Horror Weekly

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

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Mainstream Films:

2025 Piglet

* Directed by Andrea M. Catinella

* Written by Harry Boxley

* Stars Alexander Butler, Lauren Staerck, Alina Desmond

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This isn’t the Piglet from “Pooh: Blood and Honey,” it’s a separate tale. This Piglet is a big, mutated guy wearing a mask and having a big appetite for killing. Reminiscent of Leatherface from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movies. The music and accents required subtitles. Brian was harsher on it than Kevin was, who found it entertaining more than not. But we both agree it didn’t show us enough new to really be interesting. It’s not a standout film, and we thought it was okay at best.

Spoilery Synopsis

A prison van stops in the woods so the driver can pee. “Is it true what they say about him? About the experiment… and his family?” The prisoner was part of a scientific experiment that deformed him. Dr. Bickley turned the scrawny man into a huge killing machine. He then murdered the people in the prison. Naturally, the prisoner gets out of his chains and kills all three of the inept security guards. The masked killer returns to his lair and puts on a pig mask. Credits roll.

A carload of party girls stop on the side of the road so one of them can throw up. Kate is upset about hiding from her insane boyfriend. Two other girls talk about the pig serial-killer who used to operate in this area. A man comes out of the woods and tells them not to go to the camp, as bad things always happen there.

A man in a cowboy hat talks to Piglet about the girls who will be coming to stay at the farm. Piglet can have his pick of one of the girls; the rest will go in the freezer.

The girls arrive at Mr. Hogarth’s farm for the first time in ten years. Kate sees Piglet in the woods, but only for a moment. Mr. Hogarth, the man in the cowboy hat, shows the girls around; he runs the camp.

On the road, three other people stop their car with a breakdown and have to walk the rest of the way to camp through the forest. Courtney is autistic or something and forces them to stop so she can draw. As they wait, the other two stop for sex. Piglet kills the couple, Riley and Bruce, with a big meat hook. Courtney goes looking for them and finds herself in a bear trap until Piglet catches up to her.

Kate gets a scare from a man covered in blood. The police come and pick up the homeless man as Mr. Hogarth assures the girls that animals won’t come into the camp. One of the girls tells the story about the local serial killer they used to call “Piglet,” who fell in love with a girl named Kate.

Judith soon finds Courtney chained up in the barn and hides while Piglet comes in and kills Courtney with a hook before killing Judith as well.

Kate and Susie talk about Spencer, Kate’s crazy ex, who used to follow her around and stalk her. She feels like that again. They both plan to move to Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, Alex and Dianne make out in the hot tub as Mr. Hogarth watches. Hogarth then kills Dianne with an axe.

Alex, Kate, and Susie wonder what happened to all their friends. They talk about making a phone call, but try to drive to town instead; the car has been sabotaged.

Hogarth and Piglet work together to kill Alex with a sledgehammer. Kate thinks Spencer has followed them and is causing all their troubles. Bret, the weird harbinger from the woods, shows up and tells them they need to leave– he offers them gas for their car. They soon see Piglet, and the chase is on. Bret shoots Piglet, and then the girls take his gun and force him to drive them to town. Bret explains the whole thing, but Susie and Kate are skeptical. Hogarth comes outside and blames Bret for keeping a bloodthirsty monster on the grounds.

Piglet shows up and kills Bret while Hogart shoots Susie in the leg. Piglet takes Susie to the barn and chains her up. He then peels her face off with the help of his knife.

Kate runs to the road and flags down a cop, Officer Burke, who handcuffs her and takes her back to Hogarth and Piglet. They all sit around and sing “Happy Birthday to you” to Kate. Instead of a birthday cake, they give her a foot with a candle wedged on top; they’re cannibals. “Piglet’s chosen you. We want you to join the family. He needs a mate. He’ll take the mask off for the honeymoon.”

Kate seduces Officer Burke and attacks him as well as Hogarth. She runs out to Bret’s car as Piglet comes up behind her. She rams him with the car and then drives off. The car stalls out not too much later, and Kate walks to another barn, where she encounters a man in a welding mask. Piglet grabs the man and kills him right away. She steals the man’s car, but crashes it as well.

Kate knocks Piglet down and goes at him with the axe. She pulls off his mask, and he just vanishes.

Brian’s Commentary

This isn’t part of the “Poohniverse,” as this version of Piglet is just a deformed man wearing a pig mask, not a mutant animal at all. The mask, however, looks just like the one in “Blood and Honey,” but it’s a whole different story. The weird family is more closely related to the one in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” instead.

The music was so overbearing in the beginning that we had to turn on the subtitles to catch all the details of what was being said. The thick accents were strong enough that we would have needed the subtitles anyway.

The acting is really weak, and the accents are atrocious. If you can make it through the pre-credit sequence and keep your sanity, you might like this one. That opening scene was really the worst of it, but it never really gets good.

It’s not awful for a low-budget indie flick, but it doesn’t really do anything we haven’t seen many times before. I never thought I’d say it about a movie, but it’s no “Pooh: Blood and Honey.”

Kevin’s Commentary

I don’t disagree with any points Brian made, but I did find it entertaining enough to keep me interested - a fundamental requirement to get any kind of thumbs up from me. The short run time helps, with minimal time wasted - it does have a lot of gore and kills, and the effects are realistic.

2023 Consecration

* Directed by Christopher Smith

* Written by Christopher Smith, Laurie Cook

* Stars Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Thoren Ferguson

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This has a little bit of a slow start, but we do gradually get to find out what’s really going on and who’s behind it. The movie blurs the lines a little between good and evil, right and wrong. And raises some questions about who is really in charge. We thought it had a cool wrap-up and liked it a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman walks down the street thinking about guardian angels. Suddenly, an old nun walks up and points a gun at her.

We cut to the same woman, Grace, giving an eye exam to an old woman. She goes to see John, an old friend and teacher, about the old woman’s case. She goes home to work on her computer when, suddenly, the lights go out. We get glimpses of a nun in the background, inside the house, but Grace doesn’t see anything. She gets a phone call from the police, who say they’ve found the body of her brother, the victim of a murder suicide.

Credits roll as she travels to the remote convent where her brother’s body was found. DCI Harris fills her in on the investigation. They think Grace’s brother, a priest, killed another priest and then himself. Harris is trying to piece together what actually happened and why. He tells the story about how one of the nuns thought they saw the devil and poked their own eye out. They’re an extreme sect.

Grace and Harris meet Mother Superior, and we see that Grace isn’t interested in religion at all. The old woman blames a demon for the deaths. She gets a vision of Michael warning her that it’s not safe there; then she faints.

When Grace wakes up, she meets Father Romero from the Vatican. She goes back to sleep and dreams about a middle-ages witch hunt. She goes to the place where Michael died and sees many nuns dropping off the same cliff. She faints again and wakes up in the convent. She confronts the whole group of nuns at dinnertime.

Father Romero takes Grace on a tour of the ruins of the old church and explains the history of the place. He seems straightforward and honest, exposing that the Mother Superior cleaned up Michael’s body before the police arrived.

She goes through Michael's books and finds a really weird one that she can’t read. Except that she can read it somehow. We get another flashback to young Grace doing things she shouldn’t be able to.

We cut to Romero arguing with Mother Superior and the other involved nuns. Grace and Sister Meg talk about life in the convent.

DCI Harris questions Mother Superior. Kate’s rude to all the religious people, and we soon get a flashback as to why. Her father was a religious nut who kept them locked in cages, which explains her attitude and also why the two siblings have a secret code that only they can read. Kate watched as her father killed their mother.

When their father was captured, the convent tried to adopt the two children. We get a flashback to that as well, but the old priest and nun really only wanted Grace. As the kidnapping progressed, something happened, and a truck ran into the kidnappers.

She tells this to Romero, who believes Michael came there to find a relic. He offers several ancient books to Grace, and they’re in code as well. The same code she thought was her and her brother’s. The books talk about the Knights of the Morning Star and his shadow. We get another flashback to Grace’s brother Michael being tortured for information about the relic. He refuses to talk, and when he gets up he stabs the old priest, which is how he died.

Grace watches as a nun stabs herself, and the next thing we see, she’s talking to DCI Harris about what she’s learned. She stops in at the prison to meet her father and asks why he did the things he did. He believes that she’s the devil’s own child, and he should have done even worse. He’d died in a storm, and she prayed for him to come back, which he did, but he wasn’t the same after. When she tells him that Michael died, he tells her to “bring him back.” He doesn’t think she can die. He points out that wherever she goes, death and destruction soon follow.

Mother Superior talks to Harris, and she says that Grace is the relic; not only that, but Grace knows this herself.

Grace watches as an invisible force beats up one of the nuns who was trying to hurt Grace. She walks back to the convent, where no one seems surprised that she’s now covered in blood.

Father Romero does a prayer to “consecrate her,” and then opens up a door to an underground place beneath the church. “She must be contained for eternity; her power is a threat to Christ,” we hear someone say. As Romero tells the nuns to seal the crypt, all Hell breaks loose in the church, killing him. “So that was your plan, to bury me in a tomb? What happened to forgiveness?” Grace asks.

Grace goes up to the “suicide ledge” and starts walking backwards, the way Romero explained to her. Before she gets too close to the edge, Harris shows up and tries to talk her out of it.

She jumps. And falls very, very slowly. Slowly enough for another flashback. We see that somehow, Grace has been time-travelling through young Grace’s childhood, saving her from many bad things, sometimes invisibly. She even has a conversation with the about-to-die Michael. She tries to persuade him not to, but he says he must. The mother superior and two nuns there feel invisible Grace push past them and see Michael’s one-sided conversation with invisible Grace. Before he jumps to his death. Then she finishes her own fall off the cliff.

In the morning, Harris sends boats out to find Grace’s body, but that’s not easy and nothing is found. Mother Superior tells him that Grace isn’t dead; she’ll go on using her power until she’s stopped.

We flash to Grace, drinking with her old friend John. She’s looking very healthy now. She still doesn’t like churches. John mentions that the old woman from the beginning now has perfect sight; it seems to be a miracle.

We cut back to the opening scene, with Mother Superior pointing a gun at Grace on the street. Out of nowhere, she’s hit by a vehicle and killed. Grace is her own guardian angel...

Brian’s Commentary

It’s slow going in the beginning, and we don’t know who’s good or bad for a very long while. Still, the mystery and suspense build up continuously, and it comes to a fun ending.

It looks good, it’s well acted, it’s a mystery where we do get all the answers in the end. I liked it.

Kevin’s Commentary

I liked the places it went with theology and angels, and how far people would go to protect the status quo. Basically, I think, she’s a fallen angel slumming as a human, hiding the memory of who she really is from herself most of the time. Very cool. It does have a slow start, but I thought the finish was great. I highly recommend it.

2025 Self Driver

* Directed by Michael Pierro

* Written by Michael Pierro

* Stars Nathanael Chadwick, Reece Presley, Lauren Welchner

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

We weren’t sure going into this one, the trailer looked iffy. But it turns out the trailer doesn’t do it justice. It was very good. Nathanael Chadwick is perfectly cast in the lead, which is good since the majority of the movie is about him driving around and doing stuff. It moves well as things get more complicated through the night. We both liked it a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man drives a car as the credits roll. D, the driver, eats his generic fast food in the car and gets a phone call from his landlord, which he ignores. His girlfriend calls and asks when he’s coming home, but this is Friday, the day that pays the best. She complains that there’s no WiFi; he probably didn’t pay the bill.

He opens the VRMR! App, a rideshare thing. He picks up people and takes them where they want to go, and he does a variety of weird characters that are all critical. They. Are. Annoying.

One of the clients offers him a business card for Tonomo, a new company that offers better pay and a signing bonus. Four or five thousand dollars a night, with the right attitude. He doesn’t actually say it’s legal, but D thinks about it. D calls VRMR! on the phone, and it’s the usual annoying runaround with the voice system and “hold music.” He wants to get paid early, but that’s not going to happen.

He keeps on driving and picks up two drunk women, one of whom pukes all over his back seat. It costs even more money to wash the car. The VRMR! app says it’s time for a mandatory 8-hour break.

He calls Nick with Tonomo about the job. Nick installs an app on D’s phone. D signs the mile-long “Terms and Conditions” page. “Always do what the app tells you; never speak to the clients. If you quit in the middle of a job, you lose all your money.”

D hits “Start,” and the app tells him where to go. He misses a turn, and that already cost him a penalty deduction. He gets to the destination, and the app has him wait. He picks up a woman and drives her where the app says to go. As he drives, she changes into an angel costume. He drops her off in an alley, but she wants him to wait for her.

The payment for the job comes to $100. The next job is for $500, but he promised the girl he’d wait. He accepts the job anyway and drives on. The whole thing has a lot of time pressure, so he has no choice. On this job, he just carries a package.

D stops and a man gets in, and he’s loud and obnoxious; he says he’s a pusher. D drops the guy off and continues with the package. He goes around the block, and the app tells him to pick up the same guy. It looks a lot like he’s a getaway driver now. D and the man argue over the route, but D insists on following the app. The man gives D a gun to dispose of and some drugs as a tip. He ends up with $450 for that job.

Between jobs, D tastes one of the drug-coated sugar cubes the man gave him but doesn’t really take it.

He takes on another $500 job. This one has him move to the back seat next to a passenger and hit the man. “It’s OK, just do it,” says the man. D does the job. Each punch is $50, again and again. It gets easier for D around the fourth punch. With all the bonuses, he makes a bunch.

The app tells him to “rest now.” He uses the time to clean up the blood on the back seat. He goes back to the place he dropped off the angel woman, but she’s not there.

The next job is $2000. Before accepting, he tries one of the sugar cubes. They stop and pick up two girls, one is very high or drunk, and it might be a matter of sex trafficking. She cries and fights, and D just sits there. About this time, the drugs D took start kicking in. He sits there while the brother and sister carry the stoned girl into a warehouse. When they come out, they yell at each other and then start making out on the hood of the car.

D starts seriously hallucinating now, but he’s also driving where he needs to go. Something went wrong with the girl they dropped off, so they need another one. They stop and grab the girl with the angel wings from earlier. They drive back to the sex trafficking warehouse, and the brother and sister have to deal with a more immediate problem.

D digs out that gun from earlier. He gives the angel girl the other sugar cube, and she wakes right up. The two run away from the car but the two soon catch and beat up D. The car itself rescues D from the evil pair.

“Job abandoned: Payout $0” D loses all the money for the evening’s work.

He gets back in his car and drives away. VRBR! sends him a text asking if he wants to drive some more, which he accepts. Back to the grind…

Brian’s Commentary

The trailer didn’t do this one justice. It’s mostly just one guy and a few passengers, very simple. For quite a while into this, I was thinking, “I’d do this job,” but then it got a bit excessive.

The jobs weren’t that hard from D’s point of view, I dunno what he thought was going to happen taking LSD or whatever it was during the work.

It was well shot, looked good, was nicely paced, and kept my interest throughout. Very cool!

Kevin’s Commentary

I was reminded of “13 Sins”(2014), where the guy had to do progressively more twisted things with anonymous instructions.

I like being pleasantly surprised by a movie, and this is one that does that. The trailer looked like a maybe, and it turned out to be a winner. Things build nicely and move well, with just enough dark humor to spice it up. I’d recommend it.

2011 Hellraiser: Revelations

* Directed by Victor Garcia

* Written by Gary J. Tunnicliffe, Clive Barker

* Stars Steven Brand, Nick Eversman, Tracey Fairaway, Jay Gillespie

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 15 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Watch it: https://amzn.to/43zJXQp

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Unlike some of the previous sequels that were a standalone movie with a little Hellraiser stuff barely tacked on, this was made as a Hellraiser movie. Clive Barker wasn’t involved because he no longer held the rights, and he vehemently denounced it, but it does tap into a lot of elements from the first two movies. Doug Bradley isn’t involved either and reportedly said bad things about it. There’s a different and less effective Pinhead actor. All things considered, though, it was surprisingly pretty entertaining and certainly better than some of the previous sequels.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a found-footage style camera view of two guys leaving L.A. to get one of the guys some sex. Nico and Steven are going to Tijuana for hookers. Their car gets stolen, and the next thing they know, they’re playing with a cursed puzzle box. Lights blink, bells ring, and the walls glow. Pinhead shows up for his box and Nico’s soul.

We cut to Steven’s mother and sister discussing the video we just watched. Ross, Steven’s father, doesn’t want to talk about Steven, but Emma does. They all argue. Pinhead listens from another dimension. Emma sneaks into the bedroom and watches the rest of Steven’s video. Nico kills a hooker, so that kinda spoils the trip.

Back at home, Steven’s parents, Ross and Sarah, talk to Nico’s parents, Peter and Kate. As far as they know, both boys went missing and were presumed murdered. We see that Emma has the puzzle box. As she plays with the box, Steven suddenly appears, more or less alive.

The phones are dead, and now all of a sudden, everyone’s cars are gone. The parents think some kind of psycho has followed Steven and has cut the phone lines and stolen the cars. They lock all the doors and plan to run for help in the morning.

Emma continues to play with the box, which escalates the weirdness inside the house. When the lights come back on, Steven is gone again. They soon find him outside, “They’re coming. The vagrant called them Cenobites.”

We get another flashback to Mexico, where the boys talk about not getting caught for the hooker’s murder. A vagrant comes over and offers them a puzzle cube; “It’s experience. A form of ultimate arousal.” He gives the box to Nico. Not long after, Nico opens the box and all Hell breaks loose. Pinhead comes and takes Nico away.

Steven hires a hooker and kills her as well, thinking it will help Nico. Her blood brings Nico partially back, but he needs much more.

Back in the present, Steven flashes back to having his skin peeled off. Steven wakes up and makes a move on his own sister before kissing her.

The vagrant shows up outside. “He’s here. The one who escaped. They will have him again.” Peter shoots the guy, but the vagrant then slices up Peter’s face, killing him. Steven then shoots Ross. “This isn’t you talking,” says Ross.

Flashback to Mexico again as Steven hires and starts to kill another hooker. He stops halfway through when he sees she has a baby. Nico comes in and argues with Steven, who finishes the job. Nico wants one more, a man, so he can wear his skin. Steven refuses, so Nico kills him and takes his skin. This has been Nico in the house with his parents all along!

After much monologuing from Steven-skin-Nico, Emma brings him the box. She stabs him as well, but he still forces her to open the box.

Pinhead and the other Cenobites, including Steven as an apprentice Nailhead, come for Nico. Pinhead only wants one thing, and that’s Nico. When Ross shoots Nico, Pinhead needs someone as payment, so he tears Sarah apart. Then they send Emma home with Ross, who dies. Emma looks at the box, maybe she’ll try again.

Brian’s Commentary

This is the first film where Pinhead isn’t played by Doug Bradley. Stephen Smith Collins isn’t a great substitute. Clive Barker refused to have anything at all to do with the film in a very clear way. That said, at least it is clearly a Hellraiser story, unlike a lot of the past half-dozen films in the series. Despite Barker’s opinion, this is not the worst of the series.

Kevin’s Commentary

After the previous sequels, I was bracing myself for the worst. I was pleasantly surprised to find this one wasn’t too bad. It’s not great, certainly not up to par with the first two movies, but it does have some of the elements from them. Trivia says it was a rush job thrown together so the company could maintain their rights. I’d call it watchable with no regret, having seen it.

2005 House of Wax

* Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

* Written by Charles Belden, Chad Hayes, Carey W. Hayes

* Stars Chad Michael Murray, Paris Hilton, Elisha Cuthbert

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 53 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a remake, in name only, of the 1953 original. That said, though, this had a good script, actors who knew what to do with it, good direction, and excellent special effects. Plus top-notch death scenes. It’s a good one to go into blind if you can. We thought it was very entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 1974, and we watch as someone fills a mask mold with melted wax as their child calmly eats cereal. The other child comes in, and he’s an out-of-control monster who has to be tied and duct-taped to the high chair. That kid ain’t normal. Credits roll.

In the present day, Carly and Paige talk about starting their internships after their trip, as Wade shows up. Blake finds a shortcut on the GPS for their planned road trip. Nick and Dalton are also going, but no one really wants them to.

Halfway through the shortcut, there’s a detour, and they all decide to pull over for a nap. Nick is just out of jail, and he blames Carly and Wade for ratting him out. Nick and Carly are twins, and they clearly don’t like each other much. The wind kicks up, and there’s a terrible stench coming from the woods.

A truck stops nearby, just sitting there with the headlights on high, shining at them. Nick throws a bottle at it, smashing one of the headlights. The truck backs up and drives away. After the group goes to sleep, Carly hears someone skulking around outside in the darkness.

In the morning, they all pack up, but Dalton seems to have lost his camera. When they look to see where that smell is coming from, they find a huge pit full of dead animals and at least one person. The group watches as a roadkill collector dumps carcasses from his truck. The hand in the pile is just part of a mannequin.

Also, the belt on Wade’s car has broken - probably sabotaged though they don’t realize that. Wade and Carly go with the roadkill guy to the gas station for a replacement belt to fix Wade’s car. The driver is creepy, has a big knife, and the window won’t open. It’s tense, but he turns out to be okay. The road’s washed out, so they walk the rest of the way to town.

Blake, Paige, Dalton, and Nick get stuck in traffic in the big city; they’re gonna miss the big game, so they turn around and head to where Carly is.

Wade and Carly make it into the little town of Ambrose, but there’s no one on the streets. But there are puppies in a shop window, and they see a lady peek out through some upstairs curtains. They go into the church, and there’s a funeral in progress. They exit quickly. Bo angrily comes out. He runs the gas station. The funeral’s gonna be going on for a while, so they decide to visit the big house of wax they walked past earlier.

Wade notices that “The House of Wax” is literally covered in wax on the outside. It’s closed, but they go inside anyway. The floor and walls are made of wax, as well as almost everything else. The place is dusty and old, but it’s got lots of cool things to see. Carly gets skeeved out, and they go back to the gas station. Carly tells Wade about her being the good twin while Nick was the “vile one.”

Bo returns and invites them to his house to pick up the fan belt. Bo talks about Trudy, who used to be the main artist there. Vincent was Trudy’s son. Dr. Sinclair was Trudy’s husband, a doctor who did bad things. She went crazy, Sinclair killed himself, and their two sons went to foster homes.

Wade soon comes to the conclusion that Bo is one of Trudy’s sons, just before the power goes out and someone attacks him. Bo chases Carly around outside, and she runs back toward town. In the center of town, all the lights come on and there are city noises, but nothing at all is moving.

Vincent drags Wade into his workroom and starts cleaning him up and sewing the hole shut, and waxing all his hair off. Wade is put into a “wax shower” that coats him completely.

Carly runs back to the church and sees that all the parishioners are wax figures, the priest included. It’s Trudy Sinclair’s funeral, and it appears to have been going on for a long time. Bo comes in to talk to his Momma and looks around for Carly, and soon catches her. He straps her to a chair and superglues her mouth shut.

Nick and Dalton arrive in town. Carly yells after getting her lips apart, and Nick comes downstairs and releases her; he knows about Bo now. Dalton goes to the wax museum and finds the very immobilized, yet still alive, Wade. There’s not much skin left under the wax. Vincent shows up and chases Dalton toward the basement workroom before beheading him.

Carly and Nick go to the woman peeking out of the curtain, but that’s just an animatronic wax figure. So are the puppies.

Meanwhile, Paige and Blake have sex in their tent out in the woods. Blake stops to check his phone messages and hears bad news from Carly. Vincent shows up and kills Blake, but Paige runs and hides, but not long enough, so he gets her as well.

Nick and Carly run to the movie theater, which is showing “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.” Inside, they turn the tables and finally kill Bo. Wade and Dalton had the car keys, so the pair decide they have to go back inside the house of wax to find them.

Carly finds a news clipping talking about how Bo and Vincent were Siamese Twins joined at the head. Dr. Sinclair separated them. Vincent ended up with a half face. And Bo was the violent one. We cut to Bo, not as dead as he appeared. Outside, Vincent drives up with Blake and Paige’s bodies in the back of the truck.

Bo and Vincent talk - well, Bo talks - and they’re clearly in on the plot together.

Nick finds Dalton in the wax machine and pulls his reconnected head off by accident. Vincent shows up, and the three fight as the wax-cooking fire flares up. The fire gets out of control, and since the whole building is made of wax, it starts melting. Carly beats Bo to death with a baseball bat for real this time, and Vincent starts to chase them, but the whole place is falling down around them. After a battle, Vincent is killed too.

Bo and Vincent fall through the floor into the burning basement, and Nick and Carly have to claw their way through the walls as the whole place oozes down around them.

In the morning, the police arrive, and there are wax-covered bodies all over town, so no one doubts the story. The sheriff explains that the town has been deserted for ten years, and most people forgot the place even existed.

We hear over the sheriff’s radio that the Sinclairs didn’t have two sons, they had three. On the way out of town, Carly notices the weird roadkill guy waving to them on the way out.

Brian’s Commentary

“Town of Wax” would be more accurate. This is almost nothing like the original from 1953.

The melting building was really well done, but where would anyone have gotten that much wax? The acting was fine, the characters were distinctive, and it didn’t get boring. The whole idea is a little hard to believe, but overall, it was a fun movie

Kevin’s Commentary

I really enjoyed this one, it was actually the third time I’ve seen it. Even knowing the twists, it’s a fun movie. The whole package - script, cast, effects, direction, all work for me.

Short Films:

2018 Short Film And The Baby Screamed

* Directed by: Dan Gitsham

* Written by: Dan Gitsham

* Stars: Fionn Gill, Lisa Backwell, Otto Gitsham-Mair

* Run Time: 3:27

* Watch it:

What Happens

There’s a baby crying on the baby monitor. The baby is always crying on the monitor, so the parents argue about whose turn it is to check on the screaming. The father does his thing, and it stops for a bit. Not a long bit, as the crying starts again. And again. And again.

The father finally comes up with a solution to get a good night’s sleep. This turns out to be a really bad idea.

Commentary

It’s a simple idea and a simple story, but it’s still very effective. It’s darker than I would have preferred, but it does all take place late at night, so I can deal. For a hair over three minutes, it’s worth taking a look.

2024 Short Film The Night Nurse

* Directed by: Tim Delaney

* Written by: Tim Delaney

* Stars: Francesca Anderson, Rachel Brun, Emily Jon Mitchell

* Run Time: 12:15

* Watch it:

What Happens

Tallulah’s stuck in the nursing home at Christmas time. She looks longingly at all the visitors that other people are getting. A stranger waves at her, and Tallulah ignores her; she’s a little bitter. The nurse comes in and reminds her that the sun lamp will help with her memory. He’s nice, and then he leaves.

Late that night, Tallulah hears something from her neighbor and goes to investigate. She sees that smiling stranger from earlier biting her old neighbor’s neck. Could she be a vampire? Whether she is or not, will anyone believe an old woman with dementia? Would it be a bad thing to have just one visitor?

Commentary

The vampire here is surprisingly convincing… and tempting. She makes a lot of logical sense. This old lady’s not so far gone that she can’t put up a fight, and that’s exactly what happens. I had a very good idea how it would end, as they projected that too early on with the nurse.

I was immediately reminded of “The Rule of Jenny Pen” (2025). Old people in nursing homes are generally not taken very seriously when they complain.

It’s well shot, nicely paced, and I thought it was really good.

2023 Short Film Red Velvet

* Directed by: Blake Simon

* Written by: Blake Simon

* Stars: Austin Lynn Hall, Alisha Erozer

* Run Time: 13:00

* Watch it:

What Happens

Jack practices introducing himself; he’s nervous about asking a girl out. He calls an escort service and orders an escort for his motel room. It’s all very automated, and Cassandra will be joining him shortly. He bumps the radio and overhears people discussing that the end of the world is imminent, like tonight, imminent.

Jack’s already ordered the prostitute, so what’s he gonna do? He turns on the news to verify what he heard, and yeah, that’s all accurate. He looks down at his arm, and he’s already infected with whatever it is– maybe. It messes with your head first.

Cassandra comes to the door, and he lets her in. Could she be infected? It’s all very confusing. She’s good enough at her job to almost make Jack forget what’s happening outside. Almost.

Commentary

I kept wondering all along if he was just imagining it, which is what we’re supposed to be wondering. Right up to the end, we’re never sure. But we do get answers!

This is fun. We get enough information about the situation to make it tense, but then Jack’s got a whole lot of tension even before the story begins, and it only gets worse for him.

2024 Short Film “O”

* Directed by: Dominik Balkow

* Written by: Dominik Balkow

* Stars: Nadine Scheidecker

* Run Time: 14:06

* Watch it:

What Happens

We open on a dried-up, mummified-looking mouth making the “O” face. We zoom into the mouth for our story…

A woman looks into the hole, back out at us, and smiles. We cut away and see that she’s looking through a hole in a brick wall. She stands there watching the hole all day, well into the night, until a stranger bumps into her and breaks her concentration.

That night, she dreams about the moaning hole and goes right back to it, this time, with a flashlight.

What’s in the hole? She reaches in and finds nothing.

Before long, all holes start doing it…

Commentary

I immediately wondered if we were going to get some kind of play on the glory-hole, much like “Glorious” from 2022. It’s not quite that twisted!

It’s black-and-white and very sharp. It looks great, and all along, we’re wondering what’s in there, as does the woman. It’s a fun tale of obsession and compulsion.

It’s very weird!

2022 Short Film Sushi Noh

* Directed by: Jayden Rathsam Hua

* Written by: Jayden Rathsam Hua

* Stars: Felino Dolloso, Geneva Phan, Jodine Muir

* Run Time: 18 Minutes

* Watch it:

What Happens

Ellie dances to the music until her uncle yells at her to turn the music off. He seems grouchy and doesn’t like her noisy toys. He breaks her toys and won’t let her call her parents. He’s stuck babysitting her while the parents are away at a conference. He has someone coming over tonight, so he demands that she keep quiet. He turns on a TV show about making sushi, and it’s very strange.

Uncle Donnie gets one of the sushi-making machines that’s even weirder than the commercial. Uncle Donnie soon has his date, but she clearly doesn’t like him. He offers her sushi, and she doesn’t like it. Turns out, his big date is really just trying to proselytize to him. She talks about visualizing their dreams, and Ellie listens to all of it.

Ellie learns to “Emanate” her desires.

Commentary

“Emanate!!!!”

I may never eat sushi again. That may be the worst date ever.

I guess the moral of the story is don’t abuse your family, or you may wind up the victim of a sushi curse.

This is awesome, both silly and terrifying at the same time.

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This week, we look at all four films in the Netflix series “Fear Street.” The first trilogy came out in 2021, and “Prom Queen” is a new, marginally connected new release. We’ll also watch a cool new indie film, “A Hard Place,” with so many monsters! Oh yeah— shorts have returned. We have four of them for you this week, with more on the way!

“The Horror Guys Guide to the Horror Films of Christopher Lee” is available NOW!

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Mainstream Films:

2021 Fear Street Part One - 1994

* Directed by Leigh Janiak

* Written by R.L. Stine, Kyle Killen, Phil Graziadei

* Stars Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr. 

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 47 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9PuKH4hKSU

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A lot of teenagers in their 20s go through drama, romance and horror as they try to fight a witchy evil that’s been tainting their town for hundreds of years. There are a lot of 1990s references that are hit and miss, but they mostly get the vibe right. It’s well made overall, and there are some good moments, but we found much of it dull and predictable. It’s certainly not the worst thing we’ve seen, but we were pretty lukewarm toward it.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman buys a book at the B. Dalton’s in a mall full of stores, so we know this is the 90s. Heather answers a phone call from Ryan, but the line drops. He gives her a jump scare using a blow-up sex doll, and they get separated again. Suddenly, a man in a skull-faced Halloween costume attacks her with a knife. She runs to another store and calls 911. She whomps him with a lava lamp, but he eventually catches and stabs her. As we hear gunfire, the killer pulls off his mask, and it’s Ryan. As the cop shoots him, both teenagers die in the middle of the food court. 

Credits roll as we hear news reports that Shadyside has all kinds of crazy slashers and murders. 

Deena watches the news as Sheriff Nick talks about all the town’s serial killers. She yells at her little brother Josh about running up the AOL bill with the Internet. He’s in chat rooms on AOL talking about the serial killer and the massacre last night at the mall. 

At school, everyone thinks “The Witch” is back, and that seems to be all anyone talks about. There’s a lot of very typical high school drama as the school has a memorial service for Heather and Ryan. Mayor Goode is there, and he addresses the crowd. Deena runs into her ex, Samantha, and returns a bunch of stuff she borrowed from her. Sheriff Goode talks next, as Deena and Sam argue about Sam moving to Sunnyvale, away from Shadyside. The memorial service soon turns into a big brawl as the two football teams fight. They all seem to attend a school with no adults present, not even a bus driver. 

On the way home, the Sunnyvalers' car attacks the Shadysiders’ bus, and that goes badly. When the car goes off the road, Sam sees something. 

The next night, Deena sees Skullface outside and runs him off, then she goes to her friend Kate’s house. Kate and her brother then tell the story to Josh and Deena. They all assume it’s Peter, Sam’s new boyfriend. They go to the hospital, where Peter has been with Sam all day. As Deena and Sam argue, someone stabs Peter in the back, as this is one of those hospitals without any staff or other patients. 

After much running around and fighting, Deena knocks the killer's mask off, and it’s Ryan– again, even though he’s clearly already been killed. They talk to Sheriff Goode, who doesn’t believe them, since they’re accusing the kid the sheriff killed just last night. On the way out of the police station, Deena shoots a girl who doesn’t die after attacking Simon. 

Josh listens to Simon’s story and recognizes Ruby Lane, a woman who killed her friends and herself thirty years ago in 1965. He has a crazy wall full of old news clippings of slashers and murders in the town. Normal people keep turning into psychos, and it goes all the way back to 1666. Sarah Fier was a witch, and she’s been possessing people to use as killers. 

Sarah remembers seeing the witch in the woods, so the whole group goes out there to look. They find Sarah’s bones and try to bury them to put the witch back to rest. 

They get chased by a man in a scarecrow mask with an axe. The witch is not back at rest. Sam thinks the killers are specifically coming for her. The killers seem to be able to smell Sam’s blood, which is on Simon’s shirt and Deena’s shoe. 

They break into the high school to take clothes from the lost and found. This involves everyone taking off their shirts and getting close as they talk about their feelings. All five of them end up having sex, which is weird when you count the numbers. 

The teens make a big trail of blood to bait the possessed killers, and they soon start showing up. Ruby, the Halloween axe killer, and Skullface are all there. They walk right past the living teens and go after the blood-smeared dummies. The killers get trapped in a restroom and are set on fire. 

The kids soon notice that the killers reassemble themselves from the pieces. Kate wants to give Sam to the monsters so the rest of them can live. Josh remembers that in 1978, the camp massacre had a survivor, so maybe it’s possible to get through this. They call the survivor on the phone, but she’s not home. Turns out, the camper woman died, but was brought back, so that might be the secret. 

Meanwhile, the sheriff, after cleaning up the bodies at the hospital, drops off a note at a house: “It’s happening again.” 

Simon’s brother OD’d, died, and came back, so he thinks he can do that to Samantha on purpose to kill her and bring her back. They all go to the grocery store where Simon works. Sam takes a bunch of pills as Kate, Simon, and Josh fight the monsters. The pills don’t work fast enough, so Deena drowns Sam in the store’s lobster tank. 

Kate gets brutally sliced up, and Simon gets the axe. It’s all looking bad until Sam finally dies in the tank. Deena and Josh work to revive her. They shoot her with about a half-dozen EpiPens (for a drowning?) and soon, Sam is fine again. 

We cut to the sheriff, interviewing Sam, Deena, and Josh, who lie about the whole thing. He blames Kate and Simon, and that’s gonna be the story from here on. Sam’s mother angrily picks her up. 

They get together again that evening, and Deena gets a phone call. “They’re still alive,” it’s the campground survivor. “It’s not over. She makes the rules. The Witch will do whatever it takes.” Yes, Sam is now possessed, and she stabs Deena. Deena and Josh tie up Sam, vowing to get her back. 

Brian’s Commentary

Kevin pointed out immediately that all the teenagers were being played by actors in their upper twenties. Not long after, he was already rooting for everyone to die. Other than the sheriff, there doesn’t appear to be any adults in this town. 

Teen romance and high school rivalries just don’t matter to us anymore, and it’s all very hard to take seriously. There are lots of 90s references here, but a lot of them aren’t really all that accurate. 

I am amazed at the positive reception this got when it came out. We’re both too old to have read either Goosebumps or Fear Street, so there’s no nostalgia there for us. It’s like this was made as a horror movie for people who had never seen a slasher movie before. It’s well made, I guess, but I found it interminably dull, offering exactly nothing new or interesting. 

Kevin’s Commentary

I don’t have much to add that Brian didn’t say already. There were some good moments, like when the undead get blown to slimy bits and reform again, for example, but mostly I was biding my time waiting for it to get over with.

2021 Fear Street Part Two - 1978

* Directed by Leigh Janiak

* Written by Zak Olkewicz, Leigh Janiak, Phil Graziadei

* Stars Sadie Sink, Emily Rudd, Ryan Simpkins

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 49 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR2KSY1fipo

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one has some of the present day from the first movie, but a large chunk of it flashes back to a prequel of things that took place in 1978. It's a slasher at a summer camp kind of story. It takes a little while to get to the good stuff, but it gets going nicely. We thought it was more entertaining than the first one.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get a quick recap of the first film. We then get a news report about the carnage at the mall, hospital, and grocery store. Simon and Kate are getting the blame for all that. 

We cut to C. Berman, who’s clearly very paranoid. She’s got the note the sheriff left her about it happening again. She catches Deena and Josh coming through her kitchen window. They want Berman’s help, and they’ve brought Sam to her. Berman doesn’t want them there, but eventually relents and lets them all in. She tells them the story of the summer of 1978 at the Nightwing Camp in Shadyside. Credits roll. 

It’s the 70s, and a bunch of mean girls tie up Ziggy Berman and torment her. They rope her to the same tree that Sarah Fier was hanged on back in 1666. Sheila grabs a lighter and burns Ziggy on the arm, at least until Nick intervenes. Kurt is the counselor there, and he doesn’t like Ziggy much. We get a camping montage, including all the '70s camp sexy stuff. We meet the various employees of the camp, including young Cindy Berman. 

Ziggy goes to the nurse’s office and finds a book of witchcraft stuff on Nurse Lane’s desk. Nurse Lane is Ruby Lane’s mother, the girl who went crazy and killed eight people. 

Cindy yells at Ziggy, her sister, about not getting kicked out of the camp.  Cindy complained to Tommy about it later. Nurse Lane comes in and tells Tommy that he’s going to die tonight. She attacks him, and they’re both injured– she gets wheeled away in an ambulance. At lunchtime, Ruby Lane, Nurse Lane, and the witch are the subject of all conversations. 

There’s some more Sunnyvale versus Shadyside nonsense. Everyone thinks Shadyside is cursed as the teams play capture the flag. Cindy and Tommy check out the nurse’s office and find the witchcraft book. Alice and Arnie are there as well to steal drugs. They find a map in the book to the witch’s house, and Alice wants to check it out. 

Ziggy and Nick talk about Stephen King books as she mixes blood-colored paint. She knows he’s going to grow up to be the Chief of Police someday, as he’s all straight and uptight, but she’s not. He’s from Sunnyvale, and she’s from Shadyside, so that’s not gonna work. 

Cindy, Tommy, Alice, and Arnie find an old cemetery, where Nurse Lane had been digging up bodies. There’s a whole cellar under one of the graves, lit candles and all. They find Tommy’s name etched in stone under all the other possessed people. Right then, Tommy grabs an axe and kills Arnie before walking back to camp. 

Ziggy and Nick pull a prank on Sheila, dousing her with bugs. Meanwhile, Cindy and Alice argue in the underground tunnel they’re trapped in. They soon find a big lump of flesh that beats like a heart; it’s covered in flies. Alice gets a vision of the witch and freaks out. 

Meanwhile, Tommy gets back to camp and kills a kid. Nick rings the alarm bell and calls everyone together in the cafeteria. Nick and Gary go out to find Cindy’s group, but Nick insists that Ziggy wait with the others. Ziggy remembers Sheila, locked in the room with the bugs, and runs to let her out. 

Tommy kills Kurt’s girlfriend. Cindy and Alice talk about how terrible their lives are. Tommy kills all the kids in the cafeteria. 

Ziggy finds Sheila in the restroom and knocks her out. She hears Cindy yelling from the tunnels under the toilet and works to get her out. That goes really badly when Tommy shows up, and Gary gets the axe. 

Ziggy explains the whole thing to Nick, who doesn’t believe in the witch. When Tommy shows up with his axe, Nick gets chopped in the leg. 

 Ziggy gets back to the main campground just in time to watch the bus pull out with the surviving kids and leave. Ziggy throws a burlap sack over Tommy, which is where “The Halloween Killer” of the first film came from. Ziggy and Cindy double-team him with knives but don’t finish him off. 

Cindy and Ziggy make up for all their arguing. Alice shows up and says she’s found the witch’s hand, which is behind all this. Sarah Fier’s hand is the key to stopping the curse. “The curse will last until body and hand unite,” says Nurse Lane’s book. 

Suddenly, Ziggy bleeds on his hand and gets a vision. Meanwhile, that big pulsing glob in the tunnels forms into a human shape. Upstairs, dead Tommy gets back up. Alice gives a rousing speech just before Tommy cuts her head off. They kill him again, but then they hear Ruby singing, a killer we haven’t really seen yet in this film.  

The two sisters run out to the hanging tree and start burying the hand as the killers start closing in. There’s no body where they expect it to be. They dig up a stone that says, “The witch forever lives.” Tommy kills Cindy while another killer stabs Ziggy a dozen times. 

Everyone dies.

Back in the present, C. Berman talks about how Nick showed up with the two sisters’ dead bodies and revived Ziggy with CPR. Turns out, the survivor is Ziggy, not Cindy. Nick told the EMTs that she was Cindy– for reasons. No one, not even Nick, believes the story about the witch. 

Adult Ziggy tells Deena and Josh that there’s no way to end the curse. Deena knows where Sarah’s body is, and Ziggy knows where the hand is… They go and dig the hand back up, and Ziggy calls Sheriff Nick. 

Deena takes the hand to the woods where they found the body in the previous film. She gets a flashback to her as Sarah Fier…

Brian’s Commentary

It’s a slasher-at-camp movie, but set in the background framework laid down in the first film. This doesn’t rely on the teenage b******t like the first one did, it gets right down to business with bloody, gory killings. Unlike most Friday the 13th films, this one kills kids, so that’s fun. 

It does take a long time to get moving, but it does get there eventually. I was definitely more entertained with this than the first one, although getting the lore of the witch in dribs and drabs is way too slow.  

It was better than the first one. 

Kevin’s Commentary

We should all be glad this wasn’t in smell-o-vision with all the time spent in the cave under the outhouse. I wouldn’t call it great, but it was more entertaining than the first one. It seemed a little too long at times; I felt like it could have been tightened up a little here and there. We get more of the overarching story in addition to it being a self-contained movie of its own. If you liked the first one, you should continue with this.

2021 Fear Street Part Three - 1666

* Directed by Leigh Janiak

* Written by Phil Graziadei, Leigh Janiak, Kate Trefry

* Stars Kiana Madeira, Ashley Zukerman, Gillian Jacobs

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 54 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj3CXY8rKuY

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It suffers from what all three of the films do, a slow start. Using the same cast as ancestor characters in 1666 was an interesting choice that worked. Only the first part is set in the past, and the wrap up back in the modern time of the 1990s was more satisfying. There’s more to like than dislike about it. If you’ve watched the first two, you really need to see this one.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get a recap of the first two films, ending with Deena in the 1600s, in Sarah’s body. Sarah/Deena gets called in by Josh/Henry to help the pig give birth. Henry looks just like Josh from 1994. Credits roll. 

As Sarah/Deena walks through town, we see that all the 1666 villagers look like actors from the previous two films. She stops to talk to Hannah, the pastor’s daughter, who looks like Samantha. Thomas is the town lunatic. Sarah takes a baby pig to Solomon, who looks like Nick from the future; they’re engaged. 

Sarah, Hannah, and Lizzie go to see The Widow in the woods, and Sarah finds the old woman’s book of spells. They soon get thrown out, and instead, they eat berries by the fire before making out with each other. 

In the morning, Hannah tells Sarah that her father’s lost his mind. Something may have possessed him. Hannah’s mother suspects that Sarah and Hannah have been wicked together, and they might get blamed for her father’s insanity. Sarah’s indiscretions get spread all over town. 

Henry reports that the mother pig has eaten all her babies, so Sarah kills it with an axe. When the well gets contaminated, everyone starts looking for a witch. Sarah and Solomon talk about how she didn’t invite the devil to town. 

Suddenly, there’s a scream. The pastor has gone crazy and locked all the children, including Henry, inside the church with him. Solomon breaks down the door and finds all the children dead. Thomas continues to scream that it’s all witchcraft. Hannah and Sarah’s fooling around comes up again; everyone saw them making out. 

Sarah runs off into the woods as the villagers search. Hannah is caught and chained up in the barn. Everyone thinks they summoned the witch, so why not make it true? Sarah wants to make a deal with the devil to save them both. Sarah runs to the Widow’s house and finds her dead. 

Sarah hides in the basement of Solomon’s house and finds a whole stone pentagram set up. Turns out, he’s the one who’s been doing the black magic all along. The two soon get into a physical fight, and she stabs him. He chases her toward that big throbbing thing in the tunnels, which was there already in 1666. 

Solemn catches Sarah and cuts her hand off. He catches up and turns her over to the villagers, claiming she’s the witch. They’re taken out to the hanging tree and ordered to confess. Sarah confesses to being a witch, taking the blame off Hannah. 

As Solomon chains her up for the hanging, she curses him and his whole family. They hang her and bury her there under the tree. 

Later, her friends moved the body out to the woods in a secret grave. We see how the curse has affected the people in 1978, 1994, and other times. 

Back in 1994, Deena wakes up, having buried Sarah’s hand with the body. Nick Goode, Solomon’s descendant, arrives on the scene. Deena tells Josh that Nick is the real bad guy here. “Goode is evil,” she explains; Sarah was never really a witch. We get flashes of the modern Nick Goode doing a ritual to add names to the Devil’s list. It keeps their family on top in the town of Sunnyvale. 

We cut to the cellar-blob, which is now spawning bad things. Deena and Josh go back to Ziggy’s place, where Sam is still tied up. They tell her the whole story about evil Nick, who knew the truth all along. They can’t kill the devil, but they can kill Nick. 

The group enlists Martin, the mall’s janitor, to help them. They plan to lure the possessed monsters into the mall and lock them behind the security gates. They use Deena’s blood to lure the monsters to the mall as they do a “preparing for battle” montage with a lot of black-light spray paint.

The deputies show up and arrest everyone, until the undead murder monsters show up and kill both cops. Skullface, the Halloween killer, The Milkman, and some others walk right into the stores and get trapped as planned. 

Sheriff Goode arrives on the scene, and he knows that they know what’s been going on. He arrives and faces off with Ziggy, whom he saved all those years ago. They douse him with Deanna’s blood and then release the monsters. 

Nick gets stabbed but runs away. Deena follows him down into the tunnels that seem to be under the whole town. Josh, Ziggy, and Martin shoot the monsters with Deena’s blood, and they kill each other, but they also know that’s not going to last since they keep regenerating. Sam escapes and follows Deena into the tunnels. 

Nick and Deena come to the pulsing blob. Upstairs, Ruby and the masked child show up, and Josh uses the axe on them– the dead monsters start to reawaken. 

Nick stabs Deena, but she makes him touch the blob, which is really distracting for him. Deena stabs him in the eye, and all the monsters upstairs vanish at the same time. The evil blob melts into a puddle.  

Deena helps Sam up; she’s gonna be fine now. They walk out through Nick’s living room, past a poster of his many-branched family tree. As they go outside, a garbage truck rams a car on the street; Sunnyvale isn’t so perfect anymore…

We get a few minutes of the characters tying up loose ends. 

Brian’s Commentary

Using the same actors to play characters in different time periods was stolen straight outta “Dark Shadows” (1966), but we don’t see that happen very often, so we’ll call it a good feature here. 

All three of these films take entirely too long to get to the meat. They’re really slow for the first 45 minutes, and that’s true for all three. Each part feels like it’s been stretched out for maybe 30 minutes extra for some reason. 

Still, it ended well, although the first half, from 1666, took way too long. 

Kevin’s Commentary

I’m going to go with the second half of this one, back in 1994, as the best segment of all three movies. I thought the wrap-up, bringing it all together, was satisfying. My biggest complaint would be it is a bit too stretched out. I wouldn’t call the whole trilogy great, but I didn’t hate it, and there were many entertaining bits.

2025 Fear Street: Prom Queen

* Directed by Matt Palmer

* Written by Matt Palmer, Donal McLeary, R.L. Stine

* Stars India Fowler, Suzanna Son, Fia Strazza

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYbnjaK5nsI

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was too heavy on teen and high school drama, but it still manages to be pretty entertaining. It doesn’t drag, and the kills are well done. It takes place in the same town as the starting trilogy, but it’s a story of its own, not connected directly to those events. We liked it quite a bit.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re back at Shadyside High School in 1988. It’s two days before Senior Prom, and six students are running for Prom Queen. Tiffany, the mean girl, Christie, the weed dealer, Linda, the smart one, Debbie, the gossip, and Melissa, the lap dog, and the final candidate is the unpopular Lori Granger. Her best friend is Megan, who thinks prom is lame. Lori’s mother may or may not have stabbed her father in the eye. 

One day, in class, Megan stands up and cuts off her own hand. One kid pukes. It’s all just a prank, and she gets sent to the principal’s office. Lori talks to Tyler, and we get lots of teen angst and drama. 

That night, Christie walks home in the dark when someone in a shiny red raincoat kills her with an axe. The next day, due to her absence, she’s disqualified from running for Prom Queen. Vice Principal Brekenridge wants Lori to win justice for how her mother was treated. 

It’s time for the prom, and everyone gets ready. Lori’s mother talks about her experience at her prom, where she killed Lori’s father. The principal calls all the contestants up onto the stage, and the other four girls do a sexy swimsuit dance, leaving Lori out, completely unaware they were going to do that. 

Linda and her boyfriend talk about what it takes to win and notice that all her flyers have been defaced. The red raincoat killer is there, and he disarms Dan before killing them both.

Debbie and Judd go to the basement to kiss, but they aren’t alone. Raincoat takes them both out with a rotary saw. 

Lori is told that she’s got a delivery in the front office. Tiffany picks on Lori about her father’s death. She’s so mean that even Melissa is sickened. Tiffany then turns on Melissa. 

As Lori and Tiffany have a “dance off,” the killer gets Melissa in the restroom. Except we see that there are two identical killers now. 

Tyler is also turning against Tiffany; he’s always liked Lori, and he sees that now. Megan notices that all the prom candidates except Lori and Tiffany have gone missing. She tells Lori, who doesn’t believe any of it. 

Lori and Tyler go off alone, but he doesn’t live long after that– Lori runs away. Megan investigates the basement and finds bodies. The two meet up, but they’re locked in the basement with the killer. Lora manages to stab the killer as they climb out a window and make it back to the auditorium. 

The votes have been counted, and the results are in. Lori wins! 

As she accepts, the killer comes into the auditorium and starts ax-killing people. Lori stabs the killer in the head with her tiara. The killer takes his mask off, and it’s Dan, Tiffany’s father. The prom breaks up as the confusion clears. [We remember that there were two killers at one point].

Lori and Megan make up after their argument. Megan goes off with the ambulance, leaving Lori at the school. The police need to question Tiffany’s mother, so Lori offers to drive home with Tiffany, who’s in shock. Lori stays with her until Nancy, Tiffany’s mother, comes home. Nancy has a knife, so now we know who the second killer was. Both girls hide in the closet and wait. 

In the closet, Tiffany pulls out a knife and tries to stab Lori. She runs right into the mother, who cuts her. Tiffany and Nancy are just as crazy as Dan was. Nancy admits that it was she who killed Lori’s father. Right after that, things go badly for Tiffany. Lori then brains Nancy with a bowling trophy and walks out, leaving her to die. 

Brian’s Commentary

The weakest point of the first film was all the high school nonsense and teen drama, and this one doubled down on that. Everything revolves around the vote for Prom Queen, but it’s all just one good girl against the mean girls, with a bunch of other stereotypes in-between, so we pretty much know how it’s going to end. This isn’t “Carrie,” but it’s trying to be. 

The kills are good, and it never gets boring. I had a theory about halfway through about who the killer was, but I was wrong about that. 

On the other hand, it may have the best soundtrack of any movie ever. 

Kevin’s Commentary

Yeah, there was a little too much teen drama from people in their twenties. But it was a pretty entertaining movie overall. It moved along better than the first trilogy did - the short run time helped this one a lot. I’d give it a thumbs up.

2025 A Hard Place

* Directed by J. Horton

* Written by Michael J. Epstein, J. Horton

* Stars Felissa Rose, Lynn Lowry, Rachel Amanda Bryant

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNYvXsHOkK0

* Watch it now: https://amzn.to/4dAmaDv

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When criminals on the run seek refuge at a big old farm, it seems like a good idea at first. What’s worse than getting trapped in a place with monsters? Well, you should watch this to find out rather than spoiling it here. It’s decent all around, with good effects and an entertaining script. We give it a thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman hides as zombies eat people. Zuri’s a fighter, and she helps the others kill zombies. We cut back and see that it’s really two people watching a zombie movie at the drive-in. 

Inside the drive-in’s office, a group of criminals hold the place up and shoot the woman running the place. The couple watching the movie is involved, and soon, everyone is in a shootout. As the crooks drive away with what they came for, they argue about whether or not they should have killed anyone. Zenia says they need to lay low, and she knows just the place… Credits roll. 

The six criminals arrive at an isolated farm in the snowy hills. We very quickly see that there’s something not right with the local plants. Something in the woods gets Zenia from behind. It gets Stevie as well; it’s some kind of plant-covered person. 

Some hunters rescue Zenia from the plant-zombie. They soon run into a larger group of hunters. 

Meanwhile, in the barn, the rest of the gang run into two of the creatures; now they all know what the score is. Naja, the woman who was there first, calls them “Guardians” and says they need to wait for nightfall. The only way out of the barn is through a dark underground tunnel. Somehow, Naja and Fish get separated, but the rest join the hunters. 

We stop for a heartwarming story about a pet monkey and a twisted grandmother. Until the group is attacked again. They all go to the hunters’ home, where Mother Henrietta explains about their longstanding feud with the plant-monsters. 

Fish learns that Naja’s gunshot wound is completely gone; is she infected with whatever made the Guardians? 

At Henrietta’s house, some of the guys watch that same zombie movie from the drive-in. They all have something really big planned for tomorrow morning. They laugh about “Odie playing with her food again,” as the girl turns into a creature and attacks one of the visitors. 

The family explains that they’re Caretakers of the place, and the moon brings out the worst in them - when they want it to. “Remember what Ma said, no one changes all the way before supper!” As the robbers figure out that they’re surrounded by monsters inside and out, you might say they’re stuck between a rock and… you get it. 

Naja and Fish find their way to the house, and they all sit down to dinner. Zenia comes in– she knew exactly what she was doing when she brought her friends here. Henrietta stands up and tells the story of the Guardians and the Caretakers. They started interbreeding, and that went badly. Zenia laments that she hasn’t been turned and the years are adding up for her. 

Tomorrow’s going to be a solar eclipse, and the monsters that roam the night and the day can come together in a huge battle. Then the whole family starts to turn into demonic lizard-like creatures (not werewolves). One of them knocks out Fish, who wakes up in front of a TV showing a documentary about “How Babies Are Made.” Yes, the visitors are going to be kept for breeding stock.  

Morning comes, and it’s time for the big battle. Henrietta gives a “going into battle” speech. The Guardians come, and a lot of them die, but they run the family back into hiding. Suddenly, the sun goes into eclipse, and it gets dark, much to the plant-creatures’ annoyance. The family turns into monsters and the fight is a little more equal now. 

Zenia, who isn’t a monster, comes into the barn and apologizes for tricking them. She lets them out. Henrietta promised to “turn” her if she brought them more breeders. Fish and Naja say goodbye as the normal humans sneak off in the middle of the battle. 

With the eclipse now over, the family turns back to humans and the leader of the Guardians kills Henrietta. Zenia and Naja talk to the plant leader and beg for peace. 

Zenia and the family set up a trap in a barn and lure all the Guardians inside before blowing it sky-high. The three human survivors run toward the road, but then meet Naja and her allies, who let them go. Naja promises to keep fighting them, even though she doesn’t remember why. 

Candy shoots Hurt in the back and is then shot in turn by Fish, the only one to drive away with all the loot. 

Brian’s Commentary

This was filmed mostly in Ohio, and I recognized the Dixie Twin Drive-In from the movie’s opening right away. 

Like many of the indie films we’ve looked at recently, this suffers from a cast that’s too large. Henrietta’s “family” is like twenty people, and they all seem to get a line, for better or worse. I guess that’s one of the unfortunate side effects of crowdfunding. 

The monsters are what you get when told, “We have cordyceps at home.” Actually, for a low-budget indie film, the plant-creatures are pretty well done. There are a lot of them, and they have a good variety. The fight scenes are well-choreographed and don’t go on for too long. I loved the monkey story, it was so completely unnecessary but yet still just perfect; there was a lot of good humor here. 

Overall, I liked it– it was entertaining throughout. 

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought it took a while to come into focus, but once they got to the farm, I was fully on board. The effects were pretty cool, lots of good gore and creatures. Brian has a point about the cast being cumbersome, but that did allow for a lot of redshirts to meet gruesome deaths. I’m glad I got to see it.

Short Films:

2025 Short Film: Mugs

* Directed by David Padilla, Samuel De Angelis

* Stars Carlo Marks, Jean Rosolino, Robert Sutton, Danilo Vargas Jr. 

* Run Time: 7:52

* Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGqkyg7zcJs

What Happens

Alex returns home to his family after at least a year; his parents are having troubles. He arrives, and his mother starts talking about nightmares. His mother makes coffee but can’t find the mugs for some reason. Alex quickly figures out that his mother is in the early stages of dementia. Or maybe further along than that. And where is Alex’s father, anyway?

Commentary

Apparently, George really likes his coffee. I like coffee, could I have some coffee, too?

It looks great, very well shot, well lit, and done well overall. I don’t think there are too many surprises here, other than the general situation, but it’s one horror that’s all too common in real life.

2024 Short Film: Double Vision

* Directed by Isabelle Kiser

* Written by Isabelle Kiser

* Stars Isabelle Kiser

* Run Time: 5:02

* Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFYDiMe8wSo

What Happens

A girl reads a creepy news story on the walk home in the dark. She sees someone strange standing next to a car, but when she looks again, there’s no one there. When she gets home, she’s careful to lock the front door. We soon see that she’s not as alone as she thinks…

Commentary

Seeing something like that at the top of your steps, why would you turn the light out? 

Isabelle Kiser wrote, filmed, acted, and did everything else here, and she did a great job. It’s short, and there’s no dialogue, but it all looks great and is nicely paced. 

2024 Short Film: Portrait of Fear

* Directed by Parker Viale

* Written by Parker Viale

* Stars Lainy Larsen, Vivian Amirault, Joaquin Hinkens

* Run Time: 8:46

* Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpXtToQXmsA

What Happens

A woman’s sister has died suddenly, and she decides to leave. She starts packing her things, and the memories come back to her. Exhausted, she finally goes to bed at 3:13 a.m. Just as she turns out the light, she hears the bedroom door close. 

The photo of Emily has gone blank. What could that mean? Nothing good.

Commentary

I liked the messages scrawled on what used to be the photo. 

This is really nicely done for what appears to be no real budget. It’s all shot in someone’s house, but it’s all very well-lit and clear what’s going on at all times. It starts out slow, but the tension ratchets up consistently up to the end. 

Very nice!

2015 Short Film: Room 88

* Directed by Mike Booth

* Written by Mike Booth

* Stars John MacCormick, Gary Taylor, Blake Barbiche

* Run Time: 8:47

* Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tLNEeraSfc

What Happens

There’s a knock on the door of room 88; the neighbor wants to know what he’s doing in there to make the lights keep flickering. The neighbor says he’s going to complain. 

Inside the room, the scientist looks at a small device he’s made. “It’s time,” he says as he activates the device and laughs maniacally. The lights do, indeed, flicker, and then go out. It’s still not working. 

Will he ever get it right? Apparently so. 

Commentary

This is the problem with the idea of time travellers; interesting events would be full of people who traveled there to see it. 

It’s got a very retro look, and the added annoyance of the busybody neighbor really makes it fun. It’s a simple idea executed really well, and it’s fun to boot!

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites: https://www.horrorguys.com / https://www.horrorweekly.com / https://www.horrormonthly.com

A weird mix for you this time around. We've got an updated version of Ultraman with "Shin Ultraman," along with another old Godzilla film, "Godzilla vs Megalon." We meet up with "Jack Brooks, Monster Slayer," and then learn about cryptid hunters with "Kryptik" before meeting a weird family in "Bloody Axe Wound."

Check out our selection of short horror biographies: 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

Mainstream Films:

2024 Kryptik

* Directed by Kourtney Roy

* Written by Paul Bromley

* Stars Chloe Pirrie, Jeff Gladstone, Jason Deline

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

What seems to start out as a simple cryptid-in-the-woods story that steadily gets more complicated as a curious woman, who seems to have amnesia, retraces the steps of a missing cryptid hunter. Full of strange and interesting characters and things that make you wonder what's going on, it's a good one that keeps you involved right to the end with an ambiguous wrap up. We both liked it, but it might not be for everyone.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman drives through the forest to a very isolated place. She eventually arrives with a group -- the women's walking club on Krypto Peak. Kay has joined the group, hoping to make some friends, but she sits alone and ignores everyone else. The tour guide tells them about Barb Valentine, a local cryptozoologist who went missing a while back. He explains what cryptids are. She was here for the Sooka, a tall, hairy creature, something like Bigfoot with a mole face.

Kay soon wanders off alone and encounters the creature, even getting it on video. She runs to the nearest campground as the tour group wonders what happened to her. She sneaks back among the group and pretends that she was with them all along. She's... odd. When she gets back to her car, she checks her driver's license and sees that it says, "Kay Hall." She acts surprised.

She goes home and goes through the whole house, looking to see if she's alone. In the morning, she goes through all her clothes and continues to explore the place. She eventually looks through her video camera at the footage but gets interrupted by the phone. It's Don, her boss, who wants her to come in this afternoon. She gets there but decides not to stay when she finds out she works in a vet office.

At home again, she starts researching Barb Valentine, and the photo shown is... her. Suddenly, someone breaks into her house; she runs to the car and drives away. She wakes up at 3:15 the next day parked out in the woods, and her legs are covered in mud. She drives to Blue Cliff, the last known place where Barb was supposed to have visited as she listens to a podcast about Sooka in the car.

Kay talks to Sally, the woman who runs the motel, about Barb. "Oh yes! The monster hunter! It's terrible that all the people are going missing around here. It's like the forest swallows them up." That night, she watches a video of Barb's last interview, and Barb looks exactly like her.

In the morning, Sally isn't around. Kay drives on to the next location that Barb was supposed to have visited and goes into the woods. She soon runs into a hairy monster... no, it's Starla, a hunter in a camo outfit. Kay goes home with the strange woman, who takes her home and pulls out a scrapbook about Sooka. Starla's daughter, Diane, was taken by the Sooka ten years ago. Kay shows Starla her video and talks about forgetting who she is. Then Kay passes out.

When she wakes up, Kay is alone, and her feet are dirty. But she does run into another woman who gives her directions and suddenly vanishes. She sees a "Missing" poster for Diane later, and it's the woman from the woods.

Kay watches videos about Morgan, Barb's husband, who is desperately trying to find her. She goes to a bar and talks to a former magician who's just a full-time drunk now. The drunk gives her another lead on the Sooka. Kay starts seeing things; maybe she's the monster after all.

She drives to the next place and talks to Johnette, who is supposed to have seen the creature. Inside, she sees a book that Barb wrote, and it's got a business card inside. Johnette thinks she looks like one of those monster hunters who used to come around. The Sooka tried to break into her trailer a while back, and she describes the creature.

Johnette invites her to the big trailer park party tonight. An old man there talks about the Sooka travelling through portals to get around. Another woman there talks about sleepwalking and waking up covered in mud. Sasha recognizes who she really is and asks what happened. "People like us got to stick together." She gets really high and goes off with Caleb, Johnette's boyfriend, and they do naughty, possibly inhuman, things in the woods.

Kay/Barb walks home to Morgan, who is shocked to see her. She stinks, so he cleans her up and wonders why she doesn't speak much. He seems a little off as well, both weird and creepy. Morgan dresses her up and gets her to work in the yard doing gardening.

She eventually starts to talk, and it's clear that she ran away from him because he was so controlling and mean and pretty strange. He talks about the fantasy stuff causing her last "episode," and we're not quite sure who to believe. Later, he tries to have sex with her, and they both get really weird.

Barb goes into her desk and pulls out a bunch of news articles about Kay Hall, who has gone missing. She and Morgan argue again, and this time, she hits him with her car before finishing him off. She drives off, leaving him to die on the floor.

She drives back to her "Kay" house and goes inside. She breaks in through a window, and we hear past-Kay downstairs running away and driving off. She gets back in the car and drives off to the hiking trail where the film began. She goes off-trail, just like before, and leaves her hoodie and flowers right where we saw them earlier.

Then she sees a bright light in the woods...

Brian's Commentary

Most of the film is one of those "what is going on" plots. It's well acted, looks good, doesn't get boring at any point, and has lots of interesting characters.

So what was going on? There was something to do with time portals, that much is clear. We repeatedly get monstrous, slimy flashbacks, especially when anything approaches being a sex scene.

I have no idea. It was entertaining and weird, but I'm not gonna pretend to understand this one. Do I recommend it? Depends on if you need answers or not.

Kevin's Commentary

I'm going to go on the side of liking it. Things weren't super clear, and it was very strange, but it kept me engrossed throughout. I'd give it a thumbs up.

2007 Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer

* Directed by Jon Knautz

* Written by Jon Knautz, Trevor Matthews, Patrick White

* Stars Robert Englund, Trevor Matthews, Daniel Kash

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3H1KTEp

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The script is a little on the predictable side as things unfold, but it's well written and the two leads do a fine job, as well as the supporting cast. All the effects are practical without CGI, which gives it a throwback vibe at times. With a nice blend of horror with some humor. We liked it quite a bit.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a battle in the jungle, with a bunch of natives fighting a crazy one-eyed lizard man. There's over the top panic in the village. Inside the tent, we don't see the face of a monster slayer who prepares for battle. Credits roll.

We cut to young Jack, who was always in trouble for his aggressive behavior. He had some crazy anger issues. Before that, he was a normal kid who went camping with his family-- until a monster ate them all. Today, he's in therapy with Counselor Silverstein. Jack is... messed up.

Jack goes to night school, where Professor Crowley teaches Chemistry. The old teacher explains sodium to the class and makes a little explosion. Jack and Eve are a couple, but she's also into another guy in the class. Jack's a plumber, and Crowley wants some help with his pipes later.

Later, Jack goes to the professor's messy old house to work on the pipes. The house has some history, and Crowley bought it cheap. Jack gets to work, and he's really bad at his job, which leads to a Hell portal opening up in the backyard. Later still, smoke comes out of the Hell Portal and possesses Professor Crowley, whose eyes turn black.

The next day, Jack talks to Silverstein about Eve. Jack needs to find some way to relax. Crowley wakes up outside and finds that he's been digging. He digs more and uncovers a big wooden crate that he takes inside. The box contains a skeleton and a heart that still beats. Crowley then eats the heart, which is never a good thing.

At the hardware store, Jack talks to old Howard, who orders a part to fix Crowley's pipes. He knows about that house, "The place is cursed." He's got a whole story about his uncle Emmet, who used to live in that house. He bought the black heart of a demon, but it took over Emmet, who started acting strangely. This all culminated in young Howard shooting Emmet and burying him in the backyard.

That evening, everyone goes to Chemistry class, and Crowley comes in, filthy, belching, and not at all himself. He dismisses class and goes home. Crowley soon finds that he's growing tentacles and cuts one off, which is messy. Then he eats his dog.

In class the next night, Crowley is a lot worse. He suddenly falls down and sprouts many long tentacles which chase the students down the corridors. The professor then turns into a big rubbery puppet and starts converting the students into zombie-minions.

Jack, Eve, and another girl hide in one of the classrooms. One of the demons comes in and eats the other girl. It's very quickly down to Jack and Eve against the monsters. They get to the car and away, but then Jack decides to dump obnoxious Eve and go back to fight.

Jack goes inside, armed only with a pipe. After a quick battle, he kills two former students and moves on to the big monster, who is still converting people. Eventually, Jack uses the sodium to blow up the monster, but of course, it's still not dead. He finishes the job and rescues some survivors, and gets a kiss from a woman he's attracted to.

Jack learns that he felt better after killing monsters, and then he decided to go after the one who killed his parents. After that, he travelled around the world killing monsters everywhere.

We flash back to the opening scene of the jungle and lizard monster. That actually takes place after the main events of the movie. Jack's ready to fight now...

Brian's Commentary

There's no CGI at all in the film, all the effects are practical. The individual humanoid monsters are all really well done, but the big Professor monster was just ridiculous.

It's predictable, but well done. It's not quite a comedy, but it's got lots of silly bits. It's pretty good.

Kevin's Commentary

I thought this had a good balance of humor and horror, and I really liked the job the two leads did. I'd seen this previously right after it came out, and I recently purchased it on blu-ray - so that's a testimonial to how much I like it.

1973 Godzilla vs Megalon

* Directed by Jun Fukuda, Yoshimitsu Banno, Ishiro Honda

* Written by Jun Fukuda, Tekashi Kimura, Shin'ichi Sekizawa

* Stars Katsuhiko Sasaki, Hiroyuki Kawase, Yutaka Hayashi

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 18 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one has an interesting start, with a futuristic 1970s sort of world. The beginning is the most entertaining part, with surface people versus an undersea empire. This time around, Godzilla has an ally in a humanoid robot Jet Jaguar that can enlarge to his size. Once the big creature battles start, there is quite a bit of reused model footage we've seen before, and the guys in rubber suits fight to the point of tedium that goes on too long. We didn't enjoy this one as much as some of the others.

Spoilery Synopsis

A narrator talks about an underground nuclear test that went very badly. They felt the impact as far away as Monster Island, and we see the monsters there upset at the yellow smoke. Credits roll.

We cut to a child riding a paddleboat in a lake. Goro is on the shore taking pictures of Rokuro, his little brother, and hanging out with friend Hiroshi. There's a sudden earthquake, and the lake starts smoking and bubbling. Goro shoots a rope out and pulls the little boy back in before it's too late. The three make it to safety just as a whirlpool swallows the paddleboat.

Soon, the lake is gone. It's all drained into a sinkhole that just formed on the bottom. On the drive home, they hear about more fissures opening, and the radio blames it on the nuclear test. They talk about Lemuria and Mu, great cities that sank after earthquakes buried them in the sea.

When Goro and Rokuro get home, they find men inside who beat them up. Hiroshi comes in just in time to save them. After they recover we see that Goro is an inventor of the science-fiction variety. The place is a mess, but they didn't take anything. Meanwhile, Hiroshi chases the bad guys in his dune buggy. They drop a fire bomb out of the car, and get away.

They do find some strange red sand on the floor of the house. After some testing, they find that it's from a very far off island in the Pacific.

Goro is working on a robot, and he's finally finished it. The bad guys kidnap Rokuro and make him open the door to Goro's lab.

These two baddies are agents from the hidden underwater land of Seatopia, and they want the robot. We cut to Seatopia, where there's a whole ritualistic dance thing going on. The Emperor of Seatopia says the men above have declared war by blowing up their northern province with their nuclear tests. They call upon their monster, Megalon, to destroy the surface dwellers.

Megalon is a giant monster with metal claws, wings, and some kind of electrified horns that glow. The agents program the robot, who also flies, to assist Megalon in his task by guiding him.

Hiroshi is tied to a chair in the robotics lab as the agents explain everything to him. Goro and Rokuro are tied up in a container that's headed to Seatopia. Hiroshi escapes and chases after Goro and his brother. This soon turns into a car chase down a mountainside. He loses them.

Megalon finally arises from the lake bed, and the agent orders him to attack Tokyo. The robot leads the big monster to the city. The military mobilizes and prepares for the worst.

The hired bad guys are about to dump Goro and Rokuro off a cliff when they see the monster approaching. The monster accidentally frees Goro and Rokuro from the truck before it's too late. They recognize their robot, Jet Jaguar. Goro made a tiny remote control that he can use as long as the robot is in visual range.

The army and Megalon fight, Goro retakes control of the robot and tells him to fly to Monster Island and get Godzilla. The Emperor of Seatopia calls Nebula M and requests help from Gigan as a backup.

Jet Jaguar reaches Monster Island quickly and signals to Godzilla, who understands him completely. Meanwhile, Megalon is flattening Tokyo.

Jet Jaguar stops taking orders from anybody; he's on his own now. He confronts Megalon, and we see that he can grow huge himself (his determination makes him big). Now an equal, he and the monster fight.

Gigan arrives, teaming up with Megalon to beat the robot. That goes badly for Jet Jaguar until Godzilla finally arrives. Soon, it's a four-way battle between the kaijus and the giant robot. There is a great deal of roaring, wrestling, and throwing things away. This goes on for two or three days, or so it seems.

Eventually, after a long battle, the bad monsters are dispatched. Jet Jaguar and Godzilla shake hands, they are besties now. Goro, Rokuro, and Hiroshi wave goodbye to the helpful monster. The robot shrinks down to normal size and goes home with the boys. With his mission accomplished, he's just a mindless robot again-- until next time!

Brian's Commentary

There's a lot of stock footage and reused footage from previous films with the army and evacuation stuff.

There wasn't much monster action until the final half-hour, and then it was nothing but men in rubber suits wrestling. It started out well enough, but there was just too much monster fighting, which gets old very quickly.

Kevin's Commentary

The citizens of Tokyo in this universe must get mighty tired of all these dang kaiju busting up the city. I thought the creature battles were the weakest, least interesting part of this one. Once those started, it felt tedious - like wrestling where you know ahead of time who's going to win.

2022 Shin Ultraman

* Directed by Shinji Higuchi, Ikki Todoroki

* Written by Hideaki Anno, Eiji Tsuburaya

* Stars Takumi Saito, Masami Nagasawa, Hidetoshi Nishijima

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 52 Minutes

* Watch it:

* Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/4j9JGZe

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It's a modern update to the Ultraman storyline, with multiple Kaiju creatures and aliens battling it out with humanity and each other. The human characters are well fleshed out and interesting, and there's a lot of talk and human drama with a decent balance of action and giant creatures fighting. We thought it was fun and entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

Psychedelic 70s credits roll. We immediately cut to Gomess, a giant, Godzilla-like monster, who attacks the troops, and there's a full-on battle happening. They defeat the monster, but then they have to battle "Mammoth Flower." It's just one monster after another. There's a whole bunch of giant creatures we've never seen before, and they're designated S-Species, or Kaiju. The DPA, Disaster Prevention Agency, is created.

There's a new monster in town, Neronga, and this one is both invisible and has some kind of lightning power. The DPA and military work together, since invisibility means lasers have no effect on it. It is overpowered by a power station and then becomes visible. The boss complains that Kaiju only attack Japan; the other nations might let them have nukes to defend themselves, but Japan's going to have to pay for them.

It's all looking bad for Japan when something crashes down out of the sky near Neronga. The object is moving in the smoke, and they all see it. It's a giant silvery robot with glowing eyes.

Neronga zaps the big robot full blast, but it doesn't affect him at all. When the robot shoots back, Nerongo pops like a grape, as does a lot of the mountainside. We see a guy we later know as Shinji caught in the blast shielding a boy. Then the robot flies away, and seems to vanish off radar. We see Shinji carrying the boy out of the woods.

We cut to the city, where everyone is talking about Kaiju. Asami is transferred to the department as an analyst. She meets Yumi, Kimio, Akihisa, and Shinji. She's enthusiastic about being teamed with Shinji, but he's not excited. They name the robot "Ultraman."

BOOM-- It's time for another Kaiju, this time, a radioactive subterranean one named Gabora, heading for a nuclear facility. They bomb it with American bunker-buster bombs. It's only one mountain away from the nuclear waste storage. Shinji runs off in the middle of the battle, and suddenly, Ultraman shows up right outside camp. This creature is radioactive, so if Ultraman uses his beam on it, that would be catastrophic.

Ultraman seems to know this and does everything he can to protect the humans from the monster. Ultraman knocks the monster out with one punch and then flies off with the body. Asami wonders if they can communicate with Ultraman. When they get back to base, Shinji is there waiting for them, and Asami decides to do some research on him.

All the power at the base goes off, and a stranger shows up, Zarab, who talks to them, introduces himself as "Extraterrestrial Number Two." He has come here to start a friendship with Japan, and he wants to talk to the Prime Minister. Zarab can manipulate computer data and technology, and it soon appears that he's interested in world dominance. Zarab reveals his motivations; humanity is too dangerous to live.

He also knows that Shinji is Ultraman and takes him prisoner. Soon after, a fake Ultraman attacks the city and army, and he's very obvious about it, too. The team soon figures out that Shinji has been Ultraman all along. It's suspicious that his car was found abandoned three days ago.

Zarab gives the government his "Ultraman Removal Plan." He wants to know where Shinji has hidden the device that exchanges his body with Ultraman's.

Asami finds the device at the office where Shinji trusted her with it. Kimio knows more about Shinji and Zarab than he's been telling, and he fills in Asami on the details. Zarab can create illusions, like that fake Ultraman who's been attacking everyone.

Asami finds Shinji and cuts him loose. She's not happy that he didn't tell her his secret. He becomes Ultraman and then fights his evil clone, who turns out to actually be Zarab in disguise. Ultraman cuts Zarab in half, and the battle is over.

A giant-sized Asami appears downtown. She looks right, but she doesn't speak and seems to be in a trance. Then she starts wrecking things. A voice comes from nowhere and says not to attack her, since there are others out there with Ultraman's powers. She's made of a solid version of a chemical, definitely not human.

A man comes into the office, Mefilas, yet another alien, and says he arrived before Ultraman; he's the voice from earlier. As a demonstration, he makes Asami small and human again. He wants to make humanity giant-sized so they can defend against Kaiju and aliens like Zarab.

Mefilas wants to work with Shinji, but Shinji accuses him of waking up all those Kaiju in the first place. Mefilas doesn't deny it, but he had good reasons. They have a long talk as Mefilas tries to win Ultraman over to his side. Ultraman is half-human, half-alien, so his point of view is unique.

Shinji talks to the DPA guys about stealing the Beta Box from Mefilas before he can give it to the government. As Mefilas hands over the technology to the Prime Minister, Ultraman grabs it.

Mefilas doesn't care and shows his true form and grows to giant size. The two giants fight in the middle of a refinery. Ultraman gives the Beta Box back to Mefilas, who promises to leave the planet. They both vanish.

The four DPA people are taken into custody. All the world's governments want the secrets of Ultraman, but they are soon released. Elsewhere, Shinji talks to Z Ffy, another alien who looks like Ultraman, and he's brought the Zetton, the ultimate weapon to exterminate the human race. We see that the real Shinji died in that explosion shielding the boy at the beginning, his body is there, but Ultraman basically made an exact copy that he merged with. Z Ffy releases the weapon, which goes into orbit and starts constructing something huge up there.

Shinji comes to the DPA and tells them about the Zetton. The Japanese government comes in and says they're in charge of Ultraman now, which is news to Ultraman. He quickly convinces them to back off.

Shinji has no choice but to beat Zetton himself. He flies up into orbit and starts blasting. That goes badly, and Shinji ends up in the hospital. The humans mostly give up and wait for humanity to be exterminated.

The group finds a message left by Shinji. He's left instructions on how to build their own Beta Boxes to grow huge. Taki comes up with a plan while Asami talks to the comatose Shinji, who finally wakes up. They are going to use the Beta Box technology to destroy Zetton directly.

Zetton is finally set up and ready to do its thing. Taki explains the plan, but it involves sacrificing Ultraman to save the Earth.

Ultraman flies into orbit and attacks Zetton at exactly the right millisecond, which sends them both into another dimension. Zetton is gone, but so is Ultraman.

Z Ffy talks to Ultraman in the afterlife. He's had second thoughts and wants both of them to go back to the Planet of Light. Ultraman just wants to experience being human for real. At the very least, he wants Shinji to live, with or without power.

On Earth, Shinji wakes up surrounded by his friends.

Brian's Commentary

I was never an Ultraman fan growing up, so my exposure to his story is limited to knowing who he is, but not much more.

Gabora, that underground drill-creature, was a pretty amazing design. Actually, most of the creatures here were really well done, although obviously CGI.

There's no real connection here between this film and "Shin Godzilla," although it similarly focuses on the government's reaction to the monsters and creatures. There's a lot of talking, but a lot of monster action as well.

Overall, it's pretty decent, and we were entertained. Be warned, there are a lot of subtitles, as it's a very talky film.

Kevin's Commentary

I thought this was a hoot. Like Brian, I wasn't very familiar with Ultraman before this. A lot of the classic era kaiju movies go on and on with giant creature battles overdone to the point of tedium - this one didn't do that. It entertains and moves well, with a good balance of the big action and humans doing stuff. I liked it quite a bit.

2024 Bloody Axe Wound

* Directed by Matthew John Lawrence

* Written by Matthew John Lawrence

* Stars Sari Arambulo, Billy Burke, Molly Brown, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/4doihBu

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was heavy on dark humor playing with slasher tropes. We start out right off the bat learning that there's a movie serial killer in the real world, in the video business to make money making movies about his killing. His daughter stands to take over both the movie and killing business, but things get complicated when she gets a little too involved with the potential victims. It's strange and well done and we liked it a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a woman having a very bad day between a serial killer and a werewolf. He chops her with a butcher's knife... It's just a TV show starring Butch Slater.

Our narrator, Abbie, talks about her father, Roger Bladecut, and he's a real-life serial killer who helps keep their town famous. The murders on the TV show are all based on the real murders committed by her father.

She goes to the office and watches the scene we just saw on his TV, but Roger complains that he doesn't like the wolf. It was actually Abbie who played the wolf on the show. Mackenzie works at the video store, and he's annoying.

Glenn, the dry cleaner, tells Abbie he doesn't want to clean Roger's clothes because last time he found a toe in one of the pockets. It seems Roger's serial killing isn't a secret.

"Son of Bladecut" starring Makenzie, is coming out soon, and Abbie's mad that she's not involved. Roger doesn't want her to be his replacement because she's a girl. "You can't have some woman who weighs maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet instill fear in the hearts of teenagers." Still, he offers to have her tag along on the kill tonight just to see how it goes.

We cut to two stereotypical teenagers alone at the lake at night. Roger puts on his hockey mask, grabs his machete, kills them both, and then keels over with a heart attack. "Resurrection of Bladecut" was a hit film, so she buries her father. And he comes back like he always does. He has trouble digging out of the grave, and she helps him. Maybe he is getting too old for this stuff.

That night, Mackenzie goes out and puts on the mask, with Abbie backing him up. They've targeted another young couple. Mackenzie botches the kill and dies in the process-- that's not how this is supposed to work. Abbie leaps into action and cuts their phone line then puts on the werewolf mask to finish the job with her axe.

It's all going well until she gets stabbed by Sam, a potential victim, and then passes out at the laundromat. Later, she wakes up to a bunch of "Get Well Soon" cards. Her dad sends her a brand new axe. She changes the name of the new movie to "Spawn of Bladecut."

Glenn wants to be in the movie, but Abbie just wants him to run the store for her. Abbie, who's still in high school, is ready to start making her own fresh list of victims.

She ends up making friends with Sam, the school bad girl. Abbie feels the need to kill her, but doesn't really want to. They look at all the many memorial photos hanging in their high school lobby. "And that was just last year's," she points out.

"The werewolf" starts stalking Sam, watching through the window. Old man Roger starts to feel worthless in his forced retirement.

Abbie sees Patty's name circled in her yearbook, so she's next. She's about to do the job when Sam and her friends interrupt. The group all plans to go to the "Queef Queens" show tonight. Patty turns out to be nice, and she changes her mind about killing her, but her father explains the rules. Roger says the whole group has to die; that's just the way it is.

Abbie kills Izzy, the dancer from school, by pushing her out the window. She goes out for beers with Sam afterward. Sam complains about all the funerals she's been to in the past few years, and they have a romantic moment. Roger warns her that getting to know the victims just makes it harder to do the job.

Roger takes Abbie to see Izzy, who didn't die in the fall after all. "Finish the job. Tonight." Abbie looks at her friends and starts to have doubts about this whole thing. That night, when she can't finish off Izzy, Roger is outside in his mask; he'll take care of it.

Abbie goes to see Sam when they get the call that Izzy's dead. Abbie talks Glenn into calling Sam and warning her to leave town. All four kids, Abbie included, leave town in a van that soon breaks down. They all decide it's a good idea to hide out at the old deserted campground.

Glenn comes out of the woods in disguise and warns them all not to go any further; he's trying to be a harbinger. Sam sees right through his act. The group takes him hostage.

They sit around the campfire and talk about all the deaths here at "Camp Killgood" over the decades. They read an old newspaper article about Roger Bladecut. Abbie tells them the origin story of their most famous serial killer. Roger is hiding in the woods, listening to the story.

They all pass out from taking the wrong pills, no doubt Roger's work. In the morning, they find what's left of Billy outside. Patty figures out that Glenn and Abbie were working together to kill her friends. Patty grabs an axe and dies when Sam shoots her with a harpoon gun.

Roger comes after Abbie, Sam, and Glenn, and he's very good at his job. He pulls Sam out of the car and drags her away. Abbie begs him to stop and then kills him with his own machete.

Sam heard Abbie call the murderer "Dad" and has questions. Then she dies, since Roger always comes back. We zoom out and see the whole thing on TV.

Abbie is closing their video store. They get a whole box of "Spawn of Bladecut," but Abbie tosses them in the trash.

Suddenly, the lights go out. Abbie goes out to her father's grave, which is empty again. Sam is there; she came back too.

Brian's Commentary

It's a horror movie about a serial killer who makes true-life horror movies. It uses all the basic slasher tropes, but they're all very intentional and comedic here.

There's a lot here that you can't think about, but it's fun anyway. Very cool!

Kevin's Commentary

It took me a little time at the beginning to figure out what was going on, but once I did I was fully on board with it. It was thoroughly amusing and entertaining.

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It’s “We Have Disney At Home” week here with the Horror Guys. This time, we’ll take a look at three recent “fairy tale” movies: “Screamboat” (2025), “The Ugly Stepsister” (2025), and “Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare” (2024). We’ll then watch the classic sci-fi alien invasion thriller, “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” from 1956. We’ll then finish up the “Final Destination” series with the 2011 final installment (at least until later this month).

Hey– we just released “H.P. Lovecraft: The Biography.” It’s available exclusively at Amazon.

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

Mainstream Films:

2025 The Ugly Stepsister

* Directed by Emilie Blichfeldt

* Written by Emilie Blichfeldt

* Stars Lea Myren, Ane Dahl Torp, Thea Sofie Loch Naess

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 49 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is a telling of “Cinderella” primarily from the viewpoint of one of the stepsisters. She’s fixated on the handsome prince, and she’s willing to take some extreme steps to become beautiful enough to catch his eye. What she goes through, and puts herself through, starts out horrifying and gets worse as things go along. The body horror is top notch, and we thought it was very good.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch as Elvira reads a book of romantic writings and poetry by Prince Julian, and it’s clear she’s smitten with him. Rebekka, Elvira, and her sister, Alma, are moving to her mother’s new husband’s castle. Her new stepsister, Agnes, shows her around. Elvira’s wearing braces, so we know she’s the ugly stepsister. As the happy couple enjoy their wedding cake, old Otto suddenly coughs up blood and dies. Credits roll.

Agnes blames her father’s marriage on Rebekka’s money, but Rebekka married Otto for his money. There are already men there to repossess the castle. Elvira says she can get married to bring in some income, but Rebekka knows that’s not gonna happen, as she’s hopeless. But maybe they can improve her?

In the morning, they get notice that the king and Prince Julian are putting on a ball for the virgins of the countryside. Agnes gets right in, but Elvira gets hers under the name “Elvira von Stepsister.” Elvira wants to marry the prince, and she has fantasies.

The doctor talks about removing Elvira’s braces, but he doesn’t like her nose and wants to fix that. Rebekka offers to pay double… after the ball.

Oh, the surgery. That’s something. Wonking it with a chisel to break her nose and reshape it. Still, she has perfect teeth afterward. Later, we see her in a metal nose-brace. Miss Sophie welcomes them all to finishing school, where she gets put in the back of the dance class with the other ugly girls.

Agnes goes to visit her dead father, who still hasn’t been buried yet, and flies are everywhere. Elvira volunteers to do a dance for the class, and the teacher mocks her by saying she has wasted talent. The teacher prefers Agnes, who isn’t so ugly or fat.

The head of the school gives Elvira a tapeworm egg. If she swallows it, she’ll lose weight. Alma says, “You’re sick in the head.” Meanwhile, Agnes makes out with Isak, the stable boy. She loves him but she knows she needs to marry the prince.

Elvira runs into Prince Julian in the woods by accident. He’s pretty mean, and his pals are jerks, and she runs away. On the other hand, she still wants and fantasizes about him. She gets home in time to catch Agnes and Isak banging away in the barn. Elvira tells of course. When Rebekka hears about that, she sends Isak harshly away. She goes crazy over Agnes and puts her to work with the servants.

Three months pass, and Elvira has her metal nose brace removed. It all looks really good under there– and she’s thinner too! She goes back to the plastic surgeon, Dr. Esthetique, who sews on eyelash implants. There’s a great deal of screaming involved. Around this point, she’s taken to calling Agnes “Cinderella.”

Later, both Agnes and Elvira notice that Elvira’s hair is falling out. That night, Rebekka brings in a man with a big crate. “I’m your good fairy,” he says. He has a fancy dress for her in the crate; she’s going to get to dance for the prince after all. The dressmaker is all over Elvira, but Rebekka’s OK with that. Then he notices the hair loss as well, but he’s got a wig for her.

Agnes/Cinderella plans to go to the ball, but Elvira tears up her dress. She cries over her father’s still-rotting corpse until the ghost of her dead mother appears. The father bought a new dress, including shoes. The mother warns that at midnight, her coach will become a pumpkin.

It’s time for the ball, and Elvira arrives looking great. As all the eligible young women are introduced with great ceremony, the men there drool over them and talk lasciviously amongst themselves. She bows in front of the prince, whose jerk friends like her boobs. When she and her two classmates do their dance for him, he’s much more impressed with her. Throughout all this, Elvira’s stomach keeps gurgling; she never took the tapeworm antidote. All the men want to dance with her, but first, Prince Julian gets his dance with her.

In the middle of the dance, Cinderella/Agnes shows up, wearing a veil, and everyone stops to look at her, including the prince, who deserts Elvira for the newcomer. Elvira runs outside and pukes up a bunch of tapeworm eggs. Rebekka says there are lots of other great men in there and to pull herself together. She goes back to the dance, and it’s all pretty horrifying as a number of pretty awful men sweep and bounce her around the dance floor. Rebekka is making herself comfortable with some of the rich guys herself. Cinderella’s veil slips at one point and Elvira sees who the mystery woman is. Until the clock starts to strike midnight and Cinderella runs away, leaving one shoe behind. The prince declares that the woman whose foot fits that shoe will be his new wife.

Elvira goes home and threatens Agnes with a knife. “Give me that shoe!” She gets it, Agnes gets away, but the shoe clearly doesn’t fit. She looks at the butcher knife, knowing how to make her foot smaller. She measures carefully and then cuts off all her toes. She doesn’t swing quite hard enough, so they only come mostly off. Alma and Rebekka come in and say she’s cut the wrong foot. “The prince has the left shoe.” Rebekka picks up the knife and finishes the job so they match. Elvira, passed out, dreams of the prince putting the slipper on her feet, fitting perfectly.

In the morning, she hears the prince arrive outside, and her feet are two bloody messes. She drags herself down the steps, busting her mouth open, breaking her nose, and losing her wig in the process. Agnes walks right past her and goes to the prince. “It fits! I have found my princess!” Elvira hears the whole thing from the floor inside.

Elvira drinks the tapeworm antidote, and it has a really painful effect as it comes up and out. Alma grabs the end of it and pulls. And pulls. And pulls. It all finally comes out in one long gob after the string.

Alma sneaks into her mother’s room and takes her jewelry. Mom pauses fellating one of the rich men she brought home and watches her go.

“We have to cross the border before it gets dark,” Alma tells her sister. She helps Elvira onto the horse, and they ride off.

After the end credits, we cut back to Otto, who’s still lying dead on the dinner table, now just a rotting skeleton.

Brian’s Commentary

Did they even have braces in this time period? Probably not more than they had plastic surgery/rhinoplasty. They did, in fact, have tapeworms.

It’s essentially “Cinderella” from the point of view of one of the ugly stepsisters.

We get a lot of body horror here, as Elvira gets “improved” by the 19th century surgeon. It’s a little slow-moving, but it’s got things I’ve never seen in a horror film before, so it’s a winner!

Kevin’s Commentary

The science and medical technology are part of the fantasy telling of the tale. What that young woman puts herself through is something else. There are plenty of moments to wince and groan while watching. And then have it not matter in the end. I thought it was great, my favorite telling of Cinderella for sure.

2025 Screamboat

* Directed by Steven LaMorte

* Written by Matthew Garcia-Dunn, Steven LaMorte

* Stars David Howard Thornton, Allison Pittel, Amy Schumaker

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 42 Minutes

* Trailer:

*

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

They took another of the cartoon characters who have gone into the public domain and really embraced it, creating an origin story that explains the creation of the cartoon. The setting is great, on an actual decommissioned Staten Island ferry, and the whole package was entertaining. On the silly side of horror. We enjoyed it.

Spoilery Synopsis

Two workers are on the Staten Island Ferry, and Dominique hears something moving around deep inside. Neil says get used to it, as this boat is old. Back in the 1920s, the ferry ran on steam, and he’s stealing part of it that’s valuable for his retirement. They open a hatch and let a bunch of steam out. They hear whistling and realize they’re being attacked. It comes out of nowhere and steals his nose. It kills them both as credits roll.

We watch as an all-girls birthday party arrives at the ferry. We get to see the various characters and are reminded that New Yorkers are weird people. The captain gets a call that the trip is going to be delayed due to heavy fog in the harbor. The captain leaves anyway.

Homeless man Barry tells EMT Amber, “We’re all gonna die!” Pete, a deckhand, and Selena, a passenger, talk about her avoiding the birthday crew.

A guy in a Statue of Liberty costume gets killed by a tiny furry creature.

Selena talks to Amber about moving back home away from New York. The cop gets beaten to half to death with a hammer and dropped into the ship’s propeller as Selena watches. We finally get a good look at Steamboat Willie.

Selena tells Pete, Amber, and some other people. When she describes the killer, they all think she’s drunk. Meanwhile, Willie kills the captain. Willie then recreates a certain iconic scene from a very old cartoon as he steers the ship around in circles.

When the crew figures out that the captain is dead and they’re off course, they argue over who’s in charge. Amber sees Willie kill two of the birthday partiers. She goes to Selena to tell her that she was right. Pete joins in and tells about the captain.

Pete moves everyone down to the lower level for safety. The majority of the passengers get locked into a room together down there and they soon see Willie as well. He turns the hose on all of them and then watches them electrocute.

Pete, Amber, and Selena hide and make a plan. They join up with two more survivors, Moses and Mateo. They find old Barry, who’s dying. “You’re all going to die!” He tells them about Steamboat Willie, an old legend from the days of steam. He’s lurked in the underbelly of the ship for decades. He was a kindhearted mouse that everyone called “Willie” who used to be a friend of a man named Walt, but then Willie went evil over the years.

Cindy, the final party girl, soon sobers up enough to figure out what’s going on, but Willie harpoons her at the same time.

The group needs to go down to the lower levels to find some flares. Selena and now-Captain Pete have a moment. They run into Dominique, who survived the opening credit scene, and she talks about how they’re losing power.

Turns out, Dominique has always been on Willie’s side and turns against the people. As she puts on a helmet with huge mouse ears, she explains that Willie has a mission, to find someone out there lost at sea, and nothing’s going to stand in his way.

Amber and Selena gang up on the little evil mouse, but the flares aren’t there.

Dominique has all the flares. “Our world is the happiest place on Earth.” Willie doesn’t care, as he kills her too. Moses shoots a flare at the mouse, which blows up the engines, and now the boat is sinking.

Willie kills Pete next, which traumatises Selena. Selena finds an old photo of Willie and his girlfriend, and she gets an idea. Willie is about to kill Amber and Matteo when Selena shows up, dressed like a sexy mouse to trick him. Then she whacks him with a huge cartoonishy oversized mallet.

Willie is about to push Selena overboard when he has flashbacks to his own shipwreck when he lost his girl and helps her back aboard. She stabs him in the head with scissors, and he finally goes overboard.

“Still beats tunnel traffic,” Amber jokes as a boat comes to rescue them. “If this doesn’t make you a New Yorker, nothing will,” she tells Selena.

We cut to a pile of trash on the beach. Willie is there, and he wakes up to start whistling again. His lost girlfriend finds him…

Brian’s Commentary

This, of course, is another film based on Steamboat Willie, which went into the public domain not long ago. The thing with the real-life Willie is that he doesn’t really have any kind of backstory or mythology; he’s little more than a whistling cartoon character, so the filmmakers were free to do pretty much anything they wanted with the concept. The party girls are all named after Disney Princesses Cindi (Cinderella), Ariana (Ariel), Jazzy (Jasmine), Bella (Belle), Ilsa (Elsa), and Rory (Aurora), so Willie gets his revenge on all of them.

This was filmed on an actual, decommissioned Staten Island Ferry. There are normally ten boats that cover that route, and the trip usually takes about twenty minutes.

Willie is a small puppet about half of the time, but in close-ups, he’s played by David Howard Thornton, of “Terrifier” fame. And in those scenes, he’s essentially a furrier version of Art the Clown, and the kills are similarly over the top.

It’s goofy but not too bad!

Kevin’s Commentary

I liked that it was loaded with dark humor, with a creature that had cartoon powers, which led to the cartoon. It was pretty clever, I thought. The cast is decent; the effects are quite good. I thought it was a fun watch.

2025 Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare

* Directed by Scott Chambers

* Written by J.M. Barrie, Scott Chambers

* Stars Megan Placito, Martin Portlock, Kit Green

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This version has Wendy, Peter Pan, and Tinkerbell in one messed up real world take on the magical tale. It’s a grim piece of work that really does bring out the horror elements from the story. It’s far, far from a Disney tale. We were impressed and would recommend it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We hear about what a wonderful place Neverland is, without parents to ruin the fun. The man closes the book and tells the young boy that it’s time for him to go to Neverland. We cut to “Missing” posters for the boy…

At the circus, we watch a creepy clown scoping out all the little boys in the audience. Later, young James finds the clown in the trapdoor under the floor; he’s got a major “It” vibe going on. The clown’s name is Peter, and he’s very friendly and invites James to a very special place. James’s mother comes in and kicks the clown in the face before grabbing a knife. The two have a major knife fight and battle in the kitchen until he… scalps her. James does, in fact, get sent to Neverland.

Fifteen years later, Wendy’s mother nags at her about not going to college because of some guy that she likes. She’s also forgotten that it’s her little brother Michael’s birthday.

We cut to a worn out looking person shooting up with “Pixie Dust” until told by a deformed man, “It’s time to collect.” The deformed man then goes to the store and picks out a Halloween mask. He stabs the store clerk repeatedly.

Michael has a bike “accident” on the way home and sees a strange “Come to Neverland” van parked in the woods. (Where did the bike come from since Wendy drove him in the morning?) The man in the mask grabs him and throws him in the back of the van. Wendy stops at school to pick him up, but he’s already gone.

Later, we see Peter bringing some food to Michael, who’s locked in a creepy playroom. He takes off the mask, and he’s a scarred-up mess. They play hide and seek in the nasty, mannequin-filled hideout.

Wendy and her mother know about Peter Pan; he’s back. He enlists her friend, Mel, and Michael’s friend, Joey, to help ask the families of other abductees about their stories. One man tells about his son little Timmy, who was obsessed with fairies before he went missing.

Peter kills an entire school busload of Michael’s friends out in the woods.

Timmy is now grown up, Tinkerbell, and she’s scary too. “I was the first to be chosen. I’m a fairy.” Michael seems to understand all too well what’s really going on.

Wendy goes to stay with Mel and her family. Peter shows up and stabs Mel and her family as Wendy watches from her room. He takes Joey with him this time, but Wendy follows in her car.

Wendy gets into the house and sees Peter chasing Joey around. She goes looking for Michael and runs into Tinkerbell, who tells her where to go. Tinkerbell and Peter talk about whether he’s hurting or saving the boys.

Wendy calls Tinkerbell “Timmy,” and then Tinkerbell changes sides. Wendy and Michael sneak through the house, looking for Joey. Peter gets really angry with Tinkerbell, but this is gonna be the last time. Meanwhile, Michael calls the police.

Wendy pushes Joey out the window, but she goes back for Michael. She runs into a really gnarly-looking prisoner chained in the basement. It’s James from the opening sequence, and he’s got a hook where his hand ought to be.

Peter and Wendy fight in the kitchen as Tinkerbell has some final words for her, “Don’t give up.” She grabs a syringe of Pixie Dust off the counter and stabs him in the neck with it. That slows him down.

The two fight on and on, and it’s all very bloody. “Captain Hook” comes into the room and drags Peter off into the darkness as the police finally show up outside.

Michael has a big birthday party the following year, until Wendy gets a phone call from Peter…

Brian’s Commentary

This takes place in the same universe as “Pooh: Blood and Honey” and its sequels. At work, one of Wendy’s friends mentions going camping, and she’s one of the campers in that film. Joey’s wearing a T-Shirt advertising the movie as well.

This really wasn’t what I expected at all. I was expecting some kind of horrific take on Neverland, but it was just a real-world slasher/child abduction story with a few weird twists. There’s nothing magical or supernatural at all here. Still, it’s not bad for what we do get.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was so much better than I expected it to be. It’s horrible and grim. An excellent example of real-world horror, without magic or monsters, just people doing awful things. The cast is good, the effects are realistic-looking, and the direction is well done. I was impressed, more than Brian was.

1956 Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers

* Directed by Fred F. Sears

* Written by Bernard Gordon, George Worthing Yates, Curt Siodmak

* Stars Hugh Marlowe, Joan Taylor, Donald Curtis

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a very fun 50s science fiction action flick. It was made before Sputnik, the first satellite, and it’s interesting seeing what they thought the future was going to be like. Plus a flying saucer invasion! The effects are quite good for the era, the story is decent, and the cast is good. It’s a little campy, but they’re all taking it very seriously and there’s quite a body count. Our only complaint is an ending that’s a bit abrupt, but we liked it overall.

Spoilery Synopsis

Man has always speculated on the existence of life on other worlds. We see news reports of UFO sightings all over the world. The military goes on alert, ready to fire on any UFOs they spot. It might be… Earth Versus the Flying Saucers! Credits roll.

Dr. Russell Marvin rides in the car and dictates a letter to the Defense Department. He’s been married to Carol for two hours, and she still calls him “Dr. Marvin.” He explains that humanity is ready to start exploring outer space. We get stock footage of real rockets and hear about futuristic things called “satellites” that we are about to launch. Suddenly, a flying saucer appears over the car, and they pull over. When it flies away, they both doubt what they saw.

Back at the lab, they notice that the tape recorder picked up the sound of the flying saucer, so it must’ve been real.

General Hanley, Carol’s father, arrives at the base to talk to Russell about cancelling the rocket launch. It’s too late, and the rocket blasts off. The general points out that they’ve launched multiple satellites, but they’ve all fallen back to Earth. Russell thinks someone is shooting them down; he tells the old man what they saw. They get a report that Number Eleven has lost contact.

The next day, they launch Number Twelve, but this time, they load on cameras and video feeds to see what happens. They get a report of a UFO approaching, and everyone sees it this time. It lands there at the base, and someone gets out. The army shoots him, but the others are behind a force field. When the spacemen shoot back, the whole Jeep, soldiers included, vanishes.

The aliens start shooting, and the buildings all over the launch base start exploding. The general is captured, and the aliens speak to him. They tried to talk to Russell, but he didn’t understand them. He refuses to tell them anything, but they have a mind probe that can access his brain directly.

Meanwhile, Russell and Carol are buried in the lab, and they assume everyone outside has been killed. The battery in the tape recorder is dying, and he finally understands the alien’s message as it plays at a slow speed. They tried to come in peace, but he didn’t understand the message because it was sped up so much.

There’s a whole government investigation, and the two survivors explain it all. Russell wants to try to contact the aliens and make peace before it gets any worse. Major Huglin is assigned to keep an eye on Russell. The government tells him to wait before contacting the aliens, but he does it anyway. The aliens want to meet him, but he’s under house arrest until the investigation is over.

Carol doesn’t want Russell to go, so she calls Huglin, who comes after Russell. This leads to a car chase. He arrives at a landed saucer and approaches. The aliens invite the whole group, including the traffic cop, inside. The aliens explain that they’ve taken off using magnetic fields, which also alter the way time works for them and the humans on board.

The aliens misunderstood the satellite launch, thinking they were weapons. They’ve come from a destroyed planet, and their entire fleet is circling the globe. They want to talk to the world leaders about a permanent landing site. They don’t want to cause panic; they want to be invited. General Hanley walks out, now a zombie; his knowledge has been drained. The aliens show their power, and they could wipe us out easily. They give Earth 56 days to arrange a conference.

Russell talks to the generals about the meeting and his idea of building an ultrasonic gun to fight them. The professor suggests a way to disrupt the alien’s magnetic devices. A saucer lands outside, and they get a chance to try their new weapon. Zap! It drives off the saucer, but it leaves one of the aliens behind, which destroys the weapon. Huglin shoots it with bullets, and that seems to work. They pull off the alien’s mask and see what they really look like under the helmet. The aliens then drop the general and the traffic cop out the door, and they fall to their deaths.

Using the captured helmet, the army decodes the alien’s language and starts listening to the alien transmissions.

The aliens broadcast a message to everyone, everywhere. They’re going to disrupt the sun to demonstrate their power, and then they expect a full surrender. The aliens will be landing in DC, so they get working on evacuating the city.

The aliens attack, and the human soldiers get ready. Surface-to-air missiles don’t seem to do much to the UFOs. Russell uses his sonic weapon, and he shoots down one of the saucers. There’s a saucer hovering over the White House, and they shoot it down as well. The aliens then just start blowing up buildings and landmarks all over town, even the Washington Monument and the Capitol building get crashed into.

They signal the all-clear, and everyone comes out to assess the damage. We cut to Russell and Carol at the beach. The aliens have been defeated, and the space program can continue without interference. “Will they come back again?” “Not on such a nice day!”

Brian’s Commentary

This was the year before Sputnik, so satellites and space launches were all science fiction at this point. For 1956, the special effects here are really noteworthy; Ray Harryhausen did the flying saucers, and everything looks really cool.

It’s got its hokey bits, but for the most part, everyone plays it completely seriously, and it all seems fairly realistic. From the name of the film alone, I was expecting a lot more camp and silliness.

The ending is a bit abrupt. I guess they just shot down all the saucers. This might have been more effective if we’d known how many saucers there were or that the aliens were running out of ships. Other than the quick ending, it was really very good!

Kevin’s Commentary

The special effects and sets were pretty cool in this. It’s a great example of 50s science fiction that holds up pretty well for fun and entertainment. I always like seeing visions of what the future was going to be like from decades ago. We watched a colorized version that looked really sharp. I’d recommend it.

2011 Final Destination 5

* Directed by Steven Quale

* Written by Eric Heisserer, Jeffrey Reddick

* Stars Nicholas D’Agosto, Emma Bell, Arlen Escarpeta

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was another 3D production, which we saw in 2D, but clearly was being geared to make the most of the effect. It’s better than the 4th movie and almost as good as the first three. And they introduced a couple extra goodies that were interesting. We liked it okay.

Spoilery Synopsis

Things come flying out of the screen at us at the credits roll, so this was obviously shot in 3D.

Sam is an overachiever, making a big, fancy breakfast for the whole sales team. They’re getting ready to leave for a team-building exercise. Peter jokes that he’s getting ready to fire Sam. Molly tells Sam that she’s breaking up with him. Peter’s banging Candice, the intern. Olivia comes to the business outing dressed like a slut. Isaac the nerd wants to get with Molly. Dennis, the boss, is straight out of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” a major A-hole. Nathan lets his underlings yell at him for going to the retreat. The whole group gets on the bus.

The bus passes a log truck. The sign mentions that the bridge is under construction. Sam looks out the window at the various death traps on the elevated bridge. Sam knows something is wrong as the bridge starts to crack apart, and everyone runs for it. Candace gets impaled on a sailboat. Isaac doesn’t make it out of the bus. Molly walks across a suspended beam, but Olivia can’t see because she lost her glasses and falls to her death. Nathan and Dennis get it next. Sam and Peter leap to safety as the rest of the bridge collapses. Peter gets multi-killed and Sam doesn’t fare any better.

Sam jerks awake on the bus and knows what’s going to happen. He yells to the others that the bridge is going to collapse and they’re all gonna die! Most of the named characters follow Sam to bring back Molly. When the bridge starts going haywire, they’re already off the bus and have a head start this time.

Later, Agent Block wants to know how Sam knew it was going to happen. Sam explains it was a vision, but Block thinks Sam might have been in on a terrorist plot. Still, he has to let Sam go. The bus people are known in the news as “The Lucky Eight.”

At the funeral, old coroner Bludworth is there. “Death doesn’t like to be cheated.”

Sam goes to see Molly; he works a second job as a chef and talks about moving to Paris.

Peter goes to see Candace, who’s in a gymnastics competition. She complains about the broken air conditioner, but it’s her turn. The camera zooms in on various mundane things, but we know that something’s going to happen. As she does her thing on the balance beam, water drips on a bad extension cord, the AC vibrates ridiculously, and we see a screw standing up on the balance bar. She narrowly avoids all those things and moves onto the uneven bars, where she breaks herself in half with a big splat.

Peter and Sam talk about what happened. Sam sees Bludworth loitering nearby. The next day, everyone’s at the office.

Isaac leaves early to go to the spa, and we know that’s gonna be bad. He’s a perv and makes that clear, so the receptionist hooks him up with a grouchy old woman for his massage. She gives him a really violent massage, but he acknowledges it feels good after. Then she brings out the acupuncture needles– lots of them. She leaves, and then a fire suddenly starts. He rolls over and falls on all those needles before knocking over a huge bottle of alcohol. That doesn’t kill him, a huge stone Buddga crushes his head instead.

The group hears about the latest death and talks to Bludworth, who is the coroner. He tells them he’s seen this kind of thing before and tells them how these events work. He suggests that if they kill someone, then Death will be appeased, and they might survive. They’ll get the time that the person who died prematurely has left.

Meanwhile, Olivia is at the eye doctor for a LASIK surgery. The doctor fixes her down on the table and clips her eyes open. The doctor goes out for her file, and we see more water and electricity mishaps in progress. The surgery machine goes into overload, and the laser goes berserk. That doesn’t kill her, but then she falls out the window to her death.

Agent Block is there now, investigating the pattern of all the deaths. Sam tells Block about their theory about Death coming for them. Sam tells Molly that Nathan ought to be next.

We cut to Nathan, watching the workers at the plant with his security system. We see that the plant isn’t up to OSHA standards. Roy, the troublemaker, gets what’s coming to him, but Nathan is OK. Was that a death trade, the way Bludworth explained it? Nathtan might be off the hook now. He got the time that Roy would have had left.

Peter tells Dennis, the boss, about what’s been going on. “It’s going to happen to us if we don’t do something about it.” Dennis calls Agent Block and tells him about Peter being unstable.

Peter talks to Nathan and the others. If Nathan is off the hook, then Dennis– nope, too late. He gets a very fast wrench through the head, out of the blue, as they speak.

Sam goes to his second job, working in the kitchen with the chefs, and it looks like a dangerous place as well. He’s afraid of the meat tenderizer and all the pointy, sharp things in the kitchen. He makes it through the night and accepts the job the chef offered him… in France. After hours, he talks to Molly in the restaurant when Peter knocks on the door.

Peter’s next on the death list, and he knows it. He knows that committing a murder will save his own life, and he decides to do it. He’s run into many easy opportunities, but he just couldn’t do it. He thinks it’s unfair that Molly is going to live and pulls a gun on her. Sam knocks him down, and they all play cat-and-mouse in the kitchen as Agent Block comes inside.

Peter shoots Block to death, so now it’s Sam’s turn. Now he has to kill Molly, who witnessed everything. Sam jumps in and attacks Peter in the more and more dangerous kitchen. The gun falls on the burner and starts heating up. Sam stabs Peter from behind; does he count since he was going to die anyway? The gun explodes harmlessly, so yes, that counts.

Sam and Molly get on the plane to France. We see the cast of the first film being dragged off the plane. That guy had a premonition that this plane was going to crash… It’s Flight 180 from 2000, and yes, they’re all gonna die!

The plane explodes, as we knew it would. We cut to Nathan at Roy's wake. Nathan learns that Roy was going to die any time anyway from an aneurysm. Nathan didn’t get much time after all. A chunk of the plane falls on the building, killing him.

We then get a montage of all the deaths from all five films.

Brian’s Commentary

This one adds the idea that murder might be a way to cheat Death. It also adds a little twist at the end that makes this a prequel to the first film.

It was better than the previous film, on par with the first three. It was fine!

Kevin’s Commentary

I’d seen a spoiler ahead of time that it had a twist that it was actually a prequel, but I still thought that was a clever way to do things. Like Brian said, it’s back on track in line with the quality of the first three, maybe not quite as good, but better than the fourth. And the idea of offering another death in place of your upcoming one was interesting. I thought it was worth watching.

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It’s Lovecraft week here with the Horror Guys. We’ve got five adaptations of stories from H.P. Lovecraft. We’ve done many others in the past, but if you know of any that we haven’t talked about, drop us a note! This time, we’ll do “The Call of Cthulhu,” a unique film from 2005. The next four are all from the 90s: “The Resurrected” from 1991, “Necronomicon: Book of the Dead” from 1993, “Lurking Fear” from 1995, and “Castle Freak” from 1995.

Why Lovecraft week? Because we’ve got a new book out: “H.P. Lovecraft: A Biography,” which you can pick up right here: https://amzn.to/435mJQJ

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

Mainstream Films:

2005 The Call of Cthulhu

* Directed by Andrew Leman

* Written by H.P. Lovecraft, Sean Branney

* Stars Matt Foyer, John Bolen, Ralph Lucas

* Run Time: 47 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Buy it: https://amzn.to/3ETYIEg

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This version was like a trip to the old days of silent films. It’s black and white, interspaced with speech panels instead of dialogue, with a music soundtrack. They did capture the look and feel of a movie from the 20s, though the film speed and quality didn’t quite match how it used to be. It’s a pretty good telling of the story, it’s short, and it’s worth checking out.

Spoilery Synopsis

Two men talk about one of their great-uncle’s life work. The man wants the other man to burn the stories. He tells us that he was the executor of the old man’s estate, including a locked box full of folders and news clippings.

It tells the story of Henry Wilcox, who has a new wood carving of something he saw in a dream last night and takes it to the narrator’s great uncle. He felt the earthquake last night very strongly. All through his dream last night, something was calling to him with a name he couldn’t pronounce.

The doctor asks Wilcox to start writing down his dreams. He does this, along with many pictures, which greatly upsets him. He continues to show the great-uncle what he’s seen. Henry falls into a fever, and the old man tries to care for him, but once the fever broke, he didn’t get any more visions, nor could he remember the old ones.

We cut to the American Archaeological Society, where a detective talks to a professor. He shows them an object, and one man there recognizes it. We get a flashback to a tribe that worshipped a god named Cthulhu. That’s where the man lost his eye. The inspector tells the men his tale from last year, when he investigated some disappearances in the New Orleans swamp. “This ain’t just some Voodoo cult, this is the devil hisself,” says one witness. The cultists were chanting the Cthulhu ritual as the policemen watched. Forty-seven cultists were arrested, and one explains that they worship the Great Old Ones, who sleep now, but will reclaim their world soon. Great Cthulhu lies sleeping in R’yLeh, and he’ll awaken soon.

Back in the present, the nephew starts getting strange dreams. Anyone he asked about the cult either knew nothing or was dead. He reads a new article about the Emma, a ship that ran into a storm at sea and started to sink. They all boarded the Alert, an abandoned fishing vessel. The log says the crew went ashore on an island three days ago, but there’s nothing on the map. They found a strange tentacled idol and soon the whole crew was lost except for one man who went mad.

The nephew starts putting his dates and facts together, and it’s all very terrifying. He tracks down the idol at a museum and follows the sole survivor of the Alert to Oslo. The man was dead by the time he arrived, but the nephew managed to read the man’s logbook and learned what really happened on the island.

The island was covered with jagged peaks and terrifying statuary. One man falls off a tower and dies, and immediately after, there’s an earthquake, and Cthulhu himself shows up. Everyone runs, but only two men make it to the boat. The one who got a good look at the monster goes mad, bleeds from the eyes, and dies. The other is the one man who escaped with the log.

The nephew tells all this to his psychiatrist, and we’re back at the beginning, when he told the man to burn all the notebooks. Cthulhu is still out there, waiting to rise. The doctor, naturally, doesn’t burn them, he starts reading…

Brian’s Commentary

It’s a black-and-white silent film, done in the style of a movie from Lovecraft’s day, the 1920s and 30s. It’s done in the style of the old German Expressionist films, and it looks pretty good considering. It was released through the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, essentially a fan film. The story, probably Lovecraft’s most famous, has long been considered unfilmable, so this is a good attempt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Call_of_Cthulhu_(film)

Kevin’s Commentary

This was an interesting novelty, and it was worth seeing it for that. It’s short, which is a plus, so we got through it before that novelty wore off. I thought it was well done overall, and it does tell the story.

1991 The Resurrected

* Directed by Dan O’Bannon

* Written by H.P. Lovecraft, Brent Friedman

* Stars John Terry, Jane Sibbett, Chris Sarandon

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Get it: https://amzn.to/42XRuqO

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a detective story, with a bit of mystery, as a private investigator and his sidekicks put things together. We start out seeing the end, then get to see what led to that ending. The movie bogs down a bit in parts, but it’s got a good story, and the conclusion is satisfying.

Spoilery Synopsis

Charles Ward escaped from the asylum, and the doctor isn’t happy about it. There’s an orderly in his room without a head, and it’s a real mess.

At the March Agency, John March, a P.I., dictates his story about Charles Dexter Ward. He flashes back a ways and talks about the city of Providence and the case…

Claire Ward comes to discuss a case. Her husband, Charles, was arrested for hiding some human remains. Since then, he’s been avoiding her. She tells a story about him abandoning a party to work in his laboratory in the carriage house. He had been working with Doctor Ash, who is creepy, but she wanted him to move his lab somewhere else, which he did. Not long after, Charles was arrested for having bodies in his possession. John agrees to check out Charles before he agrees to take the case.

John goes to a gas station and talks to a man cleaning up a dead dog. The gas man is weird and creepy, but John finds his way to the Ward house. He talks to Charles, and he’s evasive, but not excessively so, so John leaves. Later, he reads about “Vandalism at Cemetery” in the paper. His assistant Lonnie calls and reports that the police found eight bodies in Charles’s old lab. All the bodies were from dead occultists, wizards, and magical scholars.

John tells Claire what he’s learned so far, and she explains that he found old family papers and which sparked interest in Joseph Curwen, a reputed magician who lived in an old house in the country. They went to the house and found a painting of Curwen, who looks just like Charles. Right after that, Charles started working late nights in the lab and got weird.

Claire shows John the painting and the carriage house, which has old bloody IV bags and animal blood in the fridge.

Mr. Fenner, the man across the street from Charles’s new place, calls John, but when John arrives, the old man is dead. There’s not much left of the body, and the police think it was a wild animal attack. John has weird dreams that night.

Claire comes by in the morning with a cassette tape from Charles. He says he’s made a terrible mistake, and he’s afraid of her. “Keep away from Dr. Ash. Don’t even talk to him.” The two go out to the farmhouse again, and Charles has changed. He even talks differently now; he sounds British now.

Charles says he’ll show them what he’s been working on in six weeks. He’s very intense about it and uses antiquated language. John suggests that Charles has become convinced that he’s this Curwen character.

John and Lonnie do their detective work and learn a lot about Charles’s assistant Raymond. They can’t find out anything about Dr. Ash.

John goes back to Ward’s place with the police to have him committed briefly, and they arrest Raymond. When they get outside, Charles has a knife to Claire’s throat. John gets cut, but they get Charles into a straitjacket and into the ambulance.

At the mental hospital, the doctor examines Charles, who is still speaking old-time British and looks very sickly. He wants to eat raw, bloody meat. The doctor talks to Claire and John, explaining that Charles has homicidal and cannibalistic urges.

John finds the diary of Ezra Ward from 1771. He came to America and started a shipping business. He lived at the same time as Curwen, who stole Ezra’s girlfriend Eliza. He came to the conclusion that Curwen was practicing witchcraft on corpses. A hundred men stormed Curwen’s house, but Eliza admits that she’s carrying Curwen’s child. That’s the end of the book.

Claire wants to go back to the house and really go through what’s in the basement. They bring explosives, just in case. They find a passageway down under the basement, and it smells terrible. There’s a whole series of tunnels and doors down there, and they look around.

They find Charles’s notes, where Charles bragged that he’s beaten Death itself. The lab is full of interesting things. Including dead animals that aren’t really dead.

Suddenly, the light goes out, and the creatures pull Lonie down into the darkness and eat him. There are weird deformed, slimy, inhuman monsters all over the place, and they’re down to one single match. As they make their way out, John drops little explosives along the way. As they get in the car, he blows up everything.

John takes Claire to the hospital with a concussion and learns that she’s pregnant. John opens Charles’s suitcase and finds a disguise in there that looks like Dr. Ash. And there are human bones in there as well.

John goes to see Charles at the mental hospital. John knows that he’s been taken over by Curwen. The bones in the suitcase are what's left of the real Charles Dexter Ward. Curwen reveals everything. Charles raised Curwen from the dead, who put on a disguise and pretended to be Ash. After doing away with Charles, he’s been eating flesh to continue being immortal. He’s learned things he’s not supposed to know.

Curwen then rips off the straitjacket and kills the orderly, pulling his head off. John throws some of the super chemical on Charles’ bones and brings him back to life as an angry skeleton. The skeleton rips the skin off Curwen, and both disappear. John then arranges things to look like Charles simply escaped, walks out of the hospital, and goes back to his office to tell the story as we saw at the beginning.

Brian’s Commentary

This one is loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.” There is a lot of slow meandering through the dungeon in this one, to the point of boredom. Despite the really slow middle, it had a good story, a good mystery, and a very cool conclusion.

For another version of the story, check out 1963’s “The Haunted Palace.”

Kevin’s Commentary

I enjoyed this the most of the Lovecraft movies we’ve seen lately, though it does have some slow points. Overall, it was entertaining with a good script, creepy effects, and a strong cast.

1994 Lurking Fear

* Directed by C. Courtney Joyner

* Written by H.P. Lovecraft, C. Courtney Joyner

* Stars Jon Finch, Blake Adams, Ashley Laurence, Jeffrey Combs

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 16 Minutes

* Trailer:

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

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was kind of a mishmash of action, horror, and crime drama. It wasn’t stronger for the mix, it almost seemed like it didn’t know what it wanted to be. We thought it was watchable, but not really great.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on two women and a baby. They have guns, and Cathryn doesn’t approve. We see something with big claws reach through an air vent and try to kidnap the baby. It pulls Cathryn’s sister Leigh through the tiny vent instead, breaking her apart. Credits roll.

We cut to John Martense, who’s just been released from prison. He goes to see Knaggs, a mortician. They both have matching maps of a cemetery where a man is buried. That man is stuffed with money; Martense’s father buried him and Knaggs is the man who stuffed him.

Meanwhile, at the Leffert’s Corners Cemetery, Cathryn’s there burying a bundle of dynamite. “I got a surprise for you tonight!” Later, she helps Dr. Haggis subdue a recovering addict. He helps her load more dynamite onto a truck.

Back at the mortuary, Knaggs meets Mrs. Marlowe, a recent widow. She pulls a gun on him; she works for Bennett, a gangster. They cut open his current customer and fish out bags of drugs. They steal his copy of the map, shoot him, and head after Martense.

Cathryn, Haggis, and her people talk to Father Poole at the church. “These damned things have been living under our feet and tearing us apart for years,” yells Dr. Haggis. The group is gearing up to battle against something really bad tonight.

Martense arrives just after dark and is quickly grabbed by Cathryn. Bennett and his people are right behind him. There’s a quick scuffle as everyone gets to know each other. Bennett says he wants the money, but no one knows what he’s talking about except Martense, who plays dumb. His people disable all the bombs spread around the cemetery.

They all go out into the very well-lit cemetery and start digging as it begins to rain. We cut to a monster under the surface who knows the storm has begun and starts to get excited. The monsters come up through the bottom of a grave and pull Martense down a long shaft into their cave network. He pops back up through the opening in the church floor.

The locals explain the monsters to the mobsters. These creatures have tunnels all over town and eat the townspeople occasionally. Martense is threatened by Pierce, one of the baddies, but then one of the monsters pulls Pierce out the window.

We get some quiet time as Cathryn goes out for a gasoline truck and Haggis keeps guard on the others, needing more booze.

Father Poole calls to the monster and tells him the situation. The monster tears his heart out and then grabs Dr. Haggis.

Bennett gets the drop on Martense, and they go back outside to dig some more. Marlowe and Cathryn fight in the rain outside, which soon turns into a mud-wrestling match, at least until things start exploding.

The monsters grab Cathryn and pull her down underground where Martense and Barrett are. The creatures see Martense’s birthmark; he’s one of them. Martense lights up a dismembered arm as a torch and leads the good guys out of the caves. Barnnett gets the money he came for, but it’s not going to do him much good.

The gas truck explodes, which ignites everything, blowing up the church, the crypts and many of the buildings in town. Martense, Cathryn, and Beth walk out of the cemetery in the morning.

Brian’s Commentary

This is based on the H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name.

The creature effects are good, there’s lots of action, but this one just didn’t do it for me. It’s like they were aiming more for an action-vibe than a horror movie, and didn’t quite achieve either.

Kevin’s Commentary

The creature effects are decent, but they kind of lost me when one of them started to speak, and it sounded like the Cookie Monster. It’s hard to be scared when you’re snickering. And the action attempts took too much away from the horror. I thought it was just okay, though I liked it more than I disliked it.

1995 Castle Freak

* Directed by Stuart Gordon

* Written by Stuart Gordon, H.P. Lovecraft, Dennis Paoli

* Stars Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Jonathan Fuller

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Buy it: https://amzn.to/3EWGAcT

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s loosely based on a Lovecraft short story, different enough to be interesting. The cast does a nice job with it, and the setting is great in a real castle. It’s decently made and moves well, with oodles of practical gore effects. We’d call it quite good.

Spoilery Synopsis

An old woman cuts up her unappetizing food. She then crosses the courtyard to the big castle and walks down to the dungeon. She opens the cell door and whips the screaming creature inside. After, she slides the plate of food inside and walks away. The whipping took a lot out of her, and she staggers back to the house, where she dies from an apparent heart attack. Credits roll.

John Reilly, Susan, and Rebecca drive to the castle the family just inherited. It’s seven hundred years old and has the rats to prove it. Mr. Giannetti is the local man who shows them around; he will be in charge of liquidating the assets and selling the place. Agnese is the housekeeper, and she seems eager for them to sell and go away.

John and Susan are having some marital issues. Rebecca, the daughter, is blind and can hear them arguing. We get a flashback to a drunken John causing a traffic accident that blinded Rebecca and killed their son, JJ. Susan hasn’t forgiven him for it.

That night, John wakes up to hear wailing from the basement and thinks it might be JJ. He finds a huge wine cellar, and he cuts his hand on a broken bottle. Agnese talks about the Duchess’s son, Georgio, who died when he was five years old. The Duchess fired all the servants and didn’t leave the castle for the next 42 years. Everyone says the old Duchess was crazy, and they say that even today, you can hear Giorgio crying at night.

In the morning, John and Rebecca go through the rooms to do an inventory. They find a nursery. He also finds a big bloody whip under the bed. Rebecca finds the Duchess’s old cat and follows it downstairs to the cell where the creature lives. The creature eats the cat, but being blind, she doesn’t see anything. She thinks there’s someone else in the castle, but her parents don’t believe her.

Meanwhile, downstairs, the creature breaks free. It smashes a mirror, and everyone hears that. That night, the creature comes into Rebecca’s bedroom and gives her a good scare. John finally starts to search and soon finds the dungeon where the creature had been locked up. He also finds some tombs with a photo of little Giorgio, who looks just like his dead JJ.

John tells Susan about the photo, but it’s gone when he shows her. This results in an argument about him killing their son. Soon after, John starts drinking again. He goes to the bar in town and brings a hooker home with him to raid their wine cellar. The creature watches as they make out, and he likes it. As the prostitute tries to find her way out, the creature follows her and has his way with her as well.

In the morning, the policeman comes to the door, looking for the girl, who was last seen with John. Meanwhile, the girl awakens, chained up in the dungeon with the creature. She tries to flirt with him, but he doesn’t have a tongue or penis.

John talks to the lawyer, Giannetti, who gets a call from Agnese; she’s found the hooker’s handbag. It doesn’t look good for John. Giannetti wants to raise his fee in order to make it all go away. Giannett explains that John’s father and the Duchess got together back in the day; if Giorgio had lived, they would be brothers.

Back at the castle, Agnese finds the missing Sylvana, dead, half alive and partly chewed up. The monster then beats the old housekeeper to death.

After hearing about John and the hooker, Susan packs the car to leave town. They are stopped by the police on the way out; they aren’t allowed to leave. By the time they all track down John, he’s opened up Giorgio’s tomb and found it empty. John has it all figured out, but by this point, no one believes him. Suddenly, they find the two women’s bodies in the next room, and that goes really badly for John. The policeman was dating the hooker and the lawyer was the housekeeper’s sister.

They take John away and leave to officers to watch Susan and the castle overnight. One of the policemen soon dies, and then so does the other a few minutes later. Giorgio sneaks in and helps Rebecca undress, and then he grabs her and carries her off. Susan grabs a knife and follows them.

In town, John knocks out the cop and breaks loose.

The creature, Giorgio, soon figures out that Rebecca can’t see him and takes off his mask; he is a mess. He starts biting her just as Susan comes in. “Take me!” she shouts as she starts to undress. The creature goes for her now, and she stabs him in the back. The two women run upstairs as Giorgio screams and chases them with the whip.

They all make it up to the roof, in the rain, as John catches up with all of them. He gets up on the loose tiles and lures Giorgio to follow him. They fight, but John doesn’t finish him off. Giorgio goes berserk with his chain and John is out. No- John grabs the chain, connects it to his own wrist then jumps off the roof, killing them both.

Brian’s Commentary

This one is loosely based on the H.P. Lovecraft story “The Outsider.” Very loosely based.

The creature effects are very good, the plot moves along pretty quickly, although it’s nothing especially innovative. It’s a fine example of mid-90’s Full Moon Horror.

Kevin’s Commentary

I was kind of surprised how much I enjoyed this one. Though I should have known that with Jeffrey Combs in it, it would be good. It’s a fine specimen of 90s horror, with gore and effects better than I expected. I’d recommend giving this one a watch if you haven’t seen it.

1993 Necronomicon: Book of the Dead

* Directed by Christophe Gans, Shusuke Kaneko, Brian Yuzna

* Written by Brent Friedman, Christophe Gans, Kazunori Ito

* Stars Jeffrey Combs, Tony Azito, Juan Fernandez

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes

* Trailer:

* Get it: https://amzn.to/3Z3rLMl

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was quite a good anthology of three tales with a number of recognizable faces, so the acting is consistently good throughout. The writing and effects are decent. None of the three or the wraparound are directly H.P. Lovecraft stories, it’s more a story of him discovering these events in the real world and then adapting them later to his tales. We enjoyed it.

Spoilery Synopsis

Wraparound Story: The Library

We hear H.P. Lovecraft talking about a time when he found out about the Necronomicon, and he needed it for his writings. It was supposed to hold the secrets of the universe. He talks to a creepy librarian and steals his keys. An attendant watches Howard sneak downstairs and unlock the vault using the stolen keys. The vault is surprisingly cooperative, and he finds the book quickly.

As he reads the book, something opens in the back of the vault… Yes, it’s an anthology!

Part 1; The Drowned

Nancy talks to Edward, who has inherited this old hotel. As they wander around, we see there’s a huge sub-basement in the place. She recommends that he sell the place, as it’s all going to collapse someday soon. They admire a painting of Emma, Edward’s aunt. Her husband, Jethro, died just a few days later, probably of suicide diving off the balcony. We flash back to Edward and Clara driving. There was a crash, and she died.

Old Jethro left a letter for Edward from sixty years ago. He tells his story. Their ship crashed into rocks, and he was the only survivor. When Jethro wakes up, his wife and child are on display downstairs for the funeral. He burns the Bible and throws all the mourners out. He also banishes… God.

That night, a seaweed-covered stranger comes to visit. It’s some kind of fish-man who says, “You are not alone.” The fish-man leaves quickly, but leaves a book behind– it’s the Necronomicon. It tells him a “Remedy for Untimely Death.”

Jethro does the spell from the book, and it works. Emma and Jon wake up, but their eyes glow evilly. Their mouths sprout tentacles; they are monsters. They watch as Jethro jumps to his death.

Back in the present, Edward uncovers the pentagram that Jethro once used. That night, as he sleeps, we see green light and tentacles from the pit below the house. Edward wants the book so he can bring back Clara. It takes a while, but he finds it. Edward reads from the book, and we soon see Clara walking up the steps to his room.

Edward tells Clara that the accident was his fault and that he’s sorry. When the tentacles start to sprout, she seems surprised. He attacks her with a sword, and she goes back down into the basement, where Edward gets a hint of what’s down there.

The giant tentacle monster below breaks through the floor, it seems that “Clara” was really only part of the monster. Edward cuts the rope to the chandelier, which impales the thing right through its eye as he escapes out the skylight dome.

Back in the library, Howard notices that there’s something odd under the floor of the library’s vault. Outside, the librarian and the attendant wonder if Howard is brainless enough to read the book. “Of course. He’s human.”

Part 2: Cold Air

Dale, a reporter, comes to see Emily, who is allergic to heat and sunlight. The house is like a freezer. The house is supposedly owned by Dr. Richard Madden, who’s super old, but there’s no record of his death. He thinks Madden is dead and Emily had something to do with that. And he’s suspicious about the number of local deaths there have been.

Emily tells the story. Twenty-two years ago, her mother rented a room in this building. Lena lived there alone and rented the room to her mother. There was also a mysterious tennant on the third floor, Dr. Madden.

Her stepfather, Sam, tracks her down, and he’s abusive. She fights back, and there’s lots of screaming as she crawls upstairs. Dr. Madden comes out of his room and stabs Sam in the hand. Madden takes her into his apartment and explains that he’s got a disease that requires an unreasonably cold environment. He sends her downstairs but invites her to come back again. When she leaves, we see that his forehead is leaking orange goo. Lena starts giving her “vitamin” pills that are sketchy at best.

Emily then goes upstairs and sees Lena and Madden disposing of Sam’s body; she faints. In the morning, she thinks she dreamed that. Madden accidentally cuts himself, and his blood is orange. Emily gets a job at the diner across the street, and the owner says old Dr. Madden must be nearly a hundred by now. Two policemen in the diner have “Missing” posters for Sam.

Emily confronts Madden; he follows her downstairs, where it’s warm, and he doesn’t react well. After getting patched up, Madden explains the science behind his life. It requires him to live at a reduced temperature, but he has cheated death. He really is over a hundred years old. He demonstrates by bringing a rose back to life.

Emily and the doctor fall in love and have sex, which annoys Lena. Lena’s jealous and pulls a knife. Emily runs away.

She comes back and finds a man in Madden’s freeze chamber; Madden and Lena are trying to kill him. Another price of Madden’s extended life is that he has to regularly harvest spinal fluid from people. They struggle, and a fire starts. Madden’s face looks terrible after that; he starts to melt and rip flesh off. He literally falls to pieces. Lena comes in and shoots Emily in retaliation. Emily tells Lena that she’s pregnant with Madden’s baby.

Back in the present, Dale wants to know why there were three more bodies even after Madden’s death. He suspects that Emily and her mother are the same person. She admits it, but then she mentions that the tea he’s been drinking is drugged. She got the disease from Madden and didn’t survive the gunshot, but she’s still got eternal life. And she’s still got that baby inside her that she wants out someday. Lena is still there, still a minion, but Emily’s now…

Lovecraft notices the temperature in the library is going up. The librarian watches through a peephole to see what’s transpiring inside.

Part 3: Whispers

Two cops pursue a suspect in their car. Sarah and Paul argue as they drive; she’s afraid to be a mother. Their patrol car flips over, and Sarah watches as someone drags Paul’s body out of the wreckage. She follows the blood trail into an industrial-looking building.

Paul’s not dead, but when he sees who’s dragging him along, he screams. Sarah runs into Mr. Benedict, who says “I’ve never seen him grab a cop before. The man you’re looking for is called The Butcher.” He says the building has a bad habit of just swallowing things up. They run into Benedict’s wife on the way downstairs.

Sarah follows the couple, who show her to their apartment, which has the Necronomicon on a table. They’re very strange and warn her against the Butcher. They mention that the Butcher is an alien, who’s been down here since before the dinosaurs. They show her to the entrance of a cave system under the building

Sarah and Mr. Benedict wander through the tunnels, and it does all look very ancient. The old couple sets Sarah on fire and pushes her into a pit, where she soon finds a whole pile of skeletons and corpses… and Paul, who is being animated by The Butcher, a big worm-thing.

Turns out, there are many of the creatures down here, and they want her baby. No, wait– Sarah wakes up in a hospital room with the Benedicts, who are now doctors. Did she hallucinate all that? Mrs. Benedict is actually Sarah’s mother, and she wants Sarah to keep the baby. Things get weird, and we see that the earlier bits weren’t a dream after all.

Back in the library, Howard closes the book. The librarian tells him everything is going to be fine so long as he opens the door. The book glows red, and the librarian screams for him to put the book back. The librarian squeezes through the bars as Howard fights with the creature under the floor. “Consider your privileges revoked, Mr. Lovecraft.”

The monster bites the librarian’s head off and everything resets. Lovecraft goes outside and drives away in a cab. He’s got the book, and he has stories to write.

Brian’s Commentary

H.P. Lovecraft looks like Jeffery Combs with a prosthetic nose and chin.

Jeffrey Combs, Richard Lynch, David Warner, and Don Calfa– it’s got a great cast of 90s horror people, and they all do a great job here.

All the stories are good, but I thought the third one dragged on a bit too long while the second was a little too short. Overall, a worthy viewing.

Kevin’s Commentary

Who knew that H.P. Lovecraft wrote his stories from real-world inspirations. The quality was pretty consistent throughout, though I think I enjoyed the second tale the most. The heavily practical effects worked well, and I enjoyed the viewing. I’d never even heard of this one before. It’s worth checking out.

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We’ve got a good mix of old and new this time around, starting with the very sci-fi “Ash” from 2025. Also from this year are “Shadow of God” and “Final Recovery.” We’ll then watch a couple of not-so-new films, with “Godzilla vs. Gigan” (1972) and “The Final Destination” (2009) [The fourth in the series].

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

Mainstream Films:

2025 Ash

* Directed by Flying Lotus

* Written by Jonni Remmler

* Stars Eiza Gonzalez, Aaron Paul, Iko Uwais

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one is a bit of a mystery as the main character wakes up with a foggy memory and tries to piece together what happened on a space station with failing power and multiple bodies. Which gives it a video game quest vibe at times. But things gradually come together as she, and the viewer, figures out what happened and why. The cast is good, the story is compelling, and the effects are excellent. We really liked it.

Spoilery Synopsis

Riya has flashing visions of people’s heads melting and exploding; it’s all very graphic. The computer announces, “Abnormal activity detected. Systems failure. Reboot.” She wakes up on the floor with blood on her hands. She walks down the hallway, noticing bloody handprints and dead bodies everywhere.

She goes outside, and it’s raining ash. She finds more bodies scattered about. She looks up and sees something amazingly weird. Credits roll.

She finds that she’s having trouble breathing and barely makes it back inside.

Flashback time. Adhi, Kevin, Davis, Clarke, and Riya eat Brion’s Beans, referring to a guy still up in orbit, and talk about who’s going to be the first one outside. They’re the first ones on this planet, ever. The atmosphere is almost breathable, and it may be the best find yet for potential colonization.

Back in the present, Riya washes the blood off and wonders, “Who am I?” She walks through the ship, reading notes and watching videos.

Suddenly, the computer announces that there’s movement outside the airlock. There’s someone outside banging on the door to get in. Riya attacks the man when he comes in, but quickly finds it’s Brion, who has come down to the surface. He got their distress call; something about Clarke having a psychotic break. She explains that by the time she woke up, everyone had been killed. Other than that, she doesn’t remember anything.

Brion tells her that Earth is dying, and they sent out seven expeditions to find a new home. This planet, Ash, is where they sent the seventh ship. He remained aboard the mothership to establish communication with home, but now he’s come down to investigate. He does a medical scan on Riya, and says she’s got a concussion, but is otherwise fine other than the memory loss and minor wound on her forehead that the automatic surgeon robot fixes up.

Riya keeps hallucinating the dead faces of her crewmates; could she have been the killer? They wonder where Clarke went, could she still be alive outside? The station is slowly running out of oxygen, so they need to get back up to the orbital. The launch window is in twelve hours.

There’s a sandstorm outside, and they get a hull break that needs to be repaired, as they’re losing more oxygen. She fixes the hole, but they have even less time now. They have to leave in five hours, so they may never get any real answers about Clarke.

Riya watches recorded footage from the group going outside in their suits. They found a deep tube; someone, but not humanity, has built terraforming equipment on the surface, which is why there’s so much oxygen in the air. Davis drops something into the tube, and it explodes with strange energy, killing him.

Riya admits to Brion that she thinks it was her who killed the others, but she doesn’t know why. She wants to stay on the base to get her memory back, but their time-frame for leaving is running out. Brion points out that they’ve found alien technology, and this is about the survival of the species, not just her memories.

She remembers more about killing Adhi, but now it looks like he was attacking her and it was self-defense. She goes through the ship and finds Brion, dead, with his head broken up. Clarke is there, in a suit, and she attacks Riya. Riya eventually beats Clarke, using the suit against her.

Riya does a post-mortem on Clarke, but doesn’t find any alien contagion.

The computer announces that the orbital lineup window is now open, so she has to hurry to the lander to get up to the mothership. The computer on the lander is as messed up as the one on the base, so she goes back to the base.

She puts Brion’s body in the medical scanner, and it reports that he’s been dead for 51 hours. Who has she been talking to all this time?

“Unusual lifeform detected” announces the computer. It’s Brion. He explains that he’s part of her now. He shows her what happened in her mind. Riya’s crewmates found something alive inside the circuitry of the computer, some kind of alien worm. Brion arrives, and they all talk about the creatures. Adhi decides they need to get off the planet before the thing spreads. Riya argues that they should stay anyway.

The self-replicating lifeform jumps right up Adhi’s nose and takes possession of him. Then he attacked, and she killed him with Kevin’s help. The creature, however, then crawled into Kevin and did the same with him. Kevin then killed Brion and beat Clarke severely. Clarke then rushed out to the lander. Riya then stabbed Kevin to death and then the alien entered her. She took poison, but passed out rather than dying, and that’s the point we saw her waking up from in the beginning.

Back in the present, the alien speaks inside her head. “This is our planet. We will not let you take it. Your species is inefficient and doomed to self destruction. All we need is one of you. You have been chosen to join the many.”

Riya hops into the medical scanner and sets it to “excise parasite.” She passes out in pain, since there’s apparently no anesthesia. It yanks the worm right out of her head, but then it crawls into Brion’s body, and it goes into full “The Thing” mode, with tentacles and everything.

The monster chases her through the ship, getting crazier-looking with every step. She eventually burns it with a flamethrower and extra oxygen. She then goes back to the lander, which is working now, and takes off.

As she approaches the orbiter, she thinks about her dead friends. Happy ending for her!

…except for the mid-credit scene, which isn’t so happy.

Brian’s Commentary

While all the red and blue light sources look cool for a movie, that’d make me insane after a few hours. In the future, they won't have white light bulbs anymore, I guess. What’s with the equipment speaking Japanese on an all-American base?

Those are maybe some of the most alien aliens we’ve seen. Very cool.

Other than the funky lights, the special effects, gore, and sci-fi stuff all look great. The plot is a mystery: what’s going on and why. This could almost be taken as a sequel to “The Thing” as the aliens could be related.

This was really good!

Kevin’s Commentary

Science fiction horror is one of my favorite genres when it’s done right, and I thought that this one was. It builds nicely as we gradually piece together what’s going on and what’s causing it. The creature effects were nightmare fuel, very effective, and did remind me of John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” with a dash of 2017’s “Life” and a bit of Lovecraftian elements. And I didn’t mind the colored lights.

2025 Shadow of God

* Directed by Michael Peterson

* Written by Tim Cairo

* Stars Mark O’Brien, Jacqueline Byers, Shaun Johnson

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is very well made. It’s an exorcism kind of movie, but not a ho-hum-it’s-another-one which we were kind of expecting. There are some differences which make it unique and interesting. We both liked it quite a bit, Kevin more so than Brian.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a church in Guadalajara, Mexico. A pair of priests talks to a woman in a wheelchair; they’re doing an exorcism. The demon argues with them about her name, and then the woman kills Father Scott. The other priest, Father Mason Harper, uses Scott’s blood to drive out the demon. Harper reports to the Vatican, and they mention that Father Scott was the sixth exorcist killed today. Something is going on. Credits roll.

In Southern Alberta, Canada, Mason waits for a ride in the empty countryside. He watches his own father jump off the bridge, but he appears to have imagined that. Tania comes to pick him up, and he says the past 24 hours have been strange. Mason’s coming home, where he grew up with all kinds of terrible trauma. She doesn’t believe in anything, and she thinks his exorcisms are psychosomatic cures (she’s a psychiatrist) for lunatics, but he knows better– he’s seen things. They argue, and she leaves.

There’s no alcohol in the house, so Mason walks to the store and buys a bottle. As he leaves, he sees his father in the fog. We flash back to his father, a religious fanatic, nailing Mason’s hands to a board as his father whips him for the parishioners. Yes, Mason escaped from his own father’s cult– and went straight to the Catholic Church. Tania doesn’t see that as an improvement. She says his father wasn’t possesed, he was schizophrenic.

Tania gets a call from the police that a man jumped off the bridge and there was a witness who walked away afterwards. She goes to the hospital, and to see another man who was under the bridge and witnessed the death. He says the dead man landed on the rocks right in front of him, and it was horrible. Then the body got better and walked away, it was some kind of terrible miracle. “It means the End has come!”

The police chief, Glen, comes to Mason and says he saw Mason’s father wandering down the highway. “Resurrection’s more your jurisdiction,” Glen says. “They’re looking for us,” says Angus, the father. “If they find us, we all die.” Glen bails out and leaves, he’s done his job, and it’s on Mason now.

Mason has always believed that his father made a deal with a demon many years ago, and maybe this is their opportunity to fix that. Angus admits that all his rituals and congregations were all wrong and that he was tricked.

On the drive back to town, Glen runs into several men on the road who have guns. They’re looking for Angus and shoot Glen full of holes.

Mason calls his boss, but Angus says “That fraud in Rome won’t help us.” Mason wants to do an exorcism on Angus, but Angus says he’s God’s vessel.

We flash back to young Mason and Tania, leading policemen with guns to their father’s compound. The cops shoot Angus several times in the chest.

Tania spots flashlights in the old compound and sneaks in to investigate. The old cult has returned; they capture her. She watches as they execute people.

Angus has a seizure and passes out, so Mason straps him to the bed. “He’s here.” The exorcism begins, and Angus begs him to stop. Mason calls Glen and tells him what’s going on. Glen is dead; it’s the murderer Beau who really answered the phone. Mason calls his boss but is informed that he was killed last night during an exorcism. The people on the phone forbid him from doing another exorcism until they know what’s going on.

Mason watches as screaming bright light pours out of Angus and makes things in the room explode. He goes out and puts on the collar and full uniform. Angus speaks telepathically, “Feel honored that you’ve been chosen for this,” says the old man with the glowing head. Mason turns the cross upside-down, and Angus doesn’t like that at all. This might be an angel, not a demon. No, he claims to be God himself.

The cultists realize that Tania is “a cohort of the Shepherd.” They talk about a prophecy.

Mason has a vision of Lucifer, who wants to talk. He’s been killing exorcists recently. “Humanity is done with God, and God is done with humanity.” When God gives up, all of humanity will be destroyed. He tells Mason that Angus is a vessel for God, and it’s important that Mason not let him out.

Beau breaks in with his goons and holds Mason at gunpoint. Mason escapes and runs out into the night. He goes to the local shop for help, but that’s a bad idea. He gets knocked out. He gets a vision where someone gives him a knife.

Mason wakes up chained in the cultists’ barn, but he does have a knife in his hand. The men nail Mason’s hands to a table, just as his father did. Then Beau whips him, just like the good old days. Mason tells Beau that if they complete the ritual, the world will end, but they’re fine with that. The whipping goes on and on as Mason does a Confession under duress. They cut a cross in his forehead with a razor blade.

Beau and the group force Mason to do the ritual on Angus. He summons God as “a being of flesh and blood.” It’s not an exorcism, not exactly. One of the cultists rushes up to look at God and his head explodes. Then we get a moment right out of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” only with less face melting. All the cultists explode into dust.

Angus stands up, and his face shows the universe. “The summoning is complete.” Mason turns his cross upside down and calls upon Lucifer for help. He tries to banish God.

In the other building, Tania escapes. She grabs a gun and shoots God full of holes, but that does nothing. As he’s distracted, Mason stabs him with the knife. Lucifer shows up again and tempts Mason to kill God, but he stabs Lucifer instead. He then used Lucifer’s blood to cast God out, and that does the trick.

Angus apologizes to Mason for everything before dying again. As Mason and Tania walk away, he throws out his collar.

We cut to a hospital, where an orderly rolls a gurney into the morgue. It’s Angus, who’s still twitching…

Brian’s Commentary

It’s a different kind of exorcist movie, where maybe God is the bad guy. The special effects are good. For a long while, we weren’t sure whose side we were supposed to be on, which made it interesting. Even at the end, I’m not sure who was right.

It was well made and looks good. It's different enough to be interesting, but it’s really just another exorcism film, which tends to bore me quite a lot.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was a breath of fresh air as far as exorcism movies go. I thought everything about it was well put together, and it was different enough to keep my interest. And who were we really supposed to root for? It’s complicated. I liked it a lot without being bored at all.

2025 Final Recovery

* Directed by Harley Wallen

* Written by Jerry Lee Davis, Nick Theurer

* Stars Charlene Tilton, Jasper Cole, Richard Tyson

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Ah, nothing like a festive holiday movie to put you in the spirit. This is well put together, with drama and human struggles building towards some real horror at the end. Charlene Tilton nailed it as Nanny Lou, able to hide her core with a mask of sweetness when she wanted to. We thought it was quite good.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 1974 at Christmas. Louise’s father closes the store at night and talks to a guy who’s begging on the street. The argument escalates until the old man gets stabbed and dies, and his daughter watches from the car.

Today, Rodney goes to his trailer and admires his drug collection when two cops, Levi and Jacob, barge in and search the place. They knock out Rodney and take him to a rehab place for treatment. Louise is there, grown up, and she runs the treatment center– she pays the two cops for bringing Rodney in. Dr. Sam Porter tells Louise that Rodney’s going to be unconscious for a while.

Jacob brings in another crackhead, and he’s not in good shape. Sam thinks they should call an ambulance. “We can’t send him to the hospital; he’s got my specials in him!”

In the morning, Rhonda brings some of Rodney’s things since he’s going to be there for a long time. She calls Louise “Nanny Lou,” and she’s been through this before. Rhonda still blames Rodney for the death of their child. Her daughter, Kylie, says she needs to forgive Rodney.

Meanwhile, at the treatment center, Louise makes up a batch of pills. Rodney talks to Dustin, the new guy, about them both being on Specials.

At group, we meet a few more recovering addicts. Tonya and Heather argue. They meet Marianne, one of the counselors there at Sage. Dustin tells his story, but he doesn’t want to be here.

Dustin later goes into convulsions and Levi brings him back in. Sam says they’re giving him too high of a dose. Cindy, Dustin’s sister, sees his condition and says it’s all from his Aleppo PTSD, and they can’t really afford to stay here. Louise points out that it’s either here or jail since the cops found so many drugs in his system. Louise talks about financing and she’ll let Dustin work in Cindy’s store to keep an eye on him. Levi thinks Cindy “is on to us,” but Louise is confident.

Rodney and Dustin start to conspire against Louise, who rules this place with an iron fist. Rodney tells him how his son died, and it was his fault. One of the patients dies, not accidentally, and Jacob and Levi carry body parts out in garbage bags.

Rhonda, Kylie, Cindy, Dustin, and Rodney sit together and discuss their situations. Louise yells at Rodney for leaving with her Specials, and now she wants him to find her more customers.

While the guys are working at Cindy’s store, Louise kills Tanya. Dustin falls over, he’s been taking the Specials again.

Walt tells Rodney that his month is almost up, and he’s looking forward to staying clean this time. Walt also mentions that he hasn’t seen Tanya today; she’s supposedly been released, but they both know that’s not true. Nanny Lou calls Walt out of a group meeting for a surprise.

Rodney sells some drugs to Kylie’s new boyfriend and feels bad about that, but Louise is making him do it. Louise says she’s here to make sure no addicts hurt anyone else; she still holds a grudge over her father’s death.

In the middle of a group session, Heather passes out, and she might die. Doctor Sam is also not in good shape– he may be on something as well. Louise tells Marianne that Sam is a recovering addict as well, and he’s lost his license. This devolves into threats from Louise.

There’s a big fight during visiting hours, and Rodney sees Levi making a move on Kylie. Rodney explains that they get people clean until it’s time for release, and then Nanny Lou gets them hooked on Specials again. This keeps people coming back, which is good for the bottom line.

Heather dies, Levi chops her up, and Dustin sees him doing it. Louise injects Dustin with something that knocks him out. Louise later forces Rodney to take some Specials. She tells Rodney that Dustin robbed her and then ran off with Heather. She also threatens to have Levi hurt Rhonda and Kylie if Rodney doesn’t play ball.

Dr. Sam starts to tell Rodney what Louise is up to, but then Levi kills him right in front of Rodney. Rodney runs downstairs and finds the bodies and parts in the dismemberment room. He also finds Dustin, but too late: Nanny Lou gets him.

Rodney and Louise talk about her motives, and she’s very pessimistic, she’d rather kill the addicts than release them for a relapse. Rodney stabs Louise and releases Dustin. They feed Nanny Lou a bunch of the Specials and then watch her die…

Brian’s Commentary

This was filmed here in Flint, Michigan, which is pretty cool, although I didn’t recognize any of the locations. It’s also, oddly, a Christmas movie.

The characters are all distinctive and interesting, and the drama of drug addicts in rehab and dealing with their families is good. It’s very talky, and the horror elements don’t really come in until towards the end, but we were entertained.

Kevin’s Commentary

Terrible people doing terrible things can certainly be as unsettling as literal monsters. I thought it could have moved a bit more and sooner into the horror. Like an engine revving in neutral, I found myself thinking it’s impressive, but put it in gear now. Still, the characters were interesting enough to make me care about them, and it’s decently made overall. I dug it.

1972 Godzilla vs. Gigan

* Directed by Jun Fukuda, Yoshimitsu Banno, Ishiro Honda

* Written by Takeshi Kimura, Shin’ichi Sekizawa

* Stars Hiroshi Ishikawa, Yuriko Hishimi, Minoru Takashima

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one has humans vs. aliens, multiple fighting creatures, loads of collateral damage to buildings and infrastructure, a lair in the shape of a giant Godzilla in an amusement park, and blood. The first time we’ve seen the creatures bleed in battle. And there are some long battles, maybe too long. If you’re a fan of the 70s Toho kaiju films, this is one of them. It’s fun for what it is.

Spoilery Synopsis

We start with a cartoonist drawing kaiju comics. He talks to his friend, who pitches him the idea of a “Homework Monster” which is what the kids really fear. It starts as homework and mutates into a monster. The cartoonist says that idea stinks.

Gengo is assigned to go to the construction on the “Children’s World Site,” where they are building the Godzilla tower, part of a theme park. The head of the project, Kubota, explains the idea to Gengo. He is a big advocate of world peace. Gengo says the park needs more monsters and suggests a few others. Kubota hires Gengo to design some new monsters. After this Children’s Land is complete, Kubota plans to destroy Monster Island.

Gengo gets to work drawing his Homework Monster and Uptight Mother Monsters. The Uptight Mother Monster, Mamagon, looks just like Gengo’s wife. On the way to see Kubota, he runs into a girl who drops a tape that he picks up. Kubota and four henchmen chase after the girl.

At the offices of the Children’s World Site, Gengo sees that it all looks like a supervillain’s lair, and the chairman there, Fumio, is very young but also is working on some serious math formulas. They mention a lost tape that could ruin their plans for peace. Gengo says nothing about the tape he’s carrying. On the way home, that woman and her friend wants her tape back. They are Machiko and Shosaku, and they tell their story. Her brother worked for the company and recently discovered an evil secret about the company, and they did something to him. The tape Gengo has is evidence, but he left it in a train locker.

Her brother, Takashi, argues with Kubota and the chairman about his forced overtime; he’s being held prisoner. They get an alarm that someone is playing the Action 2 tape. Gengo and his new friends don’t understand the tape at all, but on Monster Island, Godzilla and Anguirus wake up and pay attention. The two monsters talk to each other with comic book speech bubbles (which is hilarious).

Gengo goes to the company and snoops around. He finds Takashi’s lighter in Godzilla Tower. Shosaku and Machiko decide to do more research on the company, and Gengo goes along with the plan. The three find out that both leaders of the company came from Yamano, and our guys drive there to check out the little town. Fumio’s mother says that he died last year. His father says Fumio was never very smart, but his photo checks out. Kubota was his junior high school teacher, and he’s dead too, from a climbing accident.

Meanwhile, Fumio and Kubota receive a message from the space nebula, “Prepare for Arrivals.” They play Action Tape 1. They decide they don’t need Takashi anymore and plan to eliminate him.

Suddenly, Anguirus shows up on the beach and the Defense Forces leap into action. They open fire on the giant mutant turtle. They drive the monster back into the sea.

Kubota follows Gengo to Shosaku’s house and captures the three good guys. Gengo’s wife accidentally barges in and beats up the men. The trio goes to the police, but those guys are busy because they just heard that both Anguirus and Godzilla are heading to the city. We soon see that Gidorah and Gigan are on their way to Earth as well, drawn by the bad guys’ tape.

Gengo and Tomoko free Takashi from Godzilla Tower, but are soon captured. Fumio and Kubota admit that they are aliens here and give a lesson on pollution and ecology. They saved their planet, but it won’t last much longer. They both look like giant cockroaches in their true forms.

The monsters are coming, so the Defense Forces deploy again. The space monsters attack and buildings fall. They blow up lots of stuff for quite a while. This is the aliens’ “Peace Plan.” This goes on until Godzilla shows up. Both space monsters can fly, so that's a challenge for the Earth monsters to overcome.

Meanwhile, Shosaku and Machiko are outside Godzilla Tower trying to find a way in. Gengo, Tomoko, and Takashi are still prisoners inside. They send up a helium filled weather balloon up to the top of the tower with a rope for the others to climb down. Turns out, the big Godzilla Tower has a laser built in, just like the real monster.

Our heroes all go to the Defense Force and tell them about the aliens inside Godzilla Tower. Takeshi suggests attacking inside the base rather than trying to defeat the monsters. They sneak a bunch of boxes, clearly marked TNT onto the tower’s elevator.

Outside, Godzilla sees himself. No, that’s a tower that looks like him, and then the tower shoots laser beams at him.

The elevator gets to the top, the bad guys shoot it, and the entire tower explodes. Kubota and Fumio turn back into cockroaches and die.

Meanwhile, the monsters continue to fight. And fight. And fight. Working together, Godzilla and Anguirus tag-team the other guys to death. No, not quite– they both fly away, defeated.

Gengo and the others watch as the space monsters leave Earth. The good monsters turn and go home. Godzilla Tower and the evil aliens are defeated. “Maybe cockroaches will inherit the Earth,” someone points out. The end.

That closing song is something else!

Brian’s Commentary

So many models were destroyed in this! Actually, the modelwork is really good, and there’s a lot of it. A lot of work went into those, just to smash in one quick scene. The monsters, however, are still guys in rubber suits.

The voice bubbles for the monsters were hilarious, and the translations were even better. There were a lot of nods to comics, cartoons, and manga here; that must have been a big thing at the time of filming.

The monster-fighting goes on and on here. There are lots of models destroyed, but there’s not much to say about the fights themselves.

Three of these monsters had appeared before, but this was Gigan’s first appearance. He would later appear in three movies and make numerous appearances on TV. He’s got claws instead of hands and a buzz-saw in his belly. It looks like he has a laser-beam eye in the posters, but we never see that used here.

This is also the first film in the series to actually show any blood– this was actually based on requests from children to make the fights more realistic. There are no children in this one, so that’s a nice break, but overall, the monster fights aren’t that great because we already know who’s going to win.

I thought the fights were a little tedious, but the human bits were mostly funny. It’s… OK.

Kevin’s Commentary

If I had a secret lair, I would definitely want it to be inside a giant hollow Godzilla statue in an amusement park. Because why not? This one was on par with others of the era. It’s heavy on science fiction and very 70s in fashion and technology. I had a good time watching it.

2009 The Final Destination

* AKA “Final Destination 4”

* Directed by David R. Ellis

* Written by Eric Bress, Jeffrey Reddick

* Stars Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 22 minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

In hindsight, this was called “Final Destination 4,” but at the time it was planned to be the last one. We didn’t see the 3D version, but it’s clear they were filming it with that in mind. It wasn’t as strong as the previous three. The main character has too many premonitions regarding the deaths that give away too many hints ahead of time. It still has the chain-of-events death scenes, but they weren’t quite as fun this time. It’s pretty good, but the weakest of the four.

Spoilery Synopsis

This one begins at the racetrack, as the cars speed around the loop and the fans cheer. We zoom in on Nick, explaining that they’re only really watching in case there’s a crash. Hunt, Janet, and Lori are there as well. Nick notices that the speedway is really old, with crumbling walls and broken bleachers. Janet asks, “Is it safe to sit here?” “Of course, there’s a fence here.” As we see a closeup of the fence bolts starting to vibrate loose.

Nick starts getting a weird feeling.

We cut to someone knocking over an oil can, and a car drives off with a gas nozzle left inside. A car drives over the nozzle and flips over repeatedly. A tire kills one of the spectators, and a car lands in the stands. Pieces of cars fly everywhere, the stands collapse and catch fire. People get sliced in half, trampled, impaled, burned, and squashed. Everyone dies!

Back a moment ago, Nick remembers what’s about to happen and displays his knowledge of the very near future. “We have to get out of here. We’re all going to die.” This devolves into a fight, and a bunch of people end up chasing them outside.

Outside, Nick and the guys watch as mayhem ensues inside. The racist guy’s wife got left behind. A woman still gets killed by a flying tire– credits roll.

Nick, Hunt, Lori, and Janet talk about what happened at a coffee shop. The death toll is at 52, and they talk about going to the memorial. At the memorial, they talk to a few of the other survivors: some are thankful, and some aren’t. One racist guy makes a scene with George, the black security guard.

Later, the racist guy drives to George’s house and puts a cross to burn in his front yard. Through a sequence of coincidences, his tow truck drives away and drags him down the street. He catches fire and then the truck explodes, dumping his head right in front of George.

Nick watches the news report on TV, and he dreamed about that last night. He gets another premonition.

Next up is the mother with two kids. She goes to the beauty salon, and we see that the chair is faulty. There are curling irons, chemical treatments, sharp pedicuring tools, and a wobbling ceiling fan. What could go wrong? Everything goes wrong all at once, but everyone is fine. Then they go outside and she gets hit in the head with a rock thrown from a lawn mower.

Nick and Lori tell Janet and Hunt about Nick’s most recent vision and also about the events of the previous movies. They are all going to die at some point soon. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.

Nick and Lori go back to the racetrack to help him remember the order in which people died in his vision. They run into George, who shows them video of the incident. That reminds him of the sequence of deaths.

They go to talk to Andy, a mechanic who should be next to die. He was the one whose wife died by flying tire after they escaped. The garage where he works is an obvious deathtrap, He dies as the others talk to him. Hunt and Janet are next, but they died at the same time.

Hunt is at the country club, hanging around the pool. Janet is picking up dry cleaning and has trouble with her car’s sunroof. Nick gets another premonition that Hunt is going to die in water.

Hunt accidentally starts the pool drain, which has crazy pressure. A golf ball mishap makes Hunt drop his lucky coin in the pool, so he dives down after it. The drain suction grabs onto Hunt and pulls him down. The pump needs revenge, however, and cranks itself up to eleven, sucking Hunt’s guts out. The pump explodes with blood, intestines, and a lucky coin just as Nick arrives.

Janet goes to the coin-op automatic car wash. Something gets a short and the car gets stuck. Suddenly, the sunroof opens, just as a pipe breaks and fills the car with water. She sticks her head in the sunroof to avoid drowning, but then Lori and George arrive to help.

They saved Janet, so does that break the chain? George knows he should be next. He killed his own family in a drunken traffic accident a few years back, and he’s not against the idea of joining them.

Lori and Nick go to George’s house and find him hanging but the rope breaks. He’s been trying to kill himself all day. For some reason, he can’t die. They all decide that’s good news, and the cycle has been broken.

Nick has a premonition– he forgot about one of the victims, who has just died. The cycle is back on.

Meanwhile, George gets flattened by an ambulance.

Lori and Janet meet for lunch. We see some construction going on outside, and someone is playing with RC cars. Lori gets her shoestring caught in an escalator, but that doesn’t go anywhere. The two go to a movie in the mall. We see that a fire has started in a room full of flammable liquids right behind the theater screen. Lori starts getting premonitions now, and she wants to leave. She leaves with Nick, and Janet stays behind. Then the film explodes, killing Janet.

The whole mall starts exploding, and there’s a mass panic. Lori has another run in with the escalator, and this time it eats her.

Nick flashes back to the instant after George died. It’s too late to save him, but maybe he can get to Lori and Janet faster this time. He goes to the room with the fire and tries to prevent it, but he doesn’t have much luck at first. Actually, he’s attacked by a nail gun. He manages to set off the sprinklers, which douses the flames.

Two weeks later, Nick meets Lori and Janet at the coffee shop. Nick wonders “What if we didn’t change anything?” As a giant semi truck blasts through the window, killing them all.

Brian’s Commentary

The main incident was based on a real racing crash and chain reaction from 1955 - the Le Mans disaster - that killed 84 people and injured over 100, many in the same way as depicted here. This one was filmed in 3D, which is obvious from some of the obviously set-up shots we get. Nick’s visions are all bad CGI, and those shots didn’t hold up well at all.

It mostly follows the same formula as the previous films. This one adds Nick getting premonitions of how everyone is going to die with the freak accidents, which I think lessened the impact of the weird accidents. This time, Nick also gets yet another chance to rewind, and that lessened the impact even more.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was my least favorite of the four, a step in the wrong direction. There was too much premonition going on. I suspect they were trying to make it a little different to shake things up, but they shouldn’t have. It’s okay, but not as good.

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We’ve got a fun bunch this week. We’ll hang out in the yard with “The Woman in the Yard,” take a visit to “Caddo Lake,” before going home to “825 Forest Road,” which is located in “Crazy, Texas.” Then we’ll all die repeatedly in the third installment of the “Final Destination” Series.

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Mainstream Films:

2025 The Woman in the Yard

* Directed by Jaume Collet-Sera

* Written by Sam Stefanak

* Stars Danielle Deadwyler, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peyton Jackson

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The cast is excellent and it all looks good. They manage to ramp up the tension out of what is sometimes not much, sometimes quite a bit. We do gradually get to piece together what’s really going on more or less. It does have a wrap up, but we found it pretty disappointing in the end.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman watches a video of her husband talking about naming their farm. Ramona watches it over and over, clearly depressed. Her son, Taylor, comes in and breaks up the depression; the power is out, and he wants her to call someone. As she finally gets out of bed, we see she’s got a broken leg. She says good morning to her imaginative daughter, Annie, and heads downstairs.

Ramona’s husband, David, the man on the video, has obviously recently died, and the family has lots of unpaid bills. The food in the fridge is going to go bad pretty soon, and she can’t call the power company because her phone is dead. We soon get a flashback to the traffic accident that caused all the trouble, but then that’s interrupted when Taylor reports that there’s a strange woman in black out in the yard.

When Ramona decides to go outside and see what the woman wants, the kids act terrified of the stranger. It takes forever for Ramona to get to her on crutches, but she makes the attempt. “How did I get here?” the woman asks. She’s weird and seems to know more than she should about her and David. “You called and I came, Ramona.” Ramona gets scared and goes to the garage, where she plugs her dead phone into the car lighter plug. The car is dead, too.

Ramona comes back inside and locks all the doors. She makes up a story for Tay and Annie. A little while later, the old woman is now sitting closer to the house. We see that the old woman’s shadow affects things in a bad way.

The family dog had been barking non-stop, but Ramona notices it’s gotten awfully quiet outside. She goes outside to see about that and finds nothing– the dog is missing. Taylor wants to drive to a neighbor’s house; Ramona can’t drive in her condition, and Taylor’s not old enough. He wants to walk to a neighbor’s house– it can’t be more than a couple of miles.

The old woman gets closer, and Annie steps on something that cuts her foot. While Ramona deals with that, Taylor goes outside to look for the dog. He notices that all the chickens are dead. He goes out to the garage and fears that the woman is stalking him outside the door. He figures out that the car is dead and the dog is gone.

Taylor comes inside and accuses Ramona of knowing who the woman outside actually is. Taylor gets his father’s gun out of the safe and threatens the old woman. The woman stands up and walks toward him, taking off her veil. “Your mother’s been lying to you– about everything.” She explains that Ramona lied about the accident that killed David.

Taylor confronts Ramona about what really happened that night. They went out to dinner and she told him that she wasn’t happy with her life. She wanted to leave David and the kids, but he made a perfectly reasonable argument. She drove them home in the rain. Ramona notices a woman in black on the road in her rear-view mirror. She’s watching the woman when they hit the other car head-on.

Meanwhile, we see Annie inside the house, but the shadows are moving things around to scare her. The shadows menace her, but she doesn’t see them right away. Soon, everything in the house starts moving and flying, and they all see it. They quickly see that if they hide where it’s dark, there are no shadows, so they all go up to the attic.

Whatever it is outside, it bangs on the walls and doors, wanting in. Then they start seeing the woman inside the attic. The shadow eventually disappears, and takes Annie with her. They hear Annie downstairs, so Ramona and Taylor go down after her. Ramona goes through a tunnel into a reality where David is there, replaying the scene from her phone. She notices all the words she can read are backwards; it’s some kind of mirror-world.

Now, Ramona is the woman in black sitting outside the farmhouse, and we see the first encounter with the woman from her point of view as she talks to herself, a few hours ago. She then replays the scene in the attic with her in the part of the monster.

Ramona, now with the gun, talks to the woman, who says she only wants to help, the way she asked her to. The woman talks to Ramona about her long-planned suicide; Ramona wants to die. “I’m the corners of your mind. The scary parts. Today’s the day.” The woman talks to Ramona about going through with it to set her children free.

Ramona sends the kids to walk to the neighbor’s farm. She goes back inside and checks out the gun, as she only has one bullet. The woman shows her what to do.

Ramona goes back outside to the kids, who have returned. “Will she come back?” “If she does, we’ll be ready.” Suddenly, the lights go on and the dog shows up. Was any of this real? It’s a happy ending!

We cut to a painting with her signature– it’s backwards.

Brian’s Commentary

The ending was vague, but I guess by actually killing herself she went to the mirror universe and had a happy ending. Hooray for… suicide?

I have no idea why everyone was so scared for the first hour. An old woman was sitting on their lawn, and they were talking about calling the police and getting out the gun. Sure, it was an unusual situation, but why the overblown fear of an old woman who has done or said absolutely nothing?

There were only three characters, and two were children, so we weren’t expecting much of a body count, but we didn’t expect the monster to just be another case of depression. Especially since the kids saw the woman outside as well.

It looks good; the acting is good; it’s well paced, but the actual plot and resolution were pretty awful.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought the cast was great, including the kids. And I was impressed with how they ramped up the tension when there wasn’t really a lot going on when you thought about it. The explanation of what’s going on wasn’t that impressive though. The script was on the disappointing side, I thought. So mixed feelings.

2024 Caddo Lake

* Directed by Logan George, Celine Held

* Written by Celine Held, Logan George

* Stars Dylan O’Brien, Eliza Scanlen, Caroline Falk

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

We went into this pretty much blind, and it was more than either of us expected. It goes along with not too much out of the ordinary happening for a while, only some hints of weirdness, as we get to know the characters. Then things abruptly take a turn and stay wild from there on. We both really enjoyed it.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man and a woman wake up in an already-flooded car. He gets out, but she doesn’t. We see that they went over a bridge. Credits roll.

Today, Paris and his coworker, Zed, talk about how they keep finding stuff in the swamp due to low water levels. They are removing old pipes and junk for scrap. There’s an old, damaged dam being repaired, and it’s messing with the whole ecosystem; there’s a full-on drought. Paris and his father, Ben, are supposed to go to a funeral, but Paris doesn’t want to see “her” there, so he just drops off his father and leaves.

We cut to Ellie talking to Anna about Ellie’s annoying mother and where Caddo Lake got its name. They take a small boat out to deliver groceries to some people. They find a dead alligator; something bit it in half. Anna finds some dead moths that are supposed to be extinct. There’s also talk of wolf sightings, but there aren’t any of those there any more.

Paris talks to a doctor about his mother’s condition. His mother shouldn’t have been driving. She just had a seizure at a bad time was all, according to the doctor. When he gets home, he runs into Cee, whom he’d been hoping to avoid at the funeral. They walk over to a very-unfinished house and pretend to make pasta in the very open-air kitchen.

Later, Celeste throws a family dinner and talks to Ellie, her daughter. They talk about Ellie’s dad, who’s been missing for years. She needs his death certificate for college admissions. Her stepfather, Daniel, is a nice guy, but she clashes with him.

Paris apologizes to Cee about not appreciating her attention after his mom died; he was in a very bad place at the time. Paris’s dog, Wally, has been barking at the water a lot this week, and that’s not like him.

We cut to Ellie, whose boat hits something in the water and breaks the propeller. She and Paris and Wally hear something loud and boomy out there. Ellie sees wolves, supposedly impossible, but there they are.

That night, at her friend’s house, Ellie gets a call from Celeste that Anna’s gone missing. By the time she gets home, everyone is in a full panic. Someone has taken the boat that Ellie literally arrived in moments before.

Paris and Zed are working on removing more exposed pipes in the drought. They don’t know what these old pipes were for, but they’re good for scrap. Paris follows the pipe on dry land through the woods while Zed circles around in the boat. He traces them to an old abandoned oil pump, until he starts hearing weirdness and his hands shake. He catches up to the waiting Zed. Paris untangles some garbage from the boat propeller and finds the chain that Anna was wearing.

Paris talks to his dad Ben about his mother’s medical records– he’s still obsessing over her death and possible misdiagnosis. Ben does not approve, he’s thrown out all that stuff. His mother had a chain just like Anna’s - though he doesn’t know about the missing Anna. Now he has two of them. He takes Cee to where he found the necklace.

That night, they find Anna’s boat, but Anna and her life jacket are gone.

Celeste and Ellie argue over their treatment of Anna, and Celeste throws Ellie out of the car. They argue over whether Ellie’s father went missing or just left them.

Paris compared his experience on the swamp with his mother’s seizures; he thinks they may be related and it happens when the water is low. Cee thinks maybe those seizures are hereditary.

Ellie goes off searching alone, at night, and hides from other searchers. She crosses the weird “sound barrier” that Paris found earlier. She gets disoriented and loses her phone. She’s out there all night; in the morning, she flags down a fisherman and gets a ride home. When she gets home, everyone is freaking out about Anna, as if she’s just gone missing. She sees herself arriving on her boat outside. Her hands start to shake as she steals the boat while her past self goes into the house. That explains who took it from before.

Ellie and Paris both approach the same bridge, but for Ellie, the bridge looks broken down. Ellie hears Anna yelling and time-warps again; she finds Anna– but it’s not her Anna.

Paris walks through the time dilation, and for him, it’s night time– no, now it’s midday. He is very confused. He also finds Anna in the woods– injured and unconscious. Due to a lost tooth that hasn’t been lost yet, Ellie realizes that the Anna she found is from a month ago, just out in the swamp on her own. Ellie returns home with Anna a month ago, after a big fight, which is confusing for Ellie considering how angry her mom and stepdad are. That wasn’t this Ellie.

Paris, on the other hand, is much further back in time, and he sees the old dam being built. The booming noises they heard are explosions from controlled detonations during construction.

Paris learns that it’s 1952, and he hasn’t even been born yet. He leaves the little girl he found, Anna, with some men driving by in a truck who will get her medical care. 1952 was the year of the great drought; Paris had a chart of all the droughts. He realizes that maybe he can time travel back to when his mother died and fix things. He sees wolves and moths out in the woods.

Ellie learns much the same, and she uses a long rope to find her way through the maze of time periods. Paris finds her rope and follows it back to Anna’s boat. He takes her boat but soon runs into the police. That goes badly, and they send him to the hospital for questioning by the sheriff.

Ellie’s in 2005 now. She steals the necklace from Cee’s vehicle, they argue about it being Anna’s. Cee yells at Ellie for making her baby Ellie cry. Cee is actually a younger version of Celeste, and she’s putting up posters of Ellie’s missing father– Paris, missing since 2003. Paris’s mother is little Anna who traveled to 1952, grown up. Paris and Ellie have been in different time periods all along.

Paris can’t explain anything to the sheriff. He sees a news broadcast about 8-year-old Anna Bennet going missing just a few days ago. He knows who that is. He breaks loose and finds a room with his much older father on his deathbed. Ben hasn’t seen Paris in years, and it’s a big shock. In his getaway, Paris steals Celeste and Daniel’s car by chance, and she recognizes him as he drives off.

Ellie looks up Anna Lang and finds that she died in a traffic accident in 1999 - the scene we saw at the beginning which was Paris and his mother. She looks up Anna’s yearbook picture on the Internet and sees her there. She follows her whole story up to her obituary. It looks like she had a happy life with love and friends.

Paris drives his stolen car, pursued by the police and jumps off the dam to escape them. The police yell that the dam isn’t safe, and he watches it break - with a flood of water rushing toward him.

Ellie returns to the swamp, finds her rope, and follows it back to her time just in time. She watches as water starts flooding the woods, and the water stops the time dilation effect– the woods are normal now. She hears people calling for Anna and Ellie and gets picked up. Anna’s been gone three days. Daniel talks about a guy who stole Anna’s boat and their car. The guy killed himself jumping off the dam, and he looked just like Ellie’s father. Ellie tells Daniel that she knows Anna’s OK.

Paris is mentioned in the news as a drowned man with no id, and the authorities don’t know who he is. Celeste is watching it, and she knows. Ellie shows Celeste one of the missing person posters she grabbed from 2005. “He didn’t mean to leave us.”

Brian’s Commentary

We’re almost an hour in before we see that this is a time travel story, and what twisted story it is. We were a ways in before I realized that Cee and Celeste weren’t the same character, and then later, we find out that they are. That was both excellent and very confusing casting going on.

It’s more of a time-travel drama than horror, but it’s really awesome!

Kevin’s Commentary

So that was the reason that the actresses playing Cee and Celeste were chosen to look so much like each other. I went into this thinking it was a creature feature, and the half-eaten crocodile early on was a red herring. It turned out to be so much more than I was expecting, and I thought it was great. Not horror, but I’d put it in my favorites of the year so far.

2025 825 Forest Road

* Directed by Stephen Cognetti

* Written by Stephen Cognetti

* Stars Elizabeth Vermilyea, Kathryn Miller, Joe Falcone

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 41 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was an excellent film. Creatively done with the same section of time replayed from three different points of view, and then a wrap up that brings it all together. We loved everything about it.

Spoilery Synopsis

Two girls have theories about a haunted house, and they’ve been doing research forbidden by their parents. Ashley hears a knock on her bedroom door, but she’s the only one home right now. She looks around, and there’s no one there, but then the knocking continues.

Maria, Isabelle, and Chuck walk around the house they’re considering buying. Isabelle isn’t their kid, but Chuck is her brother. They move in and find the roof leaks badly. Maria does some kind of sewing podcast, and she’s got a terrifying mannequin in her studio.

Chapter One: Chuck

Larry, a neighbor, introduces himself. Chuck complains about the leaky roof, but the roof is supposed to be new. Larry mentions that the old owner killed themselves. Chuck takes a photo of the buckets of water, and when he looks later, he sees a shotgun in the photo– but he doesn’t own a shotgun.

The next morning, Martha the mannequin is outside. Larry comes over to ask about the very real-looking mannequin. Larry asks about Isabelle’s mother who died in the car accident. This house seems to prey on the most vulnerable, so he warns Chuck to keep an eye on Isabelle. Larry also suggests that he read up on the town history at the library and join a gardening group.

At the library, Chuck runs into Ashley, one of the girls from the opening sequence, and she’s been crying. “Just put the books back and leave. It’s real. It’s all real. Don’t look for it. Just get out of this town.” The librarian jokes that he’ll never find Forest Road in those books.

Chuck teaches piano, and Olivia, his first student, arrives at the house. Someone is playing music and Olivia is in the other room with Chuck. “There’s an old woman at the piano,” she says, but no one is there when they go back in that room. Olivia can’t wait to run out the door.

Larry invites Chuck to a secret meeting in the basement of a building, and the people there talk about things they’ve seen. “We haven’t had a suicide in years, until Ashley. Everyone here has been affected by her in some way. She feeds on suicides.” Helen Foster has been inflicting pain on the people for decades. Everyone knows about her, but no one knows how to stop her. They have to find 825 Forest Road, that’s where Helen killed herself in the 1940s.

Chapter Two: Isabelle

We go back to when they moved in, and Isabelle isn’t thrilled about being there. She keeps having dreams about her mother. Chuck asks if therapy is helping. She’s an art student, and she drew a perfect picture of the new house, but she drew it years ago.

When the mannequin ended up outside, Chuck blames her, but she swears it wasn’t her. After the secret “gardening meeting” Chuck comes home to be questioned by Isabelle, who says Ashley, a girl at school, killed herself last night. Isabelle doesn’t think it was suicide; she’s been seeing things.

Luke, a friend from school, comes over to talk to Isabelle about what she’s seen. Everyone knows about the “gardening group” and he knows what’s been going on. He tells her about Helen Foster, who’s daughter faced continual bullying. When the daughter killed herself, Helen wiped out the bully and their whole family. She lived at 825 Forest Road, but that’s not on any map. Back in 1980, the town council was going to do something about it, but they were all killed in a massacre.

Isabelle and Maria go to a local art museum. Maria mentions that she’s got bipolar disorder and Chuck just doesn’t get it. One of the paintings changes, scaring a patron, and the gallery closes as they put a cover over the painting.

Chuck wants Isabelle to move to campus and get out of the house. Chuck and Maria may move in a few days as well. Luke mentions that he met Isabelle’s mother downstairs a few minutes ago. Isabelle points out that her mother is dead. Luke leaves, and Isabelle and Maria see the dead woman and run upstairs.

Chapter Three: Maria

We rewind again to Maria’s point of view of the first time they see the house. Later, she waits outside the library as Chuck gets his book. Chuck tells her that therapy is a scam, which Maria doesn’t agree with. Isabelle was the one driving when her mother was killed, so Maria knows that Isabelle’s gonna need lots of it. Maria didn’t want to move to this little town, but she didn’t have much choice.

Chuck explains that the town renamed and renumbered all the houses back in 1953 for some reason. She does her video blog and notices that right in the middle of it, her mannequin moved.

Later, Maria is afraid of the mannequin and wonders if there’s something wrong with her bipolar medication. She skips a dose.

After the art gallery incident, Maria tells Chuck what happened. He thinks she’s complaining about moving to the small town. On her next live video broadcast, we can see the mannequin’s hands moving in the background. That thing is clearly alive. She gets a text from her audience, “get out of the house.” It starts chasing her around the house, and later, she has Chuck burn it in the backyard.

Chuck says they may have trouble selling the house, and he has doubts about her experience. A thousand people saw it on the livestream, so it’s definitely not in her head. We cut to the incident with Isabelle’s mother in the kitchen, and we see what happened from Maria’s point of view.

The crazy old ghost-monster-woman scares the crap out of Maria. Maria goes into Isabelle’s room, and she’s bleeding.

Chapter Four: Forest Road

Luke comes to the door and tells Isabelle that he’s found the house at 825 Forest Road. He’s found plans and followed the power grid rather than street maps. He’s found power lines that seem to go nowhere, so that’s where Forest Road is.

Bonnie, the realtor, comes to the door, wanting to film a testimonial. Maria volunteers to do it. Chuck and Isabelle go searching for the house, leaving Luke to watch over Maria. Bonnie has a film crew to record an interview with Maria, and we soon see that Maria is being possessed by Helen, telling Helen’s story.

Chuck and Isabelle drive to the end of the road. They soon find a house and break in. Under a floorboard, they find a box with letters inside. Letters that Helen wrote to the bully’s family– the bully family’s address is their house.

Maria turns into a monster right on camera and kills Bonnie and the cameraman. Luke runs, but it gets him too.

At the house, an arm grabs Isabelle. When Chuck tries to stop it, it pulls them both into the bedroom and slams the door.

Everybody dies!

Brian’s Commentary

It’s kind of a mystery, as everyone tries to learn what’s really going on. Everyone knows something is happening, but they have no idea how to stop it. The three different points of view is a neat way to tell the story. It’s a ghost story, but it’s not about a haunted house; it’s about a haunted town.

I liked this one a lot. It’ll probably be in my top ten for the year.

Kevin’s Commentary

Like Brian, this one really clicked with me, too. It was unique enough to be interesting, and everything about it came together - cast, script, effects, and direction. It was great.

2025 Crazy Texas

* Directed by Francis Juarez

* Written by Jordan Bradley, Marc Isaacs, Francis Juarez

* Stars Wes Gillum, Anna Pena, Belle Fawn Crow

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

We didn’t care for this one much at all. It lacks a plot, or at least we couldn’t really pick up on much of one. The story, such as it is, just kind of sits there stalled. The performances are just okay. Nothing stood out for us, and we were bored. The cardinal sin of a movie.

Spoilery Synopsis

Rocky and Trevor talk about playing a trick on some girls. Trevor describes a kidnapping, and Rocky is a simple fellow who goes along with it not fully realizing the bad thing they are doing. We cut to a bunch of Christmas Carolers. The two kidnappers break into the house and put everyone to sleep. They carry out two women and drive away. They stop and change cars and clothes then pass right through a police checkpoint. Credits roll.

The two women, Avery and Lilly, wake up chained to chairs.

We cut to a funeral where Avery and Lilly mourn their grandparents. After, they hear the reading of their will; the two girls got a large sum of money to split.

Trevor plays Christmas songs on the record player at the wrong speed and torments the girls. He says he knows everything about them. He says they are both here because they are “true believers.” He seems like a religious fanatic, but there’s probably more to that.

Lilly wants to do what the man says and get released, but Avery wants to escape. He knows about their inheritance and their grandparents. Avery remembers Trevor from church. Avery is confused about the date, and she’s told that it’s Christmas Eve.

We flash back to Trevor and Rocky; Rocky wants to talk about the girls. Trevor puts him off until evening. As they talk, it appears that Trevor’s not into religion at all, even though he acts otherwise.

We cut to Lilly and Avery talking to Trevor about their inheritance problem. It’s all very civilized, and he seems to be a counselor or therapist.

Back in the lair, the three talk about Olivia, Avery’s friend. “Would you like her to join us?” We cut to Olivia, who shows Avery’s photo to Rocky. Rocky comes to Trevor for his payment. He shows them the girls and then hits him over the head with a baseball bat.

Back in therapy, Trevor tells Lilly about an unconventional therapy that he tried once. “Sometimes unconventional methods are necessary.” He says he needs Lilly’s trust and help, and she agrees to help.

Olivia comes to Trevor’s door, and he tells her he’s there alone. He offers her “counseling” but he’s creepy and she leaves. Olivia goes to her friends and tries using a Ouija board to locate Avery. “Avery Help” is the message.

The police are out investigating Rocky’s disappearance. They talk to the girls’ parents, who are also Trevor’s clients. Trevor explains that Lilly is helping Avery “find her way.” “Change doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a process.”

Avery is very religious, and Trevor says it’s all a lie. His grandfather left him a notebook with lots of twisted stuff, and we get a flashback to those days. “The Bible is only one side of the story; other accounts exist.” He reads to them from his book.

In therapy, Lilly complains about how Avery is changing, but he reminds them that “we have a plan.”

Back in the room, Trevor does a ritual with powder in circles on the floor and blood. Olivia returns, and this time, Trevor gets her too. Then he gives Avery a long explanation about something… blah blah.

Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door; it’s the police, looking for Rocky. He gets rid of them easily enough. He goes back to the overly-long Satanic ritual.

Avery wakes up and rises from her coffin in foggy woods. She goes through a door and hears monsters inside. She sees an older woman inside and gives her a rose. She gets further instructions from the woman.

Back in the real world, Trevor gets upset because Avery didn’t bring back the Morningstar. He kills Olivia in retaliation. Lilly wants to change the plan; their whole plan was to make Avery insane to get her half of the inheritance. She and Trevor have planned this whole thing.

Lilly whacks Trevor over the head with a hammer and then chokes him.

Avery wakes up in the hospital, and Lilly admits everything. The two sisters are happy after that as they go visit Olivia’s grave.

We cut to the girls’ parents, who are now reading Trevor’s grandfather’s book.

Brian’s Commentary

This is just awful. It’s like someone heard the blurb for “Heretic” last year and tried to make a movie like that, but got it all wrong.

We were starting to lose interest about a half hour in and wondered when the “plot” was going to start. At about the one-hour point, we were still wondering what the point of all this was.

Wes Gillum once played Charles Manson in a film, and he’s definitely got the same look and vibe here. Other than him, it’s a very “indie” cast, most of whom seem like they’ve never acted before.

The dialogue here is slow and pretty clunky. Why did Olivia think Trevor was involved in the girls’ disappearance? Avery’s dream sequence looks good, but that’s just a few minutes of an otherwise incredibly dull film.

Kevin’s Commentary

I kept finding myself being drawn to looking at other things on my phone and computer as we watched this. It just didn’t hold my interest. It seemed to be stuck in neutral without really going anywhere, though I kept hoping and expecting that it would. I didn’t think it was entertaining at all. I wouldn’t recommend it.

2006 Final Destination 3

* Directed by James Wong

* Written by Glen Morgan, James Wong, Jeffrey Reddick

* Stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ryan Merriman, Kris Lemche

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one is more of the same, only different specifics. A vision before a disaster saves some people who were meant to die, then death comes after them. The deaths are even more Rube Goldberg, and suspenseful and creative, this time around. The acting and direction gets the job done, the effects are good. If you’re a fan of the previous films, you’ll probably enjoy this one too.

Spoilery Synopsis

We see footage of a carnival as credits roll. When that’s done, we cut to a bunch of people on a high-drop ride. Wendy takes a photo, where the ride is “High Dive,” the photo shows “High Die,” with the V gone dark. Wendy, Kevin, Jason, and Carrie are having fun, and Wendy is also taking photos for the school yearbook. The group decides to ride a roller coaster with a talking devil on it. Wendy’s weirded out about it, and they all argue about where to sit. A weirdo, Frankie, wants to sit behind a couple of hot girls and takes Wendy’s seat. She and Kevin end up sitting in the very last car.

We cut to a hydraulic leak somewhere on the ride. They ride up to the top hill and let loose; Yep, it’s a roller coaster! Frankie drops his camera, which breaks something, and the whole coaster starts coming apart. Everyone dies.

We flash back to everyone getting on the coaster. Wendy says, “We have to get off here. It’s gonna crash!” This results in a fistfight, and most of the characters get off. The ones remaining ride the coaster… and die.

Some time later, Wendy looks at a memorial to the dead students. Kevin tells her about the people in the first movie; there was a death-avoiding premonition then, too. It does sound like her situation. Wendy isn’t listening.

The two girls who should have been in the front of the coaster go to the tanning salon (remember those?). The attendant is really busy and lets them self-serve. We see that the shelving unit is loose, the attendant gets locked out, there’s a high voltage sign: this place is a deathtrap. One thing leads to another, and they get trapped inside the tanning pods. They burn to death before the attendant can get back inside.

Wendy tells Kevin that she feels that Death is following her; she can feel it. She admits that she’s looked up Flight 180, and now she believes the group is doomed. The kids should die in the same order in real life as they did in Wendy’s vision, so Frankie Sheets should be next. There’s another whole thing involving out of control trucks and a slow drive-in window. Wendy and Kevin avoid death, but Frankie, in the car ahead of them, doesn’t. Wendy’s photos tell how people are going to die, but only vaguely.

Kevin and Wendy go to see Lewis, who’s working out in the gym. Wendy tries to see a pattern in the photos, but there are just too many ways to die in this place to narrow it down. He works on a machine directly under a pair of sharp-looking display swords. The swords fall, and don’t do what they all expect, but he dies anyway.

We cut to Ian, who is shooting pigeons at the hardware store with a nail gun while standing on a forklift. Erin lets in Wendy and Kevin. They think Ian and Erin are next, but they are skeptical. The forklift gets caught in a chain, there’s glue, wind chimes, antifreeze, saw blades, and power tools, oh my. Well, stuff happens. Erin gets nailed and Ian lives… for now, but he shouldn’t have lived. And he’s very suspicious of Wendy now.

Wendy’s sister Julie was next on the roller coaster. Amber and Perry were probably with her. Wendy goes after her to the centennial celebration, where Kevin is working security. A cannonball rolls downhill, messing with a trailer support. As the fireworks start to launch, the trailer they’re on starts rocking. A horse goes berserk and ends up nearly killing Julie. We soon figure out who was sitting next to Jule on the coaster– ouch!

Kevin almost gets burned alive but Wendy pulls him away at the last minute. Ian walks through the party, and Wendy thinks he’s involved with her death. He mocks Wendy and says he’s beaten death and completely safe. He’s… not immune.

Five months later, Wendy’s in the big city. She hears a song, sees a number, and wonders if it’s all over for her. She wants off the subway, right now. She runs into Julie and doesn’t get off as she wanted. She finds Kevin on the train as well. All three of them “beat” death– or did they? As the subway train crashes, we see that no one beats Death. And we wonder why it took five months.

Wendy reverts back to just before the accident. It was another vision and it’s happening again!

Brian’s Commentary

We’re both pretty sure we’d not seen this one before. No one from the previous two films are in this one, so it’s a whole new start. The deaths in this one are the whole point of the film, and they are more Rube Goldbergy than ever. You know who’s going to die next, but the various clues and hints as to how are often red herrings.

It’s well made with good special effects and very creative deaths. If you’re a fan of the series, this is pretty much just like the others, more of the same.

Kevin’s Commentary

I had seen a clip of the opening chaos scene before, the rest was new to me. This one did seem to have more of a focus on the death scenes, which were a bit more elaborate and involved this time around. We knew someone was going to die, but exactly who and how wasn’t made clear until the resolution. I thought this was a worthy sequel, as entertaining as the previous two.

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It’s another “oldies” week here. We’re starting off with the really dated “I Was a Teenage Frankenstein” from 1957. A year later, we’ll visit the cemetery in “I Bury the Living.” A few years later, we’ve got undead problems with “Count Yorga, Vampire” and “Dracula and Son,” both from the 70s. Last, we’ll look at “Final Destination 2” from 2003.

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Mainstream Films:

1957 I Was a Teenage Frankenstein

* Directed by Herbert L. Storck

* Written by Herman Cohen, Abem Kandel

* Stars Whit Bissell, Phyllis Coates, Robert Burton

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 14 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Professor Frankenstein, a descendent of that Frankenstein, has a full facility at his disposal with all the high tech equipment available in 1957, as well as an alligator pit in his lab for disposing of bodies and parts. His ego is big, and so are his plans for advancing science regardless of the cost. This one is decent but low effort, maybe a little rushed at points with such a short run time. It’s entertaining enough, but more campy than classic.

Spoilery Synopsis

Professor Frankenstein talks about transplanting eyes and other organs. One of the scientists in the audience says some of his claims are simply impossible. “Dead tissue cannot be activated,” says Dr. Randolph. Frankenstein says one day soon, his theories will be proven.

Later, Frankenstein and Dr. Karlton, his physicist friend, talk about proving their ideas. Frankenstein wants to assemble a body from different cadavers. “On my own. In my own laboratory.” Frankenstein talks about that great ancestor whose name he bears. He thinks the key to success is to use young bodies, which are much more resilient— wait! A car crashes outside right in the middle of his explanation. Two cars, and they were full of teenagers, who were all killed. Such a shame and mess, who will notice one missing?

Soon, the two scientists have snuck off with one of the bodies and put it in Frankenstein’s own private morgue. He puts the body in a drawer and turns down the temperature. Karlton wants out, but Frankenstein has blackmail material, so he’ll help with the project as required.

The two men go upstairs to a party. Frankenstein says he’s going to return home to England soon, and Margaret, his girlfriend and nurse, looks unhappy. He cheers her up by asking her to move in with him as his fiancee.

Karlton “activates” the body as Frankenstein amputates his hands and leg and Margaret works the phone upstairs as the new “watchdog.” Frankenstein disposes of the leftover parts by feeding them to an alligator in a closet.

Frankenstein and Karlton sneak into a funeral home and take the parts they need after another tragedy. They sew the leg and hands onto the corpse at home.

Frankenstein and Margaret go for a drive and park at a popular make-out spot for the local teenagers. She wants to do what the teenagers do.

The animated corpse is healing well, and Frankenstein wants the creature to speak. He does speak, and then he cries. Margaret suspects something is up. She’s also obsessed with their impending marriage and displeased with how little of the professor's attention she gets. He slaps her in the face when she gets more uppity than he likes. She doesn’t go along with that very well, and she starts snooping into his work. She makes a key to the basement, opens the morgue drawer, and the corpse sits up. She runs off without locking the door behind her.

Frankenstein and the monster talk, and it’s clear that Frankenstein is on a power trip with his obedient creation. The monster does his weightlifting and other workouts. The monster is tired of living in the lab; he wants out into the world. Frankenstein cuts off the bandages to show him why he can’t, and we see that the monster is really a monster from the neck up. Yeah, he’s a mess.

The monster wanders out of the unlocked lab anyway and goes upstairs to the regular house and then down the street, where he peeps in the window at a young woman. She sees him and screams, so he breaks in and silences her. A bunch of people see him as he leaves.

The police question the witnesses, and they're going to check the houses in the neighborhood. Frankenstein reads about the attack in the news, and he knows what happened. The monster promises to behave from now on. When the detectives stop by, Frankenstein lies to them.

Margaret invites a jeweler over to shop for rings, and Frankenstein throws him out rudely. This results in another fight. She tells him that she knows what he’s been up to, and they make up.

Not long after, Frankenstein tells his monster that he thinks they’re safe now. Except for Margaret, who could derail the monster getting a new face. She’s going to ruin everything! The monster agrees to “stop her.” He lures Margaret into the lab, where the monster kills her. Margaret soon feeds the alligator.

Frankenstein and the monster go out to choose a new face. They go to the makeout spot and the monster picks out a guy whose face he likes. They take Bob’s head home and put his face on the monster.

Dr. Karlton comes over to talk, and he wonders what happened to Margaret. “She just up and disappeared.” He mentions giving the monster a new face, and Karlton wonders where that face came from.

The problem is that someone here is likely to recognize Bob, who was a popular local boy. Frankenstein wants to take Bob to England, packed in crates with a false bottom. He wants to disassemble Bob and ship the parts to England… separately, for reassembly later.

Bob climbs on the table, ostensibly to get his stitches removed, and they strap him down. Before they can sedate him, Bob senses that something is wrong and attacks the two scientists. Karlton runs away, but Bob feeds Frankenstein to the alligator.

Karlton returns with the police, and Bob backs into the machinery that electrocutes him. We close on a shot of a well-fed alligator.

Brian’s Commentary

The first half hour or so is very similar to most other Frankenstein films, albeit more modern, taking place in the 50s. After that, it goes its own way.

Dr. Frankenstein is supposed to be British, but he’s got a perfectly normal American accent.

The monster here is just a big guy in a rubber mask, so this was pretty low effort in that regard. Unlike “I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” which came out the same year, this one doesn’t really rely on the “Teenager” angle very much, and better yet, there’s no musical numbers in the middle of the film.

It’s low-budget and low-effort. By this point, Frankenstein had been relegated to Abbott and Costello movies, this kind of thing, and other “silly” films. The following year, Hammer made their version, which rejuvenated the whole franchise by taking it seriously once again.

It’s fine, but it’s not really a classic.

Kevin’s Commentary

I would say this Frankenstein is the biggest jerk of all the Frankensteins I’ve seen, with a thirst for knowledge and medical progress that drives him above everything else. His lack of humanity and empathy and concern for others is appalling. But it makes for a satisfying finish when his creation turns on him. I was more entertained than not, and they do take it seriously with no comedy, but it’s one worthy of mockery.

1958 I Bury the Living

* Directed by Albert Band

* Written by Louis Garfinkle

* Stars Richard Boone, Theodore Bikel, Peggy Maurer

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 17 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This had a Twilight Zone vibe and a dash of Alfred Hitchcock, with a poster that’s pretty sensationalized compared to the actual movie. It moves along well, and it’s very well made. Until an ending that disappointed us both. So mixed reviews.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open in a cemetery, where two men walk into the caretaker’s office. Robert Kraft is the new administrator, the other man is McKee who has been the caretaker for decades, and they talk about him being pushed into retirement, and they can find a young replacement. Kraft says he’ll still get paid and it will be great, but McKee seems reluctant. They both admire the elaborate map of the cemetery on the wall. He uses a white pin on the map to show a pre-sold plot, and a black one to show where the dead are. McKee shows him where a pistol is, just in case of emergencies.

Stuart and Elizabeth Drexel drive up; they’re just married, and they got a cemetery plot there in the Immortal Hills as a requirement of Stuart's inheritance before he can access the funds.

Robert complains to George, his uncle, about serving at the cemetery, but the old man insists that it's a family tradition of service to the town. It’s good for business. Plus he’s going to have to do it if he wants to inherit the department store. Mr. Watson, the undertaker, calls to congratulate Robert on his new position and to let him know that the Drexels have suddenly died.

Mr. Jessup comes to the cemetery office; he’s a reporter and Bob’s friend. Robert looks at the map, and he may have accidentally marked the young couple for death by mistakenly putting black pins on their plots instead of white ones. Nah, couldn’t be. Ann, Robert’s fiancee, comes for a visit. Robert absent-mindedly puts a black pin on the Isham plot. Elsewhere, Mr. Isham suddenly dies.

At the end of the week, Robert comes by to sign paperwork, and he notices the name “Isham” on the intake form. McKee points out that the map had a black pin on it already.

Jessup assures Robert that it’s all just a coincidence. Robert has deja-vu when he hears the sound of a headstone being carved.

George gets annoyed; when he was in charge, he put the wrong color pins on the map all the time and nothing happened. Bob actually believes he killed those people with the black pins on the map. The two go to the cemetery office and George starts to change the pins on Henry Trowridge’s plot, just to prove that it means nothing. No, Robert takes the pin and does it instead.

That night, Robert waits by the phone, worried about Trowbridge. Robert phones the man’s wife, and she goes to get him. At almost midnight, Henry is found dead. His wife tells Robert right then on the phone.

Robert calls Lt. Clayborne from the police. He tells them his theory, but the Lieutenant doesn’t believe it at all. All four dead people died in different, random places, and there’s no sign of any foul play with any of them. Jessup and the Lieutenant say it’s all just a coincidence.

Robert’s not convinced. Is it the map, or is it him? George wants Robert to take a vacation for a while. George and Ann both think Bob is losing his mind. George, Charlie, and Bill, the whole Cemetery Committee, insist that Robert change all their pins to black tonight, to prove to Robert that he’s wrong.

Robert doesn’t like it, but he does it that evening. McKee comes to him and warns him that bad things may happen; he seems to know more than he’s saying. The map seems to grow in Robert’s eyes as he sits by the phone. He calls Lt. Clayborne and Jessup to tell them what he did. He tries to call the men on the Cemetery Committee, but none of them answer the phone.

Robert soon learns that two out of the three are dead except for George, who comes to the cemetery to look at the map. Robert picks up the gun; why hasn’t George died? George pulls his own pin out of the map and leaves.

Robert leaves two hours later and finds George in his car, dead. He goes back inside the office and calls the police. The Lieutenant tells Robert to put a black pin on the map for Mr. Mittel, an importer. Mittel is perfectly healthy and all the way overseas in Paris right now, so he probably ought to be safe. Right? This is just a risky test. Lt. Clayborne thinks just maybe Robert has a special power to kill with the pins, something like Voodoo.

Robert wonders. He has the power of death with the black pins. Does he have the power of life with the white ones? He switches all the recently dead people’s black pins with white ones.

Outside, we see the graves being disturbed from underneath. Meanwhile, Robert starts a fire in the cemetery office when his heater breaks and has to run outside. He sees the empty graves and knows what’s happened.

Robert gets the call that Mr. Mittel died in Paris. The effect has a very long range. McKee comes in and says neither the map nor Robert has any power. He has been killing all these people. McKee resented being forced to retire, even with a full pension.

Robert says no, he caused McKee to kill those people. McKee is no killer, and Robert made him do it through the power of his mind. McKee falls over dead just as the police and everyone break in.

Clayborne and Jessup come in. Mittel didn’t really die; they put his wife up to calling to see what McKee would do. McKee then dug up all seven bodies. Robert still believes it was the pins.

Brian’s Commentary

It influenced Stephen King, who wrote “Obits,” a similar story about a man who kills by writing obituaries. The story has been done numerous times since, in films such as “Death Note” and others.

It’s a very weird concept, and it’s well executed here. I wondered early on what would happen if Robert switched a black pin for a white one. Would the dead rise? Fortunately, the filmmakers wondered the same thing, and that’s where it ended up going.

The explanation McKee gives at the end doesn’t make any sense. Actually, the whole ending doesn’t make much sense. All those men died of fright?

It’s very much like a Hitchcock film, with the suspense building as Robert continues to learn more and more about what’s really going on. The ever-growing map is a very cool prop as well.

It’s surprisingly good up until the last five minutes, but the ending is confusing and doesn’t really work for us.

Kevin’s Commentary

The acting, script, suspense, and cinematography were all excellent. I really, really liked this until the ending, which made no sense. We literally saw one of the guys just keel over, not killed by McKee. The police saw no signs of anything unnatural in any of the deaths. And there’s no way McKee, an older and pretty out-of-shape looking guy, could have nearly and completely dug up seven graves in such a short time. I probably wouldn’t recommend it.

1970 Count Yorga, Vampire

* AKA “The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire”

* Directed by Bob Kelljan

* Written by Bob Kelljan

* Stars Robert Quarry, Roger Perry, Michael Murphy

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was originally intended to be a softcore porn movie. You can still see some hints of that here, but mostly it’s a serious horror film. It’s an updated vampire tale set in the modern age of 1970. It’s a little on the predictable side, but we thought it was quite good.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch a coffin being loaded onto a truck from a ship and driven through time as we get a voiceover that talks about vampires and their powers and abilities (in case you’ve never heard of vampires). The truck with the coffin arrives at a big house in the country.

We cut to a group of people sitting in a circle as they prepare to do a seance. The group isn’t taking the whole thing very seriously, but Donna wants this to happen so she can talk to her dead mother. The man leading the group, Count Yorga, is also very serious about the seance. Things take a creepy turn, and there’s a lot of screaming.

Donna faints, and Yorga takes care of her, but Michael doesn’t like any of this. Yorga hypnotizes her secretly, and the others have no idea. He leaves shortly after without eating or drinking anything.

Later, Donna explains that Yorga was her mother’s boyfriend for the three weeks before she died. He talked Donna out of having her mother cremated. He didn’t come to the funeral, which is odd.

Some of the guests drive Yorga home, and they meet his creepy servant, Brudah. He invites Paul and Erica in for a drink; she’s interested, but Paul says not tonight. They drive off but soon get stuck. Funny, the road wasn’t wet before. They don’t go back to the count’s house, they have sex in the back of the van.

Soon, Count Yorga comes to the van, and it’s now obvious that he’s a vampire. Paul is knocked out, and Erica loses all memory of what happened.

Erica’s lost a lot of blood and is dizzy. Dr. Jim Hayes tells her to eat lots of rare steaks to fix that. “It must be the two bite marks on her throat,” which she can’t explain.

Paul and Mike talk about hypnosis and how good Yorga was at it with Donna. Erica also lost her memory; could the two be connected? They go over to Erica’s house, which is a mess, and they find her eating her cat. Paul donates blood for a transfusion to Erica administered by Jim and Mike.

We cut to Count Yorga’s castle, where he has two women sleeping on stone slabs. When he comes in, the two women wake up; they’re vampires too, and one of them is Donna’s mother.

Jim talks to Paul and Mike about vampires. Yorga is supposed to be from Bulgaria, and that fits the profile. They talk about how unlikely that is, but they don’t really rule it out, either.

Yorga looks out the window, and somewhere else, Erica wakes up and walks to her window and opens it. Then she waits on her bed as Yorga arrives to bite her again. When Paul comes upstairs, Erica is gone.

Mike calls Jim, and they head up to the castle. Jim’s girlfriend mentions he read about a baby drained of blood in the newspaper. Jim calls the police with this information, and they have the expected response: they hang up on him.

Count Yorga is expecting Paul to come to the house, and he even unlocks the door for him. Yorga jumps out and strangles Paul before Brudah breaks his back. Yorga tells his servant “You can expect more guests.”

Jim, Mike, and Donna knock on the door. Their plan is to keep Yorga occupied until the sun rises. Yorga invites them inside, but he says he hasn’t seen Erica or Paul since the seance last night. Jim is a blood specialist, and Yorga is intrigued by that. Jim asks about the mystic arts, and Yorga admits that he’s interested in those things.

They note that it’s 4:30 a.m. and the sun should be rising soon. Yorga knows what they’re up to as the men drag out the conversation. Yorga claims to have seen a werewolf, and he absolutely believes they exist. When asked, he also believes in vampires. He insists on retiring for the night, so the guests have to leave.

At home, Jim tells Mike they have to kill Count Yorga, but Mike isn’t on board with that. Jim says if he is a vampire, he’ll turn to dust and there won’t be any evidence. They plan to go back and do the deed in the early afternoon. That morning, Yorga telepathically calls for Donna to come and join him.

Mike and Jim both oversleep; it’s nearing sunset already. Donna drives to the Count’s house. It appears that Brudah forces himself on her before dragging her inside. He apologizes to Master Yorga for not being able to help himself, but Yorga seems pretty dismissive about it. Meanwhile, Mike and Jim break up furniture to make stakes and crosses at the last minute.

Inside the castle, Yorga now has a nice collection of women on slabs. He finds Jim on the doorstep and invites him inside. They talk more about vampires. He takes Jim to see Erica, who is now a vampire as well.

Meanwhile, Mike sneaks in the back door and finds Yorga’s empty coffin. He hears Jim calling for help and runs upstairs. The three women wake up and surround Jim. By the time Mike finds them, it’s too late for Jim. Mike and Brudah fight in the dungeon until Mike stabs the brute. Next, he has to fight Erica and the redhead vampire.

Yorga wakes Donna up to talk to her mother, who is not as dead as she thought. Mike barges in and stabs Donna’s mother. Yorga runs out, leaving Donna to Mike. Yorga does a sneak attack, and Mike stabs him with a broken broom handle. He soon turns to dust.

One the way out, Mike and Donna run into the remaining two female vamps. He locks them in the basement, but that doesn’t help when Donna turns and bites him…

Brian’s Commentary

This was intended as a softcore porn movie, but actor Robert Quarry insisted it be switched to just a standard horror movie. You can see where this was intended to go with a few of the side characters, like Jim’s girlfriend.

The Count Yorga character was originally intended to be the villain in the second “Dr. Phibes Rises Again” (1972) movie, but they ended up reworking the character to be a different kind of immortal, still played by Robert Quarry.

It was an attempt to modernize the vampire story to the “modern” 1970 time period and taking modern science and skepticism into account.

There’s not a lot here that’s surprising or unexpected, but it’s good if you’re a fan of the movies of that period.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was my third viewing of this. I’m quite sure I saw this at the drive-in when it came out, though, since I was about five at the time, my first memory is hazy. My second time was some years ago. I still found it pretty entertaining this time around. Robert Quarry is quite good as the lead, and it’s decent overall.

1976 Dracula and Son

* Directed by Edouard Molinaro

* Written by Alain Godard, Jean-Marie Poire, Edouard Molinaro

* Stars Christopher Lee, Bernard Menez, Marie-Helene Breillat

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 18 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Christopher Lee provides a mostly serious balance to the comedy elements that prevents it from tipping too far into silliness. It was a nice mix of horror and humor. The script is decent and the sets are cool. We both enjoyed it more than we expected.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 1784 in Transylvania. The carriage crashes through the forest, “We’ll never make it before nightfall if we don’t hurry.” Then the wheel breaks. They all know what that means. One of the passengers pretends he’s a vampire and scares the young woman passenger.

The Count sends another carriage to pick up his young fiancée. “We’ll never see them again,” says the man they leave behind in the first carriage. Young Hermine’s chaperone gets bitten before they even arrive at the castle. When she arrives, she is greeted by the count himself. Yeah, he’s Dracula, so she faints.

We cut to them having sex later. “I want you to bear me a child,” he says. He soon gets one and then bites her as the baby rocks in a little baby-sized coffin.

We cut to two men talking about how to kill vampires. These were the men who were in the other carriage the previous year. They haven’t forgotten, but no trace was ever found of “that girl.” Hermine comes to town for her first meal as a vampire and kills one of the men. This goes badly, and she soon finds herself racing back to the castle as the sun starts to rise. The carriage arrives, but she’s just a pile of dust.

Five years pass, and Ferdinand runs through the castle. “Drink your blood and go to bed!” Marguerite, the old woman vampire, generally takes care of the boy, who locks her outside as the sun rises. One hundred and sixteen years later, Ferdinand looks about twenty and still hasn’t bitten anyone, and the Count says it’s about time, so he sets Ferdinand up with an old woman traveling alone. He befriends the old woman instead.

In the present day Romania, the Count doesn’t appreciate the new Communist regime; the peasants have taken over his castle. The two vampires barely make it out alive. They kill a pair of sailors and trade places with the bodies in their coffins, which are then buried at sea.

Ferdinand’s coffin washes up on the shore and he gets wound up with an immigrant man. The Count, on the other hand, gets caught in a fishing net and taken to London. They both have a rough first night in civilization.

Ferdinand gets a job as a night watchman. Whenever he sees a pretty girl his fangs grow and his stomach growls. He soon learns about blood banks. He’s coerced into donating blood, which isn’t how it’s supposed to work.

Meanwhile, in London, the Count is having trouble finding a meal and finds a job as an actor– playing a vampire! He bites and turns the leading lady, but he soon gets annoyed with her. He tricks her into the sun himself.

Ferdinand’s still never bitten anyone. He pays an aggressive hooker with a mirror on her ceiling, and that goes badly. He goes to the morgue and bites a corpse, but they’re all frozen and stiff.

Ferdinand sees his father on TV for his famous vampire roles. They are soon happily reunited. Ferdinand shows his father where he’s been living, and the Count is not impressed. They go to the Count’s celebrity hotel after shopping for nice new coffins.

The Count meets Nicole, and he’s enchanted; she looks just like Hermine, so many years ago. She wants him to pose for a toothpaste ad, and he refuses. Ferdinand offers to take his place, and Nicole laughs. Ferdinand doesn’t hide that he’s a vampire, but that’s just what the count, the actor, always says, so no one takes him seriously. Ferdinand likes Nicole too, and he does what he can to keep the Count from biting her.

Somehow, the Count and Nicole get arrested, and he doesn’t get released until just before sunup. Ferdinand throws the count’s coffin out the window, so that’s a problem. He ends up hiding in a sewer all day.

Ferdinand does, in fact, get the toothpaste ad job. He’s not very good and he argues with his father in front of Nicole.

Ferdinand leaves and gets a job in a meat packing factory. Nicole tracks him down and says the “funny” toothpaste ad is a hit. She leaves, as she has a meeting with the Count, and Ferdinand follows her. Ferdinand cuts the power, and while it’s dark, sneaks into the room with Nicole and finally makes love to her.

When Nicole figures out she’s really with Ferdinand, she doesn’t really mind. They go to her place, but he loses track of time and rushes out as the sun comes up. As the sun rises, Ferdinand learns that he doesn’t explode into ash; he’s only half-vampire, so he’s fine outside. He can also see himself in the mirror now. He tries real food, and he loves it!

The Count, however, still wants Nicole for himself. Nicole takes Ferdinand to her family’s old estate, which has no electricity; The Count follows them and turns on the power. Ferdinand grabs a cross and the Count is impressed. Nicole, however, thinks it’s all a silly game and pulls down the curtain, exposing the Count to sunlight, which kills him.

Six years later, Ferdinand and Nicole have children, and they’ve been acting peculiar lately. They have fangs…

Brian’s Commentary

For the tenth and final time, Christopher Lee played Dracula. Well, more or less; the character here isn’t really named Dracula except for the title.

It’s described as a parody and comedy, but there’s a lot here for horror fans to like. Christopher Lee mostly plays it straight, which contrasts with Ferdinand’s comedic side.

It’s not bad!

Kevin’s Commentary

It became a backdrop for humor to never refer to Christopher Lee as Dracula. He was perfect for the role to balance the humor and put just the right amount of brakes on it. It was way more entertaining than I expected it to be. I’d recommend it.

2003 Final Destination 2

* Directed by David R. Ellis

* Written by J. Mackie Gruber, Eric Bress, Jeffery Reddick

* Stars A.J. Cook, Ali Larter, Tony Todd

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The chains of events that lead to deaths are complicated and don’t always go the way you’re expecting. Clear, survivor from the first movie, is back, and there’s a new batch of doomed people hoping to survive. It’s not a spoiler to say most of them don’t. But the fun is seeing who gets it and how and when. It was decently made. If you like the first one, you’ll probably like this one too.

Spoilery Synopsis

A news report tells us that it’s the one-year anniversary since the airplane crashed in the previous film. Forty students died on that plane, but all the students who didn’t board the plane also died. The guest on the show basically explains how Death itself came for those students as the credits roll. “No one can escape Death. Today may be your day to die.”

Kimberly and her friends are going on a trip. As they drive away, we see the car has been leaking something. The kids stop at a light as a homeless woman comes to the window and scares them. They get moving and drive past a school bus full of chanting students. We see various other cars, motorcycles, and other dangerous-looking things going on. Kimberly’s dad calls about the leak. A giant log truck passes them on the right as the young people panic about a cop following them. It’s quite involved in the setup for what we know is going to happen.

Suddenly, everything goes haywire all at once. The log truck loses a log which kills the cop and the motorcyclist. Another truck kills the stoner; a couple of families crash into logs and explode. One guy gets beheaded explosively. Kimberly’s car rolls over, and then another truck kills them all.

Kimberly looks at the homeless woman. All that was a vision. Kimberly knows what’s going to happen and blocks traffic instead. All the cars behind them are stopped as well, so everyone waits for the traffic to clear. Then the log truck drives by, and Kimberly tells the cop what’s going to happen. And then it does, killing lots of other people, including everyone in Kimberly’s car except for her.

Kimberly tells the cop that this might be just like that airplane crash thing last year. The police bring in all the people who survived the accident. Maybe Death will be coming for all of them now. Maybe it’s not over.

Evan, one of the survivors, only just won the lottery yesterday, so he goes home with his shopping and fixes dinner. The microwave shorts, which causes him to drop a ring in the sink. He gets his hand stuck in the drain because of his Rolex, and then the dinner on the stove catches on fire, setting off the smoke alarm. The whole kitchen catches on fire. He finally gets his hand out of the drain but can’t get out of the burning apartment. He breaks a window and goes down the fire escape as the apartment explodes about him. He almost dies a hundred different ways, but then the fire escape ladder falls on his head.

Thomas, the cop, researches freak accidents, especially the ones from the first film. Everyone from the accident watches the news, and they all recognize Evan, who was with them earlier.

Only Clear Rivers survived the events of the first film, but she’s been institutionalized. Kimberly goes to visit her. She’s been hiding away from Death for the past year; she’s in the asylum voluntarily with crazy safety measures. Kimberly tells her about her experience and is told that now she’ll be the last to die. Kimberly explains that’s not the way it’s been happening. Clear tells her to watch out for the signs of Death.

Thomas comes to Kimberly; the survivors all want to meet. Nora and Tim Carpenter, mother and son survivors, are next up, and Kimberly thinks they’ll be killed by… pigeons.

Tim goes to the dentist. We watch the fish in an aquarium in the waiting room as well as construction going on outside the office. A pigeon crashes into the window as the dentist gets to work. The doctor turns on the oxygen with the laughing gas, but an electrical short takes out the oxygen. With a hundred things going on at once, Tim chokes on a rubber fish– almost. As they leave in complete safety, Tim is squashed flat by the construction equipment.

Clear leaves the asylum and meets up with Kimberly and Thomas. They go to see Mr. Bludworth, the cemetery groundskeeper from the first film. He’s about to cremate Evan. Clear is certain they can beat Death, but Bludworth says no, you can’t. “Only new life can defeat Death. There’s a balance to everything.”

On the out, they stop for gas at the most deathtrappy gas station ever. They discuss what Bludworth said; they have to find the pregnant lady from the accident. Her new life can reset the death chain. Thomas works his police contacts to track her down.

Rory, one of the other survivors, almost gets his foot stuck in an elevator door. He shows up at a group meeting for the accident survivors, most of whom don’t believe any of this. Eugene tempts fate and nearly gets impaled by a kayak. Kat the businesswoman, is also skeptical, but Nora is a believer after what happened to her son.

On the way out, Eugene and Nora get on the elevator with a man with a basket of prosthetic arms. Rory gets a vision about “a man with hooks.” Things go badly for Nora. Eugene tries to kill himself, but it isn’t his time, so Death won’t allow it.

Isabella, the pregnant woman, is taken into protective custody. Suddenly, her water breaks, and the baby is on the way. Deputy Steve doesn’t have a squad car, so he takes her to the hospital in her van.

The survivors talk about previous near-death experiences, and many of them tied in with deaths from the previous film. All these people who died to save them were people from Flight 180. All those events caused ripples in Death’s design, and none of these people should be alive right now anyway.

The survivors’ car and the deputy’s car almost crash, but amazingly, none of the survivors dies. Eugene gets impaled, but he’s still alive. As the emergency crews arrive, we see things setting up for more carnage. Gasoline from a news truck leaks through a pipe which drips into the car where Cat is trapped. That doesn’t mean much, because she’s killed by an airbag deployment. She drops her lit cigarette, which causes the news van to explode, which causes a barbed wire fence to fly through the air and slice Rory into chunks.

Kimberly, Thomas, and Clear rush toward the hospital where Isabella is giving birth. At the same hospital, bad things happen to Eugene.

The baby is born, and the curse seems to be broken. Maybe Eugene’s not going to die from a ventilator failure after all. “It’s OK, it’s over!” Then Kimberly has another vision; now she thinks Isabella wasn’t meant to die in the accident after all.

Clear goes into Eugene’s room and the oxygen explodes, killing them both. Thomas and Kimberly look at her bloody hands, just like in her premonition. She’s seen herself in a white van drive into the lake next to the hospital and drown. “I have to die.”

Kimberly steals an ambulance and drives into the lake on purpose. Thomas dives in after her, but the doors are locked, and he can’t get her out in time. She dies.

One of the doctors from the hospital wakes Kimberly up with her crash cart. She did die, but not permanently. This is the new life that was needed to stop Death.

Some time later, Thomas and Kimberly have a picnic with her family. We find out that the chain continues as a grill explodes…

Brian’s Commentary

It’s “One Damned Thing After Another: The Movie.”

The original “Final Destination” (2000) can be found here. The whole film has a really weak story; the only reason to watch this is for the crazy, Rube-Goldberg deathtraps. They are really elaborate here, and sometimes, they’re just red herrings, but sometimes they aren’t.

Kevin’s Commentary

It troubles me that Clear was able to hide from Death by taking safety precautions and voluntarily isolating herself in a padded cell in a mental institution. As crazy as the chains of events that caused the fatalities were, Death could have found a way to get her. Everything else in the movie makes perfect sense though. It’s kind of crazy, but entertaining. A worthy sequel to the first one.Contact Info:

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We’ve got another cool selection of five films, old and new, this week. We’ll start off with two brand-new ones, “The Monkey” and “The Rule of Jenny Pen” (2025). “Monolith” was from 2022, and then 2014’s “Deep in the Darkness” and the sorta-classic “Chillerama” from 2011.

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Mainstream Films:

2025 The Monkey

* Directed by Osgood Perkins

* Written by Osgood Perkins, Stephen King

* Stars Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Like the poster implies, there’s quite a body count in this one. And the deaths are over the top. It’s a good mix of dark humor and gruesome horror, very well made. We both really liked it.

Spoilery Synopsis

After the 1970s-era titles, we cut to a junk shop. Captain Petey Shelborn comes in with a monkey toy; he’s also covered in blood. He explains that it’s not a toy, but the proprietor doesn’t want it. Suddenly, the monkey starts banging his drum, and the captain looks around, terrified. We soon see that he has good reason to be afraid. The captain sees a flamethrower on the wall and burns the monkey. Credits roll.

It’s 1999, and Hal and his twin brother Bill are annoying. Their deadbeat father was a pilot who walked out on the family. In the father’s closet, they find a box containing the monkey toy. Their father was Captain Petey from earlier, and this is the monkey he burned, only it looks untouched now. Bill turns the key on the monkey's back, but nothing happens.

The babysitter takes the boys to a Japanese-style restaurant, and they take the monkey with them. The monkey activates, plays his drum, and inside, the chef accidentally beheads the babysitter. Bill and Hal’s mother talks about death, but she sounds almost eager for it.

Hal gets bullied at school, and when he gets home, he finds the monkey in his room. He takes it to school with him. Hal tells the monkey that he wishes Bill was dead. Instead, their mother dies. The doctors said it was an aneurysm, but Hal knows better. The monkey doesn’t take requests.

The boys go to live with Aunt Ida and Uncle Chip. Hal cuts up the monkey, which bleeds like a real monkey. He puts the pieces in the trash and the family moves to Maine.

Bill finds the monkey, and Hal says he cut it up back at the other house. They both know it killed the babysitter. Bill wants to try it again, just to be sure. Soon, Uncle Chip is trampled by wild horses on a camping trip. The boys throw the monkey down into a well.

Twenty-five years later, Aunt Ida hears the monkey’s song playing and goes down to the basement to investigate. She falls into a box of fishing lures and then sets herself on fire, but that’s… not the worst of it.

Grown-up Hal now works in a store, and Dwayne, his boss, is half his age. He’s divorced from his wife, and her new husband, Ted, is a “family” expert. Hal’s son, little Petey, keeps asking about Hal. Ted wants to legally adopt Petey, and then Hal won’t be able to visit anymore.

At Aunt Ida’s estate sale, Ricky, a young guy, buys the monkey; it reminds him of his dad. Ricky knows a guy who might want to buy the monkey.

Petey wants to know about Hal’s family; he’s working on a family tree. Hal denies having any siblings. That night, he dreams about the monkey. Bill calls him on the phone to tell Hal about Aunt Ida’s death. Bill wants Hal to make sure the monkey isn’t in her house. As they discuss the monkey, a woman at the motel’s swimming pool explodes. Hal and Petey leave the motel in the middle of the night.

Hal really doesn’t want Petey to be involved with any of this, but his son wants to see Hal’s childhood home. Barbara, the realtor, tells Petey about Bill, his uncle. Barbara recounts all the outrageous deaths from the past week in town. Every day since Ida, one person or more has died ridiculously. She doesn’t remember selling a toy monkey at the estate sale. Barbara becomes the next death when she meets a shotgun in a closet.

As the police investigate the death, Ricky and a bunch of cheerleaders congregate outside. Hal tells Bill on the phone that there’s no monkey here, but that people have been dying mysteriously all over town.

Hal opens up the 2024 phone book (those exist?) and looks for Bill inside, thinking he might be local. He finds “Mrs. Monkey” in there instead.

We hear from Bill, who explains that he crawled back into the well for the monkey. It was gone, but there was a note saying it would be back. Years later, in 2016, the year of the monkey, he started seeing it everywhere. He became obsessed, even placing ads in the paper looking for his monkey. When Ricky brought him the monkey, he prayed to its infinite wisdom to smite the right person. It hasn’t yet.

We cut to Dwayne hurting himself. Ricky asks Bill for the monkey back. When Bill refuses, he goes home and gets a gun.

Petey asks Hal if he’s ever killed anybody, and Hal’s not really sure how to answer. Hal calls Bill, who admits to turning the monkey’s key. Bill wants Petey to turn the key. “The person who turns the key never dies.” If Petey turns the key over and over, he’ll never die.

Ricky comes to the door and take Hal and Petey hostage at gunpoint. He sends Petey inside to get the monkey from Bill. Inside Bill’s house, Petey encounters several booby traps. We see all kinds of dangerous things in and around the building– it’s not gonna go well for someone.

Bill shows Petey the monkey and tells him that it was Petey’s grandfather. Petey does, in fact, turn the key. Outside, Hal and Ricky notice the world’s biggest hornets nest. Ricky accidentally shoots it through the windshield, and all hell breaks loose– but just for Ricky.

Bill wants the monkey to kill Hal. Bill winds the monkey and watches the monkey really go to town on his drum. An airplane crash sends bodies through the roof of the building.

Bill confronts Hal; he knows that Hal got his mother killed by trying to kill him. The two make up, at least a little. The monkey activates, and the Rube-Goldberg in the traps all feed on each other, and Bill’s head gets blown off with a bowling ball.

Hal and Petey drive through what’s left of the town, and it’s just… wow. They decide to keep the monkey and accept that it’s theirs. They stop at a traffic light as Death himself rides by on his pale horse.

They decide to go dancing.

Brian’s Commentary

There are numerous callbacks to Stephen King characters and names as well as for other movies. The deaths here are all excessively over-the-top and comical, and they’re the high point of the film.

It’s very silly, but it’s also very well made. The characters are interesting, the deaths are very creative, and it all moves at a reasonable speed. I liked this one a lot.

Kevin’s Commentary

The death scenes were awesome. And so was watching Hal just trying to deal with it all. I was also impressed with the acting and effects from a single actor playing twins, both the boys and the adult versions. It deserves a big thumbs up from me.

2025 The Rule of Jenny Pen

* Directed by James Ashcroft

* Written by Eli Kent, James Ashcroft, Owen Marshall

* Stars Geoffrey Rush, John Lithgow, George Henare, Nikki MacDonald

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is an extreme tale of how getting old is awful, with bullying and tyranny when and where there shouldn’t be. The performances from the two leads are impressive. We both thought it was on the long side, but it was worth the watch.

Spoilery Synopsis

Stefan Mortensen squashes a bug with a tissue. Oh, wait, he’s in the middle of a trial, and he’s the judge– a harsh one at that. In the middle of pronouncing a sentence, he has a stroke and keels over.

The next we see, Stefan is in a wheelchair in a rest home. He insists that he’s only in this cheap place temporarily. The man sitting next to Stefan outside accidentally sets himself on fire, but the place is a little short staffed, and that goes badly.

At the musical show, Stefan notices the other patients, including one old man cuddling a hand puppet. Stefan soon finds out he’s in a double-occupancy room with a man who really likes to talk.

We see that Stefan has some serious problems with his hands, and he might be a little suicidal.

We cut to the man with the puppet, Dave Crealy, as he walks through the halls at night. The doll is Jenny Pen. He stops to talk to an old woman who’s forgotten she’s been there for years. He pours a bucket of urine all over Stefan that night.

In the morning, all the nurses insist that Stefan peed himself, even though he tries to explain. He even names Dave as his assailant, but no one pays any attention.

The two men soon become arch enemies.

That night, Jenny Pen (and Dave) visit Tony, Stefan’s Maori roommate, a former rugby legend. He torments both men with his evil puppet. Tony explains that he’s always been like this, but now Dave has an audience in Stefan. Still, we see that he picks on and abuses most all the patients.

Tony confides in Stefan about Dave’s ongoing bullying. This has gone in for years since Tony got there, but Tony doesn’t seem interested in making it stop. Dave complains that Stefan’s been stealing from him, and they do find some things. They do find something nasty, but it’s clear Stefan didn’t know about it.

Stefan sees that Dave was on the staff going back for decades, so he knows all the ins and outs of the place. They trade barbs at lunch. Dave, on the other hand, knows exactly how Stefan’s deterioration is going to progress; he’s not going to get any better. We soon see, with the doctor visits, that Stefan really isn’t getting any better, he’s getting worse from the stroke.

Dave leads an old woman outside and opens the gate to let her out to die. He makes a mistake this time, however, as she has his access card in her pocket. He has quite the adventure getting it back.

The doctors start “managing expectations” when Stefan talks about leaving. He’s started having memory blips and losing track of time. As he and Tony commiserate, Dave kills another oldster.

Stefan sneaks into Dave’s room and looks at Jenny Pen, who briefly has real eyes. He drains Dave’s inhaler, so Dave’s next asthma attack is revenge. Stefan sleeps well that night, setting aside his call button.

The next morning at breakfast, Stefan and Tony note the complete lack of Dave. It’s very peaceful.

When Dave returns, he sets up quite a scene, but Stefan gets all the blame. None of the patients are competent enough to back him up in any way. Stefan passes out and wakes up in a hospital room, alone. Now almost paralyzed, Dave really torments him, just like he did with Tony.

Timid Tony gets up his courage and tries to do a Haka dance at Dave, but it’s just pitiful; the nurses help him away. Dave realizes that Tony might be “growing a pair” but can’t let up. He finds Stefan hiding in a laundry room– no, it’s an ambush, as Tony and Stefan beat up Dave. It’s a rather low-energy combat, but the two weak men do outnumber Dave, who dies. Jenny Pen ends up melting in a bonfire later.

Stefan peacefully plays backgammon with another man as Tony naps in the background. Everyone is happy. Or as happy as it gets in this place.

Brian’s Commentary

Getting old sucks, but this is a bit much. I find it hard to believe that Dave could be doing all that and the staff wouldn’t even notice. The real horror here is the lack of staff in these places.

I like how the doll changed expressions depending on what was going on at the time. Still, other than the changes in the doll’s face, there’s no indication that anything supernatural or weird is really going on. It’s not controlling him, Dave is just an evil man picking on old people.

The performances here are excellent, as you’d expect with these two men, but the film itself really just goes on and on, dragging quite a lot in the middle.

It’s quite a story!

Kevin’s Commentary

This was painful and sad to watch at times. The movie plays up the ways that getting old can suck, with infirmity, loss of independence, and isolation. The performances were great. The script was well written, but a little on the long side. It felt like it was going on longer than it should. I’d give it a moderate thumbs up overall.

2022 Monolith

* Directed by Matt Vesely

* Written by Lucy Campbell

* Stars Lily Sullivan, Damon Herriman, Ling Cooper Tang

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 34 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

For such a simple premise, and being about one actor in one house, this was surprisingly good. It builds steadily, getting more suspenseful and weirder as it goes. Lily Sullivan is excellent, which is good since she’s the only one we ever see in person - the rest of the cast literally phone it in. We both liked it a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man tells a story about how his family is a bit unusual. A man followed them for years, taking thousands of photos of the family. Still, he has no evidence of this at all. No, wait, the man telling the story is a nut. We zoom out to see an Interviewer talking to the crazy man for her podcast. She says she’s going to tell us a story, all we have to do is listen. Credits roll.

We watch as the Interviewer apologizes for a mistake she made in checking out some sources for a news story. “Beyond Believable” is her show, where she exposes the “truth” behind conspiracies, hoaxes, and such.

She gets an email that has a number for Floramae King, but she doesn’t know why. She calls the number and asks about a “brick.” King says the brick changed her life. Twenty years ago, she was having a hard time in life, but then she received a black brick. The brick was taken from her and sold to an art dealer. Even today, she can still feel “the power” from the brick after all these years.

She calls Mr. Lang, the art collector. He admits that he has several of these bricks. He received one when he was young, and he’s been collecting them since. He knows of at least a dozen in existence. The interior of each brick consists of hundreds of symbols overlaid and folded onto each other. He feels that his original brick was meant just for him, it’s connected to him somehow. He also talks about an ugly creature he once encountered, but he also felt that it was his brother. After that, he got the brick. He’s very convincing until he offers to sell her one of his bricks.

She talks to Scott, who says she needs a break, especially after getting fired from her job. This new podcast isn’t working out for her. Who sent that anonymous email in the first place? She publishes what she’s got and asks if any listeners know anything more about these bricks. Her boss, Tyler, likes what she’s sent him.

Sure enough, a woman contacts her about another brick. Laura got hers about two years ago. She gets visions from hers, and she also loses time once in a while. It’s trying to tell her, “Something awful is coming.” She can’t talk about where she got the rock.

The Interviewer continues to do interviews and research, and she starts her own “crazy wall.” Several callers say the bricks are dangerous and should not be spoken of, the podcast itself may be causing trouble. “You need to stop what you’re doing– you’re in danger now!”

Mr. Lang, the art dealer, sends her some volumetric scans of the interiors of the bricks, and they are very weird. She sends them to Scott, who’s a linguist. The markings inside look like a language, but nothing he recognizes.

She gets a USB drive in a box on her doorstep. It holds a video of a little girl’s ninth birthday party, where she got a brick. Except… that was her birthday party. Who sent that?

She calls Lang, who denies sending her the information. He’s got a video of the bricks in his vault. He senses his dead brother in the vault. There’s screams on the phone and then it goes dead.

She talks to a reporter who did an article on a viral disease that travels through sound. People went crazy after hearing about a certain thing. She warns that publishing what she knows could be dangerous, and not everything needs to be told.

The Interviewer starts getting ill and is clearly very disturbed by all this. Is she going crazy? She finds that Floramae King used to work for her family, and they’re the one who stole the brick from her. She’s been involved in this from her childhood. Floramae claims she didn’t know that the Interviewer was the family’s child. We find out that there was a whole lot of drama that went on back in the day.

The Interviewer calls her father, who knows all about the brick. She admits to the incident that got Floramae fired all those years ago; she was jealous of Paula, Floramae’s daughter, and lied about damaging some furniture. The incident ended up ruining Paula’s life. She admits to destroying the furniture herself. Or did she? The brick may have been behind it all.

Suddenly, she gets sick and pukes up… a brick. She takes a hammer to it and breaks it to pieces. A bit later, she gets a vision of herself, and it crushes her audio recorder with one hand. She runs outside and hides from her other self. They fight with each other, and one kills the other. We don’t know which was which.

All cleaned up, she tells her story to the audience.

Brian’s Commentary

“Let’s make a horror movie about a magic rock!” It’s an unsolved mystery/conspiracy theory/unexplained phenomenon story that’s more mystery/sci-fi than horror, but it’s very cool.

The idea of the sound-based illness is very reminiscent of “Pontypool” (2009) but other than that, the story is very different.

That’s a nice podcast setup! The film has only one character who ever appears on screen, mostly in her apartment, but we do get some glimpses and flashbacks to other places from time to time.

There’s almost no action, but it’s an interesting mystery to follow along to the end. In the end, we don’t really get an explanation, but it’s all very strange and weird.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought it was very effective, just having one character, and how we never learned her name through the whole thing. The build is well done, layering on the mystery gradually. It was all around very cool.

2014 Deep in the Darkness

* Directed by Colin Theys

* Written by Michael Laimo, John Doolan

* Stars Dean Stockwell, Sean Patrick Thomas, Blanche Baker

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When a family moves from the big city to a small town, there’s always going to be a little bit of adjustment. This is an extreme case of that. There are some plot points that make questionable sense, and some things that just don’t work that way in real life, but overall it was a pretty entertaining film. It deserves a moderate thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a man carrying his daughter through the woods. He’s dirty, and he’s been through something bad. He hears screams coming from another room…

We cut to the same man, Dr. Michael Cayle, who talks to a woman whose husband was killed by a rabid dog. She wants to sell her dead husband’s medical practice and the house. Cayle wants to get out of the city. Michael’s family, wife, Christine, and daughter, Jessica, move to the little town of Ashborough. As soon as they arrive, Jessica pukes all over, and Michael steps on a nail, a great start.

Neighbors Phil and Tyler Deighton walk up to introduce themselves. They’re nice and invite the family over for lunch. Michael goes into their bathroom to fix up his foot and meets Mrs. Deighton, who has a strangely disfigured face. At lunch , Michael seems to be in a hurry to leave. Phil mentions that they don’t have cable in this little town, but there are plenty of videotapes at the library. There’s also a town curfew: everyone off the streets by eight.

Michael goes into the office and pulls out the medical records for Mrs. Deighton but doesn’t really look at them. He gets a box full of ebola and other diseases addressed to the former, now-dead doctor, from “Zach,” and he places them in a safe.

Michael starts seeing patients; everyone wants to meet the new doctor, including Lauren, who’s flirty. Phil takes Michael on a hike in the woods, and they go to an old burial ground. Not Indians, but some strange people, the Isolates, who used to live around here. People used to give them sacrifices to keep their families safe. Correction, people still make sacrifices here. Phil says he expects Michael to kill an animal on the stone slab, but Michael thinks it’s all just folklore.

The family goes to a welcoming party for Michael at the church, and Michael feels out of place in the all-white town. Phil reminds Michael about making the sacrifice, but Michael’s busy meeting all the townspeople. The Sheriff and his son, AJ, meet the doctor. Lauren is there, and she asks for his protection, but he thinks she’s just flirting again.

Old lady Zellis is the town’s matriarch, and she thinks she runs the town. Christine has a meeting with her and immediately wants to go home. At night, we see something strange looking in the windows, but Michael doesn’t. Jessica asks about ghosts.

Christine announces that she’s pregnant, and Lady Zellis is the town's midwife; it’s what all the women in town do. She’s started spending a lot of time at the church.

That night, Michael has a nightmare but wakes up when he hears something out in the barn. It’s a goat, and Michael kills it in a panic. When he comes back with materials to get rid of the body, it’s gone.

The next day, all of Michael’s patients are no-shows and cancellations. Lauren staggers by, covered in blood. The only thing she says is “Christine” before she dies. He runs inside to call 911, but her body is gone when he returns. Michael goes to the sheriff, who is not helpful.

Lauren turns up later in the middle of the road, it looks like a hit-and-run. Michael’s about to say something, but Tyler stops him. “Don’t– there are rules here.” Michael calls Phil, who can’t talk about it right now.

Michael plugs in a UV light and sees blood splatters and prints all over the house, even on Jessica’s bed– and her face. Michael’s car stops working. His internet is broken. The taxi company refuses to come.

Lady Zellis comes to Michael. “You didn’t make the sacrifice. If we didn’t need you, you’d be dead already.” She warns that something is coming.

Something comes. It’s a bunch of animalistic troglodytes with glowing eyes. They lead Michael and Zellis to their cave lair, where Michael meets the Isolates, not as extinct as Phil may have suggested. They have a sick and very pregnant Isolate who needs his help. He cuts the “woman” open, pulls out her baby, and sews her back up.

Michael wakes up at home and goes straight to Phil’s place. Phil says he tried to warn them not to stay, but they didn’t get the hint. The Isolates took Phil’s wife last night; they left her eyes.

Michael confronts Christine, who also knows more than she’s saying. “I know enough to keep my mouth shut, and so should you. I think it’s time you take the dog for a walk– before it’s too late!” Michael takes the dog to the sacrificial stone but is interrupted by Jessica, who has monsters following her.

Michael boards up all the windows on the house, but Tyler says, “They’ll find a way.” The Isolates do, in fact, come for Michael that night; the sick one needs more attention, so he gives her some penicillin. She dies, and the others eat her.

Michael finds that Phil is also in the cave; they know Phil talked to Michael, and they took him as punishment. The Isolates insist that Michael kill Phil, which he does.

The next day, Tyler comes for a visit. He has Phil’s eyes in a paper cup. He wants to kill the Isolates, but now it’s Michael who plays dumb. He says that Zellis is half-Isolate, and she runs the town, so there’s no help anywhere. Michael knows “they” hear everything, so he slips Tyler a note. Michael then packs the bags for the family.

The family drives out of town, but the sheriff stops them for “breaking curfew.” Christine runs the sheriff down and stops to pick up Tyler. Michael goes into Tyler’s house, and we see there are isolates inside. He finds Zellis interrogating Tyler and interrupts them.

Outside, the monsters are tearing apart Christine’s minivan. There’s a very bloody battle, and the good guys eventually all get in the car and drive away. The road is blocked, and they crash just as Christine starts to say something about the baby. They all end up walking back to their house, but Tyler has been “marked” by Zellis, and the Isolates get him anyway.

Michael takes a dead Isolate to his office and does some tests. The Isolates seem very prone to infection, and he just happens to have a box of plagues in his safe. He now realizes that the old doctor had ordered the diseases to be used against the Isolates, so maybe Michael can do the same.

He loads up a syringe with bubonic plague and goes back to the caves. They’ve got another sick Isolate in there, and he “treats” this one with the plague. They make him inject a small amount into himself first, but Michael has prepared for that by gobbling some pills first. He injects the sick creature, and they lead him back out of the cave, where he rescues Jessica. He gives her some pills so she can also avoid getting the bubonic plague.

All the Isolates die from the plague within minutes.

Back at the house, Christine is giving birth. Zellis is there assisting, as is the sheriff. The thing that comes out isn’t quite human. “Someday, she’ll speak for them, too,” Zellis says as someone sedates Michael.

Michael wakes up and notices an old photo of his wife as a child. The mailbox behind her shows that she’s also from the Zellis family.

Brian’s Commentary

Michael thought the town was treating him strangely because he was black, but it turned out to be a lot worse.

This actually came out the year before “Bone Tomahawk” (2015), but it would also be a great sequel to that film.

Why did Michael want to leave the city so badly? We never saw any incident. Why do the townspeople put up with all this? It seems that everyone knows what’s going on, and the sheriff can’t block the roads all by himself every moment of every day.

Throughout most of the movie, we wondered about the box of diseases, but it was eventually explained. Still, no plague kills that quickly, and no cure or preventative would work that quickly, either. Is the whole town now infected with the plague? We don’t see any evidence of that, but… we should.

The creature effects here are really effective, and the creatures are certainly nightmare fuel. There’s a lot that doesn’t make any sense, but overall, I thought it was pretty fun as long as you don’t think too hard.

Kevin’s Commentary

“What’s a troglodyte?” asks Jessica. Kid, you’re going to find out. So much of the movie hinges on a shipment of disease samples - Ebola, HIV, bubonic plague, some others - that were packed in test tubes and sent through the mail. And then they are handled in a small-town doctor's office facility. Nitpicking aside, it was a pretty entertaining film, and I had a good time watching it.

2011 Chillerama

* Directed by Adam Green, Joe Lynch, Bear McCreary

* Written by Adam Rifkin, Tim Sullivan, Adam Green

* Stars Adam Rifkin, Sarah Mutch, Ray Wise

* Run Time: 2 Hours

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The whole thing is layers of parody, movies within a movie that takes place at a drive-in theater. It’s raunchy, gross, politically incorrect, and very funny. But in a sick kind of way, so you are warned. Oh yeah, and there’s musical numbers too. It’s not a classic of cinema, but we liked it more than disliked it.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s an anthology. The wraparound story takes place at a drive-in.

Zom-B-Movie

Floyd digs up his dead wife’s grave in black-and-white. He decides to have sex with the corpse, who sits up and bites his bean-bag off. He’s late for work, so he pulls his pants up and walks out of the cemetery.

He limps to the Kaufman Drive-In Theater, which is featuring “Chillerama” tonight. The four films tonight are the theater’s last ones, and they’re both rare and special films. We cut from car to car as the patrons joke about how awful these movies are going to be.

Old man Kaufman is depressed by his impending forced retirement. Floyd, the guy from the cemetery, staggers in, and he’s not looking good at all. Kaufman gets on the PA and announces the first film…

Wadzilla

Dr. Weems is a urologist, and he shows Miles normal sperm— and then Miles’s own little swimmer. Weems offers a new drug to increase Miles’s sperm count. It won’t increase the number of sperms, but it will increase their strength.

The next day, at breakfast, Miles takes one of the pills. Every woman he sees that morning causes him pain. Dr. Weems gives him a very painful test. “I don’t think you’re going to need a microscope.” The tadpole-sized sperm crawls across the floor. Weems instructs Miles to stop taking the pills.

That night, Miles goes on a blind date with Louise, and it happens again. Louise calls a friend who explains the problem, and she feels sorry for Miles, who is now chasing a rat-sized sperm all over her bathroom. He clogs the toilet with it, but then it comes back up, and it’s gotten a lot bigger. It’s got big teeth, and he throws it through the window out into the yard.

The sperm wriggles its way to the nearby park, where it eats a woman’s dog– and then the woman’s head. About ten feet tall now, the sperm starts eating homeless people.

Miles and Louise see the sperm on the evening news; it’s now the size of a house, and the military is trying to figure out how to “rub it out.” As it continues to grow, they start calling it “Wadzilla.” It wants to fertilize an ovum, and only the Statue of Liberty is large enough.

The Statue of Liberty is all in on that idea, dancing and tempting the monster to impregnate her. Before it can, the army drops a giant condom over the green woman. Her torch, however, tears the condom. The army ends up bombing the thing, which splashes everyone in town with white goo.

Louise spits out a mouthful as Miles jokes, “Some first date, huh?” She leans in for a kiss, and he bends over in pain… another one?

We cut back to moviegoers in the theater. Ryan goes to the concession stand for snacks. Meanwhile, Floyd’s in the back room, bleeding blue goo. He gets the goo in the popcorn butter, which gets put on all the popcorn. It’s time for the next movie…

I Was A Teenage Werebear

Two teens have sex in a van. It’s 1962. Ricky’s father interrupts and won’t stop watching. His girlfriend, Peggy Lou starts to sing– it’s a musical! Talon pulls Ricky out of the way as a truck plows into Peggy Lou. Ricky doesn’t mind, because he’s gay, but he takes her to a gypsy woman. The old gypsy woman doesn’t like Talon.

We cut to a 1960’s beach party, with an excessive amount of male wrestling. Talon and Rick wrestle, “Give it to me, Rick!” Talon suddenly grows fangs and bites Rick in the rear. Rick sings about how he’s gotta “Purge this urge.” He talks to the coach about his urges, and the coach understands– that’s why he watches the team shower after practice. Rick’s eyes grow red and he accidentally kills the coach. He has the strength of a grizzly.

Talon says that the bite from him made Ricky into a werebear. When Butch catches them, they all undress and fight in the locker room. Talon turns into a bear– in every sense of the word. Afterwards, there’s a big pile of bodies in the room, but Ricky denies that he’s one of them. He’s in denial and in the closet about being a werebear, oh, and about being gay, too.

Talon and Ricky sing “Love bit me on the ass,” which is quite a song. As they dance, they both turn into leather bears.

That night, it’s the big Luau dance for the high school. Talon sings another song, “Do the Wham Bam!” Suddenly, there are Bears everywhere. People lose their heads, literally.

The old gypsy woman has a silver dildo that she uses to kill the werebears with Ricky’s help.

Back at the drive-in, more people go in to buy popcorn. Old man Kaufman pulls out a pistol and considers suicide. He puts the gun down and introduces the next film,

The Diary of Anne Frankenstein

We open on a black-and-white subtitled film, where Anne Frank, in the attic, finds her grandfather’s diary. He was said to have experimented with bad things. That’s why their family shortened their name from “Frankenstein.” Suddenly, the Nazis storm in and capture everyone. Hitler himself stumbles into the room. Hitler wants to know about the journal. He kills everyone and takes Frankenstein’s book. He gives one of the men Anne’s diary, “Write depressing stuff in this as if a teenager wrote it!”

Hitler orders parts from the grave digger, and they wheel the body parts into his office. Hitler starts to break into song, but then a bad edit cuts that out. He soon reveals his monster, who looks like a big, square-headed rabbi. The creature soon comes to life. “It’s alive!”

Hitler and Eva Braun laugh at how smart the monster, Meshugannah, is; he even got them money back on their taxes! Hitler has a hard time convincing the monster to kill. Once the monster figures out he’s Jewish, he has no trouble killing the guards. The mayhem continues so long that they all just sort of get bored with it.

Soon, it’s Hitler vs. Meshugganah as they battle through the various film sets we’ve seen. Hitler soon loses his head.

Back in the theater, the audience isn’t looking very healthy anymore. People start turning into zombies.

Mr. Kaufman introduces the next movie, “Deathication.” The director explains how it literally scares the crap out of people. We then get a montage of people pooping, painting, and dancing.

In the office, Floyd and Kaufman fight, and the old man shoots Floyd the zombie. Toby and Mayna come in and help fight the monster. Outside, the patrons have all turned into sex-crazed zombies. Ryan and Susie hide in the storeroom, but she changes into a zombie, which is the only reason she likes him. She bites him in the neck, and he becomes one as well.

Kaufman opens up his secret armory; he’s got some heavy weapons back there just for a time like this. Toby and Mayna battle their way outside to the car, but there are a lot of zombies out there. Kaufman kills many of them, each with a movie quote.

Locked in a car that won’t start, Mayne and Toby make out as the zombies surround them. The movie ends, and four guys in the audience (possibly the directors) complain about how awful the four stories were.

Stick through the credits and you’ll get to hear Hitler’s song.

Brian’s Commentary

I was shocked to see that this wasn’t a Troma film, because it’s got all the usual signs. The grainy film, the acting, and the over-the-top everything is just like their stuff.

Even considering all that, the special effects, gore, and mayhem are all well done and a lot of fun.

Each story is a parody. Wadzilla was obviously a kaiju film, Werebear was a beach-blanket musical, and Anne Frankenstein should be obvious. The Zom-B film is longer than it needs to be, but not excessively.

If you like movies that parody horror classics and tropes with lots of sex jokes, this might be right up your– um, alley.

Kevin’s Commentary

I found myself laughing more than I probably should have. Having each of the sections done in a different way made it more interesting. It’s stupid, but fun.

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Some classics, some remakes, and some fun for you this week! We’ll start out with the super-powered “Freaks” from 2019. We’ll then watch the original “Cube” film from 1997 and then the Japanese remake from 2021. We’ll do the sequels another time. We’ll watch a couple of old classics next, “The White Reindeer” from 1952, as well as “The Seventh Seal” from 1957.

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

Pick up our newest book, "The Horror Guys Guide to the Academy Awards of Horror" at https://www.horrormonthly.com/horror-guys-guides/academy-awards-of-horror

Mainstream Films:

2019 Freaks

* Directed by Zach Lipovsky

* Written by Zach Lipovsky

* Stars Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Grace Park

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 45 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This leans heavily into science fiction, action, thriller aspects while whispering in some horror. It starts out nicely with a bit of mystery and gets more fascinating the more we find out what’s going on in this alternate reality. It was very entertaining with a big thumbs up from both of us.

Spoilery Synopsis

A little girl, Chloe, peeks out the window at the ice cream truck on the street. Her father shoos her away from the window and covers it back up, saying she’s not being a good hider, and the bad guys will find her if she’s not careful. She recites all the details about her made-up identity with her dad. She knows exactly what to do if her father ever doesn’t come home. “I can’t wait until I’m normal,” she whines. They seem happy, but they’re also clearly hiding. Is he some kind of loon?

Then Dad’s eyes start to bleed, which surprises no one. She wonders if her eyes will do that someday. He shouts at her, “You are not normal!” and she laughs. Chloe knows things about “the mountain,” but she’s not supposed to know about that.

Chloe dreams about a monster trying to break in the door, and we see that she’s been drawing scary pictures. Turns out, she sees ghosts. Dad says, “Ghosts aren’t real.”

The next morning, Chloe hears the ice cream man outside again, and someone drops a book through the mail slot, “Mr. Snowcone and the Princess.” Chloe wants ice cream. She sees another little girl at the ice cream truck and wishes out loud repeating for Harper to bring her some. She does, so Chloe opens the door. Harper’s mother, Nancy, also stops by and introduces herself. “She looks so normal,” Nancy says. Dad wonders how Harper knows Chloe’s real name.

Harper wakes up and finds Chloe in her room. This version of Harper is Chloe’s sister, at least Chloe thinks so. And wants Harper to pretend she’s Chloe’s mother. Dad comes in, and Chloe’s alone in the locked room. He offers to just buy her some ice cream since he has to go out for supplies anyway.

A short time later, Dad rushes in, covered in blood and holding a gun. “That’s OK, this mostly isn’t my blood,” he says. “I just gotta be more careful.” Not only has he been shot, he’s forgotten the ice cream. He says they may have to stay hidden for a very long time.

Once Dad passes out, Chloe grabs a gun and hundred-dollar bill and goes outside to get some ice cream. She looks around like she’s never been outside before. “Are we safe from the people who want to kill us?” She asks the ice cream man, who happens to know her name. He lures her into the back of his truck and drives her to “the park.” On the way, they pass a billboard showing someone who bleeds from the eyes and a warning to call 911.

They do, in fact, actually go to the park. The old man asks if Chloe can do anything special. He tries to scare her, and then he tries to make her mad, to get a response. “Is there anything you can do that other people can’t do?” A police officer shows up, and the old man claims to be her grandfather. Chloe gets upset at the cop, and she makes him go away with the power of her mind.

On the way home, the old man explains that Chloe’s mother was his daughter– he really is her grandfather, and he really does take her back home. He hands her a drug to make her father go to sleep the next time he returns.

When he wakes up, Chloe’s father finds that his daughter has a new attitude; she calls him a liar. He says her mother was killed because she couldn’t follow the rules. A little later, Chloe finds her mother in the little room where she was with Harper earlier.

We watch Chloe’s father dozing in front of a news report, “Remembering Dallas Ten Years After the Attack,” and they show the city in ruins. The “Abnormals” or “Freaks” are the subject of discussion. Any Freaks who are running loose are illegal. Most of the Freaks have been relocated to a mountain somewhere. “Living weapons of mass destruction,” calls the newscaster. But the agent being interviewed suggests how wonderful it could be to find an Abnormal child they could raise to be good and on their side.

Chloe somehow ends up in Harper’s room while still at her own house during a sleepover, and all the other girls start calling her a Freak. She also finds her mother chained to the floor.

When Chloe tells her father about what she’s seen, he doesn’t believe any of it. She tries to drug him as instructed, but he figures out what she’s doing. She forces him to go to sleep–without the powder, and her eye bleeds.

Chloe wants to go across the street and pay Nancy to become her new mom, but Grandpa shows up and offers to take Chloe to her real mom. Grandpa explains what happened to Chloe’s mother– her father wouldn’t use his powers to protect the family, since he wanted to hide.

Grandpa takes Chloe to see Agent Ray, the woman from the TV. He pretends to be a priest who’s been taking care of an “Abnormal.” Ray has an easy, painless way to detect mutants by using an ultraviolet flashlight to see if there are traces of blood tears, and the old man looks clear. He wants Ray to take them both to Maddick Mountain. That plan goes south, and the old man makes them both disappear– he can turn invisible! He stabs a cook in the eye, and the overzealous cops shoot that guy as they invisibly escape. He believes that his daughter is still alive and being held at the Evil Mountain.

Chloe’s dad, Henry, appears out of nowhere, and teleports the old man away. He says he’s been looking for her for a week. Then we see that Henry doesn’t teleport, he can slow down and even stop time outside a bubble he projects. The world only advances while he sleeps; it’s only been a few months since Chloe’s mom died, but it’s been years inside the house from their point of view inside the bubble he projects.

Henry takes Chloe and a big pile of money across the street to Nancy and Steven’s house. They expected this; Henry wants to leave Chloe with them with the promise of regular payments. Harper is there as well, and she doesn’t like Chloe, who has been appearing in her room; she’s gonna be a problem. This is a weird situation, and Nancy and Steven argue. Chloe makes the problem go away– for a few minutes before they’re thrown out.

Henry and Chloe go back home, where Grandpa Alan is tied to a chair. As the two men argue, Chloe talks to her mother in the attic. When Henry tries to nail the door shut, Chloe makes him nearly kill himself before passing out herself.

Alan tells Henry that Mary isn’t really dead. This leads to an argument. Chloe notices Nancy, across the street, talking to the police about getting a reward. Chloe makes the policeman stab Nancy in the eye, and then the other cops see her eye bleeding and shoot her.

Chloe gets a vision of her mother strapped to a bed after being tortured. Henry sees it too, this time. He apologizes as they watch two workers get ready to inject something into Mary. Chloe makes them stop, at whatever distance the scientists are away. She then makes the remaining man release Mary, fully possessing him.

Agent Ray comes to the door, which interrupts everything; Henry freezes the entire outside world. Chloe wants Henry to talk to Ray and convince her that he’s normal. Alan shows Henry how to get past Ray’s ultraviolet light test, so he lets her in. They talk about Freaks in the neighborhood like Nancy and Steve. She knows who he is as well as the whole family story. She’s got drones outside ready to kill them all if he doesn’t cooperate, as well as heavily armed cops outside. Meanwhile, Chloe continues to fully control that other security man, who wheels Mary toward the prison exit. Mary has said she has to get outside to have room to use her power.

As Ray and Henry talk, Alan, who is invisible, steals Ray’s gun. Ray says Henry will be killed, but Chloe will be saved and used as a weapon. Ray knows he’s there. She shoots Henry and goes upstairs to find Chloe doing her thing with Mary and the man at the prison. Ray shoots Chloe, but Grandpa gets in the way and blocks the bullet; he dies. Chloe then makes Ray shoot herself.

Henry comes upstairs, and he uses Ray’s radio to tell the men outside that she’s a hostage. Henry freezes time, goes outside, and shoots several of the cops before starting time up again, which gives the rest of them pause.

Inside the mountain, the guards close in on Mary, but Chloe makes them open the doors. Mary then flies away with a shockwave that blasts all the guards outside into pulp, “I know where to find you,” she tells her. Henry slows the Hellfire missile that’s in the process of hitting their roof and he runs out with Chloe.

A bit later, Chloe wakes up just as Henry dies. Mary shows up, she flew all the way there. The shockwave from her landing kills the remaining soldiers closing in on Chloe. She carries Chloe away, who declares that they aren’t going to hide anymore.

Brian’s Commentary

This should not be confused with the 1932 film “Freaks” which is a whole different animal.

We start off with a paranoid, isolating father who appears to be crazy, and it goes quite a long time until we learn otherwise. We’re forty minutes in before we figure out that this is the X-Men universe. The X-Men are fun, but this film is probably much more like the way it would really work out if mutants were real.

Bruce Dern was 83 here and it’s a big part for someone of that age. Lexy Walker, as Chloe, is very young and does an outstanding job here as well. Emile Hirsch looks just like a young Jack Black for some reason, but he’s good too.

It’s a bit minimal on the horror elements, but it was really entertaining.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought this was very cool. We got to gradually find out what was going on in this alternate world, and once we did it was a cool story. The effects of Chloe’s distance viewing and projection, the time dilation, and the invisibility were all very well done. I’d give it a solid thumbs up.

1997 Cube

* Directed by Vincenzo Natali

* Written by Andre Bijelic, Vincenzo Natali, Graeme Manson

* Stars: Nicole de Boer, Maurice Dean Wint, David Hewlett

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is heavy on science fiction, but certainly has the horror elements with trapped people, deadly traps, and gruesome deaths. We travel through the cube trap with the cast, trying to figure out what’s going on as they do.

Spoilery Synopsis

A bald man wakes up on the floor inside an industrial-looking room that’s cube-shaped. Each of the six sides, four walls, floor, and ceiling, has a door in the center. He opens one and goes into the next room, which is identical to the first. He goes through several rooms, lit in different colors. Suddenly, something happens, and the man falls to pieces– literally. We see a razor sharp grid– these rooms are trapped! Credits roll.

A man whose shirt says “Quentin” wakes up another named Worth. They are joined by two women, Leaven and Holloway. Quentin has blood on his hands, and he tells the others about the traps. An older man, Rennes, comes in, and he’s found a way to avoid the trap rooms by throwing his shoes in first. None of them remembers how they got there.

Who built this place? The government? Aliens? Holloway is a doctor, Quentin is a cop, Rennes is a career criminal who is known for escaping prisons. Leaven is a student and Worth is “just an office guy.” The group uses the “boot trick” to move through several more rooms as they start looking for a way out. Leaven notices that each room has a serial number. Rennes gives them all a speech about being careful seconds before being sprayed with acid in the face and melting. So much for the boot method.

Quentin and Leaven look at the serial numbers on the doors and notice that the trapped rooms all have a prime number. The pattern seems to work, and they go through a bunch of rooms, all alike. Once in a while, they hear machinery in the walls doing something. They open a door and find a mentally challenged man inside; he’s Kazan.

They all start getting tired and hungry. Quentin falls into a trap and gets cut, but the room isn’t prime, so they don’t understand that. Quentin and Leaven start to get really annoyed with Kazan, who’s loud and smells bad. They all argue with Worth, who has a bad attitude and doesn’t believe there is a way out. He eventually admits he worked in the office who drew the plans for the shell of the cube. The group all argues about conspiracy theories and ideas about how this place got made. It all starts to sound pretty hopeless, so Quentin beats up Worth.

With Worth’s information, Leaven figures out that the cube has 17,000-plus rooms. She also figures out that the serial numbers are three-dimensional coordinates.

They find a room where the trap is activated by sound, but they have to go through instead of around. They’re all concerned about Kazan, who’s noisy at the best of times, but they all make it through. Afterward, Quentin and Hollway argue about him being abusive. They make it to where they think the door should be, but it’s just a sheer wall outside.

Holloway sings from a rope made of clothing to try and get somewhere “outside,” which doesn’t work. Something moves, and she nearly falls but Quentin catches her. Then Quentin lets her fall to her death.

Leaven, Kazan, Worth, and Quentin decide the best bet is to go down, so they can drop out the bottom. They all stop for a nap first. As the others sleep, Quentin hauls Leaven away to leave the others and go off on their own. It soon becomes apparent that Quentin is a little but insane– and maybe a pedophile as well. Worth comes to the rescue, and the others realize that Quentin killed Holloway. Still, might makes right, so Quentin beats Worth senseless.

Uh-oh. They come to a room and find Rennes’ body. They’ve travelled in a circle somehow. No, they soon figure out that the rooms move around. Leaven does some math, and she says she knows where the exit is. The math is way too advanced for her to figure out, and then Kazan chimes in with the answer; he’s a human calculator (and an excellent driver as well, most likely).

The three manage to escape from Quentin, and they leave him behind. They come to the “bridge” room and wait for it to move. The rooms then shift and they lose Kazan somewhere. He doesn’t go far, and they retrieve him as they end up in the final room. They enter the bridge to the outside.

They see the light outside, but Worth doesn’t want to leave, since he feels that this is all his fault. As he and Leaven talk, Quentin sneaks in behind them and kills Leaven. He also stabs Worth. Kazan goes outside, but Worth hangs onto Quentin just long enough for the room to cut him in half when they move again.

Worth, Badly wounded, lays down next to Leaven’s body as the cubes reset again. Kazan walks out to the exit, alone.

Brian’s Commentary

Julian Richings was on the poster, the trailer, and all the advertising, but he’s only in it for thirty seconds and never says a word. Iconic!

Seven actors and one set. This would have a hard time being more low budget, but it’s really good.

The rooms all made sense until they started talking about permutations, and that’s where they lost me. The movie is essentially a math puzzle.

This was good when it came out, and it still holds up today.

Kevin’s Commentary

Having the rooms be different colors is such a simple idea but so effective in making a single set seem like a maze of rooms. This was my third or fourth time seeing it, and I think it’s great. I like everything about it.

2021 Cube

* Directed by Yasuhiko Shimizu

* Written by Vincenzo Natali, Koji Tokuo

* Stars Tokio Emoto, Masaki Okada, Takumi Saito

* Run Time: 1 Hour 48 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is a Japanese remake of the 1997 English language film “Cube.” While it does have some differences to make it a bit interesting, it has an even lower budget feel to it than the original and we both thought it was on the dull side for much of the film. If you’re a fan of the 1997 version and two follow-up movies, you’ll probably find this at least interesting. But we don’t highly recommend it.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man opens a door and climbs through the small hole. He enters a cubical room from one of the sides. He opens the opposite door and goes inside. There’s a room exactly like it, only in a different color. As he walks across the floor to the next door, giant tubes shoot out of the wall to impale him and a big cube of flesh falls out of his chest before he collapses.

Another prisoner wakes up to find two other people in the room with him. None of them know how or why they are there. A door opens and someone throws a shoe in . This guy walks through to the next door, and one of the prisoners asks him what’s going on. They open the ceiling door and find the first man and his chest chunk. Then a girl opens the door and comes in as well. Credits roll.

The guy with the shoes demonstrates to the others that some of the rooms are booby-trapped. Everyone introduces themselves. Kai, Goto, Uno, and Ide talk about what they do in the real world. Then they all freak out a bit until they calm down and Ide leads them to the next room.

Goto notices that each room seems to have a serial number. They keep moving until they find an older man, Ando, in one of the rooms. Now, there are six of them. Uno, the youngest - a boy, doesn’t like to talk or be touched.

Suddenly, the lights go out, and giant spinning fans start to descend. The room they are in is rigged; they barely manage to open the floor door and escape. Not long after, Uno figures out that the room numbers can predict whether or not there is a trap inside. He and Goto work on some math problems for about an hour, and then find a pattern.

The group starts making rapid progress, as the prime numbers seem to indicate the presence of a trap. They find one room that’s got a sound-activated trap, and they have to be very, very quiet. Ando gets a cut on his leg after Ochi accidentally makes a noise.

The next door they open has that first guy and his hollowed-out chest again. They’ve travelled in a circle? No, the rooms move! Soon after, Ide gets cut to bits with a laser in one of the rooms.

Everyone sits around while Uno does more math problems. Bars come up out of the floor, splitting the room, and the group, in half. Ando says that’s OK, he hates young people anyway, and he goes off on his own. Ochi on his side has no choice but to follow him.

Uno, Goto, and Kai continue in another direction, still relying on the numbers to guide them. Goto and the others watch a projection of himself in the past, on the roof of a building as his brother, Hiruto, stands on the edge. He says the wrong thing, and Hiruto jumps to his death.

Ando and Ochi, in a different room, talk about how much they hate each other; it’s old versus young with these two. Youth wins out, as Ochi crushes the old man’s head in one of the doors.

Uno yells at Goto that he understands why Hiruto killed himself; adults are garbage! Uno then jumps into a deathtrap, but Goto grabs and saves him instead. Kai opens the next door, which opens to an empty space. They watch as one of the rooms moves; is that the exit? Must be.

They decide to make for that cube near the door and see if it is the exit they need. Ochi opens the door and finds them again. He’s covered in blood and says Ando got killed in a trap. Uno catches on quickly that he’s lying, but the others don’t. He tells Goto, but Goto is skeptical that Ochi would have killed Ando.

Ochi very soon exposes himself by attacking Goto. He’s gone quite insane from working at a convenience store. It’s more complicated than just that, but it makes a kind of sense. He makes a long speech before trying to kill Goto. He doesn’t want to go outside. Abruptly, a trap goes off and kills Ochi. The room starts to move, and Goto gets left behind.

Kai and Uno ride the moving cube to the exit. After Uno gets out, Kai decides to stay inside and says goodbye to him as he walks away. We cut to Goto, who is all cut up, injured, and very much not quite dead yet.

We see on a screen about the ones killed, that Uno was “Released” while Goto was “Continued.” Kai, on the other hand, has glowing computerized eyes that go back to appearing normal after a moment. She goes into a room with another batch of prisoners, and you can see her processing each of them one at a time visually before she speaks. It appears she’s some sort of android or cyborg, and she’s been in on the whole thing all along.

Brian’s Commentary

Kevin said, “This is for people who liked the first Cube, but wished it was more slow and dull.” I can’t argue with him. There are long stretches with no dialogue, and the math problems are cranked way up as well.

The original had some commentary about the conflict between rich and poor people; this one seems to do the same with age differences and child abuse.

We see lots of pointless American remakes of foreign movies, like “Funny Games,” “Speak No Evil,” or “The Ring.” This one spins that around and does a Japanese remake of an American movie. This one is equally as pointless and diminished as those other remakes.

Right off the bat, we noticed that the cube’s walls and floor are cheaper looking and smaller than in the original. It’s not a shot-for-shot remake, but it’s pretty close. The characters are all different types, and some of the traps are different from the first film.

There are some flashbacks and new things, but not enough to make this as good as the original. It picks up a bit in the second half, but the first one is still far superior.

Kevin’s Commentary

As Brian mentions in his commentary, for the most part, I found this kind of low-key and dull. There are enough differences from the original to spark some interest here and there, but overall, I didn’t care for it. The set and technical aspects weren’t as good as the original. The second half is better, but overall it’s just okay.

1952 The White Reindeer

* Directed by Erik Blomberg

* Written by Erik Blomberg, Mirjami Kuosmanen

* Stars Mirjami Kuosmanen, Kalervo Nissila, Ake Lindman

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 14 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Instead of the vampire turning into a bat, she turns into a white reindeer - that was a different take we’ve never seen before. This was kind of interesting seeing what life was like in a small Finnish community in 1952. The movie has a dark fairy tale vibe to it, literally starting out with a woman setting up the story, and there’s also vibes that it's a documentary about these people and the nature they live with. It wouldn’t be for everyone, but we thought it was a decent watch.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch people wandering around in a desolate snowscape as the singer tells us about a witch with “evil in her belly.” There’s also a story about a girl who turned into a deer and died when a hunter killed her. We watch the woman make it to the witch’s tent, give birth, and die.

We cut to Pirita at the reindeer-sled races. It’s like the Iditarod meets Ben Hur. Pirita is way ahead when a man throws a lasso over her and pulls her off the sled. They laugh and then kiss.

Later, the man, Aslak, meets her parents and says he has good intentions and pays a dowry. There’s a party and lots of drinking and toasts. It’s a happy day for everyone!

Some time passes, and although the two love each other, they have a dead bedroom. He leaves to go on a weeks-long reindeer cattle drive, which leaves her at home alone.

Pirita goes to visit an evil-looking man, Taslkku-Nilla, out in a very remote cabin. She wants a love potion from him. His magic drum gets out of control, and even he’s afraid of it, calling her a witch. He does tell her that she has to sacrifice the first living thing she sees when she leaves– which is her pet reindeer, a little white tame one.

She takes the little reindeer to the altar of the Stone God and kills it with her knife. She then passes out in the snow and gets a vision.

Pirita goes looking for Aslak, but he’s not in the camp when she gets there, he’s out hunting. She goes to sleep in the tent with all the other men, but she wakes up in the middle of the night. She leaves the tent and becomes a big white reindeer.

Some hunters see the white reindeer and start tracking it. One of the hunters ropes the animal and wrestles it to the ground, just as we saw Pirita do earlier. Suddenly, the deer is Pirita, laughing at the shocked hunter. As he leans in for a kiss, she gets a surprised look and bites him on the neck, killing him.

Other hunters find the body and bring it back to the village. All the village men find Pirita attractive, especially after the love potion spell, and that night, she eats another man.

The men talk about the “White witch reindeer,” and argue about superstition. They discuss their favorite weapons. They spot a white reindeer outside and one man chases it and shoots it, but his gun explodes. He sees Pirita there, laughing at him.

That night, back in camp, the man with the exploding gun recognizes Pirita and chases her with a torch. The other men wrestle him to the ground, but now, Aslak is a little suspicious of his wife. She looks in the mirror and sees that she now has fangs. That night, she almost kills Aslak, but doesn’t at the last moment.

At church, Pirita doesn’t sing with all the other women, and people notice. Aslak sharpens his spear; he wants that reindeer. “Cold iron is the only way to kill a witch,” he proclaims. We see that a lot of people in town are readying iron weapons.

The white reindeer returns, and all the men grab their spears and go after it. Pirita knows she’s in trouble and goes back to Tsalkku-Nilla to undo the spell, but she finds him frozen to death inside his hut; no help there.

She runs back to the sacrificial altar and begs the stone god to take back his magic. Instead, she turns into the reindeer right then and runs off. Aslak sees the reindeer from a distance and pursues it on his skis. He gets it with his spear and approaches, only to find out that it’s his own wife.

Brian’s Commentary

I had no idea people used reindeer as sled dogs or could just catch a wild one to tow your sled. Very cool! There are a lot of shots of reindeers and people herding, hunting, and wrestling them.

There’s very little dialogue, so even if you don’t like subtitles, this isn’t excessive. Visually, it’s excellent, especially if you’re curious about Finland in the old days (it’s vague about when this takes place, but it could've been as late as 1952).

It’s interesting due to the location and time period, but there’s not really much of a story or drama here. A lot of it feels like a nature documentary rather than horror. I suspect many modern audiences would find it boring.

Kevin’s Commentary

The best part about this was getting a historical peek at a very different culture, thriving in a frozen land, from many decades ago. It’s low-key on horror, more like a fairy tale, but I thought it was worth watching.

1957 The Seventh Seal

* Directed by Ingmar Bergman

* Written by Ingmar Bergman

* Stars Max Von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bengt Ekeros

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a visually interesting piece that explores religion, philosophy, human relationships, the meaning of life, and death. Death is personified and while it’s not their first appearance on film, it’s an iconic version that has influenced other later movies and media. It’s pretty grim through much of it, and on the talky side, but it’s one worth checking out for sure if you haven’t seen it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a deserted-looking beach, and we hear about the lamb opening the seventh seal, and the signs of the apocalypse. We cut to shots of dead men on the beach, from a shipwreck, including Antonius Block. He gets up and prays, not as dead as the others. Well, maybe not so good, since Death himself appears to him. “Are you ready?” Antonius challenges Death to a very high-stakes game of chess.

Antonius rides his horse away, with Squire Jons tagging along, talking about all kinds of ominous things. They try to ask a man for directions, but he’s obviously died from the plague.

Jof wakes up, gets out of his wagon and talks to his horse until he has a vision of a mother and child walking through the grass– he assumes it is the Virgin Mary. He goes inside and tells Mia about what he saw. She doesn’t believe him since he’s played pranks on her before. They are part of an acting troupe, and they've been hired to entertain the priests, who are all worried about the plague.

Squire Jons talks to a man painting a mural about the value of scary paintings. It’s a painting of the plague dead, meant to remind the living that they’re going to die. Jons tells that they’ve just come home from the Crusades.

Antonius arrives at the church and makes a confession– to Death. He laments that he doesn’t care about his fellow man, and he has major doubts about his faith. He wants knowledge, not faith. Why won’t God show his face? Antonius wants to use his reprieve from Death to do one worthwhile act.

Antonius and Jons go outside and find a woman being flogged for having “carnal intercourse with the devil.” They think she’s the cause of the plague. Antonius and Jons ride out of town.

The two come upon a mostly abandoned town. Jons talks to Ravel, who brags about robbing the many dead in town. He’s the man who talked Antonius into going on the crusade ten years ago; it was a scam of some kind, and Jons threatens to kill Ravel if they see him again. Ravel’s woman becomes Jons’s housekeeper.

The acting troupe/circus has come to town. One of the actors follows a local woman into the bushes for a good time. The act is interrupted when a bunch of creepy monks and sick people march into town in a macabre parade. Everyone stops, prays, and cries. “You shall all die from the Black Death,” says the leader. He’s… not a fun man. After his morbid speech ends, the whole group moves on.

Everyone knows the plague is coming, and there’s a lot of angst as they wait in dread. The people are talking about Judgment Day and what that entails.

Plog the blacksmith is looking for his wife, who ran off with Jonas, the actor we saw earlier. He talks to, and threatens, Jof, because he’s an actor, too. They force him to dance and perform until Jons comes and rescues him.

Antonius sits in front of the chessboard and talks to Mia, who has a small baby, Mikael. He recognizes her from the circus show. Jof comes back, and he’s a mess from his ordeal. Antonius and Jof talk about safe places to hide from the plague. Antonius offers to guide them through the forest. Antonius talks about his wife, whom he hasn’t seen in a decade.

He likes being here with this calm, quiet family, and he’s cheerful when Death comes to play a turn of chess. Death vaguely hints that something bad might happen to Jof and his family. Plog, the blacksmith, begs to come with the group through the forest, hoping to find his missing wife.

Antonius, Jons, and a few others lead Jons’s family through the woods. They very soon catch up with Plog’s wife, Lisa, and Skat the actor. The two men call each other names until Lisa begs forgiveness. Lisa is obviously manipulating both men, and Jons cynically watches the whole thing.

Skat hides by climbing a tree, but then gets upset when Death arrives with a big saw to cut the tree down. “Your time has come. Your contract is terminated.” The tree falls and Skat dies.

Soldiers walk through, pushing a cart with the witch aboard, they’re heading to the execution grounds.

Antonius tells the witch that he’d like to meet the devil in order to ask him about God. She doesn’t have any good answers. The men burn the witch. Antonius and Jons argue over whether anyone, God, the angels, or Satan, is watching over the poor girl.

A man infected with the plague crawls into camp looking for help. Jons won’t let anyone go near the man or help him, as it’s pointless.

Later, Jof watches as Death returns for his game with Antonius. Mia thinks Antonius is alone, but Jof sees Death for what he is. “Nothing escapes me,” says Death. Antonius tries to spill the board, but Death restores the pieces and says Antonius is going to lose in the next movie. “When next we meet, you and your companion’s time will be up.” He still won’t say anything about the afterlife.

There’s a storm, and Jof and Mia have to park the wagon for the night. They know Death is on their heels. Meanwhile, Antonius and Jons enter a castle and look around. It’s Antonius’s home, and his wife is inside. They all sit down to dinner until Death shows up and they all recognize him… “It is finished,” says the mute girl.

We cut to Jof, Mia, and Mikael, all fine and healthy in the morning after the storm has passed. Jof sees the rest of the characters walking in a line as the Grim Reaper leads them in a long dancing line. Antonius, Jons, Skat, Plog, Lisa, and the mute girl are all dead now.

Brian’s Commentary

You know it’s old when Max Von Sydow gets fourth billing under people you’ve never heard of.

This wasn’t the first portrayal of Death as a character, but it was an extremely influential depiction.

It’s basically all the characters talking about how people deal with death, loss, and faith. It’s very philosophical, and all the characters have their own opinions. It’s an exceptionally bleak film, and they don’t get much more morbid and death-obsessed than this one. Visually, it’s excellent, the characters are all good, and there’s a lot of talking about religion and philosophy here.

Kevin’s Commentary

You never know when you’ll be climbing a tree and Death will come along with a saw to collect you. And the tree. This movie was much more interesting than I expected, full of engrossing and thought-provoking moments. Visually it’s great, the cast does a fine job, and the writer/director Ingmar Bergman clearly knew what he was doing.

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