so bad it’s good – Horror Ghouls

Paganini Horror (1988)

Posted on October 15, 2025October 15, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The year was somewhere in the late 1980s where the exciting news had spread in Italy that none other than Klaus Kinski was writing, directing and playing the main role in an upcoming biopic of the legendary violinist Niccolò Paganini. Since Klaus Kinski was still a crowd magnet, director Luigi Cozzi, expected Kinski’s film to be such a hit that a horror film based on Paganini could piggyback on its success. Instead, we have a nonsensical and laughable shiny turd of an amateur hour spectacle that could easily have been sharted out by Claudio Fragasso in a short week. Not that Kinski Paganini was a much better film, but that’s a whole other story, in a different genre.

Paganini Horror starts in the city of Venice with a girl who plays her violin through “The Witches Dance“ from a rare sheet of paper. These notes are of course cursed that makes the girl become possessed, then goes into the bathroom where her mother is taking a bath to drop a hair dryer in her water. FZZZZZZT, FZZZZZZT, added with some old-school cheesy hand-drawn electric effects.

Then we jump to our group of protagonists, an all-female rock n’ roll band (except for the drummer) who’s in the studio and recording. And no, the singer is not Peter Burns. The producer isn’t much impressed as she calls it the same old stuff and nothing original. She wants them to make something mind-blowing and sensational. Well, we’re still in the good ole’ 1980s, so that shouldn’t be that hard. The drummer, Daniel, then meets a mysterious man named Mr. Pinkett to exchange a black suitcase that holds the sheet of notes for… Paganini Horror! The combination of the suitcase is of course six, six…six. OoOoh… This Pinkett guy is played by Donald Pleasance where it’s hard to tell whether he’s completely buzzed-out or high as a kite.

Daniel plays the tune on a piano. The producer is finally impressed even though it fits way more in an Elton John ballad. Daniel says that the unpublished notes were written by Niccolo Paganini. Do you mean Paganini, the famous Italian violinist?, she ask like a braindead imbecile. No, Eilerti Paganini Pilarmi, who else? So let’s rock! The legend says that Paganini used these magical notes in a secret ritual while he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for fame and wealth. According to the real legend, Paganini did sell his soul to Dr. Satan but for talent and not for fame and wealth. Maybe not the best choice as he died piss-poor at age 57. Anyway, a light bulb flicks over their airheads as they believe that these tunes can bring the same success to them. The mind-numbingly bad acting as they look as excited and enthusiastic as some broken NPCs mixed with the stiff dubbing, is enough to give this extra cheese-filled spaghetti clown show a watch. And it gets better/worse.

Our girl band rents a remote castle to shoot a horror-themed music video. Meanwhile, we see this Pinkett guy throwing all the money from a tower while he’s mumbling

go, go, go, go all you little demons. Little demons. Yes, fly away, little demons, so that the real ones can take your place, so that what happened to Paganini will repeat itself this time as well. Let the price for fame be extracted by the one to whom it belongs, his majesty, Satan.

OK. So, uhm, the ghost of Paganini rises from the grave, I guess, to stalk and kill our female rockers one by one with a dagger that sticks out from the bottom of his small violin. Here he’s dressed more like a cheap cosplay version of the phantom of the opera, and is not even close to the awesome-looking ghoulish skeleton we see in the poster. There’s full-on nonsensical dream logic from here on where people randomly fall through green neon-lighted sinkholes, and…well, as we say in showbiz: The show must go on. Don’t have a script, you say? Then improvise! What follows is more retarded acting, cheap effects, cheaper costumes, baffling dialogue delivery and so on. You know the drill..

But to be fair though, the director Luigi Cozzi is not all to blame here. Cozzi was in constant fights with producer Fabrizio De Angelis, who always demanded Cozzi to cut as many gory scenes from the script as possible. Which is pretty odd considering that Fabrizio was also producer on the goriest films of Lucio Fulci throughout the 1980s. It sounded more like pure sabotage when Cozzi got this demand just a few days before the shooting started. He also planned an eight-minute long sequence with scenes of planets, galaxies and parallel dimensions that were supposed to give the movie a stronger “science fiction touch“. Paganini in space? Yeah, why not. This animated short film from Gobelins isn’t that far from the idea.

Cozzi picked the script apart until it was nothing more left to shoot, and most of the script had to be rewritten. Daria Nicolodi (the fresh ex-girlfriend of Dario Argento) then came into the picture to help him with the rewrite, and the next is Italian Trash Cinema history. Nicolodi also plays one of the main characters and she looks as brainfarted as the rest. If the original script and the overall technical aspects would be much better if hadn’t it been for the iron fist of De Angelis, we’ll never know. But if the acting was still as amateurish as in the version that got made, I hardly think so. Some fewer laughs, maybe.

Director: Luigi Cozzi
Writers: Luigi Cozzi, Daria Nicolodi, Raimondo Del Balzo
Country & year: Italy, 1988
Actors: Daria Nicolodi, Jasmine Maimone, Pascal Persiano, Maria Cristina Mastrangeli, Michel Klippstein, Pietro Genuardi, Luana Ravegnini, Roberto Giannini, Donald Pleasence
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095812/

The Antichrist (1974)

Posted on October 14, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Ippolita is a young woman who has been paraplegic since a car accident when she was 12. The accident killed her mother, and left her broken in more ways than one. The doctors have diagnosed her paralysis as purely psychosomatic due to mental trauma rather than any physical issues. She’s also gotten very reliant on her father, the wealthy Rome aristocrat Massimo, and more or less craving his attention nonstop. Her attachment issues skyrockets when she finds out that Massimo has gotten romantically involved with a woman named Greta.

Ippolita, wanting more of her own life and especially to get rid of her paralysis, eventually reaches out to her uncle who is a Vatican cardinal. He only recommends her to get in contact with a parapsychologist named Marcello Sinibaldi, who uses hypnosis on her because he believes that she’s having unconscious memories of her past lives. One of these past lives is none other than a witch (well, of course!) who entered a covenant with Satan and was burned at the stake. Ippolita is possessed by her ancestor’s spirit, and even regains her ability to walk, which she does only under a dissociated state. During this state she ends up killing a tourist after seducing him in her own witchy way. Then things only escalate, where Ippolita becomes fully possessed and lets everyone know that she’s learned a few bad words like “cock“ and “whore“. Especially cock, which seems to be her new favorite word. Ippolita is now ready to let her witchy, demonic side out in full. Mamma Mia! Time to call the exorcist!

The Antichrist (original title: L´anticristo), also being released under the title The Tempter, is a supernatural horror film from 1974, directed by Alberto De Martino and co-written with Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino. Yet another cash-in on the success of The Exorcist (1973), but despite all the cheese and nonsense in this film I don’t think anyone can beat The Turkish Exorcist, Seytan. Its place as number-one in the most baffling and hilarious exorcist ripoffs remains unsurpassed.

While this film is another blatant The Exorcist ripoff, it is on a completely other level than the aforementioned Seytan. The Antichrist actually harbors some qualities, especially in the visual department. Joe D’Amato worked as director of photography on this film, under his real name Aristide Massaccessi. This easily explains why the movie feels fairly competent visually, and combined with a score composed by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai, there are actually some scenes which manage to deliver some decent atmosphere. It doesn’t take long until it stumbles between each of those, however, as the pacing is quite off at times and the special effects are mostly goofy. Ippolita’s character isn’t exactly the most sympathetic to begin with, but her change into a murderous, horny, foul-mouthed witch becomes more ludicrous than shocking. Hearing an adult woman say cock will never pack the same punch as hearing a 12-year old say your mother sucks cocks in hell.

There are some scenes that goes straight into wtf-land with some surreal fantasy-dream-nightmare visuals, and of course we get a rather lengthy Satanic orgy in Satan’s garden in Hell (or wherever it’s supposed to be). With all that talk of cock it was about time she finally got some. Despite some good things, the film is struggling with the pacing issues and some rather laughable scenes which are actually supposed to be scary. Or at least I think so. We have a disembodied flying hand that chokes a guy, a hilarious levitation scene, and so many other things which I suppose are supposed to be horror elements, but just makes you chuckle instead. It’s a totally confused mixture of witchcraft, satanism, possession, sleaze, and goofy effects. But is it still entertaining? Hell, yes!

Overall, The Antichrist is a movie that can be a fun watch if you want to see a sleaze ‘n cheese ripoff of The Exorcist. If you’re in for a challenge: take it as a double-feature with The Turkish Exorcist, Seytan!

Fun Fact: Carla Gravina, who plays the role as Ippolita, revealed that she had some trouble playing the role and would never accept anything similar ever again. After starting the shooting of the film, she said she started to feel some kind of strange disease coming on, which she described as differing between an intense cold, feeling dizzy, getting a feeling of emptiness, headaches, lack of appetite, and so on. Doctors diagnosed that it was most likely due to overwork and “curious psychic influences“…

Director: Alberto De Martino
Writers: Gianfranco Clerici, Alberto De Martino, Vincenzo Mannino
Original title: L’anticristo
Also known as: The Tempter
Country & year: Italy, 1974
Actors: Carla Gravina, Mel Ferrer, Arthur Kennedy, George Coulouris, Alida Valli, Mario Scaccia, Umberto Orsini, Anita Strindberg, Remo Girone, Ernesto Colli
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071150/

Reptilicus (1961)

Posted on October 8, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Monster schlock madness from Denmark. We’re of course talking about the one and only… REPTILICUS! Be afraid. Be very afraid! This is also known for being the one and (for the time being) only sea monster flick that was made, not only in Denmark, but in Scandinavia. And if the poster itself wasn’t enough to set the tone right away, then let’s just say that this is the type of film that Ed Wood would have made, if he hadn’t become best friends with Jack Daniels and Martini Rosso.

How to even start with this absurd, mental clownshow … yes, it’s one of those. Well, it’s important to know that the film was simultaneously made in two versions, in Danish and in English for American audiences. Poul Bang directed the Danish version while the American version was done by Sidney W. Pink. The shooting was as simple as right after Poul Bang shot his scene, Sidney Pink took over and shot his scene for the American version. And of course, not all the Danish actors could speak English very well, so some dubbing had to be added. Why they just didn’t dub the whole thing from the Danish version to both save a lot of time and money, god knows.

The Danish version was released in Denmark by Saga Studios in 1961, and the English-speaking version was released in the US by American International Pictures in 1963. And yes, both versions exists.

Reptilicus starts somewhere in the forest of Lapland where a group of oil-drilling miners digs up a mysterious tail from a prehistoric monster that has been frozen for thousands of years. C o o l. After it is transported to Denmark’s Aquarium in Copenhagen, it soon looks like the tail is actually in the process of regenerating itself into a brand-new animal. Or maybe a… monster! And then there’s this mentally-challenged caretaker, whom I’ll come back to. The whole crew at the aquarium goes for a cabin trip, while we spend some time with General Greyson at the famous Tivoli Gardens. Here we have a song number by none other than the famous Danish Eurovision representative Birthe Wilke who sings her song Tivoli Nights. What a cute Ad for tourism, nevertheless. Tivoli Gardens is still spinning, by the way, which is actually the second-oldest operating amusement park in the world. Anyway: In the meantime, the monster escapes the aquarium and roams into the countryside of Denmark, where he kills cows and ruins a family dinner. Kors i røven!

What we have next is basically the whole Danish military force assembled to track down the monster with tanks, missiles, flamethrowers and all the firearms they could get their hands on. Yes, this shit gets real. When Reptilicus enters Copenhagen we see a handful of extras who jog with their hands in the pockets through the streets in full “panic-mode“ as they’re smiling and giggling, and just being thrilled about having their fifteen-minutes-of-fame moment in a motion picture. General Greyson, on the other hand, is certainly not smiling as he’s sweating like a pig. The chief of the aquarium has two mild heart attacks. So no, this is no laughing matter.

Then we have the monster itself, which is exactly what you imagined: an e-grade Ray Harryhausen funny-looking puppet on strings who destroys miniature buildings of Copenhagen. And the reveal of Reptilicus is just, like Martin Scorsese would have said, absolute cinema!

As earlier said, the film was shot in two versions. But things were drastically changed after the Danish version had its first screening in its home country, where the film was just laughed at and got bad reviews. Well, what a surprise. The American distributors got very cold feet, looked at each other and said: We can’t release this shit. Look at it! So they brought Reptilicus back to the editing room where they removed several scenes, some of which where Reptilicus flying over a not-so-convincing silhouette over Copenhagen. Nothing looks convincing here though. And to make the monster look more threatening, some special effects were added, such as making the monster spit out green goo. And I honestly don’t know how to describe it. Just see for yourself.

Some quick scenes were added where we see Reptilicus “eating“ some of his victims, which looks like it was directed by Terry Gilliam while he was having a stroke. Other scenes were cut out in the American version, such as a completely random scene where the mentally challenged caretaker is suddenly in a park, surrounded by a group of children and sings a song about Reptilicus. This guy is played by Dirch Passer, who was a big comedian in Denmark and an institutionalized figure at Saga Studios. So, of course, he had to be in Reptilicus, where he mostly makes funny faces and gets himself electrocuted after goofing around with an eel. The American version is also more fast-paced with less talk and more campy action, or in other words, more retarded B to Z-movie goodness.

So yeah, they pulled a Shelby Oaks here, only in this case these changes was done without Sidney Pink’s knowledge. And that made him pissed. So pissed in fact that his last name was changed to Red. But somehow they made the film worse and better at the same time. And this also seems to be the case with the upcoming Kraken (the first sea monster film from our home country Norway) which has been abruptly delayed to next year, by some very suspicious hush-hush reasons. So we just have to wait and see what that’s about and if Denmark will have the last laugh.

And there you have Reptilicus, the first and only sea monster spectacle from little Denmark. A must-see for fans or pure old-school schlock. Also lighthearted enough to work fine for the whole family. It’s available in 4K Ultra HD by Vinegar Syndrome where you get both versions and a cool poster.

Directors: Poul Bang, Sidney W. Pink
Writers: Sidney W. Pink, Ib Melchior
Country & year: Denmark, 1961
Actors: Bent Mejding, Asbjørn Andersen, Povl Wøldike, Ann Smyrner, Mimi Heinrich, Dirch Passer, Marlies Behrens, Carl Ottosen, Ole Wisborg, Birthe Wilke, Mogens Brandt, Kjeld Petersen
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056405/

Aquanoids (2003)

Posted on July 29, 2025July 29, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Aquanoids, or Aquanooooids, like Johnny Depp would have said it, is a silly Z-grade amateur-hour creature/feature flick where we have a sea monster that looks more like a rejected, drunk band member of Gwar who’d fallen into the ocean, and just decided to stay in the water and kill everyone who comes near him.

The film starts in the year 1987 in Santa Clara Island, California, where a couple is having a swim. Guess what happens. They get dragged down the water and killed by an unseen monster as a random guy is watching the “traumatic“ incident through his binoculars. And, of course, this random guy will be important later. Much later. Sixteen years later, to be precise, in the present day (2003) where a coastal town in sunny California is celebrating the 4th of July. God bless America. As the town is in full festive mode, the young girl-next-door, Vanessa, actually has far more important things to do. Because she’s an environmentalist, you see, and would rather spend her time to save our green planet by diving into the ocean to pick up trash. Greta Thunberg would be impressed. As she gathers her good karma points, she gets a glimpse of our sea-creature. Ooh, scary. She hops on a water scooter and heads straight to the town’s mayor, Frank Walsh, to beg him to close down the beaches. Because the aquanoids are back, she says, despite we’ve only seen one. Dream on, honey. Haven’t you seen Jaws, or if you dig a little deeper, Humanoids From the Deep? Here we also meet Clifton Jefferson, a mafia-looking guy who does some dirty work for Mayor Walsh, and who also looks like a Joe Pesci cosplay from Goodfellas. And if Mayor Walsh talked like Kermit the frog, I wouldn’t doubt for a second that he was played by Jordan Peterson.

Anyway, as Mayor Walsh won’t do shit because he’s exactly what he looks like: a super-shady bad guy, Vanessa and her roommate are handing out warning papers while they shout dangerous waters! dangerous waters! No one believes them though. The only one who does is Ronald Jackson, the random guy we saw at the beginning. And no, he’s not played by Eric Roberts. He’s the one and only witness of the aquanoid that killed 17 people back in 1987, and is just seen as the town’s crazy person. He now spends most of the time at the local bar being a traumatized alcoholic, and just wants to be left alone. The news and rumors of the aquanoids start to spread, and suddenly the local Hard Boiled News (yes, really) pops up to have a quick chat with none other than Jackson. Poor guy doesn’t get a break. Mayor Walsh and Joe Pesci, sorry, Jefferson, don’t like that the rumors of the aquanoids are spreading to the public, and that’s for more than one reason. The “plot“ here is thrown all over the place, and there’s just too much to spoil (or maybe not), but let’s just say that you’ll be more shocked than anything by how corrupt this Mayor is. And I also bet that he’s on a certain client list.

Aquanoids is directed by Reinhart ‘Rayteam’ Peschke. Rayteam who? He worked primarily in the Camera and Electrical Department on films such as Volcano (1997), The Usual Suspects (1995), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) With Aquanoids, you’d get the impression that Rayteam one day went through some of his old and forgotten childhood stuff in the attic, found some tapes of a home-made horror movie he made with some friends, neighbors and uncles during some summers in his early teens, and said to himself: I want to release this hidden gem on DVD. This is also the one and only film he directed.

The title, screenshots and the trailer speak more or less for themselves. If you’re familiar with these kinds of retarded, zero-budget home-made turd movies, you know what you’re gonna get. It’s amateur-hour from start to end (with a short and welcoming runtime of 1 hour and 13 minutes) with a dumb plot, bad acting, absurd dialogue, cheesy music, a series of WTF-moments, an unexpected and “shocking“ twist, and of course some cheap gore.

The highlight of Aquanoids is actually not the monster itself, which we barely get a clear glimpse of, but our two goofy antagonists, Mayor Walsh and Jefferson, as these two actors try very hard to act dead seriously. If Walsh looks somewhat familiar aside from Jordan Peterson, he’s the guy who had the deadly handshake with the Joker in his most-known-for-movie on IMDb, Batman (1989). And I’m not surprised if the one who looks like Joe Pesci has auditioned for all the Martin Scorsese films, and in his all-boiled-up frustration tricks people into believing that his most-known-for-movie, Aquanoids, is actually an alternative title for Jaws. And enough schadenfreude for today.

Director: Reinhart Peschke
Writers: Mark J. Gordon, Eric Spudic
Country & year: USA, 2003
Actors: Laura Nativo, Rhoda Jordan, Edwin Craig, Ike Gingrich, Laurence Hobbs, Suzan Spann, Robert Kimmel, Christopher Irwin, David Clark, Doug Martin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338726/

Sharktopus (2010)

Posted on July 22, 2025July 22, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Nathan Sands is a geneticist (or just a mad scientist, if you will) who has been hired by the U.S. Navy to create a new weapon. Together with his daughter Nicole, they have created a large intelligent shark with the tentacles of an octopus, because that sounds like an excellent idea where nothing can go wrong. A sharktopus, in other words, but for some reason they have decided to simply call it S-11. They control the creature by using a device on its head, which gives electromagnetic pulses. Because an attachment to such a creature’s head which is the entire means of control over it sounds like the greatest idea ever, right? Well, as can easily be imagined, the S-11 gets rid of the annoying device, and swims along to Mexican waters to create some mayhem and perhaps enjoy some human burritos. Sands and Nicole must find someone that can help them capture the monster, and meets up with a cocky dude named Andy Flynn who is apparently the most suited for the job. The catch is: the monster must be captured alive. Easier said than done! As Nicole and Andy tries to follow its tracks, a pesky news reporter called Stacy Everheart and her henpecked cameraman Bones starts pursuing the story of the year.

Sharktopus is a SyFy horror film produced by Roger Corman and directed by Declan O´Brien, which later sparked a franchise. And ohhh boy, could this one have been a total rotten fish of a stinker if it wasn’t for the obvious tongue-in-cheek approach and the self-awareness displayed here. It’s made as a “so-bad-it’s good“ movie, and that is a much harder achievement than one might initially expect. Few movies that aim for this setup manages to pull it off, but Sharktopus is one of those exceptions. It delivers exactly what it promises, and you’d have to be an idiot if you were to take it seriously for even a split second. It’s yet another movie where I’m glad we have badges instead of ratings here on Horror Ghouls…

The setup is pretty simple: crazy scientist creates monster, monster runs amok, heroes must stop it. The characters are pretty bland, with Eric Roberts as Nathan Sands being the most decent of the bunch. That being said, the over-acting and clunky performances from several of the actors here is what offers some decent laughs, plus the hilarious kill scenes mixed with bad CGI effects. Not to mention campy lines like:

– Oh no, not like this! Arrrgghhhhhh! (while attempting to convince the viewer they have really been caught by those crappy CGI tentacles)
– Damn you Sharktopus!
– You can stop staring at my rack. They’re just boobs. They’re not gonna get up and dance or anything.
– That guy was killed in front of us inches away. Inches away! Gosh. He was kind of a nice guy, you know? Smell a little funky, but he was okay. Now he’s dead.

Yeah…if I haven’t made it pretty clear already, Sharktopus is indeed a horrible movie, but for all the good reasons. It’s a lot of stupid fun, and a nice watch for the shark week!

Also, in 2023 the movie actually had a remake…from China, of all places. And to be honest it looks more like they tried to make a remake of Deep Rising. Currently not available officially anywhere outside of China…but as of now, there’s YouTube…and here’s a link to the trailer.

Director: Declan O’Brien
Writers: Mike MacLean, Stephen Niver
Country & year: USA, 2010
Actors: Eric Roberts, Kerem Bürsin, Sara Malakul Lane, Sara Malakul Lane, Héctor Jiménez, Liv Boughn, Julian Gonzalez Esparza, Blake Lindsey, Peter Nelson, Maija Markula
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1619880/

Robowar (1988)

Posted on July 11, 2025August 14, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

This Italian-produced Predator ripoff starts in the midst of a full-blown bulletstorm mayhem in the jungle of the Philippines, and a group of commandos are sent to the green inferno to see what the hell is going on. We meet the four trigger-happy testosterone-filled walking ballsacks with the colorful code names Killzone, Blood, Papa, Diddy Bop and Quiang. And together they make the team called BAM, which stands for (yeah, you already guessed it) Bad Ass Motherfuckers. Can’t get more 1980s than that. They stumble upon fresh-fried corpses as they explore the territories. They rescue a damsel-in-distress from getting chased by a group of horny guerrillas. She is a young, blond nurse who goes by the name… Virgin. Sounds like she’s in the wrong movie, no?

Anyway – As they go deeper in the jungle, things start to smell more cheesy, as they’re getting hunted by an alien-looking killer robot, called ~~Predator~~ Omega One. He’s a high-tech renegade humanoid who shoots the deadliest lasers through an arm cannon and wears a silly costume where a biker helmet was used to give him the flair of RoboCop, another well-known film you’ve maybe heard of. Instead, we have just another thick layer of cheese. Now it starts to smell. And his appearance is as intimidating as…someone who has dressed up to attend a Halloween party at the local gay bar. To build up some suspense and tension, we see from his POV perspective through his lousy, low-pixelated sensor while he mumbles gibberish like a demented Indian scammer on crack cocaine. So, come get some!

Robowar is directed by schlock maestro of Italian Trash Cinema Bruno Mattei (here under his most used pseudonym as Vincent Dawn), written by the couple Rosetta Drudi and Claudio Fragasso. Fragasso also got the honor of playing the RoboPredator, which made him faint two times during the shoot due to the extreme heat. Claudio Fragasso also did the most Claudio Fragasso thing to shoot a random sequence without zero context to the rest of the film. Of course. Robowar was originally meant to just be a Vietnam-war film, inspired by Apocalypse Now (1979), shot in the hot n’ sticky Philippines and all, but when Mattei saw Predator during a lunch break, he did what he usually did: put in elements of said film to cash in on its current success. And we can only imagine what the film would look like if he had also played Contra. That being said, Mattei had already made the war film Commando Strike the year before, also in the Philippines, where I guess the leftovers of ammo, cheese, testosterone and set pieces to blow up were enough to fill Robowar. Mattei also made Commando Strike 2 the same year, aka Trappola diabolica. So yeah, Signor Mattei sure got to make his epic war films, one of which by coincidence became a Predator ripoff, and one of the mockbuster films I bet that The Asylum wish they had made some 30 years ago. And that alone says it all.

Some quoteworthy (white) lines:

– Fuck it, Diddy. Quit moving around like you’re jerking off, you’re making me seasick.

– Why do they have nicknames?
– You should know what the group is called. “BAM”.
– BAM?
– Big Ass Motherfuckers!

– Drug addicts and fags. I bet they got AIDS too, huh, Quang?

– Technology hasn’t got feelings! (I bet that Jason Blum does not agree on that one, bwhahahahaha…!)

Director: Bruno Mattei
Writers: Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi
Original title: Robot da guerra
Country & year: Italy/Philippines, 1988
Actors: Reb Brown, Catherine Hickland, Massimo Vanni, Romano Puppo, Claudio Fragasso, Luciano Pigozzi, Max Laurel, Jim Gaines, John P. Dulaney, Mel Davidson
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096000/

Octaman (1971)

Posted on April 15, 2025April 15, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Octaman, or Octamaaaan, like Johnny Depp would have said it, is exactly what you think it is – a mutated, cheesy-looking octopus humanoid who shuffles around and kills people, played by a poor actor who can barely see shit through the costume. Yep, it’s one of those films. This is the type of vintage Z movie amateur campy schlockfest that could easily be mistaken for a lost Ed Wood film. And if you get some strong Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) vibes, you’re not wrong. Octaman is written and directed by Harry Essex, who also was a co-writer of said film.

The plot is something like this: we follow Dr. Torres as he goes on an expedition with a small crew to a primitive Latin fishing community in Mexico to uncover some atomic radiation. And they, of course, encounter Octaman, who’s actually credited in the opening sequence as Octaman, not the actor, just to add some extra flavor of mystique. It worked with Boris Karloff with Frankenstein way back in 1931, but here, though, with the cheesy costume and all that doesn’t even fool a blind person, it’s just comical. Anyway… Octaman starts to stalk and kill people one by one.

Octaman goes pretty fast into the monster action. And I’m using the words “monster action“ very loosely here, because there’s nothing much to get excited about, except for having some laughs at its overall incompetence, as the action has the impact like a pillow fight in your sister’s bedroom. The way Octoman attacks its victims is pure retarded slapstick comedy. He leaves his bodycounts with open wounds and an eye that almost pops out of some poor dude’s skull, yet he only slaps them like a drunk bitch with his overlong rubber suit tentacles as he also struggles to not lose balance. He’s as intimidating as, well, Octaman. Fun stuff. The monster costume was designed by the one and only Rick Baker, who later became one of the most prominent effect makers in Hollywood. This was his very first gig, and… we all have to start somewhere.

Writer and director: Harry Essex
Country & year: Mexico/USA, 1971
Actors: Pier Angeli, Kerwin Mathews, Jeff Morrow, David Essex, Jerome Guardino, Robert Warner, Norman Fields, Read Morgan
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067515/

Cathy’s Curse (1977)

Posted on April 4, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

– She has the power…to terrorize. And to make us laugh.

This amusing French/Canadian-produced little clown show starts with a father and his daughter, Laura, who learns that the mom has left them and taken Laura’s brother, George, with her. Your mother is a bitch. She’ll pay for what she did to you, says the dad. Oki-doki. As they’re driving through the woods at the night, a white rabbit suddenly crosses the road that makes the dad lose control and crash. Dad and Laura get stuck in the car as it sets on fire where they get burned alive. At least, the rabbit got away unscathed.

Then we jump to present time (1977), where George, who’s now a middle-aged man, his wife Vivian and their young daughter Cathy, are moving into the house we saw in the opening sequence. George hasn’t been in the house since he was four and does his best to act emotional. Vivian has some mental and paranoia issues after she had a nervous breakdown and has some extreme mood-swings. Another one who suffers from sudden mood-swings, plus some late stages of dementia, is the film itself, because nothing here, absolutely nothing makes sense. As Cathy explores the house, she finds herself in the cobweb-filled attic where she picks up a ragdoll with both eyes stitched shut. Cathy then looks at a picture of the ominous girl we see at the movie poster, and Cathy gets possessed. Why? Not even the three screenwriters knows.

The film is all over the place with random stuff that just happens because the messy script just says so. A medium visits Vivian, a woman I almost mistook for Mr. Bean’s girlfriend. She holds an old picture of Vivian’s husband’s father, the guy we saw in the beginning. She sees flashes of the car accident as she talks in a cheesy demonic voice. Nothing here builds up, things happen sporadically just out of the blue. Cathy suddenly has telekinesis Carrie powers so she can make random objects in the house explode. In one scene, Cathy has breakfast, served by a nanny. Cathy throws a bowl to the floor, just randomly, with both hands to demonstrate that the bowl flies across the kitchen. Nanny acts like it was just an accident. After she picks up two pieces of the shattered bowl, she smiles and says: There, it’s all done. Ok, if you say so. I guess the screenwriters thought they did a great job here to not insult the viewers’ intelligence.

Another memorable scene, for all the wrong reasons, is where Cathy starts to teleport herself around the house to scare her mother. She acts way more irritated than scared, because none of the three scriptwriters would even imagine that anyone would shit themselves if they witnessed such a thing. Vivian must have some serious brain damage or some skills in pills, or maybe both. Cathy then makes the whole house shake. This movie is more tone-deaf than Yoko Ono. And, of course, I have to mention the classic scene where Cathy makes an old drunk geezer freeze while he sits by the kitchen table. And while he just sits there, stiff frozen, a snake and some spiders suddenly appear and crawls at him. And we have some stellar dialogues here:

– Old bitch. Fat whore. Fat dried up whore.
– Go on, you filthy female cow. Make us laugh!
– All women are bitches.

The eye-catching poster reminds me of the poster of James Wan’s Insidious. But don’t let that fool you. Cathy’s Curse is not even close. It’s barely close to even being a horror movie. I even doubt that the three screenwriters, that also includes the director, was never under the same roof during the writing process. I’d guess that all three took elements from The Exorcist (1973), Carrie (1976) and The Omen (1976), with the same idea of “children scary“ then tossed it together and maybe just hoped for the best. The messy and incompetent writing is just one thing, we also have some weird music choices, primitive effects (even for a 1970s film) and bizarre editing. In one scene the camera zooms slowly into a door with some ominous music, just randomly. We don’t see much of that door again. The acting goes from wooden to laughably bad. The “big star“ here is the child actress Randi Allen as Cathy. And she’s no Linda Blair, just to make that clear. This is the one and only film she appeared in, and said in an interview once that she only took the role to financially support her single mother. To add some extra quick cash, her brother, Bruce Allen, also had a small role in the film.

Cathy’s Curse is a nonsensical mess that only leaves questions rather than answers, and is as scary as My Little Pony, but the overall inept absurdity makes it a fun watch.

Director: Eddy Matalon
Writers: Alain Sens-Cazenave, Eddy Matalon, Myra Clément
Country & year: Canada, 1977
Actors: Alan Scarfe, Beverly Murray, Randi Allen, Dorothy Davis, Mary Morter, Roy Witham, Bryce Allen, Sonny Forbes, Robert V. Girolami
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075820/

Things (1989)

Posted on January 31, 2025March 3, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

– This is Ghastly, Brutal, Horrible, Insane!

I’ve seen some terrible, mind-boggling, retarded and fascinating amateur shows over the many years, but nothing could prepare me for this little Canadian shiny turd of a film called Things. And in this case, that is something I can appreciate. I’m always searching for the next best-worst movie, since I’ve always had a weak spot for these kinds of films, and this one belongs somewhere deep down of the horror movie iceberg. It’s impossible to review Things in a conventional sense, and is one of those that you just have to experience for yourself. Visually, to use that word very loosely, it’s something like Manos: The Hands of Fate meets Violent Shit, filmed in an obscure fever dream in the skull of Jörg Buttgereit.

The film starts right off like something that looks like some cursed low-fi video from the dark web. And to be fair, the same could be said about the whole film. It’s all shot by a Super 8 with the overall technical skills of two drunk cavemen, so that speaks much for itself. We’re in a basement where a mysterious woman (Jessica Stewarte) in a weird devil mask undresses in front of a sleazy-looking guy, named Doug (Doug Bunston), who says: I want you to have my BABY! My wife and I tried to have a baby, but we could never get one. Now it’s up to you. My true fair love.

And yeah, the acting is as goofy as the dialogues, which already sets the tone of what to expect. What makes this scene icky, for whole other reasons, is that this masked woman was/is a real-life prostitute, and probably did this short appearance just to scramble some quick cash for her next fix. The filmmakers tried to track her down to include her in the 2008 DVD release, but she could not be found. We all wish her the best. Anyway: two minutes in (yes, two minutes) and the film is already an unbelievable wet, bloated brainfart where there’s a lot for the senses to digest. The acting, the editing, the sound mix, the bizarre goofy music, the sheer level of pure and raw amateurishness… It will drain your sanity and good luck getting through the rest without some booze. The masked woman already had his baby, she says. Ah, good news then. And when she hands it over to Doug, the baby appears to be some sort of a monster that bites his hand. This was just a dream, by the way, as Doug wakes up on a couch in his living room.

After the opening credits, with the fugliest fonts ever put on film, we meet Don (Barry J. Gillis) and Fred (Bruce Roach), who pays Doug a visit on a late night. Yep, Don, Fred and Doug. These are the guys we’re supposed to root for. All three reeks of bad vibes a mile away, if the film didn’t smell bad enough already, where the youngest looks like a ticking school shooter while the other two have the charisma of the types of serial killers who would bury their victims in a basement crawlspace. We even have a dude here who pops in at the end (Dr. Lucas) who could be the twin brother of Jeffrey Dahmer. It’s hard to comprehend what’s going on here, but they find a tape recorder in Doug’s freezer and a diary of Aleister Crowley. Don puts his jacket in the freezer because it’s hot, they drink some beer, talking about paintings…

It’s pretty creepy up here. Why don’t you put something on TV, Don says.

On TV we have pornstar Amber Lynn, here dressed in a ridiculously dated outfit as the very least believable news anchor. She cuts in and out during the film to give some vague and unrelated plot details, or whatever, as she clearly reads straight from cue cards. Her background is randomly stacked with some cheap TVs and VCR’s that looks like anything but a news TV studio. Amber Lynn got paid $2500 to be in this, (the whole budget, I’d fairly guess), and spent a quick hour to shoot her few scenes. Director Andrew Jordan was at least clever enough to approach her with a 16mm camera to look more professional. You can’t see much difference though. And the biggest shocker is that she does the best acting here.

We have a random torture scene because the plot suddenly said so. Or maybe because the filmmakers had just seen Guinea Pig: Devil’s Experiment and thought it was cool to just throw in a quick eye-gouging moment. Yes. there’s gore here, but don’t expect much. It’s cheap amateur slop and combined with the blurry image quality, you’ll spot more clearly gory images from a Rorschach test. And there’s also some zombies here, because why not.

Doug finally shows up, so the main plot can go forward. And he’s irritated because Fred and Don didn’t bring any food. He opens the fridge and says after he gives a loud burp:

What the fUUUck? There’s a six day, or a six month old bread in here. Maybe I can make myself some kind of a sandwich. Eh.

They eat some sandwiches, drink beer, burps, farts and have a good time, I assume. And then we have the classic scene where they put a dead bug in Don’s sandwich. There’s also a dog here, who only smells bullshit and clearly doesn’t want to be in the film. Can’t blame him.

Around the 25 minute mark, Doug’s bedridden and pregnant wife, Susan, screams. Yes, she’s pregnant. Forget the masked woman we saw at the beginning. That was just a premonition nightmare. As if the film isn’t already a nightmare. A puppet creature with big sharp teeth crawls out of her stomach. Susan is dead. RIP.

Oh my gOOOd…! SUSAN, Doug yells. Poor Doug. He really must have loved Susan. Because the acting here is just that convincing. We then learn that Susan was a part of a failed impregnate experiment of Dr. Lucas.

After it’s been established that a killer creature now lurks around the house, plus some other ant-like monstrous Things, we cut to a news break where Amber Lynn informs us that the legendary filmmaker George A. Romero is once again taking his copyright case to the Supreme Court of the United States. Because pirates continue to distribute thousands of copies of Night of the Living Dead. OK, good to know. Where’s the weather report? As our three protagonists now have to survive in a cramped basement full of monstrous Things, the guy with the beard, Fred, suddenly vanishes, as if he was cut out of the movie. What the fuck? Where’s Fred?, Don asks. To give some logical explanation, we’re told that (and I’m not making this shit up) he was trapped in a mouse hole (!) that brought him to the third, fourth and fifth dimension. And if I dared to break down more of the “plot“, I’d probably be sucked into a mouse hole myself.

On the surface, Things look like something made by a group of ten-year-olds, just for pure fun and shit’s n’ giggles, as they were only goofing around with a camera with no more thought behind it. The whole film, except the ending, was shot in the basement of Andrew Jordan’s parent’s house in Ontario, Canada. His parents were also confident and wholesome enough to finance the principal shooting and pre-production, which I still guess was $2500 to only afford some quick scenes with Amber Lynn to boost the sales. Because director Andrew Jordan and co-writer/actor Barry J. Gillis had actually some high, grandiose ambitions with Things other than just show it to embarrassed family members and friends on a drunk Friday night. They wanted to distribute it all the way to Canadian Television. Because why not. And I just assume that they also saw the Hollywood signs far in the blurry horizon. The closest the film got to the mainstream was at the video rental shops, where it reached the historic milestone of being the very first film shot on an 8mm to get a VHS distribution in Canada. Andrew Jordan’s parents must have been proud, and cheers for that. Doug Burston’s parents, on the other hand, forced him to get a real job. And they might’ve had a point, considering that he was mostly drunk during filming (wow, what a surprise), and beer was a requirement for him to act in the movie.

The dialogues here is the most bizarre shit I’ve heard in a long, long time:

– They’re eating me! Take me to the hospital! They can rebuild me there!
– I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I …!
– All I see is blOOOd — and guts!
– Ah, the blood is dripping like maple SYRUP! Oh, oh, so much blood!
– My dog… my cute little bloody dog!
– Listen, ah geeh ah, I’m gonna die! I feel like it, but I’m saved!

While this sounds bad enough on paper, just wait till you hear the delivery. It’s Zombie ’90: Extreme Pestilence level of bad, or maybe even worse. I refuse to believe that even a single line of dialogue was written here, aside from the scenes with Amber Lynn. The dialogues were overdubbed, since the original recording was useless, and Andrew Jordan spent months torturing himself in post-production to polish his masterpiece. He was high on cannabis during the whole process, which surely explains a lot. But even the most expensive sound mixing studio couldn’t save this. He also hated the experience of making the film, which finally begs the big question why he made it in the first place, and on top of that, distribute it on VHS for all to see. The mental state of these guys raises some speculation, because the more you dive into it, the more it sounds like a miracle that this bizarre, inept clownshow was actually completed from start to finish, and released. The entire project sounds more like something Andrew Jordan was forced to make at gunpoint, like some sort of a humiliation ritual. In that case, mission accomplished, as the film has garnered a cult-following over the years, for all the wrong reasons.

Actor and co-writer Barry J. Gillis is still very proud of the film, and said in an interview with Sins of Cinema that he would love to make a sequel to Things, and I’m quoting: only if there is a fan out there with access to an investor with a million or more dollars we could make a great sequel. And he also would love to have Bruce Campbell on board.

… and we can’t wait to see that. Just make sure to have Mike Flanagan as an executive producer so that Neon picks it up for distribution. Things is available on DVD by Severin Films/Intervision, and is also on our favorite streaming site, Tubi.

Director: Andrew Jordan
Writers: Barry J. Gillis, Andrew Jordan
Country & year: Canada, 1989
Actors: Barry J. Gillis, Amber Lynn, Bruce Roach, Doug Bunston, Jan W. Pachul, Patricia Sadler
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183881/

Extra Terrestrial Visitors (1983)

Posted on December 6, 2024January 31, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

– Trumpy, you can do magic things!

Extra Terrestrial Visitors. Yup, this movie actually exists, and no, this is not a very long-delayed mockbuster from The Asylum. Extra Terrestrial Visitors was originally meant to be a straight-forward horror film with an Earth-stranding alien who goes on a murder rampage. Sounds just like in the right alley for the Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón, who had just made the ultra violent Grindhouse classic Pieces.

Then came the global megahit E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the producers demanded to have the script rewritten and add a storyline with a boy and a friendly alien and cut as many horror elements as possible. Not a good idea, to quote Tony Stark. In the UK, the film was released on VHS with the shamelessly fake clickbait title E.T.: The Second Coming. So what we have here is probably the most pathetic and desperate attempt to squeeze out a cash-in within the last minute. The producers who were confident enough to think that this kind of director was a good fit to piece together a mainstream, family-friendly E.T.-ripoff with zero to none resources, except an overuse of smog machines, must have snorted too much cocaine. Trumpy took the rest. Trumpy who? He’s a friendly, furry alien who has a big trunk like an anteater. More about him later.

A meteor crash lands in some rural forest landscape. Two poachers are out hunting and one of them sees a red gloving cave while the fog machine already works on overtime. As he goes into the cave, he enters a room filled with some large alien eggs. After he smashes them with his rifle, except one, he gets attacked and killed by an unseen entity. Mommy alien, we can guess. The last remaining egg gets later picked up by the boy, ~~Elliot~~ Tommy, who brings it home and hides it in his room.

Then we have a rock band, of some sort, who are in the studio recording. I can’t remember a single name, but what we have are two guys and four chicks. The melodrama is all over the place where it’s hard to give a single fuck. Here we also get some of the worst, retarded and hilarious dubbing I’ve heard recently. And the written-on-a-toilet paper dialogue with the amateur acting makes it all better. It’s already easy to see why this was picked up by Mystery Science Theater 3000.

The rock band drives out into the woods to have a picnic. They start to argue over some bullshit that makes one of the girls leave them and go into the smog-filled woods. And speaking of fog, I’d guess that this film has the world record for using smog machine. She stumbles upon mommy alien somewhere in the thick fog who makes her fall from a cliff and die. The rock band carries her body to the nearest house where they get to seek shelter. And yes, the same house where Tommy has hidden the alien egg in his room.

Suddenly, the egg hatches, and out comes a little cute alien who Tommy feeds with nuts and milk in all secretly in his room. And the faster he eats, the faster he grows until he’s as tall as Tommy. The alien is, assumedly, played by a kid in a cheap, funny costume that looks like something you’d see in the background of the Star Wars cantina just to fill some empty space. He has, as mentioned, a big trunk which he eats through and gives some blank, empty stares with stiff emotionless eyes. As hard as Tommy tries to act excited, there’s zero chemistry or charm here. It’s just unsettling and off-putting. To put the golden raspberry on top, he names the alien Trumpy. And he’s here to Make Earth Great Again. Or maybe not. Trumpy also has telekinesis power, and trust me, it’s cinema magic at its finest and will blow your mind.

And if you thought the dubbing was bad, you’ll have some serious brain farts when you hear Tommy. Trumpy’s alien mom goes on a rampage and body counting, because this was, after all, originally meant to be a horror film. Alien mom kills its victims by slapping and shoving them where they die instantly, one-hit-death Alex Kidd style. Lousy stuff. How does this turkey show end, you ask? Do we get an emotional goodbye scene like we did in E.T.? —Spoiler warning— After our two friends have a run in the woods, Tommy tells Trumpy to fuck off. I hate you Trumpy, he says. Uhm…OK. Poor Trumpy, I guess? And since there wasn’t any budget to make a cheap-looking spaceship to pick him up, Trumpy wanders into the fog-filled woods to never be seen again. The End.

Well, that was… something. Making Contact (1985) comes to mind, only this one is far more tone-deaf and completely inept in all aspects. To Juan Piquer Simón’s defense, he had no control over the final product as he was fucked over by the producers. Showbiz is brutal. Extra Terrestrial Visitors is still a fun, amusing trainwreck to watch for all turkey lovers. It’s available on Tubi and on Blu-ray from Severin Films.

Director: Juan Piquer Simón
Writers: Joaquín Grau, Juan Piquer Simón
Original title: Los nuevos extraterrestres
Also known as: Pod People
Country & year: Spain, France, 1983
Actors: Ian Serra, Nina Ferrer, Susana Bequer, Sara Palmer, Óscar Martín, Maria Albert, Emilio Linder, Concha Cuetos, Manuel Pereiro, Frank Braña
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086026/