Horror Weekly

We’ve got an interesting batch of films this week! We’ll start with “NFT: Cursed Images,” which explains that some NFTs are even worse than others! “Haunters of the Silence” shows us that grief is the monster we met along the way, and “Forty Five” brings us to the edge of Armageddon. “Obex”, on the other hand, is a fun, techno-fantasy that takes a few dark turns along the way. Lastly, we’ll start watching the “Silent Hill” series, with more of those to come in the coming weeks.

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #54, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 NFT: Cursed Images

* Directed by: Jonas Odenheimer

* Written by: Jonas Odenheimer

* Stars: Najarra Townsend, David Wayman, Mariah Nonnemacher

* Run Time: 1 hour 13 minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s 2021 and NFTs are hot. A group of young friends in London start having some big troubles when they receive some that have curses attached. The rules and the ending seemed a little unclear, but we both liked it more than disliked it, with Kevin being a bit more favorable toward it.

Spoilery Synopsis

A couple walks home late at night. Sue thinks she sees something and gets spooked. She talks about how an NFT scared her. Her friend is making a lot of money with them, and her friend passed one on to her. There are supposed to be dozens of these cursed images that are shared online. Sue can’t get through to her friend now. Suddenly, Mark vanishes. When Sue tries to call the police, all she sees on her phone is that NFT. Credits roll.

It’s 2021, and NFTs are still a thing. Kit is a successful NFT trader. Dan complains about being a Millennial and the current job market. There are Boomer and Doomer jokes. The whole group got rich with crypto, except for poor Dan, who’s a whiner.

James doesn’t know what an NFT is, and the others can’t explain it to make sense. Julie and Cass arrive, and Kit’s not happy about that. The women have exactly the same thoughts about the men. They all seem to be infatuated with NFTs– it’s even better than crypto!

The group talks James and Dan into buying some NFTs right now. They explain the nonsense that is an NFT. Kit suddenly has seven NFTs transferred to his account out of the blue. It’s from a collection called “Crypto Horrors.” Sarah’s heard of those, they’re real cursed images. There are only 666 of them, and they get Airdropped to you at random. He sends each person one of them.

The party breaks up, and everyone leaves. Later, Kit wakes up to a weird stretchy-faced ghost woman in his room.

Cass remembers that she left her phone at Kit’s place, and Julia suggests asking James to go back and get it. Sarah walks home and gets texts from Kit’s phone, but the person texting isn’t Kit. She soon finds out who’s stalking her.

James and Cass go back to Kit’s for her phone. They find the place a mess, and then Cass wants to go check on Sarah, who also isn’t answering her phone.

We cut to Dan, who is also walking home in an isolated tunnel. Something is chasing him. Julia: The same.

Nes is watching YouTube videos about NFTs and gets a panicked call from Dan, who says he saw his NFT chasing him. Dan believes in the curse now and every one is unique just like NFTs are, but Nes just laughs it off. All the NFTs are based on old legends, and possibly real curses. Julia also comes to Nes, and she’s been experiencing the same thing as Dan. James also calls and tells him that Kit and Sarah have gone missing. Julia leaves, and her monster gets her right after. Nes takes a show and gets his.

James arrives at Nes’s house, talking to Dan on the phone all the while. He sees Nas’s NFT there and scares it away by showing it a reflection of itself, like Dan tipped him off should work. Dan says if that worked, then maybe they do have a chance against the curse. Dan looks up Cass’s curse and says it can be stopped by striking it with a sword.

Meanwhile, James’s own NFT comes after him, as does Dan’s. Dan is attacked, but his monster goes away suddenly. He gets a notification that his NFT has sold for .5 ETH. He’s free of the curse. Dan calls James and tells him to sell or transfer his NFT right now. James transfers his right then; Dan gets the notification that it was transferred to him. Dan dies right away.

Dan calls Cass and tells her to dump that NFT right away. She says she already gave it away to some random guy on Twitter. Cass goes to Sarah’s place and talks to her corpse. It possesses her somehow, which gives James a final scare.

Brian’s Commentary

The background music is occasionally too loud; it’s often hard to follow all the British people talking due to the noise. The visuals are all pretty good, as is the acting. The creatures themselves are not particularly impressive, but we mostly only get glimpses of them.

I’ve done crypto, but I never understood NFTs at all. Of course, I was eventually proved right on those. Even today, I still don’t understand where the value was supposed to come from. Still, the only thing they normally kill in real life is your net worth.

I like the idea of cursed NFTS, and that they appear from nowhere. The ending made no real sense. Are the victims killed or possessed? Cass should have been spared, but the monsters weren’t following their own rules.

It’s a neat concept, but the actual story was a little underwhelming.

Kevin’s Commentary

We could have used subtitles. Perhaps it was just in the quality of our screener.

I thought the party was a bit draggy at first, but things move quickly once that breaks up with the NFTs doing their thing that very night. The digitized creature effects are brief, but pretty cool. All the effects do the job well.

Like Brian points out, the monsters don’t seem to follow the rules, and the ending was a little unclear. But overall, I was entertained, which is what really counts. It’s a pretty good one.

2025 Haunters of the Silence

* Director: Tatu Heikkinen, Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen

* Writers: Tatu Heikkinen, Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen

* Stars: Tatu Heikkinen (as K.), John Haughm (as Hat Man), Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen (as Wife)

* Runtime: 1 hour 11 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The IMDB description says “In the stillness of night, a man is trapped between worlds. As darkness closes in and reality blurs, he must confront the Haunters of the Silence.” and it’s hard to pin down more of a story than that. The visuals are very cool, sound and music is effective, and Tatu Heikkinen is completely natural going about through his days and haunted nights.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man walks along the beach and eventually stops to dump someone’s ashes into the water. As he drives home, credits roll.

The man, K, sits in his house, and we see photos and things of his wife, who is apparently the one who died. He goes to sleep, and we see all around his house. An alert from his porch camera wakes him up, and he goes out to investigate. Finding nothing, he goes back inside and checks inside the house. More weird stuff happens after he goes back to bed, so he searches some more. He falls to the floor and starts hallucinating.

K runs through the misty forest and comes to an abandoned building. It all gets pretty surreal and weird. After a while, he starts being pursued by a man in a hat. K wakes up when he gets a phone call from his father. He then dreams about skulls and bones followed by many other weird visuals.

K wakes up and sees his wife at the bottom of the bed. “It’s OK,” she says. We then hear a recording of a poem, “The Haunters of the Silence.”

The alarm goes off, and K gets out of bed. He makes some tea and goes outside. Suddenly, it’s the middle of the night again. He’s still in the dream, and he can’t get out. The man in the hat comes into his bedroom and– the film ends.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s super slow-moving and atmospheric. Everything is hazy and dreamlike, which reflects the main character’s state of mind after losing his wife. It was inspired by the director/writer/star’s experience with sleep paralysis. It’s all very visual, but there’s no real plot to speak of; it’s just K and what he sees, or imagines he sees. There’s also no real dialogue, as K is alone through the whole film.

It’s basically a nightmare on film. It’s surprisingly relaxing, and I almost caught myself going to sleep a couple of times, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s unique and weird!

Kevin’s Commentary

I’d say the visuals are the number one thing going for this. Very cool.

There is a nightmare quality to many of the scenes, and the whole thing is surreal. Without much of a story. A guy in mourning attends therapy, takes medication, tries to get through his days, and looks like he’s having nightmares with sleep paralysis.

I agree with Brian, I found it more relaxing than disturbing. I’d say that I liked it.

2025 Forty Five

* Directed by: Bazz Hancher

* Written by: Bazz Hancher, Michael Walcott

* Stars: Benedict Bareford, Sean Botha, Ryan Brunt

* Run Time: 40 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

After Fallon loses his daughter, his search for answers leads him on a surreal and creepy quest wrapped up in religious prophecy. It builds well as it goes along until a chilling finish. We were both impressed.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get a Biblical math lesson; it is the end of days– 45 days to go. It’s June 6th, 2022. Police and detectives examine a crime scene out in a field. A young girl was murdered and bitten, some kind of ritual killing.

Three years later, Carson and Fallon talk about “45” whoever that is. 45 is dangerous, and whoever gets close to him dies. Despite the warning, Fallon, the dead girl’s father, still wants to know more. Fallon goes to see Father Vaughn, who knows something about the case.

Vaughn talks about the Book of Daniel and the end times. He believes that 45 killed Fallon’s daughter, and he’s also involved with the Antichrist and the end of the world through a holy war. Fallon’s daughter may have been sent by God to defeat the Antichrist, which is why she was killed. As soon as Fallon leaves, the old priest collapses and dies.

Several times, we see the ghost of Fallon’s daughter in the background, but he doesn’t notice. Fallon goes to visit Blake, the detective who was in charge of the case three years ago. “Do you know what you’re getting into?” says the sickly, dying detective. He also warns Fallon to stop investigating. The closer Blake got to finding 45, the sicker he got; it’s like cancer, but it’s not.

Fallon next goes to a weird woman who has been beaten. She’s a disciple of forty-five; a false prophet. She gets intense.

Fallon wakes up with forty-five. The goatman creature admits everything and explains it all. Fallon gets a vision of himself being his daughter’s killer as he passes out.

Brian’s Commentary

As an American, I found the accents a little difficult, and I watch lots of British films. There was a good bit of dialogue from some characters that I just missed out on, which detracted from my understanding of what was going on.

It’s all very ominous and most of the film builds suspense as Fallon digs deeper into the problem. The visuals are excellent, and it all looks great.

Kevin’s Commentary

I agree with Brian on the accents, but I got used to them as it got going and could understand it clearly.

I thought it builds nicely, was creepy and unsettling, and it looks really good. IMDB says the estimated budget was only $2,700.00, if that’s correct it’s especially impressive for such a small sum.

I give it a thumbs up.

2025 Obex

* Director: Albert Birney

* Writers: Albert Birney, Pete Ohs

* Stars: Albert Birney (Conor), Frank Mosley (Victor)

* Runtime: 90 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG9VrEeKk-I

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Conor leads a quiet isolated life at home with his dog, computer, and media in 1987. And everything is so normal until he plays the computer game OBEX. Then reality and digital start to blur together when he goes on a quest to find his missing dog inside the game. It’s slow moving and fascinating, kind of surreal. We both really enjoyed it.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 1987. Conor watches three TVs at once. He feeds the dog and takes out the trash; he seems normal enough. He watches a show about people making a cicada omelette. He then types in and prints off an ASCII portrait on his computer.

Mary comes to the door, bringing groceries, but he doesn’t let her in– he apparently never leaves the house. After she leaves, he checks the mail, and finds that he’s got a new computer magazine. He’s got an ad in there about his photo art service. He turns the page and sees an ad for a new game called OBEX. It promises to “insert you into the game.” Cool! He records a video that tells the gamemakers about himself so that he can be put into a game. He has a weird dream about his dead mother.

The OBEX game soon arrives in the mail. He loads it right in and gets started. The game actually has Conor’s image in it. It’s clunky by today’s standards, but he seems to enjoy it for a minute or two. It doesn’t do much, so he quickly gives up and deletes it.

Mary comes to the door, asking if he’s found blood in his milk. He looks outside and sees a dying cicada. The cicadas are everywhere in his backyard, and he constantly sees them. He gets back to work digitizing children’s photos but the picture is ruined by a cicada in his printer. That night, it’s another nightmare but then he wakes up when he hears the printer working. It says “Remove your skin” over and over.

The next night, the TVs come on by themselves, the OBEX game comes onto the computer, and a glowing creature comes out of the TVs from the game. It wanders around the house and notices Sandy the dog.

In the morning, Sandy the dog is gone, missing. Conor goes looking for his dog out in the nearby woods and finds his computer out there, still with the OBEX game running. Sandy the dog is now inside the game, along with cicadas. All of a sudden, Conor is inside the game as well, now with a long beard and surrounded by little fairies. He runs into a videogame version of Mary, who is an NPC now. She tells him about the demon king Ixaroth, who took Sandy. She gives him supplies and tells him where to go.

Conor walks through the Dark Forest as it’s shown on the gaming map. He camps in the “Meadow of Regrets.” The next day, he comes across a pair of humanoid cicadas torturing a humanoid TV monitor. Conor kills the baddies with his sword. The TV man is Victor. The two find a car that reminds Conor of his mother. Victor speculates on what TV Heaven might be like.

That night, he stops when he sees a naked woman and man in the road. They start to spin and lose their skins– they’re just skeletons. They attack him, and he sees “Game Over” in the sky. He does, however, get the option to “Retry.”

Conor wakes up with Victor and Mary; he’s reborn, and they soon restart their journey to the dark castle. They soon arrive at the Nightmare Realm but there’s a big combination padlock keeping the gate shut.

In the morning, Conor has aged significantly. Victor has opened the gate, but died in the attempt. Conor enters the videogame castle, and it’s full of cicada-men. He finds Sandy’s bones, and there’s also a wolf– and Freddy Krueger. All his worst nightmares come to life all at once. Eventually, Ixaroth appears and demands that Conor remove his skin. Conor attacks and defeats Ixaroth.

We, and Conor himself, watches as Sandy and Conor’s avatar reunite and go to the beach. “The End” comes up on the computer screen, and Conor exits out of the game. The two then go to the beach for real– happy ending!

Brian’s Commentary

I loved all the old computer technology, although I never imagined people did that kind of ASCII art by hand. The rest of it– I remember. The black-and-white makes it all seem more surreal, and it does fit in a bunch of old videogame tropes.

It’s slow-moving, and there’s not much action, but the concept and execution are really interesting, and it never gets dull. I liked this one a lot.

Kevin’s Commentary

It was a quiet nostalgia trip through 1987 at first, watching Conor go through his days. Then things get weird when he plays OBEX.

For such a slow moving film, I kept expecting to get bored, but I didn’t. It’s strange and very good.

2006 Silent Hill

* Director: Christophe Gans

* Writers: Roger Avary

* Stars: Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates, Tanya Allen, Alice Krige, Jodelle Ferland

* Runtime: 126 minutes

* Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Little Sharon has a strange ailment that makes her sleepwalk and have hallucinations, so adopted mother Rose takes her to Silent Hill trying to find answers. She ends up having a weird and dark adventure - almost like a horror video game. Which the movie is based from. The effects and story are creepy, but we both thought at over two hours long it gets draggy and repetitive here and there.

Spoilery Synopsis

Sharon has gone missing in the middle of the night. Her mother, Rose, runs through the woods after her and arrives at a huge waterfall. She sees Sharon on a nearby cliff and tackles her. Sharon screams “Silent Hill” over and over. Christopher, the father, catches up to them and carries Sharon home. Credits roll.

Sometime later, Rose asks Sharon about Silent Hill and her sleepwalking. Sharon doesn’t remember any of it, so they’re going there for a visit– without Sharon’s father. He looks on Rose’s computer, and it’s full of information about “The Tainted Town,” the ghost town of Silent Hill. Christopher says Sharon needs to be in a hospital, under medication. Could Sharon have come from there?

Rose and Sharon stop at a gas station for directions to Silent Hill. A strange policewoman stops and talks to Sharon. They break through the fence to Silent Hill with the cop in pursuit, and that goes badly when they crash.

When Rose wakes up, ash is falling from the sky, and Sharon is gone. The sign says, “Welcome to Silent Hill.” She walks on into town, and it’s completely abandoned and hard to see through the falling ash. She sees someone running in the distance and gives chase, but cannot catch up. An air-raid siren goes off. She goes down a tunnel into a big maze of corridors. Then she runs into hundreds of little mutant-children-looking things that chase her.

Somehow, Rose makes it back outside. She runs into a woman outside who says “We’ve all lost our children.”

Christopher talks to a mechanic about Silent Hill, a town that still has a coal fire burning underneath it. He comes to the gate that Rose broke through and talks to the cops there. Rose’s vehicle has been found empty, and the cop mentions he’s also missing a deputy. They drive into town, and it looks completely different to them: abandoned, but normal.

The police officer, Bennet, catches Rose and handcuffs her. They start walking, but soon reach the “end of the world” and cannot leave town. They soon encounter an armless wobbling mutant, and Bennett ends up shooting it.

Rose continues exploring the abandoned town and seeing weird things. She encounters strange men in gas masks and hides in a school. The siren goes off again, and Rose finds the room she’s in decaying before her eyes. The gas mask men are eaten by giant cockroaches.

We see that Christopher and Officer Gucci are searching in the same physical location as where Rose actually is, but it’s in a parallel universe or something. Things get crazy, and Rose runs back into Office Bennett again, and this time, she’s more open to cooperation. The pyramid-head man has quite a knife, and he’s not afraid to use it. They drive him off for a while and get out of the building.

Chris doesn’t believe the police about what happened to Silent Hill, but the archivist refuses to help him. He breaks into the library that night and reads through the old records. He finds a photo of Sharon; maybe she did come from Silent Hill.

Rose and Bennett head toward a large hotel and suspect that Sharon might be inside. They meet Anna, another mother of a missing child. She lives with Christobella, who keeps them safe; there are others here. They enter room 111, where they find a girl who looks just like Sharon; she’s Alessa. Anna screams, “The darkness is coming,” and they all run to the church. Dahlia, a crazy woman, warns Rose not to go with the others as they’re all dead. Pyramid-head shows up and does something really bad to Anna.

Inside the church, the people point at Bennett and Rose and call them witches. The leader, Christobella, comes to them. She talks about the demon who takes children. It’s all very cult-ish.

Christopher goes to the orphanage where he adopted Sharon, and wants to know where she came from. Officer Gucci arrests Chris for disturbing the peace. Gucci talks about Alessa, and how she was killed thirty years ago.

A group of the cultists, led by Christobella, takes the two outsider women to a huge building where the demon is said to live. Rose takes an elevator to the lower levels, but the cultists beat Bennett half to death. Rose encounters a roomful of undead nurses, but they seem to only be active when her light is on. She switches it off and walks among them– until they wake up and attack anyway.

Rose hears Sharon/Alessa’s voice, and it tells about what happened to Alessa and her mother, Dahlia. The locals kidnapped Alessa and killed her for a sacrifice, but that went badly for the whole town. Alessa was horribly burned, and her hate grew so strong that she gained mental powers to get revenge on the town. Turns out, Sharon is Alessa’s own daughter, given to the orphanage to protect her from the monsters.

In the church, Christobella plans to finish what she started by sacrificing Sharon. They burn Bennett first. Rose shows up and talks about the world outside, at least until Christobella stabs her.

Suddenly, a hole opens in the floor and barbed wire snakes out. The real Alessa rises up, still confined to her bed, and she grabs Christobella with the wire. The wires and Rose set about slaughtering all the cultists. Dahlia comes in and recognizes her daughter.

In the morning, Rose and Sharon wake up and leave the church. They walk to the car and drive back out of the town, across the bridge. She calls Chris to say they’re coming home.

They arrive at their home, but it’s all dim and foggy, not like the sunny world that Chris still lives in. They’re still in two different worlds even though they’re in the same room…

Brian’s Commentary

Sean Bean didn’t die? Huh. Actually, he only interacted with Rose for a minute at the beginning, otherwise, his part is mostly unrelated to the action.

I’ve played a little bit of the original game, way back when it came out in 1999, and they’ve definitely got the atmosphere of the game here.

It’s well over two hours long, and it does drag quite a bit. Overall the visuals are excellent, but the story really drags in the middle.

It’s a weird one, for sure.

Kevin’s Commentary

It certainly does have a video game vibe to it.

The shots of the police and husband searching the “real” Silent Hill in the same locations simultaneously that Rose was in those same locations in the underworld was cool.

I liked the atmosphere, effects, and story, but it’s on the long side and drags after a while.

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We’ll finish up the Lake Placid movies this week with “Legacy” from 2018. We’ll also continue our Godzilla sequence with “Tokyo S.O.S.” from 2004. Then we’ll watch three hot new films: “Primate,” “Predator Badlands,” and “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” all from 2026.

New Book!

The Horror Guys Guide to the Tremors Films and TV Series

All this as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #53, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2018 Lake Placid: Legacy

* Director: Darrell Roodt

* Writers: Johnathon Lloyd Walker, Matt Venables, and Jeremy Smith

* Stars: Katherine Barrell, Tim Rozon, Sai Bennett, and Joe Pantoliano

* Runtime: 93 minutes (or 1 hour 33 minutes)

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is a sequel to “Lake Placid vs Anaconda” as well as a sequel to the Lake Placid standalone movies. A group of eco-warrior urban explorers FAFO when they break into a fenced off decommissioned research compound. It wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before, but it’s well put together. It moves well and entertains.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open in Seattle, WA, where four people sit in a tiny car and conspire about exposing corporate greed. And urban exploration. And hacking. As they break into Wenoco Corp, we cut back and forth with a man running through the woods, terrified. Wenco Corp looks like a Star Trek set on the inside. The eco-terrorists drop a “Wenoco = Death” banner off the roof. Meanwhile, something unseen eats the man in the woods. Credits roll.

Alice doesn’t approve of the urban explorer/eco-terrorist stuff that her sister Jade leads. Sam, Billy, and Spencer are just in it for the rush. Sam gets a challenge from Dane for “one last quest” that has a $100,000 prize for the first one in. The place they need to go is off-limits, even deleted from Google Earth. It’s supposed to be a place where a toxic spill happened twenty-something years ago. Pennie and Travis don’t want to go anywhere near a place with radiation, if that story is even true.

The group arrives at the electric fence, and there’s definitely no radiation. The electric fence doesn’t work or is turned off for some reason. When they get inside, they do soil samples; there’s no contamination here, either. Why the fence?

Pennie and Travis drop the others off at a dock and promise to wait 30 minutes before they leave them. The others walk through a construction site. They soon find Dane’s camp, but Dane isn’t there. The place is wrecked, but they find a camera. It shows Dane being chased by some kind of monster. Then they find body parts, but Spencer thinks it’s all a prank– until they find half of Gomez, Dane’s assistant. They all run back to the boat, which suffers an accident, along with Travis.

Everyone talks, whines, screams, and argues all at the same time. The group finds a dark tunnel with a grate that’s been broken through and decides it’s a good idea to go inside. The group gets split up. Billy, Spencer, and Pennie head back to the dock while Sam, Alice, Jade, go deeper into the facility.

The inside group finds a lab with power while the outside group tries to boost their cellphone signal to call for help on the dock. Inside, the group learns that the facility was breeding giant crocodiles for some reason. Outside, Spencer and Pennie get eaten.

Sam and his group find Dane, still alive, down in the tunnels. They also run into Henderson, whom Dane has tied up for getting them all into this situation. He used to work for the corporation and explains about the genetically modified formerly extinct species that was supposed to cure cancer. He sounds believable with his motivations.

Billy calls 911 with his boosted phone, but he’s doubtful they could trace to source. Billy then loses his head, so he’s not gonna try again. In the confusion, Henderson sneaks away. Everyone else has to swim through a flooded tunnel for no obvious reason. The monster catches Dane and tears him up.

Henderson, in the meantime, wanders right into the big crocodile’s main nest and is torn in half.

Sam comes up with a cockamamie plan to blow up the whole place by sacrificing himself with canisters of propane as the two girls run back the way they came. Sam’s plan fails non-spectacularly.

Alice faces the monster eye-to-eye, but then Jade gets in one of the construction machines and starts it right up after being outside, abandoned for twenty-five years. She pins the crocodile and then covers it in fuel. The croc goes boom!

The two girls then swim off the island, but then we see they’re being followed…

Brian’s Commentary

It plays fast and loose with the lore from the previous films, as the whole corporate angle only marginally applied to the “Vs” film. On the other hand, the lab and facility were nice sets and they probably hoped there would be more sequels.

There’s supposed to be just one crocodile, but it’s both simultaneously inside the tunnel and out eating Billy at the same time. Its size also fluctuates depending on where it is.

It’s all fairly predictable in every way, but it wasn’t boring. If you’re looking for more CGI-croc action, this movie… exists.

Kevin’s Commentary

The poster is especially cool for this one.

I had a fundamental dislike of the eco-arrogant characters, which made it difficult to root for them. The croc tended to move from place to place and size to size as plot required (though we do find out at the very end it wasn’t really just one). And it wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before.

But those issues aside, I thought the whole thing was pretty well made and entertaining. The pacing is good without much down time, and the settings are great.

2003 Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.

* Director: Masaaki Tezuka

* Writers: Masaaki Tezuka, Masahiro Yokotani

* Stars: Noboru Kaneko, Miho Yoshioka, Mitsuki Koga, Masami Nagasawa, Chihiro Otsuka, Koh Takasugi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Akira Nakao

* Runtime: 91 minutes (1 hour, 31 minutes)

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Mothra and the fairies are back to warn Japan they need to return the bones of Godzilla used to make Mechagodzilla to the ocean to rebalance nature. But they repair Mechagodzilla just in time for Godzilla’s return, so there’s a big creature battle. We both thought this one looked good, but it was only middling. A bit on the bland side.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on Mechagodzilla, back in the base as the people do checks on the system. We then cut to the deep sea, where Godzilla wakes up. In the Caroline Islands, there is wind. In Hawaii, the Americans detect something on the radar– it’s Mothra! Credits roll.

The news reporter reminds us about the battle with Godzilla in the previous film– Mechgodzilla is still under repair from that one. Godzilla hasn’t been spotted in months, but he’s still out there somewhere.

Yoshi talks to his little nephew, Shun, about being a fighter pilot. He’d love to pilot the Mech-G. The grandfather is Professor Chujo. Suddenly, the two mini-fairies show up in the living room and want to talk to him. The old man knows them from way back in the first Mothra adventure, 43 years ago. They want him to send Godzilla’s bones back to the sea and not use them to build weapons like Mech-G. Yoshi argues that we need Mechagodizilla for protection, but the girls say Mothra will protect them– or else Mothra will destroy humanity.

There’s some debate on whether or not the presence of Godzilla’s bones is what attracted the new Godzilla in the previous film. Maybe they should get rid of those bones.

Grandpa Chujo tells Shun about his original adventure with Mothra, and he’s got photos to back it up. At the base, Yoshi and Azusa, from the previous film, know each other and talk about piloting. Yoshi goes in and looks at Mechgodzilla while remembering the fairies’ threat.

Chujo talks to the Prime Minister about cancelling the Mechagodzilla project. The leader has no other defenses against Godzilla and the monsters; they need MechaGodzilla, even if its absolute zero freeze-ray hasn’t been repaired yet.

Some giant creature washed up on shore, dead. It’s a giant sea turtle, but it was killed by something even bigger– like Godzilla. Meanwhile, Godzilla runs into, and rips apart, an American submarine.

Yoshi gets called to testify about the meeting with the Mothra fairies and what they promised. Meanwhile, Godzilla is heading toward Tokyo again. Shun steals Chujo’s Mothra-calling stone and tries to signal Mothra for help. It works very quickly.

Godzilla is heading straight for the Mecha base; his bones are attracting him. Inside, the men scramble to get Mechagodzilla working.

Mothra attacks Godzilla as the fairies sing to an egg back on their island. The big Mothra gets injured, and the humans decide they have to launch Mechagodzilla to assist.

Soon, the two Zillas are fighting, and many buildings in Tokyo pay the price. Mothra gets shot down just as his replacement egg hatches into two Mothras! The two soon set out across the ocean.

Yoshi drives around the deserted city looking for Chujo and Shun. The worms arrive and start spraying Godzilla with their silky strings. Meanwhile, old-Mothra is still alive and giving them advice– at least until she gets nuclear-blasted by Godzilla.

Mechagodzilla is dead. It can’t get up. Yoshi calls the commander and says he can fix it. What choice do they have? The fairies want Mecha-G dead, but they help Yoshi on the way to the repair anyway. He gets the problem fixed, but he also finds out that he’s trapped inside the thing.

The fight continues, and Mechagodzilla’s got some surprises to use against the bog lizard. The hyper-maser really annoys Godzilla. Mechagodzikka and Yoshi decide to stand by and let the Mothra worms disable Godzilla. The fairies insist that the Godzilla bones be returned to the sea. Suddenly, Mechagodzilla starts moving with a mind of its own, grabs the paralyzed Godzilla, and flies out into the ocean.

Azusa figures out that Yoshi is still on board Mech-G and shoots the sealed hatch open. He jumps out and is impossibly rescued in mid-air. The two Godzillas fall into the ocean and sink to the bottom. The Mothra worms swim back where they came from with the fairies.

Brian’s Commentary

How fast could the Mothra worms swim to get from their island to Tokyo during a single battle?

This one is all about the fighting monsters, and the human characters all suffer lack of development. They don’t really do much. Because of this, I think it’s a little dull– men in rubber suits fighting gets old fairly quickly.

This takes place not long after the previous film. Everything is sharp and clear and modern, but it’s almost too clear– the buildings look much more like models than they used to. The creatures, on the other hand, look better than ever, as do the planes, machines, and other CGI things.

Kevin’s Commentary

This one didn’t feel like much of anything that I hadn’t seen before. It all looks pretty good, with the creature fighting and collateral damage we’ve grown to expect. It’s just all on the bland side. I didn’t care much for this one.

2026 Primate

* Director: Johannes Roberts

* Writers: Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera

* Stars (Cast): Johnny Sequoyah, Troy Kotsur, Jessica Alexander, Gia Hunter, Victoria Wyant, Miguel Torres Umba

* Runtime: 89 minutes (1 hour 29 minutes)

* YouTube Link for Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When a beloved and tame pet chimpanzee gets rabies, things go bad quickly. It becomes a game of who will survive as a group is trapped and the body count rises. The effects are mostly practical, which is appreciated, though the chimp is an actor in prosthetics most of the time, and it’s not a perfect illusion. There are comparisons to “Cujo,” with people trapped by a rabid animal. The violence is brutal, and the situation is tense. It was pretty good.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get some text explaining about the symptoms of hydrophobia/rabies and that there’s no cure after 48 hours.

Lambert opens a large cage and goes inside to give Ben the ape his snack. Ben’s not feeling well right now and rips the man’s face right off. As credits roll, we see news articles about a famous sign-language-using chimp.

36 hours earlier, Lucy boards a plane to go home for a visit to Hawaii with Kate, Hannah, Nick, and friends. Lucy’s dad will be away at work, so the group starts planning a party. Lucy’s father, Adam, is deaf, and he works with apes for sign-language. Her sister, Erin, is annoyed that Lucy’s been gone for so long. The little chimp, Ben, uses a machine to talk, and he’s very smart.

Hannah visits the pool and runs into Ben, who drools and stares at the water oddly. Adam takes Ben to his cage and finds a dead mongoose in there. He also finds that Ben’s been bitten by the thing.

Night falls, and all the teens do teen things. We get the scene with the man in the cage getting his face ripped off again that night. Kate runs into Ben in the kitchen, and he’s weird and scary now.

Everyone argues about what to do with Ben; Hannah wants to shoot him. They call Lambert and hear his phone ringing up in the enclosure. Ben then takes out a big chunk of Erin’s leg. They all jump in the pool to keep away from the crazy ape, but Erin won’t stop bleeding. Lucy figures out that Ben must have rabies. Soon, they all find themselves trapped in the pool.

The pool is situated on the edge of a cliff, and Nick tries to push Ben over the edge. It’s Nick who ends up going over, and it’s an impossible drop. Lucy tries to get to a dropped phone, but Hannah ends up partially scalped. They do manage to reach the two boys from the airplane on the damaged phone, but they don’t sound like the helpful type. And the phone ends up ruined at the bottom of the pool.

Meanwhile, Adam’s at a book signing and gets word that the mongoose that bit Ben had rabies. He thinks it’s a mistake, since there is no rabies in Hawaii.

The girls find that Ben has gone, so they get out of the pool and head back up to the main house. Lucy and Kate go inside for a phone and accidentally turn on the loud TV, which draws Ben. They hide in a closet and wait for him to go away. They make a run for it, but Ben catches up to Kate and smooshes her head with a rock.

Drew and Brad, the doofuses from the airplane, break in the front door, having no idea anything is going on. Ben hears them immediately, and Drew gives him some lip. Brad doesn’t fare any better. Hannah uses the distraction to grab a phone and car keys and go out the front door. She gets in the wrong car, though, so that’s not good. She calls 911 but doesn’t know the address. Ben, in the meantime, has the keys to her car and lets himself right in.

Meanwhile, Lucy and Erin are still trapped in the pool. Adam, aware that something’s possibly wrong, comes home early. Ben and Lucy fight right behind him, but he doesn’t hear a thing. Eventually, he finds Drew’s body and knows what’s happening.

Ben attacks the two sisters until Adam shows up with his whistle. Adam and Ben have a fistfight, but Ben is nearly unstoppable. Adam stabs the chimp with a broken wine bottle, and things calm down. Of course, Ben gets up and makes one final leap, but ends up dying in the process.

Lucy, Erin, and Adam all go to the hospital. The family who kept an illegal chimp in Hawaii and let it get rabies is fine, but all their innocent guests are dead… So, happy ending, I guess?

Brian’s Commentary

It’s “Cujo” with a chimp and swimming pool instead of a dog and VW. The ape is mostly done with practical effects, but I was surprised at how unrealistic and unexpressive it looked.

I thought the fake looking ape detracted a lot. CGI might actually have been better. Other than that, it used a lot of the usual horror tropes and ideas. It was… alright, but not great.

Kevin’s Commentary

Most of the chimp action is practical effects, which is generally appreciated over CGI. And much of that practical effect is Miguel Torres Umba in prosthetics - which I thought was very good but not perfect. Like Brian said, some top quality CGI, or motion capture like in the “Planet of the Apes” movies, might have been more effective.

It’s a great house, but a pool in a cave with only one way in and out doesn’t seem like a good idea.

2026 Predator: Badlands

* Director: Dan Trachtenberg

* Writers: Patrick Aison and Dan Trachtenberg

* Stars: Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Ravi Narayan

* Runtime: 107 minutes (1 hour and 47 minutes)

* YouTube Link for Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A young and runty Predator goes on a quest to hunt the ultimate prey on an alien planet. He teams up with a damaged Weyland-Yutani android, and they have dangerous zany adventures on their quest. It’s action, adventure, and science fiction without much mystery or horror. It was pretty entertaining in its own way, but far from the original Predator movie.

Spoilery Synopsis

Yautja are predators. We open on Yautja Prime, where one Predator enters a cave and fights another. They leap around like it’s a videogame and taunt each other. The Yautja, Dek, loses, but survives. He’s not a Yautja yet. The two brothers talk later about old battles. Dek still needs to prove himself in battle in order to join the clan and earn his invisibility cloak. He chooses Genna, the Death Planet. The Kalisk there will be his trophy; even their father fears it. Dek’s got something to prove, and he wants it the hard way.

Dek’s a runt, and his father thinks he should simply be culled. His brother Kwei doesn’t want to kill him and turns against their father, which goes badly for him. Dek’s ship launches, taking him on his hunt.

Dek arrives on the planet Genna, and it’s clear that he’s not very good at flying - he lands hard. He checks out his weapons, and at least he’s prepared those. Even the trees in this place are hostile, so he fights them. Credits roll.

As Dek patches up his wound, he learns about his surroundings. He comes across a broken synthetic who knows his language. She knows he’s hunting the Kalisk, and she offers to help– if he helps her. They soon find themselves working together to survive. She has no legs or bottom half. He doesn’t want a partner, but he can use her as a tool, which is acceptable to him. She’s Thia, and she talks a lot.

Thia tells her story. She and another synth, Tessa, are better attuned to the creatures on this planet. The Kalisk attacked, and they got split up; Thia, literally.

We cut to the synth base, where Tessa is being repaired. She’s fixed up enough to complete her mission, capture new life forms for weapons use. Now, she wants the Kalisk too, threatened with decommission if she fails.

Dek and Thia run into various creatures and both hunt and are hunted. It’s all very action-packed. They make friends with Bud, a Gollum-like sidekick animal that hunts with them. We see that Tessa has arrived with a well-armed crew as they wipe out the vine creatures that Kalisk first encountered. Dek and Thia chat around the campfire and get to know each other better.

Tessa finds and explores Dek’s crashed spaceship. Thia and Dek wander around looking for the Kalisk’s den. Thia finds her legs and signals for her people to come and get her. She warns Dek that they want the Kalisk, and he should leave. He refuses.

Dek goes off on his own while she reattaches her legs, and he soon runs into the Kalisk. He and Thia work together to defend themselves from the giant thing. She is still legless because the mending got interrupted. Dek eventually manages to behead it, but then the head re-attaches itself. It’s… unkillable.

Tessa arrives and freezes the Kalisk, Dek, and everything. She then takes Dek prisoner. Tessa wakes up Thia, who talks about their catch– both the Kalisk and the Yautja. Tessa experiments on Dek, and it looks very painful. Thia doesn’t like the work Tessa is doing and shuts it down . She’s seen things on her trip, and she’s evolved a bit; Tessa’s not into that at all. Thia is “broken” as well and will be deactivated.

Thia and Dek trick one of the drones into letting them loose. Dek escapes and goes to his ship to heal up. He uses what he’s learned about the animals and plants on Genna to build new weapons and traps. He also rejoins Bud, who he recognizes as a baby Kalisk.

Dek then follows the synths to the huge Weyland-Yutani base that’s on the planet. He finds Thai, who is deactivated, but he brings her legs along as a distraction. The Yautja, Bud, and the legs defeat a whole army of drones. Thia’s upper half and lower half fight together as a team.

Tessa, meanwhile, loads the Kalisk onto a transport ship.

Dek and Thia get back together. So did Thia’s two halves. Dek wants to release the Kalisk, Bud’s mother.

But first, Tessa attacks in a big loader-mech (looks familiar, but much bigger). They fight hand-to-machine while Thia works on releasing the big Kalisk. The Kalisk shows up, angry, and makes short work of Tessa’s battlemech and the crunchy snack inside it.

Bud “vouches” to his mother about Dek and Thia, who are all friends now. Suddenly, the Kalisk freezes and explodes, releasing the evil android inside it which she’d swallowed whole. Tessa gets the drop on Thia, but Dek kills her from behind.

Dek returns to Yautja Prime and confronts his father. This time, however, he’s battle experienced and much improved. Dek shows his father who’s boss this time, and he does it without any help. He’s got his own clan now…

Brian’s Commentary

It’s very different from the other Predator (or Alien) films. This one is a much smaller-scale affair, with only two “good” characters, neither of which are human, out on an adventure.

It’s got quite a bit of humor and fun, but there’s so MUCH CGI. It’s like watching a videogame for nearly two hours.

If you like the rest of the series, you’ll probably like this one. If not, there’s probably not much here to sway you.

Kevin’s Commentary

I saw more than one review that said this smells of Disney, who owns the Predator rights, and I’d agree. It’s like an ultra violent Disney adventure movie. They even manage to gain an adorable little monkey-thing companion. How far the original Predator movie, and Alien franchise, have fallen.

Still, I warmed to it as the movie went on. I didn’t hate it as much as I expected, and I was pretty entertained overall.

2026 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

* Director: Nia DaCosta

* Writers: Alex Garland

* Stars: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parry

* Runtime: 109 Minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one is an immediate sequel to 28 Years Later. Little Spike joins the Jimmys, head Jimmy continues his loony leadership, and the doctor continues his work with his Bone Temple project and befriending Sampson. It’s a weird vision of a late-stage apocalypse. We both enjoyed it a lot and thought it was better than the previous movie.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on the Jimmys, in a long-abandoned water park, along with Spike from the previous film. One of the Jimmys is no more after that. Spike becomes a Jimmy too. Credits roll.

Near the bone temple, we see a hunter run into Sampsom and his infected crew. The hunter dies excessively, and Samson eats his brains. Not far away, Dr. Kelson cuts up the pregnant woman from the previous film. On the way to dispose of the body, he runs into Samson and has to tranquilize him. Kelson then removes the arrows from the giant zombie; after, he goes down into his bunker and plays some music.

The next morning, Kelson encounters Samson again, and this time, the big guy doesn’t charge at him. Kelson bargains with the monster. He tranquilizes the big man again, which is what Samson seems to want. Kelsen wants to be friends with Samson, or at least train him. Kelsen takes some of the drugs himself and passes out; when he awakens, Samson is gone and didn’t kill him in his sleep. They start regularly getting stoned together. A weird bromance is born?!

Three new characters, Cathy, Jonno, and Tom, walk through the woods. Jonno draws the wrong kind of attention and becomes infected. Tom and Cathy return home to George’s place and find that the Jimmys have taken over. It’s tense as they all introduce themselves and then kill the homeowners.

The Jimmys soon come across the bone temple and see Kelsen and Samson dancing. Jimmy Crystal, the leader of the gang, talks about his “divine right” to rule. He’s maybe just a little insane.

At the temple, Kelsen admits to Samson that he’s running out of morphine, and that’s going to be a problem really soon. He wants to euthanize Samson, but he’d really like the big man’s consent. Samson finally speaks, saying “Moon.”

Back at the farmhouse, Jimmy orders Tom to fight Jimmima. Cathy, who escaped, helps Tom. Things go badly from there when a propane tank ignites thanks to Tom. Jimmy sends Spike to kill Cathy, but he wants to go with her instead. She punches him and runs off.

The Jimmys decide to pay a visit to Kelsen, whom they think is the devil. Meanwhile, Samson puts on pants and learns to eat berries. The Jimmys spy on Kelsen, but Spike, who knows the doctor, doesn’t say anything about him. Samson starts having memories about being on a train.

Jimmy Crystal goes to the Bone Temple and sees all the skulls. Kelsen admits that he’s not Satan. They have a long conversation, as some of the Jimmys start to doubt their leader. Can Kelsen pretend to be Jimmy’s father, the devil? Kelsen has little choice.

Kelsen tells Samson about the encounter. He’s been working on a cure for the disease, but now he may be out of time and wants to try it on the big man. Is it all just a weird kind of psychosis? He gives Samson some pills.

The next morning, Samson is aware. He gets aboard a train car and remembers his childhood. He and his family were on the train when the infection hit. In the present, a bunch of infected people board the train and attack the big man, who fights back.

Kelsen prepares for his meeting with the Jimmys, as he “becomes” the devil.

Night falls, and the Jimmys come into the temple. It’s all lit up with Satanic imagery now, as Jimmy Crystal wanted. Kelsen does a song and dance, and it’s very convincing. The music is loud, and it attracts Samson. Kelsen gives the order to the Jimmys to follow Jimmy Crystal, but when he sees Spike and recognizes him, he changes the rules. He tells the Jimmys to crucify Jimmy Crystal. Jimmy then stabs “Satan.” Jimmy Ink, on the other hand, sticks with Spike and kills the other Jimmys.

Only Spike and Jimmy Ink are left standing. As Kelsen dies, the young people crucify Jimmy Crystal for him. As he hangs there, upside down, Samson comes into camp. Samson thanks Kelsen for curing him as the doctor dies.

Back in the safe land, we see Jim, the main character from the first film. He’s teaching his daughter, Sam, history. They go outside and see a flock of infected chasing Jimmy Ink and Spike, who need help. Sam asks Jim if they should help, Jim says of course, and they head off to do so.

Brian’s Commentary

This begins almost immediately after the events of the previous film. Oddly enough, it all makes sense, in a crazy way. There’s supposed to be a third one coming, so we’re in good shape here. This was much better than the previous film, which was mostly just setup.

Kevin’s Commentary

I liked the weirdness and surreal aspects of this one, with the Jimmys, the Bone Temple, the doc and Sampson getting high together. And it contains the best use of Iron Maiden music ever.

It takes its time with the strangeness and events with lulls and spikes, it’s long but was never boring. I thought it was pretty great. Better than the previous one.

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Back in episode 372, we did all the rest of the Anaconda films. This time, we swap over and do all the “Lake Placid” films, including the crossover with Anaconda. We’ll cover the newer “Lake Placid: Legacy” next week.

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #53, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

1999 Lake Placid

* Director: Steve Miner

* Writers: David E. Kelley

* Stars: Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson, and Betty White

* Runtime: 82 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a giant creature feature, set in a beautiful location. There’s a lot of violence and gore, but also a lot of dark humor - it’s not quite in the comedy genre, but there are a lot of chuckles to be had. The casting is excellent and added a lot to making the movie more watchable and entertaining. It was a fun watch.

Spoilery Synopsis

As credits roll, we see scenes of a very placid lake. The sheriff and a diver are out tagging beavers. The diver goes down and finds an underwater tunnel and checks it out. Turns out, it’s not a beaver nest. The sheriff, aboard the boat, pulls up about half of the diver.

In New York City, Kelly explains to Myra that her boyfriend has dumped her; Myra already knows because she stole Kevin from her. Kevin comes in and talks about a probable-bear attack and wants to send Kelly to Maine to investigate a tooth they found in the diver. She’s not really gung-ho about field work, but has no choice but to investigate.

Near Lake Placid, Sheriff Hank welcomes Jack Wells, with Fish & Game, to investigate the animal attack.

Kelly, Jack, and Hank go out to the lake and talk to an old woman who is the only person who lives directly on the lake. Mrs. Bickerman says her husband died two years ago from an assisted suicide. Kelly, in the meantime, does not enjoy the natural beauty of the place. “I have good hygiene; I’m not welcome here.”

Hector Cyr, a rich mythology nut, shows up in a helicopter. He’s obsessed with crocodiles, so that’s weird. There shouldn’t be any crocodiles in this lake, but he’s pretty confident that’s what they have. They go out in canoes, and something knocks over one of the boats. They also find the diver’s toe.

Hector’s a party animal, and sets up quite a campsite. Hank doesn’t like him at all.

The next day, they use all their equipment as Hector and Jack go diving for the creature. Meanwhile, the monster attacks the boat with Kelly and Hank. They’re fine, but the deputy, on the other hand, loses his head. Hector gives a ridiculous speech about dreaming he’d lost his head.

Suddenly, a huge bear attacks! That goes nowhere because even more suddenly, a giant crocodile leaps out of the water and eats the bear– whole. Finally, Kelly decides she’s having a good time.

In the morning, they all go croc-hunting. They find another severed head just on the edge of Mrs. Bickerman’s place. They watch as the old woman leads a cow to the beach and feeds it to the enormous crocodile.

Mrs. Bickerman admits she’s been feeding the thing for six years; it’s a sort of pet. It was what killed her husband. Meanwhile, Hector goes swimming again and comes face to face with the big croc. The crocodile lets him get onto the helicopter, but then tries to eat that.

Hector wants to sedate and capture the crocodile. He doesn’t want it killed, which Fish & Game will do. He’s persuasive. They use one of Mrs. Bickerman’s cows, dangling from a helicopter, as bait. Eventually, the croc takes the bait and crashes the helicopter. It comes up on land and menaces everyone. The crocodile manages to get stuck inside the helicopter and can’t get out. They tranquilize it, so it’s all good. Suddenly, a second crocodile shows up, and Hank gets to shoot that one explosively.

As things wind down, Hank and Hector drive off to the hospital. Kelly and Jack get together.

Some time passes and we see Mrs. Bickerman, out at the dock, feeding a new batch of baby crocodiles…

Brian’s Commentary

The interplay between Hank and Hector is comedy gold. Actually, this movie is only good because of the stellar cast. The croc is a combination of CGI and practical effects, but it’s all very effective.

It’s a great mix of giant-animal horror and comedy. It was successful and then led to a whole batch of sequels.

Kevin’s Commentary

I agree with Brian, it was casting done right that added a lot to the movie. It could have been a lot lamer than it was. Okay, it wasn’t that lame, it was pretty entertaining. And the humor helped a lot.

The croc is a practical effect - a giant puppet - in many of its scenes, which was much better than having it be purely CGI. Though the CGI is quite good too. Trivia says the croc actually has less than four minutes of screen time.

Somehow, I had missed seeing this before now. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

2007 Lake Placid 2

* Director: David Flores

* Writers: Todd Hurvitz and Howie Miller

* Stars: John Schneider, Sarah Lafleur, Sam McMurray, Chad Michael Collins, Alicia Ziegler, and Cloris Leachman

* Runtime: 88 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The first movie was enough of a success that they made a sequel. They embraced the CGI this time, lowered the quality of casting, and generally cheapened everything as a direct to TV SyFy production. The gore was a step up, while the humor and pacing were a step down. It was barely okay, but not the win the first one was.

Spoilery Synopsis

After the credits, we open two men in a boat talking about how many people have disappeared on this lake. Soon, it’s one man in the boat.

Sheriff Riley listens to his son Scott complaining about being there after a custody battle. The EPA man comes to the office and tells them about his partner being eaten. They think it’s all a joke until he shows them the man’s chewed arm. Emily, from Fish & Wildlife, arrives, and she has history with Sheriff Riley.

The group goes out on a boat to see where the attack took place, and they talk about the crazy old woman who used to feed crocodiles on the lake. They find a head and then go to talk to old Sadie. Sadie is the sister of the other Mrs. Bickerman.

Sadie feeds the local newsman to her crocodile. Riley, Emily, and Frank soon see the crocodile when it smashes their boat. A CGI plane lands, and Struthers, a rich loon, arrives. He wants to hunt the crocodile.

Meanwhile, Scott and Kerri meet in the woods, along with Thad and Larry. They head to the lake with her friends. He goes out for a walk alone and finds a nest with eggs. Thad breaks some eggs and soon pays for it.

Riley and company tranquilize the croc and put it right to sleep. It’s not as asleep as it appears, as Deputy Dale and Frank soon learn. They set up some bait and lure in the croc, but they harpoon Struthers’s airplane instead. Working together, they kill the crocodile.

After some celebrating, they all camp for the night. Scott, Larry, and Kelli are lost in the woods. A second croc attacks the camp and eats Ahmad, Struthers’s assistant. They go to see Mrs. Bickman, who tells them that there are three of the big crocodiles out there.

Emily, Riley, and Struthers find the nest and take the eggs. They come across Scott and Kerri just after Larry gets eaten. Riley blows up a second croc, but the big one is still out there. Kerri and Scott feed Mrs. Bickman to the final croc– no, turns out there were really four of them.

Emily hides in a tree trunk as Riley shoots the next croc. Struthers loses his head but blows up the final croc.

Scott, Kerri, Riley, and Emily drive away. They drop Kerri and Scott off at home, and they kiss.

Brian’s Commentary

This was made for the SyFy Channel and never hit the theaters directly. All the “Teenagers” are way old and the acting is equally bad. It’s very cheaply made, with no corner left uncut.

John Schneider is just “We have David Hasselhoff at home.” They lost nearly all the humor and went for a straight-up horror movie this time. The film overall is just pretty dull, even for a made-for-TV story.

Kevin’s Commentary

Everything about this sequel was a step down from the original. The crocodile, and some other elements, were very obvious CGI without the practical effects of the giant crocodile puppet. The cast, script, and pacing weren’t as good. All in all, the entertainment value was less.

I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the first movie.

2010 Lake Placid 3

* Director: Griff Furst

* Writers: David Reed

* Stars: Colin Ferguson, Yancy Butler, Kirsty Mitchell, Kacey Clarke, Jordan Grehs, and Michael Ironside

* Runtime: 96 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s more of the same as the last two films. With no one seeming to really be aware that the events of the two films happened or were anything to be concerned about. The CGI is bad and obvious, but it was a bit better than the second movie. It still wasn’t as good as the first. If you saw the first two, this one was a bit of an uptick.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s the Black Lake Wildlife Area, and two hikers arrive at the lake. They go for a swim and hear growling. A bunch of little crocodiles eat them both.

Nathan stands on the dock and has some kind of flashback to the previous film. Nathan, an EPA scientist, is old Mrs. Bickerman’s nephew, and he’s just inherited her cabin. The sheriff comes to visit Nathan, Susan, and their son, Connor. The sheriff tries to convince them that the crocodile incident will never happen again; he wants them to live here rather than sell the house. As they talk, Connor sees crocodiles outside and feeds them all…

Two years later, Connor is still feeding the much-larger crocs. Susan leaves him with Vica, the babysitter. He sneaks out to the store to steal a big bag of meat for his pets. Nathan is out in the woods studying elk when he meets a group of campers. When they find a head, Nathan thinks it might have been Reba, a local poacher.

Meanwhile, in town, Brett comes to see Reba. He wants to hire her to find a missing girl in the lake area.

At home, the crocs eat Vica’s little yap-yap dog and then Vica as well. Out at the lake, those four hikers start getting picked off one-by-one.

Connor and Susan try to help Vica, but the crocodiles are surrounding the house. He admits that he’s been feeding the crocs.

Reba and her clients’ boat are attacked, which ruins the hunting party. Nathan and the sheriff’s boat as well. There’s a failed attempt for all the good guys to run to the car from the cabin, but that goes badly.

Reba and Brett are attacked; the sheriff tries to run over a croc and gets eaten. They eventually make their way to Nathan’s place.

Brett holds them all at gunpoint because he wants to go out and find Ellie, the last of the hikers. He soon finds her, and they kiss and make up just before a croc eats him. Everyone gets in Reba’s boat and goes to town.

It’s the middle of the night, and most of the stores in town are closed. They break into Dmitri’s grocery store, the place Connor stole from earlier, and he’s got a gun. The crocodile outside makes sure nothing comes of that.

Nathan, Susan, Connor, and Ellie run for the truck, leaving torn-apart Reba behind. The big croc chases them until they blow it up at the gas station.

Time passes, and Nathan gives a lecture next to the lake about the extinct crocodiles that used to live there. Naturally, we see that they aren’t extinct at all.

Brian’s Commentary

This one was also made for TV, but it’s a lot better than the previous film. The crocs are all mediocre CGI, but once we get past that, the rest is pretty good. Anytime there’s any real action, the camera gets all shaky to make it look more exciting, and I found that annoying. The editing in other scenes is almost as bad.

Still, it was miles better than part 2.

Kevin’s Commentary

The CGI. Sigh. So much obvious CGI.

And the foreign touches creeped more around the edges because it wasn’t filmed in the United States, like the second film.

I agree it was a little better than the second movie. Still not as good as the first.

2012 Lake Placid: The Final Chapter

* Director: Don Michael Paul

* Writers: David Reed

* Stars: Elisabeth Röhm, Yancy Butler, Paul Nicholls, and Robert Englund

* Runtime: 90 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Some time has passed, and now the lake and surrounding area is enclosed with a big, sturdy electric fence to contain the crocodiles which are the only ones of their kind. But lots of people still make it inside, either deliberately or accidentally, and there’s a decent body count. Everything about it is decent, not awful, but it’s really just more of the same we’ve already seen.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on the final battle of the previous film, and it turns out that Reba’s not as dead as she looked before. As she limps out of the grocery store, credits roll as she kills one more croc.

Sometime later, Sheriff Grove, Dennis, and now-Fish-and-Game ranger Reba, go out into a boat to look for one of the very rare crocodiles. They tranquilize and capture a small one, but there’s a report of bigger ones not far away. They all get into a truck and drive away, but a big croc chases them. The whole area is surrounded by an electric fence as a wildlife refuge for the protected animals. Dennis explains that the crocs are mutants that shouldn’t be getting so big.

Loflin talks to his son, Max, who is working on the electric fence. The sheriff goes home to her daughter Chloe. They go out and look at all the young guys who like Chloe. Chloe’s got a senior camping trip this weekend, but she doesn’t really want to go.

Poacher Jim Bickerman, along with Dennis and his men, sneak through the electric gate to go hunting crocs. They soon find one, and when it chases them, they can’t get out of the electric fence. The screams attract the attention of Max, who opens the gate and gets hauled off by a croc.

Chloe and a busload of teens arrive at the “safe” beach, but Chloe thinks they might have gone to the wrong place. Sheriff Theresa and Loflin make out at home. Chloe tells the story of Mrs. Bickerman and her oversized crocodile pets. Chloe’s boyfriend, Drew, double-times her along with her friend Elaine.

In the morning, the men call the sheriff, Reba, Loflin and the others. The gate was left open last night, and Max is now missing. One of the high school camping kids gets eaten by what appears to be… piranhas. Chloe finds Max out in the woods. Soon, everyone knows about the giant crocs on the beach.

Loflin kills a croc and climbs down the thing’s throat to see what’s inside. The crocs have run out of food and are eating each other now. The sheriff’s group soon makes it to the beach and finds Chloe’s phone.

Loflin and the sheriff find Dennis, who explains why he’s inside the fence. He’s soon eaten. The teen group catches up with Jim Bickerman on his boat. They all swim to the boat except for their coach, who is eaten. He doesn’t take them to the gate, he takes them to where he’s supposed to meet with Dennis (who’s already been croc-lunch).

Everyone shows up at the same place, and Drew meets a croc. There’s lots of running and shooting, and eventually, everyone makes it to the gate, where they fry the big lizard on the electric fence.

Bickerman, left behind, gets eaten. Max and Chloe, as well as Loflin and the sheriff, get together. Reba finally gets her croc head for the wall. We hear how Lake Placid is now clear of crocs– as we get an attack at Clear Lake.

Brian’s Commentary

That’s a mighty big lake to be surrounded by a high-voltage fence.

Again, there’s not very much humor in this one; they are still taking it all pretty seriously. There’s a lot of action and the pacing is decent. It’s not awful, but it’s not anything innovative, either.

Kevin’s Commentary

Having Yancy Butler return as Reba was a bright spot.

An electric fence that big and solid would cost a fortune. Plus the power to keep it energized and constant vigilance and repair to keep it running. It’s best not to think about the size of the lake shown on screen and the logistics of that fence.

It’s still full of CGI. But the cast did a better job than the last couple movies, and the pacing was better. The crocs are still way too bullet resistant. The sequels have each gotten slightly better, but they still aren’t up to the first one.

2015 Lake Placid vs. Anaconda

* Director: A.B. Stone

* Writers: Berkeley Anderson

* Stars: Yancy Butler, Corin Nemec, and Robert Englund

* Runtime: 92 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s the crossover we didn’t know we needed, fifth in both series. The crocs from the Lake Placid movies were contained until they decided to try to combine the giant anacondas with them, and things became a mess. There’s quite a body count in this one, and lots of CGI creature action and gore. It had more humor than the anaconda films, which we just saw as well. It’s middling, not awful but some entertainment value. Especially if you like watching lots of young women in bikinis.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a group of people hunting an alligator in the woods. Jim Bickerman looks like he’s lost some limbs due to the local reptiles. The giant crocodile is taken to a lab where there’s also a giant snake. This whole area is full of protected crocs, and Jim knows how to get in and out. They inject some cells from a crocodile into an anaconda, which is about to lay eggs. Suddenly, the big croc wakes up and gets loose. In the ensuing scuffle, the snakes escape as well.

At the Clear Lake State Recreation Area, we run into Tull, a wildlife cop. We also see Sheriff Reba in the next town over, where there is at least one missing person from the area around the Black Lake electric fence. If there’s trouble, the mayor is all set for a coverup. Deputy Ferguson is at Black Lake, and he’s found the mess from last night. Daphne, the missing girl, turns out to have a crocodile under her bed, which eats her.

Sarah Murdoch, the daughter of the dead businessman of the previous Anaconda films, tells Mr. Beach about the blood orchids and immortality. The only animals that are compatible with the serum are anaconda and those special crocodiles.

A couple of carloads of sorority girls are driving out to “prove themselves” at rush weekend. One of the girls is Bethany, Tully’s daughter.

Some hunters get eaten by a swarm of tiny crocodiles.

At the crime scene, Reba cuts open a croc and finds some remains inside. She calls Tully for some croc-assist.

The sorority group is clear to point out that the famous crocodiles are in that other lake, not here. Everyone gets into the water, and we soon see someone get dragged under– no, it’s just two guys playing games.

Sarah, Beach, and his men have a tracker in the female anaconda, hopefully before she lays eggs. They have the trackers and want Jim Bickerman to help them again.

Reba and Tully find it’s strange that all the trackers in the crocs have gone offline. They have no trackers, but the crocs must be headed to Clear Lake. Tully calls his daughter, who is at the lake, but she’s not answering.

A waterskier gets eaten on the lake, and we see a huge croc closing in on the sorority recruits. The waterskiing group soon learns they’re going to need a bigger boat. The sorority girls run to their cars, without keys, and watch as crocs close in on them.

Sarah beats up Jim; she needs his help. Her whole group is soon out in the wilderness area looking for the missing anaconda.

Tully and Reba are about to be eaten by a crocodile when the reptile is suddenly attacked and killed by a giant anaconda. They know about the crocs, but the giant snake is new for them.

The anaconda squeezes the girls’ car, so now they have no way to get away. Tully, Reba, and Ferguson arrive and check out the wreckage on the beach. They find the girls’ crushed car and soon, the remaining three girls.

Murdoch’s group steals a boat, and Jim goes for a swim. Beach and Murdoch argue about leaving Jim behind. They’re attacked by the male snake, but she won’t let him shoot it. They lose their goons, so now it’s just the two of them. They soon run into Tully, Reba, and the girls as well as an even-bigger female snake.

Murdoch calls in a helicopter as the snakcs and crocs start fighting with each other. One of the snakes brings down the copter, and things get weird from there. One of the snakes swallows Beach whole, and he uses a grenade from inside. That’s messy.

Elsewhere, Jim has finally swum to shore, and he’s thrilled.

Tully gets the croc-tracker from Murdoch, so now he can start rounding up the loose crocodiles. One final croc attacks, and everyone shoots it at once.

Somewhere in the woods, we watch as eggs hatch and tiny little snakes emerge…

Brian’s Commentary

Other than the original Lake Placid, this is the first of that series that I’ve seen. It seems to lean more heavily on humor than the Anaconda series.

It absolutely continued the ongoing story of the blood orchids and anacondas, although that never really did make much sense. This one was also made for TV, and it’s a lot cheesier and less serious that the previous Anaconda films.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was the fifth film in both series. We hadn’t done the Lake Placid movies (yet?) but that doesn’t matter much for seeing this one.

Again, there’s heavy and obvious CGI use. Some humor, more than the solo Anaconda movies so far. It wasn’t too bad, I thought it was fairly entertaining, it moved well and wasn’t boring. I’d give it a 6 out of 10.

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We’ve got another mostly random mix this time around. We’ll start off with the weird BDSM-gone-wrong film, “Bight” from 2026. We’ll then watch Seven Samurai— no, “Seven Cemeteries” from 2024. We’ll force ourselves to watch the infamous “Troll 2,” finish up the franchise with “Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud,” and then continue our big lizard coverage with “Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla.”

All this as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #53, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 Bight

* Directed by: Maiara Walsh

* Written by: Cameron Cowperthwaite, Maiara Walsh

* Stars: Cameron Cowperthwaite, Mark Hapka, Maya Stojan

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Two artsy couples get together for an evening of bondage, photography, sex, and emotional exploration. It takes a while, but it does eventually get to some horror-adjacent elements. It’s more of a drama thriller though, and it’s quite good. It wasn’t quite what either of us expected.

Spoilery Synopsis

Two people hug in the shower as they wash blood off each other’s bodies. Credits roll.

Charlie gets a call from her boss, Ariana, and she’s not happy. Her artist boyfriend, Atticus, works in the living room. The couple is not getting along very well. They’re going to Sebastian’s party, but neither of them want to go to this one.

Turns out, this party is just for them. Sebastian and Naomi have invited only Charlie and Atticus. Charlie keeps getting texts as the men talk about photography. Charlie and Atticus argue some more, and then we see that Sebastian and Naomi aren’t getting along so well either.

Sebastian gets all pretentious during dinner and we get a flashback to the last time the four got together; it was an orgy. This time, he wants to use his two guests as nude models. Charlie is all in, but Atticus doesn’t want to participate; they’ve done this before, and he doesn’t want to repeat last time. They decide to go for it.

Sebastian puts something in everyone’s tea. He explains the rules of his work with ropes and then everyone splits up to get ready. Naomi ties Atticus’s hands behind his back as the drugs start to kick in. Soon, they’re both bound up, naked, with ropes, and Sebastian starts to take pictures. Naomi, in the meantime, covers them with red paint.

Neither Charlie nor Atticus are really into this, and both are really uncomfortable, but it’s hard to argue with Sebastian. As they all take a break, Sebastian gets with Charlie, while Naomi goes for Atticus.

We then cut to a bedroom scene with Atticus tied up on the floor and Naomi suspended by ropes from the ceiling above them. Sebastian has sex with Charlie as the other two watch in restraints. Naomi wants to be released, and Sebastian says no way; he’s punishing her for having sex with Atticus. This is all some kind of elaborate revenge plot by Sebastian against the cheaters. When Atticus realizes Naomi drugged him, he urges Sebastian to spin her ropes some more.

Charlie has seen enough and wants to leave, so Sebastian just knocks her out. He puts her in a gas mask and ties her up. He then cuts Naomi’s throat and lets her bleed all over Atticus, who is still tied up beneath her.

As Sebastian menaces Charlie, Atticus breaks out of his ropes and intervenes. In the struggle, Sebastian gets stabbed numerous times with a box cutter and then strangled with a rope.

Atticus apologizes to Charlie and unties her. The two of them then clean up the mess. Then when they get to their car in the morning they have wild sex; their romance has rekindled.

Some time later, at one of Atticus’s art shows, he reveals his new works; at least in his mind, Sebastian is still with him.

Brian’s Commentary

Bight: a loop of rope, as distinct from the rope’s ends.

This film looks great. It’s colorful and is very interestingly shot. The dialogue is clunky and pretentious, but the characters are all “artists,” so that’s probably just realism.

It took a very long time to get to anything that might be considered horror, but it did get there eventually.

It’s weird, a little dull and draggy in the first half, but overall, I liked it.

Kevin’s Commentary

The bight/bite play on words is clever.

It flowed along with a lot of talk, and then it got realer than I expected when Sebastian stepped things up a bit. All in all, it wasn’t what I expected, and I liked it quite a bit.

What a way to rekindle your relationship.

2024 Seven Cemeteries

* Directed by: John Gulager

* Written by: John Gulager, Joel Soisson

* Stars: Danny Trejo, Sal Lopez, Samantha Ashley

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The plot is simple. A recent parolee gets a Mexican witch to resurrect his old posse so that they can help him save a woman’s ranch from a ruthless drug lord. So it’s an action crime drama with magic and lots of dark humor. We both thought it was really good.

Spoilery Synopsis

In Diablo County, Texas, men come to an isolated ranch, and Matteo, the man who lives there, grabs his gun. The old man in the car wants to buy the farm, and he’s not going to take no for an answer. That goes really bad for Matteo.

We cut to Santana Bravo, being released from prison, where he’s been since 1973, as credits roll. We’re told he was falsely accused of murder and spent 41 years in prison. He goes to Diablo County and goes to that same ranch for a job from Matteo. Matteo’s wife, Carmela, wants to hire him for protection from the old Abuelo.

Sheriff Jake shows up, and oddly, all their body cameras aren’t working. He marches Bravo out into the field, and shoots him in the back three times.

Bravo wakes up some time later in the home of a bruja, an enchantress, and her husband, Miguelito is a zombie. She also wants him to stand up to Abuelo. Back in the day, Abuelo killed Bravo’s wife. He became a legend in the region for standing up to Abuelo back in ‘73. He’s old now, and not up to the fight anymore. She says he “needs a crew” and can make one by standing over a grave and bleeding.

Bravo goes off to do the job, and he takes Miguelito with him. Miguel explains what it’s like to be dead, and he doesn’t mind it too much. They head to cemetery number one and Bravo cuts himself and bleeds into the grave. His blood explodes dramatically, and when the fire clears, dead Eugene is back, out of the grave, awake, and not too happy to be there.

At the next cemetery, they wake up another corpse, Tommy LaSorda. Tommy and Eugene don’t get along, and they wreck their truck. They quickly manage to steal another one. They all drive to another cemetery and dig up Quasimodo, the dead professional wrestler and his girlfriend Delores, both buried in their luchadore costumes.

At the fifth cemetery, they wake up Stickface, a homicidal hockey player.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, Camela and her mother get ready for a fight when Abuelo returns in the morning. Sheriff Jake and his men arrive in force, and they want trouble. Jake is the first to die in the ensuing fire fight.

Then the dead arrive and mess up the killers. They are not gentle, and there’s some great carnage. Carmela is a little surprised to find Bravo with an army of zombies who all introduce themselves. “One problem at a time,” she tells her elderly mother.

As everyone gets set working to reinforce the house, Quasimodo sings to Delores. They learn that there are tunnels under the farm that leads across the border.

Hector reports to El Abuelo about their defeat at the ranch earlier in the morning, and the old man is not happy. El Abuelo then grabs Miguel and plays the accordion for him. Miguel doesn’t torture well. He warns Abuelo that the others are “Way less chill.” Then they put him through a wood chipper.

At cemetery number six, Bravo and Carmela visit Matteo’s grave. They talk about Guadalupe, Bravo’s long-dead wife.

The bad guys grab the bruja and drop her off at the ranch. She’s wearing a big bomb, the same way Abuelo killed Guadalupe many years ago. She goes boom, and the zombies are not pleased. Bravo’s got nothing to offer them now; he had promised that the bruja would restore them to real life, but that’s not gonna happen now. That’s OK, as they all want revenge now.

The baddies return with missiles, and they blow up Stickface. The gang heads down to the cellar and the tunnels to head for Mexico. All the zombies want to blow up the tunnels and bury themselves to save Bravo, Carmela, and the old lady.

Bravo is killed anyway, but Carmela’s mother revives him. When they get to the other side of the tunnel, Abuelo is waiting for them. The old man gets the drop on them, but then, out of nowhere, Miguel’s severed hand crawls up the old man’s pants and does bad things to him. Bravo and Carmela finish him off.

At cemetery number seven, Bravo reburies all his zombie friends. Bravo and Mihuel’s hand walk off to have further adventures.

Brian’s Commentary

This is great, it pokes fun at westerns, Mexican wrestlers, revenge films, zombie tropes, and everything else it can throw in. Mostly, though, it follows the basic plot of “Seven Samurai.” It’s more comedy than horror, but it’s about zombies, so there’s that. Danny Trejo’s getting a little old to be doing physical stunts and violence, but as the leader of the group, he does well here. The array of dead characters is fun, especially Lew Temple as Tommy Lasorda.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought the humor in this was excellent. The script is very good, taking an old idea and adding the element of the undead to liven it up. I’d say it was my favorite Danny Trejo movie that I’ve seen.

2007 Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud

* Directed by: Michal Hurst

* Written by: Michael Hurst

* Stars: Lance Henriksen, Rob Freeman, Amy Manson

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When a young McCoy loves a young Hatfield, their family feud works to keep them apart. When a younger McCoy is killed, it’s revenge time! Which in these parts means it’s time for Pumpkinhead again. The plot’s a little basic, but it’s well made with practical effects that look good, and steady pacing.

Spoilery Synopsis

A couple of guys on motorcycles race through the woods, being pursued by something. One guy crashes, and Pumpkinhead kills him. Elsewhere, in a cabin, a man collapses in pain. The other cyclist arrives outside the man’s door and demands that he “call it off.” He shoots the man, and Pumpkinhead vanishes. The ghost of Ed Harley appears and tells him that he’s not going to escape vengeance. Credits roll.

Five years later, it’s a McCoy wedding party. Two Hatfields show up and aren’t allowed in. Jodie and her brothers understand but don’t like it.

Inside, Ricky is weird, and everyone notices. A group of Hatfields come in the side door and soon, it’s an all-out brawl fight. Jodie Hatfield does not approve. Papa Hatfield explains the origins of the feud to her, and she’d never heard the story before; they put Uncle Abner in a wheelchair by running him over. Abner himself isn’t too angry about it; he knows that Jodie is dating Ricky.

Jodie and Ricky meet in the woods, and Ricky’s younger sister Sarah comes along to be the lookout. When a couple of the Hatfield brothers show up, Sarah is killed in a fall. They drag Ricky behind their truck until the rope breaks. Ricky runs back and finds Sarah’s body in the woods.

Ricky takes Sarah’s body to the old woman in the woods. Ed Harley comes to her and tells her not to help Ricky, but she wants to help Ricky get his revenge. Ricky insists on revenge, and he wants Pumpkinhead specifically to help. If anyone in a horror movie was ever warned that revenge is a bad idea, it would be Ricky, who just won’t listen to talk about “paying the price.” Old Haggis does the ritual.

In the morning, Ricky takes Sarah home to the McCoys, who are not pleased. Haggis does her thing in the pumpkin patch, and Pumpkinhead rises again. Soon after, Hatfields start dying.

Ed Harley appears to Jodie and explains that only she can stop what’s going to happen. Ricky comes to her and explains that he’s done something that will fix everything.

Sheriff Dallas sees Ed. Five years ago, he was warned that Pumpkinhead would be coming back, and now, his time has come.

At Sarah’s funeral, Ricky feels pain when the next group of Hatfields dies. Dallas tells old man Hatfield about Pumpkinhead.

Jodie goes to Haggis’s house and finds the pumpkin field. Better yet, she runs right into Pumpkinhead, but he doesn’t hurt her.

Four more Hatfields go to the McCoy house and set it on fire. Jodie helps out the old woman inside, but she doesn’t get a lot of thanks.

This is enough that the McCoys and Hatfields finally make peace. Old Man McCoy has no idea that Ricky’s behind all the carnage. Now, both sides decide to work together to stop Ricky and Pumpkinhead. Sheriff Dallas explains that the only way to stop this is to kill Ricky. Sherriff explains his story, which we saw in the pre-credit sequence.

Pumpkinhead attacks the house, full of both McCoys and Hatfields. Ed reminds Jodie that only she can stop this. Soon, there are a lot of dead bodies inside. Ed comes for Dallas, who has to face the monster. The fight moves outside, where Pumpkinhead disembowls Dallas. It comes for Jodie’s younger sister, and Jodie has to make a decision. In the end, she shoots Ricky. He’s still not dead, but he grabs Pumpkinhead and they both fall into a well.

Ed appears again and says she “done good.”

Brian’s Commentary

Hatfields and McCoys? Wasn’t that cliche a hundred years before even this film was made. Lame plot aside, it’s nicely paced, well acted (mostly), and doesn’t get boring. The Pumpkinhead creature looks as good as ever, and he’s still pretty effective for a guy in a rubber suit.

It’s entertaining. A long way from great, but not terrible, either.

Kevin’s Commentary

Haggis does keep trying to warn these people, but they just don’t listen.

I appreciated the practical effects, and the creature looks good even fully visible in the light.

There were many moments of neither family being too bright. But it is well put together, and I’d put it as my number two favorite after the first movie.

1990 Troll 2

* Directed by: Claudio Fragasso

* Written by: Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi

* Stars: Michel Paul Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It has nothing to do with the first “Troll” movie, and doesn’t even have Trolls. They go to a town infested with goblins and a witch. It’s a bad movie, but it’s a good bad movie. It’s stupid, but it’s fun and entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

We hear about Peter, lost in the woods. He found some ugly small people, goblins, who followed him. This is all a bedtime story told by Grandpa to little Josh. He explains that goblins are evil little creatures. Credits roll as the goblins hunt Peter.

Grandpa insists that goblins still exist and that Peter came to a bad end. They turned him into a half-plant and ate him. Josh’s mother comes in, and we see that Grandpa isn’t real. “I see him in front of me, and he’s so real.” Grandpa’s funeral was six months ago.

Josh and his family are going on a monthlong vacation to Nilbog in the country tomorrow. Elliott comes over and makes both Joshua and Holly scream, but the parents downstairs don’t hear a thing. Elliott invites himself along on the trip.

In the morning, Elliott is really late, and the family leaves without Elliott. Dad’s thrilled, Holly is not. Elliott and all his friends are not far behind in an RV. Joshua imagines himself getting sick and turning into a plant. On the way, the ghost of Grandpa tells Josh to make his family turn back.

The family arrives at Nilbog, and there’s no one in the town. Dad says “Farmers sleep this time of night,” but it’s clearly mid-afternoon. They take a family’s house and trade keys as some of the locals head to the city. They go inside and find a bunch of food waiting for them. Grandpa warns Joshua not to let them eat, so he pees all over the table and food. “You can’t piss on hospitality– I won’t allow it!” yells Dad.

Elliott’s group parks in a field and wonders where all the girls are. Arnold goes outside and soon finds one. He chases her into the woods and learns that the goblins made her eat that green stuff. The goblins show up, and stab Arnold.

They run to a strange house with an even stranger woman inside. She’s Creedence Leonore Gielgud, and her ancestors are from Stonehenge. She appears to be a witch. The girl turns into a plant; “She’s food for my children!” says Creedence. The goblins rush in and eat the woman.

At home, Holly plans her revenge against Elliott, who never does anything without his friends. She gets a vision of Dead Grandpa, and Dad thinks she’s been smoking dope.

The sheriff picks up another of Elliott’s friends, and right away offers him some green food. He’s dropped off at the local general store, and the place has a weird variety of foods. “We’re vegetarians here in Nilbog,” says the store owner. He gives him some “special” milk.

Joshua finally figures out what “Nilbog” spelled backwards is and freaks out. Back at the house, Creedence brings Josh’s mother some green cake. Josh comes across a strange church service where the goblins complain about meat.

Drew arrives at the church-house and tries to rescue Arnold, who’s mostly a potted plant now. Creedence returns and takes a chainsaw to Arnold, but he laughs as it only tickles.

Holly goes to see Elliott and punches him. Josh and his dad arrive and pull her out of there. When they return home, the whole village has come to sing and dance; Mom’s invited them all inside. Josh warns about goblins again and reminds everyone not to eat the food.

A goblin attacks Josh, but Grandpa Seth appears with an ax and cuts its hand off. Back at the church, Creedence loses an arm– that she soon regrows. The old ghost then gives little Josh a Molotov cocktail to use downstairs.

The leader of the goblins catches on and sends Grandpa back to Hell. That goes badly for both of them, but when Dad puts the fire out, he just sees a burnt goblin there. The whole family soon realizes that the goblin stories are true and hide inside the house.

Creedence prays to Stonehenge for more power, and soon, she’s young and normal-looking. She then shows up outside the RV, and Brent, Elliott’s last friend, goes outside to see. They both have sexy corn on the cob… and popcorn.

The family, meanwhile, tries really hard to make a seance work so that Grandpa Seth can return. The old ghost talks about destroying the stone that gives the goblins their power, but then the goblins break in and start attacking. There’s a great deal of running around and screaming until Josh finds himself in the church-house (which is apparently now in the basement of the family house).

Grandpa tells Josh what to do with the stone. Creedence starts getting ugly again and calls for her goblins, who vanish, leaving the family alone. Creedence looks on in horror as Josh eats a meat sandwich and then touches the magic rock.

The whole family helps Josh touch the rock, and soon, all the baddies are dead.

Back in the city, the family returns to their real home. Joshua’s mother eats an apple right away. Josh soon finds that his mother is being eaten. “Do you want some, Joshua?”

Brian’s Commentary

This is often cited as one of the best “So bad it’s good” movies, and it’s clear to see why. It’s hard to tear your eyes away from this, as it’s weird at every turn. The acting is atrocious all around, except for Deborah Reed as Creedence, who deserved some kind of overacting award– so bad that she wraps around to awesome.

It’s really something.

Kevin’s Commentary

Goblins, trolls, Goldberg, iceberg - same thing.

Reading the trivia, it’s impressive the movie came out as well as it did. The director only spoke Italian, as did the crew except for one member who acted as translator. And the cast were mostly a bunch of locals who showed up thinking they were just going to be extras and got lead, supporting, and extra roles.

Some movies have gallons of blood, this one had gallons of green. I wonder how much green food coloring got used in production. And yogurt. Lots of yogurt.

It’s awful but fun.

2002 Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

* Directed by: Masaaki Tezuka, Kazuki Omori

* Written by: Wataru Mimura

* Stars: Yumiko Shaku, Shin Takuma, Kana Onodera

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When a new Godzilla appears, they use the remains of the 1954 Godzilla to make… a MechaGodzilla to fight him. Of course it’s not that simple as complications arise, politics are worked out, and Godzilla is tough and stubborn. There’s more CGI used this time, and they blend pretty well with the practical effects. It’s an entertaining one. Brian thought it was one of the better ones, Kevin was entertained but thought it was a bit mundane.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 1999, and the Japanese military is getting ready for action. A typhoon is coming, and a big one at that. Not only does it rain really hard, but it drives Godzilla ashore. The Anti-Megalosaurus Force (AMF) is deployed. They bring tanks and rocket launchers, and those work as well as they always do against Godzilla. The Maser gets his attention, but that goes badly for the troops. Credits roll.

The news reports that the attack was carried out by a monster similar to the Godzilla of 1954 (I guess we’re ignoring all the sequels again). The Prime Minister remembers how the original was defeated; Dr. Serizawa’s weapon has never been duplicated. Mothra and other monsters have attacked over the years, but have always been repelled. What can they do against Godzilla, though?

Meanwhile, at the AMF, Akane Yashiro is cleared from any wrongdoing in the loss of her Maser crew. Still, she’s been transferred to a desk job.

We cut to a science lab where Dr. Yuhara, the professor, talks about animal-machine hybrids. He’s soon taken to the Defense Agency to work on a new project. There’s a whole conference table of scientists invited to work on the project. They have found the skeleton of the original 1954 Godzilla and have taken cells to make a bio-robot. They want to make a robotic version of Godzilla and make it even stronger than the new one.

Yuhara doesn’t want to get involved, but his daughter, Sara, convinces him to take the job. Four years pass, and the construction proceeds.

Akane hates her desk job, but she’s done well in her years of punishment and is finally invited to join the Mechagodzilla team as a pilot. Colonel Togoshi runs the Kiryu project, and it’s nearing completion. The team undergoes extensive military combat training. At the base, Yuhara likes Akane, but she doesn’t even know who he is. They soon find out.

The machine is soon finished, and they present it to everyone on the news. It’s powered by DNA computers, the fastest available, as well as a freeze-ray. Suddenly, they spot the real Godzilla on the radar. What perfect timing!

Mechagodzilla is airlifted to the coast to wait for big G’s arrival. People flee through the streets.

Mechagodzilla attacks with missiles, rockets, lightning, and everything else it has. The absolute zero gun is ready to fire, but all of a sudden, something inside Mechagodzilla wakes up. The original Godzilla DNA cells remember its own death and lets the new one escape.

Suddenly, Mechagodzilla shoots at the human’s fighter planes. It then unloads all its weapons against Tokyo’s skyline. In about an hour, it’ll run out of power, but that’s going to be a really long hour.

Togashi tells the Prime Minister that it’s a design flaw and that they can fix it. They need the Kiryu project for the next time Godzilla shows up. They retrieve the powered-down machine and get to work fixing the problem. Godzilla’s road was what triggered the machine’s memories.

Sara yells at her father about how adults treat living things. She says the thing inside Mechagodzilla is suffering. Akane talks to her about moving on from her mother’s death.

There’s another Godzilla sighting, followed by another evacuation. His atomic breath makes short work of the conventional defenses. They don’t really want to try Kiryu again, but what choice do they have?

They launch Mechagodzilla again, and the battle continues. Mechagodzilla’s got a jetpack and a wide variety of weapons, but Godzilla’s got atomic breath. Just as Mechagodzilla’s power starts to fail, Godzilla falls over. Akane activates the absolute zero weapon, and that goes badly for Tokyo.

Mechagodzilla is knocked out, and Akane has to physically go inside the thing to reactivate it while the scientists figure out a way to recharge it; they drain the whole city’s power.

Togashi crashes his fighter plane into Godzilla’s mouth to keep it from firing at Akane. She grabs the big lizard and dumps him in the ocean. When she finally has the power to shoot the absolute zero weapon, she turns Godzilla into an iceberg. That doesn’t last, but it does convince Godzilla to go back to the ocean.

They couldn’t destroy Godzilla, but they beat it away this time. The PM declares it a great victory. Akane watches as Godzilla walks out into the ocean. Will they get a rematch?

Brian’s Commentary

Kiryu: Mechanical Dragon

Although not perfect, this is the first of the series to use CGI fairly well. There’s a lot of it, but it’s mostly pretty good and not super-obviously CGI. The battles look far more realistic this time around, and both creatures look good.

I’m not super clear about what was going on with Sara, but everything else made sense.

This was one of the better ones in my opinion.

Kevin’s Commentary

Science. So much science. DNA computers, and microwave blasters, and low temperature blasters, and giant cyborg robots oh my.

This one had a lot of military vs. Godzilla, creature combat, and collateral damage. It also seemed a little heavier on the people and what they were doing.

It was entertaining enough, but I didn’t feel like it was much we hadn’t seen before.

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We watched the original “Anaconda” (1997) film a couple of years ago, but this week, we’re completing the series.

We’ll start off this time with the second film, “Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid” (2004), then the two real sequels, “Anaconda 3: Offspring” (2008) and “Anaconda: Trail of Blood” (2009). Then we’ll watch last year’s Chinese remake, “Anaconda” (2024). Lastly, we’ll watch the recently-released mostly-comedy, “Anaconda” (2025).

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #53, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2004 Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid

* Director: Dwight H. Little

* Writers: Hans Bauer, Jim Cash

* Stars: Morris Chestnut, KaDee Strickland, Eugene Byrd

* Runtime: 97 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When a pharmaceutical company gets information on an orchid that only blooms for a limited time, only grows in Borneo, and could have incredible medical uses, a group goes off on an expedition to collect some. As the title hints, there are big snakes in the mix. And human mistakes and greed. It’s not a great film, but it’s well put together and managed to entertain us both.

Spoilery Synopsis

As credits roll, we open on some jungle people hunting a tiger, or maybe it’s hunting them. The tiger might be the least of these guys’ problems, as a giant anaconda eats them instead.

In the big city, Gordon is about to lose his pharmaceutical company for lack of performance. Jack explains about the blood orchid, a plant in Borneo that’s extremely rare and might be able to extend human life indefinitely. The orchid is only in bloom for another two weeks, so they need to hurry to Borneo and find some more.

In Borneo, there’s trouble with the charter boat; no one will go upriver until the rainy season ends… in three weeks. There’s one guy who will do it; Gordon, Gail, and Jack go into a seedy bar and find Bill Johnson, who wants fifty thousand for the journey. Ben, Cole, Tran, and some other characters introduce themselves at the docks the next day. There’s some banter and hijinks as we get to know the characters a little.

Bill’s little monkey pet takes a side quest and runs into trouble. They can hear the screams on the boat. In the morning, they all wonder where the monkey went.

Gail falls overboard and runs into a crocodile. Bill shows us that he’s a badass and fights it. We see, but the characters don’t, as the anaconda eats the whole dead crocodile. Also, the not-so-dead monkey comes back for an unexpected jump scare.

Because of the rainy season, the river is flooded, and debris jams the propellers; now they’re headed towards a waterfall in the broken boat. There’s literally no possible way the boat could survive going over the waterfall, and we were pleasantly surprised that it didn’t. With everyone in the water, we see the snake again, but it doesn’t get anyone.

Bill has a plan to hike to a place where they can be rescued. It only involves a short walk through the jungle. Bill calls his friend John to come and pick them up at a rendezvous point. The group then has to walk through a flooded region, and we see the snake is right alongside them. When the snake reveals itself and eats Ben, everyone sees it.

Bill says that was the largest he’s ever seen, a real freak of nature. Fortunately, they’re very territorial, so there won’t be another one for miles. Gail calls off the expedition, but Jack and Gordon refuse to stop. They all argue about how much is riding on this expedition. Cole is the “We’re all gonna die” guy, and he gets annoying fast. He shuts up when he finds leeches all over his body.

Meanwhile, at the boat, John is attacked by the anaconda and crashes the boat. The group finds the wreckage and manages to salvage a few things. Tran mentions that maybe they can find help with a nearby tribe of headhunters. When they find John’s body, Bill explains how anacondas spit up their food, also how they all congregate during mating season, so there may be more than just one.

They come to the tribe’s camp and it smells bad. There’s a dead anaconda there with half a man hanging out of it. The villagers are all gone now. Jack figures out that these anacondas are so big because they’ve been eating the orchids and have become immortal: they may never stop growing.

Jack unleashes a poison spider on Gordon, who tries to use the sat phone to call for help. Jack doesn’t want to quit just yet. The snake shows up and eats Gordon, who is too paralyzed to fight back. Jack then steals the raft while everyone’s distracted.

The others try to follow Jack on foot, and naturally, they get separated. Tran gets eaten, but Sam beheads the snake. Whoops- another sneak jumps out and grabs Cole, who miraculously survives.

Jack, Meanwhile, heads downriver and finds his orchids. The others soon catch up, and they all know what Jack did. The flowers are surrounded by baby anacondas, and Sam is forced to retrieve them. There’s a struggle over the bag of flowers and Jack is bitten by one of those spiders and falls into the nest. The snakes are all so distracted by eating him that Sam escapes.

Bill shoots a flare gun, and the whole rain-soaked hillside explodes, burying the nest, the flowers, and everything else. Bill, Sam, Cole, and Gail all laugh at their luck as they row the raft further downstream.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s got a very “TV Movie” vibe to it, but it was, in fact, a theatrical release. It’s also the last film in the franchise to focus mostly on practical effects, but there’s still plenty of CGI going on.

The story is very predictable, and you know how it’s all going to play out. Still, it’s nicely paced, the characters are distinctive, and it more or less all makes sense.

It’s not great, but it’s entertaining if you like big CGI snakes.

Kevin’s Commentary

I was bracing myself for awfulness and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t too bad. Quite entertaining in fact. The use of CGI is heavy and obvious, but the story moves well and the cast does a decent job. Watching it was a pleasurable experience.

2008 Anaconda 3: Offspring

* Director: Don E. FauntLeRoy

* Writers: Nicholas Davidoff, David C. Olson

* Stars: David Hasselhoff, Crystal Allen, Ryan McCluskey, Patrick Regis, John Rhys-Davies, Anthony Green.

* Runtime: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The blood orchid from the previous movie only works on snakes, and works very well, in the lab - which they bust out of. The company wants to keep it quiet, so a team of expendables are sent to retrieve them. It’s watchable, but pretty low effort and mediocre. The sequels are not heading the right direction in quality.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on four men walking through the woods (it doesn’t look like the jungle), and there’s a big snake crawling through the trees above them. Suddenly, they’re attacked by the snake, and there’s a lot of shooting. Credits roll.

Mr. Murdoch listens to a report on the testing of a new drug that had horrible results. He tells Pinkus that PETA has been complaining about the company and the leak that told them about it. They have a queen anaconda in their lab. They’ve been working on blood orchid extract, and it seems to be working, but only in snakes right now; it’s lethal in humans.

They’re experiments with the serum have made aggressive giant snakes. Amanda Hayes is the herpetologist of the facility, and she wants bigger, stronger cages. She picks up right away that Murdoch is dying and wants the serum to live longer.

The big snake breaks through the glass and kills a technician. The base goes on lockdown as the snake disappears. It bites the head off a security guard on the way to the queen. Amanda goes to the main lab, but the queen is now gone. The snakes were smart enough to break out. Murdoch orders Pinkus and Grozny to take control of the situation.

We cut to Hammett, the guy we saw in the opening scene, selling rhino horns on the black market. We see that he’s a badass even without the wild animals. Pinkus calls him to hunt the snake. The ragtag collection of diverse caricatures heads off to hunt the snake.

Elsewhere, a farmer has some misadventures and finds himself inside a snake. The team shows up, searches, and Grozny is impaled. Everyone blasts the snake with machine guns, but nothing stops the snake.

Amanda and Pinkus come face to face with the huge snake. Hammett finally shows up and immediately explains a plan and starts giving orders. There’s an extended chase scene through the woods. Victor and Sofia don’t last long against the snake. Amanda escapes but then has a flashback to all the people she’s watched die.

Everyone comes to the conclusion that Amanda knows more than she’s telling. She admits that they messed with the snake’s DNA and it got a little… mutated. Also, the queen is pregnant and will be giving birth very soon. The offspring will be useful in developing the health serum. But they all know that would be bad news for the country if they are allowed to live free.

The snakes arrive, and Pinkus dies. Hammett calls the local army guy and asks for backup, but he’s clearly not into that and might have faked the call. The snakes, meanwhile, slither into the local lake that’s really near the town.

Amanda and Nick follow the snake into an old factory, and there’s a lot of hide-and-seek. It finds Nick first, but he feeds it a grenade. That’s one dead snake, but the queen is still out there.

We cut back to Murdoch, who’s on the phone with someone we don’t know, making some kind of plan.

Hammett shoots Andre in the back and holds Amanda at gunpoint; he wants those baby snakes - he’s been promised 10 million bucks for one. He and Amanda fight, but he doesn’t see the big snake behind him until it’s too late, or her knife stabbing him in the belly. Amanda throws a bomb at Hammett, the queen, and the baby snakes. The bomb blows up everything as Amanda walks back to the car.

Murdoch’s other man goes back to the blown-up factory and retrieves some surviving baby snakes. On the way out, he passes Amanda, who’s burning all the science-y records.

This story isn’t over…

Brian’s Commentary

This one was made for TV by the Sci-Fi channel simultaneously with the fourth film. The CGI is just atrociously bad with the snake. The characters are all cliched “types” that you’d expect to see in a cheaply made film.

The writers must have seen “Predator” a few times, as some of the characters and situations were ripped right from that film. In the previous film, the tough guy was killing anacondas with the throw of a knife; here, six guys empty their Uzis into one, repeatedly, and it doesn’t slow down.

It ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, obviously leading into the fourth film. Murdoch and his assistant are still alive and have a snake. Amanda is still alive, and she may or may not be back to fight snakes again.

It’s OK, but far from great. It’s got Hasselhoff, which is a big indicator of the quality of the film.

Kevin’s Commentary

The CGI is pretty bad in this one. And the story. And the characters. It’s made for TV production, and it shows.

I understand that the snake was supercharged with a serum, but it couldn’t have been nearly as bullet proof as it was in this production. Though a grenade in the mouth finally does the trick for one of them. Like the previous film, human greed and mistakes play a big factor.

I thought it was watchable, and I didn’t truly hate it, but it was low level entertainment.

2009 Anacondas: Trail of Blood

* Director: Don E. FauntLeRoy

* Writers: David C. Olson

* Stars: Crystal Allen, Linden Ashby, Danny Midwinter, and John Rhys-Davies

* Runtime: 1 hour, 29 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one follows the third movie closely as a sequel, with surviving baby snakes, Alex, and Murdoch back for more. As well as a bunch of new snake victims. Greed and mistakes are still supporting characters as well. It’s on par in overall quality with the third film, maybe a hair better. And if you saw that one you should see this one to see how things wrap up.

Spoilery Synopsis

With the retrieval of the blood orchid and the anaconda babies, the research continues in Peter’s lab. Now, the snakes can regenerate when their heads are cut off. We get a good look at the lab, and the big snake clearly wants out. It easily escapes and kills the scientist who had the snake at the end of the previous film.

At Murdoch’s house, Eugene arrives to pick up a million dollars if he’ll do a little job for Murdoch. Murdoch thinks the scientist stole the orchid formula and is offering it to the highest bidder. He wants Peter the scientist dead, and also Amanda if she should show up.

Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe (that’s where anacondas live, right?), a hiker gets lost in the woods. Alex has no idea how to read a paper map. He runs into Amanda and her two policeman assistants. They find signs of a big predator.

Not long after, Jackson, an archaeologist, tells his crew about the important discovery they’re about to make. They stop at a fallen tree and have to walk the rest of the way to their camp. They mention that there’s no cell service or radio out here.

Amanda’s group finds Peter’s enhanced orchids in his lab. She plants bombs to wipe out the flowers, but then the snake shows up and kills the two policemen. Amanda and Alex make their way out through a mine shaft. She hears the snake roaring behind her (do snakes roar now?) The snake is about to kill her when part of the roof collapses on it, and she gets away.

Jackson arrives in the dig’s camp, but there aren’t any people here. They’ve all gone missing. He soon finds their partially eaten bodies, but it’s too late in the afternoon to go back, so they have to camp there. By the time the rest of the team arrives, all the bodies have gone missing.

Eugene’s crew of assassins arrive at Peter’s lab.

Heather gets stung by a poisonous spider and gets sick, so they can’t all just walk out the woods today. There’s a whole, “we have to drain the poison” scene that looks pretty nasty. Jackson leaves her and Wendy at camp while they walk up to the excavation site. Jackson soon finds the bodies of the other team.

Alex runs through the woods, but Amanda has his lost car keys. She shows up and runs into the snake just in time to save Alex. She shoots at the snake, which draws the attention of both Eugene and Jackson’s groups. Everyone runs, but some of them aren’t fast enough.

Eugene then takes everyone hostage and insists that Amanda go and get the serum from the snake. Amanda explains to Scott about the serum, the orchids, and the snake. They stop at Peter’s house and Amanda finds the serum. Some of it is spilled, which is going to attract the big one.

Something blows up, and everyone runs in different directions. Scott sacrifices himself so that Amanda can get away. She blows up the snake, but it soon starts to regenerate.

Murdoch shows up at Eugene’s campsite. Vasile, the policeman who we thought died, is there, and he wants more money. Eugene double-crosses Murdoch, but shoots Vasile by mistake. Jackson knocks out Eugene and takes his gun.

Amanda and Jackson confront Murdoch, who wants the serum. He lets them go; the two of them, along with Alex and Heather get into a car and drive off. Murdoch injects himself with the serum, which immediately attracts the snakes. He’s healthy now, a very healthy snack for the big snake.

Amanda stops the car and blows up all the orchids.

Eugene wakes up and finds everyone is either dead or gone. He jumps on the back of Amanda’s car to escape and shoots Amanda. Jackson and Eugene fight on the roof of the car, with the anaconda right behind them. Amanda pulls the pins on Eugene’s grenades, and he and the snake blow into a million pieces.

As everyone drives off, we see that there are still snakes out there.

Brian’s Commentary

The snake sounds like a roaring lion every time we see it. I’m not sure why Amanda was so intent on blowing up the flowers, since curing cancer is usually considered a good thing. They don’t really need the snakes, that’s just a side effect of the testing.

The film mostly continues the plot from part three, but also incorporates some of the ideas of the second film as well. There’s not much connection to the original at all.

It does wrap up the previous film. Otherwise, it’s pretty lackluster.

Kevin’s Commentary

In addition to the roaring lion that Brian mentioned, there’s often the sound effect of a rattlesnake.

Machine gun shooting 101 - it’s a lot more effective to aim at what you want to shoot rather than randomly waving the gun in the air while holding the trigger down. There was too much of that - from pros who would know better.

It was a missed opportunity not showing the blown up pieces regenerating into new snakes after they left, but we’ll have to be satisfied with one still surviving being shown.

I thought it was consistent with the previous film, maybe a little better. I didn’t hate it but it’s pretty middling.

2024 Anaconda (Chinese)

* Director: Xiang Qiuliang and Xiang Hesheng

* Stars: Terence Yin, Nita Xia, Paul Che, Jiu Kong, Ken Lok, Wang Xing Chen, Wang Gang, Wang Zi Run, Xu Shao Hang, and Wu Hao

* Runtime: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is a Chinese reboot of the 1997 original movie, not a sequel. There’s similarities to the original, and quite a few differences too. A group of circus folks traveling the river run into deadly highjinx with bad people and badder snakes. So many snakes, of normal size and giant size. It moves well with entertainment and the action is good. We’d say it was just about as good, if not somewhat better, than the US original.

Spoilery Synopsis

The four men in the boat talk about the Red Anaconda, the worst kind, and that the place they are going to is cursed. Right away, there’s some treachery, as one guy stabs another in the neck and then cuts his head off– which is promptly eaten. They’re here to poach poisonous snakes, and they soon have sackfuls.

As one man carries a sack to the boat, he’s eaten whole by a giant anaconda. It then gets the third man, only leaving the nasty leader alive. He recognizes the crimson anaconda and smiles evilly. Credits roll.

We cut to a very weird variety show. During a water-escape act, everyone notices a big snake above the tank. It falls in, and the audience freaks out. Turns out, that’s part of the show. The audience doesn’t appreciate the show and they demand a refund. Mr. Jin comes in and buys the whole thing; he wants to take them all to Thailand. Lan doesn’t want to go and quits the act. She changes her mind and decides to come, along with her snake, Jimmy. They set sail.

Right away, one of the men on the boat gets snakebitten, but it’s not a poisonous variety. There’s a zombie jump scare, but it’s just a new act that one of the guys is developing for the circus.

The boat stops. The captain shows them a huge pile of garbage and debris that’s blocking the river. The boss doesn’t want to take a detour (as he’s got something sketchy planned), so they decide to blow up the stuff blocking the river. The debris is jam-packed with snakes, and it’s soon raining reptiles all over the boat. There are a lot of snakes.

There’s an accident, and a man falls overboard. He runs into Jeff, the snake-poacher guy we saw in the opening sequence. He joins them aboard the ship. Jeff helps when one of the men gets a snake stuck in his ear. Lan knows snakes, and she says the man was bitten by a poisonous snake and didn’t flinch. How many bites does it take to grow immunity? There’s something about Jeff that she doesn’t like.

That night, the captain goes overboard and disappears. In the morning, we see that Jeff is using the captain as bait for a really big snake. The birds all fly away. “Something big is coming,” Jeff warns. He briefly hooks the big snake, but it gets away. Still, everyone sees it. The snake grabs Jeff and drags him all over the river, but he manages to get away from it. The snake does eventually vomit up what’s left of the captain.

The snake comes up onto the boat and everyone hides from it as it prowls. The snake is very fast and very mean. Some fuel is spilled in the panic, and there’s a fire and explosion. The boat burns, and everyone is stuck in the jungle. Jeff says he can lead them out. No one trusts him, but they don’t have much choice. A-Li has been bitten by something and has 48 hours to get treatment or she’ll die.

The group camps in a cave, and there’s more drama with that. The little boy is attacked and rescued, Jeff eats a raw snake, and the girls bond over chocolate. Jin confides to Jeff that the others are his product; he’s selling them for organ transplants when they get to the destination. One of the two cousins is dripped on by the snake and gets some variety of hydrophobia, but he’s eaten before that’s too much of a problem. The other cousin gets it in the morning.

They soon arrive at Jeff’s boat, but he wants their help in catching the snake. Jin backs Jeff in the argument. The ones who won’t cooperate are tied up for use as bait. There’s a struggle, and the snake finally gets Jeff. Ali is wounded in the fight and dies as well.

The three remaining characters climb into Jeff’s boat, but it turns out that Jeff’s still not dead. Once again, the three are tied up as bait for the Crimson Anaconda. A whole group of anacondas show up, but they’re soon run off by the biggest of all. Jeff’s got a net trap set up, but it doesn’t work as well as he’d hoped. As it swallows him, the other three get out from the ropes and hide.

The three are about to die when, out of nowhere, snake Jimmy jumps down as a distraction as Chinese-Hodor jams a log down the snake’s throat. The snake also loses an eye. This enrages the snake enough that it charges right into one of the traps Jeff set for it and is beheaded.

As the trio sails away in Jeff’s repaired boat, the headless snake rises up and sticks out a tongue.

Brian’s Commentary

Being a much newer film, the CGI snakes are the best we’ve seen in the series. Yes, this is a “real” film in the series, as the Chinese company bought the rights to the series to make this. I never did catch most of the characters’ names, but they’re all distinctive enough that everyone is easily distinguishable from one another.

It’s nicely paced, looks fantastic, has a lot of humor, and works well overall.

Kevin’s Commentary

This one is a remake not a sequel. I went in expecting the worst, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Like Brian, I immediately noticed how much better the CGI was in this one vs. the US original and sequels. In addition to the CGI snakes, there are loads of practical effect snakes - this wouldn’t be a good one to watch if you have a phobia.

The boat captain is quite a character and looks like a caricature, and they are all at least a little quirky and interesting. The action scenes are very good.

I was very entertained and would recommend it.

2025 Anaconda

* Director: Tom Gormican

* Writers: Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten

* Stars: Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Steve Zahn, Thandiwe Newton, Daniela Melchior, and Selton Mello

* Runtime: 99 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A quartet of people on the fringes of show business obtain the rights to the original “Anaconda” movie and decide to remake it on location in the jungles of Brazil. Where there happens to really be a gigantic anaconda. It’s not a horror movie in itself, it’s a comedy adventure, but they are remaking a horror movie. It’s well made with a strong cast, but we both just thought it was okay.

Spoilery Synopsis

A French couple is out in the Amazon rainforest, and they know they’re in trouble. As she makes her escape, some guy is eaten by a giant snake. Credits roll.

We cut to a conference room, where Doug McCallister tells a scary story that’s really just his idea of a wedding video; he makes wedding videos. We also meet Ronald Griffin, who’s an actor playing “Doctor Number 3” but gets fired very quickly. On the way out, he stops to look at a poster for the original “Anaconda” film.

Both men wind up at Doug’s surprise birthday party that evening. They made amateur horror movies when they were thirteen, and they all miss it. Afterward, they all talk about the original “Anaconda” film again. Griff mentions that he’s got the rights to the film now. He wants to reboot the series, indie-style, filmed in the actual Amazon. Kenny the videographer and Clair the actress agree to participate in it. Doug is reluctant, but his wife is all for it.

The group gets into the process of writing, planning, and financing the film. They soon arrive in the rainforest, where we meet Santiago, the snake handler. Santiago knows all about anacondas, showing them one he has in a cage.

We also see Ana, that Frenchwoman from earlier, skulking around, still being hunted by strange men. She steals the keys to a boat and pretends to be the pilot; it’s the filmmaker’s boat.

The group starts filming right away. We get a montage of the actors and crew doing their things. Afterward, they all compare head-butting styles. Later that night, a big anaconda slithers through their bedrooms on the boat. In the morning, they find that it’s Santiago’s snake that got out of the crate.

In the morning, Griff freaks out and kills the snake, sorta accidentally. They have a funeral for the snake. One of the men following Ana is eaten by an even bigger snake. Santiago and Griff go out into the jungle to find a new snake. Griff “nopes” right back to the boat, but Santiago finds his snake– actually, it finds him.

Everyone gets off the boat to look for Santiago, and the bad men search the boat. Doug, Griff, and the others soon learn about the big snake, as they get trapped inside a camper van.

Somehow, we find ourselves in a high-speed chase, being pursued by the giant snake and illegal gold miners. They make it back to the boat and have to decide whether to go home empty handed or stick around and keep filming. “We came down here to remake ‘Anaconda,’ and now we’re in it.” Doug rewrites the script to incorporate what he’s seen and use Ana as his new hero character.

The next day, another boat passes them on the river. Those people are also doing a reboot of ‘Anaconda.’ Griff may have been exaggerating about having the rights to the film. Surprisingly, everyone gets upset.

Griff quits and goes off in a little dinghy to find the other movie boat. He soon finds it, crashed, sunk, and floating in the river. All those actors and crew are dead.

Back on the main boat, Ana picks up a gun and forces Claire, Kenny, and Doug off the boat. Not long after, Griff returns and finds everyone gone. Ana makes everyone carry big bags of illegal gold that she stole from the miners. The men who have been chasing them are policemen. As Ana menaces everyone, the snake approaches.

When the snake attacks Ana, everyone runs. Doug gets bitten by a spider, and there’s a whole extended thing about Kenny peeing on his leg. When Doug finally gets his leg peed on, it’s a major victory.

Doug starts to give a rousing speech to Griff just as the snake comes out of nowhere and snatches him. They later find him regurgitated under a tree. They decide to use his body, tied to a dead pig and squirrel, as a distraction for the snake while they run to a boat. Suddenly, Doug wakes up tied to a dead pig with a squirrel in his mouth and a giant snake right behind him. Turns out, the pig’s not dead either, which leads to some hilarity.

The group finds the base camp where that other party was filming the real “Anaconda” remake. Ice Cube, one of the actors from the film, shows up to join their group. “Who were you expecting, Jon Voight?” He says they were setting up pyrotechnics all over the jungle for his film.

We then get a montage of everyone getting ready to blow up the snake while on film. That doesn’t work so well, and the four soon find themselves cornered. Griff finally “heroes up” and shoots it with a flare gun, making the snake explode spectacularly.

We cut to Doug and Griff accepting an award for their unauthorized, probably illegal reboot film. They were then sued by Sony. J-Lo comes to Doug and wants him to direct the new, real reboot.

During the end credits, Santiago sits up in the jungle, amazed that he’s alive.

Brian’s Commentary

Honestly, I laughed more at the Chinese version from the previous year.

Still, it’s an interesting concept, remaking the movie that the film is based on while running into other people doing the same thing.

It’s fine for a goofy comedy, and it does use a lot of the horror tropes. Still it could have used more Jon Voight.

Kevin’s Commentary

It didn’t take long for me to grow weary of Jack Black and company trying to be funny. Though I did have some chuckles here and there, it didn’t satisfy me as a comedy.

I can’t fault the production values, and the cast worked hard at it, but I thought it was just okay overall.

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Two new films and a handful of weird oldies. We’ll open with “Grizzly Night,” a new dramatization of a true event. Also, we’ll take a look at the sci-fi “Merge” which hopefully isn’t based on true events. We’ll continue looking at the Pumpkinhead series with “Ashes to Ashes” and then the really old “It Came From Beneath the Sea” from way back in 1955. Lastly, Godzilla Returns with “Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack” from 2001.

All this as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #52, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 Grizzly Night

* Directed by: Burke Doeren

* Written by: Bo Bean, Katrina Mathewson, Tanner Bean

* Stars: Charles Esten, Oded Fehr, Brec Bassinger

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

In August 1967 in Glacier National Park, Montana, there were two fatal attacks by two different grizzly bears. Here they have milked this story into an hour and a half movie. It’s well made and the acting is decent, they captured 1967 pretty well. Brian liked it a lot, and Kevin says it feels like there’s a lot of filler that bored him some.

Spoilery Synopsis

A couple in a tent are harassed by a nosy grizzly bear as they hide in terror. This goes badly as credits roll.

It’s 1967, and this is based on a true story.

Eighteen hours before the attack, a woman files yet another report about the bear that’s been terrorizing the campers. The rangers are all busy with a firewatch and fire fighting after the lightning storm last night.

Joan, the new girl, gets assigned to lead an overnight hiking group since all the “real” rangers are busy. Julie calls her mother from the camp store; she’s going camping with Michelle, Paul, Denise, Raymond, Ronald, and Roy this weekend, since there’s nothing else to do. Everyone sets off on their respective hikes.

At the chalet, Joan stops with her group. Julie and Roy stop in, but there are no rooms available. Her and a few others have to sleep outside since the place is all booked up. Paul and Michelle’s group go to the lake and do some fishing.

Michelle’s group runs into a bear, and it takes their dinner. It’s too late to head to the ranger station, so they just hope it doesn’t come back. Roy staggers into camp and says a bear got Julie. The screaming wakes up Joan and the people at the chalet. We get a flashback, and see that they were the couple screaming before the credits.

Joan calls the main ranger, Gary, and reports the bear attack. He promises that help is on the way, but he’s a long way off. Gary then takes a helicopter to get there faster, but it’s awfully dark outside. Joan gets the people on the ground to light fires to give the copter a place to land, which finally works. The doctor patches up Roy and they load him onto the helicopter to the hospital.

Meanwhile, nine miles away, Denise wakes up, and the bear they saw earlier is back. The bear drags off Michelle, sleeping bag and all.

Gary, Joan, and the others search for Julie, and soon find signs of the attack in her campsite. They soon find her, still alive but wounded. Gary and Joan talk about leadership. Julie’s too far gone, so the priest moves in to do his thing as she dies. Gary explains that in 57 years, there hasn’t been a single grizzly attack until now.

In the morning, Michelle’s group is still out there, but they haven’t found her yet. They decide to walk to the ranger station and report what happened. Two attacks should be impossible, and the ranger there is skeptical at first. They search the woods and find… parts.

Many rangers show up, all armed; it’s time to kill the bears. Joan and Leonard talk about the likelihood of two bear attacks and whose fault this was.

Brian’s Commentary

This isn’t so much a horror movie as it is a drama about a terrifying situation. It starts out with all the horror movie tropes and characters, but then just focuses on what happens without playing up the bear or the drama excessively. It’s based on a true incident, and it doesn’t stray too far from the actual case.

It was quite good!

Kevin’s Commentary

This is indeed based on a true event. On the night of August 13, 1967, two young women were attacked and killed by two different bears miles apart in Glacier National Park, Montana - a heck of a coincidence. There’s an online article about the real thing that’s interesting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Grizzlies.

Here they expand the story out into a movie almost an hour and a half long. The sauce is spread mighty thin. It’s well made, but there isn’t a lot of substance. After the attacks, I found myself getting fairly bored.

2025 Merge

* Directed by: Bela Baptiste, Dalano Barnes, Richard Fenwick

* Written by: Bela Baptiste, Dalano Barnes, Richard Fenwick

* Stars: Achmed Abdel-Salam, Tatjana Alexander, Bela Baptiste

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 17 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s an anthology of science fiction short stories, each heavily depending on technology far ahead of where we currently are. It shows various ways humans could interact with such technology, and how it can interact with us when it has a mind of its own. The stories are pretty gentle, sweet, and romantic, with a zero body count. But there is uncertainty, a lack of control, and the potential for disaster making an undercurrent of horror if you look for it. The stories are all well written, well acted, and well directed. The CGI is a little heavy handed and obvious, but it’s entertaining. It reminded us of “Black Mirror.”

Spoilery Synopsis

A man has breakfast in a futuristic city and suddenly starts screaming.

Angst

A narrator explains that everything is perfect and everyone is happy now. Fear no longer exists, and that’s how he makes his business. He gives people phobias for excitement. We see a man become terrified of his own pet spider and a woman becomes claustrophobic. We return to that screaming man and see what he thinks he sees. “Embracing your fear allows you to be reborn,” he explains. The man offers the drug for free. Credits roll.

Soulmate

A couple talks in bed. He’s so glad he found her, he bought her a book. Turns out, this is a virtual world, and only the girl is real. She’s not allowed to be in there, and there’s an investigation into the illegal avatar. She goes back inside to break up with the man, who doesn’t understand. When she arrives back at work, the boss is sitting at her workstation; she’s going to be caught– but she isn’t. As the boss goes for a break, she deletes the AI logs.

The investigation eventually ends, and Anna goes back to work. She restores the deleted information and goes back inside for Neil, who no longer recognizes her. She gets a message: “Scenes no longer compatible with current software version.’ She deletes this newest meeting and then goes back in time to their first meeting. Anna meets Neil for the first time– again.

When Unfettered

Two men sit by their father, who dies. The father’s robot assistant, Ash, walks them through the process. The girls decide what to do with the house and also what happens with Ash, whom they don’t really want anymore. Ash goes outside for a walk, and she’s a lot more human than people expect. She meets a handicapped boy in the park and plays with him. Everyone thinks she’s great until the mom finds out she’s an AI, and then she gets rude. Then she meets and helps an old couple who are very nice.

Ash decides to never go home.

The First Time I Never Met You

John listens to recorded messages from his dead wife. He’s so broken up that he’s lost his job. Overdue notices litter his desk. He’s got some kind of plant that sends him back in time to the first time he met her. Their “first” date goes well; he’s a physicist, and she’s an evolutionary biologist. He talks about “rewinding” time. He’s so in awe at seeing her again that he acts strangely, knowing too much about her that she’s never told him. She’s so creeped out that she breaks it off and goes home.

Suddenly, he doesn’t remember why he’s there. He forgets his children and whole life, since now, none of that happened. He leaves the bar and goes back to his new, old life.

Subscribed

We open on a commercial for Vitalus, a new AI product. “Your life, upgraded!” We soon see that all the AI just lets people stay inside all the time. Carol gets a phone call, and it appears that maybe Vitalus is censoring the news and information she gets to keep her inside and addicted to the AI. It watches all her body functions everywhere, even on the toilet, and in bed. Luke keeps trying to get through to her, both on the phone and in-person, but the AI keeps dropping the call and running him off. The AI does not want her talking to him any more.

She wises up to all this, but “Vicky” still won’t let her out the front door. She shorts out the power and runs outside, where Vitalus Tases her and sends her back inside. She wakes up, and Vicky says it was all just a nightmare.

The Man Behind the Machine

Martin lives in a warehouse; a man from the Turing company comes to repossess his android. He’s an older model and is returned to Turing, where he meets a newer model. His signal is different; he’s malfunctioning and escapes back to Martin. He wants to choose what he wants, which is unique.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s way more sci-fi than horror, but these alternate, high-tech futures have a lot of overlap with horror. The first segment of this anthology has dodgy CGI and voice dubbing, but the others mostly look good and are well-acted. I have to admit, I didn’t really understand the final segment. The middle segments are the best of the bunch,

If you like “Black Mirror,” then you’ll probably enjoy this.

Kevin’s Commentary

The CGI was a little overused and obvious at times, but the technologies and stories were cool.

The stories were all at least pretty good. The last one was a bit confusing. I especially liked “When Unfettered.” What’s an autonomous AI robot to do when they lose their job because their master died?

I’d call it a win overall, not really horror, but I enjoyed it.

2006 Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes

* Directed by: Jake West

* Written by: Barbara Werner, Jake West, John Werner

* Stars: Lance Henriksen, Doug Bradley, Douglas Roberts

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This third movie is a sequel to the first movie, even bringing back several of the same characters. This time several wronged people want revenge and go to the witch Haggis to summon Pumpkinhead, and the main target tries to fight back. It’s not as good as the first one, but it was still pretty entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man named Bunt runs through the woods in a panic. Pumpkinhead is right behind him. When he catches him, he cuts an “X” in his forehead. And then Bunt wakes up. His boss, Doc Fraser, tells him it’s time to move the body. As Bunt hides the body, the ghost of Ed Harley, from the first film, comes and tells him bad things are coming his way.

A hiker in the woods spots Bunt dragging a corpse behind him. He runs to a nearby crematorium. Inside, Doc Fraser cuts open a dead man as his accomplices watch. The hiker stumbles in and interrupts things; on the way running out, he finds numerous other bodies. They soon catch the man and use him for parts.

Doc takes the man’s kidney to a man to sell it for him. Meanwhile, the now-kidneyless dead man wakes up, not as dead as they all thought. He flags down a truck and gets ride to town. Molly Sue takes him to the police station, who rush out to the crematorium and arrest the people there.

In the morning, the sheriff’s men clear out the bodies from the crematorium’s barn. They find lots of bodies. One of the bodies they dig up is in the middle of an old pumpkin patch; Doc Fraser is there, and this one doesn’t look familiar.

In jail, Bunt tells his accomplices about Pumpkinhead, who feeds on sins.

Back at the crematorium, the old woman from the woods shows up and looks at the weird body. “This one belongs to me. You outta know better than to disturb this one.”

Molly finds her dead son with the other bodies, and she’s angry. She wants revenge on whoever did this and wants the old woman’s help. She, along with a handful of friends, go to track down the old woman that night. The old woman seems more than happy to help. They all get their hands sliced for blood, and soon enough, the ritual is done. The twisted little skeleton writhes and becomes Pumpkinhead.

At jail, Bunt screams, “It’s coming for us!” And it does, right then. It kills the deputy, but the prisoners Bunt and Dahlia get away. They run home to her father, Doc Fraser. They all talk about the monster.

Oliver and Mary Sue go to see Doc; she’s not feeling well after the ritual. As soon as they leave, Pumpkinhead attacks Tiny, and all the baddies see it. They hop in the car and drive off. Bunt sees Ed Harley’s ghost in the road and makes them crash. Bunt gives us a flashback to the first film, when he encountered the monster.

Meanwhile, at the church, there’s a midnight memorial service for all those dead people they found. Doc arrives and sits with Molly and Oliver. Pumpkinhead arrives soon after, and the whole town sees the CGI creature jump through the skylight. The resulting carnage goes on for a long time.

Molly and Oliver talk about the curse. Why did Pumpkinhead go to the church? Who was it after?

Oliver, Ellie, and Ritchie regret calling up Pumpkinhead and want to undo what they did. They go back to the old woman, who says that Pumpkinhead can’t be stopped.

Doc goes to see Ritchie and tries to kill him but is interrupted by the monster. When Doc kills Ritchie, Pumpkinhead collapses, allowing the evil doctor to get away. Ellie and Oliver return and find the body, along with evidence that Doc was involved.

Molly is packing up to leave town when Doc arrives to kill her. Oliver arrives and warns her about Doc. Dahlia and Bunt pack up to leave as well. All of them decide to stop at Lenny the drug dealer’s house first for some reason.

Bunt comes to Oliver and Ellie and tells them everything. They plan to get the crematorium working and dispose of all those corpses, which might make the demon go away.

Doc and Molly have a talk. He did what he did to give the town free health care.

Meanwhile, Oliver and company burn all those bodies at the cemetery, shoving them into the crematory oven like firewood. Molly holds Doc at gunpoint as Pumpkinhead kills Lenny and Dahlia in the next room. The whole place explodes, and only Doc seems to have survived.

At the crematorium, Ed comes to Bunt one more time to sound ominous and foreboding. Doc comes in and shoots at Ellie but misses; Pumpkinhead comes in and kills Doc. There’s only one more body left to cremate. Ellie throws it into the fire, but nothing happens. Ellie then crawls into the fire and burns herself up– she was the last of the four who conjured up the monster.

Pumpkinhead collapses and shrivels back into the body of Ed Harley before dissolving into a skeleton. The FBI guys finally show up and talk to Oliver and Bunt.

The old woman comes to the crematorium and takes Ellie/Pumpkinhead’s little body back to the pumpkin patch.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s a decent enough continuation of the story from the first film. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it does seem to stick to the information we learned in the first film.

Lance Henriksen returns from the first film, but his part is basically just a cameo as a ghost. Doug Bradley has a substantial role as the villain of the film. These two are both good, as always, but most of the rest of the cast is mediocre at best.

It’s alright, but nothing special.

Kevin’s Commentary

Mediocre CGI strikes again and too often. The creature looks good when he’s a practical effect though.

The story is a pretty good sequel of the first movie, following the same rules. I saw in the trivia that Lance Henriksen was so embarrassed by the film that he snuck out of a Q&A without taking the stage, but I didn’t think it was that bad. It’s not as good as the first one was, but it’s entertaining.

1955 It Came from Beneath the Sea

* Directed by: Robert Gordon

* Written by: George Worthing Yates, Harold Jacob Smith

* Stars: Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, Donald Curtis

* Run Time: 1 hour, 19 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The “It” is a gigantic octopus (or hexopus if you look closely - the budget was tight and it’s a couple arms short). The military and lab stuff is all realistic looking because it was the real thing, mostly. The puppetry, miniatures, and rear screen use are pretty obvious but they get the job done. The original was black and white, but it’s since been colorized. It’s a fun creature feature of the 1950s, worthy of being called a classic of its time.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get a military voiceover talking about the new submarines. The human mind had thought of everything… except that which was beyond his comprehension… Credits roll.

We are shown the wonders of the periscope. Commander Matthews talks to another officer, Griff, about how impressive the ship is. Suddenly, something big shows up on the sonar that might be following them. They accelerate, but the thing is gaining on them. It bumps the ship from behind as it catches up. Also, there’s a radiation warning, but it’s not coming from their engine. They finally manage to escape whatever it is and head to dry-dock for repairs.

The men find something strange stuck in the rudder, and the scientists had to analyze it. Dr. John Carter and Professor Lesley Joyce, two marine biologists, explain that what they brought in was just a small piece of a much larger creature. Mathews likes Joyce and makes that abundantly clear.

The scientists work for a couple of weeks and then report that the creature is an octopus, albeit a giant one, that lived on the bottom of the ocean until H-Bombs stirred up the ocean floor and irradiated it. It can no longer eat fish, so it may be hunting for a higher form of life, maybe even man. The heads of the military don’t seem impressed or believe that the problem is a giant octopus.

We cut to a cargo ship out in the ocean, and they spot a huge tentacle outside the ship. It pulls the whole ship down. Carter and Joyce are finished with the military and ready to move on to their next project, but Mathews isn’t going to give her up that easily. The admiral revokes their transfer and requires them all stay– they know about the cargo ship that went down. The survivors tell the story, and it’s still a little hard to believe. The military heads still aren’t convinced. The survivor recants his tales, and Joyce goes to meet with him before he’s released. She’s smooth and crafty about getting the sailor to tell about what he saw.

The military shuts down all shipping in the Pacific as they hunt for the monster. Joyce warns that they might be able to kill the thing once they do find it. The main characters all split up to run down a few leads as they hunt for the octopus.

They soon find a wrecked car, a missing family, and odd circles in the sand on a beach. That must be the place! Instead of investigating, Mathews and Joyce are soon making out on the beach. They soon get an actual sighting.

The Navy plans to trap the creature in San Francisco Bay. Carter talks about the need to destroy the creature’s brain; they have a special weapon for the job– a jet-propelled torpedo. Joyce explains that this kind of thing has happened in the past.

The creature makes another appearance, and they attack it with depth charges and electricity. This only manages to anger it, and it climbs up onto the Golden Gate Bridge. Carter has to drive out to the middle of the bridge to turn off the electricity. Mathew and Joyce soon follow to pick him up. The trio barely make it off the bridge before the monster crushes it. The octopus eventually gives up and goes back into the water and vanishes.

The monster soon reappears at the ferry terminal, where there are a lot of people still around. As it starts to pull itself up onto land, Mathews and his submarine approach. They dive and prepare torpedoes, but the harbor is pretty crowded, so it’s gonna take some luck. They embed a torpedo into it, but then it grabs and holds onto the sub.

Mathews himself puts on Scuba equipment to blast the sub loose with explosives. It doesn’t work, so Carter tries next; he shoots it in the eye, which really gets its attention. Griff orders that the torpedo be detonated, and the octopus blows up. Carter and Mathews are picked up, alive, not long after.

Mathews wants Joyce to marry him, but she’s argumentative and wants to write a book instead.

Brian’s Commentary

Could Mathews be any more inappropriate with Joyce if he tried? He’d be up on charges for coming on that strong today. It’s the 50’s, where “No” always means “Yes.”

The filmmakers had access to a lot of military sets and equipment, probably all leftover from the war, and they weren’t afraid to incorporate them into making the film seem more realistic.

The monster is one of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion creations, and it’s really well done. It crushes ships, the Golden Gate, and various buildings near the ferry port. It’s not much compared to modern effects, but for the time, this was all groundbreaking stuff.

Kevin’s Commentary

The interior submarine scenes were really filmed in a submarine. How cool is that?

What’s worse than a gigantic angry octopus? A radioactive gigantic angry octopus.

It’s strange to think that everyone on the screen is seventy years older than they were when this was released.

It’s very 1950s in sexual and social attitudes, culture, and technology, which I thought added to the fun. It seems to take a long time to get to showing the creature, but we do finally get a payoff.

2001 Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack

* Directed by: Shusuke Kaneko

* Written by: Keiichi Hasegawa, Shusuke Kaneko, Masahiro Yokotani

* Stars: Chiharu Niyama, Ryudo Uzaki, Masahiro Kobayashi

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 45 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one is another sequel to the original 1954 Godzilla that disregards all those that have come since - except for a dig at the 1998 American remake starring Matthew Broderick when an admiral mentions a creature looking something like Godzilla that attacked the United States. It’s a bad Godzilla vs. several good guy monsters and there’s lots of big creature action, carnage and explosions, as well as humans to root for. It’s not the best of them, but it’s entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a Japanese Navy meeting where they talk about the 1954 Godzilla attack (I suspect we’re going to ignore all the other films). There was a monster that looked like Godzilla that attacked the USA, but the real one hasn’t been seen since. Suddenly, a US nuclear sub has gone missing. The Japanese send a deep-sea rescue sub down after it. Suddenly, a giant monster arrives on the scene. Guess who? Credits roll!

At Mt. Myoko, a reporter talks about the monster of the mountain. They’re making a pseudo-entertainment documentary to entertain children. There’s a sudden earthquake, and it’s clear that there was a real monster involved.

There’s some kind of earthquake that night, and Yuri, the reporter, wants to investigate. The army shoots a special “digging” missile at the mountain. An old truck driver claims he saw a monster last night, and it must have been Godzilla. Yuri is given a book, “The Guardian Monsters,” and some of the pictures inside look familiar.

Yuri’s father is an admiral, and he thinks she drinks too much. She turns on the TV and learns about another monster attack; this one left a bunch of kids wrapped in cocoons.

Yuri interviews an old man who has been saying Godzilla will return for years now. He says she needs to wake up Ghidorah to stop Godzilla this time. Baragon, Mothra, and Ghidorah are the guardian monsters. They are supposed to sleep for 10,000 years, so it’s too soon to wake them up.

Yuri’s father, the admiral, has a flashback to 1954, and it wasn’t a happy memory. A giant monster attacks, and everyone says it’s Godzilla, but we know better; it’s Baragon. The actual Godzilla soon arrives on shore and heads right toward the other monster. Soon, they’re fighting as Yuri and Kadokura watch from afar. Little Baragon doesn’t have a chance. Meanwhile, the old harbinger breaks open some ice we saw in a nearby cave.

The military is activated to take on Godzilla, and fighter jets are dispatched. Yuri obtains a bike and sets off toward Godzilla to get the story rather than follow along with the evacuation of the area. Not surprising, the missiles only manage to make Godzilla more angry, and he shoots the jets out of the air with his atomic breath. Yuri gets it all on film and follows Godzilla from a distance.

Another creature wakes up from the ice cave where the old man is; Ghidora. But wait, there’s more! Mothra also hatches from her cocoon at the same time. All of them head toward Godzilla. Baragon, Mothra, and Ghidorah are all heading toward Tokyo, where Godzilla is also on the way.

Mothra shoots some kinds of spores that knock Godzilla over onto a building. He retaliates with nuclear breath, which really makes a mess of the city– and Yuki, who survives somehow.

Ghidorah shows up, and he’s dramatic with his three-headed lightning bite. Godzilla, on the other hand, is unstoppable. The humans then open fire on Godzilla, which just results in an angry Godzilla blasting the military.

Godzilla blasts Mothra, who dissolves into millions of glowing lights that reinvigorate the apparently dead Ghidorah. The two merge into something new that’s blast proof. Super-Ghidorah clobbers Godzilla explosively and the fight moves underwater.

Yuri learns that her father is leading the counterattack from a small submarine that isn’t really meant for war. They shoot Ghidorah by mistake, and that goes badly. But then Ghidorah is reanimated and supercharged by a chunk of stone from one of the talisman statues.

There’s still more battling between the two until Godzilla finally blasts Ghidorah into dust. Baragon and the other two guardians are visible as golden energy that combines and then dissolves.

The admiral pilots his submarine right down Godzilla’s throat, and Godzilla swallows. He’s not immediately killed and uses one of those drill-missiles to shoot his way out. Godzilla tries to blast Yuri and Kadokura, but his nuclear blast shoots out the wrong hole and he collapses into the water. He tries blasting again and blows himself up. The sub bobs to the surface.

Yuri and the admiral are reunited, and both are OK. Tokyo, on the other hand, looks to be mostly gone now. Down in the harbor, we see Godzilla’s still-beating heart– nothing else, just the beating heart. He’ll be back!

Brian’s Commentary

The monsters are still men (and a woman this time) in rubber suits, but there’s also a great deal of really dated CGI here. The bad CGI is pretty distracting this time, because there’s so much of it, but there is some good carnage and explosions. Godzilla’s fire breath is really impressive this time around.

This is the one and only film where Ghidorah is considered one of the “good guys” rather than a main villain creature. This one endows the Guardian Monsters with magical healing powers and a bit of religious mystery to them, which basically lets them come back from the dead several times.

Kevin’s Commentary

This one had more of a tangible body count than typical. Not gory graphic, but many instances of people getting stomped and blown up and crushed in rubble. Plus aftermath showing the many wounded.

Godzilla is purely the bad creature here, which isn’t typical either.

Mothra looks especially cool in this one, I thought. Fluorescent colors and more movement from the wings and legs than we usually see. I also liked the gold dragon look of King Ghidorah.

This wasn’t the best of them, but it was entertaining.

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Trash and treasure this time. We’ll open with “Killer Whale,” our first film released in 2026. We’ll then watch a fun zombie film, “Queens of the Dead” from last year, as well as “Dust Bunny” just recently released. For our oldies, we’ll contend with “Godzilla vs Megaguirus” from 2000 and “Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings” from back in 1993.

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #52, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 Killer Whale

* Directed by: Jo-Anne Brechin

* Written by: Jo-Anne Brechin, Katharine McPhee

* Stars: Virginia Gardner, Mel Jarnson, Mitchell Hope

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Two young women end up trapped on a tropical atoll by a killer whale with a thing against humans. The acting is a moderately bright spot in a slog of bad pacing, a lame simple script, and way too much CGI and greenscreen. We didn’t care much for this one.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open with some discussion of Orcas, killer whales, and the whale at the Sea World-ish amusement park. Chelsea and her friend Dana, who work there, talk about how their whale, Ceto, just isn’t the same since they took away her baby. The whale eats Chelsea, and the credits roll.

Maddie and Chad talk about Trish, who’s busy with school. He gives her a cello necklace and leans in for a kiss, just as a gunman comes into the place to rob them. There’s a struggle, and the gun goes off, damaging Maddie’s hearing. Everyone survives the attack, but, from out of nowhere, Chad is killed by the robber’s truck.

One year later, Trish comes to visit Maddie and offers to take her on a trip. Maddie doesn’t want to go, but Trish is persuasive. They fly to an island resort in Thailand.

On the beach, Trish brings up the topic of Ceto, which disturbs Maddie. Josh, a local guy, talks about the local whale, Ceto, who has been in captivity for twenty years and lost her baby two years ago. That night, the three of them sneak into the run-down amusement park to see Ceto.

Maddie gets to see Ceto up close in the aquarium. She hates that the whale is trapped here, but then she watches as the whale kills a maintenance worker. Maddie, Trish, and Josh are then chased out of the park by a security guard.

In the morning, the trio takes a Jet-Ski out to an isolated island. The locals say this place is cursed, and something happened a few years ago, and now no one comes here. In almost no time flat, they lose Maddie’s phone, the Jet-Ski, and Josh to an Orca attack.

The two girls are now stuck on a pizza-shaped floatie and can see the giant orca swimming around beneath them. It’s Ceto, the same whale that was in the park last night, somehow. They can tell by the distinct dorsal fin. Trisha jumps off the pizza and swims to a big rock, Maddie chickens out. There’s some quick drama, and Maddie soon ends up on the rock as well.

The two eventually calm down and talk about how Ceto could possibly be here. “Orcas have never ever killed anyone in the wild.”

The girls take a nap, and when they wake up, they see a boat, but it’s too far away to see them. We’re reminded that Maddie is deaf, which is probably going to mean something later.

One of Josh’s arms floats by, and Maddie snags it with her bag. It’s not for lunch, she wants his wristband flashlight. When night falls, they use it as a signal, but no one comes. The girls talk about Maddie playing the cello again and going back to school.

They use Chad’s cremation stone to break open a shelled thing to have something to eat. Afterwards, she decides it’s finally time to throw the stone away. Trish admits that she put the robber up to the robbery that night; it’s her fault Chad was killed. We get a whole dramatic guilt-spiel from Trish. Again, we’re reminded about Maddie’s hearing aids.

In the morning, Trish explains her plan to swim to the atoll surrounding their rock, but Maddie has her hearing aids off and doesn’t even know what’s going on. She makes it, but Maddie only makes it to another rock. When Trish is distracted by a plane flying over, the orca jumps up into the shallows and drags Trish back into the water– and bites her leg off. She crawls back up on the beach but soon bleeds to death.

Night falls, and Maddie decides to swim to the atoll. She makes it without too much issue and then makes her way around to where Trish’s body is and buries her in the sand.

Maddie remembers that Trish said her phone was waterproof, but it went down with the Jet-Ski. Can she retrieve it? She does. Rather than get out of the water, she activates the phone right there, in the water. It’s unclear if she sent an SOS or the phone didn’t work.

This is followed by a string of ridiculous underwater hide-and-seek, resulting in Maddie stabbing the Orca in the eye with her broken Cello bow stick.

When the sun comes up a helicopter arrives; the phone’s SOS did work after all.

Brian’s Commentary

Brian’s Rating:**

Although the whole thing probably wasn’t filmed in front of a green screen, it seems like most of the outdoor scenes were. There are a lot of outdoor scenes, so… ouch! The whale is either as large or as small as the plot requires; sometimes it’s huge, and other times it squeezes right up to the rock.

I’ve seen this compared to “Fall” (2022), and it is a very similar theme: two girls stuck in a bad place. The other film did it better.

It’s contrived, the characters make one stupid decision after another, and the whole thing with the whale’s location makes no sense. The acting and dialogue are atrocious as well.

It’s pretty terrible.

Kevin’s Commentary

Kevin’s Rating: *

So much green screen and CGI. It is so, so obvious and overused.

I agree with the comparisons to “Fall” and that movie did it better. The three leads have some skill, but they can’t overcome the effects, direction, and script. It gets worse as it goes along until it culminates with a weak ending.

I didn’t like it.

2025 Queens of the Dead

* Directed by: Tina Romero

* Written by: Erin Judge, Tina Romero

* Stars: Jaquel Spivy, Kay O’Brian, Quincy Dunn-Baker

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 41 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s drag queens, with their friends and family, versus a zombie outbreak. Holed up in a club against the backdrop of a larger apocalypse, there’s a lot of humor with a body count that racks up. The pacing is a little draggy in places, and the zombie action is pretty low for most of the movie, but it’s a fun watch.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on an over-the-top drag queen walking down the street on the way to church. When she goes into the church, her Grindr alert goes off. She finds the man’s phone, but it’s covered in blood. Then she finds him, but he doesn’t look quite alive anymore. She’s bitten by the zombie priest. Credits roll.

We cut to a musical number interspersed with scenes of a dancing nurse, Sam, at the hospital. Sam talks to Jane, a patient with issues, who wants to leave.

On the stage, Kelsey and Ginsey argue with dancers in the show. Yasmine phones Dre that she’s too sick to do the show tonight, but she’s obviously faking it. Jax and Nico are dancers, and they’re elevens on the gay scale. Jane watches their livestream and tells Sam about it. Sam knows Yasmine and Dre, but that was another time. Jane wants to meet all of them and tell them they’ve got bad drugs. Nurse Lizzy tells Dre that Barry is coming over to unplug her toilet. There’s a lot going on.

Everyone’s ready for the big show, and Dre breaks the news that Yasmine’s not coming tonight, so Ginsey will have to headline the act. Nico’s more than willing to step up. They’ve presold a ton of tickets, but hardly anyone has shown up. Barry gets all the pronouns mixed up. When Sam shows up, just as a guest, everyone knows him. Sam used to be “Samonsay,” a major drag star.

Barry finds a dead rat in the toilet and takes it out to the garbage. As he’s out there, we see that pre-credit drag queen stumble in.

Sam tells Ginsey why he’s been out of action for a while. It was stage fright, and he just couldn’t do it anymore. He starts to change into his costume but then chickens out again. Barry gets a bit of news on his phone about disturbing events in Manhattan. Out on the dance floor, the zombie queen starts looking for people to eat. Barry grabs an axe, but it’s Kelsey who gets hacked. Things go South from there.

Sam goes into nurse mode and works on Kelsey’s chopped up leg. Dre tries to call an ambulance and gets a busy signal for 911. Then a shelter in place alert sounds over all their phones. Everyone argues about what’s going on, but it’s all over the news and social media, so they don’t argue long. Jimmy, the bar owner, has some weapons hidden. The Mayor, Tom Savini, comes on and tells everyone to stay home, “This is not a George Romero movie!”

At the hospital Jane and Lizzy see that it’s happening there as well. A man in a bloody bunny suit attacks them.

At the club, Jax the dancer is clearly a zombie now, and the others all see what he’s become. They all argue some more about what to do about him. They lock him in a dancer’s cage. Next, they catch Yasmine sneaking in through the window. Jimmy is pulled out the window and bitten.

The front door is cut open, and new people come in, led by Pops, Kelsey’s girlfriend and fiancee. She mentions a boat waiting for them. Dre wants to wait for Lizzy to arrive, but most of the rest want to go to the boat. A zombie stumbles in, and she drills him through the head.

Sam and Dre put Jimmy in the freezer and talk about how he’s changed. After consulting a paper map, several of the group decide to go for a truck, but first, they all change their outfits. Nico, Sam, and Ginsey all dress up to go out on electric scooters.

The group makes their way through the horde of zombies, who are mostly interested in their phones. Sam and Ginsey talk about acceptance and the need for approval. They’re attacked, and with her dying words, Ginsey encourages Sam to be himself.

Back at the club, there are now zombie rats, and they get Pops. Dre turns on the music to distract everyone, and they dance. Lizzy and Jane have been trapped in a car, Nico’s trapped outside as well, but all the zombies hear the loud music and head toward the club. Meanwhile, Barry tells Dre that Lizzy is pregnant, which she did not know.

Sam returns to the club, and he’s got a plan. We get a montage of the group doing various things that might have something to do with the plan. When they’re ready, they open all the doors and let the dead in. Once the dance floor is full of zombies, Samonsea makes her return to the stage with Yasmine and Barry’s backup.

Everyone makes it out the back door just as Lizzy, Jane, and Nico drive up in a parade float. They all drive away to the boat, trailed by the zombies.

Brian’s Commentary

As you might guess, it’s full of gay, trans, and drag queen jokes, and some are really good. Most of the good laughs are in listening to the various characters’ reactions to the weirdness going on. All the characters get good scenes, and the dialogue is mostly hilarious.

The zombie makeup is fun, although nothing serious. There’s surprisingly little gore involved. It never slows down, and it never gets boring. The jokes mostly drop away in the final half hour as the zombies start getting more serious, but it stays entertaining throughout.

Fun!

Kevin’s Commentary

Director and co-writer Tina Romera is a daughter of George A. Romero - zombies run in the family. The one liners are abundant in this, and the humor is one of the best parts of the movie. The zombie action is actually kind of low-key for much of the movie, with it more of a thing in the background. I thought it was a fun one.

2025 Dust Bunny

* Directed by: Bryan Fuller

* Written by: Bryan Fuller

* Stars: Mads Mikkelson, Sophie Sloan, Sheila Allen

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 46 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Set in a colorful alternate reality with magic and fantasy, a little girl recruits her assassin neighbor to take care of the monster under her bed that she thinks ate her parents. There’s real danger, viewed through the eyes of a child, so we wonder through much of the movie if the monster is real or not. It’s surreal, quite funny, and very entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a blob of dust coming in through the window and rolling around a child’s room. It eventually settles under the bed; it’s a dust bunny! The little girl on the bed above sits up and screams. Aurora’s parents look under the bed for monsters and say there’s nothing there but dust bunnies. She goes out and sleeps on the fire escape instead.

Aurora watches her neighbor come home from a trip; a magic firefly points the way. The next night, she follows him into what appears to be “The Blade Runner District” according to Kevin; masks and fireworks and dragon costumes are everywhere. She watches as her neighbor goes fully CGI-Ninja and kills a bunch of guys during a fireworks explosion.

There’s a whole over-the-top battle scene, and Aurora watches it all from the roof. She then follows the man home again. The man knows he’s being followed and wipes up his own blood drippings with his socks. He spots Aurora going back into her apartment across the hall.

Aurora is still terrified of the dust bunny. That night, it eats her parents. She does “the floor is lava” to avoid getting too close to the thing under her bed. It then bursts out of the floor and terrorizes her excessively.

In the morning, everything is back to normal– almost. We cut to a musical number in a very stylish church. Aurora runs off with the collection plate.

The neighbor in 5B reads his mail in front of a taxidermied light-bulb-butt chicken. He gets a note from Aurora with money, wanting to hire him. He wants to know what she wants him to do. She’s offered him $327.42 to kill the monster. She knows he killed the dragon in Chinatown. She tells him that the monster ate her parents.

5B goes over to Aurora’s house, and her parents’ room is a torn-up mess. There’s no blood, but she says it ate them whole. Something went on there, but he’s not convinced about monsters and sends her home.

The neighbor in 5B, who is nameless, goes to see Laverne, his contact/handler. She likes her sandwich– a lot. He asks her about the neighbors who disappeared. He thinks “the monster” was after him and got the wrong apartment. He’s got a whole different kind of monster in mind. She tells him not to get involved.

That night, the Neighbor hears someone coming and prepares to kill them. The very human assassins come in through the door and the window to finish off Aurora. The assassins beat the 5B neighbor and prepare to kill Aurora, but then the dust bunny intervenes. There’s a difference of opinions between Aurora and the hitman about what happened to one of the killers.

Aurora wants to watch 5B chop up the dead assassin’s body, but he won’t allow that. He does, however, let her help wrap up the pieces. He tells her that the assassins came to kill one of them and that there aren’t any monsters. He explains the whole thing, but she knows better about the monsters.

Brenda, from Child Protective Services, comes to the door, and 5B pretends to be her foster family. He doesn’t believe she’s a social worker, and he’s right.

Turns out, this is the third family that Aurora’s monster has eaten. She originally wished for it to happen, and it did. She explains all about the monster and why it’s there.

The hitman goes to see Laverne, who admits that she sent the assassins to “help” him with getting rid of Aurora, who witnessed him killing the men in Chinatown. Aurora comes to the meeting, which perplexes Laverne.

Aurora wants him to be her new dad, but he’s got way too many problems for that. They go out for Chinese food and talk to a threatening man.

Brenda returns and has a word with Aurora’s “father.” Aurora warns her about the monster in the floor, but that goes about how it always does. Laverne shows up. A whole squad of killers arrives downstairs. Brenda admits that she’s FBI and investigating the disappearances of Aurora’s families.

The Chinese gang and the FBI attack at the same time. Soon, they all believe in monsters. It is, in fact, a giant bunny, and it eats the Chinese gang, one by one.

Soon, it’s just Aurora and the Hitman against the monster, and then it swallows him whole.

In the morning, Aurora hears pounding under the floor, and then the neighbor claws his way back up. He had a bottle of thumb-sucking deterrent in his pocket, and the monster didn’t like it.

Laverne comes in, and she’s not got Aurora’s best interest in mind. We also find out that she’s his mother. 5B warns her to get off the floor, but too late. That goes badly for her.

The monster does one more final attack, but it won’t eat Aurora. It’s her monster, after all. She and the hitman go down the fire escape and move to the country. The monster follows along, under the car.

Brian’s Commentary

Brian’s Rating:*****

Every kid who had a monster under their bed will get this one.

As Kevin points out, this feels like Burton and del Toro got together and made a film, but they had nothing to do with it. It’s an American-made film, but it feels very European to me. It’s very fairy-tale-like and surreal in many places.

This one is hard to classify. It definitely starts out like a children’s movie, but it’s extremely violent, and the horror bits seem excessive for a kids’ movie. It’s not a comedy, but it’s very funny.

This is awesome!

Kevin’s Commentary

Kevin’s Rating: *****

My first thought was this looks a bit like something directed by Guillermo del Toro with influences of Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. It’s actually Bryan Fuller’s directorial debut, and he did a great job.

I liked the colorful-surreal-alternate-reality vibe. Very cool. The use of CGI is liberal, but I thought it worked well. And there are practical effects too, like the taxidermied chicken lamp with the lightbulb in its butt - I need one of those.

I thought it was excellent.

2000 Godzilla vs. Megaguirus

* Directed by: Ishiro Honda, Masaaki Tekuza

* Written by: Hiroshi Kashiwabara, Wataru Mimura

* Stars: Misato Tanaka, Shosuke Tanihara, Masato Ibu

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 45 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one seems to be in an alternate timeline, once again ignoring all the movies except the 1954 original. It’s said that after that attack, Japan rebuilt and moved the capital to Osaka. And the technology is advanced even more than in some of the other Godzilla films. There are some elements in this one that step up the horror, and it’s got the giant creature fighting with collateral damage we’ve come to expect. It’s entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get a news flashback to the 1954 Godzilla attack on Tokyo. He smashed the city and then walked back into the ocean as Japan rebuilt. Then, in 1966, he returned for more, this time to attack Japan’s first nuclear reactor. Japan then gave up on nuclear power plants. In 1996, the government decided to once again experiment with energy production, this time, with a plasma generator.

Kiriko Tsujimori is one of the soldiers tasked with defending the city against Godzilla in Osaka. He’s returned yet again. The soldiers shoot him with bazookas, but that does nothing. He’s heading for the clean energy factory, smashing everything in his path, including Kiriko’s superior officer.

In Tokyo, 2001, we see Kiriko is with G-Grasper, and she goes to visit Kudo, who is good with tiny robots. She’s recruiting for an anti-Godzilla unit. She introduces him to the team. We see that most of them have some history against Godzilla, and they’ve designed a weapon powered by a black hole to fight him; he can’t beat that! As the chief scientist explains all this, suddenly, the radar spots something big in the ocean.

Three months later, a little boy sneaks into a military facility and sees a bunch of people working on a huge gun. We see that it’s the G-Grasper team, now ready to test their weapon. It works impressively. Uh-oh. There’s a space-time wormhole left behind, but it soon fades away.

That night, the little boy sees something outside his window. Turns out, that wormhole didn’t close, and it’s allowing strange flying creatures through. He also finds a large egg that he takes with him. It makes a mess at home, so he dumps it into the sewer.

Kudo tells Kiriko that he’s designed a tracking device. Meanwhile, in the sewers under the city, the egg multiplies. A couple of water department guys show up to fix a leak, and we see something nasty right above them. The dragonfly-like creature then kills a couple of people graphically.

The G-Grasper people detect Godzilla again; this time, they confirm it. Kiriko pilots the futuristic Griffon fighter to investigate. They find one of the bug-creatures, but it’s dead– Godzilla must have killed it. Kiriko ends up having a close encounter with Big G and climbs up onto his back. She shoots him with the tracker.

The black hole weapon is now completed and shot into space on a satellite. The plan is to shoot Godzilla from orbit.

The dead bug is analyzed, and it’s a Meganula, an Earth-insect that usually lives in large swarms but is now extinct. Suddenly, large parts of Tokyo are flooded, but they don’t know why. They find more eggs deep under the water.

Kiriko explains her plan to lure Godzilla to an isolated island and then blast him with Dimension Tide, the black hole weapon.

In Tokyo, soldiers discover hundreds of Meganulas, far too many to shoot with their rifles. At the same time, Kiriko prepares to blow up Godzilla forever. Just as they’re about to push the button, a zillion dragonflies arrive on the scene and swarm over Godzilla. They sting and attach themselves to him, draining his energy. There are too many, even for his fire breath.

The humans fire the weapon anyway, and it sucks in everything on the island. Still, some of the meganylas survive, and so does Godzilla. They can’t fire again for another hour, so that’s bad. The bugs fly away, and Godzilla follows them.

The insects go back to flooded Tokyo and deposit their energy into a big thing sleeping underwater. The thing awakens, and it’s another kaiju. It’s a giant dragonfly, and its wings tear up the buildings with which they come into contact. It’s also got a sonic screech that’s devastating to the buildings. Kudo gets hurt, and when he wakes up, they explain that the new creature is called Megaguirus, a sort of queen bee of the Meganulas.

Godzilla returns to Tokyo, but the Megaguirus is there as well. They prepare to fire Dimension Tide again, but something goes wrong. Only Kudo can fix it, using his weird anime app. The fight between the monsters rages on, and Megaguirus is very fast in the air. It’s back-and-forth for a long time, but Godzilla eventually wins.

Godzilla’s in downtown Tokyo now, and he’s making a real mess. Mr. Seguiro won’t spill his secrets, but he seems to know what Godzilla’s after. Also, for some reason, Dimension Tide starts falling from orbit. They can get off one more shot before it’s too late. Turns out, there’s a secret plasma energy project at the science center, and that’s why Godzilla’s here.

All the heroes have to work together to make the weapon lock onto Godzilla as the satellite falls from the sky. The satellite fires just before exploding, and the black hole comes down right on top of Godzilla, who shoots it with his atomic breath. There’s a big bang, and there’s no sign of a giant creature.

Tokyo, on the other hand, is a mess. Will they rebuild? Yes. Time passes, and Kiriko comes back for Kudo again– there are more signs of kaijus in the ocean. It’s not all over yet…

After the credits, we see the little boy at school; he hears Godzilla roar!

Brian’s Commentary

Did we ever get an explanation as to why Tokyo flooded?

Well, OK, then. This one moves Godzilla back into the realm of horror as the bug-things kill people across town– it’s pretty graphic, the most we’ve seen in a Godzilla film.

There’s a lot of noticeable CGI in this one, but considering the age of the film, it’s not terrible. The music is good, the monster effects are very well done, and even the monster battles are creative. I’d go so far as to say this is the best of the monster-battles we’ve seen, even the slow-motion parts.

The CGI is overused and pretty dated, but other than that, this is one of the better ones.

Kevin’s Commentary

I was very surprised at the one-on-one attacks from the Meganula, before we saw the mega-sized queen. It’s gory monster carnage right out of a horror movie.

The CGI looks pretty obvious, but the models and practical effects mostly look pretty good.

It was very entertaining.

1993 Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings

* Directed by: Jeff Burr

* Written by: Ivan Chachornia, Constantine Chachornia, Andrew Osborne

* Stars: Andrew Robinson, Ami Dolenz, Soleil Moon Frye

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Once again, Pumpkinhead is resurrected and is a monster for vengeance. This one has a little bit of a mystery for the sheriff to figure out, but it’s still not a complicated script. It’s not quite a sequel to the original, more of a parallel. It lacks from not having Lance Henriksen and lacks the quality of the first one. It’s not bad, but only pretty good.

Spoilery Synopsis

In Ferren Woods, 1958, an old woman goes looking for Tommy. Six local boys arrive in the woods, and they’re hunting him too, but less beneficially. After a short chase, they beat him half to death and then stab him for the other half. They eventually drop him down a mine shaft.

In the present, Sean Braddock is the new sheriff; his wife Beth is impressed but thinks their daughter Jenny isn’t going to be happy here. Jenny makes some quick friends at her new school.

The new sheriff starts work and gets some advice about the town judge. Mayor Bubba warns him to keep an eye out so Jenny doesn’t wind up with the wrong crowd.

Meanwhile, Jenny is with the wrong crowd, including the judge’s son, Danny, hanging around that same mine shaft. Sheriff Sean shows up and runs them all off.

That night, the gang runs over an old woman in the road. “Some folks say she’s a witch,” one says, and the old woman seems to have disappeared. Jenny insists they go to the old woman’s house to see if she’s OK, and it looks like a witch’s house should. Inside, they find a scroll with a spell on it to bring back the dead. The old woman shows up and tells them to leave, and that goes badly for her. She curses them all to the “vengeance of Pumpkinhead.”

For some reason, Danny and the gang decide to dig up a grave next. The body inside is all deformed and weird-looking. They pour “the blood of the damned” over the body and read from the scroll. At the same time, the old woman’s house catches fire, and she burns. Pumpkinhead rises from the grave!

Sheriff Sean soon learns from a farmer that the kids were up at the old lady’s house last night, and he also hears that “It’s back, and none of us are safe till he gets what he’s come for.”

Sure enough, that night, Pumpkinhead attacks the same farmer, while at the same time, the old woman in the hospital goes into convulsions. When Sean and the coroner investigate, they find a big “V” drawn in blood on the wall.

The coroner comes to dinner, and Delilah tells the story of Pumpkinhead. The sheriff, Sean, is from the area and remembers that story as well. Jenny overheads the whole conversation, so now she knows what’s up. That night, Pumpkinhead gets another local man. The man’s girlfriend sees the whole thing and goes insane.

The judge calls for a posse to hunt down the monster which gets Sean angry. Sean then tells his wife about deformed Tommy and how he helped him one day. Somehow, Tommy was connected to the two dead men.

Danny, Paul, Peter, and Marcie go back to the grave they dug up and see that the body is gone. They know what they did.

Old lady Ossie dies, but that doesn’t stop her from warning Sean and Delilah about Tommy and his father, Pumpkinhead. She mentions that there is going to be one more victim from the old “Red Wing” days, and then he’ll be coming after the modern-day kids.

Sean researches the Red Wings, and finds that the sixth member was the judge, who’s gonna be the next victim.

The young people want to come clean about the whole thing, but Danny pulls a gun on them. Meanwhile, the judge is torn apart. Pumpkinhead then chases the remaining teens through the woods. It gives Danny what he so cleanly deserves.

Jenny runs to the old mine shaft as Sean and the posse run up. Sean yells for Tommy to release her, and the monster hesitates. Tommy/Pumpkinhead remembers what Sean did for him way back in the day and releases her. The posse shows up and starts shooting, causing Pumpkinhead to fall back into the mine shaft.

Later, Sean and Jenny make up. Workmen board over the old mine shaft.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s clearly the same monster as in the original, but it doesn’t look nearly as good as the original for some reason.

The main cast are all recognizable names, and they do a great job here. There are a lot of tiny cameos from actors from other horror films of the time. The other “actors” are just atrocious. It’s a very formulaic sequel, but there’s nothing explicitly terrible about it. Other than the legend itself, there’s nothing here to connect it with the original film, which was far better.

Kevin’s Commentary

This one seemed less clear on the path of revenge than the first film. And this wasn’t really a sequel to the first film either - it’s more of a parallel or reboot. Andrew Robinson was good, and there are lots of recognizable names from other horror movies in many of the supporting roles.

It’s not as good as the original, but it’s not too bad.

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Back to our usual five films this week, and we have an interesting mix of horror and terrifying reality. We’ll start with “The Demoness,” which just came out, along with “Super Happy Fun Clown,” also new. We finally got around to “Megan is Missing” from 2011. For a couple of older films, we went with “Wisconsin Death Trip” (1999) and “Come and See” (1985).

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #52, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2025 The Demoness

* Directed by: Andrew de Burgh

* Written by: Andrew de Burgh

* Stars: Akihiro Kitamura, Riley Nottingham, Bella Glanville

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A demoness visits Earth to cause trouble for one couple in particular. A couple with relationship issues. We had issues understanding several of the characters. After the couple, she moves on to mayhem to a series of victims. We both agree that it suffers from too much dialogue that’s difficult to understand, poor pacing, and bad CGI. It didn’t work for either of us, with Kevin being more forgiving of it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open in an apartment as a jerky-moving demoness wanders through the house and stops next to the occupied bed. Credits roll.

In the morning, the couple wakes up and complains about the economy and their jobs. They argue about Sarah’s inability to get a job. That night, the demoness comes back into their room, and this time, we see what it does. It wakes up Jack and has sex with him, but Sarah can’t hear them and doesn’t wake up.

In the morning, Sarah finds some evidence of sex in the bed and assumes Jack’s been cheating on her. The demoness comes to her and they argue about the sex last night. “Kill him if you want to live.” That evening, she poisons Jack and dismembers him on the autopsy table they have in the garage for some reason. She mumbles in British throughout the process.

The demoness returns and bites Sarah on the neck, vampire-style. The demoness then conjures up assistance, and Satan himself shows up, also speaking too modulated to understand more than half of it. She admits that she’s had a great time with Jack and Sarah, but now she wants more. She wants to be able to take human form to make her job easier. He gives her a month to see if she can torture ten people.

Now in human form, the demoness heads to Hollywood for victims. We cut to a disco that looks like it was filmed on a green screen without the processing. Two guys hit on an attractive-looking human who’s not at all a demon; she says she’s Charlotte. She’s rude, and they love it. One guy leaves, leaving Steve, a Tech Bro, with Charlotte. The two seem to compare to see who’s the most shallow.

She invites him over to her place after dancing. She’s surprisingly philosophical, which puts him off a little. She makes him a drink, and shockingly, it’s drugged. She dresses him up like a clown, puts him back on the autopsy table, and makes a whole unintelligible speech in her demoness form; when she pulls out a machete, we understand that part.

In the morning, Charlotte talks to the neighbors, Yagami and Tamara, about moving to Jack and Sarah’s house. They invite her over for dinner. Their daughter has cancer.

Charlotte arrives for dinner in a sexy, low-cut dress that Tamara obviously doesn’t approve of. It’s all very awkward. Yagami, on the other hand, says she “looks gorgeous.” It’s an awkward scene that drags on for entirely too long. It soon becomes obvious that they have drugged her. “This will be fun,” Tamara laughs. Daughter Saori says they shouldn’t be doing this just to keep her alive.

Charlotte wakes up tied to the wall. The family plans to steal Charlotte’s organs to sell to pay for Sairi’s treatments. Charlotte starts to laugh in a “Do you know who I am” kind of way. She then beats them both to death with a hammer.

Steve’s partner, Brad, goes to see a detective about Steve’s mysterious disappearance. They’re hostile with each other for no apparent reason, but Brad seems unhinged.

The demoness calls Satan again, and she wants to move on to bigger things; he says no.

Brad grabs a gun and breaks into Charlotte’s house. She quickly takes charge of the situation and puts him in a clown costume. Soon after, she eats his eyeball and cuts out his tongue. Then she bites off his toes. The demoness summons Satan yet again, and they discuss the need to deal with Detective Gerrard, the last one alive who knows who Charlotte is. She pays him a visit at his office, and of course that goes very badly for him.

And then it was suddenly over, fortunately for all of us.

Brian’s Commentary

Was the sound designer for this a deaf person? Both Sarah and the Demoness are nearly completely unintelligible. Once the demoness became human, the voices got a lot clearer. When she was back in the makeup, she was unintelligible again. The demoness creature looks really good, but her voice is awful.

That’s the fakest disco I’ve ever seen, almost as fake as the CGI gore effects, which are really poorly done.

I like the idea and the basic plot, but it’s a really poorly made film. It starts out hard to understand, and once we get moving, it’s only downhill from there.

This is pretty awful.

Kevin’s Commentary

We really could have used subtitles. That conversation between the demoness and Lucifer might have been interesting, but I felt like I missed a quarter of it. But once we got past that and Sarah out of the picture, people’s voices were nice and clear. Until Charlotte went back to her demon form again, sigh. She was good in the role though, and her makeup was cool.

This falls in the trope of a killer that is so powerful that the victims have zero chance as they are toyed with, and we know how each confrontation is going to end - it’s just a matter of how.

Between the pacing, poor audio, and overacting, I was pretty weary of it as the end approached. And then an abrupt ending happened. I’m going to say I liked it more than disliked it.

2025 Super Happy Fun Clown

* Directed by: Patrick Rea

* Written by: Eric Winkler

* Stars: Jennifer Seward, Nicole Hall, Matt Leisy

* Run Time: 1 Hour 27 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Jennifer’s had a rough life, but she finds a way to happiness and fame by channeling her clown self. After a slow start, we watch her trip to crazy town progress and leave a trail of bodies in her wake. The pacing is uneven, but it’s a pretty good one.

Spoilery Synopsis

The police have the clown and her hostage in their sights. That goes badly, and then credits roll.

Back in 2004, we see a clown in the park. Young Jennifer is somewhat obsessed with clowns and homeless people. She’s smart, but her mother is unenthusiastic.

Twenty years later, She’s Jenno-The-Clown, doing mime-y things in the park, and the kids love her. Her husband is unenthusiastic. She’s got serial killer posters on her wall, and she likes that as well.

Detectives Barnes and Marshall talk about what crimes they expect this upcoming Halloween.

Jennifer and her mother talk about her pedo, ex-lawyer husband and badly paying job. Her mother is still unenthusiastic and downright mean. She and her coworker Ryan fantasize about being serial killers. She loves being a clown, but not much else about her life.

After a while, Jennifer stops being enthusiastic about being a clown, so she kills her husband. She just lets him decompose in the spaghetti over the weeks leading up to Halloween. After a while, she starts to eat him. Then she buys a tiny little gun.

It’s Halloween, and Jen runs over a guy with her car. She goes over to her mother’s house in full costume and shoots right through her mother’s head.

The police get a call to do a wellness check on Jen’s rotting husband. Barnes mentions that he’s afraid of clowns; Marshall hates horses. Neither of them appreciate the half-eaten rotten corpse in the kitchen; they also soon track down her dead mother too. Jen, meanwhile, is at Ryan’s Halloween party and has sex with him. Halfway through, she stabs him with an icepick.

Jen then goes to a haunted house attraction and jumps the line. She starts killing the “monsters” inside. The zombie and the Phantom of the Opera are the first to die, but several more follow. Eventually, she comes to a woman dressed as a killer clown, and she likes that a lot but only for a minute.

The detectives arrive at the theater, and one of them soon becomes a convenient hostage. We’re back at the opening scene, and Jennifer is shot.

Some time later, she wakes up in the hospital without makeup. The networks are already asking for interviews. Detective Marshall is not amused that the evil clown has survived.

Brian’s Commentary

The childhood segment was only ten minutes long, but seemed like half an hour. I love the husband’s meal choices. After the slow start, the film picks up the pace and goes pretty well until the haunted cinema, where things seem to slow down once again.

For a low-budget indie film, it’s not bad. With the exception of the pacing issues, I was entertained.

Kevin’s Commentary

We have Harley Quinn at home.

This spends way too long at the beginning of the movie showing not a whole lot happening in Jennie’s childhood, or it seemed way too long anyway. Once she reaches adulthood things build momentum. The pacing is still uneven throughout, but I thought it was decent overall. I enjoyed it more than disliked it.

2011 Megan is Missing

* Directed by: Michael Goi

* Written by: Michael Goi

* Stars: Amber Perkins, Rachel Quinn, Dean Waite

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a movie entirely on webcam, video, phone camera, and so forth, presented in found footage format. Two “teenage” girls are the main characters, who fall for an Internet predator. It’s drawn out and talky for a long time before the missing part happens. It does finally dial up the horrifying, and hard to watch, up to eleven, but it takes quite a while to get there. It’s bleak and cautionary.

Spoilery Synopsis

Amy and Megan come on talking about being her new camera. We’re told onscreen that in 2007, 14 year old Megan went missing, and three weeks later, Amy also vanished. Credits roll.

The two girls talk about losing their virginity soon and drugs as well. We soon see Megan’s mom smashing her X-Box in the other room. Amy, on the other hand, has a nice home life. Amy’s a year younger than the other girls, so the others consider her something of a nerd.

On Saturday, everyone goes out to a house party. Amy’s only invited because Megan insisted on it, but she doesn’t really fit in. It’s pretty wild for a teenage party, since everyone is too young to really know how to party. It doesn’t end well for Amy, who pukes on some other girls.

The next day, the girls talk about b******s; Megan did her first one at age ten, but Amy’s still afraid to try. She tells the story, and it’s anything but romantic. The conversation is interrupted by Meg’s overbearing mother, which prompts her into saying she hates it there and would like to just leave.

It’s Amy’s 14th birthday, and she gets a new video camera. She interviews Megan about being sexually assaulted by her stepfather. Amy, on the other hand, talks about her favorite stuffed animals.

Megan hears about a new guy in town, Josh, who’s a skateboarder. He likes what he sees, but his “camera is broken” so she can’t see him. He invites her to a party tonight, and she’s clearly interested. He doesn’t show up.

She calls Josh, and he swears he was there. He describes what she was wearing, so he was there, but she never saw him. They flirt and make up on their one-sided video call. Later, she calls him again and introduces Amy. Amy leaves, and Megan goes to meet him behind the diner.

The next day, Amy starts calling Megan’s friends; she didn’t come home last night. She eventually calls Josh, who says she never showed up last night.

A couple days later, Megan’s disappearance makes the news. Amy continues to record her video diary; the newspeople all seem to think Megan ran away, but Amy doesn’t believe that. We see security footage of a man meeting Megan and leading her away.

Amy continues to talk to “Josh” on the webcam, and he denies that the “old guy” in the video footage was him. He’s a little mean to her, and he seems to understand her pretty well. She goes to the police and tells them everything. The other girls blame Amy for all this, for no particular reason.

Josh threatens Amy to shut up to the police and says he’s watching her. We do see a mysterious figure behind Amy in some of her videos.

A few months later, torture porn photos of Megan show up on a fetish site. She’s not looking like she’s having a good time.

Amy goes missing as well, and the news people speculate that they may have run off together. They do, however, find Amy’s video camera in the trash can where we saw her abducted. We then see that footage…

We hear a woman screaming behind a big metal door; it’s Amy. She begs to go home, but “Josh” isn’t going to do that. We watch her scream as he rapes her. She eventually gets to see what became of Megan, and it’s not pretty. He then seals Amy into a barrel with Megan’s rotten corpse, which terrifies her, as he digs a barrel-sized hole. As he digs, she begs and bargains with him from inside the barrel. This goes on for a long time.

Eventually, he pushes the barrel into the hole and fills it in, with Amy screaming and begging the whole time.

Then the screaming stops.

Brian’s Commentary

Brian’s Rating: ****

It starts out fairly weak, with two girls talking about nonsense, but it devolves from there. Megan doesn’t go missing until about 40 minutes in, and it’s a little dull before that. Everything is done as found footage, mostly through video chats.

The “horror” aspects don’t really come into it until Amy disappears, and then it gets pretty extreme. There’s no supernatural elements or creatures here, just a kidnapper and victims; the horror comes from the idea that this kind of thing happens all the time in the real world.

I’m not quite sure why Josh would film all this and then leave the camera in the last place anyone saw Amy.

Kevin’s Commentary

Kevin’s Rating: ****

So, we get to watch some “teenage” girls talking and partying for a while. For too long of a while. Eventually a predator does start making his moves, and Megan disappears. Then we get more talk from Amy, and we see her getting pressure from the predator. A true crime show wades in.

It’s very tame until it isn’t any more, it goes to the other extreme.

It’s easy to watch this sort of thing and think how dumb the girls are for falling for it, but this sort of thing (and lesser things) does really happen to the naive and inexperienced and unwary.

1999 Wisconsin Death Trip

* Directed by: James Marsh

* Written by: Michael Lesy, James Marsh

* Stars: Ian Holm, Jeffrey Golden, Jo Vukelich

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 16 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

There’s not a story to spoil. The movie consists of a series of grim and unusual news stories that were reported in Wisconsin from 1890 to 1900. They are reenacted in black and white, and interspaced with many historical photos and narration. With some more modern scenes and stories from Wisconsin spaced in here and there, showing things can still be violent and strange today. It’s put together in a way that’s interesting, and we both thought it’s worth the watch.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re told that “What follows is based on real events that took place in the state of Wisconsin between 1890 and 1900. All the stories are authentic news reports from a paper of the time.”

The narrator introduces us to the city of Black River Falls, and we see lots of old-time photos of the people there. It all sounds like a very nice place. We then cut to a photographer taking a photo of a dead child and then putting her back in the coffin. Credits roll.

Then a hard winter hit, the banks failed and mines started shutting down, and poverty and disease hit the area. Many unemployed men left town and some tried to kill themselves quite creatively. Several are sent to the insane asylum.

There are stories of the insane, abandoned children, suicides, murders, diptheria.

We watch as the film goes into color mode, and we see modern-day children playing and that things have gone back to normal. The current mayor talks to us about the town.

Back in the 1800s, and black and white, we hit Spring. Drugs, murders, arson, weird Norwegian superstitions, and suicides abound. After, we get more modern, mundane town life, although they have arson and crime as well.

Summer arrives in the cursed 1800s, and there are trouble with courting couples, baby murder, drunkenness, religious issues, and more insanity. Back in the modern day, we hear about Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer, both from the area.

In the fall of the 1800s, we get shootings, murders, more religious troubles, and a lesson in making sheep’s head stew. “Criminal ears” are also a factor. We hear the story of a famous opera singer who hit hard times, came to the area, and met with a bad end. In the present, there is still murder, suicide, and mental illness today.

Back in Winter, there’s trouble with old people, grave robbing, suicides, ghosts, and still more window-smashing, an ongoing thing.

We cut back to the present, where we’re reminded what a wonderful place Black River Falls Wisconsin is– and even that’s creepy.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s mostly in grainy black-and-white to give it a more authentic feel, although the stories are all reported as true. There’s no real overall plot or characters here, it’s just one damned thing after another that happened in this town, which was not a fun place to live. These were not happy times for anyone, and it’s interesting to be reminded of that. Crime and insanity aren’t new.

For a film with zero story, it’s strangely fascinating to watch. It’s really something!

Kevin’s Commentary

It was interesting how it focuses on the violent, grim, and sordid around the edges. The mix of historical photos and reenactments is well balanced, with good narration. I thought it was really cool.

1985 Come and See

* Directed by: Elem Klimov

* Written by: Ales Adamovich, Elem Klimov

* Stars: Aleksey Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevius

* Run Time: 2 Hours, 22 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This isn’t a horror movie, but it does show the horror of war. It’s set in 1943 Russia in an area fully hit by fighting and follows the misadventures of a pre-teen boy who joins the resistance. It’s an uncomfortable watch, very graphic and realistic, but it’s really well made.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on an old man yelling at someone he claims is digging and hiding underground. We then cut to a little boy who mocks his grumpy uncle. We see that it’s Byelorussia in 1943. The two boys then go dig on the beach, looking for guns. “Without guns, they won’t let us join!” They want to be soldiers. The older brother finds one. Credits roll.

The boy’s mother doesn’t want him to go and hands him an axe to kill them all, which Flyora won’t do. Some Soviet soldiers come to pick him up, he’s joining up with them. The soldiers try to be funny, but it only scares the family. The soldiers make it look like he was conscripted, but he really volunteered.

Flyora goes to the army camp, and it all looks like a big adventure to him. Kosach is the commander, and Glasha is a girl that he likes. They are soon called to action, and everyone gets ready to march to the fight– except Flyora, who is told to trade boots with a man and stay behind.

Flyora runs into Glasha crying in the woods, and she’s so sad it makes him cry as well until they laugh. She points out that they left him behind out of pity, and he takes offense to that. She doesn’t seem quite right, mentally, and she upsets him. They watch a plane fly over and drop parachutes and bombs far too close for their liking, partially deafening Flyora. Then they have to hide from the paratroopers who land nearby.

By morning, the two are friends again, and they get a little crazy in the woods. With nowhere else to go, Flyora and Glasha head back to his mother’s house, but no one is there. The soup is still warm, so they haven’t been gone long. Glasha sees a huge pile of bodies, probably including Flyora’s family, but she doesn’t tell him about it. The two then decide to walk through a swamp, which neither of them enjoy. She tells him the truth, but he won’t believe it.

After finding another soldier, the two go with him to a place with a bunch of refugees including some who tell Flyora that his family is dead. Flyora’s cranky old uncle is there who is burned and dying, but still has time to say “I told you so.”

In the group, some of the men do artwork with a Nazi skeleton. Flyora seems to mostly be in shock through all this, but eventually moves on with some soldiers. Soon, there’s only Flyora and one other soldier, and they steal a cow, which leads Flyora to be the only survivor; even the cow is shot.

Flyora meets up with a man who agrees to take him home and hide him with his family. The German soldiers are right behind them in trucks. The Germans round up all the villagers and inspect the group. Flyora knows they’re going to be slaughtered like his own village, but the villagers allow themselves to be herded into a barn. There is a lot of screaming and pushing for a long while, and Flyora is just one of the crowd.

The leader of the Germans then ordered all the adults to climb out a window and leave the children. Flyora is the only one to try to leave, so he’s grabbed and pulled aside. There are a lot of Germans there, and they all watch and have a good time as they kill everyone in the barn. Flyora is one of the few outside who lives to see it. The Germans start to leave as the village burns. Flyora passes out, and they leave him for dead.

In the morning, Flyora moves on, regaining his uniform and gun. He rejoins Glasha, who has been beaten and raped quite badly. Kosach’s men have captured a handful of Germans, and there’s an argument on how to treat them. The German officers identify themselves and make excuses. “I’m just a tired old man,” says the German leader. Flyora points out that he’s the one who ordered the children killed. Exposed, the leaders tell what they really think of the local people. This goes badly for the prisoners.

We then cut to real old footage of concentration camp survivors as Flyora finally shoots his gun– at a poster of Hitler. It looks like he’s gone completely insane from all of it, but he goes off with the soldiers to fight some more. We’re told that in total, in reality, 628 villages were burned to the ground just like what we saw.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s not so much a horror film as it is a “horror of war” film. Flyora witnesses all kinds of death and atrocities, much more than any twelve year old should. It’s slow to get started, but the climax is very intense. No one gets out unscathed, and we see why Flyora has “that look” in his eyes toward the end.

Kevin’s Commentary

It’s not a fun movie, but it’s a good one. I’ve heard it said it’s an uncomfortable watch, and they are right. War is awful, and this shows that well.

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.horrormonthly.com

We’re breaking our usual format this week to cover our top picks of the films released in 2025. We’ll each discuss our top ten picks from the 2025 films as well as our favorite things we watched of the older films we watched last year as well. We’ll discuss a handful of short films too!

This as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #52, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Short Films:

2022 Short Film CIMIM

* Directed by: Cody Mobley

* Written by: Cody Mobley

* Stars: Darian Michael Garey, Mike Duff, Daniel Kohl

* Run Time: 5 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

A group of campers banter about cats vs. dogs. One girl mentions she has edibles in the truck. She goes to grab them, and when she returns, she finds herself still sitting at the campfire. Her doppelgänger opens her eyes and freaks everyone out. One by one, it quickly picks off the campers…

Commentary

This is all filmed at night, but it’s still brightly lit, and you can see everything that’s going on. We don’t get much explanation for any of it, but then, neither do the campers. It’s very short, but also really well done.

And I have no idea what “CIMIM” means.

2025 Short Film The Last Thing She Saw

* Directed by: Anthony Cousins, Rebecca Daugherty

* Written by: Brady Richards

* Stars: Bailey Bolton, Agatha Rae Pokrzywinski, Nathan Tymoshuk

* Run Time: 9 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

Emmy has ordered a phone charger, and when the doorbell rings, she answers it. Turns out, it’s a home invasion, and now her phone is dead. She’s just the house sitter, so she doesn’t know the combination to the safe.

Emmy has seen the face of one of the intruders, so he plucks out her eyeballs. The rest is all shown through the eyeball’s point of view…

Commentary

Well, that was different. These don’t seem like smart crooks, and this was not a well-planned robbery. Still, the eyeball on a string is something I’ve always wondered about.

This is gross, nasty, and actually pretty funny.

2025 Short Film The Convenience Store

* Directed by: Julian Davis

* Written by: Julian Davis

* Stars: Dominic Collantes, Amia Marisa, Max Ptasznik

* Run Time: 10 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

Kira’s mother doesn’t like her working alone at the convenience store all night, but she needs the money. Kira hears something strange outside, but there’s nothing there when she looks.

The door opens, and her friend Tommy comes in. He doesn’t like her working alone either. She talks a bit and then gets to work restocking and stuff. The front door opens, and the security camera is no help at all.

She hears something outside again, and this time, it goes differently.

Commentary

It’s well acted, and the set is perfect. It’s the sort of store that’s not at all creepy until it is. It’s another of those shorts where we don’t really know why anything is happening, but we know exactly what’s happening. Nicely done!

2025 Short Film In a Nutshell

* Directed by: Ryan Valdez

* Written by: Ryan Valdez

* Stars: Sarah Palmer, Ivan Djurovic, Chelsea Breeze

* Run Time: 8 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

We zoom through what looks like a dollhouse, and then zoom out to see a woman assembling and painting it. She’s making a duplicate model of an actual crime scene. Her husband, Owen, thinks it’s not good for her to be looking at crime scenes and autopsy reports all day. She says it’s a one-time job, and it’ll be done soon.

We then see just how accurate Emma’s work really is, as it becomes reality…

Commentary

This is sharp and looks good. At no point are we unclear on what’s happening, but it’s still suspenseful to watch it play out.

2021 Short Film Sleep Talker

* Directed by: Carl Firth

* Written by: Sarah Emery, Carl Firth

* Stars: Jessica Saras, John van Putten, Rhys James

* Run Time: 7 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

Kelly comes home late after work and finds her husband, Curtis, already asleep. Or is he? There are sounds coming from the bedroom, so she checks it out. He’s in there, asleep, but he’s talking. No wait, is that really Curtis doing the talking?

Commentary

No one’s ever going to believe that actually happened, right?

It’s pretty dark, but we see all that we need to see. The “intruder” is really well done, and what he does is interesting as well. Creepy!

Best of 2025

Link to Last Year’s Ratings (2024)

This time around, we’ll be discussing our favorite films released in 2025. We made a list of everything we watched that was released in 2025, and we each made a top-ten list. There’s some overlap, so we’ll look at our individual picks first, then look at the ones we both chose. Note that these lists are the top ten for each of us, but we didn’t sort them into any special order: the top of the list isn’t necessarily the best of the ten.

At the end, we’ll also discuss some of the best things we watched this year that WEREN’T new releases. Overall, we’ll discuss 27 of our favorite films.

Brian’s Favorites of 2025 Films

* The Ugly Stepsister *

* Dracula: A Love Tale *

* Companion

* Frankenstein

* Keeper

* Weapons

* Ash

* Woken

* 825 Forest Road *

* The Elixir

Kevin’s Favorites of 2025 Films

* Dracula: A Love Tale *

* 825 Forest Road *

* Borderline

* In Vitro

* Monster Island

* Self Driver

* Sinners

* The Monkey

* The Ugly Stepsister *

* Strange Harvest

Unanimous Favorites

* The Ugly Stepsister

* Dracula: A Love Tale

* 825 Forest Road

Brian’s Favorite Not-New films

* Boys from County Hell *

* A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night *

* It’s What’s Inside

* The Legend of Boggy Creek

* Tucker and Dale vs Evil

* Inhuman Kiss

Kevin’s Favorite Not-New films

* A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night *

* Boys From County Hell *

* Cube (The original 1997)

* Flesh For Frankenstein

* Horns

* Santa Sangre

Both Agree

* Boys from County Hell

* A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.horrormonthly.com

For our first episode of 2026, we’ve got four new releases and one oldie for you. We’ll open on “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” and “Influencers,” a couple of sequels. Two that aren’t sequels are “Keeper” and “Wormtown,” all from 2025. Finally, we’ll watch “Experiment in Evil,” an oldie from 1959

This as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #52, should be on sale in a few days! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2025 Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

* Directed by: Emma Tammi

* Written by: Scott Cawthon

* Stars: Josh Hutcherson, Piper Rubio, Elizabeth Lail

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A year after the first movie, the survivors are back with some fresh faces, and there’s another Freddy’s location with intact animatronics plus a new creepy puppet. As you might guess, the problem wasn’t completely solved after the first movie, so there’s another bout of death and destruction. We liked the first one and thought this one was equally entertaining. It’s a bit abrupt in the ending and very obvious there’s going to be a third movie.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on an arcade and a fun place with lots of kids playing. One little girl just sits and waits for the animatronic show. The sad girl, Charlotte, watches as a little boy goes into the back room with the big rabbit. She goes in after him but gets stabbed in the process. Credits roll. “Girl Dies in Fazbear Accident” says the headlines. We also see a marionette, a character who was not in the first film.

Twenty years later, little Vanessa has grown up and still remembers all those events. Mike calls; he and Abby have a house now. Mike’s got an upcoming date with her, but his friend says she has crazy eyes after that incident with the killer bear. Abby, on the other hand, tells her story repeatedly at school. No one ever found the real killer, William Afton.

Abby’s class is learning about robotics at school, and there’s going to be a science fair. Mr. Berg, the teacher, doesn’t like Abby. Could she fix up the old robots at Freddy’s? Maybe she could. Mike has promised to fix them for years, but he never really does it. The dead-children possessed the robots there, and they were her friends.

Mike and Vanessa go on a date, and she’s still messed up from her experiences before. When he gets home, he finds a note from Abby saying she’s gone to Freddy’s to fix up her friends. They go inside to find nothing– the animatronic animals are gone now. She finds a FazTalker, some kind of talking toy, on the floor and keeps it.

Elsewhere, a trio of ghost-chasers arrives at Freddy’s; Mike may have invited the “Spectral Scoopers” to investigate. The new security guard is Michael, not the Mike we already know, and he lets them inside. This isn’t the same location as the one Mike and Abby were just in, this one is much cleaner; it’s the original location. The Marionette was unique to this location as well. This one still has the animatronics inside. Lisa, Rob, and Alex explore the place, recording everything for their show. They all die painfully as Michael smiles evilly. Except, Lisa is now possessed by Charlotte.

Meanwhile, Vanessa, at Spin Class, hallucinates Afton/The Yellow Rabbit yelling at her, and she’s not all the mentally well. Afton was her father, and he left an impression. She still has nightmares about him.

The FazTalker talks to Abby, asking for help. She rides to the other FazBears, where we saw the bad stuff happening. Chica is there, and she’s happy to see Abby.

The next day, Vanessa comes over and sees Abby’s robotics project; she says Freddy and Chica helped her build it. This leads to Vanessa and Mike breaking up.

Vanessa goes to Freddy’s and talks to Charlotte’s ghost, who wants to get out of this place so that she can hurt people. None of the animatronics can leave, but Charlotte thinks Abby can help her break that limitation. Charlotte/Marionette then capture Vanessa.

At the science fair, Mr. Berg breaks Abby’s project, so she goes back to Freddy’s to be with her friends. Chica volunteers to be the new science project, but she can’t leave the building until Abby enters the passcode. The other animatronics arrive just as the lock shuts down. Abby and Chica then take an Uber to the science fair.

Mike goes to see Charlotte’s father, who still hasn’t gotten over his daughter’s death twenty years ago. They complain about the “FazFest” that’s coming to town. Mike learns that there was more than one Freddy’s location. The father gives Mike a music box that Charlotte used to like.

Mike rushes to Freddy’s, breaks in, and walks right past Lisa’s dead body on the way inside. He does eventually find Vanessa locked in a closet. Vanessa explains it all, but Mike is still skeptical. The only ghost here is Charlotte, not all those other kids.

Chica and Abby go to the science fair, and Mr. Berg doesn’t approve. Chica takes care of everything.

Vanessa explains that Charlotte is remote-controlling the animatronic to get revenge for her own death. Meanwhile, all four big robots are out and about. Freddy is at the FazFest carnival. When Mike starts hacking into the system Charlotte activates the nasty looking prototypes in the back room.

Mike and Vanessa each encounter the prototypes, but they aren’t very smart. Meanwhile, the intact robots are out killing bad parents. As everything starts getting crazy, Mike turns off the wifi and everything stops. Only the one with Charlotte is still active, and it’s at Mike’s house.

At home, Abby sees Chica pop open, and the Marionette comes out. When Vanessa reports that the WiFi has come back on, Mike goes to Freddy’s and begs the ghosts of the dead children for assistance.

Vanessa gets there first and finds that the Marionette/Charlotte has possessed Abby. Just as she’s about to kill Vanessa, Mike shows up with the music box and puts Charlotte to sleep.

The robots then attack again along with Michael, who turns out to be Vanessa’s secret brother. “I’m here to continue Afton’s legacy, just in time for FazFest.” The Animatronics start to attack Vanessa and Mike, but then, out of the blue, the old animatronics, possessed by the dead children, arrive to save the day.

One of the ghost boys appears and says they all have to move on, but once they are gone, they “can’t hold him in anymore,” setting us up for a third film. Mike doesn’t want anything to do with Vanessa, who has lied to him repeatedly. Then, the Marionette possesses Vanessa…

During an end credit scene, we cut to some looters breaking into Freddy’s before the scheduled demolition tomorrow. They find the yellow rabbit from the first film, the one with Afton inside…

Brian’s Commentary

This is obviously a sequel to 2023’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” There’s a lot going on here that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s got enough humor in it that it’s worthwhile. It seems like the whole thing could have been avoided if the characters from the first film would have gone through some therapy afterward.

The ending was clearly a setup, but it was awfully abrupt, and more of a cliffhanger than an ending. Still, if you liked the first one and thought it needed more, this is probably right up your alley.

Kevin’s Commentary

It’s a smooth sequel, continuing right along with things after a year passing since the events of the first movie. I thought it was on par with the first movie, just as entertaining. And it very obviously sets us up for a third movie after an abrupt ending.

2025 Influencers

* Directed by: Kurtis David Harder

* Written by: Kurtis David Harder

* Stars: Cassandra Naud, Emily Tennant, Jonathan Whitesell

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 50 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a sequel to 2022’s “Influencer,” with Cassandra Naud back at it again. It was a little unclear at first if it was a prequel or sequel considering the ending of “Influencer,” but they decided to just gloss over a major issue with that ending without explaining it. That aside, it was well put together in beautiful settings, and we both mostly enjoyed it.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman gets a million notifications on her socials and cries. She then grabs a knife and cuts her own throat.

We cut to southern France, where Catherine, CW, is riding her bike. She goes home to Diane and they go out for a date. They have plans for the weekend, and they go to– no, they stop off at an abandoned castle to do some sightseeing. Nothing happens there, so they continue on to the castle that they have reserved.

When they arrive, their room is rented, so they get a tiny space instead. Catherine meets Charlotte, another guest, who complains about the size of the pool. She’s the one who got their special room and offers to buy their dinner. Turns out, Charlotte is an influencer. Catherine is clearly jealous, but Diane thinks she’s nice. They talk about how quickly Charlotte would shrivel up and die without her phone.

The next day, Catherine tells Charlotte that Diane is ill, and offers to be her photographer for the day. She knows just the place to get some great photos– that old castle again. Sure enough, they go up to the dangerous-looking tower Catherine visited earlier. One short push later, Charlotte is no more. Catherine has Charlotte’s phone and password, so she can use that. They soon end up in that room they reserved after Charlotte “runs off.”

Diane goes through all Catherine’s stuff and finds her passport. Her name isn’t even Catherine, and she has access to Charlotte’s account. “You’ve done this before. What were you doing in Thailand? Several girls were killed.” Catherine tries to convince her that she knows nothing about it, but one thing leads to another, and soon Diane is dead. Credits roll (30 minutes in).

We cut to a podcast explaining what happened at the end of the previous film. The murderer, CW, somehow got away. Madison White was the only survivor from all that carnage. The podcasters still don’t believe Madison’s story, whose story doesn’t quite check out. There’s no evidence that “CW” ever existed. Later, Madison reads how Charlotte’s body was found in France. Could there be a connection? Can she find proof? She’s still getting death threats and stalkers after getting blamed for all the murders.

Madison goes to France and starts following places where Charlotte had posted photos. She goes to the big chateau and asks about Catherine and Diane, but she doesn’t know what names they used. It’s kind of a dead end.

We cut to Bali, where Jacob, a “man-o-sphere” influencer, does his show. Ariana warns him that his audience is dwindling. He runs into Madison, who’s still looking for CW, and gets her phone number.

A while later, Jacob spots CW in a crows, and he recognizes her from the photo that Madison showed him. He tells CW all about Madison looking for her; he’s truly an idiot.

CW then returns to her lair and talks to an AI copy of Diane, who talks just like the original. She uses the AI to figure out who Jacob is and where to find him– and Madison as well. She then uses AI to reconstruct Diane’s face well enough to talk to Diane’s own mother over Facetime.

CW talks to Jacob and tells him about the stalker that keeps accusing her of terrible things. She’s got quite a story for him. Later, she gets into his computer and gets access to everything. While there, she runs into Ariana, who threatens to call the police. CW leaves, but also tells her that she slept with Jacob, Ariana’s boyfriend.

We cut to Paris, one year ago. CW has moved there after the Thailand incident, and wears a hoodie to hide her distinctive birthmark. We see how she met Diane and fell in love. It’s a whole extended flashback thing, and it appears that CW wasn’t using Diane the way she manipulated the other influencers. She didn’t really mean to kill her, it just happened.

Back in the present, Ariana calls Jacob’s friend Cameron, who tells her that Jacob wants to break up with her. Cameron never liked Ariana, and he wants to get rid of her. CW posted a video of Jacob having sex with another woman, and Ariana’s getting a lot of notifications. Not long after, Arian kills herself, which we saw in the opening scene.

Jacob tells Cameron that he thinks he’s onto a murderer, and Cameron thinks he’s crazy.

Jacob goes home and finds Madison standing over Ariana’s dead body and jumps to the wrong conclusion. They argue– who’s been playing whom? Well, that doesn’t matter because Madison then stabs Jacob. The two girls then fight for quite a while. Eventually, Madison knocks out her opponent, steals her phone, and learns where CW’s “lair” is.

Madison talks to the AI Diane as she searches the place and finds murder victim photos. Meanwhile, Jaxob recovers a bit and unties CW, whom he assumes is the victim now. He soon looks at Ariana’s phone and learns the truth. This time, CW stabs him a few more times.

Except Jacob’s computer on, livestreaming to CW’s lair, where Madison and “Diane” have seen rebroadcast the whole thing on social media. Her guilt is proven, and she goes berserk. Cameron walks in, and she guts him in front of everyone. Then she chases down the girls with him as the movie closes.

Brian’s Commentary

This is a sequel to 2022’s “Influencer,” and, as before, the settings are amazing. I liked the first one, and I liked this one as well. It’s got enough twists and turns, and most of the people who die kinda have it coming, so I’d call it a win.

Kevin’s Commentary

It reminded me a bit of the Mr. Ripley character from his conniving adventures advancing himself at the deadly expense of others and having to keep up on the damage control.

At first I was going to go with this being a prequel because they didn’t explain it for the first half hour. But then they showed us that they figured out how to milk it out as a sequel despite the ending of “Influencer.” How do we explain how she got off the island? Just don’t and hope we don’t mind. I’ll overlook that annoying point enough to call it a win.

2025 Keeper

* Directed by: Osgood Perkins

* Written by: Nick Lepard

* Stars: Tatiana Maslany, Rossif Sutherland, Birkett Turton

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 39 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A couple in love goes to his remote, and beautiful, cabin for a romantic getaway. Things seem normal. Then it gets strange. Then very strange. It takes a while to get there, but the payoff is very good. We both were very pleased.

Spoilery Synopsis

We see various scenes of women and then cut to scenes of some of them screaming. Credits roll.

Liz and Malcolm drive to his cabin way out in the woods. It’s a nice place; the caretaker left them a cake, so he starts making dinner. As she takes a bath, we see odd things happening behind her.

Someone’s ringing the doorbell, but it’s late. Malcolm says it’s Cousin Darren and his date, Minka, who doesn’t speak English. Minka nods at the cake and warns Liz about it. The unwanted guests soon leave. Liz is suddenly very suspicious of Malcolm, but he still seems nice. They start to make out, but in the middle, he decides he wants some cake. She doesn’t like chocolate, but he wants her to try it anyway.

That night, Liz has strange dreams. She goes downstairs and examines the rest of the cake, which she shoves into her mouth like an animal. As she eats it, we hear the screams of many women.

We cut to Minka, who is lost in the woods for some reason. She sees another woman, and she is attacked strangely.

In the morning, Liz draws the faces of the screaming women; she’s an artist. Later, she and Malcolm go for a walk in the woods. She finds a locket on a rock in a stream and takes it. Malcolm gets a call from work and has to go deal with it. She’s acting weird, but he doesn’t seem to notice. She keeps getting visions of bubbles and water.

Alone now, she watches out the window to the neighbor’s yard and sees a head in the garbage there. No– just her imagination, maybe. Then she sees Minka and also a mini-Minka. And wakes up from a nap after drinking.

Darren comes over and asks about the cake. He asks if she feels sleepy. She goes to the bathroom and locks herself in while he grabs a cleaver. Is he coming after her? We see someone weird climbing the stairway, but it’s upside-down and partially dismembered. When she comes out of the bathroom, Darren isn’t there anymore. Did something get him? She calls Malcolm and leaves a message for him to hurry up.

Liz finds a man’s wristwatch in the garbage disposal and then hallucinates a person with a bag over their head. Also, there’s another cake on the table now. She packs her bag and calls her friend for a ride; the phone loses signal halfway through, so she doesn’t know how that worked out.

Malcolm returns. She confronts him about all the weird people she’s seen. He searches the house for her, obviously not believing her story. He’s charming and all gaslight-y, so she decides to stay longer. After a while, his story continues to not check out, and she knows there’s something wrong again. She finds a photo of Malcolm with another woman lying on the bathroom floor, and it looks really old.

He insists that he loves her and didn’t want her to suffer, but he’s starting to tell the truth. “You’re giving me life,” he explains. The cake was supposed to knock her out, but it didn’t work on her. “They present themselves to you as women, didn’t they? I don’t know what they are, but I’ve known them for a long time.”

Malcolm tells her a story about when he and his cousin were children, two hundred years ago. They found a pregnant woman on their land and shot her before taking her prisoner. She ended up giving birth in the pig pen. The “baby” was… unusual. Now, he and Darren feed them women regularly, and have for centuries. He talks about “their magic” shielding the place.

She runs upstairs, and something strange follows her. She climbs out a window and falls into the stream below. We flash back to the locket, which contains a picture of the original “mother,” who looks just like Liz. Meanwhile, Malcolm packs up Liz’s stuff and puts it in a room with a bunch of others.

Liz wakes up in a basement. There are some very weird “people” down there with her as well. They have a head in a honey jar, and they place it on a mummified body. They say they are her children, and also all the women who came before.

Upstairs, Malcolm waits for the screaming to stop and then goes to bed. He wakes up coughing; he’s older-looking now. There are screams.

In the morning, Malcolm wakes up upside-down, hanging from a tree, and he’s looking pretty ancient now. Liz comes out to him and says they’ve asked her to stay. She feeds him some cake. Then she drowns him in honey.

Brian’s Commentary

This started out feeling like an abduction-gaslighting-kidnapping story, and it was, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

The creature effects in this one really stand out. Those things are weird. The whole thing goes way off the rails in the final half hour, and that’s the best part.

It was surprisingly good.

Kevin’s Commentary

Things seem normal enough at first. Then they get strange. Then all is revealed.

I was expecting a sort of vampirism where he was feeding directly off the life force of a series of women over the years, but it’s a secondary immortality by feeding women to magic creatures.

I really liked the payoff and where the ending went.

2025 Wormtown

* Directed by: Sergio Pinheiro

* Written by: Andrew James Myers

* Stars: Caitlin McWethy, Rachel Ryu, Emily Soppe

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 41 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is an interesting take on a parasitic takeover, not seeing the initial invasion but instead the day to day life of a fully infested population in a small town - with a trio of holdouts fighting the system. The body horror is dialed up to eleven, and it’s really gross. We both thought it was a little rushed toward the end, but overall a thumbs-up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a man at the optometrist’s office; he’s been having headaches and his eyes hurt. He’s the mayor of the town. He claims he can now see in the dark. The eye doctor looks into his eye and sees… worms. We then cut to the town, and it looks like it’s populated by people with skin conditions. The mayor and the others infected by the worms run the town, the radio station, and the churches, working for “the greater good.” We then see a couple of women shaving each other’s heads. Credits roll.

We then see some kids playing outside as the sun comes up, and the bright sunlight has a devastating effect on little Tommy. He melts into a pile of blood and worms.

Jess, one of the bald women, goes to check on her friend Greg, who has drunk the wormy milk. She scrounges the area for food and junk outside during the daylight hours until she finds what’s left of Tommy. She opens him up and looks at the worms inside; not all of them are dead yet. Rose analyzes the samples back at the bald-woman base to study, but Kara, another of the women, doesn’t care. Jess runs in, covered in Tommy’s blood, and she’s afraid she’s been infected.

Night falls, and the infected people come out again as the mayor continues broadcasting on the radio. Kara rushes off in a huff and gets stopped by an infected deputy. He takes her to Tommy’s mother for identification, but she’s not the one who was messing with the body. They want Kara to sell out her friends so they can all join the group. They feed her a wormy apple.

Meanwhile, Rose and Jess talk about going to Amish country to visit family. Kara and Deputy Elroy come in to infect them, and there’s a fight. Rose gets infected repeatedly, but Jess pulls out the worms– maybe. She then cuts out Elroy’s eyes - more for revenge than to get necessary samples. The two women then go out, in the daylight, to hide in a shut-down school. Rose is in the early stages of infection.

After a while, Rose complains that she can feel the worms inside her. Rose tells Jess to go to Amish country and find her sister Susanna, for help. Rose then runs out into the sun to die.

Kara, who now lives with Alice, Tommy’s mother, complains that her ribs hurt. The woman explains that the brian-worms hadn’t even hatched yet when she betrayed her friends.

Jess goes to Amish land and finds Susanna and her brother Hans. She tells them that Rose has died, but they had disowned her long ago. Susanna is friendly, but Hans is not, but Jess gets to stay in the barn. She espouses the wonder that is the “Bill and Ted” movies. Jess and Susanna talk about the world outside, all infected by the worms.

Back in town, Kara goes through a ritual as the worms take her over. Now she can see in the dark, and she’s part of the group. She’s still getting sick, so it may not be working quite right. She’s going to need surgery to correct the problem. They strap her down to a table and give her electric shocks to drive out the “bad” worms and leave the good ones. It’s painful and disgusting, but the treatment works.

Susanna and Hans talk about why she doesn’t get a humspringer, and in exchange, he allows Jess to stay with them.

Kara meets the mayor, or what’s left of him, and we see that the long-term effects of the worms are not good. She wants to be “A Rancher” , one of his deputies, and he wants to know why. He admits that the humans are basically food for the worms, and it’s all going to end badly. The mayor wants Jess brought in for the murder of Elroy.

Now “Ranchers,” Alice and Kara get outfits that let them walk outside in the daytime.

Jess and Susanna talk about Cleveland and the worm-people. They hear normal people on the radio– maybe only Ashland is infected. On the road, they soon run into Kara’s group. This goes badly for Alice, who gets exposed to the sun in the ensuing fight. They throw Alice in the backseat and head back to the farm.

Alice, now with her head clear, apologizes to Jess for everything she’s done. Alice tells Jess to disable the radio station where the mayor is constantly broadcasting and then dies.

Kara goes rogue and beats up an uninfected person in town, which annoys the mayor. Kara then squishes the mayor’s head and lets the bugs out. Taking over, she goes to the radio station and starts reporting about her new era. They are even going to go after the Amish now.

Jess and Susanna arrive at the radio station and kill one of the guards. When Jess smashes the transmitter, the outside signals can get through now. She and Kara fight, and Jess gets wormed before killing Kara.

Susanna takes Jess to the car and drives out of town. The sun comes up, and Jess gets out of the car to die in the sunlight. Susanna runs up and covers her with a blanket.

Brian’s Commentary

Ew. So many worms.

I would have liked an explanation of how this all started, but there’s a lot more mystery to it this way, which is probably fine. I feel like there was a lot here that wasn’t fully fleshed out, like the thing with the cell phones, which seemed to disrupt the worms somehow. Also, the worms seemed to be in a sort of group mind, where they knew each other were being attacked.

If you like body horror, this is a gross one, but it suffers a bit from being too ambitious a story and from being rushed. This would have made an excellent miniseries.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought this was an interesting take on a parasitic takeover. We don’t see the origin or get an explanation if they are terrestrial or alien or what. Just small town life with most of the population in the grip of the infestation. And a few freedom fighters are trying to undo it. Well, quickly two freedom fighters and then one.

It had a promising start, but I thought it got bogged down the further it went along. I have mixed feelings about it, mostly good but not entirely.

1959 Experiment in Evil

* AKA “The Testament of Dr. Cordelier” AKA “The Doctor’s Horrible Experiment”

* Directed by: Jean Renoir

* Written by: Jean Renoir, Robert Louis Stevenson

* Stars: Jean-Louis Barrault, Teddy Bilis, Michel Vitold

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s an updated version of Jekyll and Hyde set in the modern age of 1959 France, Dr. Cordelier and Mr. Opale this time around. The Frenchness as well as the late 1950s fashions, styles, and technology all contribute to the entertainment. It’s solidly made and an enjoyable watch, though the last half hour drags a bit.

Spoilery Synopsis

Mr. Renoir arrives in town, and they head straight to the TV studio. He gets settled in behind the desk and records the introduction to a documentary story. He tells us about the strange Dr. Cordelier, a scientist. Mr. Joly is a notary who helps the doctor write up a new will. Mr. Opale is written into the will to inherit Cordelier’s estate should anything happen to him.

Joly watches one night as a sketchy-looking man with a cane shuffles down the street. His suit doesn’t fit right, and he grabs and attacks a child. The creepy man runs and hides in Cordelier’s garden and escapes. The servant lets Joly in, who tells him what happened. The servant, Desire, explains that Mr. Opale is Cordelier’s house guest, and it must have been him.

The next morning, Cordelier comes to see Joly about Opale and the events last night. Cordelier doesn’t seem worried or surprised at the story, but he’s not going to do anything about it.

Joly goes to see Dr. Severin who doesn’t like Cordelier’s research. Cordelier used to be a great psychologist, but now he’s a loon. They talk about why Cordelier would want to work with a crazy man like Opale.

Meanwhile, Opale goes on a daytime rampage, attacking various people around Paris and eventually beating a man to death. As the witnesses are questioned, Joly is there and recognizes Opale’s cane. He knows what’s going on and tells the police about Opale.

The police go to Opale’s apartment, but he’s not there. The women in the building are thrilled that Opale’s going to be arrested. They find whips and fetish gear inside as well as the other half of his broken cane.

Cordelier doesn’t seem concerned and says he doesn’t know where Opale is. His brain has allowed Cordelier to do his greatest work, so he owes him.

Cordelier sets up a demonstration of his work with Dr. Severin, who also invites Joly. We see that it’s Opale who shows up. He can’t help but attack a man with crutches outside and this starts a whole chase with the police. He then chases the nurses around the office before confronting Severin.

Severin examines Opale and asks him some medical questions. As they talk, the police and Joly arrive outside. Cordelier answers the door and shows them to Severin’s dead body. The police search for Opale, but they don’t find a trace of him.

Cordelier promises to stop his experiments, and he even has the back door to his garden bricked up. He throws a party for all his wealthy friends.

Much later that night, Desire calls Joly and urges him to rush over. Professor Cordelier is in his lab moaning and screaming, and the servants are terrified. The noises continue, and the men break in the door.

Inside, they find Opale who grabs a hostage. They can’t find Cordelier anywhere. They all calm down and leave Opale to tell his story to Joly. Opale has an audio tape from Cordelier that explains it all. We get a flashback to a much younger version of Cordelier, who treats a woman with a scandalous nephew. He had “naughty” thoughts about his nurse and some patients, and once, he even raped a sedated patient. This happened over and over, so he started to look for a way to chemically treat his moral failings. He decided to try his experiment on himself, and after drinking it, he turned into Opale, who looks very different.

Instead of repressing his sick desires, they manifested physically, turning him into a criminal. Back in the lab, Joly doesn’t believe any of this. Opale wants Joly to help him get his conscience back and go back to being just Cordelier. He tells more about that first time he changed to Opale, then went back to Cordelier who swore never again. But he craved it too much to leave it alone. So we see the flashback of his second outing as Opale.

Which brings us back to the present, where Opale laments that he can’t turn back anymore. Opale wants to take a fatal dose of poison which Joly tries to talk him out of. He doesn’t succeed and Opale collapses. Joly runs for help, and when he comes back with the servants Opale has reverted back to Cordelier.

Brian’s Commentary

Cordelier and Opale look nothing at all alike, yet they’re played by the same actor. This was made for TV and got a theatrical release later on.

It’s decent, although pretty uninspired for the first hour, and it starts to really drag once Opale starts to tell his story. I do not recommend it.

Kevin’s Commentary

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was published in 1886. It’s strange to think that this was a modern update at the time, which was over sixty years ago.

I was impressed with the distinct look that Jean-Louis Barrault had between the two personas with the use of mannerisms, makeup, and costuming.

It’s dated, but that lends to the charm with 1950s technology and vibe. Overall, I thought it was an entertaining good time. For some reason, it seemed longer than an hour and a half but I wasn’t bored. Just surprised when we paused at a point I was expecting to be a final wrap up and there was still a half hour to go.

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