Film School Flopped: Harpy (2000)

Harpy (South Korea, 2000)

Rating: *

Starring: Lee Jung-hyun, Kim Rae-won, Ggoch-ji Kim

When a movie starts with a film class meeting where you could barely comprehend what the teacher is saying because the chatter from his students can be heard along his little talk, or the damn thing pauses randomly for the sake of creative editing, you know friggin' well this isn't gonna end good for any of us.

While working on an amateur slasher flick for a school project, shy musical prodigy Su-yeon (Lee Jung-hyun) falls for the motorbike-riding bad boy Hyeon-su (Kim Rae-won), who just so happens to be dating the class queen bee Yae-rim (Ggoch-ji Kim). As you would expect from a love triangle, drama and intrigue ensue, especially after someone begins to stalk Su-yeon and Hyeon-su with a camera after the two start seeing each other in secret. Photos of the meet-up are soon passed around school and Yae-rim, of course, isn't too pleased to know that her squeeze is squeezing another girl behind her back, so she corners and attacks Su-yeon at their classroom after spotting her working late one night, only for us to see another figure walking in to kill off the attacked girl no soon after. 

Or at least that's what it looked like as, a few days passed being absent, Su-yeon reappears looking rather okay despite the whole assault, much to Yae-rim's surprise and uneasiness. Su-yeon does appear to be quieter than usual, though, but with her being back on board, the film class can now proceed with their hack' n slash movie project and visit a remote villa where they'll be filming. This is when the shoot goes South for the gang as not only would they discover their props tampered with to cause actual harm, but someone dressed up as their balaclava-clad villain starts hunting them down one by one...

Now, see, Harpy (2000) here had the potential to be at least a serviceable enough murder mystery despite its sappy love triangle one hour act and often wonky characters. It's not a perfect plot, you can actually tell the twist from afar, but it at has the spirit of a passable yet fun B-grade slasher that you could catch whenever nothing else is good to watch on a weekend afternoon. This would have been the case if only, ONLY it wasn't edited into a schizophrenic dreck by people I assume were suffering from a mental breakdown. Or were high. Or both.

Basically, any sense of a stable direction was completely lost within all the noise and stylistic visuals our editor from hell decided to give this film, filling Harpy (2000) with a gobblecock of cartoon noises, randomized freeze frames and slowmo shots, odd voice overs spouting the most random shite here and there, apparently as a way to market this movie as a "horror comedy" in which, from what I read looking into this mess, wasn't even supposed to be the case. Based on what I can properly decipher, it was shot as a (mostly) straight slasher, but the added bells and whistles transformed it into an art house film experiment of the chaotic kind, one that failed to explain its own jokes or reward our patience with worthwhile entertainment. If anything, the whole shtick may have alienated it audience considering its sad box office performance and its relative obscurity. I wouldn't be surprised if none of the people who watched this could make head nor tail of what they're seeing here.

Harpy (2000) is, without a doubt, an experience. Just not a good one. Undoubtedly one of the strangest slasher titles I've seen out there, as well as, sadly, one of the more frustrating to sit through... 

Bodycount:

1 female beaten, stabbed with knife offscreen 

1 male snared with a chained grappling hook, later found hanging dead from a ceiling

1 female strangled with a chained grappling hook

1 female stabbed in the back

1 female stabbed in the chest with a dagger

1 male gets a knife pushed into his throat (mostly offscreen)

1 male knifed to death

1 male strangled to death with a chained grappling hook

Total: 8

Rave a Cave to The Grave: Bone Cave (2011)

Bone Cave (2011)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Justin Rose, Jeremy Jusek, Andrew Hartl

...Yeah, I'm not even gonna beat around the bush, this is just terrible.

Two college slackers named Mike and... T Rad... want to earn some good cash so they throw the mother of all raves inside a secluded cave for novelty's sake. Lights were set. Tunes were played. Stolen drugs were passed around as party favors. Things were going great - until it isn't. The cave just happens to be the lair of some face-painted creep who goes by Bones Magee and, for the lack of a better term, he has aspirations to be the next wise-cracking slasher villain. Like, he utters terrible one-liners before and/or after hacking someone to death with his assortment of bone-related weapons. So, yeah, Bones Magee soon crashes the party, forcing Mike, T Rad, some hot goth-punk chick named Annora and the few remaining partygoers to try and survive the Bone Cave.

Honestly, I wanted to like Bone Cave (2011). It has cheese factor, a stupidly entertaining villain and some of the kills were gruesome enough, but its pacing is atrocious, taking a very long while with us just watching two boring bozos trying to plan a rave before anything interesting happens, all in the meantime enduring acting chops that range from stiff to dull just to pour salt on the wound. The murder spree wouldn't takes place after almost an hour of lackluster plot building, and its insultingly done and over with no soon after, leaving the last fifteen minutes or so focused solely on Bones Magee hammily monologuing this movie's excuse of a twist, while our survivors equally cheese it out with responding banter. 

Throw in a couple of dated computer graphic effects here and there, plus an entire massacre that happened offscreen, implied only through blood splashes on prop rocks, looped audio of actors screaming and annoying heavy rock playing in the background, and you have one of the cheapest slashers to come out of celluloid. Seriously, Bone Cave (2011) earned its spot on the crusty bottom barrel of horrid horror lameness for not only how crappy the overall quality of it is, but also for how braindead boring it is. 

Avoid it.  

Bodycount:

1 male skewered with a pike

1 female impaled through the forehead with a pike

1 female had her face melted with acid

1 male bashed on the head with a skull-decorated pickaxe

1 male hacked on the side with a bone hatchet

1 female had her throat crushed

1 female hacked on the head with a bone hatchet

2 females slashed with a bone hatchet

A number of victims massacred with a skull-decorated pickaxe

1 victim seen crushed in a grenade-triggered cave-in

1 male had his head crushed with a stereo set, electrocuted

1 female hacked on the back with a bone hatchet

1 male hacked on the head with a skull-decorated pickaxe

1 male falls to his death

1 male dies from a bone hatchet hacked unto his back

Total: 15+

Boogie Bop Flop: 1962 Halloween Massacre (2023)

1962 Halloween Massacre (2023)

Rating: 1/2

Starring: Ariel Ash, Caroline Beagles, Will Branner

Yeah, this one is a real doozy of a slasher movie. And here I was thinking watching the side of my painted house dry was terrible, I have no idea there's something even more boring!

This hogwash of a film is actually based on an internet urban legend involving a vintage photo of a 1960s Halloween party. Among the people in the picture is a figure wearing a simple black mask and story has it that the fella would soon lock all the guests in and start attacking them, killing seven before disappearing into the night and leaving the FBI the black mask as the only piece of evidence from the massacre. 

1962 Halloween Massacre (2023) basically tries molding a story out of the urban legend, focusing on four friends who happen to be members of an elite circle of pharmaceutical families, driving to a remote cottage in the woods for a Halloween party. As they enjoy the spirit of the night and the debaucheries that comes with it (mainly sex, booze and a game of hide-and-seek apparently), an unexpected guest drops by to skulk around and say random doomsayer shit to himself, before soon enough trapping everybody in the cottage by tying the doors with heavy duty rope and going around stabbing people to death.

Now, see, this would have been exciting given that the film wasn't so focused on way too many conversations between its main casts or the random spouting of nonsensicals from the deranged maniac, so much so that 1962 Halloween Massacre (2023) is mostly jabber and little horror action from the maniac stabber. It's slowburn beyond slowburn, a direction littered with dull yakking about things that barely made the movie's dry run intriguing, something that doesn't help the fact that the low budget is more than evident from the cheap sets, use of CG blood and lackluster visual work that's obviously shot by some guy walking around with a camera. Most of the acting is okay(ish) at least, although I can't help but feel awkward watching some of these actors line read 1960s lingo with the enthusiasm of a highschool theater play. 

Damning of it all, though, is how this film concludes; without giving out a lot, too many survivors ran away scott-free with the killer leaving them be under the reason that they prefer a "captive audience" and "when you buy a ticket to the movies, you don't have to chase the picture to watch that". Uh, bullshit! Just tell us you're lazy, you self-glorifying asshat! This is then followed by more mad ramblings from the jerk before they phone in the killings to the police while pretending to be some sort of cross between a murder victim and an entitled bitch who cries "lawyer" when shit doesn't go their way. (No, really) The scene then simply cuts to the following morning, with FBI detectives weirdly scoping out the place and ending with heavy implications that the killer is among the investigators. Riveting, it ain't.

1962 Halloween Massacre (2023), as a concept, has the potential to be a good time capsule slasher flick set in the 60s, but its cheap and rushed production unsurprisingly results to one of the most nerve-wreckingly unexciting slasher to ever disgrace the face of horror. To be plain and simple, this one is just a drag. 

Bodycount:

1 male had his throat cut with a knife

1 female knifed to death

1 male knifed to death

1 male knifed to death

1 male knifed to death

1 female knifed to death

1 female knifed to death 

Total: 7

Voyage of The 'Duh': Moon In Scorpio (1987)

Moon In Scorpio (1987)
Rating: *

Starring: Britt Ekland, John Phillip Law, William Smith

I remember the day I first saw Moon In Scorpio (1987). It was years ago and I was coming home from work, a storm just hit my country so it's heavy rain and strong winds throughout the afternoon. Foreboding, ain't it? As if the universe was giving me all of the signs to call it a day then and take a break. Sleep it off. Well, dear readers, if the idiot writing this review was a tad smarter then, he should've saw the fucking signs and doze off like the dead instead of wasting a perfectly fine evening being bored off his arse by this shipwreck of a movie.

Word around the grapevine says that this movie didn't start out as a slasher during its production and it was more of a Lovecraftian supernatural horror flick about soldiers in Vietnam encountering an evil snake goddess and something about a child hunting down the men years later in revenge. But the big wigs producing the movie got too involved and wanted it to be more stabby-stabby, so reshoots, rewrites and editing came in the way and butchered the entire thing into this incohesive travesty of plot holes, lousy directions and overcooked cheese, all under the cheap leftover budget of another film.   

Told as a flashback narration by the only survivor of the eventual murder spree (which means we get to see and hear what's going on in the movie technically twice), Moon In Scorpio (1987) follows three Vietnam vets and their partners taking a yacht pleasure cruise, unaware that one of them just broken out of a mental asylum and has armed themselves with a knife and some weird spearhead weapon that would have been cooler in another slasher film. Insert Nam' flashbacks of the veterans fighting in the jungle and one of the gals in the boat spouting psuedo-Astrology about the moon being in Scorpio (which according to her meant that the cosmic force of vengeance is acting upon them or some shit like that), the yacht population soon starts to dwindle as our killer hunts them down one by one, sparking an intrigue of paranoia and distrust that's dulled down by the droll narration accompanying it and the hammy acting from its casts.

Any means of tension is dead on arrival given the lifeless pacing and paperthin story clashing horribly with the hodge-podge production behind the film, making Moon In Scorpio (1987) just unbearably tedious to follow from the start. The sheer ridiculousness of the plotting and its execution is more insulting than entertaining, so much so that not only was the identity of the killer damn obvious (not hard to figure out seeing there are only six of them aboard that fucking yacht), but the motive behind their murder spree also had shit to do with anything this movie was building on so there's little to no reason for the damn psycho to be there anyway, fucking up what little attempt remains on making the whodunnit angle interesting!

The only good thing about this movie is that its tone is so weird and over-the-top, those with the stomach for the odd (and/or just plain masochistic) could still find something entertaining out of this rancid mess. Moon in Scorpio (1987) is, without a doubt, tailor-made for their strange taste. For me, however, I'm better off abandoning this sinking ship of a war time trauma meets boat-set bodycounting and those who value their time and brain cells should consider doing the same.

Bodycount:

1 male knifed in the back

1 male knifed in the gut

1 male stabbed in the gut with a spearhead weapon

1 male shot (flashback)

1 male shot dead (flashback)

1 female shot (flashback)

1 male shot dead (flashback)

1 male shot (flashback)

1 female shot, left for dead (flashback)

1 male knifed, throat cut with a spearhead weapon

1 female knifed in back and hacked with a spearhead weapon, eye stabbed

1 male shot with a harpoon

1 male knifed in the back, throat cut with a spearhead weapon

1 male had his throat cut with a knife

1 female stabbed in the back with a spearhead weapon

Total: 15

Yankee Doodled: 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010)

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010)

Rating: *

Starring: Bill Moseley, Lin Shaye, Christa Campbell

Ah, god, how did I even survive this shit?

Look, I love 2001 Maniacs (2005), Eli Roth's teen slasher remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis Southern-fried splatter classic Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964). And I also love Bill Moseley, a beloved character actor who don the roles of many horror faves such as Chop Top from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) and Otis B. Driftwood from Rob Zombie's Firefly Clan movies. Seeing Moseley leading in a follow-up to one of my fave early 2000s gorefest should be a match made in heaven for me, but not if the resulting movie is like watching a ten year old trying to paint a replica of Van Gogh's The Starry Night while drunk and high at the same time: simply horrifying and concerning.

For those who are not in the know, the story of Maniacs follows the ghoulish undead denizens of a small Southern community called Pleasant Valley and their macabre celebrations involving the luring, torturing, mutilating and then devouring of unsuspecting motorists as revenge against the Northerners. 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010) follows on the events of Eli Roth's re-telling as we see the folks of Pleasant Valley preparing for another round of their annual "Guts N' Glory Jubilee" celebration, only to learn that the local sheriff is putting a stop to the Jubilee since the feds are starting to catch on to the disappearances around their neck of the woods over the years. Town leader Mayor Buckman (Bill Moseley) doesn't take kindly to this news so, after killing off the sheriff by rolling him down a hill inside a barrel driven with nails, he devised a plan to take their macabre celebration on the road, turning the jamboree into a traveling circus of sorts.

In comes our group of stereotypes that happen to be the cast and crew of a brain-rotting reality TV show Road Rascals (practically The Simple Life), driving around in their tour bus when they came upon the maniacs' lil' cavalcade of crazies and sees an opportunity to film an impromptu episode for their show once they're invited to join Mayor Buckman's traveling party of Southern hospitality, games and barbecue! And as you would expect, the folks from Pleasant Valley are just delighted to have these suckers around for their fiendish and cannibalistic fun, picking them off one by one...

Almost everything about 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010) is terrible. Flimsy. Embarrassing. Excruciating, even. I say almost since there's a good deal of messy gore effects done for some of the kills which pleases my inner gorehound, as well as Moseley being a definite treat in this movie, playing the gruesome yet infectively charming and hilarious mayor of Pleasant Valley with much wry Southern humor and tongue-in-cheek hamminess. Past that, too many of the jokes missed than hit as the writing often devolved into cheaply throwing shots at horribly dated pop culture and politics, the victims are devoid of any real character apart from being tired offensive clichés played by barely talented folks and the production definitely took a nose dive down the cheap shithole. Seriously, throughout the movie, you'll see uninteresting camera work, audio quality dropping randomly and hack job editing. It's bad enough we have to sit through rotten cheese, terrible jokes and yawn-worthy shock gags, but to have it executed half-assed simply shows how much this movie just dragged itself into failure from the moment it started.

No, good gentlemen and fair ladies, I am not impressed by 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010)! It's hard to praise a film that can make the idea of a black comedy about evil, murderous and cannibalistic confederate towns this boring and I would rather chuck myself down a nailed barrel rolling down a hill than to subject myself to another viewing of this garbage. Dump it!

Bodycount: 

1 male rolled inside a nailed barrel, impaled on wooden planks

1 female sliced through the groin with a buzzsaw

1 male electrocuted in an electric chair

1 male had his back broken, heart torn out

1 male had his head decimated with a stick of dynamite

1 female hoisted and hanged on a noose

1 female had her face torn off with a clawed chastity belt

1 male shredded against a bus engine

2 female ran over with a truck

Total: 10 

"Golden Title": Frozen Flesh (2001)

Frozen Flesh (2001)

Rating: LEGENDarily bad

Starring: Frank Gillis

I found it. I've seen it. The horror movie to end all horror movies. A macabre masterpiece of maniacal madness. A psychological shocker of surreal sins. An aberration of abnormal anguish. A presentation of putridness unmatched by many classics I've seen in my entire existence. A heart-stopping horrifying horrors of horror simply known as Frozen Flesh (2001)!

With a running time of almost two hours, we see the methodic mindset of a masked mass murderer expertly played by the one and only Frank Gillis, as they showcase to us what goes in the mind of a deranged individual as they feast upon what's not meant to be feasted. A gruesome buffet of human viscera and gore fills the screen every minute, artistically shot in red tint and sickening close-up, surely to sear it in our minds as we sit through this nightmare play of devilish directions. A true art of hellish sensibilities and a daring display of deadly malice, we would soon see this monster wield their blood-caked knife with furious frenzy, either to battle their own invisible demons or to succumb in their need to defile the human form with a swift carve of their blade, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

And over...

Okay, truth be told, that's two hours of my life I'm not getting back. Frozen Flesh (2001) is a weird little shit of a "movie" where we literally just watch a guy in a striped shirt and bag over their head just sitting there, while a plastic body part that you can buy at a Halloween goods store being passed on as this garbage's "gore effects" gets cooked inside an oven before our wannabe horror star just starts wielding the knife in the air repeatedly, in different angles. All of this in almost two hours of running time! Two fucking hours of red tint and bad score, while we watch what's basically some guy's take on a performance art without the striking and though-provoking sensibilities of actual art. I'm sure this is all good on paper at some point, maybe even philosophical or psychological even, but in practice and execution, I think a shitload of things got lost and tossed away, resulting to this head-on attack on our endurance and patience.

It's only fitting to cover this pile of cinematic excrement on April Fools Day as that's what it is. A joke. A big stupid joke of a movie that I guess only those with a certain warped mindset (or high on something both powerful and illegal) would find entertaining. If you're one of the people who enjoyed Frozen Flesh (2001) then more power to you! I'm glad this movie gave you joy while you find yourself strapped in a straightjacket and locked inside a padded room that one time you had a mental breakdown. In the meantime, the rest of us here would be better off seeing other movies to cleanse our palate of this worthless filth and that includes cheekier and hammier bad films that are Oscar winners when compared to this...

Bodycount:

1 victim seen with their pieces being cooked. For an hour. 

Total:1

Just A Couple Of Dummies: The Dummy (1995) and The Dummy (2000) Double Bill Review

From the titular Devil Doll of 1964 to Slappy of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps franchise, ventriloquist dummies have been a minor staple of horror media, tapping into the pediophobic creepiness of the dolls' uncanny valley looks. Entrust this trope to capable hands and we'll get horror cult classics like Magic (1978) and Dead Silence (2007) treating us to a chilling good time. On the other side of the coin, the more clumsy low budget side, we'll unfortunately get messes such as these instead...

The Dummy (1995)

Rating: *

Starring: Lisa Cook, Todd Jason Cook and Sabrina Cook

Directed and starring Todd Jason Cook, who I'm sure a few of you reading this would know as the same guy who brought us underground cult films like Evil Night (1992), Death Metal Zombies (1995) and Zombiefied (2012), this shlock starts with a newlywed couple visiting a gypsy psychic for laughs and insulting her readings. This obviously enrages the woman, so she casts a death curse upon them and calls forth a demonic ventriloquist dummy to end the couple as well as basically anyone they come across. The rest of the story is practically a rinse-repeat cycle of the couple visiting, getting visited or receiving a phone call from friends and relatives, only for those folks to get attacked and slaughtered by the killer dummy while heavy metal plays in the background, up until only the newlyweds are left for the dummy to terrorize.

As one can expect from a shot on video Z-grade flick, The Dummy (1995) has the production quality of an aged moldy peanut with grainy and dull camera work, an uninspired repetitive direction and appalling audio quality. The characters are outrageously hammy and their dialogues are equally dim, unsurprisingly, and the killer dummy itself is practically just a dummy getting wiggled around while kitchenware is taped or glued on their hands. I will say at least that the hokey gore effects have a little sense of cheesy charm to them, coming fact that there's some effort made to make them as gruesome as possible, but there's only so much random people talking and doing crap on low budget standard that I could take before a boring movie absolutely shoots down any interest I have with it. 

If anything, the whole dreck is more of a collection of kill scenes held together by a very thin and unremarkable excuse of a story, trailing along the creepy killer doll fad that's ineptly and, dare I even say, hilariously executed here. Fans of extremely low-budget do-it-yourself horror flicks may have a fair time enjoying this, but for the rest of us, this one might be a difficult fling to sit through...

Bodycount:

1 male stabbed in the eye with a dagger

1 female repeatedly slashed with a knife, stabbed in the mouth

1 male had his throat cut with a dagger

1 male whipped on the face with a length of chain

1 female stabbed in the gut with a dagger

1 male stabbed in the throat with a dagger

1 male shot on the head

1 male stabbed in the knife (dream)

1 female had her throat cut with a knife (dream)

1 male ran through with a fire poker

1 male stabbed in the back with a knife (dream)

1 female hacked on the neck with a machete 

Total: 12

~~~

The Dummy (2000)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Keith Singleton, Irina Björklund and Jocelyne Lopez

Saw this one when I was just around a single-digit age and I can clearly say that, after seeing it recently, nostalgia isn't what it used to be with this title.

This little obscurity centers around a ventriloquist named Paul (Keith Singleton, who also happens to be its director, producer and writer!) coming back to his home town and making a career out of his talent at a comedy club after a lengthy 20 year stay at a mental hospital. Things were going as fine as a jittery puppet master could try make it to be, even bringing home a couple of women from the club to sleep with, but it all starts to unravel for the worse when Tommy, his ventriloquist dummy, seemingly comes to life and murders one of his coworkers at the club. The following morning comes and a local snarky entertainment critic bites the big one next with a poisoned blow dart after bashing Paul's performance.

Hearing about these recent deaths, Paul starts to freak out and reaches out to a few people he could trust for help, including a new lady friend who wanted to write a book about people with special conditions and a psychiatrist who treated him back at the ward. It seems this isn't the first time the man had some problems dealing with dead people and he believes all of this has something to do with a few blackouts he have been getting lately, as well as his own foul-mouthed homicidal ventriloquist dummy...

I'll give The Dummy (2000) this; it tries to mold itself as this low budget Hitchcockian stride of hero-antagonists struggling with their dark pasts, a "Jekyll and Hyde" premise coupled with some efforts to deliver genuine suspense and thrills as seen in some scenes such as Paul trying to dispose the body of one of Tommy's victims, and too the few kills that focus more on build-up rather than blood and gore. The whole strive has its potential to be effective but it mostly fails due to the fact that plentiful of the talents involved couldn't act to sell what the movie's offering and the plot itself is just as basic as they could come, very much predictable from the start to finish even with all the red herrings thrown in to try sway us away from figuring things out too soon. You could say it overstayed its implications to what's going on in our lead's head to the point that its little reveal in the end comes to no surprise, in turn leading to a letdown of a finale regardless of whether you see this film as a straight-to-video psychological thriller or a killer doll slasher flick.

It's cinematography is shaky at its worse, lowered down further in quality thanks to this movie's inept editing and uninspired lighting. The only thing The Dummy (2000) would probably be best remembered for is its long gratuitous sex scene between Singleton and Irina Bjorklund, a Finnish Jussi Award winner in her first American movie role, basically handing this film its obligatory B-grade sleaze. Other than that, this film is a rather overly familiar walk down the psychodrama path paired with slasher film bodycounting and risqué business and, honestly, there isn't much you're missing here. In fact, it can get darn tiring if you don't have the patience for ludicrous bargain bin Hitchcockian thrills but should you find yourself curious about this little mess, a word of warning: Avoid the UK DVD release! They zoomed in the whole thing so much that it cropped heads and credits! The US VHS release does fair a tad better, but it is getting shorter in supply...

Bodycount:

1 female knifed in the gut

1 male knifed in the neck

1 female knifed to death

1 male shot on the neck with a poison blow dart

1 female hacked to death with an axe

1 male ran through with a spear

Total: 6

Court Cases and Courtships: Hanging Heart (1983)

Hanging Heart (1983)

Rating: *

Starring: Barry Wyatt, Jake Henry and Francine Lapensée

It appears everyone has the hots for Denny (Barry Wyatt), may it be his lady co-stars from the experimental homoerotic play he leads or Elliot (Jake Henry), the middle aged lawyer renting a room with him. Life for our little actor goes very hairy one day though when, after making love in the theater with one of the actresses, Denny becomes the prime suspect after he was found holding the girl's lifeless strangled body. He gets thrown in jail, roughed up a bit, witnessed two inmates getting what-what in the butt, but he's soon released on bail with the help of Elliot, who then proceeds to defend him in the case, much to the anger of the police and lead prosecutor.

 

From that point on, Hanging Heart spends less as a slasher movie and a lot (and I mean a lot) more as a psychological courtroom drama reeking of nasty cheese, misplaced dark humor and tons of homoerotic themes and imagery. The only time the film ever remembered it's a bodycounter flick is during a couple of murders involving the other cast and crew at the theatre as the killer dons a slasher-friendly get-up of a creepy black wig covering their face and long black coat with matching gloves inspired by Italian gialli. Apart from that, we're mostly forced to sit through Denny breaking down as he gets repeatedly blamed for the killings, defend himself in court while opposing parties antagonize him, relive a childhood trauma involving a horrible child rape and a matricide, all the while interjecting scenes of him and his bare ass in the showers, behind a mental psych gown, as a hallucination of a crucified Christ, etc., for interested parties to ogle at or ponder about its clumsy implications of equating homoeroticism and homophobia with assault and mental illness.

Any attempts to build up its own mystery is lackluster at its worst considering its blatantly obvious red herrings and the unsurprising revelation at the end. If anything, Hanging Heart's all in all direction can be summarized as a test to how much bull the producers and writers can pull off to get the movie pass an hour (and overstay its welcome for another hour) as the overall story just barely made sense. (I mean, I really doubt a suspected killer can be released through bail as often as Denny did, or can anyone be that luscious of a man that almost every woman would look past the supposed crime he committed just for a chance to ride him) To simply put it, this film is one huge mess; its this lack of solid structure and consistency in tone makes it all the more of a chore to sit through and it's little to no wonder why it didn't even get a release in its native land, the good ole' US of A, and instead got video releases overseas. 

Bottom line, Hanging Heart is dry for a slasher, boring for a thriller, offensive for a homoerotica and too cluttered to be a working drama. Not a big loss if one simply decided to skip over this, frankly...

Bodycount:
1 female strangled with a pair of pantyhose

1 female strangled with a pair of pantyhose

1 female strangled with a belt (flashback)

1 male strangled to death

1 male shot in the mouth

Total: 5

Terror Tripped and Failed: Terror At Black Tree Forest (2021)

Terror At Black Tree Forest (United Kingdom, 2021)

Rating: 1/2

Starring: Cassandre Wallace, Will Jones and Amanda Bourne

I heard about Terror At Black Tree Forest (2010) all the way back around my college years through the website Retroslashers when it was still running. It's a supposed throwback to backwoods stalk-and-stab types featuring bag-headed killers and, at least from what I read, it's awfully mediocre. Yet, here I am finding out not only did this film somehow got sequels, but it also have a 2021 United Kingdom remake! Well, as of writing this, I've yet to see the first three original Black Tree Forest movies but, after seeing this cinematic disaster, I'm not too keen on seeing any them if the whole thing is going to be THIS bad!

The film opens with a couple looking over a lake, reminiscing about their first meeting and first kiss with some confusion from the two as they remember everything differently. They soon head back to camp, got lost in the woods until dusk and find themselves on the murderous side of a shmuck in a sack mask.

Come the day after and we now follow a group consisting of a Caroline Travers, stoner Molly Wade, goofball dudes Simon St John and Will Andrews, and Jane Mellows, the newest addition to their little pack. They do the usual kids-go-to-the-woods jig of setting up camp, joking around, exploring the surrounding forest, get creeped on by mysterious figures in the background and (wouldn't be a slasher flick without this) telling ghost stories around a campfire. 

As the night goes on, our bag-headed killer eventually starts a good run of killing these people one by one, as these films normally do. Now, see, I wouldn't have any problems with this paint-by-numbers stalk-and-stab approach given that everything else about this film wouldn't be so problematic, but Terror of Black Tree Forest (2021) just have to line itself up a whole load of dumbfuckery; first of which, these are probably the most densely annoying cast of characters I have to sit through as once their numbers start dwindling down, we have one or two of these dumbasses refusing to believe that something is wrong and that all the splattered blood and screaming happening around them are just a part of a prank. Yeah, sure, I would get it if one would see it that way with the first sign of danger, but the writing and direction really milked this plot point. Like really, really milked it, to the matter that most of the dialogue around the third act is just a roundabout of "This joke isn't funny anymore" before someone fires back "It's not a prank" and then gets a response of something like "Yeah, sure". 

I bet if I smash one of these guys' face in with a sledgehammer, another would berate me and my victim about our poor taste of a prank and nags the twitching corpse next to me to stop acting and get up. Oh, wait, you know what? That did happen in the film: one guy gets a fucking knife ran through his head, two girls run off, only to stop and have an argument with one another at how this is the worst practical joke they ever experienced. Hell, the dumbfuck even walks over to the killer after spotting them, thinking the figure who just knifed a guy's eye out is in on the joke. You can guess what happens after that smart move. The fucking idiot... 

With this level of writing in mind, the direction and pacing can sum up as tedious, and the scares and suspense are very lacking. Any slice of gore here do look impressive for a small budget production, but when most of the victims are as dumb as someone walking into a bonfire to dry up after swimming in a lake full of gasoline, it kinda takes away the thrill of the blood spill. Add on the killer's motive being shallow at its worst and comparable to a teenager looking for attention so, yes, this movie just keeps getting suckier until the last minute.

What else is there to say but Terror At Black tree Forest (2021) is just embarrassingly awful, infuriating even, and that I'm highly hoping that the entire franchise isn't around this level of bad.

Dear God, please, don't let them be this bad...

Bodycount:
1 male knifed to death

1 female strangled with fairy lights

1 male knifed through the throat

1 male knifed through the head, exits out of an eye

1 female gets a knife thrown to her chest

1 male found dead with a throat cut

1 female stabbed in the gut with a knife

Total: 7

Some Bloody Nights Deserving of Silence: Silent Night, Bloody Night: The Homecoming (2013) and Revival (2015) Double Bill Review

An unsung cult classic, Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972) is a proto-slasher that spells a weird yet intriguing mystery plot tagged along with gothic tones, solid performances and a series of brutal murders set around Christmas time, more or less setting grounds to a few staple slasher tropes. It's a fun little number despite its flawed production value and I guess we have a few enthusiastic folks out there who thought the same, which led to not only a 2013 British redo, but also a direct sequel to the original released at 2015.

Oh, how I wished these wanks just didn't bother with them.

~~~

Silent Night, Bloody Night: The Homecoming (United kingdom, 2013)

Rating: *

Starring: Adrienne King, Sule Rimi and Lee Bane

As a modernized reboot, The Homecoming mostly follows through the 1972 original's plot with a few liberties here and there; a rich man named Wilfred Butler dies flaming and falling through his house's second story floor back in 1987. Cut forward to the present and Butler's last living relative, Jeffrey Butler, returns to the house to settle an offer with the townsfolk, selling the abode for a sizable sum. A few locals ponder over this as they just want the house demolished, hopefully taking down with it a dark history that has been tainting the town over the years.

Trouble arises, though, when a maniac murders their way out of a loonie bin and heads toward the town, settling in the Butler house to lure people in and killing them. It appears this murderer has some ties to the house and it isn't long before Jeffrey, along with the mayor's daughter Diane, discovers the horrifying truth behind the Butler's legacy.

Considering the quality of The Homecoming as a product, I dare question the point of even making this film when everything in it is yay-close to being a joke. The acting, for one, has so little life and flair to them that we have scenes where people just walk in and talk before switching over to another scene which may either repeat the process or involve them being killed off by an axe-wielding loon. The audio is mucked up, making half of the lines indistinguishable, and the editing done here looks like it's been made with some shlock's basement computer running on outdated software, something that doesn't help improve the lackluster camera work and uneven pacing.

I did admittedly find the lengthy flashback scene here a tad interesting for at least attempting to bring some character and solid story, but once that song and dance is done, The Homecoming slugs its way through a lifeless finale that has the killer trying to enjoy Christmas dinner with a reluctant survivor, accompanied by corpses and random twists that don't add up at all.

Not really hard to say little else about this movie seeing how much it lazily half-assed its way into existing. Don't bother with this one, mates, as it's a bloody night better off silenced.

Bodycount:

1 male suffocated with a plastic bag over his head

1 male had his head repeatedly crushed with a car door

1 male strangled and garroted with fairy lights

1 female had her face jabbed with a chair leg

1 male hacked in the back with an axe

1 female axed to death

1 male hacked through the head with a shovel

1 female had her throat cut with a razor

1 male slaughtered with knives (flashback)

1 female dragged away, killed (flashback)

2 males killed, method unknown (flashback)

1 male gets a wine glass to the eye, killed (flashback)

1 female killed offscreen (flashback)

1 male shot

1 male shot with a shotgun

1 male strangled to death

Total: 17

~~~

Silent Night, Bloody Night 2: Revival (2015)

Rating: 1/2

Starring: Julia Farrell, Luc Bernier and Jennifer Runyon

Okay. Who asked for this? Tell me. I have a large crusty chunk of coal ready to shove up their a-

The story here follows siblings Angelica and James traveling to the small town of East Willard to pay respect to their deceased brother, Max. They then head to stay at a bed and breakfast where things get strange as not only did Max apparently sent the house a VHS recording of himself giving cryptic messages for his siblings to watch, but there's also a creepy caller phoning the place, looking for a Jeffrey Butler and warning whoever is staying there that a Peter is out and that there will be blood by Christmas morning.

Angelica eventually learns through a not so hidden hidden journal of Jeffrey Butler that the town has a bit of a dark past one Christmas time ago back at the 1970s and now, a new festive fear figure is terrorizing it; Black Peter, the vengeful brother of Santa Claus. 

Now, see, I have no problem with sequels taking place decades after the original. Hell, one of my top fave slashers happen to be Psycho II (1983), the direct sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's horror masterpiece Psycho (1960). The key is to make the sequel's story work with character developments, intriguing plot pieces and a little bit of fanservice, a craft that can be mastered with skill and respect to the original film. And these are lot of things this garbage that calls itself the sequel to Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972) lacks of and failed to do.  

When about two-thirds of a sequel is just the original movie re-edited as sepia toned flashbacks and its scored with free-to-use internet music, you know there's barely any story to go by here and you can smell the cheap glue holding it together from miles. The over-cheesed bad acting that's as atrocious as the writing certainly isn't going to help elevate things ("Who's outside?", one character questions as mad door pounding fills the room. "Someone who wants inside.", answers another. Riveting), so does it comes as a surprise that the effects here are distractingly bad, too? (Yeah, uh, when you have that much of a snow shovel hacked all the way into your back, I highly doubt you can still stay in once piece and do semi-snow angels during your death rattles) 

In a way, it's kinda amazing how so much of this movie just doesn't work, even in a so bad, it's funny outlook. I guess this movie's trying to be something like the 1987 sequel to the infamous-for-kinda-understandable-reasons holiday slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), wherein the follow-up film hams its tone, acting and script further up and pushed the ante for economically tight movie making by recycling footages from the original as "flashback scenes", not very unlike the approach Revival did. The only difference here is that Deadly Night's sequel has a lot of manic energy in its approach that it's kinda fun to watch in a cheesy ironic way, while Revival just drags on for a lengthy while with its supposed mystery only to reward our patience with cheap kills and insultingly horrid onscreen talent. Fuck. That.

 Again, who asked for this?

Bodycount:

1 male implied dead from a car wreck

1 male hacked to death with an axe

1 female hacked through the back with a snow shovel

1 female stabbed in the chest with a fire poker

1 male beaten to death

1 male found dead on a cross

1 elderly female strangled with fairy lights

1 elderly male shot on the face

1 female poisoned

Total: 9

Rotten Cranberry: ThanXgiving (2006)

ThanXgiving (2006)

Rating: 0

Starring: Ari Lehman, Suki Peters and Jaxon Stanford

...The flying fuck did I just watch here?

I heard about ThanXgiving all the way back at 2008 and I recall wanting to see it very badly then, thinking it's a rarity as it has barely anything about it online. Welp, I finally have my chance recently thanks to some shady video sharing site and I think I now understand why this shit has little to none online presence and how that's for the better.

As far as I can tell, the "story" of ThanXgiving is about a group of filmmakers going into the woods around the Traunton Riverbend camp grounds to shoot a horror movie, but the production is as problematic as this film's very existence as everybody seems to have some beef with one another and one of them even bled to death during the project when his leg got caught on some spikes and had to be amputated because...

Any way, filming continues (?!) and during an evening around a campfire, a local played by Ari Lehman (Yeah, Friday The 13th (1980)'s "lil' Jason Voorhees" Ari Lehman. I'm just as surprised as you are) joins the crew and tells them that a lot of people have been disappearing into these woods and many suspect it's the work of a deranged group of killers. And sure enough, our troubled filmmakers soon encounter a family of hillbillies who are hospitable at first until, that is, all the weird shit starts happening and everybody is getting in touch with their murderous side.

Mixing documentary and standard filming presentation with an obnoxiously surreal amount of editing effects, horrendous audio quality and truculently grained picture format, ThanXgiving is probably one of the hardest horror movie to sit through for the dumb reason that it's nearly incomprehensible as a whole. Its direction feels a lot like just random horror shit happening left and right, with a sense of structure that's one random home invasion footage away from falling atop the "Am-I-on-acid-right-now?" tree and hitting every branch on the way down. Nobody here acts normal too, so it's hard to figure out which crap is happening for real and which is just footage from the damn movie the characters are supposed to be filming, thus further adding to the overall aggressively confusing nature of the film.

It's disappointing, really, as I can tell this should have been a very easy plot to follow with a generous helping of blood and gore to boot. Perhaps the people behind this film wanted to make something more than just another backwoods killer-on-the-loose type and if that is the case, I wholly respect that, but the level of ineptitude done in this movie is just too much that it ain't even hilarious. In fact, it makes me mad! So MAD that someone out there thought this indecipherable garbage is good enough to be called a movie! Like, dude, ThanksKilling (2008) is more intelligible compared to this and that movie is a slasher with fucking killer turkey! Killer! Turkey!  

All in all, I'm thankful this Thanksgiving that I'm able to muster enough brain power to still write this review after the blow ThanXgiving did to my brain. Heed my warning, do not give this travesty a time of your day. Don't. Just don't.

Bodycount:

1 male had his chest flayed open

1 female had her throat crushed with a tree branch

1 male had his leg amputated with a machete, bled to death

1 male brained to death with a hammer (film within a film)

1 female ran neck-first through a line of barbwire, presumably killed

1 female seen dead in a lake

1 female hacked to death (film within a film)

1 male dismembered with knives 

1 male knifed in the head, disemboweled

1 female had her throat cut with a sickle

1 male had his throat cut with a sickle while being drowned

1 male falls into a lake and gets electrocuted with live cables

1 female had her neck crushed

1 male strangled with a line of barbwire

1 female seen hanging dead, gutted

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 male dismembered with knives

Total: 17

Sog and Clog: Terror At Tenkiller (1987)

Terror At Tenkiller (1987)

Rating: *

Starring: Michael Shamus Wiles, Stacey Logan and Michele Merchant

Wow, I think I owe the grade school drama group back at my younger years an apology: anything they made then is gold compared to this.

In need of a break from her increasingly abusive hubby-to-be, Lesley joins her friend Janna for a vacation down at Lake Tenkiller where they relax, swim and enjoy the scenery. They also apply for Summer jobs there as waitresses at a local diner that's constantly short on servers, a problem that has everything to do a knife-wielding loon prowling around at night, offing girls because reasons. It ain't long before the killer spots Lesley and Janna and care to even fancy a guess what he's planning to do with them? 

A tired mess, Terror At Tenkiller (1987) is really nothing more than long padding scenes of people talking, people talking to the phone and a killer being a terribly acted creep, with streaks of murders here and there. The entire thing feels and looks cheap seeing the movie's limited budget, thus the myriad of production hiccups such as dim lighting, atrocious pacing, an annoying electronic musical score among a few. Any notion of excitement in its direction is absent as the movie's horror elements basically trashed any sense of mystery and suspense by barely bothering to hide the killer's identity at all (Like, they revealed it about 30 minutes into the film. Heck, the victim even shouted his name!) and Summer-stock acting from every party involved simply doesn't cut right no matter what angle you look at it.

Kills are also mostly dry, with the only semi-decent gore effects done being one dude getting his arm cut off post-mortem and another involving someone's back getting stabbed in close-up. Past this, Terror At Tenkiller (1987) is just inane. Ridiculously inane. Other people might get a chuckle out of this (heck, I sure did at some moments) but for my patience and insanity's sake, one viewing is enough. Please.

Bodycount:

1 female had her throat cut with a hunting knife

1 female stabbed in the gut with a peeling knife

1 male stabbed in the gut with a hunting knife, arm cut off

1 female knifed in the back

1 male found with a throat cut

Total: 5

A Real Tired Act: The Gallows: Act II (2019)

The Gallows: Act II (2019)
Rating: *
Starring: Ema Horvath, Chris Milligan, Brittany Falardeau

Well, shit. Look at that.

When The Gallows got released back at 2015, it barely made anything promising for itself as a supernatural found footage/slasher hybrid, but it did obtained a possibly very small number of genuine fans, with me being one of them as I appreciate its efforts and honestly had a good time watching the tame bodycount and cliched "haunted cam footage" tricks. By in no means, however, did I ever saw this as a possible franchise material so imagine my surprise that this sequel reared its ugly head and, oh, how I wished I just left it alone!

Ditching the Found Footage approach after three to four something minutes, Act II follows teenage Youtuber Auna Rue who aspires to be an actress by joining her school's theater group (That's good!) but blunders an audition. (That's bad!) Looking for another way to make a name for herself, she takes the advice from one of her online fans to try reading lines from a more known play (That's good!), only said play happens to be The Gallows, which is said to curse anyone who gets involved with it. (That's bad!) Thinking none of the supernatural consequences that might await her, Auna proceeds and actually impresses the theater group with her new readings (That's good!), but now the curse of The Gallows is hexed upon her and the murderous figure known as Charlie is out to get her. (That's also bad. For more tiresome reasons. Can I go home now?)

So, remember that slasher Smiley back at 2012? This movie is a near carbon copy of that flick, down to its focus on a mentally tormented protagonist whose whiny attitude failed to mend any kind of connection to my interest and a stupid twist that came out of nowhere concerning a death cult worshipping Charlie like some sort of harbinger. (Yeah, spoilers and shit. I don't care, the movie sucks. Y'all will be thanking me.)  Due to this, there are more poorly-paced supernatural spookiness and drawn-out "my life sucks because teenager!" talk going on here than actual noose killings and boogeymen stalking, a fact that infuriates me as this movie was showing some potential of being a creative bodycounter with Charlie finding more ways to strangle and hang people than just with his noose, all the while rocking some sweet cinematography. One scene involving some sheets and Charlie's silhouette is a perfect example of a wasted opportunity as it wonderfully blends the menace of its paranormal killer with an unexpected weapon of choice, but we have to throw all of that away because Act II wanted to be more inclined to teen drama tropes of boyfriends, unappreciative parents and the downside of popularity with some added flavors of ghostly "scares" and slow psychological and physical breakdowns. Apparently teen drama about a bland character have bigger priorities over working scares and/or a killcount in horror movies...

To be fair, lead actress Ema Horvath as Auna Rue did an amazing job acting onscreen, it's just that the material she's been given to work with is so damn boring and dull, that I was hoping the producers filmed this in secret, pondered about it halfway only to abandon it and never speak of it again. But instead, they filmed it in secret, went all the way to finish it, sent it out there for our eyes to be subjected to, leading probably half of the horror community baffled why The Gallows (2015) even got this sequel? Who demanded it? How many of us demanded it? I, despite liking the original Gallows, definitely didn't saw a need to continue Hangman Charlie's onscreen horror Odyssey, so who is this supposed to target? The minuscule number of fans that I'm very certain is only around the hundreds? How's that a promising market?

Why the hell am I asking you all of these questions?

Bottomline, if you like the original Gallows, you're good and set with that. Never bother yourself to see this, though I'm positive that tiny nagging voice inside your head would convince you otherwise eventually so should that happen, a word of advice: prepare a drink and a back-up movie. Something nice and worth your time. You will need it...

Bodycount:
1 boy found snared and wrapped dead in a swing set
1 dog found hanged
1 female strangled with a measuring tape
1 female hanged on a gallows
Total: 4