Insane Haunted Santa UFOs

Serial killers…haunted houses…UFOs…insane asylums. It’s like a horror snack platter. Still not seeing anything involving robot cheerleader werewolves. And if any of you big time Hollywood film producers are interested, I have a script. Plug ’n play, man. Just sayin’.

SECRET SANTA (December 13, 2016)
“A group of eccentric college kids struggle to get through the hectic exam period. A liquor-filled Christmas party is planned to ease the stress. They plan to toast the end of the semester with a Secret Santa exchange. Little do they know, a killer is in town and has a special present for all the girls and boys. Will they dare to open their presents?”

Santa as a serial killer. There’s a horror plot device older than Christmas itself. And as for “eccentric” college kids, there’s a better descriptive word: obnoxious arrogant over-privileged jerk wads. Yep, that’s one word.

BEHIND THE WALLS (2017)
“Years it has waited, now someone’s moved in. Through the eyes of the evil within we witness a broken family desperately seeking a new beginning in a new home. But this house lives, watches and wants them to stay — FOREVER.”

Of course the house wants them to stay forever — rent’s gotta be paid. I question this evil house’s sincerity, though; for instance, in The Legend of Hell House (1973) and The Amityville Horror (1979), the malevolence therein keep telling their tenants to get out. Admittedly, not a good business model if you’re an evil landlord.

SAM WAS HERE (2017)
“California, Mojave Desert, 1998. A strange glow appears in the sky. Sam, a forty-something door-to-door salesman, travels through the few inhabited zones of the Californian desert in search of clients, yet everything seems deserted. When his car breaks down, Sam becomes a prisoner of the empty, hostile environment. Alone and without human contact for days on end, he listens continuously to a talk-show on the only local radio station. The host, a man named Eddy, takes calls from listeners who share their thoughts on a child killer at large in the area.”

I bet the strange glow in the sky is a UFO. Everybody knows UFOs glow. Outside of that, I wonder what Sam sells? That’d be cool if he sold hot air balloons that light up so you could see ‘em, say, over the desert at night.

ELOISE (January 5, 2017 (UK) / 2017 (US)
“Four friends break into an abandoned insane asylum in search of a death certificate which will grant one of them a large inheritance. However, finding it soon becomes the least of their worries in a place haunted by dark memories.”

Given how many abandoned insane asylums used in countless horror movies, you kinda wonder what made everybody leave? As they say in prison, three hots and a cot.

Shark Bubbles

You don’t have to put on Shark Exorcist (2015) to watch a supremely crappy shark movie. Just go on YouTube™ and pull up the obscure Deep Blood, a 1989 Italian shark flick, featuring no fishy action or graphic kill scenes whatsoever. So why did I watch it? It was free. But free in this case meant you’ll pay a price — 90 minutes of your expiration date.

The title comes from a pact four young boys made to alway be friends and to kill a great white shark lest one of them should be eaten by one. Guess what happens? 10 years later the boys reunite for a fishing vacation at a small beach community stalked by a marauding shark. (Likely an out of towner, also on vacation.) One of the boys is sharked to death and the remaining friends make another pact: kill that shark hard for what it did.

Vengeance is the first thing on their minds (with boobies coming in a very close second). They prep their trap while the shark (stock footage of several great white sharks swimming in circles and occasionally coming to the surface for air) munches on beach food. The kills are nothing more than screaming swimmers in an eruption of blood bubbles (or “Texas Champagne”). You don’t see the shark actually doing any attacking, just a lot of red froth. And screaming.

The boys’ plan is to use explosives to turn the shark into puzzle pieces. Gonna be a challenge as the mean fish is thought to be an incarnation of an ancient hoodoo (West African spiritual traditions and beliefs) spirit that took the form of a killer shark.

So yeah, African spirit hoodoo sharks (different ones spliced in to emphasize the premise) in Italy. A more entertaining idea would’ve been to do a movie about voodoo spaghetti. And instead of blood, they could use tomato sauce, which I hear is smiliar in color. Just thinking out loud.

Slasher’s Aren’t Very Knife

There’s a razor blade slasher reducing the population of strippers in New York. What the heck, man? These ladies perform a vital service to society and you wanna kill them? Messed up, dude. This sets the sex and violence mood in 1983’s American Nightmare, a low-grade/low-rent slasher flick filmed in Toronto, home of Pothole Filler Imperial Stout™.

So there she was, naked in a hotel room, about to close a business deal with a client, when the messed up dude pulled out a razor made for shaving, and cut her throat — and she didn’t even need a shave! Again, messed up.

Earlier, Isabelle (the stripper-slash-hooker-slash-slasher victim) left messages for her brother to come save her from danger. (In New York, that could be anything from a serial killer to a dirty public toilet seat). He doesn’t know he’s way too late, and searches every strip joint in town. Gotta love his methodology; hope he brought a lot of small bills — to, um, buy information, of course.

The guy (Eric) hooks (sorry) up with a dancer (Louise) and they both go on the empty-lead search. In-between all of this is LOTS of bold displays of the female anatomy set to music and an increasing bare body count. There’s even a sex scene that, back in 1983, was likely rated-X. By today’s standards and practices, it would only fetch a PG designation. But hey…ladies dancing without the muss and fuss of clothing. Like I said, a VITAL service.

The killer in this gritty slasher flick gets it in the end. Okay, that didn’t come out right. Regardless, his identity came as no surprise. What IS a surprise was the transvestite hooker. A surprise to her clients, anyway. Ha!

Turkish Dracula

1953’s Drakula İstanbul’da — painstakingly translated to Dracula in Istanbul, paints the Prince of Darkness in humorless hues. (Actually, the movie is in black and white, but Dracula was/is a pretty colorful guy.) This Turkish Dracula is balding, has crayon tip fangs pointing opposite directions, and is only interested in real estate deals and juicing your neck.

Drakula İstanbul’da is a re-vamping (heh) of the 1928 novel Kazıklı Voyvoda (Impaler Voivode). And that book was a near photocopied translation of Bram Stoker’s novel that brought Dracula into the mainstream. Only difference is the Mina character is a stripper (um, I mean “showgirl”) and Dracula boot lick Renfield is nowhere to be found. (He’s probably in some basement eating the life force of bugs.)

Drakula is hungry and his feeding techniques look more like he’s leaning in to tell you a bawdy joke rather than a perforation. His target is two young ladies, one of whom has a mysterious secret: sleepwalking. Scary, but assured it’ll go away once she’s married. (Heard that doesn’t work with uncontrollable flatulence.)

Drakula is hunted down in a long and boring process (the only chills would be if you watched this in the Antarctica with the windows open), and dispatched with a medium rare stake through the heart as applied with a rock. Time to take down the anti-Drakula decorations — all garlic must go. “But I use it to cook with,” says Mina, who protests she won’t be able to make her eggplant recipe without it. (No person in their right mind would eat that crap anyway, so better to just move on to mac ’n cheese and give up this eggplant madness and schemes.)

Dracula isn’t the only intellectual property grave Istanbul has robbed. Superman, Flash Gordon, Zorro, Captain America, Batman, Tarzan, Satan and Spider-Man (as a green-suited criminal) have all been given a Turkish bath, and look like they were dressed in clothes their moms made them. Final note: You haven’t any idea of what Istanbul is all about until you’ve seen Turkish Batman cavort with ladies of burlesque.

P.S. For some prime hardcore Turkish horror action, check out Baskin (2015), wherein four cops enter the foyer of Hell when they happen upon a Black Mass in an abandoned building. Hope you have a strong stomach. Otherwise it’s recycled eggplant time.

Blanketed In Horror

Few things in life are better than a blanket featuring the VHS cover art of a pile of old school slasher horror movies. You might think rabies-resistant puppies, transparent bikini tops or free candy. Nope — horror blanket.

And now you can taste the good life with ’80s Horror VHS Explosion Fleece, sold on RageOn.com. Here’s how they suckered me…

“The ’80s Horror VHS Explosion Fleece is the perfect holiday gift for the VHS lover in your life, available in either 50”x60” or 60”x80” sizes, featuring the iconic VHS art for films like Slaughter High, Chopping Mall, Cheerleader Camp, Silent Night, Deadly Night, and The Video Dead.”

You’d think a treasure such as this would cost a reasonable $400 – $500 dollars, and would happily bitcoin this thing. But RageOn.com is selling it for $64.99 — $79 respectively (lg/xlg). That is the definition of insanity. Regardless, Krampus has surely smiled down upon us this holiday season.

Wrap yourself in horror HERE

 

Tropical Shark = Hawaiian Crunch

“There are no sharks in the Hawaiian archipelago!,” screams a tropical hotel resort manager as his guests are being systematically eaten by a shark.

But it’s not just any shark — this tourist trapper is a prehistoric shark, theorized to be let loose by an underwater earthquake. So believes the sea biologist, who later provides Up From The Depths’ (1979) funniest moment. Besides all the other ones, that is.

Boaters, swimmers, divers and dumbasses are being attacked by said prehistoric predator, which isn’t much bigger than Jaws’ cousin’s neighbor’s BFF. One second you’re there, the next, nothing but red, foamy bubbles. After a broad daylight attack, everybody leaves the water and runs back and forth on the beach, screaming and knocking over stuff. Then night falls. And the tourists are still screaming and running back and forth, knocking down stuff.

A reward for the monster is offered: a case of island rum. And to sweeten the pot (as if it was needed), the hotel manager throws in $1,000 bucks and a stay in the presidential suite. Well, dang — somebody hand me a spear!

The shark makes blurry cameos and his meals are about as graphic as watching somebody sloppily eating tomato soup. The aforementioned hilarity includes three drunk guys on a boat prepping a blow torch to go after the shark. (Flames under water — why didn’t I think of that?) They end up turning their pleasure craft into a roaring campfire.

But the best LOL moment comes when the sea biologist barely makes it back aboard the boat after being attacked by the shark. In order to lure the beast out into the open, they tie a line around him, who just died from his injuries, and toss him into the drink. Then they tow his body back and forth in front of the hotel in front of the still screaming guests. What some people won’t do for rum.

Plastic explosives are found, words were said, shark goes boom, all without actually seeing barely more than a dorsal fin and an occasional toothy smile. (Hawaiian sharks, like the islanders, are so pleasant.)

If you’re looking for one of the worst Jaws (1978) knock-offs ever made, you just found it.

Renamed Aliens, Social Evil, Fresh Beats

Recently had a conversation with my dumpster diving associate behind the Squeezie Mart about the state of horror and sci-fi movies. His position: “Technological advances in the visual arts have broken through the limitations of horror filmmaking, thereby pushing the medium into new territories…” Then he peed his pants to emphasize his point. My thought is I don’t care; I just wanna see things go squish on the big screen.

Anyway, here’s what’s new horror/sci-fi is coming up to make your bladder splatter. Presumably not in public.

ALIEN: COVENANT (May 19, 2017)
“Alien: Covenant begins with the colony ship Covenant bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy. The crew discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world, whose sole inhabitant is the ‘synthetic’ David, survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.”

Back in time — September 24, 2015, to be exact — I blogged that the next sequel in the Alien franchise was gonna be called Prometheus 2. That was the opposite of correct. Then I reported the movie was being retitled to Alien: Paradise Lost. Strike two. Now I find out it’ll be called Alien: Covenant. Not gonna say a word, other than I bet my life savings they’ll change the title again to make me look like a cred-less boob.

THE DEVIL LIVES HERE (December 13, 2016)
Three friends — Ale, Magu and Jorge — go on a trip to visit their friend Apolo at his family’s farm for a weekend of fun. At the same time, Sebastião and his younger brother Luciano are getting ready to perform the spiritual ritual their family has been tasked with every nine months, for centuries. On the night the two groups meet, they find out that what they thought were scary tales becomes more than real. It is now up to them to prevent evil to be born and take over the world.”

Spiritual ritual. That rhymes somehow. No doubt someone could turn rhymes into a rap song. Not me. No fan of rap here — or kids performing spiritual rituals. But hey, it should be fun to watch ‘em try and keep evil from being born and taking over the world, and then rapping about it against a backdrop of fresh beats.

HOSTILE (2017)
“After a worldwide epidemic, most of the planet’s population is killed. Only a few thousand have survived and are struggling to find food and shelter. But they’re not alone: they have to hide from strange creatures that go hunting at night.”

Liked this better when it was called The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007).

FRIEND REQUEST (available now UK) / releasing 2017 / US)
“Laura is one of the most popular girls in her high school, seemingly adored by all. She is then sent a Facebook™ friend request by lonely Marina. Having initially accepted, Laura finds herself being obsessively pursued by Marina and not long afterwards hits the ‘unfriend’ button. When Marina apparently commits suicide in an online video, Laura’s life takes a turn for the terrifying, and she becomes the victim of a supernatural presence, attacked in her own home by a mysterious force. Is Marina responsible? And why does she refuse to disappear from Laura’s friend list, even as it increasingly diminishes in number?”

They forgot a question: who cares? Pointless social media horror has been around for a while. Not sure why; with its limited premise — do we need YET ANOTHER one? [Moviepilot.com lists Megan is Missing/2011, Smiley/2012), Antisocial/2013, The Den/2014, #Horror/2015, Unfriended/2015, and Ratter/2016, as “top” examples. They are wrong — all of ’em suck, because I’m older than social media and I can say things like that.]

Sorry, kids, but you can take your social media and cram it down your Facebook™. Back in my day our social media was the telephone — and we used it to call forth horror, i.e., 976-Evil (1988). Crank called satan all the time, we did. No fancy pants digital screen tapping, just pure finger-in-the-hole, rotary dialin’ horror.

As The Giant Worm Turns

Digging up the front yard of a rural, British convent’s front yard, a budding archaeologist unearths a weirdo animal skeleton head artifact this size of a tuba. Tubas rock hard when honked. And the archaeologist thinks the skeleton head rocks, to which he loudly exclaims, “Yeehaa!”, thus setting in motion one of the more unusual and provocative giant monster movies you’ll see on a smart device.

Turns out the skull could very well be part of the D’Ampton Worm, a gigantic mythical wiggler. Apparently, the super-sized Lumbricus terrestris was worshiped by an ancient cult. (What is it with ancient cults, anyway? Couldn’t you just pray at the porcelain altar after worshiping a case of Worm Brew? Geez.) The snake monster was later slain (or “cut in half”) by the then Lord D’Ampton for later generations to sing pub songs about. (The lyrics could use some work, but the tune is rather catchy.)

Enter the overtly seductive Lady Sylvia Mars, a mysterious gal who has an affinity for slithery things. After scene after scene of waiting for the worm (that’s thought to still be alive in a nearby cavern), Lady S sets up shop in a nearby mansion, takes off her clothes right down to the string of G, and lures men to worship at the altar of her R-rated booty. It’s here she brandishes her snake fangs and bites them on the trouser worm, injecting and infecting the prey with paralyzing spittle. The debilitated victims are fed to you-know-what.

Astonishingly, the D’Ampton Worm turns out to still be doing business, worming its way up from the depths of Hell for some take out, with human sacrificial groceries provided by Sylvia Snake. Of the numerous nightmare sequences, a stand-out is a rather disturbing flashback scene of people being crucified amid shoulder height flames with giant white worms twisting around the nail-hung bodies, nuns being non-consensually romanced by pant-less soldiers, and the snake woman hissing and her-ing all over the place.

The Lair of the White Worm (1988) is quite entertaining (except to nuns), and slithers happily between surreal horror and deliberate black comedy. (Sylvia plays Snakes ‘n Ladders with her “offerings” and can’t help but twist-y dancing when hearing music.) You have to wait most of the movie’s 93 minutes to see the whopping worm, but there’s people being turned into vampire snakes ’n stuff. Almost doesn’t matter after watching Lady Sylvia (topless the entire last scene) pose over her victims in attire best suited for a fetish nightclub.

And the worm? Big time big.

Home For The Holidays with Serial Killers and Robots

Nothin’ like celebrating the impending holiday season with some slashers, serial killers and robots. Oops, I forgot — robots now prefer to be called “cyborgs.” Fine by me. A rose by any other name,

NEVER OPEN THE DOOR (December 6, 2016)
“Three happy couples retreat to a cozy secluded cabin in the woods to enjoy Thanksgiving. A badly wounded stranger appears at the door, and when they let him in, he throws up blood and collapses on the floor. As he dies, he points towards the lovers and croaks his final words: “Never open the door”. The dumbfounded group of friends start to panic as one of their own inexplicably disappears. Doubt rises by the minute and mistrust soaks through the cabin. As strange men surround the cabin, escape becomes paramount. Who will open the door?”

I don’t want to goon you out, but if a wounded stranger shows up on your doorstep at Thanksgiving and throws up on the floor, it’ll likely be me. I’ll leave without a fuss as long as your prepare a to-go box with turkey, mashed potatoes and 16 airline bottles of vodka. (I’ll find my own mixer in the dumpster behind 7-Eleven™ — good pickins!) And would it kill you to throw in a couple of slices of grandma’s pumpkin pie?

I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER (December 9, 2016 / VOD)
“John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous and he knows it. He is 16 and helps his mum and aunt at the family mortuary. John is obsessed with serial killers but really doesn’t want to become one. So for his own sake and the safety of those around him he lives by rigid rules to keep himself “good” and “normal.” When somebody starts murdering people in John’s small Mid-West town, he has to investigate and risk letting his own dark side out in order to stop the killer. But without his rules to keep him in check he might be more dangerous than the monster he is stalking. As the icy winter tightens its grip on the community a deadly supernatural game of cat and mouse ensues.”

John Wayne Cleaver. Now there’s a name you can hang your entrails on. As for living by “rigid rules” to stay “good” and “normal,” I bet ’ol JWC is one just Jagermeister smoothie away from drumming up business for the family business.

DETOUR (January 9, 2017 / VOD)
“Harper, a seemingly naive law student, obsesses over the idea that his shifty stepfather was involved in the devastating car crash that left his mother hospitalized and comatose. He drowns his suspicions in whiskey until he finds himself suddenly engrossed in conversation with volatile grifter Johnny and his stripper companion, Cherry. As daylight breaks and the haziness of promises made becomes clearer, how will Harper handle the repercussions (not to mention the violent duo — on his doorstep)? Employing a split-narrative structure to tell this tale of deception and murder, Detour takes the audience on a thrill ride full of hairpin turns, where it’s never quite clear what or who can be trusted.”

I’m sorry — I didn’t catch anything after “drowning in whiskey.”

GHOST IN THE SHELL (March, 2017)
“The Major (Scarlett Johansson), a special ops, one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid, leads an elite task force known as Section 9. Devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, Section 9 is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic’s advancements in cyber technology.”

The stunningly gorgeous Scarlett Johansson as a one-of-a-king human-cyborg hybrid. That explains a couple the things, the first of which is why she doesn’t return my e-mails. (I’m probably just spam to her.) Regardless, this live action sci-fi thriller is based on the enduringly popular Japanese seinen manga series by Masamune Shirow that got its start back in 1989. Scarlett Johansson got her start in 1984. I could probably make a connection there, but the cyborg part of my humanity is on the blink — again — so just go with it.

Composing The Decomposing

A young British gent is given a 3-D hickey by a female zombiette, whom he happens upon in the woods while collecting biological chipmunk samples.

Over the course of the following week he senses something is not quite right, like the non-healing flesh wound on his neck. Then comes the convulsions, gooey lesions and craving for human sushi, all the while keeping a chronological diary of his ongoing decomposition.

One of I, Zombie: The Chronicles of Pain’s (1998) romantic moments comes while pleasuring himself to his ex-girlfriends photo, he yanks his rotted pork stick clean off. I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened to… Never mind.

As his body further decays he simply screws metal plates into his skull and legs to keep things somewhat functional. No mindless Dawn of the Dead (1978) zombies wandering around like me after the bars close, just a fascinating  Hallmark™ look at the loneliness of being dead and having no one to talk to without chewing their ear off.