Is Mac and Cheese A Side Dish or A Main?: The Blackening (2022)

The Blackening (2022)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg

For the longest time, the whole trope of Black characters dying first in horror movies baffled me since, being a guy obsessed with slasher films, I can only count maybe five titles out of hundred-ish wherein this instance holds true. (New Year's Evil (1980), Alone in the Dark (1982), Slaughter High (1986), A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), and Scream 2 (1997), to name a few) I now understand that this is more of a stab at the token minority trope, a problematic movie practice of sacrificing characters of certain ethnicities to the threat as bodycount fodder and/or motivation for the hero (typically a white male) to do better in saving the day. Over the years, through social push, more big-name Black actors are given more access to show off their talents, resulting to horror legends like the late-Tony Todd, Ken Foree, and Keith David, as well as modern horror creators like Jorden Peele and Misha Green, gracing the screen with a great deal of prominent Black characters in memorable leading roles.

With this turn, the "Black guy dies first" trope is occasionally uttered around nowadays as a tongue-in-cheek joke. The same kind of cheekiness that gets us fun and silly terror flicks like this house-in-the-woods survival slasher, The Blackening (2022)!

It's a Juneteenth weekend and a group of old college friends are meeting up for the first time after ten years; the assortment includes gal pals Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) and Allison (Grave Byers), and their gay bestie Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins); hunky African-descent Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls) and his former-gangster bro King (Melvin Gregg); life-of-the-party Shanika (X Mayo) and incredibly nerdy Clifton (Jermaine Fowler). They're all invited to a vacation house in the middle of the woods by their friends Shawn and Morgan, who are suspiciously missing the moment they arrived. Nonetheless, the gang starts celebrating like any people in backwoods slashers would, with a whole lot of Spades, diabetic Kool-Aid and a side of troublesome fling that may or may not open old heartbreaks. 

The good times can only go so long before the lights suddenly go out and, on their search to get the power back on, the group stumbles upon a hidden room full of board games. Including an obscenely racist-looking one called "The Blackening", consisting of question cards, a grinning Sambo fella on the middle of the board and, curious enough, game pieces seemingly made based on their specific personalities. When the game centerpiece starts asking them to pick a card and play, this is when things get really screwed up as everybody finds out that Shawn is dead and Morgan is about to be tortured by a masked killer somewhere inside the house. Making matters worse is the game room is rigged close and the only way everyone to get out alive is to beat the The Blackening, or die trying!

Keeping the record straight, The Blackening (2022) is less a horror-comedy and more of a comedy with horror elements. Yes, there are kills and killers, a sense of stake, and a mystery as to who is behind this entire bloody fiasco, though the approach taken here leans closer to satirizing slasher tropes through the eyes of sharply witty and street smart African-Americans. Think a Halloween episode of The Boondocks, only feature length and with a killer masked up to look like a damn minstrel show. This certainly meant that the movie has little in the sense of blood, tension and scares, but the unapologetic energy of its writing and characters when it comes to poking fun at horror tropes, as well as showcasing jokes outside of the horror spectrum, is incredibly infectious down to the funny bones! (A running gag involving conversations through eye contact only being my favorite!) 

A good deal of this workability stems from the incredible chemistry and performances the entire casts have, from the hearty humor surrounding around Lisa and Dewayne's friendship jeopardized by Lisa's love for Nnamdi, to the no-nonsense loudness of Shanika and Carlton's cringe-inducing awkwardness. Their reaction to the bloodshed practically lampoons the roles of Black people in horror media, mainly being quippy, lucky and even straightforward enough to actually best the killer in a lot of encounters despite some painful, embarrassing, and painfully embarrassing blowbacks on their part. (Splitting up. Accidentally hurting themselves with their weapons. Getting high on Molly while being hunted down. Y'know, the usual backwoods horror theatrics) Interestingly, it is through this lampooning that The Blackening (2022) also took its chances to examine how modern culture and its many attempts to define ethnic communities led to harmful judgement within these circles, a lot of it light-heartedly addressed during the times the friends are forced to play The Blackening and test their Black-ness, only to later resurface as a motive in this movie's plot twist. While nowhere a grandeur deconstruction, it is an intriguing insight to pull within the movie's remarkably coherent humor.

The Blackening (2022) is, without a doubt, very "Black" and I just love it for that! It may not do much as a horror flick, but as silly fun little movie you can sit back and relax to, it's a whole party, baby! So grab some Rap Chips, down some King's Kool-Aid, and treat yourself with this roaring riot of a comedy slasher!

Bodycount:

1 male shot on the neck with a crossbow

1 female killed offscreen

1 male repeatedly stabbed with arrow heads

1 male shot through the neck with a crossbow

1 male had his head pulped with a candlestick, stomped dead

1 male shot with a crossbow, kicked into a well (?)

Total: 6 (?)

Camping The Camp: Bloody Murder (2000)

Bloody Murder (2000)

Rating: *1/2
Starring: Jessica Morris, Peter Guillemette, Patrick Cavanaugh

Well, boys and girls, can you name that one infamous hockey mask-wearing slasher known to lurk around the woods killing teenagers? If you answer 'Trevor Moorhouse' then I'm both impressed you even remember the guy, and disappointed coz you've probably never seen a Friday The 13th film. You're an anomaly of a slasher fan and that makes me sad...

So in this direct-to-video cheapo, trainee camp counselors fixing up Camp Placid Pines are disappearing one by one after bringing up a campfire boogieman named Trevor Moorhouse, who may or may not be responsible for cutting down the local population for a few years now. As suspicion variously falls on one another, our heroine Julie decides to do some amateur sleuthing to try and figure out who could be responsible for the potential murders going around the camp. And apparently this includes scenes of imagined scenarios wherein other characters are committing the murders to throw us off, and hilarious voice-over work whenever a letter is involved...

Bloody Murder (2000) was released around the time Scream (1996) made witty and satirical deconstruction of horror flicks look like the hottest thing to do, and it often feels like it with scenes shamelessly ripping and calling out slasher tropes, most of it coming from the resident horror nerd Tobe, who bemoans wry remarks like "...a great time to be walking through this camp alone. Why don’t you just paste a sign on my back that says ‘Please Kill Next’." (Yes, dude. We get it. You're trying to be Scream (1996)'s Randy) The result is nowhere as engaging nor as clever as it wanted to be, considering the whole murder mystery angle is clumsily handled with too many obvious red herrings and an acting tone dangerously leaning towards parody, courtesy of its eight-grade level writing. 

Nothing simply works here, not even the slasher elements which are awfully chaste by dead teenager flick standards; there's hardly a drop of blood for a good deal of these kills, no workable stalking or chase scenes involving a hapless victim and our masked murderer, and the raunchiest this movie ever got is a make-out session in the woods where no one got naked. Plus, the whole 'Trevor Moorhouse' shtick just isn't cutting it with how much the plot tried making him a household name here, making a mountain out of a molehill when the guy hardly even has the presence that demands attention, even more so when the killer ends up being someone we hardly paid attention to. But, hey, the movie seems to be dead set on making Trevor Moorhouse the next slasher star, so much so they're willing to risk a dumb twist ending featuring the hockey-masked maniac. (May have worked, though. This damn movie got two sequels, believe it or not...)

Perhaps the aim here was to be so bad it's good, but all I got is a whole lot of bad and very little of the good. If any. Bloody Murder (2000)? More like a bloody waste of film reel...

Bodycount:

1 male hacked up with a chainsaw

1 female stabbed with a kitchen knife

1 male shot to death with arrows

1 male had his throat cut with a kitchen knife

1 male gets a lawn dart thrown through his back

1 male found hanging dead atop a tree

1 male killed with a chainsaw

Total: 7

Death Comes For Legacies: Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Rya Kihlstedt

It's been, what? Fourteen years since the last Final Destination movie? In all honesty, Final Destination 5 (2011) would have ended the franchise on a high note by being an absolute godsend entry for managing to still keep the idea of Death personally picking off disaster survivors brutally frightening and morbidly fascinating within its back-to-basics story. Not to mention that one neat twist in the near end that I'm sure surprised a lot of the audience the first time they saw it! But through the next years, the rumor mill kept hopes of another round of the "howdunnit" bodycounting alive, this including talks of a story set at the medieval ages, to ones focusing on a group of first responders. (Frankly, a period piece Final Destination movie would have been interesting. Maybe then they would finally address who or what the flying fridge kept giving these random people visions of terrible disasters?)

Now, Death is back once more, and this time it takes a bloodied flying log through the legacy sequel trend, with a big emphasis on "legacy".

The scene starts at 1968; young Iris is surprised by her boyfriend Paul with a fancy dinner high up at a newly opened Skyview Tower, a classy restaurant built hundreds of feet above ground. What Iris didn't know is that her man plans on proposing to her there, all the while Paul isn't aware that the love of his life is carrying his child. When the two learns of each other's little secrets, the couple couldn't be happier for themselves and one another, thus everyone clapped and is happy.

Until some brat's coin toss somehow leads to the tower's glass dance floor shattering, a massive explosion, and the structure falling apart, killing everyone.

As Iris falls to her death, this turns out to be no more than a recurring nightmare and the source of night terrors for one Stefani, a present day college student. It's been two months since she started dreaming the disaster and, hoping to find its source so she can live normally again, Stefani pries information out from her extended family who hesitantly reveal to her that Iris is her grandmother, driven insane by her constant lookout for Death ever since that visit to the Skyview and is now dwelling inside a fortified cabin at a secluded mountain clearing.

Tracking her grandmother down, Stefani learns that Iris was successful in preventing the tower's collapse, saving the lives of everyone there. Of course, Death didn't like that its plan got screwed up, so it starts to kill off every survivor in the order they would've died that time, along with their respective descendants who shouldn't exist to begin with. The matter that everyone walked off living and breathing from that tower meant Death took a very long while to eventually get to Iris' bloodline (so long, dare I say, that if it was a movie, it would take three or four sequels just to do it justice), but with Iris now terminally ill, she theorizes Stefani's getting these dreams as a sign that her family's next to bite as soon as the cancer finally do her in. 

Stefani didn't buy any of this at first, but a well-projected weather vane through grammy's head moments after their meeting was enough to make a believer out of the girl, who then starts to go through and take to heart Grandma Iris' impromptu gift, a Bible-thick journal full of tips and tricks on how to avoid Death. The rest of her family, as you would expect, was skeptical by all of this until, that is, someone's dad got his face mulched by a runaway lawnmower and a cousin gets a gruesome yet unusually humor-driven incident involving a garbage truck. By then, it's a desperate race against time to find a way to break the cycle, which may include a heartfelt final appearance of Tony Todd as the mysterious mortician William Bludworth, a kooky plan to kill-and-resurrect a cousin through a triggered peanut allergy, and maybe even a darkly humorous suggestion of infanticide to steal the fresh soul's years, though thankfully nobody bothered to do after, perhaps, one of this film's best exchanges.

In fact, one of the key good points of Bloodlines (2025) is how the two families are written and portrayed, just a colorful bunch of fun and likeable characters despite their flaws. The film generously gives good bits after good bits of just how close they all are (Uncle Howard's kids and their cousin going through the house looking for a tiny adorable pet turtle, for one. And then there's Richard Harmon's Erik, a tattoo and piercing-studded assholey joker-type, shown to have a photo of his dad giving him a fatherly smooch on the cheek set as his phone's wallpaper, which successfully tugged my heartstrings), and it's this warm bond that's something mostly absent throughout the franchise, thus greatly welcomed here for giving the movie an identifiable theme and tone, as well as a relatable raise of stakes.

When it comes to the messy meat and bone of the movie, Bloodlines (2025) does kick things off with one of this franchise's best opening disaster next to Final Destination 2 (2003)'s vehicular pile-up; just brutal carnage all over. Blood, guts and charred bodies grace the screen full of splatter and a dash of dark comedy here and there. (Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head plays on a radio before hapless dancers start getting splattered on the hard concrete from a fall. A penny's weight causes a piano to tip over and fall through and, satisfyingly, on top of an obnoxious character. Just to name a few) This dip into grim comedy occasionally shows up across the rest of the death scenes, making the massacre here oddly balanced in terror, gore and cathartic laughs as MRI magnet flies metal debris through soft flesh, or an accidentally-chained nose piercing escalates to a deadly blaze.

The excitement, unfortunately, starts to fizzle down around the final act as the remaining family decide that the best course of action to keep Death at bay is to have them, or at least one of them, fort up inside late-Grandma Iris' "deathproof" cabin as long as they could, so the rest can live their lives to the fullest. Now, see, this is when Bloodlines (2025) starts to get sloppy with its direction as, for one, this plan is just dumb; with Death managing to kill off Iris using the structure of the cabin against her, the whole place is basically imperiled and this is further hammered down by the number of hazards originally meant to keep the Grim Reaper off now posing as dangers against the doomed family. And, yet, they continue ahead, resulting to even more deaths and a near-death experience that may or may not have broken the cycle.

I could have tolerated this shortsighted turn of events as it did still feature a few nicely executed set-pieces, but even when the movie rears up its inevitable twisty final disaster, Bloodlines (2025) couldn't even bother to come up with a more creative exit. Practically speaking, they just did the ending for Final Destination 3 (2006) again, only with little to no exciting build-up, looking awfully cartoonish and has Final Destination 2 (2003) logs thrown in because, well, fanservice. Yawn.

Quite a shame, really, as I would have given this entry a better rating given that they tried harder and better for its finale. Still, the journey before that is a whole baggage of fun, one that isn't shy to toss around an emotional core in the midst of all the crushed bodies and witty jest, reminding us to cherish our time with our loved ones. All I can say is I'm glad we have Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)! It's imperfect, but worth a watch! 

Bodycount:

1 elderly female gets a projected weather vane through her head

1 male had his face shredded by a lawnmower

1 female crushed to death inside a trash compactor

1 male gets a magnetized wheelchair crush and impale him into a malfunctioning MRI machine

1 male gets a magnetized metal spring through his head

1 female crushed by a falling light post

1 female crushed by an airborne log

1 male crushed by an airborne log

Total: 8

Images (c) Google

Really Dirty Beddings: Lucker The Necrophagus (1986)

Lucker The Necrophagous (Belgium, 1986)

Rating: *1/2
Starring: Nick Van Suyt, Helga Vandevelde, Let Jotts

I remember my very first Fangoria magazine; I was 13-years old and it's issue #252, with Michael Rooker's face in heavy and slimy alien mutant make-up gracing the front cover. Within those pages are DVD reviews and one of them happens to be of Lucker The Necrophagous (1986), and I recall the magazine being unfavorable about the film. I guess I should have taken that as a warning of what I'm getting myself into when I finally decided to see this grey market exploitation indie many, many years later, but the damn curious cat inside of me is egging to see just how much of a trainwreck this movie is.

And, boy, is it a trainwreck.

The story of Lucker The Necrophagous (1986) follows the titular serial-killer who likes to rape and murder women, though not necessarily on that order. The film opens with him heavily sedated in a mental institution after a suicide attempt, but his medication wears off too soon and Lucker is up killing orderlies, having his way on some of the bodies, and escaping into town to lay low. We eventually learn that it's been eight years since his reign of gross terror ended with his capture, a total of eight victims under his kill count. Should have been nine, though, and after hearing about this one gal, Cathy Jordan, surviving his rampage (and finding out where she lives through a damn phone book!), Lucker sets off to correct his mistake, taking a few lives along the way. (And, yes, the freak got his rocks off on a few of the resulting corpses)

Apparently, Lucker The Necrophagous (1986) is a film made to be purposely offensive as a way for the director, Johan Vandewoestijine, to get back at the Belgian Film Commission. The resulting production was rough, with Johan withholding the finer details of the movie from fiscal backers just to get the money to make it, only for the producer to destroy the negatives, leaving only bits and pieces of the film to work with for the final product. That would explain the choppiness of the story and the patchwork-editing quality of the movie itself, though that did little to null the extreme repulsiveness of its taboo subject matter, especially when an infamous "bed scene" was done leeringly long and filled with as much vomit-inducing gags you'd wish to could bleach away from your brain once the dirty deed is done. Past that, the story is basically a 68-minute short slasher (74 minutes for the Belgian VHS release) wherein we simply watch Lucker stab people to death with very little workable dialogue to go with, even more so by its climax when everything devolves into a cacophony of screams and grunts amidst the film's score, punctuated by a rather confusing ending. 

There's few in the way of substance here, but we do see some bit of style through the giallo-inspired candy-colored lighting and stylized photography. Gore and make-up effects are also a fair highlight, something a movie of this dirty of a plot would benefit from and did, but that's as far as the positives could go. Sad to say, Lucker The Necrophagous (1986), a button-pushing shlock made to test just how far one can go before feeling cold and dirty, is quite lousy as an entertaining horror piece, its overall quality just all sorts of bad. If all of this tickled your curiosity, then, a word of advise, prepare a barf bag...

Bodycount:

1 male stabbed in the eye with an icepick

1 female beaten to death against a steering wheel

1 female disemboweled with a knife

1 male bashed to death against a wall

1 female stabbed on the throat with a kitchen knife

1 female head seen (flashback)

1 male strangled, head beaten with a pipe

1 female knifed to death

1 female disemboweled with a knife

Total: 9

Feeling A Little Devilish: Hell Of A Summer (2023)

Hell Of A Summer (2023)

Rating: ***
Starring: Adam Pally, Rosebud Baker, Fred Hechinger

At age 24, Jason Hochberg (Fred Hechinger) could have been working a real job. One that probably pays more than a hundred bucks a week. But, no, he prefers to cling on to an adolescent happy place and accept a lead camp counselor gig at his childhood Summer haven, Camp Pineway, after the owners have to take a leave of absence. Genuinely thrilled by this, Jason went on and about trying to befriend the latest turnover of young camp counselors, who are more or less your walking and breathing killcount tropes, only coated here with a fresh paint of Gen Z-stereotyping. Needless to say, Jason's overly-friendly approach to be one with the teen clutter is mostly taken with an awkward stance and a chuckle, maybe a couple of eyerolls at its worse, but this will drastically go South later that evening when someone in a handcrafted devil mask starts to hack aspiring social influencers dead inside their cabins, as well as decapitate vocal vegans with a mean meat cleaver, among many other gruesome bodily atrocities...

It's a backwoods slasher plot as old as time, though the direction and tone here is noticeably more focused on the coming-of-age comedy than throwing dismembered limbs on the air for a splatter-fest. A lot of the jokes and dialogue centers on the generational clash between Jason and the group of junior counselors who would rather speak about meat being murder, gathering online clout, or practicing their death shrieks for a stage play they're working on; occasionally, it's cute and worth the little giggle here and there for how cleverly written and edited some of these sequences are, though a few did fall flat, fumbling whatever gag they're building to, making the whole teen camp comedy angle a hit-or-miss. That said, though, it would be a disservice to the actors to not at least credit their talents as they did manage to pull off the one-note ridiculousness of their characters, yet still making them likeable enough to feel sorry for whenever they're in trouble. May it be from the killer, or their own stupidity. 

For the slasher side of things, it started strongly with two gruesome murders involving a guitar and a knife murder that's executed oh so deliciously, only for it to take a backseat until halfway into the movie when it makes a clumsy comeback; while it has its share of splashy kills like a gnarly axe to the head and a brutal rock beating, its more novel deaths were only teased such as the killer taking a mean-spirited advantage on a victim's nut allergy by dipping their knife in a jar of peanut butter first, though rather than showing the dirty deed, the next thing we see is the poor shmuck's lifeless red-faced body being dragged out. It's kinda frustrating, though not as frustrating as the killer's overused motive of doing it because of a sociopathic need to have eyes and ears on them, though I'll give credit to the twist reveal as I honestly didn't see it coming, plus I do dig the gradeschool craft devil mask and cloak combo! In the end, we're treated with a passable enough final act that ties things as neatly as a standard backwoods slashers would and it's, well, fine.

Hell of a Summer (2023) doesn't really need to much to be entertaining. Dare I say it's actually halfway being a decent backwoods bodycounter you can pop in anytime for a simple fun watch, but it held off a bit on the carnage and sets its gums on a more comical venture that only partially works. The end product is a half-and-half attempt, but, frankly, it could have been worse. So much worse.

Bodycount:

1 male found with his mouth impaled with a guitar neck

1 female stabbed in the head with a hunting knife

1 female hacked with a meat cleaver, head found in a refrigerator

1 male stabbed with a peanut butter-tainted kitchen knife, dies from allergic shock

1 female knifed in the back, beaten with a rock

1 male hacked in the head with an axe

1 male stabbed in the neck with a swiss army knife

1 female gets an arrow shot to an eye, stomped

Total: 8

The Douche Who Cried Axe: #ChadGetsTheAxe (2022)

#ChadGetsTheAxe (2022)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Spencer Harrison Levin, Michael Bonini, Taneisha Figueroa

Personally, I see fame as more of a bother than a benefit. Sure, you get the riches and recognition, but it comes with the pressure of meeting people's expectations and this often comes with the price of one's self-respect and decency. When fame becomes an obsession for clout, this need for attention can spiral towards notoriety and you'll become trouble. Or be troubled.

Though, I don't believe getting troubled by an axe-wielding maniac is something a fame-hungry moron would need to worry about. 

That much.

Based on a 2019 short film of the same title, #ChadGetsTheAxe (2022) follows vlogger "Spicy Steve" (Michael Bonini), couple Jennifer and Spencer (Taneisha Figueroa and Cameron Vitosh) of the beauty blog 'Spennifer", and uber-popular prankster Chad Ryan (Spencer Harrison Levin) plan a collaborative urban exploration video and stream for the weekend. The place they'll be exploring is one Devil's Manor, a dilapidated backwoods property near a swamp, which is said to be the hotspot of supposed cult activities around the area as a Satanist named William Burrows did have a mass murdering spree there many years ago. The night goes as you would expect it being populated by social media celebrities; they explore the manor while responding to comments, advertise their merch once in a while, and do obnoxious dares whenever their view count reaches a certain number. (One of which echoes the real life sickening stunt influencer Logan Paul did during his visit to Mount Aokigahara)

The fun times could only last long before things start to get unnerving; when one of them gets attacked, it's very well clear then that somebody else is inside the manor. Someone masked up, wielding an axe and not too pleased to have these people roaming around. Chad, unsurprisingly, is ready to dismiss this as a prank plotted by fellow pranksters until, that is, more of his friends disappear and all that's left for the mysterious masked maniac to hunt is him...

Shot through the rarely used Screenlife format, wherein we see the action unfold through the screen of a device via apps and sites (think Unfriended (2014), Spree (2020) and Deadstream (2022)), #ChadGetsTheAxe (2022) gets the benefit of being fun by satirizing the many stereotypes of click chasers while delivering a good dose of creepy imagery and set-pieces. It doesn't waste time getting into the main event, almost immediately throwing the streamers into the supposed haunted manor and simply letting the story develop as it goes by, showing us just what kind of people behind the camera phones are as the situation gravely escalates, as well as the reaction of the community they are catering to. The direction is pretty spot on to what we would normally expect from a weekend night stream hosted by an appalling content creator, pure unhinged and aggravating debauchery, and director Travis Bible practically knows we're here to see these idiots get their comeuppance for giving in to the almighty viewer count at the cost of common sense and a soul. Happy to say, we get what we came to see!

One by one, our streamers are picked off, a few clearly axed dead. Whenever #ChadGetsTheAxe (2022) slides in a creepy scene and build-up, it's all done with a straight face that's greatly effective. The villain doesn't ham it up, making their murderous assaults often jarring, even more so when the story finds opportunities to shed a sympathetic light on the victims, such as moments of clarity among the creators when some of them recognize how messed up the gags and situation are becoming, or slices of commentary on the unhealthy relationship between creators and their fanbases. It's not overly scary, per se, as the film still has its focus more on humor than frights, but it's a satisfying watch as the stalk-and-hunt onslaught with Burrows and his axe add weight to the horror side of this horror-comedy. 

This all leads to a third act where the story puts the hurt on Chad as he becomes an unwilling final boy dodging a masked killer's axe swings. He gets stalked through the woods, his means for escape repeatedly thwarted, and his cries for help dismissed by most of his viewers as either a joke, or just something they can cruelly exploit for fun. It's both cathartic and pathetic, impressively working both in a balance as we see this guy who spent most of his onscreen time being noisome reduced to a helpless whelp, more so on the movie's final act as a good twist reveals a hopeless situation hinted in a blink-and-you-miss moment in the chat. The end result is a grimly satisfying end full of desperation, axe falls and blood flowing on a live stream.

#ChadGetsTheAxe (2022) can be a little rough on the edges, but it understands the culture of online clout and the toxic people surrounding it. It uses those to its advantage, crafting a smart, funny and creepy backwoods slasher that shouldn't work, but did! Chad got the axe and I'm glad to have seen it!

Bodycount:

1 male body found rotting

1 male hacked with an axe

1 male hacked with an axe

1 male killed offscreen with an axe

1 female hacked with an axe

1 male killed offscreen with an axe

1 male hacked with an axe

Total: 7

Me Hoy Minoy!: Shiver Me Timbers (2025)

Shiver Me Timbers (United Kingdom, 2025)

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Murdo Adams, Stephen Corrall, Paul Dewdney

Popeye The Slayer Man? Popeye's Revenge? And now, Shiver Me Timbers?! It looks like 2025 is going to be the year of Popeye slashers thanks to the old cartoon sea dog entering public domain and while I am not totally sure if I'm on board with this trend of vilifying heroic ole' Popeye The Sailor Man as a slasher monster, so long as the oddity of it all keeps it entertaining, I guess.

And odd is exactly the word for this one; taking place in 1986, siblings Ollie and Castor Oyl tag along their friends to camp out at a Northern Californian backwoods and watch the meteor shower accompanying Halley's comet, as well as the occasional booze chugging, weed smoking and premarital sexy time! In between all of this casualness, they nearly run over an old sailor guy who's out there to fish and, too, stop a pair of violent punks from beating up a poor vagrant who, in turn, doomsays that the comet is Evil!!!

True enough, a teeny-tiny piece of a meteor happens to float into the aforementioned sailor guy's pipe, which he thought nothing of and proceeds to smoke it. Little did he know, huffing and puffing the space rock has otherworldly consequences, mainly being mutated into a brawny monster man with a cartoonishly deformed face, with nothing but brutal murder in mind.

That said, guess who this mutant Popeye just happens to stumble upon no soon after?

With an obvious low budget and a firm tongue pressed in a cheek, Shiver me Timbers (2025) practically embraced the absurdity of making a slasher movie out of Popeye the Sailor Man, throwing in a weird premise involving deadly meteor showers, excessively splattery kills and one of the funniest looking Popeye killer so far, dubbed 'Monster Popeye", into a melting pot full of bad cheese! Granted that the shoestring production can get really distracting with all the bargain bin visuals populated by laughably bad computer graphics and store-bought practical effects, not to mention the caricature-quality character writing and acting, as well as the numerous sloppy editing, that's kinda the fun point of this movie. It's so bad, it's sort of respectable for how silly it can get! 

Shiver Me Timbers (2025) never feels like the kind of movie that'll detail why a meteor fragment caused one old sailor to hulk-out into a killer juggernaut, or go deep into Ollie's dilemma about leaving for college. No, it's the kind where a mutant man rips off a fat bloke's head while the fella uses an outhouse, and then follow the murder up with the head living long enough to horribly witness his killer pop a squat down on his freshly decapitated neck stump. Or have a finale that's greatly inspired by Evil Dead II (1987) as Ollie finds a giant gas-powered buzzsaw constructed by an crazy wheelchair-bound coot and do battle with it against a savage sailor man who, at that point, starts uttering Popeye quotes. It's the kind of movie that, honestly, isn't going to win a big crowd, but will sit well for those who wouldn't mind wasting a good hour and ten-ish minutes on a juvenile slasher littered with trashy charms and nasty kills just for the giggles!

In all honesty, the fact that we have a killer Popeye as a villain for a story that has barely anything to do with the cartoons is pretty much telling that Shiver Me Timbers (2025) is meant to be a joke. How well you take this joke, though, may depend on your tolerance for bad movies. Really bad movies. What say you, sailor?

Bodycount:

1 male had his head pulverized with a punch

1 male had his head torn off

1 male skewered through the arse with a baseball bat, exits to mouth

1 female seen decapitated

1 female gets a meteorite through the head

1 male found dismembered

1 male dunked inside a barrel of toxic waste, melted

1 male beaten to death with a wooden plank

1 male stomped on the head

1 male nearly sliced in half by an oversized gas-powered buzzsaw (?)

Total: 10 (?)

A Sailor Man Disgustipated: Popeye The Slayer Man (2025) and Popeye's Revenge (2025) Double Bill Review

Very much like the case of Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey (2023), beloved spinach-eating, bad guy-bopping Popeye The Sailor Man joins the troublesome train of childhood characters getting reformed into brutal killers once he entered public domain in 2025, resulting to movies like Popeye The Slayer Man (2025) and Popeye's Revenge (2025)! Now, as a kid who grew up watching the sailor beat away villains and saving his dame, Olive Oyl, time and time again (Oh, those cherished Monday nights!), seeing him turned into a massacring monster should've got me feeling disgustipated, but as a hardcore slasher fan, I just got curious.

So curious, in fact, I watched these two back to back! Was I crazy to do that? Of course! But I had a warm cheeseburger and a pack of fresh onion rings that evening, so why not pair those with a couple of dumb movies? 

~~~

Popeye The Slayer Man (2025)
Rating: ***
Starring: Jason Robert Stephens, Sarah Nicklin, Angela Relucio

Blow me down. I actually like this one!

University student Dexter is doing a video documentary about a local town legend known as the "Sailor Man", who apparently haunts the abandoned and soon-to-be demolished Anchor Bay spinach cannery. He's joined by his bestfriend Lisa, her boyfriend Seth, their friend Katie, and a mysterious newcomer named Olivia who's deeply interested about the urban legend. The gang plans on filming around the factory later that night for quality shots, as well as do a bit of junior investigation around what exactly led to the place shutting down two decades ago. While all of this is happening, Katie's abusive boyfriend and his cronies are convinced she's cheating, so they start stalking the place to confront her.

Unbeknownst to all of these hapless souls, the Sailor Man is real; with his deformed face and equally misshapen, overly muscular arms, he stomps around the factory to crush some heads and tear off a few limbs. Particularly of those who dare enter his territory...

Popeye The Slayer Man (2025) is what it is, a cheesed-up slasher with a ridiculous premise, one that actually brought some good material to poke fun at; while the characters are your trope-types ranging from the nerdy protagonist and his cool girl love interest, to the lovey-dovey couple and despicable douchebags that are just in it for the kill count, they're set around a story that's basic yet workably outrageous, centering on bad spinach cover-ups and a mutated man-monster with distinctive brutality. It walks a fine line between being a satire of the Popeye franchise with its name drops and visual Easter eggs (I guess that guy will have to pay another food joint Tuesday for a cheeseburger today), and a murder-focused B-grade bodycounter that generously delivers splashy kills and chunky gore, the resulting product being this odd yet entertaining ham of a movie that can get predictable with its direction, but makes up for it with a few laughs and loads of the red stuff. Loads.

At times, the low budget does show whenever we get a good look at our killer Popeye up-close, the rubbery texture of the practical effects done for his face and tumorous arms visibly obvious. Due to this, it's sometimes hard to feel scared for our characters whenever the Sailor Man is out getting them, though we do have some expressive lightning here and there that definitely gave him an intimidating presence, as silly as he looks with his caricature face, bulbous arms and his strangely prim sailor uniform. (Like, he's been hiding in that dusty spinach factory for years, how the heck is that uniform not worn out?) Plus, he has lore. The movie actually took the time to build a silly lore behind this monster, one involving unsanitary canned vegetables, whistleblowers and a long lost swee'pea that, somehow, makes him sympathetic, even! I have to give the movie points for that!

To simply put it, Popeye The Slayer Man (2025) is a movie not meant for serious eyes, but for those who love a bad slasher! Cheesy to the core, too silly to ignore, pop this Popeye in with hot popcorn and anchors away!

Bodycount:

1 male disemboweled

1 male had his head crushed open, brain spilled out

1 female killed offscreen

1 male had his head stomped

1 female had her scalp torn off, crushed in a hydraulic press

1 male had his eyes thumbed, head twisted

1 male had his neck crushed with an anchor, decapitated

1 male impaled by dropped steel rods

1 female falls unto steel rods, impaled

1 male beaten to death with his own torn arm

1 male had his head crushed 

Total: 11

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Popeye's Revenge (United Kingdom, 2025)
Rating: *1/2

Starring: Emily Mogilner, Connor Powles, Danielle Ronald

From ITN Studios, who produced the infamous Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey franchise, comes this darkly tale of a deformed boy who drowned in a lake, now haunting the woods as a supernatural undead hulk, hellbent on murdering he comes across. 

Yeah. Hadn't heard of that before. Totally original. (If I had a nickle...)

Popeye's Revenge (2025) starts with an animated narration about a boy named Johnny (Nicknamed "Popeye"), who was born with a cartoonish chin, even more cartoonish forearms, and immense strength. Because of his odd appearance, he's constantly bullied at school to the point he eventually snaps one day, strangling another kid dead. Horrified by this, Johnny's parents hide away him in a basement until this whole thing blows over, his only companion a mysterious pen pal who passes him notes through a secret door. It isn't long before the angry mob find out where the boy is hidden and they torch down the house, killing Johnny's family and him barely escaping the blaze, only to seemingly drown in a nearby lake. Now, it is said that Johnny's spirit lives within the lake's fog and whenever it rolls in, it means nothing more than the arrival of a vengeful burnt brute. (Dressed as a sailor)

Cut to the present and we learn that Johnny's old home was rebuilt mysteriously over the years, and a young adult Tara has inherited it after her gramma passed away. Hoping to turn it into a haunted attraction to help her folks with their money problems, she invites her friends over to get the place cleaned up, unaware that the foggy presence of "Popeye" and a mysterious accomplice has set their eyes on hunting and ending them the moment they arrive.

As you can tell, Popeye's Revenge (2025) takes a different stab on ole' Popeye The Sailor Man, one that's barely Popeye at all. There's little to no reference to the cartoon source material and, instead, simply have its killer dress up as a half-burnt sailor (in a lake) and beef up his arms a bit. In fact, take all the Popeye stuff away and just make Johnny a random vengeful revenant cursed with deformity, you'd still have the same picture show! Sadly, the story it chooses to tell is barely showcasing anything new, with the killer's origins, for one, a hodge-podge of Friday The 13th's Jason Voorhees, A Nightmare on Elm Street's Fred Krueger and even a bit of the undead ghosts killers from John Carpenter's The Fog (1980). The plot dearly tries to make something unique out of this monstrosity, but its supposed supernatural angle is handled so poorly, it's practically nonexistent and pointless, leaving us with nothing more than another killer-in-the-backwoods dead teenager movie littered with boring and unlikable youngsters. 

If there's anything to praise here, it would be the fact that Popeye's Revenge (2025) has some decent camera work here and there, its sizeable kills are never dry of blood (Though some of the props used are obviously Halloween decors, just look how stiff that freshly torn spine is!), and its "Popeye slasher" looks intimidating given that you ignore the silly matter that he's wearing a cartoon sailor's uniform in the middle of the damn woods for some reason. (In fact, why was he wearing a sailor's uniform when he was still alive?) It has that faint whiff of cheese, sure, but it doesn't really feel like it's openly approaching its silliness that much, focusing more on straight shlock that partially works.

In the end, uninspired plotting and clumsy execution is the undoing of Popeye's Revenge (2025), and no amount of splatter and slaughter can save itself from being a tired effort. That's all I can stands, an' I can stands no more! 

Bodycount:

1 boy strangled until his eyes popped off (flashback)

1 male and 1 female burned to death (flashback)

1 boy caught on fire, drowned in a lake (flashback)

1 female hacked with an anchor, head stomped

1 female punched through the chest

1 male had his head crushed

1 male garroted to death

1 female had her throat crushed with an anchor, drowned in a jacuzzi

1 male gets an anchor to the groin, spine and head torn off

1 male shoved eye-first to a broken plank

1 female shredded through with a riding lawnmower

1 female strangled with a length of chain until her eyes popped off

1 female caught in an exploding car

1 male knifed to death

1 female set on fire

1 female had her neck broken

Total: 17

A Birthday Wish To Perish: The Debutantes (2017)

The Debutantes (Philippines, 2017)
Rating: *
Starring: Sue Ramirez, Miles Ocampo, Michelle Vito

Stop me if you heard this before: a weird lonesome girl gets befriended by someone from a popular clique and then invited to a party where she's humiliated by a prank, resulting to unspeakable horrors to those responsible.

Yep, that's Stephen King's Carrie. 

The Debutantes (2017) by Filipino director Prime Cruz is basically this for a good deal of the run, following quiet kid Kate (Sue Ramirez) as she befriends her classmate and neighbor Lara (Mile Ocampo) while helping her out with some math lessons. Grateful for getting her grades up, Lara invites Kate to a debut party (A Filipino celebration of a girl's 18th birthday) where Lara's circle of bullying buddies, unfortunately, decide to traumatize the lonesome girl by undoing the top of her dress, revealing some rather unsettling scars to the entire crowd. Humiliated, Kate rushes home, while Lara, who wasn't in on the so-called prank, chastises the group for their actions.

It isn't long before something is making sure the girls are properly punished for their part on embarrassing Kate, involving ghostly doppelgangers, a creature that kinda looks like a man made from soggy black mush, and deaths. Uncreative, boring, vanilla deaths.

I mean, the first kill was staged pretty okay, with creepy visuals, some good tension with the possessed self-diving car, and a good bloody payoff at the end. But the rest, we have someone getting strangled with a necklace, an abuser suffering a heart attack, and a swimmer getting drowned. Not, uh, not really impressed, sad to say. As if the predictable plotting and twists aren't lame enough to slowly knock me out into sleeping. (A twist character here is only onscreen whenever Kate is around. Who wouldn't connect the dots and see that reveal coming?!)

Cinematography is alright, though, I'll give the movie that. Acting is so-and-so, focusing a lot on the teenage dramatics in the film's attempt to establish some form of depth around its really small casts. (Like, really small. Where the hell are these girls' parents?) The quick pacing of the direction, its paper-thin characters and an abundance of hammy lines, however, didn't do much good for The Debutantes (2017)'s approach on emotional and psychological turmoil, resulting to a very stale horror shlock that's been done better.

Needless to say, The Debutantes (2017) is a supernatural slasher hokum I find hard to praise as there's hardly anything to praise at all. The story is done to death, the deaths lack spectacle, and the spectacle is missing in its execution. What else is there to say but go watch Carrie (1976) instead. Or Evilspeak (1981) if you're in a slasher mood. 

Bodycount:

1 female gets into a car collision against a truck, smashes through a windshield

1 female strangled with a necklace

1 female drowned in a pool

1 male suffers a heart attack (flashback)

1 female stabbed in the gut with a knife

1 female killed offscreen

Total: 6

Bowling Over Dead: The 13th Alley (2008)

The 13th Alley (2008)

Rating: **

Starring: Robert Carradine, Randy Wayne, Bobb Hopkins

Back in 2008, slasher fans were treated with a horror movie that's as cheesy and sleazy as it is vile and gruesome, revolving around a rather obscene rape-and-revenge plot packed with fun gore effects and a hammy yet memorable masked killer, all of which centered around a dirty bowling alley. Some abhorred it, many loved it, overall it's a mini-cult classic of the splattery kind.

There's also The 13th Alley (2008).

Justin, special effects student and manager of Zodos Bowling & Beyond bowling alley, often uses his position and talents to hold private late-night games of "strip bowling", as well as pranking his buddies and their dates with realistic blood and guts. One of these evenings, however, didn't end too well when they tag along a random girl from the arcades to hang out with them, only for her to completely lose her cool upon seeing one of Justin's realistic prop heads rolling out from the ball return as a joke. It turns out the girl has a bit of history concerning her father decapitating his boss out of vengeful spite, a real deal of trauma that have her storming out. 

This incident is mostly brushed off the next night when the gang agree to do another round of "strip bowling", this time inviting over a Jamaican gal who happens to practice Voodoo hypnotism (No. Really.) It's all fun and games (as well as sex and pizza), until someone literally loses a head and a growling cloaked figure wearing an oversized knight helmet begins to stalk the alleys for more victims to behead and dismember with their bloody battle axe.

The 13th Alley (2008), in all honesty, mostly feels like a parody; its writing is as ridiculous as the kooky ensemble of characters, paired alongside gaggles of questionable acting and a direction that hams up a lot. At times the movie tries to play itself straight, usually during its slasher scenes, but it's undoubtedly hard to take any of the story seriously when you have couples making out after seemingly aroused by a prop rat falling down into a pizza oven, or a 'Voodoo' hypnotist trying to put someone in a trance by rolling her eyes over and over. We also have Robert Carradine as a zealous handyman being way too obvious of a red herring by babbling about God and prayers every single time he's on screen, and the Wilhelm Scream on loop as one poor chap loses a hand, I kid you not.

It's ineptly bad, but there's a hypnotic quality to its ineptness, so much so that it almost feels like a throwback to the old days of late night cable horror-thons or weekend drive-in features. Almost. You could say that The 13th Alley (2008)'s shlocky quality and high camp give it a so-bad-it's-good entertainment value, though its overall curiousness can get a tad bit distracting at times, especially when it gets in the way of the movie's more interesting ideas. Or a decent killing spree. Then again, if you're the tolerable and forgiving-type when it comes to horror films oozing with musty cheese, then this is a watchable effort. It's terrible, but at least it has a bit of fun here and there. 

Bodycount:

1 male found decapitated, head seen

1 female found decapitated, head seen

1 female knifed in the gut

1 male hacked in the chest with a battle axe

1 male drilled through the head

1 male hacked on the gut with a battle axe

1 female dismembered offscreen, parts seen

1 male killed with a battle axe

Total: 8

The Morbid Pursuit Of The Art Of Murder: R.S.V.P. (2002)

R.S.V.P. (2002)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: James M. Churchman, Sharon Bruneau, Scott Workman

Picture Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) reimagined as a slasher, written by Kevin Smith and featuring Patrick Bateman from American Psycho (2000) as the killer. This is what R.S.V.P. (2002) is, for better or worse.

Criminology student Nick 'The Prick' Collier (Rick Otto) is hosting a leaving party for his friend Jimmy (Lucas Babin), as the guy prepares to relocate with his girlfriend Jordan (Brandi Andres), who happens to be Nick's ex. One by one, the guests arrive, consisting of their friends (among them Jason Mewes of Jay & Silent Bob fame playing a stoner, because of course), Jimmy's family, as well as their professor, Hal Evans (Glenn Quinn), and it's mostly fun and games with a bit of tarot card reading, weed smoking and cocktail mixing. There is also Hal's discussions circling around the idea of murder being an art form, something that puts plenty of the partygoers on a sour mood seeing how passionate, borderline obsessed he is about it. 

And there's the matter of Jimmy not showing up to his own party which is starting to worry some of the guests. Not to mention Nick acting a little suspicious about a particular piece of decorative chest in the living room. Needless to say, something is very off about the party and things are about to get way worse when Nick begins murdering away one unfortunate soul at a time, seemingly inspired by the very atrocities he learned studying serial killers...

Rather than your routine stalk-and-stab, R.S.V.P. (2002) has its focus more on dark humor and trenchant characters, often delving into situational comedy territory following Nick's attempt to juggle running a party, killing off the guests and then hiding away the bodies just to keep things running as smoothly as he plans it. We're pretty much in on the joke and, frankly, it is a intriguing set-up for a slasher, more so a homage to Rope (1948), as the plot keeps a constant academic yet reckless angle on the murders, mostly within dialogues shared between Nick and Prof. Evans as they pretentiously yet captivatingly run their mouths toward philosophizing serial killing, all in the midst of good acting and writing. It's without a doubt this movie's engaging highlight, though this does mean it can get a bit talky and flaunty in its direction.

The kills themselves have little blood to speak of, preferring showy deaths than over-the-top splatter which may drive away gorehounds, though the film makes up for it with flashy effects and editing, as well as a lot of quirky scenes of our killer finding fun ways to dispose the guests and the troublesome tasks of storing away the remains right after. It isn't long before we're back with the usual slasher climax of a final girl fending off the villain, though this one comes with a rather amusing confession as Nick points out the absurdity of serial killers always needing an alibi for their massacres, and how his killing spree is brag-worthy different as he did it because he simply could. The oddity of it all continues to the film's last few scenes, wherein our survivors relax with a roll of joint after defeating the killer, capping off that night's dreadful experience by stating the dilemma of them needing new friends to hang out with now. It's dumb but, hey, it could be so much worse.

R.S.V.P. (2002) is weird, but it's the agreeable kind of weird! Ostentatious, sure, but it makes for a quaint and eccentric watch! 

Bodycount:

1 male stabbed in the gut with a knife

1 female knifed to death, blood splash seen

1 female brained with a cane

1 male kicked down an elevator shaft

1 female had her neck snapped

1 male shot with a nailgun

1 female shot to death with a nailgun

1 male strangled to death with a guitar string

1 female drowned in a pot of boiling water

1 male stuffed inside a chest, suffocated

1 male found dead inside a garbage bag

1 male shot, stabbed with a broken bong

1 male knocked off a building, lands on a parked car

Total: 13