american horror movies – Horror Ghouls

The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)

Posted on September 12, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The fourth and (for now) the farewell entry in the Conjuring franchise drifts far more from the actual case it is based on than ever before. The film starts back in 1964 where Ed and Lorraine have their first case together. They’re at a curio shop to investigate an antique haunted mirror. Lorraine is also fully pregnant, and the water goes as soon as she touches the mirror and sees a spooky vision of some demon. Ed rushes her to the hospital where Lorraine pushes out a stillborn. Oof. (My mind then played with the idea of Ed and Lorraine taking the fresh corpse of the baby home with them to perform a ritual to make a deal with the devil in order to bring the baby to life. Some decades later a pack of hellhounds would emerge to drag Ed and Lorraine to hell after the deal comes due, Supernatural-style. A predictable but fitting reason why the Smurl haunting became their last case, especially by looking at that sinister promo poster. Oh well.) After some hard prayers, the baby comes to life, and they name her Judy.

Then we jump to 1986 where She Sells Sanctuary are blasting from the speakers. Good times, for as long as it lasts. Jack and Janet Smurl with their four daughters and Jack’s parents are moving into a crammy duplex at a bleak and dreary suburb in West Pittson, Pennsylvania, where anyone would be bound to end up with chronic depression and alcohol problems before the first Christmas. The church-going family seems pretty happy, though, but they’ll soon learn that there isn’t much sanctuary to find here. It all starts when one of the oldest daughters gets an evil-looking gothic mirror as a confirmation present, something you’d see in Phantom Manor. And yep, it’s the same mirror we saw earlier. OoOoh…

The ceiling lights crash down on the kitchen table like a sledgehammer, Janet hears a cheesy whispering voice calling her name in the basement, Jack one night gets paralyzed and porked by a witchy Phoebe Waller-Bridge look-alike succubus. Fifty Shades of Ectoplasm. One of the youngest daughters gets spooked by a ghoulish grandma ghost with a demented Cheshire cat grin. A tall redneck farmer with an axe, also a smiley one, suddenly pops up around the house to terrorize the family. Their dog, Simon, is safe, for now.

Meanwhile, as hell is brewing in Pennsylvania, we spend some time with Ed and Lorraine’s daughter Judy, who’s now grown up and dating her future husband Tony. Judy looks collected on the outside but on the inside she’s broken, shaken and traumatized. Growing up with Ed and Lorraine as your parents does that to you. But the reasons are more generic than that: because Judy has the psychic powers of her mom and started seeing ghosts floating around her long before she realized that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. Life’s not fair. Ed and Loraine are now more or less retired from ghost hunting, much due to Ed’s failing health after he suffered a heart attack, and spends most of the time lecturing for a shrinking audience and being home, probably playing Ghosts ‘n Goblins on Nintendo. Tony gets the blessing of Ed and Lorraine to marry Judy after dating her for only six months. Hooray. He also bought the proposal/wedding ring only one (yes 1) week after they met. Uhm… red flags anyone? The Warrens have a barbecue party and play pingpong where we see one of the many cameos from previous films. Cheers. How’s Smurl’s doing?

Not that great. Things have gotten so bad that they’ve reached out to all from talk shows on TV to Larry King in hopes of getting some help. Doesn’t go so well. And the Warrens have no desire to help them. That’s only until Judy somehow gets drawn to the Smurl house, all the way from Connecticut. Why? Because.

Director Michael Chaves said in an interview with Bloody Disgusting that the Last Rites would stay true to the real-life Smurl haunting. BOOlshit. The Smurls seems more like an afterthought here as the main focus lies more on Judy and Tony, who had zero involvement with the case. We spend a lot of time with Judy and Tony and that’s the main problem. They’re not an interesting couple and the whole romance aspect is pure dead meat and filler-time that could easily have been tossed into the deleted scenes section. And the chemistry between these two is non-existent. It just feels hollow. A stark contrast to Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga.

The last twenty minutes or so is messy, stupid, eye-rolling and all over the place. The spinning mirror is so cartoonishly retarded that I almost expected Russel Crowe’s character from The Pope’s Exorcist to randomly chime in and end the film with a big ko-ko.

Even though the Last Rites was overall a mild disappointment, it has its strong elements when it comes to the technical aspect. It’s far from the trainwreck that was The Nun II. Michael Chaves gives a steady direction with great enhancement from cinematographer Eli Born. The retro 1980s esthetics are on point and the thing with the videotape camera, without spoiling, was a new and fresh idea. The few scenes in the Smurls’ house during the first and second half are the most interesting, especially if you’ve seen the movie made for TV, The Haunted, and read the book, which works best at reading as just pure horror fiction. Having that in mind, there are certain scenes here to wait for, especially the classic Janet? sequence in the basement. And they completely botched it, just like I expected. Then we have the mommy-mommy doll scene which is in pure style of James Wan and worked much better in the context of the film than in the first teaser trailer, where we saw a more goofy CGI ghost. The new design of the granny ghost, played by Fabrielle Downey, was a big quality upgrade which looks like a mix of The Bride in Black from Insidous and Mary Shaw from Dead Silence. The other two ghosts, the farmer with the axe and his succubus wife, make some solid appearances during the short amount of screentime they were given. And like the first two films, the child actors also delivers. Some few other classic Conjuring highlights sprinkled here as well. Too bad that the Smurl case itself is so rushed and undercooked.

So there you have The Conjuring: Last Rites – a very mixed and bloated bag with potential that was primarily wasted on romance and Hallmark family drama bollocks. If the film just had focused more on the actual case, the three grinning ghosts and the demon, whatever that was, this could maybe reach the quality levels of the first two. And if you haven’t seen the aforementioned TV movie from 1991, since the film has to this day not gotten a physical, nor a streaming release, and probably never will, it’s available on YouTube.

And here we have a quick local news segment about a young couple who bought the real Smurl house a week after the first teaser for the Last Rites dropped. They had no idea about the house’s history, off course. So it just remains to see if they also get swarmed with trespassing horror fans and ending up suing Warner Bros, like what happened in the wake of the first film back in 2015. In this case they should rather sue the real estate agent. Peace out.

Director: Michael Chaves
Writers: Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, James Wan
Country & year: USA, 2025
Actors: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Mia Tomlinson, Ben Hardy, Steve Coulter, Rebecca Calder, Elliot Cowan, Beau Gadsdon, Kíla Lord Cassidy, Peter Wight, Kate Fahy, Tilly Walker, Molly Cartwright
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22898462/

Prequels:

– The Conjuring (2013)
– The Conjuring 2 (2016)
– The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

Slugs (1988)

Posted on September 2, 2025September 2, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The summer ain’t over yet, cause here they come – the slugs! Thousands of slugs slime their way up from lakes, sewers, and toilets to eat people in a small American town, all from alcoholics, horny teenagers to rich soap opera snobs. And before you know it, the slugs are everywhere. They slime, they ooze, they kill. Slugs, slugs, slugs! My oh my… The local sheriff must come up with a smart plan to save the day. There you have this cheesy, silly, slimy low-brow Spanish/American-produced creature-feature in a nutshell. Nothing more, nothing less. But are slugs really harmful though? Let’s ask Mr. Google:

– Considering that you are a rational human being who doesn’t put slimy, gross bugs into your mouth, this shouldn’t be a problem. It may, however, be an issue for your pets. Cats and dogs that consume slugs may suffer from excessive drooling and or vomiting. Beyond this, slugs are not harmful, Google says.

Allrighty then. So, what are we gonna do with those damn slugs? And speaking of animals, did you also know that hedgehogs eat slugs as if it was candy? This would be like a buffet heaven for the Sonics. Anyway…

What makes the movie worth a watch are the effects and just the overall silliness. And if you appreciate some funny-bad acting, there are some laughs to be had here. There isn’t much more to say really. It’s pretty straight-forward where NPC’s are getting eaten by slugs, one by one. Some slime their way into garden gloves to chew on someone’s hands, while others hide in the food to get swallowed so they can eat their victims from the inside out. Gnarly. Slugs is directed by the Spanish gore & schlock master Juan Piquer Simón, who’s most known for Pieces (and the bizarre clown show that is Extra Terrestrial Visitors), so that alone should say a few things. The film is also known as Slugs The Movie since it’s based on a book by the splatter-punk horror writer Shaun Hutson. And after he saw the film he had a clear verdict: – Do yourselves a favor a don’t bother watching it, it’s awful! – He has later viewed the film as a guilty pleasure.

Slugs is available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video, and as for now, it slimes around on Tubi.

Director: Juan Piquer Simón
Writers: Ron Gantman, José Antonio Escrivá, Juan Piquer Simón
Also known as: Slugs The Movie
Country & year: USA/Spain, 1988
Actors: Michael Garfield Levine, Kim Terry, Philip MacHale, Alicia Moro, Santiago Álvarez, Concha Cuetos, John Battaglia, Emilio Linder, Kris Mann, Kari Rose, Manuel de Blas, thousands of slugs
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093995/

100 Feet (2008)

Posted on August 29, 2025September 2, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Marnie Watson (played by Famke Janssen) is a woman who killed her abusive husband, Mike, in self-defense. Or that’s what she claims, because not everyone is eager to believe her version of the story, including police officer Lou Shanks who was a former partner of her husband. Yep, Marnie’s husband was a cop, and they can never be abusive, right? Hah. Marnie is placed under house arrest, and has an ankle bracelet fit on her which prevents her from moving more than 100 feet from the detector which is placed in the house’s hallway. If she does, the police will be notified, and that’s bad news for her, so better stay safe at home. Or at least she tries to. She has a delivery boy bringing her groceries, since she can’t go outside. Then, later at night, her husband’s face suddenly appears before her while she’s in bed. Terrified, she runs out from the bedroom, but her husband’s ghost pushes her down the stairs. She desperately tries to flee, and sets off the detector in the hallway, and Shanks arrives to find her unconscious at the front door. He notices that she looks beaten up, but she just tells him she fell down the stairs. They didn’t believe her when her husband was still alive, so there’s no chance in hell they’ll believe her now, so why even try. However, Marnie is now trapped with her abuser once again…

100 Feet is a horror film from 2008, written and directed by Eric Red (who also directed Bad Moon). It stars Famke Janssen in the leading role as Marnie Watson. While many ghost horror movies use its time to build up a mystery regarding the haunting and who the ghosts are, this movie goes straight to the point with showing the audience exactly what is happening here. It’s a haunted house/ghost story where you know very well who the ghost is. The suspense comes from how Marnie is totally trapped inside the house with her dead tormentor, which sets it all up for an interesting premise. In many ways, 100 Feet has some very close similarities to Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man from 2020, except here it really is a ghost and not some invisible mad scientist. I also found a little flair of Delirium from 2018, which was also about someone trapped inside their home in a house arrest situation.

Famke Janssen’s performance here is pretty good and carries a lot of the movie, where her actions and behavior comes off as convincing. While it may at first appear like she’s a cold-blooded murderer, which her husband’s former police partner obviously considers her to be, it also becomes clear that she tried multiple times to get help, including calls to the police which were quickly disregarded by his police buddies (of course). She was trapped before, but is even more trapped now. The only thing that hasn’t changed is that she knows no one will believe her, which means she must once again take matters into her own hands.

While 100 Feet never really becomes scary, there are some very effective scenes, where Marnie is both physically and mentally tormented by her dead husband. Some of the scenes where we can see glimpses of him are actually kinda creepy. There are some CGI scenes that get a little goofy, but there’s also a certain violent scene in the latter part of the movie which really catches you off guard with is severe brutality. Holy hell, did that just come out of nowhere!

Despite not exactly reinventing anything here, the movie delivers some creepy scenes, solid performances and a few twists and turns, making it a pretty solid supernatural horror movie.

Writer and director: Eric Red
Country & year: USA, 2008
Actors: Famke Janssen, Bobby Cannavale, Ed Westwick, Michael Paré, Patricia Charbonneau, John Fallon
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0899128/

The New York Ripper (1982)

Posted on August 15, 2025August 15, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

There’s a serial killer on the loose in the city of New York. What else is new?

It all starts simple enough like a classic detective crime story when a dog fetches a severed hand to his owner during a walk by the Hudson River. As we see a clear close-up of the dog having the hand in its mouth, the image freezes as the intro credits rolls over some cheesy jazz music, taken from the vinyl collection of Umberto Lenzi. Then we meet Lieutenant Fred Williams who’s on the case. He’s a chain-smoking apathetic soon-to-retire cold fish of a guy who fucks hookers and probably reeks strong odors of tobacco mixed with some cheap cologne a mile away. Not the most sympathetic individual, but nor are the rest of the people we meet here. Welcome to New York and enjoy the smell. But I’d never leave the city without at least tasting the pizza.

The kills escalate in more brutal ways when young women around Manhattan are getting butchered, the one in a more brutal way then the other. Already six minutes in we have one of the many red-herrings when a woman accidentally bumps into some dude’s car with her bicycle, where we also have some stiff n’ cheesy (dubbed) dialogue:

– Goddammit, why can’t you watch where you’re going??

– I’m sorry, I was thinking of Boston. (Eh, huh? Ok.)

– You women should stay home where you belong! You’re a menace to the public! And you got the brains of a chicken!!!

– And you’re an asshole. Ciao.

After they both go on board the Staten Island Ferry, our Boston lady takes a little revenge by writing “SHIT“ with her lipstick on his windshield while he’s probably in the toilet and jerking off. You go, girl! In pov view we see someone approaching the lady and catches her in the act. We assume that’s an off-duty police officer only until the person speaks gibberish in a Donald Duck voice before the girl gets stabbed to death. From here on it snowballs into a messy whodunnit sleaze-fest mystery where we jump from one character to the next, until we have so many shady faces to suspect as the killer that you’ll lose count.

One could argue that Lucio Fulci just saw Maniac (another New York based serial killer film from 1980) while he scoffed, took a sip of his red vine and said to himself while waving his hands enthusiastic like a true Italian: This is kids stuff. I can turn up the sleazyness all up to eleven, or maybe even higher! And with that said, this is not your typical Lucio Fulci dish that’s usually served with tons of maggots, slimy corpses spiced with cobweb-filled ghoulish scenery. This is a way more grounded detective/crime story that is quickly to be overstuffed with sleaze, nudity, softcore scenes, a bizarre toe-banging-rape scene, and a series of graphic kills that was more than enough keep the filmed banned in the UK until 2002. But even though the maggots are absent, The Big Apple is rotten to the core, where you could more or less say the citizens themself are the maggots, as misanthropic as it sounds. Because the film treats all the characters as worthless scum as if they have zero value to the society, and Lucio Fulci makes damn sure to kill them in such a way that it leaves as little as possible to the imagination.

Then we also have the grimy, urban and decaying environments of New York that mirrors the drained-out empty shells of the characters with their broken dreams and lonely beds. We also follow a mysterious upper-class lady who’s in the audience of a Live Sex Show where she hits a small tape recorder so her husband can jerk-off to the couples moaning sounds. That’s how creative we had to be decades before the internet. This woman is also a pathological nymphomaniac who fucks around with shady dudes in the city. There’s no empathy to find here. Only desperate and compulsively-driven desires to fill the next sexual/fetish cravings, whether it is a quick load with hookers, or chasing young ladies through graffiti-filled subway trains where I guess the stench of piss and shit is soaked in the air like a sponge. The New York Ripper is co-written by Gianfranco Clerici, who also shaped Ruggero Deodato’s House on the Edge of the Park (1980), so that alone should tell what kind of a dark alley this is. Even though the effects isn’t always as convincing as on paper, the nature of the killings are as grisly as it can get. Throats get sliced, nipples and eyeballs gets cut in half (Takashi Miike took notes) and a broken glass bottle gets shoved into someones vagina. All in pure classic giallo-style, of course.

The sexual aspects is here for a reason and not just added as just a meaningless shock value, even though the film goes so far in some certain scenes that you can’t avoid speculating if Lucio Fulci just wanted to make a straight-up porn film instead. The motives of the killer is as bizarre as the demented Donald Duck voice, but that’s giallo for you. Some shoddy dubbing and cheesy use of jazz music may cause some unintentional chuckles. But underneath those hiccups The New York Ripper is mean-spirited, nihilistic and misogynistic to the bone. Sick and morbid entertainment for sick and morbid people. Plain and simple. Fulci nods proudly in his grave. And if you’re easily offended when it comes to simulated violence against women, I’d rather put on a film like Blood Sucking Freaks (1976). I’m sorry, that was rude and unemphatic of me to say. The film has gotten several uncut releases during the last 10-15 years and got a 4K Ultra HD release from Blue Underground in 2020.

Director: Lucio Fulci
Writers: Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti
Country & year: USA/Italy, 1982
Actors: Jack Hedley, Almanta Suska, Howard Ross, Andrea Occhipinti, Alexandra Delli Colli, Paolo Malco, Cinzia de Ponti, Cosimo Cinieri, Daniela Doria
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084719/

Weapons (2025)

Posted on August 12, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

In Maybrook, Pennsylvania, something strange happened one night. At exactly 2:17 a.m. seventeen children suddenly woke up, ran out of their homes and disappeared. All of these children were from Justine Gandy’s class, where the entire classroom would be empty the next day with only one exception: Alex Lilly, the only child who didn’t end up missing that night. Police investigation begins immediately, but yields no results. Alex doesn’t know anything, and Justice doesn’t know anything. One month later, the desperate parents of the missing children demand answers, and decide that Justine must know at least something. After all, it was her class. She’s put on leave, and immediately turns to the alcohol for comfort as she’s being harassed by the townspeople who believes she’s guilty in some way or other. Justine, sincerely not knowing anything and also being concerned about Alex, the only kid left from her class, starts doing a bit of investigation by herself. One day, she follows him home, and notices that the windows of his house are all covered in newspaper…

Weapons is a horror film written, co-produced and directed by Zach Cregger. It has so far grossed over $70 million against a budget of $38 million. Zach Cregger also had a financial and critical success with Barbarian (2022), and immediately started working on a new spec script which was inspired after the death of a close friend of his, Trevor Moore. The screenplay ended up in a bidding war between Netflix, TriStar Pictures, Monkeypaw Productions, Universal Pictures, and New Line Cinema, where the latter won. Jordan Peele, with his company Monkeypaw Productions was one of the participiants in the bidding war, and after losing he parted ways with his longtime managers Joel Zadak and Peter Principato. I guess the success of Weapons was foreseen by a lot of people, considering the heavy interest in securing the rights…

When we saw Weapons at the big screen we knew very little about it and went in as blind as possible, and yes: this is one of those movies where knowing as little as possible definitely heightens the experience. The movie starts off with the mystery that’s also revealed in the trailer and descriptions of the movie. A narrator with the voice of a young child tells you what happened, and you follow the aftermath of the children’s disappearances. There’s an ominous vibe to it all, something dark and brooding, and if you’re blessed with seeing this movie while still being oblivious as to what’s actually going on, you’ll definitely have some fun trying to figure out and speculate where it’s all going. While Barbarian very obviously red-herringed the fuck out of you, this one keeps you constantly guessing while slowly creeping towards the reveal, which I’m going to be honest, wasn’t at all what I initially expected. Weapons also has a lot of dark humor, mixed with some pretty grotesque scenes where some of them honestly caught me a bit off guard. It was quite the ride, for sure! There’s a lot I could have written about this movie, but as I think the best experience is to watch it as blindly as possible, I’ll refrain from going much further.

Underneath Weapons, you might be surprised to realize that the story is actually a very generic horror story, but it’s the non-linear way it’s told and the mix of narrative choices here that makes everything work out so perfectly. Instead of a bland, overused formula with ingredients you’re all too familiar with, it twists everything on its head and presents it to you in a completely different wrap-up. I’m repeating myself like a broken record here, but: go in as blind as possible, and enjoy this twisted and unpredictable horror adventure!

Writer and director: Zach Cregger
Country & year: USA, 2025
Actors: Scarlett Sher, Julia Garner, Cary Christopher, Jason Turner, Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams, Alden Ehrenreich, Whitmer Thomas, Callie Schuttera, Amy Madigan
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26581740/

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 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/

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/