Some Kind of Hate (2015)

"Some Kind of Hate" is a supernatural-slasher that managed to squander any possible potential - of which there WAS a glimmer - in favor of just an abundance of emo, cry baby bullshit.

After retaliating against a bully with a fork to the face, a mopey outcast is sent to some kind of reform retreat out in the desert. Now he's bullied by a new group of assholes until he encounters the ghost of a girl who was driven to commit suicide years ago by former camp attendees. She has this 'power' where any harm she causes to herself with her razor blade necklace is inflicted upon the bully she's pursuing...

This is a decent enough idea that could've worked better had they not reduced the entire movie to just a slow-paced, anti-bullying PSA. The razor blade girl is a very ineffective presence, overall, who looks about as creepy or imposing as a Hot Topic shopper and the gore was nothing special, if not a bit repetitive and boring. Not to mention consisting of an overuse of CGI blood effects.

"Some Kind of Hate" is a dull revenge/slasher flick that does more whining about bullying and angsty teen shit than anything of any real interest. Except, maybe, the scene of the chick getting her legs cut up by proxy, courtesy of the ghost girl. That was kinda hot...

Suspiria (1977)

I think it's safe to say that Dario Argento's "Suspiria" is pretty much universally regarded as one of the top dogs of Italian horror and nothing short of a masterpiece. Striking atmosphere, creepiness and some savage gore - though I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, I'm sure.

An American girl flies into Germany to attend a prominent dance academy, but is greeted by a girl inexplicably fleeing the school in the middle of the night. We see as this girl makes her way in the pouring rain to a dormitory where her and a friend are brutally murdered by an unseen assailant. Back at the academy, the newcomer is noticing some unsettling situations transpiring, involving the blind pianist's seeing-eye dog attacking people, maggots falling from the ceiling and a furtive directress with a peculiar snore... Turns out there's some occult-type shit going on with the witchy instructors and anyone who catches on to this is slaughtered by preternatural killer...

As it's known, the vibrant color scheme and 'art deco-ish' backdrops are essentially what people take away from "Suspiria" and what has garnered it it's iconic status more or less. And rightfully so - the movie looks awesome. On top of that, you've got some graphic kills - the stand-out, of course, being the stained glass window brutalization - and there's the dour, memorable score by Goblin. "Suspiria" is a just a creepy flick with a grim and strange story, enveloped in a radiant neon color aesthetic while delivering on some nice, meaty violence. There's very little to not appreciate about "Suspiria".

Offerings (1989)

Lameass "Halloween" knock-off with really nothing going for it. Hence, I'm going to keep this short.

The weird, mute boy is neighborhood bully prey and ends up falling down a well. Cut to ten years later and he's in the hospital, disfigured and catatonic. He breaks out and starts killing off the now teenage bullies that were responsible for his accident...

"Offerings" is about as forgettable as they come. The death scenes are either completely bloodless or off-screen... Or both. I don't recall any nudity from any of the valley girl non-actors and the killer couldn't have looked more uninteresting. And what was with the pizza toppings? Am I to assume he took the time to cook up human meat and bribe the delivery boy to add it to the pizzas? What a fucking stupid, boring slasher flick. I regret wasting my time...

The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

I hadn't seen this one in years and was happy to finally revisit this classick the other night. This is easily the best 'melt movie' ever ("Street Trash", of course, coming in at a close second...) and I don't care who disagrees with that. All hail Rick Baker and his gooey skills!

During a space mission, a crew of astronauts are exposed to heavy radiation around the rings of Saturn and Steve is the only one on the shuttle to return to Earth alive. However, he's in pretty bad shape as his body is gradually melting, though he now possesses heightened physical strength. After escaping from the hospital, he goes on a rampage through the town while a scientist tries to catch up with him and contain his radioactive rage...

"The Incredible Melting Man" is done very much in the tradition of '40s and '50s sc-fi movies, just with a slimier, gorier 'edge'. Steve, the melting man, looks great as he's scaring and tearing towns folk up while literally falling apart along the way. You got a few memorable scenes, such as the old lemon-stealing couple, a severed head going over a waterfall in slow-motion and hitting the jagged rocks below and, of course, one sorry motherfucker getting tossed into some power lines. Awesome demise! Just an all-around fun, straight-foward flick. If you haven't checked it out, do so.

There's Nothing Out There (1991)

I guess I've seen worse as far as self-aware indie- horror/comedies go, so in all fairness, "There's Nothing Out There" wasn't a total misfire. I just found it more annoying than witty, overall.

Some high school friends drive up to - you guessed it - a vacation home out in the woods for spring break. They end up having to fight off a frog-faced, tentacled creature that shoots mind controlling laser-beams out of it's eyes and wants to procreate with the women...

It's one of those movies that throws a bunch of cliches out there in order to spoof the genre, so I can't really give it shit for that. Much of the heavily forced humor fell flat, for me at least, and the obnoxious, over-the-top, nonstop sarcastic delivery of the horror nerd character got particularly irritating. Good points were the girls are pretty much in their panties or bikinis for the majority of the movie, which gave me enough reason to coast on through the run-time. That's really all I got on this one. There's worse shit like this out there but I still can't recommend it.

Let My Puppets Come (1976)

The porn industry of the '70s would just try anything. Puppet porno? Why not! I'm not sure if there was some niche at the time that would actually find this shit spank worthy or if it was just universally seen as a goof, but you can't rule out puppet fetishes. Hell, I've seen people fuck MUCH weirder things. Anyways...

So, some puppet businessmen need an idea to save their broke company so they decide to get into the porno game.

The very first puppet-on-puppet sex scene involves bestiality (strong start...), then you got a puppet cum-shot, quite a few puppet BJ's, an ad for a vaginal hygiene spray called Sweet Fish (Haha!) and a black puppet that is creepy as fuck. There's a few human cameos - Al Goldstein and Ralphus, the midget from "Blood Sucking Freaks", are blown by some puppets. There's also a human chick getting spanked by a puppet... "Let My Puppets Come" is kind of entertaining - directed by the legendary Gerard Damiano of "Deep Throat/Devil in Miss Jones" fame. It DOES get a bit boring and redundant at times, which is expected from many porn parodies/comedies. Overall, it's worth a look to quell your curiosity or put on with some friends around and get hammered.

Spookies (1986)

What "Spookies" was - based on my non-extensive, post-viewing research - initially, a completely different movie that I guess got scrapped along the way after some financiers backed out. So a new director was brought in to finish the production by coming up with a whole new premise and just cobbled the shit together based on the footage they had. So what it ended up being was basically three or so different stories clumsily mashed together. And it definitely shows...

It starts off with a 13-year old boy running away from home because his parents forgot his birthday. He comes across some shady adult man in the woods, whom he exchanges brief dialog with before leaving the man to be killed by some kind of cat-man creature wearing a pirate shirt. The kid shows up at secluded mansion where he finds a birthday party set-up (cake, presents, etc...) but no people. After opening a present to find a talking human head inside, he runs from the house where he is chased and killed by cat-pirate. The movie then shifts to a group of people who show up at the mansion to party. However, things go awry when the house's primary inhabitant (whose head was in the box...) starts playing a deadly game of 'chess', using his new visitors as the pawns... Oh, and he has some chick he loves preserved in a coffin...

So, of course, the direction and editing are beyond horrible and nonsensical. What "Spookies" is more or less known for is its multitude of make-up and creature FX - the vivacity of which is actually pretty spotty. Some of the FX are decent while others look like dollar store Halloween costumes. I think the effects work was suppose to act as the redeeming factor of this flick, but, in the end that really couldn't save it. In all, "Spookies" is just a slapped together mess that should have just been aborted the first time production funds were pulled. This outcome just doesn't work...

Murderlust (1985)

Considering some of the true greats, such as "Maniac", "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and "Angst", "Murderlust" doesn't quite stack up to the mean-spirited violence and gore those gems are rightfully hailed for, but I really didn't mind this relatively obscure serial killer flick. It's entertaining for what it is and tosses in a few decent moments.

A highly respected Sunday school teacher leads a secret life as a degenerate whore killer who dumps his strangled female victims out in the desert in a mass grave. He's also got some financial woes and is running the risk of losing his apartment since he can't seem to hold onto his side jobs and is faced with molestation accusations from a troublesome student and becomes romantically involved with a girl he decided not to kill...

The movie is low-budget as hell, but rolls along nicely and the lead actor does a decent enough job as sort of a Green River Killer type of mock-up. Again, very minimal with the gore and nudity, unfortunately, though it's still worth a look if you dig milder - though still effective - serial killer movies like, "Confessions of a Serial Killer" or "The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer".

We Are Still Here (2015)

Haunted house movies don't typically thrill me all that much as they tend to be overtly formulaic and lacking anything real surprising or 'edgy', I've found. That's not to say certain ones don't come along and prove contrary to my general views on these types of horror films, such as "We Are Still Here", which is one of the strongest supernatural/haunted house movies I've seen in quite a while. Probably not since "Insidious".

After losing their son in a car accident, a husband and wife move out to a rural house to get away from the city. Upon their arrive there seems to be something amiss with the cellar, which is emitting smokey odors which may be linked to the previous owners who, according to a few locals, were run out of town for running a sort of black market corpse selling operation out of their funeral home business, i.e. the house. Turns out, the house's history is even a bit more tempestuous when charred up entities start springing up out of the dank cellar and offing visitors...

Now, "We Are Still Here" doesn't go about adding much NEW, fundamentally, to the haunted house "recipe", but there IS a salient air of 'freshness' to it, as well as a visible admiration for the horror genre that is clear in the film's general "attitude" and style. The movie focuses abundantly on atmosphere - through quiet, moody shots of the house exterior, interior, the cellar, trees and the snowy Northeast countryside. Mood is established exceptionally well - seemingly without much artificial lighting much of the time. The characters are believable and the performances are decent, however, there's no doubt in my mind that Larry Fessenden was going for a Jack Torrance kind of vibe with his character, even in his appearance. Ha. The movie also doesn't shy away from gore when necessary. While not an all-out bloodbath, there's some fairly splattery moments.

In all, is "We Are Still Here" a GREAT film? No, but it's a very good, traditional (but not 'campy'...) take on supernatural horror with a heavy nod to Lucio Fulci's "House By the Cemetery" and, most importantly, a respect for the genre and it's fans.

Screams of a Winter Night (1979)

Extremely unmemorable 'drive-in' anthology bore-fest.

A van-load of some truly unfuckable 20-something's drive up to a vacation home out in the woods where they elect to sit around and tell campfire stories. The first one is about a creature that stalks a stranded couple out in the woods. The next on concerns some college kids staying in a haunted asylum as a frat initiation and the third is about a chick who defends herself from a date rape, via stabbing, and goes on to stab to death her roommate for borrowing her shawl...

None of the stories are remotely imaginative or have any kind of clever or creepy pay-off while the bland 'wrap-around' material pretty much takes up the majority of the movie, with such riveting discussions as; 'who is going to run an errand for more lamp oil?' and, 'who is paying for said lamp oil?' and, of course, 'John should really stop scaring the girls'. And then the house implodes... Picking the best segment from this flick is difficult, as they were all so fucking tedious that, with each one, I found myself having a hard time focusing due to the terribly slow pacing. Just avoid this one.

The Witch (2015)

I caught this one in the theater a few months ago and, while VERY impressed, was just too damn busy at the time to muster up a review for it so I figured I'd give it another watch upon a good ol' home media release before I added in my two cents. Lately, here and there, some very decent horror flicks seem to have been slipping through the Marvel-saturated Hollywood sewer system of wider theatrical releases and I gotta say, I really fucking loved "The Witch"! Maybe a demand is growing. Hell, I'm game. Give me a reason to go to the theater and I'll fucking bite.

So, we're back in New England, circa 1630, where a family is banished from their plantation for their kooky, ultra religious bullshit and are carted out into the woods to start anew, ensconced in gloomy, righteous solitude. Right off the bat, their baby is swiped by an evil forest-dwelling hag and more run-ins with sinister presences ensue - showing that the family's devout, god-fearing lifestyle is no match for one of the evilest fucking goats and rabbits you'll ever see...

Make no mistake about it, "The Witch" is pretty slow and for the most part might as well be in another language, given the thick dialect taken straight from legit sources (diaries, letters, etc...), so if you're a stickler for knowing precisely what's being said at all times in a movie you'll want to have your English subs on. Frankly, I didn't really see it as being too crucial to the comprehension of the story since a good portion of the dialog seems to be just quoting scripture while the rest is intelligible enough, I'd say. The authentic period vernacular is the icing on the cake, however, of what makes "The Witch" a very unsettling flick. Bleak tones and eerie, evil moodiness on top of infanticide, devil goats, apple regurgitation, pedophilic witches and zero hackneyed jump scares! This movie is full of uncomfortable shit. The acting is phenomenal across the board. Remembering and reciting all of the fucking "doth hath's" and "hither's" while actually putting forth an intensive performance is fucking grandiose, if you ask me. All believable performances that really 'strike' you if you're like me and are disturbed by deeply religious jargon - most notably, when a dying child is 'ascended into Christ's loving embrace'... Yeesh. If you're hankering for something creepy and a bit fucked up that won't insult your intelligence with cliches, check out "The Witch"! I look forward to director Robert Eggers' take on "Nosferatu".

Pledge Night (1990)

As you probably know, the slasher subgenre was distinctly on the 'outs' when "Pledge Night" came out and for good reason - just watch this one. It's a boring, cheapass pile of redundancy that luckily acquired the rights to some of Anthrax's music, which is it's only notable attribute. And I'm not an Anthrax fan.

A fraternity is putting some pledges through "hell week" but their hazing is eventually interrupted by the deformed spirit of a former hippie college kid who was killed when some 'brothers' accidentally submerged him in an acid bath during an initiation...

For starters, it takes well over half of the movie for anyone to get 'offed' and when the body count portion of the movie kicks in it doesn't get much better. From the looks of it, I saw a cut version, but I'm not entirely sure how accessible an uncut version currently is. Or IF it is. Either way, the movie still sucks. Way too much frat-boy bullshit and very little of anything else, aside from the massive pair of rotating tits of a haggard stripper and a fat, bug-eyed killer mongoloid with a hilarious cackle. In all, a forgettable post-slasher joint.

When Animals Dream (2014)

I'm actually a bit torn on this one. I want to like it for the same reasons I want to dismiss it as kind of a bullshit, typically 'artsy' horror film, but at the same time I don't want to totally shit on it. "When Animals Dream" is sort of an almost-werewolf-flick that relies mostly on wide shots and quiet characters - shit that can work when it doesn't come across as so flagrant and trite.

A young plain-jane with an almost comatose mother and shitty fish butchering job begins noticing strange hairs sprouting up over her body and is having dreams of snarling creatures resembling herself. The pieces start falling into place when she peeps in on her dad shaving her mom's back and catches a glimpse of the doctor's chart. Turns out, mom is being heavily sedated to keep her from turning into a wild, hairy she-bitch that kills the villagers - which she is apparently known for...

Honestly, I didn't really get 'into' this one. The slowness of it and the whole 'atmosphere-over-story' aesthetic just doesn't work for me. Yeah, it's shot very nicely and in a nice location, but, aside from that, it really isn't that much different than many werewolf movies I have seen. The characters are the dull, quiet type (shoot the sky, not dialog!...), the effects in the end are boring and simple, and the gore is minimal - everyone gets bit on the throat. I really just felt like I had seen this kind of thing before, numerous times. It didn't feel original to me. That said, it's not terrible. Well shot, adequately acted, but that's about it...

Lucky Bastard (2014)

Despite how much I rag on the long played out run of 'found footage' movies that have circumscribed the horror genre for quite a few years now, I'm not above eating my own words from time to time when I incidentally come across a decent one. Actually, I hate to say it's also happened lately with "The Visit" and, after seeing "Lucky Bastard", that makes two FF flicks that have surprisingly offered up an unusual comprisal of 'freshness' within this exhausted sub-genre. Not to say I'm going 'soft' on this shit, cuz I've definitely had my fill, overall.

A porn production company holds a special Lucky Bastard contest in which a loyal online pud-tugger can win his own sex scene with a lovely actress. So, a dweeby, non-threatening looking chump is selected and flown out to porn valley, but shit soon goes off the rails when the lucky bastard starts coming across as a bit stalkerish. This rattles the poor pro and the crew, but shooting resumes until the big scene is underway and everything officially takes a turn for the worse - leading up to the 'bastard' showing his true, violent, virgin-rage colors...

There's a healthy amount of sex and nudity, but what really stood out about this one to me was the writing and performances, which are considerably strong. Most notably, the guy who plays the director who was convincing and really entertaining at times. Downside: the violence and gore is actually pretty minimal. You got a fatal pistol-whipping and a guy being ass-blasted with a big, unlubed dildo as the main scenes consisting of any kind of stand-out brutality. That said, "Lucky Bastard" rolls along nicely with some always welcomed full-frontal and substantially competent writing and acting for the most part. Worth a look.