HorrorGhouls – Page 3 – Horror Ghouls

Aquanoids (2003)

Posted on July 29, 2025July 29, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Aquanoids, or Aquanooooids, like Johnny Depp would have said it, is a silly Z-grade amateur-hour creature/feature flick where we have a sea monster that looks more like a rejected, drunk band member of Gwar who’d fallen into the ocean, and just decided to stay in the water and kill everyone who comes near him.

The film starts in the year 1987 in Santa Clara Island, California, where a couple is having a swim. Guess what happens. They get dragged down the water and killed by an unseen monster as a random guy is watching the “traumatic“ incident through his binoculars. And, of course, this random guy will be important later. Much later. Sixteen years later, to be precise, in the present day (2003) where a coastal town in sunny California is celebrating the 4th of July. God bless America. As the town is in full festive mode, the young girl-next-door, Vanessa, actually has far more important things to do. Because she’s an environmentalist, you see, and would rather spend her time to save our green planet by diving into the ocean to pick up trash. Greta Thunberg would be impressed. As she gathers her good karma points, she gets a glimpse of our sea-creature. Ooh, scary. She hops on a water scooter and heads straight to the town’s mayor, Frank Walsh, to beg him to close down the beaches. Because the aquanoids are back, she says, despite we’ve only seen one. Dream on, honey. Haven’t you seen Jaws, or if you dig a little deeper, Humanoids From the Deep? Here we also meet Clifton Jefferson, a mafia-looking guy who does some dirty work for Mayor Walsh, and who also looks like a Joe Pesci cosplay from Goodfellas. And if Mayor Walsh talked like Kermit the frog, I wouldn’t doubt for a second that he was played by Jordan Peterson.

Anyway, as Mayor Walsh won’t do shit because he’s exactly what he looks like: a super-shady bad guy, Vanessa and her roommate are handing out warning papers while they shout dangerous waters! dangerous waters! No one believes them though. The only one who does is Ronald Jackson, the random guy we saw at the beginning. And no, he’s not played by Eric Roberts. He’s the one and only witness of the aquanoid that killed 17 people back in 1987, and is just seen as the town’s crazy person. He now spends most of the time at the local bar being a traumatized alcoholic, and just wants to be left alone. The news and rumors of the aquanoids start to spread, and suddenly the local Hard Boiled News (yes, really) pops up to have a quick chat with none other than Jackson. Poor guy doesn’t get a break. Mayor Walsh and Joe Pesci, sorry, Jefferson, don’t like that the rumors of the aquanoids are spreading to the public, and that’s for more than one reason. The “plot“ here is thrown all over the place, and there’s just too much to spoil (or maybe not), but let’s just say that you’ll be more shocked than anything by how corrupt this Mayor is. And I also bet that he’s on a certain client list.

Aquanoids is directed by Reinhart ‘Rayteam’ Peschke. Rayteam who? He worked primarily in the Camera and Electrical Department on films such as Volcano (1997), The Usual Suspects (1995), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) With Aquanoids, you’d get the impression that Rayteam one day went through some of his old and forgotten childhood stuff in the attic, found some tapes of a home-made horror movie he made with some friends, neighbors and uncles during some summers in his early teens, and said to himself: I want to release this hidden gem on DVD. This is also the one and only film he directed.

The title, screenshots and the trailer speak more or less for themselves. If you’re familiar with these kinds of retarded, zero-budget home-made turd movies, you know what you’re gonna get. It’s amateur-hour from start to end (with a short and welcoming runtime of 1 hour and 13 minutes) with a dumb plot, bad acting, absurd dialogue, cheesy music, a series of WTF-moments, an unexpected and “shocking“ twist, and of course some cheap gore.

The highlight of Aquanoids is actually not the monster itself, which we barely get a clear glimpse of, but our two goofy antagonists, Mayor Walsh and Jefferson, as these two actors try very hard to act dead seriously. If Walsh looks somewhat familiar aside from Jordan Peterson, he’s the guy who had the deadly handshake with the Joker in his most-known-for-movie on IMDb, Batman (1989). And I’m not surprised if the one who looks like Joe Pesci has auditioned for all the Martin Scorsese films, and in his all-boiled-up frustration tricks people into believing that his most-known-for-movie, Aquanoids, is actually an alternative title for Jaws. And enough schadenfreude for today.

Director: Reinhart Peschke
Writers: Mark J. Gordon, Eric Spudic
Country & year: USA, 2003
Actors: Laura Nativo, Rhoda Jordan, Edwin Craig, Ike Gingrich, Laurence Hobbs, Suzan Spann, Robert Kimmel, Christopher Irwin, David Clark, Doug Martin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338726/

THE AUTEUR – Horror Short

Posted on July 27, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

A man tries to write his ideal female character, only for her to gain awareness and rebel against the way he’s writing her.

It is Horror Short Sunday again, and this time we’re taking a look at The Auteur. Talk about having your story take on a life of its own..!

Director: Bethany White
Writer: Patrick Crellin, Bethany White
Country & year: UK, 2024
Actors: Paloma Anastacia, Jordan Perry, Patrick Crellin
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt28061466/

The Bay (2012)

Posted on July 25, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, there’s a cozy town called Claridge. A reporter named Donna Thompson, totally fresh in the game, has decided to cover the local’s celebration of 4th July, but amidst all the fun a lot of the citizens start falling ill. And severely so. The hospital gets overwhelmed with patients, and the head doctor calls the CDC who believes it must be some kind of viral outbreak. Things keep getting worse, with people dying showing some really bizarre symptoms, like severe lesions and their tongues missing. What could be the cause of this? Well…some months earlier, two oceanographers discovered that the bay had high toxicity levels, and even encountered multiple fish that had been consumed from the inside out, by some kind of mutated isopod. Hmm…could this have something to do with the chicken farm nearby that have polluted the bay when dumping their chicken excrement and god knows what else into the water? One thing is for certain: everything turns into full chaos mode as people keep dying.

The Bay is a found footage horror movie from 2012, directed by Barry Levinson and written by Michael Wallach. It is based on a story created by the duo. The inspiration for the film came when Levinson was asked to produce a documentary about the problems facing the Chesapeake Bay, a project he chose to abandon when he learned that Frontline was already covering the issue. Deciding to make use of all the research, he produced a horror film instead and promoted it as “80 percent factual information“. The movie was shot on locations in North Caroline and South Carolina.

The Bay is a horror movie that may feel like yet another zombie-outbreak movie at first, but instead its playing around with a concept that sells itself as something that “could have happened“. While that is a bit of a stretch, of course, it’s still a horror movie that can make you quite uncomfortable, especially if you’ve either experienced or are aware of just how much damage bacteria and parasites can do to a human body. I’m still getting chills from remembering some of the episodes of the Monsters Inside Me series that was broadcast on Discovery…bloody nine hells, how disturbing some of that actually was..! And while a horror movie like this is of course exaggerating things, it’s kind of nasty to think of how close it still is to reality. Yes, the parasitic isopod eating tongues is a real thing: it’s called Cymothoa exigua. Not believed to be harmful to humans in real life, though…so, uhm, I guess that’s a relief…

The format, found footage docudrama, works pretty well for a movie like this. It feels a little chaotic at times with all the “footage“ put together in order to form the narrative, but this only adds to the perceived realism as the citizens are literally thrown into a deadly chaos. The extremely fast-acting way the parasitic infections occur in people reminds us a bit of the typical zombie-infestation buildup where things go from zero to a thousand in the blink of an eye. No one knows what’s happening until it’s too late, and then there’s the inevitable societal crumble. In that regard, the realistic approach falters a bit, but strengthens the horror elements.

Overall, The Bay is a nice found footage horror film which makes you more afraid of the tiny things in the water that you can’t see, rather than any big monster. Probably not a good watch for those suffering from Parasite phobia, though…

Director: Barry Levinson
Writers: Michael Wallach, Barry Levinson
Country & year: USA, 2012
Actors: Nansi Aluka, Christopher Denham, Stephen Kunken, Frank Deal, Frank Deal, Kether Donohue, Kristen Connolly, Will Rogers, Kimberly Campbell, Beckett Clayton-Luce
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1713476/

Sharktopus (2010)

Posted on July 22, 2025July 22, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Nathan Sands is a geneticist (or just a mad scientist, if you will) who has been hired by the U.S. Navy to create a new weapon. Together with his daughter Nicole, they have created a large intelligent shark with the tentacles of an octopus, because that sounds like an excellent idea where nothing can go wrong. A sharktopus, in other words, but for some reason they have decided to simply call it S-11. They control the creature by using a device on its head, which gives electromagnetic pulses. Because an attachment to such a creature’s head which is the entire means of control over it sounds like the greatest idea ever, right? Well, as can easily be imagined, the S-11 gets rid of the annoying device, and swims along to Mexican waters to create some mayhem and perhaps enjoy some human burritos. Sands and Nicole must find someone that can help them capture the monster, and meets up with a cocky dude named Andy Flynn who is apparently the most suited for the job. The catch is: the monster must be captured alive. Easier said than done! As Nicole and Andy tries to follow its tracks, a pesky news reporter called Stacy Everheart and her henpecked cameraman Bones starts pursuing the story of the year.

Sharktopus is a SyFy horror film produced by Roger Corman and directed by Declan O´Brien, which later sparked a franchise. And ohhh boy, could this one have been a total rotten fish of a stinker if it wasn’t for the obvious tongue-in-cheek approach and the self-awareness displayed here. It’s made as a “so-bad-it’s good“ movie, and that is a much harder achievement than one might initially expect. Few movies that aim for this setup manages to pull it off, but Sharktopus is one of those exceptions. It delivers exactly what it promises, and you’d have to be an idiot if you were to take it seriously for even a split second. It’s yet another movie where I’m glad we have badges instead of ratings here on Horror Ghouls…

The setup is pretty simple: crazy scientist creates monster, monster runs amok, heroes must stop it. The characters are pretty bland, with Eric Roberts as Nathan Sands being the most decent of the bunch. That being said, the over-acting and clunky performances from several of the actors here is what offers some decent laughs, plus the hilarious kill scenes mixed with bad CGI effects. Not to mention campy lines like:

– Oh no, not like this! Arrrgghhhhhh! (while attempting to convince the viewer they have really been caught by those crappy CGI tentacles)
– Damn you Sharktopus!
– You can stop staring at my rack. They’re just boobs. They’re not gonna get up and dance or anything.
– That guy was killed in front of us inches away. Inches away! Gosh. He was kind of a nice guy, you know? Smell a little funky, but he was okay. Now he’s dead.

Yeah…if I haven’t made it pretty clear already, Sharktopus is indeed a horrible movie, but for all the good reasons. It’s a lot of stupid fun, and a nice watch for the shark week!

Also, in 2023 the movie actually had a remake…from China, of all places. And to be honest it looks more like they tried to make a remake of Deep Rising. Currently not available officially anywhere outside of China…but as of now, there’s YouTube…and here’s a link to the trailer.

Director: Declan O’Brien
Writers: Mike MacLean, Stephen Niver
Country & year: USA, 2010
Actors: Eric Roberts, Kerem Bürsin, Sara Malakul Lane, Sara Malakul Lane, Héctor Jiménez, Liv Boughn, Julian Gonzalez Esparza, Blake Lindsey, Peter Nelson, Maija Markula
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1619880/

THE DEVIL’S ROCK – Animated Horror Short

Posted on July 20, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Teenaged runaway Haylie finds herself stuck on a large boulder in the middle of a back-country cornfield along with Logan, an injured farm boy. The mysterious creatures that are lurking among the crops will attack anything that enters but strangely refuse to venture outside of the corn themselves…

Horror Short Sunday is here again, and this time we’re taking a look at the animated horror short The Devil’s Rock. This is one of the Don’t Walk Home Alone After Dark shorts, created by Andy Coyle (known for his work directing the animated Netflix series Hilda).

THE DEVIL'S ROCK - Animated Horror Short

Director: Andy Coyle

Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1981)

Posted on July 18, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Here we have a lost little gem that was buried among the endless wave of the 80s formulaic slasher craze, and was rediscovered eons later. And with a strange nursery rhyme’ish title like Butcher Baker, Nightmare Maker, it’s not too easy knowing what to expect. Then we also have the alternative VHS title Night Warning and that blood-drenched poster with the shortened title Butcher Baker. Not to mention the slightly cryptic trailer posted below. So… is this about a mad cocaine-snorting butcher who terrorizes vegans in their dreams, or something? I’m almost tempted to just say yes… ha-ha.

The film centers around the not-so-healthy relationship between aunt Cheryl (Susan Tyrrell) and her nephew Billy (Jimmy McNichol). She once adopted him after his parents died in a brutal Final Destination-style car accident, the most graphic moment in the film as the breaks suddenly won’t work and the car rolls in towards a log truck. The outcome speaks for itself. Now, in the present day, Billy is soon to have his 17th birthday and plans to move to the University of Denver after he gets offered an athletic scholarship. Good news, right? Not for aunt Cheryl, not in the slightest. Because Cheryl wants her baby-boy all to herself. And because she’s sacrificed everything for him, he now owes her, said no one but Cheryl. Yes, she’s one of those with her own dusty copy of Guilt-Trip Textbook for Narcissistic Parents, finally ready to come into use. Run and never, ever look back. Easier said than done when Cheryl has done her part of grooming him into believing that crossing over some intimate boundaries, that would get everyone’s skin crawling, is completely normal. Her delusion and borderline fantasy world that she’s built up in her sick head over the many years starts to crack fully open when she finally realizes that he’s also moving to the university with his girlfriend, Julia.

So, in order to cope and not let the mask slip, while she actually let the mask fall off completely at turbo-speed, she gets into panic mode and tries to seduce Phil, the TV operator. Because she needs a new man in her life, and she needs one now! And things go completely off the rails from here on as the mating ritual (for lack of a better term) ends up with Cheryl grabbing a kitchen knife and making a bloody mess by stabbing the guy to death. And in comes Billy. This is also his 17th birthday, and all. Yay! “He tried to rape me“, she screams hysterically. And the Earth is flat. Another one who doesn’t buy that story, but for whole other reasons, is the detective Jo Carlson (Bo Svensson). Because Phil was in a secret gay relationship with Billy’s baseball coach, Tom, and detective Carlson suspects Billy to have been in a threesome relationship with these two. He has some valid reasons to actually believe that though. But Carlson is first and foremost a dedicated homophobe and a pompous sociopath who only views Billy as a worthless fag who he’d love to throw in jail. In the meantime, Cheryl is in a full mental collapse as she cuts her hair, starts to poison Billy’s milk with strong sedatives to keep him bedridden, and declares war on everyone who dares coming in her way to keep Billy for herself.

It must be said that the film is far from as gory as the impression may give. Butcher Baker was added on the overhyped joke-list in Britain that is the Video Nasty where it’s easy to assume that it was banned just because of the poster alone, not so unlikely what happened with The Driller Killer (1979) after this cover art was used on the VHS release. The film was also banned in Norway, my home country. So with that being said, this is not your typical straight-forward teen-slasher, but more of a morbid psychological drama sprinkled with taboo and touchy subjects that will be as fresh and relevant until the end of mankind. While the subjects itself are dark and disturbing enough, the tone and execution is way more whackier, if not bonkers, than it maybe should be. But somehow it works. One can analyze the deeper meanings and themes that lies under the surface to the next nuclear winter, but the most important here is that Butcher Baker, Nightmare Maker is overall an amusing, entertaining semi-slasher with some great eccentric energy. Much thanks is to Susan Tyrrell as the mentally unhinged and raving mad aunt Cheryl. She gives a pretty unique, zany and explosive performance to such a threatening level that I bet that the co-actors must have felt seriously intimidated by her. And I can’t unsee the Mia Goth likeness. She’d be perfect in a Butcher, Baker, Nightmare ReMaker. Bo Svensson as detective Carlson also made me chuckle at some moments, because he’s so over-the-top stereotypical and full of burning hatred against gay people that’s it’s almost comical. Chill.

Butcher Baker is on Blu-ray from Severin Films, and for time being, on Tubi.

Director: William Asher
Writers: Steve Breimer, Alan Jay Glueckman, Boon Collins
Also known as: Night Warning, Butcher Baker
Country & year: USA, 1981
Actors: Jimmy McNichol, Susan Tyrrell, Bo Svenson, Marcia Lewis, Julia Duffy, Britt Leach, Steve Eastin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082813/

I Drink Your Blood (1971)

Posted on July 15, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

This grimy, low-budget Grindhouse classic wastes no time as we are thrown straight into an obscure Satanic cult ritual in the woods in the middle of the night, led by the charismatic sociopath Horace Born. He is a self-proclaimed Capricorn who was born in Hell and reborn on Mother Earth to do Satan’s work with his group of hippie Satanists called “The Sons and Daughters of Satan“. Sounds wholesome. They drink blood spiced with LSD as they’re buck naked before sacrificing a poor chicken (for real). A trigger warning for animal cruelty. The whole act is spied on by Sylvia, who is the girlfriend of one of Horace’s cult members. And Horace won’t have any of that. After a quick chasing scene with some funk music, she is caught, where we can only assume that she is gang-raped off-screen, before she barely makes it home alive. Next day Horace and company’s hippie truck won’t start and have to walk to the nearest town, which is Valley Hills, a small hillbilly town in the bumfuck of nowhere.

They buy a box of meat pies at the local bakery before they seek shelter in an abandoned hotel – where they completely trash the place and wreck havoc while they chase a bunch of scared rats to barbecue and eat for dinner. Yum, Burp and Hail Satan. These were trained rats, by the way, which were also used in Willard, another horror film from the same year. The dead rats we see in the barbecue scene were already dead prior to the film, if we’re gonna trust the trivia section on IMDb. Anyway, when Sylvia’s grandfather learns that this Satanic cult is in town, he decides to pay them a visit to confront them with a shotgun. But because he’s a slow, old fool, he fails miserably and gets beaten before they pour some LSD into his mouth. Even though they’re kind enough to spare his life, his grandson and Sylvia’s younger brother, Pete, who’s also been spying on them, is the next to spit on their grave. He takes the shotgun to finish his granddads’ revenge, but on his way he shoots and kills a rabid dog. And one can say that things gets really interesting from here on.

Because listen to this: Pete, the smartass, takes a sample of the dog’s rabies-infected blood, mixes it with the meat pies that Horace and co eventually eat and… well, it doesn’t go exactly as imagined. Instead of dying instantly, they slowly turn into deranged zombie-like foaming flesh-eaters, who end up attacking the townsfolk and turn Valley Hills into an apocalyptic rabies warzone which can be described as Night of the Living Dead meets The Crazies. Only, this one is far more out there than these two combined, sprinkled with more LSD, schlock and unhinged, unapologetic B-movie madness. We can say the intention of Pete was good, but man, talk about shitting the bed. Heads are rolling, limbs chopped apart, and one dude has his teeth falling out as he gets piggybacked stronghold, and some other bizarre WTF moments. It’s a full-on riot with lots of sadistic, goofy fun. Plain and simple, and not much deeper than that. I Drink Your Blood was also the first film to have the historic achievement to be stamped with an X-rating. Hats off.

I Drink Your Blood is available on Blu-ray from Grindhouse Releasing, and was once upon a time on Tubi. Don’t bother looking for it on YouTube as it’s filled with pixelization censoring.

Writer and director: David E. Durston
Country & year: USA, 1971
Actors: Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, Jadin Wong, Rhonda Fultz, George Patterson, Riley Mills, John Damon, Elizabeth Marner-Brooks, Richard Bowler, Tyde Kierney, Iris Brooks
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067229/

VERSACE SOFTBOI – Horror Short

Posted on July 13, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

A stoned slumber party with her best friends takes a terrifying turn when Alex realizes her Tinder date is watching her through her apartment window.

It’s Horror Short Sunday again, and this time we’re taking a look at Versace Softboi. Three weed-smoking friends have a fun time, until they notice a guy outside, sitting on the stairs…

Director: Charlie Gillette, Sarah Metcalf
Writer: Charlie Gillette
Country & year: USA, 2023
Actors: Charlie Gillette, Becky Granger, Wesley Han, Christian Elán Ortiz, Eric Yang
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt22493984/

Robowar (1988)

Posted on July 11, 2025August 14, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

This Italian-produced Predator ripoff starts in the midst of a full-blown bulletstorm mayhem in the jungle of the Philippines, and a group of commandos are sent to the green inferno to see what the hell is going on. We meet the four trigger-happy testosterone-filled walking ballsacks with the colorful code names Killzone, Blood, Papa, Diddy Bop and Quiang. And together they make the team called BAM, which stands for (yeah, you already guessed it) Bad Ass Motherfuckers. Can’t get more 1980s than that. They stumble upon fresh-fried corpses as they explore the territories. They rescue a damsel-in-distress from getting chased by a group of horny guerrillas. She is a young, blond nurse who goes by the name… Virgin. Sounds like she’s in the wrong movie, no?

Anyway – As they go deeper in the jungle, things start to smell more cheesy, as they’re getting hunted by an alien-looking killer robot, called ~~Predator~~ Omega One. He’s a high-tech renegade humanoid who shoots the deadliest lasers through an arm cannon and wears a silly costume where a biker helmet was used to give him the flair of RoboCop, another well-known film you’ve maybe heard of. Instead, we have just another thick layer of cheese. Now it starts to smell. And his appearance is as intimidating as…someone who has dressed up to attend a Halloween party at the local gay bar. To build up some suspense and tension, we see from his POV perspective through his lousy, low-pixelated sensor while he mumbles gibberish like a demented Indian scammer on crack cocaine. So, come get some!

Robowar is directed by schlock maestro of Italian Trash Cinema Bruno Mattei (here under his most used pseudonym as Vincent Dawn), written by the couple Rosetta Drudi and Claudio Fragasso. Fragasso also got the honor of playing the RoboPredator, which made him faint two times during the shoot due to the extreme heat. Claudio Fragasso also did the most Claudio Fragasso thing to shoot a random sequence without zero context to the rest of the film. Of course. Robowar was originally meant to just be a Vietnam-war film, inspired by Apocalypse Now (1979), shot in the hot n’ sticky Philippines and all, but when Mattei saw Predator during a lunch break, he did what he usually did: put in elements of said film to cash in on its current success. And we can only imagine what the film would look like if he had also played Contra. That being said, Mattei had already made the war film Commando Strike the year before, also in the Philippines, where I guess the leftovers of ammo, cheese, testosterone and set pieces to blow up were enough to fill Robowar. Mattei also made Commando Strike 2 the same year, aka Trappola diabolica. So yeah, Signor Mattei sure got to make his epic war films, one of which by coincidence became a Predator ripoff, and one of the mockbuster films I bet that The Asylum wish they had made some 30 years ago. And that alone says it all.

Some quoteworthy (white) lines:

– Fuck it, Diddy. Quit moving around like you’re jerking off, you’re making me seasick.

– Why do they have nicknames?
– You should know what the group is called. “BAM”.
– BAM?
– Big Ass Motherfuckers!

– Drug addicts and fags. I bet they got AIDS too, huh, Quang?

– Technology hasn’t got feelings! (I bet that Jason Blum does not agree on that one, bwhahahahaha…!)

Director: Bruno Mattei
Writers: Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi
Original title: Robot da guerra
Country & year: Italy/Philippines, 1988
Actors: Reb Brown, Catherine Hickland, Massimo Vanni, Romano Puppo, Claudio Fragasso, Luciano Pigozzi, Max Laurel, Jim Gaines, John P. Dulaney, Mel Davidson
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096000/

Bad Moon (1996)

Posted on July 8, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Ted Harrison is a photo journalist who’s on an expedition in Nepal, together with his girlfriend Marjorie. While making out in the tent, they get attacked by a werewolf who rips the tent open and snatches Marjorie out from it. Ted tries to save her, but the werewolf bites him. It then kills Marjorie, before the injured Ted manages to shoot it with his shotgun. Then, we head over to the States where his sister Janet lives together with her son Brett and their dog Thor. Then Ted suddenly contacts her and invites them over to his “home“ by the lake (he’s living in a camper trailer). When they get there, Thor is immediately picking up some strange scents and scurries off into the forest. There we see some severely mauled human remains hanging from a tree branch. And just where Ted has relocated, what a coincidence! Or not. It’s very obvious that Ted is now a werewolf since he got bitten.

When the authorities start investigations after finding the remains of several hikers and a forest ranger, all found in the woods where Ted has been staying, he gets afraid he’ll become a suspect, and decides to stay at Janet’s property. She senses no danger, of course…but Thor, on the other hand, can sniff out the threat immediately. While Ted is trying to keep his dark side under control by handcuffing himself to a tree in the forest at night (because here’s a twist: he doesn’t just turn into a werewolf every full moon, but every single night), this doesn’t always work and the consequences are…bloody. And messy. Thor is trying desperately to make Janet realize the danger they’re in, and is hellbent on protecting his family from this wild beast.

Bad Moon is a Canadian-American werewolf horror film from 1996, written and directed by Eric Red and produced by James G. Robinson. It is based on a novel by Wayne Smith, called Thor. And yes, this story is actually told mostly from the dog’s perspective, and this mixed with a score where several scenes have a slightly kitschy soundtrack, the result produces an odd family-movie-night vibe. But don’t be fooled, because this werewolf movie actually has both teeth and a bite to it (which unfortunately cannot be said about this year’s Wolfman movie). There’s some really vicious gore and kill scenes here, and despite some not-so-good CGI effects in a scene later on, the movie doesn’t have many issues in the visual part. I also found the “dog perspective“ to be both charming and fun, giving the movie a personal flair. This works especially well since Ted, whom I guess would have been the natural protagonist otherwise, is kind of a mixed bag when it comes to having any sympathy for him. While he struggles with his urges and tries some half-assed attempts to chain himself up at night, he also shows no restraints when it comes to putting his loved ones in danger. Like his wants and needs should conquer everyone else’s safety. Like in most werewolf movies, you do kind of feel for the character since what they’re going through is more or less out of their control, but Ted is going too far in the “ah well, can’t help this shit anyway“ direction. Or maybe the werewolf part has gotten too much control over him. So, Thor: go ahead and sic him, boy!

Bad Moon wasn’t received well upon its release. On a budget of $7 million, it only earned back $1.1. million. And despite some really bad CGI effects in a scene that was reminiscent of what you could see in Sleepwalkers, I think the remaining werewolf effects and costume were pretty neat, and that goes for the gore effects as well. I found the movie to be some nice, cheesy fun with a cute doggy hero in one of the leading roles. A werewolf horror movie with an odd charm to it. Well worth a watch!

Writer and director: Eric Red
Country & year: USA, 1996
Actors: Mariel Hemingway, Michael Paré, Mason Gamble, Ken Pogue, Hrothgar Mathews, Johanna Marlowe, Gavin Buhr, Julia Montgomery Brown, Primo
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115610/