horror – Arkham TV

The Pit And The Pendulum (1961)

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 80min Classic horror movie about both a pit and a pendulum, directed by Roger Corman, written by Richard Matheson using a title by Edgar Allan Poe, with Vincent Price (134)

Recap

After the death of his sister, Francis Barnard visits his brother in law Nicholas Medina and is shocked by just how brazen everybody lies to him about her death. Is Nicholas truly mourning or are these just crocodile tears? He decides to stay the night, and that’s when it starts to get spooky.

This is the second movie of the so-called “Corman-Poe-Cycle”: Corman wanted to make movies with slightly higher budgets, especially with better sets, and wanted to use the fame and reputation of Edgar Allan Poe to market these films. Nerds like me were always complaining that the movies were named after Poe’s works, but never sticked to their actual plots. So I thought, yeah, well, I shall give it ⭐⭐⭐⭐, because it has Vincent Price and nice sets and in a way even the status of a classic.

Boy, was I wrong! So I shall give it ⭐⭐⭐⭐ alright, but much unlike before I shall not complain about how this is not Edgar Allan Poe. Yes, it all starts a little slow, and Vincent Price, while as enjoyable as usual, goes thoroughly over the top in a way that does not necessarily improve the movie. And no, I have no idea how horrific this horror has been back in the 60s,but for today’s standards it’s all quite tame and maybe even a little lame. So this movie may be a little old, but on the other hand I didn’t remember nor expected that such an old movie would make such clever use of surprising plot twists. I tip my hat to Richard Matheson who never was as famous as Poe but sure could spin an entertaining yarn.

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Blessed Are The Children (2016)

⭐⭐ 98min Indie movie that introduces the abortion topic to the slasher genre

Recap

***Spoiler Warning. No wait, is it a spoiler when I say that Jason and Michael are the slashers in Friday The 13th and Halloween? ***

So there are these three women, and one of them has two men in her life and a mother and she is pregnant. When she makes her choice she becomes the target of Anti Choicers with babyface masks who do not even pretend to be Pro Lifers and start slashing everybody who has more than one line of text.

It’s not uncommon that the slashees in slasher movies are shallow, uninteresting, daft, dull and expendable. In this one, however, they take their slasheeness to a new level. For some part of the movie I actually thought that the writer/director was an Anti Choicer himself. But then, when the slashers were portrayed as even more degenerated than the slashees, I developed an alternative theory: maybe he hates his mother (did she tell him to find a day job?), the three women represent the women who rejected him (one prefers intellectual stimulation, one prefers women, and one prefers jerks, I mean jerks that are jerky in a way that he isn’t),and the men of course represent those men who “scored” more women than he did.

Anyway, the first third of the movie is just girl talk. Think the TV show Mom, think the movie Catwoman. Yes, it’s that bad, even worse, half of the time the pregnant woman talks to herself. Then there is one third of absolute average, uninspired slashing, one almost sees the slashers yawning beneath their babyface masks. At least the last third offers a decent amount of suspense. Which means that yes, you can watch it. It’s far from being the worst slasher ever. However of course there are MANY movies that are so much better. The best reason to watch this however is its unique selling point: this is the first abortion slasher that I have heard of. So while the writer/director is not so good at writing or directing he sure isn’t too dumb when it comes to marketing. If you want to have an opinion on abortion in slasher movies I guess you will have to watch it.

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It’s Just A Game (2018)

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 70min. Lowbudget slasher featuring a merry band of depraved satanists.

Recap

Of course I know that the americans are weird. But this movie starts with a girl in the bathtub with her underwear on! WTF?

So there are these girls on a sleepover, and you know what it’s like: do you dare to stand in front of the mirror and say “Doofenshmirtz” three times? And since this takes place in Alabama, there are a lot of ghosts hanging in the neighborhood, like the Skull Girl from the movie poster. As Brianna, tired of being a teenager called Brianna, summons Mother Murder to kill her bully, a gang of depraved satanists rush in to save the day and the movie.

Yes, it’s true: the movie starts dumb, but eventually it becomes weird and original and entertaining. Thumbs up!

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Phantasm (1979)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 89min Classic teenie horror with flying spheres and Angus Scrimm

Recap

So there is this young orphan who lives with his adult brother, and when they bury his uncle, yes, the family seems not to be too lucky, he observes how the undertaker steals the whole coffin with the uncle inside.

Of course, the boy pays the funeral home a nightly visit, and he even encounters some Jawas straight from Tatooine. Yes, in a way this is a horror movie for young teenagers. The hero, Mike, is a youngster who rides a motorbike and drives really hot car and even plays with a big knife and guns. And when his brother Jody locks him in, he uses a pump gun round to macgyver a mini explosive. The undertaker, known as Tall Man, is an extremely corny boogeyman and was a highlight in actor Angus Scrimm’s otherwise not so overwhelming career, much like Freddy Krueger was for Robert Englund. There is a little gore in the movie, but it is a quite unreal scene involving a (by now legendary) flying metal ball, other scares are more appropriate for a younger audience, like having an insect in one’s 70s mane or a disappearing ice-cream vendor.

This one is not a masterpiece, at one point Jody’s friend Reggie has to tie up several loose plot threads in a half dozen lines of dialog. But yet, the movie was made with inspiration and diligence, and even though it is lowbudget, there are some very nice sets and special effects. The atmosphere in some scenes is quite dreamlike, and the plot even includes some kind of interdimensional space travel.

I think they sure made the most out of the budget, and I guess for 1979 the movie even was a little bit avantgarde. So while it was not an instant success it gained some well deserved popularity and became the first part of a small franchise.

Definitely recommended.

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Tourist Trap (1979)

Pleasant slasher about young tourists trapped with a bunch of mannequins. 90min imdb

Recap:

So there are these young people who are stuck in a tourist trap full of mannequins, and there is this man who likes to wear a mask that makes him look and feel like a doll, and this is the beginning of a wonderful slasher movie. Oh, and we learn very soon that he has telekinetic powers.

Yes, the budget is low and it shows. There are some major logic bugs. This is not considered one of the best slashers ever for a reason. However they make the most of their budget and their skills, this one is very decent and well worth a watch.

Sure, it borrows some ideas from films like Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but it is also interesting to see which movies it inspired. At least for me, that is. I read that this one is about mannequins, and I thought: well, that’s neat. A movie about scary dolls. This may be nice for starters, because I soon want to take a closer look at the Full Moon Extended Universe with all the Puppetmaster and doll stuff anyway. Well, guess what, this one is produced by Charles Band, this is the inofficial start of the Bandiverse.

Movie 90min

Trailer

Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973)

Young women at the mercy of Dracula. With boob, blood and Paul Naschy. 75min imdb

Recap:

So there are these young women who have a broken carriage wheel and thus have two stay in a castle where they find a book in which they read that there will always be a Dracula until he finds true love. Conveniently one girl falls in love with Dracula while the other girls are turned into vampires. Now it’s time to revive Dracula’s daughter, the countess. Eventually the girl has to decide whether she wants to become a vampire or not.

Now this may sound stupid, but only because it is. I guess the plan was to a) make a movie with an incredibly long and dull exposition, b) show a lot of boobs, blood and violence and c) eventually come up with a plot that makes sense. Well, two out of three ain’t bad, and this is not the first time I noticed that a mediterranean movie neglected the plot.

On the upside, this movie is not dumber than most current micro-budget movies, but it looks much better, and it has Paul Naschy in it, which is a good thing for the fans of Paul Naschy. But it by no means is a good movie. Mediocre I would say.

Movie 73min

Movie 73min b&w

Trailer

Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964)

6 yankees are the guests of honor at a southerner celebration. Directed by godfather of gore Herschell Gordon Lewis. 83min imdb

Recap:

So there are these hillbillies who use fake detour signs to lure a half dozen yankees into their town to be the guests of honor at their celebration. They are celebrating the war crimes the yankees committed 100 years ago, and the guests of honor are urged to play games like “horse race” or “barrel roll”.

Herschell Gordon Lewis was the godfather of gore because he was the businessman who had the idea that a cheaply made color movie with loads of blood would make a decent profit. This makes his first gore movie Blood Feast a historical document, but not much of a good movie. This one, however, is different. It is a cheerful celebration of violence, there is not one slasher running around, earnestly doing his chores, these are 2000 maniacs gleefully enjoying refreshments, snacks and sadism. It is this glee that in some scenes makes the violence even harder to bear while in other scenes it provides a bit of comic relief. I am glad that this trope hasn’t been overdone by now and that this movie is still fresh and enjoyable.

Movie 83min

Trailer

The Brood (1979)

Family drama and psychoplasmic therapy, directed by David Cronenberg 92min imdb

Recap:

As a child, Nola has been abused by her mother, and her father didn’t help. Now she is a patient of Dr Raglan who is a shrink at the “Somafree Institute Of Psychoplasmics”. Her husband Frank notices marks of abuse on their daughter Candice. He decides to keep her away from her mother, talks to Raglan, has Nola’s parents involved…

It’s not a spoiler to say that Raglan, while not exactly competent, is not completely inapt, either. He has taken all the psychobabble about giving your emotions Gestalt to the next level. Patient Mike gets a physiological rash when psychologically (or psychoplasmically) interacting wit Raglan, expatient Jona even has developed lymphoma, and Nola, well, let’s just say that she has ways to externalize her bad vibes.

So what we have here is a cheap and nasty family drama, a psycho therapy from Cronenberg World (and, I guess, a look at the shards of Cronenberg’s shattered marriage). People are not getting tired of pointing out that this is not Cronenberg’s best movie, but nobody denies that the ending will be a classic forever.

Movie 92min

Trailer

Lo (2009)

A demon has taken Justin’s love away, and he wants her back. 80min imdb

Recap:

Justin’s girlfriend Alice has been abducted by a demon, so he prepares a magic circle, uses his book of spells and spills his blood to summon the demon Lo and command him to bring Alice back to him. Lo claims that he can’t and instead gets Justin involved in a conversation. He, supported by demon Jeez, convinces Justin that April really is a demon who has been returned to hell.

The first thing I noticed was the astonishingly good body make-up of Lo. Now this is a lowbudget flick with a promising start, I thought. It took me a while to realize what I was watching: few actors, hardly any action, only one location, the cheapest backdrops in the flashbacks, the overacting with the big gestures and the tons of dialogue: I was watching a bloody stage play. But then, why not? It was nice for a change, it was entertaining, it wasn’t even too predictable (I was one hour into the movie when I found out what the surprise ending would be).

Sure, it’s flawed in many ways: sometimes it’s too silly or too artsy or too pretentious, but I can live with that. I like it because it’s UNIQUE!

On IMDb this is listed as horror and comedy and fantasy and lovestory, but I feel uneasy about this: yes, it is fun, but it surely isn’t funny enough to call it a comedy. And horror, well, would you file Goethe’s (or in this case: Marlowe’s) Faust as horror?

Oh well, I file it under horror, why not. There’s blood in it and demons and tortured souls…. However, this is not a regular slasher, so viewer’s discretion is advised.

Movie 80min

Trailer

The Ghost Galleon (1974)

Third batch of the Blind Dead: the templars on the “Dutchman’s” galleon. 89min imdb

Recap:

As part of a publicity stunt a model and a starlet use a small boat on the open sea, and the boat is damaged when it hits a 16th century galleon. To the rescue come the two men who got them into this mess, a scientist who is of bored of mere science and two women who happen to be around.

On board they find the coffins of the 8th century templars and the captain’s log of an ominous “Dutchman”, and that’s all the “explanation” that we get, and of course we don’t get an answer to the most important question: why did they bother to make this movie? I don’t get the impression that anyone involved really cared. Let’s just get those people on board of the ship, even if we don’t have a decent plot or motivation for the characters. Let’s pad the runtime with some models in two piece swimsuits (at least nobody will complain about this) and a flashback to explore the relation of the two model girls of which one is already dead. Wait, isn’t this supposed to be a horror movie? Shouldn’t we have some templars templaring around? Meh, if you insist. But not more than one onscreen murder. And have you seen the REALLY GOOD horror movie last year? Let’s use the word “exorcism” in this one!

People who are keen on watching everything zombie will watch this one, too. But they will not really enjoy it.

Movie 90min subtitled

Trailer

Iron Wolf (2013)

The entourage of a has-been punk rocker pees on a swastika and burns a barrel of nazi stuff. But in a horror movie, no good deed goes unpunished. 93min imdb

Recap:

So there is this nazi research facility that since the end of world war 2 has only been entered by one single bum who seems to think that the eerie noises behind the metal door are not worse than anything else that germany has to offer. But then one day this has-been punk rocker arrives with his entourage because punk. Postmodern irony says that a former nazi research facility is just the right place for a reunion concert. Trouble is that in a horror movie no good deed goes unpunished. In Friday, The 13th the slashees are punished for smoking weed and playing strip monopoly, and in Iron Wolf they pee on a swastika and burn a barrel of nazi stuff. So there is this result of genesplicing that you maybe can call a weresheperddog (half werewolf, half german shepherd) and that does what wereshepherddogs do. In the end there is a cliffhanger for a sequel, and it seems that the filmmakers have watched too many Marvel movies, because there are 12 (TWELVE!) minutes of end credits with mid credit scenes with a cliffhanger for a sequel (don’t tell me. I know that this is a total of two cliffhangers, it’s just that the filmmakers didn’t seem to care).

This is an independent movie, which means that it looks dreadfully cheap (I was astonished to see that the production values include nazi flags, a military-looking vehicle and some sort of a cannon). It also means that there are no actual actors in it, and it doesn’t help either that their lines were in english. The violence is reduced to a bare minimum. I’ve seen indie “slashers” with even less blood, but still I say that you shouldn’t be cheap on the violence especially when your film has nothing else to offer. Interesting characters? Suspense? New ideas? Nil return! Oh and in the end they actually show the Iron Wolf which is not a smart move because he is something between furry, cosplay and Halloween fancy dress.

I guess that they thought that it was enough to have nazis in it. There are so many movies with nazi zombies in them, there was Yoga Hosers with nazi wieners, there was Iron Sky with nazi men on the moon… Nazis are definitely the trope of choice for lazy filmmakers who want to attract an audience without putting too much effort into their movies. However this movie just doesn’t deliver, and also I dislike how the exnazi is the smartest and the most sympathetic of the slashees while the bigmouthest (does this word even exist? Now it does) of the antifascists is the dumbest douchebag.

Why do only the dumbest and trashiest of these movies get made? Germany’s currently greatest novelist and cartoonist Walter Moers once tried to raise funds for a movie about his Adof Die Nazi-Sau (Adolf The Nazi Swine), but as far as I know nothing ever came of it.

Movie 95min

Trailer

And this is how a nazi movie should look like in my opinion:

The Crumbs (2020)

Inbred cannibal hillbillies on a mission to waste the viewers’ time. 101min imdb

Recap:

The Crumbs are an inbred Hillbilly family that feeds on trespassers. However they are not entirely degenerated. One of them even is an actual MD.

Yadda Yadda Yadda. The story starts quite interesting, but then, nothing really happens. And when nothing has happened for quite some time, nothing happens.

BUT THEN!

ALL OF A SUDDEN, NOTHING HAPPENS!

In the end some of the plot threads seem to lead somewhere, but then they don’t.

First thing is that that the advertisers are lying even more than usual. This is not a horror movie, it’s not even a thriller, because nothing horrifying or thrilling happens.

You could call it a crime movie because illegal things are done in it. However this is so long and longwinding and slow-paced that it is the dullest crime movie I can remember. Also, it’s too much of a fairytale or fantasy or at least science fiction story to be a legit crime story. The Crumbs have an anti aging treatment that actually works. And Dr. Crumb claims that it works by protecting the cells from cancerogens, which is about as “scientific” as, say, creationism. If an anti aging treatment would actually work it would be because it would manipulate the telomeres of the chromosomes. Which of course would mean that the Crumbs couldn’t have been around for as long as this movie suggests because genetic engineering even in theory has not been around for such a long time.

This is a nothing burger with extra nothing and special nothing sauce.

Movie 110min

Trailer

Return Of The Blind Dead (1973)

Second of the Blind Dead movies. 91min imdb

Recap:

So the villagers celebrate that the village has been templarfree for 500 years now, and the fiance of the mayor tries to rekindle her romance with the man who engineer’s the fireworks. However, the local idiot sheds a young woman’s blood to revive the blind dead who promptly poop the party (why? They won’t tell us, but it may well be because he is an idiot).

So there is a new batch of templars in this one: in the first movie they were hung, and then the birds ate their eyes. In this one they were blinded with torches and then burned on the pyre (which makes me wonder how they still got cloaks). Oh, and this time they are not so much into bloodsucking anymore. Generally it feels like the first one had more sex and violence in it (though I would have to re-watch it to be sure), and of course it had a great final plot twist that this one has so totally not. However, this one has much more plot in it and is by far not as slow-paced and longwinding. So while they’re both far from perfect I still say that both are pretty good, and the second one is a bit more entertaining. Enjoy.

Movie 91min

Trailer

Related movie:

Devil Times Five (1974)

Five nasty brats find a group of the dumbest adults ever. With Leif Garrett. 78min imdb

Recap:

There is a bus accident, but five children survive and make it to a remote house where there is even a group of adults that they can play with. These adults are quite busy with themselves and also incredibly stupid, so it takes them forever to realize that the children are homicidal maniacs.

Now this is not literally a comedy, it isn’t even a conventional horror comedy, and yet it is (… well, yes, it is a little slow-paced and it takes a while until it picks up momentum, but still it is) an astonishingly funny movie. I guess I like the kids’ playful approach to killing. At one point the boys even bother to bring some gasoline just because they know that one of the girls likes it hot.

So all I want to say is that this movie is a treat.

Fun fact: costar Leif Garrett may be forgotten now, but he has had one Top10 hit in the USA.

Movie 78min

Trailer

The Last House On Dead End Street (1973)

A former prison inmate hates society, and his plot for revenge includes making a horror movie. 78min imdb

Recap:

Terry Hawkins is a small time crook who has just spent a year in jail. He blames hates the world instead of himself and is longing for revenge. He has experience with stag films and has connections to the pornography scene which has the problem that everything has been shown and seen already. Now he gathers a crew and makes himself a name by shooting a movie in which he chokes a man. Then he and his crew gather a group of designated victims.

The Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell was a movie of about 180min that was shown in 1973 on the Cannes and Berlin festivals and for a short time in some american cinemas. However an actress sued producer/writer/director/actor Roger Watkins because of her nude scenes. A 78min butchered version was released as Fun House in 1977 and as The Last House On Dead End Street in 1979. The original version however remained lost and became the center of all kinds of legends.

But we still can watch the butchered version, and that is an intense and dark and sometimes even surreal experience. There is nothing normal in it, just hatred and violence. It is a movie about movie making that can be watched on a meta level. Also, it is a porn that replaces the act of reproduction with violence, so it’s a good thing that google/youtube is an american company, because violence is not much of a problem for americans, so we can watch it there because Terry Hawkins is just a harmless murderer instead of an evil pornographer.

This movie is definitely very interesting to watch. It’s said that it had a budget of $3000, but the director claims that he had spent 2200 of it on amphetamines. There are not many nobudget movies as impressive as this one. Sure it doesn’t leave a nice impression, but as a disturbing movie it has really passed the test of time. Even though it’s just a butchered movie I say it’s very, very good.

Movie 77min

Trailer

The House On Cuckoo Lane (2014)

The hunt for a mysterious video destroys the life of a horror nerd. 82min imdb

Recap:

So there is this dude with a huge collection of horror VHSs and DVDs, and since he has a small bedroom in a big house we assume that he lives with his parents. Having seen about everything, he now wants to watch The House On Cuckoo Lane, a movie that may well be extremely bad, but who cares since it is extremely rare. He talks to a lot of people to get a copy, but that’s just runtime padding because it’s a dream that leads him to a copy hidden in an abandoned farmhouse. From now on on he is addicted to this movie, his life goes down the drain and his girlfriend leaves him. So he returns to the Hawk, one of the video dealers who did not sell him a copy.

The movie looks promising until you take a closer look. The hunt for an obscure video sounds interesting, just as a movie which is so disturbing that it takes control of your mind. Oh, and there are people with animal masks in it. I like that.

I think that this could have become a dirty, disturbing trip into the depths of madness and addiction, even with its low budget. However the director/star/coauthor of the movie refuses to go to where it hurts. It may be a lack of either inspiration or dedication, but it’s probably both.

The best thing I can say about this is that it made me want to watch The Last House On Dead End Street (1973) which is the 78min edit of The Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell, an obscure 180min horror movie that may well be extremely bad, but it was shown on one festival and then never released, so of course everybody wants to watch it.

Movie 80min

Trailer

Same title, but so much more interesting:

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Most legendary slasher movie ever. Directed and co-written by Tobe Hooper. 83min imdb

Recap:

In Muerto County there is an especially vile case of grave robbery, so the siblings Sally and Franklin go there to look after their grandfather’s grave, along with three friends. On their way back they decide to stop the grandfather’s house, and Pam and Kirk want to swim.

In the past I have only watched a family friendly edit of this. Now for the first time I saw the full 83min and I must say that I am most impressed. This is one of best horror movies ever. There is almost no runtime padding except for some dialog among the main characters which really helps no one. The rest of the movie strictly serves the story, with the parts summing up to a whole so perfectly as they usually don’t, especially not in slasher movies. And Hooper himself, surely not the worst in the industry, never managed to do something quite like this ever again. Which of course is cool. With this one masterpiece he is ahead of most writers and directors, including many blockbuster makers.

Reminder

In the comment section they say that this doesn’t work in USA and Canada, so in case of doubt please pick a german server for your VPN.

Movie 83min

Trailer

and then some extra footage

Not Hooper’s best work, but the song is a timeless classic.

Rabid (1977)

Movie 91min

Trailer

On Cronenberg World, vampirism is a disease much like the rabies. 91min imdb

Recap:

Rose has a motorcycle accident and is picked up by the ambulance of the nearest hospital, which happens to be an institute for plastic surgery where she is given some kind of stem cell treatment. You can imagine that stem cells were rather experimental back in 1977, so from now on she can no longer digest conventional food. Instead she starts hugging people to death, sucking their blood with a proboscis that she keeps in an additional vagina hidden in her armpit. But you know what mosquitoes are like, they spread diseases, in this case: the Vampirabies which turn people into rabid bloodbingers. This disease is quite deadly, especially when you shoot the infected as part of the containment strategy (the other part is handing out vaccination certificates). I would like to file this as a holiday movie because when fighting this epidemic, shooting Santa is just a collateral damage (but then I won’t because only one Santa slayed just isn’t enough).

I guess it’s quite obvious that I like this movie, and why not? People say that this is far from being one of Cronenberg’s better movies, and I don’t disagree. The narrative is a bit choppy, it feels a bit as if they have had a script for a much longer movie and then removed every scene that wasn’t indispensable. Well whatever. I liked it. It is a good movie, it is well done and contains a lot of good ideas. I sure would love to re-watch Videodrome and watch those other Cronenberg movies which are considered better, but there’s nothing wrong (and much right) with this movie.

How Not To Make A Horror Film (2015)

Docu 60min

Trailer

Mathew J. Wilkinson’s documentary about the failure that his first feature film was. 61min imdb

Recap:

Now this is one promising title, isn’t it? I expected an hour of footage from abysmal movies, making fun of them, explaining why they don’t work and maybe how they could be done be better.

However, what we get is a rather sad film about a man who goes to the desert with A$ 30k, tries to shoot a movie, loses his lead actor, has both makeup girls involved in a car crash and spends a total of not 30k but 57k to finally come home with film footage that indeed in a way resembles the movie that he wanted to make. Too bad though that the camera did not react well to the weather, and ruined much of the film stock.

At this point of the docu, the lesson that I had learned was: when you don’t got the knowledge nor the experience nor the funding, then you better don’t make a feature film, especially not in the outbacks. What’s wrong with shooting in your neighborhood? What’s wrong with making short films? Sure, few people watch short films, and yet they are shown on festivals, so they can bring you not only experience but also reputation. And after showing them on festivals you can upload them on YouTube where you reach all the people who actually watch short films. Also I will never forget just how much Following (1998) has impressed me. It’s not a great movie, not at all, but it works. It was done without a budget, carefully scripted around the locations and props they had access to, and in the end they had a movie that really worked and didn’t even look cheap. Because they knew what they were doing. And that’s why Christopher Nolan is doing big budget stuff today.

Mathew J. Wilkinson, however, was positively destroyed and in debt after his first attempt as a movie maker. And then there is this plot twist: Wilkinson keeps saying things like that he’d rather be a failure at what he loves than a success at what he hates, the success of indie film makers is not money, it’s the next gig, and the film is the filmmaker’s baby that he wants to show to the world, no matter how many people will call this baby ugly. Which proves that Wilkinson is a clever man indeed, because now we all sympathize with him, and we are eager to watch The Nullarbor Nymph (2012) which he shills as his first actually published movie… Which doesn’t even seem to be true, because there’s also Don’t Show Mother (2010),but that’s about domestic violence and probably too depressing to fit the narrative, while everybody is ready to watch a T&A exploitation flick to show some sympathy for him (well, I am anyway).

All in all it was an interesting look into the world of independent film making, and it makes reviewing indie flicks even harder. I guess I have mentioned once or twice my admiration for people who make movies because of their love for the cinema and not for the money. Also there are quite a few nobudget flicks that I watched but not reviewed because I admired the filmmakers but disliked their films. I will have to learn how to emphasize the good things about indie films without lying about the bad aspects.

Horror House (2012)

Recap:

Since he no longer produces movies, Lloyd Kaufman is a real estate agent now, and he tries to sell the Horror House to you by telling five stories that have happened there. Of course, being a former movie producer does not automatically qualify you for a movie cast, but I did like his performance. It may well be that they were very careful about not asking too much of him, but I still say that he’s the highlight of the movie. And when I say that Kaufman is the highlight of a movie, maybe you get a hunch that this one is not so super special.

Each of the five stories starts either more or less interesting, some build up a bit of suspense and some don’t, but none of them really convinces in the end. By the way: the most predictable of the endings includes a practical effect that was quite decent. And that’s about it. No violence, no gore, no nudity and few special effects. Of course a movie can be great without all of these, but this one isn’t. Not that it’s bad, it’s just the most average movie I can think of right now. No, wait, that’s not strong enough. Let me try this: it’s the averagest movie ever. Or how about this one: this is the Mount Average of movies. imdb

Sleepaway Camp 2 (1988)

Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers

Careless fun summer slasher. 80min imdb

Movie 80min

Trailer

Recap:

The movie starts with some campers telling horror stories. We get a recap of part one, plus we are told that the slasher a) has spent some years at the madhouse and b) has undergone plastic surgery and c) has been set free recently. Then we are shown that the slasher d) is working at this camp as a counselor and e) continues slashing.

So they don’t waste time and get the movie going right away. What follows is routine slashing, and it’s performed quite casually. One might say that slashing is more enjoyable when the slasher does his job with earnest dedication, but this more tongue-in-cheek approach works, in my opinion, quite well, too. The murders themselves are partly routine stuff, but mostly fun and original, and there is a decent amount of gratuitous nudity and sex. So as long as you don’t ask how the victims’ disappearances could be covered up with lies without someone actually missing them for such a long time, you have a very decent fun slasher. By no means it’s special, but it very okay and watchable.

Nosferatu In Venice (1988)

Italian attempt to cash in on Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979),starring Donald Pleasance, Christopher Plummer, Klaus Kinski and Venice. 97min imdb

Movie 93min

Trailer (German)

Recap:

So there is Donald Pleasance, looking a little lost when worrying about somebody else than Michael Myers. He’s basically a catholic priest, very catholic, drinking the blood of Christ (wine) and eating his body (sammich) while the adults are discussing the important stuff. Then there is Christopher Plummer as the ghostbuster. He vanhelsings across Venice where Nosferatu last was seen. Plummer is always good, especially when he doesn’t sing Edelweiß, and yet he makes me feel the void that Peter Cushing has left behind. Then there is Kinski with a Johnny Winter wig (that’s what you get for not shaving your head, I guess). Most of the time he is just standing there, being himself, getting the chicks. Oh, and then of course there is the star of the movie, Venice, also just standing there and being herself, being just as worn down and ugly as Kinski, but at the same time even more beautiful and enchanting than him.

The 1979 Nosferatu by Kinski and Herzog was such a success that it’s a small surprise that the Italians wanted a piece of the cake. What’s surprising however is how slow this movie is, and not slow in a let’s-pad-the-runtime-with-redundant-dialogue way, it’s more like a we-paid-for-Venice-now-let’s-make-the-most-of-it way. Maybe it’s just because that when they had spent the budget they were far from having finished the script, so they just had to make the most of what they had. So of course the movie was a quirky little flop. But I’m cool with that. I have no idea what I have missed with all that stuff that never was shot. I can only judge what I was actually shown, and that sure was good enough for me. The exterior shots were made in Venice, so you will hardly ever see a movie with more chocolate for the eyes. There’s Kinski in it, and even when he doesn’t even try to deliver a decent performance he is still Kinski, dominating the screen (except for a few occasions when his co-star Venice steals the scene). So, yes, the movie is trash, and it’s stylish, and I like it!

Lethal Nightmare (1991)

No budget Super8 movie by the Polonia Brothers about three young men and their hallucinations. 63min imdb

Movie ca 63min

Trailer

Recap:

So there are three young adults home alone, and they start having nightmares and hallucinations, and right at the beginning the cat goes missing,so these nightmares in a way may well be real.

Yeah, and that’s about all, storywise. The acting is terrible. The sound is, well, it’s a good thing that they re-recorded the sound, but still the no-talent voice acting adds to the no-talent acting. Speaking strictly for me: occasionally the movie becomes a bit eerie because I just cannot predict where the nightmares are heading, and in these precious and rare moments the filming on Super8 actually contributes a bit of surrealism. But all in all it’s an ultra cheap and ungifted amaturd. It must have been so much fun to make it, and it was neither the first nor the last release of the Polonia Brothers (who make the Shaw Brothers look like the Warner Brothers). However, people who actually pay for this will most certainly want their money back… unless of course they are raiders of hidden or lost treasures. For me it is okay to watch this kind of stuff, off the mainstream, made for fun and not for money, but to be honest: this is not a good movie, really not. If you don’t feel some love for nerdy outsider stuff you are just going to hate it.

The Hideous Sun Demon (1958)

Old-fashioned lowbudget monster action about a guy who turns into a lizard man when exposed to sunlight. 74min imdb

Movie 74min

Trailer

Recap:

So there is this scientist who is bitten by a new radioactive isotope. From now on the sunlight temporarily reevolves him into an incredible and green lizard man. Thus he avoids the sunlight as good as he can but turns out to be quite incompetent. He kills a mobster in self defense, and what’s worse: while on the run from the police he hits a person with his car, a person who is a copper, so the homicidal monster is hunted down by coppers hungry for revenge.

What I think is interesting about this movie: four years later, in 1962, another scientist was bitten by a radioactive isotope, and from then on anger was the catalyst that temporarily turned him into an incredible and green hulk. So I like to imagine that Stan Lee has watched this movie before he invented the Incredible Hulk. This, of course, is not really probable since the Hulk was all grey in the first issues until a coloring error looked even better. Yet I cherish the thought.

Apart from that, the movie is, well, okay. I like monster horror, I like vintage movies, and if you like the same this is just right for your regular fix.

Tombs Of The Blind Dead (1972)

Satanist temple knights who were excommunicated and whose eyes were eaten by the birds rely on their ears when zombieing around. 101min imdb

Movie 100min age restricted

Movie family fun edit ca. 93min

Trailer

Recap:

So there is this love triangle: Virginia wants Roger, but Roger is after Bella, so Virginia jumps off the train and wants to sleep in the old abandoned abbey. At this point we’re almost half an hour into the movie and so far absolutely nothing has happened. But then, while reading a book, at timestamp 27:50, she flips to the last page to see how the story ends, and you know know that in catholic horror movies no sin goes unpunished. So the graves open up and undead satanist templers emerge, complete with live and healthy horses. The next day, the police asks Roger and Bella for an identification of Virginia’s body, but the attendant at the morgue has had a clown for breakfast and, trying to be funny, presents the wrong corpse. So Virginia later has to rise from the dead and kill him.

All in all this movie is unnecessarily long, and the amount of gore is unnecessarily small, but it has its moments and these temple knights are extremely cool, and the last plot twist is Fun with a capital f. So I say yes to the blind dead. I like it, it is a good movie and it doesn’t even bother me when the dialogue permanently switches between English and Portuguese (or is it Spanish?). I like to believe that the movie was mutilated for the international release and that this is a restored version.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Foster siblings Angela and Ricky go to summer camp. And summer camp just wouldn’t be the same without some decent slasher shenanigans. 84min imdb

Movie 84min

Trailer

Recap

So the movie starts with a freak motorboat accident, killing a family except for one child, which now is sent to grow up at the aunt’s place.

Years later, cousins and now foster siblings Angela and Ricky go to summer camp. There, people who interact with Angela have not much of a life expectancy. The first victim indeed is a pedo rapist, but then the reasons for the killings become more and more arbitrary.

In the end there is a plot twist, maybe to explain why the killer is insane and/or maybe to gross out the audience and/or to add a detail to make this movie stand out, to make it “different” and “special”. To me, this twist seemed rather forced and there is nothing really “special” about this movie. But it’s really a well done and above average slasher that deserved its success both when it comes to the profit it made and to the sequels which I will sure give a try.

Criminally Insane (1975)

Fat Ethel slashes everybody who gets between her and the fridge. 61min imdb

Movie 61min

Trailer

Recap

So there is Ethel, she has mental problems, so she gets shock treatment. Unlike her quack she knows that electroshocks don’t work, she prefers eating. Her grandmother is the first one to try to get between Ethel and the food. It doesn’t end well.

For me, watching this movie was a dare, because it’s marketed as a bad taste exploitation slasher comedy, the worst of the worst, making fun of the fat, yadda yadda yadda yadda, you must feel the subconscious need to punish yourself to switch on a movie like this. But guess what, I have seen worse. In a way, this really is a movie. The storytelling, the cinematography, the editing, all this is done as if they really tried to make an actual movie, and Youtube channels that make money with commercial breaks are uploading several turds every day which are so much worse.

I didn’t read too many of the reviews, but I bet that there are people who will tell you that this is indeed a tragedy and that Ethel and her sister are some metaphorical hyperbole analogies or whatever for our constant and futile struggle with reality. Of course they are wrong, this is a piece of trash and not a piece of art after all. But at least they are closer to the truth than those who accuse this movie of fatshaming or whatever. It is what it is. It’s not a good movie, but it’s a good thing that I watched it.

X-ray (1981)

While receiving a routine check-up, a woman finds herself stranded on the hospital’s eighth floor, while someone dressed as a doctor is intent on her never leaving, even if it means killing any staff member who comes into contact with her. 89min imdb

Movie 89min age restricted

Trailer

Recap:

This is the official imdb summary:
“While receiving a routine check-up, a woman finds herself stranded on the hospital’s eighth floor, while someone dressed as a doctor is intent on her never leaving, even if it means killing any staff member who comes into contact with her.”

And well, yes, the description is accurate. I was naive, so full of wishful thinking, I was really hoping for a serious dose of psychological hospital horror, complete with mind games and power games and what have you. And in a way, that’s what I got, just not in the way I expected. In the opening credits they say that this is a Golan-Globus production, which is a huge red flag if you have ever seen Superman 4 or even an episode of the never ending Lemon Popsicle franchise.

But then, big surprise, while the movie was so totally not what I was hoping for, it turned out to be a really decent slasher. Some of the murders are really good, some scenes are pleasently absurd, there are even some big and bizarre laughs in it.

This is not arthouse, nor is it Oscar material, it is not a cinema treasure full of images that were never seen before. But it’s fun, it’s just what you want to see when you pick a horror movie. And I like it.

Seizure (1974)

A weekend with family and friends is interrupted by a eerie home invasion. Oliver Stone’s first feature film as director. 98min imdb

Movie 94min

Trailer

Recap:

So there is this guy and his family, and they are expecting guests. Then there is this home invasion, and we assume that these invaders are the escapees from the madhouse they have mentioned earlier.

Well, yes, what do you do if you’re a Vietnam veteran who does small jobs in the movie industry. For example you could co-write and direct a horror movie, why not? How hard can it be? Actually it was quite hard, there is an abundance of stories about what a stupid idea it was to have the whole cast and crew live in the house which was also the movie location, and how difficult it was to get a copy of the movie and bring it back to the USA. The biggest problem however was, in my eyes, Oliver Stone himself. Later on he became the award winning darling of many (not really including me), but back then he hardly knew what he wanted nor what he was doing. Yes, the movie is both quite suspenseful and surreal, I have seen so much worse, but on the other hand I constantly get the feeling that I am looking at an attempt to create arthouse horror with a talent which may be huge or not but which is so totally not honed. It sure is worth to give it try for reasons of curiosity, but I really say it’s rather so-so. There are movies which were made with lower standards that I enjoyed more because they actually met these lower standards.

Children Of The Corn (1984)

An adult couple is stranded in a smalltown where they have murdered all the adults. Based on the story by Stephen King. 92min imdb

Movie 92min

Trailer

Recap:

Gatlin, Nebraska, is a God-fearing, all American smalltown, so when the young local prophet Isaac commands the murder of all adults, the kids of course obey. He speaks the words of God after all. In the beginning of the movie there is this young apostate who is trying to run away, but it’s really mostly about the adult couple that is stranded there.

I guess the horror of this movie originally came from the children, lost in their blood frenzy. And that’s not eve wrong, creepy children are an important movie trope for good reasons, and this movie really delivers. However, I could not fully immerse into this movie the way I was supposed to. I was just too distracted by the recent reality that has a whole army of adult Isaacs spreading lies and hatred in the name of the lord. Of course, reality often copies art, and you cannot really blame
a 1984 movie for not being as horrible as the 2021 reality. Maybe one can see this movie as a time capsule from different, more innocent days long gone.

Of course the Stephen King fans used to complain about how it’s not close enough to the original short story, and that may even be true. However, they also used to complain about The Shining, and this movie is undisputed today. Children Of The Corn may be not as good as The Shining, but it is good, maybe even very good.

The Brides Of Dracula (1960)

Vampire lord count Meinster hypnotises a young teacher and invades the school she’s teaching at. With Peter Cushing. 85min imdb

Movie 103min

Trailer

Recap:

So there is this young teacher on her way to a boarding school for girls, and she meets poor count Meistner who is chained by his evil mother. She frees him, and now the count who is indeed a vampire has access to a hypnotised teacher and an entire girl school. Good thing that van Helsing is on his way.

No Dracula in this one, no Christopher Lee, a quite nice movie for everybody who loves vampires, Hammer or Peter Cushing, but absolutely nothing special. Especially since the only version I found is of not so good quality, image wise.

The Color Out Of Space (2010)

A meteor crashlands on earth and disappears, poisening the soil of a farm and sealing the fate of the farmers. 86min imdb

Movie 85min

Trailer

Recap:

***SPOILER WARNING*** In the last 19 words of this I tell what a color out of space looks like.***

The son of a WW2 soldier hears that his father has gone back to germany, so he follows him. In germany he meets a german who who tells him how he met his father after the war. Then he tells him what happened before the war: there was this meteor crashlanding downhill of the Gärtener farm. Scientists examined it very diligently until they could declare with scientific precision that they were positively clueless about the nature of this meteor which over time had dissolved, it’s ingredients poisoning the soil of the Gärtener farm.

The horror! As the mother goes insane, the Gärtener family retreats to solitude, avoiding contact with the villagers, having nowhere to go, awaiting their fate…. This by the way is quite similar to The Secret Of Marrowbone (which unfortunately is not available on YouTube), a movie that I recently watched. It was so overwhelming to watch the story unfold because we only were slowly, bit by bit, exposed to just how terrible the fate of the Marrowbone really was. The Gärteners in comparison are quite annoying. This movie so totally resembles a german made for TV movie, insofar as the storytelling is sluggishly slow, the cast desperately avoids overacting to a point when they stop acting altogether and just say their lines, horror elements are reduced to the bare minimum and then some more, and of course the storytelling has to happen on three timelevels, present day, after the war and before the war, because one of the time levels is important and the other two are perfectly fit to do nothing for the story. The horrible fate of the Gärteners could have been a truly soultearing experience if only the makers of this movie had not decided waste this opportunity and to make a detached, uninvolved, merely observing and describing document of lameness instead. Purple. They shot the movie in b&w so that purple would look sufficiently like a color out of space.

Zombies Of Mora-Tau (1957)

A crew of treasure hunters is after diamonds which are guarded by voodoo zombies. With Marjorie Eaton. 69min imdb

Movie 69min

Trailer

Recap:

So there are these treasure hunter trying to salvage diamonds from a ship that sank a long time ago. Several crews have tried this before, and they are all dead because the wreck is guarded by voodoo zombies. Two things are different this time: the crew’s diver is the love interest of the granddaughter of a zombie’s widow, and this time the old lady helps the treasure hunters. She wants to see the diamonds found and the zombie curse broken.

Well, this is a plain and simple adventure movie which uses zombies instead of natives, pirates or wild animals. It sure is not a good movie but it’s still better than most of the old zombie movies. What else? Well, in the beginning they use the term “twilight zone” two years before the TV show, and they got underwater zombies long before Shock Waves, so you can say that the film is innovative. Ach, and the grandmother indeed is played by Imperator Sheev Palpatine (don’t believe me, just search for “marjorie eaton palpatine”).

I Drink Your Blood (1970)

A very small small town is invaded by a gang of rabid hippie satanists. 90min imdb

Movie 88min age restriced

Trailer

Recap:

So the hippies are coming to town, and you know what hippies are like: they are violent and they take drugs and worship Satan and are a menace to society. After they have mistreated the big sister and the grandpa of Pete, the boy discovers a rabid dog, which comes in handy for his revenge plot.

What we have here is a nasty, gory exploitation flick cashing in on the Manson murders, and it’s a bun full of fun. Usually I dislike bad movies, but this is one of the few exceptions that are REALLY so-bad-that-it’s-good! It’s not just gross, there are also many (involuntarily) funny bits in it. Also, there is a black man (person of color) , an actor from India playing the part of an Indian (native American), several men with hard hats and, in the end, even some cops in uniform, so I had to remind myself several times that the Village People had their debut not before 1977.

What really grosses me out however is how youtube handles historic documents like this: on the one hand it is age restricted, which in a way is cool, let’s protect the youngsters and leave the fun to the adults.But what nasty things are they saying that even the age restricted version had to be muted for a minute or so?Also I am pretty sure that there are a few gory takes missing, so I must ask: why the age restriction when you censor it anyway?

The only thing that comforts me is that even the youtube version is quite entertaining.

Trick (2019)

It’s that time of the year when the slashers come out, and Trick keeps on coming up with new, well, ideas. 100min imdb

Movie 96min

Trailer

Recap:

So there’s this guy whose name is Patrick “Trick” Weaver or maybe not, because it may very well be that he casually switches identities whenever he sees fit. One evening he poops a Halloween party by killing pretty much every guest before he gets hit himself. He gets emergency surgery and survives, escapes, falls out of the window, survives and disappears, probably by jumping into the river, which of course means certain death, doesn’t it? Everybody except for one single cop believes that he’s dead, and that’s why everybody except for one cop is surprised that there are more Halloween party massacres in the following years. However, the slasher seems to think that his strategy does not draw enough attention, so one year he starts cop killing during the week before Halloween.

I say that the first Halloween party massacre was a good way to start the slasher movie, the bit with the cop who is the only one who believes in his theory is not new, but good enough to work for this movie, and some of the the cop killings are quite innovative. Then however, there is the Finale, and I think that it is not as good as it is long, and when there is the surprising plot twist, I did not foresee it, but at that point I just didn’t care anymore.

This movie sure is okay. Not really good, but I have seen much worse, and it surely is an adequate choice for a holiday related movie night.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures (1964)

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies.

Three young people visit the carnival where an evil voodoo lady is looking for new zombie material. Directed by Ray Dennis Stecker. 82min imdb

Movie 80min

Trailer

Recap:

The story mostly consists of an endless stream of song and dance acts. As intermissions, we see two young man and a young woman visiting the carnival. Eventually one of them is hypnotised by a voodoo lady and becomes a mixed-upzombie, committing murders at her command.

This movie is quite notorious, so I guess sooner or later I had to see it. Well, I’m glad it’s over. Many people say that this is a fascinating movie, like they just can’t believe how bad it is. Well I don’t have to believe it, I have seen it with my own eyes. What I haven’t seen though is why this is supposed to be so-bad-that-it’s-good. I guess some people appreciate Steckler’s recklessness to just grab a camera and go for it. And yes, I understand people who want to make movies so badly that they just make them, even if they don’t have a budget or a story or a clue. However, in this case I cannot enjoy the result, because nothing really happens. There’s nothing really interesting or entertaining about it. Even when there is the zombie action it’s just too little, too late.

Bowery At Midnight (1942)

Bela Lugosi leads a double life as a professor and a gangster. 61min imdb

Movie 61min

Trailer

Recap:

Bela Lugosi runs a soup kitchen in the Bowery. Wut? Wait! Bela Lugosi is a professor by day and a gangleader by night, and he uses a soup kitchen as his headquarters and recruitment office. He is an extremely friendly and well-mannered man, smiling at people even when he has them killed. Trouble is that the unsuspecting young woman that helps him is the girlfriend of one of his students.

Of course it’s always a pleasure to see Bela Lugosi, and this is a nice old fashioned crime flick, but it’s really nothing special. What bothers me most is that I found it in a list of zombie movies. So should you watch this you better not blink, or you will miss them. I don’t even tag this as a zombie movie and I recommend it only to friends of old fashioned crime movies or fans o Bela Lugosi.

Revenge Of The Zombies (1943)

John Carradine tries to create an army of voodoo zombies. With Mantan Moreland and Madame Sul-Te-Wan. 61min imdb

Movie 58min

Trailer

Recap:

So there is this man who goes to Florida because his sister has died, and he brings a friend (a cop) and his driver, a black stereotype comic relief. We soon find out that the sister has been poisoned with a zombie drug, and that’s not even the only fishy thing that’s going on.

So this one has John Carradine in it, but apart from that it’s pretty much the same as King Of The Zombies. Trouble is that Mantan Moreland this time is not zombiefied, which was the one thing that made the first movie worthwhile. I even file this one as horror, it’s not that it’s too eerie to be a comedy, but too unfunny.

Related movie:

Revolt Of The Zombies (1936)

Second zombie movie of the Halperin Brothers about a man who stops at nothing to get the girl he wants. 65min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

Boy meets girl. They get engaged. But when he finds out that she really loves another, he withdraws. Then he discovers how to zombiefy people and decides to be a ruthless man who takes what he wants, using all the people who he has zombiefied.

Well, yes, that’s the story. The Halperin Brothers have had moderate success with White Zombie, the story of a lovelorn man who uses voodoo to get what he wants and fails, and so they tried this recipe again and, well, did not really succeed. I can live well with Halperin voodoo zombies not being Romero flesh eating zombies, but this movie starts playing with the idea of using an army of zombies to wage a horrible war but then turns out to be a lukewarm love triangle with an bare minimum of creepiness. Some people (like me) will watch it because there are zombies in it, but few will not be disappointed.

Zombie 90: Extreme Pestilence (1991)

Classic gore movie by Andreas Schnaas. 75min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

So there is this new disease that turns the dead into flesh eating zombies, and a scientist proves scientifically thar even removing the heart doesn’t help, you just destroy the brain.

So much for the plot. The rest of a movie is a nonstop gore fest with people who get butchered in the very scene in which they are are introduced. No, wait, there is indeed a story arc with two dudes who are investigating the situation, but it leads nowhere.

Andreas Schnaas is not a filmmaker like Ed Wood who wanted to be a real professional, looking for investors and hiring celebs. He is more like Ray Dennis Stecker who just grabbed a camera and started filming. There is nothing that remotely resembles a plot, or acting, just a bunch of kids enjoying themselves, playpretending and imitating the trash they had seen on VHS, mostly Italian zombi/cannibal flicks, I assume. What the kid’s love best is grossing people out. There is more fake blood and more gore (including what looks like real intestines, which makes sense because professional movie props are expensive) than you see in professional movies. Wait, in a way this is a professional movie. Schnaas’ first movie was distributed internationally, and for this, his second, they even created an English dub. I read that it was meant to be a joke in the first place, but Schnaas declared it the official dub, and it’s easy to see why: it’s hilarious. A few minutes into the movie I thought “great, a comedy”, a few minutes later I thought “nah, it’s too gory to be filed as comedy”. But to be honest it’s really to silly to be a real horror movie.

This is not an actual movie-as-we-know-it. It’s crap and you cannot say anything good about it. But I’ll do it anyway. It’s far from being the worst movie ever. Some people claim that Plan 9 From Outer Space is the worst movie ever, because it won the Golden Turkey award. But that was awarded many years before Uwe Boll made the German Fried Movie, which is the worst movie that I have seen by now, and Zombie 90 really is so much better than these two movies.

Horror Of Dracula (1958)

Classic Dracula movie directed by Terence Fisher for the Hammer Studios. With Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. 82min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

Basically, this is the battle of Grand Moff Tarkin versus Count Dooku. Spoiler: the one with the cooler Star Wars movie wins.

Okay, let me try again. This is a Dracula movie, this time Harker is a vampire hunter who tries to kill Dracula but fails, but he kills the bride of Dracula, so Dracula bites him and then goes for Lucy.

Also, this is quite an international movie: the innkeeper has a very blonde (and maybe Swedish?) maid called Inga, and the country where van Helsing resides cannot be England which shares borders only with Scotland and Wales, because in this movie they cross the border with a carriage, and along the border you see on the buildings’ walls German words like Zollamtshaus and Friederickstrasse.

All in all this is a priceless historical document. It’s such a pleasure to see skilled actors working for a skilled director, the sets are not exactly big budget but they look so much better than the nobudget stuff that is shot on location nowadays. I guess that there’s pretty much blood for a 50s movie, and I guess that the faces Lucy and Mina make when they expect Dracula may have been quite suggestive back then. Yet I must say that in my personal opinion the movie today is not as overwhelming as it may once have been. But it’s still great to watch anyway.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Aenigma (1987)

A comatose college girl haunts those who did her wrong. Directed by Lucio Fulci. 90min

(VPN:D)

Recap:

So they prank a college girl, she runs away, humiliated, and is hit by a car. While she is comatose, a new girl arrives at the boarding college, and things get spooky. People involved in the prank start dying. The new girl seems to be involved somehow, and when she goes crazy she is treated by the same neurologist who has observed that the comatose girl shows abnormal reactions when people at the college die.

Well, yes, there is some kind of spooky possession involved, so Lucio Fulci is free to show all kinds of crazy or weird stuff, one of the college girls even is (or hallucinates to be) snailed to death. Then, of course, the story takes place in a boarding college, which means plenty of young women in nightgowns and 80s aerobic wear. And, by the way, Eva, the new girl, is quite naughty, and after she couldn’t get the gym teacher, she goes for her shrink.

So this movie is not deep or anything, but it’s an extremely well done movie always worth watching.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Tempus Tormentum (2018)

A mysterious stranger comes to town and is soon hunted and tortured by masked locals. 81min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

Mr. Mouse comes to town and rents a room in a motel whose owner seems to be interested in taxidermy. In his room, there is a typewriter that is extremely old, very cool, quite mysterious but (just as the motel owner) completely irrelevant for the movie. At the diner, Mr Mouse catches the attention of three local men. Later, they put on masks and hunt him through the night and torture him in various ways until they feel like the time is right to do what they planned.

The movie starts promising, in a way. Okay, so nothing much happens, but you get the feeling that this is not the next generic nobudget slasher padding the runtime, it feels more like they are setting up a deep and sophisticated story, and the light and the props and the camera angles all look good, signaling “don’t worry, friend, trust us. We know exactly what we are doing.” Trouble is: it’s a lie. Director James Rewucki knows very well how to create impressive images, but writer James Rewucki has no idea how to craft an interesting story. At least that’s my opinion. It may very well be that I’m just to dumb to dig a decent arthouse horror. So I guess that people who like unconventional horror may give it a try and make up their own minds. It may very well be that I’ll give it another try another time, and I’m pretty sure that I will take a look at Rewucki’s other feature film which is also on YouTube. It’s got a significantly better imdb rating, but that may be because it’s got only 93 votes so far, many of them probably coming from Rewucki’s artist gang.

⭐⭐

Wrong Turn (2003)

Degenerated, inbred hillbilly family that feeds on trespassers. 84min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

So there is this family of degenerated, inbred hillbillies who feed on trespassers….. Wait. I know what you want to say, but this time it’s different: no butcher’s apron, no mask made of human flesh and, most importantly, no chainsaw. But apart from that, people in West Virginia are very much like Texans, but I’m not complaining. I guess horror has subgenres with recurring tropes, like we know what we get when we watch a zombie/vampire/etc. movie. Does this subgenre have a name yet? Maybe Hillbilly Horror? Would sound right to my ears.

Anyway, all I want to say is yes. YES! This movie works on many levels, it’s got horror, suspense hand a fair share of gore. The script is not exactly arthouse, it doesn’t even meet most of the usual Hollywood requirements like conflict/plot twists/character development /hero’s journey/whatever. But it works. It doesn’t insult my intelligence, thanks for that. And then the production design. I guess this was the filthiest, most disgusting cabin I’ve seen so far, and you simply must love the car cemetery with the wide range of specimen that hint at how long this family has been living their special lifestyle. All in all this is a very complete and enjoyable movie.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

House By The Lake (2017)

House by the Lake (2017)

A struggling married couple try to reconnect at an idyllic lake house, but their relationship is tested when their young daughter begins to fixate on an imaginary friend that may or may not be real. 77min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

So there is this family that (temporarily) moves into the house by the lake. The parents are in the last phase of their marriage, they don’t even care to stop bitching when the child can hear them. The child, by the way, is somewhere “on the spectrum”. Being “on the spectrum” means not only that you’re an autist, it also means that the people around you believe that “autist” is a bad word. Then there is the nanny, who is a double threat to the mother: she is younger and hotter than her, and she is a trained professional with a natural empathy and establishes contact with the kid in no time. And then there is the old perv who totally ignores the mother and goes for the child immediately. All in all the situation is pretty dreadful, and nobody worries too much when the kid is having a new “imaginary” friend, the Fish Man. Not until the girl is missing, that is.

Well yes, sounds very interesting. Trouble is: it isn’t. Not really. The story unfolds, occasionally I wonder, if the kid is autistic, shouldn’t it have a tantrum in this situation?, but then I’m not an expert, and then the story unfolds some more, and I start to realize that this is not a horror movie, it’s a mystery thriller with more mystery and less thriller, and then there is a final plot twist that is not really surprising, and that’s all folks. Of course they could have added more suspense, a little creepier, maybe cut away a bit of the long winding drama stuff or make the movie longer. But maybe they just hadn’t the skills or the imagination.

Yes, you can watch it. It’s not bad, not at all. I have seen crap that was so much worse. Trouble is: it just isn’t good. Not a bit.

⭐⭐⭐

Nightmare City (1980)

Fast zombies that use weapons and drink blood. Directed by Umberto Lenzi. 91min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

An airplane is contaminated with radiation, and after the touchdown a horde of zombies unboards. A journalist witnesses this and tries to warn the people with a newsbreak, but his boss takes him off the air because the military wants to keep the whole thing covered. So they switch back to the daytime schedule which soon is interrupted by a live broadcast of zombies feeding on a bunch of dancers.

Sounds promising, doesn’t it? I really thought wow, this is one splendid satire. File it as comedy, no wait, don’t. For a comedy it’s got a little too much gore. However, this movie starts with an incredible velocity, and the zombies are guano crazy. They are strong, they are fast, they use weapons.

Q: how can this movie keep up its speed?

A: it doesn’t. The movie introduces a bunch of supporting characters and then forgets about them and then returns to them to kill them. Then the girlfriend or wife of the journalist says all the pseudo intellectual blahblah that they apparently wanted to have in the script, then he slaps her in the face, which makes the feminist bitch horny as hell…. Wut? Well, yes, to tell the truth, the movie industry is dominated by morons. They wanted to make cash with just another zombie movie, so they made a list of tropes they could use and created something that resembled a story. I bet when they found out that one third of the film was brilliant they said “way cool! One third is so much more than we could ever have hoped for!” and the sad thing is: they were right. The One-eyed is king among the blind. So I guess when I give 3* for brainless braineater movies because they are good enough to fix our zombie cravings, then I must give this one 4*. I do so reluctantly, though.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Panic (1982)

Bloodthirsty monster in the sewers of a British city. 95min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

After the opening credits there is one of the fastest monster origins ever: there is an alarm in a laboratory, we get a short glimpse of the monster, and then there is a CEO who wants to cover the accident up. In the sixth minute of the movie we see a couple that wants to take a joyride in a parked car, and you know what happens next.

I watched this movie because I have read that it was published as Zombi IV in Australia and as Zombie IV in Greece. However, there is one (admittedly quite ugly) bloodsucking monster that carries a virus which might be contagious if it didn’t kill its victims, and it’s occasionally shown to remind you that you are watching a horror movie. And before you ask: there aren’t too many murders, and they happen mostly off screen. Really the story is more about assistant scientist Jane who wants to develop an antidote, the army that wants to bomb the whole city and Kirk, who is a captain and wants to see the monster dead. All in all this movie movie is so incredibly dumb that I do not even want to count in how many ways it is disappointing. What bothers me most is that this film, miserable as it is, is far from being the worst movie I ever watched.

⭐⭐

City Of The Living Dead (1980)

1980 horror classic by Lucio Fulci 93min imdb

(VPN:D)

Review:

In Dunwich, a priest commits suicide, and this sin is serious enough to open the gates of hell. A psychic woman in New York sees this and dies, well, sort of. A journalist saves her from being buried alive, and together they travel to Dunwich, where a whole lot of strange things are happening, like people who see the ghost of the priest start crying blood, etc…

Yes, a lot of things are happening, involving not just astonishing amounts of blood, but also brains, intestines, rats and maggots. What puzzles me, though, is that all these elements don’t really make a story. Let’s make this and we can do that and then there is something we could also do, and then we have a finale and then a surprise twist that doesn’t even have to make sense, we have a runtime of like 90min and enough shock effects and that’s good enough for us.

Also, the story takes place in Dunwich, which is a Lovecraft town name, but I cannot find how hell and catholic sins are related to Lovecraft.

What can I say? Many call this a masterpiece, and yes, in a way it is a masterpiece of the horror genre, but only if you don’t too much storywise.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trick Or Treat (1986)

Halloween teenie movie about a high school boy whose favorite metal singer talks to him from beyond the grave. 98min imdb

(VPN:D)

Review:

So there is Eddie, a high school boy whose favorite metal singer has died. A radio DJ gives him the only vinyl copy of Sammi Curr’s final album and tells him that he will broadcast a tape recording of the album on Halloween. Eddie starts experimenting with playing records backwards and indeed makes contact with Sammi. This seems like a good thing because now Eddie can stand his ground against his bullies. But while Eddie is a true metalhead and thus a truly gentle man, Sammi is up to no good and plans to return from the grave .

Yes, those were the eighties. Technology has improved since then, high school bullies and lying pastors are basically the same today, and to be honest, things have gone a little downhill for fashion, music and movies. This is an 80s movie. Sure, it’s not Back To The Future, and when they tried to get a sitcom star they had to go with Marc Price instead of Michael J. Fox. But still this movie is a carefree piece of fun. Imdb lists it as horror and comedy and music movie. The latter is not entirely correct. There is not that much music in it, for a big part of the movie the music is played backwards, and the soundtrack was provided mostly by Fastway. While it is true that Fast Eddie Clarke has been the first guitarist of Motörhead, getting rid of him was a giant leap in the right direction for Lemmy.

By the way way, small parts in this movie are played by Gene Simmons and Ozzy Ozbourne. Not everybody will remember, but Ozzy has not always been an obnoxious TV celeb like Donald Trump or Bruce Jenner. Back in his days he was a legend, in a way even bigger than Gene Simmons, and I guess for many people he still is today.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Bunni (2013)

Entertaining slasher for the Halloween season. 71min imdb

(VPN:D) this is the 71min version. The 73min version cannot be embedded, so there is a direct link in the picture to the left.

Review:

It’s Helloween, and two couples of twenty somethings are loitering in front of the old, abandoned novelty shop. An old man warns them that this place is haunted, so they burgle it right away. The first jumpscare, of course, is just a joke, the slashing doesn’t start before a few minutes later.

The first half our is dedicated to the exposition, the shorter part is about the slasher’s origin, the longer part is about the characterisation of Rick The Prick. Why? Because! He definitely is not the center of the movie, but his part is played by the writer/editor/director of the movie who obviously enjoyed being the dude with the infinite amount of girlfriends. I think that with half an hour this is a pretty long exposition, especially since the movie has according to imdb and filmstarts.de an official runtime of 60min. Which makes me wonder because the youtube edit has a lengthy mid credit scene.

Anyway, is it good or not so? I’ll say it’s okay. It’s got no surprising plot twists, and it’s not new or special or anything, but it’s very decent holiday related binge material.

⭐⭐⭐

Shock Waves (1976)

Peter Cushing and John Carradine in a movie about underwater nazi zombies. 84min imdb

(VPN:D)

Review:

John Carradine is the captain of a small very old ship with a crew of two and a four tourists on board. Eventually they are hit by a huge ghostship and find themselves stranded on a forgotten island with a hotel that has been abandoned by everybody but Peter Cushing. During World War 2 he had been in charge of a ship full of underwater nazi zombies, and when the war was lost he just sank the ship and retired to said hotel.

What’s not to like about those blonde underwater nazi zombies with their awesome dark goggles? Often it’s really badass when they come out of the water. And, well, that’s where it starts with what I don’t like about them: sometimes they just kneel in the shallow water until they stand up. I wonder why and that sometimes ruins my immersion. And wait until you find out how you can kill an underwater nazi zombie. Spoiler: it’s not about destroying their brain. And while we’re at it: yes, this is a zombie movie, but, no, this is by no means a gore movie. Every single kill is unbloody and some even happen off camera, which is a bit untypical for that kind of film.

Oh yes, this movie has it’s moments, and I sure like the extra twists they add towards the end just to make you feel a little extra miserable. And as I mentioned above, the zombies in many scenes are quite badass.

So all in all this is a very watchable movie. It’s not a masterpiece, it doesn’t keep some of its promises, but it’s very, very watchable.

⭐⭐⭐

The House By The Cemetery (1981)

86min

(VPN:D)

Sound

English

Captions

English auto

Classic horror movie by Lucio Fulci.

Review:

So there is this scientist from New York who has to move to Boston to finish a work that a colleague started before, so they tell him, he killed his his wife and then himself. At this point, his son starts seeing a ghost girl on a photograph.

In Boston he moves into the house where his colleague Petersen had lived, and he finds out that Petersen wasn’t doing the research that he was supposed to do, he instead was obsessed with a long dead surgeon called Freudstein.

In fact, the place where he and his family are staying now is the Freudstein mansion, and guess what, this place is haunted.

Not going to lie, this movie has ghosts and atmosphere and shock and suspense and a fair amount of blood. While watching this I thought that I would have got to complain about all the plot holes and how the various elements of the story just don’t fit together. People who call this a masterpiece are invited to explain all the logic bugs to me. I just feel like Fulci tried to create a masterpiece, and when he realized that he just didn’t have it in him, he decided to go for a massive overuse of blood and cheap thrills and then top it with a sad SAD mystery ending to add some artistic flavor.

What can I say? It works! I could write endless paragraphs about the shortcomings of this movie, but I don’t, because it really got me and I really like it!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Werewolves On Wheels (1971)

74min

(VPN:D)

Sound

English

Captions

None

70s exploitation of Easy Rider with a horror twist.

Review:

Does it count as a spoiler when I tell you what’s no happening in this movie?Well you’re NOT going to see a pack of Werewolves riding their bikes.

Instead there is this gang of bikers, little league, small time crooks, but they call themselves The Devil’s Advocates, so they don’t hesitate to drink the wine some Satanists offer them. By night, when everybody is drugged, the Satanists have a satanic picnic with one of the gang members, and from that moment on things go downhill for the bikers. Gang members are murdered every night until the gang gets lost in a sand storm and things get a little trippy.

Most of the movie, we see bikers biking or stopping at a gas station or resting in the desert. They also added a bit of horror to it, but not enough to tickle my fancy. There are reviews that tell you how fun and free the shooting must have been, and that may very well be true. And yet: I really wanted to like this little trash movie, and I still wanted to like it after I realized that it was not really about werewolves on wheels. I wanted to write just how refreshing it is to watch this amateur movie that just doesn’t care about the laws of filmmaking. But the best thing about this is that I now can claim that I have seen a movie called Werewolves On Wheels. And? How was it? Well, quite disappointing.

⭐⭐

Suspiria (1977)

98min

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English

Subs

English auto

Italian horror movie about a nightmarish dance academy, directed by Dario Argento, starring Jessica Harper.

Review:

American dancer Suzy enrolls at a German “Tanz Akademie” (where everybody speaks English). The night she arrives, another student flees the school in panic and is brutally murdered shortly thereafter. The academy turns out to be a sheer nightmare: the staff is a complete freak show, the dorms are maggot infested, and it seems like the headmistress has Suzy drugged whenever she feels like it. Suzy talks to Sarah, who used to be a friend of the girl that was murdered at the beginning of the movie, and she gets the impression that witchcraft may be involved.

Dario Argento is said to be one of Europe’s greatest directors of horror and giallo, and I can see why. The sets do not even try to look realistic, the movie makes excessive overuse of light and color, it all looks like a dream, like a trip, unreal… Maybe surreal? Well this is not arthouse, this is an extremely well crafted horror movie starring the adorable Jessica Harper.

In short: me like!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Spider Baby (1967)

81min

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Sound

Englisch

Subs

English auto

Classic Thriller about an insane family with Lon Chaney Jr.

Review:

After the father of a family died, his driver took care of the rest of the family. All members of this family were born with a genetic anomaly that, as soon as they hit puberty, caused their mental and physical degeneration. Now that the father is dead, soon distant (and sane) relatives arrive and bring a lawyer and his assistant to grab whatever they can. The situation escalates quite quickly.

“The maddest story ever told” they claim in the opening credits, and in 1967 this may very well have been true. This movie is indeed quite insane and aged very well. Today it is a classic that just doesn’t get enough love and attention.

Talking about love: I love the part when the lawyer’s assistant talks to Lon Chaney Jr. about movie monsters with special emphasis on the Wolfman. Take a bow, Mister Chaney.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Chair (2016)

84min

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English

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English

Violent drama about a prisoner on death row and the sadistic and murderous warden.

Rowdy Roddy Piper’s last role.

Review

So there is this prisoner waiting for the electric chair. However, the warden and his henchmen soon turn this movie into a torture porn. In the second half it gets more dramaish with some extremely dull plot twists.

All in all this is a solid 1*, but I give it a bonus star because Rowdy Roddy Piper and Road Warrior Animal are in it. I don’t want to watch the movie a second time to find out whom Animal played (I assume he is the chubby cop who is shown in a flashback near the end), but Piper was a great wrestler, and of course a good actor, that’s part of the job description after all. This was his last movie.

⭐⭐

Blood Feast (1963)

67min

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English

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A caterer collects body parts for a Egyptian-style cannibal feast. First gore movie ever, directed by the notorious Herschell Gordon Lewis.

So there is this woman who wants to organize a party for her daughter, and the caterer promises her an Egyptian dinner that hasn’t been cooked for thousands of years. Trouble is that the caterer is a lunatic serial killer and cannibal who wants to celebrate a mass for the Egyptian goddess Ishtar.

The story is stupid, the actors are terrible, and the blood, well, the blood. They shot this movie in color to show the blood, but the red paint that they used looks so totally fake, like, hey, don’t worry, it’s not real, it’s just a movie.

However, you can and maybe should watch this, because this flick by Herschell Gordon Lewis is said to be the first slasher movie ever, so at the very least this is a historic document.

⭐⭐⭐

Room For Rent (2016)

Room For Rent (2016) 70min with Erin Brown. English sound with autocaps. VPN:D ⭐⭐⭐

So there is that dude who buys a house because he thinks that this is what grown people do. When he finds out that he cannot pay the bills he starts searching for a a roomier via internet. Via internet? Yes, and soon people start trolling him with stories about just how haunted his house is. So he tries to prove that his house is all right.

Well, I’m so totally not a fan of found footage movies, and I like microbudget movies only when they are well written and executed with diligence. The reason why I watched this is Erin Brown, I’m a bit of a fanboy since I saw her (as Misty Mundae) in Spider-Babe. In this film, however, she was not so convincing. She said her lines and walked across the lane clearly not knowing what she was doing there.

The really impressive thing about this movie: one of the bigger problems with this kind of movies are the unskilled actors, and here, in this movie, the sister and the friend of the hero are incredibly convincing. How come? Are they pros? Are the naturals? Well, I love to imagine that they are both awful actors, and since the author knew this he wrote parts for them that would not require actual acting, they just had to overact while being themselves. Well I love this theory and if it should be wrong, please don’t burst the bubble.

Anyways, this is definitively a 3* movie, fully okay if you occasionally watch microbudget found footage movies.

Terror Train (1980)

Terror Train (1980) 97min with Jamie Lee Curtis and David Copperfield English sound VPN:D

⭐⭐

There is this incel who has been pranked three years ago. Now there is that college fraternity that has a Halloween party on a train, which is a good opportunity for revenge because the killer can change his disguised whenever necessary.

The good thing about this movie is that Jamie Lee Curtis is in it.

The bad thing is that it’s probably her worst movie ever, and also: David Copperfield is in it.

Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 96min First modern zombie movie, by George R. Romero

Recap

Famous last words: “They’re coming for you, Barbara.” says Johnny before he gets killed by the first modern zombie ever seen on the screen. Barbara escapes and hides in a seemingly empty house, but she is in a state of shock and of not much use, so the rest of the story focuses more on Ben, another survivor who actually has what it takes to deal with the apocalypse at hand.

This is of course not the first zombie movie ever, that was White Zombie, but this is the first modern zombie movie, with zombies that are not voodolated, but with living dead who feast on human flesh and turn their victims into more zombies. So I guess I must give this movie full score for being not only extremely well done and entertaining but also an important historical document.

Ach, and before I forget: do you remember how some people complained about fast zombies in later movies like Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn Of The Dead? Well, about 8min into the movie we see the very first modern zombie moving quite swiftly. Just saying.

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Asylum (1972)

⭐⭐⭐ 88min British anthology movie with Peter Cushing, written by Robert Bloch

Recap:

All right, so there is this shrink who wants to work in a madhouse. During the job interview he’s told that the actual head of the asylum is upstairs and mingles with the inmates. To get the job he needs to talk to the patients and find out who the actual professor is. This is the envelope for several short stories.

This is obviously a “could watch”. You don’t have to watch it, but if you do you will not regret it, especially if you like old-fashioned brit horror and/or anthology movies and/or Peter Cushing.

(imdb 6 rt 3,5)

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