by ·Comments Off on Stopmotion (2023, Robert Morgan)

Young animator Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale) is completing her dying mom’s final stop-motion film, then tries to turn it into her own work. But Aisling has no ideas of her own. Where do ideas come from? She tries asking her man’s sister for psychedelic drugs, then starts listening to the girl down the hall who doesn’t actually exist. She begins animating in a trance state, believing the monster they created inside her film is after her, and it does finally eat the girl they also created. In the meantime, Aisling pushes her bf Tom down the stairs, and his character name must be a Peeping Tom reference since she kills his sister with a tripod. Unfortunately the movie we’re watching isn’t a stop-motion horror but a mediocre live-action indie movie. I’ve tried to make it sound eventful, but the twist is that it’s ponderous and tiresome, offering nothing fresh, and that’s a crushing disappointment from the creator of the brilliant Bobby Yeah.

by ·Comments Off on Thanksgiving (2023, Eli Roth)

Lotta characters in this – at least the third feature film based on joke Grindhouse trailers – but what’s important is that the survivors of a black friday riot are being hunted, captured, and posed at a private “turkey” dinner by bereft psycho cop Patrick Dempsey, who loved riot victim Gina Gershon. The killer hides behind a pilgrim mask until the climactic parade, when he swaps out for a killer klown mask. Lotta nastiness – one girl gets corncob holders in the ears then chucked into a table saw. Enough victims and false leads to get over the 100 minute mark. A gross good time, but not substantially better than the two-minute version. I’ve skipped everything by Roth for sixteen years – since Hostel 2 he’s done a couple TV things, a shark documentary, a remake, a kids movie, a cannibal horror, and a Keanu Reeves movie I watched the last ten minutes of.

When you’ve been facially mutilated and cannot call for help:

by ·Comments Off on Chopping Mall (1986, Jim Wynorski)

I guess rewatching Dawn of the Dead got me nostalgic over horrors watched when I was 12 that were set in malls with gun stores. Back then I wouldn’t recognize Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov camping it up in the opening scenes, but my whole life I’ve known Dick Miller, seen here being electrocuted by killer robots.

Robot knows the best stores:

The robots are smarter and more resourceful little ED-209s, slow and loud (but apparently silent to the hearing-impaired characters), meant to guard the mall but turned evil by a sinister lightning strike. The teens who work at the Sbarro and the furniture store are partying after hours when the robots go on a killing spree, until only the two nerds remain.

Watching Leslie’s head explode:

These kids: Nerd Allison was in Night of the Comet (also with Mary Woronov), Nerd Ferdy in Karate Kid, Rick in Friday the 13th Part 2, Greg in Electric Boogaloo. Early victim Mike is Deathstalker himself. Most importantly, torched Suzie was Barbara Crampton, in the midst of becoming a horror legend with Re-Animator and From Beyond.

by ·Comments Off on Wendigo (2001, Larry Fessenden)

Family on vacation, local hunters unhappy at family for hitting a deer they’d been tracking, pink hat Otis will get his revenge – my second Otis movie of the week. Though afraid of the deer hunter, the family settles into their vaca home and gets settled: Patricia Clarkson here between The Green Mile and a Carrie remake, dad would appear in Jennifer Lynch’s Chained and the Dawn of the Dead remake, and their son, Middle Malcolm’s little brother.

The kid is given a wendigo figurine by the Phantom Indian of a store intown, then there’s a gradual ramp-up of displaced-Indians imagery. Both parents intended a getaway but have work stuff come up. Some sweet stop-motion/photo-montage scene transitions keep the movie lively and mysterious, then Otis shoots dad and kills the sheriff with a hammer, glimpses of deer creatures and antler mazes as the camera rushes the doomed people.

I was wondering if you could make a whole week of Malcolm in the Middle horror movies… Malcolm’s in teen gamer flick Stay Alive, Reese starred with Dee Wallace in Invisible Mom II, Francis did a kidnapping thriller, the mom did a Manson family thing, and dad was in a haunted novelist story and sci-fi horror Dead Space… so Dewey here is the champ.

tfw malcolm in the middle isn’t on TV:

by ·Comments Off on In a Glass Cage (1987, Agust Villaronga)

We try to keep Shocktober light and not end up watching psychosexual nazi stories, I don’t know how this keeps happening. A visually striking Spanish movie about ugly shit, the Apt Pupil of its time.

Nazi pedo (who was also in The Boys From Brazil, appropriately enough) is stuck in iron glass lung, cared for by wife Griselda (Almodóvar regular Marisa Paredes) and kid Rena. Then crazy Angelo moves in with his weird eyebrows claiming to be a nurse, actually a witness to the nazi’s final victim before the suicide attempt that landed him in the lung. I thought it a revenge plot but Angelo tells the old guy he wants to be his protege, so, no good guys in this. Nice giallo-lite as he stalks the wife through the house and hangs her, then he starts kidnapping random local boys and reenacting murders from the man’s journals in nazi cosplay. This is almost worth it for the way the music tears itself apart in the climax when Angelo is killing his idol and taking his place.

Rena is okay with Angelo wrecking the place:

by ·Comments Off on The Body Snatcher (1945, Robert Wise)

Following up Curse of the Cat People, it’s clear that Wise didn’t have a firm handle on things yet. The whole aspect that this is Scotland in the 1800s is very weak, while the plot is just the Burke and Hare story but set two years later, so the characters being murdered keep redundantly mentioning the more famous murders.

Karloff is the local snatcher, bringing bodies to medical school for Dr. Henry Daniell (Kirk Douglas’s brother in Lust for Life). Lugosi plays an idiot foreigner who gets killed shortly after the singing homeless girl. The doctor gets spooked and dies in a rainy carriage crash, and that’s the end of that. I think the last Val Lewton horror I’ve got left is Bedlam, another Karloff period piece, oh boy.

Frilly doctor is standing pig-center:

Frank vs. Drac:

by ·Comments Off on Vampyres (1974, José Ramón Larraz)

Ripoff: the lesbians get shot to death before credits. But lesbians never truly die, they remain undead in a fancy British house near the graveyard, luring in dudes who wake up alive minus some blood. Disagreeable couple Harriet and John (he’s one of the Zed twins) camp outside and get involved. The second half is mostly boring, watching everyone else slowly realizes what we’ve known since the opening title. Vampire Miriam was in Lisztomania, their last victim has been in 20 major films, Larraz moved back to Spain and made some movies with shabby posters which are all on Tubi.

by ·Comments Off on Theater of Blood (1973, Douglas Hickox)

RIP Anthony Hickox – on the day he died, I watched a film by his father. Vincent Price is in disguise as a fake cop, not helping some housing bigwig evict murderous squatters. Turns out Price is back from the near-grave, having suicided in front of the critics association after losing an acting award, rescued by cartoonish winos and become their king. Daughter Diana Rigg handles his above-ground affairs while Price contrives new ways to kill his tormentors (beheading in sleep, being fed their own beloved dog on a fake game-show set) in connection with his Shakespeare roles. They don’t necessarily deserve to die for thinking Price is a cheesy actor, but for other reasons, they mostly do. In fact it’s annoying that the boring critic Ian Hendry gets to survive, but I can’t stay mad at a movie that stages a swordfight on trampolines.

I forget which Shakespeare play this was:

by ·Comments Off on Seed of Chucky (2004, Don Mancini)

Follows through nicely on its opening Psycho reference, not just a fakeout joke. Appalling CG is something I’m getting used to this month after Final Destination 4. But oh no, the first scene was a first-person murder fantasy by an ugly doll, and this is a meta making-of a Chucky movie. Jennifer Tilly as herself: “I’m an oscar nominee for god’s sake and now I’m fucking a puppet.”

Young Seed is trans, feat. a nice Glen or Glenda reference, and voiced by Pippin himself. Cool-looking movie with good dollwork, but Bride hit the horror-comedy sweet spot and this one is just cheesy. John Waters plays the paparazzo stalking Tilly, whom the adult dolls are trying to knock up, while their messed-up doll-baby protects/threatens them. Feels like a lot of British people were in this. Seed finally boxing-helenas Chucky’s limbs before beheading him, but let’s see, Chuck will be back – Curse comes next, then Cult, then I am not watching the TV series.