Spent the weekend in Portland, Oregon and stayed at my favorite hotel (The Benson) downtown. It’s 187 steps away from Mary’s Club, Portland’s oldest nakedteria. And it’s in the men’s bathroom I found real horror — it hasn’t been cleaned since the club went topless in 1955 (it was a piano bar in the ’30s). If/when you go there, where a wet-suit and scuba tanks. If that’s too stylish, you can get a hazmat suit on Amazon.com™ pretty cheap.
Speaking of cheap, here’s some new low-budget horror movies headed 187 steps in your direction.
RESIDUE (July 18, 2017/VOD)
“Private investigator Luke Harding reads a book of sinister origins owned by seedy crime lord Mr. Fairweather. Unbeknown to Luke, the book is a much sought-after supernatural artifact and Fairweather’s greatest rival, the enigmatic Mr. Lamon, pursues Luke with his henchmen. While the criminal underworld is desperate to retrieve the book and harness its power for their own dark agendas, it’s evil begins to take root in Luke’s apartment; putting himself, his daughter and his secret love in a fight for their lives…and their eternal souls.”
Why doesn’t Luke just sell the supernatural book on Craigslist™? (eBay™ sucks.) That way I could buy it and put my own dark agendas to work, which includes but is not limited to an endless bar tab, waffle dinners at least five nights a week and even louder heavy metal.
LYCAN (August 4, 2017/limited)
“When six college kids in a sleepy Southern town are assigned a group project to rediscover a moment in history, one of them sets in motion a horrific fate when he proposes they head into the Georgia backwoods to tackle the legend of Emily Burt, the Talbot County werewolf.”
A female werewolf. Not a new concept, going all the way back to 1913 with The Werewolf. The chick wolf in that one was Phyllis Gordon. Man, even her name sounds like it has hair on it.
DARKNESS RISING (2017)
“When Madison Shaw finds out that her childhood home is about to be torn down, she knows that she has to see it one last time. But this isn’t a nostalgic trip through childhood memories. When she was a little girl, her mother killed her baby sister, and Madison narrowly escaped with her life. Now she has one last chance to confront the demons that have haunted her ever since.”
Stock title, stock plot. I tend to ignore movies with the words “dark” or “darkness” in its title as that’s usually a sign of a paint-by-numbers thriller. But hey, I’ll have nothing better to do whilst my hair dries, so I’ll probably watch it.
THE BRIDE (January 19, 2017/Russia – 2017/2018 U.S.)
“Nastya is a young woman who travels with her soon-to-be husband to his family home. Upon their arrival, she can’t help but think that the visit may have been a horrible mistake. She is surrounded by strange people and starts witnessing strange, terrible visions as his family prepares her for a mysterious traditional Slavic wedding ceremony. More than the wedding preparations, can she survive the next few days?”
As long as she can make it through the honeymoon, then we’re all good here. Hope this Russian horror movie has sub-titles; I don’t care much for “reading” movies, but there’s usually some really funny phrases in translations. (“Get away from me demon — you are horrifying me…”)
Drinkin' & Drive-in 