When Good Puppets Go Vengeful: Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge (1991)

Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge (1991)
Rating: ****
Starring:  Guy Rolfe, Richard Lynch, Ian Abercrombie

Some people sees Puppet Master II as the sequel to top the original, but I beg to differ. For me, this is not only how you top an original, but also do the Puppet Master title justice!

Taking place in 1941 World War II Berlin, where a gentle puppeteer named Andre Toulon and his wife Elsa entertain children with marionette shows satirizing Adolf as a coward, much to the disgust of a Nazi lieutenant disguised as a civilian. However, the soldier's disgust soon turns into intrigue when, while snooping around after the show, he discovers that Toulon's puppets are in fact alive, fed with a strange serum that animates them into sentience.

This discovery eventually reaches a Gestapo officer named Major Kraus and excites a scientist named Dr. Hess, who is forced by the Nazis to find a way to reanimate corpses to use as living shields for the war. It isn't long before the Gestapo raids Toulon's theater and attempts to take the puppeteer away for his secrets, even killing his wife in the process, but Toulon isn't gonna back down. Not with his trusted small friends armed to the teeth and willing to fight back.

Impressively shot and released eight months after the last sequel, Toulon's Revenge is less of a slasher movie, or horror for that matter, and instead plays itself more as a mash of fantasy, macabre and scifi themes under the structure of a revenge thriller with a good dash of splatter. With this shift, it re-introduces the murderous puppets of the two prior films in a more anti-heroic light, fighting off a greater evil under the orders of a master who would never used them for killing until tragedy forced him to. It's undoubtedly a far cry from what started as a set of bodycount films, but the movie's direction, solid writing and even stellar acting made it workable not just as an entry to a movie franchise, but also as a standalone film of sorts.

In fact, the movie basically took a jab at "comic book continuity" and either missed or retconned the matter that at the beginning of Puppet Master (1989), Andre not killed himself at 1939 in America while trying to escape the Nazis, thus making this a possible detailed re-telling of his and his "friends" story, coinciding with a plot concerning Nazi occult science and suicidal zombies.

The movie's mythos also strongly help hammer down this new moral turn for the puppets as it established that each puppet contains the will of Toulon's friends and loved ones, all victims of Nazi cruelty. It could have all looked cheap and shoehorned in an attempt to humanize the puppets and empathize with them as now they're given a reason to kill, but this was mostly handled with subtlety and the puppeteering and screen effects did most of the fleshing out for each puppet's personalities considering how more screentime they're given in this entry along side of our titular puppet master.

"Hands up, pardner!"

Adding to this cavalcade of tiny terrors is Six-Shooter, a six-armed cowboy with a devilish grin, originally conceived as early the first movie, though instead of a Western gunslinger he was a multi-armed ninja. The character's inventive design fits perfectly with the movie's theme and proves to be a fan favorite as he would later become a more prominent member of the puppet crew as the series progresses.

In terms of production, Toulon's Revenge made the most out of its estimated eight hundred grand budget and verily defines the big budget look. The sets look impressive and, again, the special effects used here are some of the best this franchise had to offer. While the background actors can be a bit distracting (is that a bad German accent I hear?), Toulon's Revenge also fixed the problem of the first two film by improving the human actors and their scenes. Seeing this is an origin film of the puppet master, it would have been more fitting to match Toulon's personality with that found with the version of this character seen at the beginning of Puppet Master (1989), which meant a humble fatherly figure to root for. Thankfully, not only does actor Guy Rolfe fits the look, but his soft yet anguished performance is as sympathetic as it can be and it works perfectly.

On the side of the Nazis, Richard Lynch plays a decent bad guy as Kraus and, much like Rolfe, he has the look and the cold presence his character needed to intimidate. To be fair, though, he didn't really do much apart from bark orders and be impatient (oh, and shoot Toulon's wife dead), but he made it workable on some level. In between this battle of good and evil is a curious scientist played by Ian Abercrombie, whose character tries hard to uncover Toulon’s formulas not only because the Nazis order him to, but also for his own quench for knowledge and, soon, understanding as he (all too quickly) made friends with Toulon. James Bond's Major Gogol actor Walter Gotell also makes a rather raunchy appearance here as General Mueller, who's supposed to be the head of the Nazi's reanimation project but best remembered for his sexcapades in a brothel and being the victim of one of Six Shooter's awesome kills.

For me, this is Puppet Master. As much as I love the slasher-esque take of the first movie, it's nothing compared to the defined and developed story this sequel brought upon its fans. It's also here where the puppets start being seen as the good guys and Full Moon Entertainment, which produces this films, decided to cash in on this by (mostly) ditching the idea of the puppets being killers in the franchise's following sequels and have them side with a master who's good, thus using them for heroics (or anti-heroics). Can't say if this is a good turn for the series, but as far as I can tell, most of the films that followed weren't that entertaining for me (or well made for that matter. To be fair, the fourth and fifth movie was supposed to be the last) so, suffice to say, I think it'll be for the best to end my Puppet Master reviews with just the first three movies. Whether you agree with me in this or not, Toulon's Revenge deserves all the praise it can get and more.

Bodycount:
1 male shot dead
1 female shot dead
1 male strangled to death
1 male drilled through the back
1 male garroted
1 male had his face bashed with a wrench, fed to leeches
1 male repeatedly shot, falls off a building
1 male gets a thrown brick to the face
1 male choked on a live leech
1 male shot
1 male shot dead
1 male knifed on the gut
1 male snared with hooks, dropped unto a halberd
Total: 13

 Bonus Review

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018)
Rating: *1/2
Starring: Charlyne Yi, Thomas Lennon, Michael Paré

Well, not gonna say this was a bad idea. But it could have been a lot better.

So, over the years, Full Moon Pictures has been sucking ass on the horror business (see Exhibit A) so I kinda stopped caring for their movies around the 2010s, this including their Puppet Master Axis Trilogy which tried too hard to recapture the glory days of the franchise but only succeeded on making it kinda lame. (Well, mostly lame. I'm still saving up to get me a replica of Kamikaze, one of the coolest evil puppets from that trilogy. (And no, it's not racist of me seeing that I, too, am Asian! I think. Are Filipinos still considered Asian?))

Nevertheless, there's a part of me that still cares for the Puppet Master movies and I am willing to try whatever shtick they'll come up with, even if it now includes a parallel world where Andre Toulon is an evil Nazi and the entire production is being released by RLJE Films, which already brought forth some decent titles like Nobody Gets Out Alive (2012) and My Name is Bruce (2007). If only the resulting product is anywhere as watchable as those two examples...

So, we start the movie in 1989, as a heavily scarred Toulon tries to pick up a potential one night stand at a bar, only to leave disgusted as he finds out the lady bartender is lesbians for a waitress. It isn't long before the two lovers are killed on the road by a thin-wire trap and the cops quickly piece together that Andre Toulon is responsible. After raiding his hotel and catching him with a gun, a pair of cops (one of them being B-movie staple Barbara Crampton) gun Toulon dead, thus ending his reign of terror. For now.

Cut to the present, we now follow Edgar (Thomas Lennon), a comic book artist returning to his home town to live with his folks after a devastating divorce. Digging through his old junk, he discovers his late brother owned one of Toulon’s puppets and decided to sell it at an upcoming Toulon convention, where other Toulon enthusiasts gather to discuss the macabre infamy of the puppet master's creations. Hopping along the ride is Edgar's new girlfriend Ashley (Jenny Pellicer) and proudly Jewish boss Markowitz (Nelson Franklin), the trio journeys to the estate and gets into a exposition trip tour hosted by the very cop who shot Toulon.

After all of that jazz and the convention goers settling within the hotel, the puppets, both old and new, start coming to life and murdering the guests in a seemingly supremacist fashion. The massacre is quickly realized and those still surviving are now forced to find ways stop the littlest Nazi army before all of them are minced meat by morning.

Now, the gorehound inside of me should be happy about this direction; not only are we going back to the franchise's horror roots, but with we are also getting updated gore and a more villainous take on the fan favorite killer puppets, as well as some new additions to create a literal puppet army. I would have been fine with these changes if only they did more with this twisted jab on the film series.

As much as I love the splatter and bloodshed, there is such as thing as too much and this is the problem with Littlest Reich. It's nothing but death porn, one kill jumping to the next in a pace that seems rushing, thus concepts and plot points got introduced and dropped at a moment's notice, numerous supporting characters simply exist to be killed off, the tone shifts back and forth from dumb to misplaced serious, and it all the ends with a twist that makes little sense and simply drops us one of them annoying "to be continued..." farce. 

Worse yet is that our puppets are reduced to mass-produced weapons brought to life by ancient magic, which is the last thing I expected a Puppet Master movie to do. While I understand that this is supposed to be a reboot of sorts where the puppets are as evil as the Fuhrer's determination for world conquest, they could have at least gave the tiny terrors some shred of personality which made them memorable to begin with, whether as killers or anti-heroes. But, nope. The movie favored the massacre approach so much that they made sure there's enough copies and variations of each puppet to slaughter a building full of people, letting go of the very things that made them stand out among other killer toy villains. A real shame.

Nonetheless, if you're just in it for the gore then The Littlest Reich won't disappoint. Two kills really stood out the most among the carnage, one involves a pregnant lady getting attacked by a racially insensitive new creation called "Money Lender" (guess what he looks like), while the other had a large fellow getting the whirly bladed end of another new killer toy. The rest varies from classic stabbings and slashings, to upfront burnings and messy car engine crushings, all done mostly in glorious practical effects with some CG enhancements as well as a few slices of dark humor in which the victims are supposedly gays, gypsies, Jews, and other individuals intolerants love to hate. Could have worked well if, again, they stick to this idea since in the end, it looked like they're just killing off everything that breathes regardless of skin color and preferences.

Sure, it will shock and offend but the execution comes with little to no effort. Real shock and offensiveness comes from build up and purpose, and this movie simplifies that to the point character and story hardly matters in the end, which in turn made this movie hardly matters in existence. The Littlest Reich may find new fans for its dumbness and chunky gore, but I sincerely can't find any life nor joy out of the point A-to-B style mayhem it embraces and its absence of a real conclusion.

Bodycount:
1 female decapitated with a thin wire
1 female murdered offcamera
1 male shot dead
1 male seen set ablaze (opening credit)
1 male stabbed on the neck (opening credit)
1 male, 1 female, 1 boy and 1 girl slaughtered (opening credit)
1 male seen shot (opening credit)
1 female thrown off a ship (opening credit)
A number of victims seen slaughtered (opening credit)
1 male and 1 female set on fire
1 male and 1 female stabbed to death
1 male had his head sliced off
1 male disemboweled, throat sliced
1 female found murdered
1 pregnant female had her baby ripped out from her own womb
1 female had her throat cut
1 male had his back ripped open
1 female disemboweled
1 female had her head crushed
1 male had his face repeatedly stabbed, head crushed with a car engine
A number of victims massacred in a parking lot
1 female seen murdered
1 boy had his hands sliced off, killed offcamera
1 male had an arm ripped off
1 male shot on the head
1 female shot on the head
A number of victims seen murdered in a hallway
1 female found burnt and drained of blood
1 male stabbed on the throat
1 female hits her head against a dumpster
1 male found mauled to death
1 female hit with a brick, throat sliced
2 males presumably killed
1 victim seen killed
1 victim seen killed
1 victim seen killed
1 male found mauled to death
1 female shot on the head
Total: 41+

I Want Your Baby. US Edition: Inside (2016)

Inside (Spain/US, 2016 remake)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Rachel Nichols, Laura Harring, Stany Coppet

To this day, filmmakers Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s 2007 extreme French horror À l’intérieur (or in English, "Inside") remains as one of my key slasher titles whenever I need a good scare and/or a sick sense of shocking entertainment. Its concept- a home invasion slasher centered on a pregnant woman and a baby stealing psycho- is as unsettling as the movie's use of over the top gore and a rather bleak conclusion, so I find the idea of remaking Inside kinda unnecessary as there's no possible way this film can be topped as an exploitative powerhouse. But, as you can see, Kidnapped (2010)'s director Miguel Ángel Vivas found a way to reboot this Euro horror cult classic and the results, though more commercial, honestly still delivered some solid thrills.

On her third trimester of pregnancy and still grieving over the death of her husband, Sarah (Rachel Nichols) decides to spend her Christmas Eve alone despite open invitations from family and friends to spend some time with them. Not long after, a woman (Laura Harring) comes knocking at her door asking for help with a broken car and it soon becomes clear that there's more to this stranger when she suddenly calls Sarah by her name. Police were called and, like most creeper scenarios, no woman was found by the time they get there, but they did promise to have someone patrol the area later that evening just in case.

Somewhat assured of her safety, Sarah eventually hits the hay, not knowing that the woman will return soon enough and find a way into the house, with a clear intention to steal the soon-mother's baby at all cost. What then follows is a cat-and-mouse situation between not only these two women, but also those unfortunate enough to get between them.

While the original Inside appears to build around a concept of nihilism and shock with its gloomy atmosphere, bitter protagonist and, again, generous supply of splatter, Inside (2016) has a quieter, simpler and somewhat more realistic stroll around the story, even when the carnage begins and is in play. A good deal of this could have something to do with the film's direction and writing, as the story actually took its time to flesh out the setting and situation, showing its lead struggling with her loss and attempting to voice out her concerns as a single parent within her loved ones and friends. The film even dedicated a few moments in the opening to show Sarah happily interacting with her husband before his demise a few scenes later, an approach that not only provided further context behind our lead's grieving, but made her more human and accessible to feel sympathetic for once trouble found her.

In turn, the horror elements of Inside (2016) has a calm yet intense approach that strongly focuses on tone and atmosphere instead of disturbing body horror and a messily high kill count. This can be easily seen on how the movie portrayed its villainess, an unnamed woman with a look and aura of normalcy around her despite hiding a sinister and methodic secret. Laura Harring plays this antagonist effectively with a chill, managing to create quite a disturbing character that doesn't need to overly mutilate her victims and paint the entire house red to be scary, but through sheer dedication to her goal and simple gestures such as holding up a picture of a victim's loved one over their face while slowly killing them.

This meant that (save for one victim) the gore and blood work of Inside (2016) are relatively simple. Far from being tame but harking back to the quick and easy killing styles of late 70s and early 80s slasher flicks, with a lot of stalking scenes and home invasion survival horror, many of which are effectively shot and structured around Sarah's disability to hear (caused by the car crash) and, of course, her vulnerability from carrying her child. Both weaknesses even found their way to stylize the scares and thrills together by deafening some moments to nothing but the sound of heartbeats, Sarah's and/or her child's, emotionally reaching out to us to feel what they feel. Sometimes these styles and directions work, sometimes they don't, but I can honestly say that Inside (2016) would have made it pretty far as a decent remake and a movie of its own, if it wasn't for its last third act.

While the first hour of Inside (2016) follows the plot of the original with only a few tweaks here and there, the remaining 20 to 30 minute run rails off the track and went on with its own pace and plotting, something that would have been fine with me if it didn't felt like re-hashed scenes from countless slasher tropes, from entering a spooky house (which is obviously the killer's hideaway) to look for help, to hiding inside closets where you know the psycho will most likely wise up to and attack our heroine at. None of these, however, measure to the odd conclusion director Vivas went with, making our villainess curveball to a more "honorable" type despite all the cruelty and lives she took, doing the finale away with chock full of symbolism, orchestral score and stylish visual works. I admit it's in tone with the rest of the movie, but the routine slasher scares barely made an impact and that heartwarming and sympathetic twist on the killer felt a tad too forced.

In my eyes, nothing will top the wild, artsy, no-holding-back exploitation Inside (2007) assaulted our senses with, but it is nice to see a more comfortable variation of this film in the form of Inside (2016), especially since there's more hits than misses. With its style and twists mostly deviated from its source material, this remake might as well be a film of its own and it strongly deserves to be seen as one. See it!

Bodycount:
1 male killed in car crash
1 dog killed offcamera
1 female gets a glass shard to the neck, bled to death
1 male stabbed on the back with a knife, smothered
1 male had his throat slashed with a knife
1 female shot on the eye
1 male repeatedly stabbed with a peeler, throat punctured with a pair of scissors
1 female drowned inside an enclosed pool
Total: 9

The Naked Clown: Among The Living (2014)

Among The Living (Aux Yeux Des Vivants) (France, 2014)
Rating: **1/2
Starring: Anne Marivin, Théo Fernandez, Francis Renaud

Filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo are among the few people in the horror community I keep an eye out for mainly due to their movie Inside (2007), a new wave French slasher centering on a pregnant woman fighting off a deranged maniac who wants to cut out and steal her baby. It is extremely graphic and a wonderfully intense piece of modern horror that managed to unnerve me, so much so I consider it as one of the best slashers out there. With this being a fact, I obviously wanted to see more from Julien and Alexandre and, so far with Livid (2011) and that gruesome ABCs of Death 2 short X is for Xylophone, they're doing okay....ish.

From that, we now look into their third feature, Among The Living, which opens one Halloween night in France where a soldier suffering from PTSD gets savagely attacked by his pregnant wife (Inside (2007) actress Beatrice Dalle in a cameo) apparently out of frustration from taking care of both him and their seemingly deformed son. After failing to kill off both her spouse and boy, however, the matriarch decided to end it all by stabbing her own womb instead before slashing her own throat in front of her family. Not wanting anymore trouble to fall on him and his son, the disturbed husband flees the scene with his children (Yes. Children. The now-dead fetus, too), driving away into the night.

Some time later, three young troublemakers, Victor, Dan and Tom, skip the rest of their school day after causing too much ruckus and set off to do some more juvenile fun instead such as setting angry farmers' barns on fire in revenge for almost breaking one of their limbs, or simply relaxing on a row boat at a small lake. But this time, the lads see something peculiar as a tow truck they never seen before drives by and enters an abandoned movie studio, with a car on tow. Following the truck out of curiosity, the boys are horrified to find a woman bound and gag inside the trunk of the car, and a large man in a rotting clown mask emerges to take her away.

After a failed attempt to rescue the woman, the boys are later found by cops (sent to look for them after the barn burning incident) and their story of masked men kidnapping women naturally fell to deaf ears knowing their history for trouble. Their respective families are also quick to dismiss the event as another tall tale, something no short of a deadly mistake when the masked man somehow followed them all home and starts to methodically snuff them dead one by one.

From the sound of the plot alone, I wanted to like Among The Living a bit more than what I do right now, since it is technically a slasher with a child murder taboo-breaking. For most parts, it does exactly that with the clown masked man, now stripped nude and going sortah frontal on us (you'll know what I mean by "sortah" once you see it), stalking and killing the children who bore witness to his crime, mostly taking along whoever else happens to be in the house with them. This is usually a nice set-up to build some intense and distressing scenario and Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo definitely show they still got the directional flair to do suspense, shocks and creepy imagery, but I can't help but feel underwhelmed.

I could try to be as shallow as possible and just simply enjoy the horror offerings provided, but the first act of the movie did an otherwise okay job building around the three boys that I really wanted to see more of these kids and their lives. Granted we are given some expositions and even a little glimpse of what's going on in each of their little worlds, they did little to further flesh out the children, which is a big negatory for any main characters as the ambiguity of whether they will make it out of the ordeal alive or not often lies to how well liked and relatable they are. Once the killings begin, the kids and more or less everybody else who get roped in the chaos are easily reduced to slasher flick victims, with half of them dying less-than-spectacular deaths, adding insult to my injuries.

This leads to another issue of mine with Among The Living; now, I understand that a good deal of these killings may have been done in a certain way for artistic flair, but I have mixed feelings with the continuous series of offscreen kills around the middle part of the film, something I find odd since the movie had no problem showcasing blood, guts and aborted fetuses at the opening, as well as continue bringing us onscreen carnage after these portions with the offcamera slayings. To be fair, I do find half of these offscreen deaths quite creative and darkly comical as they used an ominously brightening glow and an intensifying heart beat to imply the character's end, but I wouldn't mind seeing some of these characters get their a brutal comeuppance (Like a certain abusive father) and I personally believed a lot important players were killed off too soon.

Still, as mentioned prior, Among The Living possesses some of the more effectively creepy and intense scenes for a slasher flick, like a good ole take on the popular "clown doll" urban legend and one torture porn-ish murder involving a broken arm cast, a chisel and a foot. The whole tone of the movie even deviates itself from a common slasher as it has that dark fantasy air of sorts with its gypsy-inspired soundtrack, humanoid monsters and devilish cavern-turned secret lairs. Whenever it wanted to be brutal, it does tries its best to be as brutal as it can be, but I can tell there's a stronger priority on atmosphere here.

The killer (soon killers) committing these atrocities is an interesting fellow too, being a disfigured man (?) who has no problem going buff while he prowls and murders. The last time I recall we have a nudist killer would be the butt-naked serial murderer Warren Stacy from the cop thriller/slasher hybrid 10 to Midnight (1983) and, to some extent, the titular Mary Hatchet of the underrated guilty pleasure Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (2009), but what sets our nudie killer apart from these guys would be the fact that he prefers to murder using nothing but his strength, impressively seen when he easily breaks a plaster cast and re-breaks an arm. He is eventually joined by his own father (revealed early on as the same father at the opening slaughter) who brought out the more stabby n' slashy killings, with a nice touch of chemical weapons to boot.

Altogether, its issues led Among The Living being dry and uninspired respectively in the blood and story department, but when it comes to creep factor and tone, it still found a way to make a lot of that work despite the lackluster story. I honestly believe this film would have done better if it focused more on building its character and paced its killings a bit, but it's here, existing, so we might as well try to enjoy it. If you love odd French horror films or at least appreciates an atmospheric one, Among The Living might be right up your alley. If you prefer a warmer, stickier and redder slasher flick, you may wanna try something else. Like Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's extreme first feature opus.

Bodycount:
1 pregnant female knifed her own womb, throat cut
1 female killed offcamera, method unknown
1 boy killed, method unknown
1 male shot (?), later found mangled
1 boy killed, method unknown
1 male beaten, later paralyzed with a chisel and choked on killer's foot
1 female shot
1 male poisoned, crushed with a rock
1 male had his face sliced off with a sword
1 male stabbed with a sword, shot on the head
Total: 10

Don't Wait To Buy Land. Kill For It: Dream Home (2010)

Dream Home (Hong Kong, 2010) (AKA "Victoria No. 1")

Rating: ****

Starring:  Josie Ho, Ching Wong, Helen To

In this dark mix of satirical drama and deliciously bloody bodycounting, we start things off with a security guard catching forty winks while someone armed with construction tools slowly slips a nylon tie around his neck. With one sharp tug, the guard finds himself awake, soon to be out of breath and desperately looking for something to cut off the tie while our perpetrator stands cautiously nearby, watching all of this unfold. The garroted guard eventually finds a box cutter and tries to slice the nylon off, only to end up digging deep into this neck and gouging himself to death.

After that attention-grabbing debacle, we flashback sometime earlier and follow one Chang-Lai Sheung, a twenty-something Hong Kong woman working two jobs in order to save enough to get an apartment with a view of the Victoria Harbor. Her dedication to acquire such a specific settlement stems from both a childhood dream and the struggles she went through as a working adult, wherein she and her family suffers through the eighties and nineties Hong Kong property boom in which poorer families were forced away from their homes (often through criminal means) in order for the land to be used in constructing luxury flats. 

While we watch these little snippets of Sheung's past showcasing her slow obsession to better her and her family's lives, we're also treated with present day interjections of a mad killer brutally murdering flat occupants in a manner so worthy of the slasher sub-genre. What's intriguing about this killing spree is that the film eventually identifies the maniac as none other than Sheung herself in an early reveal. While this may have ruined any potential mystery between the connection of the building massacre to Sheung's plight for a flat with a sea side view, it does instead help cement the fact that Dream Home (2010) is a character-driven horror show, with the only question in mind would be how far will our lead go to get what she wants?

To be fair, a lot of the drama portion works; rather than bombarding us with an hour or so of straight life tragedies before serving us the gory helpings of sliced up teens and unexpected victims, Dream Home (2010)'s time-jumping bite-sized approach to the events that lead to the killing spree does well to even out the pacing as not to overdo the sappy soul-sucking realism that is an economy crash and the horrible things it brings out from people who cannot keep up with it. It also helps that Hong Kong singer and actress Josie Ho is decently good as an inexperienced killer who gets beaten around nearly as much as her victims, though she excels far better as a victim of society, shouldering what can be compared to as a (twisted) Herculean task in today's market.

When it comes to the slasher bits, I can guarantee Dream Home (2010) will be a gorehound's wet dream; while some of the murders are obviously CG-enhanced (like a certain eye-popping scene that looked a tad too cartoonish to be anywhere realistic), a good deal of the gore and blood still used old fashioned corn syrup and really nasty practical and make-up works. These deaths range from simple knife killings to a methodically torturous vacuum suffocation, some intentional while others accidental, all have that mean-spirited streak to them as most of the victims aren't so innocent to begin with. I guess it's a way for the film to ease us into rooting for the killer, but one or two kills may keep us from entirely forgetting Sheung isn't too well in the head at this point, particularly one murder involving a pregnant woman who miscarries during the attack. I also love the fact that this film found a way to enhance the intensity of these killings by confining them in small spaces that get tighter and more claustrophobic the further the plot goes.

If we are going to look for any drawbacks, I could try squeezing out some issues I have with the flashbacks taking a while to get going, but I learned to understand and accept it as a necessity for building up the massacre and Sheung's character. I could also try pointing out the absurdity of the whole spree killing as an over-the-top solution for such a contrasting realistic problem but Dream Home (2010) is a slasher flick. And slashers, by most parts, are supposed to be exaggeratedly hardcore and bloody. I guess what I'm getting at here is that Dream Home (2010) is a movie meant for genre fans and the only issue I can see here is whether it'll be for one's taste or not. If you're a horror fanatic who's open to something a bit dramatic once in a while then this Asian slasher has a lot to offer for your onscreen bloodlust. 

If not, well, why not give it a try? 

Bodycount:
1 male garroted with a nylon tie, neck gouged with a boxcutter
1 female gets a screwdriver ran through her head
1 pregnant female gets a vacuum-sealed bag over her head, smothered
1 male had his neck broken against a night stand
1 female passed away, cause unknown (flashback)
1 male stabbed on the neck with a broken bong
1 female had her head slammed through a toilet
1 male succumbs to a lung sickness, suffocates (flashback)
1 male repeatedly ran through with a knife, castrated
1 female shot, impaled through the head with a broken plank
1 male had his throat cut with a knife, bled to death
1 male shot through the temple
1 male shot in the mouth
Total: 13

Little Pig, Little Pig: Wolves At The Door (2016)

Wolves at The Door (2016)
Rating: **
Starring: Katie Cassidy, Elizabeth Henstridge, Adam Campbell

The moment I saw the word "pig" written in blood during its trailer, I already knew how Wolves At The Door (2016) will end.

Being a horror fan normally meant grossing over spooky, creepy and morbid stuff at a varying degree, this including a level of fascination to real life monsters and atrocities such as deranged cult leaders forcing an entire community to commit suicide for the sole purpose of enlightenment, or serial killers who prey on women using their charm and wit. This said, one can imagine that a good bunch of us know a thing or two about Charles Manson and his so-called Manson Family, a cult of deranged and/or brainwashed individuals who were responsible for seven murders under the belief that it would incite an apocalyptic race war known as "Helter Skelter" back at the 1960s.

These killings gained notoriety due to the fact that one of their victims was the late actress Sharon Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with her husband Roman Polanski's child. The crime would soon lead to the investigation and eventual arrest of the responsible members of Manson's so-called family, as well as Manson himself under the charges of conspiracy to commit the murders, among many other crimes.

As one can imagine, this is some heavy stuff and it have been covered multiple times through many mediums from books to documentaries and dramas. You could even say that the deranged character of the cult influenced a decent dose of horror movies back at the days until recently, from titles like I Drink Your Blood (1970) to Manson's Lost Girls (2016), so was it really a terrible idea to make a slasher film based on Manson and his cult?

Truthfully, it all falls to what the movie will make out of such a touchy subject. Wolves At The Door (2016) follows four friends- pregnant actress Sharon, her friends Jay and Abigail, and Abi's boyfriend Wojciech- hanging out in their rented Hollywood hills home to commemorate their last night with Abigail as she will be moving back with her parents at Boston. What they didn't count on happening, unfortunately, is the arrival of four murderous individuals who have no plan on leaving any of them alive.

If this sounds like your average slasher plot, that is because it is. Unfortunately, this itself is sure to leave a bad taste to most movie goers' mouths as Wolves' lack of depth to its carnage comes out rather uncomfortable and even upsetting due many of the film's details make it look and feel like a fictionalized and exploited re-enactment of the infamous "Tate murders", wherein the aforementioned Sharon Tate, three of her friends, and a visiting student were killed by members of the Manson cult, in and nearby a house at Los Angeles. Given that the movie did try to do little changes to keep itself from being too parallel to its real life inspiration (the couple in the opening was based on another Manson cult attack, though what happened in real life ended differently...), things like naming the characters based on the people who were either killed or were associated with the crime, as well as not-so subtle hints that this film is based on said crime (the characters were hanging out at the El Coyote restaurant during the beginning of the film, and too the fact that "Sharon" just also happens to be pregnant) do otherwise and just left everything about this slasher feel convoluted; it's too close to home for escapism, too relentlessly exploitative and cheap to be a re-enactment.

To be fair, Wolves does have its little pros like a few good suspenseful scenes and some worthwhile scares, many of which probably stem from the uncomfortable historical backdrops and a few effectively executed jump and false scares. I also like the fact that the villains here are depicted as your typical silent boogeyman and boogeywomen-type, which I will honestly say are too good for this movie. The murders they committed in this film strike me as odd, though, as they were mostly done in a way that they are as obscured as the faces of the maniacs committing them, but enough were showcased with a fair amount of brutality and helplessness, a middle line that reflects the is-it-a-slasher-or-is-it-a-dramatization? nature of the film.

In the end, I find Wolves At The Door (2016), in a lack of a better term, pretty confusing. Not plot-wise, but as a production: was it made to commemorate the lives we lost from the doings of a deranged lunatic and his minions with its near-accuracy? If so, why do it in such an exploited manner by treating it like a generic slasher flick? If it was supposed to be a slasher flick/home invasion hybrid then, why feature so much details from the real world crime and used it as a plot point or element ? This kind of familiarity will spoil any supposed surprises this movie can come up, leading the final product either predictable and forgettable or just trying too hard to be shocking, which is exactly how I felt about this film. Don't waste your time with this film unless you are really really into Home Invasion/ slasher hybrids.

Bodycount:
1 male bashed on the face with a sledgehammer
1 male stabbed to death with a knife
1 female killed offcamera
1 male knifed to death
1 female stabbed with a knife, killed offcamera
Total: 5

Millennial Gut Munching Goodness: Anthropophagus 2000 (1999)

Anthropophagus 2000 (Germany, 1999)
Rating: ***
Starring: Achim Kohlhase, Andre Sobottka, Dirk Thies

Ah yes, Andreas Schnaas. The director behind the shlocky yet kinda popular underground German horror film series Violent Shit, as well as many others including one of my guilty pleasures, Nikos The Impaler (2003). Many of us remember him for two things and two things only: fake looking yet shocking gore and fake looking yet shocking gore! This being mentioned, was it a bad idea to have him remake the 1980 Italian cult fave cannibal/monster/slasher hybrid film Anthropophagus by one Joe D'Amato, director of many Italian soft core smut and/or horror exploitation such as Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973), Beyond the Darkness (1979) and Ghosthouse (1988)?

Personally, seeing how the original Anthropophagus bored half of my mind into sleeping, not only would I say not really, but also please please please!

Anthropophagus 2000 starts with a trio of Interpol agents finding a cave littered with murder victims in varying states of decay. While two of the agents leave to call for back-up, one of them stays behind and finds a journal belonging to one Nikos Karamanlis, a wealthy man who got lost and stranded in the middle of the sea with his family after surviving a storm.

The story then shifts to what we can assume as both some time after the Karamanlis family got lost and some time before our Interpol agents found the cave; a couple is seen walking at a beach being lovey-dovey and (at least in my opinion) do the unsexiest hanky-panky inside their tent. Once they're done, the girl leaves to get some firewood only to return and find her man missing half of his face and a pair of arms grabbing her to bury a hatchet unto her face.

In the meantime, the now-dead couple's friends, our main selection of meaty victims-to-be, are driving to a vacation home in Borgo San Lorenzo where they expect to meet and pick-up their assumed-to-be-alive buddies. Their ride is unfortunately cut short when their RV breaks down and one of them twists an ankle, forcing most of them to walk to a nearby village, while a few stays behind. Misfortunes continue when they discover the commune nearly devoid of living people and the deranged cannibal responsible has set his teeth and weapons to abduct and kill the new arrivals for food.

For most parts, Anthropophagus 2000 follows the plot of the Italian original with some level of accuracy, with only a few new twists and turns added in its attempts to update the story and make it fresh enough for modern audiences. Though some of these changes may have made the movie's low budget a tad more obvious such as exchanging an entire Greek island setting for a smaller set of abandoned backwoods ruins, it is a downgrade that I personally found nothing much to quarrel about, but will admit that it costs the film some of its creep and dread factor as an empty backwoods village doesn't have the same impact as an island community being nearly ravaged.

Further issues I have with the movie would be fact that it still retains some of the problems I had with the original Anthropophagus: much like that movie, this remake has its slow moments, most of it somewhere around the middle of the run wherein character and plot developments were attempted, only to genuinely fail due to how cardboard thin the casts are, how bone-dry the story is, and how many of the scares failed to be all that effective. These trappings didn't work then and they are definitely not working in this movie either. I will say, however, that low-budget quality of Anthropophagus 2000 made the lack of scares and story development kinda forgivable as it makes up for these loss with a little slice of cheese and a juicy rubbery splatter work that sort of made most of the troubles worth it.

The way I see it, Anthropophagus 2000's may flop as a serious horror flick, but it does succeed as a campy so-bad-it's-good gore film that only depraved gorehounds and open horror fans can enjoy. I love how the killcount is nearly doubled and how most of it guaranteed an outrageous death. Heck, a few of them even have a realistic flair to their execution despite the obvious latex prop use, one of which being an updated and slightly more upsetting take on the original Anthropophagus' infamous cannibal scene, but a good chunk of the murders committed are so cartoonishly graphic that you just have to admire the lengths the movie went for just to reach that shock value. It's a shallow reason to enjoy a slasher flick, I know, but a little braindead fun will always have a time and place and I can see this film as an okay candidate whenever one is in the mood for a dumb horror film.

In the end, Anthropophagus 2000 didn't break any new grounds in terms of horror, not that it was really trying, but the underground filming quality somehow brought out the exploitation taste of the cannibal-cum-slasher plot quite well at a point, making this shlocky nightmare entertainingly bad and graphic that some of its many shortcomings can be forgiven. Watch on your own risk unless you have a taste for low-budget splatter flicks and German underground nastiness!

Bodycount:
1 girl hit on the head by a broken mast
1 male found with half of his face missing
1 female repeatedly hacked with a hatchet
1 male speared through the neck
1 male had his face bashed with a rock, disemboweled
1 male had his larynx pulled out from his mouth
1 female jumps to her death
1 male impaled on a stake
1 pregnant female knifed and cannibalized (flashback)
1 male ran through the head with a machete
1 pregnant female had her womb cut open with a rock
1 newborn cannibalized
1 female had her throat bitten open, back broken against the killer's knee
1 female had her head ripped off
1 male decapitated with a shovel
1 male had his head blown off with a gun
Total: 16

Misogyny I wanna Miss: Las Vegas Bloodbath (1989)

Las Vegas Bloodbath (1989)
Rating: *1/2
Starring: Ari Levin, Rebecca Gandara, Barbara Bell

A husband drives home one day to find his wife in bed with another man, goes crazy alarmingly quick and then proceeds to shoot his unfaithful spouse and her lover dead. He then embarks on a killing spree with a goal to rid off any woman he deems dirty, as well as the occasional random bystander who just happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Now, I shouldn't have a problem with this movie as I can tell its not meant to be taken seriously with it's casts being eye-rollingly horrendous with their equally inept scripting, as well as the fact that the low-budget shows on its editing, lighting and audio quality so much that the cheesy fondue was just begging to be laughed at. However, by having the villain be this misogynistic whiner and have the film focus purely on his bloody escapades in a pacing so dull and full of filler scenes, I'm quite surprised to discover that even I have standards.

Basically, Las Vegas Bloodbath is really nothing else but a collection of murder scenes committed in a span of a single day and this kind of plotting is usually a hit or miss depending if the central idea and/or character is either entertaining or interesting. Sadly (and fortunately for the sake of whatever soul I have left), I can't find myself to be fully drawn to the idea of a killing spree fueled by gender hate committed by a rather unimpressive-looking whiny villain in a mullet as entertaining, especially if it meant sitting through a painfully cheesy tone and total lack of real identifiable characters contrasting horribly with the movie's many attempts to be grim and upsetting. I mean, yeah, I guess some folks will find the fact that the male deaths in this movie were quick and hardly given much thought, while the female victims here were berated and gorily dispatched without giving them a valid fighting chance as z-grade tomfoolery meant for the shlock fans, but I can't help but feel this could have been handled better.

Now, if gore alone is all we will consider from this movie then I definitely have no quarrels with that. It's the only thing about Las Vegas Bloodbath that really shined the most as all the latex and corn syrup work looks disgustingly phenomenal despite one or two goofy executions. It's just too bad that the story that goes with it is so generically simple even for a slasher flick that it can easily be replaced with better similarly-plotted bodycounters like, I dunno, Truth or Dare: A Critical Madness (1986)?  (Come to think of it, Truth or Dare does have a murderous ex-husband and mainly consists of random killings, too. And that movie came out at last three years before Bloodbath. Does this mean...? (Insert Twilight Zone theme here))

Anywho, definitely skip this one unless you're into very bad splatter flicks or murderous ex-husbands in bad mullets.

Bodycount:
1 male and 1 female shot dead
1 female knifed in the mouth, had a leg torn off with a car
1 male shot on the head
1 male had his head pulped with a shovel
1 pregnant female disemboweled with a knife, fetus cut out
1 female lobotomized with a powerdrill
1 female shot
1 female shot on the head
1 female gets a hatchet buried into her gut
1 male knifed
1 female had her arms torn off
1 male decapitated with a kicked door
1 male shot
Total: 14

Those Crazy Spaniard Kids: Who Can Kill a Child (1976) and Come Out and Play (2012) Double Bill Review

Who Can Kill a Child?/¿Quién puede matar a un niño? (Spain, 1976) (AKA "Island of the Damned", "Death is Child's Play", "The Hex Massacre", "The Killer's Playground", "Trapped", "Would You Kill a Child?")
Rating: ***
Starring:  Lewis Fiander, Prunella Ransome, Antonio Iranzo

I may have been expecting a lot from this, but I honestly find Who Can Kill A Child? as a workable yet unnecessarily draggy chiller where all the violence happened off-camera, the villains are anomalously freaky, and gripping tension is all that matters. I guess, being someone who have seen all Children of the Corn movies, it's kinda hard to break a mindset that every "killer child" movie has to be at least modeled after slasher movies (Except, of course the original Bad Seed and The Omen. Those are special exceptions for me), so some elements of this film didn't work out for me.

They might reconsider having kids in the end.
If they survive...

In here, an English couple is touring an isolated island over the Southern Spanish coast, only to find the place completely barren of adults and littered with grinning children. After looking around, it soon becomes clear to them that the children have murdered all the of the adults, leaving the couple trapped and forced to fight for their lives.

As to why the children are doing this or what is causes them to commit murder, this was hardly explained. Instead, it's hinted at some scenes that a strange supernatural phenomenon or infection may be to blame, and the adults are left defenseless from all this since their morals and ethics are holding them back from hitting a or their child, which, honestly, is bullshit on my part (I mean, are they telling me not one or two adults in there thought  "Oh, so that's why Beware! Children at Play! ended like that!" and just fought back and at least disable the kids?) This enabled the killer kids to take advantage and pick them all off overnight, a fact that kinda killed off some credibility to this movie.

And then there is the point that the film felt like it takes forever before anything happens. I know this is for the psychological tension, but it's kinda hard to feel scared watching a movie if we spent around 45 minutes or more with the couple just looking around empty streets for someone to show up. And by the time the couple finally knows what's wrong with the children, the stalk-and-chase antics can get a bit tiring as it provide very little shock for a movie with a near two hour running time! I might be bias with this one, but for me, if you want a psychological-survival film to work, you got to provide us something that will utterly unnerve us other than long intense scene. (One scene, for example, had a pregnant woman attacked by her own unborn baby that somehow succumbs to the sickness affecting the children. The idea is sick and interesting, but it's hardly bloody and all she did there was moan and wince.)

If there is anything good to come out of this film, it would be that actors were great since all the focus was on two primary characters as any other were bumped off as soon as they're introduced. The tone of the movie is also consistent, so it's not really a bad film to begin with so to speak and I could have honestly enjoyed it as a B-flick creeper thanks to its dreary atmosphere. The kill count is high and the movie's bleak resolution had us hinting of a possible apocalypse involving evil kids, an idea that I find creepy so that's another point up.

I know around the time this movie was released, killer kids may have been considered shocking, but for our standards today, we've seen worse brats with blood on their hands. As a whole, Who Can Kill A Child? is a fair low-brow horror flick for those who loves a good mind-fuck, survivalist drama or homicidal children.

Bodycount:
1 female found dead underwater
1 female seen murdered
1 elderly male bludgeoned to death with cane
1 male found with head wound
1 female found murdered
1 female found dead
1 male murdered, method not sen
1 male found dead
1 female presumably killed
1 male found with head wound
1 boy shot with rifle
1 pregnant female killed from the inside by her own unborn baby
A number of children shot with rifle
1 boy beaten with boat paddle
1 boy hit on the eye with boat paddle
1 boy hit on the face with boat paddle
1 boy hit on the face with boat paddle
1 boy hit on the face with boat paddle
1 male shot with rifle
1 male shot with rifle
2 males presumably killed
total: 21+

Come Out and Play/ Juego de niños (Mexico, 2012)
rating:***
starring: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Vinessa Shaw

Almost 40 years have passed since the little cult fave Who Can Kill a Child terrorized audiences with uncomfortable silence and isolated backdrop. Now, some guy who calls himself Makinov figured it's high time to potentially update this little known title for the modern audience for a possible reboot. A decision that I find necessary for this title.

Unfortunately, it is as if they were afraid to mess it up, the film (uncomfortably re-titled "Come Out and Play") is nothing more than a shot-by-shot remake of the original with blood and gore. The story still revolves around an English couple visiting a South Spanish island, finding it's entire adult inhabitants have been murdered by their own children who are succumbing to a strange supernatural infection, thus turning the couple's supposed holiday tour to a fight for survival that they may not win. So with that in mind, the movie failed to make any impact on its own, unless yer not familiar with the original.

Different Generation. Same beard.

There's also a matter of the scripting and character; back then, the two lead's character might have been credible and effective, as too the movie's scripting, but in today's society, there's just something quite off about a couple not realizing the strangeness of a near-empty town with only children running around. They could at least notice that, but no. They actually put the blame on last night's Carnivale partying for an entire town's disappearance, seeing the possibility that everyone's just drunk asleep.

Yeah right, and I'm the King and Queen of Cheese...

The only thing that changed here, and I believe is for the better, is that Come Out and Play delivers the story as soon as possible and the film finally have the gore the original should have provided, in a rather quite satisfactory way if I may say so myself. (though most occurred offscreen) While Who Can Kill a Child? is a practice on fright without the use of blood and bodies, Come Out and Play showcased a bloodier set of murders including an elderly male being stabbed to death, corpses being mutilated further and a messier murder of a pregnant woman, something to at least keep up with the time in terms of shock value.

The hopeless tone of the original coinciding with this remake's blood-work somehow brought the same sense of dread and unnerving tension with all the mayhem the children are creating, just as it did on the original. Some people might call it a lack of imagination, some might call it keeping the torch burning, I for one call it living the phrase "If it ain't broken, don't fix it (too much)".

If you know little of the original 70s creeper, then this movie might just work out for you. Fans, however, of the original will be sorely disappointed on this carbon copy of a movie. (It's Psycho '98 all over again...) Still, so long as they're finally showing the bodies for me, that's all I need to keep me watching this survival thriller. Sometimes it's best not to expect too much...

Bodycount:
1 female glimpsed murdered
1 elderly male repeatedly knifed, head crushed with a dropped rock
1 male found with missing eye
1 female found with throat cut
1 female murdered offcamera
1 female found disemboweled
1 male beaten to death
1 male found murdered
1 boy shot with rifle
1 body seen being dismembered with hacksaw
1 male seen disemboweled
1 male head seen
1 pregnant female killed from the inside by her own unborn baby
A number of children shot dead with rifle
1 boy hit on the head with boat paddle
1 boy hit on the head with boat paddle
1 boy face crushed with boat paddle
1 girl face crushed with boat paddle
1 male shot dead with rifle
1 male shot dead with rifle
total: 19+

Bloody Sawn Beginnings: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2005)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2005)
Rating: ****
Starring:  Jordana Brewster, Matt Bomer and Diora Baird

Seriously? Y'all hating this masterpiece, seriously? I don't know whether it's the bad advertising or the fact a lot of people was just tired of going through the same splat attack introduced by films like SAW and Hostel which took over the early 2000s, but one thing is certain about this movie and that is it deserves a second loving.

At a meat shop in 1939 Texas, an obese pregnant woman dies at work while giving birth to a sick yet breathing baby boy. The manager, heartless and disgusted, carelessly throws the baby away in a nearby dumpster where so happens a young Mae Hewitt was scavenging for meat. She finds him and took him home, thus begins baby Thomas' life as a Hewitt.

Thirty years later, Thomas, now a grown man ridden with a rare skin disease that ate most of his face away (forcing him to wear a mask made from animal skins), works in the same meat shop his real mother died in, which is now closing after health inspectors deemed it unsuitable to operate due to it's horrible condition. After being insulted by his boss one last time, Thomas murders the man with a sledgehammer before stealing a chainsaw, the attack heard over by the local police station during a failed 911 attempt. Sheriff Hoyt, the last law enforcer in town, responds and escorts Thomas' uncle Charlie along in hopes he can help him talk his nephew down into complying, only for Charlie to murder the sheriff instead out of his claim that "there's nothing wrong with his boy". Uncle Charlie then takes on the late sheriff's identity and butchers him for food.

All the while, two brothers enlisted to Vietnam were traveling cross country with their girlfriends when they got into a hustle between a biker gang, one of whom proceeding to stalk and chase them in a robbery effort. Unfortunately for this biker chick, "Hoyt" was just around and quickly murders her, abducting the teens for himself; one of these kids, Chrissie, got thrown out and lands further away during a crash, obscuring her from the rest and forcing her to watch everything unfold in front of her. By the time Hoyt takes away her friends, Chrissie has no choice but to muster up and follow them to the Hewitts, now gone mad from hunger and poverty. But can she save them all from being lunch meat if who she's up against is a hulking brute armed with a chainsaw?

Let me first point out the movie's limitations; while it has some great plot angles, TCM The Beginning is still a slasher film that does everything by the book with nothing more to stand out with other than the point it's an origin story and it is gory. While I already accepted the fact that majority of our modern slashers lack any real scares (with varying level of tolerance) and their main focus is often in piling up bodies in every creative way possible, what was missing in that department I often look elsewhere and in this film, I find it in the flow of the story and the actual tone of it.

TCM The Beginning works a little better as a period piece than TCM 2003; with the inclusion of the Vietnam war subtext and the movie's very barren premises, it helps settle the hopeless feel this movie has and the reason to why the Hoyt family has no problem eating other people. (Something the 2003 remake failed to live up or even hinted) There are also some very great acting here, especially the two roles by Matthew Bome and Taylor Handley as brothers who have bickering ideas about the war, filling yet again some insights into the movie's mood. R. Lee Ermey returns to reprise his role as the homicidal sexual deviant Sheriff Hoyt, who's still a nasty addition to the Texas Chainsaw mythology; though here, we actually see more of his bad side as a demanding pervert with a penchant for torture and murder, again acting as a realistic contrast to the hollywood-ized monster that is Leatherface. 

The rest of the movie's horror elements and plot heavily rely in shock value brought in by the gore and meatier saw action that I felt really lacking from the 2003 reboot, with a still-menacing looking killer -  who honestly should have stuck around with the animal skin mask than the supposedly iconic face mask (don't hate me) - to go along with these kills to make it all better for me.

This is a brutal and beautiful movie, honestly, and I wouldn't blame you if you think I'm crazy. Maybe it's the unrestricted gore speaking to me, but I see TCM The Beginning as that one kind of movie that grows into you after repeated viewing and, compared to the rest of the franchise, might be the only one that actually lives up to the Chainsaw Massacre. I believe this is a winning draw and anybody else who wants to stone me for that can kiss my proud love-cheeks!

Bodycount:
1 female dies from birth complications
1 male gets a sledgehammer to the head
1 male shot on the head with shotgun
1 female shot with shotgun
1 male sliced in half with chainsaw
1 male ran through with chainsaw
1 female had her throat cut with shears
1 male ran through the chest with chainsaw
1 female gets chainsaw through the back
2 males ran over by car
Total: 11