Poltergeist Police, Apparition Anthology, Specter Slasher

If you’ve ever watched ghost-hunting “reality” shows and thought, “Well heck — I could do that and make an idiot out off myself way better than those guys,” now you can with Ghost Stop’s™ Ghost Hunting Gear, a one-stop shop with all the equipment you need to expose real-life hauntings for what they are. (Don’t make me explain this.)

Ghost Stop™ has it all to get on Casper’s case, from EVP recorders and meters, video cameras, thermal cams, and branded backpacks to stuff it all in. And before you think this is all nonsense, the prices aren’t: the EVP Recorder is a scary $89.95, the Phasm Cam is a shocking $179.95, Ghost Stop’s™ Spirit Box Ghost Hunting Kit will spook you out of $252.80, and the Pro Ghost Hunting Kit is a spine-chilling $699.70. You could spend that money on beer and film yourself haunting various bars and/or taverns. Now THERE’S a reality show worth watching…and I would like to audition for it.

While you look to get your ghost gumshoeing on, here are a few out now horror movies that may or may not scare the easily detectable ectoplasm out of you…    

LET IT GHOST / Out now (VOD)

“This anthology film features a triplet of horror stories, starring up-and-coming actors and popular local Youtubers™. A film crew is haunted by paranormal activities; When a taxi driver takes his girlfriend to a party room to get it on, a horny ghost adds spice to the proceedings; When a wandering ghost refuses to leave a soon-to-be-gentrified mall, the tenants concoct a plan to send her off.”

Of these I would like to see how they pull off a threesome with a ghost. For starters, what would they use for lube — VapoRub™?

THE OPEN BODY / Out now (VOD)

“1909. Miguel, a young teacher, is sent to work in a small, gloomy village on the border between Spain and Portugal. There, he will start to feel a special kind of fascination for Dorinda, the wife of Turelo, who is having an extra-marital affair with Mauro. When, one icy morning, Mauro’s body is found hanging from a cherry tree, the teacher begins to suspect that his soul is still wandering around the village in search of revenge. An erudite and highly rational man, the teacher now comes face to face with a world that is no short of archaic in its ways and values. A universe that still believes in the ‘open bodies’, which are especially prone to being possessed by the spirits of the dead and who use them as a way to manifest themselves and establish a relationship with the living.”

Mauro’s soul isn’t wandering around the village in search of revenge — he’s looking to establish a relationship with a living restroom. (Apparently, there are no working toilets in the afterlife. Guess that’s why it’s called Hell.)  

DR. GIFT / Out now (VOD)

“What do you get when you combine an ’80s slasher with a haunting ghost story?”

A reason to waste $4.99 to rent it.

UFO PARANORMAL OVERLORDS / Out now (VOD)

“Why are Aliens so widespread in ancient tradition, mythology, religion and even now in our modern age? The truth can be found within the mind’s connection to other realms. We can access this ‘dark’ side of the mind and Alien connection via methods used by the ancients to access our own internal world, which is our gateway to other realms. With the use of medicinals, meditation or prayer we can access this other dimension but the pathway is multi-leveled and complex. It is the hypnagogic — the point between waking and sleeping. Within this realm we can see and experience what Carl Jung termed ‘archetypes’ which have been encountered since time immemorial, are in reality our connection to the Multiverse. Since ancient times, we have encountered what we now call ‘Aliens’ in many forms that have more than influenced our history, they may have created it.”

Accessing the mind’s dark side and Alien connections using medicinals and meditation? Who made this documentary — hippies?

A Ghost You Can’t See

In the 2015 scare-deficient The Dead Room, three paranormal researchers go into a run down house in the woods that a family fled after being spooked out of their lease by something invisible and angry. Think Casper the Unfriendly Ghost. An insurance company hired them to prove/disprove the place is haunted. It is. Claim settled.

The team is made up of Holly, a young Goth-y girl who is a psychic, Liam, the guy who knows how to run all the cameras/gear by plugging the right chords into the right holes, and the older man, Scott, is an outright skeptic. Once geared up, they wait for the ghost to make spooky stuff happen. It takes a while, but soon the unseeable entity starts throwing furniture around like it was being yanked by fishing line. Then anything sharp gets hucked right at soft and splittable heads.

After much door slamming, windows breaking, books unshelving themselves and indoor wind, the crew abandons their paid gig and packs their cameras to leave. It’s here they see smoke-like smoke coming from behind a wall. Doesn’t smell like burning, so clearly there’s a ghost in the walls. Time for some sledgehammer action.

After breaking through the sheetrock, they discover a room with a ladder leading down into a hole. Well heck, who wouldn’t want to go down there? I’m surprised there wasn’t a pushing contest to see who got to go first. Once in the “basement”, they find a mummified corpse of an old woman chained to a chair. She looks like she hasn’t washed her hair for decades. Ick.

And it’s here the team figures out the secret behind the hauntings. Unfortunately, their revelation came a few beats too late and the ghost you never get to see evicts all of them — permanently. If this sounds familiar, it’s because they took giant ice cream scoops of The Legend of Hell House (1973) and slapped a dumb title on it.

Another Baker’s Dozen Ghosts

An evil rich uncle figured out a way to capture souls and store them in stay-fresh cubicles in his house, which is made of glass walls with Latin slogans on them to keep the pesky dead from touching his stuff.

These ghosts aren’t of the Casper variety — they’re the most gnarliest, f’d-up poltergeists on the planet, looking like they came from Marilyn Manson’s shiny pants.

Each of these ghosts were chosen for their unique energy, which, when combined with a demonic machine and a spell from some spell book, will open the Eye of Hell, allowing the user to see behind the creation curtain. (I’ve seen it — just a bunch of boxes filled with last year’s Christmas decorations.)

A family inherits the evil uncle’s house after said relative dies while trying to round up a ghost that doesn’t want to be rounded up. “This isn’t a house; it’s a machine made by the Devil and powered by the Dead,” remarks one ghost-hunter. An understatement — all the ghosts are contained in the basement, but the family screws around with the buttons in the Rubik’s Cube™ mansion and let the stinky wraiths out. Then it’s smack ass time.

These ghosts make Hellraiser’s Cenobites look like cotton candy vendors at Disneyland™. Blood and guts decorate the stylish glass walls like Dutch Boy™ paint. Lots of swearing, tension, and a handful of flinchy moments that’ll have you tossing your popcorn before you eat it, thereby wasting it.

2001’s Thir13en Ghosts (a hardcore graphic re-imagining of 13 Ghosts/1960) is quite lean on suspense and backstory, though, which makes it hard to give the ghosts some love when you don’t really know anything about them. As for the evil uncle, it’s not explained why he’s so mean. No matter; It’s heartwarming to see such ultra-violence and brain goo.

Monster Guide, Halloween on Halloween, Evil Stuff

For those of us who still know how printed books work (no swiping left or right required), you might wanna swipe, uh, I mean, purchase the just released The Frightfest Guide to Monster Movies (Dark Heart of Cinema), written by longtime horror movie critic and Fangoria writer/editor, Michael Gingold. The price? A mere $24.93 with free shipping from Amazon Prime™. (If you live in England Town and order from Fabpress.com, it’ll set you back 20£ or “quid”. (Translation: $26.38 U.S.)

From the book’s press release: “Celebrated writer, editor, and critic Michael Gingold traces the history of the genre from the silent movies all the way through to the present day. From Universal Studios legends such as Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man, to the big bugs, atomic mutants and space invaders that terrorized the ’50s, to the kaiju of Japan and the ecological nightmares of the ’70s and ’80s, to the CG creatures and updated favorites of recent years — they’re all here.”

Guess I’ll have to raid the quid swear jar and get a copy. There might not be enough shillings in there, so time to start cussing like an Irish longshoreman at last call. While I practice yelling “shite” at the top of my lungs, here are a few recently released and upcoming horror I swear you may or may not watch…

THE INVOKING 3: PARANORMAL DIMENSIONS (available now)
“Hundreds of disturbing paranormal events occur every year. Most of these terrifying encounters go unreported – until now. Enter the disturbing world of The Invoking 3: Paranormal Dimensions, where the undead come to wreak havoc upon the living. Grim Reapers, evil poltergeists, satanic forces and conjured spirits will feed off your fear and drag you into the abyss of waking nightmares.”

How this movie isn’t about alcohol abuse is beyond me. I see this stuff ALL THE TIME whilst excessively imbibing.

10/31 (October 31, 2017)
“A new horror anthology in the vein of V/H/S (2012) and Creepshow (1982) brings an ensemble cast together to spin twisted tales of the macabre. The poster is by Travis Smith who’s designed artwork for Metallica, Slayer, Avenged Sevenfold, Opeth and others.”

Cool poster. Hope the movie is as good. I like anthologies as my attention span is dwindling by the…

LIVE EVIL (October 31, 2017/Amazon/VOD)
“When a small college town police station is besieged by ‘Evil’ on a sleepy Halloween night, Pete, the sheriff, and Hancock, his loyal deputy, are thrown into the middle of holy chess game that could destroy the town, and possibly the world.”

Shouldn’t that be UNholy chess game? Why would Evil play a holy game? That’s like playing golf with bowling balls.

I REMEMBER YOU (November 10, 2017/DVD/VOD)
“After a woman hangs herself in a church, a new psychiatrist discovers she was obsessed with the disappearance of his eight-year-old son, who vanished three years earlier. Meanwhile, three city dwellers are restoring a house when they realize it is haunted, and a mysterious child named Bernodus, who disappeared 60 years earlier, is discovered as the link between the two groups.”

[Disclaimer: Already brought this to your attention a few months ago. This is the updated U.S. key art and a whole new pithy commentary.] Who names their kid “Bernodus”? Is he Greek? Are the names Jacob Marley or Casper not spooky enough? And why would a woman hang herself in a church? What, tying a rope around your neck and stepping off a wobbly stool not sufficiently religiously offensive?

Ghost Boy

A paranormal research team discovers the ghost of a little boy in a run down (i.e., unmopped floors) apartment building. They set up shop and keep tabs on the little dead fellow, who appears every night at the same time, sits in the corner on the floor and says something. No one can hear him because hey, ghost words, people.

So they bring in a police sniper with extremely sharp vision and the ability to read lips. He translates the ghost boy’s verbiage and follows the Casper-esque tyke on a journey across town. Problem is, you’re not supposed to look in his opaque eyes or you’ll be converted into being dead. Okay, that just gooned me out.

At the journey’s end the lip-reader starts to piece together the clues surrounding the boy’s death. This involved the kid having MTS (multiple tumor syndrome and probably itchy butt), which leaves him with boils constantly boiling up on his face. The kids at school won’t be friends with little Yao (pronounced “Yeow!”), so he does a full gainer off the school roof. And hey, wasn’t that his mother outside urging him on?

While this is hitting the fan, the scientists, funded by a for-profit-only company, invent the Menger Sponge, which gives them the control over gravity. This all factors in, so be friggin’ patient. The head scientist is a cripple with an artificial leg and the other one rotting away like something that rots. He’s obsessed with the dead kid and the sponge as it holds the key to his own death wish, probably due to that leg thing.

As they get closer to the truth and actually locate the kid’s buried body, things get even more weird — i.e., a barely visible strand of a shiny substance that provides a trail to where the dead kid goes. This is where the Silk’s (2006) title comes from, the band of energy between the living and the dead. I would’a called it Hell Rope or Spooky Putty, but no one in the movies EVER listens to me.

Once the dead kid’s mother is found comatose in a hospital, the secret is unraveled. But something just happened — coma mom is now dead mom…and goes after anyone associated with her kid. This is where the sponge comes in. While it’s not to be used to clean off stuff (dishes, counter tops, blood gushing out of necks), it does allow the user to walk on the ceiling. (Upside down, without your keys falling out of your pocket because of that whole “manipulating gravity” thing.) It can also be used to “trap” the ghost kid. Now mom’s REALLY p*ssed.

This situation builds to a low-boil climax. But even though you might’ve been hoping for ghost mayhem and the eating of faces, it works more on your mind. The deleted scenes and alternate ending should’ve been left in as they’re pretty cool and a bit more bloody. Bloody’s good. Silk is eerie, not scary, like, I don’t know…a sponge, for instance. If you think about it long enough, those things can goon you out.

Skeptical About Ghosts

Bryan Beckett is an attorney whose aunt just died and left him a four-story Victorian house loaded with lots of eBay™-able furnishings. The house also comes with a ghost. Therein lies the problem — Beckett is pragmatic to a fault, refusing to believe in the Loch Ness monster, the Roswell Incident, or spooks and/or spirits. He doesn’t even go to church because he thinks all that God stuff is just plain silly. Ironic how he keeps yelling out “Jesus Christ!” whenever the ghost comes around.

Beckett moves into the house and hears audible whispers and door scratchings (probably a giant talking rat). He even sees reflections of a ghost woman in mirrors and crumpled up at the bottom of the stairs. These are goon out moments. He later learns the house was willed to a scientific institute that specializes in investigation of the paranormal.

Having his inheritance yanked from underneath his disbeliefs, Beckett goes to the institute and discovers his aunt was a customer after hearing voices and scratchings herself. But the lab director deals in science fact, not fiction, and easily dismisses the experiences in what Beckett now believes to be a haunted house. And hey, factor in all the medication he’s been taking for chronic insomnia (and delicious wine left in the cellar), and you have a plausible explanation for the spookings. If only drugs and booze were that simple.

As the paranormal events escalate, Beckett slowly discovers he’s been blocking something so horrifying, he’d pee his pants right now if it wouldn’t be embarrassing in front of the supernaturally pre-disposed chick from the institute. She moves in for a night to see if the place is actually haunted, or if Beckett’s dipstick isn’t quite touching the oil.  Strong dialogue propels the mystery even further, with the vomit-inducing truth coming to his mind’s surface.

An above average ghost story, The Skeptic (2009), even with its lackluster ending (it needed less Casper/1995, and more Poltergeist/1982), has great reaction shots and enough scare moments to make that which was prone to puckering even more so.