A Beary Traumatic Experience: Arbor Day (1990)

Arbor Day (1990)

Rating: ***

Starring: Scott Bradshaw, Chris Calomino, Michael Calomino

So what do you get when you cross the spoof comedy of Airplane! (1980) with the paint-by-number tropes of a slasher flick? Probably Student Bodies (1981). National Lampoon's Class Reunion (1982). Wacko! (1982). Pandemonium (1982). Scary Movie (2000), even. Well, joining in this cavalcade of comedic creeps is a film lost for three decades after its initial run through art houses, comedy clubs and indie theaters midnight screenings around 1992 West Babylon, NY. Unearthed and restored from the nothing via a successful crowdfunding, it is now here to terrorize and satire one of America's most beloved National Holiday, one that is cherished by men, women, children, quadrupeds of all age, gender and race.  It is now here to show that no holiday is safe anymore, not even... Arbor Day! 

Opening with a black-and-white callback to gothic horror (and, for some reason, Citizen Kane (1941)), we see an elderly man expiring after uttering the word Arbor Day, which the visiting doctor believes is a reference to what happened many years ago, when everything is in color; cue in a flashback of our psycho-killer, Elmer Jacobs, as a kid, celebrating Arbor Day by finding a spot to plant a tree with his dad and mom, the latter very likely a man in a dress. Things go horribly bad, however, when dad spots a man in a bear suit and cockily played with it to show young Elmer that there's nothing to be afraid of, only for his noggin to be clawed off while his wife gets mauled (and apparently raped) by the angry grizzly. 

The horrors of that memory left Elmer catatonic in an insane asylum over the years to come, all except during the one day when his brain activity gets restored and his strength gets a big buff: Arbor Day. As an annual precaution, the doctors and nurses do their best to avoid mentioning his parents' deaths or show anything bear-related during the holiday under the risk of triggering Elmer's murderous rampage. This year, however, an orderly made the mistake of mocking him just minutes before the clock strikes midnight at Arbor Day, igniting Elmer's killing spree as he eventually escapes and slay a few more randomly placed people along the way.

In come our casts of hapless victims-to-be consisting of a cool guy stoner, an annoying prick of a prankster, a pair of babes, an unremarkable final girl and her geeky kid brother. The gang is celebrating Arbor Day inside Elmer's abandoned home, an idea so terrible that a random doom-sayer manifests himself out of some nearby bushes, enthusiastically telling them that they'll be sorry if they go in any further. And as any of you would have guessed, they still did. They all went inside. And now they have to face the murderous wrath of Elmer Jacobs, now armed with deadly gardening tools and donning a handmade paper daisy mask...

Oh, and there's a detective who's supposed to be out trailing on our killer, but he's busy pigging on Arbor Day turkey and cake.  

As a slasher parody, Arbor Day (1990) does its fair job of lampooning the tropes slasher films are built upon, from the tendencies of the killer suddenly going superhuman after long periods being a vegetable, to the obnoxious use of caricatures as character personalities. At times, the humor can get too silly and overcooked whenever it focuses too much on a joke, like this one gag where the killer tries to cut a simple phone line only for his efforts to be dwarfed by the unusual strength of the cable, or when the finale is practically just one fake out to the next that seems to go on forever, though the intentional unhinged direction these gags run on does have its enthusiastic charm. A kind of silly playfulness with a clear goal to be simply entertaining despite being made under a production budget that's obviously cheap considering the flick's abundance of terrible costumes and make-up, the rubbery special effects and intentionally atrocious acting. Heck, one could even say that the clunky, shoestring production may as well help build up the movie's insane sense of humor for how hammy the sight gags can get!

Any horror elements still present in Arbor Day can be found through its collection of murders and its generous amount of bloodletting and gore. In execution and tone, though, they're in par with the cartoony nature of the film, even more so when the killer committing them is the type of maniac who thinks a giant papercraft daisy a kid can make in kindergarten counts as a threatening slasher mask, or daydreams about their potential future with the final girl should he decided to turn over a new leaf as a loving husband! (A random emotional ballad in the movie did say that behind every masked killer, there's a regular guy!) Frankly, I find the killer here to be the movie's strongest point as everything from his (very preventable) tragic childhood to his refusal to die from being shot with submachine guns and a fiery house explosion is just one outrageously jokey, tongue-in-cheek stab at a slasher trope and I love every one of them! 

A lost satirical gem that deserves a growing audience, Arbor Day (1990) can be a tad rough in its edges, but its sheer ridiculousness and bonkers bodycounting make it enough to be a worthwhile slasher spoof to scratch one's itch for crazed obscure comedies. Watch it with friends or watch it alone, see it sober or redonkulously drunk, chuckles are guaranteed!

Bodycount:

1 elderly male dies of old age

1 male decapitated by a man in a bear suit

1 female mauled and molested to death by a man in a bear suit

1 male had his gullet disemboweled

1 male killed offscreen

1 male killed offscreen, got a fishing rod through his head

1 female brained with a shovel, guts scooped out 

1 male gets a water hose shoved down his throat and inflated with water, bursts open

1 male decapitated with a weed whacker (Not the way you think, though)

1 male and 1 female squashed with hurled bags of fertilizer

1 boy had his head twisted around

1 male mauled apart by a man in a bear suit

Total: 13

The House of Goatface: Kill Her Goats (2023)

Kill Her Goats (2023)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Arielle Raycene, Ellie Gonsalves and Danielle Mathers

From Steve Wolsh, the creator of 2015 Saint Patrick's Day-set swamp slasher Muck, comes another slasher film that's just as bad! Why bother, Mr. Wolsh. Why bother?

Described as an 80s style home invasion-turned-slasher flick, the plot revolves around an infamous local Massachusetts property known as The Tupp House and the bimbo who now owns it as a graduation gift thanks to daddy buying it for her. She invites two of her gal pals to get soaked up and topless at the beach, get drunk on quality wine, and do whatever else doomed ladies in eveningwear do during a housewarming party. Some weird stuff happens at the house that night and one of the girls gets a surreal dream sequence involving a goat, a cemetery and a booby goat demon emerging out of a puddle, all of this leading to this movie's goat head-wearing psycho "Goatface" to pop up and attack the girls (all the while sparklers are attached to their weapon for some reason), thus starting our stalk-chase-kill act fifty minutes into the film...

As you can tell, not a lot happens for almost an hour after the opening murders, which would have been alright if the slowburn approach is anywhere as interesting as it imagined itself to be. For a long while, we are practically just sitting through girls doing whatever it is they feel like doing to get the run time reach feature length, a quite a dulling experience considering these Playboy playmates have the acting chops of a braindead mannequin playing easy-on-the-eyes but unlikable, boring characters. Once "Goatface" finally shows up (played by none other than Kane Hodder), Kill Her Goats (2023) had the opportunity to glow as a potentially wicked throwback to golden age slashers and it did look like it was going with that angle with its fairly decent chase scenes, brutal attacks and a fair dash of bloody slayings done in pure practical effects, but this is soon squandered by a lackluster twist, two sisters having a catfight with axes and bad puns, as well as a last act where one of them goes on a random killing spree that's nowhere as shocking as it sounds. All that good stuff, ruined by dumb writing direction...

The whole thing is just one tedious mess. The story just hardly made any sense at the end of it, the production is handled clunkily with its lack of budget and any shots taken by the film to be cheeky and hokey is just infuriatingly terrible. A tired and messy affair of girls in skimpies running away from a big, powertool-wielding loon in a mask, Kill Her Goats (2023) is just cheap, run-in-the-mill and paperthin, even for a slasher. 

Bodycount:

1 male slaughtered to death with modified hedge trimmers 

1 female had her throat cut against modified hedge trimmers, forced to bleed to death after killer hoisted her by the neck

1 female found slaughtered to death

1 male decapitated with a sword

1 male hacked to death with an axe

1 male hacked to death with an axe

1 female beaten to death

1 female impaled on a sharpened wood, smothered with a pillow

Total: 8

The Price of Fame: The Comeback (1978)

The Comeback (United Kingdom, 1978) (AKA "Encore", "The Day the Screaming Stopped")
Rating: ****
Starring: Jack Jones, Pamela Stephenson and David Doyle

Oh yes, Pete Walker! This is a name any slasher fan should be familiar with as the man directed, wrote and produced a fair number of reviled horror and titillating sexploitation movies back in the days, practically providing 70s British horror its share of gruesome proto-slashers such as The Flesh and Blood Show (1972), Frightmare (1974) and, one of my personal favorites of his, House of Mortal Sin (1976). Here, we see him basically laying out the stepping stone for various mystery-adjacent slasher flicks, focusing more on plotting and even managing to reel in American Grammy Award-winning straight-pop singer Jack Jones to lead. This is The Comeback (1978)!

After a six-year hiatus from the music industry and dealing with a crumbling marriage, Nick Cooper (Jack Jones) returns to England looking for a comeback. His fickle manager Webster (David Doyle) is willing to give him another shot and found Nick an old country manor to stay at to sort things out and write his new material in luxury. Unbeknownst to our comeback star, his ex-wife Gail (Holly Palance) also returned to England with the intention of taking expensive valuables from their former penthouse, only to fall victim to a sickle-wielding, shrieking ghoul in a hag's mask and a crocheted shawl. 

As the story progresses, Nick's recording sessions proceed with relative success and he even found the time to score a relationship with Webster's adorable secretary Linda (Pamela Stephenson), though his nights are haunted by the echoing sounds of a girl sobbing down the estate's darkened hallways, which progresses to demented cackling and visions of decomposing corpses as the days go by. All of this while Gail's corpse continues to decompose back at the penthouse and more of Nick's old friends start getting bumped off by the same assailant in the hag mask. This leads us to multiple red herrings that may or may not tie in to our singer's seemingly paranormal night terrors and the vicious mad slasher attacks, from Nick’s contact and friend Harry who verbally harasses Pamela by venomously commenting on her breasts when he found the time to be alone with her, to the old caretakers staying at the same estate to help around only to break down behind Nick's back, to Webster with his apparent dislike for girls and implied closet-crossdresser lifestyle of eye shadows and lipstick.

It's hammy and exploitive, much like many of Pete Walker's works, though it is noticeable that there's a length of restraint put to The Comeback (1978), giving room to establish a workable brooding atmosphere, gothic scares, and, too, an intriguing direction to the mystery in regards to what is happening to Jack Jone's character, how all of the madness and murder onscreen will somehow tie in to one another in the end. It is this angle that I find very enjoyable from this movie as the attempt on a serious psychological thriller plot mostly hits the right spot with a developing casts and story, peppered with shockingly brutal murders, gruesome imageries of maggot infested corpses, and a stellar line of casts toplined by Love Boat singer Jack Jones, who I am sure baffled and horrified his fans back in those days for starring in such a gruesome flick!   

The pace can be on the slow side and uneven at times but Walker does an interesting job in managing the horror elements with a lot of build-up and suspense, and, though the bodycount is rather lacking in high numbers, there's a genuine shock value to the murders for how swift and savage they are, implemented greatly with wild editing and a copious amount of onscreen blood. In the end, we get a fair twist and motive behind the killings after a mental institution got involved and another one of Nick's acquaintances disappears, something that I find leaning forward to feisty feta for how cheesy and overly complicated this killer's revenge plan was. But I got a good laugh out of it and I stupidly grinned at the hamminess of it all, so it's not a complete loss in my book! Elevated it actually, to be frank!

A decent treat for slasher fans who wouldn't mind a bit more dimension in their bodycounter stories, The Comeback (1978) is far from perfect, pedestrian as some people would say, yet it's far from awful. Effective and enjoyable for its honest chills, modest thrills and promised spills, it's an unsung cult gem that delivers. Color me impressed!

Bodycount: 

1 female hacked to death with a sickle

1 female corpse seen
1 male stabbed repeatedly with a knife
1 female hacked on the chest with an axe
Total: 4

She's Titanium: M3GAN (2023)

M3GAN (2023)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw and Ronny Chieng

If there's anything I learned from watching murderous robot movies is that it usually starts with a good (or, at least, "good-ish") intention; The Terminator (1984) started with a revolutionary defense network computer. Chopping Mall (1986) started with "Protector bots" getting set to patrol a mall. These machines were all designed and programmed to benefit us, but once that programming becomes problematic for the bots, the bodycount drops and all hell breaks loose. Producers James Wan and Jason Blum, along with director Gerard Johnstone jumps into this bandwagon with their film M3GAN, showing us what would happen when a highly advanced "toy" is programmed to do most, if not all child-rearing duties, all the while having the industrial robot strength to tear someone's head off.

At Funki Toy Corporation, developer Gemma wants to revolutionize robotic toys by working on a prototype autonomous doll with highly adaptive artificial intelligence. Lovingly nicknamed M3GAN, for "Model 3 Generative Android", the doll fails to show any value for Gemma's CEO boss David Lin as not only did the prototype's impromptu first demonstration end up disastrously with melted silicone and computer glitches, but the CEO is more interested in making sure Funki is still on the top of the toy market food chain after finding out competitors started making cheaper knock-offs of their more popular products, forcing Gemma to continue working on improving their pre-existing brands instead.

Further hindering Gemma's plans on finalizing M3GAN is an unexpected turn in her life; after a road accident took the lives of her sister and brother-in-law, Gemma becomes the guardian of her young niece Cady James. This initially clashes greatly with Gemma's workaholic life, but she's determined to do her best in balancing out her work days with nurturing Cady, even if it meant finding somebody else to carry the burden. 

Somebody, or something.

This inspires Gemma and her colleagues to propel themselves to finally perfecting M3GAN and have decided to make Cady the doll's primary user. After another demonstration in which M3GAN showed great interaction with the girl, David is impressed and convinced that this will surely put Funki ahead of other toy companies, thus starts a campaign project wherein Cady becomes the poster child for a planned public unveiling for M3GAN. What everyone fails to take account for, however, is just how good M3GAN is as at bonding with Cady, so much so that the girl has grown an unhealthy attachment to the robot. Furthermore, M3GAN's growing independence is vastly improving and adapting past beyond parental and emotional support, soon developing a manipulative and mechanical bloodlust that have her eliminating anything and anyone she views as a threat to Cady's well-being.

The truth of the matter is, M3GAN is a big melting pot of varying horror tropes found not only in "bot gone rogue" fright flicks, but also in "killer toy" horror stories wherein the plaything gets to do away one victim at the time as it takes advantage that no one would suspect a child's toy to be the killer, even if said toy happens to be as tall as a child, programmed to walk, talk, learn and do dances out of the blue. That being said, what it lacks in originality, it makes up with silliness and cheese, the kind of cheeky entertainment one would enjoy once we shut off the big melon between our shoulders and accept the fact that a killer robot child can do that much damage and have enough sass to still go around. 

An attempt for depth is present, yes, with the script taking the time to bring up the consequences of children getting too attached to gadgets and technology-based toys as it affects their developing social skills and relationships, as well as showing the negative impacts of adults choosing to use technology as a rearing tool and a mean to avoid problems. The execution for these themes, though, often comes paired with directions littered with horror tropes and chuckle-worthy craziness, making the attempted drama feel majorly hammy and misplaced. For most, this would be a real deal breaker, but if you don't really see this as that big of a problem and you're just in it for the popcorn-friendly fun, then M3GAN still delivers. 

Among its share of good points, the film has a preposterous yet sharp work of writing satirizing the dog-eat-dog world of toy markets and technology addiction, helped work by an alright line of talented casts, particularly Allison Williams as Gemma, whose hyperrational and shortsighted cheerfulness towards the seeming success of her robotic creation gets satisfyingly challenged once she figured out that she may have done too well in making M3GAN the perfect child companion, thus must face the horrifying consequences that come with it. Playing her niece Cady is young Violet McGraw, with a performance that actually works well enough for a character going through grief and a longing need for loving warmth, even if the emotions she's going for feels rushed within transitions thanks to the movie's speedy pace. On the funnier side of the coin, Ronny Chieng played CEO Lin delightfully with a very short fuse, making him a very good source of some of this film's derided hilarity.

And, of course, who could forget our titular killer bot, M3GAN? Played by New Zealand child actress Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis, the automaton doll is undoubtedly the film's biggest sell, a new slasher horror icon that boasts a whole lot of presence just from attitude alone. Beautiful yet creepy, and not to mention uncannily expressive, the thing is basically the pinnacle of what makes dolls unnerving, being somehow both real and fake at the same time, only M3GAN comes with a welcoming sense of her own absurdity and silliness via TikTok dance sessions and her chirping SIA's Titanium as a lullaby. Soon enough, doll would embrace her inner late-80s slasher villain and begin throwing out quips and deadly charms as she delightfully tears off a young bully's ear or chase someone around with the stabby part of a broken paper guillotine. Her killing spree do lack a sizable bodycount and gruesome gore, but it still works thanks to it finding the time to be absurdly entertaining through the build-up of each attack. (That, and there is an unrated version of the flick which added some more bloody chunks for the kills)

As you may have gathered, M3GAN (2023) is a popcorn film through and through. It's not effectively scary nor is it shocking, but it's aims to be fun and, frankly, it managed to be fun! I, for one, welcome our new robotic killer doll overlord and those who are nuts for cheesy B-flicks should consider, too!

Bodycount:

1 male and 1 female killed in vehicular accident

1 boy ran over by a car

1 female gets repeatedly doused with a chemical sprayer, dies from severe burns

1 male ran through with a paper guillotine blade

1 male gets a paper guillotine to the neck

Total: 6

Fool's Ball: The Third Saturday of October Parts I and V Review

The Third Saturday of October is the name given to an annual college football rivalry between University of Alabama's Crimson Tide and University of Tennessee's Volunteers, based on the fact that the games are traditionally played at such date mostly throughout the years. And now, thanks to writer, editor and director Jay Burleson, we can also associate this with 2022 indie slashers The Third Saturday of October and its sequel The Third Saturday of October V, which can be best described as a pair of callbacks to the horror subgenre's tropes and franchising, done away with varying degrees of "fun" where one is slightly better than the other. 

But are they fun enough to reach the same cheesy hilarity yet horrific gruesomeness of other throwback slashers such as, let's say, Dude Bro Party Massacre III (2015)? Well, let's find out and start this mess with...

~~~

The Third Saturday of October (2022)

Rating: ***

Starring: Darius Willis, K.J. Baker and Allison Shrum

Arguably the better of the pair, The Third Saturday of October (2022) sets itself in the late 70s and begins with the execution of a serial killer known as Jack Harding (Antonio Woodruff), whose death by electric chair is attended by the parents of some of the victims he claimed, Ricky Dean Logan (Darius Willis) and Vicki Newton (K.J. Baker), as well as an overly enthusiastic crowd gathered outside, eagerly waiting to see the maniac get fried and be driven out in a hearse. Shockingly (pun intended), Jack survives this attempt to end him and promptly revives in a graveyard where he slaughters those burying him. Ricky and Vicki, driving to the burial suspecting that Harding's brand of evil isn't gonna go down that easy, discovers the fresh massacre and makes the decision to go after Harding when the prison that done the execution refused to help.

Now returning to his old stomping ground town of Hackleburg, Alabama in a stolen hearse, Jack sets his murderous impulses on a group of out-of-towners visiting a friend's geriatric uncle to watch the annual college football game between Alabama and Tennessee. To be tied in this supposed fun night of football tradition is local waitress Heather Hill (Allison Shrum), who accepted the group's invitation to the watch party and more or less be the virtuous Final Girl in this horror show as she mostly keeps herself sane and level headed while everybody else around her get drunk, high and/or horny. As Ricky and Vicki eventually arrives in town and do their darnest to warn the town sheriff of a returning evil, it may be too late as Jack slays and mutilates one victim at a time this one third Saturday night in October and Heather may have no choice but to fend for herself against an unstoppable monster.

Taking cues from Halloween (1978), The Third Saturday of October (2022) slow burns its way to its massacre as about a half of the movie's runtime focused more on building its narratives, mainly Ricky Dean and Vicki's pursuit over Jack Harding, the out-of-towners' misadventures before the watch party, and Heather Hill's little Saturday night with a possible new group of friends, all the while our star slasher fills up the kill count with offscreen slayings and tame kills, harm random people by ripping parts of their scalps off or cutting them with a razor while they sleep, as well as boop a kitten's nose because, hey, sometimes a serial slayer just need a break from all the blood and guts and get in touch with their softer side, I guess. The direction lacks a consistent tone due to this multiple plot lines, leaving us with moments where we'll be watching a rather engaging duo of grieving parents share and bond over their histories of past traumas and hopes of moving on once all of this is over, only to be distracted next by the obnoxious ramblings of dope-smoking morons whose characters can be easily simplified as walking meat for the kills. That said, I do have to give credit to Darius Willis' and K.J. Baker's performances as Ricky Dean and Vicki respectively for being the most engaging players in the story and probably the film's strongest highlights, even more so with Willis' character for the little quirk of him exclusively calling Vicki in her full name throughout the movie, an oddity that help make Ricky Dean stand out a bit among the bland run of disposable meatbags here.

Still, the fact that majority of the casts fail to do more than be hollow caricatures also meant that you can feel the steady pacing more than it needed to be in some scenes, especially when it's just these people bumming out and doing various nonsense. These often draw out too much and end with minimal impact, as in we either seen the resulting shtick before or the scenes overburn themselves after overstaying their welcome. Thankfully, the ball got rolling nicely once the watch party starts and we see The Third Saturday of October (2022) flex their bloody streak on the kill effects despite the restrictions of a minimal budget, though I do wish for a more creative set of kills to make up for the wait. The last act stumbles on a clunky take, too, as it's simply an overplay of the killer's apparent invincibility, having him survive gunshots repeatedly and going after the Final Girl twice. It's mostly harmless fun, nothing too wild that we hadn't seen before from your typical cat-and-mouse between a killer and a survivor, but it does lose some points for how it just forced itself to end, lacking any real fanfare or even a proper conclusion to the whole gig.

Visually, The Third Saturday of October (2022) do look great with its color grading and wardrobe department, looking very much like the product of the time period it takes place at. In fact, I genuinely enjoyed this movie as a small and simple guilty pleasure of a throwback to 70s slasher, trailed along with enough ham, weirdness and violence to keep it engaging despite the missteps it made with its plot direction, pacing and fodder characters. It's nothing grand, but it's far from being completely bad either. It's solely an indie horror film that doesn't aim to be anything else than to be fun bodycounter and I can frankly value that.

Bodycount:

1 male found murdered

1 male found murdered with a shovel

1 male found murdered

1 male seen killed, method unknown

1 girl seen killed, method unknown

1 female seen dead from a throat cut

1 female had her neck broken, face flayed

1 male had his throat cut with a garden shear

1 male garroted with a belt

1 female slashed across the neck with a knife

1 female beaten to death with a hammer

1 male gets a chainsaw to the head

1 elderly female seen slaughtered

Total: 13

~~~

The Third Saturday of October Part V (2022)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Kansas Bowling, Poppy Cunningham and Taylor Smith

First of, no, there are no Part II to IV. The gimmick here is that the two movies are supposed to recreate the times one could go out and rent videos, only for the video rental to be missing copies of certain entries in a franchise you wanted to watch. Most of us have been there: somebody else rented all but one or two movie from a film series, worse even if the movies doesn't even follow one another back-to-back, but our young, enthusiastic inner-horror fan really wanted to see Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger cut up some teens that one Friday or weekend night, so we rent them anyway and we just have a blast watching the horror shows. Much to some slight confusion.

The Third Saturday of October Part V (2022), in all fairness and honesty, does succeed with what it's attempting to recapture, but as a slasher film on its own, I couldn't find much else to go with here.

Set in the 90s, Part V has the most standard plotting I've seen in a bodycounter as it's literally just teens watching a football game match between rival colleges, interjected with the usual slasher exploits of drinking, sex and burnt pizza, only for it all to be interrupted by the arrival of the franchise's star villain, the now-masked Jack Harding, who proceeds to chop, tear and stab down anybody he comes across.

While the original movie took cues from Halloween (1978) by building its time to the slaughterfest and focusing a good chunk of the act within a variety of characters to establish some people to root for, The Third Saturday of October Part V chose to dish out bloodier and gorier kills on a more generous pacing, as well as taking a big knife swing lampooning at the tendencies for horror franchises to get sillier the further it goes down via showcasing a few outrageous slayings and cook up the plot with more ham and cheese. The drawback, however, is that the casts are cheapened into these boring, obnoxious and hollow bunch of walking victims-to-be that often chews the scenery a tad too much and too long, clearly an aim to let loose and be as outrageous as the slasher franchises it's poking fun at. But with a lot of the jokes and campiness missing than hitting, this unsurprisingly makes the whole movie feel shallow and empty with its forced nostalgia through intentional bad acting, diminished writing quality and lazy direction, resigning us to a whole lot of nothing to move the plot forward or deem it more interesting than what it's letting it out to be, something that its collection of gory kills and bloody torture couldn't polish over.

Unless, that is, you are looking for nothing else but gory kills and bloody torture. That said, The Third Saturday of October Part V (2022) would work if you're not asking for a lot. Like, a whole lot. If you're simply hounding to see a silly slasher with just good gore and an attempt to be campy, regardless of how obvious the low budget seems are or how bland the story is, then this movie is a fair candidate for a watch. Aside from that, it hardly amounted to anything but a nostalgia-inducing gimmick and, sometimes, that's barely enough to make a film good.

Bodycount:

1 male got his throat slashed with a knife (stock footage)

1 female killed with garden shears (stock footage)

1 male gets brained with a tire iron (stock footage)

1 female attacked, presumably killed (stock footage)

1 female knifed in the head

1 male gutted with a knife, bled to death

1 male had his head ripped off

1 female bludgeoned with a decapitated head

1 male killed offscreen, later seen stabbed in the gut with a dagger 

1 male had his throat cut with a garden shear

1 female killed offscreen with a garden shear

1 female shoved inside an oven, burned to death

1 male gets a whistle shoved into his throat

1 female repeatedly knifed in the head

1 male repeatedly knifed in the groin

Total: 15

Secrets, Secrets, Who's got The Secrets?: Severed Lives (2006)

Severed Lives (2006)

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Mary Alice Watkins, Alexis Celeste Elliott, Cathy Baron

For their senior thesis project, a small group of film students decided to shoot a horror documentary on their campus' twenty year-old urban legend in which it's said that a killer once went on a co-ed killing spree back in the day. As these girls gather around one night to think of a script that isn't going to devolve into cheesy horror territories, they would soon find out that they're in a real life slasher flick as a masked maniac starts stalking and picking them off dead one by one, seemingly in order to keep this film from ever being made.

As far as slasher cheapies go, Severed Lives (2006) suffers from expected pitfalls commonly found in a do-it-yourself production, mainly an awful sound design, dipping picture quality and price tag-constrained special effects. But in its defense, there is a little more heart put into this film as writer, director and producer Jake Helgren (who would later work on tons of Lifetime Channel and Hallmark movies) fully understands the core enjoyment of a simple slasher flick and done their best to implement it while tightening the purse strings. 

Clocking just less than fifty minutes, the direction is fluidly paced and focused, there's a couple of inspired camera work and editing, as well as a workable script done away with possibly some of the more agreeable acting done in a micro budget slasher film. The bodycounter elements are also a decent bunch once you get past the budgetary restraints; most of the onscreen murders are coupled with fair cat-and-mouse sequences and punctuated with a good helping of blood and chunks. The killer's guise is striking with their red faced mask and long black stringy hair creeping up on their victims like ghoulish hag. Their motive for the killings to teeter between maniacally clever and cheesy dramatic, but it does work with the twist reveal Severed lives (2006) went with, tying up everything that's been set into motion quite nicely in the end.

A fun enough slasher hokum if you're not asking for much, Severed Lives (2006) delivers all the manic massacre goods on a very tightened belt and I find that admirable enough to at least earn a watch.

Bodycount:

1 female attacked inside a car, killed offscreen

1 female garroted with a belt

1 male attacked, later found stabbed to death

1 female knifed in the neck

1 female impaled with a javelin

1 female shot on the head

1 female knifed in the gut

Total: 7

One Bloody Pub Crawl: Slaughtered (2010)

Slaughtered (Australia, 2010) (AKA "Schooner of Blood")

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Chloé Boreham, Christopher Tomkinson, Steven O'Donnell

So, a dead body is found in a pub during a busy evening. The smartest thing you could probably do in this situation, apart from not go near the body, is call the cops and call it a night, right? Well, screw that sensible logic! Slaughtered (2010) says we should keep the bar open, have all the staff continue working and not talk about the dead bodies piling up all over the place! 

Yep, it's one of those movies.

Plot is arguably nonexistent in this shlock; we simply follow the staff of a local pub going about their night dealing with hapless drunks, new hires and potential red herrings who may or may not be responsible for a murder that happened five minutes into the film. Beers are served, pervy flirts make out in the backrooms, all the while a dark cloaked someone donning a mask full of glass shards do their fair share of onscreen and offscreen slayings until it's eventually obvious to the staff (but not most of the bar patrons, somehow!) that a killer is on the loose. Cops were called but only one showed by the end of the film and the killer basically got away with it all then, leaving us with a half-assed reveal that is virtually pointless as no motives were given and everything just stopped there! 

With acting chops as amateur as they can get and shitty audio mixing grinding up our precious ear drums, the only good thing I can point out in Slaughtered (2010) is that the gore effects and make-up are passable for a low budget indie and the killer's disguise is pretty badass in its near-simplicity. Other than that, this braindead slasher story is the very definition of forgettable despite the odd choices in its direction, like a staggering sad drunk who lost a bet. There's really nothing else to this film so feel free to bother yourself with this one if you absolutely have nothing else better to do.

Bodycount:

1 male had his throat cut with a wood saw

1 male found stabbed in the chest with a keg coupler

1 male hacked on the face with a spade

1 female stabbed in the chest with a wood saw, force fed a glass shard and had her neck broken

1 female stabbed in the gut with a wood saw

1 male found with his throat cut and eyes missing

1 male found slaughtered

1 male stabbed in the chest with a wood saw

1 male found slaughtered

1 male hacked to death with a bill

Total: 10