My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987)

Every October I hit up my local big box retailer to see what manner of impulse purchase I can make to add to the annual movie marathon. Most of the time I regret my decisions. This year I made two purchases, one that I regret and this one. I suppose that is a spoiler of sorts but honestly, I’m always down for some cheesy eighties’ horror comedy mashups.

Our main character is Jeremy who we first meet while he is having a wet dream. Hey man it was the eighties! He is crushing on one of his classmates, Darla, but everything in his dream goes sideways when a mysterious lady shows up. After seeing some high school shenanigans, we follow Jeremy as he delivers groceries, yes that was a legitimate after school job back in the day, where he meets the woman of his dreams. No seriously her name is Nora, and she is the woman who interrupted his teenage fantasy. She invites him back at midnight for… well things that I guess we thought were funny and acceptable in the eighties but would now probably get her on an “offender” list.

With the encouragement of his horndog friend (another staple of the eighties) Ralph he goes back. Before things get too naughty she bites him and a vampire hunter, played by David Warner, busts in. Jeremy makes his escape, but it seems that his lady friend is dispatched and now they are on his trail. The rest of the movie is him dealing with his new powers and learning the rules with the help of his new vampire mentor Modoc. All of this is happens while he tries to date Darla and with the hunters on his trail. Silly things happen and we find out that inexplicably no one died and being a vampire isn’t so bad.

I haven’t watched this movie since the last time I rented it in the early nineties. I remember it being a harmless bit of cheese and I’ve got to say my opinion hasn’t changed. Both the humor and horror are tame with this being a PG rated flick. That means no over the top scary effects and no nudity. The pacing is solid with the characters being introduced quickly before the movie then jams them into the predictable storyline. Not once was I bored. Though the flipside to this is that I didn’t remember much about the movie before rewatching it and will probably forget it quickly again. My Best Friend is a Vampire follows the formula and checks all the boxes but does so in a strangely forgettable way that just isn’t going to stick with the viewer.

I assure you this was how the cool kids dressed

If there is one outstanding thing about the movie it has to be the cast. Our lead is a very young Robert Sean Leonard who has gone onto do movies like Dead Poets Society and television like House. There is also a weird Star Trek connection with the previously mentioned David Warner as the vampire hunter as well as Rene Auberjonois as Modoc. Both of these men have had amazing careers before and after this movie. Kathy Bates of Misery fame has a small role as Darla’s mother. Speaking of mothers Jeremy’s is played by the amazing Fannie Flag. Not only was she an excellent actress and author but was also a semiregular on my favorite gameshow of all time The Match Game! Finally, we have the actress who plays Darla. Her name is Cheryl Pollak and had a brief but memorable career starring in movies like Pump up the Volume (a personal favorite of mine) as well as the recently review Night Life. It seems weird that with all this acting talent that the movie is so generic.

I can’t imagine needing to watch this again for another few years so I’m not sure I can recommend purchasing the new Blu-Ray. But if it pops up streaming somewhere or better yet if you can find an old VHS on the cheap then it is worth a look.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Ready or Not (2018)

I have to be honest I was shocked when I realized I hadn’t covered Ready or Not for the site yet. I discovered this fact when I popped it in to watch for the marathon. I suppose this is a spoiler, but I have loved this one since it was on first release. As an added bonus the first time I saw it was in the drive-in, which was a perfect setting. I guess I’ve already let the cat out of the bag that I’m going to recommend the movie, so I’ll just explain why. But first the plot synopsis. 

Grace, played by Samra Weaving who was on quite a roll with genre flicks at this point, is marrying into a rich family. Her future husband, Alex, is heir to a family fortune made from selling various board and card games. So when Grace is told it is family tradition for her to play a game with the family at midnight the day of her wedding it seems weird but understandable. Plus being an orphan, she really wants a family to belong to. Unfortunately, instead of pulling one of the mundane cards like Old Maid or Chess she gets Hide and Seek. Why is that a bad thing? Here is where the story gets interesting. 

The family has a secret benefactor named Mr. LeBail. Years earlier an ancestor met the mysterious man while traveling on a sea voyage. A deal was struck that he would fund any venture that the family wanted to try. It is also hinted at that they were also guaranteed success which is why they are so damn wealthy. Since this is a horror flick you probably figured out that the family basically sold their souls to the devil or at least some sort of demon. When you marry into the family you have to play a game. It is insinuated that if you are corruptible, you get something silly to seal the deal. On the other hand, if you aren’t then Hide and Seek it is. That means that the family has to hunt you down and murder you before sunrise or something bad happens to them. 

The rest of the movie is the twisted members of the family trying to find and murder Grace. Along the way we see her go from not understanding, to panicking, to pissed off and fighting back as all final girls do. We also see that not everyone is good at the hunting or at least identifying their prey as several household staff find out. Much mayhem (another good movie from Samara Weaving that I need to review eventually) ensues before the dawn comes. 

This is such a great movie. The story is set up quickly with just enough time given to establish that Grace is a good person and the family she married into isn’t. Then we get to the action with the first murder being used as the turning point where our lead realizes she is in trouble. There is a bit of dialogue showing her freaked out but then jumps right back into the violence. Ready or Not is at it’s best when the blood is flowing, and it flows a lot. This is a flick that will grab your attention and never let it go. From the first death… well technically the second as we start off with a flashback, until Grace is smoking on the stairs outside the house something interesting is always happening. The big payoff is teased as maybe being nothing before things get explosive. Heh… trust me if you watch the movie that is a funny turn of phrase. 

The cast is solid with familiar faces like Andie MacDowell (Groundhog’s Day), Henry Czerny (Mission: Impossible) and Melanie Scrofano (Letterkenny) all chewing up scenery as various members of the murderous clan. Though the real highlight is Samara Weaving who has to carry the proceedings in her role as Grace. She is able sell the initial fear and then anger thru her performance. She also has some of the best dialogue in recent horror history as she reacts with some profanity heavy lines. Though it doesn’t feel over the top because if your in-laws that you just met were trying to sacrifice you to a demon being pissed off seems like a legit reaction. 

The filmmakers also did a good job with the kills. We get some creative setups with a crossbow bolt to the face, a crushing by dumbwaiter, a bullet to the noggin, a head lopped off, and a plain old shooting. My favorite kill is also where we finally see Grace’s anger come out. When the family matriarch, MacDowell’s character, pushes her luck Grace “introduces” her to the wooden box at the center of the family curse. That is a fancy way of saying she beats her to death with it. While we don’t see the actual kill on screen there is a gag with hair and blood on the box that is pretty good. Speaking of gags, the nail thru the hand bit that is genuinely gnarly and memorable. I challenge anyone to not squirm when they see it. 

I could go on, but I don’t need to. If you haven’t checked out Ready or Not, then you should. This is an excellent bit of recent horror starring an actress that for a few years was making some amazing genre films. Plenty of gore and laughs makes for a great way to kill ninety minutes this Halloween season. 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Plaga Zombies: American Invasion (2021)

Why do I keep watching these independent zombie flicks? Well, okay it is totally for content here at the website. Don’t get me wrong I do keep hoping to watch something decent and find that hidden gem in the pile of cinematic doo doo. This flick is a sequel to a movie that I’ve never heard of, which itself isn’t a good sign. Then again with a second bite at the apple maybe they got it right? Hell, maybe the first movie was itself a good flick! I suppose the big question is was Plaga Zombies: American Invasion that diamond in the doo that I’ve been looking for? 

Time for the plot synopsis. Be warned if this makes no sense you can’t blame me. The movie opens with a dude getting abducted by aliens who proceed to drop a worm in his ear Wrath of Khan style. This turns him into a zombie. But don’t worry about this too much since we never see the guy again and worms are never mentioned again. Got it? Cool! Then we see a guy named Nash give his lady friend a fancy necklace. Before things get too sexy the aliens show up to cock block him with some zombies. They also steal his girl away. Nash swears to get her back. But don’t worry about this because she is never seen again. Got it? Cool!

You know what this movie needs more of? Right, we need more characters. Now we meet “professional” wrestler Sammy. Well, he has been trying to live his dream of being a professional wrestler, but it isn’t working out. We see him get booted from a big show, buy a bottle of Busch beer, and then get home in time for his lady to dump him. So he sits down to watch television. Just to be clear we watch him watch… so exciting… Eventually Sammy looks out his window and sees a zombie apocalypse. How did that happen? Don’t know. Must not be important. But this does lead to him and his only fan, Manny, to suiting up to do battle with the walking dead. Here we find out that Nash is his neighbor when they meet up with him. 

The now trio head off to escape the island. Oh crap I forgot to mention that the government blew their small down off of the North American continent setting it adrift in the ocean. Yeah, the science checks out. I mean you can find flat Earther websites so really anything is on the internet if you look hard enough! The rest of the movie is them getting split up, annoying adventures happening, we meet an assassin and a terminator style robot. And then nothing! More on that later. 

Why is this movie an hour and forty five minutes long? That isn’t a rhetorical question. Even I realize that I’m sounding like a broken record, but what I’m saying isn’t wrong. Here we have a story that jumps from scene to scene seemingly at random. It very much feels like a project where folks were sitting around a table saying things like “you know a zombie wrestling match with a zombie audience would be funny” or “we should totally put a terminator style robot in the movie”. Someone also seemingly though aliens with laser guns would be a good idea. When we do see our main characters trying to get to the objective (looking for a boat to escape the island) it comes down to them, a location, some extras in zombie makeup, and poorly done fight choreography. 

This entire movie is nothing but a series of disconnected bits loosely tied together with far too many characters. Sammy and his sidekick are one group, Nash by himself and then with the bounty hunter are another. Even Sammy and Manny separate for a bit. This feels like a project that was shot on the weekends with whomever was available. It is choppy and there isn’t a cohesive narrative. There seems to have been a plot outline rather than an actual script. Almost everything they shot feels like padding rather than a story. This brings me right back to my initial question. Why the hell is this movie an hour and forty five minutes long? There is no reason for it. Nothing is critical, there is no story. I’m being generous in saying that there is maybe sixty minutes worth of material here. If that isn’t enough for you and as yet another example of them not having a script the movie has no ending. Seriously a spaceship hovers, zombies come out of the ocean and the damn thing just stops. They didn’t have an ending!

Time to talk about the filmmaking and special effects work. The big zombie fights are staged awkwardly, and the choreography is terrible. That is when we can actually see anything since most of the fights are shot with the shakiest camerawork you will see. Probably someone realized how bad the action was looking and thought they would cover that defect up by making it completely unwatchable. The zombie special effects work is them painting faces blue (a standard low budget approach) as well as red and other even brighter colors. We even get some cheap ass looking wigs as well as other zombies dressed in obvious Halloween costumes. I guess someone hit the Spirit Halloween on November first. The kills and gore are mostly CGI… and badly done. The only nice thing I can say is we get an occasional rubber limb probably also purchase on clearance when they were picking up wardrobe. 

Now I can already hear what sort of reaction my review is going to generate from a certain demographic of reader. Let me head off those angry emails right now. I get that they weren’t trying to make a serious movie. I in fact not only love indie horror but indie horror comedy is my jam as well. I love the work from guys like Kevin Strange and Chris Seaver. A lot of their stuff is really funny. I have also covered the work from Steve Rudzinski (CarousHell rules). So I’m not some no fun having stick in the mud. The difference is those movies are funny and this one isn’t. If you want to make a comedy, then it had better have some laughs. If it doesn’t then it is just bad. Plaga Zombie: American Invasion is incompetently made (bad zombies, worse camera work), lazy (no script), and generally just a miserable waste of time. 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

13 Eerie (2013)

Some college students are headed out into the middle of nowhere. By middle of nowhere I mean an old prison where their professor has setup scenarios involving dead bodies. They are in an advanced forensics class or maybe trying to get into a program. Not quite sure about that but they all seemed to be stressed out. We see cameras being setup so that they can be watched on the staged crime scenes and then they get to work. 

After some gooey gross stuff with the dead bodies one of the students notices that there are more than were expected. Not only that but some of them get up and move around! Seems like the prison was used for experiments in the past, which is briefly explained in some throw away dialogue, and the black goo that is all over the place has turned some of the dead prisoners into zombies. They bite some of the students, who then also become zombies. There is a siege with the survivors, actors appear and disappear at random (more on that later), until we get to an ending that isn’t really an ending but a freeze frame without resolution. 

I don’t hate 13 Eerie, but it is also not a good movie. The story is weak with the whole unexplained prisoner experimentation explanation of the black goo and zombies feeling tacked on at the end. Sort of like the filmmakers decided “damn we need to let the audience know why this all happened”. Combined with the first half hour being spent getting to know the characters, who honestly aren’t that interesting, it gets really slow. After the zombies show up we still get some people walking thru the woods unaware what is happening scenes to continue padding things out. This is one of those flicks that feels like they didn’t have a finished script rather just an idea and maybe a location or two. That is not a formula for success. 

I was especially bummed by the weak writing due to them having a solid cast. Brendon Fletcher (Violent Night), Brendan Fehr (Bones), Michael Shanks (Stargate SG1), and Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) all appear. This is a solid cast of “B” movie and television actors that are good at their jobs. Sadly, they are completely wasted. It also seems that they only had certain actors for briefly as there are just a few scenes where they appear together. Especially Shanks seems to come and go seemingly at random. Not sure if that is the case of if the editing was just that bad. 

Where the movie does a good job is in the creature design. The zombie makeup is decent looking though I did notice that while we get several different zombies running around, they do tend to look the same. There are a few kills on screen with the highlights being the first one where a girl gets caught up in brambles and not only gets some fingers chewed off but ends up with a thorn to the eyeball! There is also a bit of gut munching, but it is poorly executed. I give them props for including it but wish they had done a better job. The rest of the kills are sort of meh. Some of the violence done to the zombies is cool. We get a nifty sawing thru a neck and an awesome gag with a cheek. 

Again, I don’t hate this movie. The story is a mess, but there is a bit of gore, and the zombies look decent. At best 13 Eerie is a mediocre by the numbers effort that is forgettable. While not as horrible as some of the recent zombie movies I’ve watched there are much better ways to kill ninety minutes of your time. I can’t recommend it. 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Totally Killer (2023)

It has been thirty five years since the small town of Vernon was terrorized by the Sweet Sixteen killer. Three sixteen year old girls were killed by being brutally stabbed sixteen times by a murderer that was never caught. Jamie, the daughter of the surviving forth girl Pam, is annoyed by how overprotective her mother is. This is especially so since nothing has happened for so many years. But then the killer returns for her mother, who puts up a good fight but dies. We also meet Jamie’s bester friend Amelia who is building a time machine for the science fair. Weird but I’m down with it.

The killer comes after Jamie, there is an accident, and the time machine works sending her back to nineteen eighty seven where she meets her mom and the soon to be dead friends. After the initial shock of finding out that her mom was a mean girl in high school she figures if she stops the killer in the past, they won’t be around to murder her mom in the future. Enlisting the aid of a teenage Lauren (Amelia’s mom whose plans she used to make the time machine) she goes about trying to change history. She does but it only results in changing the location and order of the murders. Can she stop the killer? Will she figure out who the killer is? Will she be trapped in the past? No spoilers from me.

Initially this sounded a lot like The Final Girls or Happy Death Day to me. I liked both of those movies so that was fine. That said I have to say that while the story is somewhat similar Totally Killer takes it in a different direction. There is some fish out of water humor, but it is tempered with some nasty kills. I’m not political but Jamie being triggered by “inappropriate” stuff from the eighties like the FBI (Federal Boobies Inspector) t-shirt or the problematic school mascot isn’t funny to me. But then we get to the dodgeball game, and I’ll admit it made me laugh. Plus, they don’t linger on this stuff but use it to show the character having to adjust to the past. In the end it was a lot cleverer and more nuanced than I thought it was going to be.

About the writing the story is great. It feels familiar but has some unexpected twists and turns. I can’t get too specific since I don’t want to spoil anything but the identity of the killer I didn’t see coming. Or well I sort of did, but there is an added layer that got me. The characters feel like those from an eighties slasher flick and are one dimensional existing only to up the body count, but that seems appropriate. The movie also leans into it making them as annoying or dumb as possible. They double down on the horror tropes and again that just feels right.

The kills aren’t overly complicated. Instead they lean in on the brutality. From the first kill of Jamie’s mother in the present to the deaths of the girls in the past the camera doesn’t pull away from them being stabbed sixteen times on screen while screaming. It was sort of disturbing in how the kills are staged. They also do a very clever bit with the first kill. The older Pam (Jamie’s mother) is played by a very recognizable face. Julie Bowen from Modern Family and Hubie Halloween (a personal favorite) dies very messily setting the tone for the rest of the violence in Totally Killer. That has a bit of a Psycho sort of surprise no one is safe vibe to it. This again goes back to how well thought out and written the script is.

Between this and Killer Book Club I’ve had some excellent luck recently with these new takes on the slasher genre. Should I press my luck? Probably not. Regardless this movie is well worth your time.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Killer Book Club (2023)

Every October I dig into the streaming services as well as my to watch pile looking for new or new to me horror flicks to watch. As you can see from my earlier reviews that means I end up watching a lot of… well for a lack of a better word… crap. But I keep diving headfirst into the shallow end of the cinematic pool on the hopes that I find a gem. To that end I found Killer Book Club on Netflix and decided to give it a shot.

Our main characters are college students as well as members of a book club that is currently reading something called Killer Clowns, sadly not from outer space! We meet the characters, including Angela who is a published author suffering from writer’s block. This is important because she looks to her professor, Cruzado, for help and he offers to meet with her. Though when she arrives at his office his intentions are of a more personal nature Things get creepy with lots of grabbing and groping before she gets away.

This makes the club angry and they decide to get some payback. Inspired by the book they are reading they buy a bunch of clown masks and decide to terrorize him one night. Apparently scaring the crap out of him is a much better solution than reporting his unwanted advances. Well things go horribly wrong as he accidentally falls to his death and the book club members swear each other to secrecy. That lasts until someone in a clown mask starts to kill them off while taunting them over social media. Damn a lot of new horror movies use social media… though I suppose that relates well to the audience they are going for. The bodies pile up, secrets are reveled, and we get a happy ending. Or do we? Dum Dum Dum!

I liked this one. While not breaking any new ground it does take the formula and run with it efficiently. We get the unintentional death leading to an unknown person coming for revenge while the shrinking group of survivors try to figure out who is after them. The characters fall into the traditional tropes of final girl, annoying friend, bad boy, forlorn crush, and the guy who dismisses everything. There is even the big twist ending that isn’t that much of a twist if you watch slasher movies. But all of this is packaged together in an entertaining and well-paced ninety minutes that keeps the action moving to a satisfying conclusion. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel if you execute the old familiar formula well enough. Here I think the filmmakers do that.

The kills are also fun starting off with the professor getting skewed on the sword of a Don Quixote statue, he is a literature professor after all. There is a lot of stabbing and slashing of book club members with much mayhem to chests and throats. We get so see some folks burn alive and old Don Quixote gets another victim before things are all done. My favorite gag is one that doesn’t result in a death but is just gnarly. It involves a knife to the chin. I’ve seen it before but for some reason these sorts of onscreen injuries always get me. Be warned that much of the gore is digital or at least has a digital assist. But beggars can’t be choosers and they don’t linger on them, so it isn’t obvious if you aren’t paying close attention.

This isn’t going to go on my list of flicks that I need to watch every October but overall, its pretty good. If you have Netflix and are looking for something new to watch, I think that Killer Book Club is worth an hour and a half of your time.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Slotherhouse (2023)

When I saw the trailer for Slotherhouse show up online I was sold. Sure, the concept of a killer sloth was absurd, and the movie looked like it was going to be completely silly, but sometimes absurd and silly is what I want. So, is that what I got?

The movie opens in the rainforest where we see a sloth above the water when a crocodile jumps from the water and snatches it off the low hanging tree branch. Blood flows to the surface and the sloth crawls out of the river. Soon after it is tranquilized and taken away. Then we see a college girl who we later find out is named Emily, saving a puppy from getting squished. A nearby man introduces himself and finding that she is an animal lover gives her his card. He is an exotic pet dealer. When Emily decides to run for president of her sorority, she needs a hook to get everyone’s attention. She decides to buy a sloth from the dealer… uh oh.

Of course it is the killer sloth who is medicated so not as homicidal as earlier with the crocodile. Though not well enough as we see it murder the pet guy before Emily arrives. Initially the sloth, that they name Alpha, is chill. Though that changes when it sees a selfie that Emily took with the dealer. From that point on the sloth goes full on murder machine. It begins picking off the girls and then uses their phones to take selfies and create cover stories as to where they have gone. Yeah, the sloth is using their phones! But that makes total sense since later it steals Emily’s car to finish off a girl who made it to the hospital! I did say this movie was absurd. Eventually there is a final battle between our heroine and the murderous sloth.

Catching some rays!

I love this movie. It is a perfect blend of horror tropes and comedy. It is basically a slasher flick with the mostly unkillable murderer being a sloth rather than a guy in a mask. We see it stalk it’s victims only to seemingly pop up for the final jump scare and kill. Remember how it always seems that the killer is slowly moving towards the soon to be victims and you wonder how they always catch them? Slotherhouse doubles down on that by having that slow moving killer be an actual sloth! The characters even mention how fast the sloth is despite us never seeing it move at anything other than a glacial pace. When I saw the trailer I wondered if it was just going to be a gimmick, but the writers put a lot of effort into being clever. It makes for a very funny watch.

There are a lot of kills in Slotherhouse, though many of them are offscreen. If you are looking for a lot of creative kills and gore this likely isn’t the movie for you. Many of the kills are played for laughs, but that fits with this movie much better than over the top kills and gore would have. We get a girl getting roofied by the sloth and slashed to death. There is also death by loofa, a mass killing during a hazing ritual in the shower, and a stabbing of the house mother who has enough time to express her regrets at a wasted life. The movie also has a murder montage that covers the couple of weeks where the sloth was killing and hiding his victims. Death by gravity, curiling iron, stuffed animals, and scissors to the face. The best part is when Alpha decides to send all the selfies she took to Emily to terrorize her at the end of the movie. #LastSelfie… Normally I don’t dig the social media crap in my horror movies as I’m an old fart. But I’ll be damned is this shit isn’t funny as hell.

Death by loofa

The sloth is brought to the screen without CGI but with puppetry. Does this limit them being able to show the sloth walking around a bit? Yes it does and for me that only adds to the charm. Despite being a puppet, the sloth has a lot of personality and I give credit to the director as well as the performer in making that happen. If you have spent much time here on the site you know that I’m all about monsters in suits, rubber or otherwise. The effort put into making this a practical effect already was in my wheelhouse, but doing it so well made me love this movie even more!

The filmmakers also decided to toss in some references for movie nerds. You have the Psycho music playing during a shower attack, the sloth ends up out the window and splayed on the ground only to be gone the next time Emily looks down at the grass ala Halloween. We even get an Empire Strikes Back “I know” gag! Seriously man if I haven’t convinced you to check out Slotherhouse yet I don’t know what else I can do. This is one of the best movies I’ve watched this year and will definitely make my top ten list in January. It is streaming on Hulu and is available for purchase from most of the big retailers. Buy a copy and get yourself ready for some laughs.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer