Love Lorn and Love Scorn: He Knows You're Alone (1980)

He Knows You're Alone (1980)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Don Scardino, Caitlin O'Heaney, Elizabeth Kemp 

Released early into the 80s golden age of slasher flicks, He Knows You're Alone opens with a scene we're familiar with: a parked car in the woods, its guy and girl occupants busy Frenching each other. The girl hears something outside, prompting her partner to step out to investigate only to go quiet. Too quiet. It isn't long before the girl gets uncomfortable and, after looking around the car on her own, finds her boyfriend strung up upside down on a tree, dead. And just as our masked slasher makes an appearance to give chase at our reasonably hysterical gal, another girl blocks the screen and goes down into the bathrooms before any of us could yell 'Down in front!'

So it turns out the backwoods shenanigans is a film within our film, one that's a bit too much for the bathroom gal we're focusing for now as she ends up feeling really uneasy whilst doing her business in the ladies' room. This slight paranoia is soon to be validated when, returning just in time to join her friend catch a crucial moment in their movie, the girl is stabbed in the back by a sweaty man with a knife, her agonized scream masked by the theater's roar of jovial laughter and shock by what they're seeing on screen. But not for long...

The murder is soon discovered and on the case is one Detective Gamble, who learns that the girl was to be wed a few weeks from now and this fact prompts him to correctly assume this is the work of a psycho he's obsessed on catching for years, a serial bride killer named Ray whose killcount includes Gamble's own late would-be spouse. As Gamble investigates and deduce Ray's current whereabouts, our maniac catches a bus ride away from his fresh kill and coincidentally stops the next morning nearby our leading bride-to-be Amy, who plans to hang around and have fun with her friends and family while her fiancé Phil celebrates his last days as an unwed man at a faraway log cabin with his buddies.

Behind the smiles and all that gushing over her engagement though, we come to find out Amy's having seconds thoughts on tying the knot completely with Phil and its a conflict stemming from the matter that she still has feelings for her lovable goofball ex, Marvin. Sure enough, her former lover shows up here and there, begging her to marry him instead with Amy's friends Nancy and Joyce, as well as Amy's own kid sister agreeing he's a better match for her than her current potential future hubby. The more she thinks this over, the more she starts to notice a prowling man popping up wherever she goes however, just a few feet away or hiding among the crowd. 

As you would've guessed, Ray, made aware of Amy's bridal commitment, has chosen to terrorize this girl and whoever else involved with her big day next. Will Amy come to a decision just in time before she's stabbed full of holes by a bride-hating loon? Will Detective Gamble piece it all together to stop Ray's latest slay-a-thon and put a full end to his terror? And oh my gods, is that young Tom Hanks in a slasher flick?!

In substance, He Knows You're Alone doesn't swing too far out from a standard and linear slasher narrative: we have a killer on the loose and cops are after them, all the while we watch a cast of characters live their lives, anticipating cathartic losses through their demises under the hands of said killer. It's a simple horror plot with simple murders, its violence tamed to just knife stabbings and offcamera deaths (save for one that went an extra mile) with the film focusing more on a good amount of character interactions and plot build-up. With a hokey B-grade flavor to it, the film's genuine sense of warmth and fun from our casts of friends and desperate lovers is a welcome treat found within the movie's writing and scripting, both cheeky, naughty and cheesy yet still somehow achieving a level of sympathetic care and development in its story and characters. 

Any scares and thrills this movie has to offer are handled through Halloween (1978)-inspired camera work wherein the killer appears to menace and/or observe from a distance before disappearing into crowds or is just be completely gone altogether, and too the well-paced and crafty stalking scenarios that can get real intense. Our killer here, uncomplicatedly named Ray, may be your typical textbook example of a random bonafide nutcase seemingly snapped into silence and bloodlust, but he has the physical presence to be intimidating despite looking like your everyday fellow out in the streets. There are moments where the shocks and creep factor doesn't work, but the film practically plays every clichés a slasher title is known and picked apart for, so there's still some slice of hammy enjoyment bound to be found and experienced here. (Like watching our final girl try to avoid death by retreating into her own sweater as the killer looms closer, or seeing young Tom Hanks play a small role here as a psych major dating one of the characters!)

Though not by any means a great movie, He Knows You're Alone (1980) is an entertainment piece that's good enough to be one's mini cult classic of sorts. It's well-written, fairly acted and amazingly fun in its simplistic approach, well worth watching overall, just maybe not around your beloved's bachelorette and/or stag night~!

Bodycount:

1 male found murdered (film)
1 female hacked to death with a sickle (film)
1 female knifed in the back
1 female stabbed to death with a switchblade (flashback)
1 male stabbed with a pair of shears
1 female found murdered
1 male knifed to death
1 female had her throat cut with a knife, decapitated
1 male stabbed on the chest with a knife
Total: 9

Astral Pain: Host (2020)

Host (United Kingdom, 2020)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb

During 2020's COVID-19 pandemic, six friends choose to spend some time under quarantine performing a seance over Zoom,  a cloud-based video conference service. With the help of a medium they invited, it's all fun and games until one of them went a tad too far poking fun at the session, somewhat angering an otherworldly force that wouldn't hesitate to haunt and hunt them all down.

Running only under an hour long, Host is a relatively modest techno-horror feature from director Rob Savage, basically a haunt movie with a bodycount and a "Screenlife" format similar to the likes of the Unfriended series, wherein we watch the entire spooks and carnage through a single computer or phone monitor. Story-wise, the film isn't doing anything far different from the classic supernatural horror plot, with the group dabbling into the unknown with little regards to the possible dangers they're putting themselves in, until that is people starts dying and they're desperately struggling to stay alive. 

It's scene after scene of horror trappings, particularly of the paranormal found footage variant with its share of eerie focus on darkened rooms, things moving on their own in the background and the generous helping of jump scares. Of course, this style and direction wouldn't work for everyone; some might find the movie's video conference-style pretty restricting or that the gimmick is nothing more than an evolved take on the found footage style, not really offering new aside from a more digital perspective. Others might see its quick pacing has a tendency to go over decent character or warranted plot development, but I personally don't mind any lack of depth in a movie's writing and/or scripting so long as it entertains. And Host entertains. 

With a group of decent actors doing a splendid job immersing themselves in the movie's horror and a talented director crafting the scares wonderfully with good timing and setup, Host boasts some genuinely impressive set-pieces from both its fright and murder sequences, some getting quite brutal and intense even without spilling a shocking amount of blood. (Though one did get awfully bloody. Like really bloody) Its cool practical stunt work and the creepy make-up and visual effects used for the villainous spirit and their rampage also further heighten the chill factor of these scenes and the fact that all of this was shot through and presented as a Zoom meeting calls for some ingenuity, at least in an effort to make this film a tad more memorable, relatable and fun as a quickie horror flick that plays around the creepy voyeuristic factor of the horror "Screenlife" approach. 

Best watched with a pair of headphones on and with the lights off, Host has the right amount of unnerving content and engaging character to make it slightly more than just another footage horror flick. As cheap and easy as it can be at times, it has its occasions that guarantee goosebumps and a good watch.  

Bodycount:
1 male dropped dead from a ceiling
1 female killed, method unknown
1 female beaten to death against desktop
1 female had her neck snapped
1 male set on fire
1 female tossed from a window, crashes into a table
2 females attacked, presumably killed

Total: 8

Gone Postal: Disgruntled (2008)

Disgruntled (2008)
Rating: ***
Starring: Mouzam Makkar, Mark Nilsson, Catherine Warren

I've seen a fair share of bodycount movies featuring office employees going postal, from angry fathers seeking vengeance against their own families to deranged bosses making a kill count out of the people they used to work with. It's a fad that's still going on to this day and while some of these newer titles are less than stellar in my opinion (I still loathe the fact that the potential Korean horror Office (2015) was such a drag and unnecessarily long), I love that we have little gory outings such as this movie to keep this little trope fun.

As the head of the IT department of an online publishing company, Matt McClaine can be too intimidating and viciously stern, so much so that he apparently starts to scare some of his co-workers and he constantly email his boss to do something about a certain laidback-type he is working with for the sake of the team's morale. Needless to say, Matt didn't get the response he is hoping for as, while typing another formal letter to the boss, he discovers in great anger that he is booted off the company. 

Snapped out of the grid, Matt goes homicidal then and there, secretly sneaking back into the office through the maintenance room, locking in all those who are still working there. One by one, he starts to pick off anybody he can grab hold to, which includes the aforementioned laidback feller Matt hates so much, Robert Blake, the son of the company head and a hopeless romantic.

Clocking for only an hour, Disgruntled may have the look of a quick-and-easy slasher and, to be truthful, it does delivery all the bloody and chunky needs a bodycounter can deliver to gore-hungry viewers, though it can get really tedious with half of its focus being on the Robert character's egging attempt to win back a failing relationship with a co-worker. Not to say that these scenes are done terribly, they're quite passable given the film's considerable budget, but they have this generic sense to them and it barely breaks away from just these two main characters talking to one another that it hinders what could have been a fair pacing for me.  

Gladly, Disgruntled knew to remedy the two-cast act with some decent looking slasher scenes and though some of these murders were cheaply implemented (as in we're shown blood splatter while the actual parts where the blade cuts through flesh are obscured offcamera), the rest were horrific enough to satisfy horrorhounds for the gruesome imagery and savage butchery. They even gave our killer a creepy face mask that is either flayed flesh or bloodied latex (I can't really tell even if my life depended on it), though I do find it strange that we have to give this guy a mask seeing everybody he is killing know it is him, with or without it. Perhaps this is the reason why his co-workers are so afraid of him, coz he works with a lifeless mask on? I dunno, but it sure would have been a funnier slasher if that was the case!

Disgruntled is simply "okay" as a slasher, doing its job to the greatness of its own extent and nothing much else. What it lacks in extreme content and solid plotting due to either budget and/or writing, it makes up for it with a sincerely balanced seriousness and cheese tossed in with the bloody mayhem a disgruntled former office worker can lash out in a horror movie. A worthwhile viewing for open slasher fans, particularly if you have the time to stream online via Amazon Prime, or order it there as a DVD.

Bodycount:
1 male sliced to death with a buzzsaw
1 female repeatedly gutted with a screwdriver
1 female bludgeoned with a crowbar, strangled
1 male found murdered
1 female sliced with a buzzsaw
1 male found with his throat cut
1 male found with his mouth nailed shut, stabbed with a screwdriver
Total: 7

Cluttered Cybernaturals: Friend Request (2016)

Friend Request (Germany, 2016) (AKA "Unfriend")
Rating: **
Starring: Alycia Debnam-Carey, William Moseley, Connor Paolo

In a way, I feel bad for this movie; Friend Request clearly has some neat ideas for a literal "ghost in the machine" horror flick, but being released two years after the similarly-plotted (and better) Unfriended (2014), it was inevitable for this German dead teenager flick to be compared and expected to dish out a better (if not the same) kind of scares, drama, and bloodshed Unfriended delivered.

For a decent while, it kinda looked like Request was gonna do okay, opening with a campus professor announcing to his class news concerning an apparent suicide of their lonesome and troubled classmate Marina. One of the concerned faces in the crowd is Laura, an uber popular girl with a seemingly perfect life in and out of cyberspace, as well as the first and last friend Marina made not just before her death, but in her entire life.

We then go back a few weeks or so to what happened prior to the suicide, as Laura notices Marina awkwardly looking at her during class. Knowing the girl's inability to socialize, Laura decided to befriend Marina out of pity, a move she will later regret when the girl starts obsessing over her, cyber-stalking and spamming our protagonist's profile with possessive comments while working on some very grisly (yet beautiful) gothic animations.

Understandably upset over the girl's erratic behavior and obsession, Laura decided to cut her ties with Marina no soon after which, unfortunately, pushed the loner into killing herself, suspiciously in front of a recording webcam. The captured video becomes viral and it isn't too long before Laura's friends begin to see weird visions of a ghostly Marina and other disturbing apparitions. Visions that prompt them into killing themselves.

Laura's situation gets worse when the deaths somehow find their way into being posted in her facebook wall, a phenomenon that her "facebook friends" seem to think she's doing on purpose. Now, as of writing, I never use any social media outside of deviantart.com and blogger (if they're counted), and I assume the single facebook profile I made back at 2008-ish is rotting in cyberspace as we speak so I honestly have no clear idea if this is how social media works, but Friend Request seems to be tying itself as a parallel to real life hackings and shows how these new age socializing tools can be used to ruin a person's life should the wrong hands manage to get into it. Again, this is a neat idea and I do love the fact that we get to play around with this concept again after Unfriended, but a few missteps in Request's plot, direction and characterization quickly worsens my viewing experience.

Basically, the problem I have with this movie is that most of the latter plot development wherein majority of the ghoulish stuff happen is unbelievably shallow and cliche'd; correct me if I'm wrong but a scene here has Laura visiting a computer wiz who manages to find out that whoever's posting the artistic snuff gifs at Laura's facebook wall is using some very freaky cybercode that resembles rune letterings. Why not take a friggin' screenshot of the codes and forward it to the site's admins so they could handle the situation and/or announce to every moron in Laura's so-called Facebook "friends" that this is a bug (A very freaky bug that could kill the admins too if we go any further looking into it, but a bug otherwise) and there's not much they or the account holder can do about it? Or better yet, why not forward this to the two detectives investigating the case? I understand that this is a horror flick and smart decisions are usually not a character's smartest asset around this genre, but a little brain cell couldn't hurt! (At least the tech wiz in Unfriended attempted to do something to stop their own "cybernatural" mishaps. And he got killed early for doing so, which in turn puts the rest of his friends in a situation they cannot escape without his technical know-hows. Now that's development done right!)

So what does Friend Request offer on its end? Some enjoyable soundtrack and the little bits of animation here and there, I will give the movie that. And then there are the jump scares. Lots and lots of jump scares.

Now, these are fun jump scares, I admit, but I sometimes see them as a desperate moves to save an otherwise uninteresting plot and Request almost felt exactly like that as the movie's message gets really confusing, the deaths are boring (albeit bloody) and the villain is hardly noteworthy despite all the added supernatural witchery used to substitute for a decent characterization. The additional emphasis on Laura's facebook friends dropping down because of the snuffs "she" was posting might also be another scare factor for today's social media obsessed public, but for someone like me who hardly cared about this sort of stuff, it's not gonna work as much as it would to the next selfie-obsessed duddette.

In the end, Friend Request is an underwhelming dive into modern horror that can't seem to figure out if it wants to be relevant and relatable, or just be a braindead fun flick full of dumb characters and cheap scares. It is watchable, make no mistake, especially if you are the open and easily forgiving type, but with so many other interesting bully and/or web-based horror flicks out there, this movie hardly tries to be memorable and can be easily replaced by better titles.

Bodycount:
1 female hanged herself above a burning portrait, caught on fire
1 male beaten to death inside an elevator
2 boys mentioned killed, faces mutilated
1 female had her throat cut with a scalpel
1 female shot through the mouth
1 female presumably killed offcamera
1 male knifed through the neck
1 male stung to death by wasps
Total: 9

Strangle This and Strangle That: Shock- Diversao Diabolica (1984)

Shock: Diversao Diabolica (Brazil, 1984)
Rating: **
Starring: Jurandir Abreu, Claudia Alencar, Elias Andreato

It's often said that some things are best left alone; take Night of the Dribbler (1990) for example, a supposed sports-themed spoof on the slasher sub-genre that tries too much to be funny and forgets the slasher part almost through-out the movie. It wasn't clever. It wasn't exciting. It was not even so effin' bad it was good, and some (if not most) of those slasher fanatics who begged for the film to be released were quick to wash their hands and hoped that sonovabitch-of-a-movie will be shelved again.

Now am I saying Shock should fall into a similar fate? Perhaps, perhaps...

Shock-Diversao Diabolica follows a rock band who decided to haul up one night inside a house while waiting for their instruments, apparently delayed due to some issues with whoever's transporting them. As any hot and young teenager/young adult couples would do in this predicament, we spend a good near-20 minutes watching them (graphically) make love while the scene jumps back and forth to some people in a club. And seeing this is a slasher movie, the band soon realizes that they are not alone and someone donning heavy black boots is strangling and garroting them dead, one by one.

With six victims and sixty minutes to spare after the first murder, Shock is quick to show that it isn't only influenced by American slashers; normally in a movie of this kind, these characters would be running out doing dumb things that will get them killed but, instead, these would-be murder victims decided to confine themselves in a room while one of them goes out to get the cops. They then spend most of their time discussing who could be out killing band members, among plenty other things to pass the time.

Interestingly, its not just the victims that broke the slasher cliches; the sex=death formulation gets tweaked with as one female character rejects her boyfriend's sex-is-natural talk and would have been our virginal final girl, only to unsuccessfully seduce him back and, of course, gets killed off as an early victim. In turn, the villain does not act like quite a crazed maniac but instead, he is methodic and patient enough to make himself a sandwich, smoke a joint he found on the floor (eww) and play the drums tunelessly in hopes of driving the kids out. (And it worked!) We never get to see his face, just his hands and boots, so the enigmatic nature of the killer is always a plus in my book.

Sadly, there is one thing that prevents me from rating this any higher and it's that the kills aren't too exciting. With the later slasher parts taking place inside an single room, we have no chase scenes and each of the murders (save for a real rat getting pinned to the floor with a knife) are nothing but strangulations. Sure you can try to spice it up with slow-mo shots or an epilepsy-inducing strobe light effect, but in the end a slasher movie needs blood. Or at least a creative variation to the killings, like the automated noose from Argento's Trauma (1993)!

Watching Shock isn't a bad experience as a whole, just a little odd. The ending of the film is quite nice and I can say that the film's director, Jair Correia, was aiming for something more intellectual than your average hack-a-thon, but with a lack of thrills comes a lack of attention and intrigue from me. It's not worth loosing any good night's sleep being tracked down but when you do have the opportunity to watch it, see it out of curiosity.

Bodycount:
1 female strangled to death
1 female hoisted by the neck, strangled
1 male garroted with a rope
1 male garroted with a rope
1 female strangled to death
1 male found murdered, body tied to a column
Total: 6

Suicidal Girl Bands Must Die!!!: Dead Girls (1990)

Dead Girls (1990)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Diana Karanikas, Angela Eads, Kay Schaber

Solid concept, bad execution; a simple phrase that best describes this early 90s slash-a-thon about suicides, vengeance and rock-n-roll!

After her little sister committed suicide with her friends while under the influence of their death metal music, songwriter Gina travels back home with her band to make amends with her lost. But as the rest of the town apparently blaming them for the incident, she instead is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares driven by guilt.

Things are bound for the worse when someone in a Halloween mask, trench coat and fedora (must there be a hat? really?) is killing off one band member and staff at a time when these guys decided to stay for a while and relax in a nearby cabin. Could it be Gina's aunt and uncle, whose anger is enough to curse their own niece to hell? Or is it the mentally handicapped groundskeeper? The cop? Gina herself? We soon find out...after one lengthy exposition to the next.

This is as exciting as it gets, told true; Dead Girls had a lot going for it from a good opening and a story that gives us a chance to play whodunit, but with so little characters to care about, doing away cheesy scripts in a plot that takes too long to get around, watching the entire movie is suicide inducing enough!

Kills are plentiful and so does the gore count, Dead Girls actually dwells into a more psychological trapping at the near end as these girls begin to turn against one another from one paranoid attack to the next. But, again, it's really hard to get by with their uninspired acting and attempted-seriousness-which-does-nothing direction, with me being more bored than thrilled with their paint-by-number antics.

To top it off, it even has the most downbeaten ending I've seen for the sub-genre, a real gutsy one in an attempt to push their standards a bit higher. Kinda works really, just too bad that this would be the only grimly memorable thing about the entire film, damn odd as I'm sure not all of us are willing to walk through something as god awful as this plot just to see that.

A rather forgettable effort, the only mystery I see here in Dead Girls is when did they actually showed these girls jamming their instruments (for credibility's sake) and to how the movie managed to gather its own fan following. The latter must be of taste, which I obviously didn't have for this film...

Bodycount:
3 males and 3 females cuts their wrists, bled to death
1 male shot on the head with nailgun
1 female strangled with noose
1 female drowned on a lake
1 male stabbed on the back with shovel
1 female hacked on death with an axe
1 male shot
1 female repeatedly stabbed on the back with knife, throat cut
1 male beaten to death with a dead branch
1 male blown up with explosives
1 female left for dead
Total: 16

Insert Garbled Robot Language Here: Deadly Friend (1986)

Deadly Friend (1986)
rating: ***1/2
starring:  Matthew Labyorteaux, Kristy Swanson, Michael Sharrett

A little off from being a traditional slasher film, but nearly structured as one otherwise, Wes Craven's Deadly Friend is a little cult classic with a fair following due to its would-be campy yet imaginative plot coinciding with a rather offbeat and sometimes warm tone.

A new kid in town, Paul is a super genius specializing in robotics, particularly Artificial Intelligence. He moved to his new home with his single mother and B.B., his bestfriend and crowning achievement of a self-learning A.I. that looks like a cross between Short Circuit's Johnny 5 and the laser shooting Killbots from Chopping Mall. (interestingly both movies were released in 1986. Cash-in?) Paul quickly got the attention of some neighbors thanks to B.B.; some quickly befriends the two, including Sam, an abused yet loving girl and Paul's little love interest, while others, like Sam's own father, a cranky old hermit Elvira, and some neighborhood bullies came to loathe them.

Despite the mixed attentions both he and his robot friend are treated with, Paul maintains a healthy lifestyle with his human friends as well as on his studies on creating A.I's at a local university. But when he lost B.B. during a Halloween prank gone wrong and Samantha was accidentally killed by her own father (disguised as an accident), some time later, Paul decided to play God and merge B.B.'s AI chip with Sam's brain in hopes of reviving her. The plan worked, but not the way he imagined it as a robotic revenant, Sam/B.B. begins to take down those responsible of killing him/her and those too who threatens Paul.

Cute and Deadly.  DEADLY COMBINATION!

Apparently one of Craven's stranger and obscure entries in 80s horror, Deadly Friend was based on a novel titled Friend which the movie follows for most part and elements, but all in all still ending up as your typical hilariously cheesy, moderately-budgeted horror film that, if you would take a time to notice, also shows some signs of Craven's devolving style in regards in making horror films.

If back then, Craven wanted us to cringe in terror as a trio of thugs gets their comeuppance from a victim's family or when a burnt man hunts you down in a place where you're most vulnerable and helpless, Deadly Friend marks the time he began to create a more commercially acceptable horror film that's toned down in terms of scares and shocks.

The first half of the film was clearly for build; we get to know the main players of this story and some of the turmoils they're going through, may it be as a physical presence such as nasty neighbors and abusive parents, or as an emotional wreckage, as in the death (or deaths) of friends. When Paul finally managed to zombify Sam, the film quickly escalates to a typical revenge-driven slasher film that plays around with some well-deserved kills, with one involving a basketball and an exploding head being this film's biggest (and personally funniest) selling point. This should have been a fine and understandable move, but if we're going to look into at all of this, one would start to see why this film also raised a lot of eye brows.

While the first half already taken out some sense of credibility and realism from the movie (understandable seeing this is a movie about a geeky boy and a robot that he so happens to had build on his own), the second half pushed the envelop further as things begin to look sillier by the minute: Yes, teenagers driving recklessly in a banged-up van can go ride and park around unnoticed, while one of them steals a corpse from a conveniently under-staffed hospital and then easily hide away a rotting, day-old corpse, hardwire it with a chip and remote control it to move around on its own, without anyone noticing the smell and the fact this corpse managed to walk out the next day. I may made it sound atrocious, but thankfully it's a lot more bearable if you take it in a more open manner.

Obviously, the film was made for young, new age horror fans who would like to drive by to the mall just to watch a "scary" picture with a date. The film features a lot of Craven's later signature elements such as a plot revolving around a once humanoid character being resurrected into something otherworldly, as well as the use of dreams (or nightmares) for scares. I do take notice of a lot of Craven's slasher movies would normally revolve around teenagers with parental problems as well. A Nightmare on Elm Street had parents hiding a fatal secret from their kids, Shocker and (the atrocious) My Soul to Take have leads who's fathers were really killers; in here, Craven took another stab on the whole bad parent approach, but the focus on it was more as an ignition point than a driving element that going along the movie, since bad daddy here was hardly as evil as some other bad daddies from other horror films would be since all he did here was look crazy and shout at his daughter, along with a wrist wrestle or two. His death ironically justifies his existence, however, as a newly revived Sam finally puts the beg into her father.

Kills in Deadly Friend were very few since it did more favor over the story. As I mentioned above, the only worthy murder here is the now online-famous basketball decapitation, done away in the most basic and the most splattery blood effects this film can afford. Another discussion-worthy moment would be the ending, which is by far one of the oddest take on a last jump scare gig, rivaling the unexplained "corpse coming to life to de-groin a guy" ending of the cheese-filled slasher Pieces (1981). Spoiling said ending (skip this part if you don't want to know yet), we suddenly have a humanized version of BB coming out of Sam's corpse when Paul tries to steal it back again, grabbing the geek by the neck and seemingly killing him. You would expect a logical explanation here, like a dream maybe, but with all things logical thrown out of the window, I guess the producers thought it would be just as accepting to do a random scare scene as a fully grown robot coming out of a body to kill off its creator as if its happening in real life. Some people bought it, some didn't. I stood in between and just waited for he cool ending theme this film has!

B.B., now's the best time to learn about make-up...

What makes Deadly Friend an acceptable film, above all its flaws, is that at least it's mindlessly entertaining. A few selective people will try to understand it, but it's really just a movie meant to be enjoyed for its weird campy story reaching out to its teenage audience. Not the best from Craven's end but it is far from horrible either. (I believe My Soul to Take takes home as his worst. Seriously, how did you managed to get that one released, Craven?!)

Bodycount:
1 female hits her head down the stairs, suffers through brain trauma
1 male had his neck broken, head burnt in furnace
1 female had her head destroyed with a thrown basketball
1 male thrown and lands on a car, back fractured
1 male had his neck broken
total: 5

The Italian Chainsaw Massacre in the Left: The Last House in the Woods (2006)

Last House in the Woods (Il bosco fuori) (Italy, 2006)
rating: **1/2
starring: Daniela Virgilio, Gennaro Diana, Santa De Santis                         

Can the lack of imagination be easily make up with just good gore?  Well, on a personal note, gore's not enough to make a movie great if it doesn't go along with a good story, but for this case, I can make an exception since the brains behind this title was at least honest enough to admit their movie's obvious influences.

The Last House in the Woods is a hodge-podge hybrid of two movies, Wes Craven's The Last House in the Left and Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We start the film with a family swerving their car into a tree, killing the father and leaving mum and son to venture out to the other side of the woods to find help. Mum gets hit by an incoming van and son hides into the woods, watching the van's driver brutally kill off his mum with a rock.

We then fast-forward some amount of time later, wherein we join a bickering couple riding into the woods in hope of mending their relationship. But after their car breaks down in the middle of the road, they soon become the prey for a trio of drugged up punks who proceed to beat and rape them. But rescue comes in the form of a gun-packing stranger driving by and scaring off the druggies; taking pity on them, the driver lets the couple rest up in his secluded home in the middle of the woods, where they are patched up by the driver's wife. But as you would know in any horror movie, the backwoods-dwelling husband and wide aren't what they seem, especially if they're taking care of a sharp-toothed boy with something that isn't red jello smeared on his face. Soon, the two young couple is forced to become dinner for their hosts' inbred family and an unexpected help will be their only hope of surviving if they live long enough.

The Last House In The Woods is a throwback to the old Italian exploitations of the 70s and 80s, where plot is ripped-off from (better) movies and cheese is the selling point. As an intended rip-off of Last House on the Left and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the movie tries to re-capture those years of Italian cash-ins but it hardly tries anything to set itself apart from the rest.

The movie did nearly everything Last House and Chainsaw have already done, including some shocks and promised gore, but there just wasn't enough to throw around to make it anywhere that exciting or intense. It's imaginative and nasty with its grue (Wanna see a man die from an exploding goiter? Look no further!) but the tone of the film can be an issue as the comedic elements comes rather off, border-lining as hammy.

The last act is probably this film's another high brow moment; while the first act is a routine walk-through with gore, inbred horror and lots of running, the second half is where we have our thugs come back to save the two couples (or what's left of them), which was an odd direction that does nothing but boost up the kill count as people from both sides die off from one bloody murder to the next. There's also a disturbing image at the end that kinda unnerved me, a bit of a shout-out to the weird and surreal endings Italian horror is known for.

A guilty pleasure for sure, The Last House on the Woods is a cocktail of everything you would know and expect in an Italian exploit, with a little something extra around, may that be a good or a bad thing. It's not gonna hold-up to the rest, nor was it planning to reinvent the face of horror, but it's plays the game pretty straight up, entertaining us with buckets of blood and a retro look that's done in a budget similar of those from the old days.

Bodycount:
1 male killed in car crash
1 female hit by a car, brained to death with rock
1 male beaten to death with a gun
1 male disemboweled with chainsaw
1 male shot on the head
1 male knifed repeatedly on the back
1 male had his neck crushed until goiter explodes, bled to death
1 male knifed on the back, nearly beheaded
1 female had her  neck repeatedly bitten
1 male had limbs cut off with chainsaw, bled to death
Total: 10

Short Shear Terror: The Quiet (2013)

The Quiet (United Kingdom, 2013)
rating: ****
starring: Jenni-Lea Finch, Nigel Long, Sarah Buckland

It's been a while since I reviewed a good short film, as in a really good short film. Normally, what I look for in a short is a good plot that can stand on its own and be as effective as any real horror film, despite its short running time. I have seen attempts to do this, more over I've just seen 26 of them last months through my review of The ABCs of Death, somehow that experience taught me the dos and don'ts of making a real scary short, and one of them is that pacing and style can sometimes come a long way.

The independent short The Quiet is a good example of this; bullied into walking the long way back home, Alice is a young deaf girl who finds herself the target of a man who begins to stalk and chase her around the woods with a malicious intent. Having already lost her hearing aid, the girl has no other choice but to run and try to survive her ordeal.

I would like to say, first, that I love the production for this movie. It's a perfect short film in regards to creepiness and tension, and the photography of this film definitely has style. I like how the film revolves around a barren road side next to the woods, as it shows a bit of parallelism of being out in the open where people can come by and see you, all the while one step into a place where no one can't. (That, and the shots of the countryside are just beautiful in this movie) The film starts off there, but as the girl begins to notice her stalker, it dwells deeper and deeper into a more isolated and hidden premise wherein tension doubles into a survival act that is not unlike that of a slasher movie, minus the actual slashing of course.

The simple story, though not entirely original, does call for some highlights by featuring a root-worthy lead, whose deficiency in hearing seems to get no pity from her peers. Add the fact that her nubile age is a bit taboo even for a horror film, the touchy subject certainly strikes a nerve or two. If one would notice how the stalker chases and caress the girl's hair during his "attacks", you can definitely tell this guy's a total creep.

The only thing that I really wish they didn't do here is that they did a little reveal of who was the stalker all along; It could have been anyone for all we know, but I was really hoping they haven't done that twist reveal as it kills off some of the notoriety of the villain. Either that or I really prefer my bad guys to be random loons, since, the way I see it, faceless and nameless villains are a lot scarier since they can strike anytime and can be anyone.

Very slasher like stalkings makes up a lot for the short.

Overall, I simply adore this little creeper. There's some artistic interpretation to the more horrifying incidents that happened here, which is really enough to make up for the zero kill count here, but all in all, The Quiet is an effectively scary horror short to see.

Bodycount: 0

Watch the short!

Death Comes Torturous: Final Destination 3 (2006)

Final Destination 3 (2006) (AKA Cheating Death: Final Destination 3)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ryan Merriman, Kris Lemche

Gore, gore, and more gore; when movies like SAW (2004), Hostel (2005) and The Devil's Rejects (2005) introduced long and torturous overkills in the early to mid-2000s, bighead business types probably wanted to cash-in to these movies' successes by putting the splatter back in horror and thriller cinema. Thus, the once clever and intense dead teenager series Final Destination steps its game up for its third inning to cater a new wave of gore-hungry audience, even if it meant re-telling the same plot all over again.

This time around, we join highschooler Wendy and her friends at a local fair as they celebrate their last days attending McKinley High before graduating. What should have been a fun night for everyone in her year, tragedy strikes when a roller-coaster accident takes the lives its riders, though there should have been more victims in the count.

Wendy, you see, had a premonition of the upcoming disaster minutes before it started, thus she ends up saving a few of them, something she's not too thrilled about as it costs her a loving boyfriend and a good friend, leading to one hell of a survivor's guilt. It will, however, go for worse when one by one, the should-be coaster casualties start dropping like flies from one fatal accident to the next, all in the order they were supposed to die at the fair. Now aware of her predicament, Wendy has no choice but to figure out the pattern and clues to stop an inevitable force hunting them down or end up next on Death's list.

In comparison, the first two Final Destination movies can be seen as teen thriller-cum-supernatural slashers with some metaphysical themes, while Final Destination 3 (2006) is more of the splatter-filled junkfood horror, throwing off factors like proper character build and plot development in favor of off-the-wall kills, paint-by-number clichés and stereotypes. Not any of that is a bad thing honestly, but it kinda stepped this entry down a lot from the imaginative dead-teenager flick that started it all, to a messy and chunky kill-a-thon rollercoaster ride. (Pun intended)

That said, the movie's greater focus on the brutal impact of these kills meant the deaths here are more torturous and/or overdone as the mutilated gets further dismembered and splattered beyond recognition, done gloriously in traditional practical effects with CG enhancements in full onscreen. Basically, a gorehound's wet dream. Those expecting a smart and witty film may not find much to work with this entry, but with the right mindset and expectations, Final Destination 3 (2006) can definitely be fun; yes, the plot could have gone down the route to at least explain a little bit further on how Death works in these movies, but the basic teenagers-in-peril story has its own perks if you're not in a demanding mood. Sometimes you just want to see doomed teenagers lined up as lambs for the cosmic slaughter and, as sadistic as that sounds, it does make one hell of a guilty entertainment, even more so paired with the nihilistic undertone of this movie. (I mean, just look how this movie ends. No hope at all!)

Final Destination 3 (2006), as far as I can tell, could have been a rather dull entry to the series as it retreads the same plot that backbones the first two films. Nevertheless, the fun factors of these Final Destination films, who will die next and how, are still present, with the how here being answered with loads of stage blood and shredded latex. Gorno-addicts and enthusiasts might find a worthwhile time through this one, as too those who are willing to trade out smarts for bloody parts. It could have been worse, and I mean really worse -*COUGH*THEFINALDESTINATION! - so let's just thank the invisible forces for these small mercies, and hopefully this series can continue a stable footing.

Bodycount:
7 riders mangled in a roller-coaster accident
2 females incinerated in malfunctioning tanning beds
1 male had his head shredded by a truck engine fan
1 male had falling exercise weights crush his head
1 female repeatedly shot on the head with a nailgun
1 female impaled by a broken flag pole
1 male crushed by a falling cherry picker
1 female crushed by a dislodge train wheel
1 male filleted in between a train and tunnel wall
1 male and 1 female mangled in train derailment

A number of victims seen killed in train derailment
1 female ran over by an incoming train
Total: 19+

Nightmare on Hunt Street: Deadly Dreams (1988)

Deadly Dreams (1988)
Rating: ****
Starring:  Mitchell Anderson, Juliette Cummins, Xander Berkeley

Eversince A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) introduced the idea of murder by dreams, you would have expected many of our 80s entries would try to cash-in to its success and try to take a shot on chucking kids into the dream realm to die, just as many tried to get teens into the woods to be killed after Friday the 13th (1980)'s success, or have silent methodic killers terrorize people in the streets  or at holidays just like in Halloween (1978). Ironically, the only thing A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) successfully passed on to its would-be imitators was the idea of having their killers crack one-liners and bend reality via the supernatural; almost none of them tried to touch the dream world concept, but some did found other ways of utilizing it.

Deadly Dreams (1988) is one of these movies; it's about Alex, a man haunted by a tragic past ten years ago, wherein his parents are murdered one Christmas Eve by Perkins, a disgruntled business partner. Though the killer's reported to had committed suicide the same night of his murder spree, Alex suffers recurring nightmares involving Perkins, still wearing his wolf mask, stalking and murdering him or anyone dear to him. So now 21-years old, Alex is currently undergoing therapy to overcome his nightmares and try to live a social life as normal as possible, but this is somehow proven harder than said when a mysterious figure in a wolf's mask begins showing up around the corner even when he's awake.

Could Perkins still be alive and keeping his vendetta? Or is Alex loosing his mind? Maybe living in a town that celebrates deer hunting seasons and littered with hunters wasn't such a bright idea for a fellow suffering from trauma but, eitherways, someone's after Alex and there'll be twists and turns you'll never expect.

We can actually count this movie as a tribute to 50s/60s psycho-thrillers or a forerunner to the 90s revival, where rich benefactors are haunted and hunted by loonies that are either real or imagined. This in mind, much of Deadly Dreams (1988)'s murders are more of false kills that are later revealed to be dreams; some are obvious, some have their varying shock values, but the movie's strengths lies little on these murders but more on the narrative that has us wondering if the killer is really someone who's mistaken to be dead, someone attacking from the grave, or someone hoping to drive the lead mad. (Being one of the sons of a rich family, he's entitled for an inheritance. So you could only wonder if this is all just an elaborate scheme to rob Alex of his future riches.)

Deadly Dreams (1988) is passable in terms of visuals and direction. The film is paced and evenly written to develop all the players (hence why some might see this movie's 79 minute run time to be longer than imagined), though a few scenes and dialogue couldn't escape being cheesy. The film's hopeless outlook also gave it much effectiveness as a twisty thriller and help the impact of the surprise ending, thus finishing with a slasher that felt more like a bloodier version of an afternoon soap opera, so those expecting a traditional gore-fest might be put off.

It took a good minute to look around and make a serious slasher out of the cavalcade of cheesy imitators and DIY wannabes, so I find Deadly Dreams (1988) deserving of our attention as a well directed late 80s entry and the only movie that has a workable wolf mask.

Very workable indeed~

Bodycount:
1 female shot with a shotgun
1 male shot with a shotgun
1 male shot himself with a shotgun
1 male shot repeatedly with a shotgun (dream)
1 male had a hunting knife driven through his back (dream)
1 female smothered with a pillow, hunting knife to the face (dream)
1 male shot offscreen with a shotgun
1 male had his throat cut with a hunting knife
1 male killed offscreen with a hunting knife
Total:  9