Is there anything creepier than a room made for the dead? Everything in a morgue or embalming room is cold, antiseptic, and hard. There isn’t a cushion in site on which to rest a corpse. Why would there be? It’s not as if the dead will complain. They’re just motionless slabs of meat and bone, gristle and organs. The difference between the living and dead is rendered stark in rooms like this, where no living person could tolerate lying on stainless steel tables, their heads resting on blocks. Everything about these rooms would cause intolerable pain in the living. But, again, the dead won’t complain. Continue reading “The Autopsy of Jane Doe”
Blood of Dracula’s Castle
Glen Cannon (Gene Otis Shane) is a lucky man. He has a decent career as a photographer, is about to marry and start a family with a model, Liz (Jennifer Bishop), and just inherited a castle in Arizona. That’s right. A castle. In Arizona.
There’s just one problem. The castle has been leased out to an aging couple for decades, and they don’t wish to leave. There’s actually another problem. The old couple are the Count and Countess Dracula (Alexander D’Arcy and Paula Raymond). They call themselves the Townsends now, but they are, indeed, the creature of legend and his wife. Continue reading “Blood of Dracula’s Castle”
Boar
I love a bloody, gory horror flick. Especially one with a monster that oozes and drips foul disgustingness. Not every day, mind you, but no October is complete without a film that makes a mess out of its cast.
Boar, the 2017 horror flick from Australia, did very well scratching that bizarre itch. My biggest criticism is that, although it delivered the nasty goods, it was kind of a bummer. A film where half the cast is brutally killed, a bummer? Who would have thought, right? But, if horror flicks weren’t a good time, for the most part, they wouldn’t be so prevalent and so profitable. Maybe we viewers are just diseased. Continue reading “Boar”
Troll Dwarfs with Tommy Guns!
The Devil’s Nightmare
At first glance, The Devil’s Nightmare looks like a shoo-in addition to the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index. After a full viewing, however, I can say that it’s not. And since Missile Test is a dictatorship, my opinions have the force of law.
The main reason why one would think this is shitty is that the movie doesn’t look all that good. It doesn’t appear to have ever gotten a restoration before release to Blu-Ray, and, as of this writing, it wasn’t available on streaming. The print I saw was from a horror compilation DVD set, formatted for CRT televisions. Continue reading “The Devil’s Nightmare”
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
Scary movies not doing it for you anymore? Are the days of peeking through your fingers or cowering under a blanket long behind you? Are you worried that you’ve become so desensitized to horror films that you can’t enjoy the genre like you used to? These are the fears of the horror movie veteran — sometimes the only fears left after watching hundreds and hundreds of horror films.
Well, might I suggest a game?
Resident Evil is the videogame series that won’t die. There are two main reasons for that. One is that when games in the series get it right, they are among the best releases in any given year. The other is that Capcom, the series’ creator, pivots gameplay and reinvents the series just as soon as they’ve beaten all their good ideas to death in lackluster sequels. Continue reading “Resident Evil 7: Biohazard”
Inmate Zero, aka Patients of a Saint
Inmate Zero is a pretty generic title for a zombie flick. But, it does have the benefit of not only fitting the story, but letting any potential viewers know what they’re in for. It’s a much more honest approach than giving a movie an evocative title and then failing to deliver, à la The Thirsty Dead. That’s just a con. Either way, Inmate Zero, as basic a title as that may be, is still much better than Patients of a Saint, the title under which this film was originally released. That is just awful. This is a zombie flick, not some agonizing Jane Austen romance. Continue reading “Inmate Zero, aka Patients of a Saint”
Blood Sabbath, or, My Soul for Some Strange
What a bucket of sleaze. Blood Sabbath, the 1972 exploitation horror flick from screenwriter William A. Bairn and director Brianne Murphy, is exactly the kind of movie that gets the pious all worked up. Gratuitous nudity only begins to describe the amount of flesh in this movie. This is one of those drive-in classics packed full, from start to finish, with butts, boobs, and bush. Add in witchcraft, and one would be hard-pressed to find an R-rated film more capable of moral corruption. It’s spectacular.
The film follows Vietnam War vet David (Anthony Geary). He’s having a rough time with what he experienced in the war, and has gone on a walkabout that takes him, I think, into Mexico. The film isn’t clear on that. While there, he is accosted in the night by three naked partiers and chased through the woods. He trips and falls, hitting his head on a rock and falling unconscious. When he awakens, he finds himself being cared for by a buxom young lady named Yyala (Susan Damante). She’s a water spirit, or something similar, and the two fall in love with each other. But, David can’t get past first base because, according to Yyala, she has no soul, and it’s forbidden for her to be with someone who still has theirs. So, David makes it his mission to rid himself of his soul so he can get laid. Continue reading “Blood Sabbath, or, My Soul for Some Strange”
Insidious: Chapter 3
Leigh Whannell has had one of the most impressive runs in horror films so far this century. He’s responsible, with James Wan, for the Saw and Insidious franchises, and has even managed to amass over thirty acting credits. Insidious: Chapter 3, from 2015, is his first time in the director’s chair. A prequel to the first two Insidious films, the film doesn’t feature the Lambert family this time around, but Lin Shaye, Angus Sampson, and Whannell all reprise the characters they played. Continue reading “Insidious: Chapter 3”
The Werewolf of Washington
Writer/director Milton Moses Ginsberg had something to say about the rot infecting Washington D.C. in the early 1970s. It was the time of Watergate, when the president, the attorney general, and all the rest of the president’s men were a pack of felons working to undermine the rule of law. How times have changed. Ginsberg’s response to the constitutional crisis posed by the ongoing criminal conspiracy that was the Nixon administration, was to make a movie satirizing the president. And he chose to make it a werewolf flick. Continue reading “The Werewolf of Washington”