HorrorGhouls – Page 8 – Horror Ghouls

Longlegs (2024)

Posted on August 2, 2024August 2, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the 1990’s, where FBI agent Lee Harker has been assigned to work on a case involving a series of murder-suicides. In each of these cases the father in the family has killed everyone else and then himself, but the big mystery is how each case also involves a letter written in Satanic coding, signed by “Longlegs“. If someone or something has influenced the fathers in these families to commit the murders, then how and why? Upon investigating, Lee discovers that in each family there’s been a 9 year old girl born on the 14th of each month. And all the murders occurred within six days before or after the birthday, which makes the dates of the murders form an occult triangle symbol on the calendar. One date is missing, though. And Lee receives a coded birthday card from Longlegs, and he threatens her that revealing the source of the code will end up getting her mother killed.

Longlegs is a horror thriller film written and directed by Osgood Perkins, starring Maika Monroe as FBI agent Lee Harker and Nicolas Cage as Longlegs. It was released in the U.S. on July 12, and have since grossed approx. $74 million worldwide on a budget under $10 million, making it Neon’s highest grossing film so far and the highest grossing horror film of 2024. It seems to be steadily creeping closer to surpass the box office total for last year’s indie horror hit Talk to Me. How it became such a massive success is not only favorable reviews from critics and audience, but a devilishly (no pun intended) clever marketing campaign: the promotional teasers have been effectively chilling and with taglines like “The best serial killer horror film since The Silence of the Lambs“ and “The scariest film of the decade“, then yeah…expectations were set high, and the hype got real. And we all know that too much hype can ruin the experience for some. Of course, Longlegs isn’t the first horror movie to suffer a little from extreme hype, Talk to Me from last year was also so hyped that a certain type of people were ready to release bash-reviews on YouTube in pure spite. And that’s something both of these movies have in common, aside from being really good movies.

With the movie premiering in the U.S. several weeks before we (finally) got the premiere here in Norway (which is August 2nd, but we got to see it on an early screening on July 31st), we couldn’t avoid having new videos and reviews popping up all over the place during those weeks of wait. We did our best to avoid major spoilers prior to watching it, and as always: lowered our expectations a bit. And we both had a great time in what was a fully booked auditorium. That’s actually a first in a very long time, that a screening we went to was full, so that’s something.

Visually, Longlegs look great (I mean the movie, not the actual character who looks like something dredged up from your deepest fever-induced nightmares. Hmmm…I guess that’s actually a compliment in this setting). The cinematography and clever use of color is pure art, and I really liked the use of 4:3 format for the flashback scenes. The use of sound and music adds the perfect layer of ominous vibe to the movie, created by Zilgi which is a pseudonym for Elvis Perkins, the director’s brother. Performances are strong, with Maika Monroe’s portrayal of the FBI agent Lee Harker who appears to be somewhere on the spectrum, but also possibly influenced in other ways which I will not spoil here. But the icing on this Devil’s Food Cake is without a doubt Nicolas Cage as Longlegs. While the titular character has a limited screentime, whenever he’s on screen his uncanny appearance and freakish behavior evokes a perplexing mix of feelings: it’s a blend of goofy, disturbing, and zany. He talks in a Tiny Tim-esque voice, heightening the creep factor a dozen notches.

Cage said that he drew inspiration from his own mother for this role, channeling his late mother’s mental health issues. She suffered from schizophrenia and depression throughout her life, and in an interview Cage stated:

“It was a deeply personal kind of performance for me because I grew up trying to cope with what she was going through. She would talk in terms that were kind of poetry. I didn’t know how else to describe it. I tried to put that in the Longlegs character because he’s really a tragic entity. He’s at the mercy of these voices that are talking to him and getting him to do these things“.

So yeah…all of that gives an even eerier and tragic vibe to the whole character. Speaking of mothers, Osgood Perkins also stated that Longlegs is his most personal film as of late, and an ode to his own mother and the secrets she kept about her husband’s sexuality and how “a mother can lie out of love“. Perkins’s father was Anthony Perkins (yep, the Psycho guy), and his mother’s name was Berry Berenson, who perished in the first plane to hit the World Trade Center. So yeah, a lot of dark and depressing stuff to take inspiration from here, that’s for sure.

The movie also seems to have planted a seed in certain religious and devil-fearing circles. On r/Christianity it seems like it’s about time to pray some more. “I don’t believe you can say hail Satan that many times and not call upon anything. I just haven’t felt right and I’ve been praying a lot since I watched the movie“. I don’t know about you guys…but if this was supposed to be some kind of deterrent from seeing the movie, it did at least have the exact opposite effect on us.

Longlegs, being the great horror movie it is, is probably best viewed if you don’t let your expectations elevate too high prior to watching it. It’s not going to make you faint, have a miscarriage, puke snakes or have the devil hitch a ride back with you from the theater. It’s just a good, slow-burn atmospheric horror movie that really hits the sweet spot on oppressive, nightmarish and nihilistic mood. Having seen and appreciated some of Perkins’s earlier movies is a plus, but not completely necessary as this is the most straightforward horror film I’ve seen from him thus far. But it is a slowburner, it does focus a lot more on atmosphere than narrative (in order to repeat myself from my review of Gretel & Hansel), and it is made in total Oz Perkins-vibe. So if you can appreciate movies like this, go see Longlegs and Hail Satan!

Writer and director: Oz Perkins
Country & year: USA/Canada, 2024
Actors: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby, Lauren Acala, Kiernan Shipka, Maila Hosie, Jason William Day, Lisa Chandler, Ava Kelders
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23468450/

The Ritual (2017)

Posted on July 30, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Five friends – Phil, Dom, Hutch, Luke and Rob – meet in a pub and start discussing plans for a holiday trip together. Rob suggests a hiking trip to Sweden but the others think it sounds horribly boring and would rather travel to someplace where they can get as shitfaced as possible. Later, Rob and Luke goes into a store in order to buy some more alcohol, but ends up getting involved in a robbery. Luke finds a place to hide, but Rob ends up getting killed by the robbers. Then we fast forward to six months later, where the remaining friends have decided to honor Rob’s memory by taking the hiking trip to Sweden after all. After making a memorial of sorts by placing Rob’s picture on top of it, Dom ends up injuring his knee and they decide to cut through the forest instead of following the marked trail in hopes of getting to the destination sooner. Bad choice. The first bad omen they encounter is a gutted elk, hanged on a tree like a morbid christmas decoration. Having to seek shelter in a creepy abandoned cabin due to a rainstorm, they also come upon a sinister-looking effigy depicting a decapitated human torso made of twigs, with antlers for hands. The tension between them is also growing because of Luke’s survivor guilt and the feeling that the others blame him for not having done something to save Rob. As if all of this wasn’t bad enough and causing some pretty frayed nerves, there’s something evil out there in the woods, stalking them…

The Ritual is a supernatural folk horror film from 2017, directed by David Bruckner and written by Joe Barton. It is based on a novel by Adam Nevill from 2011 by the same name. Despite the film’s story happening in Sweden, they decided to film it in Romania due to tax credits and softer labor laws. It was shot on location in the Carpathian Mountains. And of course, there aren’t any Swedish actors here either, and the locals are played by a mix of Danish, English and Romanian actors. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where Netflix acquired the rights for $4.75 million. And with that being said…the screenshots aren’t of the best quality. It’s Netflix. ‘Nuff said.

The movie is for the most part a very character-driven story, where the subdued tension between the four friends comes more to the surface the further they go into the Swedish forest. The horrific findings like the elk pinned to the tree, pagan symbols on the trees and of course the headless effigy in the cabin all makes up for a gradual build of expectation: something’s wrong in the forest, and they’re about to find out what it is soon enough. There’s a sinister atmosphere from the very start, and you know the characters are not in for a holiday of the fun sort. The survivor guilt ripping Luke to pieces is portrayed in an effective way, not to mention how it’s a very clear “elephant in the room” with them all the time. The interesting thing is, despite how they all more or less collectively blame their friend for not having done anything to save Rob during the robbery, they don’t exactly practice what they preach. When they encounter the dangers in the forest, none of the characters show themselves off as a brave hero facing the dangers head first, pretty much proving they most likely wouldn’t have fared any better if they had been in Luke’s situation back then.

Now, over to the monster, which is being kept in the shadows of the forest for most of the time but comes into full display in the final moments of the movie. I have to give thumbs up for the creature design, it’s truly an interesting take on a Jötunn-inspired creature (from Norse mythology). It also works well to keep the monster hidden during the majority of the film, giving it the necessary build-up before the reveal. The earlier scenes where we see the monster’s disemboweled victims in the trees makes us wonder what kind of creature has done this, and how…

I have read several of Adam Nevill’s folk horror books but I haven’t read this once, so I cannot compare the movie to the novel. Overall though, I’d say the movie does portray a lot of the ominous folklore-horror vibes that I’ve gotten from the other novels, and makes for a fun lost-in-the-woods horror flick with a pretty cool monster design.

Director: David Bruckner
Writer: Joe Barton
Country & year: UK/Canada, 2017
Actors: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton, Paul Reid, Matthew Needham, Jacob James Beswick, Maria Erwolter, Hilary Reeves, Peter Liddell, Francesca Mula
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5638642/

AUTUMN HARVEST – Horror Short

Posted on July 28, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

A grief-stricken sailor answers a mysterious call from the sea.

It’s Horror Short Sunday again, and today we travel into some Lovecraftian territory with Autumn Harvest. This Norwegian horror short was made by Fredrik S. Hana, the same director behind Sister Hell. While the aforementioned horror short was trippy, funny and colorful, this one is in black and white with a gloomy atmosphere and Lovecraftian elements. A sailor, devastated by grief, is about to end it all when something from the sea offers him a way to get back what he’s lost. Of course, this comes with a price…

Director: Fredrik S. Hana
Writer: Fredrik S. Hana, Marius Lunde
Country & year: Norway, 2015
Actors: Oliver Hohlbrugger, Eili Harboe, Helga Guren, Thomas Aske Berg, Tomas Alf Larsen, Michael Wallin, Silje Salomonsen, Magnus Rostad, Frikk Hana
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt3811786/

Last Shift (2014)

Posted on July 26, 2024August 2, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Jessica Loren is a rookie police officer, ready to take on her first assignment: taking the last shift at an abandoned police station that will soon be closed down for good. For some reason she doesn’t quite understand, her mother calls her and pleads with her to not take the job. She believes it must be because her father was killed on duty many years ago. Anyway, Jessica ignores her mother and leaves for duty. The commanding officer at the police station gives her a quick tour, and tells her that a Hazmat team will come around sometime later in order to collect evidence that is difficult to expose of. For this reason, she’s ordered to never leave her post. Sounds like a pretty easy task for a rookie, right? Nothing bad could happen here…right? Well, what sounds like a dull job, soon proves to be anything but as Jessica soon finds herself in stranger and stranger situations. The first incident is when a hobo enters the place and acts all weird, but it gets more disturbing when she receives a series of distress calls from a woman named Monica, who claims that she’s been taken hostage by a cult and believes they’re going to kill her. The thing is: no emergency calls are supposed to come into that police station anymore, as they have been rerouted to the new station. Jessica also finds out that in this exact police station the members of an infamous cult committed suicide one year ago, and she starts suspecting that the calls from Monica indicates that this cult still has some living members. Something is going on at this police station for sure, and while the place may be abandoned by people, something is definitely still there…

Last Shift is a horror film from 2014, directed by Anthony DiBlasi, written by DiBlasi and Scott Poiley. It was filmed in Sanford, Florida, in an actual abandoned police station. The script for the movie had actually not been written yet until the director and writer came upon the place. Sometimes you just need to find the right location and setting first, especially when you’re an indie filmmaker.

DiBlasi’s vision for the film was to have one that focused on atmosphere and would keep the audience wondering and intrigued by the mystery, and on this it definitely hits the sweet spot perfectly. Despite being a one-location movie, it keeps the pacing up and rarely falters. Much of the horror elements and sinister atmosphere comes from the main character’s isolation and increasingly bizarre and creepy events that keeps unfolding around her. Going from the subtle incidents at the beginning to a gradual rise in bizarre occurrences, the tension always keeps building. It’s also obvious that DiBlasi used the Manson Family as inspiration for the cult, while adding some occult and satanic elements into the mix. I guess you could define this movie as a little bit of a slow-burner, where indeed the focus on creepy atmosphere and a tingling sense of foreboding is what drives a lot of the movie forward, keeping its mystery elements in the shadows and revealing little bits and pieces along the way.

Overall, Last Shift is a creepy and effective psychological horror film featuring a satanic cult. DiBlasi also directed a remake titled Malum in 2023 where it appears the focus is a lot more on gory effects and an expansion on the cult elements.

Director: Anthony DiBlasi
Writers: Anthony DiBlasi, Scott Poiley
Country & year: USA, 2014
Actors: Juliana Harkavy, Joshua Mikel, Hank Stone, J. LaRose, Sarah Sculco, Kathryn Kilger, Natalie Victoria, Mary Lankford Poiley, Matt Doman, Lindsi Jeter, Randy Molnar
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2965466/

Anthropophagous 2000 (1999)

Posted on July 23, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

For those familiar with Andreas Schnaas’ epic Violent Shit saga, and just add Nikos the Impaler to the list, know pretty much what to expect: Amateur-hour overkill extravaganza all the way through. And his remake of Joe D’Amato’s Antropophagus isn’t much different. It’s Violent, it’s Shit, and lots of tasteless, inept fun.

The film starts with a group of Interpol agents who have discovered a cave with human skeletons. One of the agents spots a diary which he takes a further look into to maybe get some answers. Then we flashback to a family of four on a boat-trip: dad Nikos (not related to Nikos the Impaler) with his younger daughter and pregnant wife (UH-OH). Shit happens when they get hit by a storm which leaves them stuck on a lifeboat where Nikos goes insane and eats his whole family. Since then, he’s paddled himself to the mainland to some remote village where he’s eaten up most of the people.

Our first body counts are a young couple who are about to have sex in a tent. We’re a few minutes in where the cinematography is non-existent and the overall quality reeks of amateur homemade porn. And don’t expect it to be any better. However, Nikos is soon about to pop up where he deletes them both with an ax and rips their faces off.

We jump to a train station where we meet our main characters (or just body-counts, if you will), a group that I’d guess were some middle-aged Anonymous Alcoholics, gathering for an intervention. It’s less serious than that though, as they’re here on vacation. The place is supposed to be in the countryside of Italy, yet the only post listed on the IMDb trivia section tells us that the film was shot in Austria. Whatever.

They continue the trip with an RV where they struggle to find the destination, a town called Lorenzo (if I remember correctly). They ask a local for help, a hobo, who strongly warns them to NOT go near Lorenzo. The pregnant woman pukes straight at the hobo’s hands, which he slurps and smears over his face. Uh.. OK.

It’s pretty straight-forward from here on with the same plot points as the original. The pregnant woman mysteriously disappears (and we all know what lies next for her), the body counts enter an empty village where they stumble upon (what is supposed to be) cadavers. Don’t let the cheap Halloween props fool you. This is the real thing. They get spooked and surprised by a blind screaming lady in a basement. The classic fetus scene is of course here, and instead of using a skinned rabbit, we actually have a real baby. Just kidding, they used an animatronic baby doll.

We also have some new fresh ideas with a quick side-plot of a gay couple hiking in the local woods, only to amp up the pace and kill count. And instead of the obligatory taking-a-piss break, we … are having a smoke. Because Andreas Schnaas tried to go for a far more serious tone with this one, if you can even imagine – and it falls completely on its face on all fronts. If the acting wasn’t bad and amateurish enough, with the same juvenile and frantic backyard-filmmaking approach as his previous films, the film is also shot on video. A fugly combination that never looks appealing. So don’t look for any visuals or atmosphere like the original.

That being said, Anthropophagous 2000 doesn’t fail to entertain. It’s a fun retarded so-bad-it’s-good trash fest that could exist in the Violent Shit universe. I said the same about Nikos the Impaler. Just replace the killer with Karl the Butcher, and there you have it. It makes zero difference. The gore is over-the-top, messy and comical, as Schnaas is known for. Some look decent while others look fake, like a plastic turd. Also watch out for a Cannibal Holocaust reference. Andreas Schnaas plays, of course, the cannibal, where he acts more like a cosplay version of George Eastman. It’s like watching a mouse trying to be an elephant. But as always, he seemed to have a jolly fun time playing yet another boogeyman.

Director: Andreas Schnaas
Writer: Karl-Heinz Geisendorf
Country & year: Austria/Germany, 1999
Actors: Oliver Sauer, Cornelia De Pablos, Andreas Stoek, Sybille Kohlhase, Achim Kohlhase, Andre Sobottka, Britt B., Andreas Schnaas
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202233/

Original:
– Antropophagus (1980)

Faux sequel:
– Anthropophagus II (2022)

Anthropophagous 2000 (1999) – Trailer from Movies From The Crypt on Vimeo.

O, GLORY! Horror Short Film

Posted on July 21, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Set in the late 70’s, a psychiatric doctor and his assistant are called to an isolated country house to examine Deborah, whose brother believes she is losing her mind.

Again it’s Horror Short Sunday, and this time we’re taking a look at O, Glory! This horror short offers up a trippy 70’s vibe, where an opinionated and conceited psychiatrist believes he can cure a mentally disturbed woman, only to have everything spiral into bizarre cosmic horror.

Director: Charlie Edwards-Moss, Joe Williams
Writer: Charlie Edwards-Moss, Joe Williams
Country & year: UK, 2022
Actors: Sam Spruell, Jonathan Livingstone, Emily Stott, Vincent Shiels, Charlie Ratcliffe
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt17274022/

Anthropophagus II (2022)

Posted on July 19, 2024July 23, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Anthropophagus II, my ass.

Because this has nothing to do with Joe D’Amato’s film, even though I see clearly through the cheap and ridiculously outdated selling tactic. Italians were notoriously known for spewing out cynical and half-assed unofficial “faux“ sequels to more successful films way back in the day, which most of us horror ghouls know pretty well already. This one came just four decades too late. I discovered the film while I wrote my review of the original, and I honestly expected the worst of the worst and that I’d maybe turn it off after the first thirty minutes (which is something I rarely do). And to my fat surprise, I had some fun with Anthropophagus II, because it’s so dumb it’s actually amusing.

The plot goes as follows: A group of young female students are writing a thesis on a historical air-raid shelter bunker located near Rome, Italy. To get a sense of the place and its environment, they let themselves be isolated in the bunker over a weekend. No alcohol allowed. And I thought that girls just wanted to have fun. They also have to hand over their cellphones, which I don’t believe for a second that any Gen Z would survive without for even two seconds. They would crumble and die of abstinence before starvation. Anyway – it turns out that a disfigured, tiny freak lives deep in the bunker where he has his own secret little dim-lighted torture chamber. He looks like an older, retired brother of Yellow Bastard from Sin City, just without the beer gut, and is of course not related to the cannibal from the original film. He’s moons apart from the creepy and intimidating presence we saw with George Eastman, if we really have to compare. So, what’s his deal? You’ll see.

On the surface, there’s nothing new here, just a string of tired, over-done clichés and modern TikTok characters with a half brain cell and the personality of an emoji. Nothing much to grab onto there, except some nice flesh, I guess. It’s formulaic by the textbook. The acting is flat with tone deaf dialogues written by an alien who doesn’t have a clue how humans interact. Yes, it’s one of those movies. The girls are cute, though, I’ll give ’em that. All the actors have English dubbing and some of their dialogue delivery is on Scooby-Doo level and overall so goofy that I burst out laughing several times. Lol and Lols and more emoji lols. The film is produced by Giovanni Paolucci, an old-timer veteran who’s worked on several films by Bruno Mattei and Dario Argento’s big turkey, which was Dracula 3D. So that alone should maybe say something.

The film’s strong side is the effects and the setting of the bunker which reminded me more of Creep (2004), while we have a series of fleshy Guinea Pig-inspired torture porn scenes. And this one goes hardcore on the gore, already in the opening scene where we have a baby being ripped out of a woman’s vagina. A nice quick nod to the original. The effects are impressive, and the violence is mean-spirited, brutal and callous, whereas Art the Clown would probably have smiled from ear to ear. Solid work from the splatter & gore department, in other words. So, if you’re primarily in for the bloody and messy stuff, sprinkled with some flavors of classic Italian horror aesthetic to make it taste more than a week-old frozen pepperoni pizza, you won’t be too disappointed.

Anthropophagus II is available both on DVD and Blu-ray, and also lurking on our favorite streaming site, Tubi.

Director: Dario Germani
Writer: Lorenzo De Luca
Country & year: Italy, 2022
Actors: Jessica Pizzi, Monica Carpanese, Giuditta Niccoli, Diletta Maria D’Ascanio, Chiara De Cristofaro, Shaen Barletta, Valentina Capuano, Alessandra Pellegrino, Alberto Buccolini
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13757762/

Original:
– Antropophagus (1980)

Remake:
– Anthropophagous 2000 (1999)

Antropophagus (1980)

Posted on July 16, 2024July 23, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

It’s summer, the sun is shining and that means: vacation time. How about traveling to an obscure, exotic Greek Island out in the middle of nowhere. We can take along our heavily pregnant friend who’s just minutes from giving birth. Yeah, that’s a great idea, because nothing bad could happen to her.

As soon as our group of friends arrives at the island, things doesn’t seem to be right. The old town nearby is eerily quiet where all the townsfolk just seem to have vanished in thin air. After some exploring, they stumble upon a rotten corpse which should be enough to take a U-turn and maybe visit Disneyland instead. Whoops, too late, cause their boat has been attacked and is adrift. The pregnant woman, who stayed on the boat, has been captured by a grunting man which we so far has only seen from his POV view. Turns out that he’s a deranged cannibal who’s eaten the whole island where the only survivor is a blind girl drenched in blood, hiding in a basement. Have a nice stay.

Antropophagus, or AntHropophagus. or AntHropophagOus, or just I Eat Your Fetus. Yum is Joe D’Amato’s filthy and notorious Eurotrash magnum opus which is most known for one particular scene (or maybe two). The odd title stems from anthropophagy, a doctor term which in English simply means cannibalism. And with that being said, the film is far from as gory as as it’ll make you to believe. We have the half-classic scene of the cannibal eating his own intestines, a severed head in a bucket, a pretty sloppy kill with a meatcleaver, and of course the film’s big selling point: the very juicy fetus scene which made the film earn its spot on the list of Video nasty, and banned in most countries. But don’t worry, the effect of the fetus was a skinned rabbit covered in blood. Poor rabbit, though.

The pacing is slow, especially in the middle-part where the film really uses its precious time to build up the atmosphere. The characters are bland and boring which makes the slow build-up seem longer than it should. A familiar face among the body-counts would be Tisa Farrow, most known from Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979). This was her final acting gig before she retired from the film biz to pursue a career as a nurse. She died early this year at age 72. RIP.

The film is pretty tame compared with today’s standards, to be honest. There’s also some very bizarre circus/clown music to be heard during the first half. The film’s strong suit is the thick, raw and sticky atmosphere. George Eastman as the bulky and tall cannibal is also a big plus here, even though he walks slower than a lobotomized zombie on Zoloft. So despite its flaws and clunkiness, the film has its unique vibe and distinctiveness, maybe much thanks to the primitive surroundings and the old European buildings with the overall strong odor of death and decay everywhere. It’s also a technically solid film with some really great ghoulish sceneries – the most memorable being in a moist catacomb where the film’s crew mixed real skeletons with fake ones.

And that segways us to the IMDb’s trivia section: because according to the director, some of the heads and bones in the catacombs were plastic imitations, as mentioned. Upon collecting them after the scenes had been shot, the crew accidentally took with them some real bones. Since D’Amato did not dare to return them, he let them make a “pilgrimage” to his house. Horns up!

I’m also a sucker for that deliciously tasty movie poster, by the way, which is definitively something to have framed in your living room just to piss of your mum and dad every time they visit. That one is made by Enzo Sciotti (1944 – 2021) who also illustrated movie posters for Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, David Lynch, George A. Romero and more. Movie poster designers, and illustrators in general, get little to no credit, and with the rise of AI junk, I hope that will change. But I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, though.

Antropophagus has gotten numerous releases throughout the years, all from cut-down versions to bootlegs with even more numerous alternative titles to keep you confused. It was for the first time released in full uncut version in 2005 by Shriek Show with both Italian and English dub. The Italian version is laughably bad, so rather stick with the English one. Eastman and D’Amato followed-up with a so-called “spiritual sequel“ a year later called Absurd, which is just dull and painfully boring. The remake Anthropophagous 2000 (1999) by Andreas Schnaas is way more fun. An unofficial sequel was spat out in 2022, simply called Antropophagus II, which I hadn’t heard of until now.

Director: Joe D’Amato
Writer: George Eastman, Joe D’Amato
Country & year: Italy, 1980
Also known as: The Grim Reaper, The Savage Island, The Beast, The Zombie’s Rage, Man-Eater
Actors: Tisa Farrow, Saverio Vallone, Serena Grandi, Margaret Mazzantini, Mark Bodin, George Eastman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082479/

Remake:
– Anthropophagous 2000 (1999)

Faux sequel:
– Anthropophagus II (2022)

SISTER HELL – Horror Short

Posted on July 14, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

A reclusive nun is tempted to leave the monastery. Her dream is to become a curvy, voluptuous woman; to become how she really feels inside. With cautious steps, she ventures towards the sinful city.

On this week’s Horror Short Sunday, we present the amusing Sister Hell, a horror short from Norway (our home country) about a nun who wants to undergo a total bimbofication surgery. When mother superior and the other servants of the lord tries to stop her and punish her for her sins, the devil himself comes to save the day and brings along his fiddle and his accordion as well! Yes, it’s exactly as weird and bizarre as it sounds. Enjoy!

Director: Fredrik S. Hana
Writer: Fredrik S. Hana
Country & year: Norway, 2015
Actors: Thomas Aske Berg, Espen Hana, Oliver Hohlbrugger, Anders Hommersand, Lene Heimlund Larsen, Johanna Knudsen Rostad, Michael Wallin
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt4921312/

Lovely, Dark and Deep (2023)

Posted on July 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

In Arvores National Park, several rangers and other people have gone missing over a span of many years. Lennon is a backcountry ranger who starts working at the place, after her predecessor became one of the missing people. Of course, Lennon also has a motive for working at this place: when she was a child, her sister Jenny disappeared there, and she hopes that maybe she will find some answers. In her ranger cabin, she also keeps track of all the people that have gone missing over the years, including her sister. Soon, there’s report of another missing person as well: Sarah Greenberg, who went missing during a hike. The rangers form a search party, but the head ranger orders Lennon to stay at base camp, an order she quickly disobeys. She starts searching for Sarah as well, and finds her bloody and disoriented. What sounds like a happy ending to what could have been another missing persons case, ends up getting Lennon fired and she is asked to await airlift out of the place in five days. Well, five days can be a long wait…and strange things start happening when Lennon then decides to take a hike through the park…

Lovely, Dark and Deep is a horror film from 2023, written and directed by Teresa Sutherland. It’s her feature debut, and stars Georgina Campbell (from Barbarian) in the leading role. The movie was filmed in Portugal, providing many great forest and landscape shots.

The feeling of total isolation comes through well during the film, where the infrequent appearance of other rangers and hikers almost come as a surprise. It is both beautiful and unnerving, where Lennon walks through the confines of the forest on a sunny day, while also feeling like the entire place is ready to swallow her up and leaving no trace. Every year, hundreds of people go missing in national parks, and many of them are never found. While it comes as no surprise that this could easily happen due to the lack of proper planning, not having proper gear, unpredictable weather, sudden illness and even wildlife, it’s still something that’s fruitful for fanciful explanations and creepy theories: from the more down-to-earth speculations like serial killers roaming these places to supernatural explanations, Bigfoot, ufo’s, you name it. And while Lovely, Dark and Deep does offer some supernatural elements, most of it is subtle enough and without any thorough explanation, which works just fine for a movie like this.

Lovely Dark and Deep is a slow-burner which focuses on mood and mystery, providing an unsettling and often dreamlike atmosphere. It’s primarily about a woman who returns to the place where a childhood trauma happened, in order to seek answers. Not only does she get isolated in the vast forest landscape, but she’s already mentally isolated by dwelling on her past terrors and conflicting feelings and self-doubt, partly blaming herself and wondering if she could she have done something to save her sister. It does take a certain turn after a while where it ventures into the supernatural and surreal, which may take some people out of it, but which I personally found enjoyable. Recommended if you want something beautiful, mysterious and atmospheric. Or something lovely, dark and deep if you will.

Writer and director: Teresa Sutherland
Country & year: Portugal/USA, 2023
Actors: Georgina Campbell, Nick Blood, Wai Ching Ho, Mick Greer, Celia Williams, Maria de Sá, Ana Sofia Martins, Ivory Lee Smith, Letícia Assunção
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15560132/