Weasels, Sirens and Cage? Oh My!: Willy's Wonderland (2021)

Willy's Wonderland (2021)
Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Emily Tosta, Beth Grant

Apparently, if you put Nicolas Cage inside a death house full of killers, he's not trapped in there with them. They're trapped in there with him.

 This is the case in Willy's Wonderland (2021), where Cage plays a lone, quiet and nameless drifter who sees himself driving through a set of road spikes "accidentally" left there. Just his luck, a tow truck happens to conveniently spot him and its driver, Jed, is willing to work on the ride if the drifter, apparently unable to pay for the new tires, is willing to work it off himself. So Jed calls in Tex Macadoo, the owner of the kid's pizzeria Willy's Wonderland and he has a proposition for the drifter; stay overnight to clean and fix the place up and the new tires are for free in the morning!

With a hand shake and a swift tour around the pizzeria, the drifter becomes "The Janitor" and off he goes to work. But things aren't all right around Willy's. Not when the animatronics gaze at him hungrily, their claws, teeth and weapons itching to shed blood, results of a Satanic ritual done years ago. So as night falls, the Janitor figures out (rather quickly) that he's in a rough night as the robotic menaces go after him, leaving him to fight back and spill some robot gore, all the while still cleaning up the place, taking hourly breaks for a soda and pinball game, and encounter some well meaning yet still doomed kids who decided to break in to, well, break him out.

Now, see, if you're looking for a horror movie that's rich in subtext and substance, then you're at the wrong pizza stop. Willy's Wonderland (2021) is seemingly made for two purposes; to be a bloody, cheesy, easy-going horror-comedy and to be a Nicolas Cage vehicle. There's really no deeper plot in here than Cage fighting off a gaggle of fuzzy robots and this can be easily seen with how shallow and bland most of the characters are, and too how quickly this film gets to the punching point. This said, it can get slightly tedious whenever the movie stops for a soda break and focus on the fleshy victims-to-be, only to be of slight interest when they go feed us some information to what's going on, though it's not something that elaborate or new altogether. (Basically, Willy's was founded by notorious killer Satanists and their murderous souls got transferred into the robots through a suicide pact in order to escape police and continue their killing spree beyond death, practically pulling a Child's Play (1987) gri-gri on us.) 

If you are, however, open for cheese, ham and Nic Cage shlock, then it's your birthday today because here at Willy's Wonderland, they have more than enough of those to feed your B-flick cravings. There's a strong sense of dark humor at play here and the ridiculousness of the premise just blends in perfectly with the direction and flow the movie goes by. The small army of  killer animatronics are a fun bunch by design, a little diverse in their range from talking animals to fantasy beings like sirens and knights, all tainted in grime and age which adds some uncanny creep factor. The kills are bloody at their best, may it be your typical human victims or, yes, even the possessed animatronics themselves! For those with a twisted fascination for robot "gorno", this film surprisingly finds a way to make decimating creepy kids place machines satisfyingly brutal with oil spilling like blood and metal parts crushed like bones!

And then there's the one and only Nicolas Cage, who doesn't utter an entire word in the film save for some groans and grunts. He more or less lets his fists and cleaning duties do the talking here, both being satisfying to watch, but the lack of dialogue on his part does make him too enigmatic for his own good, bordering into being questionable as there were moments where his help could have been appreciated but he chooses to ignore it, resulting to some deaths. Nevertheless, it adds to the weirdness and macabre of Willy's Wonderland and it does have Cage getting into the zone and jamming out to this film's best song while playing pinball so not a completely big dent to the movie's charm.

If you know what you're getting yourself into, then Willy's Wonderland (2021) is just the kind of junk food horror goodie bag you could ask for. Packed with creepy killer bots, an ass-kicking antihero and a gaggle lot of strangeness, find a good cozy spot in your Super Happy Fun Room and give this a good whirl!

Bodycount:

1 male dragged away, killed

1 female killed, blood splash seen

1 boy clawed (flashback)

1 male, 1 female and 1 girl killed offcamera (flashback)

6 males and 1 female seen dead from suicide, ingested tainted drink (flashback)

1 girl bearhugged to death (flashback)

1 male ran through with a sword

1 male mauled to death

1 male bitten to death

1 female mauled dead offcamera

1 male found disemboweled (flashback)

An entire family mentioned murdered 

1 female attacked, presumably killed (flashback)

2 females and 1 male seen murdered (flashback)

1 victim seen mauled (flashback)

1 female seen mauled (flashback)

1 male implied murdered (flashback)

2 males and 1 female implied murdered (flashback)

1 male decapitated with a sword (flashback)

1 male and 1 female had their necks snapped (flashback)

1 male had his neck snapped 

1 male crushed to death

1 female clawed in half 

2 males immolated in an exploding car

Total: 36+

Tough Love and Tough Breaks: Masked Mutilator (2019)

Masked Mutilator (2019)

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Christine Appino, Brick Bronsky and Chet Cole

Originally a lost and unfinished 90s slasher, unearthed and reworked with a wraparound shot and taking place in the present year of 2019, Masked Mutilator is as cheap as a multi-generational B-Grade horror flick can get, but it isn't without its good points. Reeking cheesy good points, but good points nonetheless.

The scene starts with a present day podcaster interviewing people who went through group home tragedies and he invited a few who happen to be survivors of a rather unusual yet devastating incident back at 1994 dubbed as the Home of Horror. Here we cut to the 90s where Vic Mangino (Jeff Sibbach), a rather infamous professional wrestler who went under the name Masked Mutilator until he accidentally killed an opponent in the ring, is working as a house parent at a group home, handling the rather troublesome youths with his brand of tough love and be the kind of imposing authority figure needed to discipline them to the right track.

Problems arise when the state starts to waver its support for the home despite handing Vic more kids to look after, which meant the home is steadily losing funds to support everyone staying there. No soon after, a masked man starts to show up and brutally beat the teens dead one by one. Perhaps it's Vic? Finally losing it after struggling with his own personal demons? Or maybe it's one of the kids? Tired of living under a strict household and getting their butts handed to them on a regular basis? 

In all honesty, there's nothing that groundbreaking about Masked Mutilator as a story and much of the movie's interest is from the fact that this was a forgotten film brought to life for the modern audience in a Frankenstein monster-esque fashion. Because of the way it's shot, edited and re-written, what we have here a rather short film that skips from one point to another, breezing over character development and plot details for a hammed up direction tainted in really janky acting. It can be laughable for the unintentional hilarity despite the plot dropping deep matters like the state of foster systems and its effects on troubled wards, so you could say that it is darn entertaining even if it's stumbling and missing a lot of opportunities to better itself.

Wrestling-themed slashers are a very very few bunch and observing familiar titles that fall into this category such as the equally fun Wrestle Massacre (2018) and Wrestlemaniac (2006), the running theme of this slasher breed is that they focus more on "tooth-and-nail" murders, as in they limit the use of murder weapons as much as possible and prefer to fill the kill count with more physically-inclined slayings. At that, the kills here involve a lot of beatings and smack-downs and Masked Mutilator makes it work by bloodying it all up and throwing in a few wrestling moves into the slaughter. The climax itself even packs a brawl-out that sits comfortably within vintage WWE programs, with Sibbach clobbering up a slasher who, in turn, is also ready to deliver a pile-driver or two against whoever stands against them or is in the way. Eagle-eyed wrestling fans could also spot some familiar faces from the industry such as Brick Bronsky as a buffed-up kid who likes to work out (and is also this film's director), and Doug Yasinsky as the cook of the house who suspiciously disappears around the last act.

To simply put it, if you're not looking for an overly gory, extravagant bodycounter and is simply in the mood for something silly, fairly bloody and moderately fun, then Masked Mutilator is waiting for you in the ring. Come on by and give it a round!  

Bodycount:

1 male had his neck snapped

1 male repeatedly beaten, neck snapped

1 male had his face beaten against a support beam

1 female strangled to death

1 male bearhugged to death

1 female kicked on the head (flashback)

1 male had his neck snapped

1 male strangled with a chokehold

1 male killed, method unknown

Total: 9

Chaotic Lawful, Lawful Chaotic: 10 To Midnight (1983)

10 To Midnight (1983)

Rating: ***

Starring: Charles Bronson, Lisa Eilbacher, Andrew Stevens

When Death Wish came out in 1974, main lead Charles Bronson is pretty much set to star in many of Hollywood's action titles as the staple old-fashioned rightist who deals with scum by bending the law for their own brand of justice. 10 To Midnight (1983) is one of these Bronson vehicles, pitting him as a Dirty Harry-clone of sorts against a killer who prey on nubile women.

After his co-worker at a secretarial pool rejects his aggressive advances, Warren Stacy (Gene Davis) hatches a murder plan which involves him going to a local theater and harassing a couple of girls there to create an alibi, before sneaking out through the bathrooms to drive to a nearby spot in the woods where his co-worker Betty and her boyfriend are making sweet love. To further cover his tracks, Warren strips down into nothing but a pair of rubber gloves, which proves to be an effective tactic as responding police couldn't properly pin the murder of Betty and her partner on him due to lack of evidence.

It's almost the perfect murder. Almost.

Among the officials looking into the killings are weary old cop Leo Kesller (Charles Bronson) and his young quixotic partner Paul McAnn (Andrew Stevens), and it turns out Betty was an old friend of Kesller's nurse daughter Laurie (Lisa Eilbacher), who hasn't been in touch with her old man until this case. As the three attend Betty's funeral, not knowing her killer is also lurking within the group, Kesller is made aware by the victim's father that she kept a diary which may contain some details to the identity of her killer. Warren, also hearing this, rushes to Betty's apartment no soon after to try sneaking the diary out, but not only did he find the diary missing, but he's forced to kill her surviving roommate to keep his tracks clean.

By luck, Kesller and MacAnn actually got hold of the diary first and narrowed it down to Warren due to the repeating past encounters he had with the victim. With little solid proof to go by, however, they're unable to hold Warren accountable for the murders, which got our killer feeling cocky as he starts targeting Kesller's daughter with obscene calls. Certain Mr. Stacy is the culprit they're looking for and eager to put an end to his terror as soon as possible, Kesller tampers with the evidence to frame him for the murders.

This nearly worked, riling up Warren into hysterics even, but it misfires badly when it comes to light that the evidence was planted, thus setting our killer free once more and vowing revenge against Kesller.

With the bulk of its story mostly a police drama, 10 To Midnight is only a slasher at the beginning and end of the movie, starting itself with a streaky double murder that got the plot rolling and concluding with a stalk-and-stab last act as Warren goes in the buff again to get even on Kessler by hunting down his daughter, taking along the lives of her nurse roommates in an effectively distressing home invasion scenario. These horror scenes are practically the movie's strongest points since the main meat of the plot, with all its legal talk and police procedurals, is your standard police story and courtroom theatrics copy-pasted from Dirty harry (1971), down to the questioning of lawful politics that have killers getting scoff free due to loopholes.  

This doesn't necessarily mean the crime drama aspect of 10 To Midnight is not entertaining, mind you, but it can get too bare-bone basic for its own good. Fortunately, the film still has its cheesier moments and a good abundance of sleaze to go with the murders, the latter being from the fact that Gene Davis have to go butt naked for all of the slasher sequences and that all of his victims are in various state of undress.

All in all, 10 To Midnight is a fair run of a horror hybrid that caters well to Bronson's fans, those who aren't expecting too much from their slasher flicks and those who aren't squeamish to see a killer's butt crack onscreen. It's all the makings of a classic 80s cop thriller with the right splash of teen bodycounting to boot!

Bodycount:

1 male stabbed to death with a butterfly knife

1 female stabbed in the gut with a butterfly knife

1 female gutted with a kitchen knife

1 female stabbed in the gut with a butterfly knife

1 female stabbed in the gut with a butterfly knife

1 female killed with a butterfly knife

1 male shot on the head

Total: 7

The Cuban Spine Crusher: Wrestle Massacre (2018)

Wrestle Massacre (2018)

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Richie Acevedo, Tony Atlas, Julio Bana Fernandez

(Special thanks to Jeff for sharing this wonderful trash, intentionally or not! Haha!)

Back in 2006, low budget Rey Mysterio-starring slasher Wrestlemaniac proved to us the stalk n' kill potential of wrestlers. It was fun, silly and cheesy, and I'm gonna piledriver us back to the bloody ring with yet another wrestling themed bodycounter. Cheesier and lower budgeted, yet fun in the best Z-grade way! 

Awkward groundskeeper Randy (pro wrestler Richie Acevedo) just wanted to make a name for himself as a wrestler, but life has other plans for him; not only do most of his coworkers and family get out of their way to belittle him, but he's also constantly put down and alienated by his clients save for one Becky, who showed him at least a shred of kindness. 

After finding out there's a wrestling camp nearby looking for enrollees, Randy tries out but ends up getting humiliated in a test match gone embarrassingly wrong. Making matters worse, he learns the next day that he's being let go due to him skipping work to attend the try-outs, as well as other incidents including peeping on a bathing chesty home owner. Snapped, Randy vows bloody vengeance the only way he knows how: donning nothing but boots, wrestling underwear tights and a mean attitude that somehow grants him the wrestling prowess he lacked before.

Now, there's no covering the fact that Wrestle Massacre is a low budget production judging from its undoubtedly do-it-yourself quality, but its made with a lively and hammy personality in its direction and plotting that you can't help but feel entertained on how much this movie tries, from the uneven the acting to how cartoonish the killings can get for the sake of blood and guts. 

Story-wise, the horror bits is your standard "gone postal" type, with the main antagonist going axe crazy after life pushed him too far and the film really took its sweet time getting to the juicy bits, bulking up this story is a side plot involving Becky and her partner Erwin's little loan problem for the possible purpose of developing a final girl and proposing additional bodies for the eventual kill count. This is all, again, done with feisty cheese that doesn't promise anything else but guaranteed unintentional laughs, but it does hurt the pacing since it lagged the entire movie from what could have been a serviceable seventy minute story to a hundred minute slay-a-thon with a talky first half.

Thankfully, one Randy puts on the stretchy wrestling briefs and masters the art of wise-cracking, Wrestle Massacre doesn't hold out on the messy kills. Granted, it's not the most realistic looking visceral pile and, yes, some murders can get outrageous (ones involving a spine and a scalping via eating utensil got me laughing), but its in it to be fun and I happen to be the kind of guy who can appreciate that, especially if a chunk of it is done ala rock and roll montage and with a small side of sleaze! And to cater to the wrestling theme, a high percent of the kill here are wrestling moves so there's a good share of brawls before the murder blows. 

Then, for that sweet wrestling fan service, there's also the abundance of cameos from other wrestling stars like the late Manny Fernandez, The Sandman and, funnier even, Jimmy Valiant as some sort of satire of himself and his Boogie Wrestling Camp in real life!

Ending with an out-of-nowhere supernatural twist that frankly reeks of sequel baiting, Wrestle Massacre is a fair budget horror and nothing much else. It's too little of a production to make a mark, but it's entertaining enough to worth at least a single night rental. Try it out if you're curious and get ready to rumble with the Cuban Assassin!

Bodycount:

1 male had his throat ripped

1 female had her face peeled off, beaten against a tree

1 elderly male strangled 

1 male had his back crushed against killer's knee

1 elderly male had his neck snapped

1 male killed offcamera

1 male had fingers and an ear torn off, killed

1 male bludgeoned to death with barbells

1 male tossed to a live fusebox, electrocuted

1 male killed via headlock move

1 male had his face shredded with a weed-whacker

1 female had her tongue torn out, killed

1 male disemboweled

1 female had her head stomped flat

1 male scalped with an eating utensil, killed

1 male strangled with his own guts 

1 male had his eyes thumbed

1 male had his head torn off

1 male beaten to death with his own severed leg

1 male stabbed on the throat with a garden shear

1 female had her face flattened with a folding chair

1 male had his spine ripped out 

1 male stabbed on the gut with a stake, head crushed in half with a rock

1 female had her head torn apart by the jaw, shot

1 male shot on the head

Total: 25

Pridesploitation!: Make a Wish (2002), Killer Unicorn (2018) and Into The Dark: Midnight Kiss (2019) Triple Bill Review

As of writing this, it's June again and for our queer brothers and sisters, that means its pride month! And what better way to celebrate this time of openness and love beyond boundaries than some slasher flicks aimed for gay audiences? 

(Well, that or take your partner out for a romantic day out. Maybe cook dinner together. Play Twister. Pretty much anything else if you want to be more productive...)

Here be three hand-picked titles in which bodycounting and homosexuality get to be salty-sweet bedfellows, treating us to a birthday camp gone wrong, a vengeful fellow dressed as a rainbow maned fantasy creature, and a stalk n' stab shindig caused by a New Years game. Can these slashers be worth a gay old time? Or do they deserve the bottomless bottom of shame? Let's find out starting with:

Make a Wish (2002)

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Moynan King, Hollace Starr, Virginia Baeta

The premise is as basic as it comes with a group of friends getting together in a forest reserve to celebrate a birthday. Susan, our butch celebrant, holds this annually with her gal pals of lesbian cliches, consisting of hardcore vegan Chloe, tomboy Monica, formerly queer Linda, Dawn who's into mantras and candles, and newcomer Andrea, Monica’s new girlfriend. 

Trouble rears it ugly head early on when Linda's aggressively possessive boyfriend arrives to confront Susan before the rest got there, almost getting into a scuffle until a redneck hunter intervenes and threatens him away. (For now) The hunter, in turn, takes a liking to Susan despite her showing little interest for a male fling, lumbering away only after she puts her foot down and shoos him away. (Also for now)

As tents get set and nearby lakes get swam on, the girls start to get a bit heated in more ways than one as, if they're not busy snuggling with one another, drama stirs on who dumps who and for what reason. It isn't long before night falls and while the gang tries their best to make the most out of the slowly intensifying state of their love life and friendship, there's a psycho on the loose killing people at random and setting up traps. 

It isn't hard to hide Make a Wish's minuscule budget looking at the mostly static hand-held video quality, nearly wooden acting and the lack of special effects. In fact, as a slasher, Wish is very light on the blood work, thrills or even scares, with the groundwork greatly focusing on the melodrama surrounding our group's relationship with one another and their former swing with the birthday gal, Susan. Scripting on this case is dead centered on developing the girls as far as the pen can go, but it couldn't really gotten that far with cheesy banter and lackluster wittiness tainting its direction, leaving the movie hobbling forward with one-dimensional lesbian stereotypes spewing hammy gay in-jokes clutched on its wheels, which may or may not work well depending on how one could take the humor.

If anything, Make a Wish is simply an okay backwoods bodycounter for what it is; essentially progressive for its lesbian-centric cast, it doesn’t force anything of the girl's gender orientation and preferences and they simply act like regular horror film fodders. There are some T&A of the girl-on-girl nature, but it's very tame, hardly exploitative. It all goes on full ante in the last act, making way to a reveal in the finale that I honestly didn't see coming both for the twist and the nature of how it ended.

The hunted-lesbians-in-the-backwoods plot will eventually get revisited and, on my opinion, improved upon in 2018's stoner slasher 4/20 Massacre, a film that pits another gang of likable girls against what appears to be a Big Foot-like creature with a thing for weed. Until then, Make a Wish (2002) swings an okay gay themed stalk-and-stab jab, just not enough to actually consider itself a must have. Makes an good rental for a single night, though!

Bodycount:

1 female strangled with a crowbar

1 female had her neck cut with a hunting knife

1 male had his chest burnt off with a blowtorch

1 female shot and pinned to a tree with a crossbow

1 female stabbed to death with a tent spike

1 female drowned

1 male shot repeatedly

1 male hit off a cliff with a car

Total: 8

~~~

Killer Unicorn (2018)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Dennis Budesheim, Alejandro La Rosa, Markus Kelle 

A nameless fellow remembers that one time nearly a year ago, when a group of drag queens left him for dead after beating him for almost raping one of their friends. Now donning nothing but a pair of hot pants and a giant unicorn mask, he embarks to hunt them down one by one in revenge.

As a slasher-comedy,  Killer Unicorn is very high on camp, quite fitting considering a large deal of the cast here are made up of drag queens in all of their heavy make-up and flamboyant glory. That being said, the film basically dims down the story to your typical revenge-driven stalker-type, only the victims involved are walking gay stereotypes and it's kinda hard to follow through a plot wherein almost everybody couldn't be taken seriously, let alone for an hour and fourteen minutes.

Pretty much anyone you will encounter in this movie are sex-starved and/or so self obsessed and you can only have so much of that sleaze and ham until it gets uninteresting and boring, borderline unlikable and annoying. The only highlight I can see here is that the titular Killer Unicorn does look interesting, a campier take on the topless Satan figure stalking hot boys in Hellbent (2004) if you will. We do get an ample slice of good gore, as well as some gross-out deaths like an acid enema and one guy drowning on force-fed urine, but apart from that, Killer Unicorn (2018) just doesn't cut right enough for me.

Bodycount:

1 male had their throat cut with a knife

1 male found decapitated

1 male stabbed in the eye

1 male gets sodomized with acid-filled enema, guts spill open

1 male choked on force-fed urine

1 male snorted tainted drugs

1 male had an arm cut off with a knife, killed

1 male strangled with a severed arm

1 male set ablaze

1 male slashed with a knife

1 male bludgeoned with death with a lead pipe

1 male knifed to death

1 male axed on the neck

Total: 13

~~~

Midnight Kiss (Into The Dark Episode 4/Season 2 (2019))

Rating: ***

Starring: Scott Evans, Adam Faison, Lukas Gage 

A joint effort between horror movie company Blumhouse's television branch and video-on-demand subscription service Hulu, Into The Dark is a monthly horror anthology web series where each episode is a feature length film inspired by a holiday from the month it is released. For their second season, December 2019 gets a second episode helping at the near end of the month with a slasher set around New Year and hot gay men.

Longtime best friends and former lovers Joel (Scott Evans) and Cameron (Augustus Prew), along with Joel's fiance Logan (Lukas Gage) and their wing woman Hannah (Ayden Mayeri), head to Palm Springs to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Staying in Joel's isolated family estate and with plans on clubbing til' midnight, the gang invites Logan for a game of Midnight Kiss, where the rule is to hookup with a stranger, bring them home and get freaky until the next morning, which by then they can choose whether to depart with no strings attached. It's mostly fun, games and smooches until someone in a gimp mask and leather suit shows up, targeting the group and taking their sweet time to thin their numbers down. 

The general plotting of Midnight Kiss can be narrowed down to it being small parts holiday bodycounter and greater parts gay drama, thus lacking a higher kill count and sturdily focusing more on developing its casts for a good helping of melodramatics. We see and hear about these boys' relationships and how it have strained over the years between them through a generous portion of dialogue, a fact that would normally put me off in a slasher movie if it wasn't for the layers of intriguing history these characters have.

The writing for this movie crafted the characters as organic as possible past all the shower butt shots and male-on-male snuggling, their plight and insecurities from implied controlling partners and pressured relations made worthwhile investing our time to for how human these characters can be. It isn't until the last act wherein the horror elements kick into full gear and by then, it's no short of being the typical stalk-and-prowl with a reveal that only half worked because of the glaringly obvious red herring.

As a slasher, it's serviceable enough despite the, again, low death toll and from what we got on the effects department, half of them were generous with the bloodletting, one of which a nastier spin on classic wine bottle murders. The only drawback here is the motive of the killer which boils down to a mix of jealous rage and scarred ego and, coming from a guy who dons an imposing BDSM leather suit, it's unimpressive and pathetic to say it lightly.

A production sleek in sharp colors, fresh camera shots and some awesome techno scores, Midnight Kiss (2019) may have its slow bits and overly talky sessions, but the overall end product is still something to admire, at least as a plot-focused horror/thriller. Its heart and mind is in the right place, next to a sharpened knife that's ready to surprise open horror fans with a bittersweet script and a fair run of blood. 

Bodycount:

1 male had his throat cut with a knife

1 male gets a broken wine bottle shoved down his throat

1 male smothered with fabric

1 male stabbed in the eye with a syringe, shot

Total: 4

Broken Bones, Oozing Blood, Sumo Killers: The Guard From Underground (1992)

The Guard From Underground (Jigoku no Keibiin) (Japan, 1992)
Rating: ***
Starring:  Makiko Kuno, Yutaka Matsushige, Hatsunori Hasegawa

Formerly an art gallery curator, Akiko Narushima (Makiko Kuno) has taken in a new position as an office lady for the Akebono Corp trading company where she mostly works as an adviser regarding the paintings they purchase. At the same time, a murder case concerning a former sumo wrestler who murdered his lover and friend after finding them on a cheater's tryst is in talks of getting reopened after the wrestler got off on an insanity plea, unbeknownst to them that said towering sumo Fujimaru (Yutaka Matsushige) has recently taken a new job as a security guard at Akebono Corp.

After a brief encounter, Fujimaru develops a quick obsession for Akiko, watching her through security cameras and even keeping an earring she dropped, all the while living within the moist inner workings of the building and murdering a few staff that either rubs him the wrong way or just happens to be there. Eventually, Akiko will find out about her murderous admirer, forcing him to put the building into lockdown and murder off all the unfortunate associates one by one.

From what I can gather, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has a small cult status among genre fans for the variety of films he released from "pinkeiga" (Japanese theatrical smut films) to crime thrillers, as well as fair contenders for Asian horror cinemas such as Pulse (2001), Loft (2002) and Retribution (2006). There's definitely a style to his direction, more of it to do with the sullen atmosphere encapsulated by slow long takes and dreamlike visual imagery, a matter that's felt all over this cryptic early 90s Asian slasher through the many static shots and dim lighting within water-damaged, dilapidated sets crumbed with concrete and rebar, putting good use to the film's minimalist budget and lean story.

Plot-wise, The Guard From Underground (1992) plays it majorly straightforward and steady around the horror department, with some cues of workplace politics satire strewn around to keep the story going like a security chief who decided to keep Fujimaru despite finding out about his murderous tendencies, just so he can have the killer get rid of an employee that's been getting on his nerves lately. There's no mystery behind the killer nor his motives, he is simply out to kill people because he can and his blatant interest towards Akiko can be pretty much sum up to a simple puppy dog interest after assuming she understands him, thus basically a workplace stalker situation with a bodycount.

John Carpenter's classic slasher Halloween (1978) definitely has its share of influencing Guard with how our sumo killer moves and shot in some scenes, like his first appearance where he is mostly kept hidden in the shadows, just seen from neck down. There's a stronger emphasis on building tension so the violence is noticeably low on gore, but with Fujimaru preferring to use his brute strength to thin down the office staff, the movie still found ways to be brutal and bloody without breaking into the excessive, as seen in its memorable kills involving lockers, ladders and billy clubs.

Looking past some slow scenes and a few oddly mellowed acting (fair court on the latter though, as there's really no point fleshing out the casts as two-dimensional characters seeing most of them are par for the course of being dead in the end), The Guard From Underground (1992) can be a visually enticing experience for a slasher movie as it lovingly tributes 80s bodycounters. It is far from being the best among its director's line of films but as a cult favorite, it's unique enough to be a watchable fare and a fine addition to any genre fan's collection.

Bodycount:
1 male found mangled inside a locker
1 male forced to touch a live fusebox, later smothered with a plastic garbage bag
1 female had her chest stomped
1 male repeatedly beaten against steam pipes, brained with a billy club
1 male repeatedly brained with a billy club and a pan, gets boiling water all over him
1 female stuffed and crushed inside a locker
1 male hacked on the neck with a dislodged paper guillotine trimmer, later hanged
Total: 7

The Ghost of Inmate Past: Prison (1987)

Prison (1987)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Lane Smith, Viggo Mortensen, Chelsea Field

So there was a time in the late 80s and early 90s wherein we get this slew of horror movies about killers getting executed only to come back as (mostly electric) boogeymen. A lot of these will turn up as cult favorites like Shocker (1989) and The Horror Show (1989), though some seem to get the "Oh yeah, that existed" treatment, Prison (1987) being one of them which is kinda a shame for me since it's pretty fun on its own rights.

The film opens with a five-minute scene of an inmate getting escorted to an electric chair, with security guard Eaton Sharpe there to witness the final moments of this man as he go meet his maker with the help of ole' sparky. This event haunts Sharpe, all the way to twenty years later wherein he is now an appointment warden to the very same prison the electrocution took place, re-opened after it shut down back in the 60s.

Sharpe, truth be told, isn't quite cutting it as a prison warden as he appears tense, nervous and simply paranoid of just being there, but despite the objections of a sole female board member, he's to stay to oversee the first wave of convicts who will also be this prison's hired hands when it comes to the on-going renovations. In comes Burke (young Viggo Mortensen of the Lord of The Rings franchise, the amazing drama The Green Book (2018) and Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)) a car thief with a heart of gold who gets paired up with a more religious inmate and tasked to unearth a long-sealed execution chamber. After a couple of whacks and cracking it open though, the chamber appears to emits a strange light that's seemingly coming out of nowhere.

The light, unknown to them all, is actually a malevolent force that remained dormant in the prison until the cement wall went down, wasting no time haunting the joint and starting a supernatural killing spree by pressure cooking a poor sucker to flames inside an isolation chamber and was about to claim another when Burke shows up and saves the day. The incident gets swiftly swept under the rug as an accident, a claim soon to be proven wrong when another inmate -taking advantage of a blackout that left the automated bars unlocked- gets crushed and impaled to death by living pipes and rebars while attempting escape, his body then soon dropped from the ceiling in front of stunned cons the morning after.

As more of these accidents claim the lives of cons and officers alike, Sharpe slowly goes unhinged and resorts to demean the convicts through inhumane hardships to control the situation, little knowing that the murders are somewhat connected to an age old debt he had to who could be a murdered man. Until then, Burke and company has no choice but to try survive not only the wrath of an undead killer but also a deranged warden with some power of the state on his side.

Salad tossing prison drama with supernatural slasher together, Prison (1987) is written and produced by Irwin Yablans (who also produced Halloween (1978) and its sequel, Tourist Trap (1979) and Hell Night (1981)) who originally conceived it as a more traditional bodycounter titled Murder in the Big House, with a live fleshy killer stalking and murdering convicts within a prison. Changes were made when a screenwriter pointed out how little the plot made sense seeing there's bound to be more than one other killer in a prison who can easily snuff out a slasher, even more a live one, thus resulting to this atmospheric supernatural convict-on-peril slay-a-thon filmed in an actual abandoned prison, with actual convicts. (No, really. One of the actors, former stuntman Stephen E. Little, was serving a sentence of manslaughter at the time of this movie's filming)

It isn't perfect admittedly as there are some sub-plots and hinted elements that could have been addressed better and characterization is mostly one-note, particularly when it came with the other convicts and the only female cast among the sausage fest. (seriously for the latter, she only appears time to time to spew exposition and little else) Thankfully, there's enough gothic horror scenery, slasher-friendly gore, and prison drama to go along the decent actors, making up for Prison (1987)'s rather less-than stellar script.

The film certainly tries to work its way to create tension and tone as the first third of Prison (1987) is where all of the straight prison drama conventions get played out, from the surprisingly colorful and "quirky" convicts (here's to you, Tommy "Lasagna" Lister!) to the power play between either the prisoners or the hardass warden's little cavalcade of guards. It's done with a steady yet reasonable pace that did slow down in the middle to make more room for the hoosegow shenanigans, but the resulting manic prison riot climax where a good bulk of paranormal chaos ensues made the wait worthwhile. (Especially if it features a Kane Hodder cameo as the main boogeyman, who reportedly stuffed live worms in his mouth for his scene) Plus, in the movie's defense, the supernatural kills here are as awfully gruesome as they are outlandish, crafted away in gooey red practical effects (courtesy of  John Carl Buechler, who did the effects for Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) and Curse of The Forty-Niner (2003)), with your classic fog effects and blue tinted lighting bringing out the macabre from the grimy and claustrophobic setting of the film's cryptic prison for that extra slice of near-Lynchian horror imagery.

In short, Prison (1987) is a bonafide lost classic that surpassed my expectations despite being flawed. It balanced out its big house character play with blood-chunky supernatural slasher quite well, granting us a final product that is far from golden, but crimson red enough to warrant a viewing or even a cult following from good horror fans.

Bodycount:
1 male executed via electric chair
1 male cooked alive in a heated isolation chamber
1 male impaled to death by rebars and pipes
1 male crushed and garroted to death by barbwires
1 male blown through the chest by a beam of light
1 male electrocuted to death
1 male falls to his death off a ledge
1 male seen murdered
1 male thrown against a pole
1 male shot with a shotgun, left for dead
1 male shot dead by an automatic rifle
1 male impaled through the arse by a flung pickaxe
1 male shot to death
1 male found dead, cause unknown
1 male found dead, cause unknown
1 male bled to death from a shotgun wound
1 male electrocuted, immolated in a car explosion
Total: 17

Militant Bodycounter: The Guest (2014)

The Guest (2014)
Rating: ****
Starring: Dan Stevens, Sheila Kelley, Maika Monroe

One would remember Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett as the filmmaking duo responsible for the stylish and devilishly fun home invasion/slasher melting pot You're Next (2011), as well as the slow burning yet hypnotizing serial killer thriller A Horrible Way to Die (2009) and a couple of better entries for the first two V/H/S/ anthology horror movies. Now, we'll look into their 2014 hit The Guest, which is far from the standard horror flick you would expect in a slasher blog like this, but it has enough intrigue, kill count and even a few shout-outs to horror flicks to earn a warm welcome here in StickyRed.

Still mourning over the loss of their son Caleb who died in action back at Afghanistan, the Petersons get an unexpected visitor named David one early morning, claiming to be Caleb's marine buddy. He is there to look after them because their late son "asked him to", a promise our titular guest is determined to make good of and a proposition the Petersons were quick to accept.

Well, most of the Petersons: a bit suspicious of this is Anna, the only daughter of the family and now the remaining eldest. She believes there's more to David's near-perfection as a house guest than what he is showing and her suspicions are later proven pin-point, unfortunately, as David has a secret worth killing over and anybody (and I mean anybody) in the way is fair game once he believes he's compromised.

Being frank, The Guest's core plot isn't entirely new if you look back at movies like The Stepfather (1987) and its sequels (and underrated remake), as well as Mikey (1992), Orphan (2009) and many other horror flicks involving suspicious and/or murderous adoptive/adopting family members. It's quite easy to tell that something is up with David's boy-next-door persona and we are eventually made aware of this once he starts talking about acquiring guns in one scene and nonchalantly killing off the suppliers in another. Basically, we are more or less watching a ticking time bomb of a narrative that's scheduled to go off once the climactic curveball is upon us, only the wait is just as fun as the last act it is building to.

What The Guest does that not a lot of its ilk seems to grasp perfectly (or attempted at all) is create a worthwhile diversion to an otherwise predictable scenario. By this I meant that most of the time, movies like The Stepfather or Orphan gave more focus on uncovering the dark secrets of the painfully obvious offending party, molding said offending party into a much more obvious threat that needs to be stopped. In The Guest, however, even after we are made aware of David's potential murder-happy persona, we are still shown a more acceptable side of him as a man looking out for a family and doing a good job at it.

For a good mulch of the time, we see David help with the chores, taught the family's youngest Luke how to stand up against his bullies (beating a good number of them up in the process), and may have done something to have Spencer, the father, suddenly climb the corporate ladder at his job, all of these with an uncomfortably eerie yet somewhat genuine smile and soft spoken persona only Downtown Abbey's Dan Stevens can muster with good looks and charm. It's these awesome moments that made the David character quite a likable chap, thus adding tension and mystery to the plot as we are never solidly sure what he is capable of, what he really is and/or his actual purpose being there until the hour mark. By then, The Guest turns the table against us and kinda recalls its horror elements, bringing forth an odd mix of slasher flick killing spree and action movie shoot'em up.

This transition is far from perfect as we were never given a clear explanation as to why David suddenly goes 360 from his protective big brother mode and go Terminator on everybody's arses. Yes, they did explain he is programmed by something shady and there was supposed to be a scene that go into this in more details, but Wingard and Barrett decided to cut it out to make David more mysterious. So what exactly this programming does or what it is for were never brought up and this is understandably upsetting for some as it made the David character lazily transformed from a potential anti-hero to something of a slasher villain packing heat (And a box cutter), throwing away all of the development made just for a more explosive and exploitative final act.

Personally, the sudden transformation of both David and the subtle tone of the movie would have been upsetting for me, but seeing the layout of the story was already familiar to me genre-wise, the impact is foreseen and though I do wished they planned this twist a bit better, the resulting product is still entertainingly fun and impressive.

What I personally love about The Guest, apart from Steven's portrayal as a first-likable-then-homicidal human weapon, is that it has a grooving retro feel to it from its editing to its soundtrack despite having a modernized setting, giving the entire movie a timeless feel. There's offerings for both thriller and horror enthusiasts in the later carnage as we are given a chance to see David in gunheld action, as well as him delivering some decent kills in both combustive and slicing manner, two in particular (my favorites) involve an unsettling scene where live grenades were tossed at a diner full of innocent bystanders and another at a highschool horror maze in which the film went full slasher movie on us.

Now, if there is anything that I could point as flaws that really bugged me, it'll be the Peterson parent's quick approval of having David around just because he showed little proofs that could have meant anything else. (I mean, did David really got those dog tags from Caleb the way he explained it?) It's a typical horror cliche of "useless/clueless adults" which mostly sets grown ups as deserving meat for the slaughter for being blind of the danger they are getting into and though I get that Mrs. Peterson might be this easily persuaded as she is still grieving over the loss of her boy, I find it too easy for Papa Peterson to be just as easily welcoming after one scene of skepticism. I guess it is a good thing that most of the focus of (kinder) David interactions were on Laura and her son Luke as they were the easiest to relate to and work the best with the kind of plotting The Guest was going for.

A fun genre film that molds the thrilling and the horrifying in one antihero-centered package, I can honestly say that The Guest is a winner in my book, whether its last act works for a lot of folks or not. If you love your good thrillers with a side of horror and character, then this one's a guaranteed definite keeper!

Bodycount:
1 male shot on the head
1 male shot

1 male and 1 female mentioned dead from drug overdose
1 male shot
1 male shot on the head
1 male shot dead with an automatic rifle
1 male shot on the face with an automatic rifle
1 male shot dead with an automatic rifle
1 female knifed on the chest
1 male shot dead
1 male mangled in car collision, shot
1 victim implied shot, blood splatter seen
1 female shot
A number of people presumably killed in grenade explosion
1 male had this throat sliced with a box cutter
1 male had his wrist sliced open with a box cutter, bled to death
1 male implied murdered, uniform seen
Total: 17+

Cheese Without a Face: Faceless (1987)

Faceless (Les Predateurs De La Nuit) (France/Spain, 1987)
Rating: ***
Starring: Helmut Berger, Brigitte Lahaie, Telly Savalas

Singling this movie out as a slasher is only a portion of the truth. Should you add medical thriller, mad science, sleazy exploitation, and whatever movie genre allows a detective to fight an uber-muscular yet comically-voiced bodybuilder, then you will have the near-perfect definition for this strange late 80s euro-horror.

Starting the film classy with a shot of the Eiffel tower at night and a very vocal fellow (Vincent Thoma) mellowing our ears with the movie's own theme song, we soon follow Dr. Frank Flammand escorting his sister Ingrid and his assistant Natalie around the city as they have whatever fun rich and successful plastic surgeons can think of. Their evening was soon interrupted when one of Frank's former patients caught them off guard and tried to melt the doctor's face with acid in revenge for botching up her face. Fortunately for Frank, the vengeful patient misses when his sister pushed him away. But for Ingrid, however, she received the acid attack instead, severely burning her face.

Years passed and both Frank and Natalie are finding ways to repair Ingrid's face, most (if not all) of which involves kidnapping beautiful and fair-skinned women in hopes of placing one of their faces to Ingrid's. Why it never dawned on these two that some people will recognize the face they'll be stealing should their project be a success and get themselves in a bigger mess, I have no clue, but they seem to be sticking with this plan as they proceed to add another captive, an attractive fashion model for a new one-of-a-kind watch.

With the model's father rightfully concerned about his daughter's sudden disappearance, in comes private detective Sam Morgan snooping around in Paris and trailing whatever leads he can get. All the while, Frank, realizing he needs a professional's help, asks former Nazi doctor Orloff for assistance, a requests the surgeon is happy to accept as he sees it as an opportunity to hone his mad science talent yet again.

So now we got the mad science part. Where do the slasher bits come in, you say? Welp, just to cater for us blood junkies and gorehounds, Faceless also packs a fair amount of chunky bloodletting on behalf of Natalie and a mute (and sexually frustrated) brute named Gordon whose job is simply eliminate any living leftovers from the doctors' surgeries, as well as those who got too close on discovering their little secret. Truth be told, out of all the murders here, only one felt legitimately in tune with a slasher flick's with a nice chase scene and a power tool-wielding Gordon, while the rest were more or less just extra bloody and grandeur killings you can pull off for a crime thriller. This being said, while I am pretty impressed by the splatterific gore effects here, I cannot help but think that the dead women in this movie aren't the only ones missing their identity.

Basically, Faceless is every B-grade horror and exploitation flicks rolled into one since there's a little bit of something for everybody, such as the likes of unapologetic sleaze scenes, bloody murders, crazy Nazi science, and cheesy action sequences just to name a few. And like most hodge-podged stories, the tone is, unsurprisingly, shifty as it ranges mostly from being unintentionally (or maybe, intentionally) hilarious to just plain gross and uncomfortable, bringing nothing more to the table than some really bad writing in both the sense of scripting and plotting, but saved by the grace of just having the right amount of cheese, some fun (albeit oddly acted) characters and an EC comic- style take on horror and macabre. The pacing is relatively easy to follow too, and rarely boring as something interesting and/or cheesy is always going on, so while it's not a good movie, per se, Faceless has the charm of a really bad midnight picture that only a 70s sleaze-meister like its director, Jess Franco, can provide.

Obviously not gonna be everyone's kind of biscuit, this cult fave euro-horror is mostly enjoyable as a popcorn flick for the no-brainers and tongue-in-cheekers, and I wouldn't want it anymore than that! Some people might want to look elsewhere should they want a stronger mystery or less exploitative "detective story", but for the rest of us horror fans who just wanna have fun, there's nothing Faceless cannot provide!

Bodycount:
1 female hacked with a machete
1 female body seen
1 female injected with a syringe full of chemical into an eye
1 female decapitated with a chainsaw
1 male stabbed through the throat with a pair of scissors
1 female powerdrilled through the head
1 female had her face flayed off, presumably killed
1 male had his head pushed into a hanger hook, impaled
Total: 8
(Note: due to the nature of the ending, I decided not include 2 possible additional victims)