american horror movies – Page 5

Tales from the Hood (1995)

Posted on October 19, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Y’all know the tales from the crypt. But you’ve seen nuthin’ yet, cuz here’s the tales from tha motthafuckin’ HOoOD! … and that’s enough of me trying to talk like someone from the ghetto.

Stack, Ball and Bulldog are three young aspiring drug dealers who are on their way to meet Mr. Simms at his funeral home. And this Mr. Simms dude is a trip and as eccentric as he looks, something our homeboys are soon to experience when they get invited to his gothic and dim-lighted cozy home. And I bet the thick layer of weed rips those nostrils hard. Could I have some, please? Anyway, Stack, Ball and Bull are here to buy some drugs that Mr. Simms claims to have found in an alley. Mr. Simms has hidden the drugs somewhere in the house (and let us guess: the basement), but before we go down there, the old man has some stories to tell, all of which are based on the recent dead bodies lying in the caskets. All of them are actually true, of course, because don’t think otherwise. And as Mr. Simms says; Death… it comes in many strange packages.

The first story, called Rogue Cop Revelation, takes us to the gritty urban city streets which you can guess by the title what is about. Yup, police brutality and the every-day racism protected by the badge, and even more protected by the corrupted code that is Blue wall of silence. Yes, that is actually a thing. Protect, serve and God bless America. Here we meet the rookie cop Clarence (Anthony Griffith) and he couldn’t have a rougher start to his job when he one night is out patrolling with his scumbag partner Strom (Wings Hauser) and some other cops. Because Clarence is actually black, you see, and Strom is a first-class, rage-filled racist. Clarence gets set in a corner when Strom and the other cops beat the hell out of a black man for no reason. They beat him so badly till he dies, and then dump him with his car in the ocean by the docks to make it look like an accident.

So what now, Clarence? Do you break the code and rat on your colleagues, or pretend this never happened? He quits his job in guilt and shame and becomes an alcoholic. The comedic elements start to hit when Clarence returns from his grave, by reasons I won’t spoil, and takes his sweet revenge on the cops.

The second story is titled Boys Do Get Bruised, and here we’re in a relatively quiet, middle-class suburb area where we meet the family of four: mom Sissy, dad Carl and their young introverted boy, Walter. He also wears some bruises that catch the eye of his teacher, Richard (played by the director himself, Rusty Cundieff), and he gets concerned about his well-being. Especially when he also gets bullied at school.

Richard tries to have a chat with Walter to ask him how he got those bruises, which are certainly not from the bullies. He says that a monster comes and terrorizes him while being in bed at night. And if we’re to believe him, we’re actually talking about a real boogely monster that he also makes some cute drawings of. The subject here is pretty obvious, here spiced up with metaphors and a batshit crazy conclusion that even Mr. Simms couldn’t come up with. And I also dare to guess that last year’s Cobweb took some inspiration from this.

KKK Comeuppance is the third story, and my favorite. Because…well, I can’t say without spoiling. But what little I can say is that here we have the sweet and short biopic of none other than the white supremacist, and former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. Here he’s credited as Duke Metger as a combination of the neo-Nazi and founder of the White Aryan Resistance, Tom Metger, just to kill two snakes with one stone.

So, here we have the pleasure of meeting Duke, played by an energetic Corbin Bernsen (The Dentist), a pompous and arrogant senator who’s running for governor in Louisiana. As an ex-member of the KKK and all that shadiness, people aren’t happy, and to add insult to injury, Duke is preparing his office at an old, historical plantation. One of the protesters, who had ancestors living there, won’t let that happen, and has a special plan for him that includes, yes you guessed it – Voodoo, which seems to work every time. This one gets pretty wild with some great use of stop-motion effects that would even make Charles Band drool like an infant. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the song Voodoo by Body Count.

Hard-Core Convert is the fourth and final story. And there isn’t much fun to have with this one, to be honest. But it’s a solid and well-made segment, though, that spits some hard red-pilled truths about the black gang communities. It’s another day in the hood when a gang-related shooting episode escalates, where Jerome gets shot, survives and gets thrown in jail. After being in the tank for four years, he gets met by Dr. Cushing (a nice, little nod to Dr. Van Helsing Peter Cushing) who offers him a plea-deal if he participates in an experimental rehabilitation program. He, of course, takes the offer, and what happens next is a more twisted version of A Clockwork Orange, where Jerome gets put into a sensory deprivation chamber to get confronted by all the people he’d killed over the years, all of whom are black. One of his victims is also a little girl. A bleak segment, this one. Now I want some more weed.

But while this was the final story, we have an encore here. And boy, o’boy … nothing can prepare you for this!

And that’s pretty much how far I can go into each segment without spoiling the whole damn thing. But you see the pattern of social commentary here, told with a morbid and great sense of humor. Black humor in the purest form, if you will, where a ridiculous, zany and charismatic Clarence Williams III steals the entire show between the segments with his electric performance as the mortician Simms. He looks like a bizarro version of Samuel L. Jackson who’s just slipped into a pool filled with cocaine. Tales from the Hood is overall a wild ride and a timeless, little classic that seems as fresh and relevant today, much due to the subject matters.

Director: Rusty Cundieff
Writers: Rusty Cundieff, Darin Scott
Country & year: USA, 1995
Actors: Clarence Williams III, Joe Torry, De’aundre Bonds, Samuel Monroe Jr., Wings Hauser, Tom Wright, Anthony Griffith, Michael Massee, Duane Whitaker, David Alan Grier, Brandon Hammond, Rusty Cundieff, Paula Jai Parker, Corbin Bernsen
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114609/

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Posted on October 18, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The year is 1969, and the young medium Shaun San Dena gets a visit from a desperate couple who wants her to save their son. After having stolen a necklace from the gypsies, he’s fallen ill and have started hearing evil voices. Before she can even start a proper séance, the boy is quite literally dragged to Hell to never be seen again. Then, we fast forward to present day in Los Angeles, where Christine Brown works as a bank loan officer and is hungry for a promotion to become assistant branch manager. Her boss gives her some advice: she will prove her worth if she can show herself as someone being able to make tough decisions. She gets her chance pretty soon afterwards, when an elderly woman named Sylvia Ganush asks for a third extension on her mortgage. Despite Ganush literally begging on her knees, Christine refuses her pleas because she wants to show off her “tough decision making“ to her boss. Promotion, here we come! Later, in the parking lot, the elderly woman decides to give Christine a payback for shaming her and denying her pleas for help, and after a long struggle Ganush rips a button from Christine’s coat and curses it. Uh-oh. Christine is soon haunted by a dark spirit, which is attacking and tormenting her. She decides to beg Ganush for forgiveness, but before she can do so she finds out that the old woman has passed away. Not only that, but the curse that’s been cast upon her will have her tormented by a powerful demon for three days, before she will be dragged to Hell.

Drag Me to Hell is a supernatural horror film from 2009, directed and co-written by Sam Raimi with Ivan Raimi. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and became an immediate success. It grossed $90.8 million worldwide on a $30 million budget, and won awards and received generally very favorable reviews. Originally, the story for the film had been written 10 years prior to the film going into production, under the working title The Curse. After finishing the script for the film, Raimi was busy with the Spider-Man film series so it took a while before the film could be pushed forward. Raimi wanted it to be a PG-13 film, with less gore than his earlier horror films, stating that this time he wanted to do something different. He wanted to make a suspenseful movie with wild moments and a lot of dark humor, and in all of this he definitely succeeded.

The movie starts with a punch during the opening scene, where a little boy is quite literally dragged to the depths of Hell itself to burn forever while his terrified parents can’t do anything but watch in horror. And all over a stolen necklace…not exactly eternal damnation-worthy, but curses aren’t always supposed to be fair. Seeing this we know what Christine is at risk of, which heightens the suspense. While the protagonist isn’t all that innocent (she could have helped the old lady, but she chose to focus on her promotion instead), her actions are still not so awful that we think she deserves to be cast into Hell. Yes, we root for her, but we also can’t help but watch in glee when things turn into total demonic frolic mayhem, with scenes that are both funny and delightfully spooky. While the film does have its cheesy moments, its all done with a lot of excitement and manages to blend the dark humor with the horror elements very nicely. It’s all done in a boisterous Halloween spirit, managing to be a great load of fun. The special effects used in the film is a good variation of different techniques: green screen, prosthetics, puppets and cgi, and different effect houses were utilized, including Phil Tippet‘s studio.

Drag me to Hell is a blast from start to finish, and a perfect watch during the Halloween season!

In early 2023, Raimi revealed that Ghost House Pictures was actively trying to come up with ideas for a sequel. Well…we’re now in the late part of 2024, and while Drag me to Hell 2 is listed on IMDb, there’s absolutely no info about this sequel at all. So I’m not holding my breath for that one.

Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi
Country & year: USA, 2009
Actors: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao, David Paymer, Adriana Barraza, Chelcie Ross, Reggie Lee, Molly Cheek, Bojana Novakovic, Kevin Foster, Alexis Cruz
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1127180/

FleshEater (1988)

Posted on October 17, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

It’s a crisp and sunny day in late October in the deep redneck lands of Pennsylvania where a group of college kids are getting ready to celebrate Halloween somewhere in the woods. Meanwhile, some redneck farmer is trying to get rid of a treestump with his tractor. That was more easer said than done. Under the treestump he finds a wooden casket with a pentagram mark and some cryptic letters that says something like “do not open“. Of course, he opens it and in the casket lies the one and only – The Flesheater.

He’s played by S. William Hinzman, or more simply Bill Hinzman (1936-2012) and while his name maybe doesn’t ring any hells bells, you surely know his face. Because, you see, he was the very first zombie we saw in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). He’s the one who pops up right after the classic line “They’re coming to get you, Barbara…“. So we’re talking about a true legend here, where it was just a matter of time when he got his own spinoff, even though it isn’t officially connected with Living Dead.

The Flesheater attacks the tractor redneck guy right away, which turns him into a zombie. What a shocker. Back to our college teens (who appears to be actors in their early 30s) are getting ready to find their own fuck spot. A couple finds a barn where they eventually get attacked by Mr. Flesheater, and it snowballs from here on with more random rednecks getting their flesh chewed off and turning into flesheaters. And since it’s Halloween, the dispatcher at the local sheriff’s department scoffs off the concerned phone calls as a series of pranks. So, Happy Halloween and enjoy the feast!

The FleshEater is also written, produced, directed and edited by Bill Hinzman himself. A little grassroot passion project made in the rural countryside area of Pennsylvania, where Romero’s Dead trilogy also was made. The actors consist of all from local amateurs to family members who gladly let themselves get killed brutally on screen. The little girl who’s dressed as an angel, who also gets killed, not once but twice (!), is the ten-year old daughter of Bill Hinzman, while the actress who plays her mother is actually her mother and Bill’s wife. What a cute family production and what some cool, wholesome parents this girl must have had.

Hinzman does a fun and entertaining screen presence, although he comes across more like a drunk, unhinged uncle who just wants to score some pussy. The amount of gore is impressively high with some great effects and the film clearly checks all the points to piss the ratings board straight in their faces and shove in as much graphic content as possible. We also have some bushy full-frontal nudity here, cringe foreplay sex scenes, and kids getting killed, as mentioned, where a speed dial to the whambulance may be necessary. Har-har, that was, of course, sarcasm.

This being said, I would lie if I said that the film is on the same level of production value as Romero’s films. It’s a far cry with only a quick paper thin backstory of The Flesheater character, and no character developments other than they’re body-counts in line to be killed off. We jump from one scenario to the next where random people get killed. I call this the Andreas Schnaas of filmmaking. The only thing missing here is someone taking a piss right before getting killed. The acting is lousy, the dialogues even worse. But I can’t say I was bored. It has its shoe-string low budget charm with a certain naive energy to it with a thick layer of redneck atmosphere, and it got several laughs from me. Also, watch Redneck Zombies while you’re in the right mood.

The film has several alternative titles such as Zombie Nosh and Revenge of the Living Dead. The original title is FleshEater, while the full title is actually FleshEater – Revenge of the Living Dead. It’s known as Zombie Flesh Eater – Revenge of the Living Dead in Germany, not directed by Lucio Fulci. And enough confusion for now. The film was released in 2022 by Vinegar Syndrome in both 4K UHD and Blu-ray, and guess what: it’s also on Tubi.

Director: S. William Hinzman
Writers: S. William Hinzman, Bill Randolph
Country & year: USA, 1988
Actors: S. William Hinzman, John Mowod, Leslie Ann Wick, Kevin Kindlin, Charis Kirkpatrik Acuff, James J. Rutan, Lisa Smith, Denise Morrone, Heidi Hinzman, Bonnie Hinzman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109809/

Night of the Animated Dead (2021)

Posted on October 16, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Night of the Animated Dead (2021) is an adult animated horror film directed by Jason Axinn (who also made To Your Last Death). It follows the pretty familiar story of the original movie (Night of the Living Dead from 1968 by George A. Romero): Barbara and her brother John are going to visit their father’s grave in a cemetery in Pennsylvania. Simultaneously, a zombie outbreak causes the corpses to reanimate all over the country, and when John is attacked by one of the zombies, Barbara flees to a nearby farmhouse. There she encounters other survivors, including Ben who also seeks shelter in that house. Barbara gets in a catatonic shock, while Ben must fight of zombies with a torch as it seems fire is their weakness. Then they discover Harry and his wife Helen, who is hiding in the basement with their injured daughter. Several people have decided to seek shelter in the farmhouse, but will they be able to keep the zombies out?

The film was animated by Demente Animation Studio, and on their website it’s clearly listed that this movie was made on a limited budget. And it shows. The animation leaves a lot to be desired, and while it’s made in the traditional and quite time-consuming 2D animation style the movie suffers a bit from not having had a considerably bigger budget to flesh out the animation a lot more. There’s no doubt that the animators had to prioritize certain scenes over the overall product, pretty much like many of the old cartoons where the majority of an episode had very limited animation and movement while action and fight scenes looked nice (most of which were often used in the opening intros of the series, so you literally watched the best parts while listening to the theme songs). It’s obvious that the limited budget put a lot of restraints of how well this could be made, and the final product suffers from it. That being said, there are some decent scenes and particularly the gory ones are pretty good.

Overall, Night of the Animated Dead is more a movie you watch mostly for curiosity’s sake, as unfortunately it feels kind of redundant since it basically just retells the original story. Perhaps it would have been far more interesting if it was made in a completely different way to the original, maybe playing a lot more on the gore scenes because those were definitely the movie’s highlights. An interesting watch overall, but Jason Axinn’s previous film To Your Last Death is far superior compared to this one.

The movie is distributed by Warner Bros, and was released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2021. It is also widely available on several streaming sites.

Director: Jason Axinn
Writers: George A. Romero, John A. Russo (based on their original script)
Country & year: USA, 2021
Voice actors: Josh Duhamel, Dulé Hill, Katharine Isabelle, James Roday Rodriguez, Katee Sackhoff, Will Sasso, Jimmi Simpson, Nancy Travis, Stefan Marks, William Calvert, Chris Edgerly
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14961110/

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

Posted on October 15, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Have you always wondered why every damn serial killer in slasher movies tends to walk after their victims, like they’re about to shit their pants, rather than running? Well, Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel) is finally here to explain.

Being a top-tier serial killer like Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers or Art the Clown, is not just about grabbing a weapon and going on a killing-spree, you see. A ton of preparation, planning and complex study of the chosen victims to “the final girl“ has to be examined to the smallest details. And be sure to eat well and do your cardio exercise regularly, cause this is not a job for out-of-shape lard asses.

A small group of young film students led by Taylor (Angela Goethals) has gotten the privilege to follow the aspiring serial killer Leslie Vernon. He’s a month away from his upcoming murder-spree where he’s planning to kill a group of kids while they are having a party in an old abandoned house, and the film crew are invited to document the whole process. Sounds like the standard slasher premise we’ve seen two thousand times already. Vernon looks like a little brother of Andrew Divoff and Michael C. Hall, and like his role models, he has a tragic backstory to paint his alter ego with. We get a never-seen-before glimpse of the secret underworld of serial killers when the film crew gets to meet Vernon’s best friend and colleague, Eugene (Scott Wilson). He’s a retired veteran and has learned Vernon some tricks. We don’t know much of Eugene’s many roles in the slasher arena throughout the decades other than there’s some theory that he’s actually Billy Lenz, the unseen killer from Black Christmas (1974). C o o l. He also shares his dark past and double-life in a happy marriage… while he sleeps in a tank under the ground outside the house.

We also met Dr. Halloran (Robert Englund), the film’s version of Dr. Loomis if you will, who once treated Leslie Vernon and now is on his tail to chase him down. I find zero joy in saying this, but it’s not wrong to point out that Robert Englund has appeared in a string of terrible dogshit films during the last 10, 15, 20 years or so, and this is one of the very few watch-worthy flicks he’s in, post Freddy. We see Zelda Rubinstein as a librarian, her final role before she passed away four years later, and wandered into the light.

The film is mostly presented as a raw, handheld documentary with segments that switch back and forth to conventional. This may take some of the edge off, but this is not a film to take seriously to begin with, and Behind the Mask is overall a clever and entertaining satire on the cheesy slasher genre that dominated the 1980s. It’s also, of course, a big plus if you’re a big fan of the genre and have seen most of the catalogs of slashers from that era and its resurgence after the mid 90s. If not, the inside-jokes and the references will fly over your head while you’re just sitting and waiting for the blood’n gore which there’s not much focus on.

And one thing is for certain: You’ll never be able to watch a body-count slasher in the same way ever again.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Director: Scott Glosserman
Writers: Scott Glosserman, David J. Stieve
Country & year: USA, 2012
Actors: Nathan Baesel, Angela Goethals, Robert Englund, Scott Wilson, Zelda Rubinstein, Bridgett Newton, Kate Miner, Ben Pace, Britain Spellings, Hart Turner, Krissy Carlson, Travis Zariwny
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437857/

Frankenstein Island (1981)

Posted on October 13, 2024January 31, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The director, Jerry Warren, woke up one day and saw some hot air balloons from his window. He picked up his potato camera, pushed the rec-button, and maybe hoped he could use it in some future project. And so he did. C o o l.

Then we cut to a group of middle-aged men who have crash-landed with the balloons on some island. After some exploring, they stumble into some natives who only consist of young, slim ladies. They only cover their tits and asses with some leopard-bikini-clad. And they seem to have easy access to shampoo. Welcome to the wildlife.

You are pretty, one of the ladies says. And no, this is not really a porno, this is supposed to be a Sci-Fi horror film, if you haven’t already figured it out. They have some weird ritualistic dances as if they were high on bath salt while our group of men drools at them. Every man’s wet fantasy seems to have come true … or maybe not. Because there is a shocking secret to be revealed about these ladies later. One of the ladies gets suddenly kidnapped by a goofy-looking guy in jeans and a beanie who looks pretty much like the twin brother of Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys.

It’s impossible to try explaining what’s really happening here. The film is so bafflingly absurd that anyone would get a serious brain fart if trying to find a breadcrumb of logic.

Our men get met by two other dudes who just randomly pop up behind some bushes – one old bearded grandpa with a cane and a guy with a pirate patch. And both of these guys look like two hardcore alcoholics who have zero business being on a movie set. The strong odor of piss, sweat, booze and old spice really reeks. The one with the patch laughs all the time, drinks from every bottle he can find, and I would assume that the guy was completely hammered for real during the filming. Oliver Reed would be impressed. Because there is no freaking way that any actors near this production could act drunk so naturally as we see here. There’s also a scene where he seems to black-out as he sits by a table and the camera just keeps rolling in case he wakes up. Spoiler alert: some ten moments later he wakes up, just barely.

400 words in, and I haven’t even got to break down the premise. Maybe because there hardly aren’t any. But like in a crowded bar somewhere in Wisconsin on a Wednesday night, a lot of unpredictable shit is bound to happen. And if a celluloid can get drunk, here you have the result. It’s incoherent, messy, absurd, bizarre and out-of-control all the way to the very last pub goer who refuses to leave after closing time. Just one more drink. One more. Burp. Okay then: We have a cheap-looking lab where an old and-ready-to-die Dr. Von (yes, with an o) Helsing lies in a hospital bed, looking confused. Who could blame him. We have some random silly scenes with more Trailer Park Boys-looking weirdos who swing with the cheapest Halloween Devil Fork the budget allowed to spend. We see a glimpse of some creepy mannequin, just because, some drops of acid-trip images, and, of course, we have Dr. Frankenstein, the man of the hour himself. Here he’s played by John Carradine, where he only pops up randomly as a hologram while he’s rambling a string of demented and nonsensical words. If his lines weren’t cryptic enough, they always end with The power… The power… The power… The power…!

Man, this movie…

And yes, we actually have a Frankenstein monster shoe-horned in here, just to put the little, golden raspberry on the top. He pops up randomly just in time to join the classic fight scene in the laboratory. And this fight scene is something else, where the retard-o-meter goes all up and even through the ceiling. It’s even worse than the catfight scene in Manos: The Hands of Fate. The best way to describe the insanity is as if there was a blind dance coordinator on the set instead of a stunt/fight coordinator. The monster also keeps arm-swatting constantly as if there was a fly in front of his face that wouldn’t leave him alone. I wouldn’t be surprised if he accidentally smacked several of his co-actors. And the legend says that he’s still to this day trying to swat that fly.

The film is written, directed and produced by the same mastermind who made Teenage Zombies (1959), The Wild World of Batwoman (1966) and other public-domain classics. The most amusing thing here is that Frankenstein Island was made after Jerry Warren took a ten-year hiatus from filmmaking. And during those ten years, plus five years prior, he didn’t watch a single film and had zero sense of the pulse of the horror movie business – other than he had heard rumors that horror films were profitable again (thanks to the rise of the slasher genre). The guy clearly lived in his own small bubble, completely out of touch deep in a fantasy world where the only movies that existed were his own, and thought that a film like Frankenstein Island would rise his ego. Never heard the term zeitgeist either, I would guess. The even more amusing, if not just tragicomic, is the matter of fact that Frankenstein Island looks like something from the 1950s alongside with Teenage Zombies, produced by Ed Wood. It’s so hilariously and just painfully dated, almost to an impressive level. Without knowing any of this beforehand, I’d rather believe that the Earth is flat than that this was made the same year as Halloween II.

Warren also wanted to make a sequel to Frankenstein Island which he described as “more up-to-date, not so campy and old-time.“ I would even pay a hundred bucks to see that film, but unfortunately Warren died in 1988, two months before John Carradine. Double RIP. The one and only DVD release of the film is out of print and very pricey. It’s also available on Tubi.

Writer and director: Jerry Warren
Country & year: USA, 1981
Actors: Robert Clarke, Steve Brodie, Cameron Mitchell, Robert Christopher, Tain Bodkin, Patrick O’Neil, Andrew Duggan, John Carradine, Katherine Victor, G.J. Mitchell
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082410/

The Sentinel (1977)

Posted on October 11, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) is a young, independent fashion model who’s looking forward to starting a new life after years of trauma due to some serious daddy issues. Because when she was a schoolgirl she accidentally caught her dad in the act of having a festive orgy with some fugly, meaty ladies. Just to make it more bizarre, they were also eating cake. Ouch, those poor, innocent eyes. Watching someone’s own parents having sex can be a horrific enough sight that stays with you forever, but Alison went straight into panic mode by locking herself in the bathroom where she tried to kill herself by slicing her wrist.

Her dad is now dead from cancer, and life goes on. She rents an apartment in an old brownstone apartment complex in Brooklyn Heights. Allison spots a mysterious person sitting by the window on the top floor of the building. We soon learn that he’s an old blind priest (John Carradine) who’s lived there for years. And he just sits there, day and night, like a statue and is not to be bothered. Does he ever eat or take a piss? Huh… OK, whatever. People are strange, as Jim Morrison once said.

If the vibe wasn’t eerie enough already, things get weirder when she settles in the complex. Because here she meets her new neighbors – a group of eccentric bohemian-acting hippie weirdos who you just want to distance yourself from and let them mind their own business. We have this older over-the-top jovial gentleman who acts like he’s cosplaying The Mad Hatter. We meet a ballerina coach with some big bosoms and a blond mute who, just out of the blue, masturbates like a psychotic freak on the couch, in front of a confused and startled Allison. What a day!

Things get crazier at night when Allison is trying to get her beauty sleep. She hears weird noises while the chandelier in her bedroom swings. Spooky. It’s after all an old building, so maybe just some harmless ghosts are wandering by. After walking around in a tiny, sexy nightdress and a flashlight, she gets attacked by none other than a zombiefied version of her dead father. So, where did he come from, and what is it with that mysterious dude who just sits up there by the window? It’s soon time to find out, as she continues to get tormented by visions that start to break down her psyche.

The Sentinel is directed and co-written by the British gentleman Michael Winner (1935-2013), who also made the first three Death Wish films, which explains the thick layer of sleaze, nudity and maybe some white powder floating in the air. This is actually the only horror film he made, based on a novel by Jeffrey Konvits, who co-wrote the script. Lucio Fulci clearly borrowed some key aspects from The Sentinel when he made The Beyond (1981). It also has its parallels to Rosemary’s Baby, but besides the old apartment setting with the weird neighbors, the premises are moons apart.

The Sentinel is also known for its all-star cast. While Cristina Raines was relatively unknown, we have old veterans like Martin Balsam, Ava Gardner, Burges Meredith, John Carradine, to fresh newcomers like Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, and Beverly D’Angelo in her first film role. At the end of the film, we can also see Tom Berenger in his first screen presence. The only person missing here is Maxine Minx.

All scenes, except for the final one, are shot on location. The dusty, cobweb-filled attic is the real attic of the building. No sets were built. The interior of the building is the actual interior of the Brooklyn building, something you rarely see in a Hollywood studio film, especially these days. Even the boobs you see here — are real! Isn’t that interesting. The residents who lived in the building were paid to stay in a hotel while shooting. Only Hollywood would have the budget for that alone.

Another real aspect here are ( —SPOILER WARNING— ) the deformed people we see popping up from Hell in the zany climax. We have some real circus freaks here which stirred some controversies, even in 1977. According to the commentary track on the Blu-ray, director Michael Winner assures us that they had a real fun time during the filming of this segment. The same could not be said by Chris Sarandon though, who had such a miserable experience on set that he considered quitting acting altogether.

While The Sentinel isn’t much of a scary movie, it has a spooky atmosphere with a cryptic mystery to be solved. The tone is quite bizarre in some scenes, which go pretty overboard at the climax. Writer Jeffrey Konvitz was not particularly happy with this, as he wanted a far more subtle approach to the material. I see what he means, but the film is overall an entertaining and solid 70s supernatural oddball-flick with some uniqueness to it. Some obvious scenes were, of course, cut from the theatrical release, but are available in its full flesh version on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory. The commentary track by Michael Winner is also pretty funny and jovial, to say the least, where he gives a series of interesting anecdotes about film biz and more juicy stuff. Winner died two years after the release of the Blu-ray at age 77. RIP.

Director: Michael Winner
Writer: Michael Winner, Jeffrey Konvitz
Country & year: USA, 1977
Actors: Chris Sarandon, Cristina Raines, Martin Balsam, John Carradine, José Ferrer, Ava Gardner, Arthur Kennedy, Burgess Meredith, Sylvia Miles, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Walken, Beverly D’Angelo
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076683/

Grandmother’s House (1988)

Posted on October 9, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Two siblings, David and Lynn, are orphaned after their father dies unexpectedly. They are sent to live with their grandparents who resides in a victorian home somewhere in rural California. When David and Lynn were very young, they lived in that house together with their mother, but of this they have few memories and everything from that time is a blur. When they travel to their new home, a creepy woman is standing in the middle of the road and almost causes the bus driver to have an accident. Weird…but nothing much to reflect on, right? Creepy people are everywhere. And talking about creepy people, when the siblings meet with their grandparents, they feel that something is very, very off about them. Sure, they’re sweet and nice and all that, just like grandparents ought to be, but…something’s not right. And during their first night in the house, David has a nightmare where he witnesses his grandfather killing a woman.

Grandmother’s House (aka Grandma’s House) is a slasher film from 1988 directed by Peter Rader (writer of Waterworld) as his directorial debut. And it sure is a little bit of an oddball movie, with twists and turns that makes it an unpredictable watch, at least if you haven’t read any spoilers beforehand. I’ll do my best to avoid them here in the review.

The movie starts off with a well-trodden trope: children lose their parent, and must come and live somewhere else where things are strange and unfamiliar. A setup like this has often been used in everything from children’s movies to horror, so nothing new here. And while the grandparents seem loving and sweet, you notice that something is off, of course. It plays along with a mystery-fueled setting where certain scenes and character behavior makes everything seem even more off. While it’s apparent after watching it that several scenes and setups are made to deliberately confuse you, with the bright setting of sunlit days and a beautiful orange orchards and other picturesque locations. Yup, the countryside is indeed beautiful. It does actually feel a bit dreamlike at times, and while the mystery keeps building and you feel you know what it’s going to reveal, it still ends up surprising you. And yes, despite a somewhat slow build-up it eventually slams into full psycho-killer territory.

Overall, Grandmother’s House is an obscure slasher flick that despite a bit of clunkiness, provides enough surprises and twists to be entertaining and worth a watch. Best to go in blind, though, as knowing too much about the plot and turn of events beforehand is likely to ruin the experience a bit.

Grandmother’s House was restored and released on DVD and Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome and 88 Films.

Director: Peter Rader
Writers: Peter Jensen, Gayle Jensen,
Country & year: USA, 1988
Actors: Eric Foster, Kim Valentine, Len Lesser, Ida Lee, Brinke Stevens, Michael Robinson, Craig Yerman, David Donham, Joan-Carol Bensen
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097455/

Sleepwalkers (1992)

Posted on October 8, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Charles Brady and his mother Mary (who is also his lover) are shapeshifting energy vampires who needs to feed off virgin women. They can look like normal humans, but can also transform into big werecat-looking creatures which is their natural form. They also have a lot of powers: they can use telekinesis, and the power of illusion. So what could be their weakness? Well, it’s not a stake through the heart, garlic or silver bullets: it’s simply domestic cats. Yup, cats are their only real threat as the cats can see though their illusion and bullshit and will violently attack them, inflicting fatal wounds. So naturally, Brady and his mother are cat haters. They move around a lot, since they often leave a trail of dead bodies behind and need to avoid too much attention. Now they have come to live in Travis, a small Indiana town, after recently fleeing from Bodega Bay in California. At school, Brady meets Tanya Robertson and she believes she’s met a handsome boy with a romantic interest in her. If she only knew…

Sleepwalkers is a horror film from 1992 written by Stephen King and directed by Mick Garris. This movie was the first time when Stephen King wrote a screenplay intended for a movie rather than adapting one of his novels. It was originally supposed to be directed by Rupert Wainwright as Columbia Pictures initially approached him, but King insisted they offered the film to Mick Garris instead, who had previously directed Critters 2: The Main Course (1988) and Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990).

Sleepwalkers is a creature feature that derives a bit from the norm, as it is told from the perspective of the creatures themselves. They just want to spend the day making love to each other (despite being mother and son), kill cats who are their mortal enemies and suck the lifeforce out of virgins to keep themselves sustained. The movie is quite silly at times, with some odd dialogue, especially by the Sleepwalker Charles. There’s a lot of tacky one-liners like “This doesn’t have to hurt. Just think of yourself as lunch!“ and of course the “Cop Kabob!“ line during Andy’s murder. They almost went into full “Garbage day!“ territory here, that’s for sure. On top of that, there’s also the “death by corn cob” scene. Yeah…it’s not a movie you should take too seriously. The effects are of course quite dated when it comes to the CGI ones, but the practical effects are decent enough. It’s still that famous CGI morphing scene in the car, which was probably cutting-edge at the time but now just enhances the campiness and makes it look even more silly than it already is. There’s also a scene where the Sleepwalkers are getting down and dirty, and this scene was originally so explicit that it had to be cut in order to avoid an X-rating.

Alice Krige plays the role as the mother Mary, a role Mick Garris wanted to cast after having seen her in Ghost Story (1981). Sleepwalkers is also the only movie where both Stephen King and Clive Barker are present in the same scene. These aren’t the only “gag cameos“ however, we also have Joe Dante as a lab assistant, Tobe Hooper as a forensic tech, and John Landis as a lab technician. Ron Perlman (Hellboy) also plays a grumpy cop, and Glenn Shadix (who played Otis in Beetlejuice, and unfortunately died in 2010 so he could not reprise his role in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) also has a role as Mr. Fallows, a creepy teacher. So, yeah…lots of well-known faces and names on the cast list for sure. And then, of course, there’s the biggest hero of all in this movie: Clovis the cat. This feline is owned by a police man named Andy Simpson, and follows him around in the police car. Quite the duo, those two! When Andy is killed by Charles, Clovis manages to wound him severely. Of course, the mourning kitty decides to revenge his deceased owner, with the help of other cats.

Sleepwalkers is by no means any masterpiece, but it’s a cheesy enjoyable B-movie with gore, cute cats and silly monsters that scores pretty high on the fun factor.

Director: Mick Garris
Writer: Stephen King
Country & year: USA, 1992
Actors: Brian Krause, Mädchen Amick, Alice Krige, Jim Haynie, Cindy Pickett, Ron Perlman, Glenn Shadix, Cynthia Garris, Sparks. Cameos by John Landis, Joe Dante, Tobe Hooper, Stephen King and Clive Barker
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105428/

The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (1964)

Posted on October 7, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The blind and wealthy Henry Mandore (Tom Simcox) keeps getting phone calls from his mother all the time. Problem is, she’s been dead for quite a while. Prior to her death, she demanded to have a phone installed in her crypt as she was terrified of the thought of being buried alive, but there is of course no way she’s still alive. Yet that black phone keeps ringing, nearly driving him insane, and all that comes from the other end of the line is a haunting wailing. His wife, Vivia Mandore (Diane Baker), seeks out a man named Nelson Orion (Martin Landau) who works as an architect but keeps meddling with the paranormal as a little side-project. He’s a skeptic as well so he won’t be expected to accept any supernatural goings-on if there aren’t any, and Vivia trusts he will find out the truth about the phone calls.

The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre is a made-for-tv horror film from 1964, written and directed by Joseph Stefano, who wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock’s Psyhco (1960). Originally, the film was a pilot for a supernatural-themed anthology series for CBS which was supposed to be called The Haunted. Nothing came of it after the CBS president James T. Aubrey left, so it was then released as a standalone film. There are some well-known names on the actors list, including Diane Baker who played Lorraine Warren in the 1991 TV movie The Haunted, and Martin Landau who played Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s 1994 movie Ed Wood.

What works very nicely for this aged obscure little ghost movie, is the atmosphere and the surroundings, and some of the effects are pretty spooky despite being very outdated today. While the movie plays mainly forwards as a mystery thriller with supernatural elements, the story itself does feel a bit too convoluted at times and there are certain scenes that simply doesn’t go anywhere and adds absolutely nothing to the plot, like one scene where Nelson meets a woman on the beach whom he arranges a meeting with later, but whom we never see again. I’m not sure if this is just pure filler content or if there were plans of expanding some of these scenarios a bit more.

Overall, though, The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre is a spooky old flick where I can easily imagine that the audience back in those days would find the effects of the ghost simply referred to as “The Bleeding Ghost“ to be scarier than what they were used to seeing on screen. In fact, one of the reasons for the TV pilot not being picked up anywhere was that it was considered “too scary“ for the American audiences at the time. Of course, that sounds perfectly laughable now, but aside from not exactly having the means to scare today’s audience, it’s an interesting little movie to watch.

Writers and director: Joseph Stefano
Country & year: USA, 1964
Actors: Martin Landau, Judith Anderson, Diane Baker, Tom Simcox, Nellie Burt, Leonard Stone
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312723/