Some recent purchases

I haven't done this in a while so it's a bigger list than usual. All blu-rays.

Deadly Manor
Don't Open Till Christmas
Lipstick
The Nightcomers
Shadow Play
Sukkubus
Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye
School of Death
Death Game
Night Visitor
Night Ripper
Slumber Party Massacre
The Leopard Man
Curse of the Cat People
The Bat

These are all going to be first time views except the last four, so any thoughts are welcome.

Christmas Challenge 2022

It's that time of the year again, folks! 2022 is almost over, so here we are to wrap up our year with some traditional Christmas shennanigans.

No gimmicks this year. 1 point per minute watched. Christmas movies, Christmas TV show episodes, Christmas specials, and for good measure, New Years movies/episodes will also count.

The challenge will run all month, from December 1st at 12AM to January 1st at 6AM for anyone brave enough to ring in the new year.

Mark your spot and have at it!

The Incel Tapes (2022) 

I watched this found footage on the Tubi earlier and it was pretty entertaining. This angry virgin loser who lives with his mom and has no friends films his whole life and goes on about what a miserable piece of shit he is and how much he hates women for not fucking him. He used to have 2 friends but I'm guessing he screamed at them too much. He gets in touch with them and convinces them to go on a road trip with him after guilt tripping them by claiming he has brain cancer with 2 weeks left to live. The healthy-looking virgin has a list of stuff he wants to do before he dies which includes petting a giraffe, but most importantly, sticking his dick inside a female, which is easier said than done cuz this guy is a real cunt. His naive but well-meaning former friends do their best to help this idiot accomplish his goals, unaware that he's perfectly fine, but also plans on stabbing them to death at some point. Weird, dark little twist out of nowhere as well as the blatant assholishness of the main character makes this pretty fun.

The Lodge 2019

This one sorta falls under the Christmas horror blanket. What I'm about to say isn't so much a spoiler as it is the primary setup for the movie, but it begins with a family on the verge of a divorce. The wife is very upset about it, and then I started thinking, "Hey, I recognize that lady... it's Alicia Silverstone! I didn't know she was-" ... and then she blows her brains out. 😲 Wow! Okay then...

So our family's father has his two kids head out to "The Lodge" for Christmas to spend time getting acquainted with his new girlfriend. The one that he was cheating on the mom. Talk about uncomfortable, but she seems nice enough, played by Riley Keough. Her character has a briefly touched upon and bizarre backstory, and the kids don't want to give her a chance. For some reason I don't remember, dad ends up leaving them alone with her over the course of the movie, and things quickly take a turn for the worse, with bad weather keeping them stuck in a bad situation.

It's a slow-burn story about madness, repenting, and purgatory. I tend to like these bleak and artsy horror flicks so long as they have the balls to throw in some violent bits. It's borderline pretentious, but everyone puts in a decent effort and you want to know wtf happens in the end. But in that regard, the ending may seem a bit inconclusive. Not a groundbreaking mainstream horror movie, but it doesn't need to be. It's one of those character pieces focused on mood and made with what I can only assume is a lower budget. Nothing extravagant, but that's a good thing.

#Review

Prey 2022

I'm late to the party on this because I wasn't entirely thrilled by the idea of a native-american prequel, BUT... I did end up enjoying it. The plot kicks off with that dreaded idea of a woman having to prove herself, but considering the 1719 time period, it veers more into historical relevance rather than modern feminist. No more beefcakes this time around, but our leading lady does a good job.

While predators are always the main hunters, this story has our human characters very reliant on the hunting process too. Not for military ops, but for frontier survival. You're probably wondering how a bow and arrow could stop a yautja, but they have other innovations. Our protagonist is forced to rely on the assumption that she's worthless, but she definitely proves the skeptics wrong.

At this point in this or any franchise, I'm glad to see them change things up. Different setting, different era, and even a different looking predator. Still recognizable enough, though his gadgets look somewhat aged to keep from contrasting the time period so much, but they're still space-age alien tech either way. Some familiar items, some new. Sharp and dangerous, and I'm glad our newish studio didn't skimp out on the violence. There is plenty of severed body parts and impalings.

Shout out to the dog, too. The predator hunts a few different animals in the movie, and those are cool scenes. The action is good, and this predator gets a good beatdown, but he definitely earns it. He kills the shit out of people in this movie.

The whole thing seems kind of out of place in the rest of the series, especially given the title change, but it actually kinda makes perfect sense and gives Predator 2's ending a fitting backstory. I'd say it's better than The Predator from 2018, and perhaps better than 2010's Predators.

#Review

Christmas Bloody Christmas 2022

Shudder gifted us with another one of those evil Santa Claus movies. Aren't there enough of those already? I put it on for background noise, but the vivid lighting and punky overtones got me invested from the get-go.

In the first minute of the movie, we're given all the setup that we need. A robotic Santa has been deployed for consumer purchase, and who gives a fuck about the specifics of his programming. I absolutely loved that this movie didn't bother explaining things any further than that. There's a killer Santa robot hunting naughty people. Probably just people in general. Anybody who crosses its path should die for some reason, just because.

Before the carnage lets loose, we're given quite a bit of buildup between our lead characters. One is the rebelious owner of a rock record store, and the other is a somewhat charming, but still pretty lame employee who's trying really really hard to get with this girl. I can see why she wants to put him off for so long, but put enough drinks in anyone and they'll come around.

So our two characters spend the first half hour drinking and rambling about music and movie references that they probably think are hip and unexpected, but to any self-respecting horror fan, they come off obvious common knowledge. Stuff like Clancy Brown being great in Pet Sematary 2. Yeah, we know that already. And stuff about Lemmy being badass. Yeah, we know already.

There's a lot of banter early on, and despite it coming across as basic fandom drivel, it does feel authentic. They bounce their dialogue off each other quite well, and it isn't some forced vulgar shit like Rob Zombie would write, but I feel like they had him in the back of their minds. And as that comparison was brought to my attention, a Rob Zombie alumni Jeff Daniel Phillips appeared on the screen. RZ's movies may be grating at times, but his actors have potential and I like to see them in other things. Except Sheri Moon, who only ever appears in RZ movies because her appeal is too niche for the rest of the world.

I was discussing with @ballz about how the Terminator franchise needs to ditch its overbloated T2 rehash entries if it ever wants to come back to life, and this movie is the key. I think a great way to reboot that series would be to take a cue from this movie about a random-ass killer robot who targets unsuspecting hapless victims for reasons unknown. He does it violently, and he takes a massive amount of abuse.

Director Joe Begos might be someone to watch out for.

#Review

Mid-Century (2022)

I watched this, this past weekend. I wasn't sure what to expect, because it only has a 3.3 average rating on IMDB, but apparently it won the Best Picture award at the L.A. Film Festivel this past summer.

Soooo, I guess I have mixed feelings about it. As a proud member of this board, I was hoping that the 3.3 rating came from senseless, gratuitous violence, nudity, general mayhem and carnage, yadda yadda yadda. Sadly, I don't think those are the reasons for its low rating.

I think they tried to make a serious art film. I kept being reminded of the Ingmar Bergman movie Persona (1966), which I was forced at gunpoint to watch at some point in my life... it must have been in school. It just had a lot of close ups of people's faces, deep in thought, saying cryptically artisitc things. Well, not exactly, but it definitely had that same feeling as Persona. I was also reminded of the 1990 William Friedkin movie The Guardian, just because it is mostly set in an architecturally cool, kind of modern-ish house, and it does similar things with camera angles, etc. Barbarian is another film that leapt to mind, for very obvious reasons.

It is about an affluent couple in their thirties. The man is an architect, the woman is a doctor. It kind of bugged me that they seemed so well off, but that isn't really the plot. The man is kind of an asshole, fooling around with his secretary or business partner (I'm not sure which) while his wife is off saving people's lives at the hospital. They rent a cool house for a weekend, so the husband can experience its architecture. He is a big fan of the architect who had designed the place, back in the 50s.

They gradually learn (of course) that the house has a mysterious, shadowy history. The architect that designed the place also lived there, and he was into a weird cult that had bizarre occult aims. The house has both bad ghosts and good ones... I'll leave it to you to figure that out for yourself.

It's not a bad movie, but I'm surprised that it won any awards. I guess the critics must have felt obliged to give it some kind of award because it just looks and feels very artistic, even though it isn't that great of a horror movie. A few of the actresses are cute, soooo it gets points for that. But, it gets pretty confusing by the end. Several of the characters are possessing each other, at various points toward the end, sometimes overlapping. You really have to pay attention to keep track of what is going on.

Now that I look more carefully at its ratings on IMDB, I see that most people just gave it a 1 or 2 out of 10, while a few people gave it an 8 or a 10. Those few people are probably family and friends of the director, or of the actors. I don't think I can really recommend this one.... I guess, if you liked The Guardian, especially, then you MIGHT want to give this a shot... maybe just start watching it, while being prepared to bail at any moment.

OK, that's my two cents... you're on your own.

Violent Night 2022

I didn't know this was a Tommy Wirkola movie. The Dead Snow movies were okay. Decent effort there, but nothing groundbreaking. This one here, VIOLENT NIGHT, instantly seems comparable to Fat Man (2020) with Mel Gibson, another recent effort to depict Santa as a bad-ass version capable of kicking some ass.

The description likens it to Die Hard and Home Alone, which is partially accurate. I feel Home Alone has plenty of leisure before the conflict, but our movie VN doesn't linger about too long. The Die Hard thing is much more fitting.

David Harbour does a terrific job as St. Nick. I think the guy is good in anything, though. His backstory is also hilariously dark for a Santa Claus, which is why he plays it as a bitter drunk, disillusioned with the holiday because people as a society are awful. I like the fights for the choreography, but also because he gets his ass kicked in a lot of these fights, which is always better than watching some invincible The Rock type character.

The villain plot is pretty weak, but John Leguizamo does his best for such a cutout role. The villains are all pricks, begging for a cruel demise, and they'll get one. The family isn't much better, but mostly assholes for comic relief. You're supposed to root for Santa and the little girl who relies on him, and you do. Through her, you get the Home Alone homage, which features some good 'n gross acts of violence.

It's not the greatest, but it is pretty fun. I think I like Fat Man a bit more though.

#Review

Captain Splatter

When I was halfway through high school in the mid-2000s, I had to move. I'd been in that town and school district for 7 years and it was good to me. Suddenly, I had to leave all that behind for a shittier school where I couldn't make friends or maintain my grades.

I became a recluse. I had saved enough money to buy my first computer at a mere/whopping $600, so I learned to get by with dvds and mp3s. Suffice to say, I was pretty cool, but not that cool. I still had a lot to learn about people, and what better a teacher than a message board filled with snobs and trolls?

I would frequent IMDb's Sandbox, Soapbox, Music General, and eventually... the Horror board. That's where I would encounter him. He was an OG troll who recommended the gnarliest movies at the time. Stuff like Cannibal Holocaust and Evil Dead. And stuff like The Stuff.

It wasn't long after I read his posts that I fell in love. I admired him and wanted to be like him. He was a rebel who returned like genital warts, time and time again, no matter how many times they banished him. As crass as he could be, his logic seemed to impress upon me. More than I'd expect.

I wouldn't be a horror fan if it weren't for him. I wouldn't know half the shit I do about Italian horror or interpersonal dynamics if I didn't follow his lead and learn the lost art of being a troll. For some reason, he fascinated me. Then, he ghosted the internet.

He went on to live one of those "real lives" with those fabled "real people" that can be so elusive, and so the life lessons were over. That's it? I didn't know what to do with myself at that point except to actually find myself, but it's easier when you have a template to go on. He was my template.

I'd talk to his lady every now and then. I'd even tricked her into coming on the site a few times, but basically, I was happy in just knowing that he existed, capable of playing the role of a normal rational human being, but also that of a psychotic madman who suffers the same mental breakdowns as everyone else. The only difference is that when he did it, he was more entertaining.

It's a terrible feeling when the remnants of your childhood dwindle. Doors close, windows open, but why can't I open that door again? I miss what's behind that door. That era was half my life ago, but it doesn't make it any less meaningful.

I'm sure you've interacted or even met with a few people on message boards. People you were fond of. People you respected. People who have died. The Horror board has already had at least a few casualties at this point, and there's another one for the fire. Rest in Peace, Captain.

Smile 2022

There aren't a lot of horror films that want to compete with H-Ends this season, but here's one of them.

It's kinda like that Ring curse. And kinda like the It Follows curse. The smile demon (for lack of a better name) drives you mad, then you smile at someone and kill yourself in front of them, traumatizing them into the same curse. Also, is he even a thing? Can he be defeated? Or is it all psychological? After all, there sure are a lot of dream sequences. And jump scares.

Sounds pretty standard, huh? Well, it is. However, I never felt that it was bad at any point. It had the cliches. Sometimes, those dreaded cliches aren't too bad. Our lead does a good job of descending into madness. Gee whiz, it sure must be fun for actors to play someone who is unraveling. It also had vibes of that recent flick Unsane. Probably the hospital setting, in addition to the mental breakdowns.

So the cast is good, the score is grating, and it earns its R-rating. It's fun to try to figure out the rules along the way. How does the curse work? How can we beat it? I think it could have some interesting mechanics that could work in an rpg. Curses like these are comparable to a virus in some ways. Transmission, symptoms, durations, treatments... Yet at the same time, I'm glad it doesn't go too in depth trying to figure out the rules, so the audience can be left to use that imagination thingy.

On the walk to the theater, I was reminded of my previous walk home from the theater. I saw two people fucking under a bridge. 🙂

#Review