Tag: Gory Flick

October Horrorshow: Homicycle

I’m pretty sure Brett Kelly isn’t the best auteur from Ottawa, Ontario, but he’s certainly the most prolific. As of this writing, Kelly has directed thirty-nine features, with a smattering of shorts thrown in for good measure. Alas, this profligacy has not equalled quality, but that’s never been a concern at Shitty Movie Sundays.

Three Kelly-helmed pictures were released in the year 2014. According to IMDb, Homicycle is the best of them, with a 2.7 rating out of 10. Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t even have a rating. Yikes. So, what gives?

Homicycle is bottom feeding filmmaking. It’s the kind of flick that regional filmmakers crank out for a few thousand bucks and hopefully, maybe, find distribution with some garage-based company. In this case, Camp Motion Pictures here in the States. These films won’t make anyone involved rich, but they just might cover the mortgage until the next financial quarter, when it becomes time to make another. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Homicycle”

October Horrorshow: Curse of the Cannibal Confederates, aka The Curse of the Screaming Dead

Just because a movie is objectively bad, does not mean that it is unwatchable. That’s a maxim here at Missile Test, but it cannot be denied that, often, there is correlation between the two. A case in point is Curse of the Cannibal Confederates. It’s an objectively bad film in just about every way, and it’s tough to sit through. By the time this review is over, it will have settled into the leprous nether reaches of the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index, but it does have a few of those sublime moments of true unselfconscious ineptitude that mutants live for.

Curse is one of many films that Troma picked up for release a number of years after it first saw daylight. The film was originally released in 1982 with the title The Curse of the Screaming Dead. After Troma picked it up in 1987 they gave it a new name and did some light editing to the title sequence. This version, a low-quality VHS transfer, is what I saw. But, should one feel the need to see this flick in an HD scan that removes most of the mud and restores the original cut, Vinegar Syndrome released it on Blu-ray in 2023. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Curse of the Cannibal Confederates, aka The Curse of the Screaming Dead”

October Horrorshow: Bottom Feeder

To give one an idea of this film’s shoot, Bottom Feeder, writer/director Randy Daudlin’s parvum opus from 2007, was Tom Sizemore’s first movie after he got out of rehab. As if that weren’t tough enough for an actor who had spent the past decade in supporting roles in top tier movies, Sizemore brought along a TV crew capturing the entire thing for the reality show Shooting Sizemore. An actor who had been flirting with A-list status, in recovery, with the pressures of carrying a movie and a television show at the same time, in a b-movie titled Bottom Feeder? It’s amazing this thing ever made it into the can.

Sizemore plays Vince Stoker, a Vietnam War veteran (Sizemore was born in 1961) who currently works as a maintenance man at a shuttered mental hospital. He leads a small crew, including right hand man Otis (Martin Roach), young dipshit Callum (Joe Dinicol), and his niece, Sam (Amber Cull). Part of their job is to patrol the tunnels under the property that link the buildings, and roust out any teenage partiers or homeless people who have set up camp. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Bottom Feeder”

October Horrorshow: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

In a business that is so laser-focused on exploiting intellectual property, it’s amazing that it took over a decade for a sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to see release. Sure, it’s not unusual for a sequel to take so long to be made, but it is uncommon. This is especially so in horror, where movies can be made for miniscule budgets and, if lucky, see huge returns.

From 1986, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 sees Tobe Hooper, working again with Cannon and Golan-Globus, return to the well one more time. But, if viewers are expecting a simple retread of the first movie, they are in for a surprise. The original movie has a reputation for gore, and Hooper also viewed the film as black comedy. Well, neither is accurate. There is not a lot of gore in the first movie, and only Hooper seems to have found much humor in it. All that is fixed in the sequel. Hooper went all-in on some sicko campiness, and gave so much free reign to f/x guru Tom Savini that the film was released unrated in the States, and remained unreleased for decades in several large overseas markets. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2″

October Horrorshow: The Kindred

This movie was on the way to being a lost film. Released theatrically in 1987, Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow’s opus, The Kindred, hadn’t seen a home video release since the VHS days. But, Synapse Films dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s, and produced a 4K digital release in 2021. Good for them, because this is a creature feature that deserves to be seen.

Taking elements from monster flicks, cabin in the woods flicks, and mad scientist flicks, The Kindred follows a group of post-grad medicos who are trying to survive attacks from a gooey human/sea creature hybrid at a country house. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Kindred”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Terminator II, aka Shocking Dark

There isn’t a successful Italian film director from the 20th century that doesn’t have at least one Hollywood ripoff in their filmography. It was practically de rigueur over there. But, no filmmaker did it with quite the shamelessness of Bruno Mattei, and none of his movies approached the level of outright thievery seen in Terminator II.

Trademark law is obviously looser in Italy. Over there, production companies can market and release a movie as a sequel to an unrelated production. This movie is not a sequel to The Terminator, James Cameron’s blockbuster from 1984. But it was marketed as such, down to a poster that evokes Arnold Scwarzenegger’s menacing, uncanny cyborg face. Everyone involved, including producer Franco Gaudenzi, knew how disingenuous it all was, because this flick wasn’t released in the United States until 2018, and then under the title Shocking Dark. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Terminator II, aka Shocking Dark”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Zone Drifter

As with many films featured in Shitty Movie Sundays, Zone Drifter started with an outsider dreaming of becoming a filmmaker. For most, there is no future at Cannes or under the starry lights of Hollywood. There are no sympathetic juries at Sundance, and no standing ovation at Tribeca. But, it has never been cheaper to film a movie, with most of us carrying around HD cameras in our pockets. And, an internet with a voracious appetite for content means that making one’s film available has never had fewer hurdles. A low-budget, anonymous film has more of a chance of being a signal lost in the noise, yet that’s still better than the days when a handful of VHS tapes were the best a filmmaker could hope for. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Zone Drifter”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Mutant Hunt

Writer/director Tim Kincaid’s Mutant Hunt, from way back in 1987, was never meant to look as good as it does now. Sure, it was shot on 35mm film, but it was a direct-to-video release. For most of its history, Mutant Hunt was seen by viewers in 480p, formatted for CRT televisions, and that is the version available on streaming platforms. But, the folks over at Vinegar Syndrome came to the rescue yet again, having released a high def Blu-ray in 2022. That means that for the first time, except for some lucky folks who saw a limited theatrical run in Europe, viewers get to see the silliness that is Mutant Hunt in all its glory. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Mutant Hunt”

October Horrorshow: In a Violent Nature

At some point, filmmaker Chris Nash had a revelation. Maybe it was in those moments right before sleep takes hold, when the head carnival, against all sense, is at its most raucous. Maybe it happened while watching another movie, or when his mind was drifting away from a banal or uncomfortable conversation. Whenever it was and whatever the situation, Nash must have thought, “What if a Friday the 13th movie were told from Jason’s perspective?”

That simple idea is what drives In a Violent Nature, from earlier this year. At its core it is a classic 1980s slasher flick, but it’s boiled down until there is nothing left but bright white bones. The movie follows Johnny (Ry Barrett), the Jason Voorhees analogue, as he stomps through the woods and kills people. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: In a Violent Nature”

October Horrorshow: Proteus (1995)

Who doesn’t like a good Alien ripoff? Well, lots of people, I imagine. Alien ripoffs proliferate, with multiple films made every year using the tried and true methods perfected by Ridley Scott back in the late 1970s. It’s a formula that never seems to go out of style, but that doesn’t guarantee good results.

1995 saw the release of Proteus, from screenwriter John Brosnan, adapting his own novel, and director Bob Keen, who has spent most of his career in special effects. Proteus, by the way, is an old Greek god of rivers and seas. The name doesn’t offer much of a clue to the proceedings in the film, but it does fit. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Proteus (1995)”