School Horror Has No Class

Hard to believe Fangoria, America’s premiere horror magazine (to which I have EVERY issue), put their stamp of “presents” approval on School’s Out (1999), a steaming pile of crappily-dubbed crap.

An escaped lunatic from a mental prison is on the loose. (Hey, now there’s a clever plot!) His timing couldn’t be any better — there’s a high school graduation party going on just down the road, full of irritating teens just begging to be butchered for being irritating teens.

The killer dresses up like a garage sale harlequin, wears a red full face mask and brandishes extra-long scissors. The rest of this waste of valuable couch time is so predictable, you can almost call out the lines before they’re uttered. The surprise at the ending is how this crap was ever financed. School’s Out, indeed.

Holidays Give You Kramps

Krampus, the mythological demonic anti-Santa Claus, is yet again the centerpiece of another holiday-themed horror movie coming out this year (2015, if the calendar is to be believed). A Christmas Horror Story arrives October 2, and puts Santa Claus himself in a street rules match with Krampus, St. Nick’s mortal foe.

Before we get to the juicy details I copied off the Internet, I did a blog on the recently announced other Christmas horror movie Krampus on June 15, 2015. [click HERE to gaze longingly upon it.] That one comes out December 4, 2015.

So the Krampus is on campus and is re-gifting gore for the holidays. In A Christmas Horror Story, the good tidings killer takes on the town of Bailey Downs (I don’t know where that is), and brings along undead elves to assist in some evil stuff. I deem this to be kick ass of the highest order.

So here’s what you’re getting for Xmas: “Last Christmas Eve, two teens came to a grisly end in a school basement. Now, one year later, a new set of horrors has come to town. As three friends explore the site of the massacre, a malevolent spirit is determined to keep them there forever, and they suddenly find themselves running in terror from Krampus, the demonic anti-Santa Claus. Not even St. Nick is immune to the terror as he fights a horde of zombie elves.”

Krampus looks pretty cool, as do the zombie elves. So much so, you’d probably wanna take an “elfie” with one. Heh.

Melting Faces and Exploding Limbs

After being successfully Kickstarter’d, Lab Rats (2015), the British eco-horror film short’s trailer, is popping up like, um, rats all over the Internet. As promised via their crowd-funding pitch, Lab Rats is filled with “melting faces and exploding limbs.”

A relief to see melting faces that aren’t associated with binge drinking.

Anyway, here’s what the lab cooked up: “Kat and her eco-warrior friends embark on a mission to expose the international bio-chemistry company, Ring-Amnion, as liars after a tip-off that they ran an animal testing lab – despite their public profile claiming otherwise.”

“The gang – and Kat’s 20,000 blog followers – are eager to find out what Ring-Amnion have been hiding as they break into an old building, but they aren’t prepared for what they find inside…”

Crossing fingers here – I hope they find melted faces inside. Wanna see a teaser for yourself? Click HERE.

I know what you’re thinking – there were Lab Rats before this, 2012 to be exact. Lab Rats – currently on its fourth season – is a Disney™ produced “sci-fi” show featuring a group of family TV-sanitized teens who have bionic super powers. Think Fantastic Four on high doses of Clearasil™.

Nature Eats You – And Likes It

A recipe for fun: a handful of obnoxious teens on Spring Break, alcohol, and a houseboat on a lake that harbors a PMS-ing, super-sized crocodile. Seems the croc’s eggs have been made into omelets by some local hicks, thereby fanning the flames of her discontent.

One of the teens finds an unbroken egg and sticks it up the backpack of a hot chick who won’t take her clothes off. Everywhere she goes, so goeth the croc (whose name is Flat Dog, according to local legend). The beast itself is computer generated and isn’t altogether menacing. Its breath, however, is another story. It also pulls a Free Willy and jumps (!) over a boat. Then it turns around and eats half the pleasure craft, along with the motor, occupants, and life-saving devices. Yum.

Predictably, several teens get chomped upon (graphically enough to warrant a quick rewind); but no one gets naked, no one has sex, and everybody runs around b*tching and screaming like they were in the Blair Witch Project (1999).

The best scene has the croc gulping down a teen whole, then throwing him up later – intact and unscathed, save for a bunch of crocodile stomach goop all over his face and skateboarder street wear.

Crocodile’s (2000) tally: passable gore, toothless special effects, painful acting. Final score: gator 8 (or “ate” – heh), viewer 0.