horror comedy – Horror Ghouls

The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)

Posted on September 15, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

In the year of 2001, Japanese director Takashi Miike made Ichi the Killer, the yakuza splatter horror which got famous for its graphic violence and how it was banned and censored left and right. Even here in Norway the movie was actually totally banned, even though an uncut DVD release in 2007 managed to circulate for a while. The ban was never lifted, so the movie is actually still not legal to distribute and sell or stream here (but it is legal to buy a copy of the movie for private use). Aside from his achievement with this movie, Miike had a very busy year in 2001 where he actually made another five films, one of these being another well-known movie called Visitor Q. However, we’re not going to talk about that one, instead we’re going to talk about another of his films from 2001, called The Happiness of the Katakuris. And…oh boy…if you thought you had figured this director out from watching his horror movie hits, you’ll be scratching your head at this one.

The Happiness of the Katakuris starts off with an opening scene of a woman eating soup in a fancy restaurant. In the soup is some cherub-like claymation stop-motion creature, who sees the screaming woman’s uvula (who has now turned into stop motion as well) and mistakes it for a heart, rips it out of her throat and flies away, and…hell, it’s really one of those things you can’t explain with words without sounding like you’re rambling about your latest fever dream, you just gotta see it for yourself. Anyway: the cherub-thing ends up getting eaten by a crow, who then gets killed by grandpa Katakuri who got pissed off and threw a stick after it because the bird took a shit which landed on his face. What significance this opening had to anything still boggles my mind, but I guess it’s a way of telling the viewer that the world is an absurd place and death is everywhere. Or something like that.

Now we get introduced to the four-generation family of the Katakuris: Masao Katakuri and his wife Terue, his father Jinpei, the couple’s son Masayuki who’s got a criminal past, and their daughter Shizue who is divorced and a single mother with her child Yurie. And of course, we must not forget their cute dog Pochi. They have just purchased a large, old house nearby a former garbage dump close to Mount Fuji, which they have converted into a bed and breakfast and named it “White Lover’s Inn“. Sounds cozy. They have big hopes for this becoming a success, as the road nearby will be expanded up to their house which would turn it into a perfect spot for tourists. However, the road construction isn’t finished yet…and they currently haven’t had a single guest. So when one finally comes during some heavy rain, they’re all so excited. Finally! The first guest! And of course this dude was someone who decided to stay there just to commit suicide during the night. The bastard should’ve just gone to Aokigahara forest instead. To top it all: the way he committed suicide looks more like a murder. The Katakuris decide to save their business by burying the body.

Up next is a sumo wrestler and his young (very young, it appears…) girlfriend. Let’s just say this doesn’t turn out well either. The bodies are piling up, the Katakuris still haven’t had a single “normal“ guest, and Shizue also falls head over heels for a man called Richard Sagawa, who claims he’s a U.S naval officer and the nephew of Queen Elizabeth II. Nothing shady about this one, not at all. Oh, and of course…the nearby volcano also starts rumbling every now and then…

The movie is said to be loosely based on a South Korean film called The Quiet Family, but an obvious The Sound of Music parody is all over the place here and it’s also obvious Miike liked Monty Python. Yes, this movie is also a musical comedy, filled with upbeat and sometimes romantic dance numbers and even a karaoke sing-along. The premise of the story, a family trying to start a guest house and only getting visitors who ends up dying on one way or other, is one that could easily be tackled in all kinds of ways (including ones much darker and grittier). But this is pure batshit bananas absurdist comedy from start to finish. I have to admit it took some time before I got properly into the overall tone of this film. When it comes to comedy, I’m a bit more fan of the dark and subtle kind, and during the first half hour or so I found myself thinking this might be a little too much for me…but somehow, I got more and more into the bizarre, over-the-top vibe without feeling too exhausted. There’s always something happening, it goes from one song number or weird incident to another, and it’s truly unpredictable. Aside from the opening featuring stop motion claymation, this is also featured multiple times during the movie, sometimes mixing real footage with the animated parts. It’s…part uncanny-valley nightmare fuel as well as being fun and amusing.

The Happiness of the Katakuris is a totally bonkers musical that certainly proves that Takashi Miike is a versatile director. And the message you can take away from this movie, I guess, is that no matter how hard and fucked up your life becomes, no matter how much bad luck, just sing a happy song and keep doing your best!

Director: Takashi Miike
Writers: Ai Kennedy, Kikumi Yamagishi
Original title: Katakuri-ke no kôfuku
Country & year: Japan, 2001
Actors: Kenji Sawada, Keiko Matsuzaka, Shinji Takeda, Naomi Nishida, Kiyoshirô Imawano, Tetsurō Tanba, Naoto Takenaka, Tamaki Miyazaki, Takashi Matsuzaki
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0304262/

An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

Posted on September 8, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

If London wasn’t dangerous enough for Americans to visit, Paris wouldn’t be much better. So try Bratislava instead, haha. That being said, this is not a sequel to the well-known cult classic that is John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London (1981), but more based on the idea that the first film was originally to be set in Paris. And why not. Paris rules! The only thing this one has in common with the original is that an American student visits a European country and becomes a werewolf.

The film has some very loose connections to the first one though, and to cut it short: John Landis was asked to make a sequel to London in 1991 and wrote several screenplays. The studio, Polygram Pictures, declined all of his scripts for whatever reason and ended up with Tom Stern and Tim Burns to write the script that was later rewritten after Anthony Waller got hired as director (catching my breath). He had recently made Mute Witness, a solid horror/thriller which had already gained a cult-following.

Andy (Tom Everett Scott) and his small group of American friends are visiting Paris to sneak up to the Eiffel Tower at night to bungee jump. The big event gets interrupted when they see a young woman, Serafine (Julie Delpy) standing on the handrail, who looks like she’s ready for a suicide jump. After she leaps off, Andy jumps after her, attached to the cord (duh) and grabs her foot at the last second before she would hit the ground. The only thing he has left from her after flying back up is her shoe. Andy gets knocked unconscious and ends up in the hospital. Welcome to Paris.

And after he wakes up in the hospital, the film bounces all over the place where we have a rather flimsy romance movie, a ghostmovie that could be in the same universe as The Frighteners, another romance side plot and, of course, something to do with werewolves. Andy spots Serafine at the hospital, where she just by coincidence works as a nurse (or does she?), and goes after her with her shoe, looking like a deranged psychopathic stalker as he’s holding up her shoe and says: You forgot…this! How romantic. After they start to date, Andy and his friends get access to a secret underground nightclub that connects to the catacombs. Nice! But here is also where it gets messy, because one of Andy’s pals finds Serafine, for whatever reason, locked in the basement. And don’t tell me that she can possibly be… a werewolf?! Now that she knows that Andy is in the club, which happens to be an underground society of werewolves who eat tourists (!), she has to get him far away. Too late. The moon is full, hell breaks loose and poor Andy gets bitten in the leg after running around in the sewer before he manages to escape through a pipe. Enjoy rest of Paris and good luck finding an antidote.

There are especially two classic “pure cinema“ moments here that stick out. The first is the most awkward date scene ever, also called the bubble gum scene, where our charming American blows up a condom while Julie Delpy sits in front of him with a cold stare. Can’t really blame her though. I won’t even try to explain the context, just watch it. The second one is where Andy’s werewolf senses start to kick in, goes on all fours in a cafè (still in human form) and does a quick ass sniff to some random woman (Julie Bowen) straight in her bum. Because it’s mating time, baby! They end up having sex at Père Lachaise Cemetery, because, of course, this is Paris, the city of love, after all. But then the moon goes full. Oops.

Going in and expecting a direct sequel to the first film, you’d be disappointed…very disappointed. And forget about any memorable werewolf transformation scene. This is not that kind of movie. It’s all, if not mostly CGI, or “the first CG werewolf in movie history“ as Anthony Waller called it. And it looks like you’d expect from the 1990s: not good. So no, I wouldn’t say that this is a great movie in its genre. It has its glaring flaws, it’s very unfocused at times with a very forgettable villain (yes, there’s a villain here if I forgot to mention) and the romance between Andy and Serafine seems pretty forced. While Tom Everett Scott had a fun time making the film, the same can not be said about Julie Delpy who only took the role to pay her rent. For unknown reasons she hated working on An American Werewolf in Paris so much that she avoided doing any other commercial Hollywood movies. (That was until she signed up for Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015). She still does a good performance as a mysterious melancholic downer though.

What makes the film a win is the comedic elements, the many set-pieces of Paris and just overall the distinct fun, goofy 1990s vibe which only us who experienced that decade, before the world went down the toilet, can fully appreciate. The few of the practical effects are great, the most noteworthy being the gags where the ghost version of Julie Bowen tries to whistle and pops out her eye instead. Delightful stuff. And since comedy is the most subjective thing ever, I can only speak for myself. Or maybe just being in the right mood helps a lot. I dunno. It’s certainly entertaining and far from the worst movie of all time. The film was not a success at the box-office though, barely earning back its budget. That’s a bummer, because a third film where it was the other way around, A European Werewolf in Chicago would surely be interesting. But then the movie would be over after just ten minutes or so, because, well…I think it speaks for itself.

Director: Anthony Waller
Writers: Tim Burns, Tom Stern, Anthony Waller
Country & year: USA/France/Luxembourg
Actors: Tom Everett Scott, Julie Delpy,Vince Vieluf, Phil Buckman, Julie Bowen, Pierre Cosso, Thierry Lhermitte, Tom Novembre, Maria Machado, Ben Salem Bouabdallah, Serge Basso
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118604/

Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

Posted on September 1, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the cats! They’re even eating the ostriches!

Eight Legged Freaks is the title and that’s what you get — and it’s as silly, fun and campy as it sounds. The plot is pretty straightforward: A horde of mutated giant hopping CGI spiders attack a small mining town somewhere in Arizona. Sheriff Sam (Kari Wuhrer) and her love interest Chris (David Arquette) have to come up with a plan to save the day. Good luck. A relatively unknown Scarlett Johanson plays the sheriff’s young teenage daughter, a decade before she became a Royal Hollywood Elite.

Fun fact: The original title for the film was Arac Attack, which had to be changed due to, well, a certain current Iraq Attack in the wake of 9/11. We can all agree that Eight Legged Freaks is a way better title, a passion project by the upcoming director Ellory Elkayem from New Zealand. Too bad that his upcoming took a quick double nosedive after he made the Return of the Living Dead films Necropolis and Rave to the Grave back-to-back in 2005 that as well could be made by Uwe Boll on his worst days.

Anyway… The B-movie monster that became Eight Legged Freaks had its humble start back in 1997 with the black & white horror short Larger Than Life, which is, of course, about monster spiders. Independence Day director Roland Emmerich spat out a budget of 30 million dollars for a full-length film inspired by the short, and used his own FX company Centropolis Entertainment for the visual effects. Still, I have to say if it wasn’t for the cast and the name of Roland Emmerich attached, this could easily have been mistaken for a very late mockbuster of Arachnophobia by The Asylum. This is way more polished than what they ever could fart out though. That being said, the effects here are far from amazing, as this is meant to be a silly lighthearted comedy-homage to schlocky monster movies of the 1950s. And like a lightning in a bottle, it succeeds in every way.

There are a lot of highlights here, but one that sticks out is a scene where a poor cat gets attacked by one of the many big spiders, dragged behind a wall, and well, how should I describe it…I can’t. It’s something straight out of Tom & Jerry, and it’s okay to laugh, folks. Ostriches get killed in a way that looks like a regular day in Peru, or like any poor bastard who’d get traumatized for life after this beautiful sight in the basement, or in Australia where huntsman spiders eats possums for dinner. Brrr! We have some wild motorcycle stunts and a fuel truck gets attacked by a handful of spiders which end up in an epic explosion. Budget well spent. And yeah, the spiders also punches people with cartoon punch sound effect. Because, of course.

There’s also a nod to Dawn of the Dead where all the townsfolk go to hide in a shopping mall which quickly escalates to crazy action which most notably includes a scene where a dude in a Jason mask is slashing through the spiders with a chainsaw. The older Marvel fans will probably go nuts when ScarJo gets attacked and webbed against the wall after a spider crawls into her bedroom. The actors play their roles seriously, maybe except David Arquette, who knows exactly what kind of a film this is. It was also him that came up with the title Eight Legged Freaks after the Arac Attack had to be canceled. As a first time watch in the year of 2026 it’s also a bittersweet nostalgic reminder for us older millennials when Hollywood blockbusters once in a time knew how to have fun with no agenda and bullshit.

Director: Ellory Elkayem
Writers: Ellory Elkayem, Randy Kornfield, Jesse Alexander
Country & year: USA, 2002
Actors: David Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, Scott Terra, Scarlett Johansson, Doug E. Doug, Rick Overton, Leon Rippy, Matt Czuchry, Jay Arlen Jones, Eileen Ryan, Riley Smith
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0271367/

Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead (2011)

Posted on January 2, 2026March 21, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

What if Quentin Tarantino had a serious mental collapse and flew to planet Japan to make his 10th and final movie? Well…

The film starts exactly how you’d expect: A crazy-like scientist makes a zombie puke something in the mouth of his young daughter who has blood cancer. Saitei! After a groovy and quick opening credits which I won’t spoil, we meet a group of friends who are on a camping trip: we have the schoolgirl Megumi, the druggie Tak, his airhead girlfriend Maki and the geeky goofball Naoi. Megumi, the one dressed in the classic and cute Sailor Moon uniform, knows her karate just to make sure that she’s the star here and not one to mess with. She’s also grieving after her sister killed herself in shame after she farted in front of her bullies. Oof. That’s brutal. My condolences. Anyway: the airhead Maki wants to be a model and catches a trout to find a tapeworm so she can speedrun her loose-weight process. Always a great idea. She slurps a big fat tapeworm like a noodle, and hopes for the best.

And to say that shit starts to happen is the biggest understatement of the century.

Maki’s stomach starts to act funny, and she has to take a shit. Uh-oh. Well, girls have to shit too. As they enter a small empty village, she finds the nearest outhouse toilet where a zombie grabs her buttcheeks. Makes me wonder if this is the same guy from Headhunters (2011). A dozen of shitty zombies emerge from the toilet of the dead, called “Shit men“, plain and simple (thanks to the subtitles). They vomit and throw shit, and from here on we can say that the film surely lives up to the title. Maki unleashes an epic yellow cloud of fart that forms into a demonic shape. Absolutely diabolical, as Ed Warren would have said. An alien-looking parasitic monster comes out of her brown hole, not so unlike what we saw in Dreamcatcher (2003), and our group of friends are surrounded by shit men and parasites. All this is caused by the scientist we saw at the beginning. Why and how? To find a cure to save his young daughter. Good news is that Megumi also knows how to handle a shotgun.

What we have next is a, well, an epic shitstorm where director Noboru Iguchi (The Machine Girl, RoboGeisha, Dead Sushi) turns his extreme fart-fetish all up to 11. He started his career with the fetish porn film Doctor Enema and continued to work in that side of showbiz throughout the 1990s to mid 2000s. So, this is clearly his alley. The year after Zombie Ass, he got the golden ticket to direct a segment of the horror anthology The ABCs of Death, and you can guess which letter: F for Fart, which also actress Arisa Nakamura (who plays Megumi) got the pleasure of being in. If that’s not the most embarrassing kind of typecasting, I don’t know what is.

While the film is as silly, goofy and cartoonish as it is, here’s some of the more thought-provoking dialogues: I’m bleeding from my butt! — Why am I releasing a neverending fart? — You fart and fart until you die. That is your fate! — I just farted! — That butt ate my bat! — I killed him with my butt! — Dumb ass! You’ve got shit for brains! — ANAL VOLCANO!

And there you pretty much have Zombie Ass in a nutshell, more brown than usual, with lots of farting, fetish-driven grossness, exploding heads, karate fights in manga-style and tentacle/body horror sprinkled with some more serious topics such as bullying. Just a normal day in Japan. It has it all, almost. The blood is mostly cheap CGI, but(t) while the green-screen effects look like something from a YouTube skit. The shit seems at least real. So real, in fact, that actress Asana Mamoru (Maki) had to control her bowel movements while filming the outhouse scene so she didn’t poop on the zombie who had the pleasure of grabbing both her buttcheeks. Some of the farts heard were also real! Amber Turd or Blake Lively wouldn’t hold back for even a split second. Working in showbiz is so glamorous, innit? Can’t wait for the cocaine and the hookers that don’t fart. In an alternate universe, Siskel & Ebert gave this Two Brown Thumbs Up! …eew. Eating a can of chili beans beforehand while wearing a fresh skid marked underpants could also add some nice Smell-o-Rama effect. Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead can be found at the one and only streaming site that (fecal) matters — Tubi. Enough cringe wordplay for today.

Couldn’t actually find any watchable trailer for this masterpiece, but the screenshots, if not the title alone, speak loud and clearly for themselves.

Director: Noboru Iguchi
Writers: Noboru Iguchi, Tadayoshi Kubo, Ao Murata, Jun Tsugita
Original title: Zonbi asu
Also known as: Zombierumpe: De dødes toalett (Norway)
Country & year: Japan, 2011
Actors: Arisa Nakamura, Mayu Sugano, Asana Mamoru, Yûki, Danny, Kentaro Kishi, Demo Tanaka, Asami, Sayuri Yajima, Haru Shiina, Yûya Ishikawa, Hideki Kurauchi, Takeo Gozu
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2061869/

There’s Something in the Barn (2023)

Posted on December 23, 2025December 23, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Bill is a family man who is about to fulfill the dream of his life: moving back to his ancestral family farm in Gudbrandsdalen in Norway. The problem is: he’s pretty much the only one who is very, very excited about this. The teenage daughter Nora feels like her life has fallen apart when being dragged from sunny California and over to cold desolated Norway. Carol, the stepmother, tries to keep an optimistic tone with her life coach visions, but it becomes apparent that she really struggles with keeping the smiles up for Bill’s sake. Lucas, the youngest son, tries to be more enthusiastic though. When exploring their new home and the surrounding area, he discovers something fantastic: there’s something in the barn! It’s a good ol’ classic “fjøsnisse“ as we call them here in Norway, or what a local man tells Lucas is a “barn elf“. These humanoid creatures comes with a set of rules: they hate modern changes, loud noises, and bright lights (feeding them after midnight is okay though, they aren’t gremlins). If you ignore those rules, there will be some horrible consequences, because you really, really do not want to make the barn elf angry!

There’s Something in the Barn is a Norwegian comedy horror film from 2023, directed by Magnus Martens and written by Aleksander Kirkwood Brown.

This is a movie that’s mixed with Norwegian folklore, combined with some comedic elements regarding some of our cultural oddities. And with a good dose of that bad English, of course. That cheesy, broken sing-song English that is the common Norwegian accent! (God, whenever I travel abroad I hate hearing my own voice when I speak English). And most of the Norwegian characters in this movie plays this up a bit, especially Henriette Steenstrup who plays the sheriff, and Calle Hellevang Larsen who plays the local barn-elf expert. And speaking of these so-called “barn elves“: this creature stems from very old Norwegian folklore predating the Christian times. Most of the original lore regarding these creatures have been included in the movie, like how they will become quite mischievous if you do not treat them well, however it was originally mostly enough to give them a big bowl of porridge and they’d be satisfied. They were never known for becoming dangerous, though. If dissatisfied with you, they were believed to do things like making noises to bother you, or let the animals in the barn out during the night. Otherwise, they were generally goodhearted and watched over the farm animals, and were especially friendly with the barn cat which most farmers would have to keep away rodents. However, since the filmmakers were making a gremlins-like horror movie, they did of course have to make the barn elves quite mean, with the exception of the “main“ elf which I guess is like the Gizmo of the movie. And yes, there’s no doubt that there’s a lot of inspiration from, and a homage to, the classic 1984 movie Gremlins which is also a holidays-themed movie.

Much of the humour is aimed at the total cultural differences between Norwegians and Americans, where especially the family father is trying his best to adapt. Both “sides“ are purposefully caricatured, and while I’m certain that there are a lot of the Norwegian references that won’t be properly understood when viewed by those abroad, the humour is still straightforward enough even for those who doesn’t know the slightest about Norway or Norwegian culture. The movie explains some of the things gradually through the eyes of the Americans who just moved there, so we see everything through their experience, and often through the experiences of the boy Lucas who first sees the barn elf. Despite Lucas trying to warn his family (no one believes him, of course) they piss the creature off by breaking the rules one by one. What a shocker. First of all, it’s the “bright lights“ rule when they put up all their Christmas holiday decorations, full-on American style (which means a lot of decorations). Then, in order to get to know their Norwegian neighbours better, they also decide to redecorate the barn and throw a party in there, because who knew: they only way to get a Norwegian out of their cold, hard shell is to get them shitfaced on alcohol! And yes, that’s a little bit too true, and as someone who doesn’t drink alcohol I’ve been frowned upon more than once for this choice, it’s like committing a total blasphemy around here. Well, anyway. All rules have been broken, and the barn elf is now majorly pissed off! There’s only one way to appease him…bringing him a big bowl of porridge. So Lucas, as the goodhearted boy he is, makes some and puts it in the fridge to serve the angry nissemann later…only to discover it has gotten eaten by his father. The only thing Lucas can give the barn elf now are the leftovers from a botched “Norwegian dinner“ attempt from earlier that day: the dish Lutefisk. Which, of course, breaks the final straw for the poor little barn elf and makes all hell break loose. Believe me, you’d be pissed too.

From here on, the movie takes a turn from a rather cozy one to bringing in the horror elements, where we get some kill counts and a bunch of violent and mean barn elves running around and wreaking havoc. It’s still too charming and fun to be scary in any kind of way with the goofy antics of the creatures, including them getting drunk after smashing the living room and having the family trapped in the upstairs bedroom. In between, we do get a little bit of forced family drama just to pack it in with some kind of “rediscovering togetherness during the holidays“ message, but it’s also slightly mocking this cliché a bit. While it’s a little sugar-coatey at times with the family dynamics, it kinda works in a premise like this. Never hated any of the characters, although I did root for the barn elves of course.

Visually, the cinematography offers up the beauty of a snowy winterlandscape, and it is jam-packed with Christmas vibes! Despite being a movie that’s featuring some very typical Norwegian scenery, it’s informed in the film’s trivia that half of it was shot on stages in Lithuania. There was also a limited snowfall during the shooting (so there goes that illusion of how Norway is always fully packed with snow) so they had to bring in snow by truckloads in order to accomplish the vision they needed.

Overall, There’s Something in the Barn is a fun gateway horror movie with a good amount of holiday charm. And as can be expected from such a goofy, lighthearted horror movie, it all ends on a good note despite all the mayhem. And it becomes good to be a nissemann, after all.

Happy Holidays and God Jul! Now remember to put out that bowl of porridge (julegrøt) for the nisse with a good portion of butter in the middle and some cinnamon spread atop! Just don’t serve him any Lutefisk…or you know what will happen.

Director: Magnus Martens
Writers: Aleksander Kirkwood Brown, Josh Epstein, Kyle Rideout
Country & year: Norway, 2023
Actors: Martin Starr, Amrita Acharia, Kiran Shah, Townes Bunner, Zoe Winther-Hansen, Calle Hellevang Larsen, Henriette Steenstrup, Jeppe Beck Laursen, Eldar Vågan and a horde of angry barn elfs
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23060796/

Match (2025)

Posted on December 19, 2025December 19, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Gimme All Your Lovin’

Alright, boys and girls, let’s do an experiment: What would happen if you ordered Barbarian from Temu, sorry, I meant Tubi? You get a Match made in Goofyland. Or, in other words: By going into this Tubi Original completely blind, without even having seen a single screenshot, and expecting the absolute bottom of the barrel, you’ll maybe have a pleasant surprise and have a fun schadenfreude time. And that should be my whole review for Match. So take care, thanks for stopping by, have a ghoulish night and happy Unholidays.

But if you’re still here, OK then…I’ve no better things to do either, so here we go: Here we meet the young woman, Paola, who’s searching for the sweet love via apps and whatever the kids are using today to communicate. After Paola has suffered through the one disastrous date after another, she finally finds a guy named Henry who matches her 93%. Well, if she thinks the previous dates were bad, she’s seen nothing yet. He even offers to serve her a home cooked meal on their date. What a true gentleman. Almost too good to be true.

There’s only one thing though — he has an autoimmune disease which makes him housebound. He also makes some bullshit COVID excuses for not wanting to go outside. Yeah, in the year of 2025. Paola’s sister, Maria, sees the red flags waving a mile away and begs her not to visit him alone at his home on the first date. So, it’s pretty clear early on that this is not the brightest final girl. But since love can be one helluva drug, she can’t resist. That home cooked meal must really be worth it.

After Paola arrives at Henry’s big upper-class house and rings the doorbell, she gets met by his mother, Lucille. Just the sight of her is another big red flag already. She’s ecstatic to meet her son’s date though, and invites Poala in to the point of no return. Poala gets drugged and wakes up strapped in a gurney as Lucille rolls her through some dark, decayed dim-lighted corridor filled with dead maggot-infested rats on mousetraps. Cozy. Again, that home-cooked meal must be something that would even give Gordon Ramsay an erection.

Speaking of erection… a terrified Paola gets rolled into a room where she finally gets to meat Henry (see what I did there?) but this is not the same Henry she’s chatted with. Huh. Instead, we have a morbid surprise that looks like if Sloth from The Goonies had a baby with Junior Gorg from Fraggle Rock while cosplaying as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And he’s ready to fuck. Or just to quote Rammstein: You’ve got a pussy, I have a dick, So what’s the problem? Let’s do it quick.

And… I’m just gonna leave it here, because this absurd and sometimes icky horror comedy is just best watching without knowing anything about it, as mentioned earlier, even though how predictable it seems on paper.

What we also have here is an extremely sarcastic and welcoming commentary on the more and more delightful and soul-sucking online/smartphone society we live in ― filled with a sewer of apps (or digital cockroaches as I call it), mountains of uncanny face filters and future-faking that follows the most gullible NPCs all the way to their grave. And then we have the “shock values“ that includes a close-up with a monsterdick and a… mousetrap. What an interesting combination. I bet that Johnny Knoxville can relate.

And for those who got seriously traumatized after seeing a penis for the first time on the big silver screen in 28 Years Later earlier this year, this one will probably ruin your Christmas. Just a friendly warning.

But jokes aside, cuz this is so over the top and silly to almost a Looney Tunes level, that could as well be something straight from an average Troma film. The film gets more and more unhinged as it goes on with absurd, twisted dark humor with lots of lols, WTF-moments and questionable logic, while the main actress Humberly González seems to do the best she can to take this satirical clown show seriously. The film knows exactly what it is though, and so does Dianne Simpson, who plays the deranged Lucille, with a big dose of zany energy. The big star here (no pun intended) is of course the lover boy himself, the fake Henry, played by Jacques Adriaanse, buried under tons of layers with old school prosthetic makeup. And I’d bet there was a whole mini series of bloopers during the shooting. Not the best film of the year, but a surprisingly fun one with some eccentric charm.

Director: Danishka Esterhazy
Writers: Al Kaplan, Jon Kaplan
Country & year: South Africa, 2025
Actors: Humberly González, Shaeane Jimenez, Dianne Simpson, Jacques Adriaanse, Luke Volker, Nikita Faber, Dean Goldblum, Peter Butler
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt37436190/

Army of Frankensteins (2013)

Posted on November 25, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

―We’re from the future, and it’s time to kick some Frankenstein ass.

And no, this is not Bill & Ted’s Another Bogus Journey to put Frankenstein into the Iron Maiden… Army of Frankensteins is a… movie… where weird shit happens, all over the place, literally. Made by a group of young, ambitious and hyperactive amateurs that apparently had the time of their lives while making it. And not to be confused with Frankenstein’s Army, which was released the same year as this. The plot for Army of Frankensteins goes, uuhm… starts something like this:

We’re in Virginia, the year is 1809 in the middle of a civil war. A nurse named Maggie is escaping from a group of Confederacy soldiers. She runs into some dude…and is about to have sex… suddenly, a horde of Frankenstein’s monsters show up and rips the dude’s arm off. Maggie runs screaming into the woods.

We jump to present time where the young grocery clerk is preparing to propose to his girlfriend Ashley. And that goes straight into the shitter as Ashley is an NPC who’s not programmed to be proposed to. She loves him though, even though the stiff and wooden high-school play-acting and dialogues is as convincing as Mr. Beast’s creepy smile.

After the failed proposal, Alan walks home and gets beaten by two slobs. A kid with a gun comes and rescues him and makes sure that he gets zapped unconscious so he can bring him to a warehouse lab where he wakes up, in a dentist chair. He gets met by a strange old man that he earlier met in the grocery, and yes, he is Victor Frankenstein himself. He goes by the name Dr. Tanner Finski, but he’s not fooling anyone. The twelve-year old kid is, of course, Igor (yes, really). Victor rips out his right eyeball which he puts into his Frankenmonster. After some more shit happens, an interdimensional portal gets opened that creates several dozen of Frankenmonsters before they all get sucked in and transferred back to 1865, in the midst of the battleground of the American Civil War. Of course.

So… where do we go from here? The script says… who the fuck knows. We just make shit up as we go along. Alan and Victor get rushed to the nearest medical tent, where Maggie also comes in. Maggie who? The maid we saw in the beginning. And Igor? He’s somewhere, getting chased by Frankenmonsters. Some soldier with one of the many epic fake mustaches takes a green serum from Igor. Alan sees visions of the original Frankenmonster’s POV. They must die…ALL OF THEM, Victor shouts before he dies. Alan teams up with Igor, Maggie and a Union soldier with a fake mustache to kick some Frankenstein ass… and a handful of Confederates/South Boys on the way, because, well, it’s the civil war, boy!

While it all sounds big and epic on paper, it looks like some role-play gathering at the local woods, where you can say that, well, some people got hurt. Army of Frankensteins is full-on homemade goofy schlock from start to finish and doesn’t try to be much else. There’s some legit qualities to point out here though, such as some solid make-up effects and cheesy fake n’ heavy mustaches that never seem to fall off, even during the battle scenes. The gore is cheap and the use of green screens is what to expect. The plot gets sillier when even Abraham Lincoln chimes in, here looking like he has stage 4 stomach cancer. God bless. And yeah, then there’s Mega Man. Yup, because, why not. Pure infantile amateur-hour movie madness and fun enough if you’re in the right mood. So there you have it. It’s on your favorite streaming site, Tubi.

Director: Ryan Bellgardt
Writers: Ryan Bellgardt, Josh McKamie, Andy Swanson
Country & year: USA, 2013
Actors: Jordan Farris, Christian Bellgardt, John Ferguson, Eric Gesecus, Rett Terrell, Raychelle McDonald, Thomas Cunningham, Lucas Ross, Billy Bean, Shellie Arizu Sterling, Jami Harris Shine
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2620490/

Hausu (1977)

Posted on October 25, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

In Tokyo, there lives a teenage girl whose name is Gorgeous. And yes, of course she is beautiful, and of course she’s also got a wealthy father and appears to be living a harmonious life with nothing to complain about. Her life turns upside down when her father, who has been widowed for a time, announces that he’s married a woman named Ryoko Ema. Who seems to be a very nice woman, by the way, ready to be the best stepmother she can. Gorgeous, on the other hand, throws a temper tantrum like a little, spoiled brat and hurries to her room, where she writes a letter to her aunt, whom she has never met, asking to come visit her. Gorgeous receives a letter back almost instantly. Of course lonely, old auntie is ready to welcome her! Gorgeous brings six of her friends along with her: Sweet, who is of course sweet as candy and with a personality as gentle as a lamb, Kung Fu whose specialty is martial arts (who would’ve guessed), Fantasy, who is constantly daydreaming and having her head in the clouds, Melody, who plays the piano like a maestro, Prof, who is an academic and intelligent girl, and Mac, who…loves to eat. And is of course “fat“ (she isn’t, really, but that’s Asian beauty standards for you).

On the way to auntie’s house they bring along a white, fluffy cat, who appears to the aunt’s harbinger of sorts. Prior to getting to the aunt’s cozy country house, they meet a watermelon seller who could’ve more or less been the “don’t go to the house“ kind of guy, but which does the opposite and tells them exactly how to get there. Greeting the girls in a wheelchair, the aunt seems to be very happy to welcome them. The always hungry Mac had of course bought a Watermelon from the seller they met earlier, and brings it as a gift which they leave in a well to keep it cold. And from now on, it doesn’t take long before everything inside the house turns into a spookfest of the purest insanity! It all starts with Mac going out to retrieve the watermelon, and doesn’t return. Worried, Fantasy goes to check on her, only to find Mac’s disembodied head which flies into the air and bites Fantasy in the butt. Nobody believes her, of course, but soon all kinds of supernatural shenanigans are happening all around the house, which is all so gaga loony that nothing can really prepare you for the enchantment of the House and its white fluffy kitty!

House aka Hausu (Japanese: ハウス) is a Japanese comedy horror film from 1977, directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi.

Toho Studios contacted Obayashi because they wanted to make a movie like Jaws and needed ideas. Okey-dokey then. If Obayashi was an Italian he would probably gone ahead and urged Toho to make a shark film and call it Jaws 2, but we’re in Japan, where the craziest ideas are allowed to take form! So he went to his pre-teen daughter Chigumi for ideas, under the presumption that adults only think about things they understand, so everything stays on a boring human level while children can come up with the strangest things that defy explanation. Thus, sharks and beaches were replaced with a fluffy white cat and a spooky country house that eat girls. Obayashi also used some of his childhood as inspiration for some of the key elements in the movie. He was born in Hiroshima, and during the atomic bombings he lost all his childhood friends. He decided to use these themes into the plot of the film, by creating a plot element of a woman’s ghost waiting for her love to return back home from World War II, a wait that lasted forever since her lover died, and this turned her into an evil spirit. The ideas were given to Chiho Katsura, who then wrote the script for the film.

Now that the big cooking pot had boiled and simmered into this psychedelic brew, the project was green-lit. Except…it had to be put on hold for two years, because no one at Toho wanted to direct it as they all thought it would be a disaster that would ruin their career. Obayashi himself originally proposed to direct it, but he was turned down since he wasn’t amongst the staff at Toho. He kept promoting the film until the studio finally caved in and said “alright then, since we can’t get anyone else to touch this thing with a 10-foot pole, go ahead and do your thing.“ And together with a bunch of amateur actors and a lot of pep, history was made.

If Toho Studios hoped for a critically acclaimed hit like Jaws, they were in for a nosedive on House. It mostly received negative reviews, but despite this, it ended up becoming a box office hit in Japan. Ironically, when the movie got a wider release in North America in 2009 and 2010, it was met with a much more favorable response and it was from here on that it gained a cult following.

Obayashi had, prior to this film, mostly worked in commercials and independent films, so the majority of the cast in House were not established actors. It was a mix of people he had worked with before, and some friends and family. His daughter even has a small role as the little girl in a shoemaker’s shop, and the shoemaker himself was played by the production designer. While being filmed in one of Toho’s largest sets, Obayashi made sure to have a playful attitude which caused everyone to have fun. The Toho crew felt the film was utter nonsense, but let’s be honest…it kind of is. But it’s the good kind of nonsense! The overall mix of complete nonsense, childish and upbeat tone with the horror elements reminiscent of the nightmare logic of a 5-year old, is what makes this movie such a unique experience, accompanied with a fitting score which was performed by a rock band called Godiego.

Visually, the movie leans towards a little kitsch and European fairytale vibe. There’s a lot of experimentation with practical effects, and insane imagery. There isn’t a single frame that looks uninspired or boring. The visuals fit so well together with all the spooky things happening all the time, as the girls are attacked by all kinds of things in the house: flaming logs, mattresses, and a finger-hungry piano…and something about a guy turning into a bunch of bananas. Because why not.

Nothing can really prepare you for the childish and golden insanity of House. Just sit back and enjoy the trip!

Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Writers: Chiho Katsura, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Country & year: Japan, 1977
Actors: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ôba, Ai Matsubara, Mieko Satô, Eriko Tanaka, Masayo Miyako, Kiyohiko Ozaki, Saho Sasazawa, a white fluffy persian cat
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076162/

Braindead (1992)

Posted on October 10, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

There’s actually “film experts“ out there that are snobby enough to flat-out refuse to acknowledge Peter Jackson’s horror films pre Lord of the Rings. Well, more carnage goodies for the rest of us.

This unhinged goreshow from New Zealand starts at Skull Island, of all places, shot at the famous Pūtangirua Pinnacles. The year is 1957 and a team from Wellington Zoo has just trapped a Sumatran rat monkey in a small wooden crate. As they hurry back to the jeep, they get stopped by a group of natives who strongly advise them to not bring the monkey to the mainland. Because this is The Skull Island, after all. After they’ve run to the jeep with the natives on their tails, Stewart, the zoo official, gets bitten. “The little bugger bit me“, he says. Uh-oh. And the only cure for that is…singaya! His local guide kicks him off the jeep, picks up a machete and chops him to pieces after a scar pops up from his hands to his forehead. The gory cartoonish title card for Braindead, which alone sets the whole tone for what to expect, spatters to the screen just when they chop the poor man’s skull. What an intro!

After the rat monkey has been brought safely to New Zealand, we get introduced to the young and handsome, yet clumsy and awkward man Lionel, who lives with his mum, Vera, at a big house in the hills of Wellington. And we quickly learn that his mother is a guilt-tripping, narcissistic, bitter old hag who wants her boy all to herself. Yes, she’s one of those. Things change when he meets Paquita, a Spanish bird who works as a clerk in the local grocery store, and probably the very first female he ever had an interaction with. Love is finally in the air for Lionel as they go on a date to the zoo.

Jealous mum Vera spies on them around the zoo until she suddenly slips on a banana peel, holds on to some iron bars which are far enough from each other for the rat-monkey to take a good bite of her left arm. Her screams can be heard all up to North Korea. And, seriously, if it was that easy for the deadly monkey to reach that far from the cage, this would already happen on day one. Mum slams the monkey down with her purse and plunges the poor bugger to death with her high heels. And mum now has a new great excuse to keep her boy to herself as she needs daily medical care. So, love is in the backburner, for now.

The disease spreads slowly enough, so mum can have a painful death as she falls apart and transforms into a rabid zombie while poor Lionel does everything in his naive power to help her. Mum almost rips the head off nurse Tavish with her bare hands, which makes her head hanging upside-down from her neck. Lionel quickly throws her and mum in the basement, where he soon will have a fine collection of other stiffs. But as we say: context is everything. Mum manages to escape and shuffles her way into town where she gets hit by a tram and finally dies. Well, so we thought. The next on schedule is a messy, disastrous funeral where the scummy, sleazy and sadistic uncle Les is having a big fat schadenfreude belly-laugh. And we’ll see more of Uncle Les, you can bet on that. Poor Lionel.

After she gets put to the ground, Lionel pays a visit the same night to pull an Ed Gein and dig her up. Because he believes that she’s still alive and, like the good loyal son that he is, he has to take care of her. A group of drunk hooligans pops up and get the funny idea by pissing on Vera’s grave. “It’s my mother you’re pissing on“, says Lionel, as he just expects what to happen next. Mum’s hand burst out of the soil, grabs the dick, and…well, the juice is loose! Lionel injects the zombies with some strong sedatives that he bought on the black market from a neo-Nazi and hides them back home in the basement. Uncle Les throws a big house party after that greasy slob has ensured himself to inherit the house after some blackmailing. And of course, the stiffs downstairs want to chime in. This will be a fun night to remember. Oh yes, indeed.

There’s so much insane shit going on here where we have the one classic moment after another. We have two dinner scenes, the one more gross than the other. And all I can say is not to eat custard pudding while watching. Stick to popcorn or something very crisp. Just trust me on that one. The I Kick Ass for the Lord scene alone is Oscar worthy, and that the Kung fu priest looks like Father Ted, makes the icing on the cake. This Uncle Les guy also reminds me of someone but I can’t quite put the finger on it. Maybe you can (haha). A zombie baby is born where we have a wholesome moment where Lionel is out with the newborn in a park, hidden behind a net of bar wires in his carriage. This scene is Peter Jackson’s own favorite. The 1950s setting with its rockabilly atmosphere also gives Braindead its own unique flair and some extra charm. The effects, which are all from stop-motion, practical to puppetry, are top-tier with a handful of gleefully morbid gags.

Overall, there isn’t a single dull moment here, and Peter Jackson’s unique directing style, his great sense of morbid, absurd gallows splatstick humor, makes it worth quoting narrator Percy Rodriguez, who says it best in the trailer: a modern masterpiece of horror. Well, not so modern anymore, but still a masterpiece.

And then we have the big question: is this the goriest film ever made? Could be. Just in the final scene alone, the one with the lawnmower, 300 liters of fake blood was used, five gallons per second. The legend says that they’re still cleaning up the sets. All the leftovers that weren’t used were pumped into the Hutt river not so far from Wellington, and the production got into trouble when the residents saw the river turning red and contacted the authorities as they thought there was a serious massacre going on. Well, that wasn’t too far from the truth. So, with that trivia gold-nugget alone, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is actually the goriest film ever made. Premutos – The Fallen Angel (1997) is maybe the one who comes closest.

Braindead isn’t available on any streaming services as far as I know, and the old DVD’s that were released way back in the day are out-of-print. And the talks and rumors of an official 4K UHD release, along with Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles, have been going on for so many years now with a numerous of “coming next year“ announcements that we just have to see it to believe it. The only thing to dig up is a Spanish DVD/Blu-ray and I have no idea what that one looks like.

Director: Peter Jackson
Writers: Stephen Sinclair, Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson
Also known as: Dead Alive (North America)
Country & year: New Zealand, 1992
Actors: Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver, Elizabeth Moody, Ian Watkin, Brenda Kendall, Stuart Devenie, Jed Brophy, Elizabeth Brimilcombe, Stephen Papps, Murray Keane, Glenis Levestam, Lewis Rowe
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103873/

Dead Talents Society (2024)

Posted on September 5, 2025September 5, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

In the world of the living, we have Golden Globe Awards, while in the underworld they celebrate the Golden Ghost Awards. As the name implies, the awards are given to the ghosts that manages to scare as many people as possible, much aided with today’s social media where “scary videos“ are shared all over the internet. While it may sound like a silly award show made just for fun, there’s a darker backside to its popularity, something a rookie ghost girl (who is unnamed in the movie) discovers when she suddenly starts experiencing her body disintegrating. Much like we could see in Disney’s Coco (2017), the dead are at risk of disappearing if they are not remembered by the living. Rookie realizes that her piano competition certificate, which was her token in the world of the living that valued her existence the most, had been accidentally discarded when her family moved away from their house and her former home. Unlike the premise in Coco where you’d only disappear if no living person remembered you at all, the dead people in this movie have it much, much worse. Rookie will perish in 30 days as the result of her memory having faded due to the loss of her token. With the help of her ghost friend Camilla, she decides to join the entry contest for the Dead Talents Society, where a dead person can receive a permit to work as a ghost in the living world which must be signed by a haunting agency. What better way to keep being remembered by living people than constantly scaring the shit out of them and hopefully ending up in a viral video, right? And while Rookie’s performance at the entry contest is terrible, she catches the attention of a guy named Makoto, who is the agent of a washed-up ghost named Catherine. Together they try to make Rookie able to scare people so she can get her ghost working pass. No easy task, of course, when the competition is…deadly.

Dead Talents Society is a Taiwanese horror comedy from 2024 (released on Netflix this year) directed and co-written by John Hsu. After his success with Detention from 2019 which was based on a Taiwanese video game called Red Candle Games, he wanted to do something more lighthearted and funny. And he sure did! If the Beetlejuice movies had an Asian spinoff, then this movie would be as close as you could get. While Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) aimed a lot for nostalgia, this one aims more for a more modern audience where social media is a huge part of everyone’s life. And yes…for this millennial and old-fashioned Ghoul lady, that premise sounds like something totally out of my field of interest, but holy haunted fuck did this a movie turn on all my feel-good switches!

In Dead Talents Society you get presented with an afterlife that is colorful and vibrant, but also with its fair share of darkness. What makes the movie shine, though, are the interactions between the living and the dead, where the whole premise is that ghosts are desperately trying to scare people in hopes on becoming popular enough to avoid the fate of disappearing completely. And the deaddies in the afterworld have made an entire show for this, the Golden Ghost Awards (which is an obvious parody on the Golden Globe Awards). Needless to say, you’ll be getting more than a few references to real urban legends, Asian horror in general, and viral videos.

The characters are fun, with Rookie being the typical shy, lack-of-belief-in-herself character that keeps growing throughout the movie, aided by those around her. The defamed ghostress whose haunted hotel gig just isn’t as popular anymore, appears to be cold and arrogant while being much softer than she first leads you on to believe. Then you have fake-moustache-guy Makoto who’s got his own secrets. A loving group of misfits with dynamics filled with charm.

Just like how watching Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon makes you see slasher movies in a slightly different way afterwards, Dead Talents Society has the same effect on horror movies featuring ghosts. All the preparations to pull off the perfect scare, the perfect reaction from the living, making them notice things at just the right time…holy hell, how stressful that could actually be..! And this movie shows that off so perfectly, where they do everything from drawing letters on the wall at just the right time, moving a chair at the right moment, all totally dependent on getting their victim’s full attention in the hopes of conjuring up a scare big enough to become an urban legend. Poor ghosts, it must be a hell of a job indeed…so the next time I watch a horror movie with ghosts, I’m probably gonna think “I wonder how much stress and effort the ghost must have gone through to pull that off“…

The movie does have a fair share of social commentary/satire mixed in with all the silliness going on, including a very clever satire on the ghost-hunting YouTubers. Mostly, though, it’s a portray of the influencer lifestyles and how some people will literally do anything to keep from losing their fame. So many people are craving the attention to be seen, often chasing ridiculous trends in hopes of getting enough recognition and hopefully get that one successful viral video which will provide their continued success. Which, of course, is never really the case anyway. Even in the afterlife, some of the biggest hits from earlier are at the risk of oblivion as few things will stay equally popular forever, and if you get popular, it will always be a constant struggle to stay at the top. The movie mixes comedy with some intriguing themes of life and death, love and loss and the desire to be seen.

Dead Talents Society is so much fun, a high-energy horror-comedy with a lot of colorful spooks and even a bit of heart. A total feel-good film for everyone who wants something a bit spooky-silly!

Director: John Hsu
Writers: John Hsu, Tsai Kun-Lin
Country & year: Taiwan, 2024
Original title: Gui cai zhi dao
Actors: Gingle Wang, Sandrine Pinna, Zach Ireland, Chen Bolin, Yao Yiti, Nina Ye, Chang-Ying Hsieh, Pai Ching-I, Yen-Tzu Lin, He-Hsuan Lin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17079606/