The Paris Neo-Nazi Massacre: Frontier(s) (2007)

Frontier(s) (France, 2007) (AKA "Frontière(s)")

Rating: ****

Starring: Karina Testa, Aurélien Wiik, Patrick Ligardes 

In the midst of one of France's presidential elections wherein a far-right candidate gets considered for position, a street gang of French-Arab youths takes advantage of the resulting riots to pull a robbery, scoring some cash they needed to escape Paris. The plan, however, ends up with them splitting for a bit after engaging the police in a gun fight, with one group consisting of Yasmine and her ex, Alex, looking for a hospital to treat Yasmine's severely wounded brother Sami, while the other two, friends Tom and Farid, drive to the countryside to look for a hideout where the rest can catch up.

Their predicament worsens when Sami dies moments after getting past hospital doors, forcing Yasmine to leave her him behind as security's made aware of their possible involvement with the riots. All the while, Tom and Farid decided to stop by a family-run inn near the border for a small break, only to somehow anger the clan when the innkeepers felt disrespected by the boys after a fairly disturbing dinner.

From that point, it all escalates to torturous and deadly turns as not only is the family revealed to be deranged and hinted to be cannibalistic, but they're also living remnants of the Third Reich, Neo-Nazis desperate to keep the bloodline of their "supreme race" alive. As the youngsters fall victim to their murderous madness one by one, Yasmine alone will find herself in a situation much worse than death and she will have no choice but to fight back or die trying.

Heavily borrowing elements from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and mixing it up with the violent taste of the New French Extremity movement, Xavier Gens' Frontier(s) is a bleak stroll down classic Hicksploitation horror that starts and ends in pure chaos. It's nothing relatively complex plot-wise as we follow yet another group of troubled friends ending up in unfamiliar grounds at a "middle-of-nowhere" countryside, to be horribly tortured and killed by what first looks like an angry family of rural folks, but the driving force that makes this movie a bit more extra is its unexpectedly wild turns tackling other exploitation tropes, leading to Grindhouse-gritty Nazisploitation, claustrophobic monster horror with secret tunnels being prowled by animalistic mutant children and Hostel-level of nihilistic torture and gore that get more grueling the further we go. 

It's a mixed bag of horror trappings that works well enough, though the multitudes of terrible on-goings definitely needs a tad more expanding around the conventions it introduced rather than mildly hinting it, such as the animosity and favoritism between the "family" members of the Neo-Nazi clan that broods a good deal of tension throughout the movie. There's also the matter that Frontier(s) wallows in its own bleakness a lot more than it needed to at times, which may turn off some viewers who isn't in it for complete doom and gloom as the film's flow pushes the ante of despair and torment to levels that bear little to no light to balance it out .

Then again, from what it offers, the film is made purely for exploitation fun and enjoyment, delivering on that front in full force with its sleek and grungy look, working on grainy-tint lenses, cinematography that's focused on everything in decay from buildings to flesh, and a breezy fast pace to keep the carnage going as much as possible. On that note, the gore scenes -the very highlight of this movie- are brutal in the rawest definition of the word, especially towards the finale in which Frontier(s) pulls a "reverse-slasher" on us. From Achilles heels crushed and cut with long pliers to a bisection by table saw, it's all a gorehound's treat for the amount of practical effects and fake blood used for these kills, with little to no CG assist done to keep it as old school as traditional filming and visual effects can get.

The cookie-cutter characters are played with good enough talent to bring them to life on screen, but their lack of depth may mean difficulty to empathize with them throughout their ordeal save, perhaps, Yasmine; leading actress Karina Testa done a fantastic job in her role as our definite final girl, a vulnerable protagonist at first, soon forced to fight back and feel the wrath of the clan after her character's subjected to watch her friends and former lover die. Her struggles to keep alive and escape in the later act infuses raw emotion and terror so perfectly, one might find themselves holding their breath back until the last shot of the film for how intense it all got.

Frontier(s) may be lacking a developed story or more fleshed out characters from both ends of the coin, it does have a story that sticks with you for a good while after all that manic cluster of blood, guts and torture. If you're looking for a carnal French horror flick that offers the basic exploits of people being tortured and slaughtered in all manners possible then try this for your liking. It could be your hidden gem!

Bodycount:

1 male dies from gunshot wound

1 male brained, throat cut with a knife

1 male cooked inside a sauna, shot with a shotgun

1 male shot on the head

1 elderly male shot with a shotgun

1 male shot with a shotgun

1 male repeatedly hacked with an axe, eviscerated in half with a buzzsaw

1 male had his head blown in half with a shotgun

1 female caught on a gas explosion, seen dying from a shrapnel to the neck

1 female had her neck bitten open, bled to death

Total: 10

Play The Game and Say His Name: Knucklebones (2016)

Knucklebones (2016)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Julin, Tom Zembrod, Katie Bosacki

I am a simple man. Give me a slasher with an interesting villain, some good practical grue and a pace that doesn't sleep me into oblivion, like the movie to be covered here, and I am happy. Shallow happiness, maybe, but regardless.

Our B-flick gore-a-thon starts with a brief dabble with Nazi occultism as we watch a scientist conducting a summoning with a scantily clad babe and a couple of guards for the fuhrer's cause in 1944 Germany. But as you would expect, the summoning proves to be a little too much for Hitler's underlings and the conjured demon, the titular Knucklebones, wastes no time picking them off one by one. Cut forward to 1976 Texas, where we watch a lady working at a sweatshop suddenly starts breaking apart before a massacre happens offcamera, leaving only a young boy alive to witness the bodycount and the creature responsible for it.

Now in comes flashforward number two, taking place forty years later (or, y'know, the present) and shifting focus to one lovestruck teenager Lisa Avery (Julin) getting the bad end of a relationship when her fiance decided to split, a news too much for her delicate self to handle so she attempted suicide. Lisa survives and now copes with the depression by joining her friends for a late night ghost hunt in an abandoned building that used to be the same sweatshop where the 1976 killings happened. (I guess a regular beer run is out of the question that day?)

But instead of spooky specters, the gang instead finds a box full of Nazi gear and a small chest containing summoning stones made from 2,000 year old human knuckle bones, along some cryptic paper describing how to summon a demon using an ancient dice game. Thinking it's all malarkey, they play the game and unwittingly summons Knucklebones back into the mortal world once again, ready for another night of slayings. 

A melting pot of Friday the 13th hack-and-stab and A Nightmare of Elm Street supernatural wisecracking villainy, Knucklebones is a movie made with the late 80s generic, hole filled and cheese tainted slasher plot in mind, something we've definitely have taken a stroll down before from attractive looking casts with the inability to deliver dialogue and needless T&A just for the sake of butt shots, to retreads of cliched teens behaving stupid choices. (playing with an obscure game that obviously reeks of evil, splitting up after seeing your friends get murdered, going back to save that one guy who's dumb or noble enough to fend off the killer to give you the time to escape, those lil' jigs) It's undoubtedly one of the more standardized slashers that abides the dead teenager rules to the tee, but it is also manic enough to be passable for the kills and creative insanity it managed to work with despite its low production.

The movie has a filmic quality to its picture and its pacing doesn't skimp much, always leading to something interesting or unexpected to actually keep the flow going. It's climax is also an odd yet enthralling twist on your usual girl vs monster showdown, leading to a slightly unforeseen dark turn of an ending. Our villain, Knucklebones, has his moments of brutally originality with his murders, though a few of them seems to be butt-related including a callback to that tent sex double-murder from Jason Goes to Hell (1993). He has quite a personality with his terrible one-liners, often coming out as cocky and cruel as most Freddy Krueger clones tend to be, but I do dig his skeletal revenant design which is quite fitting to the skeletal motif of the ritual used to summon him and how he manifests himself into the mortal world which gleefully doubles as a kill.

If you are looking for a smarter slasher, then I will not deny this movie isn't going to be for you. No, this is a movie made for the fans of bare plotting with high gore. If you have an open mind, however, or just ready to switch off for the night for some macabre cheese that's so feisty its gouda, then why not try out Knucklebones (2016) for that splatter-happy good time?

Bodycount:
1 female killed, blood splash seen
1 male beaten with a rifle
1 male strangled and decapitated with a rifle's strap
1 male had his face beaten off with a rifle
1 female shot point blank on the face with a rifle
1 female mangled apart
1 victim killed, hand seen
1 male seen disemboweled
1 female seen murdered, method unknown
1 victim seen decapitated
1 victims seen mangled and stuffed inside a locker
1 male and 1 female seen murdered, covered in wounds
1 male seen dead with a back wound
1 female mangled apart
1 male gets a chainsaw shoved between his legs
1 female slips and impaled through the neck on a steel rod
1 male castrated during coitus with a limb cutter
1 female sliced in half during coitus with a limb cutter
1 male gets blow-torched on the face
1 male had his head split in half with an axe
1 male ran through with a machete
1 male found dead with a throat cut
1 male mangled apart
1 female skewered through with a thrown broom
Total: 25

When Good Puppets Go Vengeful: Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge (1991)

Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge (1991)
Rating: ****
Starring:  Guy Rolfe, Richard Lynch, Ian Abercrombie

Some people sees Puppet Master II as the sequel to top the original, but I beg to differ. For me, this is not only how you top an original, but also do the Puppet Master title justice!

Taking place in 1941 World War II Berlin, where a gentle puppeteer named Andre Toulon and his wife Elsa entertain children with marionette shows satirizing Adolf as a coward, much to the disgust of a Nazi lieutenant disguised as a civilian. However, the soldier's disgust soon turns into intrigue when, while snooping around after the show, he discovers that Toulon's puppets are in fact alive, fed with a strange serum that animates them into sentience.

This discovery eventually reaches a Gestapo officer named Major Kraus and excites a scientist named Dr. Hess, who is forced by the Nazis to find a way to reanimate corpses to use as living shields for the war. It isn't long before the Gestapo raids Toulon's theater and attempts to take the puppeteer away for his secrets, even killing his wife in the process, but Toulon isn't gonna back down. Not with his trusted small friends armed to the teeth and willing to fight back.

Impressively shot and released eight months after the last sequel, Toulon's Revenge is less of a slasher movie, or horror for that matter, and instead plays itself more as a mash of fantasy, macabre and scifi themes under the structure of a revenge thriller with a good dash of splatter. With this shift, it re-introduces the murderous puppets of the two prior films in a more anti-heroic light, fighting off a greater evil under the orders of a master who would never used them for killing until tragedy forced him to. It's undoubtedly a far cry from what started as a set of bodycount films, but the movie's direction, solid writing and even stellar acting made it workable not just as an entry to a movie franchise, but also as a standalone film of sorts.

In fact, the movie basically took a jab at "comic book continuity" and either missed or retconned the matter that at the beginning of Puppet Master (1989), Andre not killed himself at 1939 in America while trying to escape the Nazis, thus making this a possible detailed re-telling of his and his "friends" story, coinciding with a plot concerning Nazi occult science and suicidal zombies.

The movie's mythos also strongly help hammer down this new moral turn for the puppets as it established that each puppet contains the will of Toulon's friends and loved ones, all victims of Nazi cruelty. It could have all looked cheap and shoehorned in an attempt to humanize the puppets and empathize with them as now they're given a reason to kill, but this was mostly handled with subtlety and the puppeteering and screen effects did most of the fleshing out for each puppet's personalities considering how more screentime they're given in this entry along side of our titular puppet master.

"Hands up, pardner!"

Adding to this cavalcade of tiny terrors is Six-Shooter, a six-armed cowboy with a devilish grin, originally conceived as early the first movie, though instead of a Western gunslinger he was a multi-armed ninja. The character's inventive design fits perfectly with the movie's theme and proves to be a fan favorite as he would later become a more prominent member of the puppet crew as the series progresses.

In terms of production, Toulon's Revenge made the most out of its estimated eight hundred grand budget and verily defines the big budget look. The sets look impressive and, again, the special effects used here are some of the best this franchise had to offer. While the background actors can be a bit distracting (is that a bad German accent I hear?), Toulon's Revenge also fixed the problem of the first two film by improving the human actors and their scenes. Seeing this is an origin film of the puppet master, it would have been more fitting to match Toulon's personality with that found with the version of this character seen at the beginning of Puppet Master (1989), which meant a humble fatherly figure to root for. Thankfully, not only does actor Guy Rolfe fits the look, but his soft yet anguished performance is as sympathetic as it can be and it works perfectly.

On the side of the Nazis, Richard Lynch plays a decent bad guy as Kraus and, much like Rolfe, he has the look and the cold presence his character needed to intimidate. To be fair, though, he didn't really do much apart from bark orders and be impatient (oh, and shoot Toulon's wife dead), but he made it workable on some level. In between this battle of good and evil is a curious scientist played by Ian Abercrombie, whose character tries hard to uncover Toulon’s formulas not only because the Nazis order him to, but also for his own quench for knowledge and, soon, understanding as he (all too quickly) made friends with Toulon. James Bond's Major Gogol actor Walter Gotell also makes a rather raunchy appearance here as General Mueller, who's supposed to be the head of the Nazi's reanimation project but best remembered for his sexcapades in a brothel and being the victim of one of Six Shooter's awesome kills.

For me, this is Puppet Master. As much as I love the slasher-esque take of the first movie, it's nothing compared to the defined and developed story this sequel brought upon its fans. It's also here where the puppets start being seen as the good guys and Full Moon Entertainment, which produces this films, decided to cash in on this by (mostly) ditching the idea of the puppets being killers in the franchise's following sequels and have them side with a master who's good, thus using them for heroics (or anti-heroics). Can't say if this is a good turn for the series, but as far as I can tell, most of the films that followed weren't that entertaining for me (or well made for that matter. To be fair, the fourth and fifth movie was supposed to be the last) so, suffice to say, I think it'll be for the best to end my Puppet Master reviews with just the first three movies. Whether you agree with me in this or not, Toulon's Revenge deserves all the praise it can get and more.

Bodycount:
1 male shot dead
1 female shot dead
1 male strangled to death
1 male drilled through the back
1 male garroted
1 male had his face bashed with a wrench, fed to leeches
1 male repeatedly shot, falls off a building
1 male gets a thrown brick to the face
1 male choked on a live leech
1 male shot
1 male shot dead
1 male knifed on the gut
1 male snared with hooks, dropped unto a halberd
Total: 13

 Bonus Review

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018)
Rating: *1/2
Starring: Charlyne Yi, Thomas Lennon, Michael Paré

Well, not gonna say this was a bad idea. But it could have been a lot better.

So, over the years, Full Moon Pictures has been sucking ass on the horror business (see Exhibit A) so I kinda stopped caring for their movies around the 2010s, this including their Puppet Master Axis Trilogy which tried too hard to recapture the glory days of the franchise but only succeeded on making it kinda lame. (Well, mostly lame. I'm still saving up to get me a replica of Kamikaze, one of the coolest evil puppets from that trilogy. (And no, it's not racist of me seeing that I, too, am Asian! I think. Are Filipinos still considered Asian?))

Nevertheless, there's a part of me that still cares for the Puppet Master movies and I am willing to try whatever shtick they'll come up with, even if it now includes a parallel world where Andre Toulon is an evil Nazi and the entire production is being released by RLJE Films, which already brought forth some decent titles like Nobody Gets Out Alive (2012) and My Name is Bruce (2007). If only the resulting product is anywhere as watchable as those two examples...

So, we start the movie in 1989, as a heavily scarred Toulon tries to pick up a potential one night stand at a bar, only to leave disgusted as he finds out the lady bartender is lesbians for a waitress. It isn't long before the two lovers are killed on the road by a thin-wire trap and the cops quickly piece together that Andre Toulon is responsible. After raiding his hotel and catching him with a gun, a pair of cops (one of them being B-movie staple Barbara Crampton) gun Toulon dead, thus ending his reign of terror. For now.

Cut to the present, we now follow Edgar (Thomas Lennon), a comic book artist returning to his home town to live with his folks after a devastating divorce. Digging through his old junk, he discovers his late brother owned one of Toulon’s puppets and decided to sell it at an upcoming Toulon convention, where other Toulon enthusiasts gather to discuss the macabre infamy of the puppet master's creations. Hopping along the ride is Edgar's new girlfriend Ashley (Jenny Pellicer) and proudly Jewish boss Markowitz (Nelson Franklin), the trio journeys to the estate and gets into a exposition trip tour hosted by the very cop who shot Toulon.

After all of that jazz and the convention goers settling within the hotel, the puppets, both old and new, start coming to life and murdering the guests in a seemingly supremacist fashion. The massacre is quickly realized and those still surviving are now forced to find ways stop the littlest Nazi army before all of them are minced meat by morning.

Now, the gorehound inside of me should be happy about this direction; not only are we going back to the franchise's horror roots, but with we are also getting updated gore and a more villainous take on the fan favorite killer puppets, as well as some new additions to create a literal puppet army. I would have been fine with these changes if only they did more with this twisted jab on the film series.

As much as I love the splatter and bloodshed, there is such as thing as too much and this is the problem with Littlest Reich. It's nothing but death porn, one kill jumping to the next in a pace that seems rushing, thus concepts and plot points got introduced and dropped at a moment's notice, numerous supporting characters simply exist to be killed off, the tone shifts back and forth from dumb to misplaced serious, and it all the ends with a twist that makes little sense and simply drops us one of them annoying "to be continued..." farce. 

Worse yet is that our puppets are reduced to mass-produced weapons brought to life by ancient magic, which is the last thing I expected a Puppet Master movie to do. While I understand that this is supposed to be a reboot of sorts where the puppets are as evil as the Fuhrer's determination for world conquest, they could have at least gave the tiny terrors some shred of personality which made them memorable to begin with, whether as killers or anti-heroes. But, nope. The movie favored the massacre approach so much that they made sure there's enough copies and variations of each puppet to slaughter a building full of people, letting go of the very things that made them stand out among other killer toy villains. A real shame.

Nonetheless, if you're just in it for the gore then The Littlest Reich won't disappoint. Two kills really stood out the most among the carnage, one involves a pregnant lady getting attacked by a racially insensitive new creation called "Money Lender" (guess what he looks like), while the other had a large fellow getting the whirly bladed end of another new killer toy. The rest varies from classic stabbings and slashings, to upfront burnings and messy car engine crushings, all done mostly in glorious practical effects with some CG enhancements as well as a few slices of dark humor in which the victims are supposedly gays, gypsies, Jews, and other individuals intolerants love to hate. Could have worked well if, again, they stick to this idea since in the end, it looked like they're just killing off everything that breathes regardless of skin color and preferences.

Sure, it will shock and offend but the execution comes with little to no effort. Real shock and offensiveness comes from build up and purpose, and this movie simplifies that to the point character and story hardly matters in the end, which in turn made this movie hardly matters in existence. The Littlest Reich may find new fans for its dumbness and chunky gore, but I sincerely can't find any life nor joy out of the point A-to-B style mayhem it embraces and its absence of a real conclusion.

Bodycount:
1 female decapitated with a thin wire
1 female murdered offcamera
1 male shot dead
1 male seen set ablaze (opening credit)
1 male stabbed on the neck (opening credit)
1 male, 1 female, 1 boy and 1 girl slaughtered (opening credit)
1 male seen shot (opening credit)
1 female thrown off a ship (opening credit)
A number of victims seen slaughtered (opening credit)
1 male and 1 female set on fire
1 male and 1 female stabbed to death
1 male had his head sliced off
1 male disemboweled, throat sliced
1 female found murdered
1 pregnant female had her baby ripped out from her own womb
1 female had her throat cut
1 male had his back ripped open
1 female disemboweled
1 female had her head crushed
1 male had his face repeatedly stabbed, head crushed with a car engine
A number of victims massacred in a parking lot
1 female seen murdered
1 boy had his hands sliced off, killed offcamera
1 male had an arm ripped off
1 male shot on the head
1 female shot on the head
A number of victims seen murdered in a hallway
1 female found burnt and drained of blood
1 male stabbed on the throat
1 female hits her head against a dumpster
1 male found mauled to death
1 female hit with a brick, throat sliced
2 males presumably killed
1 victim seen killed
1 victim seen killed
1 victim seen killed
1 male found mauled to death
1 female shot on the head
Total: 41+

Cheese Without a Face: Faceless (1987)

Faceless (Les Predateurs De La Nuit) (France/Spain, 1987)
Rating: ***
Starring: Helmut Berger, Brigitte Lahaie, Telly Savalas

Singling this movie out as a slasher is only a portion of the truth. Should you add medical thriller, mad science, sleazy exploitation, and whatever movie genre allows a detective to fight an uber-muscular yet comically-voiced bodybuilder, then you will have the near-perfect definition for this strange late 80s euro-horror.

Starting the film classy with a shot of the Eiffel tower at night and a very vocal fellow (Vincent Thoma) mellowing our ears with the movie's own theme song, we soon follow Dr. Frank Flammand escorting his sister Ingrid and his assistant Natalie around the city as they have whatever fun rich and successful plastic surgeons can think of. Their evening was soon interrupted when one of Frank's former patients caught them off guard and tried to melt the doctor's face with acid in revenge for botching up her face. Fortunately for Frank, the vengeful patient misses when his sister pushed him away. But for Ingrid, however, she received the acid attack instead, severely burning her face.

Years passed and both Frank and Natalie are finding ways to repair Ingrid's face, most (if not all) of which involves kidnapping beautiful and fair-skinned women in hopes of placing one of their faces to Ingrid's. Why it never dawned on these two that some people will recognize the face they'll be stealing should their project be a success and get themselves in a bigger mess, I have no clue, but they seem to be sticking with this plan as they proceed to add another captive, an attractive fashion model for a new one-of-a-kind watch.

With the model's father rightfully concerned about his daughter's sudden disappearance, in comes private detective Sam Morgan snooping around in Paris and trailing whatever leads he can get. All the while, Frank, realizing he needs a professional's help, asks former Nazi doctor Orloff for assistance, a requests the surgeon is happy to accept as he sees it as an opportunity to hone his mad science talent yet again.

So now we got the mad science part. Where do the slasher bits come in, you say? Welp, just to cater for us blood junkies and gorehounds, Faceless also packs a fair amount of chunky bloodletting on behalf of Natalie and a mute (and sexually frustrated) brute named Gordon whose job is simply eliminate any living leftovers from the doctors' surgeries, as well as those who got too close on discovering their little secret. Truth be told, out of all the murders here, only one felt legitimately in tune with a slasher flick's with a nice chase scene and a power tool-wielding Gordon, while the rest were more or less just extra bloody and grandeur killings you can pull off for a crime thriller. This being said, while I am pretty impressed by the splatterific gore effects here, I cannot help but think that the dead women in this movie aren't the only ones missing their identity.

Basically, Faceless is every B-grade horror and exploitation flicks rolled into one since there's a little bit of something for everybody, such as the likes of unapologetic sleaze scenes, bloody murders, crazy Nazi science, and cheesy action sequences just to name a few. And like most hodge-podged stories, the tone is, unsurprisingly, shifty as it ranges mostly from being unintentionally (or maybe, intentionally) hilarious to just plain gross and uncomfortable, bringing nothing more to the table than some really bad writing in both the sense of scripting and plotting, but saved by the grace of just having the right amount of cheese, some fun (albeit oddly acted) characters and an EC comic- style take on horror and macabre. The pacing is relatively easy to follow too, and rarely boring as something interesting and/or cheesy is always going on, so while it's not a good movie, per se, Faceless has the charm of a really bad midnight picture that only a 70s sleaze-meister like its director, Jess Franco, can provide.

Obviously not gonna be everyone's kind of biscuit, this cult fave euro-horror is mostly enjoyable as a popcorn flick for the no-brainers and tongue-in-cheekers, and I wouldn't want it anymore than that! Some people might want to look elsewhere should they want a stronger mystery or less exploitative "detective story", but for the rest of us horror fans who just wanna have fun, there's nothing Faceless cannot provide!

Bodycount:
1 female hacked with a machete
1 female body seen
1 female injected with a syringe full of chemical into an eye
1 female decapitated with a chainsaw
1 male stabbed through the throat with a pair of scissors
1 female powerdrilled through the head
1 female had her face flayed off, presumably killed
1 male had his head pushed into a hanger hook, impaled
Total: 8
(Note: due to the nature of the ending, I decided not include 2 possible additional victims)

Herre Gud for En Hærlig Dag!: Dead Snow (2009)

Dead Snow ("Død Snø") (Norway, 2009)
Rating: ****
Starring:  Jeppe Beck Laursen, Charlotte Frogner, Jenny Skavlan

Opening shot: A random girl being chased and disemboweled by a bunch of undead SS soldiers. Typical zombie film? Not quite.

The next scene brings us back to a familiar slasher backdrop: a group of seven teenagers rent a cabin in the woods for some rest and relaxation, being warned on their way there by a random camper with a story about a tirade of Nazis who once tormented and stole loot from a nearby town before meeting their demise when the townsfolk wrecked vengeance upon them. They say those who survived the uprising froze to death up in the very mountains these kid are driving to and whoever takes their cursed loot is doomed for death.

Of course, the tale turns out to the be true as random Nazi zombies are then seen popping out of the snow, with bayonets at hand, ready to disembowel and mutilate anyone that come across their path, which unfortunately will include our hapless teens after they found the zombies' chest full of cursed jewels and stuff.

Dead Snow (2009) is a well worthy addition to the zombie fandom, but as one of those zombie films that isn't entirely all "zombie". A good reason for this is that the villains here do not kill to feed and too the fact that they seem to die off quite easily from fatal damages as if they're still alive. Countless times we also have victims here being bitten by one of these dead boys and they barely, if not at all turned; I could say it might have something to do with them cauterizing the wound but we can never be sure for these kind of films.

So instead of a typical shambling and cannibalizing zombie flick, what we have here rather is a slasher film with reanimated Nazi as the main baddie; at that point, Dead Snow (2009) wins for bringing something different for both horror sub-genres and too being a fun one at that.

As a horror comedy, it took a stab at satirizing zombie film clichés from Night of the Living Dead (1968) to splatter classics like The Evil Dead (1981) and Braindead (1992); this including witty dialogues that hails straight from the Post-Scream (1996) slasher era and splatstick antics that spells out gory fun in a Three Stooges sort of fashion, the kind of nonsensical exploitation that's made to be loved by hardcore low-budget splatter fans and company. It actually starts out sort-of straight, giving us some time to know our victims and flesh them out enough to be cared about; thrown in some decent scares and jumpy moments, and the film manages to set us with a misleading start. Once the kids start talking about movie trivia and horny beckonings for outhouse sex (foreshadowing how silly this is gonna become), the gorno comic settles in as the classic slasher "no-no" of splitting up gets committed and what remains of the group are left to fight for their lives against the undead.

And fight they did! While some of them did have a struggle through the woods as they're hunted down by these zombies, one particular scene will be stapled in the minds of viewers everywhere: two dudes, armed with no more than a chainsaw, a hatchet and a sledgehammer, goes ape on every Nazi dead charging against them while the Norwegian song Min Dag plays ala montage. It's savory brutal and gory all through out, a tribute to the badassery that is two nerds killing zombies with powertools, done before by other nerdy heroes like Lionel from Braindead (1992) and Ashley J. Williams of the Evil Dead franchise. (Okay, maybe not so much of a nerd in Ash's case, but he was sort of a wuss on the first film...)

Dead Snow (2009) may not be the most original in its premise, but it sure know how to hold it together and give us a film worthy of our time. Sure, it could have spend a good run building up the background behind these Nazis and to how they are up there as the undead in the first place, but why try to be serious if awesome grue and gags work without an apology? Yes sir, if brainless gory fun is what you need to warm up in a snowy evening, or to see with your friends in a booze run, then thaw out this movie and play it hard!

Bodycount:
1 female disemboweled, head later found
1 male had his neck slashed with bayonet, stabbed to death
1 female gets a bayonet to the gut, beheaded
1 male had his head ripped open
1 male zombie stabbed on the eye with bayonet
1 male zombie falls to his death
1 female disemboweled
2 male zombies blown apart with a grenade
1 male zombie impaled on the eye with a branch
1 male zombie had his head stomped open
1 male zombie had his arm cut off with chainsaw, bled to death
1 male zombie decapitated with chainsaw
1 male zombie disemboweled with chainsaw
1 male zombie bashed with sledgehammer
1 male zombie slashed with chainsaw
1 male zombie disemboweled with chainsaw
1 male zombie pickaxed on the head
1 male zombie pickaxed on the head
1 male zombie had his head bashed open with hammer
6 male zombies shot dead with a machine gun
1 male zombie ran over with snowmobile
1 male zombie eviscerated under a snowmobile
1 male zombie pulled into a snowmobile and eviscerated
1 male stabbed to death with bayonets, torn apart
1 male zombie had his head slashed open with hatchet
1 male zombie hacked on the head with hatchet
1 male zombie slashed with hatchet
1 male zombie beheaded with hatchet
1 male zombie hacked to death with hatchet
1 female hacked on the neck with hatchet
5 zombie males shot with shotgun
1 male zombie beheaded with hatchet
1 male zombie stomped to death
1 male hit on the head with a hammer and accidentally gutted himself on a tree branch
Total: 8 (without zombies)/ 44 (with zombies)

Der Fuhrer's Secret Occult Weapon of Christmassy Doom: Elves (1989)

Elves (1989)

Rating: 0
Starring:  Dan Haggerty, Julie Austin, Deanna Lund

Nope. Nope. Nope. Fuckin' nope.

There are no "elves". Just AN elf. One stinkin' elf that does nothing but look menacingly at us with a frozen angwy face, being wiggled around by some "puppeteer" just to make it move. Could it get any worse? Well, considering this is just one thing that went wrong from the film, yes. Yes it does.

Kristen is a ordinary teenager who unwillingly resurrected an evil demon elf after cutting her hand and bleeding on a sacred ground during a supposed "anti-Christmas" ritual. As a joke. The elf continues to spy on Kristen and her estranged family, murdering some people and throwing Kristen in a strange situation where it turns out Nazis once concocted a plan to breed virgins with fallen angels, creating killer elves in the process. And now that she resurrected one, she's unfortunately part of the plan now.

So we got a misleading title, demons being bred to hapless virgins to create the ultimate ubermensch, gun-totting Nazis and one unnecessary scene of implied animal cruelty. Yep, nothing says Christmas than these things! But is it even worthwhile for us horror fans?

Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong but this is utter bullcrap for me; it's cheap as cheese-covered cardboard cutouts being passed around as Doritos, monotonously paced, horribly acted, and is barely scary or gory. It's incredibly hammy with a lot of guys just talking about conspiracies that are too far-fetched to be even taken so seriously! I try to watch this film without any sense of seriousness but even at that mindset, the incredibly bad production of this film leaves nothing for me! Not even a good laugh!

Oddly enough, some people actually sees this film as so bad, its good, which actually was the same claim that got me watching this to begin with but, man, this is just too much. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not wasting another paragraph on this. I rather go through another round of Psycho Santa (2003) than this dreck again...

Bodycount:
1 cat drowned in toilet
1 male knifed on the groin
1 male found dead with head wound
1 female shot on the head
1 female knifed to death
1 male pounded to death
1 female electrocuted on the tub with a live radio
1 male repeatedly shot
1 elderly male shot
1 male shot
Total: 10

So This Is What A Drug Trip Feels Like: Horror House on Highway 5 (1985)

Horror House on Highway 5 (1985)

Rating: **

Starring: Phil Therrien, Max Manthey, Irene F. 

Okay, let's start with an exaggerated retelling of the first time I watched this film:

It was a dark and stormy night when a demonic claw punched out of my computer screen while I was searching for the latest update on the release date of V/H/S/2 (2013), hitting me on the nose before tossing me a bootleg copy of this movie. Ten minutes after being initially knocked out, I woke up and saw the movie, praised the gods for giving me another rare find to watch and started playing it. Unfortunately, I failed to notice the unusual smoke spewing out of my DVD player and before I knew it, I inhaled it and ended up going through the loopiest mind trip involving talking horses, sexy anthropomorphized foxes and for some reason Rob Schneider riding a giant lawnmower through a field full of babies. I finally snapped out of the trip and noticed the movie was playing...and yet, I can't tell if I'm still hallucinating or this is the actual film itself.

Horror House on Highway 5 (1985) has to be the one of the few film equivalents of a dope pill, as everything (and I mean everything about it) just doesn't add up. (Or maybe it does but I just refuse to accept it) The film starts off with a moron and a shmuck trying to decipher the meaning of a tarot card obviously meaning "Death". One guy gets it right, actually, but the other claims the card with a skeleton and a scythe means "love" cuz the effin' skull's smiling. 

Everyday of my life, I have to deal with idiots. Now this.

I would give up every penny,
just to shove that "love card" down yer throat.

Moving on, the real plot of the film actually follows a group of students who are given an assignment to write a paper on some German guy named Bartholomew who, some time ago after researching about V2 rockets, went crazy and killed a bunch of guys before residing in a nearby town. One of these students decides to interview Bartholomew's living relatives, which so happens to be the two fucktarts from the beginning. (Oh boy, that explains a lot of things) So, long story short, the brothers are idiots, but are smart enough to try and do some religious Nazi torture ritual, kidnapping the unfortunate interviewee to be their victim. Then there's something about some kids making replicas of the V2 rockets to honor the Nazi madman (...let's not go in there, please) and, of course, Richard Nixon.

Or rather some guy in a Richard Nixon mask and suit, out killing off the students for God knows what reason.

If you said "what?" after reading all of this, you have my sentiments.

For a film where there's nothing like it, it's hard to decide whether to hate or love the product; you could hate Horror House on Highway 5 (1985) for it's ineptness in direction and scripting, lack of strong elements (gore, scares, tension, etc.) that'll make it a worthwhile genre flick or make sense at any point at all, and yet you can't completely abhor it coz it tries to be different and some of its ideas come with the sole intention to be camp.

The overall feel of watching the movie is like that of watching a child with special needs trying to sing the American National Anthem at the beginning of a football game. It's uneasy but out of pity, you just have to nod your head and smile cuz let's face it, any movie where a character can escape her killer by dancing is worth a look. At least just once.

I could say I appreciate the idea of making the killer wear a Richard Nixon mask and for giving us a trippy ending, but with an uneven level of intentional and unintentional cheesiness, low gore count, and, well, lack of any strong plot, it can leave you wondering what the heck did you end up seeing as one moment ago, you were expecting a slasher flick.

The jowls of death!!!

As a horror comedy or a cult classic (I think), you could say Horror House on Highway 5 (1985) could work, but as a serious horror flick...um, no, I digress that we don't call this a "horror" flick as the only true horror from this movie is the fact that someone even thought about doing this film. (What is wrong with humanity?!) If you like it, I applause for you and hope that after watching this, you can still walk in a straight line so I can buy you some booze and discuss about some rumors I heard about some Facebookers trying to make a sequel titled Horror House on Highway 6!

Like, what the fuck?

Bodycount:
1 male strangled
1 female beaten to death
1 male killed in a car crash
1 female beaten (I think)
1 male found mangled
1 male lands head first to a rake
1 female had her face beaten with a bomb replica
1 male hit on the head with a car jack
Total: 8

Some Nerdy Nazi: Shreck (1990)

Shreck (1990)
Rating: **1/2
Starring: William Lantry, Anthony Van Deuren and T.K. Malone

First of, no, this isn't about that Green Ogre your younger brother, sister, son, daughter, or annoying neighbor kid loves, but rather it's a rare shot-on-video slasher flick about a trio of horror film and Nazi enthusiasts (AKA nerds) who unwittingly summons a Nazi from the grave after a mock séance.

So, what to say to a film that had absolutely zero budget and talent? Well, actually, it's pretty fun!

Yeah, it's a cheap Z-Grade entertainment made by some guys with a video camera, with absolutely nothing to redeem its horrid production other than, well, itself, but frankly, the movie has that vibe. That "so bad it's good" vibe. The same kind of entertainment you can get from watching films like Nailgun Massacre or Truth or Dare: A Critical Madness.

Perhaps it's the concept here; an undead nazi returning from the grave to mutilate and flay anyone that he could get while his ghostly victims serves him? I say I agree with the 'producers" when they said this title could have gone better with a bigger budget, but for now we can settle with plastic bags as portals, people under white sheets as ghosts, a Swastika lawnmower and one weirdly edited "documentary".

Horror junkie and Nazi enthusiast Roger invited over his buds, Neil and Mike, to start up a tour spot business out of an alleged Nazi, Max Shreck's house of torture. That day also happens to be the anniversary of Shreck's final mayhem when he murdered at least eleven people in various torture devices.

After a boring afternoon watching Nazi propagandas and eating Swastika Pizzas, the group decided to do a mock seance invoking the spirit of Shreck to return from the grave and continue his mayhem. However, the seance worked and now Max is back, digging up corpses and reviving them as white-sheeted slaves, as well as killing off his summoners with various weapons and torture devices.

Armed with rifles, the trio band together in attempt to survive the night, but with the undead Nazi slowly molding reality into his own past, and ghostly sheets popping then and there, can they really live through the night to see the day?

And what's up with the random ghostly cops?

A decent underground horror flick; worth a checking out if you could get your hands on a copy!

Bodycount:
1 male pitchfork to the head
1 female nailed helmet forced into her head
1 male decapitated by a Swastika lawnmower blade
total: 3

One Dream Away To Hell: Summer School (2006)

Summer School (2006)
Rating: ****
Starring: Simon Wallace, Amy Cocchiarella and Tony D. Czech

Not to be confused with the 87' comedy classic Summer School, this original and surprisingly entertaining piece of indie-horror is a definite watch for those who shares a love of reviewing horror flicks and exploitation movies from slashers to Nazis, from Redneck horrors to monsters.

Charles (Simon Wallace) runs a horror review site (just like this, and perhaps a million more out there) and decided to stay up for the last three days to binge on B-flicks in order to keep up with his posts. In doing so, he ends up spending his first day of Summer class asleep but it seems there's more to this than mere insomnia; in what appears to be a mental flux, Charles starts to dream scenarios based on the genres he watched and the more he dwells in each, the more he loses grip of what's real and not. As he experience and live through one horror scenario to the next, how long can his mind take it and, more importantly, will he wake up fine in the end?

Summer School is a segmented horror flick that ventures in and out of different 70s/80s exploitation sub-genres, all under the direction of multiple directors and around a budget of 8,000 dollars. Normally this would come varying in results, as in some segment would likely shine above the other, but while there were weak segments, the entire movie held on pretty good as it is welded in near pitch-perfect flow, resulting to a thought-provoking and wildly intense horror film.

With a unique story, great direction, fair script, decent special effects, beautiful camera work and editing and most of all, talented actors, it has something for everyone to enjoy and experience at the same time. As an anthology, each segment is faithful to the style and takes of the horror sub-genre it tackles, making it quite a treat for those who're into them as well as for those trying out new and wider horror tastes. That being said, it puts our lead student in a bit of a ride as while we know pretty soon that he's dreaming it all, we can't help but feel a tad aghast while we watch him get submitted into these horrors one take at a time. (And devilishly stabbing us at the probability of the "effects" of seeing too much horror films)

Now, I do have to give a hand for Simon Wallace; as Charles, he maintained his performance as hero, victim and even villain, so much to prove this film's little charm came from a young, inexperienced and little known actor. The rest of the supporting cast are no short of amazing either; whatever role they're are in a segment, just as Charles is to succumb to these nightmares, so do they albeit more through our lead's point of view. Ty Richardson, for one, mostly posed as a security guard in this film and would have been an easy minor character to disregard if it wasn't for his hearty performance as a Nazi captain. (My personal fave segment. Though, it is a bit hard to watch, since it resembles a certain notorious campus massacre) Same goes to Tony Czech and Lance Hendrickson as Charles troublemaking best buds, and Amy Cocchiarella as Lindsey, his little crush.

Adding to the fluid performances of our cast is this film's awesome editing. What it lacked in budget, Summer School pays it up in creativity not only with its scripting and direction but also in giving this film a polished yet gritty look in around a measly thousand dollars. In fact, if it wasn't for the editing, I would clearly see how cheap this film would have looked as while the effects are top-notch, the editing had a chance to ruin the flow of the story if it was mishandled. Thank God for small mercies.

As a indie-film, Summer School's truly exceptional.  Seek if you love segmented horrors, a stroll back to memory lane or a uniquely executed horror film.

Bodycount:
1 male stabbed with dagger
1 female found beheaded
1 male had his heart clawed out from his back
1 male shot offscreen
3 males and 2 female shot with machine gun
1 male shot
1 male had his throat cut with knife
1 female shot on the head
1 male shot through eye wound
1 male gets a broken meter stick to the heart
1 male gets a wooden stake to the heart
1 male gets a pencil to the throat, exits to mouth
1 male shot gunned on the head
1 male shotgunned on the head
1 male shotgunned on the gut
1 male shotgunned on the face
1 male eviscerated with pocket knife
1 male gets a pocket knife thrown to neck
1 female gets a pocket knife to the chest
1 male repeatedly shot
1 male hit by car
Total: 25

Bigfoot, Nazis, Bikers, the whole kazoo!: Dear God No! (2011)

Dear God No! (2011)
rating:***1/2
starring: Jett Bryant, Madeline Brumby and Paul McComiskey

The Impalers. If you're looking for the nastiest bikers in history, this is them.

They are one rouge biker gang of five whose love for murder and rape had gone beyond the four borders of acceptance, going as far as murdering a van load of priests and nuns early on in the movie, a crime too much even for a rival biker gang, Satan's Own. But showing that they hold no care on what other peeps think, they massacred an entire bar under proprieties by said rival gang,and now is on a road trip to hell as they continue their massacre to the deepest parts of the South Georgia woods.

Arseholes til the end.
Good thing I fell no remorse rooting for cryptids!

In there, they invaded the home of an anthropologist and his autistic daughter (or so he claims), who is having a casual visit with a colleague and his pregnant wife, and all things unspeakable happened. However, this is only the icing of the cake as somewhere outside the cabin is a creature hungry for flesh and its not going to wait for its dinner to come out of hiding. But what's this got to say to The Impalers? What is this monster? And who will survive this one night of mayhem?

Dear God No! is definitely not your friendly grindhouse movie (as if there's such a thing). In vein of the nastiest number of splatter movies and 70s nihilistic tone, Dear God No! is a drive-in feel-flick that tramples on one taboo to the next, with much amateurish gore and craziness to enjoy or hate.

From beginning to end, the whole movie is cheesily acted with very little character to root for, making it a test of patience with all of the nasties the hooligans put their victims through, but there's no denying the film's taste on practical effects and editing is fun to notice. What it lacked on solid story-telling, made-up with nasty numbers of child murder, old people murder, cop murder, nun murders, necrophilia, drug use, home invasion, nazis, biker mayhem, preggie rapes and murders, abortion, bigfoot kills, etc. It's so absurd that it's hard not to enjoy it as a silly white trash pile of offensive gore shots to the next, and let me tell you, there is plenty. Nearly the whole movie felt like a cheaper yet pumped-up version of the carnage The Devil's Rejects had pulled off, but in the last few minutes, where the monster arrives, it swapped off the biker-horror and tapped in Bigfoot slashers in vein of Night of The Demon and even the multi-hybrid Demonwarp, with our furry friend showing off gut pulling, disembowelment, and a nice mouth mutilation to give this guys their just desserts.

Remember cringing at Inside's Cesarean scene?
Do it again everytime she took a stabbing. Yikes.

A good look back, of sorts, on everything that had made exploitation deserving of its title. It exploits everything with much grit and gore, a monster-sized titty and body count and no-names with questionable acting. You won't find gloss and money here, just plain low-budget camera works, latex bodies and excruciating tension only found in movies of this nature.

So is Dear God No! a good movie? In a sense, it's not. It's damn evil, bad taste in every corner and meaningless violence and taboos all through the way. But you know what? I don't care. I'm up for any silly monstrosity that comes in my way so long as I can have fun watching it! Violent as it may, there's nothing like it either and it holds its bar high enough to go beyond the acceptable and the tame. What the heck, go see it if you don't believe me, but be warned. There are no due-overs and the contents may tend to scar. Deeply scar!

Bodycount:
1 male seen hanged
2 female seen murdered
1 female disemboweled with a running motorbike wheel
1 female mutilated, blood splash seen
1 male repeatedly stabbed, switchblade thrown to head
1 female had her throat cut with switchblade
10 males and 4 females shot dead
4 males and 1 female gunned down with tommy gun
1 female shot on the head
1 male had his chest shot open with shotgun
1 male shot on the neck, gunned down
1 male shot on the head
1 boy shot
1 pregnant female disemboweled with knife
1 male torn in half
1 male had his mouth torn apart, split in half
1 male had his head clawed off
1 male repeatedly shot on the head
1 male repeatedly shot
1 male shot himself on the head, disemboweled
1 female set ablaze
1 male disemboweled and strangled by his own guts
1 female had her head clawed off
total: 41