The Long Walk: In A Violent nature (2024)

In A Violent nature (Canada, 2024)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love

Advertised as a subverted take on traditional slashers, where we'll be witnessing the bloody massacre through the perspective of an undead monster, In a Violent Nature (2024) undoubtedly delivers on this promise. 

The story is relatively simple: a gold locket gets taken away from the remains of an old fire tower, leading to the resurrection of a long dead-and-buried maniac named Johnny and his long journey through the thick forest under the morning sun to the guiding moon, as he looks for the people who took his precious item. Along the way, he causes murder and mayhem to just about anybody he comes across, may it be loud teens keeping warm near a bonfire or even forest rangers who they once had a past with. 

As an arthouse exercise, In a Violent Nature (2024) mostly did itself right as an experimental approach to your classic backwoods slasher film, in which instead of going through the usual exploits of rowdy teenagers typically found in your bodycounters flicks, the entire movie centers itself on what exactly goes through the days of B-grade lumbering masked maniacs menacing old campgrounds and the surrounding forest. With the exception of a few scenes of teen victims sharing old campfire tales or them opening up old wounds of romantic affairs, narrative is almost non-existent here and there's more going on for aesthetics and gimmick as we're basically tagging along with Johnny's lengthy trudges through dense verdure, interacting with trinkets and tools, as well as observing people from afar before mundanely walking his way to them for a good kill or two. These hikes are often beautifully shot with its vibrant and natural scenery, yet there's an underlying eeriness to it all considering we're walking along the steps of a loon who will slay anyone in a heartbeat, emphasized by the movie's notable lack of score. 

On that note, In a Violent Nature (2024) grandly delivers on the slasher chaos, with Johnny himself being an obvious tribute to Friday The 13th's Jason Voorhees, echoing similarities like his slow mental state and the fact that he supposedly died as a child from a prank-gone-wrong, only to come back slicing and dicing people as a grown adult undead. He's a rather fascinating fella overlooking his affinity for silent strolling as the film isn't shy on giving him some form of personality through body language whenever it has the chance, such as a surprisingly adorable moment where he got distracted by a toy car keychain. Plus, the fella just knows how to dress to impress, sporting a creepy vintage fireman's mask to go along with his signature weapons, a pair of drag hooks and a hatchet! When it comes to the kills, it's a showcase of variety ranging from the tame yet bloody, to the downright gorehound gruesome (most memorable of the bunch being that of a woman who's into yoga, which got a little too twisty), all done in a manner so workaday, it's oddly calmative.

Frankly, the platitudinous direction is what makes In a Violent Nature (2024) a fascinating watch; almost everything about it goes against what makes a slasher film thrilling or scary, and yet it presents an engrossing alternative that's just as disturbing and may be as effective. Yes, it's an approach that's may not do well for those expecting and wanting a more traditional bodycounter set-up and I personally believe the film could have done better if it was fifteen minutes shorter, ditching the odd shift of focus to the rather ineffective final girl of this picture, but the result is still this engrossing practice of uniqueness over what could have been just another slasher in the woods type. Schismatic yet transfixing, this is a movie that definitely rewards the more patient and open among slasher fans, assuring them a fine dine of brutality and other ghoulish delights. See it!

Bodycount:

1 male mutilated offscreen

1 male gets a wood saw pulled through his jaw, decapitated

1 female drowned in a lake

1 female ran through the gut and hacked on the head with drag hooks, contorted

1 male gets a thrown axe to the head

1 male had his head crushed with a rock

1 male decapitated with a log splitter

1 male had his head hacked to a pulp with an axe

Total: 8

The Campus Halloween Rampage Massacre: Primal Rage (1988)

Primal Rage (Italy, 1988)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Patrick Lowe, Cheryl Arutt, Sarah Buxton

Taking more interest in covering leisurely school events and saving lovely girls from getting their cars towed, university journalist Sam (Patrick Lowe) have his fellow reporter and friend Duffy (Mitch Watson) tackle on an assignment concerning a possible animal abuse case. Unbeknownst to the two, said animal abuse is actually a part of a secret experiment on curing degenerative brain conditions handled by one Dr. Ethridge (Bo Svenson), though the endeavor is threatened to be cut off financially when supervising investors point out its lack of progressive results after watching an experimented baboon going nutzoid.

That night, Duffy breaks into Dr. Ethridge's lab to take pictures of all the inhumane treatments happening behind its closed doors and frees the experimented baboon. The primate, unfortunately, is carrying an "infectious rage" as a result from all that medical poking and prodding, thus spreading its sickness to Duffy through a scratch before the monkey gets killed off by a responding campus cop car, running it down by accident.

Over time, Duffy starts to feel ill but pushes himself to tough it out when Sam invites him to a double date with two female students he befriended, Lauren (Cheryl Arutt) and Debbie (Sarah Buxton). The night mostly went swimmingly with Sam and Lauren getting romantic with one another on the dance floor, while Duffy protects Debbie from an aggressive campus horndog who started to get too forward to the gal. Trouble comes spreading, though, when Duffy starts to act erratically and scratches his date while they were making out, thus starting the outbreak of "rage" across campus, building up to a trio of degenerates going full slasher maniacs at the university's rather impressive Halloween bash.

An outbreak horror film with a handful of zombie and slasher film tropes mingled in within the chaos of its story, Primal Rage (1988) is a gruesomely enjoyable melting pot of horror sub-genres done on a generous enough budget and a tad more cheddar in its execution, far from great cinema but dripping with a sense of B-grade badness that screams a riot of a good time! Its script oozes with laughably odd writing, its direction filled with crazy scenes of rabid terror and there's an aggressive amount of late-80s aesthetic, it shouldn't have work as well as it does, but the adorable chemistry from its likeable main casts and the way the easy-to-digest plot fooled around with our expectations makes the film a worthwhile spectacle of hammy romps and contagion horror.

Despite being a 14-year forerunner to Danny Boyle's 'rage zombie' movie 28 Days Later (2002), it's intriguing to note that in spite of the large cast, the outbreak only get to spread on a handful of victims and, by the end of the film, all of the them were killed off which pretty much meant the threat of the virus died along with the infected. No, the focus of the viral scare here was more on the body horror aspect of the infection (with gnarly make-up effects by Carlo Rambaldi, who did movies like A Bay of Blood (1971) and that 1976 remake of King Kong!), which relatively takes a while before the infected starts to drool black sludge, literally pop a vessel or start shrieking like an angry monkey on steroids. It's also interesting to point out that not a lot of the infected's victims get to live long enough to become infected themselves, and the trio of gang-rapists who eventually becomes this movie's penultimate bad guys doesn't even show the same kind of primal rage as of the others, instead acting more like bloodthirsty psychos who coordinate their attacks and take extra pleasure on their killings. So those expecting more of a zombie bash may want to look elsewhere, but slasher fans will definitely get something a tad unique from this run.

The contamination nightmare eventually leads to the movie's best part, a last act taking place in a Halloween ball where all the students attending don tons of frightening, comical and inspired costumes in the midst of the fancy dresses and typical get-ups. Like, for real, there are so much surreal and quirky costumes here, from a lady who's wearing an entire nostril as a mask to another whose entire gaunt face splits open via motor revealing a spooky skull, all dancing while the live band sings an earworm of a song, 'Say The Word' by The Facade Band, which I'm pretty sure is this movie's theme. Entertainingly, a few of these costumes were utilized by the killers in their murder spree, with one wearing a three-headed mask with taps for each of the noses getting the life crushed out of them, blood spilling out said taps in great grisly detail! Our do-gooders eventually steps in to stop the (mostly ignored) chaos, setting up a classic cat-and-mouse stalking as our maniacs, fittingly dressed up as grim reapers with red blinking electric eyes, attempt to end our protagonists.

All in all, Primal Rage (1988) is far from a great example of a contamination horror flick but it’s a genuinely fun one for its novel plotting, positively fantastic physical gore effects and make-ups and, too, a manageable amount of ham. It's an underrated mish-mash of ideas, reputable enough for a watch on a Halloween nights or any nights swimming in good booze and good friends!

Bodycount:

1 male brained to death against the wall

1 female found murdered

1 male mauled to death

1 male shot

1 male had his scalp torn off

1 male clawed to death

1 male had his throat ripped off

1 male hanged with a noose

1 male had his throat crushed

1 male ran through the head with a pole

1 male crushed inside retractable bleachers 

1 female beaten, later found mutilated

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 male tossed off a building, jaw impaled on a sprinkler head

Total: 14

Raiders of The Lost Shlock: Playroom (1990)

Playroom (1990) (AKA "Schizo")

Rating: ***

Starring: Lisa Aliff, Aron Eisenberg, Christopher McDonald

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

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

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

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

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

Bodycount:

1 girl found murdered

1 male found dead with a head wound

1 female found murdered

1 female got her back sawed open

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

1 male killed offscreen

1 male had his neck shot off, decapitated

1 male ran through with a pickaxe, dies from injury

Total: 8

Loud Witching Hour: Scream Dream (1989)

Scream Dream (1989)
Rating: **1/2

Starring: Carol Carr, Melissa Moore and Nikki Riggins

Ah, yes, cult classic director Donald Farmer. Cannibal Hookers (1987). Deadly Memories (2002). Chainsaw Cheerleaders (2008). Clearly a man with so much taste for cheese, I'm sure he's part mozzarella. In this post, we'll be observing one of his early feature films released around the time of the late 80s shot-on-video boom, a curious tale of witchy macabre, hand puppet demons and big, loud hairstyles!

After an opening credit roll featuring a random sleeping beauty getting attacked by otherworldly arms and a chainsaw slicing out of her bed (and headed towards her crotch), we're treated with a scene following a yuppie metalhead and his bitterly vocal girlfriend making their way to a live show of Satanic rocker Michelle Shock. The nerdy-looking superfan eventually gets the chance to meet the dark temptress backstage, much to the dismay and disgust of his partner who leaves the venue after a lover's quarrel. Michelle, in turn, decides to give the dude a little treat down there for his troubles, only to cut the session short when a certain male member ended up between her teeth in not the nicest way.

Turns out Michelle Shock's Satanist shtick is more than just an act and she's really practicing the dark arts, so much so that her foul-mouthed manager Lou, tired of the constant harassment of journalists hounding him about Shock's shocking lyrical themes and the mysterious disappearances during her shows, fires her from her her own band. This, unsurprisingly, doesn't sit too well with Michelle.

Lou, not wanting to refund any of the money for the remaining shows, hires attractive replacement singer Jamie Summers and sends mullet-branding back-up Derrick to Michelle's to pick up a stage costume. As you would expect, the plan goes South real deep when the former band lead attacks Derrick with a dagger, which mullet boy responds by knocking her out. And then chopping her up with a battle axe. And then stabbing a possessed severed hand with a knife. And then fleeing the scene. 

(Well, that escalated quickly and unnecessarily)

Anywho, the shows go on and Michelle's sudden departure and replacement mostly didn't go unnoticed, especially with the nosy reporters who see this as damage control over the controversies she made. Still, Jamie hopes she would make it big in the heavy metal business, so she drives to Michelle's house to borrow some gear and inevitably finds the former lead dead and apparently appetizing enough to try biting a chunk out of. (Because why the hell not?) Derrick, tailing Jamie in hopes of stopping her from seeing the body, arrives no soon after and convinces her not to call the police. (Because, again, why the hell not?) 

From that point, though, Jamie starts to act weird. And deadly. And I'm sure as fuck the demonic monster she turns into, the drooling mini-rat beast tailing her to get a nibble or two out of people, and the fact she can now raise the dead to kill people for her all have something to do with Michelle's wicked pacts with Satan.

A technical marvel, Scream Dream (1989) is not. Not with its uneven lighting, outdated editing and terrible audio quality that made a few scenes indecipherable over the loud band music, factors that do little help with its wide acting range that falls between mediocre to oh-dear-god-just-stop! These are, however, things one can always expect from a shot-on-video production and I will say that despite all of this mess, the film is at least unintentionally hilarious for its multitudes of insane scenes and trashy moments, even sporting some gnarly violence and mostly impressive looking make-up effects for a low-budget film. With a lean 69 minute running time, padded with three full length metal songs being played in venues and one simple yet crazy plot overblown with cheese, the whole affair is just so bad, it's earnest, enthusiastically fun, given you dive into it with low expectations and a high tolerance for heavy metal horror ham! 

Bodycount:
1 female gets a chainsaw between her legs
1 male had his groin bitten off

1 male stabbed to death with a dagger, disemboweled

1 female hacked with a battle axe

1 male had his scalp clawed, throat cut with a dagger

1 female had her throat ravaged by a demon

1 male had his face ripped off

1 female strangled to death

1 female killed offcamera by a zombie

1 female had her face clawed

1 female stabbed with a dagger

1 male had his groin attacked by a demon

Total: 11

Teenage Slaughtering Bad Juju: Venom (2005)

Venom (2005)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Agnes Bruckner, Jonathan Jackson, Meagan Good

Before the Adam Green's Hatchet franchise graced our screens with its own brand of bayou bodycounting, director Jim Gillespie of the I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) fame took a quick stab on doing a backwater dead teenager flick with the likes of Venom (2005), a back-to-basic approach to the sub-genre with a taste of swamp muck and voodoo mayhem.

It was a rainy night at a small Louisiana town when an old mambo priestess unearths an old suitcase and loads it in her car. Elsewhere, drama unfolds between teenagers Eden and her boyfriend Eric as they argue at a bridge concerning Eden's New York college application, which was accepted much to Eric's worry as this meant they'll be far and apart. Their lover's quarrel soon got the attention of local tow truck driver Ray (who's also the pariah father of one of the kids in the movie), driving by and making sure these two aren't digging into each other's throats, only for the priestess to rush in and swerve to the edge of the bridge while avoiding Ray's truck.

After he was able to pull the old woman out of her car, Ray unfortunately ends up trapped inside and falling into the river instead, getting a nasty surprise no sooner when the suitcase released a swarm of snakes which proceeds to attack him as he drowns. By the time authorities arrived, the mambo dies from her injuries and there's nothing left to save of Ray except his soggy corpse which they proceed to fish out.

Unbeknownst to them, the snakes that attacked Ray were no ordinary serpents as they're possessed by the evil of people they’ve sucked out during many voodoo ‘milking ceremonies’ the priestess performed. Now with the evil residing in his body, the truck driver returns as a murderous revenant hellbent on ending anyone in his way, hapless teens included.

While it has unfortunate luck of bombing due to being released days before Hurricane Katrina hits the United States, as well as meeting the discontent of critics who has no time for simple slashers as this, Venom (2005) is, personally, a surprisingly okay teen horror flick that does succeed on harking back at the days of simple stalk-and-stab thrills. Granted its plot is nowhere close to something we hadn't seen before, not to mention the near paper-thin characters and their wasted opportunities to be a lot more interesting (After all of that emotional drunken breakdown, Ray's son couldn't stick around any longer?), but what it lacks in depth is made up for atmospherics, creative demises and some  interesting mythos. 

Working around genuine small town feels, the Louisiana backdrop provides enough murky swamps, looming trees and muddy dirt roads to encapsulate the fair-numbered casts in a near isolated tone that just elevates the Southern Gothic gloom and doom the film wields. The direction is pretty linear and quick, wasting no time getting into the action as soon as possible and get some blood flowing, so I like the fact that all drama and details were given to us straight and easy, enough to lecture our audience regarding who's who and, too, the lore behind the threat. 

The whole concept of a voodoo-centric killer zombie was uniquely and effectively introduced here too, something I enjoyed further when they actually explore it a tad more through some interesting set-pieces like using a human body as a voodoo doll and red chalk within the house as mean of protection. The killer himself is basically a just rotting juggernaut, so the killings are no short of being bloody and occasionally chunky in gore, despite one to three murders being offcamera,. The only downside I can get from him, however, (apart from the annoying wobbly camera trick they use whenever we get a close-up) would be his easy demise at the end despite all the time he kept going and going, shrugging off shotgun shells and even being burned whole. But, then again, he was more than simply hobbled, so it kinda makes sense. 

Quite sad that this film doesn't get that much attention seeing that its simplistic take can, without a doubt, cater to a crowd, particularly those who can appreciate something bloody and mystic with a rightly balanced Southern fried undead swig. So rather than leaving in in the swamp, try and see Venom (2005) as a welcome and worthwhile addition to any hardcore slasher fan's collection. Who knows? Perhaps that collection is where it belongs. 

Bodycount:

1 male drowned inside a sinking car
1 elderly female hits her head against a car window, dies
1 male attacked, killed offscreen
1 male had his throat slashed and chest hooked with a crowbar
1 female found murdered, body hanging in chains
1 female crushed underneath a car, face sandblasted
1 male impaled with a crowbar, arm torn off
1 male ran through with a crowbar
1 female slashed on the neck with a knife
1 female impaled through an uprooted tree
1 male stabbed in the head with a pick
Total: 11

My Blood is Liquid Offering: Lake Nowhere (2014)

Lake Nowhere (2014)
Rating: ****
Starring:  Wray Villanova, Laura Hajek, Nathan Andrew Wright

This is what would happen if Evil Dead (1981) and Friday The 13th (1980) had a happy, stabby mongoloid baby raised within the era of Video Nasties and Grindhouse exploitations.

A fun throwback to old school backwoods slashers with a mysterious supernatural twist, Lake Nowhere (2014) starts with a trio of faux commercials, one being a beer ad which I am sure is funded in secret by werewolves (or hardcore furries, whichever one offends you more) and the two others being cheesy trailers for what appears to be a Satanic Cult/Giallo hybrid and a scifi creature feature involving giant killer plants and a mutated farmer. (Would pay good money to see at least one of these turned into a real film!)

The main plot then follows your classic gaggle of party-hungry teenagers getting away from it all at a cabin deep in the woods. One of them decides to stroll around the woods with her adorable dog, soon stumbling upon an old tombstone with a cryptic prayer carved into it. Unknown to her, the prayer, when read aloud, seemingly unleashes something dark, ancient and feral into the forest which may or may not be associated with the masked maniac that's been lurking around and spying on them the moment they step foot into the woods.

Done in a fittingly speedy pace with the same contrasted tone and rough texture of a forgotten low-budget vintage horror number, Lake Nowhere (2014) is an impressive love letter that kept much of the simplistic hammy fun of your usual slasher-in-the-woods affair, all the while working in a supernatural angle that soon introduces a surprise threat that eventually trails the story into an artsy finale that boasts quite the haunting atmosphere and imagery. It is gritty and raw when the time calls for it, more or less rewarding patient viewers a second half that packs nifty practical gore effects and a killer whose intimidating presence, design and motive remain apt to the movie's mysterious tone, a feat that I find quite grand for a film that runs in a short 51 minutes.

The actors also did well enough on their roles, playing out their parts as natural as possible to give their rather two-dimensional characters some level of being relatable. The only real drawback I see here is the lack of details as to what exactly their characters are dealing with as, while it is strongly suggested that there is something supernatural about the killer, the film didn't dwell any further into the nature of the otherworldly threat and how it relates to not only the masked murderer, but also to one of the characters. This leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but thankfully there's a strong Fulci-inspired nightmare logic at play once the movie's direction turns for the bloody and horrifying, giving us a chaotic fever dream of a killing spree and an expressively eerie last act to make up for the loose ends.

Sometimes cheesy and messily gory, Lake Nowhere (2014) is late night VHS weekend entertainment nostalgia in a short yet horrifyingly eventful running time. Flawed and unoriginal it may be plot-wise, there's no doubt of it's an amusing retrospect to old school dead teenager films, greatly earning its place as a praiseworthy horror effort with a lot of heart and passion behind it. What else is there to say but grab a copy!

Bodycount:
1 female had her throat cut with a knife (faux trailer)
1 creature burned to death (faux trailer)
1 victim attacked by mutated plants (faux trailer)
1 victim dragged away by mutated plants (faux trailer)
1 male attacked by mutated plants (faux trailer)
1 dog murdered, later seen eaten
1 male hanged, disemboweled with a machete
1 male had his neck bitten open
1 male decapitated with a machete
1 female hits her head against an exposed nail (?)
1 female stabbed on the head with a machete
1 male murdered offcamera
1 female gets a machete to the jaw
Total: 13 (?)

A Basic Freak: Candy Corn (2019)

Candy Corn (2019)
Rating: **1/2
Starring: P.J. Soles, Tony Todd, Courtney Gains

As a Halloween tradition, a group of small town teens bully the local outcast Jacob Atkins, whose father owns and operate a clunky carnival and freak show called "Sideshow Spook House Spectacular" under his face-painted persona "Dr. Death". Jacob mostly keeps to himself and quietly braves the bullying but this year, he decided to finally fight back, only to be rewarded with the bullies giving him a beating that eventually kills him. Distraught from losing his son and angered at those responsible tailing it from the scene, Dr. Death swears to get even and revives his son with an ancient spell, turning the boy into a masked revenant out for blood.

Being a throwback of sorts to the good old 80s slashers, (probably the revenge-themed Southern gothic Pumpkinhead (1988) to be more precise) Candy Corn (2019) could have been a nod-and-wink type that throws its bare bone plot in a vat of cheese and self-awareness as most slasher throwbacks nowadays do, but it instead goes through a more sullen and serious story-driven approach which has its ups and downs.

For the positives, Pancho Moler of Rob Zombie's 31 (2016) and Courtney Gains of Children of The Corn (1984) did a spectacular job as Dr. Death and Sheriff Bramford respectively, two fathers whose agendas bloodily cross with one another as the bullies' ringleader happen to be Bramford's son. Their sour interaction sounds and feel often natural, but Moler pretty much chewed the scenery whenever he's on screen, with his Voodoo doctor get-up and air of unquestioned authority over the small cavalcade of misfits working for him, one of which happens to be played by Tony "Candyman" Todd. Other notable faces include P.J. Soles from the original 1978 Halloween appearing as a cheery police receptionist and Sky Elobar of the love-it-or-hate-it The Greasy Strangler (2016) (I hate it), seen here as yet again another greasy looking slob existing only to pad up the killcount.

The film's flaw, oddly enough, would be that the main teens responsible for Jacob's death (and one random girlfriend) are either unlikable or uninteresting, a crud move for any revenge themed slasher, especially one that is as plot-focused as Candy Corn (2019). It makes a good bulk of the story tedious to sit through and mostly predictable, part of the blame falling on the cliched and shallow scripting made for these teens, so much so that they felt like the random encounters slasher villains would kill just for the sake of boosting up the kill count, only here they've been given a shred worth of personality and faux focus. Sad, really, since most of the kills inflicted upon them are somewhat decent with their effects, both practical and digital, but the lack of real personality and depth to these kids made the murders lacking that justified punch, another con for the film.

Perhaps if its execution was less straight-faced, or at least evened its focus, Candy Corn (2019) could have smoothened down the clanks its serious dramatic approach caused and ran a bit better and tighter. Thankfully, the movie does have the grace to look and sound good with all the chilly Fall vibe and vintage John Carpenter-inspired synths at work, so as forgettable as it is, the movie is far being completely unwatchable. Not a lot more to say but, if you think you're in the mood for a simple dead teenager film then this is a film to consider. Not a complete recommendation, but worth at least a viewing.

Bodycount:
1 male beaten to death
1 male disemboweled
1 male had his spine torn out from his back
1 female corpse found rotting under a bed
1 male found bleeding from his ears, dies
1 female had her tongue torn off, killed
1 male brained with a lead pipe, head carved off with a knife
1 male had his arms torn off, teeth pried off
Total: 8

So I just saw the new Pet Sematary...

Okay...now that I have that out of my system, where did all go wrong?

I'm never a big fan of the 1989 Pet Sematary movie but I can at least tell it works. Excellent atmosphere coupled with capable actors and nightmarish scenes, the movie is a deserving cult classic despite a few dated effects. This one? This remake? The HELL is this?! Jump scares and a rushed plot has no place in a creepy story about cursed lands and undead children! 

This isn't an effective slow burn cautionary tale about dabbling with the unknown and simply letting go, this is a bland, clichéd, cheap horror modern movie that lacks anymore substance than just to plain exist!

I...ugh....this is just underwhelming. I guess if you're looking for a B-movie, the new Pet Sematary is okay-ish? But I personally believe it could have been a whole LOT better if they took the story more seriously and find a more fitting tone and style.

I'm just... gonna sit down now. I think I'll re-watch Overlord (2018) to lighten up mah brain. That's a fun movie...

The Massachusetts Home Horror: Ghosthouse (1988)

Ghosthouse (Italy, 1988) (AKA "La Casa 3")
Rating: ***
Starring: Lara Wendel, Greg Rhodes, Mary Sellers

Ghosthouse (1988) is something you would get when a haunted house movie like, let's say, Poltergeist (1982) suddenly gets a body count under the direction of a bad slasher flick only Italians can conjure up in the late 80s. (For this movie's case, producer Joe "Antropophagus (1980)" D’Amato and director Umberto "Cannibal Ferox (1981)" Lenzi. Which should mean we would be seeing a lot of batshit insanity you thought only exists in your wildest fever dreams. Gods help us)

We start this cluster of madness with a girl murdering a cat offcamera in her family's basement, with pops eventually finding out and punishing his spawn by locking her up down there until she learns what she did is cruel and wrong. What follows is a double murder perpetrated by a mostly unseen ghoul with rotten hands, hacking the father's head with a hatchet while his dear wife gets an exploding mirror to the face before being throated with a knife.

Twenty years, ham radio enthusiast Paul tells his girlfriend Martha about the strange signals he have been getting from his equipment, which mostly consists of repetitive carnival music, odd chanting and a couple of people screaming. They soon figure out the location of where the screams are originating from, by which one car ride and one annoying encounter with a hitcher later reveals to be the same -and now dilapidated- house where the opening double murder was committed.

There the two encounter a band of four teenagers, out for your typical horror film road trip and two of whom sounding much alike the screamers from Paul's mysterious radio audio. Now dead curious of what's going on, the two parties decided to help each other out and uncover the truth behind the odd screamings, consequently leading to some weird hauntings involving ghost hounds, stretchy explosive bottles and an evil clown doll, as well as murderous groundskeepers, knife-wielding death specters and a killer electric fan.

As with most guilty pleasure movies, Ghosthouse's a whole lot like a double edge sword; on one end, you have this thing that's not all too well put together and feels more like a hodge-podge of supposedly scary scenes done with the feistiest cheese and questionable (and I think mostly dubbed) acting. Cliches upon cliches of horror tropes are to be expected, from the creaky dark Gothic houses and people investigating weird noises alone only to get murdered, to bloody faucets and a creepy doll and girl combo, while weird scripts make their way through thespians with lines like " You should believe in ghosts, pea-brain". (To be fair, it WAS (again) the 80s) It makes Ghosthouse tedious to watch, honestly, taking a good toll on any of its attempt to build atmosphere and suspense, but the silliness of it all does work in the movie's favor through another angle. The so-bad-its-entertaining angle.

When Ghosthouse goes for the ghoulish and brutal, may it be a bisection from random guillotines or an acid bath that somehow found its way underneath a house, it goes for it with a gut and a sense of energy and creativity to make itself worthwhile after each of its slow moments, leading itself to a fair killcount. At the times it is not violating our screens with gruesome deaths, in turn, Ghosthouse puts its randomness to good use by treating its audience with a cavalcade of  "scares" mostly borrowed from more well known supernatural horror movies like The Amityville Horror (1979) and The Omen (1976), dated and hammy for its effects but laughably fine for good fun.

The film's cinematography effectively captures the moody ghoulishness of its fever dream-like plot, though I find the accompanying composed score to be, while effective when timed properly, a bit repetitive and bordering annoying, particularly the case with the unholy backmasked carnival music emitted by the clown doll. Still, Ghosthouse (1988) is a passable entry to the late 80s incoherent cheesefest that is Italian horror, one that finds a welcoming home among horror fans as a fan favorite midnight movie haunting their video collection. Or late night cable viewing. Far from a masterpiece, but entertaining either way.

Bodycount:
1 cat had its throat cut with a pair of scissors offscreen
1 male had his head split open with a hatchet
1 female gets pinned to a door with a knife through her throat
1 male gets a projected fan blade slice through his throat
1 girl mentioned found left for dead inside a cellar
1 male brained with a hammer, left for dead inside a coffin
1 female chopped in half by a guillotine
1 male found hanged
1 male found dead with a head wound
1 male repeatedly stabbed in the back with a pair of garden shears
1 male hit by an incoming bus
Total: 11

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+

When Good Puppets Go Bad: Puppet Master (1989)

Puppet Master (1989)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Paul Le Mat, William Hickey, Irene Miracle

A genuine cult classic, Puppet Master is a direct-to-video production that puts the name Charles Band into the map when it comes to genre flicks. While this isn't is first foray into the living inaminate horror business as he also acted as one of the producers for the genuinely creepy supernatural slasher Tourist Trap (1979) and the horror-fantasy Dolls (1987), the imaginative variety of the tiny terrors in Puppet Master made way to its success not only as a movie, but also as a franchise that has its ups and downs through out the years. Personally? It's my love for slashers and my still-burning passion for toys and collectibles that made this an instant fave for me, so let's settle in and see what strings this movie pulled.

If Andre Toulon's alive and real, he'll be one hell of a granddad!
Just imagine all of the toys he'll bring murderous life to!

Puppet Master starts in 1939, with an elderly puppeteer named Andre Toulon working on a puppet's head at the Bodega Bay inn while a small figure actively scouts the building. Through the figure's eyes, we see trouble as a pair of Nazi spies soon drive to the bay and started to making their way to the puppeteer, prompting our small scout to rush and beat them to it, warning Toulon, its apparent master. The man, however, calmly hides his beloved creations within the walls of his room before shooting himself dead, keeping everything he knows to the grave.

Fifty years later, psychics Alex Whitaker, Dana Hadley, Frank Forrester and Carissa Stamford are contacted by an old colleague named Neil Gallagher, inviting them to the old Bodega Bay inn where he claims to have found Toulon's secret in giving life to his puppets. Despite some mysterious and fairly disturbing visions of death and gore (A few of them being their own demise, mind you), the physics made it to the inn only to meet not Neil, but rather his estranged wife Megan who they all never heard of until now.

As it turns out, their colleague killed himself after sending out the message (A death so recent that his body is still there in a conveniently placed coffin!) and they believe they're gathered to further investigate Neil's findings. Unknown to them, unfortunately, is that some of Toulon's beloved puppets are out for blood. Could they be guarding their master's secrets? Or is there something foul afoot?

Yeah, it kinda sucks to be the first to arrive at a funeral.

Admittedly, the small budget of $400,000 often shows as Puppet Master can be dialogue heavy and slow paced until the last twenty minutes but direction-wise, the film does its very best as a creepy and bloody horror flick. The story can get a tad too ambitious with its topic of magic, alchemy and psychics, but the writing, stylized visuals and editing made enough of the material to work as a B-grade cult movie, a matter that can be satisfyingly enough for the right audience.

As an addition to the killer toy sub-genre, the puppet effects, though dated and sometimes obvious (are those the shadows of the puppeteers I see?), are great and their gimmicky designs are wonderfully creative, distinguishing and memorable enough to admire, a few of them being popular enough to be recognizable within the horror community: Blade is an apparent leader, wielding a hook and a knife for hands as he slashes down victims four times his size. Pinhead is a brawn that grapples with crushing fist. Tunneler is a literal drill sergeant armed with a working buzz-top to hole through flesh. Leech Woman has a macabre skill of vomiting live leeches. And Jester, perhaps the tamest of the bunch, can shift his expression with an uncanny sneer. 

They're definitely the stars of the movie, something that may or may not say much in regards to our human actors, a cast of unknowns who still, up to this day, remain unknowns. Quite a shame, really, as I think they all did well on their roles and carried the film as good as their puppet co-stars. Granted some of them did get cheesy and their characters can be ridiculous at times (again, if you saw visions of your own death, why proceed?!) but these kinds of travesties are to be expected in low-budget horror flicks so a very little that needs little addressing.

I see the face of death. And it is a puppet with a hook and a knife.

T&A is present as half of the cast are supposedly sexually charged characters, though it is quite surprisingly that these nude scenes were barely erotic or graphic. In fact, gore is relatively lite as well as most of the kills were done in a way they're either cut away the moment steel comes in contact to flesh, or, strangest of it all, green goo replaces blood during the movie's messiest slaughter. It's prim and prudish for a slasher flick, yes, but it somewhat fits the tone and mystic air of the movie so it is, again, hardly a problem. (I mean, the opening theme of the film is already an indication that we'll be dwelling in dark fantasy)

Despite having the common flaws of a budget-restricted production for its time, Puppet Master lives on as one of the more enjoyable killer toy horror films and one of the longest running horror/fantasy franchise, with twelve movies following up after this (including a non-canonical crossover between another Charles Band production, Demonic Toys (1992)) and perhaps more to come. The success of this movie and its film series definitely owes a lot from its featured tiny terrors' grimly charm and I am glad to say I gave this movie a try and a keep. So if you're yet to see Toulon's magnificent creations, then this way come! This is one puppet show you shouldn't miss, dear bodycounter!

Bodycount:
1 male shot through the mouth
1 female brained with a firepoker
1 female gets a drill to her face
1 male attacked by leeches
1 female pounded, throat slashed
1 male gets a drill to his neck and a leech shoved down his mouth, neck snapped
Total: 6