2017 October Horror Challenge Day 22

Day 22 was one of revisiting old favorites for the most part. At least it turned in to that after I had to deal with CHEERLEADER MASSACRE. This Jim Wynorski movie is far from his best or most entertaining. Hell, it's far from entertaining. The best part of this movie is the recycled footage from Slumber Party Massacre used in the context of a flashback. Otherwise it's naked women getting killed in an unbelievably boring slasher. There's really no cheerleaders either, at least we don't see the girls doing cheer related things like shaking pom poms or you know, cheering. There's a better cheerleader related slasher from the 80s called Cheerleader Camp. And I watched a better snowy setting slasher film the day before in Iced. Watch those.

I needed a bit of positivity in my life so the next three movies were all old favorites like TROLL 2. I've talked about this film numerous times over the years so what else can I say. It's ridiculous and it makes the bad things in life go away for 90 minutes.

SLEEPAWAY CAMP is one of the best slasher films ever made. The kills are interesting and no two are alike, it has good character development and writing and the performances are believable. Oh and the ending that at this point everybody knows about. Well that ending was a world shaker the first time I saw it. And I first saw the Sleepaway Camp movies young. If you somehow haven't seen Sleepaway Camp and haven't had the ending ruined for you get off of the internet go find a copy of the movie and watch it! It's a fun movie from start to finish and I love it.

And for as good as Sleepaway Camp is SLEEPAWAY CAMP 2 is that much fun. The tone completely shifts from a serious slasher film to a tongue in cheek, campy affair (no pun intended) where the victims are disposed of in some comical but gruesome and nasty ways. There's a lot more humor and silly shit going on here like the "Happy Camper" song that is the perfect song to annoy your friends with all summer long. Or anytime of year for that matter. This movie holds a special place in my heart and I love everything about it.

2017 October Horror Challenge Day 21

Vlad The Impaler was an infamous ruler and anyone even slightly familiar with his story would agree that a movie based around him could be a wildly entertaining horror movie. Or it could be a really choppy and slopped together TV movie such as DRACULA: THE DARK PRINCE. I'll give credit where it's due; the movie looks fantastic and there are glimpses of that insane violence he was known for and  the but the writing sucks, and the breaks for what I assume were originally commercials have this thing all over the place. It goes from one scene to another set years apart without any warning. If you're a giant geek for all things Vlad Tepes then maybe, maybe you check it out. Otherwise I suggest finding something better.

And that something better could be CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN. This is a pretty standard 50s creature feature with a monster freshly released from his burial in the ashes and ruins of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The monster of a man has been encapsulated in this crust that covers his entire body and though he's blinded he has a sense that draws him to our leading lady who may be his lover reincarnated and he'll stop at nothing to get to her, killing anyone in his way. Is it something groundbreaking? No. It's a pretty standard mummy/gill man type creature feature but it's well made, the acting is good, has an original ending and it's just a fun time.

Someone needs to release ICED on Blu-ray ASAP. This movie is so stupid that it made me laugh continuously. "You invited a dead man!" "And he accepted..." - Best part of the movie. The only acting in this movie is overacting. It's a slasher set in a ski resort and we have enough of a body count to keep it from being ALL unintentional laughs but this is like going to The Melting Pot for dinner... it's all about the cheese.

2017 October Horror Challenge Day 20

I've had the urge to watch CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON for a few weeks since I met Ricou Browning who played the Gill Man in all of the underwater scenes. Jack Arnold's signature creature feature remains a favorite of mine with a cast that turns in good performances, some excellent cinematography and a lush, exotic location the film is a joy to watch. The Gill Man is also one of the most violent and dangerous of the Universal Monsters. He can damn near sink a boat and he can absolutely dispatch of everyone on board with his clawed, webbed hands. To put it simply, if you've never seen this one then what the hell are you doing with your life?

After years of seeing the VHS cover and loving the title (come on, this title is fucking awesome) I finally got to see HACK-O-LANTERN and found it to be an enjoyable piece of campy Satanic horror plucked straight from the heart of the 80s. The characters are caricatures of regular people which makes it all the more silly but I was hoping for something better. I was hoping for more of a heavy metal horror movie but we only get one real scene of that and it does happen to be one of the best scenes in the movie. The world needs more heavy metal horror. HACK-O-LANTERN is decent but now that it has been plucked from VHS obscurity I think it will soon be a title that loses it's notoriety of being a rare VHS only movie and becomes destined to be just another title on movie collector's shelves.

THE INTRUDER from 1975 is a proto slasher that was lost for years until Garagehouse Pictures rescued it and put it on Blu-ray a few shorts months ago. I'm glad it was found and released but there's nothing special about it. It's a tedious affair with melodramatic moments that seem to stretch on and on. I wouldn't call it awful, that'd be unfair but I didn't have a good time watching it and I'd be hard pressed to even tell you what it was about. Something about gold.

There are instances where you build up an idea in your head of what a movie is going to be like based on the title and you're wrong. Then there's times the title describes exactly what a movie should be about and when it doesn't deliver on that you're left puzzled. That was sort of like watching AMERICAN MUMMY. This is a very low budget movie that was released right around the same time as the new Mummy film starring Tom Cruise (which fucking honks) and the artwork has a similar feel to the ad campaign used on that huge budget picture from Universal. This is a case of Asylum syndrome... but it's understandable - Anything to get an audience for your film. I actually had a bit of fun with this one but when some students on an Archaelogical dig in New Mexico find a Aztec (or Incan? Or Mayan?... It doesn't really matter) mummy and one of the stranger students performs a blood ritual that involves dry humping the sarcophagus and a bloody make out session and ancient curse is unleashed that you would think would reanimate the mummy but no... instead various students start puking up green slime and turning into crazed zombie-like creatures. I wanted a mummy. I deserved a mummy. I had fun watching blood and guts get tossed around and the doctor from Eastern Europe giving his most stereotypical Russian stereotype impression but I wanted a goddamn mummy. They even went through the trouble of creating a colorful and creative burial mask for the mummy that I would have loved to see shambling around the campsite picking off college students and vodka drinking stereotypes. It was nothing special but it was much more entertaining than I expected and I'd watch it a hundred more times before revisiting that pile of shit starring Tom Cruise.

2017 October Horror Challenge Day 19

Are you in the mood for a painfully generic, been-there-done-that post-apocalyptic survival movie? Well then you're in luck because that is exactly what HERE ALONE is! Some sort of viral outbreak has wiped out large amounts of the population and it has left a woman all alone in the woods. During flashbacks we learn of the outbreak and what happened to her husband and new born baby. Eventually a father and daughter cross paths with her and they survive together for a while before they decide to stray from what has been working for them to try something new which nearly leaves everyone dead. The acting is good, the direction is competent and the movie looks good but there's not a single solitary thing that makes it exciting or stand apart from the hordes of similar films. It's like watching a feature length film version of the absolute worst stretches of The Walking Dead TV show.

There's plenty of Bigfoot movies out there but how many Yeti movies? Well there's at least one good one in the Hammer production of THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN from 1957. Now, I will admit this one left me a bit disappointed. I really wanted to love it. I even expected to but the movie lacks a couple signature moments that would have brought it from good to great. Also I think it would have benefitted from being made a few years later. I consider 1958 to be the year Hammer broke big with Horror Of Dracula and their studio flourished in the years following it. I think the bigger budget would have allowed for those signature scenes that come to mind whenever you think of the film. I also think had it been filmed in color would have made it more interesting visually even if the majority of the film takes place in the snow covered Himalayas there are plenty of scenes in towns that would have screamed with color. That said, it's a really solid horror movie that uses plot devices I wouldn't have expected from a Yeti movie. It's well made and the cast is excellent (no surprise there).

And for what may be the biggest surprise of the month so far... HAPPY DEATH DAY. I hated everything about this movie's ad campaign. I hated the Groundhog's Day time loop plot, I hated the killer's stupid baby mask, I hated the 50 Cent ringtone that was played over and over and I was sick of that song a decade ago. I hated that the movie felt dated, which I came to find out was for good reason since the development of this movie started 10 years ago until it was actually made. This looked like it would be painfully boring, generic watered down bullshit and the PG-13 rating certainly didn't help ease my fears but we live in a time where I can see as many movies at the theater as I want for the low price of $9.99 (how much!?) so I'm pretty sure I literally said "Fuck it" to myself and went to see it. And you know what? It wasn't awful. It's no classic and I wouldn't sit through it again. It is watered down and I still hate the mask but they at least made an attempt to give that mask some sort of meaning. And somehow they found a more annoying ringtone to play a hundred times than the one used in the trailers but this movie has a sense of humor and a good one at that. It was a fun movie to sit and watch even if I had it all figured out pretty early on. The cast was decent and the lead guy and girl had good chemistry together. It was nice to see actual character development from a slasher film and have a couple characters actually worth getting invested in. You can tell that any edge the movie may have had was taken away by the PG-13 rating but maybe an unrated cut will be different (you'll have to let me know). I wouldn't suggest rushing out to see it but I  got some good chuckles in and was never bored. That's way more than I ever expected.

Unfortunately news broke early the morning of day 19 that Italian director Umberto Lenzi had passed away. Lenzi had directed some really fine films in many different genres including a few great gialli, some of the goriest cannibal and horror pictures you'll ever see and perhaps the best of the best Euro crime films. Seriously, if you're to seek out anything the man did give his polizziotteschi a look. I had to give the Maestro a memorial viewing and I decided to go with one I hadn't seen in probably a decade. The gory tale of racial revenge, BLACK DEMONS. This one was released in 1990, a few years after the golden years of the Italian splatter period so it gets a bit overlooked, it's also not an amazing movie by any means but it gets the job done well enough to set up the kill scenes that we're here for. A group of blinded and murdered slaves in Brazil have returned from the dead to avenge their deaths on 6 white victims and they're not nice about it. Hooks, chains, cleavers and more are used to blind, maim and kill. It's a bit slow in chunks but I have fun with it and think the payoff moments make it well worth your time.

2017 October Horror Challenge Day 18

Have you ever watched a movie for the first time (presumably) and thought "wow, this is all really familiar to me."? That's the case with ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY for me. I don't vividly remember watching this before but it all felt so familiar that maybe I have and just don't remember and haven't found any record of it. Either way it's an entertaining comedy romp as a comedic duo who wishes they were Abbott and Costello are forced to go to an island to find a real life zombie to debut at their mob boss' new nightclub. They find a gorgeous blond singer to bring home along with a lot of stories of voodoo zombies, mad scientists and haunted houses... It may sound better than it is. It's decent but some of the comedy falls flat and the horror side of things, including Bela Lugosi's performance is all too silly and easy even for its time.

If you're wondering about Zombies On Broadway well then... YOU'LL FIND OUT! YOU'LL FIND OUT is horror, comedy, musical mashup featuring a starring role from Kay Kyser who was a big band leader and famous radio personality in the 30s and 40s. This is a murder mystery haunted house tale featuring performances from Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre, what a trio. They're all quite good and the movie lives up to the legendary trio's performances. I wouldn't call it anything new or special but it features some solid scares and chills in typical 40s form. The film relies too much on Kay Kyser and his musical performances to the point that it almost feels like advertisements for his program at times ("Do you know who that is? It's Kay Kyser!") and it definitely pads the runtime but when the movie is left to be a chilling horror picture it is pretty decent and certainly elevated by our legendary trio.

Then there was the directorial debut of Paul Naschy, INQUISITION. A phenomenal witch hunting religious horror film filled with gore, nudity, sleaze and a leading role from El Hombre Lobo himself, Paul Naschy. Naschy had starred in dozens of films before he got to direct one but he certainly proved to have picked up on the craft. INQUISITION feels like a cross between the Roger Corman films that starred Vincent Price and the Euro sleaze that was all the rage across the European horror scene in the 1970s. I loved this and would put it among my favorite Naschy movies. Naschy does his best Witchfinder General impression while being the sleazy sex pot we know him to be. There's a bit of plague gross out, supernatural horror, despicable humans, and really solid filmmaking. It has a gross out factor, a bit of a downbeat tone even though we're given perfectly fine antagonists to cheer for, and a skin factor that only the 70s could provide. The blu-ray from Mondo Macabro is far from perfect but its quite attractive at its best and decent at its worst with the scale tipping toward the better side of things.

And we finished off with the short film by Pete Tombs of Mondo Macabro and Andrew Starke, which was an episode of their Eurotika series, Blood And Sand, a documentary short about the history of Spanish horror. I think it is far from definitive but it does provide a nice timeline of notable films and film characteristics. Any newbie to Spanish horror will benefit from watching this short film.

2017 October Horror Challenge Day 17

Snake horror is cool. Snakes can be scary and sexy which makes them perfect to base a horror movie around. The movie still has to be good though, snakes can't carry the whole thing, at least not in a movie like NIGHT OF THE COBRA WOMAN which features a priestess using special cobra venom to stay young while she sucks the life out of men she sleeps with. She sheds her skin like a snake which makes for some of the grossest moments of the movie. Just imagine peeling a scab the entire length of you leg... ew. The movie has a couple snake bite moments, some nicely designed sets and a lead that fits her role perfectly but there's really not much going on. I certainly didn't hate the movie but this 75 minute movie feels like two hours and there was plenty of room to add some more schlock, especially for a movie produced by Roger Corman. At least we get to see Vic Diaz lurking around being a creep like nobody else in the Philippines could.

A pair of Boris Karloff films were up next starting with THE WALKING DEAD from 1936. It's better than the AMC show. Karloff stars as a man framed for murder of a judge that sentenced him to ten years in prison a decade earlier. Shortly after being put to death scientists bring him back but he's far from the same man that went to the chair. He's in a zombie like trance with only revenge for those that wronged him in his mind. It's a straight forward movie from Michael Curtiz filled with solid performances. Not a classic but a very solid mid 30s horror flick.

FRANKENSTEIN 1970 is a movie I was long curious about and finally getting to see it I can't say I'm disappointed. Boris Karloff stars as the last living Frankenstein and in true Frankenstein tradition he is carrying on the science experiments that his ancestors began a couple centuries earlier. The problem? He's broke. So he rents out use of the Frankenstein estate to a movie production company and uses the ample supply of bodies for his experiments. This one was made in 1958 but feels like a movie from at least a decade earlier. It has all of the traditional creepy mansion/castle tropes like hidden passages, creepy family crypts, spy pictures, and of course a laboratory. The lab is the part of the movie that is distinctly late 50s with a very space age design to the set pieces to a film that has an otherwise eerie gothic feel. The biggest disappointment of the film is the monster's look which is a man who is covered in bandages and shambles around with a giant square head that essentially just looks like $20 worth of gauze wrapped around some cardboard boxes in the shape of a person. It certainly doesn't ruin the movie that I'm surprised I don't hear more about.

2017 October Horror Challenge Days 15 and 16

Two days in one update today because I only got to a single movie on day 15... deal with it! Sorry I flew off the handle there.

The lone film for day 15 was HORROR HIGH from 1974. The story of a high school geek concerned only about his biology experiments and his guinea pig Mr Mumps that he's been giving chemical concoctions that he hope will turn Mr. Mumps into a violent little monster. When Mr. Mumps ends up dead the kid takes the chemicals himself and it turns him into a Mr. Hyde type character and he goes on a killing spree of his bullies including various students and teachers. The plot is better than the execution but it's still a decent movie that is played totally straight unlike the more popular Return To Horror High that is a parody comedy film. It's nothing incredible but definitely worth a look. 

Moving on to day 16 and we start with a doozy...

DEAD STORY is a 2017 film released on DVD by Wild Eye Productions who I have great respect for as they give many films a chance to get nationwide distribution that are extremely low budget independent affairs. Some of them are surprisingly great movies while others as you'd imagine are awful. Most fall somewhere in between those two extremes but DEAD STORY falls firmly on one end. I'll sum it up for you like this - If you are a wrestling fan then superkick that piece of shit into the ocean. If you're a football fan then punt that hunk of junk into the ocean. If you're a baseball fan then have a friend lob that garbage over the plate and hit a home run into the ocean. If you're a basketball fan then slam dunk that dumpster fire of a movie into the ocean. My point is just stay away from it and if you have it near you flush it down the crapper. If it doesn't fit down the crapper then sell the house and move. 

THE BABYSITTER is getting all the hype on Netflix right now so I had to give it a look even though I really have no desire to watch anything McG does. This turned out to be a pleasant surprise from the 3 letter man who is too cool for a first name. While highly flawed and a bit too cute for its own good THE BABYSITTER is a fun coming of age movie in a horror setting that has great chemistry between many of the characters. It lingers too long with side characters during the second act and leaves us wondering where our main antagonist is but it's a silly, gory romp that is a nice break from more straight forward deadpan horror movies like Shit Story up there. 

TRIP WITH THE TEACHER was next, a nasty little exploitation classic I've seen several times before but wanted to check out on the new Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray which I'll be giving a full review very soon so hold tight for that. 

Finally was the 1951 alien invasion movie THE MAN FROM PLANET X which was pretty cool. The alien looked like a cracked out version of Robin Williams' Bicentennial Man and I loved it. The movie had a moody look and feel reusing sets from 1948's Joan Of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman and covering them in fog. It was simple, cheap and effective. The acting is typical of the period but believable. This is probably my favorite of the 50s sci-fi horror that I've watched this month.