Vile Vision, Ghost Guests, Lethal Lobsters

For horror movies fans there exists a plethora of viewing options, paid and free. If you don’t mind ad-supported horror movies (or just regular movies, which nobody cares about), Tubi™ and YouTube™ beats the competition by far with obscure, DYI, foreign and classic horror offerings. (P.S. Tubi™ is the king of horror/sci-fi with hundreds upon other hundreds of horror flicks you never knew existed.)

Shudder™ is the de facto go to for paid horror viewing, with a sharply curated catalogue and consistent new releases. With plans starting at $4.79 a month, you be a screaming dumbass (okay, maybe not screaming) to not subscribe. Another bountiful horror/sci-fi option, though, is Wicked Horror TV™, a premium streaming service specializing in quality horror films. (Note: ALL horror movies are quality. Except maybe three.) 

Wicked Horror TV™ puts the gore in categorize — horror movies are sorted by decades (1920s to whatever decade we’re in now), countries (Asia, Australia, Europe, South America and whatever country we’re in now), and sub-genres (ghosts, giallo, gothic, paranormal, possession, B-movies, satanic, supernatural, occult, witches, etc.) There’s plenty of ad-supported free horror, but the premium plan taps you for $5.99 a month, though you save thriftily with their billed annually plan of $49.99. Wicked Horror TV™ can be watched (or “viewed”) on things like Fire TV™, Roku™, Apple TV™, Android TV™, Google Play™, and iOS™ mobile devices.

While you close out your horror-bereft Netflix™ account and sign up for Wicked Horror TV™ (click this), here are a few out now/upcoming horror and sci-fi movies/tv series that may or may not be worth paying for — or watching for free…

DEADLY DEALINGS / Out now (YouTube™/VOD)

“A young woman struggles with losing her brother. Her roommate turns her on to a spirit board, and that night she has a dream that she can trade her dream for her brother’s life. The next day when she awakens she learns that it was more than just a dream and she bit off more than she expected.”

Yawn. Sounds more like a spirit bored than a spirit board.

THE GHOSTS OF MONDAY / January 23, 2023 (VOD/DVD)

“A television director becomes embroiled in a supernatural conspiracy after traveling to Cyprus to make a TV pilot about a haunted hotel.”

Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Seems like a long way to go to document hotel haunters. Try the “ghosts only” Overlook Hotel in the nearby country of Colorado.

THE SWARM / Release pending 2023 (Streaming TV subscription)

“A global environmental thriller, The Swarm is set in a present day where anomalies and unnatural behavior in marine animals are causing upheaval all over the world. Millions of strange worms suddenly appear on the bottom of the North Sea, drilling their way through frozen methane, threatening to destabilize the entire continental shelf. Swarms of mussels stop large vessels from maneuvering. Toxic jellyfish, lobsters and whales start attacking human beings along the coasts of the world. It follows a global group of scientists and military who come together to tackle one of the biggest challenges mankind has ever faced. They make the chilling discovery that we are not the only intelligent species on this planet — and that deep down at the bottom of the sea resides a collective intelligence which has suffered the ravages of civilization on its habitat and decided to fight back.”

Strange worms, toxic jellyfish, swarms of mussels…sounds like the Seafarer’s Feast™ at Red Lobster™.

NEW FEAR’S EVE / Release pending 2023 (VOD)

“As the coming year approaches, three friends reluctantly prepare for Hooper Industries’ annual New Year’s Eve bash. The clock ticks down and the body count rises as a psychotic murderer known as The Doctor is on the loose. This sadistic surgeon of death leaves Owensboro covered in blood as local police and FBI are forced to navigate through a maze of bodies left in his wake.”

I liked this better when it was called New Year’s Evil (1980).

Cleaning Unclean Spirits

In a rat hole of a house in the middle of a cornfield, two amateur filmmakers document several priests and a pastor trying to suck the devil out of a nicely tanned and blonde supermodel with hellishly perfect teeth, who’d look more at home in a shampoo commercial than a vomit-splattered bed.

She floats. She swears. She wears contacts to make her look evil. She gets loose in the corn. If I were possessed, those are exactly the things I’d do, mostly because it looks like fun and not because I’m possessed or anything. Ahem.

Turns out the swimsuit model is possessed by five demons, all of whom the priests had encounters with in other countries (Korea, Eastern Europe, South America, 7-Eleven™). By possessing the girl, these unclean spirits are basically doing the evil version of instant-messaging.

One of the priests has a secret, which, as you know, is like juicy gossip to a demon. All hand-held camera stuff shot on a budget of what wouldn’t cover one sun tanning session. I don’t know how the priests kept from laughing during the overly long and loudly shouted exorcism. Somebody should’ve told me Chronicles of an Exorcism (2008) was a comedy.

A Jar of Nazis

They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1968) boasts one of the best sci-fi movie titles of all time. However, it wasn’t Hitler’s brain they saved, but rather his whole head from the neck up. And the head is alive, stored safely in a glass jar, not unlike where you’d put jellybeans or oatmeal raisin cookies.

For the first hour +, the done-on-the-cheap movie (adapted from the 1963 feature film, Madmen of Mondoras) is nothing more than spy vs. spy, with people shooting each other and traveling to South America (where Hitler’s noggin is shelved) to shoot at each other some more.

Everyone’s trying to gain possession of Hitler’s glowering face and rolling eyes. He can talk, but only has one line. (He mostly just makes facial emojis.) Not sure why his notorious upper lip goatee remains neatly trimmed; it’s not like you could take the head to a barbershop for a little off the top. Heh. Maybe they change the movie’s title to They Shaved Hitler’s Brain.

So how did Hitler survive, even though the fake news said he committed suicide like a sniveling b*tch in 1945? A team of doctors surgically removed his head as Allied Forces were closing in so that Hitler could fall back and regroup his Nazi efforts to once again try and take over the world.

Preparing to detonate a gas bomb that would kill everybody in Mondoras (that’s just plain mean), the head jar, sitting in the back seat of a car driven by his loyal followers, is being relentlessly pursued by the opposing team. A few well tossed hand grenades later brings the display case face to a candle melt-y end. Is the movie over at this point? Nope — there’s few celebratory smooches and even a what-the-heck-let’s-get-married cap to put on this head.

Swamp Monsters, Disposable Vampires and Boobs

Six months of non-stop rain and dreariness. Seattle weather could qualify as its own horror movie. So why do I continue to live here instead of, say, the Atacama Desert in South America, the driest desert in the world? For one thing, I would not want sand beetles as neighbors. Too noisy.

Anyway, here’s some stay-indoor upcoming horror movies to help take your mind off the stupid weather…

ATTACKED ON SET (March 21, 2017)
“When these girls lay down, things stand up. A perfect mixture of comedy, gore and campiness with lots of boobs and blood.”

Despite having one of the worst horror movie titles (and press releases) going, I do look forward to the boobular aspect of said dumbly named flick.

VAMPIRE CLEANUP DEPARTMENT (2017)
“Vampires have been haunting Hong Kong for centuries. Because of this, hidden in this city is an official special action unit coping with them — the Vampire Cleanup Department (VCD). The street cleaners out at night are actually vampire hunters, their giant garbage bins containing the captured vampires. The ordinary garbage station is their secret headquarter.”

So to get rid of vampires all you have to do is throw ‘em in the garbage? Seems too easy; do you need to have garlic-flavored garbage bags lining said can? Should you throw your silverware in the trash along with said disposable vampires? That begs the question — are vampires recyclable? Hope so. Wouldn’t be cool to have landfills overflowing with discarded vampires.

SWAMP FREAK (2017)
“Six college students go into the wetlands to find their missing professor after he takes off in search of the mythical and deadly monster known as the Swamp Freak.”

Not to be confused with Field Freak (2016), which also features a mythical and deadly creature. Maybe they’re cousins.

MAYHEM (2017)
“A virus infects a corporate law office on the day attorney Derek Saunders is framed by a co-worker and wrongfully fired. The infection is capable of making people act out their wildest impulses. Trapped in the quarantined building, our hero is forced to savagely fight tooth and nail for not only his job but his life.”

Time to leave the corporate world and get a job with the less violent Vampire Cleanup Department.

Blood, Leather and Mom

Still marveling over technology’s ability to stop a horror movie long enough for you to go to the bathroom, and then resume when you’re done. (Did you wash your hands?) Wonder if they make digital catheters, you know, to eliminate the middle man?

Anyway, here’s some plausible pause-ables…

BLOODY BITS (available now)
“Black Fawn Distribution, in association with essential Canadian horror film festival Blood In The Snow (BITS), has released the brand new short horror film compilation entitled Bloody BITS – Shorts Compilation. The collection highlights seven of the film festival’s best short horror films and, in support of the DVD’s new release, which is currently available for order exclusively through blackfawndistribution.com.”

I like horror shorts. Not the ones I’m wearing, but the “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” mini movies that cater to my ADD. Normally, I’d just knock that condition into submission with six or eleven beers. But short horror movies achieve the same results, though not nearly as fun.

LEATHERFACE (available now/UK)
“Four wannabe actors take part in a horrifying reality show in which a serial killer stalks them in a remote cabin and their reactions are filmed for TV. The survivor of the week is promised $1 million and the starring role in their very own horror film. The only problem is the role of the killer is being played by a maniacal murderer who has been let out of an insane asylum to continue his reign of terror.”

This one’s a lawsuit-in-a-can. There’s already an official Texas Chainsaw Massacre spin-off called Leatherface (as deftly reported here back in October 2016) pending a 2017 release. This RIP-OFF Leatherface has been released in the UK and has nothing to do with the TCM franchise, even though the guy on the front looks deceptively similar, as does his choice of power tools. International wars were started over far less.

THE BELKO EXPERIMENT (March 17, 2017/VOD)
“The American Belko company in South America is mysteriously sealed off at the beginning of a work day and its employees are ordered to kill each other or be killed themselves. This starts an escalation of violence, where we discover the true nature of each and every Belko employee.”

Corporate employees killing each other. So much for an HR department. Wondering though — if you get killed, does that take away from your accrued vacation time?

KILLING GROUND (2017)
“Ian and Samantha arrive at an isolated campsite to find an SUV and a tent — no sign of the occupants. As night falls and the campers fail to return, Ian and Sam grow increasingly uneasy. The discovery of a distressed child wandering in the woods unleashes a terrifying chain of events that will test them to breaking point.”

Time to invoke the legally-binding “finder’s keepers” claim here and score yourself some new wheels and a portable roof over your head. Don’t be a douche — do the right thing and leave a thank-you note.

BORDERLINE (2017)
“Maria and Silvia have lost their mother and they have decided to put her to rest in the nearby forest. One of the sisters becomes unhinged by the loss. Her mental instability leads to tragedy as the other sibling and others do their best to survive this dark encounter.”

Bigfoot’s not gonna cotton to you burying your garbage on his property. This also makes me wonder why the sisters are dumping no-longer-mom in the woods and side-stepping a formal funeral with all the bling? Maybe they were adopted.

Giant Bug vs. Enormous Bug

There is only one thing The Deadly Mantis (1957) has over the almost identical Them! (1954), a nuclear monster movie hailed by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time: The bug looks cooler. Yeah, I said it.

The giant ants in Them! look like someone stuck pipe cleaners into a couple of potatoes and spray-painted ’em with Rust-oleum™. The giant mantis in The Deadly Mantis looks exactly like a mantis, all alien-esque, spindly and icky. (While we’re on the subject, The Outer Limits’ Zanti Misfits (1963) look more like what ants are supposed to look like minus the big bulging eyeballs, though I’ve seen a few of those things crawling around just after last call.)

Taking the page-by-page format of the “giant insects eat civilization” right out of the Them! playbook, the title 200 foot-long Mantidae (biology name) was de-iced after a volcano thawed it from its icy cube in the North Pole. (I didn’t know they had active volcanoes in the North Pole. Snowball fights, yes; but lava?)

The military stationed up there (building a massive early detection network) sustains severe preliminary damage as the mantis feeds itself on mess hall chow (servicemen). Then it flys south, theorized to be heading to South America where I here it’s warmer than the North Pole and more suitable for getting an all-around tan. (Note to self: Use that tanning salon coupon before it expires.)

On its way for a vacation, the mantis buzzes Washington, D.C., and takes a poop rest on the Washington Monument, totally mocking visiting hours. Jets are dispatched, but the launched missiles rarely connect with their exoskeleton target. (Note to the city down below: the air force was just trying to help, man – get over it.)

One heroic pilot accidentally rams his jet into the bug due to London-grade fog that seems to be covering the entire East Coast, ejecting before ka-BOOM! The mantis hits the ground and crawls into the Manhattan Tunnel, mimicking the giants ants that took up homeless camp residence in the vast Los Angeles drainage tunnels and mocking New York Port Authority’s toll charges. The bail-out pilot leads the charge into the tunnel, armed with chemical gas can bombs, and throws it right onto the face of mantis. In your face, deadly mantis!

But for all its plagiarized similarities to Them!, The Deadly Mantis has two very funny scenes. One is with a bunch of military guys jailhouse rockin’ each other in the rec room as there are no dames around at the North Pole, and the other where a scientist and a dame (visiting journalist covering the story) and a military dude are theorizing how big the monster is, guessing that it’s probably over six-feet tall. This while the mantis is right outside their window and rising up over three stories. I just about crapped sno-cones over that one.

In conclusion, while the sci-fi sorta classic The Deadly Mantis looks good, it isn’t as good as Them!

P.S. For more big bug fun, watch 1957’s Beginning of the End – it features REAL giant grasshoppers. Those things goon me out for some reason.

Saddle Splatter

Scheduled for release on March 1, 2016, the titled and re-titled Kill Or Be Killed is being described as a “gore western.” Never heard that term before, but I have to say, I double like it.

Usually movies that start out with a title and end having it changed three times is a red flag. (Kill Or Be Killed began as Red On Yella and then Kill A Fella, neither working on any level for a horror movie, not that the painfully generic Kill Or Be Killed is any better.) But when it features horror legend Michael Berryman, it’s game on.

Here’s what will rattle your saddle: “In the autumn of 1900, outlaw Claude “Sweet Tooth” Barbee puts his ‘retirement plan’ in action, attempting to lead his train-robbing gang across Texas to recover a cash stash hidden after a botched railroad heist. They soon discover they’re being hunted by more than just the law – but rather a merciless, unexpected evil quite possibly greater than themselves.

They had me at “Sweet Tooth.” Beyond that, Kill Or be Killed kinda sounds like a cowboy spin on Predator (1987) or some satanic demon dude. Mind you, I’m just extrapolating here. But regardless of how potentially right/not right I may be, looking forward to this one as I admire outlaws who can ride horses without falling off. With that, I have a score to settle with that stupid merry-go-round horse that bucked me off at the Puyallup Fair last summer. I’m calling you out, you painted pile of plywood.

P.S. Don’t confuse this Kill Or Be Killed with the 1980 karate punchfest of the same name, or the 1950 movie featuring a wrongly accused of murder guy on the run in South American jungle, or the 1966 Italian western of a gunslinger sticking his barrel between two feuding families, or the 1993 action thriller about  two brothers and a drug empire. (Spoiler: One’s a criminal.)

None of those had merry-go-rounds in ’em.

Sensual Brazilian Space Bug

Zombie mosquitoes? Sure, I’ll bite. (Heh.) How could I turn down a premise – and a title like Mosquitoid (aka, The Mosquito Alien – Nights of Terror)?

This mash-up comes from Brazil, where there are lots of zombie mosquitoes all over the place. The Internet verified that with poorly written eyewitness accounts from hobo drunks. But before you book your vacation to South America, know that Mosquitoid is in the early stages of production, relying on crowd-funding to get across the finish line.

Need a pitch? Mosquitoid is about a giant mosquito from Planet Endfly, who finds a crack in a black hole in space and comes to Planet Earth. When he comes to Ribeirão Preto, a city that is experiencing an epidemic of the same mosquito because of the excess of still water, he promotes chaos. Mosquitoid’s venom first kills then turns the dead into zombie mosquitoes that attack the city’s population.”

“The mosquito goes through numerous funny situations because of his personalities: mad scientist, drag queen, clumsy soldier, sensual colonel, crazy hippie, space warrior… All this is washed down with very black humor, blood and some sensuality.”

That last paragraph easily describes many people I’ve seen in many dive bars. Except for the sensuality. There is nothing sensual about hobo drunks.

While you can personally help fund Mosquitoid (IndieGoGo.com), just know that an Alien Mosquitoid made its first appearance on 2012 as a sci-fi action figure in Lego’s™ Galaxy Squad™ series. (Mosquitoid also shows up in the Swarm Interceptor, Warp Stinger and Bug Obliterator sets.)

I have no idea why I know this. Apparently the words “get a life” don’t mean a thing to me.