1990s horror movies – Horror Ghouls

The Frighteners (1996)

Posted on October 25, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Are you troubled by strange sounds in the middle of the night?
Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic?
Have you or any of your family ever seen a spook, specter or a ghost?

If the answer is yes, pick up your phone and call the professionals: GHOSTB…I mean Frank Bannister, a true shameless conman that will suck all your money out of your pocket faster than the closet mouth in Carol Anne’s bedroom.

We’re in the small coastal town of Fairwater where Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox), a chronically depressed “psychic investigator“, drives around in his rusty, yellow Volkswagen Beetle like a madman, throwing away a handful of business cards at random funerals, and does his best to make a not-so earnest living. And here’s the thing: Frank is actually a psychic who can see ghosts clear as day, everywhere he goes, and even lives with three of them in his half-built hillside house: the gunslinger Judge, the disco afroman Cyrus, and the uncool ’80s nerd Stuart. Sounds fun. But instead of investigating real hauntings, Frank uses Cyrus and Stuart to stage false haunting scenarios so he can basically just come in, switch on the lights and write the check. How clever. Judge, on the other hand, is too old to spook around (yes, even ghosts can get old). I guess that being dead isn’t such a luxury, after all.

Then folks around the town start to die suddenly, at a high rate, while Frank sees numbers carved on peoples’ foreheads as a premonition, which seem to draw some connections with the dead notorious serial killer Johnny Bartlett. So, maybe it’s time to cut down the booze and start some serious ghost hunting. Well, that’s maybe easier said than done when Frank himself gets investigated by the FBI for being accused of killing his wife who died in a car accident after Frank’s reckless driving some years back. And if you thought Mulder was “spooky“, then say hello to Milton Dammers (Jeffery Combs). Yikes.

The Frighteners is truly something special, directed by Peter Jackson and co-written with his wife Fran Walsh. It blends the comedy and the “seriousness“ like Ghostbusters (1984) and the more cartoonish elements from Beetlejuice (1988), Casper (1995), and even some grimy true-crime elements. A script like this, with its many layers, subplots, slapstick comedy and more dark horror could easily have been an epic tonal disaster. But like a lightening in a bottle, it works.

There are a lot of colorful characters here and the three ghosts Frank lives with is just the tip of the iceberg. A particular standout here is Jeffrey Combs as Milton -Sieg Heil- Dammers. And there’s nothing shady about him. He only looks like if Adolf Hitler and Judge Doom had a baby, possessed by the paranoid ghost of Jim Carrey (don’t panic, Jim is alive and well, but you get the point). I could watch a whole spin-off with this guy. Then you have the cameo of none other than Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, I mean R. Lee Ermey, as a ghost who protects the local cemetery, and who can’t get enough to showcase his goddamn rights to the Second Amendment. God Bless America, you slimy fucking walrus-looking piece of shit! Rumors say that his screentime is taken from the Full Metal Jacket audition tapes.

Jake Busey certainly looks the part as Johnny (The Homicidal Maniac) with his dead eyes and hideous mouth. Michael J. Fox’s performance as the broken, depressed and desperate shell of a man is a big contrast of his signature role Marty McFly. Fox actually turned down the role as Edward Douglas in The Island of Dr. Moreau (yes, that one) to be in The Frighteners. And ‘boy, even though this wasn’t the biggest moneymaker at the box-office, we can say that he dodged a huge bullet. Dee Wallace also have a central role here as, well, that’s all I can say without slipping too much into spoilers. Danny Elfman gives a fitting and spooky Danny Elfman score, I at least can say.

The film goes heavy on CGI, all created by Wētā FX, who also did the visual effects for the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Avatar movies and Van Helsing, to mention some. The post-production to add the visual effects took 18 intense months. After the 15 artists at Wētā was on the verge of getting burned-out, George Lucas’ company, Industrial Light & Magic, had to step in to give a helping hand. Sounds like a messy disaster already, but Universal was so impressed with the final cut that they wanted to release the film right away instead of waiting three months for October, which was its intended release. Not a good plan since the film barely made back its budget. And maybe the R-rating was a factor. Who knows.

In Norway, my home country, the film flopped so hard that it didn’t even survive the first week before it was pulled from the theaters. A prime example of how a flop does not equal a terrible product. The Frighteners holds up, 30 years after its release and is an absolutely delightful fun spookyride. And on October 26, (yes, tomorrow) the film gets a 4k/Blu-ray release from Arrow Video. Happy anniversary!

Director: Peter Jackson
Writers: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh
Country & year: USA/New Zealand, 1996
Actors: Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Peter Dobson, John Astin, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace, Jake Busey, Chi McBride, Jim Fyfe, Troy Evans, Julianna McCarthy, R. Lee Ermey
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116365/

Necronomicon (1993)

Posted on October 24, 2026October 24, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

H. P. Lovecraft himself is visiting a monastery, where they store a copy of the Necronomicon. When he enters the place and meets some rather dubious monks, he asks if he can read the Alchemical Encyclopedia Vol. III, and manages to steal a key from one of them. He hurries to the cellar vault, where the Necronomicon is being held. Once inside, a vault door closes behind him. Taken aback by this he drops the key down a grating and into water, but he still proceeds to do what he came for, and sits down and starts reading.

And from here on the movie is separated into different segments, which Lovecraft is sitting there reading. The first one is called The Drowned, and supposedly based on The Rats in the Walls. The story is about Jethro De Lapoer who lost his wife and son. He uses the Necronomicon to bring his family back to life. Of course, we know that bringing back the dead always ends in even more misery. The next story is called The Cold, based on Cool Air. Here we meet Dale Porkel, a reporter who is investigating a string of murders in Boston which has taken place over several decades, and interviews a woman who lives in a freezing cold house. Next up is Whispers, based on The Whisperer in Darkness. This time we meet two police officers, Paul and Sarah, who is pursuing a suspect nicknamed “the Butcher“, where we go into creature-feature territory. And all the while Lovecraft has been reading these stories, seals have opened up to let in…something.

Necronomicon (also called H. P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, Necronomicon: Book of the Dead or Necronomicon: To Hell and Back) is an anthology horror film from 1993, featuring segments that are loosely inspired by some of Lovecraft’s stories. The segments are directed by Brian Yuzna, Christophe Grans, and Shusuke Kaneko, and they were written by Gans, Yuzna, Brent V. Friedman and Kazunori Itō. Animatronic effects and special makeup were supervised by Tom Savini, and were created by John Carl Buechler, Christopher Nelson and Screaming Mad George. So, yeah…it goes without saying that the effects here are kickass. The film won the award for Best Special Effects at the 1994 Fantafestival. The film did pretty well upon its initial VHS release in the US, and even better in Europe and Asia.

I found all the segments interesting and nice enough in their own way, but the film’s final segment, Whispers, is definitely my favorite, and the most insane and fast-paced of them all. It barely has jack shit to do with the original Lovecraft story, so if you want something more true to that you should check out The Whisperer in Darkness from 2012. Whispers is the darkest segment of the bunch, going into pure horror territory in an old abandoned house and a nasty feeding ground deep inside some creepy tunnels leading to a cave. We also get some cool body horror elements here, plenty gore and creature effects. But yeah, the segments are just veeery loosely based on the original stories, where I guess the first one regarding theme and atmosphere is probably closest to the vibe of a “cosmic horror“ Lovecraft story with sea people, rejection of the Christian God and a tentacled monster, while Cool Air is the one closest to the source material. I love Lovecraft’s stories, and I’ve gotten used to the fact that most movies based on them doesn’t really manage to capture them in a solid way. That being said, I also love the more loosely-inspired ones (and even some of the parody ones), I’m not picky. I can easily see how some of the more hardcore Lovecraft fans might wrinkle their nose like someone just farted in their face when seeing this film, though, despite how much fun I personally find it.

Jeffrey Combs plays the role as H. P. Lovecraft here, and for some crazy reason the makeup makes him look like Bruce Campbell’s twin brother. A little uncanny, to be honest. The ending/climax features of course some wrap-up with Lovecraft and the monks, which is fun. While some of the segments leaves a bit to be desired story-wise, the movie makes it all worthwhile with the awesome special effects. Plus Bruce Camb – er, I mean Jeffrey Combs, of course.

Necronomicon is a bit of a mixed bag, but it’s pure 90’s fun through and through with special effects from some of the best. It’s a little hard to come by, but we got the German Wicked Vision Blu-ray release which includes both the German dub and original English language + English subtitles.

Directors: Christophe Gans, Shûsuke Kaneko, Brian Yuzna
Writers: Brent Friedman, Christophe Gans, Kazunori Itô, Brian Yuzna
Country & year: USA/1993
Actors: Jeffrey Combs, Tony Azito, Juan Fernández, Brian Yuzna, Bruce Payne, Belinda Bauer, Richard Lynch, David Warner, Signy Coleman, Don Calfa, Judith Drake
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107664/

Hiruko the Goblin (1991)

Posted on October 23, 2026October 23, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Reijiro Hieda is a young archeologist who is very interested in the supernatural. No one takes him seriously, though, and he is discredited for advocating his “wild“ theories. One day, he receives a letter from his brother-in-law, Takashi Yabe. Yabe is a high school teacher, and he and his student Reiko Tsukishima investigated a burial mound where they discovered an ancient tomb, built to seal an evil spirit (a yōkai). Reiko mysteriously disappears, and Yabe has no idea what happened to her.

Hieda travels to the town where Yabe lives so he can investigate the incident, and he meets Masao, Yabe’s son. Masao tells him that Reiko has in fact returned, and he noticed that she tried to oddly seduce one of his classmates. Soon, they find that both this classmate and several others have been murdered with a switchblade. They first suspect the creepy janitor, but when they find Reiko’s singing, disembodied head…well, then there’s no doubt who’s the culprit and that the threat is entirely supernatural!

Hiruko the Goblin, also known as Yōkai Hunter: Hiruko, is a Japanese horror film from 1991, directed by Shinya Tsukamoto. Yes, that’s the guy who made the infamous Tetsuo: The Iron Man from 1989. Hiruko the Goblin is based on a manga by Daijiro Morohoshi, called Yokai Hunter. The movie was filmed in the town of Asahi, Toyama and Toho sound stage. For some reason, the production of the film was strained because some crew members complained about having to work under “a younger director“. Seriously…the guy was 30 at the time. What the hell. I guess these guys would’ve suffered a collective aneurysm if they had to work on Backrooms. The director even got into a physical altercation with veteran cast member Hideo Murota who refused to follow his directions. The film also went over budget near the end of the production, so the requiring crew members had to finish it for free.

With just reading the title, you’ll be quick to expect something zany and totally bonkers. And it sure is! While it doesn’t have the deepest story, it really doesn’t need it. There’s a Gate to Hell that must be prevented from opening, and our protagonist and friends must prevent this from happening while being killed off by an evil spirit. The evil spirit chasing them is using people’s disembodied heads as a vessel, crawling after them on spider legs. And through the school hallways, we see some fast-moving POV shots when the creature is coming for them. Hmm…these things probably ring a few bells, don’t they? Tsukamoto was paying some obvious homages to several classic western horror films, like John Carpenter’s The Thing and Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead. You can also find some nods to Ghostbusters (their goblin-hunting devices) and Alien (that face-hugging thing). As much as the film obviously gives references and pays homage to several western horror films, it’s doing its own thing with Japanese folklore and the Shinto mythology. Hiruko aka “Leech Child“ was the deformed firstborn son of the Shinto creator deities Izanagi and Izanami, born without bones and unable to walk or stand properly.

Performances are as expected, often energetic and hyper. The guy in the leading role as Hieda (Kenji Sawada) is the same guy who played the family father in The Happiness of the Katakuris. The effects here are of course practical and even some stop motion, and the creature designs are really cool. There’s the usual blood spray now and then, plenty decapitations and some decent gore and, of course, body horror elements. We’re talking about the creator of Tetsuo: The Iron Man after all! And while this movie is nowhere near as insane as that one, it’s still a lot of fun and with that old-school charm that older movies often manage to deliver.

If you want to see a fun, goofy low-budget J-Horror film about a severed head on spider legs killing and terrorizing students, with some awesome creatures and body horror effects, then Hiruko the Goblin is a film for you to check out!

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Writers: Koji Tsutsumi, Shinya Tsukamoto
Original title: Yôkai hantâ: Hiruko
Country & year: Japan, 1991
Actors: Kenji Sawada, Masaki Kudou, Hideo Murota, Naoto Takenaka, Megumi Ueno
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100991/

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

Posted on October 15, 2026October 15, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in Los Angeles, and the year is 1931. At the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, the staff are under attack by the patients who are throwing a revolt against the sadistic assholes working there. The place, led by the sadistic Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt (yeah, that name speaks for itself) have been conducting medical experiments on the patients and they’ve all had enough. A fire breaks out, and nearly everyone dies, except five people from staff who manages to get out.

Then we head over to 1999, where Stephen Price (not to be confused with Vincent Price, despite looking almost exactly like him) is working on staging his wife’s birthday party at the abandoned hospital, which has over the years been partly converted into a residence. Price is an amusement park mogul, and well-known for his elaborate pranks. He invites five people to the party, but here’s a twist: the five people who arrive there are not the ones he invited. The ones who turn up are baseball player Eddie Baker, Melissa Marr who is a former television personality, physician Donald Blackburn, production assistant Sara Wolfe, and the building’s owner Pritchett. Price is confused, but still decide to hold the party as planned, and offers $1 million to each guest who remains inside the house until morning. In the case of someone fleeing or perishing inside the house, that person’s money will be divided amongst the remaining guests.

Then the inevitable happens: the security system in the building is tripped, and locks everyone inside. Why this happened? Who knows. Price blames his wife, she blames him. Sara, Eddie and Pritchett goes to the basement, that looks like a labyrinth, in order to find the control panel. And then things start happening, but is it really ghosts or just some of Price’s pranks? Because yeah, of course the place is rigged all over, and Price has an assistant overseeing the party stunts. But when he goes to check on him, Price finds the guy murdered in a horrible way. Dr. Vannacutt still wanna cut (har-har) it seems. Next up for the body counts is Evelyn, who has been strapped to an electroshock therapy table and is literally shocked to death. The question is: are the murders done by the living or the dead?

House on Haunted Hill is a supernatural horror film from 1999, directed by William Malone and based on the William Castle film House on Haunted Hill from 1959. This film was the producing debut of Dark Castle Entertainment, and it was released on Halloween weekend in 1999. In the tradition of William Castle’s gimmicks, Warner Bros. handed out some promotional scratchcards to the cinemas showing the film, offering ticket buyers to have a chance of winning a money prize just like the characters in the movie. The film was a commercial success, and opened as number one at the U.S. box office, grossing $65 million worldwide. And, surprise surprise – it still got mainly negative reviews from critics.

While the original film was more aimed at delivering a spooky atmosphere with a murder mystery, where the supernatural events were mostly hinted at, this one takes it all out and presents ghostly and gory mayhem all over the place. And while the house in the original was not the typical victorian mansion or something alike, the same goes for this film. The building looks incredibly oppressive. The exterior and interiors were designed by David Klassen, who used inspiration from Albert Speer, an architect who designed monolithic style buildings for Nazi Germany.

The special effects were designed by Gregory Nicotero and Robert Kurtman, with additional makeup design by Dick Smith. The film’s final scene effects were designed by KNB EFX Group, supervised by Robert Skotak. And while these effects have become somewhat notorious for being horribly bad CGI, most of the effects for that scene were actually made up of footage and photographs which were grafted together. There’s also a fair amount of practical effects in the film, and this combined with the set pieces almost makes it look like a fun and spooky haunted house attraction. With some decent gore added to the mix, there’s certainly a lot to keep your eyes busy with!

The acting here is pretty decent, especially from Geoffrey Rush playing Stephen Price, who was made to look very much like Vincent Price in an obvious reference. His wife Evelyn was played by Famke Janssen, who fits the role perfectly as the sly and seductive trophy wife. Dr. Vannacutt, the big bad of the film was played by Jeffrey Combs and he pulls of a nice portrayal of a gleefully sadistic doctor. House on Haunted Hill is very different from the original, but so fun in many ways if you want some goofy, campy haunted house B-schlocker. There’s still some twists and turns, just like in the original.

In 2007, there was a direct-to-DVD sequel called Return to House on Haunted Hill, with Jeffrey Combs reprising his role as Dr. Vannacutt. This film had no involvement from William Malone.

Director: William Malone
Writer: Dick Beebe
Country & year: USA/1999
Actors: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, Max Perlich, Jeffrey Combs, Dick Beebe, Slavitza Jovan
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185371/

Warlock: The Armageddon (1993)

Posted on October 11, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

The first film wasn’t the biggest success at the box-office, but we still got a sequel, of some sort. This time directed by Anthony Hickox, who also made Hellraiser III, the year before. Warlock: The Armageddon is more of a reboot than a sequel where our evil male witch (Julian Sands) starts from scratch to go on a mission to free his daddy Satan from Hell. And if you thought the first one was campy and silly, this one is just bonkers, wild and early ’90s madness through and through. And to quote Bon Scott: If you want blood, you’ve got it!

The film opens with a quick epilogue that tells us about a certain type of people known as Druids who used their magic to protect Earth from evil. And once every millennium during a lunar eclipse, these Druids use the magic of some sacred rune stones to make sure that the birth of Satan’s son gets on hold for the next hundred years. Just too bad we can’t do the same with dictators, politicians and influencers. The Druids have lived through generations which we’ll come back to.

Our introduction to Warlocks starts in a city apartment where some new-age chick has one of the runes hanging round her neck. As the next eclipse happens, she gets turbo pregnant and gives birth to Warlock in the most goopy way that could only be made in the ’80s and early ’90s. Great stuff. His first words are Don’t you want to give your boy a kiss, mother?, just to make it clear that our evil Warlock isn’t just more schadenfreude evil than ever, but also a notebook of one-liners ready.

After he kills the woman in a way I just can’t describe, he possesses the rune, rips off a chunk of the woman’s skin and…well, uses it as a map that will lead him to the next rune and the body counts who’ll stand in his way. And where’s our hero, Redferne, you may ask? Oh, well.

That brings us to the side plot with the Druids, where the simplicity of Redferne is very missed, as well as Richard E. Grant. The love story between Kenny (Chris Young) and Samantha (Paula Marshall) is pretty flat and uninteresting, which is hard to give a fuck about. And speaking of not giving a fuck: then we have Kenny’s dad, Will, a modern Master Druid who trains him to unlock his magic telekinesis abilities and become a Jedi, I mean a Druid warrior like him. He’s portrayed by Steve Kahan, aka Mr. I Don’t Give A Fuck and does one of the most soulless I don’t give a fuck, I’m only here for the paycheck-performance I’ve seen. There’s also some extreme tonal whiplashes where we have a cute Hallmark movie moment of Kenny cuddling a squirrel not so long before we cut to a grimy scene where Warlock has just slaughtered and dismembered a guy in an elevator, Predator 2 style. Kenny is Good and Warlock is Evil. We get it.

The highlights here are all the scenes with the Warlock. And like a Legion, they are many. He goes from different locations and colorful scenarios across the USA with no mercy whatsoever, where he even shoves an old, helpless dwarf (Mihaly ‘Michu’ Meszaro) into an iron maiden at a circus to get his next rune. Poor ALF. A woman gets her scalp ripped off. Gnarly. I also like the mirror scene where Warlock is having some fun and toys with his victims. There are also some Wishmaster vibes here, especially with a scene which I won’t spoil. Vulgar display of power turned up to eleven. Pure fun entertainment gold. Although the practical effects are solid, the visual ones are pretty wonky, which the first one also suffered from. In this case, however, I wouldn’t say it hurts the film that much, as it’s way more self-aware of its campy tone.

And yes, there’s a third, or a turd movie, if you will… and, well, that’s all there is to say about that one. RIP to Julian Sands and Anthony Hickox, who both died in 2023. Julian’s remains were found after going missing during a hike in the San Gabriel Mountains, 65 years old. Hickox died of unknown causes at his home in Bucharest, 64 years old. Only the good die young, as they say.

Director: Anthony Hickox
Writers: Kevin Rock, Sam Bernard
Country & year: USA, 1993
Actors: Julian Sands, Chris Young, Paula Marshall, Joanna Pacula, Steve Kahan, R.G. Armstrong, Charles Hallahan, Bruce Glover, Craig Hurley, Davis Gaines, Rebecca Street
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108517/

Bride of Chucky (1998)

Posted on October 7, 2026October 9, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

In the previous film, Child’s Play 3, Chucky died for the third time. Well, we all know that slasher villains never truly stay dead, they are always resurrected in some way or other. This time, his ex-girlfriend Tiffany Valentine bribes a police officer so she can get her hands on the Chucky doll’s remains. She of course murders this guy afterwards. In her trailer (because where else would she live) she stitches the doll up and performs a voodoo ritual to revive him. Aaaand…nothing happens. Botched ritual…or perhaps a delayed delivery? Hmm. In the meantime she gets a visit from a dude named Damien who is madly in love with her, and voila, there’s life in the old doll after all and we get the first kill.

While Tiffany is at first very happy about having her love brought back to life, she soon finds out that he was never really that serious with her after all. What a surprise. She gets angry, and locks him inside a playpen while giving him a bride doll to taunt him. Uh-oh…bad idea. Chucky electrocutes her and uses a voodoo spell to transfer her soul into the bride doll. It’s supposed to be an act of vengeance, but at the same time…he got himself a female counterpart. A Harley to his Joker or something like that. They also kinda fall in love with each other all over again, and they certainly seem to be a perfect duo. Now, we have two killer dolls who want to escape their doll bodies, by finding some humans they can switch with, and they end up choosing Tiffany’s neighbor boy Jesse and his girlfriend Jade.

Bride of Chucky is the fourth film in the Child’s Play/Chucky franchise, and the first to use his name in the title. It was once again written by Don Mancini, and this time directed by Ronny Yu. And this is also where the franchise really swerves into a completely different lane, where it’s pure comedy almost to the point of being self-parodic. And to be honest…I kinda liked this turn, as the shift fits with the goofy foul-mouthed doll who was never really scary to begin with (my opinion). And no matter the reception, it became the highest-grossing film in the series.

Kevin Yahger and his team created many animatronic puppets for this film, where Chucky alone had nine different ones, and each doll required seven puppeteers to control. And yeah, we’re going for practical effects, which of course look great. The acting is actually pretty good too, with Dourif naturally returning as Chucky, but Jennifer Tilly also does a very fun performance as his unhinged and slightly cute-naive girlfriend. Her doll version looks great, a perfect counterpart to Chucky and just as full of life and character as he is. Their love-hate relationship comes off as both cute and funny, and the kill scenes are considerably more gory this time around. The only thing that falls a little flat are the two human characters, Jesse and Jade, who become totally uninteresting compared to the rest, but fortunately the majority of the film delivers on doll action and kills.

Bride of Chucky is, just as Mancini himself said: part horror, part comedy, part romance and part road movie. And it is a such a fun time! It doesn’t take itself seriously for even a split second, it knows exactly what it is. And that ending…yeah, that’s certainly something. Which of course gave the perfect idea for the next film, since obviously they decided to say “fuck it, let’s just have a ton of fun at this point and go even more off the rails“.

Director: Ronny Yu
Writer: Don Mancini
Country & year: USA, 1998
Actors: Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Katherine Heigl, Nick Stabile, Alexis Arquette, Gordon Michael Woolvett, John Ritter, Lawrence Dane, Michael Louis Johnson, James Gallanders
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144120/

Sequels:
– Curse of Chucky (2013)
– Seed of Chucky (2004)

Prequels:
– Child’s Play 3 (1991)
– Child’s Play 2 (1990)
– Child’s Play (1988)

Remake:
– Child’s Play (2019)

Child’s Play 3 (1991)

Posted on October 6, 2026October 9, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

It has now been 8 years since Chucky’s second death, and the Good Guy dolls company have re-opened their abandoned factory. As Chucky’s “corpse“ is being removed, a drop of his blood falls into the molten plastic which is used to produce the new Good Guy dolls, which of course gives him a new body so he can start killing and cursing once again.

Since 8 years have passed, Andy is now 16 years old, and he has been sent to Kent Military School. And yes, his mother is still in the loony bin. At this military school he befriends an 8 year old boy named Ronald Tyler, another cadet named Harold Aubrey, and the spunky female cadet Kristin De Silva whom of course becomes his love interest. His only struggle so far is the sadistic lieutenant colonel Brett C. Shelton, who bullies the cadets and really has one out for Andy. This not nothing compared to the threat of Chucky, who of course has managed to find out where Andy is and gets himself shipped to him as a package. Chucky is in for a surprise, though, as it isn’t Andy who ends up opening the package, but 8 year old Tyler who really, really wants his own Good Guy doll. Chucky decides to tell Tyler his secret, which will give him the opportunity to use a voodoo soul-swapping ritual to take over the kid’s body. None of this goes exactly after Chucky’s plan, but as always he’s determined enough to do anything to get his way.

Child’s Play 3 from 1991 is the third film in the franchise, once again written by Don Mancini but this time directed by Jack Bender, with David Kirschner as executive producer. And this one received mostly negative reviews from critics, and ended up being the lowest-grossing film in the series. The movie was made very shortly after the second film, giving it a tight schedule. It was filmed at the Kemper Military School in Boonville, Missouri, while the rest was filmed in California at Los Angeles and the Universal Studios Lot, with the carnival scenes shot in Valencia, California.

It also became somewhat notorious in the UK as it allegedly inspired a real-life murder of a child named James Bulger, where the killers were two ten year olds. It was said that they had imitated a scene where one of Chucky’s victims were splashed with blue paint, but this was just a rumor mainly based on that the father of one of the boys had rented the film some months earlier. The boy in question had most likely not even seen the movie since he had not been living with his father at the time. What can you say…people always try to blame shit on movies, games and other media.

When it comes to franchises, there will always be those movies considered the “better“ and “worse“ ones. Sometimes you have a dip and rise of varying quality, while other times you have a constant nosedive (like what happened to the Hellraiser franchise, where pretty much none of the movies after the third one seemed like they were made to be Hellraiser movies at all, and the Hellraiser elements felt like they had been shoehorned in). I guess we can say that in Chucky’s case, the character definitely feels more important than the story at this point. And I’m going to guess that this is why Child’s Play 3 was the last movie in the franchise to have “Child’s Play“ in the title, and the upcoming ones were always titled Chucky-something-or-other. And that’s very understandable.

What’s mainly different this time around, is that Andy is now closer to becoming an adult. Thus the movie spends some time with how he interacts with the other people, including his love interest, all of which isn’t that much of interest to be honest. You just wanna see Chucky messing around and killing people. The animatronics and effects are still really good, and Chucky looks more menacing than ever. And while the death scenes are a bit mixed (there’s one where a guy literally just gets a heart attack because he’s so scared by seeing Chucky), I loved the mean spirited garbage truck scene.

Many seem to consider Child’s Play 3 to be the “black sheep“ of the franchise, and while I personally find it far from the best, I still had a good time with it.

Director: Jack Bender
Writer: Don Mancini
Country & year: USA, 1991
Actors: Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves, Jeremy Sylvers, Travis Fine, Dean Jacobson, Brad Dourif, Peter Haskell, Dakin Matthews, Andrew Robinson, Burke Byrnes
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103956/

Sequels:
– Curse of Chucky (2013)
– Seed of Chucky (2004)
– Bride of Chucky (1998)

Prequels:
– Child’s Play 2 (1990)
– Child’s Play (1988)

Remake:
– Child’s Play (2019)

Child’s Play 2 (1990)

Posted on October 5, 2026October 9, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

It has now been two years since Chucky died, and the manufacturer of the Good Guy dolls are still trying to recover from all the negative publicity. Easier said than done when everyone thinks your product is faulty to the point of becoming a death threat. So, in order to recover from the bad reputation, they decide to “prove“ that nothing was actually wrong with the doll at all, and takes the Chucky doll’s remains and reassemble him into…not exactly as good as new, but at least whole. Sounds like an excellent idea to reassure their stockholders, right? Well, after having made Chucky whole again, a power surge suddenly electrocutes and kills one of the workers, and Chucky comes alive.

Then we’re heading over to Andy who has been in foster care after the Chucky incident, since his mother was institutionalized after she refused to back down from the claim that the doll was alive. He is now trying to live a normal life. That is, as normal as you possibly can when your possessed doll killed people and got your mommy thrown into the loony bin. Chucky, however, still needs Andy to get a proper body, and manages to find out his new living location. He figures out a way to get himself inside the house, and takes the place of another Good Guy doll already there, who is named Tommy. Yes, the Good Guy dolls are produced to come with different names. Andy soon finds out that Chucky has re-entered his life, but the problem is that no one believes him…at least not at first.

Child’s Play 2 from 1990 is the sequel to the first 1988 film, this time written by Don Mancini and directed by John Lafia with Alex Vincent and Brad Dourif reprising their roles. Tom Holland was asked to return as director, but he refused due to conflicts with the film’s producer David Kirschner and United Artists during the making of the first film. While the first film was mostly shot on location in Chicago, this one was shot on Universal Studios Lot, and the toy factory scenes were shot in an abandoned warehouse in Valencia, California.

Kevin Yagher returned to make the special effects for the film, and he even directed some of the scenes too. The puppetry and animatronics look great, and Chucky’s facial expressions are even more wild. He’s just as foul-mouthed as ever, and Brad Dourif’s voice has pretty much merged with the character at this point. Dourif is the only Chucky by now, with it impossible to imagine anyone else in the role.

It is overall an entertaining sequel with some decent kills and great effects, but it is the climax of the film that goes in a really fun direction, and the most impressive part of this sequel. It’s using the toy factory setting, where there’s a maze of who knows how many Good Guy doll boxes. While it was obviously filmed in a way where it was later edited so it looked like the maze was considerably much bigger than it was, it still looked really cool. Then the actual ending of the movie is so goofy and fun, and definitely one of the biggest highlights in the entire franchise! Well, at least in my opinion. Child’s Play 2 offers more of the comedic tone than the first film, but it fits well together with how the movie also goes for a more crazy ride.

Director: John Lafia
Writer: Don Mancini
Country & year: USA, 1990
Actors: Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham, Christine Elise, Brad Dourif, Grace Zabriskie, Peter Haskell, Beth Grant, Greg Germann,
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099253/

Sequels:
– Curse of Chucky (2013)
– Seed of Chucky (2004)
– Bride of Chucky (1998)
– Child’s Play 3 (1998)

Prequel:
– Child’s Play (1988)

Remake:
– Child’s Play (2019)

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

Posted on October 3, 2026October 7, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Your suffering will be legendary ― even on Earth! Yeah, sure, if Earth is such a green-grassed utopia to begin with, especially the Rotten Apple that is New York. And speaking of: the young, douchey pussyhound and goth-nightclub owner, J. P. Monroe (let’s just call him Jay Pee), has bought the grotesque pillar we saw at the end of the previous film, before it would be locked away in Warrens’ Occult Museum. After he fucks some chick, hooked chains flies out of the pillar and rips her skin off, and Pinhead, with only his face popping out of it, eats her. Similar to the previous films, he needs to eat human flesh in order to become whole. Only here though, he’s a demon that would be set free in the real world, in a goth nightclub, even. How fitting. Jay Pee becomes Pinhead’s bitch who gets ordered to serve him more bodysuits to eat. Not the most difficult task since New York has plenty.

Then we meet our protagonist, where the formula began using the reporter/detective trope to slog us through rest of the sequels. Here, however, we have the young news reporter Joey who has recurring nightmares of her dad being killed in Vietnam, and we can say that the plot thickens as much as it gets muddy where we eventually have two Pinheads, one good and one evil. Joey gets in possession of the Puzzle box, thanks to the clubgoer Terri, and finds a videotape of Kirsty (from the first two films) who explains how to use it in order to send Pinhead back to hell. When Pinhead (the evil one) finally gets out, he turns into pure slasher villain-mode and collects more bodycounts than the whole franchise combined. Pinhead goes on a blasphemy spree, enters a church where he mocks the crucifixion of Christ behind the altar before the place explodes. The conservatives in North Carolina, where the film was shot, had a problem with that. So yeah, Pinhead is the man of the hour here where he has the most screentime in the whole franchise and gets his time to really shine, spiced-up with some colorful one-liners.

And then we have our new group of Cenobites, which look more like something from a canceled Hellraiser Saturday morning cartoon show. Say hello to Doc the Cameraface, who has a camera merged in half of his face. And since this is the early 1990s, what could be more cool than DJ the CD face, slicing people with CD’s? So rad! And watch out for Rick the Bartender who fries your face as he spits flames from his cocktail shake beverage. And we can’t have a ’90s film without some big explosions. The comedic and playful tone lingers all over the film, as you’d expect when we have the director of the Waxworks films in the director chair. Not for everybody’s taste, but it at least still manage to feel like a Hellraiser film where there still was some respect for the source material, and is far from boring. The film ends perfectly with the song Hellraiser (of course) performed by Motörhead , and the franchise should also end with that note. The success at the box-office suggested otherwise where the brutal humiliation ritual of the franchise was about to begin.

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), or Hellraiser in Space if you like, became the final theatrical release of the franchise. That film was directed by ~~Kevin Yagher~~ the legendary Alan Smithee and also the final Hellraiser where Clive Barker was involved before the smell of bullshite got too strong and jumped ship… so that maybe speaks for itself.

What we have next is six more sequels, and…wooooof. This is the worst kind of early, ultra-cheap, soulless 2000s direct-to-video toilet slop imaginable: Hellraiser: Inferno (2000), Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002), Hellraiser: Deader (2005), Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) At this point I’m actually surprised that they just didn’t go for Hellraiser: Hellraiser. Fun fact: Inferno is the directorial debut of Scott Derrickson, but even he couldn’t get Pinhead back on track. Hellworld was the last film where Doug Bradley said fuck this bollox, I’m outta here. But it didn’t stop there, as we got the worst of them all served on a paper plate: Hellraiser: Revelations (2011) ― a baffling amateur show in all aspects and way too boring to be so-bad-it’s-good. Then we have and finally the last one, Hellraiser: Judgement (2018). Have yet to see the Hulu remake from 2021.

So what really went wrong with Hellraiser? Simple and boring answer: the first four since Inferno were originally written as standalone crime/thrillers, not as Hellraiser films. The elements with Pinhead was shoved in at the last five minutes and slammed on the posters, with the Hellraiser title, in order to cash-in and fool us gullible audiences. How they managed to poop out four of these turds with Doug Bradley onboard, is a mystery box of its own. But showbiz is showbiz and there’s always rent to pay. Your suffering will be legendary by watching them all in one sitting without any pauses, unless you’re masochistic enough.

Director: Anthony Hickox
Writer: Peter Atkins, Tony Randel
Country & year: UK/USA, 1992
Actors: Terry Farrell, Paula Marshall, Kevin Bernhardt, Doug Bradley, Ken Carpenter, Brent Bolthouse, Sharon Percival, Philip Hyland, David Young, Peter Atkins, Ashley Laurence
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095294/

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/