Glow-In-The-Dark Horror, Werewolf Hockey, Witch Religion is Best

If you wanna tap into your inner kid or just goof off on company time, then the Horror Glow-In-The-Dark Coloring book (Thunder Bay Press™) is just the ticket. Illustrated by Juan Calle and Santiago Calle, for $12.03 (Internet price) you get reams of delightful horror scenes to help pass the time until you can clock out for the day. 

From Wal-Mart’s™ website: “These creepy scenes will haunt the room, casting an eerie glow on all who behold their horrors. With 90 bone-chilling illustrations to color — including 24 that glow in the dark — Horror Glow in the Dark Coloring lets you unleash your creativity unlike never before. Graveyard scenes, nightmares, and grotesque mandalas are only a few of the dark themes to be found in this book. Each page is perforated, so you can remove your finished artworks and hang them on your wall.” (buy it here)

While I order one with the full intention to color outside the lines (I live by my own rules, man), here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be more scary than a coloring book…

BE MINE / February 10, 2023 (Meta Horizon Worlds/Meta Quest TV)

“The VR experience follows Becca, a college senior who’s going to throw the best Valentine’s Day party ever. There’s just one caveat: everyone invited is secretly there to help Becca catch her Valentine’s Day stalker — an anonymous maniac in a Cupid mask who kills any man that gets close to her with a bow and arrow. But this Valentine’s Day will be slightly different as everyone is ready to turn the tables on the killer that walks among them. With the help of the police, her sorority sisters and the fraternity next door, Becca and the party fight back to stop the carnage and uncover the mysterious secret behind a bloody Valentine’s Day massacre.”

A Cupid mask? Weak. Aspiring maniacs should really do more homework.

MY ANIMAL / Release pending 2023 (VOD)

“Heather, an outcast teenage goalie, longs to play on the hockey team of her small northern town. She meets and falls in love with newcomer Jonny, an alluring but tormented figure skater. The girls’ relationship blossoms despite Heather’s struggles with her alcoholic mother, her hidden sexual orientation, and a familial curse that transforms her into a feral wolf under the full moon. Heather and Jonny’s secret tryst soon clashes against the conformity of their small community, exposing dangerous truths and igniting a passionate, violent night of personal transformation.”

A werewolf playing hockey. And we had a werewolf playing basketball in Teen Wolf (1985). Clearly, lycanthropes dig sports. Bet they’d be really good at dog-sledding.

WAIT FOR IT / Release pending 2023 (VOD)

“Seen from the perspective of survivor girl, Darcy is living in the aftermath of her own encounter with a psycho-slasher killer. She travels home after a night out with friends, always remaining wary of the inevitable return of her tormentor.”

Great — they spoiled the movie by telling us Darcy survives. Hey douche-bags — what am I getting for Christmas?

SORCERY / Release pending 2023 (VOD)

“Chiloé Island, 1880. After her father is murdered by a German colonist, Rosa, a 13-year-old Huilliche girl, renounces her Christian upbringing and seeks shelter with Mateo, the leader of an Indigenous organization that practices witchcraft. Under Mateo’s gruff yet tender tutelage, she learns the art of sorcery and vows to settle the score. Rosa’s vengeance leads to a brutal crackdown by the island’s Chilean Christian authorities and puts her on the path to discovering her dormant powers.”

Renouncing your pray-per-view religion is like cable-canceling your soul. There are better — and cheaper — alternatives out there, many with way more features.

Profitable Poltergeists, Werecoyotes, Cult Pay-Per-View

Shot for $15,000 casino tokens, Paranormal Activity came out in 2007 and instantly became a found footage phenomenon, eventually generating $193 million box office fun funds. On that (bank) note: Paranormal Activity is the most profitable film ever made in the history of the world. To no one’s surprise, it birthed six Paranormal babies with YET ANOTHER ONE slated for 2023.

If you can’t wait that long for it, Paranormal Activity: The Ultimate Chills Collection ($55.21/Amazon™) is now available: nine Blu-ray discs loaded with all the movies and a scary amount of extras. In case you forgot (or didn’t care), Paranormal Activity’s premise is as economical as its budget: “A young couple are haunted by a supernatural presence in their home. They set up a camera to document what is haunting them.” Yep — that netted them $193 million. No wonder everybody’s been trying to copy it for the last 15 years. I would.

While you scare up some wallet wages to buy and/or purchase the collection, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not become obscenely profitable… 

HERE FOR BLOOD / Out now (VOD)

“Tom O’Bannon, a rowdy pro-wrestler struggling to make ends meet, agrees to fill in as a last-minute replacement for a well paying babysitting job. Tom arrives at an isolated family home where he meets the precocious 10-year-old Grace. What starts off as a quiet night of pizza and video games quickly spirals into bloody, violent chaos as Tom and Grace find themselves fighting for their lives when an otherworldly cult of masked intruders descend on the home.”

This isn’t just a movie — it’s a WWE™ pay-per-view.

BATTLE FOR PANDORA / Out now (Limited Theaters/VOD)

“After a help signal from a research vessel makes it back to Earth, the U.S. Space Force sends a rescue ship to Pandora, a Saturn moon. But when they try to land, they discover Pandora is already inhabited by a highly evolved humanoid species that won’t give up their Earthling prisoners without a fight.”

Asylum™, the “film” studio that has famously built a company making “spoofs” and “mockumentaries” of big budget thrillers/sci-fi, etc., now comes out with their “version” of Avatar. In my day we called this stealing.

TEENWOLF: THE MOVIE / January 26, 2023 (Paramount+)

“A full moon rises in Beacon Hills — and with it a terrifying evil has emerged. The wolves are howling once again, calling for the return of Banshees, Werecoyotes, Hellhounds, Kitsunes, and every other shapeshifter in the night. But only a werewolf like Scott McCall, no longer a teenager yet still an Alpha, can gather both new allies and reunite trusted friends to fight back against what could be the most powerful and deadliest enemy they’ve ever faced.”

If you’re gonna have a Werecoyote, there better be a Wereroadunner.

BLUE BEETLE / Release pending 2023 (Theaters)

“Jaime Reyes is a young man from El Paso who bonds with an alien scarab that attaches to his spine and creates a suit of specially powered armor for him. The scarab at one time appeared in the possession of the wizard Shazam.”

And his first nemesis is…Lady Bug. 

DYI Mad Scientist, Robot Animals, Worshiping Werewolves

Ever wanted to be a mad scientist but couldn’t find a lab coat on Amazon.com? Now you can live out your experimental aspirations with My Father’s Work, an extensive, intricately designed and app-driven board game from Renegade Games™. Your delirium-inducing Checkers game has just been shown the door. 

From Renegade Games description: “My Father’s Work allows two to four players to experience life through the eyes of three generations of mad scientists as they strive to complete a unique masterwork, such as “The Creature”, “Lycanthropic Strength”, “Love Potion”, “Immortality”… even “A Time Machine”, among others. To do so, they’ll have to further their scientific studies and experiments with lesser pursuits that will lead to more grandiose discoveries.”

If that wasn’t enough to make you shell out $125 for the game, there’s more: “Mechanically, My Father’s Work is a euro-style “worker placement” game, but one with a massive amount of theme and narrative heaped upon it. The game’s designer, T.C. Petty III, confirmed what inspired him. “Yes, 100% for the classic cast of Universal Monsters and Hammer Films with Christopher Lee’s iconic Dracula. The aesthetic leans very hard on classic, early horror film tropes: Gothic mansion on the hill, lightning strikes, howling wolves, over-the-top horror logo, unnatural noir lighting – the works.”

Of course there’s way more to My Father’s Work than that. Go to their website and see for yourself. After you do that, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not make you give up playing Checkers…

TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS / June, 2023 (Theaters)

In 1994, a pair of archaeologists from Brooklyn come into an ancient conflict through a globe-trotting adventure that ties in with three factions of Transformers: the Maximals, the Predacons and the Terrorcons battling robotic animals.

Pffft — Mecha-Kong was a robotic animal in 1967 — way before all these ultra-crappy Transformer sequels.

WEREWOLF CABAL / Release pending 2022/2023 (VOD)

“An American author travels to a small rural town in the UK to collect an inheritance after his estranged mother dies. During his stay, he uncovers a cabal that worship Lycanthrope.”

Worshiping the Lycanthrope goes back as far as 1985. Specifically, Silver Bullet, where the local preacher was a werewolf. If you didn’t pray, you became prey. Heh.

THE FLOOD / Release pending 2023 (VOD)

“A daring jail break during a dangerous storm is interrupted by hungry alligators.”

Alligators in prison. They should be, what with all their racist smack talk against crocodiles.

BRIGHTWOOD / Release pending 2023 (VOD)

“A couple on the verge of divorce find themselves mysteriously trapped while on a run around a pond.”

If I was on the verge of divorce, I wouldn’t run around a pond. I’d run to a bar — to celebrate.

Killer Snow, Rural Werewolves, Flossing Serial Killers

T’was recently announced that Ridley Scott — the man behind three of the six Alien movies (not counting the two Alien/Predator mash-ups) — is doing a horror TV series for AMC. The smoke detector can wait — time to put new batteries in the remote.

From the press release: “Ridley Scott’s horror series The Terror is a fictionalized account of a real-life expedition in 1845, in which two ships were lost in the Arctic and all 129 men were killed. The series, which debuts on AMC in March 2018, is based on the 2007 best-selling novel of the same name by Dan Simmons.”

While we impatiently wait for The Terror to brighten or screens/life, here are a few just released/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that probably don’t take place in the Arctic, though some might leave you cold (heh)…

AMITYVILLE: THE FINAL CHAPTER (available now)
“A group of paranormal investigators teams up with a wrongly convicted serial killer to track down a mysterious monster responsible for a slew of recent killings.”

YET ANOTHER Amityville movie? [insert facepalm here]. I think this makes 400 Amityville movies, give or take. The press release cracks me up — wrongly convicted serial killer. How does that even make sense? How does YET ANOTHER Amityville movie make sense? This cow has been milked so many times, it’s only giving evaporated milk.

THE HOWLING (available now)
“A local myth will be discovered to be true by a group of teenagers on a night out on remote farmland. Is there a bloodthirsty creature that has been wandering the land?”

Not to be confused with 1981’s The Howling or the seven subsequent sequels that slogged on until 2011. This werewolf movie places the creature on a farm. Maybe it’s not a werewolf. More likely a weresheep that hasn’t been sheared for so long, it just looks like a werewolf. I look similar if I skip my annual hair trimming.

PIERCING (January 20, 2018)
“Reed is going on a business trip. He kisses his wife and infant son goodbye, but in lieu of a suitcase filled with clothes, he’s packed a toothbrush and a murder kit. Everything is meticulously planned: check into a hotel and kill an unsuspecting victim. Only then will he rid himself of his devious impulses and continue to be a good husband and father. But Reed gets more than he bargained for with Jackie, an alluring call girl who arrives at his room. First, they relax and get in the mood, but when there’s an unexpected disruption, the balance of control begins to sway back and forth between the two. Is he seeing things? Who’s playing whom? Before the night is over, a feverish nightmare will unfold, and Reed and Jackie will seal their bond in blood.”

A toothbrush and a murder kit. Nice to know serial killers maintain healthy dental hygiene. Wonder if he flosses as well? That’s equally as important before going out on a murder spree. (P.S. Regularly brush/floss your teeth, but DO NOT go out on murder sprees.)

LOST SOLACE (January 30, 2018/iTunes™)
“Lost Solace is a fast-paced psychological thriller that depicts the transformation of Spence Cutler, a young psychopath and con artist. He’s never felt empathy or guilt, however, a fateful encounter with a new drug is about to give him a dose of too much reality, and he takes a mind-bending trip down the psychedelic highway of consciousness to come face to face with his own morality and his own twisted soul.”

So the main character is a young psychopath and con artist. Nice to see those just starting out in the job market to have clear career goals. Reach for the moon, I say. But don’t do drugs — that stuff will ruin your life.

Wailing Wolf-Man

If you’ve seen 1964’s Face of the Screaming Werewolf and walked away confused as all heck, you’re not alone — Screaming Werewolf, made from parts of several different movies (La Momia Azteca/1957 and La Casa del Terror/1959), is a screaming mess, beside the fact it would’ve been better titled as The Screaming Werewolf Face. (Personal preference.)

The movie starts out with doctor-esque archaeologist guys hypnotizing a psychic chic (psy-chic — heh) who life regressions herself as a sacrificial Aztec test dummy. This leads the history dudes to an Aztec pyramid, where they discover and bring back a two mummies (but no daddies — heh). Right here we have several problems — one of the crusty corpses is the sacrificed Aztec gal and the other a regular guy who happens to be a werewolf. How an American werewolf ended up mummified in Mexico is just part of this “movie’s” abstract premise. (Must’ve been a heckuva booze cruise, though.)

So they bring the mummies back and a mad scientist, whose lab is located through a secret door in the back of a horror wax museum, applies volts to jolt the man mummy back to life. With only a meager supply of electricity, the experiment fails. Nature steps in, supplying lightning and one heck of a utility bill. Prior to the power-up, his face looked he fell asleep in a bowl of pancake batter. And because it’s a full moon, his moon-beamed mug becomes covered in fur where there was no fur before. Nothin’ left to do now but go on a choking spree.

The werewolf runs out into traffic and doesn’t bark at even one car. Then he makes a girl faint, throws her over his shoulder like a sack of pancake flour brought to market, and climbs up the side of an apartment building, all the while being climb-pursued by one of the scientists. Then the werewolf climbs through a window and comes all the way back down to the street using the stairs. (He probably didn’t want to wait for the elevator.)

Meanwhile, the Aztec mummy comes back to life and goes after the psychic woman. The werewolf, now slingin’ a different chick who really put up a fight and even smashed a decorative vase over the monster’s head, brings her back to the wax museum. I have no idea why. The scientist throws chemicals around like holy water, starts a fire and battles the werewolf. Somehow the werewolf is bested and catches fire, which makes him turn back into man form, his shirt still buttoned tucked in as if prepping for a school photo. The cops show up to dismiss the numerous “werewolf” sightings as just a simple case of a man burning on the floor in front of them.

The werewolf looked werewolf-y enough, but his upper fangs were grimy and his lower fangs Pepsodent™ bright. He wore a belt to hold up his freshly ironed britches and kept shoes on the entire time. They were neatly tied. Didn’t know werewolves to be such fastidious dressers. Too bad the filmmaker didn’t follow suit. (Heh.)

Porno Ghosts, Alcoholic Werewolves, Yuletide Bleedings

According to IMDb (Internet Movie Database) – the world’s most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content (their words, not mine), there are almost 2,000 horror movies either in-production, post-production, being shopped around, and/or finished/released for 2016. Dang. I’m still wading through the 2,000 horror movies released in 2015.

And to think my sole purpose in life was to sit in front of a TV and watch every horror movie ever made and then write about ’em in this here blog dealie. That I’ve never been paid to do this is beside the point. So yeah, this might take a bit longer than expected as I’m about 11,017 horror/sci-fi movies behind. I should’ve learned to play the clarinet. There’s money in that, right? I could switch to tuba if the coin is better. Lemme know.

Anyway…

KRAMPUS: THE DEVIL RETURNS (2016)
“Five years after the murder of his wife and disappearance of his daughter, former police officer Jeremy Duffin is brought back to help in the hunt for a yuletide monster that punishes children that have been “naughty.” As the monster becomes more erratic and unpredictable, Jeremy learns the truth about the disappearance of his daughter and the fate that has been bestowed upon him by an unlikely source. Can Jeremy finally end the nightmare Christmas monster that has terrorized this town for years?”

Happily, Krampus — who hands out extreme death instead of extreme toys — seems to be the go-to holiday horror figurehead these days. In just the last several years, five and/or six Krampus movies have been released. In case you’re writing this down, this is the sequel to Krampus: The Christmas Devil (2013).

And if you’re wondering who/what a Krampus is, here’s what the holy bible (Wikipedia™) has to say about that: “In Austro-Bavarian Alpine folklore, Krampus is a horned, anthropomorphic figure described as “half-goat, half-demon” who, during the Christmas season, punishes children who have misbehaved. I am SO doomed.

ANOTHER WOLFCOP (2016)
“After saving the small town of Woodhaven from a gang of evil reptilian shapeshifters, alcoholic werewolf cop Lou Garou is finding it hard to keep a low profile. Instead, he roams the street at night, gleefully and violently disposing of criminals and stealing boxes of Liquor Donuts causing all sorts of problems for his former-partner-turned-chief Tina.”

It all boils down to this selling point: Alcoholic werewolf. It’s like they filmed my dreams. Another Wolfcop is a bit of a challenge to find as they claim it came out in September of 2016. No one sent me a complimentary DVD, so I guess I’ll just have to go back to sleep and watch it.

PARANORMAL SEX TAPE (2016)
“Based on real events that occurred in Europe in 2010. There are over 25,000 demonic possessions reported each year – many of those claim to be possessed during sexual intercourse. After a steamy night captured on video, a couple watches their sex tape. But they discover something ancient and very evil on the tape, something that’s watching them…following them…possessing them.”

Based on real events? Kind of an understatement given how many people film themselves rubbing fuzzies. And why would they freak out that an ancient evil ghost is watching them rub said fuzzies? The NSFW video will probably end up on YouTube™ for 100 million people/poltergeists to see. For free.

PACIFICO (2016)
“A group of young travelers are stranded on an island in the Pacific where they struggle to escape an evil presence that has been kept hidden from mankind for centuries.”

Pfffttt — Young travelers, my eye…these are beach hippies. There’s your real evil presence.

There’s A Werewolf In My Mouth

It’s always amazing when new horror movies rip off old horror movies and think no one will connect the dots. A new example of this comes in the form of Wolf House, a supernatural horror movie due out early 2017. It goes like this…

“Six friends on a camping trip think they have discovered and killed a Sasquatch. But what they have actually unleashed is something more evil, more ancient and more deadly than they could ever imagine – an army of supernatural terrors that will hunt them until no one remains…”

That meets my eco concerns. However, their advertising art steals DIRECTLY from 1984’s Goth horror The Company of Wolves, a modern re-spinning of the Red Riding Hood fairy tale. The story is different from Wolf House, but the ad art is either an homage or bold faced thievery. I’m thinkin’ felony burglary here.

The Company of Wolves, by the way, is a must-see for fans of werewolf movies. That thing is loaded with ’em to the point where you don’t know who is a misanthrope lycanthrope (science name for a people hating were-person) or a bipedal hominid (science name for you).

My science name is Led Sapien.

Werewolf Vampire Mix Tape

Rage of the Werewolf (1999) finds Earth infested with lycanthropes (and vampires and mutants) whose dormant genes have been activated by the moon’s gravitational suck, which was pushed closer to our ozone by a meteor. Stupid space rocks – always up to atmospheric assh*lery.

A power mad werewolf captures a vampire to mix their blood in order to create a super monster hybrid (this concept pre-dated evolution by years), the plan being to rid the world of stink humans who hunt them for their pelts.

Horror icon Debbie Rochon plays the delicious Kessa, a female vampire who is used for the biting experiments. Working on a $1.50 budget, Rage of the Werewolf can be excused for the silliest looking werewolves this side of Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988/bear costumes with rubber fangs). The monsters growl like they’re working on a stubborn stool, but there is a nice amount of gore — and Debbie.

To think what they could have done with a $3.00 budget.

Neighborhood Werewolf

In a plot lifted directly from 1985’s Fright Night, a handsome addition to the neighborhood moves into the creepy house next door to a single mom, her young son and hot teen daughter. Intrigued over potential bulges, the teen chick spies at him through a telescope meant for looking at Uranus. It’s there she sees him bring a hottie home for feeling up purposes in a scene that mimics Fright Night (1985) frame for frame. She immediately suspects him to be a werewolf (FN’s neighbor was a vampire).

An intersection of blatantly rubber-stamped events leads up to the werewolf shedding its skin, growing huge metal fangs and looking like an inside-out doggy. Suddenly turning into Rambo, the chick (she looks like Christina Ricci, but not as top-heavy) grabs a nearby gun, some silver bullets that also just happens to be nearby, and blasts the pup into pulp. Everybody thinks TV celebrity ass Redd Tucker did it, but he’s a big phony. (Kevin Sorbo in a cookie-cutter role templated by Roddy McDowall’s TV vampire hunter, Peter Vincent. It’s cool how I know all this stuff.)

During the confrontation the gal gets marked by the werewolf and her soul belongs to him for all eternity, blah, blah, blah. The punk rock pizza delivery boy gets turned into the new familiar (complete with nose ring and fuchsia streaks in his fur). The werewolf looks sorta cool, but has a plastic face. The chick is mostly wolf whistle worthy.

But the rest of Never Cry Werewolf (2008) is too “been there, chewed on that” to be of much interest. I’m jaded. So what. You try reviewing 1,887 horror/sci-fi movies and see how objective YOU are.

Hunting Vegetables By Night

You may not know the name, but you know his work. Australian filmmaker Philippe Mora is the guy behind such toilet gems as Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985) and Howling III: The Marsupials (1987) as well as The Beast Within (alien date rape, 1982) and Communion (alien butt probe, 1989). Returning to werewolf territory, Mora wants you to guide him back to box office glory with your overly-taxed fun coupons.

Seeking $200,000 to crowd-fund The Growling, Mora promises only this for your investment: “Werewolves in LA and New York are trained to be vegans to throw off investigators. Hybrid lycanthropes cannot control their own cursing and obscene language, particularly in Los Angeles. If someone starts speaking obscenities, stand back immediately…”

As of this writing only three people have donated for a total of $140.00. They have 18 days left to raise $1,999,860. (Update 6/25/15: Was just informed the fundraising campaign is open-ended, so get to clickin’.)

Maybe it has something to do with werewolves being cast as vegans or being foul-mouthed. (OK, that’s not quite new; check out Big Bad Wolf (2006) for some colorful four-letter werewolf speak.) Or maybe the concept lacks, I don’t know, something not what it’s being presented as. (Vegan werewolves? What do they do – attack rutabagas by the light of the silvery moon?)

Help fund vegetables and werewolves by clicking HERE.