Supernatural Flick – Missile Test

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: Black Cab (2024)

Who doesn’t like Nick Frost? He’s a big, cuddly teddy bear. Which makes him an ideal antagonist in a horror flick like Black Cab, where Frost’s unnamed cab driver turns from being a part of society’s background, into a troubled couple’s torment.

From this past year, Black Cab comes to viewers via director Bruce Goodison, from a screenplay by David Michael Emerson. Frost and Virginia Gilbert are credited with additional dialogue.

Synnøve Karlsen plays Anne, a twenty-something urbanite who is engaged to Patrick (Luke Norris), a philandering shithead whom audiences will despise even before they pick up on the duo’s dynamic. After a dinner with another couple that runs well into the night, Anne and Patrick hail a cab and Nick Frost pulls up in his clanking, sputtering, stinking, diesel-powered UK black cab. The couple begin arguing in the car over whether or not they are still engaged, and whether or not Patrick is moving back in with Anne, when Frost mentions that he recognizes Anne from an earlier fare. He picked her up outside the maternity ward at a local hospital. Anne’s pregnancy is news to Patrick, who responds by being even more of a dick. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Black Cab (2024)”

Shitty Movie Sundays: The Psychotronic Man

The Psychotronic Man, from 1979, isn’t a standout 20th century b-movie, but it is a bizarre little piece of regional cinema. If the internet is to be believed, it also lent its title to Michael J. Weldon’s Psychotronic Video magazine, which, from 1980 to 2006, covered pretty much the same kind of material that is this site’s bread and butter. Psychotronic Video is long gone, but public appreciation of the kinds of films we mutants like is as strong as it has ever been, if the proliferation of streaming services offering up the stuff is any indication.

Directed by Jack M. Sell, from a screenplay by Sell, Phil Lanier, and Peter Spelson, The Psychotronic Man follows Spelson (who also produced) as Rocky Fosco, a Chicago barber who begins to manifest destructive psychic powers.

It all begins when Rocky is feeling crabby after a day of cutting hair, and decides he needs to take a drive to blow off some steam. Off to rural Illinois we go, as Rocky, and Sell, take viewers on a runtime padding sequence of drinking, driving, and helicopter shots. Rocky’s method of blowing off steam is to keep driving and pouring whiskey down his throat until he gets sleepy and has to pull over to the side of the road and pass out. Man, the ’70s were wild. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Psychotronic Man”

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: Shocker

Wes Craven is one of the giants of horror cinema. With The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, he mastered the art of dread in horror. He seemed less concerned with frightening his viewers than with making them deeply uncomfortable. He lightened up in the 1980s, though, introducing one of horror’s most wisecracking antagonists with Freddy Krueger. That new style of his continued, less effectively, with Shocker, the story of another mass murdering serial killer with personality.

Mitch Pileggi plays Horace Pinker, a ruthless killer terrorizing the fictional California town of Maryville. It seems not a week goes by when there’s a news report of a home invasion where Pinker murders an entire family. One of those is the family of the detective investigating the murders, Lt. Don Parker (veteran That Guy Michael Murphy), and his adult foster son, Jonathan (Peter Berg), a star football player at the local college. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Shocker”

October Horrorshow: Devil Story, aka Il était une fois…le diable

What does a deformed slasher wearing an SS uniform, a black cat and a black horse, a ghost galleon, an Egyptian mummy, and an emotionally troubled young woman have in common? That’s not a joke. If someone out there knows, get in touch and I’ll forward the info to filmmaker Bernard Launois.

That’s more than a little facetious. All the events in Launois’s bizarre horror flick, Devil Story (French: Once upon a time…the devil), do tie together, but in more of a tangle than a knot. Thank goodness this site is more interested in the craft of film rather than interpretive criticism, because trying to unravel the mess that is this film’s story is futile. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Devil Story, aka Il était une fois…le diable”

October Horrorshow: Cemetery Man, aka Dellamorte dellamore

Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is drifting through life. No college degree — no high school degree, even. He admits that he’s only ever read two books in his life. One, he didn’t finish, and the other was the phone book. Did he finish that?

A dead end life inevitably leads one to a dead end job. In Francesco’s case, that’s as caretaker for the cemetery in the Italian town of Buffalora. His assistant is Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro), a sensitive idiot whose only spoken words are the first syllable of his name, spat out like a child saying, “Nyaa!”

It would be a normal and dull job if all the pair had to do was bury the dead and keep graves clean, but, in Buffalora, the dead have the habit of coming back to life and clawing their way out into the light. So, every night, Francesco and Gnaghi have the unenviable task of smashing the brains of the undead and sticking them back in their graves. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Cemetery Man, aka Dellamorte dellamore”

October Horrorshow: YellowBrickRoad

Ideas are easy. Writing is hard. That’s why there are so many films with fantastic premises that don’t stick the landing. A case in point is YellowBrickRoad, from writing and directing duo Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton. This film has a strong premise. In 1940, all the residents of the small town of Friar, New Hampshire, decided to walk off into the forest one day, never to be seen alive, again. They left behind everything.

Now, in the present, a small group of researchers has decided to follow in the townsfolk’s footsteps, hiking up the same disused trail, in hopes of discovering just what it was that led them to their doom. They’re looking for a scientific explanation, perhaps based in group psychosis, but are also open to the idea that something supernatural was the cause. Perhaps something, some thing, resides in the pure, untouched wilderness, and lured these townsfolk away from hearth and home. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: YellowBrickRoad”

October Horrorshow: Death Row Diner

Shot on video horror flicks can generally be sorted into two camps. One, those made in Hollywood, but outside the studio system; and two, regional cinema. The main difference between the two is that the regional movies, made by filmmakers such as Tim Ritter, J.R. Bookwalter, and the Polonia brothers, are true outsider art, unconcerned with the way things are supposed to be done while making a movie, while those sprouted from the Los Angeles area have things like unionized crew, professional editing, etc. What both of these broad categorizations have in common is that the movies are objectively bad, no matter where they come from. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Death Row Diner”