Silent Night, Deadly Night part 2 (1987)

This is a sequel to a movie that I rather like. You can check my review for the original Silent Night, Deadly Night here. This movie also has it’s fans, which my review is likely going to piss off! I suppose that is a spoiler, but I feel like my criticisms aren’t going to be covering any new ground. But in case you haven’t seen this one before I might as well start with a plot synopsis… what there is of it anyway.

The killer from the original movie was named Billy. In that movie we see that he had a younger brother named Ricky. Both of them end up in a Catholic orphanage after their parents are killed by a criminal dressed as Santa Claus. He also attempts to rape the mother in front of Billy before slitting her throat. Years later when they are older and Billy has turned eighteen he gets a job at a toy store and gets put in a Santa suit. When told to do what Santa does… well you can figure it out. He starts killing anyone who is naughty and after a while pretty much anyone who gets in his way.

Now you might be asking yourself, “Why are you recapping the plot to an entirely different movie in a review for the sequel?” That is an excellent question that I’m about to answer. Most of the plot to Silent Night, Deadly Night part 2 is told by Ricky to a psychiatrist after he has been arrested for going on his own homicidal rampage. So basically, we get a ton of flashbacks. In fact, the first forty minutes of this eighty eight minute long movie is just the best parts of the original cut in as his memories. Half of this sequel is recycled footage! You know I’d much rather be watching that movie than this one.

When we finally do get to the original material it is also told in flashback form. That means we get random bits with characters getting introduced to either die or date Ricky and then die. He meets an abusive boyfriend and runs him over with a jeep. Then there is a loan shark who he stabs with an umbrella. Finally he meets a pretty woman named Jennifer and they do some grown up hugging. After that she gets really annoyed at him when he murders her ex-boyfriend with a battery charger. So he strangles her with an antenna from a car. When a security guard shows up he takes his gun and shoots people until he runs out of ammo and is arrested.

Yeah got it... Garbage Day.

Though they apparently didn’t have enough new material so there is another couple random kills after he breaks out of the mental hospital where he was being interviewed. Somehow, again zero narrative in this flick just random scenes strung together, he ends up attacking the nun from the first movie who is clearly not played by the same actress we just saw in the extended flashbacks.

This is just a miserable movie to sit thru. There is zero attempts at story or character. As I’ve already stated half of this movie are the highlights from the original. When they get to the new stuff it plays like someone was making it up as they went. It gets awfully tedious watching characters appear form nowhere to die, rinse and repeat. There isn’t even a story here. None of this is helped by the fact that actor Eric Freeman is required to carry the movie. I have no idea what he was thinking but his performance is one of the worst that I’ve ever seen. He has said in interviews that he had conflicting direction about how he was supposed to portray Ricky, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. But this is just terrible.

The Kills are lame.

I suppose being a slasher movie I need to talk about the kills. Just to be clear I’m ignoring all the gore from the flashback scenes. These filmmakers had nothing to do with that and I refuse to give them credit for it. Ricky is responsible for eleven deaths. Most of them are offscreen or the result of his shooting spree. These are completely uninspired and mundane, like the rest of the movie. There is a fun gag with an umbrella and the last kill has a head rolling. I mean neither are particularly great but by comparison with the rest of this mess they stand out.

If you are a fan of this movie cool. I myself also reference the legendary and badly delivered “Garbage Day” line ever Thursday night when I take out the trash. The lovely Mrs. Crappy Movie Reviews gets a kick out of it. Okay that was a lie. It annoys her much like this Silent Night, Deadly Night part 2 annoys me. This one should have been binned and taken out many garbage days ago. You want to watch something cool go watch the original. That is a bit of festive fun for the whole family!

 

© Copyright John Shatzer 2023

It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)

Continuing with some holiday horror I thought I’d check out this flick that just dropped on Shudder. I mean it has a catchy name and some familiar faces so why not? I mean I’m sure it is all gimmick and not very good… but then again, I could be wrong. 

We meet the members of a couple of families the Waters, and the Carruthers. Henry Waters, played by Justin Long (one of those familiar faces), is the mayor of Angle Falls and is a bit of a sleaze bag. No spoilers there as he is clearly trying to muscle in on the family-owned business’s downtown to remake Angel Falls into his own vision. The Carruthers are led by dad David, mom Judy and siblings Winnie and Jimmy. Well on Christmas a crazed killer wearing an angel costume murders and elderly man and then goes after Winnie and her friends. Though she manages to stop the murderer and reveal he was Henry, who clearly had a screw loose. But not before her best friend Cara dies. 

Now here is where the take on another famous holiday movie comes into play. A year later everyone but Winnie has moved on. She however isn’t in the mood for the holidays and after a big blow up with her family wishes she was never born. See what they did there? Any who without her stopping the killer due to never existing the town of Angel Falls has gone right to hell. The murders have hit twenty-six or twenty-seven (the characters can’t decide…) and Mayor Waters has taken control of the downtown. 

Since we already know who the killer is they just explain that he was targeting families who had property or businesses that he wanted to take. So it was all about money at least at first. Along the way she befriends the weird girl Bernie, finds out a secret about her boyfriend, and generally learns to appreciate her life, despite the murders. There are a few twists that I didn’t see coming before we get the happy ending with Winnie reuniting with her family in a world where she was born. I mean it is still a year later and a bunch of folks are dead… Merry Christmas?

Okay I know that I sounded a bit snarky in my plot synopsis. It may have also been a bit vague on details but that is because I really liked It’s a Wonderful Knife and don’t want to spoil it. The story is surprisingly sweet for having a body count of ten! Sure there are some brutal deaths, but we also get valuable life lessons in between the murders. Now that might seem like something that can’t and shouldn’t be able to exists together, but the story is so cleverly written that it does. I had expected a lazy cash in on a nod to a classic but there was real thought put into the characters, twists to mess with audience expectations, and dialogue. Nothing feels forced here, not even when an exchange like, “You are my George Bailey.” “Will you be my Clarence.” It feels natural and a connection the characters would make. This is what happens when a talented writer, in this case Michael Kennedy, is given time to flesh out character and story. 

Most of the cast is made of younger actors and actresses that I’ve not seen before. There are a few familiar faces with the previously mentioned Justin Long appearing. We also get Joel McHale as David Carruthers. I don’t believe that people give him enough credit as he is normally solid in any role he is given, and this movie is no different. There is also a very short buy memorable appearance from William B. Davis as an early victim of the killer. Who doesn’t love to see the Cigarette Man show up now and again? 

The kills are spaced out and decent enough. These aren’t classics like the old days, and they lean too much into digital for my taste. But there are a lot and many of them are cleverly conceived. The highlights for me are an eye stabbing, an axe to the back, a solid looking throat slash, and a satisfying gut stabbing. Thought the most festive has to be the candy cane thru the mouth. It was both Holly and Jolly!

It wasn’t until after I watched It’s a Wonderful Knife that I realized the director of this movie, Michael Kennedy, was responsible for Patchwork which is a movie that I dug a lot. He also made a movie called Tragedy Girls that I’ve been meaning to check out. I’ve caught bits of it, and it looks interesting. But I’m getting sidetracked. I highly recommend checking out It’s a Wonderful Knife. I think it will fill you with some holiday cheer. 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Christmas Blood (2017)

A killer Santa movie from Norway! I’ve not seen one of those before… I mean I’ve seen one from Finland and another from the Netherlands (okay technically not Santa Claus but close enough!). But I’ve never seen one from Norway. Honestly, I was pretty excited to check it out.

The movie opens with a little girl sneaking downstairs to check out the presents under the tree while her father or maybe stepfather is snoring blissfully away. She tears and rattles things all while we see someone lurking behind her. There is a muffled scream and the father wakes up. Investigating the sound, he finds the girl dead and is quickly dispatched himself by someone dressed as Santa. The police arrive and find them butchered but manage to locate the killer and one of the cops, detective Rasch, puts several rounds into him.

As the credits roll, we see that the killer had been busy for many years racking up a body count well over a hundred. He also kept a naughty list that the police find, but never figure out why they were targeted. Though there is a bit of a throwaway line about them all being in trouble with the law at some point in time. We also find out that the killer Santa survived the shooting and was quietly and secretly locked up. But he has busted out, so it is up to a new detective, Hansen, to find him before too much murder occurs. Spoilers… it gets very bloody before he recruits the now retired and perpetually drunk Rasch to help him.

All while this is happening we meet up with another set of characters. They are all coming to an isolated town far in the north reaches of Norway to visit a friend named Julia. We find out that her mother was on Santa’s list but committed suicide. Though that doesn’t seem to bother the killer as when he arrives he just starts tearing thru Julia and her guests. Eventually the detectives figure out the pattern and arrive in time to save Julia, but her friends are toast. I suppose that is a spoiler but if you have ever watched a movie like this you should readily identify them as fodder for the body count. Things wrap up… well honestly, they don’t which is one of the issues I have with Christmas Blood.

I wanted to like this movie and there are things that I do enjoy, but it also has a couple fatal flaws that drag it down. The story is interesting with the killer having a naughty list that isn’t ever totally explained. I do like some mystery as to motivations when I’m watching what is basically a slasher movie. Sometimes the idea of a random killer targeting for reasons that no one really knows is scary. But then the story just meanders thru the hour and forty four minute runtime tossing characters at us who do nothing to move the plot around.

We see a sequence with Hansen visiting a morgue that allows the filmmakers to show us a very naked woman and a coroner who apparently loves pastries and likes to eat while he works. Admittedly this is amusing in sick way, but after spending time on it the detective declares it has nothing to do with the killer Santa and it is never mentioned again. We also have a random killing of a couple cops that are investigating someone on the list and find a body. They are then killed off themselves. Why bother? I mean we already know that the guy is a brutal killer, which is reinforced later, so what is up with the random characters just introduced to die?

This isn’t the first example of unneeded characters slowing things down. Before the killer arrives at the girls we get a couple of brothers added to the menu of victims who are there solely to die though not before participating in a drawn out “partying” dance montage. One of them does get to assault one of the women before being dispatched so I guess we are supposed to get some satisfaction out of his death. But really did we need a date rape in this flick? It adds nothing to the story other than a bit of nastiness. Hell, the girl doesn’t last more than a minute or two after her rapist and is killed in another way that violates her. Yeah, think The Mutilator. So now I was bored and annoyed which isn’t a good combination.

You'd better watch out... behind you!

I will give the movie credit for some inventive kills and the fact that they are plentiful. We get fifteen kills, with some happening offscreen and others being seen after the fact. There are butchered bodies, some head bashing, more than one decapitation (including the little girl in the beginning), some throat cutting, and lots of guts. Really this killer likes to drive his axe into many a midsection which leads to more than one person rolling around with their own intestines in hand. They must have really dug that effect/appliance because they use it a few times. There is a very Evil Dead fountain of blood as well. But my favorite kill in the movie has to be the guy getting his spine ripped out. Does it make sense? Not at all but I thought it was a fun gag.

I’ll also say that I thought a couple of the jump scares worked well. But in the end this movie is saddled with far too many characters and subplots to ever create any momentum. So, while the gore is an excellent payoff the scenes leading up to it failed to keep my interest. Overall it makes for a boring watch, and I can’t recommend Christmas Blood. There are much better Killer Santa movies out there to watch this most festive time of the year.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

I’ve been a fan of Hendrix’s books since I first stumbled over his novel Horrorstor about his fictional version of an IKEA being a portal or at least sitting on top of a portal to some supernatural realm. Good spooky fun. Since then I’ve checked out some of this other books but thought I’d finally get around to reviewing one of them for the site. That book is obviously The Final Girl Support Group.

Hendrix has a habit of mining familiar concepts and putting a creative and entertaining twist on them. Here he explores what happens to our favorite “final girls” from various slasher movies after their traumatic experiences are behind them. See in this world those movies are based on real events and therefore real final girls. He has characters that reference the familiar franchises such as Friday the 13^th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Though he has to walk a tightrope to avoid getting into copyright troubles fans are going to know who is who. Well sort of, but I’ll talk more about that later.

We meet the final girls as they are in a support group meeting with their therapist. Here one of the girls announces she is done holding onto the past and wants to move on. This leads our main character, Lynette Tarkington, to freak out as in her mind this is the beginning of the end for them. Things get even worse when they find out that one of them, Adrienne, who they thought was late, was murdered after another slaughter happened at the camp where she became the final girl. That character is based on the Friday the 13^th franchise if you can’t tell. When someone takes a few shots at Lynette and hits one of the other girls all hell breaks loose.

The rest of the story is her trying to figure out who is trying to kill the Final Girls. She has figured out that someone has manipulated them and that someone knows their secrets. Is it one of the other girls that has gone crazy? Have their killers gotten together with superfans to do them in? Or is there some unknown person behind it all? I’m not going to spoil it there. I mean that is the whole reason to read the book.

This is a solid book. Things move along briskly, and the book is a quick read. As a slasher movie fan I was able to follow some of the shortcuts in the histories of the various final girls. Again, they aren’t the same as the franchises he is clearly referencing but they are close enough that Hendrix doesn’t need to spend too much time on their background. I suppose that some readers might find the survival of certain characters hard to swallow given how mangled and messed up they get, but these are final girls, so they are used to taking a lot of abuse.

It was also neat to see how the girls themselves don’t necessarily consider Lynette a final girl. She is based on the Linnea Quigley character that gets stuck on the deer antlers in Silent Night Deadly Night and unlike the others never did her final battle with the killer. At least until now when she has to save them all or die trying. That was a neat place to take the story and shows the sort of creativity that I’ve gotten used to from this author.

One final positive I wanted to mention the big twist in the revelation as to who the killer is. Without spoilers I will say that I thought it was clever that the motivations were so clearly in the now. The story isn’t so much updated but contrasts the horrors of the past compared to what the horrors of today are. Well and one is based on fiction, the final girls, while the other is more in the news and happens. I can’t go further without screwing things up. Read the book to find out what I’m talking about.

If I did have one complaint about the book it is that there are so many girls and storylines that sometimes things do get a bit muddled. I did find myself having to backtrack to figure out who he was referring to and how they connected. I read this in two sittings, so it was fresh in my mind. I fear that it might even be worse if you aren’t familiar with the slasher movies and tropes that this book references. After writing most of this review I did go online and see what other folks were saying and it does seem that many readers were struggling with this. Not a deal breaker for me I just thought I’d mention it.

While The Final Girls Support Group isn’t my favorite from Hendrix it did hit that sweet spot of nostalgia and entertainment. I got a kick out of seeing these alternate versions of some of my favorite horror characters without it being too ‘member berries. If you dig slasher movies then I’d recommend tracking down a copy of this one, it is a good read.

 

© 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

The Last Matinee (2020)

The movie opens during a rainstorm as we see a man sitting in his car popping some snacks out of a jar into his mouth before stepping into a theater to watch a movie. He is wearing black gloves and a nondescript raincoat, so Giallo fans know this isn’t going to end well. We also meet the other characters including some friends, a man with his date (who clearly has a weird agenda!), a young boy who snuck in, the manager, and a young lady who is covering for her father the projectionist.

With all the victims lined up the killer gets to work. Locking them in he goes one by one murdering folks as they watch the horror movie within the movie about a Frankenstein monster. The first couple of kills are sneaky and happen in the background or where no one can see them. But the film breaks causing the theater to fill with white light, and it is then that the bodies are seen. This sets the killer off and our survivors on the run. He keeps mowing them down as they first hide then fight back. Eventually the police are called and show up just in time to save the day. Though not before the movie hints that one of those who lived might be traumatized enough to maybe get to work themselves one day.

This feels like a Giallo with the look of the killer and the clear visual inspiration from some of those movies, especially the work of Dario Argento. But it also has a real slasher vibe to it. Less a mystery and more of a body count flick I still liked The Last Matinee. The killer turns out to be some random crazy who kills because he can and not for any particular reason or motivation. Though he does seem to like to pop their eyes out and keep them in a jar. Remember the snacks from before… apparently eyeballs is good eating!

The pacing of the movie is solid. It takes a few minutes setting up the folks in the theater and at establishes who they are so that it isn’t just faceless victims. This gives us just enough connection to the characters so that they at least feel like individuals which makes the proceedings easy to follow. Had they all blended together it would have made the story harder to follow. When the killings start the movie picks up the pace and we mostly get sequences of them sneaking around and hiding mixed in with chases with the occasional bloody murder tossed in for fun. This is one of the quicker ninety minute long flicks I’ve seen in a while. Basically it ended and I thought it was a very short runtime but nope I was just sucked in and having a blast.

snack time!

Speaking of the kills we get a very respectable eight kills. Okay technically nine, but I never count the murderer. There are a couple neck slashes including the “handy” girl (I did say earlier that she had an agenda, and it was a sleazy one!). A face gets smashed, someone gets stabbed brutally while screaming, a face goes into the mechanism of a projector, and someone exhales cigarette smoke thru a newly created orifice. My favorite is the rebar thru the kissing couple, which was a neat design. All these kills are done with practical effects work. If there is any digital assist I didn’t notice and I tend to not miss such things. If you like bloody kills you are going to have some fun with this one.

The Last Matinee is a neat Giallo/Slasher homage that has a cool setting and fun deaths. A lot of filmmakers have tried to make movies that call back to the classics but here they nailed it. I can’t ask for much more than that. I highly recommend this movie.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Deadly Manor (1990)

Here we have another Spanish production shot in upstate New York with an American cast. These can either be fun or a complete mess. Sometimes like in the case of Pieces it is both! I suppose it is time to see where Deadly Manor will land on that scale.

This “late to the game feels like an eighties horror flick” kicks off interestingly enough. We see some naked bodies lying on the side of the road from an apparent motorcycle accident. Were they riding naked? What happened? Why does a car speed off? Warning guys this is the sort of movie that will drive you nuts if you try and apply logic to. After this interesting bit and some credits, we get to the main story.

There are some annoying young adults driving to the lake for vacation. They get lost and pick up a hitchhiker named Jack who claims to know his way around. Because picking up hitchhikers in horror movies never goes wrong… It gets dark so they drive off on a side road before finding a creepy old house. Seems like a nice place to spend the night. You know because trespassing in a creepy old house never ends up badly in a horror movie… I think that the scriptwriters for Deadly Manor had a checklist and were determined to hit all the tropes. People wander off to eventually get killed (more on that later) before we figure out who is killing them and why. Then the police show up and the movie mercifully ends.

This was painful. I’ve seen much worse flicks as far as execution. The shots are in frame, the cast delivers lines, and there is kind of a story that makes sense. But the pacing is the worst. After an opening scene that got my attention, we are treated to forty minutes of characters talking and arguing while the hitchhiker glares at them and looks suspicious. The first kill does only take twenty minutes, but we don’t see it and don’t know that it is a kill until much later. All the mayhem is concentrated in the last thirty minutes of the movie. This means that by the time anything of note actually happens I had long stopped caring about what I was watching.

If this wasn’t bad enough, we have characters disappear only to reappear much later without explanation. There is a bit of dialogue where someone is concerned that they can find Peter and Anne but the next time we see them they are still sleeping in the same room that the concerned character just stepped out of! Also does Jack die? He just disappears and is only mentioned because the cops that show up to save the day were looking for him as he was an escaped convict. There is even a dream sequence to further muddle things as I was thinking this was some sort of haunting movie. But later we find out it is a just a crazy man and his disfigured wife. So does that mean the character was just having a “grown up” dream of the woman? If so then why do we see her disfigured face and all stroll up to the bed. We don’t find out about the accident until much later so the character couldn’t possibly have known this.

See what happens when your movie is so boring I start to pay attention to the details? It doesn’t end well. Toss in some subpar gore with most of the kills being offscreen and what we do see nothing more than simple throat cuttings for the cherry on top of this turd sundae. I know that sounds a bit harsh but there is such a minimal effort put into Deadly Manor that I’m annoyed enough to go there. Obviously, I’m not going to recommend this one.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Curse of the Reefer Beast (2023)

I’m a huge fan of the Trailer Park Boys and have a subscription to their website/streaming service Swearnet. I was very surprised when a horror comedy showed up on their site as that normally isn’t their thing. Since I’m a fan and already watch a lot of low or no budget independent movies I thought I’d give Curse of the Reefer Beast a shot.

The movie opens with a woman being chased thru the woods before running up to a cabin. There she is killed offscreen by an unknown person or creature. Well, that is a fairly generic way to start things off but I suppose one can’t argue with the classics. Then we are introduced to our main characters. They are in class, which is being taught by John Russo of Night of the Living Dead fame. His best student is Angie. She is going off to the woods with her friends, who have invited a couple of stoners along without asking for her permission. This annoys Angie but she relents. There is also a guy who is hitting on her, Gunner, who ends up being invited without Angie’s knowledge as well.

With the characters introduced they then spend time talking about nonsense, especially the stoners, before getting in a car and driving to the woods. While driving they talk more, and we also see Gunner’s car break down. This allows him to run into some “influencers” aka. more victims for the eventual killings. Which by the way is taking way too long to happen. There is also a bit where they stop at a gas station for beer and the warning from the locals to “stay away from that place”. Eventually they arrive, most of them die, and a big twist is revealed.

If the above plot synopsis seems half assed and boring it isn’t a reflection of a lack of effort on my part but more so a lack of effort from the filmmakers. Curse of the Reefer Beast is one of those movies that copies all the familiar themes from other movies without adding anything new. Harbingers of doom warning you not to go to your destination… check. Arriving and setting up camp/moving in montage… check. Smoking weed and premarital naughty activities… check. I think you are getting the idea. Now if that is done well then it can still be a fun flick, but here we get pale imitation surrounded by far too much padding for a movie with a meager seventy six minute runtime to approach being entertaining. For context after the first kill it takes forty minutes of the runtime to get the characters to the lake and for the first of them to die!

Speaking of the kills they are mostly lame. I get a lack of budget limiting what can be done. But even bad practical effects are a better idea then having most everything happen offscreen. Remember that this movie was being played for laughs so bad latex kills might have worked fine. We do get a decapitation and a baseball bat thru the chest. Both are cheesy but okay. The best kill is saved for a character that shows up for a hot second to die and involves him getting torn in half. But this is too little too late as the other five kills are all offscreen and lame.

Other things to note are the generic and terrible rock music that plays over the montages, the awkward cameo from John Russo who stumbles over his lines, and the same old stoner jokes that might have landed thirty or forty years ago but are far too familiar to be funny now. This last bit proved to me that the boys clearly just put their names on this as they have written much better stoner humor themselves over the years.

Curse of the Reefer Beast is a prime example of how to do an independent horror flick wrong. A lack of budget doesn’t stop you from having a fully formed story with your own twist on the genre. Would it have killed them to figure out a few more jokes that were actually funny before running off with a camera instead of just copying shit you have seen other movies do? I can’t recommend this one at all.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

The Blackburn Asylum (2015)

A Jeep full of annoying twentysomethings are driving down the road. They pass a couple with a baby who are going to check out an abandoned mine. Well Dad is, Mom and baby are along for the ride. Because taking an infant into a dangerous mining operation in the middle of nowhere Alaska is something reasonable. The trio go to the mine, find some unpleasant locals, and get dead. Well Mom and Dad do, the baby is important later.

Then we get back to the other characters. They have no cell service… because horror movies would be way too short if you could just call 911. They also find a rockslide blocking the road and a dead lady in a crashed car. So they have to turn around for help. But after a while they find a firefighter who tells them the road is closed due to fire, so he sends them back into the middle of nowhere to fend for themselves. Even after they tell him about the accident. This brings them to a gas station, they are running out of gas, where they meet some creepy ladies who have a penchant for taxidermy and serve as the harbingers… the ones who tell them not to go to the mines. Which is exactly what they do! Some of them die, mysteries are revealed, and we do eventually get to hear about an asylum that for some odd reason was built on top of an active mine. The end.

Why do I do this to myself? I knew what this probably was and yet I persisted in watching it. The Blackburn Asylum feels like a movie made by folks who watched much better flicks and were sitting taking notes. Need a creepy gas station… check. Must have weird locals who will fill in narrative blanks and then die… check. Our main characters need to be annoying and obnoxious city folk… check check. Toss in some taxidermy and the always present board filled with missing pet posters and newspaper articles about missing people to complete things. We also have a vain female character talking about how she loves her face and a final girl that mentions she was good with a bow and arrow. These things may pay off later in very ham-fisted and predictable ways.

If I haven’t made myself clear yet the writing is bad. This really does feel like a bad copy of much better movies. I’m all for filmmakers tipping their hats to their favorite movies, hell I recently reviewed X and there it is done right. Here it just makes me think of stuff I’d much rather be watching. This is further compounded by some terrible pacing. After a couple quick kills, we then have to sit thru some driving, talking, stopping to pee, more driving, then the landslide. Here you may think things get rolling, but they don’t. We get more driving, some talking, running out of gas, wandering around a mine, relationship drama, more walking, more drama, then some running. Finally in the last half hour the kills start up again.

The kills are generic with a couple happening offscreen. We do get a nifty snapped neck, and a rebar thru some faces. But these are mixed in random bodies that I suppose are matched up with the missing posters from earlier. But this makes me feel cheated as any of these kills would have made for a much more interesting way to spend my time rather than listen to the characters drone on inanely at each other. The movie even manages to divert from the normal killer hillbilly formula with some good old tie them to a table torture porn. Our vain girl from earlier gets her face burned off… gee never saw that coming. There is also some death by acid funnel to the throat. Neither of these are nearly as good as they sound. We also get some bad CGI for the rockslide and some fires that I suppose were necessary. Oh and I completely forgot the movie’s obsession with terrible jump cuts that obscure the action and gore. To be fair was and is a staple of horror in the last couple of decades. Though that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

Clearly, I wasn’t impressed with the cast nor their performances. What I did find odd was one of the killers is Ken Kirzinger under a rather shitty looking Halloween mask. We also get a brief appearance from the Soska sisters. I’m guessing they owed someone a favor, and this was how it was paid back.

All in all this was a miserable way to spend eighty four minutes. If you want to watch a much better version of this sort of story, check out Wrong Turn or maybe even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I can’t recommend The Blackburn Asylum.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

X (2022)

Okay I suppose it is time for me to take a look at this latest from director Ti West to see what all the buzz is about. I am a fan of his other movies so I’m not coming into this with some preexisting dislike of his movies. Nor am I resistant to popular horror movies as an effort to be “cool”. Anyone that has hung around me or read my site here knows that I’m not at all worried about being cool. I just hadn’t gotten around to this one yet seeing that I’m mostly watching shitty old drive-in flicks. Please note the not caring about cool bit from earlier. Time to dive in.

The movie opens with Maxine, played by the current “it” horror girl Mia Goth, taking a bump of coke before being corralled by her boyfriend Wayne. They are off on a road trip with friends to make a dirty movie. Set in seventy nine there is some talk of making the next Deep Throat as well as some cool tunes playing in the background. Here we meet the other performers Jackson and Bobby-Lynne as well as the director R.J. and his girlfriend/sound person Lorraine. Piling into the van they head out into the Texas countryside, yeah it is set in Texas, for their destination. Wayne has rented a boarding house from an unsuspecting farmer to shoot his movie.

Once they arrive scenes are shot, characters are developed, and lots of people get naked. We also find out that the elderly couple aren’t at all what we expect them to be. But then maybe being that this is a horror flick, and they are creepy they are exactly what I as a horror nerd expected. Regardless after about an hour into the proceedings the bodies begin to drop. Some secrets are exposed, and we sort of get an ending with a bit of a twist. Though I’m glad that West did that more as a tease or “got ya” then really hanging any important plot points on it.

Gnarly finger violence!

People dig this movie, and I can totally see why. The kills are creative and executed well. We get a cool neck stabbing/decapitation, a pitchfork thru the eyes, a couple bits of shot gunning, and a gator attack. Though my favorite has to be a in your face head squishing that was both gooey and bloody in the best ways. What can I say I’m a horror nerd who loves his gore. In this way X more than met my expectations. There is also some fun gnarly bits with a nail thru the foot and some smashed fingers with protruding bone. Though for me the best is dairy cow roadkill. Growing up in the country that one hit close to home.

Being set in Texas during the seventies this movie also gives off some serious Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibes. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker this could have come off as a rip off or pale imitation, but West is better than that. His talent allows for this movie to push those familiar buttons of isolated farmhouse, clothes, music, and youth versus age all while telling his own unique story. This feels like something that might have happened down the road from the Sawyer’s house. It was more like West invokes a bit of the lore and locations but keeps it fresh. I dig that he did his own thing but still was able to give the horror audience a bit of a wink and nod. I also loved the fact that we get some gator action which I’m thinking might be another reference to a Tobe Hooper flick, Eaten Alive.

Did we really need a musical number?

Again, I’m a fan of Ti West but, and yes there is a but, X suffers from a very familiar issue. I’ve shown a lot of my friends his earlier movies, The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers. While their reaction has been mostly positive, they all point out pacing problems. I’m beginning to think it might just be his aesthetic as a director, but West does fall in love with spending long stretches with characters talking. This allows him to put out the bigger messages his movies are trying to get across before the mayhem starts, but these are horror flicks and the mayhem is what we signed up for. With X that means we hear the characters talking about being young and doing what they want to do before they get too old to do it. This is further hammered away by the old couple’s motivation for the killings, which is that the old lady is angry that she isn’t attractive or special anymore.

I guess that was a spoiler… but hasn’t everyone already seen this? It felt like I was the last one to get to it. Regardless that means while the last forty minutes of the movie is bonkers and fun with all sorts of creative kills, we get an hour of folks shooting a fake porno, talking about the porno, singing a song (I kid you not!), and driving in a sweet seventies van. There is even a bit of relationship drama when Lorraine decides to perform in a scene to the dismay of her boyfriend R.J. I understand the narrative importance of establishing the characters and the greater themes of the plot, but did it really need an hour of runtime? Also, couldn’t you have mixed in some kills earlier on so that the movie was more even? Just a thought.

In the end I see the value of X and why fans are in love with it. While I’m not in the “best horror flick ever” crowd, and they do exist out there, I would recommend checking this one out. Oh and can we please stop with the Mia Goth should have won an Oscar for this movie talk? That just makes us all look silly as genre fans. I’ve picked up a copy of Pearl, which is the prequel also starring Goth, and will be reviewing that soon.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Halloween Ends (2022)

I suppose I should weigh in on this movie. I did watch it during my October marathon but wanted to let it settle in and give it a second watching before going on the record. The movie starts off with us seeing a guy named Corey being hired to babysit a kid named Jeremy. This kid is a little shit that had me rooting for Michael Myers to show up and murder his ass! Oh yeah this is taking place in Haddonfield, which I suppose is important to point out, and they talk about the killings. So Jeremy messes with Corey and locks him in the attic, which freaks the dude out. The parents arrive home just as he kicks the door open sending Jeremy falling three stories to his death in the foyer of their fancy house. Roll credits.

After that we hear Laurie narrating a book that she is writing. She talks about Michael terrorizing the town and how evil lurks even though he has been missing since he killed her daughter. Laurie lives with her granddaughter, which is important later. Laurie crosses paths with the now released Corey, who spent time in an institution after the death of Jeremy. Both being pariahs in town (they blame Laurie for taunting Michael causing his murder spree) she feels a kindred spirit. This leads her to introducing him to her granddaughter and the pair hit it off right away. The problem is Michael is still alive and uses Corey to bring victims to the sewer he has been hiding in. They try to explain away his unstoppable nature by hinting that the evil in him heals his wounds when he kills, thus making him stronger.

Some stuff happens as Corey loses his mind and takes the mask away from Michael. I suppose it is time for him to finish off Laurie accomplishing what his predecessor could never do. Though I won’t spoil the big twist other than to say that Michael is apparently sneakier than we ever knew. In the end it does seem as if they put the whole Laurie vs. Michael storyline to bed… hopefully this time forever.

This movie has issues, the first of which was obvious when I saw in the opening credits that four people were credited with the screenplay. Normally that means either a troubled production or far too many chefs in the kitchen. Here I think it is the latter as they try and squeeze too much into Halloween Ends for my liking. When Jamie Lee Curtis is on screen the movie is far more interesting as I have over forty years invested in her character of Laurie Strode. Seeing her living a normal life and being kind to Corey is sort of sweet. They also do a good job with the script showing that every time she starts to feel happy something is there to drag her back to the past.

The grocery store sequence is a prime example of that when she is twirling her hair and flirting like a teenager. We know she never had that chance given what happened, but that hope is shattered when she leaves the store and is yelled at by a woman whose sister is in a wheelchair and lost her family to Michael. Again, they blame Laurie for taunting him and bringing him back to town. There is some excellent stuff like this in the movie that kick you right in the feelings.

But I get the distinct vibe that the filmmakers or maybe the company wanted to use this movie to setup what they are wanting to do next. This might be the end of the story for Michael and Laurie, but this franchise is too profitable to let go completely. So, we get the story of Corey, who I initially thought was going to pickup the Shatner mask and carry on, though it doesn’t work out that way. Both from her initial monologue and the one that plays over the end scenes Laurie talks about the evil that exists. Basically, Michael is a symptom, but not the cause of the horrible things that happened. They establish this with the Corey character’s transformation from innocent kid who had a horrible accident to stone cold killer recruited by Myers. The only reason I can see to spend the forty or so minutes with new characters, specifically Corey and those tormenting him, is to establish that they can and likely will move on with a new killer and final girl. A more accurate title would have been Halloween Ends to Start Again.

The fact that fans hated the new characters and wanted the movie to focus on what they where expecting which was the finale of Laurie and Michael makes a ton of sense to me. And I also agree that when they aren’t on screen the movie suffers and isn’t nearly as interesting or engaging. But I also understand the reality of them wanting to continue, though I’m checking out and not at all onboard from here on out. I basically just ignored and “got thru” the Corey crap so I could get to the good stuff. Is that ideal? Not at all and it made for an uneven story which goes back to my too many cooks in the kitchen comment when mentioning the four credited screenwriters. But at least Jamie Lee Curtis got one more badass moment, which I won’t spoil.

There are a solid fourteen kills in the movie, some of which are generic but others a lot of fun. The best of them is a blowtorch to the face, a nurse gets stabbed/pinned to the wall in a callback to the original, and a Radio DJ gets his jaw smashed and loses his tongue. There is also a decent head stomping and a spike to the eye, so you can see they didn’t skimp on the gore. This is brought to screen with a nice combination of practical effects as well as some digital assists. The kills helped get me thru the parts where I thought things were slow and ramp up as the movie closes in on the big finale. All in all, I was happy with the kills/gore.

My final word on Halloween Ends would be manage expectations. There is a good movie in here, one that our favorite characters deserve. Sadly, they also chose to setup the franchise for the future and that takes away from what this probably should have been. But if you can look past those flaws, and this is a flawed movie for sure, they at least didn’t screw up the characters. So instead of running off to sign some internet petition demanding they redo this (I mean honestly guys… what the hell?) maybe appreciate what we got and move on. I for one am happy with what I got, flaws and all.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Rocktober Blood (1984)

Just when I think I’ve run out of slasher movies from the eighties I stumble over another one. Rocktober Blood is another example of that. The movie kicks off with a singer/songwriter named Billy laying down his newest track. It is quickly apparent that he is a jerk as he treats everyone like shit. That includes a beautiful young singer named Lynn. After leaving for a bit Billy comes back and murders both engineers that were working with him in rather gruesome ways before chasing Lynn around.

Then the movie jumps forward two years. Thru some exposition we find out that Lynn testified at his trial and that he was sentenced to death. He is already dead and buried since in this world I guess that can happen in a couple of years. Though he insisted he was innocent during the entire trial Lynn saw him. Or did she? Now Lynn is the lead singer of Billy’s band and is about to release a record of his songs. But it looks like that isn’t sitting well with his ghost since someone who looks just like him is killing folks and taunting Lynn trying to make her crazy. Is this Billy returned from the grave? Well… can I spoil a movie that is approaching forty years old? Would that even be considered a spoiler?

Before I go any further, I will warn you that I’m going to give away the big plot twist. If you don’t want that to happen, then I’d suggest skipping to the last paragraph. The movie’s pacing is incredibly uneven. I was excited when we got some stellar kills in the first fifteen minutes. There is some stalking and some nudity as well. I thought that I had found one of those hidden gems that was going to follow the formula and be a good time. The acting from the killer is over the top and cheesy which is mixed in with some decent rock and roll music. But once the movie jumps ahead, we get a lot of inane dialogue about what happened. Sure, there are some sweet eighties style up close aerobics, but that can only take you so far.

Things do pick up again as we find out Billy had a twin brother John who did all the killing but that somehow no one ever knew about. He framed his more famous sibling and sat back to watch him get killed. But now he thinks that Lynn is screwing up the music and must also die. Though not right away apparently as he picks off a bunch of her friends first. I mean he could kill her anytime because he keeps showing up and taunting her with “rainbow eyes” which is the song that was written for her.

The kills are solid. There is a decent throat slash, and another person is pinned to a wall with some metal spikes. The real highlights are when the killer slaughters some backup dancers by gutting them and lopping off one of their heads. We get a couple great gags, but they all are either in the opening or the big finale. What happens in between is very slow and boring. I also liked the killer in his skull mask, but once the mask is off he looks like a bootleg Sean Astin which isn’t scary at all.

In conclusion Rocktober Blood is a weird low budget slasher flick that has a few fun kills but that is about it. I can’t imagine wasting another ninety minutes on this one so I can’t recommend spending money on it. Maybe if you find it streaming or you can rent it then give it a shot.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer