It's a Terrifier Christmas, Let Horror Fill Your Heart: Terrifier 3 (2024)

Terrifier 3 (2024)

Rating: ****

Starring: Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton, Antonella Rose

I'm just gonna put it out there that I was considering knocking down a few points from this movie for being a Christmas slasher because, damn it! The Terrifier franchise already established itself as a Halloween staple all the way back to its iconic killer's first appearance in Damien Leone's short, The 9th Circle (2008), and y'all wanna terrorize another holiday? Way to break the momentum! 

But, hey, this little blow to my obsessive compulsiveness aside, Terrifier 3 (2024) is just a damn good movie.

The film opens on a night before Christmas, with a girl named Juliet having a tough time sleeping, disturbed by the weird noises she's been hearing. Her family dismisses her concerns, explaining it away as just the house settling (or Santa's elves), but Juliet isn't convinced. Not when the noises start to resemble footfalls. Once her folks go back to bed, the little darling decided to snoop a bit, soon spotting none other than Santa Claus himself walking to their Christmas tree and pulling out from his sack... a heavy axe. What was once a silent night becomes a gory night as every single one from this family gets hacked apart, dismembered all the way, revealing to us that under the red suit and heavy boots isn't a jolly old fat man. It's Art the Clown, up and walking around once again!

Jump back to five years ago; after another Halloween rampage, Art seems to have met his match when one of his supposed victims, Sienna Shaw, fought back and managed to defeat him by cutting his head clean off with a seemingly mystic sword. This, however, is no setback for the clown as his now headless body kills its way to where his head ended up after the brawl, at the psychiatric clinic holding one of his former victims, the heavily disfigured Victoria Heyes, who appears to have finally succumbed to whatever demonic forces at play here. The two escapes, leaving more bodies on their trail as they flee back to Art's dilapidated hideout-slash-work shop where they go into a dormant state.

 

Moving ahead to the present, Sienna Shaw is undergoing a great deal of therapy as the events of that one Halloween night haunt her to this day, with visions of her dead friends and family blaming her for their demises. Upon her release from a mental health center, she's to stay with her aunt Jess' family, an arrangement Jess' husband Greg isn't too sure about despite putting on a cheerful face whenever Sienna is in the room with them, fearing she's one or two breakdowns away from endangering the family. Their daughter Gabbie, however, is simply ecstatic to have her big cousin around, completely unaware of the nightmares Sienna's dealing with. 

All the while, Jonathan, Sienna's kid brother, is now in college trying to move on with his life, something that's proven to be a tad hard when his sister is keeps blaming herself for surviving and just wouldn't let it go, as well as the fact that there will always be someone out there who will recognize him as one of the 'supposed' survivors of a killing spree perpetrated by Art the Clown, who at this point is something of a Miles County urban legend.

And speaking of the devil; when couple of demolition workers arrive to inspect a rather familiar dilapidated house, they didn't expect to find both Art and Victoria there, now awakened from their unnatural slumber and ready to take more lives as brutally as possible. With this starts another round of murders and torture for ole' Art, and with it being the Christmas season, he's gonna try on some new looks and explore new painful ways to end people. Hell, maybe he and his new accomplice will even take the time to be home for the holiday and celebrate it with a certain girl who got away the only way they can: with a crown of thorns (and razor blades), rat torture and even a roaring chainsaw...

As you watch Terrifier 3 (2024) start itself with the annihilation of a random family before treating you with a gag of a headless body wearing a victim's head to get around inconspicuously, and then grossing you out with the imagery of a now-demonic woman eating chewed flesh straight out of a still-living decapitated head's own gullet, you know damn well that this movie's going to continue the franchise's tradition of delivering some of the most-messed up things you could pull off in a slasher flick and I'm glad to say it's done all here with some noticeable improvements; for one, the pacing is just a breeze, wonderfully balancing out the story of our heroine undergoing an emotional and mental crisis as she tries to live a normal life past that one gore-soaked Halloween massacre, with that of Art the Clown being, well, Art the Clown. Just savage hijinks with a good dose of black humor that only a creepy grinning killer mime can pull off. The direction wisely opted to not overly dwell on the plot to the point that it overcooks the drama and character depth, giving it time to breathe a bit in between brutal hijinks of little mall kids getting one hell of a Christmas popper courtesy of Art, or that of a man getting the skin and flesh of his head dressed down from the skull while a disfigured witch watches and sodomize herself with a mirror shard. (Yes. You read that right) 

Curiously, apart from Sienna's descent towards a fractured case of survivor's guilt and her increasingly strained relationship with her brother, Terrifier 3 (2024) technically adds nothing that we didn't already know since the last film. Rather, it expanded upon what was given before and dives further down its layers, throwing in biblical lore behind Art's supernatural durability and immortality, as well as Sienna's mysterious sword for what could be a set-up to something big and immaculate in the future. It's not hard to see how this scattershot plotting can get real testy for some audience, as the increasingly overcomplicated mythology could stray the franchise away from what was originally just a simple story of a deranged clown killing folks, but for some of us who can roll with the punches, it's a tolerable dent on a showcase of gore and darkly hilarious clownery. Plus, admittedly, my curiosity is peaked by what they're hinting here. I mean, how couldn't you when one of these visions involves a living statue of the Virgin Mary seemingly commanding a chained demon to forge the armor of a warrior angel in hellfire? That's not simple badassery. That's pure metal!

One cannot deny, too, the top-tier special effects here; despite some of these being your typical slasher murder fares of axe hackings or knife murders, the way they're executed to push the boundaries of an iron stomach keeps them fresh, the increasing absurdity of their own brutality fitting nicely with its darkly imaginative savagery and/or the unrelenting intensity of its overkills. One axe blow isn't enough to kill someone here, oh no. Unlike most slashers out there, Terrifier 3 (2024) wanted to make sure a victim is dead and that typically means more than a couple of whacks! And, yes, why not get kooky and experimental with the murder weapons? Would a handheld tank that blows liquid nitrogen do? Of course, all of this wouldn't mean much if it wasn't for David Howard Thornton's morbidly charming portrayal of Art the Clown, who's at his most expressive here considering the clown is basically playing pretend as Santa Claus, spinning his own take on Christmas spirit and holiday cheers via cartoonish body language and facial acting, effectively hiding his deadly intentions. From enthusiastically losing himself over meeting "Santa", to mockingly mute laughing at a wife's distress while hacking apart her husband, Art continues to be a real slasher icon and there's no sign of slowing down or stopping!

Thus the saga of this hyper-violent slasher franchise continues and Terrifier 3 (2024) sets itself as a real solid treat as a holiday bodycounter, may it be Halloween's or Christmas'. There's room for improvement, sure, but it's safe to say that this one undoubtedly served the demented and the defiled! The gruesome and the gory! Have a Terrifier Christmas! Let horror fill your heart!

Bodycount:

1 boy hacked to pieces with an axe

1 male hacked to death with an axe

1 female hacked to death with an axe

1 girl killed with an axe (heavily implied)

1 male killed offscreen, head seen

1 female killed offscreen, later found being eaten

1 male had his head pried apart

1 male murdered offcamera, clothes seen

1 male jabbed in the neck, stabbed to death with a mirror shard

1 male had his head cut open with a box cutter, flesh flayed off

1 male shot on the head

1 male shot on the neck, bled to death

1 male had his limbs and head sprayed with liquid nitrogen, bashed apart with a hammer

1 boy blown apart by a bomb

1 female blown apart by a bomb

1 girl blown apart by a bomb

2 victims blown apart by a bomb

1 female slaughtered to death with a chainsaw

1 male bisected with a chainsaw

1 male found headless, gutted and nailed to a wall

1 male head seen inside a cage, eaten by rats

1 female gets a tube shoved down her throat and force fed with live rats, throat cut with a knife

1 female gets a sword to the mouth, decapitated

Total: 24

Art The Clown

"We have a very special guest with us today! Now, for a guy who doesn't speak, he sure makes a lot of noise. All the way from Miles County, please welcome...

ART THE CLOWN!"

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

Return to Kettle Springs: Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives (2022)

Clown In A Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives
Author: Adam Cesare
Publication Year: 2022
Chapters: 30 (Epilogue included)
Rating: ***

Quinn Maybrook, Cole Hill and Rust Vance. The Baypen Three. It's been some time after they survived the Kettle Spring Massacre, the orchestrated attack at a small Missouri town committed by its radicalized adults who made it their mission to cleanse their community of its "blighted youths", and all our survivors wanted to do now is move on from that nightmare, figuratively and literally. But as word of the massacre spreads all over media and the truth becomes lost the further it goes, it made way not only to unexpected (and for some, unwanted) fame for Quinn, Cole and Rust, but also to internet conspiracy theorists attempting to twist the narrative to their own version of events wherein the three are painted as the masterminds behind the massacre.

Now heroes to some and villains to others, the Baypen Three see themselves getting praises and disgust from wherever they go and whoever they meet, but things are about to become deadly as they and their loved ones are suddenly targeted by what looks like coordinated attacks by goons wearing familiar looking clown masks. Knowing that the threat is far from over, Quinn, Cole and Rust must go back to Kettle Springs, Missouri, where there awaits something far more sinister than what they could've ever imagined.

In true horror sequel fashion, Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives aims to outdo its predecessor and it does so by shaking the very foundation it itself built in order to widen its world and explore it further. Much like the first book, this sequel novel took its time establishing the lives of our main casts after surviving such a horrendous event. It is here we see notable angles being approached such as PTSD, the pros and cons of media attention and criticisms on violent extremism and mob mentality through out the internet and social media, a whole baggage of heavy ideas that's ripe exploited in a slasher plot, though done here in a much more creative swing. 

In fact, Frendo Lives is more of a up and up slasher hybrid rather than a straight-up slasher story; while we do get a couple of slasher flick style stalkings, attacks and murders, these mostly taking place within the first half of the novel and with great effect, they would eventually play second bananas to what will gradually become something of a melting pot of chases and sieges ala Purge sequel as the town of Kettle Springs devolves into a warzone invaded by radical types with a warped sense of "justice". It's mostly braindead fun, graphic descriptions of violence and murders coinciding with a lot of the wit and snark young adult horrors tend to have, though at times it paints a serious picture showing how media, especially social media, often trivialized true crime and many people would suck it dry for clout or blindly follow radicalized ideas surrounding it if it meant comfort or self-righteousness rather than face the facts. 

It's a tough dose of satire, one that holds a lot of weight in this day and age of vlogs, internet forums and online communities, but writer Adam Cesare thankfully knew how to balance it out with horror fiction filled with clown masked maniacs, unsettling imagery of shootouts and descriptive splatter, topped with flawed yet likeable characters, both old and new, brewing up good ole drama in the midst of it all. My only qualm here is that the conclusion felt lacking; without spoiling a lot, the whole town being sieged thing simply just ended once the tide started to turn against them. With all the damage they dealt, I expected something equally as grandeur, but we're instead given an epilogue where one of the survivors tell us what happened afterwards before concluding with a very cliched sequel bait. An underwhelming finish in my mind, but it could have been worse.

While the first Clown in a Cornfield is an easily favorable slasher fiction that one can enjoy as a standalone novel, Frendo Lives serves as a welcome follow-up should you ever see yourself wanting more of the Baypen Three's as horror survivors. Fast paced and savagely thrilling, another fantastic read for literary horror fans!

Bodycount: 11(?*) 

Notable Kill: A very graphic razor wire murder. Like, the book didn't stint on the excruciating detail of flesh and bone being sawed away. Had me wincing the way I did during that scene from Audition (1999). 

(*Have to leave out a few survivable attacks, like that one guy who got a baseball bat to the face. The book never specified if any of these victims were straight-out killed, so I'm not counting them.)

Masquerading Madness in Venice: Veneciafrencia (2021)

Veneciafrencia (Spain, 2021)

Rating: **

Starring: Ingrid García Jonsson, Silvia Alonso and Goize Blanco

In this giallo-inspired horror thriller, a group of five Spanish tourists visit Venice for what's supposed to be an extravagant bachelorette party, only to end up caught and tangled in a web of socio-political tensions and random murders committed by a madman in a court jester's outfit when one of them suddenly disappears the day after they all attended a secret rave. With a premise like that, Veneciafrencia (2021) could have had a rich world and intriguing plot points to center a bodycount flick around with its talks of mass tourism ruining a beloved country and the lengths some people would go to dispose what they deem as a "plague" that's ruining their beautiful city. Unfortunately, the movie can't seem to decide whether it wants to be playful with the idea or be straight with it, resulting to an erratic direction that further loses its worth as it focuses on a gang of charmless characters in a set-up not too far off from Eli Roth's Hostel franchise.

The pacing and tone are just all over, in turn, as the movie pretends to be something deep and witty as a by-the-book conspiracy thriller for some moments, only to be gutted down by its own cluster of hammy horror and crazy killings as a slasher flick in the next. It's a clumsy hodge-podge juggle that's unnecessarily complicated in its execution seeing there's really no sense of mystery regarding why the villains are doing all of this as it's basically plastered all over the scenes involving our casts interacting with many of the locals. This, unsurprisingly, results to the story's flow just bogging down with pointless police procedurals and investigations, making its hundred minute-long barrage of bland characters and tired clichés eventually lose its steam in its last act with an unrewarding conclusion to boot.

On a more positive note, Veneciafrencia (2021) does succeed in making its slasher scenes memorable in a goofy yet gruesome way, with a couple of murders happening during public daylight as our killer chortles at gathering crowds of tourists that everything horrible he's doing is just an act and these idiots simply eating up this claim without any sense of hesitation. It's absurdly silly and a tad too convenient, with all forms of logic and realism thrown out, but keeps rather a quirky energy in its viciousness, a welcome take for a bloody good time even if most of the kills were from random bystanders. Aside from that, the film also benefits from looking quite stunning with its location shots and camera work, showcasing the beauty of Venice in and out of the horror scenes and the stellar production work done behind the film.

With more miss than hits, Veneciafrencia (2021) is a good enough horror film that could've been better if it found a way to balance out its commentary themes and splashy slasher hook in a way that would benefit one another. Give it a try if you like, though expect a hobbled path. 

Bodycount:

1 male bludgeoned to death with a camera

1 female dragged away, killed offscreen

1 male repeatedly ran through with a sword

1 male repeatedly ran through with a sword, decapitated

1 female had her throat cut with a sword

1 male seen crushed on a dock by a cruise ship (video)

1 female had her hands and back hacked with hooks

1 male shot

1 male and 1 female found dead from cut wrists

Total: 10

Drop on By The Clown Cafe: Terrifier 2 (2022)

Terrifier 2 (2022)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton and Jenna Kanell

If you've been following all of director Damien Leone's filmography, then you'll know that whenever a certain pointy-nosed mime who goes by "Art The Clown" appears, it's bound to be a splatterpunk's wet dream at its most nihilistic and sadistic. And so on that note, here we are back for round two of Art's own picture deal wherein he terrorizes yet another Halloween night, leaving mutilations, gore-filled torture and traumatic deaths wherever he walks.

Picking off a year after the events of the first film, wherein Art stalked, brutalized and massacred a number of people at Miles County, it's Halloween once again and the town simply wanted to move past that horrific night, despite the lingering question as to whether the face-painted maniac is really dead or not since his body disappeared right after it got carted to a local morgue and the coroner attending the supposed stiff ended up as a corpse himself. With this, Art has become the local boogeyman but, unfortunately for the timid town of Miles County, he is very much alive and kicking through supernatural means and he's going to further cement his reputation as the stuff of nightmares as he prepares for another night of senseless murders and bloody bodycount, tagging along a mysterious creepy pale clown girl who is seemingly visible only to a few and acts as his little partner-in-crime.

Elsewhere, artistic teenager Sienna Shaw and her geeky, horror-loving younger brother Jonathan are still dealing with the loss of their father who offed himself some time ago. It appears the two have found themselves under Art's radar somehow, with Sienna encountering him in a dream in which he slays the cast and crew of a nonsensical show (with an earworm-inducing theme song) before setting everything on fire, an attack that somehow also sets Sienna's costume ablaze and nearly burning down the house. Jonathan, in turn, spots him at School playing with a dead possum, a sick act that got the boy suspended after he's mistaken to be the one responsible for the mess. As the Shaw household gets rockier with all the unnerving mishaps piling up, the closer Art draws near on getting his hands on these two, but not before ending a few of the siblings' friends, family and random bystanders left and right in the most brutally grotesque ways.

With an outrageous running time of two hours and eighteen minutes (?!), Terrifier 2 (2022) aims to upstage its predecessor by any means possible and it succeeds at this to a degree in terms of plotting and brutality; while the original Terrifier (2017) is basically just our crazed clown stalking and killing people from point A to point B in a it-goes-wherever-it-goes-flow, the sequel does take it time to focus on its protagonists and build the plot around them and their hinted connection to Art and his new ghoulish little girl cohort. It works in a way that the Shaw siblings are written realistically and acted magnificently by Lauren LaVera and young Elliott Fullam, though the execution of the potential lore behind who or what Art The Clown might be, as well as his ties to the Shaws might divide some folks and their need to satisfy a budding curiosity. It's already a given matter that something supernatural is at foot the moment Art survived shooting his own head and then walking it off to kill more people at the same night, but the way this is further implemented into the film can feel a little clumsy, adding in more bits and pieces that doesn't really go anywhere except making the movie unnecessarily confusing and long. 

For one, it's suggested here that the Shaw patriarch have some sort of link to the clown's massacres as news clippings and sketches of familiar murders were seen inside his sketchbook, implementing that his mental decline and eventual suicide could have been more than just a mere case of depression. This, sadly, was never uttered again nor any no solid conclusion was even given, but this is chicken feed compared to the Deux Ex Machina moment wherein, without spoiling much, a weapon suddenly gains the ability to revive and heal just because it was proposed to be significant earlier on. Where and how did this even happened? Don't bother. It was in a dead man's sketchbook so I guess we're supposed to roll with it.

Bloated and patchy story aside, you can at least safely bet that Terrifier 2 is still a brutal film to sit through when it comes to its kills, probably even more as it delves quite close into torture porn territory; rather than giving us quick-cut yet gory slayings and maybe one or two extreme murders to be imprinted into our inner gorehound, this sequel opted to prolong the suffering and gruesome display as Art (still the amazing David Howard Thornton) brutalizes his victims either to death or after, all the while still being horridly playful in his body language, to the point that it's effectively unnerving. One horrifying visage, for example, have an unfortunate gal getting savaged with surgical scissors and scalpel, her scalp and limbs torn off before being tortured with salt and bleach, all for it to end with her mother finding a nightmarish scene that even I didn't expect. Corpses get fed with mashed potatoes in front of loved ones, heads are used as candy bowls for Trick or Treating, chests were pried to get a beating heart to munch on, yes, Terrifier 2 outdid itself in intense gore and traumatic horror. It's bound to upset a lot of stomachs, though probably at the cost of padding the running time a little more than needed.

To be frank, however, it is around the last thirty minutes that the film really started to fizzle dry as, again, for a film clocking two and a quarter hours, we're practically treated with an overly long climax where we simply watch a cycle of stalking, stabbing, fighting and fake-out deaths between Sienna and Art. It became repetitive and drawn out at this point, with hardly to no surprises to reward our patience apart from more weird nightmare logic, macabre visions and a random power-up, all topped with an expected sequel bait that's as grisly and messy as it is peculiar and darkly hilarious. It is here were we can certainly tell the movie as a whole could have benefitted with a trim or two behind the editing room, giving us more of an engaging narrative than the resulting product here.

I can unquestionably respect the strive done to give something bigger, badder and better for the Terrifier franchise, but sometimes it is best to keep things simple, if not humble. If you can look past its the downcast aim for a story and overindulgent last act, Terrifier 2 is just as entertainingly savage as the first film and (patient) fans of extreme horror, grindhouse splatter and B-grade slashers can definitely get a kick out of the paramount of a massacre that is this movie!

Bodycount:

1 male gets a broken mop handle through the head offscreen

8 males and 6 female shot dead with a tommy gun (dream)

1 male set ablaze with a blowtorch (dream)

1 female seen with a wounded hand, killed (dream)

1 male seen on fire (dream)

1 boy found dead from tainted cereal (dream)

1 male hacked on the head with a cleaver, decapitated

1 female scalped and slaughtered to death with surgical scissors and a scalpel 

1 female seen decapitated

1 female had her head blown off with a shotgun

1 male repeatedly knifed on the groin, castrated

1 female pulverized with a blade-studded table leg

Total: 25*

(*I did not count the coroner's death as I already counted it back at my Terrifer (2017) review. As much as I want to detail here how the poor shmuck died, I don't want to be redundant just for the sake of good gore.) 

The Six-Fingered Hand of Bloody Redemption: The Redeemer (1978)

The Redeemer (1978) (AKA "The Redeemer: Son of Satan!", Class Reunion Massacre")
Rating: **1/2

Starring: Damien Knight, Jeannetta Arnette, Nick Carter

Oh, Lordy. This movie. This wonderfully horrible movie.

It starts with a shot of a hand punching out of a clear lake after a tedious run through the opening credits and a sacrilegious quote, revealing a boy with a very dated haircut casually walking out of the waters and boarding a bus headed to the town church. Elsewhere, a shadowy figure grants a sleeping fellow an extra thumb on one hand because spoiler-related reasons. And, yes, it's kinda gross-looking. One tiny thumb on top of an elongated one.

Urge to poke it with a stick... Growing...

We then we see that the soaky lil' dude is one with of the (more bullied) choirboys and the sermon is your typical fire-and-brimstone type about sins and whatnot, yelled by an equally typical Bible-thumping priest. This is where we get our character introductions interjected through out the righteous Gospel ramblings; John, a lawyer who values money more than a fair trial; Cindy, a party girl with multiple failed marriages; Terry, the eater of burgers; Jane, one who shoots at pigeons for fun; Roger, a vain actor who walked out of set because someone spilled a drink on his pants; and Kristen, a lesbian. Just, uh, just a lesbian. The six happen to be part of a small clique back at their highschool years and they all recently received an invitation to attend a reunion back at their alma mater.

Unbeknownst to them, they're the only ones who got the invites, which could've just been weird, amusing even, if it wasn't for the loon out stalking and prowling around the campus killing them one-by-one. A loon with a penchant for hammy disguises, life-sized weapon-wielding puppets and Biblical tirades. A loon who calls himself- The Redeemer!  

Now, see, as much as I want to decimate this movie and make a mockery out of its flaws, I can't. I just simply can't. I have a soft spot for dumb cheesy movies, particularly those that are done with the right amount of unintentional humor and have made odd spectacles out of themselves, something The Redeemer here manages to do and a little more. For one, the atmosphere is just befittingly weird coming from the story's dream-like logic and semi-creepy direction, straight from the shot of a random choirboy rising out of the cold waters and the random double thumb appearing at one's hand, to the villain's unusual gimmick of donning random costumes and his somewhat supernatural nature. It plays well with the movie's good eye on expressive cinematography and, too, the villain's warped morality which can be best described as very shallow at best (or worst), yet strangely entertaining leaning on the fact he's going through all of this trouble of dropping swords and setting up blowtorch-equipped mannequins to attack just because the clique is guilty of things like eating too many fast food or loving themselves too much. That said, despite the absence of strong grue or a high count, I also came to like the murders perpetrated by our Redeemer here all for the sheer unusualness of it all, may it be the execution of the scene or the imagery itself.

Character-wise, it's hard to hide how regular the victims can be, unfortunately; don't get me wrong, the actors tried (and I mean, tried) to milk out any seriousness and talent they can muster to act their respective one-note meat bags, but writing and scripting are hardly this movie's strong points so they go against creating any real solid casts unsurprisingly. You could say the same for our titular killer with his holier-than-thou horror trope psychosis, but he at least has the thankful joy of being exaggeratedly bad, to the point that I can't really take him seriously despite the murdering business and all. (Like how can you? This guy can't even get the number of sins right. It's seven deadly sins, shmuck. Not six. Unless we're pulling a Se7en (1995) here and the killer is the seventh sin?!)

Yes, The Redeemer (1978) is no real gem, but it's a personal treat that keeps splitting my sides with its ludicrous ham, as well as captivate me for just how absurd it can get. Perhaps you can say I find it so bad it's good, so much so that it deserves to sit proudly next to other lovable bad trashes like ThanksKilling (2008) and Nail Gun Massacre (1985). If you see yourself a wee bit curious enough to try it out then I say, go for it! Just remember to dim the lights in your noggin and not take any of it as high art as much as possible and you'll do mostly fine!

Mostly.

Bodycount:

1 male shot on the neck

1 male set on fire with a blow torch

1 female shot with a shotgun

1 male gets a sword dropped unto his head

1 female drowned in a handwashing sink

1 male shot on the head

1 female hacked to death with a sword

1 boy seen dead from throat cut

Total: 8 

The Fear Men Cometh: House of Fears (2007)

House of Fears (2007)
Rating: ***
Starring: K. Danor Gerald, Cydney Neil, Kelvin Clayton

When the mood hits me right, I don't really demand much from my slasher movies. Just make the plot interesting, throw in some decent looking monsters, some workable kills and before you know it, you have me satisfied for the afternoon.

House of Fears (2007) is one such movie that isn't that grand but does the job right enough to be watchable. It cold opens with a girl panicking from what look like a live burial before shifting scenes to Africa, where miners have unearthed something powerful enough to set everyone into a killing frenzy. Cydney Neil (Of Utah's Rocky Point Haunted House, playing herself) then arrives at the dig in hopes of purchasing some goods, misses the numerous dead men from afar, spots an idol among the mess and ships it to America to set it as a prop for one of her haunted houses. All that mining and murdered men just for a a decoration...

Some time later in Salem, Oregon, Hailey (Sandra McCoy) is forced by her folks to tag along her new step-sister Samantha (Corri English) to a party she's attending so the two can bond. There, shenanigans rear their ugly heads when Hailey and her group decide to sneak into a soon-to-open haunt called House of Fears just for the kick of it and Samantha is invited to join. This plan is set for something deadly, unfortunately, as a familiar African idol that just happens to be sitting around someplace within the haunt and it turns out to be malevolent, capable of creating murderous avatars and bringing animatronics to life based on its victims' fears. As the teens find themselves haunted and hunted one by one, their only chance of surviving the night is to brave their fears or die trying.

From the paint-by-numbers teen dynamics and stereotypes to the more than basic murderings and jump scares, House of Fears (2007) never really bothered to stray off the beaten track that much despite the opportunities that it could have. The concept of slasher victims being snuffed out through deaths inspired by their fears isn't exactly that new with movies like Phobia (1980), The Fear: Resurrection (1999) and Boogeyman 2 (2007), though Fears opted to give this concept a more paranormal grounding by introducing an evil idol with dark powers. If it wasn't for the movie's restricted budget, this idea may have led us to a couple of rather spectacular supernatural deaths, instead the film worked around it by cooking up fairly impressive-looking monsters manifested by the totem. Some of them were based on very specific kind of fears (a demonic clown for coulrophobics, a scarecrow for formidophobics), others being representation of said fear (a grave-digger for taphophobics, a machete-wielding mannequin for aichmophobics), all in all alright on the make-up and practical effects department.

Any drawbacks apart the generic plot and writing would be the killings done by our monsters. They're mostly dry and standard, some even done offcamera, disappointing gorehounds or even general horror fans who are hoping to see a little more excitement from their monster attacks. Still, with what it had to work with, House of Fears (2007) remains effective in tone and scares for what is basically a funhouse slasher paying small tribute to classic haunts and B-grade entertainment; it's teens in a haunted "haunted" house trying to survive the attacks of physical demonic forces and that's that. Nothing revolutionary, right, but it is safe to say this is a movie meant to be simplistic and I just find that very endearing as a fun spook show. Worth a try.

Bodycount:
1 male hacked with a pickaxe
1 males seen murdered
1 male found murdered
1 male gutted with a cleaver
1 female dragged underneath the sand, suffocated
1 male suffers a heart attack (flashback)
1 male mauled by dog
1 male electrocuted
1 male strangled, neck broken
Total: 9

Never Leave A Frendo Behind: Clown In A Cornfield (2020)

Clown In A Cornfield
Author: Adam Cesare

Publication Year: 2020
Chapters: 31 (Epilogue included)
Rating: ****

With hopes of starting fresh after the recent death of her mother, high school senior Quinn Maybrook finds herself moving out of the big city Philadelphia life to settle in Kettle Springs, Missouri with her father after he accepted a job there as the resident doctor. She is quickly taken in by a gang of misfits led by one Cole Hill after their science teacher suddenly goes mental on them on her first day at the town's high school, learning about the growing animosity between the town's youths and elders from this outburst, as well as from a brief incident at a local diner.

When a Founder's Day celebration goes disastrous after a prank gone wrong, however, it seems someone in town thought enough is enough, that these kids are out of control and they need to be taught a lesson they'll never ever forget; dressed as a certain porkpie hat-wearing town mascot Frendo the Clown, the killer stabs, slices and shoots their way through the town's youthful residents and all those who get in the way, which spells nothing but bloodshed and a possible end for Quinn as she'll soon see herself caught in this maniac's madness.

A gutsy take on a young adult horror novel, Clown In A Cornfield holds nothing back in regards to its bodycount horror and social commentary with its talks of small town poverty and generation conflict, before landing itself in an array of vile murders and an admittedly dark twist. The book basically sectioned itself in two halves to achieve this, doing a solid job taking its time to build around the situation of Kettle Springs as a place and community first, with vivid descriptions of crumbling facilities, rural politics and old folks spouting about the good old days when their home is still flourishing. This often trails into the mischievous yet well-intentioned and very informative banters between Quinn's new acquaintances as they bring up a bit of the town's history and hint past troubles that may or may not lead to the carnage later. 

It does take a while to get things going, in turn. Varying portions of certain chapters give way into developing the character or characters involved, mostly delving into Quinn's thoughts on her situation as the new girl around town and her attempts to get past her mother's passing. The writing done for these segments shed a good amount of sympathetic light to whoever the chapter's focusing on (some more than the others) but, in typical slasher fashion, once the town's secretive Founder's Day party gets held, the book mostly drops this in-depth look into rural life and teen conflict to eventually shift its gears to a more adrenaline-rushed pace, chaotically running down as much death and mutilation as possible in written format.

Without giving away much, the killings in this second half are linked to a conspirator who wants to weed out what they see as blighted youths to make Kettle Springs "great again". It starts out with your classic masked slasher stalkings and standard set of murders, but it soon breaks down into something more of a survivalist horror thriller as the kill count doubles in digits and teens start dying left and right in what looks like an active shooter scenario perpetrated by a creepy clown, undoubtedly the book's most unforgettable scene. This escalates even further to an unexpected turn that warrants a lot of shotgun-totting and even more bodies piling up, a reveal that, while not overly original (I can name two to three movies that this twist reminds me of), still deserves some merits for how well it was pulled off, putting great care into detailing the attacks and tying these set-pieces into the town's problems, both real and surmised, wonderfully. It all leads to finale that has us reading what I can best describe as a back-to-back villain monologue, a "boss fight" with guns and an epilogue that teases a possible new wave of slashing, a couple of moves that definitely echo the hammier side of slasher horror but still channeling a decent amount of grimness for just how insane and dark it is.  

From cover to cover, Clown In A Cornfield is a guaranteed page-turner of a slasher novel that delivers what it promises and more. It has the sensibilities of a 90s horror flick and the carnal homage to bloody 80s bodycounters, topped with new age teen theatrics and a bleak look into small town Americana. Again, for a young adult horror fiction, this is unrelentingly fun in a violent, old school horror way and I couldn't want it in any other way. If you have the chance to grab a copy of this at your local bookstores (or, have it in your eBook collection like moi!), don't you dare hesitate! 

Or feel the wrath of a chainsaw-wielding Frendo!

Bodycount: 20+

Notable Kill: A shocking crossbow massacre with multiple victims. The sheer chaos of this spree spreads throughout multiple chapters and the vivid details of the kills elevate the brutality of it all. 

HAPPY 2019 HALLOWEEN! (AKA, What am I watching this year. Again.)

Welp, it's October 31st here in the Philippines! That means absolutely nothing unless you're age 10 and below which, in that case, would mean afternoon Trick'r treating and a week off school.

For me though, IT'S HALLOWEEN!

Yes, Polly. Dance. Dance.

And as someone who's practically an adult living in a country that doesn't recognize Halloween as a holiday, I mostly celebrate this by making blood pacts with Lovecraftian gods watching spooky movies from years old and new! So today, I decided to share with you my picks for my annual Halloween viewing! From a back-to-back Holiday slashers to a cavalcade of carnage clowns, let's begin my picks with:

Hell Fest (2018) and Haunt (2019) - Preferably seen back to back, these two back-to-basics slashers follow anxious final girls and their friends venturing off to Halloween events only to meet foul ends at the hands of some very whacked-out psychos. Both films have their share of gore and scares, but what sets them aside from one another is their atmosphere; while Haunt seems to be going for a more grungy and claustrophobic tone with its titular haunt and ghoulish proprietors looking so clunky and cheap (with a good reason), Hell Fest has this Hitchcockian feel to it as it relies on stalking scares whenever it ain't goring it up the vast, open spaced Hell Fest that is the unknowing stalking ground of a random maniac. Whichever you want to start with depends on your mood!

The Witch (2016) - Looking past the Ye Olde English scripting, this supernatural "New England Folktale" is strong on the brooding department and nightmare imagery as a 1630s farming family gets terrorized by a plague of disappearances, hexes and death, seemingly perpetrated by a witch in the woods. Very atmospheric, gloomed to the grinded baby bones and downright fuckin' creepy.

Terrifier (2017) - A notoriously brutal slasher flick that'll give them coulrophobics and casuals alike a bad taste in their mouths, while rewarding us gorehounds a simple yet satisfying bodycounter as we follow Art, a demonic mime with a penchant for hunting two teenage girls at Halloween night and slaying whoever happens to be in the way just for the laughs. Make sure you're not squeamish!

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) - From one killer clown to another, though this one's cheesy affair would come as a welcome mental palette cleanser for those who're probably got fucked up by Art's ole' antics above. (Or not, depends on your ground, I guess) As a sort-of parody of The Blob, a spaceship full of clown-themed aliens arrives on Earth and wrecks havoc on a nearby small town, killing people left and right with cotton candy guns, popcorn monsters and man-eating shadow puppets. Who can stop these creatures? Why a couple of teens, of course!

Zombillenium (2017) - An animated flick based on a French comic book series, following a human health and safety inspector unwillingly becoming a part of a horror-themed amusement park he was assigned to, where real monsters reside in plain sight, after dying and returning as a demon. He now must find a way to escape the park to reunite with his daughter, but with his new monstrous form, how can he? A bit cheesy on the plot, but it has a lovely art and adorable characters (some of which has bouncy monster boobs. hurm), plus the animation is just beautiful at times!

Dave Made a Maze (2017) - A bit of a wild card, this surreal fantasy flick may not be overall horrific, but it does feature enough Minotaur monster action, nightmare situations and paper "blood". Thanks to "reasons", a normal dude with self-esteem problems named Dave somehow made a working maze (well, more like a labyrinth) out of nothing but cardboard, tape and probably other things lying around in his apartment. On the outside, the maze look more like a cardboard castle, but once Dave's girlfriend, friends and other random folk decided to step in to find him as he claims to be stuck, they're in for a huge surprise! Weird as hell, but it has that underlying warmth to its story. And then some.

The Devil's Candy (2015) - What's a Halloween without a little heavy metal and murder? This cult classic has a struggling painter and heavy metal enthusiast Jesse moving to a rural farmhouse with his family, not knowing about the apparent demonic forces residing in it and a dark history that's about to repeat itself. Demon worship, rock and roll, and gory kills, what more can you ask for?

Halloween III: Season of The  Witch (1982) - The runt of the Halloween franchise litter that most of us owe an apology to, this genuine cult favorite stood its ground as one of the more unique Halloween horror films out there for its outrageous concept of evil druids working as business men, plotting a mass genocide of children through cursed Halloween masks, a bit of science and an annoying TV commercial and jingle. And with Tom Atkins in the leading role, why the hell not?

Halloween (1978) and Halloween (2018) - And, of course, why not the classic? But wait! Why watch the classic alone when you can do it back to back with last year's welcome contender, Halloween (2018) ?! Watching the night he came home all the way to the night he came home again back-to-back is one of the finest Halloween treat one can indulge in thanks to just how good and fitting the sequel is, exploring post-trauma stress and its effect with everyone involves while still keeping the bodycount scoreboard high in the digits. Start off slow and steady with the original, before ending it swift, cunning and bloody with the modern sequel, can't go wrong there!

~~~
And there you have my list of watchables this year! Something creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky. And now, if you would excuse me, I gotta go be ooky. Stay safe now and have a...

H A P P Y  H A L L O W E E N!!!

Also, who else is excited about Halloween Kills in 2020?

So, got to see IT: Chapter 2...

Anybody else cried a bit with Richie Tozier during that lake scene?


*Kicks away box of tear-soaked tissues*

Joy Killed: Killjoy (2000) and Killjoy 2: Deliverance From Evil (2002) Double Bill Review

If only the killjoy we're gonna talk about is that awesome Lordi song but, as you will later see from the garbage we will be looking into, we all can't have good things in life all of the time...

Killjoy (2000)
Rating: 1/2
Starring: Ángel Vargas, Vera Yell, Lee Marks

Made around the time its production company Full Moon Features cut ties from its distributor Paramount (which meant a real downgrade of quality from a company that made and released entertaining cult classics back at the late 80s and early 90s such as the Puppet Master film series and Castle Freak (1995)), Killjoy is a real mess of an urban horror flick and a travesty of a horror icon.

A dork named Michael has the hots for Jada, who in turn is dating a violent thug named Lorenzo. As anything involving an archetypal douche boyfriend would, this often leads to the doofus getting black and blue all over so he tries summoning a vengeful spirit named Killjoy to get even with Lorenzo and his lackeys. Michael appears to luck out though when, tired of the nerd hitting on his girl, Lorenzo decides to scare him with a gun, only for it to go horribly wrong and gets the awkward Romeo shot dead for real.

Cut to a year later, Jada broke up with Lorenzo and is now dating a stock black guy character named Jamal. Lorenzo, in turn, is mostly up to his typical gangsta tomfoolery such as smoking dope and getting some ass, while his two henchies get lured inside an ice cream van with a clown inside claiming to have drugs for sale. Clown turns out to be Killjoy, exacting lackluster vengeance against those who killed Michael before going after Jada, Jamal and her buddy Monique because... Reasons.

Que in expositions from a random homeless guy (who might be the holy ghost or some shit) explaining to the casts what we already knew from the first twelve or so minutes, as well as give them overly complicated instructions on how to send Killjoy back to the netherworld. (AKA, a way to pad its running time) Throw in a few zombie ghost minions with lazy make-up effects, cheap CG and terrible acting tainted by an even more terrible script and production quality, and we get this train wreck that is 72 minutes too long.

I honestly cannot fathom how bad this garbage is and I still questions how, in the entire universe, did it spawn four sequels?! (And probably still counting!) Perhaps some people saw it with a "so-bad-its-good" sentiment that apparently made movies like Nail Gun Massacre (1986) and Troll 2 (1990) fondly remembered for their total absurdness? Probably not too off, but as you can tell, I am far from entertained from said absurdness.

Bodycount:

1 male shot

1 male crushed against a wall with an ice cream van

1 male burned alive

1 male shot dead 

Total: 4

Killjoy 2: Deliverance From Evil (2002)

Rating: 1/2

Starring: Wayland Geremy Boyd, Bobby Marsden, Aaron Brown

Despite trying to rack up the kill count slightly higher and with a bit more splash of red and practical grue, Killjoy 2: Deliverance From Evil (2002) still fails overall for how much build up it went through, just for the payoff to fall flat and face-first to a bear trap made up of bad cheese and misery.

On a more supernatural backwoods slasher-inclined set-up, Killjoy 2 has us following five juvenile delinquents and their two detention officers driving to a center, only for their van to break down in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone reception and no gas stations nearby. One of the closest house happens to belong to a shotgun-totting Southern belle, who shoots one of the kids after they try rummaging inside the house looking for help. An officer chaperon shoots back, more gun fire breaks out and before you know it, our group is now staying inside a voodoo woman's house where said spiritualist is making sure their friend doesn't die from a shotgun wound with a chicken's foot.

While some are unimpressed by the effort (I mean, really. Chicken. Foot) and is understandably upset of their situation, one of the girls can't help but recall the rumors from her town about some nerd exacting revenge against a trio of thugs by summoning a demonic clown called Killjoy. Thinking this might help the odds on beating their friend's increasingly inevitable death (Again, Chicken foot), Killjoy is summoned and, much to everyone's horror, the clown 's definition of "help" involves carnivorous chattery teeth, telekinetic mutilations and bad (and I mean really bad) one-liners. 

Trailing along a pace as slow as a mentally-challenged snail and boasting acting as extravagant as a toddler trying Shakespeare (Debbie Rochon's presence here is apparently a big deal, but seeing I hardly or yet to see any movies that had her in it, I feel indifferent on the subject), Killjoy 2: Deliverance From Evil (2002) is just as a chore to watch as the first film. The titular demon clown does not appear until 38 minutes into the movie which is over half of the total run, meaning we get to spend that time watching flat characters (who looks twice as old as the age they're supposed to be) trying to be interesting by being cliched black characters bitching with one another until our wise-cracking joker arrives to put an end to them. How interesting they ended up you ask? As interesting as a lonely fat slob eating a donut at an alley somewhere: it's sad, pathetic, moist around some areas. Just like the movie! 

The last half, in turn, is your usual A Nightmare on Elm Street-clone shenanigans like fantasy-fueled kills and foul villain one-liners that are somehow worse than the last film (So much so that I'm sure Fred Kruger's facepalming upon hearing each of them. Facepalming with his razor gloved hand), only for it to end on a tired note when the last act is really no more than our surviving protagonists and Killjoy just standing there talking and taunting. What the actual fuck? I honestly wasn't expecting Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil to be good, but I didn't know it was going to be this level of insufferable boredom that I honestly contemplated on setting myself on fire just so the torture of watching this movie from credits to credits would end!

Long story short, some idiots banked on greenlighting a sequel to a movie that shouldn't exist, ends up creating a sequel that shouldn't exist and I happen to be one of the sad morons who gets the unfortunate opportunity to watch it. Learn from my mistake.

Bodycount:

1 female shot on the head

1 female bitten to death by a pair of demonic chattery teeth

1 male bled to death from a shotgun wound on the chest

1 male thrown to and impaled on a water pump

1 male slashed to death with a knife

1 female had her throat cut

Total: 6

~~~

But what of the other Killjoy movies you whine? Well, truth be told, after I took a gander at Killjoy 3 (2010) (which happens to be my first Killjoy movie), the movie hardly danced a supernatural slasher jig and more on a paranormal horror-of-the-demonic-clown swagger. The following sequels Killjoy Goes To Hell (2012) and Killjoy's Psycho Circus (2016) appears to be following that trend (that last one has a demon riding a spaceship...), which is no loss for me as I will always have my to-go movies Stitches (2012) and Terrifier (2018) for that sweet supernatural slasher clown goodness. And, heck, while we're at it, why not throw in Clown (2014) and the 2017 It remake for good measure? Yep, screw off, Killjoy. Screw off~

Yeah, what Killjoy? Come at me, bro!