It is 1942. Richard Mason is the Familiar to an ancient vampiric creature, living in the bowels of an old mansion. In order to survive it’s physical and mental abuse, Mason must bring it victims to feed on.
Familiar is a creepy and very atmospheric horror short about the suffering of being a monster’s familiar..
Director: David J. Ellison Writer: David J. Ellison Country & year: UK, 2022 Actors: Milda Cuplinskaite, Joanna Hudson-Fox, Hugo Nicolau, Rick Wiltshire IMDb:www.imdb.com/title/tt14077492/
In the third installment of the Puppet Master franchise we go back to year 1941 and the place is Berlin, Germany where we meet André Toulon who works at the local puppetry theatre. And already here is the continuity off the rails when we learned in the first film that Toulon committed suicide in 1939 to escape the nazis, yet here is he alive and well and looks even younger. And if you thought this continuity blunder was bad, then you haven’t seen Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich where Toulon is suddenly an evil, unearthly and monstrous nazi himself. Oh my. Anyways… Toulon is also a happy man with his wife Elsa and it’s all flowers and rainbows until a nazi spy gets his attention on Toulon’s mysterious green serum, Elixir of Life, which wakes his puppets to life. And the nazi colonel Major Kraus (Richard Lynch) is very interested in that serum so he can resurrect dead bodies to use as human shields at the battlefront. With a group of Gestapos they invade his home and Kraus shoots and kills Elsa like the main villain he is. Toulon manages to escape and settles down in a hiding place where he’ll plan his way to avenge his wife and kill those nazi pigs with the help of his loyal puppets.
Although ocean air is always good for your health it was refreshing to get a break from the same locations on Bodega Bay Inn to the dark smogfilled streets of Berlin. And as Full Moon’s very limited resources to do a WW2 film is pretty far-fetched, they surprisingly nailed it. The sets, the costumes, the noir atmosphere is spot on. I was also surprised how the stock-footage of a crowded WW2 Berlin was able to blend in.
Then of course we have the puppets themselves which from here on and onward are actually the good-guys. Don’t know what I actually feel about that but as long they fight against nazis I’m in for it. And yes, nazis gets killed here in a straight-forward fashion, but like the second film and the upcoming ones, the kills are pretty tame and underwhelming. Some blood here and there and that’s pretty much it. Oh yeah, some quick shots of bare breasts, I almost forgot to mention. The new puppet, Six Shooter, is fun to watch though. He’s some dark bizarro version of Woody from Toy Story.
Puppet Master III is also regarded as the best one in the series and I agree. The script is on its most cohesive, more steady pacing and more interesting characters to pay attention to. The strongest card here is the main villain, Major Kraus, played by the charismatic cult legend Richard Lynch, the most top-tier actor you’ll witness in the whole franchise. It also have the unique whimsical Full Moon trademark tone from first two perfectly balanced with the more serious undertone, which adds to the odd entertainment value.
Director: David DeCoteau Writers: Charles Band, C. Courtney Joyner, David Schmoeller Country & year: USA, 1991 Actors: Blade, Pinhead, Jester, Tunneler, Six Shooter, Leech Woman, Djinn, Mephisto, Guy Rolfe, Richard Lynch, Ian Abercrombie, Kristopher Logan, Aron Eisenberg, Walter Gotell, Sarah Douglas IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0102728/
We’re in the gloomy smoke machine-filled Shady Oaks Cemetery where the puppets pour some green liquid on André Toulon’s grave to finally resurrect their beloved master. After this atmospheric and eerie opening, we get introduced to the new characters, a group of young ghost hunters who are sent to the Bodega Inn to investigate the murder of Megan Gallagher, the wife of the previous owner.
One of the investigators go missing after getting kidnapped by two puppets and, ah shit, here we go again. There’s a weird side-plot with a redneck couple that lives in a shack not so far from the hotel, and they’re there only to get body counted. A soft-spoken man of mystery with a Romanian accent shows up at the hotel who looks like a mix of The Invinsible Man and Héctor from the Spanish Sci-Fi thriller Timecrimes. And who could that possibly be and why is he so interested in collecting brain tissues as people at the hotel starts to get killed? Huh.. Only Scooby-Doo would know…
Although this could also easily be a remake of the first one, there are some new ideas here to make some progress in the franchise which later goes more back-and-forth in the timeline. We have some flashbacks as we dip more into the lore and backstory of André Toulon and how he and his wife came across the Elixir of Life somewhere in Egypt. The characters are mostly disposable meat balloons with their own personal drama, but they’re at least far more awake and in presence than they were in the first one.
But the star here is the new puppet Torch which, you’ve already guessed, torches his victims to hell with a flamethrower as a hand. Totally rad! And then we have a quick classic “paused movie moment“ with three seconds of bare tits. The kills are not to get too exited about. We have a lackluster scene with the Tunneller who drills the skull of one of the sleeping victims, some quick knifing from Blade and the only memorable one is a woman who gets burned alive by the Torch. There’s also a scene in broad daylight where some kid encounters Torch, which cuts off before he gets roasted. No dwarfs were available for body burn, I assume. Meh! Puppet Master II is overall entertaining as long as it’s going thanks to the mysterious villain, tasty gothic visuals, gloomy and light-dimming atmosphere, the puppets themselves, catchy tunes from composer Richard Band (brother of Charles Band) but otherwise, not much that will stick to the memory.
Director: David Allen Writers: Charles Band, David Pabian, David Schmoeller Country & year: USA, 1990 Actors: Blade, Pinhead, Jester, Tunneler, Leech Woman, Torch, Djinn, Mephisto, Elizabeth Maclellan, Collin Bernsen, Steve Welles, Greg Webb, Charlie Spradling, Jeff Celentano, Nita Talbot IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0100438/
When a young man takes his girlfriend out on the lake to propose, they come face to face with the dark spirits beneath the surface.
The Lake is a creepy horror short based on the origin of the artificial Lake Sidney Lanier.
Director: Joey Greene Writer: Joey Greene, Julian Terry Country & year: USA, 2020 Actors: Tommy Schneiders, Gina Vitori, Sonny King IMDb:www.imdb.com/title/tt13362758/
It’s time to take a dive into the dim-lighted, twisted, wacky and demented world of Full Moon from the mind of the master of puppets himself, Charles Band, where it’s Halloween 24/7.
Full Moon Features were established in the very late 80s and Mr. Band was already a veteran in the independent movie business, which had the Empire Pictures in his legacy of producing primarily low-budget horror/fantasy films spewed out for the blooming VHS market. Most of which are cheap schlocks aimed at a niche audience. Some notable titles from that era includes The Dungeonmaster, Troll, Ghoulies I and II, Trancers, Crawlspace, Rawhead Rex, TerrorVision, Re-Animator, From Beyond, Cellar Dweller and the list goes to the moon and back.
But with its brand new company after the financial collapse of Empire Pictures, it needed to get more serious and create a flagship film series to kickstart a new era where VHS was still king (and very expensive to buy). With Charles Band’s deep obsession with puppets and dolls, The Puppet Master became a long-lived franchise which, at the time being, has spawned over 14 sequels over the course of the 90s and 2000s. The last entry was released in 2022 with Puppet Master: Doktor Death and more are likely to come. An online video game based on the films was also launched this year.
All films are available on streaming at fullmoonfeatures.com, except for Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys (2004) because it’s owned by SyFy for some reason and Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018) for whatever reason. They’re available on other streaming sites though for those who have regional bullshit access.
Puppet Master starts back in 1939 at Bodega Bay Inn, a hotel on the Californian seacoast and the main location in most of the films in the series. The old puppeteer, André Toulon, is in his room surrounded by his dolls and puppets as he’s adding some colorpaint on his latest creation. He also has a mysterious elixir that brings the puppets to life, and no other than Hitler himself wants that elixir. Of course. Two Nazi spies enter the hotel as they are on the way to capture Toulon. Before they enter his room, Toulon has hidden the puppets away in a suitcase and committed suicide by a bullet in the skull.
We then jump to present time where four psychics are spiritually contacted by Neil Galahger. He’s the current owner of Bodega Bay Inn, and when they arrive they find out that he committed suicide. Why? Who really cares. The more important thing here is that there are murderous puppets creeping around and they don’t like these psychics, and understandably so when they have the nerve to trespass on their domain. So go kill’em, puppets!
The film has its flaws and rough edges but my biggest gripe here is the characters (the humans to be more specific) which drags the film to utter boredom on several places. There’s absolutely nothing to them as they have as much screen presence like a dead potato. They seem completely tuned out, bored out of their minds and there’s clearly no one home behind their eyes. Even the puppets look more alive. And yes, my ghoulish walnut-sized brain gets that they’re supposed to dip in-and-out of trances and whatnot like the weird psychics they are, but still… WAKE THE FUCK UP! SNAP-SNAP! One of the psychics, played by Paul Le Mat, looks like a young H.R. Giger, by the way.
Then we have the puppets which are just cute and adorable and always amusing to watch. They also have their own skills and weapons. Here we meet Jester the Clown with possibly the largest weapon pack that includes a knife, a handgun, razor-sharped scissors, exploding cigars filled with nitroglycerin, candy bazooka, smiling heart–shaped laughing gas bomb, flesh–eating bubble gum blower, explosive cyanide– acid stuffed Ice Cream pies, and even much more. Even John Wick would struggle here.
Leech Woman is the one with the gross-factor as she spews out leeches from her mouth upon her victims. Tunneller is an asian-looking puppet with a cone-shaped power drill on his head which speaks for itself. Blade is the leader of the puppets and pretty much the mascot for the whole Full Moon brand and which his name suggest, slashes his victims with his knife. My personal favorite is Pinhead, the one with the small head and the big knuckles. He’s just simple and a pure old-schooler who sucker-punches his victims into oblivion and oozes good old toxic masculinity. And the reason Pinhead’s fists looks more real in the elevator scene where he punches a woman is because it’s the fists of a dwarf stunt woman. In one of the sequels Pinhead also manages to rip someone’s head off with his hands. Savage!
The castle-style hotel of Bodega Bay Inn with its gothic surroundings mixed with POV shots from the puppets perspective creates an eerie atmosphere. There’s certainly some great production value here, despite its flaws, and it’s overall a decent-looking film with some clever camera work and steady directing from David Schmoeller (who also made the cult film Tourist Trap and Crawlspace with Klaus Kinski). The gore is minimal but we have at least some throat slashing, fingers that gets chopped off like small sausages and some other ghoulishness for dessert. Nothing too special but the fact that all kills are performed by a mix of stop-motion and puppets on strings surely adds to the charm.
Director: David Schmoeller Writers: Charles Band, Kenneth J. Hall, David Schmoeller Country & year: USA, 1989 Actors: Blade, Pinhead, Jester, Tunneler, Leech Woman, Gengie, Shreddar Khan, Paul Le Mat, William Hickey, Irene Miracle, Jimmie F. Skaggs, Robin Frates, Matt Roe, Kathryn O’Reilly IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0098143/
With titles such as Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), Killer Bees (1974), The Savage Bees (1976), The Bees (1978) and Terror Out of the Sky (1978), we can fairly say that the 1970s was also the decade of the killer bees. While most of them were obscure TV movies, it was The Swarm that stood out, mainly because this was a big Hollywood studio film with as many Oscar winners as possible on the cast list, fronted by Michael Caine. And before Roland Emmerich and his Independence Day, which revived the disaster-film genre in the mid 90s, there was Irwin Allen. “Master of Disaster“ he was called in positive terms for the success of producing blockbusters like The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974) which is regarded as the very first disaster-film. He also directed numerous TV series. So, in 1978, it was time to not only to produce, but also direct his first disaster feature with a big star cast and the most notable of all: 20 million bees!
The plot centers around Texas where a large legion of African killer bees have invaded the state. While the bees spread further into the country and starts terrorizing cities and leaving thousands of body counts, the scientist Dr. Bradford Crane (Michael Caine) is constantly on track to figure out a plan to stop them while fighting against the government. With him he has his trustworthy Dr. Walter Krim (Henry Fonda) to develop an antidote to the bee venom. We quickly learn that these bees are not to be underestimated as they’re capable of attacking military helicopters and plunging them to the ground in an explosion. A sight you don’t see everyday. So yeah, these bees are pissed as hell. We have a picnic scene where a young boy witnesses his parents getting swarmed right before his eyes. He isolates himself in the car, wipes the thick layer of bees on the front windshield and manages to escape by driving off to the nearest town. He later makes matters worse by going back to the area with some friends to throw molotovs at the swarm. It all escalates to the point where cities have to evacuate, which also leads to an infamous scene with a train and a chaotic climax with doomsday mayhem which includes flamethrowers and explosions.
And the question is: is this really as bad as its reputation, even being on the list of “worst films ever made“? Nah. On the technical aspects, the film is, for the most part, pretty solid although it has its stains. The script, however, and if not the pacing of its runtime of 156 minutes (judging Warner Archive’s Blu-ray), has a lot of issues. We have boring subplots with love affairs that go nowhere. Some people come and go and are never to be seen again. There’s some eye-rolling and wonky dialogue here as well, some of which are delivered as if this was an Adam West Batman movie. There’s a bunch of dry science talk, a lot of filler-scenes, which makes the film look more dated, clunky and overall an unfocused mess. The scenes where the stung victims hallucinate and see a big bee hoovering right in front of them looks just goofy, out-of-place and -again- dated like a public-domain 50s monster movie, while the film takes itself dead seriously. Not a masterpiece in any shape or form, but the bees alone makes it worth a watch.
Then we have Michael Caine’s character, who comes across like a stone-cold psychopath who would fit more as a sinister villain in a James Bond film. He always bears a duper-delight and smirks in the most inappropriate moments. His off-putting demeanor may be linked with the fact that this was one of Caine’s notorious list of “paycheck movies“ and he later claimed that it was the worst film he ever starred in. A-ha… He never saw Jaws: The Revenge, another paycheck, so that film doesn’t count. Sir Caine turned 90 recently, by the way. Cheers.
But the real stars of the film is the 20 million bees that got used and sacrificed. God bless and no wonder why they’re furious. Today all would be CGI, no question about it, but here we actually have sets with thousand of bees that swarms around actors and crew as they do their best to not have their mouth open. While there are some dated edges here, the scenes with the bee attacks looks as real as they can get and are quite spectacular, highly ambitiously made and is an unnerving sight. Even though 800,000 of them got their stingers removed, they couldn’t avoid to mix them with those who had the stingers intact which caused several actors to get stung. How anyone would sign up for something like this is beyond me. And the amount of children that’s involved must have parents that really hates them. We always hear about difficult filming conditions, especially from the pre-CGI era where most of the effects had to be shot on set but bruh… I refuse to believe that anyone involved would look back and say; yeah, being in that bee movie was such a fun time and I would do that again. You couldn’t even pay me a million. Mr. Not-The-Bees himself would agree (that meme just had to be shoved in here).
The Swarm was a massive flop and was ridiculed by the few critics that saw it. Producer and director Irwin Allen was so devastated by all the money he lost on the film that he refused to ever mention the film in future interviews. And besides the short 22-minutes making-of documentary on the Blu-ray there isn’t much insight to behold. At least the trivia section on IMDb can tell us that actor Michael Caine stated in an interview that during filming he thought the little yellow spots left by the bees on his clothing was honey, so he began to eat them, entirely unaware that what he was eating was actually bee feces. In other words: honey and bee poop tastes the same. Yummy.
Director: Irwin Allen Writers: Arthur Herzog III, Stirling Silliphant Country & year: USA, 1978 Actors: Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, José Ferrer, Patty Duke, Henry Fonda & 20 million bees IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0078350/
After taking a job on a farm run by a reclusive woman, a drifter begins suffering from visions of men trapped inside the bodies of animals.
Skin & Bone is a creepy atmospheric horror short based on Circe from Greek legend.
Director: Eli Powers Writer: Eli Powers Country & year: USA, 2022 Actors: McCaleb Burnett, Thomas Sadoski, Amanda Seyfried IMDb:www.imdb.com/title/tt20783516/
Welcome to amateur hour. Today we take a look at Ed Gein: The Musical, a homemade micro-budget horror comedy made for shits n’giggles that was probably a fun time for all those involved. The rest of the world had to wait for ten whole years to finally witness a singing Ed Gein to be released on DVD.
The film starts straight to the point where Ed Gein enters Mary Hagan’s store and then shoots her with a shotgun. After the sinful act, we hear the first notes of Eddie as he sings (with the voice-over of Will Keizer, who wrote most of the songs).
♫ Oooooooooh no, I Did A Bad Thing … And Now They Are Coming For Meeee … There’s Nowhere To Hide … Ooooh Mama, I Did A Bad Thing ♪ …
Eddie takes the corpse to his shed with the second musical number while he chops up some limbs, titled Lonely Feeling, Lonely Reeling, and the energy is as electric as a Sunday evening at the local Bingo hall.
Ed gets arrested by the sheriff, suspected of the murder of Miss Hagan, and brought into the interrogation room. From here on, Ed tells his life story, filled with nothing but delusional fantasies as we dive into more zero-budget, amateur movie madness and two-notes of honky-tonk song numbers mixed with mainly acoustic guitar and not much of the basic understanding of how a musical works. The songs are completely forgettable and performed in the most bland, lifeless karaoke style with a static camera.
We see a quick flashback scene where a young Ed gets abused by his dad for having a picture of a half-naked lady. After getting whipped with the belt, Ed says: When I’m grown I won’t take this crap. When I’m grown I will be a handsome chap. Yeah, you heard that right. We then cut to the current Ed, dressed like a sleazy car-salesman as he sings… a rap-song. The cringe meter is already at its maximum, but it still manages to get worse. Because we haven’t seen the scene with Ed and his mom yet.
We see Ed in various scenarios. In one scene he’s in some hall with elderly people, he’s in the fakest-looking cemetery ever put on film, he sits in a bar, sings some duets with random chicks and more nonsensical buffoonery follows. We also see him in a sitcom setting where they forgot to add the laugh track. All filmed in blurry and out-of-focus images with the sense of filming in general as a blind, drunk sailor man who’s way past his bedtime. As for the comedy goes we laugh more at the film than with it, which is completely fine by me.
The only legit quality to point out is the eye-catching artwork on the DVD cover. For more Ed Gein, check out Deranged (1974), Ed Gein (2000) and the graphic novel Did You Hear What Ed Gein Done? (2021).
Director: Steve Russell Writer: Dan Davies Country & year: USA, 2010 Actors: Dan Davies, Clifford Henry, Laurie Friedman-Fannin, Lucia Stevenson, M.J. Marsh, Cindy Yungwirth, James Fairchild, Barbra Alloy, Edie Amundsen, Charlie Bitter, Jason Buss IMDb:www.imdb.com/title/tt1562295/
Kiera and Brian Woods move into an old house with their two children, the teenage girl Ellie and the elementary boy Steven. Ellie, being a typical teenage girl is opposed to the move and is already missing her old place and her friends. However, Kiera and Brian moved to this place because of job opportunities, so that’s that. On their very first night in the old house, the couple must leave for work and leave their two children all alone, in a completely unfamiliar place. Yeah, great parenting right there. Ellie is of course dismayed that she is tasked with watching her younger brother on the very first night in the new house, and while Steven is up to his shenanigans he finds a secret room which includes an old Sonographe. Ellie starts playing it, only to hear a man reciting some formulas, and counting up slowly. She shuts it off before the counting reaches seven, and says to Steven that it’s time to go to bed. Soon after, there’s a power outage and Ellie panics and calls her mother. The breaker is located in the cellar (of course), but Ellie is terrified to go down there. While on the phone with her daughter, Kiera tells Ellie to count to 10, which is the number of steps down to the floor of the basement. Ellie keeps counting, but after reaching the number 10, she keeps counting and sounds like she have come into a trance-like manner. Kiera and Brian hurries home, only to find Ellie missing.
The Cellar is a 2022 Irish supernatural horror film, based on the horror short from 2004 called The Ten Steps. Both are written and directed by Brendan Muldowney. The story is following the well-known formula of how you should never buy an old, creepy house without knowing about its past. And of course, the wife is the one who understands that something spooky is going on, while the husband is pretty much “meh” about everything and believes their teenage daughter just decided to run off (which she had done before). So yeah, there are some of the familiar horror tropes here. But instead of the old over-sized house being infested with ghosts and ghoulies, however, the movie goes into sci-fi territory, with a little bit of Lovecraftian themes of cosmic horror, symbolism and occult numerology.
While the actual horror elements are a bit lacking, there’s a satisfactory amount of creepy atmosphere. The old big house with its creaky floors and gothic interior keeps the eerieness in place. It’s solid despite being rather formulaic, and the scene with Ellie going down the stairs and keeps counting is quite chilling. Of course, it’s not having the same effect as in the original horror short which leaves everything so much more mysterious. I guess that’s often an issue with horror shorts becoming full feature films: a short may only give you a small idea and leaves a lot to the imagination, while a feature film will need to explain things. Overall, however, The Cellar is a nice watch held up due to its solid atmosphere, and an interesting idea which is different from your typical spooky house flick.
Writer and director: Brendan Muldowney
Country & year: Ireland, Belgium, USA, 2022
Actors: Elisha Cuthbert, Eoin Macken, Abby Fitz, Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady, Tara Lee, Michael-David McKernan, Andrew Bennett, Aaron Monaghan, Marie Mullen
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14550642/
Set in Ireland, a family moves to a new city neighborhood, taking residence in a large, old house that is rumored to have a dodgy past. Their young daughter Katie is caught in a power outage while the parents are out to dinner, and her father insists that she go down to the basement to fix the fuse. When they’d first moved in, Katie had a panic attack in the basement, brought on by stories that the devil once appeared down there. But with her father’s help, she slowly descends the ten steps to the bottom, each step into darkness inducing more and more terror.
The Ten Steps is a creepy horror short which later turned into a feature film titled The Cellar which was released in 2022, 18 years after this short was made.
Director: Brendan Muldowney Writer: Brendan Muldowney Country & year: Ireland, 2004 Actors: Jill Harding, William O’Sullivan, Paula Lee IMDb:www.imdb.com/title/tt0452873/
