horror comedy movie review

The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)

Posted on September 15, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

Posted on September 8, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

Posted on September 1, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead (2011)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s Something in the Barn (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Match (2025)

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

Gimme All Your Lovin’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Army of Frankensteins (2013)

Posted on November 25, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dead Talents Society (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monsturd (2003)

Posted on June 6, 2025September 1, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

And no, just to put the big fat joke aside: this is not a biopic of Amber Heard. Har-har.

But what’s this supposed to be then..? Well, it’s a movie that was made. And released. And it’s exactly what the title tells you: a big goofy-looking monster turd who goes on a shitting/murder spree until it steps on a bee. Pure quality cinema from start to finish where the poster and title should speak for itself. The only thing missing here is the Troma Entertainment logo proudly slammed on the poster, just to put the icing on the turd cake. And maybe that was the hopes and dreams of the amateur writers/directors duo Dan West and Rick Popko, who the hell knows. They teamed up again in 2008 with the zombie flick Retardead (yep, you read that right) that went nowhere, other than being flushed straight to the sewer section on Tubi years later, including Monsturd. A big two in the loo, as they say in Britain.

It’s bedtime for a little girl, simply called Munchkin. It’s a thunderstorm outside and she’s scared. She wants her dad to tell her a bedtime story. But he’s tired of telling bedtime stories, and now he wants her to tell a bedtime story, for a change. That should be interesting. Ok, but it’s really SCARY, she says. And she’s not kidding. OoOoOohh…

Once upon a time, in a place called Butte County in California, there was this serial killer, Jack Schmidt, who managed to escape from a maximum security prison. He hides in the sewers (filmed in some caves that look nothing like sewers) where some toxic waste has just been dumped. After getting chased by a local cop and a federal Marshall, he gets shot and falls into a tank with the freshly exposed toxic waste that transforms him into a decent skeleton Halloween decoration after his skin falls off. Jack Schmidt is dead, or so they thought. Because you won’t believe in your wildest imagination what happens next. Listen to this: The serial killer has been mutated into a monster of human feces! Say hello to Monsturd. The poop is loose and no one in Butte County is safe as he comes out of peoples’ toilets to make sure they have a shittier day than usual. And who are you gonna call to get this mess cleaned up? Turdbusters? Oh well… If this Turdman was smart enough, he’d just skidmark himself to San Fransisco where he’d blend perfectly in.

This stinky, little passion project of a motion picture took over two years to shoot (yes, really), the biggest number two you can squeeze out, with a whopping budget of 3000 dollars. And I bet that every cent was put on screen. Most of the actors were coworkers from Rick Popko and Dan West’s dayjob, and rumors on the trustworthy internet say that some of them were blackmailed to be in the film. You couldn’t blackmail me to be in this movie, because who in the right mind wouldn’t want to be a part of a film called Monsturd?? Sign me up! I don’t see much point in picking apart a film like this that was made of pure shits n’ giggles (no pun intended). I’d just get a splitting headache if I did. By just looking at the poster and the trailer you know what you’re gonna get, nothing more, nothing less. The humor is as juvenile as it can get, with cringe jokes that’ll give you more brainfart than diarrhea, whatever you may prefer, and maybe more suitable for kids around the age of eight to twelve.

That being said, Monsturd is the perfect film to kill some time with on the smartphone as you’re having a nice dump and just, oh shit, noticed that you have to wait for someone to hand you over a new pack of toilet paper!

Writer and directors: Rick Popko, Dan West
Country & year: USA, 2003
Actors: Paul Weiner, Beth West, Dan Burr, Dan West, Rick Popko, Dan Ellis, Timm Carney, Hannah Stangel
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364527/

Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo (1995)

Posted on February 28, 2025September 5, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

This wild, crazy, silly little flick starts with an introduction of a lone trapper who calls himself the Guardian, played by some dude with schlocky old makeup that looks like dried mud. He tells us the story with a raspy Robert Englund-ish voiceover where he once upon a time came into a battle with none other than the mythical snow beast Wendigo at Manitou Island in Michigan. And this island is no joke as it has a snowy mountain shaped like a human skull. C o o l.

After he defeated the beast, he dedicated the rest of his life to protecting the world from its resurrection, like a Sentinel, if you will. And by doing so, he marks the beast’s burial ground with a circle of skulls of the victims to create a spiritual shield. Clever. But, of course, if the circle is ever broken, he’ll be reborn and more powerful than ever. So there’s no time to retire.

The Guardian is now a hundred years old and lives as a hermit in his small cabin to guard the sacred burial ground. Too bad that the old fool never thought of having a loaded shotgun, just in case. Because this is America, after all, where there’s not only Wendigos and other fairytale monsters to be highly aware of. And the ones to come here and ruin his life’s work and screw everything up, is none other than two trigger-happy hunters in the holy name of the Second Amendment. One of them, the most trigger-happy one, is played by Ron Asheton, the guitarist and co-founder of the legendary rock band The Stooges. And speaking of: the whole soundtrack is blasted with rock music from obscure artists. Because I can’t proudly say that I’ve ever heard of Elvis Hitler. No songs from Iggy Pop here, though. Anyway: They shoot one of the skulls that breaks the circle before shooting the old man.

His final words are The circle … has been … broken. The wind … whispers. Wendigo… God bless, thank for your service and rest in peace. It’s full nonstop B-movie showtime from here on as the Guardian’s body decomposes in some classic stop-motion fashion (just like we saw in the first Evil Dead from 1984) before his possessed skeleton attacks the hunters. They cut the skeleton’s head of with an axe, but then comes a big hand and grabs one of the hunters who ends up decapitated. Back on the mainland the young woman Sandy gets her beauty sleep interrupted when the ghost of the Guardian gives her a visit to pass her the torch. She gets on a plane to the island to close the circle, and her job gets more complicated when a group of drunk guys having a party in a cabin ends up conjuring the wendigo from a ghoulish shapeshifter with a wig to his full glory form.

We also have a chili stew that turns into a monster. And I should be careful with my words from here on as I drink chili beer as I’m writing this …

Frostbiter: The Wrath of the Wendigo was made sometime in the late 1980s after a group of friends got a complete life-changer after watching Evil Dead II and wanted to become filmmakers themselves. And who wouldn’t, after watching that film for the first time, whether you’re 14 or an old fart. The film collected dust for some years after Troma Entertainment finally came to the rescue and gave it a VHS distribution in 1995. In Japan, the film was released under the title Shiryo no harawata (which is simply translated as Evil Dead) to cash-in on Sam Raimi’s trilogy, in some good old shameless Italian style. The true Japanese counterpart to Evil Dead, however, was released around the same time with the colorful title Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell.

The love and homage to Evil Dead really shines through where they do their best to imitate the distinct loose camerawork and chaotic atmosphere. The Troma vibe is also all over the place, though, so don’t expect any creep factor. Instead we have full on dumb, silly comedy performed by a handful of enthusiastic amateur actors who obviously had a blast. The dialogues are even dumber. Fun stuff, in other words, to spend with tacos and beer on a Friday night. There’s also a lot of ambitions in the effects’ apartment with some cute miniature sets, matte paintings, prosthetic effects, and of course the Wendigo monster itself, that could be straight from a Ray Harryhausen film. Some really impressive work here, for sure, where every penny of the shoe-string budget was wisely spent. The audio mixing has some serious issues, though, as the music drowns out the dialogues. So thanks for the subtitles.

The film was recently released on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome and could be conjured on, yes, you guessed it – Tubi.

Director: Tom Chaney
Writers: Tom Chaney, Rick Cioffi, Steve Quick
Country & year: USA, 1995
Actors: Ron Asheton, Lori Baker, Patrick Butler, Devlin Burton, Tom Franks, Alan Madlane, John Bussard
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116371/