A Nightmare Brat: Milo (1998)

Milo (1998)

Rating: **

Starring: Jennifer Jostyn, Antonio Fargas, Paula Cale

Sixteen years ago, Milo, a ten year-old boy in a yellow rain slicker and sounds an awful lot like someone's creepy basement-dwelling cousin in their twenties, lured five girls to his father's abortion clinic and murdered one of them with a scalpel. He tried to escape from the crime by swimming through a lake, he instead drowned in his attempt. Or did he?

Skipping ahead to the present and three of the kids who were with Milo last, now grown-up, got invitations to attend the wedding of the fourth only to learn that the bride-to-be was just killed in a crash. Our heroine, Claire, decided to honor her friend's passing by taking her job as a teacher at a local school and no soon after, she starts seeing glimpses of Milo scurrying around the playground, yellow rainslicker, bike with card spokes and all. Her students also begun acting weirdly around her, pranking her with live frogs, obscene drawings on the chalk board and getting passed her own childhood photo with Milo scribblings on the back. The school staff and Claire's friends think these are all just tricks from the tykes to test the new teacher, but Claire is convinced that Milo is still out there, somehow alive and haven't aged since, apparently out to kill her and her friends because, um, evil kids will do evil kids stuff?

This one is just kinda existing to exist, honestly; Milo (1998) had the potential to be a creepy killer kid flick with its ideas and a few effective scenes with the tiny terror, but bearing an overly simple plot, lackluster direction and uninspired acting from its casts, the film hardly passes as interesting and instead leaves us with nothing but a dull drawl and some unanswered questions in the end, like who or what exactly Milo is. (I mean, hints were given at the last act suggesting it all had something to do with a botched abortion, but that doesn't explain why Milo is still a kid 40 something years later, or why he's seemingly immortal and/or supernatural) It also doesn't help that the kid just sounds silly whenever he gets talking, nor the fact that there's not a lot of noteworthy murders to write home about, but I will give the movie points for its lead Paula Cale being decent enough on her role, a few creepy aesthetics and, too, the unintentional hilarity of the titular mini-killer's unique characterization. 

It's tolerable, but easily replaceable by better killer kid flicks. 

Bodycount:

1 girl stabbed with a scalpel

1 female mentioned killed in a car accident

1 female cut to death with a scalpel

1 female slashed through the gut

1 male found murdered

1 male stabbed to death with a scalpel

Total: 7

Raiders of The Lost Shlock: Playroom (1990)

Playroom (1990) (AKA "Schizo")

Rating: ***

Starring: Lisa Aliff, Aron Eisenberg, Christopher McDonald

Suffering from reocurring nightmare-flashbacks of how he found his entire family murdered inside some old tombs as a child, American archeologist Christopher Hayden decided to revisit the same dig to finish what his late father started as a form of closure, tagging along his magazine editor boss/girlfriend Jenny, his drunkard photographer friend Paul and the photographer’s yoga-loving wife Marcy to supervise and document the find. Their excavation is for an ancient Yugoslavian monastery that's built on top of the tomb of a notorious prince named Ilok, who's said to have bargained with a demon in order to gain eternal life and cured the boredom that naturally comes with living forever by torturing peasants through mostly medieval means. 

Curiously, as soon as Chris steps into the place, he starts seeing and getting tormented by his childhood imaginary friend "Daniel", who may have something to do with the deaths of his family. The further he dwells on this, the more Chris obsesses over digging out all the secrets he could get from the tomb, slowly losing grip of his own noggin before eventually going into a murderous rage by the time he unearthed the titular playroom. All the while, a man who was wrongfully accused for massacring nearly all of the Hayden family many years ago gets an earful of Chris' return, enticing him to escape his confines and leg his way to the monastery to get even with the guy who got him locked up in a mental ward, unaware that an ancient evil has awakened and it demands to be entertained through carnal violence...

Written by Jackie Earle Haley (Yes, that Jackie Earle Haley) and directed by Dr. Giggles (1992)'s Manny Coto, Playroom (1990) starts out, by all means, as a slowburn psycho-horror as we watch our leading archeologist go down the rabbit hole of uncovering the hidden chambers of a tomb while battling his inner demons, brought upon by the memories of his father's abuse and a then-hinted possible supernatural influence. Think Jack Torrance's axe-happy breakdown from The Shining (1980), only we have a sweaty Christopher McDonald's going cuckoo for murder, egged on by a demonic ten-year old. This goes on for about almost an hour, with the rest of the small casts of characters showing concern over Chris' mental deterioration but doing little to nothing to remedy this aside from telling him off how crazy he's starting to sound, as well as suggesting getting out of there while they're still have two working legs. (Right, suggesting, even after one too many outbursts from the increasingly pissed-off prehistorian...) 

By the time Chris' little doomed crew finally decided to waltz back to the nearby town and get help, this is thankfully the same time the film finally kicked things up with gruesome delight and cheesy hokum as the angry archaeologian finally discovers Ilok's playroom full of torture devices, thus earning him the prince's full influence and act out as their executioner. With that, Playroom (1990) delves into slasher grounds and even though there's hardly any strong gore to speak of (save for the last kill), a fair set of the murder scenes are a decently good bunch for their crazily wicked set-pieces, workable cinematography and Christopher McDonald going full ham on his excitable killer persona, playfully taunting and throwing childish insults at his victims before offing them. There's also a brief scene where Miss Virginia 1983 Lisa Aliff's character encounters Ilok in his true form, a diminutive mummified man brought to life onscreen through an animatronic puppet full of jerky body movements and rubbery facial expressions. The whole moment is, without a doubt, this movie's ironic highlight as the hilariously awful-looking scraggily tiny terror is a rather memorable presence, devilishly spewing one-liners while prowling around in one of the stranger cat-and-mouse stalking scenes out there in horror.

As a concept, Playroom (1990) had the potential to be a better movie should its narrative was handled better, delivering on its promising ideas of psychological downfall and maybe even give its small casts a little more depth than your average paint-by-number slasher victims. Still, it succeeds in invoking tension and tone from its gloomy direction and the effective Slavic ruin backdrops, before going all out on the crazy massacre that sets itself well enough as this film's final act, so the film isn't a total loss in my opinion. A tad misguided, but passable nonetheless. 

Bodycount:

1 girl found murdered

1 male found dead with a head wound

1 female found murdered

1 female got her back sawed open

1 male repeatedly beaten with a skull, falls into a spiked pit

1 male killed offscreen

1 male had his neck shot off, decapitated

1 male ran through with a pickaxe, dies from injury

Total: 8

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.) 

A Cold Child's Beginning: Orphan: First Kill (2022)

Orphan: First Kill (2022)

Rating: ***

Starring: Isabelle Fuhrman, Julia Stiles and Rossif Sutherland

While not entirely a mainstream classic, 2009's Orphan set itself to be a fun and memorable take on the killer kid subgenre that mostly played by the rules and acted out established tropes, all the while also toying with them until its rather unforeseen twist that earned this movie's cult fave status among fans. Now, we see ourselves going back for another round of terror tyke horrors and thrills as Orphan: First Kill (2022) explores what went on two years prior to the events of the first film, which turns out to be quite a deranged ride when it turns out our titular murderous orphan isn't the only monster out there.

Set in 2007, we follow Leena Klammer (Isabelle Fuhrman), a disturbed but manipulative adult woman afflicted with a rare hormonal disorder that have her appearing as a nine year old child, orchestrate her escape from an Estonian psychiatric institute by murdering anybody that got in her way. She soon arrives in American soil by posing as a girl named Esther Albright, who have been missing since 2003, charmingly ingratiating herself into the child's wealthy Connecticut family after they were notified of her reappearance. 

Philanthropist wife Tricia, however, immediately doubts the possibility of this girl being her long lost daughter due to Esther's noticeably new European accent and the fact that the child can't remember important details from her life before she went missing. Inspector Donnan, the detective who investigated Esther's disappearance, also suspects something off with this whole picture and starts looking into the case again. As these little inconveniences pile up into a jeopardizing situation for her cover, Leena has no choice but to bump off a body or two, but what she didn't expect is a little assistance from an unexpected player and an interesting position that may or may not go in her favor...

Comparing this to the original's semi-serious tone, Orphan: First Kill leans towards a cheesier fanfare instead of re-hashing the first film's sober song and dance, serving up a level of outrageous camp and an outlandishly ludicrous twist to boot through a direction that wisely tampered with our expectations. It's an approach that works well enough to keep everyone on their toes and, for some parts, it even allows the narrative to explore dimensions within its titular villain that weren't touched touched upon or were just hinted back at Orphan (2009). The choice to have Fuhrman reprise her role as Esther, for one, does induce genuine chuckles as the cheesiness of the character's trait being an adult posing as a child is more obvious now considering the actress is currently in her 20s, but seeing there's hardly a secret regarding the character's true age, not only do we get to see her more openly evil light as a manic mini psychopath (just watch her take a big swig at some wine and play a piano while her hands are bloodied from a fresh kill!) but this also led to the film allowing her to dish out bloodier murders that embraced the franchise's bodycount-friendly premise.

The only drawback, sadly, is that the overall production took a dip down in quality. The entire thing looks and feels like a TV movie, with a strange white tinting that kinda comes distracting for me and a lot of uninspired camera work. The acting from the remaining casts feels rather subpar, though Julia Stiles as Tricia Albright did manage to strike an entertaining stride midpoint into the film once it's made clear that Esther isn't the only dangerous person in the household. And speaking of, there were a lot of opportunities for the film to go a little more crazy with the neat twist it pulled, chances wherein we could have seen Esther really tough it out seeing she's going toe-to-toe against some nasty people, but with it being done halfway into the movie, it all just felt compressed and maybe even a little rushed. Nothing that bad, though. To be frank, it's all still serviceable, but I can't help but think that if the twist came in a little sooner, we could have gotten more drama and intrigue from two sociopaths butting heads!

Looking past its lack of workable scares and polish, Orphan: First Kill at least offers a worthwhile fun with its silly yet committed premise. It may not hit its mark right all the time, but if you're in a mood for some popcorn-lite B-grade horror thriller made to be entertainingly corny, then this one's an okay candidate.

Bodycount:

1 male had his head repeatedly bashed against a wall

1 male beaten to death with a billy club

1 female beaten to death with a tire iron

1 male repeatedly knifed, shot to death

1 male shot with a crossbow, stabbed to death with a lapier

1 female falls to her death

1 male pushed, falls to his death

Total: 7

The Bloody Bobby Bloodfest: Black Pumpkin (2018) and Legend of Fall Creek (2021) Double Bill Review

A low-budget slasher franchise about a Halloween-themed killer kid? Offing people?! On Halloween?!?! Eh, sure, why not?

Black Pumpkin (2018)

Rating: ***

Starring: Ellie Patrikios, Matt Rife and Grayson Thorne Kilpatrick

Years ago, on Halloween, a local sheriff and his teenage daughter were murdered in their home and though the killer was never caught, they did leave a calling card: a black pumpkin.

Fast forward ten years later, two kids, Elliot and his best friend Porkchop, are filming a documentary about a local spook spot known as Diablo's Den for their school project, a place known for being the setting of "pretty much every tall tale and campfire story" from their town. Their presence, unfortunately, awaken something that terrorized their little burgh before, a local boogeyman named "Bloody Bobby" who many say was the ten-year old kid that vanished into the woods of Diablo's Den back at 1988. 

As people start being killed by “Bloody Bobby”, it's only a matter of time before the killer tyke makes his way to the two kids that brought him back, all the while the local crazy, Alex Griffin, who lost his brother at the hands of Bobby, tries his darnest to warn everyone of the little boogeyman's return and end the nightmare once and for all.

Black Pumpkin (2018) can be best described as the love child between "kid-centered" horror vibe ala The Monster Squad (1987) or Monster House (2006) and gorily shlocky supernatural slasher mayhem, done in that cheapjack B-grade filmmaking job that would either leave you giggling or groaning at how cheesy it can get. It's hardly scary with its less-than-stellar acting and cookie cutter plotting, not to mention its bargain price editing and uninspired score, but the film does have that macabre playfulness lingering around in terms of tone and the scenes wherein little "Bloody Bobby" is just doing his murderous deeds are just fun enough for how practical they're done, giving this messy treat at least a pass for its effort.

There isn't really much else to say about Black Pumpkin (2018), frankly; it's a low-budget bodycounter with a hammy heart of a kid who grew up in the late 80s or early 90s and that's more or less it. It's definitely not for everyone, but those willing to give this a try are welcome to do so, especially if you're into crazy killer kid movies and/or a big Halloween horror nut who's a little tougher to crack.

Bodycount:

1 male knifed, later found with his eye plucked out

1 female shot on the face with a rigged shotgun

1 male hacked on the head with a hatchet

1 female crushed against a tree with a van

1 male disemboweled

1 female wrapped in barbwire and set ablaze

1 female strangled with fairy lights

1 male shredded with a lawnmower

1 male stabbed on the throat with a fire poker

Total: 9

~~~

Legend of Fall Creek (2021)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Frank Brantley, Alton Clemente and Chuck Clendenin

After opening with a brief lesson of vocabulistics regarding the term “Grindhouse” and a text scroll backstory to the urban legend of Bobby Maxwell, a boy who vanished into the woods of Diablo's Den back at 1988 Halloween, the plot officially starts with a couple with car problems getting stranded on a road at All Hallow's Eve midnight and, as you would've guessed, they're soon killed by someone.

Cut to hours later and we now follow one Reggie who's returning to his home town to visit his favorite cousin Tiffany, 20 years after he and his family suddenly moved away. Their plans to catch-up lead to them attending the big Halloween party in town later that evening, unknown to the cousins and pretty much everybody else that Bobby Maxwell, AKA "Bloody Bobby", has gatecrashed the festivities with murder, mayhem and revenge in mind.

Legend of Fall Creek was actually shot in 2016 under the title Bloody Bobby before being edited and retitled for distribution in 2021, marketed as the prequel to Black Pumpkin (2018). This said, the movie certainly shows its age and low(er) budget and, I'm not gonna jerk around with this but, yeah, it's bad; the plot wallows in D-grade melodrama talk in large chunks and snail pace, hardly showing and doing anything horror-related until it remembers that it has this killer kid thing going around the opening and throws in a murder and/or exposition when it has the time. It does eventually go full slasher by the third act once the Halloween party starts, but that doesn't really help when there are hardly any likable and/or interesting characters to go with this, further falling the film short on the entertainment factor.

Annoyingly, whenever a kill or so happens, Legend of Fall Creek (2021) go Grindhouse on us with video and audio effects made to look and sound like melted film reels, distorted voices, slow-mo shots and the likes. I'm not sure whether this is already in the unedited Bloody Bobby version or these are the editing done by the folks back at distribution, but all it does is make the murders hardly comprehensible and cheapened, something a good Grindhouse tribute should avoid doing at all costs!

In a way, I can see why Black Pumpkin (2018) was released first as that film is a whale of an improvement compared to Legend of Fall Creek (2021). What we have here is a trainwreck of corner-cutting direction, talky bad acting and tiresome plotting with barely anything to make up for them, a real damn feat at being unworkable. So unless you're a real hard ass for punishment, I suggest skipping this one. 

Bodycount:
1 male found slaughtered
1 female brained with a hammer, later found gutted

1 female knifed to death

1 male decapitated with a machete

1 male brained with a bat, beaten against a toilet

1 female stabbed in the gut with a machete, later found garroted with fairy lights

1 female crucified to a wall, gets a nail hammered into her mouth

1 male stabbed in the mouth with a nail and had his guts fished out

Total: 8

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 

Trailer Crud of Terror: Dolly Deadly (2016)

Dolly Deadly (2016)
Rating: **
Starring: Justin Moore, Kimberly West-Carroll, Jay Sosnicki

What if we take the first half of Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007), stretch that into a feature film at the cost of as little funds as possible and focus more on the trailer trash life? Most of us would likely fear the results but here it is, Dolly Deadly (2016). Yeah.

We open this hicksploitation for the modern age with a chain smoking single mom trying out a new hair dye, not knowing that the chemicals in it are so tainted, it eats through scalp and skull until brain matter gushes out. The end result is a dead mother and a newly orphaned baby boy crying his eyes out.  

Flash forward a couple of years later, Benji is now a preteen boy living with his trashy grandma and her freeloading boyfriend. His only friends are his mom's dolls who are alive in his imagination but this, of course, doesn't sit well for the rest of the neighborhood so lil' Benji is seen as a freak. Harassed and abused, it isn't long before his sanity starts slipping and he wants bloody retribution against those who crossed him. 

To be fair, as an indie production, Dolly Deadly has a lot of spirit in the sense that the people working around it really went all out with what they can use and do with a budget worth two potatoes and the result is admirable. The cinematography done for Benji's dream and imagination sequences, for one, works with their dark bubblegum color schemes and partial animation done in stop-motion which adds to the creepiness and craziness of the boy's slowly unhinging perspective. The plot doesn't dwell any deeper than a ticking timebomb of emotion and psychological abuse until the fantastically violent last act which sort of delivers, but I still really couldn't bring myself to give this anything higher than a lukewarm pat on the back due to its drawbacks.

The predictability of a lot of its scenes meant sitting through them can be a chore, especially when the acting involved dips down from mediocre to crass which the film does from time to time. In fact, with a large bulk of the film focusing greatly on Benji shouldering the weight of his trashy life, the pacing really dragged itself around the boy's suffering at the hands and tongues of his tormentors, thus perfecting the image of a dysfunctional childhood life a tad too well that it gets banally offbeat way longer than it needed to be and it's barely enjoyable. Add the matter that the amateur editing and obvious low budget can get very distracting when it actually hits you in the face and you got here a tired, tedious and overblown slow burn act that aims high, only to hit it a few steps down midway.

Now, the last act wherein Benji finally starts his murderous streak does earn some points for its hamminess as literal doll parts become lethal murder weapons, apparently strong enough to pierce through skin and flesh, or be used as a bludgeon to break open a hapless victim like a piñata. All of this committed by an eight-year old slasher boy in a drag and a papermache mask and, my gods, I'm loving it until the movie settles with a low murder count, thus leaving me with an unsatisfied taste in my mouth after sitting through all of that build-up.

If any of this dive down to low-budget psychological craft sounds like a keeper in your eyes then you definitely should try it out. Dolly Deadly (2016), again, has heart and effort in it, just not the kind that caters to my taste of revenge-fueled slashing, art house horrors or murderous kids. I'll leave all of that to good titles like The Children (2008) or Mikey (1992) while the rest of the world experience the effort that is this movie.

Bodycount:
1 female got her scalp melted off and explode from a botched bottle of hair dye
1 female stabbed to death with swords (dream)
1 boy bludgeoned to death with a doll
1 male had his gut stabbed open with doll parts
1 female poisoned, face melted off with tainted face cream
1 female seen strangled with a belt
Total: 6

Golden Title: The Omen (1976)

Let's celebrate Halloween 2019 with a classic.

The Omen (United Kingdom/USA, 1976)
Rating: *****
Starring: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, Harvey Stephens

In Rome, Robert Thorn, an American diplomat, just received word that his newborn child died at birth, a grave news that is not only distraught to him but will surely crush his wife, Katherine. Hence when a well-meaning priest offered Robert a chance to adopt a newborn child whose mother died during an operation, he is quick to accept the child as his own, naming him Damien, and his wife was none the wiser.

Five years later, not long after Robert gets appointed as the US Ambassador for Great Britain, the Thorns find themselves in an increasingly frightful predicament as mysterious deaths and events start to plague them, beginning with the moment the family nanny commits suicide during Damien's birthday, claiming it is all for the boy. In fact, all of the sudden strange happenings seem to be linked to Damien and it isn't too long before an unsettling truth will come upon the family, as well as to those who insists on aiding them against a powerful dark force.

A prime example of a quintessential title within the 70's Satanic cycle, The Omen (1976) works its apocalyptic narrative through a more subtle and realistic direction compared to, let's say, The Exorcist (1973), a similarly religiously themed horror movie that's made effective thanks to its shocking blasphemous visuals. The Omen, alternatively, focuses more on downplaying the typical onscreen demonic horror elements of nightmare imagery and underworld monsters, in its place instead is a strongly orchestrated sense of helplessness as its plot implies that the Devil's forces may have already got most, if not all of the cards played in the favor of the Beast right at the beginning of the movie, while those who choose to fight against them are doomed to die while their God remains distant or absent.

It's a particularly powerful notion and The Omen (1976) captures this quite intriguingly through its story's flow, starting everything up with good fortune falling upon the Thorns only for it to slowly crumble down as one accident and odd occurrence pressures the family to seek help from both conventional and unconventional ways, leading to either a ghastly death or a revelation that defies rational explanation and leans more on the prophetic. It's this direction that the film revels at and to a good effect, as it eventually questions how much control do our protagonists have to begin with and where exactly does the line draw in regards to what is nothing more than a phase or a pawn to a grand cosmic scheme, which in this case is the Apocalypse as indicated in the Christian Bible. This Biblical concept is justly explored, but done in a way that doesn't feel overly pretentious and still caters to a wide array of horror hounds like you and me.

One of the movie's memorable elements, for example, leans more on the exploitative side of horror as it tackles smaller omens indicated through a photographer's collection of photos they took during Damien's birthday. A lot of these results to well-executed Rube Goldberg-inspired set-pieces that executes victims in spectacular manners, pretty much a precursor to Final Destination movies. (In fact, Final Destination 3 (2006)'s idea of omens through photographs was directly inspired by this movie) Gothic overtones are also strong in this movie's cinematography, done mostly through location shots and gloomy stylized lighting. Add on the Oscar-winning score by none other than Jerry Goldsmith and the effectiveness of The Omen's dark tone is very much achieved.

In terms of talent, The Omen (1976) boasts quite a casts for a horror film with Gregory Peck bringing all he can to the table as the leading man, playing a character determined to dig out the truth yet still holding on to a grounded view to his situation. Young Harvey Stephens, playing Damien, would also become one of the most memorable horror icons to grace cinema, odd as the child barely uttered a word nor did he did anything gradually evil but his very normal appearance contrasts his grim fate as the Antichrist, unsettling at best as one could never tell, reflecting the written deceptive nature of the Devil himself.

All in all, The Omen (1976) is a classic that earned its place among horror giants. Past the religious connotations and the over-the-top deaths, it is a story that can very well transpire in real life as a possibility, questioning fate and control at a terrifyingly psychological manner, thus a true treat for all genre fans, both in and out of the horror community.

Bodycount:
1 baby died during birth, later revealed due to head trauma
1 female hanged
1 male impaled by a broken-off lightning rod
1 unborn child miscarried
1 female pushed through a window, lands on an ambulance
1 male decapitated by a projected glass pane
1 female stabbed with a fork and knife
1 male shot
Total: 8

A Family Game: Ready Or Not (2019)

Ready or Not (2019)
Rating: ***
Starring: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Mark O'Brien

We all know that the rich can be terrifying once all that money goes into their head. Films like The Purge franchise and Rob Zombie's 31 (2016) show what the horror genre can do with this concept and Ready Or Not (2019) appears to be a solid contender for this class warfare from hell. If only it's a smooth consistent ride through and through.

Story is simple enough to be frank; Grace (Samara Weaving) has just joined the wealthy Le Domas family after marrying their estranged son, Alex (Mark O'Brien). She's simply happy to be a part of the clan after growing up in foster care, though her husband is unusually uneasy being around his family and gets more troubled once they call the newlyweds to partake in a particular Le Domas tradition.

"Who wants to play a game? It's time for Hide and Seek!"

Having made their money from games ranging from selling cards and boardgames, to owning professional sports team, it is tradition for the Le Domas to have the new member play a game on the night of their wedding, selected from an antique card box. As Grace pulls the "Hide And Seek" card, it becomes clear why Alex hasn't been home for some time as, whenever someone pulls "hide and seek", the seekers get armed and the one hiding gets to be killed.

On paper, Ready Or Not (2019) sounds like a "reverse slasher" in the making, wherein the lead is the one doing the hacking and slashing once push comes to shove through their efforts to survive a predicament, like your in-laws going The Most Dangerous Game on you inside their very gothic mansion and backwoods property. The actual film's approach, however, is more of a survivalist thriller with a salad-tossed variety of comedy, as well as some horror elements like the classic Faustian deals, Satanic rituals and a few slasher film-esque deaths to keep the plot going and add a bit more meat to it.

"Run, Run, Run! Time to run and hide!"

This is all done with a flow and tone that, frankly, felt all over the place, but it's a direction and style that mostly works with Ready or Not (2019)'s outrageous yet fun story, even more so since the pros overshadow the cons one way or another. The resulting film does manage to do a fair round of its jokes and thrills right, reveling on dialogue and physical "splatstick" while working out decent cat-and-mouse hijinks that utilize the backwoods mansion setting to a tee with the added bonus of being "humbly" gory and bloody for true horror hounds. It is far from a grand ride, mind you, as we still get the occasional run of predictable horror clichés and stale jokes poking fun at cartoonishly dumb rich people, a matter that hinders the full effectiveness of this movie as an intense horror thriller, but does wonders as a black comedy!

Ready or Not (2019), nevertheless, still intends on shaking the foundations a bit, such as withholding the common run of turning its obvious Final Girl into a machete-wielding slayer of evil and would rather maintain her status as a sassy yet resourceful bride-in-peril who must recognize most of her foes' lack of experience with killing and manipulates that somehow in order to survive. In turn, the running gag of having our murderous family hilariously offing the wrong people way too many times picture them as being far from the usual loaded maniacs who kill for the simple reason that they can literally afford the time and day to commit it, and that the aforementioned Faustian deal have more to say regarding their motives for doing this deadly tradition. Motives that involves wealth second and the Le Domas clan's very own survival first.

"Stay inside the shadows, all you girls and boys! Don't you make noise!" 

There is a lot playing around Ready or Not (2019)'s simple yet uniquely executed play of Devil pacts, human sacrifices and loyalty to one's family. May it be the fear of fitting in a new family, or the morals one might sacrifice at the price of their own family's survival, but the bottom ballpark is a darkly fun survival horror thriller that treats the elites as bumbling yet still threatening monsters for reasons both fantastical and relatable. Personally, it's far from a masterpiece, but I would agree that it's a guilty pleasure of a watch.

Bodycount:
1 male shot repeatedly with a crossbow, killed offscreen
1 female shot on the face
1 female shot on the mouth with a crossbow, hacked with a battle axe
1 female crushed by a dumb waiter
1 male killed in car crash
1 male shot on the neck
1 female brained to death with a wooden box
1 elderly female explodes
1 male explodes
1 female explodes
1 female and 2 boys explode offcamera
1 male explodes
1 male explodes
Total: 15

Fresh From The Crazy Cradle: Mikey (1992)

Mikey (1992)
Rating: ***
Starring: Brian Bonsall, Josie Bissett, Ashley Laurence

I first came upon Mikey (1992) as a DVD at the video section of a local mall when I was a wee little lad going through a zombie phase - as in I watch and re-watch zombie movies both old and new as if its a daily nutrient vital to my very existence - so I didn't really gave much thought about it other than it's silly trying to rope in classic slasher villains Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees to its tagline, as if the little evil twerp in the cover would match up to their legacy. Yep, lil' me wasn't easily persuaded. (Most of the time)

I eventually got to see this movie some years later when I was attending college, spotting a copy at a "get-three-for-one-price" bargain sale that also led to me owning a copy of Death to The Supermodels (2005) and Sparrow (2010). Let's just say the following weekend took a toll on my brain cells...

The gist of Mikey (1992) is that the titular boy is a 9-year old psychopath with a murderous streak; we basically start off the movie with him killing his adopted mum and sister after the former scolds him for playing with fire and the latter for not taking the blame. One deep fried mum and (a truly disturbing sight) drowned girl later, Mikey's adopted dad gets home from work and the little bugger brains him to death with a baseball bat before hiding in a closet and spinning a tale about a break-in turned deadly when the cops find him.

This puts Mikey into another set of foster parents, Neil and Rachel Trenton, who are quick to treat the kid with much love and dedication as a happy family would, introducing him to a neighboring boy to befriend, taking him to zoos, and setting him up to a good school. For a while, Mikey behaves like a little angel despite occasionally slipping out weird quirks like lying on graves and drawing murderous turkeys, quickly concluded away as his trauma simply acting up. It isn't long before the boy's goody-goody façade starts to break and Mikey's back to the evil kid shtick, sabotaging dates involving a teen girl he grows a liking to, manipulating adults into thinking he's innocent, and straight up murdering folks that he doesn't fancy anymore.

Quite surprised to see a lot of familiar faces in this one like Hellraiser (1987)'s Ashley Laurence as Ms. Gilder and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child (1989)'s Whit Herford as Mikey's friend Ben, though I doubt their presence in this film will be enough to make it a gem well-worth finding. For one, while Laurence does a fine job as a kind teacher who's the first to see past our killer kid's good guy persona and Josie Bissett of the TV series Melrose Place fairing quite well as the object of Mikey's puppy dog obsession affection, the rest of the casts have acting chops that remind me of tongue-in-cheek made-for-TV dramas of the old days that, oddly, fits to the absurdity of a serial killing kid whose cheesiness reeks strongly of cringy one-liners and crazy feats the movie have him do. (Like propping up three adult corpses into a macabre dinner set-up for the film's finale)

The film is gem for those looking for a silly killer kid horror movie to poke fun at, but those looking for a dark and serious thriller regarding mentally damaged children probably wouldn't find much here to satisfy their viewing needs no matter how much the movie tries to build a sensible build-up to Mikey's climactic murder-outburst. On that note, not much to say about the kills regarding bloodiness or gore (with two of them pretty much a carbon copy of one another), but the first massacre certainly has its dark moments (again, drowned child) and we did get a few passable latter kills including a fatal slingshot and an arrow through the gut.

As an interesting footnote, Mikey (1992) is one of a few films still banned in the UK, originally rejected for release in 1993 before finally getting the ban in 1996 due to the case of young James Bulger, who was kidnapped and murdered by two ten-year-old boys. Child psychiatrists and other professionals probably had a field day pointing out the dangers of exposing lil' munchkins to slasher films like Mikey (1992) much to the delight of witch hunter soccer moms, thus it simply never got resubmitted for release since then.

Truth be told, the idea of a murdering child is upsetting and terrifying in general, but this film's generic slasher framework and hammy cliches do drop the terror factor a notch or two, despite the occasional creepy imagery. (Mikey videotaping and re-watching his own murders, for one) It's far from a forgotten classic, but it executed the tropes well enough to at least earn a fleeting interest and a sporadic watch.

Bodycount:
1 girl drowned in a pool
1 female electrocuted in a bathtub with a live hairdryer
1 male crashes through door glass, brained to death with a baseball bat
1 male electrocuted in a Jacuzzi with a live radio
1 female stabbed on the neck with a glass shard, falls off a floor
1 male shot through with an arrow
1 female shot on the eye with a slingshot marble
1 male immolated in house explosion
Total: 8

Take The World: Brightburn (2019)

Brightburn (2019)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn

While I've read a fair share of comic books as a kid, none of them had as strong of an impact to me as the original Marvel Zombies limited series back at 2005. Not only did this very book introduce me to superheroes beyond familiar names like Spiderman, Wolverine or Captain America (pretty much opening floodgates of superhero comics for me to dive into and try), but it also catered to my love for zombie movies back then, giving me something out of the ordinary when it comes to the shambling undead.

To see these oh-so-beloved heroes as something worse, as gruesome super-powered flesh-eating monsters born out of an incurable infection, more or less taught me that, when things go downhill, the heroes we love can become the worst case scenario. This what 2019's Brightburn is. A super-powered worst case scenario.

Twelve year old Baron Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn) is experiencing a lot of strange things lately: he sleepwalks to the barn at night, hears voices in his head and finds out he has superhuman strength and invulnerability. It isn't long before he finds out he is adopted, that the parents he knew all this time (David Denman and Elizabeth Banks) found him as a baby inside a crash-landed space craft. Unfortunately for us, this isn't Smallville, Kansas and Baron happens to have a concerning fascination for human body parts as well as a nasty habit creeping on girls he likes. This isn't a superhero story. No. This is a supervillain's. Soon, those who crosses Baron's path or threaten to expose his dark side will know his true power as Brightburn.

Writers Brian and Mark Dunn pen this unique slasher/superhero hybrid about an unpredictable and corrupted young boy discovering his otherworldly origins and while it does show how dangerous and unstoppable said boy can be with his powers scarily (and gorily) well, the final product felt lacking on character development, ironically predictable and easily comparable to classics like The Bad Seed (1956), given that movie's bodycount was modeled after Friday the 13th-style stalkings with DC comic's Superman's abilities as murder weapons.

A lot of missed opportunities could have delve further into the plot and answer some vital questions, more of it concerning Brandon's sudden acceptance to be a death avatar in a cape since he starts out as this intelligent and loving boy who dearly loves his parents. This route could have given more weight to the scenes wherein our parental figures try to understand their son's murderous streak or why some of them is simply outright denying it but, on the other side of the coin, the absence of reasoning why we suddenly have Superman-Gone-Way-South here adds to the creepiness of Brightburn (2019), cementing it fittingly as a unique slasher horror that delivers the messy goods along its young alien villain.

As a slasher flick, it exceedingly subverts conventions while -again, ironically- building around them; we still have a masked killer out prowling around, stalking his victims and killing them with relentless brutality like any good slasher, though the superhero elements gave each kill that extra punch not just because of the detailed gore work (both practical and CG), but also on the fact that they're needlessly overpowered, a clear sign on how our killer kid lacks self-control over his powers, either due to him still figuring out his limits or him simply enjoying what he can unleash. Not to say that the stalk-and-slaughter antics here could genuinely make you feel real dread or fear, but I wont deny that they can be intense.

The movie is far from perfect, relying heavily on typical slasher and child-go-psycho movie tropes that, yes, I am sure many of which we've seen before, but Brightburn (2019) wins me over with its atypical choices, degrading superhero platitudes and, well, for just how good it looks for a film made around an estimated budget of $7,000,000. So if you happen to the that one guy who wonders what would happen if god-like status fall in the hands of someone who isn’t selfless and moral like a certain Mr. Kent, this is definitely one of many good films to answer that. (Next comes to mind is Chronicle (2012)) If the ending has anything to go by, though, this may not be the last we have seen of Brandon Brightburn Breyer...

Bodycount:
1 female attacked, later found with her gut ripped open
1 male crushed inside a dropped truck, jaw smashed open and bled to death
1 male shot through the head with the killer's heat vision
1 male hit by the killer in flight at top speed, slaughtered apart upon impact
1 female beaten within the house, bled to death from wounds
1 female dropped to her death
268+ victims killed in passenger jet crash
Total:274+

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