Really Dirty Beddings: Lucker The Necrophagus (1986)

Lucker The Necrophagous (Belgium, 1986)

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

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

And, boy, is it a trainwreck.

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

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

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

Bodycount:

1 male stabbed in the eye with an icepick

1 female beaten to death against a steering wheel

1 female disemboweled with a knife

1 male bashed to death against a wall

1 female stabbed on the throat with a kitchen knife

1 female head seen (flashback)

1 male strangled, head beaten with a pipe

1 female knifed to death

1 female disemboweled with a knife

Total: 9

Me Hoy Minoy!: Shiver Me Timbers (2025)

Shiver Me Timbers (United Kingdom, 2025)

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Murdo Adams, Stephen Corrall, Paul Dewdney

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bodycount:

1 male had his head pulverized with a punch

1 male had his head torn off

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

1 female seen decapitated

1 female gets a meteorite through the head

1 male found dismembered

1 male dunked inside a barrel of toxic waste, melted

1 male beaten to death with a wooden plank

1 male stomped on the head

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

Total: 10 (?)

We Are The Monsters, Babes: Get Away (2024)

Get Away (United Kingdom, 2024)
Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Nick Frost, Aisling Bea, Maisie Ayres

For the Smiths - Daddy Richard (Nick Frost), Mummy Susan (Aisling Bea), and angsty teen siblings Jessie (Maisie Ayres) and Sam (Sebastian Croft) - their holiday vacation to the small Swedish island of Svälta is the bonding experience they need as a family, especially when the divergent dynamics between the parents and the kids make a lot of conversations and activities awkward. The people they come across along the way, though, thinks their plan to visit and stay on Svälta is a terrible idea as the mainlanders there, lead by an ill-tempered crone (Anita Suikkari), doesn't take too kindly to outsiders, especially when their Karantan festival is nearing, celebrating a 19th century British-led massacre that drove its survivors into cannibalism.

And, to no one's surprise, the islanders aren't too pleased to see the family, even more so when they learn that one of Susan's ancestors took part of the massacre and she trivializes their traditions as a simple show to be gawked at. It isn't long before the residents of Svälta start showing up in the middle of the night wearing folk masks and tossing dead animals at the house the Smiths rented, not to mention the odd creaking noises coming from somewhere inside said house and the troubling sight of enough coffins for four being loaded onto boats. Believing the unwanted arrivals are a sign, the island elders ponder on the possibility to do a proper Karantan, a chance to resurrect a dormant tradition involving murder and the taste of fresh human flesh...

For the first hour, Get Away (2024) clashes the likes of folk horror inspired by movies such as The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019), with the bumbling comedy of a family under constant confrontations and awkward situations just trying to get through their holiday by being as polite as possible, to the point many obvious red flags are ignored. While some of the jokes are a hit-or-miss with its tired jabs at vegan diets or culture clashes, the story itself is made tolerable by the entertainingly dysfunctional interactions of the Smiths as they get on each other's nerves, but open to surprisingly wholesome moments like Richard sharing his youthful experience with recreational weed with his daughter, or chuckle-worthy conversations about moist waffles during a family breakfast. 

The islanders, sadly, didn't get the same in-depth treatment considering most of them are portrayed as one-note fodder, filling out backgrounds as angry locals glaring daggers and being rude to the Smiths. The only one with any real sense of character is the head Svälta elder, who passionately believes the community she leads has lost its edge over the years, that it's about time they go back and hold the Karantan as it is intended to be, a gory vengeful act upon those who wrong them. We also got one Matts Larsson (Eero Milonoff), who owns the house the Smiths are renting and hinted to have something sinister planned for the family, though he's practically reduced to a creeper with a fetish for lingerie and voyeurism, spending his time on the movie being just pervertedly gross and upsetting. 

With only so much material to work around the premise of a hapless family butting heads with angry Swedes, the pacing did get a tad draggy near the film's climax, though this is remedied greatly by Get Away (2024)'s third and final act; without giving away much, let's just say the promised massacre did happen, just not in the way you may have expected. It's a killing spree that saved the movie for me, the sheer lunacy and maniac energy of it all bringing out a dementedly dark humor as the killers hack, stab, gut and decapitate everyone on sight, all the while sharing homely banter and playful teasing, reminiscing about old times and even sing gentle lovelies with one another. Some unfortunates do fight back, even managing to land a jab or two against the maniacs, which keeps the slaying fields all fair and fun, as well as interesting down to the cornball finale. This abrupt turn on who the prey and predators are may not sit well for some folks, but you got to hand it to the film, it's a very good twist on the account of all the shocks and surprises!

From cult-like folk horror to berserker slasher, all done with a British tongue pressed firmly against a cheek, Get Away (2024) may have its shortcomings, but the pay off in the end makes sitting through it worth every minute! Patient gorehounds be delighted!

Bodycount:

1 female stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife

1 male stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife

1 male knifed to death

1 male seen dying from a head wound

1 male seen murdered

1 male stabbed in the gut with a butterfly knife 

1 male knifed in the temple

1 female had her throat slashed with daggers

1 male stabbed in the chest with a push knife

4 victims seen dead

1 male gets a thrown hatchet to the back

1 female knifed in the gut

1 male seen being hacked to death

1 victim knifed in the head

1 female slashed across with a knife

1 female repeatedly knifed, ran through with a pike

1 male seen on fire

1 male seen being stabbed to death

1 female slashed across with a razor

1 male decapitated with a sword

1 male ran through with a sword

1 male stabbed to death

1 male knifed in the neck

1 victim seen on fire

5 heads seen 

1 male seen dead from a head wound 

1 male had his throat slashed with a knife

1 female had her head blown off with a shotgun

1 male shot to death

Total: 36

Crazy Crazy Carousel Rides: Halloween Park (2023)

Halloween Park (Karusell) (Sweden, 2023) (AKA "Carousel")
Rating: ***

Starring: Wilma Lidén, Omar Rudberg, Amanda Lindh

It was one Halloween night when Fiona Wilma Lidén) tagged along her weird friend Petra (Amanda Nilsson) to a costume party for a fun time, only for it all to go horribly wrong. Like 'Petra wigging out, getting harassed by partygoers and then later found dead in the morning' kind of wrong.

Exactly a year later, it'll be another Halloween night when the past catches up to Fiona, who now works at Gothenburg's Liseberg amusement park, as she's instructed to spend the night shift accompanying a small VIP group as they enjoy the place all to themselves, from the bumper cars to the roller coaster. The guests, much to Fiona's uneasiness, turns out to be her former friends who were all present during that fiasco with Petra, most of who are upset at her now for leaving the group and blaming them for the girl's demise. Resentfully, Fiona does her best to work with the gang all the while keeping the peace and enforcing park rules, even rekindling some sparks with her old crush, Dante (Omar Rudberg), who's currently dating the group queen bee Jenny (Amanda Lindh). 

It's literally fun and game until the power suddenly goes out for the park, trapping everyone inside, and someone wearing dead Petra's Halloween mask (plus pig-tails!) starts thinning down the group one murder at a time. With a killer hellbent on ending them all, Fiona and the gang have no choice but to stick together to try surviving the night and get out alive... 

Halloween Park (2023) is, frankly, everything you'd expect from a basic slasher film; it opens with a character dying, it skips ahead some time later and those who were somewhat connected with the tragedy starts to get snuffed out by someone who is clearly doing it out of revenge. The classic set-up. Nothing is added here, not even a few additional layers of depth for its characters to up the stakes and engagement, or a bit of creativity towards who's who behind the mask. It's all a familiar walk in the park and, frankly, I do see this as an issue for horror fans who were expecting a tad more pizzazz for their bodycounting kicks. Yet, still, if you're not in a demanding streak and doesn't overly mind predictability, then this movie's 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' direction and plotting might do well for you.

Once the slayings begin, Halloween Park (2023) utilizes all it could with the isolated theme park settings, using empty haunt houses and merry-go-rounds as potential prowling spots between the killer and the teens in a macabre game of hide-and-seek. While the kills themselves are not overly gruesome, they mostly done away in fun set-pieces, a decent bunch of them involving roller coasters like one poor fella who gets axed while riding one, forcing their friends to watch in horror as they're unable to do anything to help seeing they're locked in their seats. The massacre's emphasis is clearly more on splash and splatter than vile viscera, and seeing the resulting bodycount, I say it done the assignment suitably enough for its thrills. With their mechanic get-up and broken doll mask combo, the simplistic design of the killer also adds a few good points. 

Not particularly exciting, but an alright holiday slasher offering. 

Bodycount:

1 female seen dead

1 male hacked on the chest with an axe

1 female had her wrist repeatedly slice open with a box cutter, hacked with an axe

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 male had his throat cut with a knife

1 male falls to his death

Total: 6

That's The Way To Do It: Punch (2023)

Punch (United Kingdom, 2023)

Rating: ***

Starring: Kierston Wareing, Jamie Lomas, Alina Allison

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Oh I do like to be beside the sea

Oh I do like to walk along the prom prom prom

Where the brass band plays tiddly-om-pom-pom

For those who are not in the know, Punch and Judy is a traditional puppet show featuring Mr. Punch and his wife Judy, following their often violent misadventures as Mr. Punch solves his way through various problems and foes with a beating stick. It's a staple attraction found at British seaside scenes and an occasional subject and inspiration for a few horror titles like Dolls (1987), Funny Man (1994) and a segment from an overlook horror anthology, Screamtime (1983). Now, we see good ole' Mr. Punch take the slasher mantle as an envisioned boogeyman stalking teenagers in this British bodycounter.

Wanting closure before heading back to university, Frankie (Alina Allison) decided to have one more night out with her friends as a bittersweet farewell to them and this uneventful coastal hometown life she's desperate to escape from. This evening of drugs, drunks and drama, however, gets tainted in blood when a local legend, a masked-figure known as Mr. Punch, begins creeping the seaside town for naughty people and giving them the business end of his bat. Punch spots Frankie and fancies on stalking her for the night, braining, breaking and burning as many victims along the way.

Much like its protagonist setting herself for more out of her mundane seaside life, Punch (2023) opted to do a bit more with the dead teenager horror plot by building its story around the dramatic discourse going on with its leading lady and the people she's surrounded by in her small town; some are with her in her plans of leaving the place despite feeling a tad sad about it, while others are simply downright opposed to the idea of her wanting out. This works surprisingly well as the writing actually gives the small main casts a noticeable level of depth and weight, even if they occasionally dip down into doing your typical slasher victim fodder of drinking, getting high and partying, not to mention the fact that the actors playing them gave a refreshingly subtle and modest performance, making the characters likeable enough compared to some of the tad annoying secondary casts.

On the slasher side of things, Punch (2023) does an admirable job doing its own demented little spin on the Punch and Judy puppet play aesthetic within its titular boogeyman and their kills; the murders are mostly bloody beatings with a bat while the killer spouts wise-cracks through a high-pitched voice mod, similar to how the Punch puppet deals with its foes and the little catchphrases it squeaks. This lack of variety may not do well for some slasher fans, admittedly, but I find the sheer craziness of Punch's manic clowning and playful brutality as he mocks and jokes around while shoving bats down people's throats bizarrely fun, even if the voice effect does make it difficult to work out what Mr. Punch is saying sometimes. The identity behind the mask was also a bit of a let down seeing it wasn't that hard to figure it out (clues were given early on the film), there's at least a nice second twist reveal in the near end which further ties into the puppet show lore quite nicely, in a small town folk horror way. (Do feel the film could have benefitted further from more night scenes around the empty seaside parks, though. More dread in isolation. Perhaps with a bigger budget...)

Albeit flawed, Punch (2023) is an okay Euro-horror flick that sticks to the basics; it's all evenly paced, generous with its bloodletting and, most importantly, features a freaky yet fun slasher villain with an effectively creepy look, all things any slasher fan can enjoy and appreciate. An easy slasher treat that packs a fair punch!

Bodycount:

1 male brained with a baseball bat

1 female had her jaw broken with a shoved baseball bat

1 female had her neck broken

1 male brained with a baseball bat, stomped

1 male brained with a baseball bat

1 male had his face caved in with a baseball bat

1 female beaten on the face with an audio console

1 female killed offscreen

1 male brained against a sink

1 male beaten to death with a baseball bat

1 male had his neck crushed with a baseball bat

1 female thrown into a bonfire

1 female brained to death with a baseball bat

1 male beaten to death with a baseball bat

1 male knifed in the gut

1 female brained with a baseball bat

Total: 16

Into The Woods, Down The Hill: Mercy Falls (2023)

Mercy Falls (United Kingdom, 2023)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Lauren Lyle, Nicolette McKeown, James Watterson

As a child, Rhona caught a glimpse of an incident involving her father and an injured horse, a moment in her life that troubled her so much that her relationship with him strained to the point she barely visited him as an adult. Now that her father passed away, Rhona learns that she inherited their old family cabin up in the Scottish Highlands, so she plans a hiking trip through the moors with her boyfriend and a couple of friends to visit the place and see what became of it. Along the way, they tagged along a lone traveler named Carla, who may or may not have a bit of screws loose after the horrors she faced back when she was deployed to fight a war at Afghanistan. 

As the day goes by, the would-be jovial hike begins to devolve into an intense stay when romantic and sexual tensions between the group have them arguing and quarreling with one another. When push comes to a literal shove, the gang soon find themselves in a situation they weren't prepared for as one of them ends up dying and someone's sudden spring of bloodlust have them hunting and hacking the rest of the group.

Looking past the gorgeously scenic camera work and the good enough acting talent presented here, Mercy Falls (2023) feels like it was robbed of an opportunity to do a better story seeing, prior to anyone from the group biting the big one, the narrative seems to be heading more on a direction focusing on the psychological horrors of trauma and distrust. It dances around the rising tension within the gang as they question the credibility of their friendship and love life, as well as the mental health of the few joining them after catching one too many suspicious activities the longer they stay outdoors, but that's eventually tossed away for a more traditional survivalist-type backwoods slasher run once one of them decided to give an unfortunate fella the knife-across-the-throat treatment after concluding he didn't have long to live with a big stick impaling his thigh. The mercy killer is then found out to have stayed at a mental ward and, just because they couldn't trust the group anymore, opted to hack and slash their way through them.

This unfortunately cheapens the rest of the movie since the killer's motive could have been explored further for better thrills but, rather, Mercy Falls (2023) went ahead with the usual simplification of PTSD equaling to homicidal tendencies, thus making the mad maniac here genuinely unremarkable. Pairing this misfire with a predictable and overlong stalk-and-stab situation, as well as murders that are barely captivatingly splashy or gory, and you would, in due course, get to climactic showdown that's disappointingly isn't anywhere as satisfying or impactful as it could have been due to its lack of tension and personality. Really underwhelming stuff here bearing in mind how well the movie starts.

If you're not in a very demanding mood, then Mercy Falls (2023) makes a suitable timewaster, I guess. It has enough production quality to look good and, honestly, I have seen worse backwoods killing sprees out there, but you can also do better than this downhill tumble from high ground to flat dirt. Good plot, terrible execution.  

Bodycount:

1 male had his throat cut with a combat knife (flashback)

1 male stabbed to death with a combat knife (flashback)

1 male had his throat cut with a hunting knife 

1 female shot on the neck (flashback)

1 male hacked to death with a hiking pick

1 female hanged

1 male stabbed in the gut with a hunting knife

1 female set ablaze by a gasoline-doused flaming torch

Total: 8

Beware The Witch's Water: Feed (2022)

Feed (Sweden, 2022)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Vincent Grahl, Sofia Kappel, Annica Liljeblad

Hoping to market their experience to countless lifestyle fans online for content and clout, a group of social media influencers set themselves to take a relaxing weekend at an eco-resort curiously located at a small island right in the middle of a lake, all owned by an elderly couple who are more than happy to see their little business getting some attention, maybe enough to hinder a lingering bankruptcy. 

It's mostly a quaint stay, with the resort being more of a luxurious camp that comes with spacious tents decked with furniture, an outdoor grill, a wood-fired sauna and even its own little legend of a child-devouring witch named Märit, who was forced to wear an iron mask and banished to the very same island back in the 17th century, right before supposedly taking her own life by drowning herself in the lake. The gruesome ghost story have the elderly couple cautioning the group from approaching the water, but it isn't long before the gang would ignore the ominous warning and can't help taking a swim, resulting to one of them to get attacked by something and be horribly maimed. 

After a rescue attempt by one of the resort owners eerily ends with the old man getting dragged into the water, the group will not only learn in their horror that they're marooned on the island, but there is also something murderous living in this Scandinavian lake that could surface and stalk the island for more victims to take...

For a good stretch of the film, Feed (2022) echoes the likes of The Ruins (2008) or even The Raft segment from Creepshow II (1987) with victims-to-be trying to figure out their chances of surviving and escaping the single location they're trapped in without getting their numbers dwindling down further, courtesy of a threat that's hunting them. It makes for an engrossing watch, focusing on the group's uncanny encounters with the water-drenched killer, as well as the risks and lengths they'll do just for that slight chance of salvation which, in turn, opens up a surprising amount of character build-up from a group that was initially introduced as one-dimensional stereotypes of self-absorbed influencers. Add on the matter that the killer itself, the iron-masked Märit, is intriguingly depicted as a rapid wave of water tailing boats and swimmers to drag them down to a watery grave, and, too, as an amphibious figure that can only walk and stalk around wet grounds, a bit of mythos that help build a few decent suspense scenes of our group looking for places around the small island where they can hide from the witch as rain pours down, and you have a backwoods slasher with a rather unique touch to it, throwing in some curveballs to our expectations to keep us on our toes and even some fair scares to boot.

By the time the film reaches it climax, Feed (2022) shifts its gear from seemingly supernatural to something a little more grounded, which is also when the plot piles up on the bodycount as it drops all façade of restraint and go all out on its crazed twist. It's not perfect, leaving a few questions unanswered and even coming off as rather improbable, not to mention wasting such an amazing villain design, but so long as it leads to some gruesome kills and the typical hokey villain monologues, I can stretch my disbelief enough to enjoy this last act generously peppered with brutal kills and gruesome thrills of B-grade proportions. 

Despite the flaws, Feed (2022) is a promising little Swedish slasher that does the backwoods horror jig in a largely traditional way even with the tempting opportunities for it to devolve into another lazily modernized outing. In fact, the whole social media aspect of the movie didn't really do much to drive the story forward and it's mostly set aside as self-aware jabs at the culture for the sake of a few jokes or even as a character's flaw, which is a little rich coming from a film produced by Joakim Lundell, who is among the biggest influencers in Sweden, but a welcome and well appreciated approach nevertheless. I say give this one a chance! It ain't great, but it is good!

Bodycount:

1 female murdered, method unknown

1 female dragged away, murdered offcamera

1 male shot with a shotgun

1 female hacked to death with a hatchet

1 male shot with a shotgun

1 female shot to death with a shotgun

1 male knifed through the mouth

Total: 7

In Deep Deadly Thought: We Might Hurt Each Other (2022)

We Might Hurt Each Other (Rupintojelis) (Lithuania, 2022) (AKA "Pensive")

Rating: ****

Starring: Sarunas Rapolas Meliesius, Gabija Bargailaite, Marius Repsys

The general idea is something we've seen dozens of times; teens go to the woods to party, teens end up hunted and dead. It's a slasher plot as old as the sub-genre's golden age, though this Lithuanian 2022 entry opted to do a little more with what it can dish out while still paying some tribute to classic backwoods slashers.

Marius (Sarunas Rapolas Meliesius) is the class outcast who sees himself planning to skip the post-graduation festivities of partying hard and getting blind drunk with his fellow classmates in favor of playing it safe and oppose any risk that could fall in his way. His bestfriend Vytas (Povilas Jatkevičius) thinks it's about time he at least try breaking out of his little bubble of comfort, maybe even finally ask out his crush Brigita (Gabija Bargailaitė), and the opportunity would soon presents itself when Marius learns that the end-of-the-year party lacks a venue and his realtor mother happens to have a lakeside cottage that she couldn't get sell off. The class accepts his offer of a new spot to crash in and the socially invisible Marius is now a part of the whole excitable gaggle.

What the youngsters didn't know is that the cottage was the home of one Algis Motiejūnas, a man who survived a fire that took the lives of his family and carved really eerie sculptures of mourning figures before he seemingly taking his own life. As the gang went on with their celebration, it isn't too long that the sculptures are drunkenly vandalized for firewood later that night and, shortly thereafter, they're fatally punished for it one hatchet swing at a time.

We Might Hurt Each Other (2022) takes a while to get to the backwoods carnage, so it spends half of its entire run setting up the social dynamics of the group first and does a rather spectacular job at that; the writing and acting felt organic enough to work an interesting set of main characters to focus on, investing a decent development on their growth past beyond their archetypes the further the story progresses. And it is through this chance to know and connect with them emotionally that made the lingering sting of the second act all the more effective as, once the killer shows up to do murder, we're forced to wonder just how far some of these people will go to save themselves as they question their responsibilities for a problem they didn't create. 

This theme of social responsibility lingers greatly during the massacre, throwing the story to directions that shift some characters from being dull to selfless individuals, others from adorable to just downright horrendous people, once faced with the danger of being snuffed out by a madman in a mask. It's a whole lot of escapades of true natures getting revealed, betrayed friendships and consequential brutal bloodshed, making the climactic act one heck of an emotional rollercoaster that touches some real morally-provoking questions down to its rather bleak and polarizing "good" ending. 

On the slasher side of the conversation, it's fairly serviceable; We Might Hurt each Other (2023) does the usual stunt of hinting its killer's existence via heavy breathing POV shots first before escalating it to hands-on murders once the maniac decided to show up. A good chunk of the kills were done offcamera, especially one massacre scene wherein more than half of the class are slaughtered by our slasher after cornering them in the cottage they're hiding at, but for those that get to be seen onscreen do deliver on the film's gore quota with one brutally splashy kill to the next. The killer themselves is a throwback to the earlier Friday the 13th films, mainly an amalgamation of Pamela Voorhees and her son, Jason, considering their family-centric reason for the murder spree which would also become their downfall when this is used against them in a way not unlike how Ginny tricked Jason in Friday The 13th Part 2 (1981). That being said, there's little to no surprise who the killer is and, frankly, there's not a whole lot more going for them apart from looking spooky in their wooden mask and that they only target people who destroyed the sculptures.

We Might Hurt Each Other (2022)'s slasher elements may not break any new grounds, its story of how rotten people can get once the odds are stacking against them does give this movie a little more weight for its gloomy angle and heartbreaking treacheries. Plus, it simply looks and sounds great, a real showcase of talent and production that I can easily recommend for a viewing or two!

Bodycount:

2 males and 1 female steamed to death inside a locked sauna

1 male knifed in the back

7 females and 2 males hacked and stabbed mostly offcamera with a hatchet and a knife  

1 male jabbed in the neck with a barbecue skewer

1 female had her head forced unto a broken window

1 male had his head chopped off with a hatchet

1 female found burned to death

1 male burned to death

1 male dies from a stab wound

1 female falls off a cliff

Total: 20

Death by Scuba: Amsterdamned (1988)

Amsterdamned (Netherlands, 1988)

Rating: ***

Starring: Huub Stapel, Monique van de Ven, Serge-Henri Valcke

One part-slasher, one part-cop thriller, Amsterdamned (1988) follows a series of murders happening around the murky canals of Amsterdam, perpetrated by someone in full diving gear. The victims are chosen by random, often pulled into the water to be savagely slaughtered before having their corpses displayed out in the open for every unfortunate soul to see. Tasked to solve this case is one police detective Eric Visser (Huub Stapel), your typical hardboiled single father-type who plays by his own rules, only to find himself constantly one step behind our killer and following leads that may or may not hit dead ends, resulting to more victims falling prey to our murderous scuba diver and putting the city in a state of panic.

Made by Dutch director Dick Maas, this serial killer horror thriller follows all the norms one would find from your usual police procedural flicks revolving around detectives diving deep into their investigations, piecing together potential motivation or maybe even a pattern from each crime scene in hopes of solving the murders before more people fall victim to it. What set Amsterdamned (1988) apart from its kin is the unique premise of the killer prowling the canals before emerging to abduct and murder their victims underwater, which means a lot of Jaws (1975)-style bodycounting that pretty much sets this film for outrageously amusing underwater slasher shlock!

Some fine examples of this include the very opening scene of the film wherein we spend a good build-up watching through the frogman killer's point-of-view as they swim the canals at night, before popping up to murder a prostitute with a stolen butcher knife and dragging the body away. The gnarly part doesn't happen until after the credits, however, when a daytime tour boat goes through the arch of a bridge only to have itself dragging against the prostitute’s dangling butchered body, smearing blood over the glass windows before falling in through an open roof, much to the absolute horror of the passengers. Another equally odd yet entertaining scene happens further into the movie where we see a random girl in an inflatable floatie chilling in the canal, getting a Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)-inspired demise as the killer sticks their knife through the inflatable before carefully positioning it to angle where they can just run it right between the girl’s thighs!

When not entertaining us with slasher murders, Maas also set up some thrilling action sequences from car chases pursuing motorcycle-riding suspects through Amsterdam's narrow streets, to this film's most highlighted sequence concerning a high-speed boat chase through the city's network of canals and bridges, filled with an unabashed amount of stunt work jumping over the top of bridges, skidding through cafes, crashing through other boats and Huub Stapel being dragged behind his running boat in the midst of the pursuit. Without a doubt, the city of Amsterdam is used to its full effect during these thrill rides, shot as beautifully as the inventive escapades themselves. 

The only drawback here is that, in order to get to these fun set-pieces, we do have to sit through some very standard slow moments like our lead detective's romantic endeavors with a widowed diving enthusiast named Laura (Monique van de Ven), whose suspiciously unamused therapist friend (Hidde Maas) doesn't appear to appreciate the fact that the ruffled investigator is getting a tad close with the lady, or the little side-plot of Visser's cheekily snarky daughter and her friend attempting to track the killer paranormally through an ouija board. It's a lot of establishing banter and quirky moments, which isn't exactly a bad thing for cheese and giggle's sake, but they have the tendency to slow things down and stretching the film's run needlessly for almost two hours.

Still, some of these little moments do tie in to the mystery nicely enough, leading to this movie's final act and perhaps its most suspenseful set-up wherein Laura believes she has entered the killer's house and does her darnest to hide away from the suspect while finding the opportunity to get the jump on them. It has some tension, a good reveal to the killer's motive that's more or less in par with what you would get from a B-grade slasher, though I do wish the finale have a bit more pep to it as it concludes rather anti-climactically. 

Amsterdamned (1988) definitely fits the bill as an entertainingly bad flick, one with a premise that sounds absolutely silly but executed with enough gusto, cheesy charm and cynical tongue-in-cheek to keep its fun factor rolling strong! 

Bodycount:

1 female stabbed to death with a butcher knife

1 male found decapitated

1 male dragged into the water, later found mutilated

1 female pulled into the water, later found murdered

1 female gets a hunting knife ran through her groin

1 male drowned inside a sinking houseboat

1 male stabbed to death with a hunting knife

1 male shot in the mouth with a harpoon

Total: 8

In The Deep Guilty Woods: Dark Windows (2023)

Dark Windows (US/Norway, 2023)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Rory Alexander, Vanessa Borgli, Anna Bullard

After uneasily attending the wake of their friend Ali, who passed away from a fatal car crash they're all involved in, friends Tilly, Peter and Monica decides to retreat to a country house owned by one of their grandparents to recuperate and grief in their own way as they let matters back home settle down. The stay was rocky at first with Tilly still blaming herself for the crash as she's supposedly the one driving that night, Peter downing himself with booze to numb his guilt much to the worry of his two friends, and Monica is more or less rushing to move on by acting as normal as possible, but honoring the memory of Ali and for the sake of their own friendship, the trio forgives one another and do their best to unwind from all the trouble and celebrate their late-friend's life by simply enjoying one another's company.

This is basically the story of Dark Windows (2023) for the first half; a whole lot of character building and melodramatics, practically slow-burning its way to the cat-and-mouse theatrics and, frankly, I dig it. The acting is spot-on and the writing has soul to it, making the characters likeable yet flawed as we do get to know how much of the car crash was indeed their fault and how the guilt of this fact is eating them inside despite the varying kind of brave faces they're putting on. This conflict makes the casts human, sanctioning cathartic outcomes as the film slowly builds its tension by the time our three friends would soon learn to their horror that somebody else have made their way to the farmhouse.

It starts with recordings of Ali's voice uttering familiar phrases from the night of the accident getting played at random times. And then the sound of shuffling around the house. Next a shrine dedicated to their late-friend is suddenly changed to reflect an ominous promise of their own deaths, not to mention the horrifying fact that none of them even made the shrine to begin with! Once an arm shot out of a window to grab a handful of one of the girls' hair, the three have no choice but to try and survive the night as the intruder prowls and brutes their way into getting them, undoubtedly in revenge to what happened to Ali. 

These resulting attacks are very much ripe with well-crafted tension and suspense as the three try to plan out their escape not knowing whether the masked villain is still inside the house or out there waiting for them to make a run for it. Interestingly, not a lot of kills were committed during the backwoods home invasion (save for one accidental fatal braining), rather a lot of brutalizing and capturing were done instead and the murders were only set in the end through a more torturous affair as the killer go through the victims one by one while they're bound in chairs. The casualties are rather low in number due to the fact that the focus group is also relatively small, but it has heft since we did get to know these victims-to-be, plus the overall gloom atmosphere hanging throughout the film simply adds to the effectively depressing beat of the scene. Honestly, it's not an easy sight to sit through, no matter how unique some of the kills can get. 

By the end of it, Dark Windows (2023) is a slasher flick that mostly earns its slow-burn approach; the characters have depth, the scares and thrills have a good punch to them, and the all-in-all direction has quality to it. The only thing I'm sure will divide its audience is its ending which may either leave them feeling too pessimistic from the whole ordeal, or feeling lacking as it kinda ended abruptly just when the tension was getting real high. Personally, despite it missing the benefits of a good stalk 'n stab approach and maybe even a higher bodycount, this movie is pretty alright for a bleak horror outing, just expect nobody is getting out of this flick 'okay'... 

Bodycount:

1 female implied killed in a car crash

1 male bludgeoned on the face with a baseball bat

1 male had his head bagged and filled with vodka, drowned

1 female had her arms shattered with a hammer, neck broken

Total: 4

Party Til' You Puke (And Then You Die): La Central (2006)

La Central (Spain, 2006) (AKA "The Central")

Rating: *

Starring: Eduardo Lupo, Yasmina Córcoles, Ana Cánovas

All play and little bodycounting work makes La Central (2006) a rather dull and forgettable slasher.

The premise is simple enough; a group of twelve friends go to a big house in the woods to party. And party they did. On the lakeside beach. Inside the house. Then at the beach, again. In the backyard. Back in the house, again. At an indoor swimming pool. Hell, they even continue to party when one of their friends disappears after falling off a cliff, dismissing it as just a prank. It's nothing but obnoxious partying and shrill drunkenness, decibels of loud talking and hyperactive shrieking with unpretentious gay-bashing and sexism mixed into the mess. 

It isn't until about halfway into the movie when anything remotely interesting happened as the gang decided to play hide-and-seek in the woods (At night. While drunk and high) and one of the girls finds herself attacked and her arm carved with something sharp. The more responsible few of the group decided to drive their injured friend to a nearby town to get her patched up, leaving the rest of the crowd to fend for themselves when someone wearing a dark hoodie crashes the party and starts ending them, sometimes creatively (tricking someone into swallowing bulb shards, rigging a car for shocking results), but often uninspired. (plain axe hackings and wrench bashings, mostly offcamera and bloodless) 

The rising bodycount makes its way to your usual slasher flick stalk-and-stab between the final girl and the killer, with a few casualties along the way, accusations thrown around and the typical reveal/motive monologue combo once the stabby shmuck gets unmasked. (Or for this case, casually unhooded) This would have been a redeeming swing for La Central (2006), but not only was it hard to make out what's mostly going on thanks to the movie's shoddy lighting, but the killer's reason behind the murder spree hardly sparks any volume of creativity or originality, thus adding to the lack of any respectable characters in this train wreck and overall blandness of the movie. 

And that's pretty much what La Central (2006) is. Bland. The story is uninspired, the characters are irritating and most of the kills are boring. The only good things to come out of this are a couple of ingenious murders and the unintentional hilarity of the killer having that much durability despite looking so, well, normal, but these are nothing but a little nibble of good crumbs out of an entire headache-inducing dreck of dullness. It just ain't worth it! 

Bodycount:

1 male hacked in the back with an axe

3 males and 2 females electrocuted inside a rigged car

1 female hacked to death with an axe

1 female bashed to death with a wrench

1 male shot, had his throat cut with a hunting knife

Total: 9

I Know What You Wrote Last Few Summers Ago: Killer Book Club (2023)

Killer Book Club (El Club De Los Lectores Criminales) (Spain, 2023)

Rating: ***

Starring: Veki Velilla, Álvaro Mel, Priscilla Delgado 

For the first few minutes, we see a room littered with book pages, a woman getting doused in gasoline and a girl setting everything ablaze with a burning copy of Don Quixote. Moving ahead six years later, we now follow college teen Ángela (Veki Velilla), an aspiring best-selling author and a member of the campus's book club which consists of her friends and acquaintances. She's feeling quite unsure of the quality of her own writing lately so she decided to meet up with a professor after class for some advice, but what Ángela got instead is a very bad time when the guy got too handsy and she narrowly escaped a rape attempt after she opted to be more than the slime ball could handle physically. The assault leaves the shy book writer traumatized but fortunately for her, the book club has her back and they all plan to get even on the shmuck by pranking him hard.  

As the night for revenge comes, everything was going according to plan; dress up in matching clown costumes, break into the professor's office, smash some shit and scare the bastard shitless, but all of this excitement goes horribly awry when the educator gets attacked for real, leading to him stumbling off a building floor and getting skewered through a statue's spear. Horrified of this unexpected turn, everyone involved in the prank swears secrecy, burns away their costumes and tries moving on with their lives in the midst of the media circus the professor's supposed accident/suicide eventually reels in the following morning.

No soon after, though, the gang gets an email invite to read the very first chapter of a new online horror novel penned by someone monikered "Madclown", detailing a familiar scenario of eight book club members who killed their professor out of revenge. The writer promises death to the killer book club and, true enough, our gang starts getting stalked, hunted and murdered one by one by a figure wearing a familiar-looking clown costume, wielding a deadly rock pick...

Looking into the plot, there's not much to write home about Killer Book Club (2023)'s story as it is basically a mash-up of I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)'s secrets-unburied-turn-deadly gig and Scream (1996)'s meta-horror murder mystery, down to the characters getting their trust tested as they suspect one another of masterminding the attacks and disappearances, as well as the gang discussing the possibility of our villain being a horror buff considering their knowledge of slasher tropes and using this hunch to narrow down their potential suspects. There's little room for surprises here, though there is an attempt for novelty as the killer writes down the murders as chapters for their online novel, posting them moments after doing the deadly deed.

Execution-wise, the movie still does enough good to warrant a viewing; while the direction has its moments relying on the characters' odd and/or dumb choices to get the story going (like answering and following a text that's obviously a trap, or going along with a suspicious invitation to a book horror fair where everyone is dressed up as clowns), there's a charm to its familiarity, like a low-key throwback to the ideologies of postmodernism and skepticism commonly found within most 90s teen horror. The murder scenes are also among the movie's stronger points as a fair bundle of them have decent set-pieces and chase scenes, shot and edited to showcase the energy of their cat-and-mouse antics and a few are even punctuated with gruesomely bloody slayings. The camera work is scenic at its best, the acting is passable and even though the mystery behind the murders gets answered in the climax unspectacularly at first, we do get an unexpected twist that ties most of the loose ends wonderfully and makes the final act devilishly fun. 

Killer Book Club (2023) may have failed to bring anything new to the table, it does still deliver the bodycount goods and, honestly, it all could have been worse. Should you find yourself in a charitable mood for a teen slasher mystery at its most basic and don't mind some pastiche along the way, this one's a good watch! 

Bodycount:

1 female doused in gasoline and set on fire

1 male fell off a building and lands on a statue, impaled

1 male gutted with a rock pick

1 female impaled through with a rock pick's handle

1 male found dying from a throat cut

1 female found dying from a stabbed chest

1 male knocked off a building and impaled mouth-first through a statue

1 female caught on fire, burned to death

Total: 8

Criminal Carnage And Gory Guffaws: The Cottage (2008)

The Cottage (United Kingdom, 2008)

Rating: ****

Starring: Andy Serkis, Reece Shearsmith, Jennifer Ellison

Grab the girl. Hold her for ransom. Escape with the cash. This is the plan a thug named David (Andy Serkis of the Lord of The Ring trilogy) have in mind when he decided to kidnap the teenage daughter of one Arnie (Steven Berkoff), a mobster boss. His boss. And it would have been a fairly passable plan given, that is, he didn't tagged along his brother Peter (Shaun of The Dead (2004)'s Reece Shearsmith) and the kidnapped girl's own stepbrother Andrew (Steve O'Donell) as accomplices.

Now, see, Peter is someone you would call a tool; meek yet obnoxious, suffering from a phobia of moths and is pretty much ruled under the fat thumb of his own whale of a wife. He doesn't really want to be a part of David's little scheme, but knowing this is an opportunity to please his overbearing spouse as his brother agreed to give him his half of an inherited house should everything goes according to plan, Peter tags along which much reluctance. On the other hand, Andrew is, for the lack of a better term, an oaf. The type who buys the wrong kind of ski mask to cover his identity and may or may not have slipped sometime somewhere about this little gig which leads to a very pissed crime boss sending out a couple of hired hitmen to end whoever needs to be ended.

The night gradually goes from bad to terrible when the kidnapped girl, Tracey (Jennifer Ellison), proves to be more than these guys could handle as her foul mouth, short temper and psychopathic tendencies coincide with her resourcefulness and surprising intelligence. So it kinda comes to no surprise that she soon escapes after the fellas dropped their guard one too many times. And even worse, she takes Peter hostage at knife point as they go deep into the woods to look for a way back to the city. 

And this. All of this is just the first act of the movie.

For more than half of its run time, The Cottage (2008) is a crime comedy wherein its black humor is centered within one of the worst kidnapping schemes in movie history and the engagingly hilarious characters involved, with failure upon failure stacking up against our hapless hooligans to the point that you actually want to root for these luckless suckers to at least get one thing right and somehow still win in the end even if, y'know, they messed up many many things along the way. In spite of some pacing concerns, it's honestly a smart direction to take as we do get to know more about these wannabe criminal chumps and their terrifyingly aggressive victim, giving them memorable distinctive traits and a good score of funny moments as their idiotic plan goes up in flames, as well as a decent level of character development, especially between David and Peter as even though they don't see eye to eye, they do still have their brother's back and sincerely cares for one another.

This little slice of depth do come in handy for cathartic reasons once the film drew out the creepy villagers (one of them being Hellraiser's Doug Bradley!) ominously warning not to go out at night and the plot shifts gear to slasher horror territories; as David and Andrew go after Tracey and Peter, the four soon ended up stumbling into private lands with a not-so-cozy farmhouse filled with clutter, strange noises from down the cellar and severed hands in the freezer. Oh, and a large, heavily-deformed, bellowing farmer with a killing streak. Kinda hard to miss him considering, apart from being a towering blood-thirsty maniac out chopping people up with shovels and billhooks, he often have his own goofy moments that are completely in tone with the kind of silliness this film runs on, mainly his confused and frustrated reactions when things don't go the way it normally does in a night of bloody massacring. (Like, how often do you get one of the victims aggressively coax the killer to murder another victim? Weird.) 

As any good slasher would, the kills here are gruesomely gory, some parts satisfying, other parts shocking and devastating. Heck, even the offscreen slayings have some decent splatter and guts to be seen from the resulting corpses through some fair-looking make-up and gore effects. The cat-and-mouse antics are mostly played for laughs and cheeky shocks, occasionally accompanied by classical music and a running gags of sorts with Peter being the butt of painful and/or humiliating torment not limited to the monster farmer's own brand of brutalizing. Interestingly, there's actually a story behind the killer's madness and the way the movie decided to acknowledge this is to hint it all over his abode through photos, diaries and even the corpses laying around. It's real gnarly stuff from what I can tell and I do like the fact that it's mostly kept in the shadows for an effective creep factor, though I cannot deny that I wished they explored this a tad further as it would have made the killer much more interesting.

Still, The Cottage (2008) wears its madcap crime comedy and cartoonish splatter with devilish glee and whimsy and I absolutely love it for that. Delivering acting of pure quality, comedic writing that's darkly witty, and the splatter horror that's entertainingly gruesome, if you adore a damn good slasher comedy with a British tang then go on and add this one to your collection!

Bodycount:

1 male found eviscerated

1 male found dead with his neck cut open

1 female decapitated by the mouth with a shovel

1 male killed, jacket seen

1 male gets a billhook to the groin

1 male hacked on the chest with a pickaxe

1 male devoured alive

Total: 7