Horror Weekly

Wait Until Dark, The Entity, Space Amoeba, Dark Places, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, and The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism

Weekly Horror Bulletin Issue #289

We’ve got a mixed bag this week, some really good films and some awful stinkers. That’s OK; we watch them, so you don’t have to. We’ll start off with the classic “Wait Until Dark” from 1967. then move on to the scary “The Entity” from 1982. We’ll take a fun break with “Space Amoeba” from 1970 and watch a short film as well. We’ll then move on to 1978’s “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” which really is as bad as you’ve heard. We’ll then watch a pair of old Christopher Lee films, “Dark Places” from 1973 and “The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism” from 1967. 

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The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967) 

* AKA “Blood Demon” and “The Snakepit and the Pendulum”

* Directed by Harald Reinl

* Written by Manfred R. Kohler, Edgar Allan Poe

* Stars Lex Barker, Karin Dor, Christopher Lee

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s work, but it’s kind of a mishmash of The Pit and The Pendulum with living dead and weird science and dark magic. The music was somewhat mismatched for the seriousness sometimes and it was a little draggy at times, but overall, it was pretty good.

Spoilery Synopsis

A jailer, judge, and executioner walk into a cell where Count Regula has been found guilty of torturing and murdering people. He’s killed 12 people and is sentenced to be quartered. The count swears to destroy the judge, Roger Von Marienberg, and his entire family in retaliation. They put a mask of spikes on the count and lead him on the long walk outside as credits roll. Out in the village square, they tie his arms and legs to four horses and then whip the horses. 

35 years later, people are still talking about the execution of the old count. Roger Mont Elise is a lawyer, and an old man gives him a letter from Count Frederic Regula, offering to tell him about his past. A woman related to the old baroness gets a letter as well. 

Roger arrives in town and asks about Castle Andomai. People run away when he even says the name. He watches a religious procession to “drive out the man-eating monster in the valley.” That’s where Count Regula killed the twelve virgins and was quartered. Another old man warns him not to go, as Count Regula died 35 years ago. 

Roger tells the old priest in the carriage that he doesn’t know who his parents were or where he was born. He’s going to the castle to find out some answers. Roger’s carriage interrupts a bunch of highwaymen about to kidnap Lilian von Brabant and her servant Babette. They just happen to be going to the same place and they all share a carriage. She has a similar letter about her mother’s estate. 

They arrive at the castle, but it’s a burned-down ruin. There’s an old man camping there. As they drive away, what’s left of the castle collapses completely. The coachman insists on returning to town, at least until the priest pulls a pistol. They pass mannequins in trees; there are arms and legs everywhere. 

Night falls, and they’re all lost in “The Forbidden Forest,” much to the driver’s dismay. There are bodies hanging from nooses on the trees, and the carriage runs over a few on the road. The driver has a heart attack and dies. Roger and the priest, Father Fabian, get out to check on all the corpses, and a strange man takes the carriage and the women. 

Roger and Fabian find the ruins of Castle Andomai and Regula’s tombstone. They find an underground passage that leads to a whole complex of rooms. 

The strange man who took the carriage comes to greet them; he’s Anatol. The women are there, and Lilian plays the piano. She doesn’t seem to recognize either Roger or the priest. Anatol says he gave her a drug to calm her, but that doesn’t seem right to Roger. Babette is there as well, and she seems normal enough. Father Fabian admits that he’s just a robber, not really a priest. Lilian comes out of her delusion and is terrified. They find a painting on the wall of both Lilian and Roger. 

Fabian comes in yelling that Babette is being tortured. She’s tied to a big contraption that is going to slowly lower her onto spikes. Roger and Fabian are on the other side of a locked door. They break in the door and save her just in time. She says it was Anatol who put her in the trap.  

Anatol chases Babette some more, and Fabian shoots him. “I’ve been dead for years; they hanged me. I am invulnerable.” Anatol laughs maniacally.  He shows them to Count Regula’s body, encased in glass. “His spirit is still intact. He shall live again.” Fabian gets locked in a room with no doors as Anatol works a ritual to revive the dead count.  

The count, still in his mask of spikes, wakes up. He’s pale and scarred, but looks much better than expected. Anatol reports that Lilian and Roger are the daughter and son of the count’s enemies. The count delights that he’s found the secret to immortality. “In order to succeed, I needed the blood of 13 women. I found 12.” The 13th was to be Lilian’s mother, who turned him in; Roger’s father was the judge who sentenced him to death. Lilian will be the 13th virgin. 

Roger is tied down in a room full of rats as a pendulum lowers toward him. The pendulum starts swinging. The count tells Lilian to run to save him, hoping her fear will grow, which he needs for his ritual. She’s chased by vultures, lizards, and tarantulas. Then she’s put into a room with a pit full of snakes while standing on a slowly retracting drawbridge. 

“A few more seconds and my vengeance is complete,” smiles the evil count. Roger helplessly watches the pendulum slowly lower towards his belly. The blade cuts the ropes holding him down before they get to him, so he escapes. Fabian just happens to be there to help him out. 

Roger bursts into the secret lab and interrupts the process since he’s carrying a cross. He swings the cross, joking that he has a pendulum that will destroy them. The count and his butler cringe at the sight of the cross as their time runs out. Anatol, the count, and the dead women all turn to dust, and the dungeon begins to collapse. 

Fabian and Babette ride up in their carriage to pick up Roger and Lilian. Lilian asks if it was all a bad dream. He says it could have been. 

Commentary

Note that there’s no character named “Dr. Sadism” or anything even close to that in this film. 

It’s a regular Roger Corman-like gothic-looking film from the 60s, but the “modern” music in the soundtrack really throws off the vibe. The music is almost comical at times, but the film is completely serious otherwise. It’s got some very cool visuals, although it’s also really tame by modern standards. It’s got some great sets– it’s a lot like being in one of those Halloween “haunted house” attractions. It’s campy and corny, but it’s got all the staples.

It starts to drag a bit right about the time Christopher Lee makes his big appearance, but once Roger and Lilian get into the traps, it picks up again. 

I’m amazed that this film isn’t better known, as it’s quite good if you like other gothic films from the 1960s. 

Wait Until Dark (1967) 

* Directed by Terence Young

* Written by Frederick Knott, Robert Carrington, Jane-Howard Hammerstein

* Stars Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. 

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-free Judgment Zone

The suspense in this one builds nicely once it gets going. The cast was excellent and all played off each other well. It’s a classic worth checking out.

Spoilery Synopsis

We begin in Canada. A man stuffs little heroin bags into a doll and sews it up. He gives the doll to Lisa, who goes out to catch a taxi to the international airport. The old man calls someone about the doll. Credits roll. When the plane lands, she gives the doll over to Sam Hendrix and leaves with someone who meets her there. 

Two guys, Talman and Carlino, go looking for Lisa, but she’s not home. A man in shades also comes to the door. He’s Harry Roat Junior, and he says he’s come to buy them. He wants to hire them to get the doll. He says that Lisa will pay $2000 each to find that doll. Roat tells them that Hendrix is a photographer and that he has the doll. Turns out, they’re in Hendrix’s apartment right now. 

Talman starts searching the apartment for the doll and quickly comes across Lisa’s body in the closet. The two guys decide to leave, but Roat reminds them that they’ve left fingerprints all over the place. They are both ex-cons who met in prison. One of them is a former cop. It’s one more reason they should do what Roat wants. 

Suddenly, a woman comes into the apartment. She calls for Sam and comes in. For some reason, she doesn’t see any of the three men– she’s completely blind! She’s Susy Hendrix, Sam’s wife, and she doesn’t stay long. She gets in the closet for a scarf but doesn’t even notice the body. Once she’s gone, the men get rid of the body. 

Susan and Sam talk about the woman they heard was murdered nearby. Susy complains that Gloria is in love with Sam, but Sam laughs that she’s just a kid; she’s moved things around in the apartment while she was out. Susy’s only recently been blinded, and she’s going to school to learn the ropes, but she’s still not happy about any of it. 

Susy’s home alone, and Talman comes over to work on her. He puts out a fire in the ashtray, which endears him to her. He claims that he’s an old friend of Sam’s from the Marines, using information he can see on the wall. Susy says she lost her sight in a car crash. He doesn’t stay long. Gloria comes in, and she’s an annoying little brat who throws a tantrum. The two soon make up. 

A loud old man comes into the apartment and makes a scene about something. It’s Roat in disguise. As he leaves, Talman returns, and she looks to him as a hero when he volunteers to stay with her. Carlino comes in as a detective and Talman tells him everything. The two of them manage to subtly bring up the idea of the doll and the missing dead woman. 

Roat comes to the door again, and she recognizes the squeaky shoes that the old man wore. He asks if his father was here, the old man from before. Roat’s “Father” thinks a photographer is fooling around with his wife, but it’s the wrong photographer. He also brings up the doll, which was supposedly made for his wife. The two men give each other hand signals, and they signal Carlino outside by flashing the window blinds. Carlino calls and tells Roat that his wife is dead, so he leaves. 

Susy says Sam brought a doll like they were talking about from his recent Canadian trip. Susy starts to wonder if Sam really is involved with murders. She doesn't want to call the police as she tries to cover up for Sam. The two of them both thoroughly search the apartment for the doll. Susy realizes all her visitors keep playing with the window blinds, and she puts two and two together about Roat and Carlino. Talman wants to see what’s in her safe, but she won’t open it. Finally, he gives up and leaves. 

We see that little Gloria has taken the doll. She sneaks in and puts it under the couch to make it look like Susy simply dropped it. Susy finds the doll and insists that they hide it. She gives Gloria instructions to go and watch the crooks’ van outside. 

Carlino comes to the door, and Gloria sneaks out. He thinks she’s been looking for the doll and puts pressure on her about Mrs. Roat’s murder. He suggests that the doll is in the safe and he might have to get a search warrant. There are more telephone shenanigans, and Gloria watches them all playing phone booth outside. 

When he leaves, Susy calls Talman and says she’s found the doll. Gloria signals to Susy that Talman is on it as well. Before she can call the real police, Talman returns with Roat and Carlino behind him. Susy says the doll is in Sam’s studio. She’s very calm and fools him. After they leave to search the studio, Susy tells Gloria to go to the bus station and catch Sam when he returns. She tries again to call the police, but the line has been cut. 

Susy knows that they’ll be coming back for her, so she breaks all the light bulbs, except for one over the table. 

Talman returns, and from the darkness, he knows that she knows, so they talk honestly. He demands the doll, but she refuses. Roat kills Carlino outside, and then he comes in and stabs Talman in the back before chaining the door shut. 

Roat pours gasoline all over the floor. He takes his shoes off so she can’t hear him walking. She gets scared and offers to get him the doll. Roat torments her, but she’s not willing to tell him where the doll Is. She destroys the one remaining light. She comes after him with the gasoline; he won’t be lighting any more matches.

It’s pitch black, and we don’t see anything of what’s going on– until he opens the refrigerator door - she forgot one light. She gives him the doll at last, but she also grabs a kitchen knife. He cuts open the doll and removes the heroin. She stabs him, and he dies. 

She screams at the door, but she can’t get the chain open. Nope– he’s not dead. She finally manages to turn the power on the fridge out, and things go black again. There's commotion in the dark. Did he get her? 

Sam and Gloria arrive with the police, who break down the door. They find Talman and Roat, but Susy is hiding behind the fridge. She’s fine.

Commentary

This was originally a stage play, and it’s obvious, as there’s really only one set. It’s very Hitchcockian, but Alfred had nothing to do with this one. How much could a little doll’s worth of heroin be worth, anyway? The two hired goons were $8000 plus there had to be plenty left over for Roat. 

It starts out a little contrived and is a bit of a slow burn, but the tension ratchets up in the final half hour. By the time she figured out that Talman was a baddie, why didn’t she just give him the doll– she knew by then that there was no real murder plot involving Sam. Also, Roat walked all over that apartment barefoot and never once stepped on a broken lightbulb. 

The performances are all good, the plot develops interestingly, and it’s all very well done. 

Space Amoeba (1970) 

* AKA “Gezora, Ganime, Kameba: Kessen! Nankai no daikaijû”

* Directed by Ishiro Honda

* Written by Ei Ogawa

* Stars Akira Kubo, Atsuko Takahashi, Yukiko Kobayashi, Kenji Sahara

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was in the middle of the road among the giant creature features. But it does have four big ones, some science fiction elements, and characters to root for. It was fairly entertaining, but not one that will make the best of lists.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a big American rocket about to blast off into space. They do the countdown, and up it goes! It’s going to Jupiter, where it will orbit for a year before trying to land there. However, it runs into space spores along the way that turn it around back toward Earth. 

Akira Kubo, a news photographer and passenger on an airplane, watches as the Helios spacecraft splashes down into the ocean. He meets up with Ayaki Hoshino, who tells him about a remote island paradise. It’s going to be a fantastic new resort, and they want Kubo to take publicity photos. Dr. Mira, one of Kubo’s old friends, is going there to study reports of alleged “monsters” there. It’s the island near where Kubo saw the spacecraft go down. 

An advance party of two men on the island complain about the cold as they go fishing. Suddenly, they’re attacked by a giant squid that eats one of them. The other man gets away but runs into the island natives. 

Ayako and Kudo run into Obata, an annoying man who’s also in the tourist trade. They get a report about the man on the island who was killed. Kudo, Ayako, Mida, and Obata, along with Rico, the guide, take a dinghy to the island. Rico runs off immediately, leaving them on their own. Yokoyama, the survivor of the monster attack, comes to pick them up, but he doesn’t want to talk about monsters. Ayako sees a tiny turtle and screams. 

The group goes into a cave with an underwater lake, and then they see the water start glowing. Something big splashes them, but they don’t get a look at it. Yokoyama panics, runs back to base, and starts packing. Meanwhile, the giant squid-thing attacks the house from outside, and it’s way bigger than the house. It eats Yokoyama and injures Rico. 

The others walk to base and find the wreckage. They find Rico, who has frostbite burns on his body. Obata digs through the rubble and finds some secret business plans that he stashes away. A native girl, Saki, walks in; she’s Rico’s girlfriend and wants to help. She leads them to the native village. 

In the morning, Kudo and Mida go Scuba diving to find the monster, and Obata tries to convince Ayako that there are no monsters. The divers soon find the downed spacecraft and take lots of pictures. Then the monster shows up and attacks, but the two men manage to escape. The natives call the monster “Gezora.” 

Gezora goes to the village, and everyone there scatters. The old leader stops to pray to it, but that doesn’t work. The visitors argue about it being an octopus, but it’s clearly a squid. Could they use fire to fight the sea monster? They get some gasoline and spread it around before luring the creature into their trap. It burns and runs away, back to the ocean. It sinks to the bottom and dies, releasing the space spores…

The humans continue to explore the island. They find a whole shed full of ammunition and fuel. Dr. Nida thinks that the monster might have come “from out of this world.” Obata finds an inflatable raft and tries to get away, but something under the water attacks him– it’s a giant crab! It too chases everyone through the woods. Kudo shoots one of its eyes out, but it keeps coming. He then shoots out the other eye, and it walks off a cliff. Then he blows it up, but again, the spores move on…

Obata wakes up on the beach, not dead from his misadventure with the crab. He sees some of the glowing blue spores, and they climb onto him. He hears a voice telling him that he’s been taken control of, and the spores are here to conquer the Earth. Meanwhile, Dr. Mida figures all this out on his own and tells the others. 

Saki invites the group to her wedding with Rico, who is still basically comatose. Rico freaks out in the middle of it all and runs into the jungle. He remembers the monsters now. Mida realizes that they can use sound waves to hurt the creatures. They can use bats to make the sound, but when they go to the cave to catch some bats, they find all the bats are dead; something killed them. 

While searching, Kudo and Ayako find another monster, this time a big turtle. They hide in a cave and see the bats inside. They seal up the caves to save the bats for later, but then Obata shows up. They explain the bat-plan to him, and he’s nosy about it. That night, just before dark, Obata dumps gasoline to set all the bat caves on fire. 

Ayako tries to talk to Obata, to get the man inside to resist. He does resist and forces his body to let the bats escape. Obata walks out where a giant lobster and turtle are being harassed by bats. They revert to their natural instincts and start fighting each other. They fight their way up a mountain, and both fall into a volcano. 

The humans watch as Obata walks toward the volcano and jumps in as well. “Obata killed the last of the space creatures; he killed himself to save mankind.” 

Kudo complains that no one would ever believe his story, and he doesn’t have any pictures. 

Commentary

Not just one giant monster here, but four! These aren’t Godzilla-type mutations, these are upgraded animals, enlarged by space spores. I guess the blue space spores are the “Space Amoebas” since none of the monsters are even remotely amoeba-like. 

It’s a predictable story with middling-quality creatures. We were entertained, but it’s not going on anyone’s top-ten list. 

Dark Places (1973) 

* Directed by Don Sharp

* Written by Ed Brennan, Joseph Van Winkle, James Hannah Jr

* Stars Christopher Lee, Joan Collins, Herbert Lom, Jane Birkin, Robert Hardy, Jean Marsh

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one is a character driven mystery tale with some supernatural elements to it. It’s not tremendously good, but it’s decent and gets the job done. Joan Collins and Christopher Lee don’t have a lot of screen time together, but they make the most of it. It’s not too hard to guess where things are going, but it’s satisfying, and we liked it quite a bit. 

Spoilery Synopsis

Dr. Ian Mandeville comes to see Mr. Marr, who is dying. Edward Foster complains to the young doctor that he should have been called in sooner. Old man Marr tells Edward where to find his will; “They’ll come back, my children. Promise to keep my house and money for them.” The old man dies before telling him where his fortune is hidden. He leaves as Dr. Mandeville arrives, too late. 

On the way to the Marr house, Edward talks to the cabbie, who warns him not to go there; bad things happen there. He smiles when he sees Marr’s Grove, the big mansion, and doesn’t like the pit that he steps into by accident. He cuts his leg badly and calls Dr. Ian Mandeville to patch him up. They talk about the old house, and Ian warns him about the place as well. Edward tells Ian that he met old man Marr in the asylum. 

Old Andrew’s solicitor, Prescott, talks to Edward later; Edward will stay with him until Marr’s Grove is ready to inhabit. In the morning, he checks out the mansion that he’s “inherited.” The place is covered in dust and cobwebs, but it’s mostly intact. He uncovers a painting of Andrew when he was younger, and there’s a resemblance between him and Edward. He also sees a strange “shield” design written in the dust more recently. 

Sarah Mandeville, Ian’s sister, comes to visit. She comments that he’s younger than she pictured. She offers to take charge cleaning the old place up. She’s very forward and direct about what she wants. 

Edward goes to the local banker for an account; the old banker doesn’t know where the 210,000 pounds went- it might be hidden in the house somewhere. Ian tells Edward that old man Marr’s children are dead; they were all murdered, so they aren’t coming back. “That’s why the villagers won’t go near the place.” 

Later, Ian and Sarah come to the conclusion that Edward is there for the money, after all their efforts. Things seem to fall down and move when Edward comes into the room. He finds an old photo of Alta and thinks he sees her in the window; Prescott says no, she’s dead too, murdered along with everyone else. He adds that no one knows how they were murdered, since no one ever found the bodies. 

A couple of times at Prescott’s place, Edward has seen a light on in Marr’s Grove, but there’s never anyone actually there. Edward spends his days searching for secret rooms where the loot might be hidden. Prescott and Ian argue about the money; they both accuse the other of wanting it. Edward tells Sarah about some of the weird things he’s experienced, and she knows she had nothing to do with it; she wonders if the place really is haunted. 

Edward starts getting flashbacks to young Andrew dealing with his children, Francis and Jessica. He appears to have been having an affair with Alta, the governess. Edward starts dreaming about all this in the daytime as well. 

Edward and Sarah have sex, and in the morning, Edwards finds muddy footprints in the bedroom, along with a pickaxe. Sarah warns Edward about Prescott; since an insane man cannot form a will, Edward can’t legally inherit the house, and Prescott would know that– why would Prescott let Edward have the house?

While having sex, Edward notices a small hole in the wall, which he breaks open later; the wall is full of bats. Edward flashes back to Andrew and Alta again. They talk about his wife’s mental illness and that the children have inherited it; “They’re evil.” Edward starts to think Andrew is trying to possess him. He tells Sarah things about the area that he shouldn’t know. 

More and more, Edward flashes back to Andrew and Alta. She wants him to commit his wife and children to the asylum, but he doesn’t want to. Later, Sarah tells Ian that Edward’s starting to act very strangely. 

While in one of his Andrew-trances, Edward finds a key and opens a locked door. He comes out of the trance when Ian knocks on the door. Edward goes on a walk with Ian and Prescott while Sarah sneaks back to the house to search. Edward grabs some random children while hallucinating about Andrew’s children; Prescott and Ian take him back to the hosue. 

We flash back to Andrew getting the money and giving half to Alta; she wants to just leave, but he wants to tell his wife, Victoria, first. He tells Victoria about his feelings for Alta, but she won’t hear it. She throws a massive tantrum, and Edward experiences the whole thing. 

Edward has had enough and starts packing his things. He finds the key to that locked room again and checks it out. He finds the soft wall that obviously covers a secret room. He laughs to himself, “it’s mine!” and then he takes a nap. Sarah crawls into bed with him, but Andrew hallucinates her as Victoria. He hears Alta screaming in the next room, so he strangles Victoria/Sarah. 

Edward then starts hacking away at the secret wall. Prescott and Ian are on the way to the house, and Sarah is dead on the floor, much to Edward’s surprise. Ian comes to the door for Sarah; he knows Edward wasn’t working at the asylum; he was a patient there. “I’ve come to help you with the money. You’ve found it, haven’t you?” Ian runs upstairs to the bedroom and finds his sister’s body on the floor. Edward kills Ian with the ax. 

We then flash back to Andrew confronting his children, who won’t say where Alta is. He finds Alta tied to the bed, murdered by the children. “You don’t have to go away now!” He pulls out a sword and kills them both.  

Prescott comes into the house, looking for Edward, or Ian, or anyone. He soon finds the bodies of Ian and Sarah in the bedroom. He calls the police and tells them to come quickly. They arrest Edward and look inside that hole in the wall, where they find all the dead bodies. They also find two suitcases full of banknotes. Prescott is not happy when the policeman takes all the money as evidence. 

Edward and the police drive off, probably back to the asylum. 

Commentary

It’s a low-budget British haunted house film with some recognizable faces in it. That’ll either sell you or dissuade you from seeing it, but that’s really all there is to it. It’s fine, but not especially outstanding. This came out about the same time that Hammer and Amicus were in their heyday, and it’s very similar to offerings from those two studios. 

I suspected early on that when Edward said he met old man Marr at the asylum, they were both patients there, and the whole thing would be his own imagination. 

The main actor here is fifth-biller Robert Hardy, and top-billed Christopher Lee is just sorta there in some scenes as a supporting character. It was a little predictable at points, but overall, worth a watch. 

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978) 

* Directed by John De Bello

* Written by Costa Dillon, John De Bello, J Stephen Peace

* Stars David Miller, George Wilson, Sharon Taylor

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Like tomatoes being thrown at you, this movie is a non-stop barrage of jokes and silly things. Some are subtle, some are obvious, some stick, some fall flat, some are dated, some are timeless. But there are a lot of them. Almost to the point of it being fatiguing. But chuckles are to be had, and if you’re in the mood for an over-the-top spoof, you might want to check this one out.

Spoilery Synopsis

We are told about Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and how people laughed– until it really happened. What could happen next? It’s the present day of 1978, and a woman sees a grumbling tomato climb out of her sink and roll across the floor to get her. Credits roll, including a catchy song! 

The police find the dead woman, covered in blood– no, it’s not blood, it’s tomato juice. The radio tells us that the tomato crops have been growing at an unprecedented rate. We get a montage of people talking about tomatoes killing their relatives. 

We cut to the farm where a helicopter crashed behind the police’s defensive line. It’s like a war zone. The President wants an investigation, and he wants Mason Dixon to investigate the situation. There are incidents of tomato attacks all over the country. 

The generals all assemble in the smallest possible conference room to debate the situation. Dr. Nokitofa explains the plan, and he’s very obviously badly dubbed. There are a few translation… difficulties. 

Mason Dixon arrives, and he’s introduced to his team of “experts.” We cut to the beach, where a bunch of tomatoes have seen “Jaws” and re-enact their favorite scenes. There’s a Senate investigation, but one guy gets left out. 

Ace reporter Lois Fairchild watches as a bike racer is eaten by a herd of tomatoes. She’s then assigned to check out the real story behind the tomatoes. She confronts Dixon about what he knows. 

Jim Richardson, the President’s Press Secretary, goes to talk to a publicity guy who is a walking infomercial– at least until he breaks into song. He then gets started on the world’s ultimate commercial. 

Dixon gets a call; they’ve captured an oversized tomato. Now we cut to scenes of people being assaulted by giant tomatoes. 

Sam Smith, the disguise expert, infiltrates the tomato camp and listens to the tomatoes making plans. There’s a campfire hangout that works well for him until he slips up and asks for someone to pass the ketchup for his hotdog. His cover is blown. Then it’s time for the army to sing a song about crushing tomatoes. Lots and lots of stuff happens with Dixon in the desert. Jim Richardson confronts Dixon; he thinks he can control the tomatoes. 

Finally, we get a crowd of people assembled as the giant tomatoes approach. Dixon gets to the stadium to play the song “Puberty Love” at top volume, and the tomatoes retreat [they really could have used some Slim Whitman]. The people charge out, stomping all the tomatoes underfoot. Lois, however, is attacked by the giantest tomato of all, and this one’s wearing earmuffs to block out the singing. Dixon shows the song’s sheet music, and that has the same effect. 

Lois and Mason fall instantly in love and sing one more song to each other. After they walk off into the sunset, the carrots start planning their move… 

Commentary

Many of these actors never worked on a movie before; many of them never worked again. It’s a non-stop barrage of jokes, both spoken and visual. There are almost too many jokes; some hit and some miss, but there are a lot of them. Most are pretty dated or not especially funny, and it gets old fast. There’s really only barely a story; it’s more like a bunch of loosely connected skits.  

Too many silly jokes. Not enough killer tomatoes. I was bored to tears after twenty minutes. I’m sure I’d have thought this was hilarious when I was six years old, but not so much now. 

The Entity (1982) 

* Directed by Sidney J. Furie

* Written by Frank De Felitta

* Stars Barbara Hershey, Ron Silver, David Labiosa

* Run Time: 2 Hours, 5 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was inspired by true events. We’d say loosely based on true events at best. It’s a little on the long side, but it moves well and doesn't seem excessive. There are interesting plays between the paranormal and science trying to explain it, with the most elaborate setup to catch a ghost since “Ghostbusters.”

Spoilery Synopsis

Carla Moran runs to her typing class. Afterward, she goes home and checks on her sleeping kids. Her oldest son, Billy, is a slob. She goes into the bedroom, where something invisible throws her on the bed and violently rapes her. She screams, and all three kids run in, terrified. There’s no one there and all the doors are locked. Was it just a bad dream?

Later the same night, things have calmed down and she’s alone in the bedroom again. There’s an earthquake and the room gets really cold. But it’s just the bedroom. Everyone runs to the car, but only Carla felt anything. Billy didn’t hear anything other than his mother screaming. The family goes to stay at Carla’s friend’s house for the night. 

In the morning, she tells Cindy what happened, but it’s all a little hard to believe. The rapist was there, but then he vanished. Cindy wonders if Carla’s on drugs; maybe she needs to see a doctor. Cindy’s rude husband makes them all leave soon after. They stay out all day, but they have to go that evening. Cindy shows up, and they sleep in the same bed for safety; nothing happens that night. 

On the way to work the next day, something invisible takes control of Carla’s car and drives like a maniac through heavy traffic. After that, she goes to Dr. Phil Sneiderman, a psychiatrist who orders some tests. She then goes home and takes a bath, where she’s attacked again; we don’t see anyone else there with her. 

She tells Phil that it felt like there was more than one attacker; three of them attacked her. She has bruises and bite marks in places that she couldn’t have bit herself. The doctor thinks it’s some kind of psychological trauma from her past. He drives her home and goes inside, looking around the house. He says she’s perfectly normal; she says, “There’s still something here.”

That night, she gets it again, right in front of Billy and the other kids. Billy gets thrown around by something invisible as well. He appears to be attacked by electricity and then passes out. 

She goes to talk to a whole panel of psychiatrists. She leaves, and the other doctors all think she’s hysterical, and the kids are as well. Dr. Phil Sneiderman isn’t convinced of their justifications. 

Carla’s boyfriend, Jerry, comes home from his trip. He works on the road, and she wants to go with him, but that’s impossible. She takes a sedative before bedtime, and the ghost does things to her as she sleeps. 

Phil wants Carla to check into the hospital for two weeks, and he’s very insistent. Rather than do that, she threatens to just cooperate with the ghost and give it what it wants. They argue about ghosts, demons, and imagination. That evening, she goes to Cindy’s house, and the ghost wrecks the place; it’s not just at her house anymore. Cindy and her husband see what happened, but they don’t see the ghost itself. 

She meets Gene and Joe, some parapsychologists, at the bookstore and brings them home with her. They experience some weirdness right away and then set up with their ghost-detecting equipment. That night, the ghost is there, but he’s very weak. They soon bring in the whole parapsychology department, and Dr. Phil is not supportive and accuses Billy of pretending to battle the ghost, which he denies. 

That night, Gene, Joe, and Dr. Cooley all see some strangeness, but it’s not especially violent. Just as they’re all wrapping up for the evening, Jerry returns unexpectedly and asks what all the people were there for. She tells him what’s been going on, and he’s skeptical. Then he walks in on her being pinned to the bed and that goes badly. Jerry and Phil talk, and Jerry wants out; the marriage is off. 

Joe and Gene come up with a plan to “contain” the ghost. They build a whole fake house that looks just like Carla’s, only they control the electricity, and there are no ceilings; they can see everything. There’s also a protective area that seals shut to keep the ghost out and tons of liquid helium to freeze it. Phil shows up, and he thinks this whole setup is dangerous. 

Night falls, and Carla goes to bed inside the fake house. Meanwhile, Phil and his boss make phone calls to get the experiment shut down. Everyone feels the room getting cold. The liquid helium starts spraying on its own, chasing Carla around the “house,” keeping her from the protective area. It freezes the glass in the protected area, and it shatters easily.  

She tells the ghost that she’s finished running; it should do what it wants. Phil drags her out before all the helium tanks explode and freeze everything solid. The ghost is briefly trapped, but it soon breaks out. 

Carla goes home and the ghost is there waiting for her. She hears it speak this time. She goes outside to talk to the kids; she’s just gonna roll with it for now. The attacks continue…

Commentary

It’s supposedly based on a true story of a woman who claimed to be regularly raped by three ghosts. Every time the kids are on-screen, they’re shrill and screaming. It’s got a lot of personal drama and talking, but surprisingly little ghost action. It’s more about the conflict between psychology and parapsychology rather than ghosts. 

It’s pretty long, mostly because it explores the topic pretty thoroughly, but overall, it was well done and holds up pretty well today. 

Short Film: Sea Devil (2014) 

* Directed by Dean C. Marcial, Brett Potter

* Written by Dean C. Marcial, Brett Potter

* Stars Moise Brutus, Antoni Corone, Taylor Rouviere

* Run Time: 9:12

* Watch it:

What Happens

We are told that on the morning of June 22, 2012, an unmanned fishing boat was found in Miami; the crew never was. 

We flash back to the boat picking up two Cuban immigrants; cash is transferred as well. Much to their surprise, the captain puts them to work on his fishing boat to make it all look more legit. 

Something more than just fish enters the boat that night; it looks like a man with no legs, and he’s covered in barnacles. “Put me back” he moans. 

This isn’t going to end well, is it?

Commentary

The characters and motivations are believable enough, the acting is good, the prosthetics are well done. The night shots are entirely too dark, sometimes you can only guess what’s going on. The ending is also far too abrupt; we know what’s coming, but it would have been better to see a little more.

Stay tuned for more reviews next week!

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We’ll start out this week watching the recent “I Saw the TV Glow” from 2024. We liked it but admit that we probably didn’t fully understand all of it. Then we’ll get caught up by watching the most recent three movies in the “Saw” series: “Jigsaw” (2017), “Spiral” (2021), and “Saw X” from 2023. Then we’ll watch some old classics, “Black Sunday” from 1960 and “The Invisible Ghost” from way back in 1941. This is one of those rare weeks where we liked everything!

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I Saw the TV Glow (2024) 

* Directed by Jane Schoenbrun

* Written by Jane Schoenbrun

* Stars Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is a beautiful, well-made movie with bright colors and angst and allegories galore. It’s a slow-moving piece, and we can’t say we quite understood it, but it kept us watching with fascination. It’s just a television show that Owen is watching, so how could it be impacting reality? Well, it certainly seems to be. We’d recommend it for a watch with the caveat that you’ll probably love it, hate it, or be baffled.

Spoilery Synopsis

Young Owen watches a trailer for a horror movie on TV. Credits roll. It’s 1996, and Owen is in school, waiting for his mother to vote. He sees a girl reading a book about that show, “Pink Opaque.” He talks to Maddy, who’s two years ahead of him in school. He wants to watch the show, but it’s on in the evening past his bedtime. 

He asks his mom if he can stay over at a friend’s house, and she makes it all as awkward as possible. Then he goes to Maddy’s house instead, where he can stay up to watch the show. 

We watch some of the show, and it’s full of lame teenage dialogue and a killer ice cream cone. Afterward, Maddy explains the show to him; the ice cream man is just the monster of the week, Mr. Melancholy is the “Big Bad.” Isabel and Tara are the main characters, and they are the Pink Opaque. He doesn’t really understand most of it. He goes to sleep on the floor at her house. In the morning, Owen walks home, thinking about the show. 

Two years later, Owen’s mother has cancer. She says he always seems like he’s somewhere else lately. He still has a 10:15 bedtime, and he’s not allowed to watch the show. His father is a jerk, so he’s still not allowed to watch it. He tells Maddy this, and she starts taping it for him. She also writes him a lot of notes about the show. 

He watches them over and over again. We watch part of the pilot episode with him, where the two girls meet. Owen wants to stay at Maddy’s house overnight and watch the show live, but she warns him that she’s into girls, not him. Owen doesn’t much care for boys or girls, he just likes TV shows. He thinks maybe there’s something wrong with him. They stay up late (for him) and watch the show, and Maddy cries during the episode. 

Maddy tells Owen that she’s going to be leaving town soon, as her parents are just terrible. She draws the symbol that the TV show characters have on their backs, on his. That night, he dreams about the glow of the TV. Maddy tells Owen to make plans for next week, so they can run away together. He doesn’t really want to go, and Maddy disappears without a trace; all they found was her TV set burning in the backyard. “The Pink Opaque” got canceled that same month. 

Eight years later, Owen works at a theater. He’s still very shy around people, and his coworkers laugh at him. One night, on the drive home from work, he sees strange lights in the road- a fallen power cable. He finds a page from one of the Pink Opaque books. Owen’s mother has died years before, and his father is still awful. 

Owen goes to the grocery store and sees someone acting strangely. It’s Maddy. We cut to a band singing a song as Owen and Maddy talk in the back. Everyone thought she was dead, but all she wants to talk about is the show. “Do you remember it as just a TV show? Do you ever get confused? Like the memory isn’t quite right?” We flash back to her making him wear dresses during the show. Were they actually in the show? 

She says she has been inside the show for all these years. She can’t stay here much longer, she’s going back soon. She wants him to meet her tomorrow night at midnight. Owen goes home and watches the tape of the show’s final episode. It absolutely doesn’t feel like a kids’ show anymore. Both the main characters die and are buried alive. Then the show just ends. 

Owen’s father goes into the basement and finds Owen trying to crawl inside the picture tube of the TV. The father carries him up to the bathroom, where he vomits TV sparks. 

Owen goes to see Maddy, who explains that she ran away to Phoenix and got a job. She bought a coffin and paid some guy to bury her alive. She talks about watching herself start to die and then clawing her way out of the coffin. She goes on and on about her exploits and drama. She says all his memories were put there to distract him from the Midnight Realm. 

Owen says “This is just the suburbs.” He thinks she may have gone insane, but follows along anyway. She really seems to think she’s in the show. He tackles her and then runs away. 

Owen waited for Maddy to come back, but he never saw her again. Her story couldn’t be true, could it? What if she was right?

More years pass. Owen throws out his old CRT TV and gets a new flat-screen. He tells us directly that he’s got his own family now. He’s watching “The Pink Opaque” on streaming now. It was nothing like he remembered, truly awful, cheesy, and cheap. It’s nothing like what he saw when he was younger, and that embarasses him. 

Twenty years later, older Owen still works at the Fun Center, but he doesn’t look healthy. He freaks out and screams during a birthday party, and everyone freezes as he rants and cries. He later goes into the restroom and uses a box cutter to slice open his own chest. When he tears his chest open, there’s a TV inside there, playing the good shows. 

Commentary

I’m sure this is some kind of artsy allegory for something, but I have no idea what. There’s a lot here about being a fan of media, especially before the Internet, and how people would obsess over their favorite shows– especially kids who didn’t have anything else. Maddy talks about the real world suffocating him, and toward the end, more and more, Owen has trouble breathing. 

It’s very atmospheric, visually interesting, but slow-moving. We went into this completely blind, and still felt kind of blind afterward. I never really did have any idea where it was going, but it kept my interest throughout.  

I liked it a lot, but I feel like I didn’t really understand it as much as I should have. 

Jigsaw (2017) 

* Directed by Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig

* Written by Josh Stolberg, Pete Goldfinger

* Stars Matt Passmore, Tobin Bell, Callum Keith Rennie, Hannah Anderson

* Run Time: 1Hour, 31 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Ten years have passed since John’s death, but we start right out with a group of people in a trap. Bodies of those who failed are dumped outside, putting the police on the case as well as two medical examiners. It’s got all the Saw elements, and it’s decently made, making us wonder what’s going on. If you’re a fan of the previous films, especially the first few, you’ll probably enjoy this.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open with a high-speed chase as someone runs from the cops and causes a lot of mayhem along the way. He climbs up to the roof of a building, the cops pull their guns, and the man, Edgar, claims that five people are going to die if Detective Halloran doesn’t show up within minutes. Edgar says the game is just about to get started; he’s holding some kind of hand-held detonator, so the cops shoot it. As Edgar collapses, hand blown off and one in the chest, he groans, “The game– it’s started.” Credits roll. 

Five people wake up with buckets bolted to their heads. A very familiar voice comes over the speaker and explains the rules. All the buckets have a chain that’s going to pull them into spinning saw blades. John says he wants an offering of blood to get out of this trap. One girl lightly cuts herself on a saw blade and gets out. She warns the others, who lose more or less blood. They get pulled into the next room, all but one guy, who dies. Anna, Mitch, Carly, and Ryan are in the trap room. 

At the hospital, Detective Halloran and Hunt talk about Edgar. They can’t figure out what Edgar was up to, and he’s not able to tell them because of his wounds. 

In the park, some people find the man who died in the saw-room hanging from a bridge. He’s still wearing his bucket-helmet. The corpse has a jigsaw piece carved into his neck. Halloran mentions that it’s like what John Kramer used to do, but he’s been dead for ten years. He’s got a tag, “and then there were four” on a memory card. The card has an audio of Jigsaw, saying there are going to be four more; it sounds like John Kramer. 

In the trap room, Billy rides his tricycle with a sign, “Confess” around his neck. The chains start pulling them again, and they all start confessing. Mitch sold a guy a bad motorcycle, Anna lost her baby, but those aren’t much. Mitch plays the audio tape. We get a flashback to a purse snatcher, stealing a dying woman’s medication. Carly gets a one-in-three chance of injecting herself with acid. 

Carly admits to accidentally killing someone as a result of her stealing. She and Ryan argue about the injections until Ryan stabs her with all the syringes. That… turns out to be really messy. 

Back at the morgue, Halloran reports that the voice ID says that it was John Kramer on the recording. The dead guy was a degenerate who got off the hook for murdering his own wife. 

Mitch, Ryan, and Anna move into the next room. Ryan says he sold bad mortgages and good coke; Anna mentions that her husband rolled over and suffocated her baby, but that wasn’t her fault. Ryan tries to break down the door marked “No Exit,” and ends up stepping into a trap that seems poised to cut his leg off. 

Carly’s body is found by the police, and Logan, the coroner, and his assistant, Eleanor, get to work on her, identifying the acid that killed her. Halloran starts to suspect that they might be the killers. Eleanor has been spending a lot of time on the dark web researching Jigsaw. They find a blood sample on the first victim, and it’s John Kramer’s blood. 

Mitch and Anna get stuck in a grain silo, and video screens come on. Billy explains that Ryan can save the other two if he’s brave enough to pull the lever before they’re buried alive. Ryan worries that he’ll lose his leg if he pulls the lever. It’s all very tense, but eventually, Ryan pulls the lever. Ryan does lose his leg, but the others get out of the silo. 

Eleanor and Logan talk about them both being Halloran’s suspects in the case. Halloran’s not a great detective, and several suspects have gotten off on technicalities in the past. Eleanor admits that her alibi for the first victim is sketchy, so she drives him to her “studio,” where she’s collected a whole bunch of John’s old traps. She got John’s plans and built some of them herself. Detective Hunt has followed them and starts taking pictures. 

Back at the hospital, someone kidnaps Edgar. Halloran looks into Logan’s military history, he was tortured during the war. 

In the trap room, Mitch finds a tape with his name on it. John brings up the faulty brakes on the motorcycle Mitch sold; the guy who bought it was John’s nephew. Mitch is suspended above some huge shredding blades, powered by the same motorcycle engine. There’s not much left of Mitch when that’s over. Someone in a pig mask sedates Anna. 

The cops have John Kramer exhumed. Inside the coffin– is Edgar. Halloran and Hunt raid Eleanor’s Jigsaw studio. They find Mitch’s body there, which seems almost too easy. Hunt goes to arrest Logan, who claims it must have been Halloran. Hunt is with Internal Affairs and is already investigating Halloran. Could Halloran be a copycat killer? 

Eleanor comes to Logan; she says she knows where the current game is taking place. 

Anna wakes up in chains next to Ryan. We see that they really are with the real John Kramer, not dead at all. He tells what Ryan’s guilty of. Anna used to be John’s neighbor, and he knows that she was the one who killed her baby. Her husband was accused, and he later killed himself. 

Eleanor drives Logan to an abandoned pig slaughterhouse that used to be owned by John’s wife. Halloran has followed them. They go inside, and we see that it’s the right place. Halloran comes in, gun drawn, and there’s a fight. Someone injects Halloran with a knockout drug. 

Hunt finds little jigsaw-shaped pieces of flesh in Halloran’s freezer. 

John leaves Ryan and Anna a gun with one shell inside and leaves. One must shoot the other, or so it appears. Anna grabs the gun, points it at Ryan, and the gun shoots backward, killing her. Unfortunately, the key to Ryan’s padlock was destroyed in the gun blast. 

Logan wakes up in a trap right across from Halloran, in the same kind of trap as him. John’s voice comes on and says they are the final two players. Their collars have laser cutters inside; all they have to do to escape is confess their sins. 

Logan admits that he was the medical student who messed up John’s X-rays many years ago, making his cancer harder to cure. The laser slices him anyway, with blood gushing out his neck as he collapses. Halloran starts confessing all his police screw-ups and wrongdoings. The lasers turn off, but he’s not released. 

Then Logan stands up; his lasers weren’t fatal at all, and the blood was fake. Logan is the one behind all this, after all. He recorded Halloran’s confession. Ten years ago, a game just like the one with Anna, Ryan, and the others took place in this barn. He was the first body, the guy we never really saw die. John gave him a second chance and took him on as a protege. So Logan decided to re-enact the very same games with Mitch, Ryan, Carly, and the others. Logan adds that Edgar killed his wife, but Halloran kept him out of prison because Edgar was his informant. 

We get a flashback showing how Logan set all this up. Logan turns Halloran’s lasers back on, and they split his head open like a Bloomin’ Onion. “I speak for the dead,” Logan says as he leaves. 

Commentary

Taking place ten years after the previous film, there’s none of the same characters here. It’s got more traps and fewer callbacks, essentially a reboot. 

It’s nothing unique or different, but if you like the others, this is good too!

Spiral (2021) 

* Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

* Written by Josh Stolberg, Pete Goldfinger

* Stars Chris Rock, Samuel L. Jackson, Max Minghella

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was set in the same universe as the “Saw” movies and a sort of spinoff. It was well made, with realistic effects and decent acting. But it managed to be a little bland and, we thought, easy to solve the mystery. If you’re a fan of the series, you might want to see it for completion, but we don’t give it a high recommendation.

Spoilery Synopsis

A purse snatcher runs through a crowded carnival, and another guy with a gun chases him down into the subway tunnels. A man with a pig mask grabs him from behind. He wakes up inside a machine that is chained to his tongue, and he’s balanced over the track. The pigman comes on the screen and says he wants to play a game. He is accused of lying on the stand to put innocent people in jail. The only way he can get out of the trap is to rip his own tongue off. He takes too long, and the train hits him. Credits roll. 

Zeke Banks goes on a tirade about Forrest Gump, how he died of AIDS from Jenny, which is why there was never a sequel. His friends then break into the hotel room next door and steal a bunch of money from drug dealers. Then, a dozen cops arrest them all; turns out Zeke is an undercover cop. 

Captain Garza chews out Zeke for being a lone wolf cop. She assigned Detective Schenk to be his new partner and babysitter. Zeke turned in a bad cop twelve years ago and has been paying for it ever since. They are assigned to investigate a case where a guy got hit by a train. Zeke and Schenk talk about how hard it is to be a cop. They find the guy from the opening scene– or what’s left of him. 

Back at the station, Zeke gets a flash drive that says, “Play Me.” The spiral on the tape hints that it’s related to the Jigsaw killings, but that was a long time ago, and this might be a copycat killing of some kind. They find the man’s tongue and badge– he was Boz, a cop friend of Zeke’s. 

Zeke takes charge of the case, which annoys many of the other detectives. He goes to see Kara, Boz’s wife. Lisa, Zeke’s wife, is there as well. Zeke goes home and finds Marcus, his father, a retired cop, already there; they argue. 

The detectives all get together and talk about the evidence they don’t have. Detective Finch finds out that Boz was chasing a small-time crook named Benny and steals a gun from a shop. Finch goes to where Benny stays, but someone grabs him from behind and puts him into a machine. 

We flashback to when Zeke turned in Pete, the dirty cop. Zeke’s father Marcus was the police chief at the time, and he was not happy about the situation. Zeke gets another video taunting him and the police. It leads them to a box of fingers and Finch’s badge. We flashback to Finch not doing his job when Zeke got shot. We then flash to what happened to Finch– he was in a finger-pulling-off machine. 

Checking out enemies, Zeke goes to see Pete, the cop he got thrown off the force. He’s uncooperative but still tells Zeke what he needs to know. Zeke gets another box, and this one has a doll wearing the skin off Schenk’s arm. The little paint bottle included leads them to a hobby shop where they find Schenk’s skinned body. 

Meanwhile, Captain Garza gets gassed in the cold-case room and passes out. The pig-mask guy is there and puts her in the next contraption. The tape comes on and says she covers up the corruption in her department. This machine, as with Finch, is a no-win situation, and she dies painfully. 

O’Brien suggests that Marcus may be involved, since he knew about the hobby shop location, and Zeke hits him. Both Pete and Marcus had access to the security camera footage at the police station. Someone grabs Zeke. We cut to Marcus, checking out a “spiral” location. There’s a note asking if he wants to play a game. Someone grabs him as well. 

Zeke wakes up chained to a pipe with a hacksaw within reach. He could cut his arm off– or he could use the hairpin to pick the lock. He gets out and finds Pete hanging from his hands from the roof. Pete denies knowing anything about anything that’s been going on. They play a tape and hear about Pete’s crime. This particular trap shoots broken glass at Pete unless Zeke can unlock the padlocks holding him there. Zeke finds the key, but it’s too late for Pete.  

Zeke goes into the next room and finds Schenk there, not dead after all. Pete killed Schenk’s father. Schenk lied about everything else. Pete, Finch, Boz, and the others were all crooked, not like Zeke. Schenk wants to partner up with Zeke to “clean up” the police force. Schenk shows Zeke into a room where his father hangs from chains. Zeke has one bullet to either shoot Schenk or free Marcus. He reveals that Marcus was the one who corrupted the police force in the first place. 

Zeke shoots the trap and releases Marcus. He chases and beats up Schenck. The police arrive outside and start cutting through the steel door. They cut through a cable that pulls Marcus right back up again like a puppet on strings. The cables on Marcus make him raise a gun and point it at the cops, who blow him away excessively. 

Schenk takes the elevator and gets away. 

Commentary

Kevin felt early on that Schenk would turn out to be the killer. I thought it was more likely Marcus. Both of them were apparently eliminated as suspects well before the end, but either could have been a red herring. 

This is more of a side-story to the main series, as it’s a copycat killer, but John/Jigsaw doesn’t appear at all in this one. Since it’s not John, the rules are different, and we never really know why any of this is happening until the end. 

I will quote Kevin on this one, “It was OK.” Definitely not up to the rest of the series, but not bad in itself. 

Short Film: Pizza Panic Party (2024) 

* Directed by Graham Denman

* Written by Graham Denman

* Stars Avery Potemkin, Sydney McCarthy, Chaya Mathews, Kyra Wisely

* Run Time: 9:37

* Watch it:

What Happens

Margo, Jeanette, Tracy, and Sandra are four teenagers in 1986. They get together to watch movies and listen to music in their typically 80s style. They order in pizza, but one of the girls argues about the toppings, leaving more for Margo. As Margo eats the pizza, she, and the others, soon regret it. 

Commentary

This looks great. It’s really got that 80s aesthetic down, much like “Stranger Things” did before they gave up on it. The special effects are really good for a short, and the dialog and gore shots are perfect for the retro look of the film. It’s really good, possibly in the running for our “Best of the Year” this time around. 

Saw X (2023) 

* Directed by Kevin Greutert

* Written by Pete Goldfinger, Josh Stolberg

* Stars Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnove Macody Lund, Steven Brand

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 58 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is effectively “Saw 1.5,” taking place between the first and second movies. John is the main character this time around which was interesting, giving his lessons more directly and hands-on. There are games and traps galore, and we thought it was excellent. One of the best in the series.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on John getting some medical tests done. We then cut to him in a cancer support group. The doctor gives him a few months to a year to live along with some unsupportive advice.  

While in the hospital, John sees one of the staff, a custodian, go through another patient’s things and steal his watch. We cut to that staff member sitting inside one of Jigsaw’s finger-breaking, eyeball-sucking-out games. No– that was all just John’s imagination; the custodian sees John watching and puts the watch back in the drawer and avoids that fate. 

John sees a man he met in the support group; he’s in remission now and feeling much better. Henry talks about a doctor that he read about who operated on him and gave medication – but the treatment isn’t approved yet. He gives him a link to Dr. Finn Pederson. John researches Pederson on the Internet. There’s a whole conspiracy thing going on where Pederson went into hiding from Big Pharma because he could cure cancer, and they want to shut him down. Pederson’s daughter is still active, and John contacts her. 

She soon calls John and sets up a time to get him into treatment near Mexico City. They arrange to pick John up at the airport and take him to the treatment, but on the way, they are pulled over by bandits. No– the bandits work for the hospital; the “kidnapping” was just to avoid infiltrators from the big drug companies. 

He gets to the big building and meets Gabriela, who shows him around. She says that Cecilia Pederson saved her life. The place used to be a chemical factory, but now it’s a secret high-tech operating facility. He meets Valentina and Mateo, some of the staff, as well as Parker Sears, another patient. 

Cecilia asks John what he does, and he says he helps people overcome their obstacles, sort of like a “life coach.” Not long after, John undergoes brain surgery. Later, he wakes up in a hotel, and Cecilia says he’s doing much better. She tells him to leave his bandage alone, drink his medicine for the next seven days, and then go home; he’ll be fine. He agrees to wire the second half of the payment in the morning. 

A few days later, he takes a bottle of tequila as a gift to Gabriela and finds the whole “hospital” deserted and realizes that his whole treatment was fake. He pulls off his bandages, and there’s no scar, no hole, nothing. 

Diego, the taxi driver/surgeon, is first; he tells John everything he knows about where the others are, but that doesn’t stop the two explosives embedded in his wrists. He could cut his own arms up– which will he choose? Diego gets to cutting, and removes both of the explosive devices in time. “You’re going to be OK,” says John, who takes him a first aid kit. 

Then John calls his detective friend and arranges for some help finding the others. 

Mateo, actually a veterinarian who sells animal drugs on the side, is captured. Gabriela gets captured. Valentina too. 

We cut to Cecilia, who has piles of cash on her desk to pay her accomplices. She also is captured– by Amanda, John’s “associate.” 

Mateo, Gabriela, Valentina, and Cecilia all wake up in a warehouse. When John comes in, they all know what’s up. They all beg and blame Cecilia. 

Valentina gets to play first. She has to either suck all the marrow out of her own severed leg or be beheaded by a wire. John tells the others that all of them are going to play a game like this. They’ve conned 34 people over 8 years, and John is not happy about it. 

Valentina touches the suction device, and her counter starts. She puts on the tourniquet and starts cutting on her leg. She uses the wire and starts sawing; the leg falls off. She hooks up the suction device, which starts draining her marrow. She’s just a little too slow, however, and ends up losing her head. 

The others are now convinced that this is not a trick. John and Amanda discuss philosophy and second chances. 

Meanwhile, Cecilia cuts out Valentina’s intestines to use as a rope to pull in a bag with a cellphone inside. She gets the phone, but Amanda soon takes it away. 

There’s a pounding at the door. Parker Sears is there, and he wants his money back. Amanda whacks him and ties him to a chair. He tells John that the doctors were crooks and didn’t operate on him either. John shows him his prisoners on the monitors. They explain the games and rules to Sears, who agrees to help them. 

Mateo is up next. Billy wheels out a tray of medical equipment and a tape. Mateo’s job is to cut out parts of his own brain and put them in a jar within three minutes, or something bad will happen. Cecilia talks him through the procedure, and there is much screaming. Again, he’s too slow and the machine cooks his head. 

Cecilia admits that she’s a fraud, but her father is real. She can get John in for treatment by him, but John doesn’t even entertain the idea. 

Gabriela is next, with her arm and one leg chained and suspended in mid-air. He’s hooked up part of a radiation treatment machine to slowly fry her unless she breaks her arm and ankle. She uses the metal bar to break her ankle and get out of that chain. She starts beating at her wrist as the blisters on her face grow bigger and bigger. John tells Amanda to take her to the hospital. 

Just then, Parker Sears grabs his gun and demands that Amanda give him the keys. He leads them both down to the “game area,” and it becomes clear that he’s been in on the con all along. He releases Cecilia and puts John in her trap in her place. John still wants Gabriela sent to the hospital, but Cecilia stabs her instead. 

Cecilia stops and gloats over how she’s outsmarted John. She’s actually glad that John removed her accomplices, “loose ends.” She knew all along that he was Jigsaw. She hears the little boy, Carlos, outside playing ball and brings him inside to put in the same “game” as John. 

Sears activates the game, and both John and Carlos are pulled to the floor in chains. Both of them take turns being drowned in blood, mostly John taking the worst of it. Which one will sacrifice the other? Sears and Cecilia go upstairs to get their cash. They grab the bag of money and a timer is triggered; they are in the true final game. The trap in the game room stops, and John, Amanda, and Carlos release themselves from the not-deadly trap and fake restraints. John tells little Carlos that he’s a warrior. We flash back to John disabling Sears’s gun. We also see Diego telling John all about Sears’s part in the scam. 

Jigsaw comes on the speaker, telling them that he knew everything about their tricks all night. Gas starts flooding the room they are locked in. He says only one of them can survive the next trap. The gas is poison, but there’s a hole that one of them can breathe through. They fight over the hole, and Cecilia ends up stabbing Sears. She survives but is injured, broke, and alone.

John takes Cecilia’s bag of money and gives it to Carlos. He and Amanda lead the boy outside. 

In an after-credit scene, we see John get revenge on Henry, who showed him a fake scar and got this whole mess started. Detective Hoffman has caught him and says that Henry picked the absolute worst guy to scam. 

Commentary

This is actually the first time that John is the main character and not a policeman or other victim. 

In Saw VI, John’s insurance denied him coverage for this treatment; in this one, he tries for it anyway. This one actually takes place between “Saw” and “Saw II.” How does a sickly old man in Mexico, who doesn’t speak the language at all, make these death machines? Billy and the audio tapes aren’t really necessary since John is right there, personally involved this time, but they’re a nice connection to the other films. 

Both Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith look way too old for a prequel movie, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. In all the films, John’s victims are criminals or otherwise deserve what they get, but this time, it all seems much more personal and reasonable. 

This might be the best of the series after the original. 

Invisible Ghost (1941) 

* Directed by Joseph H. Lewis

* Written by Helen Martin, Al Martin

* Stars Bela Lugosi, Polly Ann Young, John McGuire, Clarence Muse

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 4 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The premise is a little far-fetched in this one, but it still manages to be a decent film. There are no actual ghosts, just crazy people doing crazy things. Still, it’s fun, and the cast does a nice job with it.

Spoilery Synopsis

Charles Kessler comes downstairs, and the servant Evans says it’s time for dinner. Charles sits at the table alone and talks to his wife, who is just an empty chair. Evan serves “her” first. Is he insane, or is there a ghost? 

Virginia asks Evans about her father, and she doesn’t seem surprised. Ralph comes to the door, and Virginia isn’t thrilled to see him. Ralph watches Charles talking to his imaginary wife. Virginia explains to Ralph that it’s like this every year. Her mother left Charles for another man, and he does this every year on their anniversary. The two go out for a walk. 

Cecile the maid talks to Evans about whether or not Virginia and Ralph are going to get married. Jules the gardener has told Cecile about the local murders, and she’s a little weirded out. Jules then grabs some food and sneaks out to the barn, where he goes down a trap door into the cellar, where they keep Mrs. Kessler. He tells her that no one knows where she is but him. She’s not quite mentally all there. 

Jules’s wife asks why Jules doesn’t tell Charles about having his wife in the barn, but he doesn’t think Charles would take it well. Could she be behind all the murders? No, Jules says, “She is like a child.” He’s waiting for Mrs. Kessler to get better and is afraid to tell anyone about her at this point for fear of getting in real trouble. 

Cecile approaches Ralph, and she knows him from before. She’s infatuated with him, but she says he’ll never marry her. Cecile plans to tell Virginia about him soon. 

Later that night, Mrs. Kessler wanders out of the barn, which is apparently unlocked. She stands in the yard, and Charles sees her. “I’m afraid to come home. You’d kill me. You’d kill anybody,” she says to herself. 

Charles thinks he imagined it, but he starts walking around as if he's in a trance. He goes downstairs into Cecile’s room and… Evans finds her body in the morning. 

Charles calls the police, who find a note. They find a note from Ralph in Cecile’s pocket, warning her to leave. Evans overheard the conversation between Cecile and Ralph. Ralph is arrested and charged with murder. Ralph is soon convicted, sentenced to death, and executed, all very quickly. 

Paul Dickson, Ralph’s identical twin brother, comes to see Charles. That night, Mrs. Kessler gets out of the barn again, and once again, Charles sees her and goes into a trance. He then goes downstairs and kills Jules in the kitchen. In the morning, Evans finds Jules’s body, too. 

Virginia says that others have been killed here, but no one can find any clues, fingerprints, or evidence. They’d leave, but Charles’s wife used to be here, so they refuse to leave “in case she comes back.” Detective Williams talks to Paul about the details of the case. 

Jules’s wife comes to see the body and screams that he’s not dead. He is, in fact, twitching and trying to talk. Charles is there, and he asks if Jules recognized the man who tried to kill him. Jules takes one look at him and dies of fright right then. Charles finds it all confounding. 

Charles talks to Marie the new cook about not quitting. She’s pleased that Charles liked dinner and agrees to stay. Later, Charles sees his wife looking into the window and he ends up sneaking into Virginia’s room. Lightning flashes, and Charles comes out of his trance– what’s he doing in his daughter’s room? He goes back to his own room without hurting anyone. 

In the morning, Charles is terrified that the cook has been murdered, but she was just out shopping. Detective Williams comes to the door and says the police were stationed outside all night. They find Detective Ryan in one of the rooms, dead. The cook complains about food missing from the kitchen. 

Williams thinks the murderer is probably Evans, but Paul suggests bringing in a psychiatrist to judge Evans. 

As they question Evans, Mrs. Kessler sneaks in the back door and raids the fridge. A couple of police officers walk in and catch her. “But I’m dead, you understand?” They take her upstairs where the others are. As soon as Charles lays eyes on her, he goes into his trance as the others all watch. 

Charles attacks Williams. In the next room, Mrs. Kessler just falls over dead. At the same time, Charles relaxes and comes out of his trance. “What happened here?” He still has no idea what he’s done. The police take him away to jail. 

Commentary

There’s a mildly racist joke as Evans, who is black, sees Paul and thinks he’s seen Ralph’s ghost. “Am I pale? I feel pale.” Yep– he was almost scared white!

The story moves along quickly and is interesting, but the main concept is ridiculous. The insane wife triggers her husband into a murderous trance. There were no ghosts, invisible or otherwise, just a couple of crazy people and a weird domestic situation. 

Other than the silly premise, it’s a fun film. 

Black Sunday (1960) 

* AKA “The Mask of Satan” 

* Directed by Mario Bava 

* Written by Ennio De Concini, Mario Serandrei, Nikolay Gogol 

* Stars Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea Checchi 

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes 

* Trailer:

*  

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone 

Excellent sets, a good script, skillful direction, and a strong cast make for a good movie that still holds up and is entertaining today.

Synopsis 

Satan was abroad in the 17th century, and so were witches and vampires. Before the hunters burned them at the stake, they were branded with the Mark of Satan. Asa’s face is covered in the Mask of Satan before she is burned for falling in love with the evil Igor Javutich. The metal mask has spikes on the inside. “In the name of Satan, I place a curse on you,” she says before the burning begins. The executioner uses a big hammer to smash the mask over her face. Credits roll.  

It starts to rain heavily, putting out the cleaning fires. The witch Asa, and her lover Igor, are buried before dawn.  

Two centuries later… 

Professors Andrej Gorobec and Thomas Kruvajan ride a carriage to Moscow for a conference, and they stop over in a little village for the night. They bribe the coachman, who is clearly terrified of the region, into taking a shortcut through the haunted woods. When the carriage loses a wheel, the two men investigate an old church in an old cemetery.  

The two go down into an old mausoleum which is covered in dust. They find one coffin with a window, and they see “The Mask of Satan” on the dead witch. The driver calls Andrej, the younger professor, out, but Thomas, the older one, stays behind to explore some more. He’s attacked by a giant bat, and in the scuffle, the window of the coffin gets smashed. Thomas pulls off the mask and cuts himself, dripping blood into the coffin.  

On their way out, they see a woman walking her dogs. She’s Katia Javda, but we recognize her face—she’s Asa the witch. The driver announces that the carriage is fixed, but we see that Andrej is smitten. Back in the tomb, we see something bubbling in the old witch’s corpse. 

Elsewhere, in the castle, Prince Vajda is Katia’s father, and Constantine Vajda is her brother. They hear a wolf howling outside. The prince is a tired old man who’s afraid of a painting on his wall. He tells the servant, Ivan, that the execution of Asa and Igor was two hundred years ago today. Back in the tomb, we see that the witch is definitely regenerating.  

At the tavern, the two professors talk about vodka and about Andrej’s crush on the princess. A young girl complains about milking her cow in the barn next to the old cemetery. The witch in the tomb commands Igor to “Rise.” The soil over his grave splits open, and Igor Javutich does rise out of the grave, still wearing his death mask. Old Igor pays a visit to Prince Vajda in his bedroom but is scared away by the old man’s cross. Katia sends for the two doctors who are staying at the inn to come help with the old man.  

Igor gets to Thomas first, saying he’s been summoned to the castle to help with the Prince. Instead of the old man’s bedroom, Igor takes Thomas into the dungeons and traps him there with the tomb of the undead witch. The witch calls him by name and orders him to look into her eyes. She wants his blood- and soon has it.  

Thomas comes to the castle to assist with the prince. He looks different now, with white hair, and he also doesn’t like the cross. The old man calms down, and they all leave Thomas alone with him. By morning, the Prince is dead and Thomas has disappeared.  

In the morning, Andrej goes to the castle for Thomas, and Constantine is rude about Thomas’s disappearance. They examine the dead prince’s body, and Katia faints. The villagers find a body that had been eaten by a demon and rush right to the castle. The milkmaid sees a painting of Igor on the wall and says that’s the man who picked up Thomas last night. The dead man and the prince both have two marks on their necks.  

As night falls, Thomas and Igor appear in the fireplace. Katia sees someone hiding in her room, but they’re gone when Constantine arrives. She and Andrej stop all the action talk in the garden about melodramatic, angsty stuff. Ivan, the butler, finds a secret door, so Constantine and Andrej go exploring. While they’re in there, someone murders Ivan. The two men find the witch asleep in the tomb. Andrej goes to find the village priest, but Constantine gets trapped inside.  

Andrej and the priest find Igor’s mask discarded in the cemetery next to his grave. They find Thomas’s body in the grave; he’s a vampire now, but the priest takes care of him.   

Katia finds Ivan’s body and goes into full screaming-panic mode, asking her dead father for help. She’s a little surprised when he opens his eyes and sits up as a vampire. The prince is about to drink her blood when Igor comes in and throws him into the fireplace to burn.  

Igor touches Katia, who quickly ages. The witch, on the other hand, gets younger. Andrej storms in and fights with Igor. Andrej wins with a little help from the dying Constantine.  

Outside, the villagers grab the torches and pitchforks and storm the castle.  

Andrej finds Katia, who asks him to kill the old witch on the table. He notices that she’s wearing Katia’s cross, but the young one isn’t. He performs the test that the priest used and figures out that the “young” one is really the witch.  

The villagers come in and grab the witch. They tie her up and burn at the stake, for real this time. As they burn her, her youth goes back to Katia in the crypt, who de-ages and wakes up. Now she and Andrej can live happily ever after.  

Commentary 

The sets in the cemetery and mausoleum are very intricate and interesting. The movie is very dark but lit well, so everything is clear and sharp. To kill a vampire, you need to stab them in the left eye socket; that’s very specific. It’s surprisingly gory for such an old film, and it still holds up well today. 

Stay tuned for more reviews next week!

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Podcast Episode 288

Note: We're traveling this week, and the sound quality is little more "echo-y" than usual. We'll probably be back to our normal studio setup next week. Sorry!

We’ll start out this week watching the recent “I Saw the TV Glow” from 2024. We liked it but admit that we probably didn’t fully understand all of it. Then we’ll get caught up by watching the most recent three movies in the “Saw” series: “Jigsaw” (2017), “Spiral” (2021), and “Saw X” from 2023. Then we’ll watch some old classics, “Black Sunday” from 1960 and “The Invisible Ghost” from way back in 1941. This is one of those rare weeks where we liked everything!

Check out all our books with one easy link: https://brianschell.com/collection/horrorguys

And also: https://hourlongpress.com

Stay tuned for more regular and bonus reviews next week!

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It’s Road Kill Week here with the Horror Guys. The rubber hits the road with “Mad Max” from 1979, “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior” from 1981, and “Max Max: Beyond Thunderdome” from 1985. We wait about thirty years for the next installment, “Mad Max: Fury Road” from 2015. Then we’ll go back and see the movie that influenced the whole thing, “Duel” from 1971. Just for laughs, we’ll also take a look at “Rubber” from 2010.   

Check out all our books with one easy link: https://brianschell.com/collection/horrorguys

Mad Max (1979)

* Directed by George Miller

* Written by James McCausland, George Miller, Byron Kennedy

* Stars Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve Bisley

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a heavily action thriller movie, but it’s grim enough to be horror adjacent. It’s set somewhat in the future from the 70s, or in a vaguely alternate timeline, without really being futuristic or seeming too science fiction. We thought it holds up pretty well, and it’s one that you should check out as where the ongoing Mad Max movies began.

Spoilery Synopsis

After the most 70s credit ever, we are told it’s “a few years from now…” 

A couple of young cops get a call about a cop killer on the highway. Before they go, they argue over who gets to drive. They’re chasing “terminal psychotics,” and we see the police leader, Max, getting into his car. They pick up more cops and some tow trucks as the chase continues. 

We cut to a couple arguing, an RV driver who can’t drive, and a baby walking in the road. This goes badly for all involved, except the maniac, who calls himself The Night Rider, gets away with his girl sidekick. Charlie, one of the cops, gets hurt pretty badly. Max finally starts his car and awaits the Night Rider, who says on the radio that he works for Toecutter. 

Night Rider and Max play chicken on the road, and then it’s another chase. Night Rider’s car explodes in a big fireball. 

That night, back at home, Max watches his wife, Jessie, play the saxophone. They have a really nice house out on the Australian coast. Max goes to work, and we see the police aren’t what they used to be, but they do have some really souped-up cars. 

Max hears from the captain that the Night Rider’s friends are out to get him now, but Max doesn’t seem concerned. 

A whole bunch of bikers come to town, led by Toecutter. They’ve come to pick up Night Rider’s body. The gang is rowdy in town, picking on the locals. They chase one guy and his girlfriend’s car, and they soon run him off the road. They destroy the guy’s fancy car and terrorize the couple inside. 

Max and Goose get a call about the bikers, and they respond. They find the girl in shock, and Johnny the Boy, one of the bikers, high out of his mind. Toecutter sends one of his guys to get him out. No one in town presses charges, and they have to release Johnny. This enrages Goose, who takes it all very personally. Later, Toecutter shows Johnny how much he is displeased. 

Later, while the cops are all at a dance club, someone sabotages Goose’s motorcycle. In the morning, Goose rides off and Johnny smiles from a distance. Naturally, his bike waits until he’s going at a very high speed before it all falls apart. He’s not hurt, but the bikers ambush him in his borrowed truck on the way back. With Goose trapped upside down and gas leaking, Toecutter goads Johnny into setting him on fire, and they watch him burn. 

Max rushes to the hospital, where all the other cops are waiting. Goose is badly burned and on a ventilator. What Max sees is bad enough to give him nightmares that night. The next morning, Max tries to resign, but the captain, Fifi, offers him a few weeks off instead. 

We get a montage of Max and Jessie enjoying their time off together. They go on a picnic, get a flat tire, and take it to the mechanic to get the tire fixed. Jessie and the baby go to town for some ice cream and run into the bikers. Jessie knees Toecutter in the groin and drives off with the whole gang in pursuit, but they do get away. We do see that the bikers aren’t very far behind. 

Later, Jessie goes to the beach, and the bikers chase her through the woods.  She gets away, but the baby suddenly goes missing. She’s confronted by the gang, steals the baby, and runs away down the road, where she’s run down by the gang. The baby is killed, and Jessie is severely injured just before Max catches up. 

Max freaks out and goes to get the souped-up police “Pursuit Special.” He starts tracking down the Toecutter gang. He finds a group of them and runs several off the road. The survivors call Toecutter to join them. Max gets shot in the knee, and his arm gets run over. That just makes him mad. He shotguns Toecutter’s last remaining gang member. 

Max gets back in the car and chases Toecutter into running head-first into a semi-truck. Later, he finds Johnny at the site of another accident that he probably caused. Max cuffs Johnny’s ankle to the wreckage, sets up a lighter next to a leaking pool of gasoline, and gives him a saw. He tells Johnny he can't saw through the cuff in time, but he could cut his foot off to get free. Max drives away, and there’s an explosion behind him; Goose has been avenged. 

Commentary

Mel Gibson was only 21 here and was paid $10,000 since he was an unknown actor. On release, American audiences had a lot of trouble understanding the dialogue, so it was all dubbed for non-Aussie theaters. The Aussie dialogue has since been restored. 

When Max gave Johnny the saw and the choice to either cut off his own foot or burn to death, we were reminded of “Saw,” which had to have been at least slightly influenced by the scene. 

This is very different from what the franchise later became. There were some crazy bikers in the desert and very offbeat cops, but it wasn’t really anything close to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. There were a few “prohibited area” road signs. At worst, it was an under-funded police force trying to keep order in the outback. 

Still, Jessie spends a good portion of the film being chased and terrorized by the biker gang, and a lot of people die. It’s probably more action-adventure than either horror or sci-fi, but it’s the first entry in the series, so we’ll get there. 

It’s a little slow in the middle, but it doesn’t drag, and it still entertains, just without the insanity of the later films.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) 

* Directed by George Miller

* Written by Terry Hayes, George Miller, Brian Hannant

* Stars Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael Preston, Max Phipps

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Years after “Max Max,” things have gotten apocalyptic. This is the tale of loner Max who becomes a reluctant hero helping out some folks in need. The effects budget was clearly higher this time around, with over the top vehicle action, fights, and explosions. It’s still horror adjacent, but it’s got a high body count with people meeting horrible ends. We would recommend it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get a voiceover about a time of chaos and ruined dreams. We see that there were wars that ended up causing the fall of civilization. “Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage, were able to survive.” We hear about the warrior Max, and we see some flashbacks to the first film. He wandered out into the wasteland to learn to live again…

Max and his dog drive down the road, pursued by some baddies; he’s nearly out of gas. He makes them all crash, but he gets out to steal their gas. Later, he drives “home” to find someone with a tiny helicopter that has landed there. The pilot gets the drop on Max and demands his gasoline. With the help of his dog, Max turns the tables on the man, who tries to buy his safety by telling Max where a gasoline refinery is. 

They go to the site. A road gang led by Humungus has the place mostly under siege, but the villagers inside are holding them off. There are lots of people and vehicles down there, and they’re not very friendly-looking. In the morning, Max watches as some of the refinery people try to go out, and some of the Humungus gang run them off the road and do bad things to them. On the bright side, they do leave the whole refinery mostly unmolested. 

Max takes his car down the hill. Nathan, the man who survived the biker attack, is Max’s ticket into the refinery. The gang returns, and Max helps the refinery people hold off the baddies. Humungus turns on the P.A. and warns them about not cooperating with him. A feral kid throws a boomerang at one of the main baddies, Wez, but kills his boyfriend instead. Wez gets angry and wants to kill everyone, but Humungus calms him down. Humungus gives the refinery villagers one day to surrender. 

The villagers all argue about whether to abandon the refinery or not. Max knows where they can find a truck big enough to haul their gas tanker away, and he makes a deal with Pappagallo, the leader of the group. They give Max fuel for the abandoned semi that he passed yesterday, and he starts walking. First, he sneaks past the Humungus camp with the help of the feral kid. 

Meanwhile, the helicopter pilot has been dragging the log that Max chained him to for miles and miles. The pilot then flies him to the truck, where they work together to get it running. He leaves the pilot behind and drives the truck back to the refinery. 

Driving past the Humungus camp, Max stirs up all kinds of trouble, but Humungus shoots him in the radiator. The pilot flies over and drops rattlesnakes on the baddies, which they do not enjoy. 

Max, Wez, and a few of the bad guys get through the gate into town. There’s a fight, and people die on both sides. Finally, they get things under control again. It’ll take twelve hours to repair the damage done to the truck. Max is a hero to the people now, but he says he’s leaving. 

Humungus isn’t gone. We get a “What’s in your wallet” montage as they roar and stomp and pose ferociously all night. The pilot tries to convince a blonde woman to fly away with him, but she refuses to abandon her people, giving him something to think about. 

Pappagallo tries to convince Max to stay and help, and he offers him a home with them if they can get 2,000 miles away. Even the pilot tries to talk Max into staying. Max and the feral kid have bonded, and he feels bad about leaving, but he does. 

Out in the wilderness, Wez hears Max driving by, and his guys start the chase. Everyone nitro-turbos their engines, and things get crazy. Max’s car goes off the road, and that’s not gonna be a quick fix. The bad guys shoot Max’s dog, but the engine booby-trap kills several of the raiders. Wez assumes Max died in the explosion and leaves. 

Max crawls out of the wreckage and passes out just as the pilot lands next to him. He saw the smoke from the explosion and flew over to save Max. Back at the refinery, Max wakes up and volunteers to drive the truck. The villagers have been preparing for this, putting spikes and weapons on their own vehicles. 

Max drives the tanker, equipped with a cow-catcher, right through the enemy lines, making room for the others to follow. Most of the villagers evacuate in a different direction, and the baddies chase after the tanker and some escort vehicles. The refinery is left to the baddies, and a few go in, but they find it to be booby-trapped. The entire base explodes excessively!

Now it’s time for the crazy chase. All the baddies, in their modified bandit-mobiles, chase Max’s truck. Max runs a few enemies off the road, but he loses the helpers he brought with him, one by one. Wez jumps on board and really hurts Max, but the feral kid gets involved and gives Max the break he needs. 

Humungus throws a spear that kills Pappagallo, and the pilot continues dropping fire bombs until he’s shot down. Wez jumps back onto the hood of the truck, and they run head-first into Humungus, killing the bad guys’ leaders. The truck rolls over, and the remaining raiders turn around and leave. 

Max and the feral kid crawl out of the wreckage. Max sees that the truck is full of sand; it was just a decoy, so most of the people could get away. The pilot drives up in what’s left of his plane, and the three of them join the rest of the caravan at an arranged meeting place. The villagers had hidden all the fuel in barrels inside the school bus and smaller vehicles. 

We see that our narrator is the feral child, all grown up, telling about how they got away and the pilot became their new leader. He still remembers Max, the road warrior, who left them. 

Commentary

This takes place five years after the previous film, and this time, we’re definitely post-apocalypse. They never explain what any of these people do for food. Maybe they have a well for water, but there are no farms anywhere. Gasoline isn’t the only thing that matters– dressing like a bondage leather daddy seems to be a big part of the experience as well. 

The leader of the baddies is Humungus, but Wez is much more of a real threat here. All the villains here look cool, but they’re no Toecutter-level cool from the first movie. The car chases, and the cars themselves are all several levels beyond the previous film, already getting into the suspension-of-disbelief realm, but they’re fun. 

Again, the situation these people are all in is very bleak, but it’s only marginally horror. There is some good gore and creative deaths. It’s essentially a bunch of people in the desert under siege by an army of baddies with only one man to save them.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) 

* Directed by George Miller, George Ogilvie 

* Written by Terry Hayes, George Miller, Byron Kennedy

* Stars Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, Bruce Spence

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 47 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Civilization is thriving in the post-apocalyptic world, and everyone is getting along. Well, not quite, but there is a little town run by Tina Turner, who is fun in this one. The whole thing is over the top, with Max again being a reluctant hero in a world gone strange. It’s not critical to see the first two movies first, but you’ll get more out of this one if you do. We thought it was the best of the three.

Spoilery Synopsis

An airplane containing a pilot (who looks like the pilot from the previous film but isn’t the same character), along with his son, dive-bomb a guy with a truck being pulled by camels. The man driving the truck is thrown out, and we soon see that it’s Max who chases after his truck as the boy drives it away. 

On foot now, Max walks through the desert toward Bartertown, a steampunk place where everyone dresses like the crazies from “The Road Warrior.” He talks to The Collector, who offers him a job to get his stuff back. They walk through town, and we see that it’s… quite a place. The Collector takes Max to see the town’s leader, Auntie Entity. 

Auntie Entity explains that she built this town, there’s power and law and order. It’s rough, but it’s a taste of civilization. Max’s job is to kill a man. She wants him to get rid of a former friend of hers without anyone knowing he works for her. She shows him their methane factory, which generates electricity fueled by pigs. There’s a stupid giant, Blaster, and a smart dwarf, Master, who are always together– and very powerful. Master knows the science behind keeping the power on, and he thinks he should be in charge. Auntie disagrees. She wants Master alive and Blaster dead. 

Max goes down to “Underland” and starts working for Master-Blaster, and we see why he’s so powerful - he controls the energy, or the lack of it, for the town. Max also learns Blaster’s weakness– high-pitched noises. Max agrees to take on the job, which is really combat to the death inside Thunderdome, a big arena. 

That night, there’s a big party, and Max starts a fight with Blaster. The law says no fighting is allowed; disputes must be handled in Thunderdome. Next thing we know, the host, Dr. Dealgood, tells them all about the hard rain and how the law has come to Bartertown. “Two men enter, one man leaves,” everyone chants. There are no rules in Thunderdome, and the fight is to the death. 

The two men start fighting while on elastic cords, and it’s clear that Blaster overpowers “The man with no name” easily. It takes a while for Max to get the hang of the ropes, but he soon does. It gets very acrobatic as they jump and fly around the arena. Max eventually uses the whistle, which makes Blaster writhe in pain. Max knocks Blaster’s helmet off, and we all see who’s inside: a big, simple-minded lug. Master runs inside to beg for leniency on the big, childlike man. Master learns that Auntie and Max had a deal, but when one of the goons finishes off Blaster, Master has no power behind his threats. 

Auntie gets angry because Max wouldn’t kill Blaster and for spilling the beans about their arrangement. But right or wrong, they had a deal, and the law says, “Bust a deal and face the wheel,” which decides his punishment. He spins the wheel and gets… “Gulag.” They tie Max up, put him on a horse, and abandon him in the desert to die. 

When the power goes off that night, the men and Aunty torment Master until he agrees to fix the problem. Eventually, the horse under Max dies, and he’s brought water by a pet monkey. He heads back to Bartertown on foot again but passes out in the desert. Someone finds him that night and drags him away. 

“It’s Captain Walker,” says the oldest girl to the other children. There is a whole group of children living alone in caves in the desert. Max has been unconscious for a long time, and the children take care of him. The children have waited for years for Captain Walker to return; they’ve developed a whole religion about the crashed airplane and the captain who brought them there after the “apoxyclips.” Apparently, the Captain left them to go get help and never came back. 

Max tells the group that he’s not Captain Walker. He tells them that the cities are gone forever and that this place is their home now. Suddenly, the wind picks up, and everyone runs off into the desert. They lead Max to the wreckage of their plane, and they expect him to make it go. 

The children, led by Savannah and Slake, argue about trying to walk to Bartertown, and Max warns them not to try. Max stops them, but the next morning, they find that some of the group has gone anyway. Max and two of the kids follow after. They catch up to the first group just as they’re about to be swallowed up by a sinkhole. 

Their only chance is to continue to Bartertown. They sneak into Undertown to find the Master imprisoned with the pigs. There’s an almost comic-booky battle as the children and Max take over the Undertown. Things are looking bleak, but there’s a train-truck thing they can use to escape. Auntie Entity sees what’s going on and is not amused. 

As the methane ignites, everything in town starts to explode, causing people to evacuate the town. Auntie and her warriors take off after Max, Master, and the kids with their dune buggy army. It’s time for the inevitable crazy vehicle chase. Auntie’s men soon learn you don’t fight the crazy train with a dune buggy. Many vehicular hijinks ensue. 

The train comes to the end of the line, where they run into the pilot and his son from earlier. Max takes a truck, and everyone else gets into the tiny airplane. He needs to clear the way for them to take off, so he drives straight for Auntie Entity’s caravan. 

Everyone gets away except for Max, who is captured. Auntie laughs it off and leaves him there alone. 

The pilot flies over the ruined cities, and everyone aboard gets a good look at what’s left. Time passes, and the group has set up a new colony in the old city with a little bit of the power on; they still tell the story of Max, who they hope to see again. 

Commentary

This is set fifteen years after the second film and twenty after the first one. Society has completely devolved since the previous film, and this one pretty much defined what post-apocalyptic “civilization” would look like on film for decades after its release. Bartertown, and everything that goes with it, are iconic for the genre, and it’s all really well done. The story itself is all very over-the-top and ridiculous, but that’s the best thing about the film. 

It’s fairly long, but it really doesn’t drag at any point. The car chase is pretty crazy, but that’s actually only a small part of the story. 

Of the original three, I like this one the most.

Short Film: Deserters (2021) 

* Directed by Aaron Throgmorton

* Written by Duke Appleton, Aaron Throgmorton

* Stars Duke Appleton, Adlih Torres, Thato Mothobi

* Run Time: 19:13

* Watch it:

What Happens

A group of five people run through the post-apocalyptic wasteland, leaving one of their group behind as credits roll. 

They come to an abandoned waterpark to regroup. Haven should be just a few miles away. If they push, they could get there by evening, but their leader wants everyone to rest first. They believe “That thing” is still several days behind them. 

One girl has been cut with something poison that’s gotten infected. Another of their group wants to leave her behind and move on; she insults the overweight guy, who hasn’t done anything wrong. The leader and the overweight kid talk about times before the cataclysm. We see that someone else is watching them from afar…

That night, the stranger comes to their camp, and it’s bad all-around. 

Commentary

The music is good and appropriate, but a little overloud over some of the dialogue at points. The characters are all distinctive and interesting, and the acting is decent for a horror short film. The story about the wrestler’s brother was too long and dragged a bit, but was well-acted. Some of the night scenes are a little too dark. 

The fight scenes and gore are not great, but they’re a small part of the main story. The final resolution was more predictable than it should have been. I think the ending could have been clearer as to the motivation of the bad guy.

Mad Max Fury Road (2015) 

* Directed by George Miller

* Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris

* Stars Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult

* Run Time: 2 Hours

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This isn’t quite a sequel or a reboot of the first three films. It’s more of a parallel set in the same world of the third movie, with a different Max in a different part of Australia. It takes the elements and mood of the third movie and cranks up the volume with almost non-stop action. Charlize Theron and the baddies carry the movie about as much as Max does. We thought it was very entertaining and well-made.

Spoilery Synopsis

We hear about the “Oil Wars” as credits roll. Max narrates his earlier life, and then the nuclear war, and then the world fell. We zoom in on Max, who kills and eats a gecko. He gets back into his car as he’s pursued by a gang of bandits. They overturn his car spectacularly and drag him to their lair, where they cut off his hair, tattoo him, and start to brand him. He almost escapes, but we see that he’s haunted by his past. Credits roll. 

We cut to Furiosa getting into her monster truck as the leader of the town, Immortan Joe, puts on his elaborate outfit and monster face. There’s also a little Darth Vader element to what he’s wearing that is helping him breathe. Joe sends his war rig to bring back bullets from Bulletown and gas from the Gastown factory, with a tanker of water in trade. He runs the cult of the War Boys, a bunch of bald young men. There are a lot of people in this desert oasis, but Joe controls all the water; he distributes the water to the people in the most inefficient way possible. He has quite a setup going with slaves, machines, and his followers. 

Down in Joe’s dungeon, we see Max in a cage. On the road, Furiosa turns the truck away from Gastown; she wants to go East. Joe’s weird sons see that she’s off-course, and Joe runs to his vault, which is empty. His many wives have vanished– Furiosa has stolen his wives!

Immortan Joe alerts his War Boys, who get their muscle cars ready for battle. Some of the War Boys fight amongst themselves. They’ve even got a truck with a chained-on guitar player and drummers. Nux, one of the War Boys, has Max tied to the front of his car like a hood ornament as his blood source. The soldiers with Furiosa see flares and know they are being pursued. 

The porcupine sand people see the War Rig and move in to ambush them. The well-armed War Boys mess up the porcupine people without much effort. Nux’s car catches up to them, and it looks rough for Max, especially with all those spikes on the bandits’ cars. 

The bandits are all defeated, but before Nux, Joe, and the War Boys can grab Furiosa, she turns the War Rig into a huuuuuuge sandstorm. Nux follows her in, with Max clinging to the back of his car. The sandstorm is full of lightning and tornadoes, very excessive! 

Nux plans to blow up himself and his car to stop the War Rig, but Max breaks in to stop him. This goes badly for them both, as the car crashes. 

Max wakes up in the morning after the storm has passed. He finds himself still chained to Nux, who also isn’t dead. He carries Nux to Furiosa’s War Rig, which stalled out not too far away. He runs into the brides, one of whom is pregnant. He orders the girls to cut his chain off, but they attack him instead. Max gets the upper hand just as Immortan Joe’s people appear on the horizon.  

Max takes the War Rig, leaving all the women behind; it stalls out immediately; Furiosa has installed kill switches. She negotiates with him, and they all drive away with Nux hanging from the rear. They are off to “The Green Place.” 

Joe’s group and the men from Gastown are about to intercept the War Rig. The Bullet Farmer is coming from the opposite direction.

They drive through a narrow pass in the cliffs and then stop. The people Furiosa made a deal with double-cross her, but they set off an avalanche that will slow down their pursuers. The bandits get into another running battle. 

Joe catches up, and Nux is eager to help him. During one of the battles, the pregnant wife is killed; Joe stops for her. Nux, who failed miserably, knows that Joe will kill him next. The War Rig breaks down at night, so Max and Furiosa set traps and landmines as Joe’s people approach. 

The People-Eater, from Gastown, complains about the cost of this chase to Immortan Joe, who has paused to cut the baby from his dead wife’s corpse. The baby is dead too, which enrages Joe. Nux, who knows what Joe will do, volunteers to help the good guys escape. 

Max and Nux get the War Rig running again. Furiosa explains that she was born in the Green Place and was stolen as a child. She wants to get back there and help Immortan Joe’s brides escape their life of captivity. They arrive there, but the Green Place isn’t green anymore. Some of the people there know who Furiosa is, and her story checks out. On the other hand, there’s no green place, and there are only a few of Furiosa’s people left alive. One old woman has a bagful of seeds she’s saving. 

Furiosa wants to abandon the rig and cross the salt to whatever’s on the other side. She invites Max to come with them, but he declines. He wants them all to go back to the citadel and take over there. They might be able to sneak in while Joe and his men are out looking for them. 

Joe and his group, still out there, see the War Rig heading back the way they came, and turn to pursue. This leads, surprisingly, to another battle. Most everyone gets injured pretty badly, and there’s some crazy explosions. 

Joe’s largest son, Rictus, grabs some of the women off the truck, but eventually gets into a fight with Max. Furiosa catches up with Joe himself. She literally rips his face off along with his breathing mask. All the women climb off the rig onto Joe’s car. Nux, still in the War Rig, crashes the War Rig into the narrow pass, blocking the rest of the baddies from getting through. 

Furiosa’s dying, and Max works hard to save her, even giving her a transfusion of his own blood. 

They arrive at the citadel, and Max shows them Joe’s body. The crowd cheers. We see that Furiosa is back too, and she looks– alive, at least. They go up to the tower and release enough water for everyone. Max slips away in the crowd… 

Commentary

This takes all the stuff from the third movie that was great and cranks it up to eleven. It’s bright and colorful, which is odd, considering the setting, but it all works. It’s one high-speed thing after another, and the majority of the runtime is one long, high-intensity vehicle chase. 

Max doesn’t speak much in this, since he’s played by Tom Hardy, that’s a good thing. Immortan Joe, Rictus Erectus, the Bullet Farmer, and the other villains are all very interesting. The truck with the flame-throwing guitar player and accompanying drummers may be the craziest thing ever. 

The budget here was insane, and it shows it. It looks good, the characters are fun, and it’s non-stop action.

Duel (1971) 

* Directed by Steven Spielberg

* Written by Richard Matheson

* Stars Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone

* Run Time:  1 Hour, 30 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This has an unrelenting low level horror and feeling of stress that builds as David the ordinary guy gets trapped in an unrelenting situation. There are no supernatural elements or monsters, just a crazy, fixated truck driver, and that makes it that much more chilling. It’s super dated, but it still works and holds up well, with excellent direction from a young Steven Spielberg. We liked it.

Spoilery Synopsis

David Mann drives his car through the downtown of the big city as he listens to traffic reports and talk shows on the radio. He eventually makes it out of town, driving through the hills and mountains. He comes up behind a large tanker truck that’s driving pretty slow in a no-passing zone. He passes the truck anyway, but then the truck speeds up and passes him. 

David passes the truck once again, and this time, loses the truck. He soon comes to a gas station and stops in for a refill. The truck pulls in right next to him. The man at the gas station fills him up and checks out the engine; David might need a new radiator hose. David calls his wife on the payphone to apologize for their fight. His wife calls him a wimp and says he needs to start standing up for himself. 

David gets back in his car and leaves, never laying eyes on the truck driver. It’s not long before the truck has come up behind him, so he speeds up. The truck is now tailgating him pretty severely and then cuts him off, slowing way down in front of David. The truck also won’t let David pass in the passing lane. When he motions for David to pass, there’s another car coming the other way that he barely misses head on. 

David manages to get ahead finally by taking a little bypass, but the truck once again catches up with him. The truck bangs into David’s rear end and gets right up close, honking all the way. David starts getting scared, but there’s not much he can do. 

David manages to pull over and nearly crashes in a cafe’s parking lot. He goes inside and calms down. He tells himself that it’s all over now, and he’ll be fine. He looks out the window and sees the truck out there, waiting. He looks around the cafe, trying to figure out which patron is the evil driver. 

David sits there and thinks through the problem, and he knows he doesn’t have a lot of choices. He thinks about confronting the other patrons about it, but as his wife said, he’s a wimp. He does tell one guy to “cut it out,” but the guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about and the two men end up in a fistfight; David gets thrown out. The man gets into a different truck; that wasn’t him. The big truck eventually leaves, again with no look at the driver. 

David gets back into his own car and continues down the road. He’s soon flagged down by a school bus driver with a problem, but he says he never saw a truck pass. David agrees to help push the stalled school bus with his own car, which is far too small for the job. He gets his own bumper stuck under the bus, which just makes the school bus kids mock him even harder. He soon notices the truck has returned and is obviously waiting for him; he turned around and came back. 

The trucker then helps the bus driver get unstuck as David drives away as quickly as he can. David has to stop to let a train pass, and sure enough, the truck catches up. It starts slowly pushing his car into the passing train. The train passes before it’s too late, and David runs off the road. 

Once again, David catches up with the slow-moving truck, but he stops at another gas station. He can see the truck stop ahead to wait on him. He makes a phone call to the police. As he talks to the police, the truck drives right through the phone booth, and David barely jumps out in time. He runs over the proprietor’s cages and releases rattlesnakes and tarantulas. David takes off at top speed and hides his car around a corner. 

David decides to park and take a long nap to give the truck some time to move on. He eventually does drive on– until he sees the truck waiting for him again. David finally gets out of the car and walks to the truck, he’s going for a face-to-face confrontation. The truck pulls away, not letting David get close. 

David flags down an old couple and tells them to call the police, but the old people aren’t interested. Then, the truck driver backs right up to the car to interrupt them. 

David has had enough. This time, he puts on his seatbelt, so you know he’s serious. The chase resumes. The two vehicles fly through the twisty mountain roads until David sees a police car. No, it’s not a police car; it’s just colored like one. David just cannot get his car to go fast enough to outrun that truck!

Just as it’s starting to look like David is going to outrun the truck, his weak radiator hose finally breaks. It all gets very tense as he makes it to the top of the hill and starts to coast down again in neutral. 

David finally just crashes. The car barely moves, but he gets it running again and heads up another hill. He wedges his briefcase to the gas pedal and steers head-on at the truck. David jumps free. The truck hits the car and can’t see where he’s going. The truck and car go over a cliff. David watches for a long time to see if the other driver gets out, but he doesn’t. 

David sits down and throws pebbles at the wreck as the closing credits roll. 

Commentary

I like how they show David going at crazy speeds to escape the truck, like 70 miles per hour; I assume the speed limits were all 55 back then. The front of the truck was covered in old license plates, presumably from his previous victims. 

There’s really only one character, and most of the “dialogue” is his own internal narrative. We never do see the truck driver, or have any idea what his motive is; he’s just a crazy man with a truck. 

Probably the reason this works so well is because it’s a simple premise that could actually happen. It’s clearly influenced everything from “Mad Max” to “Jeepers Creepers.”

Rubber (2010) 

* Directed by Quentin Dupieux

* Written by Quentin Dupieux

* Stars Stephen Spinella, Roxane Mesquida, Wings Hauser

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 22 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was weird and funny, and a lot of things happened for no reason. But they make a point of explaining that. Many of the people know they are in a movie, so none of it is real for them, except that it’s very real when heads explode, and the body count climbs upward. It’s a crazy ride that we enjoyed.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a bunch of chairs out on the road. A man holds dozens of binoculars as he waits. A car drives down the road, swerving into and knocking over all the chairs. A policeman gets out of the trunk and asks us trivia questions about movies; all the questions have “no reason” as the answer. “Life itself is filled with no reason. The film you are about to see today is an homage to ‘no reason.’” 

He drives away, and the man with the binoculars starts handing them out to the audience, who turn around to watch the movie… “It’s already boring,” whines one kid. All they see is a dump. Credits roll. 

We eventually focus on a tire, half buried in the dirt. It starts rotating all by itself. It struggles a bit but eventually gets up and starts rolling through the desert. It slowly and deliberately rolls over a plastic water bottle, crushing it. Then a scorpion. Maybe this tire has a mean streak. When it finds a glass beer bottle, it can’t crush it, so the tire shakes with rage and breaks the bottle with its mind. This tire has psychokinetic powers! Night falls, and the tire tips over and goes to sleep. Because it’s tired (nyuck nyuck) .

In the morning, the tire wakes up and gets rolling. The audience has camped all night as well, and they wake up and get back to the show. The tire has a drink and spots a rabbit, which it makes explode with its mind. 

The tire eventually comes to a road, where it watches a car drive by. The tire vibrates, and the car breaks down. It sneaks up on the car but is suddenly hit by a truck that didn’t see the tire in the road. The car and truck get away, but a crow isn’t so lucky. The tire follows the truck to a gas station, where the tire starts vibrating maniacally. The man in the truck’s head explodes. 

The tire comes upon a motel, and it sees the door to one of the rooms is open. It peeks inside, and the girl from the car we saw earlier is in there. The girl gets naked and takes a shower, and the tire watches. The tire gets a room of its own and watches movies all night. It has the volume turned up loud, so the girl in the next room is annoyed. 

The accountant, the man who handed out the binoculars, is also at the motel. He gets a phone call from his master, and we see that he has turkeys in his room. In the morning, he brings the movie spectators some turkey, and they all fight over it. 

Back at the motel, the housekeeper finds the tire in the shower, which is rude. She throws the tire out into the parking lot, but the tire gets his revenge. The tire then stalks the girl from the car while she’s at the pool; the tire is becoming obsessed. 

The movie audience starts getting sick from the poisoned turkey they all ate. The man in the wheelchair didn’t eat any, and he gloats about it. 

A boy sees the tire kill someone. He tells his father and the policeman from earlier. The policeman says the poison has taken effect, and now they can all stop acting. Are they part of the show? 

We cut back to the audience; everyone but the wheelchair man is dead or unconscious. The policeman tells the other cops to stop acting like this is real life and that they can all stop and go home. They argue, but he demonstrates that it’s all fake by having one of the other cops shoot him multiple times. “This situation is not real.” The dead housekeeper is still dead though, which is confusing. The accountant explains that one of the spectators isn’t dead because of not eating the turkey, so they all have to continue. 

The tire makes the motel manager’s head explode as the cop watches. Lieutenant Chad realizes that the killer is the tire; it says so right there in his script. The accountant brings food to the wheelchair man, but he refuses to eat any of it. He wants to watch the story to the end, which makes the accountant nervous. Eventually, the accountant eats the food and dies from poison as well. 

The tire admires itself in a mirror. The boy Zach talks to the tire; he knows about the tire, so the tire rolls away. Chad tells the other cops to round up all the tires in the area. 

One of the cops catches up to the tire, but the tire makes his head explode. Later, the tire rolls up to a place where a man is burning a bunch of tires. 

Three days later, there is carnage everywhere. There are headless bodies all over the place. The police have tracked the tire to a house where it’s watching races on TV. The police set up a trap with explosives using a dynamite-wrapped doll of Sheila, the girl the tire likes. Will the tire fall for it? Sheila won’t read the script; it’s just too awful. 

The wheelchair guy bangs on the van door and tells Sheila and Chad that he doesn’t understand the plot right now. He asks why they aren’t using a flamethrower or bazooka or something. They argue about how he should have just eaten the turkey. 

Finally, the tire starts to vibrate, and he makes the dummy’s head explode. The explosives don’t go off, so Chad goes in with his shotgun. Chad shoots the tire and brings its corpse out to the wheelchair man, who says that’s a crappy ending. 

Suddenly, a tricycle rolls out of the house; it’s been reincarnated. The tricycle makes the wheelchair man explode. Chad drops Sheila off at her car, and they both drive away. The tricycle moves on down the road, collecting other living tires as it passes… 

Commentary

This is just a stupid concept, but it’s all surprisingly entertaining. It’s all very meta since the cop knows they're in a movie. I’m not sold on the idea that the characters know it’s a movie and even have scripts, but overall, it’s just weird for “no reason.” 

It’s dumb, but it’s a good kind of dumb. Very entertaining!

Stay tuned for more reviews next week!

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This week, we’ve got a neat mix of things, starting with “They/Them” from last year and “Immaculate” from last month. We’ll check in on a young werewolf in “My Animal” from 2023 and then run to the country for 2021’s “The Retreat.” We’ll meet an unusual pet in “Good Boy” and then watch Freddy die again in “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” from back in 1991. 

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Psst: for the next five days, you can get the HourLong Press book “Ed Gein: The Biography” issue from Amazon for FREE. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6966JGS

Stay tuned for more regular and bonus reviews next week!

They/Them (2023) 

* Directed by John Logan

* Written by John Logan

* Stars Kevin Bacon, Theo Germaine, Anna Chlumsky

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was kind of good on viewing, but it starts to crumble around the edges the more you think about it afterward. It’s a slasher at an isolated camp, which has certainly been done before, but it’s different enough to be interesting. We give it a weak thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman drives down the country road at night and gets a flat tire. She looks in the road and sees tire spikes back there; that wasn’t an accident. She gets scared by a deer, but we see a masked killer out there as well. She gets the chop while we see that “Whistler Camp” is just over the hill. In the morning, a bunch of kids get off the bus at the camp as credits roll. 

Owen comes out to talk to the kids. “Gay people are A-OK with me. I can’t make you straight. You start hearing the words ‘gay conversion camp’ and you get the wrong idea.” He does, in fact, make it all sound very relaxing and not traumatic at all. He introduces Cora, Molly, Zane, Sarah, and Balthazar, the staff of the camp. He takes their cellphones, cigarettes, and medications. He sends the boys to the boys’ cabin and the girls to the girls’ cabin. 

Jordan wonders which cabin they should use, as they are nonbinary. Owen is completely reasonable about it, which impresses everyone, suggesting they go to the boys cabin for now. We soon meet Toby, who’s a theater nerd. Veronica hates herself for being bisexual. Kim doesn’t want to pretend anymore. Some of them are just there because their parents made them. Jordan’s family made them come. 

Balthazar the handyman creeps out watching the girl campers, and Veronica tells him off that they’re the wrong team. Alexandra gets caught showering alone early in the morning, and she hasn’t been quite honest about who she physically is below the waist. We don’t see it, but one of the staff does, and she’s sent to the boys cabin. She wants her hormone pills, and Molly gives them to her.

Then we have a camp activity montage, and it looks like everyone is having a good time. In the middle of the night, Zane wakes them all up and leads them out into the woods, handcuffed in pairs. Owen is there, and this is all some kind of self-reliance exercise. He wants them to wander around in the woods and find their way back to camp by morning, handcuffed to their partners. 

Jordan tells Alexandra that they think something is wrong with the camp; there’s not enough Bible-thumping and queer bashing. They both get a glimpse of the masked killer in the woods, but he’s gone when they look again. 

Back at camp, Cora and Sarah go through everyone’s stuff. In the morning, everyone is back at camp. Jordan gets to talk to Dr. Cora about his life and psychological issues. She’s… not encouraging to Jordan, and they get upset. All the campers then break out in song as Owen watches from outside. There is supposed to be a killer in this, isn’t there?

That night, Jordan sneaks into the park office and finds pictures of beaten, scarred, and abused people. Former campers that have been coming there for decades, Owen’s ancestors started the place. Molly comes in, and he shows her the photos; she didn’t know. She warns Jordan that things could get a lot worse. 

We see Balthazar watching closed-circuit cameras of the girls’ shower. The killer comes up behind him and lets him have it. 

In the morning, the girls all work together to make pies while the guys shoot guns. Molly goes out to a shed and finds a locked room there, at least until Cora finds her and makes her leave. Jordan is an excellent shot, and Zane seems to take offense to that. They have a little contest, and Jordan easily wins. Owen wants Toby to shoot his sickly old dog. It’s all very stressful until Jordan shoots the dog first. 

Back in the kitchen, Sarah hits on Kim; she’s not supposed to be doing that, and Kim is weirded out. Later, she tells Veronica about it, and they talk about their problems, which escalates into something naughty they aren’t supposed to do in a gay conversion camp. Stu and Gabriel do the same thing in the tool shed. 

Jordan, Alexandra, and Toby make plans to steal the bus and leave in the morning. 

Stuart finds himself in a trap set by Owen and Zane. Gabriel isn’t gay, he just has sex with guys to trap them, or something. I guess they had to make sure Stu was really gay. So they show him what aversion therapy is all about. OK, maybe this camp isn’t as relaxing as they advertised. They hook him up to a car battery and fry him good in the back room of the shed. They bring him to Molly for treatment after, and she quits on the spot, threatening to turn him into the police in the morning. 

Later, Zane and Sarah have sex in their cabin, and the masked slasher kills them both. Gabriel gets caught and ends up in the aversion therapy chair. He gets fried too, but the killer doesn’t stop with a little shock therapy. Kim and Veronica find the bodies, and soon, everyone knows that there’s a killer. Owen warns Molly that it was probably one of the kids, since two counselors are dead. 

Cora goes inside for guns, and the killer gets her next. Alexandra takes most of the kids through the woods for help, leaving Kim, Veronica, and Jordan with Molly in the camp. 

Jordan goes to the office for guns and finds Cora’s body. The killer pushes Owen down and reveals herself to be… Molly. She was a former camper here; she’s Angie, from way back. Molly was the woman killed in the pre-credit sequence and Angie took her place. Molly/Angie explains how her life went after leaving the camp. 

She figures once the story gets out, no one will ever send their kids to a place like this again. Owen knocks Angie down and strangles her until Jordan pulls a gun on him. Owen gives Jordan the “You can’t shoot me,” speech. Jordan… can’t do it. So Angie kills Owen quite violently. 

“It gets easier; you’ll see,” she tells Jordan. She wants to move on and clear up another camp. All the camps, working together. The police arrive outside, and Jordan leaves. 

The sun comes up, and we see Molly/Angie being loaded into a police car and Stu getting into an ambulance; he’ll be fine. The others all sit and talk about how they’re all fine now, at peace with who they are. 

Commentary

Wait, a bunch of kids at summer camp get killed by a maniac in a hockey mask? No one’s ever seen that before. All the campers are types; the jock, the super-effeminate boy, the trans girl, and so forth. It took a very long time for the killer to get to work after the opening scene. 

The camp actually seemed really nice in the beginning, but after about an hour, we get to see what’s really going on. I mean, everyone knows these camps are terrible, terrible places, but this camp never really seemed right. 

When the movie was over, I was pleased enough. Then, the more I thought about it, the less any of it made sense. Why would they see any need to “entrap” Stu with Gabriel, if he was self-admittedly gay already? Answer: To squeeze in one more sex scene. How many years had Owen been running the place in order for Angie to get as old as Molly and still remember him? What did this camp actually hope to accomplish over the course of only one week? Also, most of the characters didn’t even look remotely under the age of 18, so, other than Alexandra, who gave a reason, why would anyone go there as an adult? I suspect they were all supposed to be teenagers, which makes the two sex scenes a little sketchy. 

Immaculate (2024) 

* Directed by Michael Mohan

* Written by Andrew Lobel

* Stars Sydney Sweeney, Alvaro Morte, Simona Tabasco

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is one with a slow start, and an almost disappointing first half that picks up abruptly with a strong finish. Sydney Sweeney is excellent in the lead role. We ended up liking it quite a bit and would give it a thumbs-up.

Spoilery Synopsis

A nun prays and then sneaks around after dark. She goes into the sleeping priest’s room and steals his keys. Keys in hand, she makes a run for it, but she has trouble getting the big chains off the front gate. As she struggles with the lock, four hooded figures come out of the convent behind her and break her leg. She passes out from the pain, but when she awakens, she’s been buried alive in a coffin. Credits roll, and she screams and pounds in the dark. 

Sister Cecilia is an American who has come to Italy to become a nun. The convent bought her ticket, and the immigration people think that’s strange. A priest comes to pick her up and drive her to the convent. He drives her through the big gates we saw earlier. 

Sister Isabelle speaks English and is clearly afraid of the Mother Superior at “Our Sister of Sorrows.” It’s basically an end-of-life facility where they take care of aged and terminally ill nuns. She explains the place was built over some old catacombs. There’s one nun dying of cancer, and another who’s got dementia really bad and bites people. Isabelle is grouchy and not friendly at all; “You can still not take your vows,” she warns. Sister Gwen barges in and wants to talk to Cecilia about America; she seems much nicer than Isabelle. 

Evening comes, and it’s time for Cecilia to take her vows. Father Tedeschi is there, and he seems very friendly. That goes well, and there’s a reception afterward. Tedeschi makes small talk about how he went to school to be a biologist. Cecilia says there’s nothing like all this back in the States. 

Mother Superior shows Cecilia a big nail, supposedly from the crucifixion. She faints and drops it, which means she has to go to confession. She has a nightmare about those hooded figures we saw earlier, and they stab her. The next morning, Mother Superior gives all the new nuns a pep talk. We get a “settling in” montage. 

Late one night, a crazy old nun comes into Cecilia’s room and cuts off a bit of her hair. In the morning, she throws up and sees the doctor. Afterward, she’s brought in before Tedeschi and the cardinal, who tells her that she’s pregnant, breaking her vow of chastity. She says she’s never been with a man before– ever. The doctor confirms that she was a virgin when she got there, and there haven’t been any visitors. It’s a miracle, so now she gets to wear the fancy robes!

Months later, she vomits up a tooth. When she goes to dinner, all of the other nuns stand up in respect. Later, she’s attacked in the bathtub by Isabelle. “It was supposed to be me! They have to try again with me!” 

Cecilia wants to go to a real hospital, but both Father Tedeschi and Dr. Gallo say no. She keeps seeing people with red faces under their robes. Sister Isabelle jumps off the roof to her death, and she’s a mess. Sister Gwen warns Cecilia about the place, but Cecilia already knows. Then, the priests take her away. 

At night, Cecilia finds a note written on the wall of her room behind a painting; it’s another warning. She then goes to the office and reads her own file, even going back to when she had a near-death accident as a child. She hears screaming outside and finds several of the red-mask people cutting out Gwen’s tongue. She gets a jump scare from that crazy old nun who cut her hair earlier; she’s made a special cross for Cecilia and says “No one ever leaves here.” 

In the morning, everyone hears screaming; Cecilia is in great pain with lots of blood; something is wrong with the baby. Tedeschi puts her in the car and heads to the hospital. Back at the convent one old nun finds a dead chicken under Cecilia’s bed; she faked the problem. Tedeschi gets a call on his cell phone and turns around, almost within sight of the town. 

Returning to the convent, Tedeschi explains things to Cecilia about the blessed nail. It literally was from the crucifixion of Christ. They found blood and tissue on it, and they used it to impregnate Cecilia; this old convent has a cloning lab, and they’ve impregnated Cecilia with a Jesus clone. Tedeschi went to school for biology, and he was thrown out for the ethics of his experiments. The church wasn’t so squeamish. He’s been trying for twenty years, and this is the first time it “took.” 

“May you never stray again,” he says as he brands burning crosses on the bottoms of her feet. She’s definitely a prisoner now. In the morning, she peels off one of her loose fingernails; it’s doing something to her. 

Time passes, and the baby has gotten bigger. Cecilia beats a nun to death with a metal cross, but on her way out, her water breaks. Then, she strangles the cardinal with his own rosary. She goes to the cloning lab and pours alcohol all over. Tedeschi comes in. “If you die, we’ll find another.” She burns him to death, too. No, he’s not dead after all, so she runs downstairs into the catacombs. 

After a quick chase in the tunnels, the scorched priest grabs her and cuts into Cecilia’s belly. Before he can do too much damage, she stabs him in the neck with the magic nail. She crawls through a hole in the wall, and she’s outside the convent. 

She screams and screams as she gives birth. She looks down at the baby, and it ain’t Jesus. We don’t get a good look at it, but it isn’t right. It growls at her. She picks up a big rock and smashes it. 

Commentary

You could probably just show us what life in a nunnery is really like; that’d be plenty horrific all by itself. 

The first hour is predictable and even a little boring. Once the priest explains what’s really going on, it gets weird. Wow, does it get weird. 

It’s very slow moving, especially in the beginning, but it ends well. OK, it doesn’t end well, but it’s entertaining.

My Animal (2023) 

* Directed by Jacqueline Castel 

* Written by Jae Matthews

* Stars Bobbi Salvor Menuez, Amandla Stenberg, Heidi con Palleske

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was an interesting take on the werewolf mythos, focusing more on the characters in their human form than in their werewolf form. The cast is good, with Bobbi Salvor Menuez in the lead as Heather, who is dealing with complicated romance and family drama while having a problem with the full moon. It’s well filmed, kind of retro, low on action, and we liked it quite a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

 Heather watches an old werewolf movie. She looks out the window at the real full moon and gets a nosebleed. Heather’s mother comes in, but the girl is gone. Credits roll as the mother goes out into the woods to look for her. Something in the woods attacks the mother. 

We cut to Heather lifting weights, surrounded by women's bodybuilder magazines, chains & manacles, and a book, “Man Into Wolf.” She helps her mother get ready for bed, and Mother has scars on her belly. 

Heather and Henry go to watch a hockey game. She gets thrown out of the boys' locker room; she wants to play on the boys’ team, but the coach won’t allow it - she’s not in high school, and she’s not a boy. Later, she goes to the store, where she sees Jonny stealing beer. Then she goes home and watches women’s wrestling on TV, masturbating throughout. 

Heather works at the ice arena, where Jonny practices skating with her coach/father. When her father gets mad and leaves, Jonny goes inside with Heather, and they talk for the whole evening until Heather gets another nosebleed.

Heather walks home, where Henry warns, “You’re cutting it kind of close, aren’t you?” Henry talks about how things are different for them. Three nights a month. She then chains her arms and legs to the bed and goes to sleep. 

We hear on the news that next month is a “Red Moon” and a lunar eclipse. Jonny calls to see if Heather wants to meet her, but she sees the full moon out there. She goes out with Jonny and her friend Otto anyway, promising to be home before midnight. 

They take acid and go to the casino. Otto loses at cards and throws a tantrum, getting tackled by security. Heather notices her arm hair is getting longer. The acid kicks in, and when her alarm goes off at 11:30, Otto and Jonny don’t want to leave. She gets a nosebleed and starts running. 

In the morning, Heather’s mother finds her sleeping outside the door. She goes to the arena, and later, Henry reminds her what could have happened. Her mother is angry and won’t even speak to her. That night, Heather fantasizes about Jonny and raw eggs. 

The next evening, Jonny comes over, and Jonny wonders why all the bedrooms have big locks on the outside. Heather’s mother comes in, drunk, and makes a scene. “You don’t even know what they are.” 

The next day, the family plays hockey, and the coach watches from the sidelines and tells Heather that tryouts are next week. It’s clear that Henry isn’t healthy. Later, she and Jonny go skating alone in the arena at night. Heather’s mother shows up and makes a huge scene; she and Henry argue and yell at each other all night while Jonny consoles Heather. 

The next day, Jonny and her boyfriend Rick argue as Heather deals with hockey tryouts. She’s upset about Jonny and doesn’t do as well as she could with the hockey stuff. They get together that night and dance at the club. Heather’s younger brothers sneak into the club with a fake ID and see them kissing and dancing together. They soon go home and do more than kiss. 

Jonny starts avoiding Heather’s calls, and Heather doesn’t take it well. She talks it over with Henry, who talks about life’s challenges. She finally does get through to Jonny, who invites her to a party; Rick is there, and he really hates Heather. Jonny says some mean things and then says she’s not gay and that Heather should leave. Heather goes home and takes that really hard. 

Over the next few weeks, Heather is moody, and Henry has a heart attack. He dies, and that’s hard on the whole family. Heather carries a big wolf out to a bonfire in the backyard and burns it. ‘Say goodbye to your father.” Heather cuts off most of her hair. 

When her brothers get into a fight, Heather leaves the house; naturally, it’s a full moon outside and a red one at that. She goes straight to the club. It’s 11:55, and Otto asks her how she’s doing. Jonny and Rick are there as well. 

Heather and Jonny have words, and Rick gets involved. They drag her outside, and Rick hits her. Her watch beeps at midnight, and she turns into a wolf and kills him before running into the woods. 

In the morning, Heather’s mother helps her wash off the blood. “You have to leave here tonight; it’s not safe for you.” Heather watches the newscaster talking about Rick’s death– he was attacked by a large wolf. She gets in the car and leaves town.

Commentary

The credits, music, and visuals are all very retro, reminiscent of the 80s. It’s pretty clear from the opening scene what we’re dealing with, but we don’t see much of that until the very end. It’s all very bleak, dark, and depressing. It’s a whole world of wood-grain paneling. 

It’s much more of a teenage romance drama with a few elements of werewolfism thrown in. It’s well-filmed and very creepy; the horror part of the movie is just one scene at the end. 

Werewolves don’t change until midnight, which is a new idea, but it makes it clear exactly when the change takes place, which is crucial to the story. It’s good, but not exactly action packed.

Short Film: Nosepicker (2024) 

* Directed by Ian Mantgani

* Written by Ian Mantgani

* Stars Leo Adotete, Abi Corbett, Mark Garfield, Bridgette Amofah

* Run Time: 15:46

* Watch it:

What Happens

Some kids sit in school, and one little boy picks his nose. The girl in the next seat tells everyone how disgusting he is. The teacher makes a big deal out of it to Georgie in the middle of class. She looks under his desk, and there’s a whole pile of boogers stuck under there. Later, the teacher calls home, which causes an argument between Georgie’s parents. Georgie may have a compulsion, and the kids at school enjoy bullying him about it.

How will they all deal with it? Or will this all take care of itself?

Commentary

That’s one weird kid. Some kids collect cards, some kids collect comic books, and then there’s… this. 

It’s well filmed and well-acted, and it really tells you what’s happening at all times. The, um, effects shots, are really nasty and well executed. 

Oddly enough, this one reminded me of “Basket Case” (1982). You’ll know why if you’ve seen it. 

It's pretty awesome!

The Retreat (2021) 

* Directed by Pat Mills

* Written by Alyson Richards

* Stars Tommie-Amber Pirie, Sarah Allen, Rossif Sutherland, Aaron Ashmore

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 22 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The story is fairly basic, but it’s well-made. The night scenes are a little too dark. It moves steadily without bogging down. It’s not great, but it’s satisfying overall. We’d give it a moderate thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

An obviously gay couple drives through the country on the way to a vacation to a gay B&B. When they arrive, someone is already watching them from the woods. Something in the woods kills them both. Credits roll. 

Renee tries to figure out how to use the coffee machine and fails; she makes a cold instant instead. Then she goes in to wake up Valerie and hands her the cup full of swill. 

The two women head out to the country and stop in a creepy convenience store. A guy hits on Valerie while Renee is in the bathroom. They are also driving to the gay B&B, which they found on a website. They get a flat tire, and Renee changes it, but they lose their balloons by accident. Connor and Scotty are the owners of the place, but they died before the credits. 

Renee looks at all the male-gay stuff and sneers. The food basket laid out is rotten, and the house isn’t cleaned up; something is wrong. 

They go for a walk in the woods, and we see that someone in the woods is watching them as well. They find a deer head strung up over the path, and they’re a little skeeved out by it. They see a deer blind, and they don’t approve of that either. Renee knows what it is because she used to be forced to hunt deer with the family. 

They think they see someone in the woods, so they run back to the cabin. Renee’s car is gone, and there are muddy footprints on the floor. Their phones are gone as well. There are people inside the house, so the two girls run back out to the woods, where they see Renee’s car sunk in the pond. They run and run until Valerie steps into a bear trap. There are a bunch of bear traps. 

Renee can’t get the trap open, so she goes back to the car to get a crowbar as the sun goes down. Renee dives into the pond and finds the crowbar, but she sees someone out there with a rifle. By the time she gets back to the bear traps, Valerie is gone. Someone comes up behind Renee. 

Renee wakes up later, all tied up in what looks like a barn. She can see out a window and looks at two men and a woman who seem to be in on the kidnapping. The woman brings Renee water, but she’s definitely not there to help. She calls Renee a disgusting pervert and then leaves. 

We see that they have Scott tied up to torture; he’s not really dead yet. No wait, now he is, all clearly recorded on video. 

Renee works at her bones and breaks her own thumb to get out of the cuffs. She spends about half an hour in the dark barn before she finds a way out. Of course, she’s on camera, and Layna, the woman accomplice, sees the whole thing. The two women wind up fighting and Renee gets the better of her “host.” 

Renee gets out and hears Valerie screaming in another barn. Connor is there with her, and he’s still alive as well. James, the guy from the convenience store, puts on a helmet with a mask and chops Connor into pieces with an ax for their video camera. Layna staggers in and tells the two men that Renee has escaped, so they all go outside to look for her. 

Renee, of course, is inside the barn and tries to get Valerie loose. They get organized and wait for their kidnappers to return. They might have been able to run away, but instead, they choose to stay and fight back. 

Renee goes inside the house, with the lights on, and it’s still nearly too dark to see what’s going on. They look at the computer and they see that these people run a whole homophobic livestream with thousands of viewers. They pick up a big old computer monitor and smash Layna’s head with it. They ax James in the head, leaving only Gavin, the big one, behind. 

The two girls find rifles and head back out into the woods to find Gavin. Renee wastes her two shots and Gavin gets the drop on her. He comes out of the woods, and Valerie shoots him from the blind stand. Renee drags him to the camera and makes sure she executes him for the homophobes to watch. 

Renee and Valerie help each other to the road, where they flag down a truck for help. They get in the back of the truck and head to the hospital. 

Commentary

The first half hour was fine; it all looked good and was nicely shot. Then the sun went down, and things mostly happened in the dark. 

I like that they fought back and didn’t simply try to run away. You know how in these movies, they whack the bad guy over the head, drop the weapon, and run away, only for the baddie to get up again? Not this time. It was also nicely paced and didn’t drag out more than it needed to. 

On the other hand, it’s really just a fairly basic abduction-torture film. Other than nominal motivation for the baddies, the whole gay vs. homophobe thing is really pretty irrelevant here. In this kind of movie, the bad guys’ motivations don’t really matter anyway. I guess the director’s plan was to show how bad homophobia is, but it really just seemed like another kidnapping movie to me. 

I liked the ending, but the movie is fairly bland otherwise.

Good Boy (2022) 

* Directed by Viljar Bøe

* Written by Viljar Bøe

* Stars Gard Løkke, Katrine Lovise Øpstad Fredriksen, Nicolai Narvesen Lied

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 19 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This starts out weird, but is it harmless and consensual? It seems that way. But since this is a horror thriller, we know it’s not going to just be a strange romance. It’s well made, starting out tame and unfolding nicely. We liked it quite a bit.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man cooks a steak and sides. It all looks delicious. He puts some in the dog’s bowl and calls the dog. What is clearly a man in a dog suit comes over and eats from the bowl. Credits roll. 

Christian eats his steak and then pulls out his phone to check out the dating apps. Later, he and the “dog” sit on the couch, brush the dog’s teeth, and do all the usual “pet things.” At bedtime, the dog sleeps on the floor next to him as Christian texts one of the girls on his phone. After a little back-and-forth, they agree to meet. 

When the time of the date comes, Christian kisses the dog on the head and goes to the restaurant. Soon, Sigrid joins him there. She works and goes to school, but he says he doesn’t really do anything. He invites her home, and he lives in a mansion, which surprises her. 

She asks if he lives there alone, and he says yes, other than his dog. When she asks what kind of dog, he says that’s a little hard to explain. Kissing soon leads to bed-play as the dog watches from the next room. In the morning, she wakes up and sees the “dog.” Christian introduces his dog, Frank. Sigrid wants out and leaves, not even wanting to hear the explanation. 

When Sigrid gets home, her dorm roommate wants to hear all about the big date. Neither of them have ever heard of a fetish like that. Aurora tells Sigrid about Christian being a multimillionaire. She starts watching videos about “puppy play.” They both soon come to the conclusion that maybe Sigrid can overlook some things for a rich, handsome boyfriend. 

Sigrid calls, and they arrange a second date. Christian explains that Frank is a dog– all the time. “He doesn’t act like a dog; he is a dog. It’s what he wants.” He says that she must treat Frank like a dog, never like a human. Frank is a little too friendly, but Sigrid says that’s OK. Christian says he and Frank met as children. 

Aurora suggests that Sigrid play a little harder to get, and Sigrid tries, but it’s not easy. She asks Christian if Frank has sex, and he doesn’t think so; he never leaves and has no visitors. He asks if she wants to have sex with Frank, and she jokes that she would. He invites her to go away to his cabin for a trip. 

The couple and Frank go to his smaller home. He suggests they be “phone-free” during this trip. Frank is very playful. When Christian goes for more wine, Frank pulls open his mask and says they need to get out of there because Christian is insane. Not long after, Sigrid vomits, a film tell-tale that she’s pregnant with Christian’s baby. Or maybe it’s just nerves. 

Sigrid finds that she’s locked in the house and can’t leave. She wants her phone back, but Christian makes excuses. He says he thinks she’s addicted to her phone. She does talk Christian into letting her take Frank out for a walk. Frank warns that they can’t run, they should attack him while he sleeps. 

When Sigrid doesn’t make the bed right, Christian gets really upset– no, he’s just messing with her. Is he crazy or not? So far it could go either way - Frank could be lying. Dinner is awkward. Later that night, Christian plays a recording of what Frank said to her earlier. He also has the knife Sigrid hid under her pillow. They go in to see Frank, in a cage. Frank bites Christian, and Sigrid uses the opportunity to steal the key and run outside. Christian drags Frank out to the barn and tortures him. Yep, Christian is nuts. 

Sigrid has no idea where to go, so she picks up a big stick in the woods and heads back to the barn to free Frank. She whacks Christian with her log and helps Frank up. Christian, however, doesn’t go down easy and soon regains control of the situation. 

Some time has passed. Christian gets up and feeds both of his dogs Sigrid and Frank, including Sigrid’s baby, who wears a puppy suit.

Commentary

It starts off weird, and then Frank talks. Then it gets weirder. We wondered if the talking dog could be trusted or not, but he seemed like an honest man-in-a-dog suit kinda guy, so we decided to believe him. Once we figured out what was really going on, it got a lot stranger. This was something different, and we liked it.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) 

* Directed by Rachel Talalay

* Written by Wes Craven, Rachel Talalay, Michael De Luca

* Stars Robert Englund, Lisa Zane, Shon Greenblatt

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

They lost the thread of the scares the original movie had. They try to be funny, or satirical, and it falls flat. It’s just really not very good at all. This is a sad finish, or intended finish, to the series. A missed opportunity.

Spoilery Synopsis

Springwood, Ohio, ten years from now. There’s been a bunch of mysterious killings of children and teenagers. There was one surviving teenager. A young guy on an airplane is not having a good night; he’s the last. He falls through a hole in the floor and– wakes up in his bedroom. He looks out the window and sees Freddy Krueger riding by on his broom, like in Wizard of Oz. After his house crash-lands, he rolls down a mountain. He gets hit by a bus driven by Freddy. “Go fetch,” commands Freddy, who knocks the guy back into the real world. 

We cut to Spencer’s father lecturing him about getting out of the juvenile rehabilitation facility. Maggie is Spencer’s caseworker. She sticks up for him when the boss finds a pipe bomb in Spencer’s room. Tracy and Carlos are there as well. Maggie talks to Doc, the man in charge, and he laments that he doesn’t get enough time to help the kids. Maggie complains to him about her own recurring dreams. He’s a dream psychologist. 

The police bring in the kid from the airplane, but he doesn’t remember his own name. He doesn’t know where he’s from, but knows that he was the last survivor. Maggie calls him John Doe, and wonders why he doesn’t want to fall asleep. He’s carrying a newspaper article “Krueger Woman Still Missing” that was from Springwood’s newspaper. 

Maggie goes to sleep and dreams about herself as a child. John also has a nightmare. Doc thinks there’s a connection between their dreams. Maggie takes John to Springwood. Turns out, Spencer, Tracy, and Carlos are hiding in the back of the van. They stop at a sad little carnival to make a phone call. John notices that there are no kids at this carnival. 

Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold come out of nowhere and talk about hiding the kids. One of the kids suggests that maybe they’re in Twin Peaks. Maggie and John stay at the carnival, as the three hoodlums take the van and leave; they pass the same landmark over and over– they can’t leave. 

Maggie and John encounter a schoolteacher who tells them that Freddy had a child. Tracy and the guys park the van on Elm Street and pick out an empty house to break into. As soon as they go in, the outside of the house changes to Freddy’s old place. Carlos immediately decides to take a nap, and Freddy takes his ears. Then we get a handful of picking-on-the-deaf-kid jokes until Carlos’s head explodes. 

Spencer watches Carlos on TV as he nods off to sleep. Johnny Depp comes on the TV, doing a “your brain on drugs” ad until Freddy smacks him. 

Maggie and John go to the Springwood Orphanage. John thinks maybe he’s Freddy’s son. Tracy drives up in the van, wanting help. Freddy then takes over the TV, showing Spencer a psychedelic music video. Then the TV shuts off, and Spencer is inside Freddy’s video game. 

John tells Tracy to knock him out so he can help in the dream world. Once again, John wakes up in his bedroom, and his house starts flying. Then it catches fire. He jumps out the window. Freddy denies being John’s father; he used John to bring Freddy to his daughter. He then kills John. 

Freddy then possesses Maggie, who goes back to the rehabilitation center and tells her boss about Carlos, Spencer, and John Doe. He doesn’t even remember those kids existed. Doc remembers them because he can control his dreams. Maggie goes home to talk to her mother. Maggie again dreams of her father, Freddy Kueger. Loretta promises not to tell what she found in the basement. Young Maggie finds newspaper clippings of victims, razor gloves, and lots of other bad stuff down there. 

Freddy and Maggie talk; he wants out. “Every town has an Elm Street!” Tracy dreams of her abusive father, whom she beats to death with a coffee pot. He turns into Freddy, and they fight. Freddy attacks Doc next, explaining that the “dream people” gave him the job. Doc wakes up and gets with Maggie and Tracy for their next move; they want to bring Freddy out to the real world. 

Hooked to a sleep monitor, Maggie goes back to sleep holding a pair of 3D glasses. She wants to get inside his brain. She flashes back to see Freddy as a child, killing a hamster. Then she meets Freddy’s abusive father. We then see Freddy being burned alive and his encounter with the “dream people” who made him what he is today. Maggie grabs Freddy and pulls him into the real world. 

Maggie encounters a very human-looking Freddy, who says he tried to be good. She doesn’t fall for it. He attacks her, but she’s stronger than he is now. They fight over his glove until she puts it on. She uses it on Freddy and then sticks some dynamite in his chest, which blows the little dream people right out of him. 

Commentary

At the end of the previous film, Freddy might have had a son, Jacob. It was left a little vague. John Doe is never explicitly named in this film, but it’s supposed to be the same character. This was released in 3D and was also intended to be the end of the series. 

Freddy’s reduced to nothing but a comic figure here, spitting out one bad pun or catchphrase after another. It’s got a handful of celebrity cameos, including Rosanne Barr, Tom Arnold, and Alice Cooper. 

It’s almost a parody of the previous films, nearly a live-action cartoon. We’ve never even heard mention of the little dream-worm people before this, but it turns out they’re what gave Freddy his power. 

It’s really pretty awful. It’s not scary, it’s not funny, it’s just sort of a time waster.

Stay tuned for more reviews next week!

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This week, we’ll start with three brand-new films, all of which we liked. 2024 has brought us “The Moor,” “Arena Wars,” and “Realm of Shadows.” Next we’ll watch a couple of fun films we missed in 2018, “The Perfection” and “The Devil’s Path.” Finally, we’ll head back to Japan with 1968’s “Destroy All Monsters.”

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2024 The Moor

* Directed by Chris Cronin

* Written by Paul Thomas

* Stars Sophia La Porta, David Edward-Robertson, Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips, Bernard Hill

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 58 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was grim and moody and quite slow moving. It pulls you along though, and we didn’t think it ever got dull. Much of it takes place on an endless flat and foggy landscape which makes it all the more chilling when something strange pops up. And it caps off with a satisfying ending. We’d give it a thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open up on two children arguing about robbing the candy store. The little boy distracts the shopkeeper while his friend loads her bag with snacks and runs out. Her friend doesn’t come out, so she goes back inside looking for him; the shopkeeper says his dad came in and took him. We see “missing” posters of the boy as credits roll. Many missing posters, followed by headlines telling us that a man was sentenced to 25 years for the crimes. 

Twenty-five years later, Claire has grown up and talks to Bill, the boy’s father, about the killer’s sentence ending. They never found Danny’s body, so they couldn’t lock the man up forever; Bill wants to go up to the moors and search for Danny’s body.  He complains about how the vultures from the news have hounded him for years. 

Claire agrees to go with him and Liz to search the peat moss moors. They have a map and they’re systematically searching the whole thing, which is going to take many days. 

We cut to an old interview with people originally involved with the investigation 25 years ago. People talk about the moors, where the bodies were supposedly hidden. 

Claire talks to Mr. Thornley, an old friend who was in charge of the original search, and mentions that Bill still goes up there to search. He knows all about the moors and shows that the moors are much, much larger than Claire realized. “How could anything be found in this?” Thornley is confused why Bill is searching in that particular area. Claire goes to see Bill, who has a psychic (dowser) there pointing to areas on a map. 

Bill, Claire, and Liz go back out for more searching, and Liz reiterates how dangerous it is here. It’s all very scenic in a really bleak way. Claire wears a GoPro and records the whole thing. It’s miles and miles of bleak, foggy, grassy, swamp terrain. 

Claire falls into a ravine and hears the others calling for her. She finds a child’s shoe down there, and the others soon catch up to her. Bill looks validated. On the way back, Liz leads them past some kind of neolithic stone monument. Claire starts to panic about being lost, but Liz says they aren’t lost, and soon come to the road where they parked. 

Back in town, the police aren’t much interested in the shoe, saying it doesn’t indicate anything. 

Back to the interview shows, they talk about the man who was arrested for the crimes. They wouldn’t show the man’s face on the news, which made him even more scary to the public. He only got one life sentence, which is 25 years, but he must have killed many children. 

On the next trip out to the moor, Claire has a vision, seeing Danny– No, just a dream. Bill invites Alex, his dowsing friend, over, and they argue about someone else who’s involved– Eleanor, Alex’s daughter. Bill explains to Claire that Eleanor tried to help them before, but there were… issues. Alex has never asked for any money, so he’s not a crook. He really believes. 

Eleanor wants to try something different. She uses the dowsing pointer to go over the map and gets nothing. Then she touches the shoe that they found, and the pointer gets really obvious about a location. 

It’s a long walk from the road, most of the day just to get there. Eleanor wants to go help, but Alex is not supportive of the idea. Liz packs a whole lot of safety equipment just to be sure. Alex tells Claire that this sort of thing always has a cost for Eleanor. 

Soon, Eleanor picks up the spirit of a little girl on the moor. Something scares her, and she runs off– right over a cliff into a ravine. She’s obviously hurt, and Alex and Claire tend to her, but Bill starts digging where she fell and finds a body. 

Four weeks later, Claire complains about nightly nightmares about the little girl’s face in the mud. They didn’t find Danny, but the body was enough evidence to keep the killer in jail for a long time; the little girl died three years before Danny, so the killer was at it for a while. Bill, however, is still looking for Danny. 

Eleanor doesn’t want to go back up there, but she talks about Thomas, who is her spiritual guardian and the one who “leads” her to things. She might be able to get Thomas to speak through her, something like a seance. Thomas says Danny is “dreaming in the dark” and moves the pointer to a very specific spot on the map, far from the road this time.  

Everyone packs up and heads back out to the moors. They find another of those strange stone monuments out there. The archaeologists don’t know who made them, but they’re very old. It gets too late to continue, so they set up a tent and camp. Eleanor says Thomas is nervous, which is new for him. Even Claire says the place feels like she’s been here before. 

It’s dark and foggy and quiet and very mysterious out there at night. Bill sees someone out there and gets stuck in a bog until Liz pulls him out. Eleanor and Claire have a long talk about Bill before they realize that Bill and Liz haven’t come back yet. 

Eleanor starts screaming, and Alex’s eyes are glowing. Liz gets on her radio to call for help, but she gets a very weird response. They all hear many children screaming for help outside the tent. Things get very strange with Eleanor, and her eyes bleed. Alex runs off into the fog. They find Alex a few minutes later, and he says he’s been lost in the dark for the past hour; that wasn’t him in the tent. They see a group of sheep with no eyes in the darkness. 

Morning comes and they see that their tent is surrounded by those stone monuments. Liz calls for help, and they airlift Eleanor to the hospital. Liz tells Bill that she’s had enough and won’t help in the future. 

Mr. Thornley calls Claire and tells her to stay away from the moor. He says that the killer was taken out to the moor yesterday to lead the police to bodies, and he escaped somehow. The killer is loose somewhere in the moors. Bill wants to go back up there, and he’s got a shotgun. 

Then we get a scene of Claire packing up and traveling, looking like she was leaving, and doing a podcast episode about coming to terms with what happened. Turns out that’s a false happy ending of something from before. 

We flashback to the GoPro, which shows Bill leading Claire with his shotgun up to one of those monuments. A crazy sheep rams his head into the monument and dies. Bill talks about human sacrifices out here from the stone age who were buried and preserved in the peat. “There’s something out here, something old and terrible. You heard the voice in the tent.” She didn’t, but he says it was clear to him.

It turns out that Bill does blame Claire for what happened to Danny. They come to the spot that Eleanor indicated on her map that last time. “The voice promised if I came here, I’d get Danny back.” Claire thinks Bill has lost his mind. Suddenly, Bill sees someone in the fog and chases them with his gun. 

Claire falls into a bog and slowly sinks as Bill returns. Several dead bodies rise up out of the bog as Claire sinks and Bill finds Danny. 

Commentary

Everyone has very thick accents, and the version we watched didn’t have subtitles. Depending on where you’re watching it, try to get subtitles. They are very British, but after a few minutes, we got used to it. 

It’s very slow moving, atmospheric, and moody. Really, the hopeless gloom and dankness of the setting are the biggest part of the film. The music and camerawork are really good; it’s slow-moving but not boring. There’s little horror at all until about 90 minutes in. 

We liked it– it’s more moody than horrific, but it does a good job with it.

2024 Arena Wars 

* Directed by Brandon Slagle

* Written by Brandon Slagle, Michael Mahal, Sonny Mahal

* Stars Michael Madsen, Eric Roberts, Robert LaSardo

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This wasn’t really horror, but a decent science fiction action flick with lots of gore and combat. And a satirical tone to it with plenty of dark humor. It’s got a very large cast that gets narrowed down as the mayhem flows along. We’d call it well-made overall and entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 2045 in the Big City. There’s some kind of arena fight going on; a man in armor with a pickaxe fights against a man in a prison outfit as two commentators talk about the bout. A woman in a mask, Cutie Pie, comes out and beheads the prisoner. 

TV execs talk about how to raise the ratings. “How do we win back the audience?” We cut to Luke Bender, in federal prison. He talks to the parole board about getting released. He’s not very cooperative and gets sent back in for more time. He gets a video call from Admiral Jordan, who asks how the hearing went.

Another prisoner, Arturo Perez, goes into the parole board, and he’s on death row. His only option is to participate in “Arena Wars,” the fighting show we saw earlier. 

We cut to the show, where there are ten new prisoners. The man there explains the situation and rules to them. “If you make it out alive, you get to go home.” They get no weapons. 

The show’s hosts, Samson and Moses, introduce the show and their regular killers. They look like wrestlers crossed with superheroes and combat suits. Calypso and Cutie Pie we’ve seen before. Each of the prisoners is injected with something. The prisoners joke about getting convicted of murder, and the only way out is to murder some more. 

One nervous young prisoner gets cut up right away. A couple of guys wait in the back, and their heads explode; that’s what the injections were about. Before long, Perez is the only fighter left alive. He beats the guy with the knives, but then another fighter comes out to stop him. Then he’s pulled into a hole in the wall by someone. 

The executives come to the conclusion that no one can root for these terrible criminals, they need a real hero to play the game. Luke Bender is pulled back into the meeting room; the show wants him. The head of the company Belladonna, wants Luke to audition by beating up his bodyguards, which he does easily. Belladonna knows that Luke is innocent; he’s read his classified file. Luke really has no choice. 

Luke gets another call from the Admiral, who knows all about his cover being blown. Luke gets on the truck to the arena and meets the other prisoners on his “team.” They are a classy bunch, and they all get checked into the facility. 

The doctor works on the established fighters, who are all on some kind of drug that isn’t working as well as it used to. He warns that if it wore off on-air that it might be a problem. 

Samson and Moses come on the show and tell everyone that they have something new, an innocent man. He was in prison because he had orders from his commanding officer. There’s lots of talking as we get to know everyone and then the show begins. 

As before, one guy gets torched. The birdman with the knives comes out next, but there are too many prisoners left alive, and they manage to overpower him. Luke has a knife, but he won’t kill the man, so another prisoner does it. 

“Meat Wagon” comes out next, and he’s big and tough, punching right through some prisoner’s chest. He and Khan work together to beat him. Luke starts talking about the team working together. The next contender is taken out by the prisoners pretty easily, and the crowd really roots for Luke. 

There’s a break in the show, and the producers invite the prisoners for a meeting up in the club. Belladonna talks to Luke, the new fan favorite. Luke wants to know if his fiance and her father are still alive, but Belladonna gives an evasive look. Belladonna offers Luke a vague “opportunity” to talk about if he survives; the network wants to make a spinoff series starring Jake. He can’t kill Jake, but shows that his fiance and her father the Admiral are both dead; that Admiral on the phone was a deep-fake. They knock out Luke.

The remaining prisoners try to support Luke, “We’re family.” We see that one of the fighters, Domino, isn’t taking her special mind-control drugs. 

The shows come back, and Moses has been ordered to keep the show going no matter what he sees. The battle starts, they lose one of the prisoners before defeating the next fighter. The next fighter is Mr. Smiles, a clown-themed killer. Billie beats him to death with his own mace without losing anyone else. 

Belladonna and the other execs watch from the control room as Domino joins them from downstairs. 

The armored-pickaxe guy from earlier attacks the four remaining prisoners. Cutie Pie sneaks in and whacks Jake in the back with her machete. Khan gives Luke some kind of drug that makes him better. The group works together to beat them both. Belladonna asks Domino how Khan snuck in that drug, and she shoots both his guards. Belladonna sends her down to the arena. 

Cutie Pie, impaled with her own machete, tells everyone that none of them really want to be there, and that even they are fighting against their will. 

Belladonna comes down to the arena and confronts the four convicts, using Boggs as a hostage. Billie cuts him in half with a chainsaw, and it’s quite bloody. Boggs presses a button and disables the explosives in their heads before showing them to the exit. 

The crowd cheers and Minty, Bille, Khan, and Luke leave the arena. 

As the end credits roll, we watch interviews between Moses and various characters we’ve seen earlier. 

Commentary

The concept is a new take on “The Running Man,” with the costumed fighters in an arena and an innocent man forced to fight for his freedom. This one has a surprisingly large amount of talking and drama for what amounts to an action movie, but it mostly works well. 

I kept expecting Perez (Robert LaSardo) to make a comeback later on, since we didn’t really see him die in the early scenes. He just sort of disappeared into a hole in the wall, which was an unsatisfying end to one of the few recognizable stars of the film. Michael Madsen, who got top billing, doesn’t get much screen time, but he plays one of the commentators and does well with the role. We both joked that Eric Roberts was literally phoning in his role, but at least that was explained in the story, and there was a good reason. 

The acting is decent, and the lighting, sound, and music are good. The sets seem appropriate, and the acting is decent for a movie of this type. The fight choreography looked good, and it all made sense. 

There aren’t really many surprises here, but we definitely enjoyed it.

2024 Realm Of Shadows

* Directed by Jimmy Drain

* Written by Robert Bieber, Jimmy Drain, Lewis Leslie

* Stars Tony Todd, Vernon Wells, Jimmy Drain

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s an anthology of tales wrapped around witchery and good versus evil. Some of the short stories had no dialogue, which was interesting. Despite top billing, Tony Todd only makes a small appearance, but he’s always good to see. We thought some of the stories were a little on the weak side, but as a whole, it’s a decent piece of work.

Spoilery Synopsis

We are told about a magic dagger that has been sought and fought over for thousands of years. Credits roll. 

Nalum goes to the strip club and talks to the other girls working there. We cut to priests talking and praying. The women go into the basement, set up an Ouiji board, and do some kind of spell that opens the Realm of Shadows…

Mallick's Dreamlady

Mallick walks into a bar and talks to Sarah, the bartender. His friend comes in and wants Mallick to hit on the girl who just came in. Sarah is replaced by a strange new man who says he can make that girl like Mallick, but he needs a strand of her hair. Mallick gets some hair for the guy, who vanishes. 

In the morning, Donna, the girl from the bar, comes to his apartment. They have fun, then she stays all day, watching him do laundry and mundane stuff. Mallick figures out that something is wrong and goes back to the bar to ask Sarah about the relief bartender; she says there isn’t one. He and Sarah leave together, and we see the strange bartender there after they leave. 

Hike

Mallik and Sarah are now a happy couple, and he has a ring for her. In the morning, she leaves him a note and takes the ring with her. He then goes for a hike in the hills. When he gets home, Sarah is there waiting for him and crying. He wakes up, that was all a dream, so he goes into the other room and proposes to her. (No one speaks in this segment). 

Abashed

A woman finds a book of hexes in the bookstore. Her boyfriend reads the Bible and doesn’t want to have sex with her. She uses the hex book to put a spell on him. They get married and she starts doing cocaine. They argue, and she uses her voodoo doll to make him kill himself. No one speaks here either. 

The Initiation of Profesor Kimmer

Dan, a new college professor, dreams about a coven of witches. He goes to school and assigns a ten-page essay on the first day (he deserves whatever he gets for this). A girl named Star wants him to read her rough draft.  He meets his boss after work, and the man tells him to watch out for sexual harassment. Dan seems to have some history of it. 

Dan’s wife is going to a family reunion, but he can’t go with the new job and all. He says he thought they were past her not trusting him alone. He grades essays, and reads Star’s, who has a love letter to him written into hers. 

The next day, Star arrives early to talk to Dan. She knows that he’s broken the rules before with his indiscretions. She wants an “A” or else. Oh, and sex. She wants sex too. The new Assistant Dean talks to Dan about Star, and she warns him about Star. Dan talks to a priest about the situation. 

Star corners Dan at a party and she’s drugged him somehow. Star is part of the coven, and they use a knife on him. The Assistant Dean comes in and wrestles the witches for the knife. Dan visits his wife, Jamie, in jail later; the Dean and his assistant reveals that she was the leader of the coven and this whole thing was a setup. 

Cadaver

It’s Halloween, and Peggy calls in to the radio call-in show. We flashback to her doing witchcraft. She reads up on Jon Beedham, the greatest dancer in the world. She practices dancing herself and goes to an audition for one of his shows. She gets pregnant by him, but he soon abandons her. Seven months later, she reads a book on witchcraft and cooks her own baby. 

Other than the radio call-in bit in the beginning, no one speaks in this segment either. 

Meet Michael

The little girl, Gaylen, has an imaginary friend that her parents can’t see. She says “Michael” lives on the roof and comes in when her parents go to bed. Her mother experiences some strangeness and wants to have the house blessed. 

A pair of priests come in to do the blessing. The priest wonders if Gaylen has seen pictures of the Angel Michael, and the parents say no. Later, we see a camera flyover of the house with an angel on the roof. 

Fate Upside Down

Father Dudley walks through the park at night and encounters a demon. “What you did was necessary,” he says. The demon gives him the dagger. Dudley talks to Robby and gives him the dagger. 

We cut back to Nalum and the witches and Ouija board from the opening. Nalum has poisoned the others, who all fall over dead; she’s got the other dagger. The priests from before call Father Dudley to fight…

The end.

Commentary

The bigger-name stars only appear in the final segment, so don’t come looking for a lot of Tony Todd here. Vernon Wells and Harley Wallen have a very brief after-credit scene. Most of the segments star the director, Jimmy Drain, and he’s pretty bland in every segment. He seems to do a decent job directing, but maybe it would have been stronger to leave the acting to someone else. It was also confusing because he played different roles in different stories but sometimes had the same character name, which made no real sense. 

There are several segments with no dialogue, and the music in these is quite good. Actually, I think I liked the “silent” segments better than the ones with dialogue. I think “Cadaver” was probably the best of the bunch.

As Kevin always says with movies like this, “It needed more Mel.”

The wraparound segment didn’t go anywhere, and the ending was more of a cliffhanger than an ending. The stories are on the weak side, but it’s well-made and looks good.

Short Film: Occupant (2024) 

* Directed by Peter Cilella

* Written by  Peter Cilella

* Stars Daniel O’Brien, Lauran September, Caroline Jennings, Kira Powell

* Run Time: 4:21

* Watch it:

What Happens

A father tells his young daughter a twisted bedtime story. Then he goes into the next room, where his wife tells him he just came into the room and said he was going to bed a minute ago. Then he hears something strange outside and goes out to investigate. 

Commentary

It’s a really simple plot that mostly focuses on the creepiness of having something in your backyard. We’ve seen scenes like this in numerous “Body Snatcher”- type movies, but this is well done. If I had a complaint, I’d say the dark scenes are a little too dark, but what’s happening is always clear.

2018 The Perfection

* Directed by Richard Shepard

* Written by Richard Shepard, Nicole Snyder, Eric C. Charmelo

* Stars Allison Williams, Logan Browning, Steven Weber

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was an excellent movie to go into blind. It starts out as one thing, then goes somewhere else. And somewhere else again. Some things could be predicted, and some things not. We really liked it a lot. Very entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman lies dead in bed, with people talking in the hallway. With her mother dead, Charlotte may be able to go back to performing, something she hasn’t done in years. She gave up her career to care for her ailing mother. Credits roll. 

Charlotte calls Anton and Paloma and leaves a message about joining them in Shanghai. She sees a billboard for Elizabeth Wells, who is now a big cello star. She meets Paloma and Anton at a concert. Lizzie is there as well, and Charlotte clearly doesn’t like all the praise that she’s been receiving. Theis and Geoffrey, two old teachers, are there too. We get a flash to Charlotte shaving her head, slicing her wrists, and getting shock therapy.

Lizzie and Charlotte talk, Lizzie says she would never leave the group, but she is going on vacation starting tomorrow. As they come back inside, a man throws up, gets a nosebleed, and collapses. There’s some kind of hemorrhagic fever down south, and someone thinks maybe that’s what he had. 

Anton asks Lizzie to play for them, and she asks Charlotte to play 2nd chair. Charlotte says she’s an amateur now, but also doesn’t take much convincing. It goes well, and we see the two of them running off and kissing, dancing, and having lots of smoochy fun afterward. 

Lizzle asks Charlotte to go on her trip with her tomorrow. Lizzie doesn’t feel well before they leave, but she only has a few days and doesn’t want to waste it. They get on a cheap, nasty bus to somewhere, and Charlotte admits she can’t speak Mandarin at all. Lizzie swears she’ll be fine. 

She’s not fine. She pukes all over the bus, just like that guy last night. The bus driver angrily pulls over to let her poop in the road, and it’s a whole scene. Lizzie cries and whines a lot, but there’s not much Charlotte can do to help on the bus. She pukes again, and this time, it’s full of squirming bugs. She freaks out, scratching at herself, and the angry bus driver wants them off the bus. 

Walking through the Chinese countryside, Lizzie insists that she’s dying and Charlotte needs to stay away from her. Lizzie sees things crawling around underneath her skin; Charlotte sees it too. Charlotte pulls out a great big cleaver, and Lizzie cuts her own hand off. 

We flashback to Charlotte giving Lizzie some of her mother’s hallucinogenic drugs. She got the cleaver from a food cart guy. She faked the rest to convince Lizzie that she had bugs inside her. Soon, Lizzie isn’t going to be any competition for the cello jobs. 

Three weeks later, at Anton’s music academy, Anton welcomes Zhang Li, the new student that we saw perform in Shanghai. Zhang Li’s mother leaves in a cab, and Lizzie comes to the gate, with only one hand. She tells the story from her point of view; she says she took some pills and cut her hand off. She does blame Charlotte; she really knows everything. The next day, Anton and Paloma kick her out, he doesn’t want her around the place now. 

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, Charlotte is home alone and is hearing noises from inside the house. Lizzie is there and gets her with a Taser… 

Anton and Paloma can’t get into the academy because Lizzie is blocking the driveway. She has Charlotte in the trunk of her car. Anton realizes that both women are crazy. Charlotte explains how she was helping Lizzie; she knows what Anton does to all his girls. She’s come back to save all the girls from him. 

We flash back to Anton going full Weinstein on young Charlotte. He demands perfection, and he’s very serious about it. 

Charlotte wakes up on stage in Anton’s special room. She’s all dressed up and chained to the floor. Theis and Geoffrey are there, as is Lizzie and Paloma. She accuses him of raping both herself and Lizzie, but Lizzie’s on his side. He makes her play, warning her that if she makes a single mistake, it will be Zhang Li who pays the price. 

Charlotte argues, but in the end, she has no choice but to play. She does, in fact, play perfectly, and Anton sends Zhang Li back upstairs. He leaves the room, telling Theis and Geoffrey to “come and get me when she stops biting.” 

The two old pervs move in on her, but Lizzie says she wants her first. Suddenly, the two old teachers collapse and die; Lizzie has poisoned them both. Charlotte smiles and Lizzie kisses her; we get a flashback to the Taser incident and the two of them making up. Lizzie knows that Charlotte was actually right with all this. 

Paloma walks to Anton’s study, and she’s got a knife in the back. It’s the two former cellists against Anton now. He admits that he’s sick and promises to get help. They both gang up on him and slice him to bits. Charlotte gets her arm graphically sliced in the process. 

Lizzie, who’s missing an arm, and Charlotte, who’s now also missing one, work together, each contributing a hand to play the cello for Anton, who has no arms or legs at all as well as his eyes and mouth sewn shut. But they left him his ears… 

Commentary

The Mount Rushmore of horror: Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and that Chinese bus driver. Wow. 

This was two full years before either COVID or the Weinstein trial, and it predicted both quite well. We went into this blind, and thought we were going to get a plague movie for quite a while. 

Still, it twisted and turned a few times, and some of it we predicted– and some, we didn’t. This definitely entertained us.

2018 The Devil’s Path

* Directed by Matthew Montgomery

* Written by Matthew Montgomery and Stephen Twardokus

* Stars Stephen Twardokus, JD Scalzo, and Jon Gale

* Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was beautifully filmed entirely in a forest with trails, and manages to have a surprising number of guys in it. But it’s mainly about two of them, and the back and forth between them is done very well. There are points that require a suspension of disbelief - especially when you ponder them afterward - but we still liked it quite a bit.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s the early 1990s. Noah explains that he’s felt the most comfortable in the woods; it’s people who scare him. “This place was our chance to leave it all behind.” Credits roll. 

A man hides in the woods and watches people walking on the trail below. He spots a guy with a beard and chases after him. He seems a little weird and “out of it.” He stops and sits next to the bearded guy and starts playing with his tarot cards: “the devil” and “the lovers.” The weird guy is Noah, and the bearded guy is Patrick; they start talking. Noah admits that he doesn’t get out very often. 

They watch a gay man cruising in the woods. Another guy, Stan, comes in and sits between them. “Love doesn’t exist on Devil’s Path,” says Stan as the other two get up and leave. The two walk on and pass a couple of “missing persons” posters; Patrick points out that they both look like Noah. There’s a blocked-off trail, and Ranger Tom says it’s closed until they find the missing men; some people have been attacked up there. 

Ranger Tom gets called away, so the two guys decide to walk down the forbidden trail anyway. Noah takes his medication with shaky hands. The area seems to be where gay men hook up for sex, and Noah seems a little uncomfortable with that. “People don’t come here for love or romance; they come here to get off,” Patrick says. 

They continue walking down the path. Patrick says that he’s an EMT and comes out here to “feel something.” Noah goes off to pee, and Patrick sees someone run past him with blood on his hands. He runs to Noah, who’s bleeding from a head wound and has trouble standing. He says that the other guy did it. The bloody-handed guy comes back with a friend and weapons, so Noah and Patrick end up running through the woods. 

Noah has a plan to take a backcountry trail to the parking lot, and they run in the direction they need to. Patrick has asthma and has trouble keeping up, so they stop. Noah walks to a stream to wash off the blood, and we see his back is all scarred up; there’s something weird about Noah. 

Patrick and Noah argue about the whole situation. Noah tells Patrick that this could be a defining moment in his life. He shows Patrick a photo of his older brother, who used to come out to these woods a lot. They argue about saving an injured bird, which Patrick mashes to put it out of its misery. Noah has a knife that he says his brother gave him, but Patrick says it’s his knife; he hooked up with Noah’s brother once and he stole the knife. They stop arguing when their two pursuers approach. 

The two argue about the nature of love. Noah looks for his pills, but the bottle is gone; Patrick says he threw them out, his mom got hooked on those. They find a covered place to hide, and Noah wants to spend the night. Patrick wants anything but that since he’s afraid of the dark. Noah admits that he beat his uncle to death for trying to hurt his brother; the brother confessed and went to jail. Noah got sent to a mental hospital, and he only just got out. 

Noah wants to know where his brother is, and he thinks Patrick knows what happened to him. Patrick says they only messed around a little bit, and he has no idea where the brother is. Noah tells the story about following his brother into the woods; the brother was there with Patrick. Patrick came back out of the woods, but the brother, Michael, didn’t. 

Patrick agrees to show Noah where the body is; no, he was just distracting Noah until he had the opportunity to stab him with the knife. Patrick runs off through the woods, and Noah tries to catch up. Patrick runs right into the two baddies, who accuse him of attacking Noah. They call him a “Homophobic piece of s**t.” Patrick then kills them both with a rock. Noah catches up, “You killed them.” 

Noah admits that he bashed himself with a rock and got blood on the other man’s hand. He begged the other man to get help, making them think Patrick was the one who hurt him. Yes, Noah set this whole thing up to spend time with Patrick and get a confession out of him. 

Patrick’s lost his inhaler, so he doesn’t get very far. Noah’s got it, and smashes it in front of him. Patrick dies. 

Noah turns around and finds Michael’s body right there, hanging from a tree. “I’m sorry Noah,” is written on a cassette tape. 

Noah limps down the path on the way out of the woods. He’s still hurting from being stabbed. He finds a bench and passes out. 

Some time jumps, Noah is cleaned up but moving slowly, and talks to Ranger Tom. One of the missing men has shown up completely fine, but now there’s a poster for Patrick. Noah plays the cassette tape recorded by Michael for him, apologizing and explaining things. Michael killed himself for “cheating” on Noah with Patrick. 

Noah sits on the bench next to a guy named Steve and they awkwardly talk. Noah is still all messed up inside, trying to unload, and Steve tunes him out clearly only there for a hookup as he leaves Noah alone for another passing guy. 

Commentary

It’s more of a psychological thriller than a horror movie, but it’s very well done. Of all the places in that huge forest, they stopped right at the place where Michael was, completely coincidentally?

We know from the beginning that something’s going on with Noah, but we don’t know what for a long time. There are a couple of twists here, but nothing out of place or that requires too much of a stretch of logic. 

The acting is good between the two main guys, and the setting is perfect for this story. It was a little draggy in a few places, but overall, I liked it.

1968 Destroy All Monsters

* Directed by Ishiro Honda, Jun Fukuda

* Written by Ishiro Honda, Takeshi Kimura

* Stars Akira Kubo, Jun Razakim, and Yukiko Kabayashi

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

In the far-flung future of 1999, the world is at peace, space travel is commonplace back and forth from the moon, and Godzilla and all the other big critters have been rounded up and imprisoned on a big island. Life is great until aliens show up to mess it up. This was a pretty fun one with impressive model work.

Spoilery Synopsis

The year is 1999, in the future, there’s a base on the moon, and spacecraft go back and forth on a daily schedule. We watch a spaceship launching. Credits roll. 

We are told about the underwater base near an island where scientists study marine life. All of the Earth’s monsters have been collected and live on this island and live together in MonsterLand. Godzilla, Rodan, Anguirus, Mothra, Gorosaurus, and Minilla are all there. If they try to leave, there are devices that drive them back. The control center is deep in the Earth under the island. 

In the base, Kyoko gets a call from the moon. Her boyfriend, Katsuo, thinks there may be monsters on the moon as well, but the call is cut off before he can explain further. There’s yellow gas being poured into the control room, and everyone passes out. The monsters are also being gassed, and they pass out as well. All communications to MonsterLand are cut off. 

The U.N. tries to see what’s going on, and someone is jamming their cameras. But who? The Soviets call, and Rodan is there destroying Moscow. Paris is dealing with Gorosaurus. The major cities of the world are being destroyed one-by-one by monsters, some of whom are from previous films that we didn’t see introduced earlier. 

Dr. Yoshido gives a press conference, and he can’t explain why Tokyo hasn’t been attacked. On the moon, Katsuo sees a UFO, but it escapes. The moonbase people get a call to return to Earth and land on MonsterLand– some new creature has taken over the island, and they need to learn more. 

Katsuo and the others land at the base and find Kyoko and Dr. Otani there. “I want all of you to cooperate with us,” says Otoni. He says they are still controlling the monsters from there; he orders Mothra to derail a train. Then they go in and meet the Kilaak Queen, who is behind all this. Kilaak is one of the asteroids, and she’s from there. The queen is also shielded against attack.

There’s a gun battle between the rocket men and the mind-controlled scientists of the island. They take Otani along with them, but he still looks possessed. He won’t answer any questions and jumps out a window at the first opportunity. The people from Kilaak capture Yoshido and Katsuo as another gunfight breaks out. 

Surgeons cut into Otano’s brain and remove a tiny transmitter that was implanted in his skull. An old farmer up the mountains finds a strange piece of metal and very soon, scientists from the moon base come to pick it up. The device is what the Kilaaks have been using to call the monsters. They announce that all the original island scientists need to be captured, including Kyoko. 

Suddenly, the air raid siren goes off, and Rodan attacks Tokyo. Godzilla, Mothra, and Manda soon show up as well. All the monsters converge on Tokyo!  The tanks and missiles start firing, and they blow up more buildings than the monsters have wrecked. There’s a lot of wreckage; Tokyo is in ruins. The Kilaaks have built a new underground base in Izu, and that’s why the monsters have come. 

Kyoko walks right into the control room and wants to talk to the leaders and the press. “If all of you allow the Kilaaks to stay here, they will send the monsters back to MonsterLand.” Katsuo tackles her and pulls off her mind-control earrings. Kyoko wakes up, but she doesn’t remember anything after the poison gas. 

Katsuo flies the rocketship to Izu, but can’t land because Godzilla is under the ship. The land forces open fire on Godzilla, and Anguirus shows up to assist the big lizard. Rodan chases the rocket away. 

Katsuo and two associates find the Kilaak cave and go inside. The queen appears and invites them inside the huge facility, which includes docking areas for the UFOs. She says they want Mount Fuji, and says the humans have no right to it; then the doors open, and they’re released with the message. 

Meanwhile, the humans have built a new control center on MonsterLand and get ready to recall the monsters. Katsuo heads to the moon when a signal is detected from there. They open fire and blow up the entire Kilaak moonbase. They see the Kilaaks in their true form, little metal worm things. The group finds a strange machine that creates the monster-controlling waves, and they disable it. 

Dr. Yoshido wants to use the monsters to attack the Kilaak’s base in Mount Fuji. The first to arrive are Minilla and Godzilla. Anguirus, Manda, Baragon, Rodan, Kumonga, and Gorosaurus show up right after. 

Suddenly, a UFO shows up; it’s none other than King Ghidorah! The Kilaaks are controlling him, and the Queen calls to taunt Dr. Yoshido. The Earth monsters remember him and attack right away. Godzilla holds him while Mothra and Kumongo shoot webs at him; meanwhile, Minilla jumps up and down excitedly. 

The monsters team up and make quick work of the three-headed space monster. A burning monster comes down from space and crashes through buildings. It wrecks the base on MonsterLand, turns around, and comes back for more. The Queen reports that her fire dragon has destroyed Yoshida’s machine, and Tokyo is next. 

Except… free from control, Godzilla turns on the Kilaaks, shooting their base over and over. The monsters will fight for Earth even without being controlled! The Kilaaks turn back into metal slugs and hide. Katsuo says he can shoot down the fire dragon. It turns out the “fire dragon” is really just a flying saucer in disguise, which Katsuo is able to shoot down. 

Yoshio, Katsuo, and Kyoko watch as the various monsters all head back to their home. The ‘Zillas wave at them as their helicopter passes. 

Commentary

Not one monster, or two, or even three. This one has all of them, eleven in total, including Godzilla, Minilla, Rodan, Mothra, Anguirus, Kumonga, Manda, Varan, Gorosaurus, Baragon, and King Ghidorah. We had to look up Manda, he’s from Atragon (1963) and Anguirus, from Godzilla Raids Again (1955). Gorosaurus is from King Kong Escapes (1967). 

There are a lot of models and miniatures in this, more than in several of the previous films. The monsters are just the aliens’ pawns, but the spaceships are pretty cool. 

It wasn’t as silly as “Son of Godzilla” and was pretty good!

Stay tuned for more reviews next week!

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This week, we’ll start with three brand-new films, all of which we liked. 2024 has brought us “Sting,” “The First Omen,” and “Insane Like Me.” Then we’ll talk about a really weird one, “Titane” from 2024. For our bonus movies, we’ll look at “Cthulhu” (2008) and “Jesus Shows You The Way to the Highway” (2019). 

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Sting (2024) 

* Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner

* Written by Kiah Roache-Turner

* Stars Jermaine Fowler, Ryan Corr, Alyla Browne

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

What’s worse than spiders? Spiders from space! In addition to the creep factor, this has a lot of dark humor and offbeat characters. The story is a little basic, but they dress it up nicely into an entertaining film.

Spoilery Synopsis

We hear that an asteroid passed near to Earth yesterday, and today it’s unusually cold outside– it’s a very rare ice storm. We watch an old woman knitting– until she hears something upstairs running around. She pulls out an [antique] phonebook to call an exterminator. We see from the notes on the wall that it looks like she has Alzheimer’s. 

Frank the exterminator comes by but the “Bug Brothers” are parked right outside. Frank warns the confused Helga about the green snot coming out of her vents. He hears the noise right away and goes in to check it out. He finds a blood trail in the back bedroom and a “Bug Brothers” hardhat before he starts screaming. Something drags him back into the room and closes the door. Old Helga forgets all this and goes back to her knitting. She hears banging noises and calls an exterminator… 

Four days earlier, we see a meteor crash down into Helga’s apartment building, and a big spider hatches out of it as Credits Roll.  A kid breaks in through the ventilation shaft and finds the spider; she puts the spider in a matchbox and Gunter, a mean-looking old woman, comes in. As she crawls through the ducts, we see the other people who live in the building. We see that the girl is Charlotte, and she’s Ethan the apartment manager’s stepdaughter. Gunter is her grandmother who owns the building. Her mother is Heather. 

Charlotte names her spider “Sting” and feeds it other bugs.  Charlotte’s other grandmother is the addled Helga, who watches horror movies and knits all day. Charlotte wrote a comic book, and Ethan drew it, and it’s become quite popular. They are working on the next issue. Sometime during the night, the spider gets into the vents. Not long after, something eats Gunter’s parrot in a really gnarly way– it’s partly melted and half-eaten. 

Ethan calls Frank the exterminator. He’s sure it’s not rats and that whatever it was, it came through the ducts. We soon see that Charlotte’s spider is back in the jar and that it really hates mothballs. Frank and Charlotte talk about pets; he says spiders only know “Eat” and “Kill,” they can’t love. Charlotte continues feeding Sting, and Sting is getting bigger. 

Maria is doing things in her apartment, and we see there’s a spider in there. It jumps at her, and she loses track of it. She’s been bitten, and soon falls down, paralyzed but not dead. The spider crawls down her throat then out her abdomen. 

Ethan finds Maria’s dog in the ventilation shaft. He takes the dog back and finds what’s left of Maria. Charlotte goes to see Erik upstairs to buy one of his aquariums for Sting. She’s taught it to whistle, and Erik is a little creeped out. Erik is a weird biology student, and he wants the spider. Erik calls Ethan about the spider and it’s dangerous– and quite large. 

Ethan confronts Charlotte about the spider, and she doesn’t take it well. They fight about her real father. Erik says he’s going to turn into the spider to the Department of Health, but he actually keeps it and feeds it bigger things from his specimens. It’s soon big enough to break out of the glass aquarium. 

Gunter fires Ethan, her own son-in-law. Gunter says he’s weak and a quitter. That night, Gunter hears her cat in the hallway, but when she drunkenly crawls into the event, the spider gets her. 

The spider jumps down and bites both Heather and Ethan. Charlotte’s got earphones on and misses all of it. It drags them away before she takes the headphones off. She does notice, however, when it steals her baby brother. She quickly makes a solution of mothballs in water bottles and loads pesticide into a squirt gun. 

Gunter and Ethan wake up webbed and unable to speak. Charlotte checks on Helga, who is fine. Helga saw the spider, but it ran away from her– because she smells like mothballs. Charlotte finds Ethan next, and she works to release him from the webbing. 

Frank shows up outside, and we’re back to the opening scene. We see that Ethan and Charlotte are in the basement and cornered by the spider. Ethan runs it off with the mothball-water. Frank comes rolling in through the vent and joins them. The spider comes back and gets Frank anyway. They soon find Heather and William and break them free. 

The family lures the spider into the trash compactor and after a lot of desperate fighting with the wiring, they compact it. Ethan gets electrocuted, but Heather wakes him up. 

Charlotte finally tells Ethan that she loves him, so it’s all going to be OK from now on. Then we cut over to a dark corner, where spider eggs are hatching…

Commentary

The many segues between apartments and characters are very smoothly done. We quickly get to know all the characters and their relationships, which is nice. The family drama is interesting, but there’s not so much of it that it detracts from the horror story. Unlike “Infested” (2024), there’s only one spider in this one, but it’s a big one. 

It’s good!

The First Omen (2024) 

* Directed by Arkasha Stevenson

* Written by Tim Smith, Arkasha Stevenson, Keith Thomas

* Stars Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson, Sonia Braga, Bill Nighy

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 59 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one didn’t work for The Horror Guys. Too many things were like the first Omen movie, which came across as lazy. They tried changing and adding things to the mythos as if it was a requel. And it was kind of dull. We’d recommend just sticking with the trilogy of original Omen movies.

Spoilery Synopsis

Some workmen raise a stained glass window with a winch as the priest walks by. The priest then goes to listen to confession, where Father Harris tells another priest, Father Brennan, about a baby that wasn’t conceived normally. We flash over to a woman strapped to a table; the man says the baby should be a teenager by now. Harris gets up and leaves, “I just want it all to be over.” Just at that moment, the stained glass window over them shatters and Father Harris is im-poled with a pole. 

Credits roll as we shift to 1971 Rome. Cardinal Lawrence is at the station to pick up Margaret, a new nun about to take her vows. The convent is also an orphanage, and they care for lots of girls. She meets Sister Anjelica, who is weird. She also meets Carlita Scianna, one of the older children, and she gets licked in the face for it. 

That night, Margaret is alone in her room and gets a jump scare. Another soon-to-be nun, Luz, comes in from the nightclubs; she’s having some fun before taking her vows. They talk about why they have decided to become nuns. 

We get a settling-in montage as Margaret meets everyone and starts doing nun things. It seems like a fun, happy place, except for Carlita, who is always sullen and creepy. That night, she sees some nuns tying Carlita to the bed. 

Luz wants Margaret to go to the disco or a bar, and Margaret admits she’s never been to one, ever. They immediately meet Alfonso and Paolo. She has a few drinks, a few dances, and wakes up in her bed at the monastery. Luz says that Margaret had a very good time. 

Later in the morning, Margaret prays as Father Brennan, from the opening scene watches from afar. He warns her about Carlita, “evil things” happen around her. He wants to talk again tonight. Margaret goes back to the convent to watch a woman give birth forcibly. A long claw comes out of the mother, and Margaret faints at the sight. 

Sister Anjelica talks to Carlita and then goes up to the top floor of the orphanage. She comes out giggling as all the children watch. “It’s all for you,” she whispers, looking at Carlita, and then she sets fire to herself, jumps off the ledge, and hangs herself on the way down. 

Margaret goes to see Brennan as planned. She tells him what happened with Anjelica. He talks about there being “two churches,” the one for God and the other for secularism. The good church is losing power to people who are more and more becoming unbelievers, so they have a small group who have decided to give people a reason to fear, so church attendance will improve. They plan to give birth to the Antichrist, to cause fear, and the fear will turn people to the church. She believes that Carlita is intended to be the mother of the Antichrist. Margaret gets scared and leaves.

Margaret and a bunch of the orphans go to town, and while they are there, a riot breaks out in the street. Margaret gets a scare that might all be in her own head. Sister Silva, the head nun, wonders at Margaret’s mental health. Maybe it’s too soon to take her vows. They end up arguing about it, and Silva makes the decision final. “Stay away from Carlita, or there will be consequences.” 

She goes to town and runs into Paolo, who apologizes for something right before a truck runs into him, cutting him in half. 

The time comes, and Luz takes her vows, but Margaret sits in the audience. Margaret sneaks out and goes to the office to find Carlita’s file. She finds a secret passageway to a dungeon where the files are located. She learns that Carlita was the fourteenth in a whole string of deformed babies in the church’s attempt to birth the Antichrist. All the others died as deformed babies. 

She goes right upstairs, files in hand, and grabs Carlita, who does indeed have 666 in the roof of her mouth. The priests and nuns grab Margaret and lock her in the “bad room.” While in there, she has several visions or hallucinations. 

Father Gabriel lets her out of the room and takes her and the files to Brennan. The three of them look through many files of deformed children. They find a photo of another experiment, healthy but this one has no photo. “There was another survivor, a sister.” Margaret just happens to remember having 666 on her scalp. 

Margaret remembers that night at the nightclub when she blacked out. She was impregnated by the devil. Gabriel and Brennan soon figure this out as well. Carlita was too young, so the church brought Margaret back to… what? This is June 6th, at midnight, they’ll be coming for her. “I need it out of me now.”

Brennan puts Margaret in a car and drives to an abortion clinic. Margaret starts feeling sick, and then the car crashes in front of a church. Margaret levitates out of the car and jerky-walks into the church, growling and roaring all the while. We see her belly getting larger as we watch. She passes out. 

Cardinal Lawrence explains it all, and it’s pretty much what Brennan suspected. The church itself made the Antichrist just to stir up trouble. 

The nuns tie her to a table, and the doctor starts cutting as all the old nuns watch. She gives birth to a big blob. The doctor then cuts open the blob, and inside are the babies; twins. Margaret asks to hold the baby, but she has her eye on the plate of scalpels. She stabs Lawrence, not the baby. Then she starts moving the scalpel toward the baby and she ends up getting stabbed… by Luz, who’s on their side now. 

Sister Silva gives orders to burn everything, leaving Margaret and the girl baby to burn. Margaret picks up the girl baby and then Carlita comes in and pulls her out. 

We cut to a priest and Luz in a car talking about the US Ambassador’s wife, who is about to lose her child in birth. They plan to offer him the boy child as a trade…

Some time has passed, and Carlita, Margaret, and the baby are happy. Father Brennan comes to warn them that “they know you’re alive. None of you were supposed to survive, especially the girl. They will come for you. They’ve even given it a name, your son… Damien.” 

Commentary

The very first scene, with the priest impaled by a pole was ripped right from the first movie, which seemed really lazy. Then the crazy nun jumps from the roof with a noose around her neck. Really? This is supposed to be a prequel, not a requel. Does the devil only know four ways to kill people? 

It’s an OK story, but the very limited deaths were all ripped right from the original “The Omen” film. Except… Damien’s mother was literally a jackal, not a woman. 

Yeah, it’s not only dull, it wants to add new stuff, like Damien’s heretofore unknown sister. Not good. Not good at all. 

Insane Like Me (2024) 

* Directed by Chip Josin

* Written by Britt Bankhead, Chip Joslin

* Stars Britt Bankhead, Eric Roberts, Grace Patterson

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 26 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s got vampires, action, spiritualism, romance, and angst, so there’s a lot to like about it. Britt Bankhead pulls off a decent job as his first lead in a movie, and Eric Roberts is always a hoot to see. It’s pretty good for an indy work, and we’d give it an overall thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s Halloween, and two couples get together to go into the Masker Hotel, which is supposed to be haunted by as many as 200 ghosts. No, it’s really a surprise “Welcome Home” party for Jake, who has just come home from overseas. Samantha hints that she’s pregnant with Jake’s baby. 

The guy from “You Hear it First” arrives with his cameraman, and he didn’t know there was a party, he’s just here to film for his TV ghost-show. The girls tell him that something’s been going on in this town for a while, but people are still disappearing. Then the two girls reveal they are vampires and bite them both. 

Will, Jake, and Samantha soon find out they’re in the hotel with a bunch of vampires. There’s a lot of fighting.

Jake goes to the sheriff, who blames Jake for killing his daughter Samantha, who got lost somewhere along the way. The sheriff has Jake committed…

Nine years later, Jake’s still in the asylum, and he gets visions of Samantha wanting help. He tells the doctor that he’s normal again, and he’s due to be released soon. He denies seeing Samantha, who we see in the room with him like he does, and he says the vampires were just his imagination. 

He’s released, and we soon see him carrying a body out to the desert to bury and patching a hole in his leg. “Samantha” still wants his help. 

We cut to the library, where Samantha’s sister Crystal and her three friends are researching the deaths from nine years ago. Crystal is a bartender and meets Jake later that night. The sheriff and deputy Will come in looking for trouble but Jake leaves. 

Crystal and her friends go to a party, and she tells them that Jake’s back in town. Jon and Josie go off into the woods to smoke, and Jon gets bitten by another vamp, as do many of the other “kids.” Jake shows up and takes a head off one of the undead. 

Jake kidnaps Mary, one of the vampire women, and takes her home to his lair. No, that was a flashback, maybe. He leaves Crystal and Haydin in his garage and goes vampire hunting; he still sees Samantha. 

Jakes goes to the hotel, but Will is there, and he’s a jerk. Crystal and Haydin show up as well, and they all look for each other. Will’s been in denial about the vampires, even though he’s seen them himself. 

Suddenly, vampires attack! Everyone decides to hide in the basement. Will calls his father, the Sheriff, who thinks Jake has been killing people. Josie also shows up, now a vampire, and that results in another fight. Will gets bit, and the sheriff takes it poorly. 

The Sheriff wants to fistfight Jake, but then Haydin shows up and bites the old man. 

Jake wakes up, and Crystal and Erica are tied to old beds in the asylum. Doctor Stoker comes in and sews Erica’s mouth shut before biting her all over. Samantha leads Jake downstairs; she lets him out somehow. The sheriff and Dr. Stoker obviously know each other; they have a business arrangement. The doctor turns on the sheriff, and he gets a vision of Samantha before Jake shoots him. 

Samantha stakes Dr. Stoker in the back before shooting herself in the head. Jake sets his explosives, grabs Crystal, and goes outside as the whole place blows up. 

Commentary

It’s got some noticeably weird editing in spots as some scenes start and end abruptly, and possibly out of order. So someone can be committed to an asylum for nine years just on the word of one sheriff? It must be the South. 

It’s low-budget, but the pacing is decent. The sets and settings are good, as is the camerawork and lighting. The music is pretty bland, but not annoying. Eric Roberts is always fun to see, even though he’s not trying very hard here. 

Short Film: Mr. Suits (2024) 

* Directed by Drew Benton

* Written by Drew Benton

* Stars Andrew Golucki, Simeon Fuller, Alex Irwin

* Run Time: 4:07

* Watch it:

What Happens

A man gets a call in the garage. He yells at his employee on the phone; he demands that the man be fired. Suddenly, he sees someone strange down in the parking garage, and the stranger is carrying a hammer. This isn’t going to end well…

Commentary

It’s short, simple, and tells us what we need to know. It’s well shot, and the suspense works well. There’s not really any explanation as to why it happens, but what we get looks good!

Cthulhu (2008) 

* Directed by Don Gildark

* Written by Grant Cogswell, Dan Gildark, H. P. Lovecraft

* Stars Jason Cottle, Casey Curran, Ethan Atkinson

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Lots of things happen without much happening. The characters seemed to almost get interesting and understandable but fizzled on the way there. There is some strangeness, but not enough of it. This seems like it should have been better than it was, a little bit of a missed opportunity.

Spoilery Synopsis

We hear about the former U.S. border, mass evacuations in Asia, and other disasters as credits roll. It’s in the near future with things going downhill globally. Russell gets a call that his mother died; his boyfriend says that sucks and begs him for twenty bucks. He listens to a radio report about the last polar bear in the wild dying. 

He stops on the road to help with a traffic accident and gets blood all over his shirt. When he gets to the funeral parlor, the funeral has already finished. His sister Dannie is glad to see him, but his father, the reverend, wants him to stay a while. Barnes, the lawyer, needs to talk to Russell about the estate. 

Russell goes to a warehouse at the docks and finds hundreds of names scratched into the walls. Not only that, but a whole bunch of cultists are marching in. He sneaks down to the dock and rows away as darkness falls. 

Russell goes to meet Dannie and Mike at the bar. He and Mike go way back, childhood friends. As they talk, we get a flashback to Mike finding Russell in a suicide attempt as teenagers. That night, Russell dreams that the kid in the car accident gave him a magic rock, which he still has when he wakes up. 

Aunt Josie, in the nursing home, tells Russell that his mother left him something in the furnace at home. Then she starts speaking in a strange language. He has dinner with the family later, and that’s all very awkward, especially when his father asks “How’s the gay life, Russell?” He’s not too supportive of the lifestyle. Russell says his father’s belief in “The Old Ones” is just a silly cult. Dannie says none of them really understand him. 

We flash back to Russell and Mike as teenagers talking about girls and masturbating together. Some guy at the bar, Zadok, looks at Russell’s magic rock and says it’s for Dagon, and used to be used for human sacrifice. Zadok tells them a story about fishing and catching a thing that looked like a giant baby. Russell gets introduced to Susan from school, but he doesn’t really remember her. She’s married and flirts heavily with Russell. 

Russell plans to meet up with Zadok for more answers, but gets a note to stay away from him. The old man tells about the lost city that used to be out in the bay on an island; the people there did rituals doing inhuman things and human sacrifices. “They came out of the sea and killed lots of people. You know what a Shoggoth is? Everyone goes back to the sea with them.” He asks Julia about the cultists that he saw. She tells him about her little brother; the cult took him five years ago. 

He goes to Susan’s house to see a book, and she says she wants him to give her a baby. Her husband wants that too. They offer him a bunch of money to do it. That doesn’t work, so they drug him and she has a go without his willing help. 

Russell starts doing research on all the missing people in town as well as the Dagon cult. He tells Mike that it’s father’s cult that has been killing people. He goes back to the warehouse at the dock, but all the names are gone now. He does find a blue sphere that glows and gives  him a vision when he touches it. 

Russell comes across Julia’s little brother, a blind boy, who says he’s waiting for Cthulhu. He ends up running around some dark tunnels and sees some weird-looking creatures down there. He goes to Mike’s house and rambles about what he saw. They argue about peanut butter and jelly until they stop and have sex. Mike says it’s not really gay, it’s just an extension of their friendship. 

In the morning, they leave Mike’s place and find the blind boy dead, nailed to a guard railing. It’s the day of the auction of his mother’s estate, and Russell is the executor. The sheriff comes to the auction and arrests Russell for murder and rape of a minor. Turns out, the sheriff doesn’t much like Russell’s family. The sheriff punches Russell. 

He dreams that he’s at the bottom of a lighthouse, and he sees a cage full of people on the beach. When he wakes up, the jail is surrounded by protesters carrying torches. The cell door opens, and Russell takes the opportunity to leave. 

He finds Susan and demands answers, but she’s not cooperative. She and her husband drug Russell and leave. Later, he goes to his mother’s house to see what she hid in the furnace. It’s a videotape of his mother, who explains everything. She wanted him away from his grandfather, who wasn't dead, and he went back to the sea. Then his father comes on and talks about eternal life through Cthulhu. He says Russell will lead them all into the sea. 

Russell runs outside and beats an old man to death in self defense. Phones all over town start ringing. A national alert says to stay in your homes. Helicopters fly over and we can see the smoke from across the river; the violence from outside of town is coming their way. Russell tells Mike about the plan for them all to go back into the sea. They get shot at on the road; people are going crazy everywhere. 

Russell goes to his father’s house, and his father shoots the sheriff and the deputy. Dannie and everyone else is there, and they start chanting. “Would you like to see your children?” They lead Russell to a bathtub full of his inhuman spawn. “The old world is dying and we’re giving birth to the new.” People are coming up out of the ocean as others go in, and Russell’s father demands that he make a sacrifice. Mike will be perfect, he says, as he stands there holding him in place. Russell roars and swings back to make a fatal blow. Does he take out Mike or his father? Blackout to credits, and we are left to wonder.  

Commentary

Neither Cthulhu, nor any of his friends, actually make an appearance here. We see some pale-looking people in the sewers, but only briefly. The rest is all about people “going into the sea” and coming back. 

The acting is mediocre at best, especially the lead actor; he’s just not good (Kevin disagrees and thought he was pretty good). We get a lot of exposition about natural disasters, maybe climate-change related, we don’t know, in the beginning, but we see nothing out of the ordinary in Russell’s home town. Maybe that’s the point; the villagers have been doing things to ensure that nothing like that happens in their town. 

The villagers clearly want Russell to have a child, so they put Susan up to raping him. The fact that he’s gay just makes it more of a challenge for them. 

Lots of stuff happens, but it’s really hard to follow exactly what’s happening or why. I guess at the end, Russell does what he’s told and brings about the new world, but there’s no real reason why he changes his mind. 

I am confused. 

Titane (2021) 

* Directed by Julia Ducournau

* Written by Julia Ducournau, Jacques Akchoti, Simonetta Greggio

* Stars Vincent Lindon, Agathe Rouselle, Garance Marillier

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was one very strange movie. It was entertaining though, and while we didn’t always understand why the characters were doing what they were doing, we could follow the plot. The weird plot. Everything about it was good, and we would recommend it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get close ups of dirty-looking machines as the credits roll. We soon see that it’s just an artsy look at the engine of a car being driven by a father with an annoying daughter in the back seat. She takes off her seat belt, the father grabs for her, the car crashes. We cut to a hospital, where they put a titanium plate in the girl’s skull. She is released, and in the parking lot, she gives the family car a kiss and big hug. 

Years pass, and Alexia is an adult now; she’s still got a scar, but it fits right in with her punk look. She’s at the most pornographic car show ever; it even has bouncers. We linger on one dancer, Alexia, who really likes cars; she licks it all over and rolls on it for five minutes. Afterward, in the shower, Alexia gets her hair caught in another dancer’s nipple ring, which is really awkward. 

She’s even got fans who want autographs– or maybe he’s more of a stalker. She stabs the man in the ear with a knitting needle, and he dies painfully. She puts his body in the back seat of her car and goes home, where we see she really does have some kind of automobile fetish; she masturbates with the car. 

In the morning, there’s a news report about Adrien, a little boy who went missing ten years ago; they are finally closing the case. There’s also a number of bodies that have been found, four so far this year– it could be a serial killer. Alexia still lives at home, and her father is a doctor. 

We cut to Alexia licking and biting another woman, but she gets carried away and the other woman gets angry. Alexia throws up and then takes a pregnancy test. She tries to give herself an abortion using the knitting needle, which looks really painful. She’s not bleeding; it’s all black up there, like motor oil or something. Then she stabs her girlfriend to death with the same knitting needle. When the woman’s roommate comes downstairs, she kills him with the fireplace poker and a stool. The roommate’s girlfriend sees this, and Alexia learns there are a lot of people in this house! 

She goes home and sets her parents’ house on fire, after locking them in the bedroom. 

She gets a ride to the train station, where she sees her face on a digital “Wanted” poster. She also sees posters for the ten-year-old case of Adrien, who’s been computer-aged to show what he’d look like right now, and he sorta resembles Alexia. Alexia goes into the restroom and cuts off her hair and wraps tight bandages around the bumpy parts of her torso. She then breaks her own nose to make herself look different. 

We cut to the police station, where the detective has called in Vincent, Adrien’s father, to identify his lost son, who appears to have been received. Yes, it’s Alexia, pretending to be Adrien. Vincent says yes, that’s his lost son. “Adrien” doesn’t speak, presumably from the trauma of being kidnapped for all these years. 

Vincent takes his “son” home to meet Rayane. She undresses in her room and narrowly avoids being caught with her shirt off. Vincent then goes into the next room and works out; he’s very well built for an old guy, and we see him injecting something, probably steroids. He then gets angry when he can’t do enough pull-ups. He’s got some issues of his own. 

In the morning, Vincent puts a brace on Adrien’s nose and trims his hair to look more natural. He gives Adrien a job at his fire station– he’s the captain. Vincent does get annoyed when Adrien won’t speak. At home later, Vincent “forces” Adrien to dance with him, resulting in a fight. Vincent, however, knows she has the knitting needle and tells her to fight like a man. 

Later, Vincent gives himself an extra dose of steroids with a lot of wine and passes out. Alexia/Adrien ses him there and considers killing him in his sleep, but doesn’t. Alexia’s pregnancy is showing more and more. She decides to stay and embrace the role of the missing son, and even starts helping on the fireman’s EMT calls, “he” even gives CPR to one old woman and saves her life.

Rayane, one of the firemen, sees the wanted poster for Alexia on his phone, and he takes a gooooood look at Adrien. Later, all the firemen dance strangely, letting off steam, and Alexia watches them. Rayane tries talking to Vincent later, but he doesn’t want to hear it - he tells him to never talk about his son. 

Vincent calls Adrien’s mother for a visit, and she tries to be friendly. Meanwhile, Alexia has developed some kind of abscess in her stomach, and it itches terribly. She continues to bleed black stuff. Her mother catches her naked and immediately catches on to what’s going on. She doesn’t care, she just doesn’t want Vincent to get hurt. “He needs you.” 

Vincent asks for Adrien’s help injecting the steroids, and then Vincent shaves Adrien, who clearly doesn’t need it. Rayane won’t let up about Adrien, so Vincent hands him a propane bottle in the middle of a forest fire. BOOOM! Problem solved.

Vincent straight up says, “I don’t care who you are, you’re my son,” so it’s clear that even he knows something is up. She drops her towel, and he still doesn’t care. Later, Adrien does a sexy dance for all the firemen to watch. They… aren’t sure what to think. Vincent walks in and sees it too; he walks right back outside, in denial. 

Later, Alexia has sex with a firetruck. Vincent sets himself on fire in his room, just a little bit.  Meanwhile, Alexia’s stomach bursts open, showing metal inside. She comes into Vincent’s bedroom, and they kiss. That’s too much for Vincent, who pulls down the sheets and sees just how pregnant “Adrien” is. He calms down and comes back to the room, helping her to give birth. She pushes, and he helps with his EMT training. 

The baby comes out, crying, and he suddenly knows Alexia’s name. Alexia, on the other hand, stops breathing and dies. Vincent picks up the crying baby and we see that it’s partially made of metal. 

Commentary

The moral of the story seems to be “Don’t have sex with vehicles,” but I could have maybe misinterpreted the meaning. 

This is a very weird movie. It wasn’t always clear what was going on, but it was always interesting. The weirdness just piles on top of itself, and it really works well. Oddly enough, I kept being reminded of “Tetsuo: Iron Man” (1989). It’s got a similar vibe, although this one is a lot more realistic. 

It looks good; it’s well filmed. Most of the time, the plot made sense. It’s very disturbing, and yet it’s also really involving. 

Jesus Shows You The Way to the Highway (2019) 

* Directed by Miguel Llanso

* Written by Miguel Llanso

* Stars Daniel Tadesse, Augustin Mateo, Guillermo Llanso

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is a heaping helping of surreal weirdness that never lets up. There is a story among strange effects, odd characters, retro futuristic technology and effects, stop motion animation, and masks. It’s likely that you’ll love it or hate it, and we were on the love it side. Or at least liked it a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

The credits look like a 1980’s home computer loading screen. It is, in fact, a virtual reality video game, and the researchers find their man in the VR helmet has had his eyes ripped out. But Agent Tracy isn’t dead yet. 

Elsewhere, Agent D. T. Gagano, a hunchbacked dwarf agent, reads a book. He gets a quick brief about how the Soviet agents have infected the Psychobook with a virus. They put Gagano and his partner Palmer into the Psychobook game. 

Inside, people have strange paperlike masks over their faces and walk in stop-motion movements. The two agents are inside an enemy agent’s house, and they have a strange fight. Eventually, they defeat the enemy agent. 

Gagano watches his wife, Malin, boxing at the gym. He goes into the shower with her to make love, but he hurts his back. He tells her that he wants to quit the CIA. He watches a very strange “Batfro” video on TV. 

Gagano and his partner get a call for another mission. Malin wants to leave the city, but he just wants to make pizzas. He still hasn’t quit the CIA, even after seven years of talking about it. She says he can stay or go with her, but she’s not waiting for him anymore. 

Gagano and Palmer go back into the Psychobook for their mission. They wear paper masks of Robert Redford and Richard Pryor. Gagano succumbs to gas, but Palmer has to fight a Soviet agent who looks like Stalin and is captured. “Stalin” wants Palmer to help him sell “the substance.” 

Palmer wakes up from the game, but Gagano doesn’t, he’s stuck inside. Palmer calls Malin and tells her the bad news. Meanwhile inside the virtual reality, Gagano orders a pizza margherita and watches Batfro on TV. Batfro is a black man in a cheap Batman suit; he’s also the president. Gagano can still talk to the computer interface, Jiminy Cricket, but he just wants to go home. They tell him that he can’t wake up, and he’s only living on borrowed mental energy. 

Clearly the Commandant has double-crossed Gagano, and Malin knows it. Palmer tries to move in on Malin, but he also wants to rescue his partner. He wants to finance Malin’s kickboxing academy. 

In the Psychobook, Batfro and Mr. Sophistication get after Gagano about his credit card being declined. They shoot Gagano but it doesn’t have any effect because he’s not physically there, so they lock him in a cage with some of Batfro’s political prisoners. 

Stalin gives Batfro orders about Gagano. They want to take over the Psychobook from inside, and Gagano can give them access to the source code. They need the Ark of the Covenant, but it’s guarded by Shaolin masters. Three kung-fu masters try to take him out and lose; Stalin sends them back with upgrades, and they win the Ark. 

Stalin and Batfro celebrate their victory. Stalin then shows Gagano a video of Malin and Palmer having sex. Stalin wants Gagano to get revenge. Mr. Sophistication releases Gagano and tries to make a deal with him, showing him the original version of Psychobook. Gagano enters his security code and one of the kung-fu masters does the rest. 

Back at headquarters, the Commandant sees that the whole system is being hacked. The Commandant wants to blow up Ethiopia in retaliation, but “The President” won’t allow it. With full access, Stalin kills Mr. Sophistication and the kung-fu masters with giant laser-blasting fly monsters. The flies chase Gagano until he finds Palmer’s avatar. They use a mirror to fight the fly’s laser blasts. 

The fly wakes up, and it’s just a guy in a rubber suit now. His name is Roy, and he wants to help Gagano. We flash back to Roy, who thought he was Jesus, crucified to a tiny little cross. He met Palmer, who told him all about “the substance.” Stalin turned him into a giant fly and sent him to fly-land, or something like that. He says that he and Gagano are really in an experiment at MIT; he doesn’t work for the CIA at all. “This is all just a virtual projection in 1997.” 

Batfro shows up and kills Roy. The old soldiers give Gagano some candy that contains “the substance,” and they say it’ll send him home. 

Back in the real world, Stalin orders the Commandant to kill Gagano’s comatose body, so they take him out to the beach and burn his body as Palmer watches. Later, inside Psychobook, Palmer finds a hard drive that contains what’s left of Gagano, which he gives to Malin. 

Malin plugs him into a portable TV, and he talks to Malin. He wants to go away with Malin now, but he’s just a TV image. He still wants to finish his mission and stop Palmer, who is dealing “the substance.” “I’m not dead, I’m trapped inside a portable TV.” The Commandant throws the TV off the roof, but it’s intercepted by Captain Lagucci, a drag queen performer and soldier. 

Lagucci sets Gagano in front of a TV showing actual Batman and Robin reruns. Palmer tries to convince Malin to run away with him as Gagano watches. Malin doesn’t think she can stay in love with a portable TV, and wants the three of them to open a kickboxing school. She turns the TV toward the window and leaves. 

Later, some men pack up all the stuff in the apartment and put it out for garbage. An old woman dumpster dives and finds the TV. She takes him to Roy, who now leads a cult. Batfro and the police raid the place as they all eat some of “the substance.” Roy pours some of it into the TV. 

Gagano awakes on a bed at MIT just as Roy said. The Commandant is actually the doctor in charge, who says Gagano has been experiencing paranoia symptoms. He gives the little man a check and thanks him for participating in the experiment. He asks Roy the way to the highway on the way out. Gagano gets in the car with his wife; now they have the money to open the kickboxing academy. They drive off, happily ever after. 

Wow. 

Commentary

If this could be any weirder, I would have any idea how. It doesn’t make a huge load of sense, and it’s all very dreamlike; it’s like Jodorowski met David Lynch and they decided to collaborate. 

The dubbing is terrible, but probably intentionally so, as it really adds to the tone of the film. It’s a mix of just about every exploitation genre. At first, it all looks like hot garbage, but it’s also clearly exactly what the creators wanted– it’s really well made, intentional garbage. 

It looks as if they simply gave Batfro a generic 1960’s Batman costume and then had to blur out the logo in all the scenes. It’s hilariously done. 

It’s one wild thing after another, and it never relents. You’ll either love it or hate it; I don’t see there being much middle ground here. 

Stay tuned for more reviews next week!

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Podcast Episode 284

This week, we’ll start with three brand-new films, all of which we liked. 2024 has brought us “Sting,” “The First Omen,” and “Insane Like Me.” Then we’ll talk about a really weird one, “Titane” from 2024. For our bonus movies, we’ll look at “Cthulhu” (2008) and “Jesus Shows You The Way to the Highway” (2019). 

Check out all our books with one easy link: https://brianschell.com/collection/horrorguys

Psst: for the next five days, you can get the June 2024 “Horror Bulletin Monthly” issue from Amazon for FREE. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6966JGS

Stay tuned for more regular and bonus reviews next week!

Contact Info:

• Email: mailto:[email protected]
• Book Store: https://brianschell.com/collection/horrorguys
• Website: https://www.horrorguys.com
• Subscribe by email: http://horrorbulletin.substack.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/horrormovieguys
• Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@BrianSchell
• Threads: https://threads.net/brian_schell
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/HorrorMovieGuys

This week, we’ll start with three brand-new films, all of which we liked. 2024 has brought us “Abigail,” “Pandemonium,” and “Infested.” Then we’ll talk about a fairly obscure oldie, “The Deathhead Virgin” from 1974. 

The weekly newsletter this time around has two more:

–  “Vertigo” (1958)

–  “Frankenstein vs. Baragon” (1965) aka “Frankenstein Conquers the World”

Those two can be found at http://horrorbulletin.com

Check out all our books with one easy link: https://brianschell.com/collection/horrorguys

Psst: for the next five days, there’s a free book available at hourlongpress.com; stop in and grab it while you can! (It’s a biography of Alfred Hitchcock this time!)

Stay tuned for more regular and bonus reviews next week!

Contact Info:

–  Email: mailto:[email protected]

–  Book Store: https://brianschell.com/collection/horrorguys

–  Website: https://www.horrorguys.com

–  Subscribe by email:

–  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/horrormovieguys

–  Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@BrianSchell

–  Threads: https://threads.net/brian_schell

–  Twitter: http://twitter.com/HorrorMovieGuys

Episode 283

This week, we’ll start with three brand-new films, all of which we liked. 2024 has brought us “Abigail,” “Pandemonium,” and “Infested.” Then we’ll talk about a fairly obscure oldie, “The Deathhead Virgin” from 1974.  

The weekly newsletter this time around has two more:

• “Vertigo” (1958)
• “Frankenstein vs. Baragon” (1965) aka “Frankenstein Conquers the World”

Those two can be found at http://horrorbulletin.com

Check out all our books with one easy link: https://brianschell.com/collection/horrorguys

Psst: for the next five days, there’s a free book available at hourlongpress.com; stop in and grab it while you can! (It’s a biography of Alfred Hitchcock this time!)

Stay tuned for more regular and bonus reviews next week!

Contact Info:

• Email: mailto:[email protected]
• Book Store: https://brianschell.com/collection/horrorguys
• Website: https://www.horrorguys.com
• Subscribe by email: http://horrorbulletin.substack.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/horrormovieguys
• Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@BrianSchell
• Threads: https://threads.net/brian_schell
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/HorrorMovieGuys