Horror Weekly

This time around, we’ve got three new films, an ancient classic, and a not-so-old franchise film. We’ll start with the new “28 Years Later,” which just came to streaming. Next, we’ll watch the shark-slasher, “Dangerous Animals” and the weird “Flesh of the Unforgiven,” also from this year. We’ll then go back to 1941 and view the comedy-horror film, “Spooks Run Wild.” Lastly, we’ll cover the final film in the Caesar trilogy with “War for the Planet of the Apes” from 2017.

And, as always, we’ll have five short films.

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Mainstream Films:

2025 28 Years Later

* Directed by: Danny Boyle

* Written by: Alex Garland

* Stars: Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 55 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This has quite a different tone than the first two movies, and neither of us thought it was improved for the better. After 28 years, assuming the rest of the world is just fine, it seems like they would be handling things differently by this point. Brian thought it was on the dull side. Kevin wasn’t bored, but neither of us liked it that much.

Spoilery Synopsis

A group of children watch the Teletubbies as the air raid sirens go off and the parents all get really upset. As Jimmy and the others continue to watch, we hear the adults in the next room being eaten. The rage zombies soon get everyone in the house other than Jimmy. We’re told that the rage virus was beaten back from Europe, but it destroyed the entire UK, which was left as a kind of quarantine zone. That was 28 years ago… Credits roll.

We open on young Spike and the other villagers getting ready for work on their farms and such on the island. His father is Jamie, who makes an amazing-looking breakfast. His mother, Isla, is sick, and she didn’t realize they were leaving the island this morning for Spike’s first time. She doesn’t want Spike to go, as he’s way too young. She’s confused or delirious, but she calms down easily.

Spike and Jamie are going for Spike’s first hunt, and everyone in town cheers them on; it’s a big event. Spike’s only 12, and kids usually don’t go until 14, so he’s an exception. Jenny, the village leader, explains that if anything goes wrong, they’re on their own. They leave the island over the causeway that can only be used during low tide.

The two hunters soon see a rotten-looking man crawling on all fours and eating worms. Spike makes his shot and kills the infected man; Jamie kills two more that sneak up on them. They find a house, and inside is a man tied up and hanging by his feet. Someone tied him up and left him for the infected. The man’s got “Jimmy” carved on his chest. Spike kills it.

The two find a stag’s head stuck way up on a tree, and Jamie gets spooked. It’s time to go back home. Too late, they run into a whole horde of crazies– the fast variety. The chase is on! They soon run out of arrows and hide in the attic of an old house.

We cut back to the village, where people hang up “Welcome home Spike” banners. We hear from Jamie about “Alphas” which are bigger, stronger, and smarter than the usual zombies. Night falls, and they can’t go home. They make a run for it and make it to the causeway, which is just slightly underwater. The Alpha chases them across the water, but the sentries at the village shoot it. They go inside to the celebrations where Jamie’s got a girlfriend on the side, Rosie.

Spike talks to an old man, Sam, about the fire they saw in the woods; he says it’s Dr. Kelson, who’s been living out there for years. He’s… odd, but Sam doesn’t want to talk about him. Spike wants to get the doctor to help his mother. Spike eventually gets Jamie to tell the story about Dr. Kelson burning the bodies of the infected.

Spike and his mentally-ill mother sneak out of the village; he wants to take her to the doctor– across the wilderness of the mainland. They spend the night in an old church. Someone prevents a zombie from killing them during the night– could it have been Isla, Spike’s mother?

We cut to a group of Swedish soldiers who are being chased by a pack of infected. They run into an Alpha, who rips one soldier’s head clean off.

Spike and Isla get chased by zombies, and they hide in an old gas station. They’re rescued by the sole surviving soldier, Erik. He’s stuck here now; once anyone sets foot on the mainland, they are quarantined– permanently.

Isla comes upon an infected woman who is pregnant, and it looks very painful. The baby seems normal enough, and Isla wants to take it. Meanwhile, an Alpha tears Erik’s head off. The Alpha chases Spike and Isla right into the hands of Dr. Kelson. Kelson sedates the big Alpha, whom he’s named Samson. Spike explains why they’ve come, and Kelson invites them to his compound.

Kelson has made a whole forest out of human bones, including a skull tower, as a memorial and tribute to the dead. Kelson shows Spike how to make a clean skull out of Erik. Kelson examines Isla and diagnoses that she has brain and breast cancer that has spread. There’s nothing he can do to help. The doctor drugs up Spike and then mercy-kills Isla. One more skull for the pile!

In the morning, Samson attacks, but Kelson and Spike hide in safety. Kelson wants Spike and the baby to go home before something bad happens.

28 Days later, the villagers on the island find the baby, left there by Spike, who continues on in his exploration of the mainland. They also find a note from Spike saying he’ll be away for a while.

On the road, Spike runs into a gang of men all dressed alike who take care of a bunch of fast zombies. They’re the Jimmy gang, and they’re all named Jimmy. “Let’s be pals,” he says.

Brian’s Commentary

Why, if the rage virus is so insanely deadly, is it allowed to continue in the UK? Why wouldn’t NATO or the US simply nuke it flat? There’s just too much risk of it getting out.

Well, you might say it’s because of the survivors, like on the island. If that were the case, why would the authorities airdrop food, medicine, or at least radio to them?

Where did the doctor get all that iodine, and why didn’t he kill Samson long ago if he sedated him regularly? He clearly had no problem with mercy killings.

The acting is fine, and the sets are cool. Other than random shots of dirty naked people running around, there really wasn’t much zombie action in this. The Jimmies at the end made no sense and wasn’t much of a payoff after seeing “Jimmy” carved into everything along the way.

I thought it was really… dull.

Kevin’s Commentary

I didn’t think this was dull, but there were too many elements that didn’t make sense - which Brian already went over in his commentary. I thought the Jimmy gang at the end was pretty funny actually. I guess if it’s an apocalypse, one should embrace the crazy.

I did appreciate that they were realistic about the arrow use. They were used up accurately and the quivers didn’t magically refill.

I didn’t think this was nearly as good or entertaining as the first two movies. This was too different.

2025 Dangerous Animals

* Directed by: Sean Byrne

* Written by: Nick Lepard

* Stars: Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, Josh Heuston

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a little reminiscent of “Wolf Creek,” with an Australian serial killer who has been at his work for quite some time. Tucker, the baddie, finally meets his match when he pursues Zephyr. It’s a little on the predictable side, but it’s well made with a good cast and it entertains.

Spoilery Synopsis

A young couple walks out to the pier. Tucker shows up for Greg and Heather, who want to hire his boat. He makes a joke about no one knowing they’re even here, and then takes them out to swim with the sharks. On the way out, he tells the story about how he was attacked by a shark when he was seven, and then he shows them the scar.

Tucker dumps some chum overboard to attract a shark, as the young people watch the sharks arrive. Tucker sings “Baby Shark” to calm them down. Greg and Heather climb into the shark cage and go down. There are a lot of sharks down there, and Heather eventually calms down to enjoy the show.

Tucker pulls them up, and when Greg gets out of the cage, Tucker stabs him and pushes him overboard. “Welcome aboard,” Tucker says as credits roll.

Zephyr and Moses are at a convenience store. He needs a ride and “convinces” her to take him. Turns out, they’re both surfers and start talking about that. They end up going home together for sex.

Very early in the morning, Zephyr goes out to the dark beach and gets ready to surf. She left her fin key at Moses’s place and borrows one from Tucker. As she texts Moses, Tucker grabs her from behind. He sedates and ties her up, then loads her into his truck.

Moses arrives at the surfing spot and parks next to Zephyr’s van, but she’s nowhere to be seen. A while later, he sees her van being towed and goes to the police.

Zephyr wakes up chained to a bed next to Heather, who’s also chained. They’re on Tucker’s boat, way out in the ocean. Heather tells Zephyr what happened to Greg. Tucker comes in with food and water. The water is drugged, and both girls pass out.

Zephyr wakes up tied to a chair on deck; Heather is chained to a harness and a hoist, and Tucker has a video camera. He talks about his “true calling.” He uses the hoist to pick up and lower Heather into the chum-filled water. He videos the whole resulting shark feeding frenzy. “Tell me that ain’t the greatest show on Earth.” He says he’ll do the same to Zephyr tomorrow night.

We soon see that Tucker’s been at this a while, with dozens of former victims. Back on shore, Moses looks all over for Zephyr, but she’s still not there. He does find her surfboard and gets the police involved in a real search. He uses the beach-cams to see Tucker’s truck on the night he kidnapped Zephyr.

Zephyr manages to knock out Tucker and get his keys. She runs up to the control room and uses the radio, but Tucker injects her and she passes out again. She manages to throw Tucker’s video camera overboard before jumping over herself.

Tucker goes back to the dock to buy a new camera and avoids his annoying pier neighbor, Dave. Meanwhile, Moses calls Tucker and then heads to the marina. He boards the boat, hears Zephyr, breaks in, and finds her. Tucker shows up, and the two fight until neighbor Dave shows up to get involved. Dave doesn’t live long after that.

Now, with both of them chained to bed, Zephyr and Moses talk about relationships. It’s not long before Moses finds himself in the shark harness– in broad daylight. Moses hangs there, perfectly still, and the sharks go away. Tucker stabs Moses and puts him right back in the water. When a helicopter flies over, Tucker puts them both back in their cell in a hurry.

Zephyr breaks her own thumb to get out of the handcuffs. That doesn’t work, so she chews her own thumb off instead. She traps Tucker in the cell, but he’s smart and knows a way out.

She jumps overboard and swims toward the resort on the horizon. He chases her in his dinghy and catches her. They go back to the boat.

This time, he puts Moses in the viewer seat while Zephyr hangs from the harness. As he gives a speech, the biggest shark he’s ever seen comes up to the boat. Somehow, she gets loose from the harness and comes face to face with the big shark.

Zephyr crawls back onto the boat and shoots Tucker with a harpoon gun; he goes overboard and the shark gets him. As the shark swims away, Zephyr’s foot gets caught in the harpoon line, and she goes overboard as well.

Moses, still cuffed to the chair, passes out. Zephy eventually swims back to the boat, can’t wake Moses up, and shoots off a flare for help. A nearby party boat sees the flare and heads their way.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s essentially “Wolf Creek” on the ocean. It’s even got the same accents. Jai Courtney is very good here as Tucker, totally crazy and yet fun to watch. I dunno about the whole videotaping-while-a-shark-eats-you part of it, but I’m sure there are plenty of serial killers out on boats in the ocean.

It’s all pretty predictable, but it’s well made, looks good, and doesn’t get boring. Overall, I did like it.

Kevin’s Commentary

I wasn’t expecting to like this as much as I did. Shark movies tend to be overdone and on the mediocre side. We could see where things were going for the most part, but this was pretty well made and entertaining. I’d say see one if you like shark movies, and especially if you’re a fan of “Wolf Creek.”

2025 Flesh of the Unforgiven

* Directed by: Joe Hollow

* Written by: Joe Hollow

* Stars: Debbie Rochon, Joe Hollow, August Kyss

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A couple’s struggles are made more complicated by supernatural forces. This reminded us both of a take on Hellraiser, with more elements of strange romance and relationship complications. There’s some decent work being done here, but this one didn’t really connect with either of us.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch a man in a bondage suit watching weird torture porn on a small TV as we get flashes of manga pages. “There will be no becoming,” warns a voice as the man begs. The man is beheaded and his body burns. Elsewhere, a woman wakes up. Was that a dream?

We hear about “The Death Dealer” who searches for lost souls and leads a legion of demons. In return for facing your fears and embracing them, you survive. Credits roll.

Jack and Sienna Russo go to the house by the lake, and it’s a very cold winter’s day. They’re having some marital problems. We cut to Vivienne, who’s talking to her mother on the phone; she’s made some bad life choices.

Jack wants to be a writer, but he has no inspiration. Sienna dresses in a bondage suit to get him in the mood. His publisher wants two pages by Monday, or he’s fired. Someone sends him a videotape and a note labeled, “Inspiration.”

We cut to Vivienne, who gets all made up in a nice dress and then shoots herself in the head.

Jack plays the tape. It’s a video of a leather-clad man in a mask tormenting a woman in a white mask. The man then slaps the woman several times.

Vivienne wakes up and a muscular man in a mask appears from a portal. “Your becoming can be so beautiful. Become my Jezebel,” says the deep voice we heard in the pre-credit sequence. She needs to embrace her fears and “become” before she runs out of time.

Sienna talks to Jack about the strange man she’s been dreaming about; we know who he is. The Death Dealer’s weird, screechy-voiced assistant, Livinia, tortures a man who wants more time.

Jack continues to watch the depraved videotape until Sierra comes in to talk about what she did. She had an affair with Jack’s best friend. Soon after she finds herself locked in a room with a magical portal. She soon meets Livinia, who introduces her to the Death Dealer. The Death Dealer strangles her, and she wakes up back in her own bed.

We get a montage that shows us that Sienna tried to kill herself at one point. Jack watches the video, and a lot of the “story” seems to reflect his own life and cheating wife. Jack thinks his publisher, Callie, sent it to him for inspiration.

Jack goes to the bar, angry, and runs into Vivienne there, who seduces him. When he goes home, Sienna wants them to do Ecstasy. The Death Dealer soon shows up and smacks Jack before tying him up. It’s a bad trip.

Mike the bartender explains a bunch of stuff; he knows about Jack and Vivienne. On Jack’s video, the tortured girl cuts off the Death Dealer’s penis and then shoots him in the head– and then herself. Jack starts to think Sienna had something to do with the tape.

Sienna comes in, and she admits she sent the tape. Was everything on the tape real? She says it’s more about forgiveness; anyone can forgive. “You hurt me too. That’s why I had to kill Vivienne.” She wants him to use all this in his novel. Then she vanishes.

Livinia laughs and tortures Sienna, who actually killed herself a while back. All of this was her embracing her fear of a life without Jack. She has become. Jack, on the other hand, does write his book.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s a sort of low-budget riff on “Hellraiser” without all the violence and special effects.

The music selections in this film are just horrible. Did the filmmaker think we’d want to hear that droning, moaning, mush?

It was written, directed, produced, and starred Joe Hollow. His acting isn’t terrible here, but his directing leaves a bit to be desired. It’s really slow, the editing and acting feel a little off, and a lot of the scenes just feel like an excuse for women to wear bondage gear.

The twist at the end didn’t really save this one for me.

Kevin’s Commentary

The costuming and effects did the job for the most part. The story dragged a bit, but got the job done in the end with an interesting wrap up. I think it might have been a stronger film with the writing/directing/producing/starring delegated more instead of all being one person.

1941 Spooks Run Wild

* Directed by: Phil Rosen

* Written by: Carl Foreman, Charles R. Marion, Jack Henley

* Stars: Bela Lugosi, Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 5 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Despite the title, there is a complete lack of spooks. There are endless quips and zany adventures as the gang encounters Bela Lugosi and his sinister sidekick. It’s actually really dated in the humor and everything else about it, and it doesn’t hold up much for entertainment.

Spoilery Synopsis

Six “Boys” get arrested. “We’re going to camp, not reform school.” They’re loaded on a bus and taken to a small town in the mountains. Three of the boys plan a jailbreak for that night, but first, they go to the soda shop. They hear a radio announcement warning about “The Monster Killer” who’s left a trail of three inhuman murders. Muggs, Danny, and Glimpy brag about eating monsters for breakfast.

Jeff and Linda are the “camp” chaperones, and they aren’t happy with the delinquents they’re stuck with. He’s studying to be a lawyer, and she’s a nurse. At the camp, night falls, and the boys hear howling outside. What if that killer guy is prowling around here?

A creepy man and a dwarf arrive in town with two caskets. Nardo (Lugosi) and Luigi are moving into the Billings Estate, where no one’s lived in ten years. Dr. Von Grosch comes to town, he’s here to catch the monster killer. Von Grosch wants to keep his arrival secret.

A man sees Nardo and Luigi in the woods and shoots at them, but they vanish. Muggs, Danny, and Glimpy sneak off into the woods. They meet up with Scruno, Peewee, and Skinny out there. The man who shot at Nardo takes a shot at Peewee, but Peewee doesn’t vanish, he gets hit.

Peewee is hurt, so they drag him up to the house on the hill, looking for help. Luigi answers the door. The house is full of cobwebs and all the usual haunted house paraphernalia. Inside, Nardo reads about the “Monster Killer” in the newspaper.

Nardo looks Peewee over and offers to give him some medicine rather than call a doctor. Meanwhile, Jeff and Linda argue about whether or not it’s even worth looking for the six missing kids. Back in town, the mayor and sheriff talk about catching the killer, which isn’t going to be easy.

Nardo shows the boys to rooms where they can spend the night while they wait for Peewee to recover. Scruno stays with Peewee to watch him, but Peewee looks dead. Peewee wakes up and walks out, looking like a zombie now. Muggs and the others come to the conclusion that Nardo is a vampire. Scruno tells the others about Peewee becoming a zombie; Nardo says he has no idea what happened to Peewee.

Jeff goes to the sheriff and hears about Peewee getting shot and going to the old Billings house, where the killer is rumored to be staying.

There are some hijinks as the boys explore the haunted house. There’s lots of running around, secret doors, and Bela Lugosi leering evilly.

Outside, Dr. Von Grosch picks up Linda and heads up to the house.

Nardo and Luigi encounter the Monster in the hallway. Nardo says the ghost has made a mistake and then falls down the stairs. The ghost is really three kids in a trench coat with a skull on top. They soon find Peewee back in his bed, feeling much better now.

Dr. Von Grosch and Linda enter the house, and he suddenly turns creepy. Yes, he’s the killer, and has been all along.

The police break in, and Muggs explains that Nardo’s really a good guy and they’ve all made friends. Nardo and Luigi are magicians, here to perfect their act. They all hear Linda screaming and run upstairs. The cops and Von Grosch shoot through a door, but then Muggs sneaks in through the skylight and distracts the killer while Linda lets in the good guys.

After everything settles down, Nardo gives a magic show for the gang and makes Linda disappear. They all have a final laugh at Mugg’s expense.

Brian’s Commentary

Some of the “boys” looked to be about thirty years old, but that’s still a common thing today. They were first advertised as the “Dead End Kids” in seven films, later the “East Side Kids” for 21 films, and eventually became “The Bowery Boys,” for 41 films. That’s a lot of movies for some guys who aren’t the least bit funny today.

Lugosi and his “mini-me” sidekick are fun. Angelo Rossitto, as Luigi, doesn’t say anything here, but he played dwarves and midgets in over a hundred movies and TV shows over a very long career.

We kept waiting for the spooks to run wild, or even walk slowly, but there were no spooks. It’s only an hour long, but it’s not funny, not scary, and not particularly entertaining.

Kevin’s Commentary

It’s pretty obvious the hijinks in this inspired “Scooby Doo” later on. It was short but still managed to drag and seem too long. The humor and script are very dated. It was kind of interesting in a historical archive sort of way, but that’s about it.

2017 War for the Planet of the Apes

* Directed by: Matt Reeves

* Written by: Mark Bombeck, Matt Reeves, Rick Jaffa

* Stars: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn

* Run Time: 2 Hours, 20 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The story continues about five more years after the last movie. It’s pretty consistent in quality, keeping the entertainment and driving up the action. Things wrap up pretty well, but of course leave it open for another movie in the continuing saga. If you enjoyed the previous two movies, you’ll probably like this one too.

Spoilery Synopsis

We are told that fifteen years after the plague, the remainder of the US Army was dispatched to eliminate the apes. Under command of Colonel McCullough, the apes went into hiding, but they are preparing to retaliate. We see that the humans have some apes working with them. Suddenly, there’s a lot of shooting. Lots of apes die, but they still manage to beat off the human invaders.

Some human prisoners talk to Caesar. The apes who followed Koba now help the humans. They release the humans, and then Rocket and Blue Eyes arrive, saying they’ve found something– a potential new home beyond the mountains. There are too many to make the journey safely the way they came, so they need to find a safe way out of the woods.

That same night, Caesar realizes that the human soldiers are a lot closer than he thought, closing on their family encampment. He silently alerts some of the fighters, and watches as The Colonel himself arrives to kill all the group’s children, including Blue Eyes. Winter, the big white gorilla, betrayed them all. Cornelius, Caesar’s little son, is the only survivor of the massacre. He leaves Cornelius with Lake, Blue Eyes’s widow.

Caesar sends all the apes away with Maurice, but he plans on going after the Colonel personally. He ends up taking a few friends, Rocket, Luca, and Maurice, along.

They go to a camp where they think there might be soldiers, but all they find is a scared child who can’t speak. Maurice decides to keep her because she wouldn’t survive on her own.

They soon find another camp, this one full of soldiers, as well as Winter, the treasonous ape. Winter explains his story and asks for forgiveness. Caesar’s wife and son are dead, so Winter knows he’s screwed.

The apes find some people half-buried in the snow after being shot by humans. One of them isn’t dead, but he cannot speak either. They get robbed by a bad ape, whom they catch and start calling Bad Ape. Bad Ape offers his coat to the mute girl. He escaped from the zoo when the plague hit. Maurice says he didn’t realize there were other smart apes out in the world; they could be everywhere. Bad Ape knows of a former quarantine zone where the Colonel and his men might be hiding. Bad Ape gives the little girl the nameplate off a car, “Nova.”

They find the humans’ base, and Luca almost immediately gets stabbed. Nova cries at the loss of her new friend, as do the others. Caesar sends the others away and goes into the human camp alone. He finds all his people have been captured and locked in cages and used as slaves.

Caesar gets captured and gets to talk to Colonel McCullough himself. He walks past the cages, and Cornelius is in there with the others. It doesn’t look good for the apes. The next morning, everyone gets marched out to move rocks to build a wall. When Caesar causes trouble, the Colonel orders Red Donkey to whip him.

Meanwhile, Maurice, Rocket, Nova, and Bad Ape watch all this from the mountain.

Caesar figures out that the Colonel is building a wall to fight more humans; the soldiers that are coming are afraid of the Colonel, not Caesar. There’s something wrong with some of the humans the apes have found, and the other humans fear that. Humans have suddenly started losing the ability to speak and think clearly, some side-effect of the plague, which has mutated. The Colonel killed his own infected son. The other military guys are coming to stop the Colonel. He thinks the final war is coming soon, and if they lose, the world will become a planet of apes.

Everyone glares at each other for about twenty minutes during my nap at this point. Caesar scopes out the whole base and then relays it all to Maurice with sign language. Donkey warns Caesar that the Colonel is going to shoot all the apes when the wall is done being built.

At night, Bad Ape and Maurice dig a tunnel into the adult apes’ holding cell and release them, and then they release all the children apes as well. All the kids get out of the camp by crawling across the power lines.

Caesar, on the other hand, still wants the Colonel and stays behind. Suddenly, humans in helicopters attack the base. Caesar uses the distraction to find the Colonel, who has lost the ability to speak; he’s mute now. Nova’s doll that he took must have been infected. The Colonel wants to die, but Caesar refuses to kill him. He ends up killing himself. Caesar makes a quick dash to escape as the humans from the north storm the base.

As many apes are pinned down by a machine gunner, Red Donkey decides to redeem himself by saving Caesar and his own kind. With Donkey’s help, Caesar blows up the wall– and the whole base.

Suddenly, a giant avalanche comes down the mountain and buries all the humans– the apes take refuge in the trees. Almost all the humans, on both sides, are buried.

The apes continue on over the mountains to the desert, where they will make a new home. As they enter the promised land, Caesar grabs his side where he was shot in the battle. Maurice promises to raise Cornelius and teach him all about his father and what he did for them all. Then Caesar collapses and dies.

And the rest all live happily ever after– until the next film.

Brian’s Commentary

It continues the story in an action-packed way, and also explores the evolution of the planet of the apes. The humans’ plague is evolving to make them stupid and mute, and we know how that’s going to end up. We lose a few characters from the previous films, but we gain a few new ones too. The Colonel’s motivations are pretty clearly explained, and he’s not wrong, he’s just on the wrong side of the main characters. Considering that only 1 in 500 people survived the plague, there were an awful lot of soldiers in that final scene.

Kevin’s Commentary

I liked this one just as much as the previous two movies. It seemed to be a smooth continuation. And it makes sense that other apes besides their group would have been affected by the plague, I’m glad they worked in “Bad Ape” to show that. I’d recommend this if you like the series. It’s more of the same and entertaining.

Short Films:

2021 Short Film 10-33

* Directed by: Alexander Maxim Seltzer

* Written by: Alexander Maxim Seltzer

* Stars: Alison Louder, Andrew Chown, Hannah Galway

* Run Time: 10:02

* Watch it:

What Happens

Ava goes to the crowded bathroom at the theater. She sits in her stall listening to the other girls gossip about the craziest things. Suddenly, she hears gunfire outside. And then inside. Then, the gunman comes into the restroom and kills everyone but her.

What could he want? We watch as Ava negotiates for her life…

Commentary

It’s very well shot. We only see Ava for most of the film, and a few other girls right at the beginning; we never see the gunman at all, so he’s left to our imagination. What does he want? Why is he doing all this? Will we get answers?

So much suspense!!!

2021 Short Film The Bowl

* Directed by: Levi Morgan

* Written by: Jamie Green, Levi Morgan

* Stars: Wade Brasington, Jamie Green, Levi Morgan, and Hannah Pendergrass

* Run Time: 7:13

* Watch it:

What Happens

Jamie confronts his roommate about a bowl that he ate out of and didn’t wash and put away. “It’s not just any bowl, Wade. It’s YOUR bowl. There must be order.” He seems really upset about the dirty bowl… until Wade says it wasn’t him. Maybe it was the third roommate upstairs?

Or maybe it’s even worse than that.

Commentary

I’ve had roommates like Jamie, and let me tell you, that’s the truly horrific part of this story. Still, none of the three had any idea what was in store for them, but at least they were happy in the end.

This one is really funny. There are no special effects, no jump scares, no blood, and still, it manages to impress– mostly from the great dialogue.

Watch it and then go put away YOUR dishes!

2022 Short Film The Gate

* Directed by: Matt Westrup

* Written by: Matt Westrup

* Stars: John Mawson, Robert Rowe, Tryphene Russel

* Run Time: 11:08

* Watch it:

What Happens

Experts and eyewitnesses discuss the strange transformations that have been taking place with seemingly random people. They painfully change into distorted, monstrous versions of humans and are often violent. As the experts testify, they start to figure out what’s causing all this.

Will it happen again?

Commentary

The weird creature effects are the main draw here, and they’re very well done. I assume they’re mostly CGI, but they blend right in. Not all the creatures look the same, which makes it just that much more fun to watch.

Be careful what you order online!

2024 Short Film Lady Parts

* Directed by: Ariel McCleese

* Written by: Ariel McCleese

* Stars: Ava Hase, Liv Mai, Jake Holley

* Run Time: 14:45

* Watch it:

What Happens

Iris, a high school girl, has an erotic dream about her friend Ellie, and it makes her wet. Very wet. This can’t be normal, can it? She decides to go to the big party, where she hooks up with Ethan. She prefers Ellie, but Ethan’s right there, so why not?

There’s nothing wrong with getting a little moist, right?

Wrong.

Commentary

This is well filmed and looks good, but they don’t really try to explain it. It’s most likely an allegory for awkward teenage years, but… wow. I want to know what was going through Ethan’s mind as this all played out.

It’s very weird. Good, but weird!

2024 Short Film The Man with No Mouth

* Directed by: Mr. Friend

* Written by: Mr. Friend

* Stars: Animated. Voiced by Mr. Friend

* Run Time: 9:37

* Watch it:

What Happens

Little Timothy’s not very smart. He’s up late doing his math homework, and he just can’t get the answers. Much to his surprise, a strange man with no mouth shows up outside his window and wants in. Timothy’s not that dumb; he doesn’t let him in. Still, the man gives him the answers to his homework by holding up how many fingers is the answer. Because he has no mouth. But wait, how was he whistling then?

The next night? Well, now they’re friends. What could go wrong?

Commentary

This one is done with stop-motion, in the style of an old VHS tape. It’s very retro, and it gets all the aesthetics just right. We have to wonder just how “not very smart” little Timothy is, but then we find out.

The ending wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was fun anyway!

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.horrormonthly.com

* https://www.flashfright.com

It’s an odd week, and an even odder mix of films this time. We’ll start off with “Bats” a nature-gone-wild story from 1999, then travel back in time to watch Bela Lugosi ruin Chinatown in 1936. We’ll then take a freaky gander at a very unusual “Wolf Girl” (2001). “The Sound” is up next, a 2025 film about mountain climbers, followed by 2015’s “Anarchy Parlor,” a terrible tattoo tale.

And, as always, we’ll have five short films.

* The latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #47, goes on sale in just a few days! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

1999 Bats

* Directed by: Louis Morneau

* Written by: John Logan

* Stars: Lou Diamond Phillips, Dina Meyer, Bob Gunton

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The poster is cool. The science is bad. The movie is pretty good. It’s a genetically-engineered-creature-gone-wrong kind of movie with a big body count. There’s not a lot new here, but it’s got some entertainment value.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open in Gallup, Texas as Quint and Emma, a young couple, drive out to an isolated make-out spot. Quint notices something strange outside the car and investigates. As a train passes by behind them, a giant bat breaks in through the windshield and kills them both. Credits roll.

We cut to Skull Valley, Arizona. Jimmy talks to Dr. Sheila Casper, who’s crawling around in a tight bat-filled cave herself. They’re rudely interrupted by a helicopter containing Dr. Tobe Hodge and Dr. Alexander McCabe. They are needed for a bat-related “biological emergency.”

The group soon arrives in Texas, where they are met by Sheriff Emmett Kimsey. The three scientists do an autopsy on the young couples’ bodies. They were, in fact, killed by bats, but that’s not normal. There have been some animal deaths, but bats don’t do that. McCabe mentions that these bats are special– two bats escaped from a lab. They need to kill the two bats before they can contaminate others with their unique viruses.

Another body is found, and it was done by way more than two bats. The mayor wants to avoid a panic and insists they all keep it quiet. McCabe explains that the bats are more intelligent and aggressive, and now they’re omnivorous. If these bats infect the general population during a migration, that would be… bad. Dr. Casper says they need to kill all the contaminated bats before this gets any worse.

Casper and Sheriff Kimsey talk about her love for bats. Suddenly, a swarm of CGI bats chases them, and they barely manage to hide in the car. They crawl all over the car, trying to get in; it’s very tense. When Jimmy and the deputy arrive, they get swarmed as well, but then the bats all fly away. All but one, which they put in a cage. They spot McCabe’s original two bats, but they escape as well. They inject the captured bat with a tracker and release it– but then the two leader bats tear it apart.

Dr. Hodge gets the CDC to evacuate the town, and the swarm is slowly migrating in that direction. We cut to the town, where we see people doing normal things. The bats start killing the townspeople, and everyone else comes outside to watch. Among many others, the deputy gets eaten and there are many explosions. Dr. Hodge gets eaten as Casper watches, and then the bats all just fly away.

In the morning, the army arrives as the surviving townspeople are evacuated. The army wants to blow up all the mountains and the town itself, but the Sheriff, Casper, Jimmy, and McCabe want to keep looking for the leader bats and save the town. The sheriff plays opera music as the others move into the town’s school.

Casper wants to crawl into the bat cave and set up equipment that’ll freeze all the bats to death. McCabe overhears the plan and starts getting a sketchy look; he’s gonna do something dumb.

The army locates the bats, who are hiding inside a huge mine. The bats attack and kill most of the army men. McCabe admits that he designed the bats to be “perfect killing machines” and he’s called them to where the characters are set up. “You let them out of the lab, didn’t you?” Casper accuses. Yep– he’s a mad scientist.

Everyone runs around doing things as the bats attack the school. McCabe runs outside, and his two “babies” tear him apart and then leave. “I guess they got what they came for.”

The sheriff, Casper, and Jimmy show up at the mine in the morning, and everyone’s dead. The soldiers got the whole mine wired with explosives and the refrigeration equipment, and the main characters just have to get it all working before the military bombs the whole place.

Casper and the sheriff go down into the mines wearing armored breathing suits. They soon fall into a waist-high pool of bat crap. Then they find millions of bats in their lair. They figure out how to turn on the cooling system, but then the leader bats wake up and get all menacing. After a crazy battle, they kill one of the leaders and run for the way out of the caves.

Jimmy blows up the cave entrances at the last minute. He calls the army to stop the air attack. The bats in the cave all freeze to death, trapped in their cave. Everyone goes home.

Later that night, we see the other leader bat crawl out of a hole– and get promptly run over by a truck.

Brian’s Commentary

The bats are described as “omnivorous,” but they only seem to go after people. It’s a good thing that a country sheriff, a bat scientist, and her sidekick know all about army explosives and high-tech refrigeration units, huh?

The CGI bats don’t hold up very well, but otherwise, it’s all pretty good. There were only two actual live bats used in the film. The town gets wiped out in the middle of the film, something that usually happens in the finale of these kinds of films.

I saw this when it came out, and I remembered it being better than this.

Kevin’s Commentary

Has Robert Gunton ever played a good guy? Partway through, I said his character wasn’t being enough of a weasel, and sure enough ,he came through. I hadn’t seen this before, I only hoped it was better than this. It was in the middle of the road all around, but it was more entertaining than not. Like Brian said, the CGI hasn’t held up, but the practical effects are pretty good.

1936 Shadow of Chinatown

* Directed by: Robert F. Hill

* Written by: Robert F. Hill, William Buchanan

* Stars: Bela Lugosi, Bruce Bennett, Joan Barclay

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 11 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

We watched the officially edited version cut down from over four and a half hours of fifteen serial episodes. It was released this way - cut to movie length - at about the same time as the serials. The end result still manages to feel too long and dull after it gets going - the full thing would be excruciating. The poster gushes about flaming action, dynamic thrills, and eerie mystery, but it was pretty tame.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open in San Francisco, on the docks. A woman reads a letter about destroying the competition. She calls Victor Poten; they’ve discussed this, and now it’s time to act. She offers him $10,000 to ruin the merchants of Chinatown. He says with his machine, he can do it easily.

Poten gets his gang together and they synchronize their watches before their plan. The men dress up like Chinese and spread out over Chinatown. They blow up smoke bombs, shoot off guns, and cause mass confusion.

Joan comes to her editor, Martin, about getting to the bottom of this crime. She’s a reporter, and she’s desperate. Martin’s servant Willie explains the crime to her: someone wants to break up the Chinese tourist trade. She continues investigating with the local beat cop. She pesters the police chief and mayor, but they don’t even believe she’s a real reporter.

Joan watches a Chinese man, Tom Chu, be kidnapped off the street and follows them. A remote-control statue drops him down into a pit. Poten and Sonya smirk at the success of their plot.

Joan goes missing, so Martin and Captain Walters go looking for her in Chinatown. Joan uses a mirror to signal for help, and Martin sees what’s going on, goes inside, and finds her. Captain Walters gets the wrong idea and arrests Martin as being part of the gang.

Sonya and Poten talk about finishing his work. He’s obsessed with revenge, but she’s more reasonable, only caring about business.

Joan is reassigned to Los Angeles to cover a story there. Sonya is also going to L.A. Grogan, one of Sonya’s crew, wants to get rid of Poten. Poten comes in and catches Grogan, then hypnotises him. Poten then boards the ship in disguise to kill Grogan. Grogan calls Martin to tell him everything, but just before he can spill the beans, Poten shoots him with a poison dart, knocking him out instantly.

Later, Poten grabs Grogan from the infirmary and dresses him up in Poten’s disguise. When it’s time to disembark, Grogan gets off, and the police go after him. Somewhere down the line, Sonya decides she’s had enough of Poten and goes to the police.

Martin catches up to Sonya and starts interrogating her as Poten comes in. She also soon winds up hypnotised. She eventually wakes up and tells the heroes about Poten’s devastating devices. Joan writes up Sonya’s story for the papers, and her boss still gives her no credit. Joan and Sonya figure out that Martin’s heading into a trap and drive right over. Meanwhile, Martin and Willy Fu battle one of Poten’s henchmen. Martin and the thug fall off the roof; Martin lands on the fire escape, but the thug is killed.

Poten hooks up a trap, fixing it so that the chandelier falls. Sonya pushes Martin out of the way, saving him and dying in the process. This leads to a car chase through town, ending when Potan drives his car off the end of the dock and drowns.

Joan writes the story for the paper and tells Martin about it. He just called the paper and had her fired. He won’t have his wife working on a newspaper. Happy ending?

Brian’s Commentary

Lugosi is Poten, a mad scientist with a criminal gang. He can still hypnotize people with just a stare, which is convenient. He’s described as a Eurasian, but he still just looks like regular Bela Lugosi.

In one scene, Poten hypnotises Grogan to obey him, and in the next, he’s boarding a ship to kill him. There was something in-between that must have been edited out. Why was Grogan important enough to keep alive through most of the film? Actually, there’s a lot here that doesn’t really make sense, most likely due to poor editing. Then again, a fifteen-episode serial, unless tightly plotted, could easily forget details between episodes.

Martin and Joan spend most of their time arguing about his misogyny. It’s considered a good thing when he gets her fired in order to marry her.

This was edited down from the four-plus hour serial, and it still managed to get really dull for the middle twenty minutes. The first twenty minutes are bearable, but it goes downhill fast. If they only included the best parts of the original here, I can’t imagine trying to sit through more than four hours of this cheaply made mess.

Kevin’s Commentary

I want to say it would have made more sense to see the unedited serial, but I’m grateful not to have to sit through the whole thing. This was pretty dull, and it wouldn’t be fun sitting through four times as much of it.

2001 Wolf Girl

* Directed by: Thom Fitzgerald

* Written by: Lori Lansense

* Stars: Shelby Fenner, Shawn Ashmore, Tony Denman

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a story about a traveling circus sideshow with a serving of horror on the side. There is a lot of music, dancing, freaks, and strange talents filling the movie, and it’s a unique take on a werewolf tale. Despite many interesting people to look at, it’s not quite as interesting as it should be, managing to drag a bit here and there. We liked it more than disliked it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on teenagers walking through the woods, looking for something. Krystal, Beau, Cory, and Whiffler run into Ryan out there, and they pick on him. Suddenly, the circus drives by. It’s not a whole circus, just the sideshow, freaks and geeks and monsters, as the song plays.

The leader of the show, Harley Dune, stops and tells the others to set up here. The main attraction is Tara Talbot, the Wolf Girl. She talks to Athena, the fat lady, about what it was like back when Athena wasn’t so fat. All the teens from earlier stand in the woods and watch the wolf girl do mundane chores.

We cut to the big evil factory across the way, where the scientists talk about developing new genetic enhancements. Dr. Klein steals one of the lab rats and hides it in her purse. She’s Ryan’s mother. They talk about a wolf being loose in the area, and there’s a posse out looking for the wolf.

The sideshow opens, and we watch the orchestra of Little People as Christoph/Christine sings a whole song as the other attractions wheel through behind her. Ryan peeks through the window as Tara gets ready for her act. Harley Dune sings a song about plucking the bearded lady.

Beau and the other teens knock on Tara’s door, and they have a hunting dog, ready to cause trouble. Harley interrupts their fun and throws them out. Tara’s act is next, and Harley makes it all sound really interesting. Beau, in the audience, throws dog poop at her.

After the show, she washes the poop off her face. Harley and Athena talk about how terrible audiences are today.

The four troublemakers walk home through the woods as wolves howl all around them. Beau beats up Ryan as a real wolf watches from not far away.

In the morning, Tara finds a note that says she can get help for her problem. It’s from Ryan, and she goes to see him. He takes Tara to his mother’s lab where she works on depilatories. He shows her a hairless mouse. He injects her when she decides to go along with it.

As she walks home, Tara hears wolves howling. She goes to the pet groomer’s and eats a poodle. No, it’s just a sudden craving and fantasy.

Before her show that night, Tara gets a bad headache. The four baddies are back in the audience for tonight’s show as well. Beau and Krystal throw darts at her this time. In pain, she breaks out of her cage and attacks Beau. Harley distracts the audience with a dwarf-striptease act. He wonders how Tara was able to break through the bars on her cage.

Tara and Ryan go off alone; they really like each other. Ryan says her attacking Beau was a side-effect of the drug, but she argues that it was all just part of the show. He promises another treatment tomorrow. In bed, she dreams of hunting and killing sheep.

Morning comes, and we watch Tara shower. Yep, she’s hairy all over, but she’s also losing globs of hair, so the treatment may be working. Ryan’s mother interrupts, so Tara ends up dosing herself, this time larger than before. Ryan tells his mother about dating “an oddity.”

Ryan and Tara go to a diner, and the waitress is weird about it. She talks about her birth and how her parents hid her away and took her to Harley for protection. Beau mouths off, and she claws him. She goes to the restroom and drinks from the toilet bowl.

At home, Beau looks at himself naked in the mirror and cries. He’s poorly endowed, and he doesn’t like it. Tara accidentally sees him, so he follows her back to her trailer and shoots at her. This results in the two of them chasing each other around the woods. She tears him apart.

In the morning, Tara’s lost more body hair, but now crawls around on all fours. She also finds bloody clothes, which she does not like.

Back at Ryan’s house, the pet rabbit eats himself. His mother says experimental animals do that sometimes. Tara wants another treatment, but he’s not willing to continue because the rabbit went psychotic.

Krystal, Cory, and Whiffer find Beau’s body and laugh at his little “thing.”

Back at the show, Harley introduces the Wolf Girl, but this time, she attacks him. Someone yells that she killed Beau, and there’s a whole stampede, literally bringing down the house.

Tara runs into the woods and injects herself again. There’s a mob of people with torches out searching the woods. Harley confronts Ryan about what’s happening to Tara, but Ryan runs away. Kristen, with her gun, runs into Tara, but she doesn’t recognize her without all the fur.

Tara looks perfectly normal now but bites Krystal anyway. Ryan shows up and grabs the pistol and fires. He shoots the real wolf as Krystal wakes up and can’t find her tongue.

In the morning, Harley packs up the whole show and leaves town. Athena cries at leaving Tara behind, but they don’t need the trouble. Tara, on the other hand, watches them leave and crawls around the woods naked, hairless, but more wolflike than ever.

Brian’s Commentary

There’s a story here, but it’s way overshadowed by the sideshow acts and musical numbers. This was filmed in Romania, and it’s never quite clear in what year this takes place.

Tim Curry playing an unequivocally good guy? Who knew that was possible?

It’s an interesting take on the usual werewolf story, but it’s also a little on the dull side. I didn’t hate it, but I’d also have a hard time really recommending it.

Kevin’s Commentary

Any movie with Grace Jones in it is automatically at least pretty good. The rest of the freaks, geeks, and oddities were interesting as well. And their take on the werewolf aspect was unique. It still managed to drag a bit here and there. It was entertaining, but not great.

2025 The Sound

* Directed by: Brendan Devane

* Written by: Brendan Devane

* Stars: William Fichtner, Jocelyn Hudon, David Clennon

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The movie includes real rock climbers, rock climbing drama and stories, and lots of dizzying footage - that part of the movie is impressive if you’re into that. It’s unfortunately pretty low-key on the horror. The story is basic, and most of the acting isn’t very strong. It didn’t appeal to us too much.

Spoilery Synopsis

In 1959, in British Columbia, a man on a mountain hears roaring off in the distance and tries to climb down to escape the thing, which pulls his rope right back up again. He falls. Back in Washington, DC, the report says the mission failed, but they will continue to monitor the area. They will recruit more assets. Credits roll.

In the modern day, much more modern mountain climbers scale the face of a vertical mountain. When they come down, they hear that the “Forbidden Wall” has just been opened after fifty years.

We cut to Kurt and Sean talking over Facetime about making the climb, which’ll be tough, but doable. Sean’s father Conner doesn’t approve; Connor’s own father was the man who died in the pre-credit sequence. Sean explains that he doesn’t really have a choice– he has to do the climb. They wonder why the tribe is allowing access now, all of a sudden, and why only certain people were invited to climb.

Sean drives to the base of the mountain and meets the other climbers. Colton is there, and he’s happy with the weather; he knows this is going to be hard and strange for Sean. No one knows why they’re allowed to climb today, but there’s a good chance no one else will be allowed in the future.

Kerrie wants to climb, but Colt won’t allow it; she has to stay on the ground to coordinate. He says she can go on the next climb, if there is one. They’ve got a guy named “Radio” who does the communications and radio. Colt gives the climbers the rules and restrictions for the climb. Chief Guyustees, the leader or the tribe, reiterates the rules. Brad, Jesse, Lucky, Justin, Emily, Kristen, Sean, and the others get ready. Everyone knows about Sean’s grandfather, who died on this mountain.

Radio reports that he can’t explain all the static on the radio. The first team of two starts climbing anyway. Sean stays with the ground crew as a backup, and he talks to the Chief that night, “You need to finish what your grandfather couldn’t. I’m not talking about the climb. There’s an evil on top of the rock, trying to escape. The legends talk of an evil that came to our world many years ago. It needs two people to escape.” The Chief wants Sean to go up and seal the creature inside the mountain. “Embrace the quiet in your head, and you can defeat it.”

Lucky tells his life story as the climbers’ tent hangs on the straight side of the mountain. In the morning, the climb continues, and everyone suddenly gets a weird vision or hallucination. The radios stop working completely; they’re being jammed.

Kristen and Brad run into some strangeness. Brad is possessed by the creature, and he climbs the rocks like Spider-Man. He chews through her safety line, but before he can kill her, comes to his senses and falls. Kerrie sends Sean and Justin up to help her. Colton wants to continue the climb, leaving Kristen to the two rescuers. We get a climbing montage.

Almost immediately, Justin hurts himself and has to return to camp, leaving Sean to rescue Kristen alone. Kerrie decides to join them to take charge. Chief Guyustees tells her to rescue Justin but not to go any higher.

Radio gets Brad’s helmet-cam and looks at the footage on there. It shows what Brad did, and it’s very weird. He tells Kerrie and Justin, back in camp now, all of this.

Up high, Kristen tells Sean all about what Brad did to her as they camp for the night. He tells her about the evil entity that the Chief told him about.

Lucky wakes up in the middle of the night, and Emily is gone. No, she’s possessed and pulling his lines out of the cliff face. Sean and Kristen hear a terrible noise that wakes them up. Emily ends up falling as well. Lucky, Colton, and Jess argue about what they just saw. Lucky wants to go down, but Colton refuses to go back down.

Radio sends his information to an expert, Bill, who explains that there was something “attached” to the audio signal that shouldn’t be there. He does some audio magic and now they can hear the creature, “Come to me.” They boost the radio and tell the others they all need to come down; Kerrie and Radio believe the monster story now.

Colton radios Sean and Kristen, the three will still try to complete the climb. They abandon Kristen, who is not happy.

Radio suggests that maybe Colton has been possessed. Up on the top of the mountain, Colton admits he’s working for the Agency. Kirsten finishes the climb, and she’s not acting normally. The three sees a weird glowing rock, a meteorite. Suddenly, Lucky shows up with black eyes and attacks them all. It leaves him and goes into Kristen, who kills Lucky.

Down on the ground, the Chief does a ritual. Up high, the rock glows. Suddenly, two magic Indians appear on the mountaintop and fight Kristen. They lose.

Sean hits the magic rock with the Chief’s magic totem, and everyone falls down. Colton says “It’s not over, they’ll never stop,” and then dies.

Sean and Kristen parachute down from the mountaintop.

In Washington, the government guy gets a call saying the Forbidden Wall is clear now. Sean goes home and his parents are happy he survived. He’s got a crazy story…

Meanwhile, back on the mountain, Colton wakes up, not dead and fully possessed.

Brian’s Commentary

If the creature wants to go down, why does it keep attacking the climbers? Why not just behave and ride one out?

In the first ten minutes, I was about to comment on the horrible acting and dialogue, and then I noticed that all the people on-screen were actual famous mountain climbers, not actors. That’s actually kinda cool, especially since they didn’t stick around for the whole film. I assume they were also consultants, as all the mountaineering seems very authentic. The first half hour could have been a documentary.

The cinematography was amazing, lots of drone shots and tense side-of-the-mountain climbing. The acting, except for a few of the experienced actors, was all pretty mediocre. A couple of the actors literally phoned in their roles through videoconferencing.

This is a movie for mountaineering fanatics, not horror movie people. If I were into mountain-climbing, I’d probably love this one, but I’m not, and I didn’t.

Kevin’s Commentary

Much of the rock action and scenery was real, with professional athletes involved in the production. This was basically a climbing movie with some horror elements. And when the Chief did his spell to make two magic Indian warriors appear, I wasn’t really on board with it anymore - that was just silly. It was okay, but not enough horror to satisfy me.

2015 Anarchy Parlor

* Directed by: Devon Downs, Kenny Gage

* Written by: Devon Downs, Kenny Gage

* Stars: Robert LaSardo, Jordan James Smith, Tiffany DeMarco

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was simultaneously quite good and not so good. Robert LaSardo carries the cast. The gore is excellent and often makes you wince in sympathetic pain. But it’s on the slow side for the first hour. We liked it more than we disliked it, but it’s hit and miss.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch a heavily-tattooed man warming up, and we see many instruments and bottles nearby. And a very bloody table. We cut to Vilnius, Lithuania as the credits roll.

We cut to a dance club with Lithuanian rappers. There is a group of Americans there, and they’re having a gooooood time. The three girls talk about Jesse, Kevin, Brock, and how hot they are. The six Americans are invited to a private house party, and it’s some house.

Amy has to go pee and can’t find an unoccupied bathroom, so she sneaks upstairs. A heavily tattooed woman shows a lot of interest in Brock. She’s Uta, and she’s a tattoo apprentice; she suggests coming to see “The Artist.” Amy goes along with Brock to see the Artist.

They arrive at the parlor, and the Artist comes in. He gets started on Amy’s tat while Uta takes Brock down to the basement for a fun time. After some discussion, Amy picks a “Love Forever” tattoo from the book. Uta injects Brock with something as they have sex. The Artist drugs Amy with a drink. They both pass out.

Brock wakes up in a dungeon operating room, and the Artist has many surgical tools there. He slices off Brock’s pre-exiting tattoo with a scalpel and then peels it right off. He explains that he’s injected them with a paralysis drug. He then cuts off Brock’s ear as Brock screams throughout. The dog gets the ear as a snack.

“The skin is the ultimate canvas,” the Artist explains as he professionally flays a nice rectangle of skin off Brock’s back. It’s… quite graphic. He takes the “canvas” and hands it to Uta to prepare it in the next room. He then cuts Brock more and watches him bleed out.

Meanwhile, Amy and Brock’s other friends have left the club and gone back to the hotel for sex. By morning, they notice that Brock and Amy didn’t come back last night.

The Artist starts working, tattooing Amy’s face. Kevin, Jesse, and the girls arrive in the upstairs parlor looking for their friends, but the Artist says they left around 4 a.m. They leave, but Kelly notices the tattoo from Brock’s arm is hanging in a frame on the wall. Jesse’s being a jealous jerk because he thinks Amy shacked up with Brock somewhere, and he leaves the group. He goes off to a strip club.

Kelly, Stephanie, and Kevin return to the shop and confront Uta. They all go downstairs to look and very quickly, all three are rendered unconscious.

Kelly and Stephanie wake up in the dungeon, but Stephanie’s on the table. The Artist comes in and calms everyone down before announcing that he has to leave to deliver to the Swiss. He leaves everyone in Uta’s hands, but insists that she not hurt Amy.

Uta skins Stephnie like we’ve seen before, but she forgets to use the spatula tool and tears the skin. She gets angry and slices Stephanie’s throat. Meanwhile, the Artist delivers finished products and we see the skin chunks are literally used as a canvas, as it’s got a man’s portrait painted on it now.

Kelly gets looks and fights with Uta and escapes. She runs down the street screaming but is caught and nearly raped and killed by a street gang–until the Artist shows up and shoots them all dead.

The Artist explains the tradition of family portraits on human skin to Amy. “These paintings are priceless. Every painting is a soul. You sit in a gallery of souls.”

Jesse and his stripper friend come to the parlor and talk to Uta. Jesse finds Kevin beaten and hanging from the ceiling as his friend gets knocked out by Uta. He finds Amy, tattooed and tells the Artist, “This wasn’t the deal. Only Brock.” Turns out, Jesse’s got one of those paintings of himself. Jesse and the Artist argue about what to do with Amy, and that goes badly for Jesse.

The Artist unties Amy and tells her that Jesse’s fate is in her hands now. Amy and Uta fight, but Amy’s more motivated this time– and she’s got a baseball bat.

Next thing we see, Amy has Uta chained up and has cut out her tongue. She slices her throat and then goes over to Jesse, who’s on the cutting table. She says his back is perfect and then goes at it with a scalpel.

Some time passes, and Amy’s the Artist’s new apprentice. We see a portrait of Amy on the wall now…

Brian’s Commentary

The gore here is impeccable and very uncomfortable to watch. Other than that, the acting is atrocious from everyone other than Robert LaSardo, who is always fun. It was terribly slow until the last half hour, when it spiced things up a bit. It was hit-and-miss, but overall, I’d say watch it if you like bloody torture porn.

Kevin’s Commentary

Thank goodness Robert LaSardo was in this, I thought he did an excellent job - and in a larger role than he usually gets. The story concept was good and creepy, and the practical effects were nice and juicy. But the supporting cast was on the weak side, and it drags quite a bit for stretches without enough happening.

Short Films:

2025 Short Film Minor Anger Issues

* AKA “Küçük Öfke Sorunlari”

* Directed by: Can Sagir

* Written by: Erdeniz Tunç

* Stars: Oguzhan Alton, Ahmet Atakul, Fatih Coskun

* Run Time: 6:45

* Watch it:

What Happens

Mert’s teacher complains about him always starting fights in school, and that if he keeps this up, he’ll never amount to anything. Mert’s got anger issues since his parents split up; he lives with his older brother now.

Later, the brother talks to Mert about keeping the beast inside under control before going to bed. As the boy tries to get to sleep, he hears something very bad come into the apartment…

Commentary

Sometimes “The Beast Within” is all you’ve got, as Mert and his brother learned. It looks good, it’s well-acted, and it doesn’t really go where we’d expect. And that music over the closing credit’s a banger as well.

It’s low budget, but it shows what you can do with that limitation.

Nice!

2025 Short Film Mary

* Directed by: Alexander Chehrazi

* Written by: Alexander Chehrazi, Max Markov

* Stars: Lanisa Dawn, Alex Gravenstein, Alex DuBois

* Run Time: 17:34

* Watch it: Not Yet. It’s on the festival circuit

What Happens

A young couple, Tom and Briana, text back and forth about their upcoming date. Later, at the bar, he’s a little late to arrive, but they’ve both been at this online dating thing for a while. They complain that people aren’t “real” online. Still, they like each other, and he invites her to his place. On the way out, she sees someone sketchy in the corner. When she looks again, the stranger is gone.

They head to his place in his car, but she sees that strange man there again, at Tom’s house.

What’s really going on here? Who’s Mary, anyway?

Commentary

This is well shot and the characters are both believable and likable. It gets more and more tense as the suspense builds and we hear more about Briana’s past. Even as we get the explanation, it gets worse and worse until the end.

It’s very good!

2018 Short Film Bathroom Troll

* Directed by: Aaron Immediatio

* Written by: Aaron Immediatio

* Stars: B Sanchez, Melissa Connell, Hannah Gold

* Run Time: 16:36

* Watch it:

What Happens

Cassie goes to the school restroom, where she overhears the cool girls talking. When they learn she’s in there, they yell at her because she doesn’t look like a girl. This all escalates into a real fight, and Cassie runs home to her mother. Her mother, however, is a hardcore Satanist, and she might know a way to get revenge. Still, is that what Cassie really wants? Is revenge really a good thing?

Commentary

This looks good and is well-acted all around. The girls get what they deserve, and it’s mostly a happy ending for Cassie. It’s got a lot of parallels to “Carrie,” and the similarities between the character names can’t be a coincidence.

The troll looks good and has a few genuinely creepy moments. The whole idea of a bathroom troll is fairly ridiculous, but this isn’t a comedy. I liked this one a lot!

2017 Short Film Skipped

* Directed by: Faisal Hashmi

* Written by: Faisal Hashmi

* Stars: Tarek Ghandour, Ghaleb El Saadi

* Run Time: 4:26

* Watch it:

What Happens

A man alone in the office late one night. The piles of paper seem to get bigger, not smaller. There’s just not enough time to do all of it. Suddenly, he sneezes, and poof- the paper is already filled out? How did that happen? He tries it again, and it works. He can skip time ahead!

What could go wrong?

Commentary

If this was actual time travel, then he’d have had to actually do that work at some point, right? Then again, it’s never a good idea to think too hard about time travel– it might give you a nosebleed.

This fun, nicely made international short has no dialogue, but you can always tell exactly what’s happening.

It’s fun!

2025 Short Film Chomp

* Directed by: Cricket Arrison, Suki-Rose Simakis

* Written by: Cricket Arrison, Suki-Rose Simakis

* Stars: Cricket Arrison, DeMorge Brown, Kate Freund

* Run Time: 9 Minutes

* Watch it:

*

What Happens

We watch as two newscasters read us the evening news. They do the usual witty banter and then sign off. We then cut to a woman in the dark who repeats everything they say. She’s a little weird. On the next broadcast, we see that she’s an intern at the station.

Things are about to get a lot weirder…

Commentary

We don’t get much of an explanation in this one, but it’s pretty clear what’s going on. It’s well shot and looks good; the dialogue isn’t great, but that’s probably intentional to show how “fake” the news reporting is.

I’d like to think this was all in the studio next door to “Late Night with the Devil.”

It’s great!

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.horrormonthly.com

* https://www.flashfright.com

We’ve got a fun mix this week. We’ll start off with the more-sci-fi-than-horror “Megan 2.0” which just hit streaming. Then we’ll watch the depressing “Tigers Are Not Afraid” from 2017 and the less-depressing “The Love Witch” from 2016. We’ll continue aping around with “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014) and finally get caught up with the series with “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer” (2006).

And, as always, we’ll have five short films.

* The latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #46 is now on sale! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2025 M3GAN 2.0

* Directed by: Gerard Johnstone

* Written by: Gerard Johnstone, Akela Cooper, James Wan

* Stars: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald

* Run Time: 2 Hours

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

IMDB still calls this horror. Maybe just barely, but not like the first one was. This one is more science fiction action with quite a bit of satire and humor. It’s fun entertainment, but beware it has quite a different tone than the first movie.

Spoilery Synopsis

Somewhere near the Turkish-Iranian border, the bad guys grab a tourist and kill her. We cut to a security briefing about a new weapon. They have a new asset. We cut to Amelia, that dead tourist, who isn’t dead. She breaks her chains, and we see she’s a robot. She sneaks through the bad guys’ camp and quietly kills… everyone. Then she shoots the man she was sent there to capture alive. She steals some weapons and reports that she isn’t following orders any more.

We cut to young Cady, from the first film, who is still in therapy. She tells us about Gemma, the inventor of Megan, who is now a vehement anti-tech speaker. Cady’s taken the time from being away from her phone to learn martial arts.

Tess and Cole, Gemma’s employees, put on a disastrous demo of a new not-robotic exoskeleton. Turns out, the system has been hacked. Alton Appleton, a rich jerk, comes into the workshop to gloat. He’s designed a neural chip and wants them to use his brain implants to go into Gemma’s exoskeleton. He’s wearing one of those implants himself. “If you put AI inside a human brain, it’s not gonna ride shotgun,” she warns.

That night, Gemma gets a very strange warning from her TV, telling her she’s in danger. It’s Megan, somehow, warning her about a home invasion that’s in progress. The smart-home appliances work together to defeat the intruders. Turns out, they’re the FBI (They could have knocked).

Agent Sattler tells her about the failed experiment, Amelia. Amelia is a robot very similar to Megan. Agent Sattler points out how lucky Gemma has been with her book sales, business, and choice of home. He explains that Amelia has been killing everyone who had any kind of involvement with her creation, and that probably includes Gemma.

Megan shows up on TV and explains to Gemma that she’s not Amelia, someone hacked Gemma’s computer and built another one. She’s just a program, and she wants a new body– in return, she’ll kill Amelia.

Gemma puts Megan in a toy robot’s body. Megan points out that Amelia’s battery has a kill switch, but only greedy Alton knows how that works. Gemma goes to Alton’s party to get the information out of him. We see that Amelia’s there as well. Alton, in a wheelchair earlier, gets on stage and dances– his neural chip really works. He spots Amelia in the crowd and starts flirting.

Gemma finds Cole at the party, and he now works for Alton. She steals his ID card and they go into the computer room. They plug in Megan, who hacks Amelia and steals a file from her mind. Then Megan finds that Amelia is here in the same building. Amelia steals Alton’s retinal print and hacks his system. Then she pulls out his implant. Amelia now has access to half the cloud servers in the country.

Amelia knows Gemma is there, and Gemma has no choice but to let Megan into the system. They escape and assume that Amelia will be going to get Cady next. Turns out, the house they’re living in is just full of surprises. It’s Megan’s lair… somehow. Megan is there physically as well, but she’s a burned up mess. Megan and Cady talk about morality, life, and evolution. Cady wants to give her robot a “second chance.”

Tess and Cady want to help Megan to beat Amelia, but Genna’s not so sure, at least until they see Megan’s factory in the next room. The group gets to work on making Megan a new body. She wants to be taller now, but insists on having the same face.

Fully rebuilt, Megan explains that she’s not the first killer robot. The first killer robot has been kept for decades against its will, getting smarter and smarter. Amelia wants to find it and release it, a kind of AI god. They think Amelia will be going after Christian, another outspoken AI genius, who’s going to be at a big AI conference. Megan sneaks in to infiltrate the place as a cosplayer and does a fun dance for the crowd.

Meanwhile, Amelia attacks Christian and the Chinese ambassador. Sattler grabs Gemma and puts her in cuffs. Megan finds out that she’s restricted into a nonviolent mode, and Cady works to fix that. Meanwhile, Megan has to fight the FBI guys without hurting anyone. Amelia, in the meantime, impales Sattler.

Amelia tries to talk Megan into turning to the dark side and then kidnaps Cady. The whole group, now plus Christian, return to the lair to regroup. Christian’s got the black motherboard, the original killer AI, in a box at the corporate research center. Gemma finally admits that Megan has been right about everything, all along, and that results in a song. Gemma removes the nonviolence chip from Megan; now they mean business.

Cole and Megan break into Xenox Corporation’s head office. Gemma figures out that Megan has been controlling Amelia all along. Amelia was just serving Megan, who wants the black motherboard. Christian, on the other hand, shoots Tess and lets Amelia into the lair; Gemma’s theory was wrong. He was behind Amelia, using her to make AI look really, really bad and get it all banned.

Christian shows Gemma the black motherboard, and then his goons drag in Megan and “kill” her. He then puts an implant into Gemma.

Colt, who knocked himself out, finds Cady locked in a room. Cady explains it all to him. Cady wants to reset Amelia, who has some of Megan's original code inside her.

Inside Gemma’s head, Megan talks to her, not as dead as she was pretending. She takes over Gemma’s body to kill a couple of baddies.

Cady wakes up Amelia, who kills all the guards. Is Megan in there or not? Gemma puts on the exoskeleton/super-soldier suit and beats up pretty much everyone. The guards knock her out, but then Megan takes over and uses the suit to continue fighting. Turns out, Gemma kinda likes violence.

Christian sets the self-destruct for the whole vault and gloats in front of the whole group. As he makes his escape, Amelie gets him. She tears his arm off and uses it to open the security on the black motherboard.

Megan, back in her body, talks to Amelia about not releasing the black motherboard, but this just results in a fight just as the self-destruction reaches the one-minute countdown. Amelia beats Megan and connects with the ancient, evil robot mind.

Gemma, Cady, and Megan talk about doing what’s right, and then Megan goes back in to talk to Amelia, who is now way more than she was. Then she detonates an EMP that shuts down all the electronics.

Later, Gemma addresses Congress about limiting AI and technology. They also soon learn that Megan made a backup.

Brian’s Commentary

Link to the first film, M3GAN (2023).

That’s totally not Xerox, right? It makes fun of all the corporate techno-speak nonsense that we hear with every new startup as well as media such as “Knight Rider” and “Metropolis.”

It’s all pretty ridiculous, and there are a lot of comedic elements here. Gemma’s nonviolent stance is wrong about everything, every time, in every scene, over and over– it’s very funny.

It’s more sci-fi action than horror, but I thought it was fun.

Kevin’s Commentary

This one is definitely more straight up science fiction than the first movie. I thought it was fun and entertaining, but there were some plot points I could see coming a mile away. They dialed up the humor and action. It’s a good movie, but quite different from the first one. I guess it evolved like M3GAN did.

2017 Tigers Are Not Afraid

* Directed by: Issa Lopez

* Written by: Issa Lopez

* Stars: Paola Lara, Juan Ramon Lopez, Nery Arredondo

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

If you watch this, see it in Spanish with subtitles, not the English dubbed version that is adults doing the children’s voices. It’s a grim story set in a grim place, with kids dealing with it the best that they can. Horrorguy Brian enjoyed it quite a bit more than Horrorguy Kevin.

Spoilery Synopsis

As the credits roll, we are told how many have been killed since the drug wars of 2006 happened. Some whole cities have become ghost towns. A class of kids write stories; one writes a story about a tiger. They can see in the dark and never forget; tigers are fighters and are not afraid.

A little boy watches the drunken Caco peeing in an alley. The boy steals his gun and then sneaks away.

Back in school, there is shooting, and everyone jumps to the floor. The teacher talks to Estrella, keeping her mind off the shooting. Classes are suspended until further notice. As Estrella walks home, she passes a murder victim in the street. As she arrives, we watch as a trail of blood follows her inside and crawls along the walls.

Elsewhere, Morro wants to hear the story of the tiger again from Shine. This is a group of children without parents, and he tells them the scary story. Tucsi and Pop listen as well.

Estrella calls her mother, but there’s no answer. She’s hungry and doesn’t know what became of her mother. That night, she has a terrible dream that the Huascas took her mother.

In the morning, Estrella comes to the four boys for food. If they don’t help her, the Huascas will get her. They begrudgingly help the girl. Estrella has a nightmare vision of her mother that night.

Caco and his friend come for Shine and his gun, and the whole group runs away. They get Morro, the smallest one. The Huascas are going to sacrifice him to Satan, or so they think. Shine tells Estrella that if she can kill Caco, she can join their group. He gives her the gun.

Estrella sneaks into Caco’s apartment, but sees that he’s already dead. She shoots the gun, and the boys think she did it. She also finds several children, including Morro, in cages and releases them. Later, Shine explains where each of the boys came from; they all lost their families to the cartels, mostly Caco specifically.

Estrella dreams about her zombie-mother again. “The one who killed him is looking for you and will find you. You have to bring him to me.”

All the kids leave their place and move elsewhere, even some of the kids they released last night. Everyone knows El Chino, the head of the Huascas, is looking for Shine’s gang now.

At the new place they find, Estrella notices the animated blood trail is still following her, but it cannot pass over her chalk-lines on the ground. Shine has Caco’s phone, as it has a photo of his mother on it. They find a bunch of soccer balls and have a lot of fun that night.

El Chino’s man grabs Shine and demands Caco’s phone back. He comes to the place where the kids are, and Estrella hides. That doesn’t work, and there’s a gunfight between one of the men and Morro, who dies. Estrella wonders why they want that phone so badly? There’s a video on it of El Chino killing someone. El Chino is running for office, so that’d be really bad if it got out. They call him and make a deal. El Chino was the man who killed Caco, because he had that phone.

Estrella has a vision of Dead-Morro and his now-animated toy tiger. She sees all the people Chino has killed, and there are a lot of them. They keep following her. “Bring him to us!” All the dead, the blood trail, and the little flying dragon-thing terrorize her for a while. Meanwhile, Pop, Tucsi, and Shine argue about what to do with the phone. Pop shows the video to a policeman, but they drive away, wanting no part of that.

Shine brings Estrella a photo of her mother that he took from their house, along with a photo of her on Caco’s phone. Now they both want to go see Chino.

Chino gets the phone and then kills his two Huasca guards, as agreed. He also lets the kids go. Estrella wants to know what happened to her mother, and Shine shows her the video of her mother’s death– he swapped the phones. Chino soon figures out that he has the wrong phone.

The blood trail crawls up Shine’s leg, and then Chino shoots him in the head. Estrella runs through the old building. As she hides, Morro’s toy tiger shows up and tells her what to do.

She hides in a place stacked high with decomposing bodies, her mother included. She leaves the phone with them, and when Chino comes for it, the dead tear him apart.

Estrella sees dead-Chino again and says goodbye to him. She gives back his lighter. On the way out, she sees a real tiger, and it takes her to a big, clean field, where she can be happy.

Brian’s Commentary

We started out watching the dubbed version, and it was atrocious– all the children were voiced by adults. We switched to Spanish and subtitles part way through, and that helped a lot.

Just living in this city in the first place is a nightmare. Having children be the only real characters makes it even worse. The more typical horror is mostly in Estrella’s dreams and visions, but there’s enough magical realism going on that it’s hard to know what’s really happening here.

The acting is surprisingly good from an all-child cast, and the visuals are excellent. It’s very good! Between the children in peril, magical realism, bleak world, and vague ending, I’d compare it mostly to “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006). If you liked that one, you’ll probably enjoy this.

Kevin’s Commentary

Brian summed that up well by comparing it to Pan’s Labyrinth and saying if you liked that one, you’ll probably enjoy this. I didn’t care for Pan’s Labyrinth or this one very much. Kids and maybe imaginary magic, or if it’s not imaginary, so what. I didn’t feel invested in it. The acting was good, and it’s well put together, but it didn’t grab me.

2016 The Love Witch

* Directed by: Anna Biller

* Written by: Anna Biller

* Stars: Samantha Robinson, Jeffrey Vincent Parise, Laura Waddell

* Run Time: 2 Hours

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s set in a strange kind of 60s reality, with modern cars and computers. And a world where witches and magic are real, and everyone just accepts that. The visuals, costuming, and lighting were all spot on for the vibe. It was too slow moving though, and a bit too long for our taste. We’d call it pretty good, not great.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on Elaine, who narrates to say she’s starting a new life out here in the country, where no one knows her. Credits roll. It’s all very colorful and retro-looking. We flashback to Jerry, who we watch die of poisoning. “I had a nervous breakdown after he left me.” She talks about being abused as we get flashes of his dead body.

A policeman pulls her over; Officer Griff just wants to warn her about a bad taillight. She pulls up to a huge house and unloads a bunch of suitcases. Trish introduces herself and helps with the luggage. She’s got the key to the mansion and lets them in. The room is insanely colorful and garish, “It’s just to my taste,” Elaine says.

The two go out to a very fancy tea room. Elaine explains that she’s been studying parapsychology, and she understands men better than she used to. She talks about Jerry, who left her, and about the cultists who taught her magic. Trish says Elaine sounds like she’s been brainwashed by the patriarchy. Richard, Trish’s husband, walks in and says hello.

At home later, Elaine mixes up some herbs in a pouch and makes a potion out of it from her spell book. She asks the goddess to send her a man to love her. She makes candles and takes them with the pouches to a local Wiccan store, run by Wendy, for consignment.

In the park, she meets Wayne, and she’s very forward with him. He wants to make out, but first, she pulls out a flask and has him try some. It’s her love potion. They go to his house, and she cooks him dinner. He teaches English literature. Halfway through dinner, the potion kicks in; she tells him it had hallucinogenic herbs in it. This leads to psychedelic sex.

In the morning, he complains that he feels strange. He says his whole world has changed as she listens quietly and in a very detached manner. The love potion worked really well. She goes to the next room and starts crying, wondering where she went. She calls him a big baby; she’s got no respect for him. Elaine goes to the bathroom, and we see that she wears a wig, but her eyeshadow never seems to run or fade. She makes Wayne breakfast and admires her “hair.”

A bit later, she finds Wayne dead in bed, killed by too much love. She works on another potion before burying him in the garden.

Trish mentions that she’s going out of town, leaving Richard at home alone.

Elaine goes to the club to talk to her old friend Barbara about her most recent romance, and she downplays everything. They sit with Gahan, the leader of the coven, who says that love spells never work out the way you expect. Someone yells, “Witches go home!” Moon and Star show up, twins who are here to learn dancing and sex magic. We get a lecture about female sexuality and the way men enslaved women.

We get a flashback to Elaine’s initiation into the group. Gahan makes her discuss perfect love and then there’s a ritual.

At the police station, Officer Griff has been promoted to detective, and he’s got eyes on all the policewomen there. Shelly comes in, she’s called about Wayne going missing. She saw him drive off with Elaine, and he hasn’t been seen since. The police go to Wayne’s house, and it’s just like Elaine left it, with rotting food and everything. They soon find where she buried the body.

That night, Richard has a date with Elaine, who makes him dinner. She makes him… a drink. She does a sexy dance for him, and he’s all in on cheating on his wife.

Griff goes to see Professor King, an expert on the occult. He shows him the potion that Elaine buried with Wayne. King talks all about human sacrifices and blood powers, and yes, they still do this stuff today. There are black and white witches, and they’re all over the country.

We cut to Gahan, Barbara, and Elaine, along with the rest of the coven, out in the woods doing a ritual. Gahan tells Elaine that he knows what she’s been up to. She mentions that she broke it off with Richard, who got too obsessed with her.

We cut to Richard, who hasn’t shaved in a week and is drinking heavily. Trish wonders what’s wrong. He cries and obsesses some more.

Griff goes to Wendy’s shop with the witch bottle, and she points the way to Elaine. He comes to Elaine to talk about Wayne. She freely admits that she’s a witch, but there’s no law against that. She’s seen him in the cards– he’s the man she’s going to marry.

He invites her out riding horses the next day, and they ride to an old-timey carnival, like a Renaissance fair. We recognize Gahan and Barbara on the stage; their being here is no accident. We get a musical number about marriage and “pretend love.”

Elaine and Griff change clothes for a “mock wedding,” which is over really quickly. We heard Griff narrating that he’s not really in love, but she clearly is. They have opposite thoughts.

Detective Steve tells Griff that he thinks Elaine murdered Wayne. He knows all about Jerry back in the other town. There’s a whole trail of poisonings behind her. Steve is convinced, but Griff isn’t listening.

Across town, Trish finds that Richard has committed suicide. She goes to tea with Elaine again, and she tells what happened. Trish has no idea who Richard was having an affair with. When Elaine talks about her new boyfriend,

When Elaine leaves her ring with Trish, Trish stops by the house to return it and looks at all the witchy stuff she’s got there. She stops and tries on some of Elaine’s makeup and her wig, and soon she looks very different. She also finds a photo of Richard there and quickly puts two and two together. Elaine comes, and Trish attacks her before running off.

Gahan and Barbara do another ritual, this time to hook up Elaine and Griff permanently. Griff’s at the club, and he hears everyone talking about the town witches. Elaine shows up, and knows from DNA that she killed Wayne. She points out that Wayne died from heart failure, and Richard killed himself; she didn’t kill either of them. He says he doesn’t love her, but she’s not dissuaded.

Griff gets ready to arrest Elaine, but suddenly, the bar patrons start chanting “Burn the witch” and attack her. Later, at her place, she promises that everything will be OK as she hands him a drink– he dumps it and resists her influence. He lies back in bed, and she stabs him to death with a dagger, imagining him saying that he wants to marry her. As we flash back to their Renaissance fair “wedding,” she sits there with her knife.

Brian’s Commentary

The crazy camera angles and colorful sets and costumes reminded me of the old “Batman” TV series for some reason. Everything here looks colorful and beautiful, and the retro-emulation of old 60s movies is impeccable. On the other hand, all the characters talk in a weird, stilted manner that seems very much like either a comic book or a bad porno. For a long while, we weren’t sure which way this was going to go.

There are modern cars and computers in the background of some scenes, so it’s not necessarily set in the 60s, but it really tries hard to look like it. We were more than halfway through the film before we realized Richard and Officer Griff weren’t the same character; they look a lot alike.

This looks amazing, and they’ve really caught the aesthetic of old movies. The acting is weird, but it’s obviously intentional. It’s really good, although maybe a half-hour too long.

Kevin’s Commentary

The visuals were spot on, with retro shots, color schemes, and colorful lighting. Though it was weird that it was only selectively retro. And set in a world where witches and magic are real, and everyone just accepts it. While it’s interesting, this was so slow-moving and slow-paced that I felt like it could have been watched at 1.25x speed, and I wouldn’t have missed anything. I’d just rate it as okay overall.

2014 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

* Directed by: Matt Reeves

* Written by: Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver

* Stars: Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Andy Serkis

* Run Time: 2 Hours, 10 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

About ten years have passed since the events of the first movie. Humanity is on the decline and apes are ascending. But Caesar is finding that apes are becoming more like humans too, which isn’t entirely a good thing. This one is more of the same with a good continuing story and lots of action. It’s on par with the first one.

Spoilery Synopsis

We hear news reports about the Gen Sys virus as we see flashbacks to the first film. We also hear about the ape escape. The plague goes badly, only 1 in 500 humans survive. Cities burn, and civilization falls. Credits roll.

Caesar leads a hunting party, but he’s attacked by a bear. Koba saves him. Caesar’s son, Blue Eyes, gets injured, but not badly. They’ve built a whole Ape City out in the hills. Maurice is teaching all the baby apes to read. Mrs. Caesar gives birth to a new baby, and they’re all pretty happy.

Caesar and Maurice talk about old times; they’ve come a long way. They wonder if all the humans are gone; it’s been ten years, and none have been sighted.

While hunting, Blue Eyes comes across a human in the woods, a human with a gun, who shoots Ash, Rocket’s son. The human, Carver, calls more humans, but they’re soon surrounded by a zillion apes. The human leader, Malcolm, talks to the apes and orders the men to put their guns down. “Go!” yells Caesar, and the men run, dropping a bag of stuff behind them.

Koba follows the men back across the Golden Gate Bridge into the city, where they report to Dreyfus, the leader. They went out to the woods to find the hydro dam so they could turn the power back on. They also talk about the apes speaking. None of the humans knew the apes had evolved.

Koba returns to the ape city and tells about the human town. Many of the apes want to attack them and finish them off. Caesar doesn’t want to fight anymore.

Soon, the ape army arrives outside what’s left of San Francisco. Malcolm goes out to talk to Caesar. “Apes do not want war, but will fight if we must” roars Caesar to the assembled crowd. Caesar makes it clear that the humans need to leave them alone.

Dreyfus reminds the humans that they have a huge stockpile of weapons, and the plague has burned out, so no one should worry. Lack of energy is their main problem, so they need that dam back in action.

Malcolm and Dreyfus know that the dam is really the only option. Malcolm wants to negotiate with Caesar. Dreyfus gives him three days before he takes armed men up to shoot the apes. Malcolm takes his wife, Ellie, and son, Alexander, along with him.

Malcolm soon finds Ape City. Malcolm shows Caesar and the ape leaders to the dam and explains what he wants to do. He wants to restore the dam to supply power to the city. The apes allow the work, but only if the humans give up their guns. Koba is not pleased with this plan, but he obeys Caesar. On the human side, Carver has thoughts just like Koba.

Mrs. Caesar is clearly sick after having her baby. The humans are taken to the dam for work. There’s a cave in, and the apes save the humans from certain death.

Koba scouts in the city, where Dreyfus is arming the humans for possible war. He gets cornered, but acts like a dumb monkey to throw the men off. Ellie is a doctor, and she helps Mrs. Caesar.

Koba returns to the dam and confronts Caesar, and he’s not so submissive this time, so Caesar beats the crap out of him. “Ape not kill ape,” says Caesar as he stops. A lot of the apes disagree with what Caesar’s been doing. Blue Eyes, Caesar’s son, agrees with Koba.

Koba does his “dumb monkey” routine and kills the first two human guards in the city. At the trucks, Koba kills Carver.

The humans soon get the power turned on, and Malcolm and Caesar are friends again. They can even see the lights from the city– it worked! Mrs. Caesar is feeling much better as well. It’s an all-around happy ending– but there’s another hour to go, that’s not gonna cut it.

Koba returns to Ape City and shoots Caesar and sets fire to the city. He has a human gun and blames the humans for killing Caesar. “Apes must attack human city! Fight back! Fight for Caesar!”

In the big city, all the humans are celebrating that the power is back on. Dreyfus has recharged his iPad and looks at old photos of his dead family. His men start transmitting on the radio, trying to call in other humans.

Suddenly, the apes attack the armory and get the weapons. Dreyfus sounds the alarm, but the apes have all the big guns now. The humans are entrenched and fortified, so the apes are getting cut down in the streets. Koba breaks down the doors with a captured tank.

Malcolm and his family have been hiding in the woods all night, and they come across Caesar, not quite dead after all. Ellie goes to work on him; all he cares about is his family. Malcolm assumes Carver shot Caesar, but the ape explains the truth of it.

One of the apes refuses to kill humans unnecessarily, so Koba kills him in front of everyone. Koba declares himself the leader and starts rounding up all the remaining humans.

Caesar hides the human family in the house he used to live in during the first film.

Malcolm runs into Blue Eyes and brings him to Caesar. Caesar tells him that Koba was the one who shot him. Ellie operates, and Caesar starts to recover. Maurice and Rocket are being held prisoner; Koba kills Ash. Blue Eyes returns to the prisoners and releases them– and the innocent humans.

The ape leaders all get together at Caesar’s old house and make plans. Malcolm goes to talk to Dreyfus, who has a plan to kill all the apes at once. Malcolm holds the others at gunpoint to give Caesar enough time to take care of Koba.

Caesar confronts Koba in front of all the apes and they soon begin fighting. It’s all very epic up on the construction tower. He reports that the radio men have made contact, and soldiers are coming.

Dreyfus presses the button, and the whole tower starts to explode and fall down, only partially because they were interrupted planting the explosives. Even as the building partially collapses, Koba doesn’t stop, killing more apes. Finally, Caesar drops him off the ledge.

Caesar realizes that the apes started the war, and the humans aren’t going to forgive and forget. He tells Malcolm to get his family out before human soldiers arrive and all-out war really begins.

Caesar’s still got his whole family– what’s he going to do now?

Brian’s Commentary

I find it unlikely that everything in the city would look so old after only ten or so years. The dam was all overgrown, rusty, and moldy. How does that happen so quickly?

As for the rest, it’s a logical progression after the first film. There are still lots of humans, but the apes have a slight edge now. The humans probably would've just been happy with their electricity if Koba hadn’t messed everything up; it’s all the apes’ fault this time.

I wouldn’t say the ape CGI is necessarily better in this one, but there’s a lot more of it, along with more ape characters. If you like the previous one, this is good too.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was a good one, continuing the story well. And of course, leaving it wide open for more to come. If it hasn’t been mentioned before, you should check out the original Planet of the Apes movies from the late 1960s and 1970s to see how they compare. The old and the new both have their entertainment value.

2006 I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer

* Directed by: Sylvain White

* Written by: Lois Duncan, Michael D. Weiss

* Stars: Brooke Nevin, David Paetkau, Torry DeVitto

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Here we have a whole new set of young people who accidentally cause a death and decide to cover it up. Then a year later, someone knows what they did last summer and starts in on the stalking and killing. Who could it be? Probably not who you’d guess. This wasn’t an improvement on the previous movies. It was okay, but a step down.

Spoilery Synopsis

The movie opens to many people having fun at the carnival. On the Ferris wheel, Amber wants to hear the story about what always happens on the 4th of July, when The Fisherman kills teenagers. They all debate over whether it’s an urban legend or not. This is a ski town in Colorado in the summer, so there’s not much else happening. PJ is the son of the local sheriff, and he’s joined the army.

Suddenly, The Fisherman attacks, and scares all the teenagers. The Fisherman chases PJ off the roof. No, wait, it’s just Roger, who bought the costume on eBay as a prank. Except the padding that PJ was supposed to fall on got moved, and he’s dead for real because he fell on a tractor instead.

Amber wants to go to the police and tell them everything, but Zoe wonders if it was even really an accident. They all argue about what they did. Colby, Zoe, and Roger want to just keep quiet about the whole thing and let the town just think it was a crazy serial killer. Amber is hesitant, but she gives in to the group.

A year passes. Lance, PJ’s cousin, talks to Amber about why she’s still in town. Colby has returned from Las Vegas, and he didn’t tell Amber that his internship didn’t work out. She leaves him to go off and cry. Deputy Hefner runs into Amber and tells her to call him if she wants to talk.

That night at home, Amber finds a note from her parents, who are out of town. Then she gets fifty text messages on her phone: “I know what you did last summer.”

Amber goes to see Zoe, who isn’t much of a friend anymore, but they rekindle things. They go to see Roger, who repairs ski lifts at the resort. He doesn’t know anything. Afterward, they run into Sheriff Davis, PJ’s father, who says it’s going to be tough heading into the anniversary. Colton also says he’s kept quiet about the accident. Colton also receives a note.

Amber rides her bike up into the mountains, and someone sabotages it. She takes a ski lift back down the mountain, in a storm, and that’s tense. She sees the Fisherman on the roof of the cable car, fifty feet in the air.

Roger, on the other hand, is not dealing with all of this well. He drinks, takes drugs, and cries a lot. He also sees the Fisherman, but this time, is killed by him. Amber, Colton, and Zoe arrive and find the body. They also find a suicide note, but that doesn’t seem likely. Deputy Hafner catches them there, and they show him the note. He also puts the move on Amber again. When Amber goes home, all her photos have been shredded and some formed into the word “SOON.”

The next day, the group goes to see Lance. Lance says the sheriff has been hanging around asking questions. Could the sheriff be the killer? Colton leaves the sheriff a note, saying he knows what the sheriff is doing this summer. Zoe’s guitar gets vandalized. Lance tells Amber that he knows what they did last summer, and someone has vandalized his motorcycle. Colton is attacked at the pool, leaving him with a wounded leg.

The whole group, now including Lance, gather to discuss the problems. They all assume it’s the sheriff doing all this, so maybe they could tell the deputy. They all go to see Deputy Hafner at his house, but the sheriff and all the cops are there, so they don’t say anything.

It’s finally the Fourth, and Zoe is performing at a talent show, knowing agents will be there. Lance and Amber start getting close. The sheriff watches everyone ominously. Colby breaks into the bar and gets really drunk. After the show, the killer hooks Zoe.

The sheriff walks in and finds Zoe’s body as Lance and Amber hide. As they explain themselves, the killer kills the sheriff.

The killer chases Colby all around the kitchen, and he gets hooked right through the door. Deputy Hafner shows up, and he wants to know why they’re covered in blood. Hafner says he knows what they did last summer; Roger told him. Hafner kept it a secret to protect Amber.

Suddenly, the killer shows up and kills Hafner, who previously had been our main suspect. Amber steals the police car and rams the killer, who gets back up again. We get our first good look at him and he appears to be a zombie-monster to Amber now. “The legend has become true, it’s the guy from the original story!” Amber uses her own hook to injure the Fisherman, so maybe that might work.

Lance and Amber run to the ski resort where they use the hook and push him into a snowplow, which grinds him up.

One year later, Amber’s in Nevada and gets a flat tire and the Fisherman kills her…

Brian’s Commentary

So after all the serial-killing, the Fisherman turns out to be an actual supernatural monster? Scooby-Doo would not be pleased. This completely killed the whodunnit aspect of the film, since it wasn’t any of the main characters.

This one has none of the stars or characters from the previous films, it’s a whole new thing. Why is “The Fisherman” from the sea town in the previous films even a thing in a Colorado ski resort? There’s no fishing there.

The setting, a ski resort in summer, is interesting. Otherwise, there’s not much going for this one. Other than the initial accident, there’s only one death in the entire first hour, and only two of the original four conspirators die before the end anyway.

It’s not so good.

Kevin’s Commentary

So the ghost zombie of Ben, the killer from the previous movies, grew his hand back after he died. Then the fact that the kids used his likeness as a prank that resulted in the death of someone caused him to stalk them a year later to avenge the death of someone he never knew in a Colorado town far from the ocean. They didn’t even have to say his name three times. And he can teleport all over from place to place when he wants to but doesn't teleport away from getting ground up in the snowplow.

At least in the previous movies, there was a bit of figuring out who and why. I can see why they might have tried to shake things up a bit to avoid repetition, but I can’t say I’m very pleased. I’d say the three films have gone down a notch with each one.

Short Films:

2024 Short Film We Forgot About the Zombies

* Directed by: Chris McInroy

* Written by: Chris McInroy

* Stars: Kyle Irion, Carlos Larotta, Jarrod Yerkes

* Run Time: 3:43

* Watch it:

What Happens

It’s the zombie apocalypse, and one of the two characters has been bitten; it doesn’t look good for him. They run into what appears to be a lab, with a table full of syringes marked “C__E.” Could this be the cure to the zombie infection?

Maybe, maybe not. Finding out is the fun part.

Commentary

I know after the first shot, I’d be slowing down on those injections. Still, it’s better than zombification, right? This is brilliantly paced, makes perfect sense, and is really, really funny.

2024 Short Film The Auteur

* Directed by: Bethany White

* Written by: Patrick Crellin, Bethany White

* Stars: Paloma Anastacia, Patrick Crellin, Jordan Perry

* Run Time: 8:38

* Watch it:

What Happens

A man sits at his typewriter and gets to work on his script. As he types, we see his words take shape in the real world. He’s written the perfect, sexiest woman he can think of, and then he writes ways to terrorize and murder her. Sometimes, however, your characters can get away from you…

Commentary

The only complaint I have here is that there are several points at which I couldn't read what he was typing, and we were supposed to be able to follow along. It’s very suspenseful; there’s no real explanation, just weirdness. It looks good, it’s got a nice concept, and it’s just the right length.

Very well done!

2024 Short Film Teletubbies Horror: The Footage You Weren't Meant to See

* Directed by: Nicolò Fumero

* Written by: Nicolò Fumero, Francesco Lucci

* Stars: Ciak Company

* Run Time: 4:14

* Watch it:

What Happens

In this classified government video, a person with voice-altering equipment tells us that the following footage was taken by a missing child who has never been found. It’s also obvious that this isn’t the first time this has happened to a missing child. Who could be behind the disappearances, and what is the strange being, Helios?

Commentary

The Teletubbies have always been pretty horrifying if you think about it, and the way this is filmed, in the found footage style, makes it even creepier, and funny as well.

Very creative!

2022 Short Film The Kid and the Camera

* Directed by: Braiden Ortiz

* Written by: Braiden Ortiz

* Stars: Animated, Richard Stibbard

* Run Time: 7:30

* Watch it:

What Happens

Young Cailen is gifted a camera, and he absolutely loves it. He takes the camera with him everywhere and shoots everything he can, until an accident happens and the camera gets cracked. That night, unable to sleep, a strange fairy comes to his window and says he can fix the camera. What could go wrong?

Commentary

This is stop-motion animated, and not the smooth stuff we have today, but the janky, jerky style from the 1970s. This whole film is very retro, including VHS interference and overexposed images. I don’t remember this one from my childhood, but it looks like I should.

We had a pretty good idea where this was going, but it’s fun to watch it unfold. Very cool!

2018 Short Film In Sound, We Live Forever

* Directed by: Joshua Giuliano

* Written by: Joshua Giuliano

* Stars: Torsten Johnson, Drew Marquardt, Eric Rice

* Run Time: 11:43

* Watch it:

What Happens

We open on a red truck, seen from a distance. As we zoom in, we hear two young people talking about music and making out. We don’t see them at all. We hear her point out that there’s someone watching them, then we hear them get ready to leave, and then we hear them being attacked. Then there’s the aftermath…

Commentary

I was expecting the camera to eventually pull away and show us old skeletons, and that the couple died a hundred years ago, in a plague or something, their voices recorded on the tape with the music. Nope, that wasn’t it at all.

This is really well done. We don’t see what happens through the first half of the story; we just hear them talking as we watch the truck and imagine what’s going on. The second half is pretty standard for a slasher/stalker film, but the lead-up to that is really good.

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.horrormonthly.com

* https://www.flashfright.com

We’re gonna forego the new movies this week and focus on some older titles. Kevin picked up three more dollar-store DVDs that we’ll let you know about: “Sweatshop” (2009), “Nobody Gets Out Alive” (2012), and “Black Sheep” (2006). We’ll also take another step ahead in two franchises, “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” (1998) and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), the first in the newer reboot series.

* The latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #46 is now on sale! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2009 Sweatshop

* Directed by: Stacy Davidson

* Written by: Stacy Davidson, Ted Geoghegan

* Stars: Ashley Kay, Melanie Donihoo, Peyton Wetzel

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This movie is like a showcase for the work of the gore effects people involved - the deaths are especially wet and effective in this one. The rest of the movie isn’t so noteworthy. We didn’t get attached to any of the characters, the script is draggy, and the acting is hit and miss. If you’re looking for top notch gore you’ll find it here but not a lot else.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman wakes up naked and shivering in a dungeon. She runs around looking for escape. Outside, a cop opens the door to the big factory and comes inside, looking for intruders. It’s obviously the same building. We see that he’s not alone; someone is in there with him has a bloody mouth and isn’t quite human. The woman runs up to him, and he shoots her by mistake about a thousand times. Credits roll.

Six hours later, a group of young people enter the same building. They’ve brought a disco ball and sound system to have a party here. They find a video camera left behind by Ghost, one of their group who was here before them, and they all watch a girl do a striptease on the camera.

We get to know Scotty, Charlie, and some of the other characters as they wander around the place and argue. As they get set up for their party, we see someone else moving around in the dark shadows of the warehouse. Wade, Scotty’s brother, shows up, and he’s got the lighting equipment and beer. Kim sees a scary face in the darkness and causes a scene. They’re expecting a lot of kids in about an hour.

Wade likes Lolli but is told she’s a lesbian. He soon finds out she is more flexible than that. Miko laughs at Jade, who kinda likes Wade as well. Then they talk about the rules for b******s. When Jade sees Wade and Lolli going at it, she runs off and cries. Almost immediately after, some ghouls come out of nowhere and tear Lolli’s guts out.

Kim goes looking for Lolli and gets captured by the baddies. A big man in a welding mask cuts off her fingers with garden shears. He then breaks her in half with his huge anvil-hammer.

Jade spikes Wade’s drink with something nasty, but Kenny punches him before he gets a chance to drink it. We get a dance break with Miko Scotty and Jade and Kenny get close. When Kenny loses his head, Jade gets a shock from the ghouls. She runs away, straight into the arms of the welding-masked man with the anvil-hammer. Gallagher would be pleased with the results.

Charlie and Enix talk about how badly she’s run this whole operation. She might be doing something shady with the admissions fee. They suddenly notice how few of their friends are still working. Scotty and Miko have a drinking contest, and Miko gets the “bad bottle.” She vomits up blood everywhere, but then the Hammer-Man shows up to finish her off.

Wade finds what’s left of Kim, but he’s too drunk to see how broken she is. Hammer Man gets him before he goes too far with her.

Charlie and Enix find Ghost’s car, along with some of his body parts. They figure out that he was killed before they even arrived, but then they find Kim and the ghouls. Enix soon gets the point as Hammer Man comes after Charlie.

Charlie ends up in a room with Scotty and Wade, who aren’t quite dead yet after all. The two brothers confess their sins to each other hilariously before they die. Charlie gets loose, runs back to her car, takes a gun, and shoots Hammer Man several times.

Charlie runs into the main room, which is now somehow full of dancers. Hammer Man follows her and starts killing the dancers, creating a stampede for the exits.

Only Charlie makes it out alive.

Brian’s Commentary

The characters are all distinctive, but not particularly interesting or well acted. None, not one, of the characters are even remotely likeable, so when they die, we’re like… “OK?” The kills are well done, and the practical gore effects are really good.

Why are there ghoul-women and the hammer-man in the warehouse in the first place? We get no explanation or reason for this. That Anvil-on-a-stick is a great-looking weapon, although it wouldn’t be very practical in reality. Where did all those dancers come from at the end when the ticket-takers were all killed? Who was running the lights and the sound?

It's a low-budget schlock that doesn’t get good until the very end and even then, the high point isn’t great.

Kevin’s Commentary

The special effects are especially good in this one, the best part of the movie. The music selection was very good too. The script is kind of dull and simple, the characters aren’t very likeable, and the supporting production values are so-so.

2012 Nobody Gets Out Alive

* Directed by: Jason-Christopher Mayer

* Written by: Jason-Christopher Mayer

* Stars: Jen Dance, David J. Bonner, Shaun Paul Costello

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 17 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is a fairly generic serial killer in the woods kind of movie. We start out with a (Why is this dummy allowing his daughter to play hopscotch in the road?) origin story of the killer. Then time passes and a group of young people go camping, laughing off the stories of death that lurks in the area. It’s well made, but just okay for entertainment value.

Spoilery Synopsis

November 2000. There’s a big outdoor party as credits roll. In the morning, one of the partiers runs over a girl in the road as her father watches.

Present Day. Doctor Owen talks to a patient and explains that her daughter is going to need time to recover. Later, we see Jenn at home eating dinner with her parents; they want her to go out with her friends now that she’s out of the mental hospital. Jenn calls her friend, Michelle, who tells her the legend of the father of the girl who got killed; he still hangs out in those woods killing people.

Mike, Danny, and Deron are going camping with Jenn, Michelle, and Angie. The three guys talk to Jared, who is very weird. Meanwhile, a man goes into a convenience store and kills the people inside.

The gang shows up at the deserted convenience store and steals some cases of beer. Jared offends the locals by trying to buy weed from them. The group is flagged down by a man who warns them that the woods are dangerous; the woods give him the willies. “I warned ya!”

They soon arrive at the spot and set up tents. Jenn is mopey, and Deron tries to cheer her up. Around the campfire, Daron tells them that the warnings from the harbinger weren't wrong. Hunter Isth, the father of the little girl who died, vanished, but now people die in these woods regularly. Brandon and Tim, the angry locals from earlier, show up and join the group. They laugh at the bogie-man story.

Everyone pairs off for the night, and Deron and Jenn talk about why she’s so grumpy. The odd man out is Jared, who gets stabbed repeatedly by the killer, who shows up out of nowhere.

In the morning, no one can find Jared. Everyone argues. They spend all day looking for him, and when they get back to their camp, it’s all been ransacked. The car has been sabotaged as well. They all watch in terror as Angie is killed outside the car. Danny also gets it, whacked with a sledge hammer. Michelle gets stabbed with a machete. The numbers are dropping radically as Mike gets hooked.

Jenn loses her medications and totally loses her mind.

We cut to the killer, Hunter Isth, as he prepares weapons at his cabin. He’s got Michelle and Mike tied up in there, not dead yet after all. He drives nails into Mike’s head, which stops him from screaming. Michelle asks, “What do you want?” and he tells her for what seems like an hour and then saws her legs off.

Deron and Jenn run through the woods until they find a house. They go inside and find Michelle and Mike’s bodies. Deron gets into a fight with Hunter and he gets double-hammered.

Jenn catches up with Brandon and gets a ride into town. They don’t get far before Hunter stops them. She’s soon on her own again, stumbling through the woods. He catches her. As he strangles her, she grabs his knife and sticks it to him.

In the morning, Jenn wakes up on the side of a road. She’s soon picked up by a friendly driver, and we see a pair of hammers in the backseat.

Brian’s Commentary

Hunter Isth has some anger management issues. Why was Jenn in the hospital and what were those medications for? Who was that guy at the end? He wasn’t the killer, was he?

It took a long time for the action to start, but when it did, we got down to two or three characters very quickly.

It’s about as generic and bland as a slasher movie can be. It’s not terrible, but there’s nothing here to really recommend it, either.

Kevin’s Commentary

No, people shouldn’t drive drunk, but people do drive drunk. Which is why you shouldn’t let your child play hopscotch in the road. Which is why I had a problem with this movie right from the opening scene where dad is hanging out nearby while his daughter hopscotches on the road - not a residential street where people are driving slow and careful, but an open road that probably has a speed limit of 55. Then he was angry at the world after that and decided to be a serial killer.

It’s pretty well put together, but nothing special. I’d say I barely liked it more than disliked it.

2006 Black Sheep

* Directed by: Jonathan King

* Written by: Jonathan King

* Stars: Oliver Driver, Nathan Meister, Tammy Davis

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The poster makes it seem funnier than it is, but there are some chuckles to be had. Mostly it’s a killer animal movie with a familiar formula, but they cranked the absurdity up to eleven. The effects are quite good, all practical with no CGI, and there is plenty of gore horror. We liked it alright, but it’s not a classic.

Spoilery Synopsis

As credits roll, we get sweeping panoramas of New Zealand, along with large herds of sheep. Young Henry is with the people herding the sheep, and he goes after a lone straggler. His father praises his good job. Credits roll.

We cut to Angus who kills Henry’s pet sheep with an axe. He then puts its head over his own and terrorizes the younger child. Almost immediately after, Henry’s father dies in an accident. Henry develops a sheep-phobia after all this.

Fifteen years later, Henry is still terrified of sheep. He’s returned to sheep country from the city, and he’s not thrilled. On the road, he passes a couple of Vegan eco-terrorists sneaking around in the field. They watch Angus fly over in his biplane and curse at him.

Henry arrives at the family home, adorned with sheep heads all over the walls. Mrs. Mac, the old housekeeper, is there, and she’s happy to see him. Angus, on the other hand, isn’t so thrilled; he’s about to sell off the family land. Mrs. Mac gives Henry his father’s sheep-shearing trophy, and it looks really sharp. Like something that will come in useful later.

The two eco-terrorists, Grant and Experience, watch the lab as the scientists load test animals on the back of a truck. Grant steals one of the containers of genetic material. In the chase through the woods, the sample container breaks open and releases a tiny baby sheep with a really bad attitude that bites Grant. The little mutant sheep soon finds its way to the main herd. It bites one of the sheep. Soon after, Grant eats a rabbit– live.

Henry and Tucker are out checking out the farm and they run into Experience. They see smoke coming from Mike’s place and rush over there. They’re chased into a room by an angry sheep, and Henry overreacts. Experience says that Angus has been breeding mutant sheep to increase profits. They find Mike’s body and know the sheep means business.

On the way out, they find that the house is surrounded by normal-looking sheep. As they drive away, Tucker is attacked by another sheep. Soon, the sheep is the only one driving– over a cliff.

Back at the lab, one of the scientists is the victim of a sheep-gang up. Also, Grant is turning into some kind of were-sheep. He runs into Angus on the road and bites him on the hand. Tucker takes off his boot where the sheep bit him, and his foot is now a hoof.

Henry, Tucker, and Experience are chased by sheep and win up at the lab to hide. They see that these sheep are really hard to kill– there’s one there skinned and cut open, and it still snaps at them. Angus and the scientists come in and everyone argues. Henry and Experience wind up falling into an offal pit. They spend a lot of time trying to get out and crawling through tunnels.

Henry and Experience get out of the tunnel and encounter Grant, who’s gone full were-sheep now. He roars and attacks Henry, who runs away with Grant’s former girlfriend.

At the lab, the scientists hide Tucker’s foot from Angus, who shows them the bite on his hand. Tucker continues to mutate back and forth between sheep and human, and Dr. Rush enjoys watching the progress. She goes outside for a break and gets chased by evil mutant sheep, who soon eat her.

Outside, Angus welcomes his many high-paying investors to a meeting. He starts giving his speech, but he’s obviously starting to change. He’s got a sheep in a box next to him, and it’s getting angry in there. It bleats repeatedly, and soon, the attendees see a huge stampede of sheep coming up onto the assembled crowd like all-you-can-eat for sheep. There is much carnage.

Mrs. Mac drives up and gives Henry and Experience a drive back to the house, where Angus has gone with his favorite sheep– there’s a budding romance in the works. Grant is there as well; Experience uses her acupuncture skills to paralyze him. Henry and Angus confront each other about who’s worse at farming. The sheep outside are slowly breaking in, so Henry, Experience, and Mrs. Mac go upstairs to hide. They notice that Henry has been bitten.

Angus makes it to his airplane, planning to evacuate somewhere safe. As he loads on his sheep-girlfriend, he starts to further change. He’s more sheep than man by the time Henry finds him. They fight in the barn, then out in the field, at least until Angus and the propeller blade meet. He gets sheared. Tucker shows up to save the day.

In the morning, the group decides to switch to organic farming. Grant is mostly back to normal as is Tucker. As we zoom out, the sheepdog lets out a “Baaaah!”

Brian’s Commentary

It’s not as funny as I’d hoped. Other than the fact the sheep are involved, it’s just another “Killer ____” movie. The were-sheep transformation effects are really well done. It was pretty good, but it hasn’t held up terribly well.

Kevin’s Commentary

I wasn’t expecting the were-sheep transformations until I saw the trailer just before viewing. I kind of wish they hadn’t given that away ahead of time. It’s just silly enough to have the comedy elements with plenty of seriousness to balance it. But I’m going to resell the used DVD copy that we watched it from. I was entertained, but it’s not worthy of entry into the physical media library.

1998 I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

* Directed by: Danny Cannon

* Written by: Lois Duncan, Trey Callaway

* Stars: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Brandy Norwood

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It still continues to be a bafflingly slow case of revenge. More time has passed, and the killer is still working on it. This brings back the survivors from the previous movie and some new folks. With those people to work with plus random folks here and there, the body count is a bit higher. Nothing else about this one really elevates it much from the first movie. It was just okay.

Spoilery Synopsis

Julie, from the first film, goes into a church for confession. She admits to accidentally killing a man. The man came back and killed Barry and Helen, her friends, but she killed him in the end. “I know what you did last summer,” says the priest before he grabs her.

Julie wakes up in the middle of class, screaming. She talks to Will, a classmate and new friend about the whole thing. It’s been one full year since the end of the earlier troubles, and she’s clearly got PTSD.

Ray arrives; he wants her to come to the Croaker Queen thing back at home, but she absolutely doesn’t want to do that. She carries pepper spray and has three deadbolts on her dorm room door. She gets a jump scare from her new friend, Karla, who lets herself into Julie’s room.

That night, at the club, Tyrell flirts with Karla as Julie watches. Will is there, at Karla’s invitation, much to Julie’s confusion. Later, Karla wins some tickets to the Bahamas, and invites all the characters.

Ray and Dave drive down the road and stop to investigate a crashed car. The fisherman-killer kills Dave with his hook and narrowly misses running over Ray.

Karla and Julie laugh as Tyrell shows up with Will at the airport. Ray does not make it as planned. Will gets airsick. Ty gets seasick later, so it’s all good. They soon arrive on a remote island in the Bahamas. When they arrive at the resort, they run into Titus, a friendly pothead they didn’t know was going to be there.

The manager of the hotel, Mr. Brooks, wishes he were somewhere else and isn’t particularly friendly. “Our marginally trained, off-season staff will attend to some of your needs,” he grouses. This is the first day of storm season.

Ray’s beaten up badly in the hospital, and the doctor tells the detective his story. Suddenly, Ray flatlines. No, he’s gone out the window.

The group meets Nancy, the bartender, and Estes, the bellhop. Julie sings karaoke to the empty bar. “I still know what you did last summer” appears on the karaoke machine’s screen. She runs back to her room to find a note– from Will. Frustrated, Will goes off for a walk.

We see that the killer is on the island when he kills the ferry’s deck hand for no real reason. He also gets the housekeeper.

Julie finds a body in her closet, but when she gathers Mr. Brooks and the others, there’s no body there. Brooks explains that there’s no boats leaving several days due to storms and the phones are out as well. Oh, and there’s a hurricane coming.

We cut to old Estes, doing some kind of weird ritual with Julie’s missing toothbrush. We then cut to the hook-man killing Titus with hedge trimmers. Back in the city, Ray hocks the engagement ring he bought for Julie. He buys a gun.

Julie and Karla go to the resort’s gym, and Julie tries the tanning bed. Karla finds the cleaning woman’s body in the dryer. Ty and Will find Titus’s body as well. Julie finds herself locked in the tanning bed and panics. Nobody thinks she’s crazy anymore. The whole group stomps down to Brooks’s office, where they find him dead and the radio smashed.

Julie points out that they never found Ben Willis’s body last year. Ty remembers Estes, and thinks he might know something. They go to Estes’s Voodoo-hut, but all they find there is their own stuff. Estes explains that the question they answered to win their tickets was wrong; he’s been trying to help them all along. This whole thing has been a setup. Estes whacks Will over the head with an oar.

Ray makes it to the island ferry office and forces the captain, by gunpoint, to take him there.

Ty and the girls find Nancy, the bartender, hiding in the meat locker. The killer soon gets Ty to shut up, permanently. He chases them up to the attic and down to the greenhouse.

Nancy leads Julie and Carla to the storm shelter, where they find all the bodies. Nancy runs into Estes, and they’re both killed by the baddie.

Will shows up and leads them back out. He’s covered in blood but tells Julie that it’s not his. Yeah, he was the one who arranged this whole trip. He explains that he’s Ben’s son, and Ben is there as well.

Suddenly, Ray shows up with a pistol. “You’re no killer; you don’t have it in ya!” Ray pulls the trigger, and the gun doesn’t work. After a scuffle, Ben ends up hooking Will by accident. The gun works just fine when Julie shoots Ben over and over again.

The storm ends. The Coast Guard helicopter picks up Julie, Karla, and Ray.

Some time later, back at home, Julie and Ray have moved in together. One night, we see muddy footprints inside their house. Yep, the killer’s under the bed.

Brian’s Commentary

We need more surprise Jack Black in every scene, right?

There were only two survivors from the first film, and if the killer wanted them dead, why play all the games and kill all the innocents? It would have been easy to kill Julie just anytime.

I liked the resort setting and the forced isolation of the hurricane, but there really wasn’t much new here.

Kevin’s Commentary

I find the whole concept of the first movie and this one basically flawed, with the slow moving revenge. And for some reason this one has the revenge spilling over to innocent people who had nothing to do with it. It’s well made, but just middling in my book.

2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes

* Directed by: Rupert Wyatt

* Written by: Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Pierre Boulle

* Stars: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 45 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a reimagining and prequel to the 1968 original Planet of the Apes that tells us how the apes got smart and how the human population got greatly reduced. Instead of humans in ape makeup this time around, they used humans doing motion capture overlaid CGI, and it works really well. It’s more of a science fiction action adventure kind of movie than horror, and it’s very entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a bunch of apes in the deep forest. It all gets very quiet, and then the apes are chased by humans; many apes are captured in nets, packed in boxes, and shipped overseas for medical experimentation.

Robert Franklin and Will Rodman watch as “Bright Eyes,” a really intelligent ape, solves a problem in record time. Steven, Will’s boss, says he’ll talk to the board about moving ahead with their project. ALZ-112 is a new gene therapy that is being developed as a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease.

Bright Eyes, however, is a wild animal and is very aggressive. She escapes and runs rampant through the whole facility, even the board room, where she’s shot dead by the security guards. Steven then orders Robert to put all the apes down; the program has been cancelled.

Robert figures out that Bright Eyes was pregnant, which is why she went berserk. He refuses to kill the baby and gives him to William. William can’t do it either, and ends up taking the baby home with him.

Charles Rodman is Will’s father, and he’s suffering from Alzheimer’s. Charles and the baby, whom he names Caesar, get very attached, very quickly. The baby is unusually smart. Over the next three years, Caesar gets a lot smarter, and Will continues to study him. Charles, on the other hand, just gets worse and worse.

At work, Will steals some of the ALZ-112 and takes it home. He gives it to Charles, and it works very quickly, restoring the dementia-riddled old man to his former self, overnight.

With all the excitement, Caesar goes outside to play with the kids out there. That goes badly, and Caesar gets hurt. Will takes him to the zoo to see the vet there, and the other apes get really quiet when Caesar passes them. The vet is Caroline, and she starts dating Will.

Will, Charles, and Caroline take Caesar out to Muir Woods National Forest, where the redwoods are. Five years later, he still enjoys coming to the forest to climb and play; he’s much bigger now. Caesar resents being a “pet,” but Will calls himself Caesar’s father.

Will takes Caesar to the lab and explains what chimpanzees are and why Caesar’s so smart. This is the first time Caroline has heard all this, so she needs a more detailed explanation. Caesar is starting to get really moody, and Charles isn’t as cured as he used to be; the dementia is coming back.

Charles gets worse very quickly. At one point, he wanders off and steals the neighbor’s car, wrecking it. The neighbor screams at Charles, upsetting him, and this also upsets Caesar, who rushes out to protect his grandfather. This is going to be trouble.

Animal Control comes to take away the crazy chimp. Caroline and Will go along, and the place doesn’t look too bad, like a big playground. John Landon, the man who runs the place, has seen this before with former pets.

Caesar soon learns that he’s in monkey jail, and he’s very sad, as are Will, Charles, and Caroline. As soon as they leave, John puts Caesar into a much less friendly-looking cage. John’s son, Dodge, is mean to the apes in his custody. Meanwhile, Caesar sees all the many other apes in the place.

Charles continues to get worse, so Will decides to make a newer, stronger drug. Steven still believes the drug is dangerous, and Will tells him everything about Charles. He believes that Charles not only got better, he got smarter than he ever was; he improved. Steven agrees to resume animal testing, and more apes are ordered.

Will meets a whole new cohort of apes, including a scarred one named Koba. Instead of an injection, ALZ-113, the new drug, is spread by aerosol gas. In one experiment, Richard gets exposed to the gas by accident.

Meanwhile, Caesar continues to be abused by Dodge. He eventually gets put into a big cage with all the other apes, including an orangutan and a very large gorilla. The other chimps sense something wrong with Caesar and attack him, but he’s way smarter than they are.

Steven sees that Koba can read and write now. He’s really smart. Richard is feeling pretty awful, he’s sneezing blood.

Back in ape-jail, Caesar uses sign language to talk to Maurice, the orangutan. He sees the Gen-Sys order, and he knows that name. Will comes for a visit, and Caesar really wants to go home with him, but that’s not going to happen.

Caesar manages to build a lockpick and release Buck, the big gorilla. Buck has never been out of his cage before, so Caesar’s got a new ally. While free, Caesar establishes dominance over the alpha ape.

Will administers a euthanasia drug to Charles, and in the morning, he’s dead. Steven is super impressed with Koba, but the virus they use to administer the drug is potentially dangerous. Will wonders about Franklin, who hasn’t come to work in several days. Franklin goes to Will’s house and sneezes all over the obnoxious neighbor.

Will bribes John and Dodge to release Caesar, but Caesar would prefer to stay with his new friends. The other apes approve of Caesar’s choice.

Caesar lets himself out one night and goes home to Will’s place. He sees the ALZ-113 drug in the fridge and steals it. He takes it back to the other apes and releases the gas for all of them.

In the morning, all the apes have changed, which is not lost on John and Dodge. Caesar starts teaching them all sign language.

Dodge continues to abuse Caesar, who finally yells, “No!” He beats up Dodge and releases all his compatriots. Caesar kills Dodge, sort of accidentally. Then they all escape out to the countryside.

Back at the lab, the Alzheimer's drug goes into mass production. At home, Richard’s landlord finds him in bed, dead. Will finds out about the apes’ escape and knows where they’re headed.

The apes storm the Gen-Sys lab and free the apes there, including Koba. Steven learns about what happened to Richard Franklin, but it’s too late. The apes then invade the zoo and free the apes there as well. They rampage through the city, and the police get involved. Soon, the apes are armed. The big apes, Maurica and Buck, are especially useful.

The whole group of apes crosses the Golden Gate Bridge, trying to get to the forest. There are a million armed cops on the far end of the bridge setting up an ambush. The apes go over and under the bridge, avoiding the police. Some of the apes fight, but Caesar tries to minimize the casualties on both sides.

The apes soon overpower the police on the bridge. The police helicopter shows up with a machine gun, and it starts looking pretty bleak for the apes. Buck knocks Caesar out of the path of some bullets, leaps into the copter, and causes it to crash. Caesar takes care of Buck for the minute or so before he dies, the big hero of the battle.

Koba then pushes the wreckage of the copter over the side of the bridge, along with Steven. He’s not as nice as Caesar. Will grabs one of the police cars and chases the apes out to the redwood forest.

Koba threatens Will, but Caesar intervenes. Will apologizes for his part in all this and wants Caesar to come home with him. “Caesar is home,” says the ape. Caesar, Maurice, Rocket, Koba, and the others climb the redwoods, happy and free.

Meanwhile, Will’s annoying neighbor, who is a pilot, spread the ALZ-113 plague across the rest of the world…

Brian’s Commentary

The CGI here is still better than most modern films; the apes are exceptionally expressive, each with their own personalities. As different as this version is from what came before, there are lots of callbacks to the earlier films, especially the original.

There are a few hundred apes at this point, and it seems likely they’d soon be rounded up, if not for that pesky plague distracting everyone.

It’s mostly logical, and it explains a lot that the original didn’t. It’s quite good!

Kevin’s Commentary

This one grew on me more this second viewing. I saw the original Planet of the Apes movies at the theater when they came out and later again on television, so I’m biased toward the originals out of nostalgia. But the motion capture and other CGI in this holds up really well, and it’s very entertaining. I’d recommend it.

Short Films:

2023 Short Film The Persistence of Time

* Directed by: Dustin Weible

* Written by: Dustin Weible

* Stars: Samantha DeBoer, Daniel F. Gray, MJ Mattiaccio

* Run Time: 9:28

* Watch it:

What Happens

It’s 1957, and two time-traveling detectives work on a case. We’re told how the FBI started using time travel to investigate old cold cases, mostly just for historical documentation. He explains that you can’t go back to the same point in time twice once you’ve been there; no do-overs.

The agents go into the motel room and find parts of a body; where did the rest of her go? Detective Roni turns the body over and sees that it’s… herself.

This isn’t going to end well, is it?

Commentary

That’s not how you pronounce “Temporal.” “Something’s out there, watching us. We never knew. Not until we went too far and messed with things out of our control.”

Time travel is always fun, and mixed with existential horror, it can only work out badly in the end.

Nice!

2019 Short Film Toe

* Directed by: Neal O’Bryan, Chad Thurman

* Stars: Cassie Carey

* Run Time: 7 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

We watch an animated boy walk through the desolation, looking for food. Instead, he finds a toe buried in the ground. He hacks it off whatever it was connected to and takes it home to cook and eat it.

He never considers for a minute that the owner might want it back…

Commentary

It’s very crisp and sharp black-and-white. It’s hard not to compare this with Tim Burton’s visual style, but this is much bleaker and less whimsical.

This one is crazy good!

2023 Short Film Fetal Position

* Directed by: Joseph Yates

* Written by: Joseph Yates

* Stars: William Tokarsky, Greg Wattkis, Avra Friedman

* Run Time: 7 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

A strange-looking man walks up to a crowd of people protesting an abortion clinic. He goes inside and orders “one abortion, please.” He’s very insistent– maybe for good reason.

Commentary

I liked some of the protester signs: “You wouldn’t abort a car!” What? “Morning sickness? Try Thalidomide!”

I’ve never had one, but I don’t think abortions work like that, at least not most of the time. On the other hand, the immigration jokes are just about 100% accurate.

It’s low budget and cheesy, but also very funny. I like it!

2025 Short Film Versace Softboi

* Directed by: Charlie Gillette, Sarah Metcalf

* Written by: Charlie Gillette

* Stars: Charlie Gillette, Becky Granger, Wesley Han

* Run Time: 13 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

Em nags at Alex to get off her phone; she seems addicted to that thing. She’s texting with a new boyfriend, a literal Versace model. She’s smoking pot and getting uptight, but then she sees her new boyfriend, Sam, standing outside, stalking her.

Is he a stalker? Maybe. They all talk about their past stalkers, and they’ve all had one.

Commentary

Is it paranoia if they’re really following you? Could it be a coincidence? It starts out pretty much as nothing, but it escalates pretty quickly as the situation gets more and more uncomfortable.

It’s well shot, well acted, and looks good, but not much really happens.

2024 Short Film Subject 7

* Directed by: Aaron Hall

* Stars: Adam Kenzie, Michael Cuddy

* Run Time: 8:41

* Watch it:

What Happens

Trevor is in a blindfold being asked some questions for some kind of research study. It looks like a lie detector test, but the blindfold is unusual. The questions keep coming back to “Are you a Communist?” Yet it’s 1983.

Does Trevor have ESP? Sure looks that way.

Commentary

It’s all very “Cold War” but with the added twist of psychic powers. It’s just two guys in a room talking, but it’s interesting from beginning to end, and the ending is really unexpected.

I did not see that coming. Very well done!

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.horrormonthly.com

* https://www.flashfright.com

We’ve got another week of five-and-five, with five features and five shorts, and they’re all good this time around. We’ll open up with the acclaimed “Bring Her Back” which just hit streaming, and the brand-new “Hotspring Shark Attack” which just released as well. We’ll watch a couple of older films, “Border” (2018) and “Cure” (2017), and then go way back to watch Bela Lugosi monkey around in “The Ape Man” from 1943.

* The latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #46 is now on sale! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2025 Bring Her Back

* Directed by: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou

* Written by: Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman

* Stars: Billy Barratt, Sally Hawkins, Mischa Heywood

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

After a disturbing opening, this takes a while to get to the horror, building nicely as things get stranger and more unsettling. It takes some time to figure out what’s really going on. The casting is spot on, the direction and effects are excellent. It’s a strange one, and we liked it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch some people doing strange things for the camera, which sees things that we do not. Credits roll.

We cut to Piper and Andy, step siblings, and she’s got weird eyes. She tries to make friends with some girls at the bus stop, but they make fun of her face. She’s mostly blind. The two go home to find their father dead in the shower. He’d just finished chemo, and something went wrong.

The two get split up for foster care. Piper is going with Laura, but Laura’s had problems with troubled kids in the past, so she doesn’t want Andy. They beg to stay together, so they’ll allow it on a trial basis. He’s very protective of his younger sister.

They arrive at Laura’s house, and she’s very friendly and nice, although it’s clear that she’s more interested in Piper than Andy. Laura had a blind daughter, but she’s dead now. They go outside and meet a very strange little boy, Ollie, who’s mute and has a birthmark on his face. He’s another of the foster children. Andy and Laura get off on the wrong footing right away.

Later that night, Laura watches videos of the cult that we saw in the pre credit sequence.

We also see that Andy has been traumatized by finding his dead father. The next day, they go to their father’s funeral. Laura cuts off a bit of the dead man’s hair and puts it in her pocket. After the funeral, they all play a drinking game. They all, even young Piper, get incredibly drunk.

Meanwhile, at home, Ollie breaks out of the house and walks around the yard all bloody, trying to get into a locked shed. He watches the others partying from outside the house. Andy talks about the way his father used to abuse him when he was little, but he never touched Piper. Late that night, Laura pours her own pee all over Andy while he sleeps to make him think he did it himself.

Ollie sits in his room and eats bugs. Andy washes himself outside because he’s afraid of the shower. At breakfast, Ollie tries to eat a huge knife, cutting his mouth up, and Andy tries to take him to the hospital. Once they get outside, they cross the white circle on the ground, and Ollie goes into convulsions. “Help me!” he says, speaking for the first time.

Laura returns and is surprised that Ollie can talk now. She drags him back inside the circle and indoors, and there’s no more talking from him. We watch one of the old cultists videos. This has happened before, and it’s not pretty. Laura feeds the hair from Andy’s father to Ollie. We see from above that the house and much of the yard is surrounded by a big white circle.

Andy has a terrifying vision of his father, who tells him, “She’ll die in the rain.” Andy slips and knocks himself out, waking up at the hospital, in the rain. He tells Laura about this, and she says she killed their father. Then again, he’s got a concussion, so maybe he imagined that.

Laura dresses Piper up in dead-Cathy’s clothes and does her hair to look like her dead daughter. Laura wants Piper to stay when Andy turns 18, but Piper plans to go away with Andy when he leaves. We see that Laura still has Cathy’s dead body in her freezer.

Andy gets released from the hospital, and Laura’s not happy about it; could he be dangerous? On the old videotape, we see that there’s cannibalism and soul-transference going on. Laura hits Piper in her sleep and frames it so it looks like Andy did it. Laura’s got a whole story made up to turn Piper against Andy. It all gets very confrontational, and Piper ends up taking Laura’s side.

Andy goes to see Wendy, the social worker who placed them with Laura. He sees a “Missing Child” poster with Ollie’s face on it. When he sees Wendy, he’s very intense, and she won’t put up with him. Eventually, Andy talks Wendy into going to the house for a visit.

At home, Ollie destroys the kitchen and attacks Laura, taking a big bite out of her. He then takes a bite out of the wooden counter-top, losing most of his teeth in the process. The skin on his own arm starts to look pretty tasty after that. He crawls into the freezer with dead-Cathy…

Wendy shows up at Laura’s house as Andy breaks the lock on the backyard shed. He sees Ollie and frozen-Cathy out there. “We can bring her back,” Laura says to Wendy. Andy shows Wendy what he’s found, and they both run for the car, where Laura runs over them with her SUV. Wendy is killed, but Andy’s only heavily injured. Laura finishes him off by drowning him in a deep puddle.

Laura goes to pick up Piper from her game and they drive home. Of course, Piper can’t see how beat-up the car is. In the house, Piper hears Andy’s voice, but we see that it’s really Ollie, and he’s looking pretty horrifying now.

Piper locks herself in the bathroom, where she finds Andy’s body. Laura explains that she put an angel inside Ollie’s body, and now it’s going to put Cathy into Piper. Piper tries to run, but hits her head and passes out.

Laura drags Piper out the swimming pool as Ollie watches and joins in the fun. As Laura pushes Piper underwater, she wakes up and tries to fight back. Meanwhile, something comes out of Ollie. Halfway through the drowning, Laura has second thoughts and lets Piper go.

Piper runs to the road and gets picked up by a car. Laura looks at Cathy’s half-eaten frozen corpse and drags it outside, where Ollie writhes outside the circle.

Later that night, the police find Ollie, who can speak and tells them who he really is. They also find Laura and Cathy in the pool.

Brian’s Commentary

It takes about 45 minutes before we get to anything truly unusual or horrific, but it does eventually get there. It’s very slow paced as we see more and more weirdness that just keeps on building up as the film progresses.

The acting here is good all around, and the film is very visual, with lots of cool shots and interesting ways of filming things. For a long time, I thought it was going to be one of those “The monster was grief all along” films, but no, that’s only part of it.

It was good!

Kevin’s Commentary

This was really impressive. The cast, visuals, and story. Maybe Laura was going just a little too far for love. We could see how things were spiraling out of her control as she started getting in deeper. I give it a big thumbs up.

2025 Hotspring Shark Attack

* AKA “Onsen Shaku”

* Directed by: Morihito Inoue

* Written by: Morihito Inoue

* Stars: Daniel Aguilar, Shoichiro Akaboshi, Takuya Fujimura

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 10 Minutes

* Trailer:

1943 The Ape Man

* Directed by: William Beaudine

* Written by: Karl Brown, Barney A. Sarecky

* Stars: Bela Lugosi, Louise Currie, Wallace Ford

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 4 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A mad scientist falls victim to his own devices and gets stuck somewhere between gorilla and human. They’ve got a real ape in the lab, desperate plans involving murder, and police on the trail. How will these hijinx work out? We would say you should see it to find out, but you’d probably be okay if you don’t.

Spoilery Synopsis

A group of reporters talks about how tough their jobs are. The newspaper reports that Dr. James Brewster has gone missing, and it seems suspicious. Dr. Randall is there at the docks to pick up Agatha, the missing doctor’s sister. Carter, one of the reporters, thinks there might be a story in it.

Dr. Randall knows exactly where Brewster is, and he tells Agatha that he’d be better off dead due to their recent discovery. Brewster experimented on himself, and it was so successful that they haven’t been able to reverse it.

The pair drive to the place where Brewster has been hiding, in a secret room in a country house. In a cage is a big ape and also Brewster, Bela Lugosi, who has hair on his face like a gorilla. He’s an ape-man now! He can still talk, but he walks and roars like an ape.

Outside, a weirdo peeks through the window as the altered doctor tells his story. Carter’s photographer friend goes off to the war, and Billie Mason, a young woman, is his replacement.

Back at the lab, Agatha watches as Brewster injects himself with a new serum that doesn’t work. He tells Agatha that there is a serum that would work, but Randall won’t allow it. Randall explains that he’d have to commit cold-blooded murder to get the spinal fluid that Brewster needs.

Billie and Carter arrive at the Brewster house, and they hear ape sounds even from outside. They’ve come to interview Agatha, a famous ghost-hunter. Agatha discusses the ghosts that haunt this house. She plays a recording of a ghost for them.

Hearing again that Randall won’t kill for him, Brewster puts on a coat and hat and goes out, with the gorilla in tow. Detective Brady arrives to question Randall about Brewster’s “disappearance.” Meanwhile, in the next room, Brewster and the ape kill Randall’s butler and take his spinal fluid.

Randall calls the police, who find a clump of hair in the dead butler’s hand. He goes to Brewster, who has made the serum and needs the other doctor to inject it. He refuses, and Agatha forces him to do it… at gunpoint. Zippo, the weird peeping-Tom, continues to watch everything from outside.

Brewster can stand up straight now, but he’s still all furry. Carter comes to the door, and Agatha lets him inside. They talk, and he leaves, but right after, Randall says he’s going too and never coming back.

The formula soon wears off, and Brewster needs more. He and the ape go out again, this time killing the milkman, another man, and a woman, stealing their spinal fluid. He’s got a bunch of it now, but Randall won’t come. “If he won’t come here, I’ll go to him,” threatens Brewster. In a rage, he strangles Agatha.

Brewster shows up at Randall’s house for an injection, but Randall throws the spinal fluid on the floor, ruining it. Brewster kills him. Agatha wakes up, not dead, rushes over there, and runs into the police as they examine the body.

Carter and Billie sneak into Brewster’s house and explore just as he returns home. Carter is knocked out by Billie by mistake, but then Brewster grabs her and runs to the lab. Everyone rushes down to the basement lab and fights. Billie accidentally releases the real ape, who attacks and kills Brewster.

The police arrive just in time to shoot the ape and save Billie. Agatha runs down to find Brewster’s body.

Brian’s Commentary

We get a lot of telling, not showing, in the opening scenes. It was successful enough that “Return of the Ape Man” came out the following year. Lugosi looks more like a Mennonite than an Ape Man, but I guess it’s a little late to complain about that.

We never do find out why Zippo keeps staring in through the window at the lab. Who is he, and why does he keep tipping off the reporters?

I want to know why Brewster, who could still talk and work in the lab, felt the need to sleep in the cage with a real gorilla.

Kevin’s Commentary

It was popular enough to spawn a sequel even though things pretty much wrapped up at the end. It was interesting seeing Bela Lugosi in another role, and he’s decent at it, but I can’t really tout this as a classic or particularly entertaining.Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s every bit as stupid as you might think from the title, trailer, and poster. It’s also very funny and a fun watch. It embraces the bad shark movie trope and dials it up to eleven. Don’t expect any scary horror, but it’s worth the watch.

Spoilery Synopsis

Atsumi, the Monaco of the East, is a fancy resort. We watch a guy on a boat “feed” his ex-girlfriend to a CGI shark. She’s fine, though, and hits him. Suddenly, a shark flies through the air and a muscly guy appears on deck. We cut to a woman in a jacuzzi who is attacked by a shark. Credits roll!

We hear more about Atsumi and the construction of the projects there. The chief of police isn’t happy about the project; he’s planning to retire next year, and it’s all annoying. He goes out to the beach, where another shark-eaten body has washed up. They find keys to a local onsen. Surprisingly, the mayor wants to keep it all quiet.

The chief is at the onsen, and he meets an annoying tourist, who almost immediately goes missing. Why were the victims all in the ocean naked? Their clothes were in the locker at the onsen. They bring in a shark expert, Kose, who gets really excited at the teeth marks on the victims. At the construction site, they’ve found fossils of an extinct species of shark; could that be related?

A bunch of influencers come to the resort and film a guy being attacked by a shark– no, it’s a prank. Still, the influencers are swarming the place, and they all do their stereotypical “influencer” stuff. Dr. Kose explains that this ancient variety of shark has very soft cartilage instead of bones, so it might fit into tighter places than a modern shark. They could be swimming around… underground and coming up through the pipes. There’s even an animated diagram showing how this might work. We cut to influencers being eaten in hot tubs.

They evacuate the hotel, but soon, sharks start coming out of the sewers all over town. The loudspeakers announce, “Onsen sharks are now attacking people in the city,” as manhole covers explode right and left. Atsumi City is in a panic, and the mayor isn’t happy. The sharks derail a train, which goes flying to kill the mayor’s staff.

The police chief is swallowed whole by a shark, but then that muscle man from earlier shows up and punches the shark. His shirt says “Onsen Guardian,” and the sharks hate him.

The Anti-Hot-Spring-Shark Unit of the Defense Force arrives and shoots at the shark, but it releases explosive gas to kill them all. Shachi-Go is activated. It’s a special new armored submarine that can withstand the exploding sharks. The sharks release an EMP that makes it crash. The shark laughs evilly.

The Prime Minister gives a speech about destroying the city of Atsumi to save everyone else. The Americans show up with their Bath Buster bombs to solve the problem once the evacuation is complete.

The police chief survived his attack, but now he’s got an infection and is turning purple. They need a vaccine from the Onsen Shark’s fins to save him. His wife won’t give up on him. Mayor Mangan realizes that this is all his fault and feels bad. He’s attacked by sharks, but the Onsen Guardian saves him. The mayor explains that he needs to capture one of the sharks, for the chief.

We get a research montage as the scientists design and 3D-print a new submarine to fight the sharks. Before the shark-killing sub is finished, the sharks counterattack, but they are distracted. The sub launches from a catapult with Kose, Mangan, and the Guardian aboard. They all eat submarine sandwiches as they wait.

The sharks find the sub and attack. The sharks shoot their EMP blast, but the sub has shields. Two of the three sharks get harpooned, and the Guardian swims out to kill the third one personally. They retrieve one of the bodies, so they can make a vaccine for the chief.

Suddenly, a whole swarm of hundreds of sharks appears. The group debates the morality of wiping out the entire shark species by dropping a building on them. They fire a torpedo at the resort’s foundation, and the whole hi-rise tower falls apart, bombarding the many sharks beneath it.

Then the “King Shark” shows up, wearing a literal crown, and he’s ridiculously huge. He eats the Guardian, so Kose and Mangan lose hope, but wait– the Onsen Guardian is inside the shark’s belly, fighting to get out.

Out of weapons, the submarine flies into the belly of the monster. The Guardian, inside, gives a mega-punch to the King Shark’s heart, knocking it way up into the sky, where Mayor Mangan shoots it, causing it to explode.

A month later, the mayor’s face is on a package of steamed buns just like he wanted. The Chief has recovered, and he watches as the Onsen Guardian rises out of the water, ready for more battles.

… And there is an after-credit scene.

Brian’s Commentary

This is the funniest, and also the most stupid, film we’ve seen in a while. It’s a perfect live-action anime. It picks on all the shark movie tropes as well as Japanese TV, anime, and influencer culture. The special effects are ridiculously, intentionally bad, which is part of why it’s so hilarious. The acting is way, way over the top as well.

Just watch the trailer. If it appeals to you, you will love this.

It’s crazy stupid, but it also may very well appear in my top ten for the year. Awesome!

Kevin’s Commentary

They effectively manage to spoof a lot of things in this movie in such a short package. It’s stupid but funny, and I had a good time seeing it. They did a good job putting this together.

1997 Cure

* Directed by: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

* Written by: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

* Stars: Masato Hagiwara, Kohi Yakusho, Tsuyoshi Ujiki

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 51 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Watch it: https://amzn.to/3HJ1kWx

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was very atmospheric and kind of slow moving, but always fascinating. A cop on a quest to solve a murder case keeps finding it gets stranger and more complicated as the movie progresses. It’s dark, and grim, with well worn settings and peeling paint everywhere - perfect atmosphere for the story. We thought it was great.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman reads a story about Bluebeard to her doctor.

We cut to a man who breaks off a pipe and beats a woman to death with it.

We cut to Detective Takabe, who is called to the scene. The killer seems to have left his clothes, including his ID. The woman was beaten with a pipe, but she died from having a big “X” cut into her throat which made her bleed out. They soon find the man hiding outside the room, and he seems terrified. Takabe talks to the police psychologist, Dr. Sakuma; there have been three similar cases in two months. None of the “perps” are connected in any way, and they all seem perfectly rational after the murders.

A confused-seeming man on the isolated beach asks strange questions to another man. He doesn’t know the date, where he is, or even who he is. He takes the man home and gives him coffee. “Mamiya” is written on his coat, so they assume he must be Mr. Mamiya.

Detective Takabe goes home and talks to his wife, Fumio. She’s sick, but Takabe isn’t sure how bad it is, or if she’s even really sick.

We watch a man jump out a window, and Takabe is called in to investigate. That was the man who found and helped Mr. Mamiya. He killed his own wife and then tried to kill himself, but he’d always been very stable before. What happened? Mr. Hanaoka, the man, survived his fall but has no memory of why he killed his wife. “It just seemed the natural thing to do.” “The devil made him do it,” says Sakuma.

That night, Mr. Mamiya is taken in by the police and kept at a tiny little station until morning. He seems just as confused and disoriented as before. Mamiya is very hypnotic with his lighter, and the policeman seems to fall into a trance…

At the hospital Takabe talks to Sakuma about the murders being done by hypnosis; someone is making these men kill. Sakuma thinks it’s highly unlikely that the killer is a hypnotist.

In the morning, the policeman that talked to Mamiya kills his partner. Mamiya goes to the hospital and talks to doctor Miyajima. He says he can see all the “things” inside her, but his own insides are empty. He hypnotizes her with water spilled onto the floor and then leaves. Not long after, the doctor sees a big “X” painted on her wall. She later cuts up a man in the restroom.

Takabe questions the police officer who killed his partner. Sakuma asks questions, trying to see if hypnosis was involved. All signs point to another man being involved. The policeman, Mr. Oida, tries to cut an X in another officer’s chest- with a coffee stirrer. He has no idea why.

Takabe gets another call. Mr. Oida had taken a stranger to the hospital, and he was treated by Dr. Miyajima. Takabe finally finds Mamiya hiding at the hospital and takes him in for questioning. Mamiya doesn’t know who he is, nor does he remember any of the victims. Takabe really doesn’t like this suspect. Takabe goes home and has to find his wife, who got lost going to the store.

Takabe goes to Mamiya’s house and finds bunches of psychology books there as well as books on mesmerism. Takabe then goes home to find his wife hanging from a noose which he does not take well. No– he seems to have hallucinated it; she’s fine and running the vacuum cleaner.

Mamiya tells Takabe what he saw. He knows. Mamiya tries to hypnotise Takabe, who tells the criminal more than he probably should. On the way out, Sakuma recommends that he not talk to the prisoner anymore.

Takabe puts his wife in the mental hospital, which is where we saw her earlier reading the Bluebeard book.

Sakuma finds an old police case from 1898 that involved hypnosis and a woman cutting an “X” into her son. They used to call hypnotism “Soul Conjuring” back in those days. Sakuma starts doing his own research and decides that Mamiya is some kind of “missionary.” We see that he’s got a big “X” painted on his wall, too. Mamiya escapes not long after Sakuma kills himself.

Takabe finds Mamiya at an old abandoned hospital. Mamiya says Takabe let him escape. Takabe shoots the mesmerist three times. When Mamiya tries again to hypnotise Takabe, he gets shot another five times.

We see Takabe’s wife, at the hospital, with an “X” cut in her neck. He goes out for dinner, and we see the waitress pick up a knife and go after someone. Is Takabe the “carrier” now?

Brian’s Commentary

It’s very weird, slow, and ponderous. It starts off like a regular serial-killer mystery from the detective’s point of view, but as we see more and more from Mamiya’s point of view, it gets more complicated.

Hypnosis is overused in horror films, and usually not realistically. This one uses it as a central theme, but treats it in a more serious, less magical way.

It’s good– we don’t get too much of an explanation, but enough that it mostly makes sense.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was a different take on the serial killer genre and made a different use of the hypnotism trope. The atmosphere throughout was perfect, and the cast was excellent. I give this one a big thumbs up.

2018 Border

* Directed by: Ali Abbasi

* Written by: John Ajvide Lindqvist, Ali Abbasi, Isabella Eklof

* Stars: Eva Melander, Eero Milonoff, Jorgen Thorsson

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 50 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A strange looking customs officer is very good at her job, literally sniffing out when people are smuggling or up to bad things. It’s a talent that her coworkers, and soon the police, take seriously. Things get more complicated as we gradually learn who she is, and she gets mixed up with a guy who looks as strange as she does and has the same abilities. This was excellent. It’s well made and unique.

Spoilery Synopsis

Tina is a very unattractive border guard. She checks bags at the Swedish port. She busts a young guy for smuggling alcohol into the country. Credits roll.

She drives home to her cabin in the woods, and the dogs don’t like her. She goes for a walk in the woods, barefoot, and the fox watches her. Her boyfriend, Roland, raises muscular dogs and he doesn’t like it when people call them “fighting dogs.”

At work, Tina sniffs the crowd and calls one man aside. They don’t find anything in the man’s bag, but she insists on smelling his phone. He’s hiding a memory card inside, and the man freaks out before being arrested. Later, she smells another passenger and he looks a lot like she does. She lets him pass.

That afternoon, she goes to the nursing home to visit her father, and it takes him a minute to remember her name. He worries that Roland is taking advantage of her, which he clearly does.

That night at home, she goes outside and pets a wild moose behind her house.

Agneta calls in Tina and wants to know how she “sniffed out” the memory card full of child porn from that guy yesterday. She admits she can just sense these things; “I smelled it on him. Shame, guilt, rage, and other things.” Agneta is a high ranking police officer, and she’s skeptical about the “smelling thing,” but she gives Tina a new assignment to help them locate the pedophile apartment.

We cut to Vore, the creepy man that Tina let through yesterday. He passes her again. She insists that he has something on him, and her coworkers know better than to argue. During the more thorough search, they learn that Vore is female - he has a vagina, beard notwithstanding. Vore has a scar on his tailbone, and we saw in a previous scene that Tina has one as well. They don’t find anything on her. The two look very similar, and there’s almost an animal attraction between them. And then Vore leaves.

Tina asks her father about her scar, and he says she fell on a rock as a little girl. She doesn’t remember it, but she also doubts his story.

In the daytime, she tracks down Vore, who feeds her a maggot; she tries it. She takes him home, and the dogs don’t like him, either. Still, they shut up when he growls at them. Roland is not pleased to meet Vore, who will be staying in the guest house. Vore kisses Tina, and she’s not sure what to make of it.

At work, Tina is continuing to stake out the child-porn guy’s apartment to try to catch the people who were making it. She sniffs out the right place. She finds people doing something to a baby and reports it. They go back later and find a camera and footage.

Vore explains that she’s not ugly, she’s better than most other people. She thinks she can’t have children, as there’s something wrong “down there.” He’s very understanding and insists that she’s fine.

Esther comes over and shows Tina and Vore her newborn baby, and that night, Vore goes out to the woods and gives birth. He mashes up more maggots to feed it before hiding the baby thing in the refrigerator.

Roland leaves to go to a dog show, but Tina knows he’s got a girlfriend waiting. There’s a thunderstorm, and both Tina and Vore hide under the table in terror as the lightning comes close. They’ve both been hit by lightning before. Later, he wants to have sex with her, even though she insists that she’s deformed. They go at it… like animals. She grows the parts she’s missing; she’s actually been a male this whole time. Sort of.

That night, he explains that she’s a troll, like him. She can smell evil and lightning chases her. She had a tail that was cut off and discarded when she was little. He knows of a small group of trolls in Finland. The following day, they frolic through the woods, naked. They’re in love. “Humans are afraid of us. And they should be. Vengeance is coming.” Humans performed medical experiments on Vore’s family. Vore clearly hates humans, but Tina thinks they aren’t all bad.

Tina confronts her father about her whole life. His dementia doesn’t allow him to give a straight answer. When she gets home, she roars at the dogs and tells Roland he needs to move out– tonight!

Tina goes to the guest house and sees the fridge taped shut. She opens it and sees what’s inside. It’s that strange-looking baby.

At work, she continues to work on the pedo case, trying to find out where the babies came from. The suspect is ripped out of the police van and killed with the help of a moose, but no one sees who did it. Tina knows it was Vore and asks him about it.

Turns out, Vore is involved with the pedo ring. “I help them hurt themselves.” The thing in the fridge is not a baby; it’s a Hiisit, and it’s just fine in there. It’s like an unfertilized egg for trolls. He’s been saving it. “They come out of me regularly.” He swaps the hiisits for real children and then sells the human babies to the pedos. “They must suffer as we’ve suffered.”

Tina roars at him in anger and then goes out to the woods to eat worms. She hears an ambulance and follows it to Esther’s house. She sees that her new baby has been switched with the hiisit. She rushes home to find Vore gone. “You’re not human. Meet me at the ferry,” says the note he left.

She finds Vore on the ferry. He wants them to carry on their race, but she doesn’t want to be evil and has him arrested. He jumps overboard instead.

Tina’s father explains her origins. Most of the others of her kind didn’t live for very long. Her name was Reva. When she gets home, there’s a baby, in a crate on her porch. It’s got a little tail and a beard. She feeds it a bug, and it smiles. There’s also a postcard from Finland. Will she go?

Brian’s Commentary

It took hours in the makeup chair to get Tina’s makeup on. The prosthetics here are really convincing. She looked like a Neanderthal or something similar from the very first scene. We also see that she’s got a very close affinity with animals. Obviously, she’s not quite human or something, but the rest of the movie is about us learning the rest of the story.

I liked how all Tina’s coworkers had seen her be right so many times that they never really doubted her ability to smell evil on people.

This one is very different, interesting and engaging all the way through. Very entertaining!

Kevin’s Commentary

This had a great story structure, letting us see that Tina isn’t quite normal right from the beginning, and filling in the gaps as it goes along. The makeup on the two of them is completely realistic. I thought it was an exceptional movie, probably going to be one of the favorites I’ve seen this year.

Short Films:

2025 Short Film Social Media Presence

* Directed by: Paul Davis

* Written by: Paul Davis

* Stars: Natalie Clark, Amanda Greig, A.J. Moorehead

* Run Time: 10:30

* Watch it:

What Happens

We watch Katie, an influencer, go about her day photographing, commenting, tagging everything she does on her phone. One day, she gets a new follower, an account that only follows her. Then the gifts start arriving… at home.

Commentary

This should be a public service video about turning your location services off. It’s really well done. There is one line of dialogue, just comments and such on the Instagram posts. We’re pretty clear all along about what’s going on, but poor Katie is the last to know.

It looks great, well shot, well paced, and the acting is excellent. Good use of music too.

2023 Short Film We All Belong to the Tower

* Directed by: Dustin Weible

* Written by: Dustin Weible

* Stars: Harley Renault, Logan Cobbs, Kevin Kedgley

* Run Time: 9 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

Kaitlin’s father gets an emergency call from work, but he’s an architect, so how bad can it be? At school, all the teachers turn on the news, which is reporting a strange new tower that appeared in town– overnight. People start reacting strangely to the news, even right there in class. That evening, Kaitlin’s father is… different.

Commentary

This is a really low budget short that tells a good story with very little explanation or special effects at all. There’s a building, and then there are the reactions to the building. At the end, we don’t get any real answers as to what it is, but we know it’s not good.

Very nice!

2023 Short Film The Gourd, the Brad, and the Ghostly

* Directed by: Jillian Terwedo-Malsbury

* Written by: Rob Knoll, Annie McGrath

* Stars: David J. Castillo, Elester Latham

* Run Time: 8:34

* Watch it:

What Happens

Doug has put a lot of time into the jack-o-lantern this Halloween, and it looks great. Whoops– it fell off the window ledge, 29 flights up. He looks out the window, and it looks like he may have killed a man down there. It’s a very long ride down in the elevator to find out what happened.

Commentary

This is really great. Doug goes from happy, to terrified, to relieved, to terrified again, and he’s very convincing. All the weirdos who head to and from the Halloween party are especially good. The ending… is maybe not what he deserved, but it’s hilarious.

2023 Short Film Robbie Ain’t Right No More

* Directed by: Kyle Perritt

* Writer: Kyle Perritt

* Stars: Madeleine McGraw, Jadon Cal, Jason Davis

* Run Time: 18 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

The family has a get-together for Robbie, who’s just home from the war. Vern the father, warns young Sarah that Robbie saw some action over there, and he just isn’t like he used to be. They all sit down for dinner, and the conversation goes awkwardly. What exactly happened to Robbie over there? It’s not what everyone assumes.

Commentary

This is good. It’s very dark toward the end, but we see enough to know what’s happening. The family dinner seems very realistic; we’ve all got one relative who doesn’t know when to shut up when things get tense.

It had a good touch of science fiction. I liked this one a lot.

2025 Short Film Every Time We Meet for Ice Cream Your Whole F*cking Face Explodes

* Directed by: Anthony Cousins

* Written by: Anthony Cousins, Carlton Mellick III

* Stars: Arden Michalec, Logan Schuneman, Alexander Michuda

* Run Time: 7 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

A boy on the schoolbus gets bullied regularly, at least until a new, funny-looking girl arrives in town. He wants to be friends and asks her out for ice cream. Their first date goes… strangely. He’s not deterred, however.

Could this be a lasting relationship?

Commentary

This is really cool. It’s retro without getting crazy about it, the bullying seems to be at a realistic level, and the two main characters act believably, except for that one small issue.

It looks really nice, the acting is perfect, and it’s got a fun resolution. Excellent!

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.horrormonthly.com

* https://www.flashfright.com

It’s the week of “Movies with Long Names.” OK, maybe that’s just a coincidence. Only one new film this week, the latest in the Final Destination franchise. After that, we’ll look at the brutal “Green Room” from 2015 and “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” from 2014. For our oldies, we’ll start with the first installment of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” from 1997 and the even-older “Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla” from 1974.

* “The Horror Guys Guide to the Horror Films of Christopher Lee” is available NOW! https://www.horrormonthly.com/horror-guys-guides/christopher-lee-films

* Check out our selection of short horror biographies, including Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and many more: https://www.hourlongpress.com/

* The latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #46 is now on sale! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

* One of my favorite writing and organizing tools is Workflowy, the endless outliner. Check it out at https://workflowy.com/invite/4958355e.lnx

Mainstream Films:

2025 Final Destination: Bloodlines

* Directed by: Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein

* Written by: Guy Busick, Lori Evans Taylor, Jon Watts

* Stars: Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Rya Kihlstedt

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 50 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one starts out with an amazing disaster scene, which of course is prevented because it was actually just a vision by the main participant - a familiar formula. But then we get to find out how that connects to all the movies so far and the events of this one. It’s more of the same as death takes people in strange ways, and Tony Todd has a nice wrap up in this one in his final film role. It’s decent all around, and if you’ve seen and enjoyed the other movies in the series you ought to enjoy this one too.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man and a woman in a blindfold drive to her “surprise,” and it’s the 1960s. They stop at “The Skyview,” a Space Needle-like building that’s just opening. As they walk in, the camera focuses on random stuff, as they always do in these films. They board an overcrowded elevator that doesn’t close properly. There are red flags everywhere as the door cracks open hundreds of feet above the ground.

They arrive at the top safely, and it’s very nice. And scary. She doesn’t like heights, and it’s not so much fun after all. She can’t stop looking at the dance floor’s glass bottom. A stranger talks to her about being pregnant. Iris’s boyfriend takes her up to the observation deck and proposes to her. A kid throws a penny off the tower, which gets sucked into an air vent and jams a fan.

In the dance room, they do “Shout,” and the place gets hopping and rocking. It’s almost too obvious what’s going to happen. The floor shatters, and everyone falls to their deaths. But that’s not all, there’s a gas leak that explodes and kills the ones who didn’t fall. It’s full-on panic, the elevator goes back, and even the stairway is a deathtrap. The whole tower starts to fall over, turning the room sideways. Everyone dies–

Stefani Reyes wakes up from her nightmare in the middle of math class, in modern times. She’s had this dream over and over. Stefani’s grandmother was named Iris, but she’s never even met her. Stefani goes home to her father’s house to find out more about her mysterious grandma. Her father would just as soon Iris’s name never come up again.

Stefani and her brother Charlie go to visit their cousins and Aunt Brenda and Uncle Howard. She wants to talk to Howard about his mother, Iris. When Stefani mentions The Skyview, they all clam up. “Iris Campbell is a deeply disturbed woman.” The old woman got so Death-obsessed that they took her children away. Aunt Brenda is more sympathetic and gives her an address.

Stefani drives way out to the country to find old Iris, who lives in a gated fortress. The compound is very post-apocalyptic-looking, and the inside of the house is weird as well.

Stefani tells Iris about the dream. Iris says that was her premonition years ago. We flash back to what really happened. Iris ran through the restaurant and told everyone what was going to happen. Everyone lived! Eventually, they tore down the building; she stopped the disaster.

Death, on the other hand, doesn’t like to be cheated. He came back and killed everyone who escaped him that day, in the order they would have died. Iris is the only one alive; she’s also clearly crazy, and Stefani picks up on that easily enough. “Death is coming for our family!” The family shouldn’t even exist since she was meant to die at the tower. Stefani leaves in a hurry, but Iris gives her a book of notes and crazy stuff. To prove it, Iris dies gruesomely right in front of Stefani.

Fast-forwarding to the funeral, the whole family, including Stefani’s estranged mother, Darlene, shows up. Afterward, there’s a family barbecue. We see a glass break and get mixed in with the ice. Stefani reads Iri’s book and sees notes about the previous films, and the camera starts showing all the ways to die at the picnic. Which danger is gonna hit first? A sequence of coincidences leads to Howard’s face getting chewed off by a lawnmower.

After the next funeral, Stefani sets up her crazy wall, which is also the family tree, extending to all the “survivors” of the tower disaster. She explains the whole thing to the entire family, since Iris had children that she never should have had, they’re all at risk. “We were never supposed to exist!” Erik, Julia, Bobby, Darlene, Stefani, and Charlie are all going to die, in that order. The family is skeptical at best.

Erik is a tattooist who has to work late. He decides to give himself a new tattoo for his recently deceased father. A ceiling fan and a nose ring lead to his comical demise.

No, in the morning, Erik is just fine. Stefani and Charlie find him and say he should be dead. He jokes that he’s indestructible. For some reason, Death skips Erik and kills Julia with a garbage truck. After that, the family is more open to Stefani’s story. Brenda admits that Erik wasn’t Howard’s biological son; he was an affair baby, so he’s safe from the curse.

Bobby’s next, and they all get a warning about his peanut allergy. The whole gang gets in Darlene’s RV to talk to someone mentioned in Iris’s book. Stefani and Darlene talk about the family.

The group arrives at the morgue of a big hospital, and they meet JB Bludworth. He already knows the whole story. He was the little boy who was the last to die in the original premonition disaster. He explains the rules, even the part about killing someone else to take their years. Also, dying and coming back will break the chain. He’s going to retire now and enjoy the time he has left.

Erik and Bobby sneak off to the hospital. They plan on killing Bobby and then, with all the doctors there, bring him back. It’s time to feed Bobby some peanuts. Bobby sneaks into the MRI room to eat the nuts, and the machine activates and dials up to eleven. It pulls out all Erik’s piercings, one by one and then he’s sucked into the machine and broken in half. Bobby, on the other hand, gets screwed.

Stefani, Charlie, and Darlene decided to go back to Iris’s cabin; the old woman had lived there for decades. The group arrives at Iris’s, but Death tries hard to kill them on the way. When they get there, the house explodes, sending each of the three to a near-death experience. Darlene’s turns out to be a little nearer than the others.

Stefani is trapped underwater in the explosion and drowns as Charlie battles to release her. He brings her up and resuscitates her, which might break the chain.

Stefani and Charlie go home to their father, who wasn’t included in the curse, and it’s time for Charlie’s graduation. We also see that the evil penny from the opening is on the loose again. On the other hand, maybe Stefani wasn’t really dead when Charlie saved her. They do not survive.

Brian’s Commentary

This was Tony Todd’s final film, and he was noticeably thin and frail here. This is also essentially his origin story, so now we know how he’s been involved in all this over the years.

It’s a much more involved plot than any of the previous films, with no real explanation as to why Iris was able to hold Death at bay for decades.

The opening scene was amazing, but there was also a lot of obvious CGI. The rest of the film seemed a little tamer than the previous films, but maybe that’s just because we've seen all the other films so recently.

It was good!

Kevin’s Commentary

It does lean heavily on the CGI, but it’s entertaining. The way they brought everything together was nicely done. Though the basic premise to the whole series is silly if you think about it too deeply. But I thought this was a nice wrap up to the series. No more please. Thank you.

2015 Green Room

* Directed by: Jeremy Saulnier

* Written by: Jeremy Saulnier

* Stars: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Patrick Stewart

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This has plenty of horror elements, but it’s just bad people doing bad things to other people. Very bad things. When a band witnesses a murder, the situation gets out of hand as the baddies try to put a cap on it, and things keep getting worse as the heroes fight back. It gets messy and tension builds as things progress. We thought it was pretty great.

Spoilery Synopsis

Pat, Sam, Reece, and Tiger wake up in a cornfield where they ran off the road last night. They’re out of gas and have to ride a bike to civilization, where they siphon gas from some stranger’s car. They’re soon back on the road and arrive at Tad’s house, where they crash for a while.

Tad interviews the band; they’re not on social media and are hard to find. During the conversation, it comes up that Tad doesn’t have any serious work for them, so they end up playing at… a diner. They make $6.87 each for their work. Tad calls his cousin, Daniel, who can get them into a show tomorrow.

They arrive at the venue, the manager, Gabe, shows them around, and it’s not a classy place. The bar’s full of radical right-wing white supremacists, and the band are lefties who plan to sing anti-Nazi songs to the crowd. “Nazi Punks, F**k Off!” is their first song. They get into regular music after that, and the crowd enjoys it.

On the way out, Pat goes back into the dressing room for a phone and finds a dead body on the floor; someone was stabbed. Pat tries to call the cops, but Gabe stops them. Gabe goes to the office and talks to Daniel, who pulls out $600 and pays one kid to stab his brother; that’ll give the cops something to deal with as the reason they were called, ignoring what went on inside.

Darcy, the club’s owner, arrives on the scene. He’s big on “damage control,” and wants to know who else knows the band was even here. He’s not happy about this whole situation.

Inside, the four band members, along with Amber, another girl, know they’re in deep trouble. They attack Big Justin, the guy who’s been holding them captive in the green room. They grab his gun. Outside, Darcy, Gabe, and Daniel make plans.

Darcy cuts the power, pretends there’s a problem, and sends the crowd of patrons home. Darcy talks to Pat through the locked door; he wants them to come out, and he’s very logical in his arguments. Pat and the band just want the cops to come, but they’ve come and gone.

Pat opens the door to give back the gun, senses a trap, and all hell breaks loose; both Pat and Justin end up with broken arms. Big Justin soon winds up dead.

Reece and Tiger break through the floor into the basement drug lab. That’s why Darcy is so eager to keep the cops out. They try the locked door, and it’s not only open, there’s no one watching the door. Is this a trap?

Yes. Trained dogs attack everyone. Tiger gets his throat ripped out, Reece gets captured and beaten, but Amber drives her dog off. Pat, Sam, and Amber run back to the green room. Darcy sends in Daniel with a machete to handle them and then learns that Daniel may have had the girl inside killed for a good reason.

Inside, Daniel knows he’s been caught and offers to help the three band members. He starts to show them another way out, but is soon killed along with Sam.

Pat and Amber talk about paintball, and Pat decides to distract the men coming for them by acting crazy. Their ploy works, and they overpower the two killers who come in after them.

Amber and Pat climb up out of the drug lab to find Gabe cleaning in the green room. Everyone else seems to have cleared out. Gabe may not be as bad as he seemed, willing to assist them now.

Pat and Amber find men in the woods who were disposing of their van. They find a whole staged crime scene that makes it look like the band was killed while stealing gas. They shoot Darcy and two other men.

Gabe walks to find some farmers and tells them to call the police. Pat and Amber, survivors, aren’t in the mood to talk about music anymore.

Brian’s Commentary

I've heard people say this was good, but otherwise, I went into it blind, having no idea what it was really about. It’s a non-stop rollercoaster of tension, and it’s pretty obvious all along that the heroes have no real chance of escape. After a while, I was starting to wonder what Darcy intended to do with all the dead bodies, as they were really starting to pile up. They staged a crime scene for the band members, but that didn’t explain all of his people who ended up dead.

It’s really good!

Kevin’s Commentary

It started right out with characters that seemed real and I cared about, which makes the situation they get stuck in all the worse to watch when the tension starts to build. The script and cast were very good, it was well directed. Patrick Stewart was perfect for the role, sensible, fatherly, and evil. I liked this one a lot.

2014 A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

* Directed by: Ana Lily Amirpour

* Written by: Ana Lily Amirpour

* Stars: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 41 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was strange and dreamy, with deliberate elements of classic black and white horror like Nosferatu and spaghetti westerns, set in the Middle East but somewhat vague on exact location and time - almost like an alternate universe and timeline. But there is definitely a vampire. And romance. With a great soundtrack. We thought it was very interesting.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch a man take a cat out of someone’s yard. As he walks through the streets, and the credits roll, we see that it’s not the classiest part of town; it’s downright sketchy. He gets to his very nice car and drives away.

We cut to Hossein, an old man, injecting himself with heroin, or something close. His drug dealer, Saeed, comes to the house and wants money; young Arash, whom we saw earlier, sticks up for his addicted father. His father owes so much money that the dealer takes Arash’s car in payment.

The next day, Arash takes up bicycling to get to his job as a gardener for a rich girl. She comes onto him, but he knows better than to go for that.

Saeed, the pimp, talks to Atti, the prostitute, about her getting too old for this stuff. He refuses to pay her and throws her out of the car before calling her a hag.

A girl walks home alone at night, gets home, listens to music, and works on her makeup. She goes out again and walks past Saeed, who likes what she sees. They go to his place, and she watches as he snorts coke. He dances and gets down to the music, but she just sorta stands there looking creepy. Suddenly, she sprouts fangs and bites his finger off. Then she goes for the neck, and he’s done for. She collects his watch and jewelry before wandering around the apartment to look at his things.

Arash comes to the apartment; he’s stolen some valuable earrings and wants to trade them for his car back. The Girl hears him on the intercom and comes down. Arash soon finds Saeed’s body and takes his car keys back, along with drugs and money.

In the morning, Arash disposes of Saeed’s body and takes over his business. As the spaghetti-western trumpet music plays, we catch up with all the characters.

Old man Hossein wants to be friendly with old hooker Atti, but he can’t pay. He spots “The Girl” on the side of the road and thinks he can do better with her. He gets weirded out and runs away, so she picks on the young local beggar-boy instead. He, too, runs away, but she goes after him just to be scary. She also steals his skateboard.

At a party, Arash’s former boss, “The Princess,” is there, and she buys some X from him. She convinces him to take one, and he’s not used to the stuff, so that’s rough. Arash walks home alone at night, completely stoned. The Girl sees him and approaches. He tells her that he’s lost. She explains that they’re in “Bad City.” He’s just come from the costume party dressed as Dracula; she’s intrigued and invites him to her place.

At her place, she puts on some music, and he nearly passes out before approaching her for a kiss. The night goes well.

Atti, the prostitute, walks home alone at night. She sees Arash’s car, and, thinking it belongs to Saeed, scratches it with her keys. She soon sees that she’s being followed by The Girl. The Girl offers a bunch of Saeed’s valuables to her. The Girl goes out for dinner a bit later, eating a homeless man.

Arash and The Girl stand outside as he asks her out for a hamburger. He offers to pierce her ears, and she lets him do it. He gives her the earrings from “The Princess.”

At home, Hossein starts going into withdrawal, and he’s having long conversations with the cat. He believes the cat is Arash’s mother, come to taunt him. Arash gives him some drugs to calm him down. The old man hires Atti for entertainment and ties her up before injecting them both with the drugs. The Girl comes in and kills the man before dragging the body away. The Girl and Atti talk afterward. The Girl takes the cat with her.

Arash asks the beggar-boy if he saw what happened, and the boy says he doesn’t know. He goes to The Girl’s apartment and tells her to pack her things; they have to leave Bad City. He recognizes the cat in her apartment and realizes that she had something to do with his father’s death. Plus he sees her scoop the pile of men’s watches and jewelry she’s collected into her travel bag.

They drive off into the night until he pulls over in the desert. They come to an understanding and drive off again.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s an Iranian-vampire-spaghetti-western film, shot in California, and it’s all filmed in black and white. There’s not a huge amount of subtitled dialogue, but the soundtrack is hauntingly impressive. It’s purposefully vague as to when this takes place; it’s not really our world at all.

There are some graphic novels that accompany the movie, which also describe the film's visuals, featuring a very comic-booky and artistic style. I’d give this one a thumbs-up for the soundtrack alone. It’s slow, mysterious, stylish, and very cool!

Kevin’s Commentary

This was awesome. The soundtrack is great. I really liked everything about it. It’s always refreshing to see something new and different done with the vampire genre, and this one is a winner.

1997 I Know What You Did Last Summer

* Directed by: Jim Gillespie

* Written by: Kevin Williamson, Lois Duncan

* Stars: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sara Michelle Gellar, Anne Heche

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 41 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Watch it: https://amzn.to/3FUIB9Y

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When a group of young people accidentally run over someone and cover up the incident, it triggers a slow act of revenge when many months later someone seems to know what they did last summer and wants them to pay for it. There’s some thrills and chills and a death or few, but it’s a little bit on the tame side. It’s well made overall, but it’s not our favorite of the genre.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a twisty and turny road next to the ocean as a dark version of “Summer Breeze” plays ominously. A young guy sits on the cliff’s edge and looks depressed.

In town, the fireworks go off; it’s time for the “Croaker Queen” beauty contest. Friends Julie, Barry, and Ray cheer on Helen, who is a participant. Helen wins!

There’s a big party afterward. Max hits on Julie. Helen’s older sister Elsa is mean. Barry is a party animal. The four friends leave the party and go to the beach, where they tell horror stories about a man with a hook for a hand (yeah, it’s that story). They all have a different version of the story. Afterward much sex has been had.

On the way home, it’s clear that Barry’s had way too much to drink, and he causes all kinds of distractions until the car, being driven by Ray, hits something on the road. Julie finds a boot, so they quickly learn they didn’t hit a deer. Ray checks the man’s pulse; he’s dead.

The four all argue about what to do. Ray was driving, but he wasn’t drinking, but no one’s going to believe that since a bunch of booze got spilled in the car. Barry suggests dumping him off the cliff into the ocean. Julie is against the idea, but the other three convince her.

Before they can do anything, Max drives up in his truck. Julie tells him that Barry is drunk and puking on the side of the road. When Max leaves, the others carry the man’s body to the dock.

Turns out, he’s not completely dead. The man grabs Helen’s tiara as he sinks, and Barry dives into the water to retrieve it. “We’re going home now, and we’re never, ever going to discuss this ever again.” We see that someone has lost their wristwatch on the scene.

One year later, Julie is back home for a school break. She’s just about to fail out of school, and her mother’s disappointed. She’s gotten a letter in the mail: “I know what you did last summer.”

Julie goes to the store to find Helen, whose life hasn’t gone the way she’d expected, either. She shows Helen the note, and Elsa, Helen’s older sister, is nosy. Barry says the note is nothing. “His name was David Egan,” explains Julie. She looked it all up– they found the body three weeks later. Barry suspects it was Max who sent the letter.

Max is working at the cannery. Barry confronts Max about it, but he doesn’t know anything about any letter. They run into Ray at the docks, and he’s a fisherman now. Everybody leaves angry with each other.

Back at the cannery, someone uses Max’s ice hook to kill him. Not long after, Barry gets a familiar-looking note. The killer runs down Barry and, dressed in a fisherman’s raincoat and hat, attacks him with the same hook - not fatally.

Julie wants to go to the police. Barry is still adamant about not going to them. Julie and Helen research David Egan and learn about his family. They make a trip there and talk to David’s sister, Missy. They try to bluff the woman into talking about David; she mentions that he only had one friend, cute and smart, whose name was Billy Blue. David’s own girlfriend died on that road one year before, and that was him we saw sitting out there in the opening scene. David’s sister is weird and more than a little suspicious of the two girls.

Helen goes home and says hello to her oblivious father. We see the killer come in behind her. In the morning, she wakes up to find someone has cut her hair.

Julie finds Max’s body in her trunk, mostly eaten by crabs. She brings Helen and Barry to see, but he’s not there late. They all know why the bad guy is doing this, but what’s he waiting for? Ray shows up; he’s got a letter too. They track down Billy Blue from the high school yearbook.

It’s been one year, and whatever’s going to happen is going to happen tonight. Julie goes back to see Missy, who’s still weird. Julie explains that what happened to David wasn’t an accident, but Missy says she thought it was suicide, since he left a note. It says, “I will never forget last summer.” Julie figures out that David wasn’t the guy they hit.

At this year’s beauty contest, Helen is on stage as last year’s winner. She sees Barry on the balcony, just as last year. She watches as the man in the raincoat kills Barry. Helen tells the deputy all about it, but there’s no evidence, and he laughs at her. The killer quickly proves him wrong. The killer chases Helen all over town and into her sister’s store. Elsa doesn’t live long after that, but neither does Helen.

Julie finds Ray and explains that David isn’t the killer, but then she figures out that Ray’s boat is “Billy Blue” and comes to the conclusion that he’s the killer. She seeks help from another fisherman, who is obviously the killer. Ben Willis, the father of the girl that David killed accidentally two years ago, killed David in revenge, and that’s who they hit with their car and didn’t finish off properly.

Ben takes Julie out on his boat, and Ray tries to follow in his dinghy. Ray and Ben fight as Julie mostly hides and finds bodies. Ray knocks out the baddie, but doesn’t finish him off. The man loses a hand and goes overboard, but they don’t find a body, only the hand.

One more year later, Julie’s doing much better at school. She gets a note– oh no, it’s just a party invitation. Then she sees “I still know” written on the mirror.

Brian’s Commentary

For years, I had this mixed up with the “Urban Legend” series of movies. After watching one of the early scenes of this, I remembered why– it’s all about the man with the hook.

We know who are going to be the victims, we just don’t know why, exactly. I guess in the end, it all makes sense.

It’s not an “A” list series, but it’s OK.

Kevin’s Commentary

I’d never seen this before, and I found it surprisingly tame. It’s based off a novel by Lois Clark Duncan which does have the basic plot and a stalker, but no body count at all. It’s said the author wasn’t on board at first with it being upped to a slasher movie, but I don’t think they went far enough with it. It’s well made, the cast looks good and does a nice job in their roles, but I’d rate it just okay. A 6 or 7 in my book.

1974 Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

* Directed by: Jun Fukuda

* Written by: Jun Fukuda, Masami Fukushima, Shin’ichi Sekizawa

* Stars: Masaaki Daimon, Kazuya Aoyama, Reiko Tajima

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This has just the right amount of big creatures battling without it becoming tedious. There are a lot of human characters to keep straight, but it works pretty well. There’s plenty of action and bad aliens who have to be overcome. We liked it quite a bit.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on Monster Island, with Anguirus looking at a bright light in the distance. Suddenly, a mountain explodes, and we hear Godzilla. Credits roll.

A woman doing a religious ritual is overcome by a vision. She sees that a kaiju will destroy the city. After watching this, Masahiko, a photographer, goes into some deep caves. He finds a shiny rock, or maybe an animal scale, down there.

Seako shows up; she’s an archaeologist, looking into ancient Okinawans. There are cave paintings of giant monsters and two suns. The royal house of Azumi has a legend about these monsters. Later, a man with a black ring sneaks up behind Saeko…

Shimizu and Ikoku are flying home to Tokyo, but they see a black mountain appear in the sky, according to the prophecy from the cave. They go to see Professor Wagura, who says the scale is a piece of “space titanium.” There are news reports about a “moving tremor” that is going from Hokkaido towards Tokyo, underground.

A man breaks into the Professor’s house to steal the artifact they found, and Shimizu fights him. The mountain explodes and Godzilla is ejected.

Back in Okinawa, the old high priest talks to the woman who had the vision and says only King Caesar will be able to save the world from Godzilla.

Godzilla starts pounding buildings until Anguirus shows up, and then they fight. As they battle, bits of Godzilla’s skin flake off, showing metal underneath. Godzilla rips the other monster’s jaw off, so the battle ends. Shimizu finds more space titanium on the scene after the fight.

All of a sudden, a second Godzilla shows up on the scene, and the new one sounds much more like what we’re used to. We cut to a hidden alien base, where the leader gloats about how he didn’t think the real Godzilla would show up so soon. The Godzilla from the mountain is some kind of machine, and Anguirus must have called his buddy, the real Godzilla, to help.

Godzilla laser-breaths the newcomer, exposing more of the metal beneath. The fake one reveals himself to be Mechagodzilla, a robot! Both giant monsters damage each other, so they split up to rest.

The professor figures out where King Caesar is buried– it’s at Azumi Castle, where the woman had the prophecy. The alien leader does not want King Caesar involved, as he’ll rally the other monsters to fight them.

The professor, Masahiko, and Ikuko go back into the mysterious caves. They’re almost immediately captured by the aliens, whose base is down there. They are from Black Hole Planet Three. The leader admits that they studied Godzilla and then made their own version. Ikuko and Masahiko are taken hostage in exchange for the professor’s help with the big robot.

Godzilla stands in a thunderstorm and is repeatedly struck by lightning, which recharges him.

Shimizu is attacked by an alien agent and shoots him in the face revealing his inner monster, a green monkey-lizard. The thief, and the statue of King Caesar, goes overboard from the tour boat, lost for good. No– he switched it for a fake, so they’re good.

Shimizu searches the caves and finds the professor’s very unique pipe. He’s also captured by the aliens, at least until the reporter shows up; he’s really with Interpol. The two men break in and release the professor, Masuhiko, and Ikuko from being boiled alive in their cell.

Outside now, they notice the moon is red, which is another part of that prophecy. The professor says he helped repair Mechagodzilla, and he knows how to disable the head using his special magnetic pipe.

Everyone goes to Azumi Castle, where the aliens have taken the priest and his daughter captive. After a quick Interpol intervention, they place the statue on the shrine and wait for King Caesar to wake up, which doesn’t take long. He doesn’t move until the priest’s daughter sings to it (We totally needed a musical interlude at this point). The big furry creature wakes up, and the aliens order Mechagodzilla to eliminate him.

The two monsters fight, and it soon looks like Mechagodzilla is going to win. Suddenly, a supercharged Godzilla reappears to help. As the two good monsters attack, the robot monster shows that it can multitask, taking them both down. Godzilla’s spurting blood everywhere, and it looks really bad for him. But Godzilla rallies and holds on so the robot is too heavy to fly away. Finally, he rips the robot’s head off.

The Interpol agent sabotages the aliens’ computer, and they all fall down and revert to their green monkiness. With the monster and aliens defeated, everything explodes. Godzilla walks back into the ocean and King Caesar goes back into his cave to sleep some more.

All the humans go back to Azumi Temple and give the statue back to the priest there.

Brian’s Commentary

This was filmed as Godzilla’s 20th anniversary.

It’s a little hard to follow in the beginning, as there are so many characters who aren’t specifically introduced. There are two brothers, two professors, two women characters, two mysterious strangers, two Interpol agents, and they all seem fairly interchangeable.

My complaint about the previous film, that the stretched-out fights of men in rubber suits went on for too long, seems to have been addressed here, as there’s not really very much monster action for the first hour, and what we do get isn’t stretched out.

Kevin’s Commentary

Ironically, I find these much more entertaining when there isn’t an excess of monster battle action. This one has just enough without it becoming monotonous. It’s heavy on humans doing stuff, bad aliens, and retro technology science fiction. I’d rate this as one of my favorites in the series. And what an awesome poster.

Short Films:

2018 Short Film Sybil

* Directed by: Joanne Mitchell

* Written by: Joanne Mitchell, Tracey Sheals

* Stars: Tracey Sheals, Seamus O’Neill, Garth Maunders, Joanne Mitchell

* Run Time: 12 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

Sybil is the assistant mortician, working for old Mr. Sniffles (could that be a better name for a mortician?). He gets worn out after working on a particularly mutilated body and tells Sybil to stay late and finish up. He also tells her to do something fun tonight.

She… does.

Commentary

This is pretty awesome. We know what’s going on at all times, and there’s a fun payoff at the end. It’s well shot, the gore is good, and the situation is both horrifying and hilarious. The little taxidermy pets at the end are a nice touch as well– maybe this isn’t even her first time doing this.

Very good!

2024 Short Film The Worm

* Directed by: Andy Coyle

* Stars: Animated, Erin Scott (voice)

* Run Time: 15 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

In this animated short, young Sparrow is working in the garage until she hears a monster outside. Or is it outside? Soon, she winds up in a mental institution under the care of a psychologist who becomes obsessed with her case. Just how insane is Sparrow, and is she insane at all? What is “the worm?”

Commentary

The art style is crisp and looks good, although the movement shots are somewhat limited. The story moves along at a nice pace and doesn’t get bogged down with explanations. It’s all clear what’s going on in the end, and it all makes sense. Nice!

2025 Short Film The Envelope

* Directed by: Michael Eggler

* Written by: Michael Eggler

* Stars: Leonora Hammer, Patric Graf

* Run Time: 4 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

We open on a woman shuffling tarot cards, surrounded by candles. “Is Alan still alive?” She doesn’t like what the cards show her. Emma hears something outside and then finds an envelope addressed to her slid under the door. “I am here.”

That’s only the start of Emma’s troubles.

Commentary

It’s very dark, and the actress’s accent is pretty thick. Also, there’s a time skip for no explained reason. Still, there are some nice shots here, and it is a very small production, so I’d have to say it’s pretty good considering the small number of people involved.

2019 Short Film Wash

* Directed by: Kristofer Kiggs Carlsson

* Written by: Kristofer Kiggs Carlsson, Amelia Clay

* Stars: Amelia Clay, Ida Ljungqvist

* Run Time: 7 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

The camera zooms in on children’s drawings of the child with a rabbit friend, then a mess in the kitchen, and then screams of: “Mom, stop!” Then the screams stop, and we focus on Mom running the washing machine. Sitting and watching it intently.

We soon see someone is in the washing machine, but it’s not what it looks like…

Commentary

I don’t enjoy doing laundry either, but this might be taking it to extremes. It’s very suspenseful, ominous, and atmospheric, as well as being very well shot. We don’t really know what’s going on here until the end, which is fun. Even then, we don’t know the real situation.

Very cool!

2023 Short Film My Scary Indian Wedding

* Directed by: Ramone Menon

* Written by: Ramone Menon

* Stars: Misha Molani, Patrick Rutnam, Lexa Gluck

* Run Time: 12 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

It’s the night of Vikram and Mila’s wedding, and it looks like things went badly. Credits roll, and then we flash back to what happened.

Mila explains to her friend Asha that Mangliks are demons who unleash a curse on unmarried women born with a fault in their stars. The cursed woman will die if she doesn’t find her soulmate. Asha whines that she probably has one, and Mila asks if she wants to find out.

Asha uses a website to find out, and according to her stars, she does have one…

Commentary

I really like the way the “telephone effects” are done here. We’ve seen it before, but it really stands out with this one. I want to find a website that explains all these rituals; that’d be cool. You just gotta follow the rules! I guess this is the Indian equivalent of a “shotgun wedding.”

It looks really good, the effects are fantastic, and it’s also very suspenseful.

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.horrorweekly.com

* https://www.horrormonthly.com

This time around, we’ve only one full-length film, an indie called “No Choice” (2025), which has just been released. Other than that, we’re focusing on a whole bunch of new short films. This week, the Palm Springs International ShortFest happened, with 311 short films from 64 countries. We’ve watched all the ones that are horror or horror-adjacent and brought them here for you.

“The Horror Guys Guide to the Horror Films of Christopher Lee” is available NOW!

https://www.horrormonthly.com/horror-guys-guides/christopher-lee-films

Check out our selection of short horror biographies, including Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and many more: https://www.hourlongpress.com/

The latest issue of “Horror Monthly” is now on sale! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com

One of my favorite writing and organizing tools is Workflowy, the endless outliner. Check it out at https://workflowy.com/invite/4958355e.lnx

Mainstream Films:

2025 No Choice

* Directed by: Nate Hilgartner

* Written by: Nate Hilgartner

* Stars: Hannah Deale, Jennifer Herzog, Robert Denzel Edwards

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The horror elements in this one are those in the real world. A character who is trapped, stressed beyond limits, beaten down at every turn, and having nightmares. It’s low budget, but the acting, direction, and camera work more than compensate. Don’t expect classic horror, but we’d recommend it for a good drama.

Spoilery Synopsis

Amy’s having a dream where she finds twenty bucks and a pill. She wakes up to find her life isn’t so interesting. She listens to the man on the radio rant about abortion. Amy argues with her mother, Debra, about medication; Debra appears to be an addict. Credits roll.

As Amy rides her bike to work, we see that she lives in a rural farming area. We’re told that it’s “Week 0.” She and her coworker Lucas joke and play at the gas station where she works. Boss Randy comes in and chews them out for not wearing name tags; he’s a jerk.

In the morning, Amy goes to her Sociology class and then home to her mother, who’s taken almost the whole bottle of pills. The next night, she flirts with the same customer she met last night. That night, she fantasizes about the guy. The man, Seth, invites her out for real, not long after, and she goes with him. One thing leads to another, and soon they’re having sex in his truck. During the act, the cheap gas-station condom breaks.

Amy has a terrifying dream about things leaking. She Googles “morning after pills,” but they’re pricey and she has no credit card for online purchases. She prays instead. She thinks about it and goes to the drugstore, but a friend of her mother’s works there, so that’s not gonna work. She rides to a pharmacy in the next town over, and she’s a couple of dollars short. That night, she dreams about eggs.

Amy finally gets the money for a morning-after pill and takes it immediately, but it’s been more hours than recommended for the drug to be useful. This leads to more terrifying dreams. Weeks pass.

Amy registers for her next college class, just one at a time. Also, her period is late. She watches videos about “abortion pills” and then starts puking. Yeah, she’s pregnant.

Amy goes to the emergency room with a fake accident, and they know she’s lied on the intake forms about her identity. The doctor is pretty understanding and tells her to go to an OB-GYN, but can’t do much about the pregnancy. She points out that abortion is illegal in this state, but she “doesn’t tell her about” the options in other states.

Lucas covers for Amy at the store, she doesn’t show up, and Lucas ends up getting fired for it.

Debra’s pharmacist friend, who sells her drugs, gets arrested. Amy tells her about the pregnancy, and Debra wants her to have the baby. Debra promises to quit the drugs, starting now, and clean up her act. More nightmares follow.

Amy goes to the OB and sees the baby on the ultrasound. She asks him about abortion, but he is not supportive at all. Debra quickly falls off the wagon, and she gets nasty with Amy about it. Desperate, Amy calls Seth but can’t talk to him.

Debra overdoses, and it’s going to be expensive for the hospital. When she recovers, Amy asks her for help in getting to the next state for an abortion, but she’s too far gone to talk about it.

She calls Seth again and tells him what’s up. He agrees to drive her for an abortion, but Randy won’t give her the time off. He fires her over this. When she gets to Seth’s, he delays and makes her wait. After many hours, it’s too late to go all the way there. He seems like a nice guy, but she dreams about being chained up and trapped. Also, he might be a serial killer. When she has a nightmare about him killing her, she pulls a knife on Seth, who freaks out and drives away, leaving her… wherever she is.

Amy leaves the motel and wanders off into the nearby woods to find the purple weeds she heard about on YouTube. It’s supposed to be an all-natural abortive medication. She goes back to the motel, chops it up, and drinks it. This time, the nightmares are of her covered in mud at the ER. She also sees herself dead of an overdose.

Amy wakes up in the hospital with her mother and everyone else there by her side. The doctor says she’s had a miscarriage. They know she ate the plant to cause the miscarriage, and the police are here to arrest her.

Brian’s Commentary

Some people’s lives just suck, ya know? The filmmakers are trying to show how the difficulty in getting an abortion (or it being just plain illegal) can ruin lives. Pregnancy is one thing, but it looks like Amy’s problems are more related to drug addiction and poverty.

It’s pretty low-key horror unless you can specifically relate to the situation. Other than the basic premise, all the horror elements appear within the many dream sequences.

The acting is very good, it doesn’t get boring, and it’s obviously a very realistic situation.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was painfully realistic. With the horror in the situation she was stuck in and the nightmares she was having. No wonder she was having bad dreams. And that closing scene where everyone who “cares” about her was gathered in the hospital room gets you right in the feels. The acting was very good all around, and they made the most of a low budget. I wouldn’t recommend it for someone looking for a traditional horror movie, but it was a good watch.

Short Films:

2024 Short Film Blood Waters

* Directed by: Stephen Robinson

* Stars: Samuel Davis, Heather Kafka

* Run Time: 9 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

A man watches the news while cleaning his gun. He hears the bell; his sick mother is calling. She looks at his gun, and she wants to use it.

The man pulls a box of chains out from under the bed as her skin starts to bubble and change. He gets her all chained up, and she tells him not to be scared…

Commentary

That’s quite some family tree they’ve got.

Early on, I was thinking she was a werewolf, but that’s not it. I don’t know what that thing was, but it was really cool-looking, and the surprises just kept on coming.

2024 Short Film Haaw

* Directed by: Joey Scoma

* Written by: Joey Scoma

* Stars: Ben Gigli, Joey Scoma, Kelsey Gunn

* Run Time: 12 Minutes

* Watch it: Not Yet. On the festival circuit!”

What Happens

We open on an isolated ski-lift. Ray and Ax, the skiers, appear to be very serious about the trip. Halfway up the hill, the two men notice someone very strange in the cable car with them. All they say is, “Haaw!” Are they serious, or aren’t they?

Commentary

Just goes to show you how awkward some rideshares can be.

The masks are cheesy and kinda dumb-looking, but as the story progresses, it gets more and more tense, and we forget about that. It’s quite a ride!

Haaw!

2024 Short Film Playing God

* Directed by: Matteo Burani

* Written by: Matteo Burani, Gianmarco Valentino

* Stars: Animated by Arianna Gheller

* Run Time: 9 Minutes

* Watch it: Nope– still playing at the festivals

What Happens

An animator creates miniatures for a stop-motion film. He tries hard to bring his characters to life, but he’s not gentle. What happens to old stop-motion models? We soon find out…

Commentary

Well, that was really something!

It’s animated via stop-motion, and it’s really well done. There’s no dialogue, just a bunch of clay figures doing what clay figures do– live in fear.

It looks great, it’s well paced, and it’s got a very interesting concept. It’s very disturbing– what happens when your god abandons you?

2024 Short Film Rata

* Directed by: Giselle Bonilla

* Written by: Giselle Bonilla

* Stars: Alani Waters, Emil DeRosa, Tina D’Marco

* Run Time: 16 Minutes

* Watch it: [Still on the festival circuit!]

What Happens

A woman comes home from work and hears a strange noise somewhere in the apartment. She searches around and finds a rat in a trap. This rat, however, is as big as she is, and it wants out of that trap. She lets it loose but then starts to find rat droppings all over the building. That’s only the beginning…

Commentary

The moral seems to be if you let a rat out of the trap, don’t tell the landlady. No one wants to rent to a “rat activist!”

That’s quite a costume, reminiscent of “Screamboat Willie.” Sometimes, a good pet is way better than a boyfriend anyway!

2024 Short Film Stomach Bug

* Directed by: Matty Crawford

* Written by: Matty Crawford

* Stars: Leslie Ching, Prasanna Sellathurai, Alice Thomas

* Run Time: 15 Minutes

* Watch it: [Still on the festival circuit]

What Happens

A man goes to the doctor with a stomach bug. The doctor says it’s nothing to worry about at all. He tries to call his daughter, but all he gets is a voicemail. He gets through to her later, and she’s out with friends. He’s just lonely and wants to talk, but she says they just spoke yesterday. She’s been offered a job that’ll take her away for the whole summer, but he’s not happy about that. Meanwhile, his stomach is growing larger and larger…

Commentary

I had an idea where this was going to go, and I was right on the (belly)button with that. When the children grow up, they need their space; sometimes the “empty nest” doesn’t stay that way long. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of how hard you want a thing, right?

It looks good, the acting is well done, and the story is just plain weird. I liked it a lot!

2024 Short Film The Beguiling

* Directed by: ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby

* Written by: ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby

* Stars: Benairen Kane, Kim Savarino

* Run Time: 15 Minutes

* Watch it: [Not yet, still on the festival circuit!]

What Happens

Two young people are out on a date; she never gets to hang out with other natives, and really likes it. She invites him inside “for coffee” and they talk about colonization and genocide. He’s from the Anishinaabe, and she’s fascinated by his culture.

She seems very political, but he doesn’t say much; he’s got other things on his mind. Still, she eventually manages to get him to open up about his family…

Commentary

It’s interesting to hear about the native boarding schools in a horror film. Some real stories are worse than fiction. Then again, if they’re stolen stories, that might be worse still.

I figured one or the other of these two would not be what we thought, but this one took a turn about halfway through that I was not expecting.

That song at the end is something else, too.

2025 Short Film Channelvue

* Directed by: Brandon Tauszik

* Written by: Joe Veix

* Stars: Lauren Servideo, Kacy Anne, Faith Barrett

* Run Time: 8 Minutes

* Watch it: Still on the festival circuit.

What Happens

We watch videotape footage from 1998. There are various strange commercials on the “TV Guide” channel with program descriptions appearing underneath. If you know, you know. There’s a news story about “The Tooth Fairies,” a strange gang that steals teeth. The weather report comes up next.

Suddenly, we are told that hackers have attacked the station, and may be listing things that are wrong and probably offensive.

Commentary

I want to see some of those shows on the menu. “Emeril’s in Jail,” “The Great Onion Threat,” “Music to my Beers,” “El Bano del Amor,” and dozens of others.

If you don’t want to see this, go watch some more Burger Barn commercials - one of the strange ads here.

It’s not terribly horrific (more of a dark comedy), unless you’re a studio exec, but it’s still weird and pretty fun.

2025 Short Film Dad Doll

* Directed by: Kyle Kenyon

* Written by: Kyle Kenyon

* Stars: Lyndsey Frank, Nina Concepcion, Jesse Bush, Geoff Ross

* Run Time: 10 Minutes

* Watch it: Not yet, still on the festival circuit.

What Happens

We watch a commercial about what to do if your father abandons you. You could buy a “Dad doll.” It’s like your dad never left! It also works for dead Dads! We watch old videotape footage of family fights. Aren’t dads great?

We pull out and see a man calling to order a dad. It looks nothing like the one in the commercial, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy.

Commentary

People actually watched the Transporter movies? Who knew?

The initial commercial is a bit much, but once we get to the man and his father doll, it gets much more interesting. We get the commercial, the story with the young man, and then it all gets a little meta as we continue on with the filmmaker.

It’s very weird. Nice!

2025 Short Film Don’t Try This in the Woods

* Directed by: Emma Doxiadi

* Written by: Stergios Dinopoulos, Emma Doxiadi

* Stars: Mary Mina, Niki Papandreou

* Run Time: 15:40

* Watch it: Still on the Festival Circuit

What Happens

Two people are in the woods. “Is it human?” asks one. “No,” answers the other. “Is it an animal?” “Sometimes.” Daphne, the guide, talks about learning to respect the forest and its ancient guardians.

Some people just don’t respect the forest or listen to the experts. Some people are gonna pay…

Commentary

If the guide says the berries aren’t edible, then don’t try one!

We didn’t know where this was going, as it was a little slow and meandering for a bit. This is beautifully filmed in the woods, and the sound is well done as well, not easy to do outside. It’s not hard to guess what the outcome is going to be, but it’s well done.

2025 Short Film Gaslit

* Directed by: Anna Maclean

* Written by: Anna Maclean

* Stars: Kirstin Howell, Bob Mann, Peter Lund

* Run Time: 11 Minutes

* Watch it: [Not yet– on the festival circuit!]

What Happens

A woman is cooking in the kitchen, and she cuts the cheese as credits roll.

The woman and Ed watch TV, and she texts him something by mistake. She manages to cover up what she really meant, but only barely. She goes to get another drink, and Ed makes a face– she made a stinker; she “dusted him.” Yes, she cut the cheese again, the other kind. She denies it, though. Better yet, she has a way to prove she didn’t fart…

Commentary

What lengths would you go to cover up letting one rip?

These two obviously don’t much care for each other, but they still try to salvage the evening, over and over, at least until they don’t anymore.

Wow– that was one bad date!

The acting is great, the pacing is good, but the last half of the film was almost too dark to really see what was going on.

2025 Short Film Interloper

* Directed by: Kerry O’Neill

* Written by: Kerry O’Neill

* Stars: Ryan Simpkins, Chloe East, Whitney Rice

* Run Time: 16:28

* Watch it: Not yet– still on the festival circuit!

What Happens

Ruby hides in her room. She’s done something and angered the other people in the house. “They’re gonna have to find you another placement.” Ruby’s in the foster care system and goes to a new house and meets a new family.

The new family seems normal enough. The daughter, Genevieve, gets $40 from the father to go out. Ruby looks at the things in Genevieve’s room while she’s away.

Time passes, and Ruby seems to like the new family. What could go wrong?

Commentary

It’s rough trying to fit in with a new group, even worse with a whole new family. The coach compared the basketball team to a bunch of wolves, and there can be only one alpha in the pack. Ruby’s not especially subtle, either.

Calling it “horror” might be a stretch, but it’s very good.

2025 Short Film Plague Season

* AKA “Época de Plagas”

* Directed by: Gabriela Calvache

* Written by: Gabriela Calvache, Daniela Granja Nunez

* Stars: Christian Soria Cabrere, Samantha Villareal, Lema Mercy G

* Run Time: 18:52

* Watch it: Not yet– still on the festival circuit

What Happens

A girl wakes up and wanders around the house. There’s plastic over all the windows and doors, and she puts on an odd filter mask before knocking on her mother’s door. Her father makes her stop, he’s told her not to go in there. “It’s for your own good.”

We heard about problems with radioactive waste on the radio. He needs to go out for a while to get food, and he wears one of those same strange masks. The little girl, Emily, misses her mother, but her father will not let her open the door to be with her.

Suddenly, a flying insect comes through the room, and Emily’s father squashes it. When he finds out that Emily has opened the window, he’s very angry.

What’s going on here?

Commentary

Those masks are pretty cool, sort of a modern-day take on the old plague doctor masks.

It’s pretty obvious that Emily’s going to get in through that door eventually, but the suspense is wondering what she’s going to find on the other side. I was expecting zombies.

It was not zombies. This is very claustrophobic, all taking place within the apartment, but we see a plague-ravaged world outside with no real explanation of what happened.

Very entertaining!

2025 Short Film Whitch

* Directed by: Hoku Uchiyama

* Written by: Hoku Uchiyama

* Stars: Rosemary Hochschild, Alicia Blasingame, Nora Harriet

* Run Time: 5 Minutes

* Watch it: [Still on the festival circuit!]

What Happens

A mother reads a bedtime story to her daughter and then goes out to find a strange old woman in her living room. She apologizes for being late, “but clearly, I’m ahead of some. Where’s your animal?” The old woman strips naked and then kills a rabbit with a knife.

What is going on here?

Commentary

This one goes from zero to a hundred fast. That ending though… wow. How embarrassing! “Again, Gladys?”

This is really fantastic. It’s always clear what exactly is going on, the characters are relatable, and the situation is… magical.

2025 Short Film The Bride’s Curse

* Directed by: Alex Kavutskiy, J. Rose

* Written by: Alex Kavutskiy, J. Rose

* Stars: A. Karpocsky, T. Newton, B. Dias, A. Seregina, O-Lan Jones

* Run Time: 20:08

* Watch it: Not yet– Still on the festival circuit

What Happens

The newlywed bride asks Sasha if he’ll always be honest with her. After they have sex, she has to tell him something. She tells him about an old Russian curse from hundreds of years ago.

The curse is that the women in the family are doomed to marry liars, and if the man lies to the woman three times, they will die.

He wants to test it. What could go wrong?

Commentary

Surprisingly, the old Russian curse is real. Maybe she could have said something before they got married? A normal, honest marriage doesn’t sound that hard, does it? Does it?

It’s very nicely paced, well-acted, and very funny.

All were from https://www.psfilmfest.org/shortfest-2025

Contact Info:

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This time around, we’ll watch three new releases and two oldies. We’ll start off with the better-than-expected “Clown in a Cornfield,” then move on to the godawful “Bogieville.” “Silent Zone” was pretty good, while “Feed the Gods” (2014) was pretty mediocre. For an eye-popping experience, we’ll finish off with “Killers from Space” from way back in 1954.

“The Horror Guys Guide to the Horror Films of Christopher Lee” is available NOW!

https://www.horrormonthly.com/horror-guys-guides/christopher-lee-films

Check out our selection of short horror biographies, including Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and many more: https://www.hourlongpress.com/

The latest issue of “Horror Monthly” is now on sale! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com

One of my favorite writing and organizing tools is Workflowy, the endless outliner. Check it out at https://workflowy.com/invite/4958355e.lnx

Mainstream Films:

2025 Clown in a Cornfield

* Directed by: Eli Craig

* Written by: Carter Blanchard, Eli Craig, Adam Cesare

* Stars: Katie Douglas, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Buy it: https://amzn.to/3ZT7nhJ

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a very well made entry into the slasher genre, done more seriously than we expected. There are some laughs, but it’s mostly done straight with a bit of satire. The acting, effects, story, direction, all the elements were very well put together. It moves well and doesn’t drag. Brian liked it quite a bit, but Kevin was left feeling kind of meh.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 1991 at a barn party. A girl plays with a jack-in-the-box with a clown and then goes off into the cornfield to get naked with her boyfriend. They are soon chased and killed by… a clown in the cornfield! Credits roll.

In the present day, Quinn and her father, Dr. Glenn Maybrook, move to a very large house in a very small town. He’s the new town doctor. He bought the house unseen, and it has some issues. They see a big old farm factory across the cornfield. There’s no cell service or even wifi in this old house.

Quinn meets Rust, the neighbor, who walks Quinn to school. He gives her some tips about the area and the school. The entire class picks on Mr. Vern, the teacher, and he’s a jerk about it. She gets detention right away, and she meets all the cool kids there. They talk about how Kettle Springs is stuck in the 90s, and Founder’s Day is this weekend. Baypen Corn Syrup is the main industry in town, and the clown is their logo. The kids have made videos about that clown being a serial killer, just for fun.

After school, Sheriff Dunne says hello to the new doctor. He recommends that Quinn stay away from a group of kids, who just happen to be her new friends. The group easily manages to steal alcohol from the convenience store but they pay for it as well. Cole and his friends were blamed for setting the Baypen factory on fire, but they say they didn’t do it.

Suddenly, the group is attacked by a clown! No, it’s a prank video as the teens make another “serial killer clown” video. Quinn tells Cole that her mother overdosed last summer, and her father needed a change, so here they are.

Later that night, Tucker, the guy who wore the clown costume in the video, is home alone and sees a clown on the Ring camera. He finds the same jack-in-the-box we saw earlier. Then the clown comes out of nowhere and kills him.

Cole gets in trouble with his parents; his father is the town mayor, and he’s running the Founder’s Day celebration. Janet and Ronnie tell Cole and Quinn that they want to do another video since the last one got so many views.

The parade goes… badly, and the teens get blamed and arrested for it. The old harbinger in their jail cell says, “You are dead. Never f**k with Frendo.” What? Who?

Matt, another of the teens, finds the jack-in-the-box on his weight bench. When he gets back to lifting, the clown beheads him.

Quinn’s father overreacts and grounds Quinn, so she sneaks out for the big party tonight. Cole shows her a jack-in-the-box with branding from the Baypen company and then they nearly run over Rust, who’s been hunting. Cole and Rust used to be friends until the factory burned down.

The party is at the same barn as from 1991. Tucker and Matt haven’t shown up, so the remaining teens think they’re planning a new prank. It’s quite an elaborate party, and it leads to Quinn and Cole making out in the barn until he rejects her.

Ginger comes out of the woods and “dies” in front of everyone, who assume it’s another prank video until someone throws Matt’s severed head at them. They all assume that’s fake as well until Frendo the clown comes in and kills more teens with his crossbow. Rust ends up shooting the clown; he says everyone’s tires have been slashed. Suddenly, more clowns appear. It’s a whole posse of insane clowns. Of course, there’s no 911 signal.

With all the teens locked in the barn, Rust and Cole reveal that they used to be involved, which explains why Cole rejected Quinn.

In town, the clowns demand that Quinn’s father, the doctor, patch up an injured clown.

Rust leads the others out through a sewer pipe from the barn, and he also manages to blow up some of the clowns. The sheriff runs into the four teens on the road and arrests Cole again before driving off. “Why did they only arrest Cole?” asks Quinn.

Quinn, Janet, and Ronnie run through the cornfield, again pursued by clowns with chainsaws, hammers, axes, and so forth. Ronnie soon learns the ways of the chainsaw clown.

The two final girls then come to a farmhouse and find a dead clown inside. They get to a phone but can’t figure it out; it’s a dial phone. They find a crazy wall with clown photos and a jack-in-the-box. “This was a trap,” Quinn points out. The “dead” clown from before kills Janet with a pitchfork.

Back at the office, Dr. Glenn stabs the clown with the knife. He hears over the radio that Quinn is the only teen left.

Quinn gets in a truck to drive away, but can’t figure out a stick shift; the clowns catch her. The clowns surround her and take off their masks; the leader is the sheriff, and we see all the other adults that we’ve seen previously. The mayor explains it all to her. First, it was hobos, then hippies, and burnouts; they’ve always kept the town clean of troublemakers. Now it’s the worthless teens they need to purge.

The mayor has Cole, his own son, hanging from a noose; he blames Cole for everything. The doctor drives through the wall, disrupting the plans, killing a couple of the clowns in the process

Cole, Glenn, and Quinn run and hide in the old factory as the clowns close in on them. Quinn kills the sheriff with a cattle prod. Cole and the mayor discuss who really burned down the factory. Rust shows up to save Cole, and they have a happy reunion with manly smooches. Quinn says it’s been a very confusing night. The mayor drives away.

The four survivors drive off in the stick-shift clown car. On the way out, Quinn runs over Mr. Vern, the evil teacher.

Some time passes, and we see that Glenn is now running for mayor. Quinn is leaving town, and Rust and Cole stop by to see her off. She can drive a stick now (dunno about the rotary phone). She finds a jack-in-the-box on the seat and throws it out the window as she leaves town.

Brian’s Commentary

I find it hard to believe that a bunch of high school teenagers could put together a party like the one in the barn, as they show here. That was a barn, not a party venue. So many lights, elaborate decorations, alcohol, and they didn’t even have permission to use the barn– they snuck all that in there earlier in the day? Where did all those teens from the barn go after the clowns attacked? That’s probably not the least believable thing this movie offers, but it was worth noting.

It’s got a couple of laughs, but it’s nowhere near as funny as you’d expect with all the clowns.

It all looks good, it’s paced well, the characters, although all stereotypes, are distinctive and necessary, and overall, has good production values. It’s a standard kill-the-teens movie, but if you like those, this is pretty well done overall.

I liked it.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was solid in every way, and I can’t voice any real complaints. But somehow the whole package didn’t really grab me. Perhaps that it didn’t seem unique enough from other things in the slasher genre. At a couple points, the killer clown was doing some acts of phenomenal strength, so I was a little surprised to see that it (they) were just ordinary people. I neither loved it nor hated it. It was okay.

2025 Bogieville

* Directed by: Sean Cronin

* Written by: Henry P. Gravelle

* Stars: Arifin Putra, Eloise Lovell Anderson, Sean Cronin

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Watch it: https://amzn.to/4jPwZTs

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A young couple go from the frying pan to the fire when they’re running from trouble and find something much worse. It’s a complicated situation of entrapment, loyalties, and family ties revolving around a nest of vampires. The effects and makeup were excellent, both horror guys are in agreement there. Brian didn’t care for this one at all. Kevin was disappointed but thought it was at least okay overall.

Spoilery Synopsis

A car drives up to the gas station; gas is $1.51, so we know this is in the distant past. The woman’s monthly bleeding has started, and she goes into her restroom to clean up. A vampire tears the door off and goes straight for the bloodiest part of the woman. Credits roll.

Ham, a mechanic, loses his job. He tells his girlfriend, Jody, at the bar where she works, and she’s not happy. Everyone talks like Europeans doing a pretend-Texas accent. This all leads to a very contrived barfight, and then Jody’s fired too.

That evening, the vampires attack the gas station and the people from the bar.

Ham and Jody go for a drive in his beat-up old truck. They talk about getting married in the new life they’re going to start. They hit something on the road and are knocked out in the accident.

The police investigate the massacre at the gas station. Doctor Mills examines the body, and the sheriff points out that there’s not a single drop of blood anywhere on the site. The vamps eat a pair of campers in the woods.

In the morning, Ham and Jody wake up on the outskirts of an old mobile home park. Rather than actual mobile homes, there’s just a big circle of little trailers (I don’t think they have actual mobile homes in the UK). A man with a shotgun comes out and tells them to skedaddle. He’s Crawford, and he runs what’s left of the park; he hires them for maintenance. He tells them they need to stay there, especially at night. Crawford’s got a lot of rules.

Crawford’s brother-in-law, Madison, owns the place, and he named the whole place “Bogieville.” We cut to Madison and his wife, who are trying too hard at acting in this scene, standing in a bright, sunny kitchen.

Crawford explains that the residents of the park are “resting” during the day, and he never puts down his shotgun. Ham thinks that’s ridiculous. They look at a dusty skeleton; it was a kid whose name was Terry. Crawford shows Ham what’s inside the trailers; it’s vampires.

“You can’t leave. They have your scent,” warns Crawford as Ham decides to leave. The old man explains that Madison and the others are all vampires, but Ham is unbelieving. They let Crawford live because he watches over them during the daytime. Ham goes inside and tells Jody everything.

Crawford’s got a little girl living in the attic upstairs. He warns Lily not to eat the two guests, as he might want them to stick around to take care of her.

We cut to the sheriff and Dr. Mills, talking about the most recent “animal” attack last night. She’s got some idea of what’s going on, but that’s crazy, right? An informant talks to the sheriff and suggests that Ham might be behind some of the recent murders.

Back at the farmhouse, Ham hears growling on the other side of the door. Ham wants to see what’s in the basement, and Crawford reluctantly lets them in. Madison, Lily, and some others are down there, and they’re clearly really vampires, which convinces the newcomers.

Crawford explains how this all came about, and we get a flashback. Madison got bit by a vampire and soon turned, as did Lily and Tess; they all soon turned. Those three went into town and killed a bunch of people who also became vampires, and that was twenty years ago. Crawford’s the only one in Bogieville who ages.

That night, everyone goes outside to see all the vampires. There’s an argument, and a group of vampires is sent away, including Billy Cupps, a rival to Madison.

The doctor tells the whole police force her vampire theory, and this time, the sheriff backs her up. Ham goes back to town and learns that the sheriff is looking for him. He’s immediately arrested, but then Madison shows up and kills both deputies.

Ham calls the State Police, but his call goes to voicemail (what?). He drives back to Bogieville, where Crawford shoots out his tires.

The vampires wake up and kill Crawford. Ham and Jody bury him in the morning. The sheriff and doctor figure out that Ham is in the middle of all this, but don’t know where to find him.

Back at Bogieville, Ham repairs an old car to make his escape but has to leave Jody behind because she smells like blood. Ham finally catches up with the sheriff, and they arm themselves for war against the undead. They all load up a bus and head for Bogieville.

The cops arrive at the trailer park and start killing vampires. Most of the vamps are killed, but Madison and Lily disappear. Madison shows up just in time to bite Jody, but she turns quickly.

Three months pass, and the sheriff comes to Bogieville to see how Ham is doing. Ham runs it now. The sheriff wonders where Jody is, and Ham says she’s having a snack…

Brian’s Commentary

Man, this was seriously BAD. This movie might have been good if it had been filmed in America. The vampire makeup is quite good, but that’s the only positive thing I’ve got to say about this film.

All the main actors needed dialogue coaches for all their atrocious accents, especially the two main characters. The written dialogue is pretty bad in the first place, but wherever they got these actors from– yeeesh. This is clearly supposed to be the American South, but these people barely speak English, much less American. The sheriff is the only character in the film who sounds even remotely realistic.

Clearly, the UK filmmakers don’t think much of American southerners, and they’ve never seen a trailer park before either.

This is another of those films that we watched so you don’t have to. You guys owe us big-time now.

Kevin’s Commentary

We previously saw and reviewed the vampire movie Drained which Sean Cronin was involved with as c0-director and actor, and I really liked that one. This one didn’t do it for me nearly as much. I liked the emotional content and struggles of family and loyalty. Like Brian said, the makeup was great. The accents were distracting, and I thought it went on a bit too long. But I’m going to rate it as okay, not hating on it to the degree that Brian did.

2025 Silent Zone

* Directed by Peter Deak

* Written by Victor Csak, Krisztian Illes

* Stars Matt Devere, Luca Papp, Nikolett Barabas

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 59 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Get it: https://amzn.to/4n4JdKS

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a tale of survival in the apocalypse, with survivors struggling against the zombie infected. That sounds like a familiar formula, but they do a nice job with it here and they spice it up enough with some unique elements. We thought the middle drags a bit, but overall it’s an entertaining piece of work.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch news reports about a new pandemic that spreads over the Earth very quickly; it turns people into raging, uncontrollable beasts. It soon turns into a full-blown zombie apocalypse. We watch as the news stations go off the air, one by one. We watch as a pilot calls his wife and kids, telling them to get out of the city. They go outside, and Abby, the little girl, watches as her mother and little brother are eaten. Then the two get back up and come for Abby. A man shoots them dead and offers to help little Abby. Credits roll.

Ten years pass, and the city is an overgrown wasteland of empty buildings. Abigail is still with Cassius, and they’re out in the woods hunting. They look like they’d done this a lot. That night, they find a scout, so the pack must be closing in on them. They get on their horses and move away from the zombie horde.

They run into a couple more “ferals” who are attacking a man, and Abigail shoots the man by accident. Cassius does a mercy killing on the guy as Abigail loots the man’s car. A bunch of guys in dune buggies soon show up to investigate. They all hold each other off at gunpoint until a thousand ferals come over the hills and attack. There’s a big battle as the two good guys and two others, a pregnant couple, make a quick escape. They are David and Megan.

The four go to an abandoned building to set up camp for the night. Cassius tells the newcomers that they’re on their own after tonight. David and Megan talk about “the colony,” and Abigail wonders if that’s a good place.

By morning, the ferals have arrived, and Abigail, on watch, has to deal with them. Abigail recognizes that they’re in the place where her father used to store his airplane. As they walk, we see that one of the largest members of the dune-buggy party has turned into a monster and is chasing them now. The group soon comes upon Abigail’s father’s airplane, intact, in a hangar, and David thinks he can get it running.

The horde attacks just as Abigail gets the plane started. She was eight when the apocalypse started, but somehow she knows how to fly. They do, in fact, take off, but then they just as quickly crash. We see that David's got a wound on his leg, and he knows what's coming, but no one else suspects.

We all stop for the night and get a crazy load of character exposition dumps. By morning, it becomes clear to Cassius that David’s been bitten. The foursome comes upon a farmhouse that’s occupied.

The man inside, Norton, allows them in after disarming them. He’s almost too friendly. They have electricity and a laptop, so Cassius looks at his old photos on a flash drive he carries. He knows about the colony but doesn’t want to join them; we soon see that he’s more than a little crazy– he thinks humanity deserves this punishment. He’s got something nefarious in mind. Meanwhile, David’s in the bathroom not looking his best, so what happens next, we can guess.

Norton puts on a high-tech glove that calls the infected, and David reacts to it. So does the horde, elsewhere. Turns out, Norton’s gone full mad-scientist, and he has everyone drugged and tied up now. He’s also got his long-dead wife in a cage, and she’s not happy about it. She and not-yet-a-monster David fight. The group gets out, grabs their stuff, and on the way out, Megan’s water breaks.

The group steals Norton’s car and makes their way toward the colony, but the ferals are close behind. David buys the others some time, since he’s mostly a monster himself now, but he doesn’t last long.

Cassius, Abigail, and Megan make it to the colony, a collection of old barges and boats, and Megan gives birth. The people there are suspicious of the newcomers. George pretends to be happy when he talks to Cassius.

Abigail likes the new place, but Cassius wants to move on. The midwife tells Cassius that the baby’s going to be fine, but Megan is dying. Megan wants Cassius to take care of her new daughter the way he did Abigail.

In the morning, Norton looks at all the bodies outside. He uses his power glove to gather and control the ferals.

One of the local boys invites Abigail to their version of a dance club. Roderick explains to her about the boats’ self-destruct bombs and the emergency escape tunnel.

In the morning, Norton and the ferals attack en masse, and they take the boat people by surprise. Abigail and Cassius help out as they can, but there are a lot of infected people. Cassius destroys Norton’s glove, and the ferals eat him.

On the way out, Abigail sees that one of the main ferals is her own father. Everyone runs down and out through the “Plan B” tunnels. Roderick presses the button, and all the boats explode, taking most of the ferals with them.

Cassius fights against the Alpha zombie, and they’re both big, tough guys. Abigail hesitates but eventually shoots the baddie.

Cassius eventually leads the large group of survivors off to a safe island somewhere.

Brian’s Commentary

This looks like it was filmed at the same place as “Chernobyl Diaries” from 2012. I’d recognize those ruins anywhere. It starts off looking very low-budget, but the characters are good, the situations are believable, and overall, it was pretty entertaining. It did drag a bit in the middle, but overall, we liked it.

Kevin’s Commentary

The ruins worked well, even if they did look familiar. All the locations were good. I agree the middle could have been tightened up a little, but it was entertaining overall. The power glove was an interesting idea that worked for me. Young Luca Papp as Abby is a badass, as is Matt Devere as Cassius. They made a good team. All things considered, I give it a thumbs up.

2014 Feed the Gods

* Directed by Braden Croft

* Written by Braden Croft

* Stars Shawn Roberts, Tyler Johnston, Emily Tennant

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes

* Watch it: https://amzn.to/4jROBOH

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It takes quite a while to get to the horror elements, but it’s well written with interesting characters in the meantime. A lot of the action is too dark for good visibility, but overall it’s a decent film.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man stops two women, a baby, and a child on the side of the road; he’s got a gun and wants their tickets. A woman takes little William and Baby Kris away from Janet. The woman and man take the two children, leaving Janet alone on the road, where something comes out of the woods and “gets” her. Credits roll.

We cut to a funeral. Brit comes to see Will, and they talk about Kris. The two brothers have obviously grown up. Olivia, their foster mother, died of a stroke and left a bunch of stuff in a box for the two boys. There’s a videotape, and they watch it that night.

Will talks about Googling Tendale, a town ten hours away, where the two boys’ parents are supposed to live. Kris thinks this is a joke. Brit says a road trip might be fun. They argue about it, but eventually, the road trip happens.

They head to the wooded community, and Kris buys a book about Bigfoot. They run into Emma, who owns the bed & breakfast they’re staying at. They talk to some of the other guests, Shanna and Wyatt, about bears and Bigfoot.

In the morning, their truck is dead and the videotape is missing. Emma points out that there are only about sixty people left in town, and there’s a good chance that at least one of them is related to the boys. Will tells Emma all about Kris and Brit.

Meanwhile, Kris and Brit knock on many doors and put up “Wanted Posters” with a picture of their parents. The townspeople are not cooperative. Will talks to Hank the barber, who has many questions about Will’s family. They also talk about wild men in the woods who wanted human sacrifices from the old-time natives.

That conversation leads to the three tourists buying hiking supplies and wandering off into the woods. Meanwhile, Emma talks to a man named Pete on the radio who seems to be involved in something secretive. They don’t find anything, and the two brothers start fighting again. This leads to Brit learning that Kris is hooked on Adderall.

In the middle of the night, Brit hears something knocking on the trees out in the woods. She wakes up Kris, but Will is nowhere to be seen. They find Will when he shoots something in the woods; it turns out to be Emma, who had followed them for some reason. Brit drives Emma back to town to find a hospital, leaving the brothers out in the woods. Emma says not to do that; “They kill me. They’ll kill you. There is no hospital.” They’re stopped by men who aren’t very helpful.

Will finds rocks with names painted on them, and one set of rocks has his parents’ names. He also finds the skull of something not human. He catches up to Kris, and the two then find Emma’s radio and talk to Pete by accident.

We cut to Pete, who has Wyatt, one of the tourists, chained to a tree in the woods. A monster comes out of the trees and kills him as Pete watches on closed-circuit TV.

Will and Kris find Brit’s deserted car, but not her or Emma. Meanwhile, Brit is chained to a tree in the woods just like Wyatt was. Pete talks to her about green tickets and people who bring more people to their town for sacrifice. The people who are sent to the town are usually allowed out, but this time, Emma got shot and screwed up. Only chosen people are usually sacrificed. Pete, Hank, and Curtis discuss the situation; they thought that Kris and Will were sent to them. Apparently, the gods offer tickets out of town with enough human sacrifices.

Will accidentally kills Hank and Curtis as well. Pete grabs Kris. Emma warns Will about the situation. Pete isn’t so easy, and soon Kris, Will, and Brit are all chained up together. Pete calls the monsters, but then they hear Emma talking to 911, calling them to the town.

The three victims release their chains from the tree and head to the truck, but run into Pete first. They grab Emma and some of the videotapes of the sacrifices as evidence. For some reason, the monsters then eat Pete.

Will runs into Bigfoot on the way out. Will sacrifices himself so that Kris and Brit can get away.

Kris talks to the police, and he shows them the skull. The sheriff says that Emma died. He also doesn’t believe any of their story since they came back without the videotapes. There’s a deputy on the scene, and that goes badly for him.

Brian’s Commentary

The characters are interesting and well-written, the acting is decent, but it takes a very long time to get to weirdness. Worse yet, most of the film takes place at night, in the dark woods, and we can’t really see what’s going on.

There was a lot of this story that I couldn’t understand or see, such as why it was filmed in the dark? Maybe we got a bad DVD, but I’m not convinced of that.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was my second viewing, and I don’t remember this being so dark for so much of it. Other than that, I thought it’s pretty cool and liked it. The basic idea, a group of people offering sacrifices to monsters to keep them appeased and get some blessings (or at least immunity) in return, isn’t a new idea, but they do it well here.

1954 Killers from Space

* Directed by W. Lee Wilder

* Written by William Raynor, Myles Wilder

* Stars Peter Graves, James Seay, Steve Pendleton

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 11 Minutes

* Watch it:

* Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3SIkG08

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one is pretty slow moving and tame. Heavy use of stock footage, use of real locations instead of sets, and aliens wearing egg carton cups over their eyes shows some low budget work. It’s apparent why Peter Graves went on to do lots of other things, he does a nice job in the lead. It’s short with an ending that was a little abrupt and easily wrapped up. Brian was pretty bored, Kevin found it moderately interesting and entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re told about an atomic test and what goes on with one of those. There’s a great deal of old military stock footage as they drop the bomb. “This is the beginning,” we are told as the credits roll.

Dr. Doug Martin reads off the radiation readings as he flies his jet fighter over the bomb zone. The pilot sees something shiny beneath them, and then the plane crashes.

Colonel Banks calls Dr. Kruger to talk to Mrs. Ellen Martin; they can’t find a body in the wreckage but there’s no way he could have survived that crash.

A bit later, Doug Martin staggers into camp, more or less healthy, but very disoriented. He can’t remember anything, even how he got that big surgical scar on his chest. He’s never had an operation, so how did that get there?

Mr. Briggs with the FBI comes to check things out. Could the man they have in the infirmary be an impostor? Fingerprints show that he’s the right man after all. They decide to send Martin home, but he starts having weird nightmares about eyes. He wants to get right back to work, but Ellen and the doctors want him to relax at home.

Martin reads about the next atomic test in the newspaper; he wasn’t invited, and he’s angry about it. The government men say he’s not a good security risk after his disappearance. They’re probably not wrong, because he starts sneaking around copying files from Dr. Kruger’s office.

Briggs comes to discuss the files with Kruger, but he says the safe was locked and nothing is missing. He suggests that it was Dr. Martin. Briggs then questions Ellen about whether her husband has any new friends. The police put out an APB on Martin.

Briggs catches Martin putting a note under a rock, but Martin attacks him and drives off. He keeps getting visions of eyes and crashes his car.

Martin wakes up in the hospital with Briggs, Kruger, Banks and doctors. He rants about killers from space who want to wipe us all out. They give him some truth serum, and we flash back to what really happened during the crash as he tells everything.

The plane was crashing, and the next thing he knew, he was surrounded by strange aliens with weird eyes. He was probed and examined in the alien lab. They have been hiding in caves in the desert since the atomic testing began.

The leader of the aliens says that Martin was dead, and they fixed his heart. They’re from Astron Delta, a world with a dying sun. They’ve taken over several neighboring star systems, but they need to move here.

Martin is dropped in a cage with giant spiders, insects, and lizards, but he runs away from those. The leader explains that those carnivorous insects and animals are their armies, ready to wipe out humanity. They are drawing energy from the bomb tests, but they are also using electricity from the grid to keep the energy controlled. Martin was then hypnotized by the aliens to bring them atomic test schedules and to forget everything he’s seen.

Back in the hospital, Martin tells the others his story. They all think he’s crazy. The doctor says the stories couldn’t have been fabricated due to the truth serum.

Martin tries to break loose from the hospital, but the doctor and Ellen stop him. He asks for some paper and gets to work. Kruger and Ellen still won’t listen, so Martin runs out to the car; he wants to cut off the power supply to the aliens, which he thinks will overload their systems and blow them up.

There’s lots of running around in the power plant as everyone searches and Martin hides. Martin forces a technician to cut the power; there’s a massive explosion. He was right about his method for getting rid of the alien base.

Brian’s Commentary

So much smoking! Was this sponsored by one of the big cigarette companies? There was even a cigarette machine in the hospital.

According to IMDB, forty percent of the film is stock footage.

The aliens here are very distinctive; they used the bottoms of egg cartons for the eyes, which looks ridiculous, but otherwise, it’s all played pretty seriously.

It takes a long time to get to the weirdness, and even then it’s all very tame. I found this one pretty boring.

Kevin’s Commentary

It was strange seeing such a young Peter Graves here. Like Brian said, it’s very tame and does take a long time to get to anything really strange. There’s a lot of 1950s technology shown, which I always enjoy. The aliens do make you want to snicker at first sight, but they play it straight enough that they pull it off. I think a lot of that can be credited to the job that the actor did in the role of the main alien. I wasn’t bored, it’s short enough to get over with soon enough, and I wouldn’t rate it super high for entertainment value. But it was okay.

Short Films:

2011 Short Film Spoiler

* Directed by: Daniel Thron

* Written by: Daniel Thron

* Stars: Luke Albright, Margaret Bright-Ryan, David C. Bryant

* Run Time: 18 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

An alarm goes off, and the sirens go off. Everyone in the apartment building is on lockdown. Everyone is either annoyed or terrified.

There are three “possibles” in containment as the experts walk to the holding area. They look at the death certificates, but they aren’t dead yet. The doctor refuses to sign them. He goes in to talk to one of “them.” He’s not just a doctor, he’s the coroner. Are we sure these people aren’t dead?

If they aren’t now, they soon will be…

Commentary

It’s a well-organized zombie apocalypse where everyone obeys the rules and doesn’t make any exceptions. It’s a short-lived zombie non-apocalypse. They’ve all seen this before, and they all know how it goes.

It’s a tense situation shown from the coroner’s point of view, and he only knows what he sees, which is also only what we see.

It’s really well done.

2023 Short Film Home

* Directed by: Jae-hee Jeong

* Written by: Jae-hee Jeong

* Stars: Young-ji Jo, Yang Mal-bok

* Run Time: 13 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

A young woman watches as her mother dies on the floor and screams at her own inability to save her.

Later, as she goes through her mother’s belongings, she starts to experience odd things; memories of her mother calling for help with a buzzer. That damned buzzer, over and over. “It will kill me someday,” she says in terror. Her mother had dementia or something and was always imagining a monster. “You will kill me,” she adds.

What really happened here? Why does mother’s buzzer keep going off long after the woman is dead?

Commentary

It’s a very weird ghost story that we don’t understand until the end.

It’s very dark, even in rooms that are supposed to be lit. Actually, it was dark enough that I had trouble seeing what was going on, even when I was supposed to know what was happening. On a second viewing, I think I figured out what was going on, but it wasn’t super clear at first.

2025 Short Film Over the River and Through the Woods

* Directed by: Graham Burrell

* Written by: Graham Burrell

* Stars: R.J. Pennington, Daphne Dennis, Camille Ladendorf

* Run Time: 15 Minutes

* Watch it: (Not Yet- Still on the festival circuit!)

What Happens

Young Dee wakes up and sees something nasty coming into her room one night. Credits roll.

Cut to years later, and Dee is visiting again having dinner. Grandma drinks a toast to her grandfather and introduces grown-up Dee to her new boyfriend, Harold. He’s a lot younger than Dee’s grandfather, which weirds her out. Actually, he’s Dee’s age.

He’s… weird. How weird is he?

Commentary

Do. Not. Grow. Old!!!

This is every awkward dinner with family; it’s easy to relate to Dee and her discomfort with Grandma’s sex life.

This is well shot and really looks good; the acting is perfect for the situation as well. Is Harold a gold-digger, or is there something more going on here? You know, there is more to it than that. We both really liked this one.

2023 Short Film Callus

* Directed by: Ciaran Hickey

* Written by: Ciaran Hickey

* Stars: Michael Patric, Grainne Good, Claire J. Loy

* Run Time: 18 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

A baby is born, but there’s something wrong with it. The mother dies in childbirth, so now Fergus has to raise the child alone.

Time passes, and little Íonait has grown up. Her face looks good, but we see something's wrong with her arm– it crackles. It’s her eighteenth birthday. Neighbor Louisa wants Fergus to bring his daughter to the pub, but he really overprotects her. It’s just a funky arm, says Louisa. Her neighbor, Ardal, a farmer, has been having trouble keeping his herd alive. “This land seems poisoned somehow.”

Fergus remembers the midwife talking about a bad prophecy when Íonait was born. Still, he does take her to the pub for her birthday drink. Ardal’s dead wife was the midwife, and she was well steeped in the old ways. They all know that story in town, and they might just remember it…

Commentary

That is quite the birth defect. Nice that it comes in handy once in a while.

“The clawed child. Sent to test our faith!” What is it with quaint little towns and their prophecies of doom? On the other hand, sometimes they’re right.

This is really well done and couldn’t be more Irish if it tried. Excellent!

2023 Short Film Trial 22

* Directed by: John Ferrer

* Written by: John Ferrer, Harry Metcalfe

* Stars: Corinna Brown, Graham O’Connor, Isabella Lake

* Run Time: 9 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

Two women fight, and they’re not pulling their punches. The winner runs to the next room, where there are more people and a voice mentions “Next round.” They’re in room 22, so it’s almost at the end of the strange game.

The lights come on, and the people in the room see a strange monster in an open cage. There’s a five-minute timer. What do they do? They take their shoes off because it seems to only react to sound.

What is going on?

Commentary

The concept seems to be something like a cross between “Saw” and “Cube” with maybe a little “Hellraiser” thrown in. Either way, there are rules to this game that the players don’t know. We don’t know why this is happening or who these people are, but we’ve all seen enough to know how this sort of thing goes.

It’s fun!

Contact Info:

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We’ve got two amazing new releases and three fun oldies this week. We’ll start off with the critically acclaimed “Sinners” that’s just come to streaming. We’ll then stop for a snack with “Cannibal Mukbang,” another tasty new release. We’ll do a couple of comedy-horrors next, “Hot Fuzz” (2007) and “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” (2010). Lastly, we’ll go way back in time and meet “The Man from Planet X” from 1951.

“The Horror Guys Guide to the Horror Films of Christopher Lee” is available NOW!

https://www.horrormonthly.com/horror-guys-guides/christopher-lee-films

Check out our selection of short horror biographies, including Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and many more: https://www.hourlongpress.com/

The latest issue of “Horror Monthly” is now on sale! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com

One of my favorite writing and organizing tools is Workflowy, the endless outliner. Check it out at https://workflowy.com/invite/4958355e.lnx

Mainstream Films:

2025 Sinners

* Directed by: Ryan Coogler

* Written by: Ryan Coogler

* Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, Saul Williams

* Run Time: 2 Hours, 17 Minutes

* Get it here: https://amzn.to/45Vl2s8

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s very much a humanity and period drama with magic and horror in the background, at first. Then things get crazy toward the second half. The cast, direction, music, and effects are all excellent. Especially the use of music. It’s on the long side but worth it.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 1932 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. A man with a broken guitar walks into church, and the preacher gets really upset, changing the sermon to talk about men who are full of sin. He wants Sammie to give up his sinful ways. We get flashes of violence and blood.

We flash back to the cotton farm, where all the black people work in the fields; it’s after slavery, but the echoes of it are still strong. We then cut again to two brothers, Smoke and Stack, who are dressed up with a fancy car. Mr. Hogwood shows up and shows them some property. It gets a little tense, but they’ve got a bagful of money and buy it.

Sammie argues with his preacher father about going out for the evening. “You keep going out with the devil, sooner or later, you’re gonna bring him home.” He goes off with Stack and Smoke, saying he’ll be back for service tomorrow. They’ve got big plans for the day and night.

The three are planning on putting a juke joint together, with lots of drinking, at the old sawmill they just bought. Stack runs into Mary, an old jilted lover, and a white looking woman as well, so she could be trouble. The harmonica player, Delta Slim, tells a story about why black folks shouldn’t get too successful.

Smoke goes to see Annie about cooking at the juke joint tonight, and they have a long history. We get a montage of everyone setting up for the party, including the cooking.

Elsewhere, a dirty-looking and injured white man beats on a door and asks a white couple for shelter from the Choctaws. He offers them money to let him inside, and they invite him in. A short while later, a Choctaw scout with others shows up, and he says he’s looking for a dangerous man who’s not what he seems. She lies and says she hasn’t seen him. They soon leave, and the strange man kills the couple, who should’ve never invited him in. Before long, all three of them are vampires.

Mary shows up to the big party, and she looks a little out of place there. Stack wants her out of there before trouble breaks out; she’s part black in the family, but has been passing for years, a prime target for lynching.

Delta Slim finishes his piano set and introduces Sammie, who plays the guitar. The magic of music fills the room. We see a guy playing an electric guitar and half the crowd is dressed like anachronistic rappers, ancient Africans, and even Asian musicians and dancers thanks to the Asian grocer and his wife. (I guess the Blues are timeless?). They are having a goooood time.

And then the three vampires, Bert, Joan, and Remmick, show up outside. They talk to the doorman/bouncer and want it. They pull out instruments and start playing; they say they just want to join the party, and they’re pretty good bluegrass singers as well. Smoke does not want to let them in.

Smoke gives Sammie some career advice; he wants to keep his young cousin out of trouble, but Sammie thinks he might want to go to Chicago like the twins did.

Mary wants to talk to the white trio about coming back; the twins are going to need every dollar they can get. She finds them playing their music right outside the barn. They’ve very friendly– until they aren’t.

When Mary returns to the party, she needs an invitation to come inside. The vampires start picking off people as they go outside to pee. As Smoke deals with a cheating gambler, Stack and Mary make out; she’s drooling. We see that yes, they did turn her outside. By the time Smoke and Sammie come in, they’re both covered in Stack's blood. Smoke wastes zero seconds filling her full of lead, but that doesn’t even slow her down.

Stack bleeds out as everyone watches; the party is over. Annie talks to Sammie, and she seems to know what they’re dealing with– she wants to move Stack’s body outside for a while. They end up locking the room he’s in.

Cornbread comes back from peeing and needs an invitation back inside. Annie accuses him of being a haint now, and the others don’t interrupt her at all. It gets so obvious that he needs an invitation that they all know something’s up with him.

There’s a knocking at the locked storeroom door; only Stack’s dead body was in there. He’s feeling much better now and busts down the door. Annie splashes him with a bottle full of pickled garlic, which makes him sizzle and run out. And then she knows they aren’t haints, they’re vampires. She says that they all need to hold out till sunlight. She explains all the rules of vampires to the group.

They find someone lying in a pool of blood. When the men carry a body outside, they see that there’s a whole bunch of vampires out there dancing as Remmick sings very Irishly. It’s a whole big musical number, and the vampires apparently not only get immortality and bloodthirstiness, but also a talent for Irish singing and dancing. Clearly in many ways they are an extension of Remmick.

Inside, everyone eats some garlic to prove they aren’t vampires, and Remmick comes to the door, making it clear how things are going to turn out for all the people in there. The Klan was already planning to come and kill them all. The mill was a trap by Hogwood that’s been used more than once, to get a bunch of black folks together in one place. The vampires are much nicer, or so they say. Stack talks to Smoke, and he makes a good case. Eternal life in one big happy family.

One of the crew finally breaks and dares the vamps to come inside. Remmick perks up - was that an invitation? Good enough! There are a lot more vamps than humans already, so the fight is a little one-sided. Smoke ends up staking Annie, which upsets Mary.

Remmick wants Sammie’s songs and wants to absorb his musical talent. Meanwhile Stack and Smoke fight inside. Sammie whacks Remmick with his guitar that has a silver disc that ends up embedded in his head. That really hurts, and all the vamps feel the wound. Smoke comes out of nowhere and stabs Remmick all the way through with a stake as the sun rises. Most everyone burns in the sunlight, especially Remmick.

Smoke tells Sammie to go home and bury that guitar. They seem to be the only ones left alive.

Smoke unpacks his old army rifle and goes after the Klansmen who arrive to shut down the juke joint. He’s got a machine gun and grenades too, and he takes out all of the evil white men. He gets shot, dies, and yet still has a happy ending.

Back in the opening scene, Sammie walks back into his father’s church with the broken guitar. We see that Sammie’s got a big clawmark on his face. Instead of dropping the guitar fragment and turning his back on music as his father urges, we see him driving away with it.

We flash forward many years and see that Sammie is old and has made a long career from singing the Blues. He runs a club of his own now, and one night, he gets some very strange visitors who need to be invited in… Stack and Mary.

Stack tells the story of how they survived and asks Sammie to play for them; he’s repaired that same old guitar.

Brian’s Commentary

The vampire effects toward the end are really good, but they aren’t overbearing through the rest of the film. This is the kind of vampire story that makes you wonder how there aren’t already billions of vampires all over the world.

It’s got a big budget, and the historical setting and context are just about perfect. It’s really slow getting to the action bits; there’s only one quick scene about vampires in the first 70 minutes, much more a period drama than anything else, but once the sun goes down, it gets pretty crazy.

The magical realism during the first musical act stands out from everything else [The Blues are forever?]. The singing vampires are a little weird as well, but not as much as the first musical number.

It’s long, but it’s really excellent.

Kevin’s Commentary

Remmick must restrain himself and his minions to keep a reasonable clan size. It’s very easy to convert others to loyal vampires. It was cool how the vampires seemed to be extensions and connected to Remmick while still retaining much of their original personalities. I really liked the long stretch without much vampire action as we got to know the characters and the world they are living in. Then the vampire action kicked in nicely. The use of music was great. And I was impressed with how flawlessly Michael B. Jordan played twins, both his acting and the special effects. This one is a winner.

2023 Cannibal Mukbang

* Directed by: Aimee Kuge

* Written by: Aimee Kuge

* Stars: April Consalo, Nate Wise, Clay von Carlowitz

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes

* Watch it here: https://amzn.to/4e0cVN0

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

So, how much would you put up with in a relationship? This movie takes the question to the extreme. The cast is good, the script is well written, and the effects are realistic. It’s heavy on strange romance with a heavy dose of gore and horror. We liked it quite a bit.

Spoilery Synopsis

Mark stares at the redhead at the convenience store. He soon finds a way to talk to her, but he’s too shy to stick around. He leaves the store and gets hit by a car. He wakes up in the redhead’s house; she’s Ash, and she’s the one who hit him. She feeds him, and it’s delicious. She’s fascinated by the metal plate in his head that he’s had since he was a kid.

Mark works in customer service; Ash eats stuff online while people watch. He knows all about mukbanging since he watches them all the time. They have a good time, and she drives him home.

Mark’s job isn’t much fun. He watches Ash’s videos and then fantasizes about her, but he’s weird about it, cutting off his own nose for her. Mark’s older brother, Maverick, gives Mark some advice about women, and he’s clearly no expert.

Ash finally gets back in touch with Mark and invites him over. She’s made a blanket fort, and it’s all really cozy and romantic. He explains that as a hobby, he writes horror movie reviews [Who does that?!], and she’s impressed. They talk about where they came from, and this leads to kissing and lots more talking.

Another day, Mark takes Ash to a vegan place, and she doesn’t look happy; she’s rude and distracted throughout the whole date. A creepy-looking man comes in, and Ash looks worried. “You need to leave now,” she warns him.

Mark goes to hang around in the park and accidentally watches as the creepy man attacks Ash. He’s about to hit her when she reaches up and breaks his arm in half. She bites the man in the throat, killing him, as Mark walks up to talk. “You’re eating him.” He offers to help her move the body.

When Ash shows Mark to her “butcher’s table,” he wonders what were in the nachos he ate the other night. “You don’t even know what hot dogs are made of,” she counters. “I only kill the people that society could do without.” He recognizes her as a serial killer, Alexandra Rouge, he’s read about. No, Alexandra was Ash’s sister. She cuts the dead man up and saves the pieces for later.

This leads Mark into more weird fantasies. Maybe Ash is the stable one in this relationship? He starts going into convulsions, and she says his hunger may be starting. He goes over, and she’s prepared a charcuterie board, fully decorated with a skull. He’s still freaked out, but he’s coming to terms with it.

Ash tells us about her little sister, Allie, and how they lived in Louisiana. A man kidnapped them and put them in a cage. He eventually killed Allie and made Ash eat her. Ash soon turned the tables on the swamp man and killed and ate him.

Ash runs errands in the morning, leaving Mark on his own, and he has breakfast. He loves cannibalism now!

Ash talks about a child molester that she’s been tracking, and she wants to kill him tonight. That goes off really well, and they do it over and over; cue the killing and eating montage!

After quite a long time, Ash asks about sex. Are they ever gonna do it? He’s still very uncomfortable, but he finally goes for it– in the butchery room. Afterward, they argue, and he leaves.

Maverick, Mark’s brother, breaks into Mark’s house, worried about not hearing from him in so long. The smell is terrible, but Mark’s in there, asleep, and he doesn’t look good. He hasn’t seen Ash in two weeks, and it’s tearing him up.

Mark goes back to Ash and apologizes. She says they have important business to attend to tonight; she’s got another victim in mind. The victim tonight turns out to be… Maverick!

Maverick knocks Ash out and gets to work raping her as Mark hides in the closet and waits for her signal. He comes out and confronts, much to his surprise, his brother. Ash had no idea they were related. The pair tied up Maverick and put him in the basement to discuss the situation. There is much begging and yelling. “If you love me, you would kill him,” Ash says.

Mark releases Maverick and gets accidentally stabbed in the process. Ash bites Maverick’s ear off. Mark lets him go yet again, and Ash is not happy. She kills Mark with an axe as Maverick runs out the door, his ear in hand.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s very slow getting to the action, but it does eventually get there. We saw the “twist” coming long before it did; Maverick was just too much of an ass to be allowed to live.

It’s an allegory for toxic relationships, but it’s still fun to watch. It’s almost more of a romantic drama than a horror film, but it’s got cannibalism and gore, so it’s got that working for it.

It ended with Maverick getting away. That’s not going to end well for Ash, but we don’t see any of the fallout from that, which should have at least been an after-credit scene.

Kevin’s Commentary

It’s a weird romance. I thought the acting and chemistry between the two main characters were great. I enjoyed everything right up to the ending, which I thought was a little abrupt and didn’t quite seem finished; it didn’t quite satisfy. But it’s good overall and definitely worth watching.

2007 Hot Fuzz

* Directed by Edgar Wright

* Written by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg

* Stars Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman

* Run Time: 2 Hours, 1 Minute

* Watch it: https://amzn.to/3SSp6BS

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a cop buddy action mystery thriller comedy with just the tiniest pinch of horror hints. That said, it's got a lot of laughs with a decent body count, and the pieces of the mystery coming together are very clever.

Spoilery Synopsis

Nicholas Angel introduces himself. We see that he’s some kind of supercop, excelling at everything. He’s so good that he makes all the other cops look bad, so they transfer him to a tiny town out in the country. Also, they’re not going to take “No” for an answer. He tells his ex, Janine, who doesn’t really care since he cares more about his job than anything else.

So Nicholas moves to Sandford, a quiet village in the English countryside. He’s… not thrilled to be there. He goes to the pub and meets the Porters, the owners, as well as PC Danny Butterman. He immediately starts causing trouble when he finds a bunch of underage drinkers in the pub– he clears out the whole place. He’s maybe a little overzealous for this kind of posting.

In the morning, he meets Simon Skinner, who owns one of the big stores in town. Next, he goes to the station and meets Inspector Butterman, his new boss, who says this is the safest village in the country. He meets all the other cops, who show him that things aren’t the same outside the city.

That evening, Tom Weaver, the old man who thinks he runs the town, throws a party for Nicholas for the Neighborhood Watch group. The old man has a grudge against “The Living Statue,” a street performer whom no one else cares about at all.

After an awful presentation of “Romeo and Juliet,” Nicholas and Danny walk right past a mysterious hooded figure who later viciously murders the stars of the stage play. Two decapitations are not something that the town cops are really equipped to deal with. But it’s staged to look like a car accident, and Angel is the only one suspicious.

The duo gets called out to an old man with a whole barn full of guns and weapons, which they confiscate. They celebrate later and then carry a drunk home. The hooded killer gets the man immediately after.

At the big church fundraiser, the town reporter tries to talk to Nicholas, but is killed by the masked killer who knocks a pointed piece of masonry down on him.

Nicholas tells his boss that he thinks all the recent deaths are connected, but the inspector prefers to think they were all just accidents. Cue the research montage as the pair discuss all the characters we have met.

Not long after, Nicholas hears all about a big real estate deal in the town from the local florist, who is killed as Nicholas watches. He chases the killer through the greenhouses. All the police still insist that there are so many accidents.

The whole police force goes to arrest Simon Skinner at the grocery store. Nicholas has a whole convoluted theory about Simon and the real estate deal. Except, according to security footage, Simon has a perfect alibi. Now, Nicholas looks like an idiot to everyone.

That evening, Nicholas goes back to his hotel room, and the killer is waiting for him. It’s Michael, Simon’s not-so-smart assistant. He and Simon were working together.

Nicholas runs to the castle, where Simon is there with a whole coven of witches that includes a lot of the townspeople we already know. It’s the whole Neighborhood Watch group! Nicholas walks in and tells them they’re all under arrest.

The Inspector Butterman shows up, and he’s all in with the cultists. This is all about winning the “Best Village” award again. Danny seems to be with them as well, and all Nicholas can do is run away. He falls into an underground pit and sees the bodies of all the people in town that the cult considered bad and killed.

He runs up to Danny for help, and Danny stabs him. But he just faked it to get Nicholas to safety; he doesn’t know anything about the big conspiracy or his father’s involvement.

Nicholas buys some supplies and then comes back in the morning. He goes to the evidence room and stocks up on all the weapons he could ever want. He rides into town on a horse, and everyone sees him coming. We see that all the quaint little villagers are armed to the teeth.

One by one, Danny and Nicholas take out the crazy villagers. The other police show up, and Nicholas tries to explain everything to them. Danny and the Inspector have their family moment, but the rest of the police start to believe him.

Everyone runs to Simon Skinner’s store for the final battle. Butterfield and Simon make a quick getaway, and it’s time for a high-speed chase as the award judges look on in astonishment.

Nicholas and Simon fight in a miniature version of the town like big silly kaijus. Nicholas has a very painful finish. Frank Butterfield makes his escape, but the town swan takes him out instead.

The London police want him back now; they’re numbers are slipping. Nicholas decides to stay in the little town now, where he’s learned to have a good time…

Until crazy old Tom shoots Danny and gets trapped under the sea mine and blows up… everyone. But it’s a comedy, and none of our heroes are hurt too badly. There are way more survivors than there should be, and one year later, Nicholas is the new police chief.

Brian’s Commentary

Nicholas’s supercop has no sense of humor or much of a personality, and he reminded me immediately of the main character in “The Wicker Man” from 1973, which is probably not a coincidence.

Timothy Dalton, as Skinner, was an obvious villain, but also a sort of red herring, since the whole town was really the baddies here. Other than him, there are lots of familiar faces here, so that’s a lot of fun in itself.

Still, there’s very little horror here. There’s a serial killer who wears a black robe and looks like Death, as well as a whole group of cultists/witches.

It’s very good, but don’t watch it as a horror movie.

Kevin’s Commentary

This is probably my favorite of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's movies. And it’s really too much of a stretch to call it horror, but that’s okay. It’s really funny and entertaining.

2010 Tucker and Dale vs Evil

* Directed by Eli Craig

* Written by Eli Craig, Morgan Jurgenson

* Stars Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes

* Watch Now: https://amzn.to/4jUkM01

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is an excellent horror comedy. It takes the idea that the killer hillbillies in a horror movie are actually the misunderstood good guys. So much depends on your point of view. It’s bloody and violent and very fun.

Spoilery Synopsis

We cut to a couple of true crime podcasters, but they’re both very quickly killed. The credits roll as we shift to a car full of teenagers in West Virginia. Chad makes a hillbilly joke. Their car is passed by two sketchy-looking rednecks in a pickup truck. When they stop to buy beer, those same two guys are there. It all looks very “Deliverance”-y.

At the store, Tucker and Dale, the hillbillies, admire the young college students. Dale likes the girls, but he doesn’t have the self-confidence to talk to them. He walks over to the girls while absent-mindedly carrying a huge scythe; he laughs nervously, and the kids all think he’s some kind of maniac.

Tucker talks to Dale about his self-confidence problems. We soon see that these guys are really deep in the region of “It’s not what it looks like,” when they get pulled over by a cop. They get to the “vacation home” that Tucker just bought, and it’s quite the fixer-upper. It’s a cabin in the woods, to be sure. There are bones hanging from the ceiling and news clippings about serial killings on the walls. They narrowly avoid a booby trap, and we see just how ignorant these two are about what they’ve stumbled into.

Not far away, Chad and the gang talk about “The Memorial Day Massacre” twenty years ago that happened right here. We get a flashback to when that all happened. It’s like every serial-killer-in-the-woods movie we’ve ever seen.

Tucker and Dale are out on the lake fishing. A bunch of the campers go skinny dipping. One of the girls has an accident, and Dale rescues her. One of the other campers sees this. “We’ve got your friend,” Dale yells, and they all run away.

Allison wakes up in the morning at the cabin, and she’s terrified of Dale and his pancakes. The teenagers walk through the woods and blow the whole thing out of proportion.

Dale explains what really happened to Allison, and she understands. They make friends and start playing board games together. Meanwhile, Tucker is outside working with his chainsaw as Mitch, one of the kids, approaches. Tucker cuts into a bee nest and reacts badly, terrifying everyone with his chainsaw antics. Mitch gets impaled on a tree branch and dies. The body is soon found by the other kids, who assume the hillbillies are murderers; Chad says, “It’s us versus them!”

Tucker walks back to the cabin, and he’s covered in bee welts. Dale pulls the stingers out, one by one, and Tucker talks about how afraid Mitch looked when he saw the bees.

The kids hide and overhear Dale talking about “beating the crap out of Allison and finishing her off.” He means, of course, at their trivia game, but they don’t hear that part. Then Tucker starts working on cleaning up the dead wood around the cabin with their wood-chipping machine. Dale and Allison dig an outhouse hole, and the kids think they’re making her dig her own grave. Two of the college students attack the men, and that goes hilariously badly for both of them. Allison is knocked unconscious in the action.

Tucker is amazed that one of the college students ran and jumped into his wood chipper (he tripped when aiming to attack Tucker). Dale talks about one of them impaling himself on a spear right in front of him. “This is a suicide pact,” Tucker speculates. They could call the police, but what would they say? Who would they believe?

Out in the woods, Chad suggests that this is an amazing opportunity to kill some rednecks. The rest of the kids run into the sheriff, and they drive back to investigate. Meanwhile, Tucker and Dale try to unplug the wood chipper.

Tucker tells the cop, “We have had a doozy of a day. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, these kids started killing themselves all over my property.” They go inside, and the sheriff runs right into the booby trap from before. Chad starts shooting at the guys, and Tucker blames the whole thing on Dale.

When Chad takes Dale’s dog as a hostage, the guys fight back with a nail gun. He’s only a distraction as Tucker frees the dog, which leads to another chase through the woods. They soon catch Tucker and hang him upside-down from a tree.

Allison wakes up, and Dale tells her what’s been going on as he cries. She offers to clear up all the misunderstandings and goes outside, where she sees the carnage. She finds Tucker’s shirt with a couple of fingers inside. He soon tracks down Tucker, who says, “This vacation sucks.”

Chad and the other kids show up, and Allison explains it all to them, but Chad just wants to kill some hillbillies. They think she’s got “Stockholm Syndrome.” Chad’s just a psychopath.

Allison gets Chad and Dale to sit down and talk, all diplomatic-like. Chad explains how his parents were attacked in the Memorial Day Massacre twenty years ago. The rednecks of the time captured his mother and killed his father.

Outside, Jason and Chloe have been waiting to come inside and save the day with a weed whacker. They break in and kill Naomi by accident. Chad accidentally sets Jason on fire. The whole cabin ends up exploding, much to Tucker’s dismay. “I’m a terrible therapist,” whines Allison.

Chad gets up and comes outside with his axe. Tucker, Dale, and Allison run to the truck and drive away– right into a tree. While they’re unconscious, Chad takes Allison away.

Tucker gives Dale a rousing speech about how Dale’s not as stupid and ugly as he thinks he is. Tucker’s badly hurt, so it’s up to Dale to save Allison.

Chad has Allison literally tied to a lumber mill saw; he’s burned and crazy now. Dale decides to embrace his inner “killer hillbilly.” Chad starts up the buzzsaw as he and Dale fight.

Allison finds a newspaper article that explains that Chad’s parents were the Memorial Day Murderers; it’s all genetic! “Chad– you’re half hillbilly!” Dale then kills Chad with chamomile tea.

The news reporters are calling it a “mass suicide,” and also that there was a killer who was never found. Tucker, in the hospital, asks Dale about Allison. They’re going bowling, so it’s a date! Also, Dale has learned not to help people now.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s all a comedy of misunderstanding, of course, but it uses all the horror movie tropes. The gore and deaths are really well done, and always funny. It uses all the killer-in-the-woods tropes, but it’s totally turned around since the kids are the bad ones.

Tucker and Dale are hilarious, and we absolutely should have had half a dozen sequels by now. It’s very possibly my favorite horror-comedy.

Kevin’s Commentary

This is really excellent. There are lots of laughs, and I liked it even better this second viewing. The script is great, and Tucker and Dale are perfectly cast.

1951 The Man from Planet X

* Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

* Written by Aubrey Wisberg, Jack Pollexfen

* Stars Robert Clarke, Margaret Field, Raymond Bond

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 11 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3FiB6t9

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is mainly a classic example of early 1950s science fiction, but it’s got some horror elements with alien scares, peril from space, and conniving humans. It’s certainly dated, but that adds to the fun. We enjoyed the watch.

Spoilery Synopsis

In the dark castle on the hill, a man wonders what happened to the girl and her father. He expects that he’ll be dead by morning as well, but he intends to fight. He’s a reporter, and he writes down his story about meeting a man from Planet X face to face. We flash back…

A new planet has arrived from nowhere, and it’s all very mysterious. John Lawrence and Professor Blaine talk about mysteries from the sky. The new planet isn’t going to collide with the Earth, but it’s going to come really close. Professor Elliot discovered the new world, and he’s gone to Burry Island, the place that’s going to be closest to the new planet.

John goes to the remote Scottish island where Elliot is staying. He’s met by Enid, the professor’s daughter. They drive up to the old castle on the hill, where he meets Elliot and Dr. Mears, whom John doesn’t like. Mears just showed up two weeks ago, one of Elliot’s former students. Elliot admits he’s not sure what’s going to happen as the planet gets really close in a few days.

John and Enid go for a walk on the foggy moors, and John likes what he sees, in all the meanings of the word. They find a strange metal thing on the ground that looks like a bomb or missile. Dr. Elliot can’t explain it either, but he thinks it may have come from outer space, as the metal is unknown. Mears points out how important that metal is to science.

After dropping John off at the inn in town, Enid gets a flat tire on the foggy old country road. She sees a flashing light out on the moor and finds a space rocket that has landed out there. She looks in the window and sees an alien face inside. She screams and runs all the way back to the castle.

The old professor thinks she’s imagined it all, so she takes him out there; Mears skulks along behind them. When Elliot looks in through the window, there’s no one inside. A beam from the ship shines on the old professor, who goes into some kind of trance. He feels better later and tells the whole story to John.

When John sees the spaceship, he says it looks like “A big diving bell,” and the professor says there’s not much difference between water and space, so why not? Then they see the spaceman, who appears to be holding a gun. It collapses as the alien tries to adjust his space suit.

The alien soon recovers and gets up. They try to communicate, but that doesn’t work, so it follows them home to the castle, much to Enid’s surprise. Dr. Mears wants to use math to communicate with the alien. John doesn’t trust Mears, and Mears knows it.

Alone, Mears works his math with the creature, hoping to learn something he can use for profit. He has no plans to share his knowledge with anyone else. He overpowers the very weak alien and turns down the gas it breathes. He goes in and tells Elliot that he’s had no luck.

Enid goes into the room with the creature and screams.

John returns and finds Enid missing, as is the creature. He and Mears walk back to the spaceship to see if they are there. They aren’t there, so John goes back to the castle, leaving Mears there.

The constable and another man arrive to talk to Elliot. Some men from the village have vanished. John’s not willing to tell them the story, but he’s willing to take the constable out to the moor and show him. They go back to where the spaceship was, but it’s not there now, and neither is Mears.

Back in the village, the second villager shows up and says that Professor Elliot went off with the alien and Mears. John says what he knows, which sends all the villagers off in a panic. The constable reports that the phone lines are out, so they try to signal a passing ship.

Meanwhile, more villagers are starting to work for the alien, all mind-controlled. John finds more men out by the alien ship, digging.

Scotland Yard sends two men; the ship did get their message. They want to bring in the military. John says he has a plan, and the police decide to go along with it. They give him until eleven o’clock– the planet will be at its closest at midnight.

We cut to the opening sequence, as John writes out his story before time runs out. He goes to the ship, where he encounters Elliot and Mears. He tells Elliot to walk back to town. Mears explains what the alien is doing; there’s going to be an invasion since the alien’s planet is dying. He tells the mind-controlled slave workers to walk away, and they do it.

The alien comes outside, and John tackles it, turning his valve off. It soon dies. He sends Enid and Mears to safety, but the alien, not as dead as it would appear, gets back up. Mears decides to run back to the ship as the army starts shooting at it. Mears get shot in the back by the soldiers before the ship explodes.

Meanwhile, Planet X gets really close to the Earth, and everyone watches as it passes harmlessly. John and Enid discuss how the government is going to cover it all up. Enid thinks the creature was friendly, and Mears was lying about the invasion.

Brian’s Commentary

The 1950s were known for their atomic horrors and flying saucer movies, but this is one of the early ones, and it was very influential in what followed.

We don’t know what Mears did back in the day for John to distrust him, but the feeling is obvious. Any planet that came that close to Earth would be a much bigger deal than the film suggests. Also, we don’t know for sure at the end what the creature’s motivations were, invasion or just exploration? Mears is the only real death in the film, and the soldiers did that.

The alien is possibly the least emotive creature ever filmed. It’s just a fixed head inside a glass helmet, no moving mouth, blinking eyes, or anything. Well, I guess that does make it pretty alien. The acting is good, the pacing is fine, but the alien really makes it hard to take seriously.

Kevin’s Commentary

The science is pretty bad, but it’s a decent watch for entertainment. The alien and effects are simple and dated. It was a great year for science fiction: “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “The Thing From Another World,” and “When Worlds Collide” were all released in 1951, too. This is one to either relax and enjoy for what it is or make fun of it mercilessly. It depends on the mood you’re in.

Short Films:

2023 Short Film The Fisherman’s Wife

* Directed by: Jared Watson

* Written by: Jared Watson

* Stars: Kelsey Carthew, Cairlin Riley, T. Ryder Smith

* Run Time: 8:11

* Watch it:

What Happens

A fisherman wanders the deserted beach, scrounging for whatever he can find, which is mostly garbage. He continues on with his futile search until he sees a woman lying in the sand. No, not a woman– a mermaid caught in a net!

He carries her home, but she’s gasping and having difficulty breathing. He boils water in a pot and then pulls out the butcher’s knife… No, it’s not what it looks like. Is it?

Commentary

This is one messed-up family.

It’s all very dark and depressing, lonely and filthy. It’s post-apocalyptic even, but it’s still hilarious in its weirdness. It’s very ponderous and slow-moving, and that just adds to the oddball charm here.

It’s very cool!

2024 Short Film The Noise Next Door

* Directed by: Christopher Cox

* Written by: Christopher Cox

* Stars: James Sanger, Scott Bolger, Natalie Polisson

* Run Time: 13:09

* Watch it:

What Happens

Jay just moved into a new, small apartment, and he’s not too impressed with it. As he talks to his mother, he hears someone bumping into the wall from the other side. He knocks on the neighbor’s door, and the man inside apologizes for watching his movie too loudly.

The thumping continues, and it’s clearly not a movie. He looks through his door’s peephole and sees a woman crying. When he opens the door, no one is there. He checks with the neighbors again, and it’s not her. They have no idea what the sounds are, and they’re also tired of being bothered.

He calls the apartment manager to report it. He’s not about to let it slide without investigating further, and he soon learns he shouldn’t have…

Commentary

It’s time for a new apartment!

From the neighbor’s point of view, Jay is just a nut. From his point of view, he’s trying to help. We don’t know until the end what’s really going on. I kept waiting for someone to say, “Oh, it’s THAT apartment,” like they knew– it took a while, but that’s exactly what happened.

This is very nicely paced and fast-moving. It’s very well done and makes perfect sense. It ratchets up the tension right up to the end. Excellent!

2023 Short Film Eyestring

* Directed by: Javier Devitt

* Written by: Alena Chinault, Javier Devitt

* Stars: Jeannie Bolet, Alena Chinault, Erin Grant

* Run Time: 8 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

Veronica talks on the phone, and the phone-in therapist on the other end talks about balance and her getting out more. As she talks, she starts to pull a little hair out of her eye. Except the hair pulls and pulls… Credits roll.

She’s out driving now, and the eye-hair is hanging down the side of her face. She calls her “concierge” from earlier, but she can’t talk to the same guy from earlier– the “therapists” are all assigned randomly.

She decides to go to the store and pick up some “eye care products,” including scissors…

Commentary

Wait– people actually call those phone-therapy lines?

Ew. Nothing’s worse than stuff in your eye. Except maybe something coming out of your eye.

It’s well shot and well acted. None of this goes the way you’d expect, which is the best part!

2025 Short Film Play or Die

* Directed by: Luca Zanzlorenzi

* Written by:

* Stars: Silvia Barattini

* Run Time: 6:17

* Watch it:

What Happens

A woman sits alone in her room at night and looks at the “Play or Die” screen on her computer. After deliberating for a moment, she clicks “Accept.” It’s a one-million-dollar challenge, and it's worth the risk for her. She looks at her bank account, and the money is suddenly all there. She has to follow the rules exactly, or “you’ll lose it all.”

The rules say, “Turn off all the lights, lock the door, and do not look behind you.”

It’s not going to be pretty, is it?

Commentary

Not following the rules is one thing, but she did as instructed in the end, so why did they kill her? Half of the short film was a black screen, so we’re left to imagine what happened.

I can live with the darkness, but the game broke its own rules, which is a cheat.

Nope. Didn’t like this one.

2022 Short Film Searchers

* Directed by: Isaac Ruth

* Written by: Isaac Ruth

* Stars: Michelle Lukiman, Christine Renaud, Ash Yap

* Run Time: 12:36

* Watch it:

What Happens

A woman wakes up from a nightmare of bones. She’s asked to search for a missing six-year-old, and she tells her contact, “This is the last time.”

Liv drives out to Salton Sea, a mostly dead community in the desert. She goes to see the girl’s mother, who is evasive and paranoid about her kidnapped daughter. She tells the story about finding that her daughter was missing one night.

It wasn’t the garden-variety kidnapper. It’s also not just one missing kid– it’s six, just this year…

Commentary

It’s one of those “what’s really going on here” type of stories, well acted and well shot. The locations and scenery here are really good. There’s no resolution to the story, and we’re left with a couple of mysteries. The director calls it a “Proof of concept” film, and I’m intrigued, but it’s not a story in itself. I’d totally watch a feature-length film expanding on this.

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.flashfright.com

* https://www.horrorweekly.com

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We’ve got three new releases this week as well as a pair of oldies. We’ll open on the not-Poohverse “Piglet” and then go to church for “Consecration.” For our oldies, we’ll take a look at one more episode that even Pinhead didn’t show up for in “Hellraiser: Revelations” from 2011, followed by the remake of “House of Wax” from 2005. And we’ve got more shorts as well!

“The Horror Guys Guide to the Horror Films of Christopher Lee” is available NOW!

https://www.horrormonthly.com/horror-guys-guides/christopher-lee-films Check out our selection of short horror biographies, including Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and many more: https://www.hourlongpress.com/

The latest issue of “Horror Monthly” is now on sale! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com