Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Cults Are Scary AF.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Cults Are Scary AF.

That’s right, folks…

Cults are scary as fuck…

Whether it’s their snake-eyed, lizard-brained, creepily-charismatic leaders…

Or their Kool-Aid-drinking, sneaker-wearing, every-word-of-the-bullshit-believing followers…

Or maybe it’s their compounds with the same checkout policy as The Hotel California, or a fuckin’ roach motel…

Whatever it is…

The first time a cult scared the ever-loving shit outta me…

Was in the 1973 film…

The Wicker Man…

In this film…

And in all of the other films…

That I am recommending to you…

We put our feet into the shoes of outsiders…

And watch…

Through their eyes…

As these outsiders…

Are gradually exposed to the inner circles…

Of each of the scary AF cults on this list…

And when their secrets are revealed…

That’s right around the time…

That these outsiders…

Are completely fucked…

And we jump right the hell out of their shoes…

And into our favorite pair of shittin’ pants.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Cults Are Scary AF Movies…In the years following The Wicker Man.

The Believers (1987) – This film comes from legendary director, John Schlesinger…Now this is not a term that I use lightly…Shit…He not only directed Midnight Cowboy…But he gave an entire generation a deep-seated fear of dentists with his bone-chilling thriller…Marathon Man…See what I mean…Totally fucking legendary…Anyway…In this film he explores the dark and disturbing underbelly of cults and cultists…Martin Sheen turns in another intense performance…This time, as Cal Jamison, a recently-widowed father, and a police psychologist…Following his wife’s accidental death…He and his son move to New York City…He gets involved with a case involving a series of bizarre, ritualistic child murders…Through his investigations…Jamison is thrust into the middle of a vast and vicious conspiracy involving not only a cult practicing the dark magic of brujeria…But what he uncovers, also involves a bunch of the most affluent assholes to ever inhabit The Big Apple…Pffft…Fuckin’ rich people…You know I love ’em.

The Shrine (2010) – This is the sophomore effort of Jon Knautz (Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer) and tells the story of a troubled couple that get into an even more troubled situation…We follow Journalist Carmen, played by Cindy Sampson (Supernatural), and her photographer boyfriend Marcus, played by Aaron Ashmore (Smallville)…As the two follow a story about a tourist gone missing in a rural part of Poland…They bring along young and naive intern, Sara and head to a remote and isolated village that right away feels…Well…Wrong…Trevor Matthews (Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer) turns in a menacing and intense performance as Henryk, one of the Polish locals…This one was a completely original concept…And I gotta say…I really dug this disturbing tale of a cult that is scattered, smothered, and covered, in an original version of evil incarnate.

Black Death (2010) – This one has a couple of our old friends from Game of Thrones in it...Sean Bean and Carice van Houten…They are starring alongside the uber-talented Eddie Redmayne (Fantastic Beasts)…In this dark tale from the middle ages…The medieval setting and downright amazing cast compliment the artistry of director Christopher Smith (Severance), who keeps turning out awesome movies…This one is set in 1348, in the midst of a deadly plague…A remote village has been discovered…Where there isn’t a single infected resident…This draws the attention of a bishop, who has heard supernatural tales about this village…To investigate…He sends a young monk, played by Redmayne…Along with a band of mercenaries…And that’s when all sorts of Hell breaks loose…There are very few medieval horror films…Which is surprising considering what an utterly bleak and dismal time period it was…And let me tell you, folks…This one…Was so gawdamn good…That I wish they made more of ’em.

Kill List (2011) – This is the film that turned me on to Ben Wheatley…A film that in the first act…Is a dysfunctional family drama…About a man named Jay…Played by the amazing Neil Maskell (Utopia)…Who is out of work and feeling the overwhelming pressure of not being able to support his family…In the film’s second act…We discover what Jay used to do for a living…And watch the intense, action-packed, ultra-violent nature of his employment…But that third act…Oh man…When it comes…It’s as if this film stood up…Shrugged off it’s pea-coat…Stripped naked…And transformed…And whatever this thing that it had become was…It started running…Newborn, and naked…Through a desiccated cornfield…And when it emerged on the other side…It was unrecognizable from its former self…Forever changed…Which is exactly how I would describe…Those of us that have seen this film…Forever changed.

Jug Face (2013) – Okay…This film…Is a weird little ditty…Played by a moonshine-drunk hillbilly…On a banjo with one-string…It is a freaky, creepy, and original story about some superstitious folk who live in a community that could easily be described as a cult…Lauren Ashley Carter (The Woman) is outstanding as the angst ridden main character Ada…Horror film god, Larry Fessenden stars as Ada’s Pa, Sustin…And the kooky-as-always, Sean Young plays Loriss, her Ma…And for one disturbing scene…Stars as the worst gynecologist since John de Lancie in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle…I absolutely adored the relationship between Ada and the town potter, Dawai, played by Sean Bridgers (Also from The Woman)…Because their relationship unfolded in such an organic, but also, sweet and completely understated way…The connection between these two characters is tantamount to almost any other…With maybe one exception…The relationship that Ada has with her perpetually reticent grandfather…A man whose once-traveled path is revealed to resemble her own…But through it all…These tender, and genuine relationships display a level of caring…That ends up being the true heart of this film.

Starry Eyes (2014) – This film comes from the dynamic duo behind the recent Pet Sematary reboot…Kevin Kölsch, and Dennis Widmyer…And the cult that it uncovers…Touches on the darker side of Hollywood…Much like the film Eat, shined a high-powered spotlight on the torment and shame that a struggling actress endures…This film takes it to another place altogether…A much darker and nefarious place…Alex Essoe (Tales of Halloween, The Neighbor) stars as Sarah…An aspiring actress whose overall struggles are not exclusive to her acting career…Her friendships are strained, at best…And her job as a waitress at a Hooters knock-off is the definition of unrewarding…But, after she jumps through hoops at a series of very unique and macabre auditions…Her whole life…Hell…Everything about her…Begins to change…I loved Essoe’s performance in this…She has shown up in a shit-ton of films since…And when I prepare to watch them…I always go in with a higher level of hopefulness…And it is based solely on this performance right here.

The Invitation (2015) – This film was directed by Karyn Kusama, who was heralded for her debut film, Girlfight…But maligned for her next two films…Rightfully so, for the 2005 shit-show that was Aeon Flux…But in my humble opinion, not so rightfully so for her next film, Jennifer’s Body…In this mysterious slow burn horror film…Will, who is played to perfection by Logan Marshall-Green (Upgrade)…Takes his new girlfriend, Kira, to a very special dinner party…His ex-wife and her new husband have invited all of their old friends back together for a reunion…Of sorts…There is little more about the plot, or story that needs to be said…The tension that gets ignited rather quickly…Keeps the suspenseful home fires burning all the way through…To the thrilling, and frightening climax…And that’s truly what a slow burn should be…A tense, pulse-racing, heart-pounding, emotionally-fueled, film that keeps you intrigued while you sit on the edge of your seat…Waiting for the burn…And when it comes…And the nature of the cult in this film is finally revealed…Oh man…You’re gonna need to stock up on the aloe gel.

The Endless (2017) – Whenever I am in the mood for a wee bit of mindfuckery…Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are my go to guys…Their films have made my head spin, my eyes roll back in my head, and made me feel like I’m having that long-awaited acid flashback that was promised to me all those years ago…With this film…They take their masterfully manufactured mindfuckery and relocate it way out into creepy cult country…The directors also star in this one…Playing brothers aptly named Justin and Aaron…Each with different memories of they place where they grew up called, Camp Arcadia…One brother recalls the experience as living in a peaceful commune…The other…As surviving a deadly cult…And when the brothers receive a mysterious videotape from Camp Arcadia…They decide to leave behind the half-lives that they have been living…And go back to where it all began…And that folks…Is when Justin and Aaron take us to the weirdest cult on this whole damn list.

The Ritual (2017) – In this British film which was picked up and released as a Netflix original…Director David Bruckner (The Signal, Southbound) tells a tale made up of tragic loss…Crippling grief…Redemption through recompense…And a shit-ton of terror…When four lifelong friends travel to Sweden to go on a hiking and camping trip…All to honor the wish of another…They encounter a frightening mystery that while it unravels…Chips away at the four men until they themselves begin to unravel…The chameleonesque Rafe Spall turns in another great performance in this dark and trippy descent into a genuinely bizarre, supernatural cult…And when you climb aboard and depart on this all-expense paid trip to the Swedish version of Hell…Let me tell ya…It was a wild fucking ride…And even though it wigged me the fuck out…It’s one that I am looking forward to going on that ride again…Very soon.

Apostle (2018) – In this dark and twisted little period piece…Gareth Evans, the man behind the amazing action film, The Raid: Redemption…Takes us back to the early 20th Century…And to a remote island inhabited by a very bizarre little cult…On the way there…We meet a man who was already addled by demons of his own…Thomas, played by the amazing Dan Stevens…Who was sent there…Much like Edward Woodward’s character in the aforementioned film, The Wicker Man…To investigate a disappearance…In this case…Thomas has been dispatched to find his sister…Who has apparently been kidnapped…And is being held by this mysterious cult…In a perpetual fugue state induced by drugs and whatever weird shit’s going on here…Thomas somehow manages to infiltrate the group and work his way in…Close enough to find his sister…But also…Close enough to find himself…In a situation that proves as difficult to navigate…As it does to escape…Check this one out, folks…It’s all kinds of messed up.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: It’s the Freakin’ Halloweekend!

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

It’s the Freakin’ Halloweekend!

So…

Because Halloween falls on a weekend this year…

Friday night…

All day Saturday…

Saturday night…

And all day Sunday…

Will henceforth be referred to as…

The Freakin’ Halloweekend!!!

And…

Every year around this time…

There is one thing…

That always puts me in the mood…

For my favorite holiday season…

More than anything else…

And that thing is…

John Carpenter’s immortal 1978 classic…

Halloween.

But this year…

In addition to the penultimate film…

That takes place during the holiday it’s named for…

I wanted to offer up my current top ten recommendations… 

And because all of these films take place during this particular holiday…

They automatically carry with them…

An eerily, evil element…

A sprawling, spooky sensation…

That injects itself into the veins…

Of each and every one of these films…

And when you watch them…

They will infect you…

With a delightfully, devilish disease…

Known as…

The Halloween Spirit.

So, let’s take a chronological look at my Top Ten scariest, spookiest, and possibly even unknown to you, It’s the Freakin’ Halloweekend Movies…That are guaranteed to put you in that magical Halloween mood…In the years following John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) – Okay this wrongly maligned film is a close second to the 1978 original…In my opinion…The Freakin’ Halloweekend wouldn’t be complete without it…Hell…I start hearing the Silver Shamrock song in my head…Halfway through the first week of October for fucks sake…And as I’ve mentioned before…The butt-hurt bawl-babies that decided Michael Myers should be the next Jason Fucking Voorhees…Were dead wrong…And had they not created such a stink…John Carpenter might have been able to continue the franchise in the way that he had always intended…His plan was to release another original Halloween-themed film…Every year…Around Halloween…Just imagine if that had actually happened…How many more amazing films would there have been on this list?!?…So to those of you out there who still hate this one…I say to you…Thanks an ass-load, you stinkin’ fuck-puddles…As much as you think I’m a douche for loving this film…Your short-sighted love of Michael Myers…Robbed horror fans of the potential for an shit-ton of amazing Halloween-themed films…Thus making you…A waaaay bigger douche.

Night of the Demons (1988) – Within the first few moments of the animated title sequence…If you aren’t completely giddy with the Halloween Spirit…Then there’s gotta be something wrong with you…In this fun romp through a typical All Hallows Eve in the 80’s…Social misfit, Angela and her friend Suzanne, played by the titillatingly trashy Linnea Quigley decide to throw a party at the local mortuary…Before long it’s a bunch of dudes with mini-mullets that would’ve made Eugene Porter proud…And ladies with enough Aqua-Net in their hair to single-handedly cause global warming…This naughty and bawdy amusement park ride is still a ton of fun to go on…There is a perfect amount of horror crammed into this 80’s party movie…And when this party gets started…Everyone screams, “It’s the freakin’ Halloweekend!”

Idle Hands (1999) – In the 90’s…Stoners changed their name…To slackers…The nomenclature didn’t continue into the next decade…Making it exclusively…A 90’s thing…Thus forcing me to call this film…The quintessential slacker horror movie…It tells the gory and hilarious story of Anton, played by Devon Sawa (Final Destination)…A slacker who realizes…After he murders his parents, and his two perpetually baked best friends…That he is now the proud owner of a possessed right hand…Anton’s aforementioned recently murdered pals thankfully chose the undead route over the highway to heaven…Pnub, played by Elden Henson (The Mighty Ducks) and Mick, played by Seth Green (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) were hilarious in the roles of the zombie stoners…Um, I mean…The zombie slackers…So bust out the Devil’s Lettuce and fire up a film that is guaranteed to put you in the right mood for the freakin’ Halloweekend.

Ginger Snaps (2000) – The next horror film to enjoy during your freakin’ Halloweekend…Tells the tale of a couple of twisted sisters who have a uniquely shared obsession with all things macabre…When Ginger gets her first visit from Aunt Flo…A cavalcade of events begin to unfold that…Although it is difficult to believe…Are actually a shit-ton scarier than a teenage girl going through puberty…This film breaks new ground in the werewolf genre…Filling it with all the angst of an independent film about the shared experiences of teenagers…And also adding strong, and unique female leads to a primarily male-dominated sub-genre…This film not only quickly rose to the top and became one of my all-time favorite werewolf movies…But it also became…One of my all-time favorite Halloween-themed horror films.

May (2002) – Lucky McKee wrote and directed this…His stunning debut…And it was a film that let me know just what kind of filmmaker I was dealing with…It’s a totally fucking warped story about a terminally strange gal named May…She is a troubled twentysomething whose desperate attempt to connect with someone…Mixed with her inability to make cogent decisions…Causes her to forge these connections by any bizarre and unnatural means possible…The ever-creepy Angela Bettis is at her absolute creepiest as the titular character…And if that wasn’t creepy enough…This must watch film for your Halloweekend…Also features a creepy doll…One that May’s creepy Mom gave to her…And that might seem like too much creepy…But in my opinion…It’s the perfect amount.

Murder Party (2007) – The next must-see film to view during your Halloweekend is is the feature film debut of director Jeremy Saulnier…A director whose subsequent films…Have established him as someone who can create taut, intense thrillers that place unlikely protagonists…In situations that start out horrible…And only get worse as the film progresses…This gory, tongue-in-cheek debut shows where Saulnier cut his teeth on that premise…When we meet this film’s unlikely protagonist, Christopher…He appears to be…Well…Basically…Me when I was in my twenties…A lonely magoo with not much else in his life besides his cat and his love for renting horror videos…But just like I used to…Christopher longs for more…So when he finds an invitation to a “Murder Party” laying in the street…He decides that going to a Halloween party might be a good way to make some friends…Unfortunately…The narcissistic art school sociopaths who are hosting this Halloween party have other plans for Christopher…But just as he did in his later films…Saulnier teaches us in his debut…That things don’t always work out the way you plan.

Trick ‘r Treat (2007) – In this Halloween-themed horror anthology…We experience something incredibly rare…The individual stories are all equally disturbing and entertaining…And on top of that…The stories are interconnected in a way…That is the polar opposite of the formula normally found in anthologies…And then there’s Sam…He’s our fun-sized host…Who binds the whole tale together…Travelling freely from chapter to chapter…And let me tell ya, folks…When Sam sauntered onto the screen…The little fucker instantly became an iconic horror character…Director Michael Dougherty (Krampus) carefully balanced the horror and the humor in this film…And gave us a film that was guaranteed to be added to this Freakin’ Halloweekend must watch list.

The Guest (2014) – Adam Wingard is a director that I dig…A lot…The first one of his that I saw was You’re Next…And after that…I was totally hooked…This film feels like Wingard dug up a rusty Knight Rider lunch box…That was buried in a trailer park since the summer of 1986…He opened up this makeshift time capsule…And pulled out a VHS tape that when played…Contained a synth-fueled soundtrack…Stunning visuals…Understated and organic performances…And then he pawned it off as one of his own films…And…Speaking of the performances…I gotta say…Dan Stevens and Maika Monroe in particular…Turn out performances that are so compelling…Your eyes will be glued to the screen during every scene that they are in…This is a film about a family…Having a difficult time coping with the loss of their son, Caleb…Who welcome a stranger with connections to Caleb into their lives…He quickly begins to inject himself into the perceived problems that each member of the family is having…The results of every single one of these interferences will startle the audience…As the film bulldozes its way towards a climax that lands squarely in the middle of the freakin’ Halloweekend.

The Barn (2016) –  This one…Is a welcomed addition to my Freakin’ Halloweekend list…And has the potential to become a Halloween party selection for years to come…It’s Halloween night in the late 80’s and a bunch of partying teens accidentally awaken three evil creatures…Ones that actually feel like they could have been classic 80’s horror icons…The Boogeyman…The Candycorn Scarecrow…And, Hallowed Jack…This bizarre little low-budget film…Is equal parts cheesy and totally bad-ass…The memorable over-the-top kills are loaded with ooey-gooey practical effects…And writer/director Justin M. Seaman even threw in some horror icon street cred…With appearances by Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead)…And Ari Lehman (Friday the 13th)…So…If you are looking for an 80’s throwback that takes place during Halloween…Look no further.

Terrifier (2017) – In this…The final film recommendation for your freakin’ Halloweekend…Writer/director, Damien Leone…Introduces us to an upgraded variation of his already iconic character…Art the Clown…This creepy fucker…Made his debut in All Hallow’s Eve, a V/H/S style anthology film…But in this film…Art the Clown 2.0 is given the screen time that he needed…To really shine…Now with a character this reticent…You might be inclined to call him a mime…But fuck that shit…I can assure you…Art’s all clown…And…He’s not the laughing-on-the-inside kind of clown…He’s the royally-fuck-up-a-public-restroom-and-then-saw-a-motherfucker-in-half kind of clown…Folks…This is one of those rare horror films that manages to flood the screen with equal parts fright and gore…You know the kind of movie that makes you want to shit your pants and throw up at the exact same time…But…Be forewarned…Doing that will not only rupture the space-time continuum…But it will also rupture…Your small intestines.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: We Miss Going to the Movies.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

We Miss Going to the Movies.

When I was a kid…

I saw a creepy little black and white film on TV…

William Castle’s 1959 cult classic…

The Tingler…

It starred Vincent Price, as a mad scientist…

Who believes that we all have a creature inside of us…

One that feeds on our fears…

He decides to test his hypothesis…

On the unwitting patrons of a packed movie theater…

The horrors that occur inside this theater…

And the theaters on this list of film recommendations…

Just might…

In some small way…

Help to ease the pain…

Of not being able to go to the movies…

Either by letting you savor the flavor…

Of a tiny taste…

Of just what it is…

That we miss so much…

About going to the movies…

Or…

By scaring so much of the ever-loving shit outta you…

That it makes you…

Not miss going to the movies…

At all.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Missing Going to the Movies Movies…In the years following The Tingler.

Fade to Black (1980) – My friend, P.J. Ames turned me on to this film…Hell…He has turned me on to so many…That I could probably do a year’s worth of lists just on those films…But anyway…He put this absolute gem on my radar, and I can’t thank him enough…In this twisted and utterly brilliant little trip to the movies…We meet Eric Binford, played to perfection by Dennis Christopher…And to refer to young Mr. Binford as a film buff…Or even a cinephile, for that matter…Would be a grievous understatement…You see…Eric is a man obsessed…And…He feeds his obsession about old movies by working at a film distribution warehouse in Los Angeles…But…When he meets an Australian model…Who happens to be the spitting image of Marilyn Monroe…His obsession grows…Turns dark…And begins to completely transform him…Man…Let me tell you…This tale of a kid who was kicked around his whole life…And the only comfort he could find…Was buried deep in the escapism of watching films…Made me identify and even sympathize with the character…Well…Up to a point…And as far as films that feed my jones for going to the movies…This one really does it…Hell…It even has a legendary rooftop finale that takes place at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

 

Demons (1985) – In this film from Lamberto Bava…We get to go back to the movies again…By way of some free passes to a Berlin cinema called the Metropol…Once there…The two students who received the passes are subjected to a nightmare that closely resembles the one showing on the screen before them…When a prostitute enters the theater and receives a scratch from a mask…An apparent movie prop, on display in the lobby…All hell…Literally breaks loose…Bava does something completely different here…In this film…He takes demonic possession…And parades it around like an infectious outbreak of a zombie virus…It is a delightfully gory…Deliciously cheesy…Completely rewatchable classic…And the third and final act…Probably looks like what theaters would have looked like…Had they not been closed during a global pandemic…So perhaps you should consider this film…A wee bit of research…On how one should prepare for their eventual reopening.

 

Dead End Drive-In (1986) – Who’s up for a little Ozploitation on this list…Me…Me…Oooh…Ooooh…Over here…ME!!! If you couldn’t tell…I am a sucker for some good old fashioned extra sharp Aussie cheese…And this film reeks to high heaven from it…The probable cause of the stink…Is the man in the director’s chair…The director behind many of my all-time favorite Ozploitation films…Especially…1982’s Turkey Shoot (a.k.a. Escape 2000)…Brian Trenchard-Smith…In this one…He takes us to a dystopian nightmare where maladjusted youths get rounded up and put into makeshift concentration camps…That just so happens to be a chain of former Drive-In theaters…Now I know that Drive-Ins have been popping up everywhere in an attempt to fill the void left behind by cinemas…But this film still serves as a way of comforting a soul that is wounded by not seeing things on the big screen.

 

Anguish (1987) – In this meta-horror from Spanish director, Bigas Luna…We are given the movie-going experience by way of watching a bunch of folks visiting The Rex theater…As they enjoy a horror film called, The Mommy…Now this film within a film stars the ever-creepy Michael Lerner, as a surgeon who commits horrible murders at the telepathic behest of his psychotic mommy…And…Mommy is played by the ever-creepier Zelda Rubinstein…And as the events taking place in the film come to a head…And the surgeon reeks havoc on a theater full of moviegoers…The patrons of The Rex are subjected to horrors inspired by those seen on the big screen…And as the film moves into the final scenes…It becomes a film within a film within a film within a…Shit…I’ve lost track…Anyway…It made me crave going to the movies at least three times as much as most of the films on this list.

 

Popcorn (1991) – Here it is…That rare 90’s horror that I am willing to recommend…In this one…We are taken back to the big screen at the hands of a bunch of film students…Who decide to put on a movie marathon to raise funds for their university’s film department…The films are all schlocky, gimmicky, sci-fi-horror films that use effects like 3-D, to enhance their cheesy contents…Even some long dormant techniques like Odorama, and buzzers in the seats…Like the ones used in the aforementioned film, The Tingler…Are deployed to enhance the experience…The film…Much like the other films on this list…Comes to a head when the movie marathon is underway…That is precisely when the dreams of our protagonist, Maggie, played by scream queen, Jill Schoelen…Begin to become a reality…This film is a ton of fun…And is loaded to the gills with great scenes within the walls of that place that I am longing for…The cinema.

 

All About Evil (2010) – This entry on the list…Is a big, fat, raunchy hunk of B-Movie cheese…And I loved every stinky second of it…I mean…Not only did it contain Dreamlanders alum, Mink Stole…And Elvira herself, Cassandra Peterson…But, the damn thing was directed by legendary drag queen, Peaches Christ a.k.a Joshua Grannell…See what I mean? No? Well…If you watch this one…You definitely will…And as we take this particular journey back inside a movie theater…We meet Deborah Tennis…Played by the always entertaining, Natasha Lyonne…A damaged and disturbed young girl who takes over her father’s cinema…When she loses her shit one night…She discovers a penchant for two things…Serial Killing…And making movies…When she decides to host a premiere of her feature film debut at her cinema…That’s when she goes a little extra crazy…And, as the buckets of blood in this instant cult classic starts getting spilled…And all of the dead bodies start piling up…The folks who visited this particular theater are going to be jealous of us…Stuck at home…Doing the recliner rumba…While we Netflix and chill.

 

The Last Showing (2014) – Although it received abysmal reviews…I enjoyed this intense little film from across the pond…In it…Robert Englund turns in a refreshingly understated performance as a projectionist, working at a cinema in England…Who is being forced out of the booth and behind the concession stand…This injustice…Mixed with his disdain for what has become of the film industry…Causes him to turn his passion for film…Into a nightmarish attempt at creating one of his very own…He then traps two patrons, played by Finn Jones (Iron Fist), and Emily Berrington (Humans), inside the theater…And unbeknownst to them…He has cast the two of them in this psychotic production…Of a horror film that he is creating…Using a handheld camera, and the CCTV’s all around the interior of the cinema…And with these…He captures all of the torture that he subjects this couple to…They are forced to endure a nightmare in the cinema…Almost as bad as the time I saw Caddyshack II on the big screen…Well…Almost.

 

The Final Girls (2015) – I adore this one…I have recommended it in my 80’s Throwbacks list…And my Horror Fans in Horror Movies list…But this time…It got onto this particular list…Because of the fact that the movie theater featured in this one…Actually transports Max, played by Taissa Farmiga, and her friends…Directly into the movie that they are watching…That movie…Camp Bloodbath…Is an 80’s slasher starring Max’s recently deceased mother, played by Malin Akerman…Now once there…The story veers away from the theater…But keeps you immersed in the wonderful world of a cheesetastic 80’s slasher…It’s about as meta as you can get in a meta-horror…It is side-splittingly hilarious at times…And somehow through all of  the tongue-in-cheek nods to us horror fans…And all those great throwback kills…This film somehow manages to retain a big ol’ heart right at the center of it.

 

Nightmare Cinema (2018) – Now not only is this a perfect fit for this list…But this one here…Is a horror anthology done right…And for the folks that stumble into the Rialto theater…Each of them must endure watching their worst fears come to life on the big screen before them…Get ready, folks…Because I am about to name-drop my ass off…Okay…Here goes..The first one…Is directed by Alejandro Brugués, the man behind, Juan of the Dead, one of my all-time favorite zombie movies…And it is a delightfully unconventional slasher short…The next one feels like a warped episode of The Twilight Zone…And it comes to us from the man behind The Howling, and Gremlins...That’s right...Joe Freakin’ Dante…The next blood-soaked installment is the nastiest thing to happen to catholic school girls since Britney Spears…And comes from the man behind the crazy, kick-ass zombie/samurai film, Versus…And the adaptation of Clive Barker’s short story, The Midnight Meat Train…Ryûhei Kitamura...The next piece is a black and white tidbit of mindfuckery from the director of Hard Candy, and 30 Days of Night…David Slade…And then the whole thing wraps up with a segment from horror legend, Mick Garris…Who ties up the loose ends normally left hanging in these anthologies…With a little help from The Projectionist…Played by none other than…Mickey Rourke.

 

Porno (2019) – When I first heard about this film…I made the mistake of googling it…First I typed, “Porno”…And oh boy…That was not what I was searching for…Then I typed “Porno 2019″…Okay…A little less hairy…But still no…Then I typed “Porno 2019 horror movie”…And then…I was permanently scarred for life…So let me save you the trouble…And the time wasted on your therapist’s couch…In this…Our final trip back to the movie theater…It’s the early 90’s…And a bunch of sexually repressed teenagers who work at their local cinema…Are gearing up for their after hours viewing of either Encino Man, or A League of Their Own…But after a crazed hobo breaks in and reveals a secret door…The theater employees investigate and discover a film reel…Once it hits the projector…They unwittingly unleash a whole heaping helping of Hell’s horseshit…This independent horror film was a fun romp…But if you are a perverted atheist…And you know who you are…It’s even more fun…But more importantly…Out of all of the films on this list…This one…Spent the most time in the theater…Which…For a short time…Erased the stain of sorrow…From not being able to go to the movies.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Crappy Father’s Day!

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Crappy Father’s Day!

In 1980…

I watched Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation…

Of Stephen King’s The Shining…

And for the first time…

I discovered a father…

On the big screen…

That instilled the selfsame fear in me…

That my own father did…

Here was a man…

That at the start of the film…

Was utterly consumed by his demons…

And although those demons were already there…

By the film’s climax

  He found a whole shit-load of new demons…

When he took a job that brought he and his family…

To a place called…

The Overlook Hotel…

And once there…

His pre-existing demons…

And the ones he found waiting for him…

Within this horrifying hotel’s hallowed halls…

Came together…

To create a culmination of weaponized aggression…

That was assigned the sole purpose…

Of destroying his wife and child…

And as I sat there…

Watching this whole thing unfold…

I came to understand…

That my own father…

Much like the ones in this list of recommendations…

Was a lot like Jack Torrance…

In fact…

This pair of damaged alcoholics…

Were two squares…

Stitched into the same quilt…

And all I could think was…

Man…

I sure am glad that my old man…

Never took a job like this…

In a place like that…

But if he ever does…

I’m locking his ass in Room 237…

And following Dick Hallorann…

Right the fuck outta there.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Crappy Father’s Day Movies…In the years following The Shining.

Creepshow (1982) – Kinda like the creepy corpse that crawls from his grave in the first segment…This film screams “Father’s Day.” The opening sequence which takes us into the credits by way of the pages of a horror comic…Does so on the bruised backside of Stephen King‘s own son…A damn fine creator of horror, himself…Joe Hill…His heavy-handed, ham-fisted, hater of horror comics of a father, is played by horror icon, Tom Atkins…Who after berating and torturing his son for being…Well…One of us…He kicks this whole film off with that delicious Father’s Day vibe by informing his wife in a condescending tone that his horrible behavior is justified because…”That’s why God made fathers, babe…That’s why God made fathers.” That amazing opening title sequence and the subsequent first segment are more than enough reason for this film to have earned a spot on this list.

 

The Stepfather (1987) – Terry O’Quinn (Lost) was incredible in his role as the menacing chameleon-like serial killer, Henry Morrison…I mean Jerry Blake…I mean…Wait…Who is he here? After murdering one family, and then changing his identity, and moving on to a new one…This guy has an equally hard time remembering who the fuck he is…This time, he has set his sights on a widow and her teenage daughter, played by then-burgeoning scream queen, Jill Schoelen…As a stepfather…I can tell you that it is an extremely difficult transition to enter a family and take on a parental role…But when you are a serial killer…The transition is probably a whole lot tougher…And folks…I gotta say…This dude is fucking scary…He really is…For years…I had an extremely difficult time accepting him as any other character….Even when he played John Locke in Lost…I remember being like, “Nope…No way! He’s the fucking Stepfather.” That being said…Based on O’Quinn‘s bone-chilling performance alone…This film stands up after over thirty years…And without a doubt…Shines way more brightly than the unnecessary 2009 reboot.

 

Frailty (2001) – Oh man…I sure do miss me some Bill Paxton…This film marked his directorial debut…And even though he only helmed two films in his lifetime…This dark-as-sackcloth thriller is one of my all-time favorite scary films about religion…And it tells the story of the bizarre relationship between two sons…Fenton (Matt O’Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter)…And how they deal with their uber-religious, and most likely insane father, played by the aforementioned Paxton…The story plays into the established belief that religious extremism accounts for a shit-ton of life’s problems…But then…Out of left field…The film tosses those beliefs, and many others…Into reality’s wood-chipper…And as the dogmatic chips come flying out the other side…You will find that this film has taken you on a trip…One that will keep you guessing…Keep you uncomfortable…And most of all…Keep you entertained.

 

28 Weeks Later (2007) –  In the follow up to 28 Days Later...We follow two children who have been orphaned by the Rage Virus…And are now being stalked by their infected father…And this film’s Bad Dad is played by none other than Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting)…A cat who doesn’t need the Rage Virus to be totally fucking scary…Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Rose Byrne (Damages)…Were outstanding in the lead roles as the  protectors to the aforementioned children…And as they are forced to traverse a re-infected London…Their ragey patriarch is hot on their heels…Now, I’ll admit…This film is not as good as the original…But to be fair…It would be tough for any sequel to beat a taut script by Alex Garland that was brought to life by Danny Boyle…But the most important part for me…Is that this film is different…Different enough that it stands on its own…And when you look at a sequel in that way…Judging it solely based on its own existence…It gives you the opportunity to lose any bias…That’s the mistake we all often make with sequels…We think it’s a comparative study…And it’s just not. 

 

Father’s Day (2011) – In the 80’s…There was a little back room, inside the corner store, down the street from my house…Inside that room, were some slapped-together plywood shelves, filled with a cornucopia of cheese-tastic films from production companies like Paragon Video, Video Treasures, Cannon Films, and Vestron Video…Now let’s get something straight…These were not the best films…And that’s okay…Because these films were the most bizarre, the most outrageous, the bloodiest, the dirtiest, and often times, the funniest movies that I had ever seen…And that is what I loved about Father’s Day from Astron-6…Here’s a film that approaches the process the same way those great heaping buckets of cheese did in the 80’s…There are tons of tongue-in-cheek laughs…The gory practical effects are disgusting…And the nudity and sexual situations would make soft-core Skinemax actors blush…In this film…Steven Kostanski, Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney and Jeremy Gillespie…Are the boys that make up Astron-6…And they are paying necessary homage to those uber-cheesy 80’s home videos…And folks…I gotta tell you…They are really onto something here…So…If this Father’s Day…You just so happen to be in the mood for a heaping helping of father-raping…Then this is your film.

 

The Woman (2011) – This one comes from Lucky McKee…His debut film, May is still one of my favorites…This one is a pseudo sequel to the 2009 film, Offspring…And I have recommended it several times…I will probably recommend it again…Deal with it, fuckers…Pollyanna McIntosh, plays the titular Woman…Reprising her role from Offspring…A role which she reprises for a third time in her 2019 directorial debut, Darlin’…In all three films she plays the role of a feral cannibal woman to perfection…But in this film…Unlike the first film…Rather than abducting locals so she and the rest of her flesh-hungry clan can dine on them…She is the one who gets abducted…For the sick entertainment of the patriarch of the Cleek clan…The Bad Dad in this film…Is played by Sean Bridgers…A performance so good that the character that he portrays…Is quite easy to hate…The country lawyer is already pretty damn abusive to his entire family…Including his wife, played by Angela Bettis (from the aforementioned film, May)…But the abuse they endure is nothing compared to what he does to The Woman…Because his captive is someone he believes he can take full advantage of…Do whatever he wants with…He does just that…But hey.,..Not to worry…You remember the part where I told you she was a feral cannibal? Yep…That’s right…All that hard-to-watch torture and abuse in the second act is a whole lot easier to stomach…When the film becomes an all-out, no-holds-barred, revenge flick in the third and final act.

 

We Are What We Are (2013) – This film, directed by the amazing Jim Mickle, is a re-imagining, of sorts…Of Jorge Michel Grau‘s 2010 Mexican horror film of the same name…After speaking to Grau…Mickle and his long time writing partner, Nick Damici…Got the green-light to take the story in a new direction…The direction took the tale that they told into the home of an unusual and ritualistically strict family…A family that undergoes a huge cosmic shift…Following the death of their matriarch, due to Kuru disease…One of her daughters is compelled to take on a new role…While the other begins to question these family rituals…Bill Sage (Fender Bender) is outstanding as the terrifyingly reticent, and rigidly domineering patriarch of the Parker clan…And of course, I must mention the incredible performances of both actresses playing the two Parker daughters…Ambyr Childers (You) as Iris…And Julia Garner (Ozark) as Rose…This film made me feel like there was a massive storm that could be heard brewing in the distance the whole time that I was watching it…And when the eye of this storm finally came rumbling across my screen…It nearly blew me away.

 

Mom and Dad (2017) – Also found in my Crappy Mother’s Day post…This was a blast to watch…Brian Taylor the man behind the high-octane action franchise, Crank…And the man who developed the dark and twisted TV series Happy!…Wrote and directed this pitch-black horror comedy starring Selma Blair as Mom…And turning out a deliciously over-the-top performance that only he could pull off…Nicolas Cage is Dad…And when the weird static starts coming through all of the TV and radio speakers…The sounds that are emitted in this deadly transmission make the listener overwhelmed with the desire to murder their own children…And what makes this one extra freakin’ creepy…Is the calm, methodical, almost matter-of-fact way that the parents behave while trying to complete their task…This Bad Dad is not full-on raging out like the Bad Dad in 28 Weeks Later…He is not a killing machine, hell-bent on killing all of the world’s children either…You see, for this Bad Dad…It’s rather personal…He is focused exclusively on the eradication of his own progeny…And as messed up as it might sound for me to say it…It was a fucking hoot.

 

The Clovehitch Killer (2018) – In this slow burn serial killer story from director Duncan Skiles…We meet Tyler Burnside, portrayed by Charlie Plummer…He’s the epitome of a good boy…He’s good…He’s polite…He’s respectful…Hell…He’s even a freakin’ boy scout…But as the film progresses down the darkened corridors that dwell within almost every suburban home…Tyler becomes convinced that his own father, and scout master…Is the legendary Clovehitch Killer…A serial killer who had been plaguing their small Kentucky town…For years…Until the murders mysteriously stopped about ten years earlier…I gotta tell you…The multi-faceted performance that Dylan McDermott turned out, as the crappy father in this film, is one of his best…And as Tyler…With the help of his smart and savvy new girlfriend Kassi, played by Madisen Beaty…Begin to uncover the clues that reveal all of the secrets contained within this mystery…Secrets that are even darker, deadlier, and more disturbing than they could have ever imagined.

 

Come to Daddy (2019) – This film is the directorial debut of Ant Timpson…And after watching it…In my eyes…He has already established himself as an incredibly talented filmmaker…This film is like nothing that I have ever seen…It is an oddly offbeat, unbelievably uncomfortable, and viscerally violent tale that really puts the strange in estranged…Elijah Wood plays Norval…A guy who after receiving a letter from a father that he hasn’t seen since he was five…Travels to his remote home in Oregon to reconnect with the man…And when we meet the man…Played to perfection by the perpetually creepy Stephen McHattie…That is precisely when our lives, and the life of Norval…Get thirteen shades of fucked-up…We the audience are forced to bear witness to the cavalcade of darkly humorous and completely unsettling situations that are thrust upon Norval…And even though I agreed with the astute assessment that Norval is indeed a rat-fucker…What he endures during this visit…Might even be…More than the little rat-fucker deserved.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Don’t Touch the Clickah, Kid…This Movie’s Wicked Pissah.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Don’t Touch the Clickah, Kid…This Movie’s Wicked Pissah.

In 1976…

Steven Spielberg sent the entire world…

On a terrifying trip to the fictional town of Amity, Massachusetts…

And it was the first time that a film showed me…

A freckle-faced seven-year-old kid…

Growing up in a microscopic town…

In rural New Hampshire…

A truth that I already knew…

And that truth was…

New England…

Can be scary as fuck…

And in this film…

And the other films that I am recommending to you…

New England…

Isn’t just a spooky setting…

It isn’t just a baleful backdrop…

It’s more like a shifty-eyed, creepy-looking extra…

That just so happens to be…

In every fucking scene.

Okay, kid…Let’s take a chronological look at the best, most underrated, and possibly even unknown to you, Wicked Pissah New England Horror Movies…In the years following Jaws…That you may not have seen…But should.

Ghost Story (1981) – Now this little favorite of mine…Was filmed not too far from where I grew up…And it captured the vibe of that part of New England perfectly…In fact…The wintry exteriors were equal parts picturesque and nightmarish…Which is an almost perfect way to describe New England in the wintertime…Growing up here…You sometimes take it all for granted…But even when a New Englander like me…Sees the ever-changing landscape that fueled not only my own nightmares…But the nightmares of horror legends like Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft on the big, or little screen…I get the same spooked out, mega-creepy, about-to-shit-your-pants sorta feeling…That those of you who aren’t New Englanders get…And this film doesn’t just have an overflow of that vibe…It also has some incredible practical effects from Rick Baker…And folks…This film also had one more thing…That scared this New Englander…Even more than New England does…Yep…That’s right…You guessed it…Alice Fuckin’ Krige.

 

The Dead Zone (1983) – Sure…I could have filled this list solely with films based on Stephen King novels…But I decided to pick just one…I mean…It’s only fair…I gotta share the love…And if there’s one to pick…I’m going with the King adaptation that not only screams New England…But it also has enough of director David Cronenberg’s uber-creepy cinematic ooze plastered all over it…To make this film a haunting amalgamation of two great horror minds…All rolled into one…Like an eggroll filled with live cockroaches and tarantulas…And then there’s the actor responsible for bringing the amazing character of Johnny Smith to life…Christopher Walken…In one of the most haunted performances ever to be captured on celluloid…And man…Walken portrayed the torment…The anguish…The horror…Of living inside the skin of Johnny Smith…Like nobody could have…And the indelible mark that performance left behind…Firmly cemented this film…Into the annals of New England horror movie history.

 

Re-Animator (1985) – When Stuart Gordon brought H.P. Lovecraft’s version of the Frankenstein mythology to life…He also gave life to the iconic character of Herbert West…A mad scientist seemingly cut from the same genetic cloth as Ol’ Doc Frankenstein himself…And this utterly deranged role has been played to perfection over the years by Jeffrey Combs…Now Lovecraft knew about this New England being creepy thing…Long before I did…Hell…It was even long before Stephen King did…Lovecraft spent his entire life in New England…And many of the settings that he created were based upon actual places that he had seen…Even this one…Which takes place within the ivy-covered walls of Miskatonic University…A fictional prestigious campus on par with Harvard…Nestled in Arkham…A fictional Massachusetts town…And the shit that goes down in that creepy little burg…Is enough to make you lose your mind…And maybe even…Your head.

 

Beetlejuice (1988) – Far too often…People forget that this film’s dark underbelly is freckled with one of the most frightening depictions of the afterlife…I think folks sometimes forget that the stink of horror is all the fuck over this 80’s cult classic…And I betcha it is sometimes forgotten that this is a quintessential New England horror film…From the flannel-clad Adam Maitland…To his staycation-happy wife…To their Volvo…Hell…To one of the most memorable covered bridge scenes since Silver Bullet…This film captures the sunny, simple, quiet, and quaint side of a little New England village…Which is an ideal counterbalance to the twisted underworld that the Maitlands uncover…One filled with perpetually ineffectual, immortal public servants serving an equally ineffectual eternal bureaucracy…And if that wasn’t enough of a contrast…The Maitlands also have an unhinged, undead flim-flam man living in the cemetery of the scale model of their tiny New England town…The one that Adam built…Back when he wasn’t so…Well…You know…Recently deceased.

 

In the Mouth of Madness (1994) – In this Stephen King adaptation about a horror writer who writes about a fictional town in New England whose recent work causes the reader to lose his mind is…What’s that? What?!? What the fuck do you mean this isn’t a Stephen King adaptation? But it’s about a horror author…Yeah, but the town he writes about is in New England…What? Oh…It’s not Maine? New Hampshire, you say? Oh…Okay…My bad…Anyway…When we the audience follow John Trent, played by Sam Neill…Into the formerly fictional town of Hobb’s End, New Hampshire…His descent into madness is flavored with all of the selfsame creepiness that surrounded my New Hampshire home…This film is not only one of the last great scary stories to come out of John Carpenter’s filmography…It’s also a bonafide staple on any list of essential New England horror films…Especially mine.

 

Lake Placid (1999) – In this tongue-in-cheek monster movie…We travel to Maine…A place known to tourists as Vacationland…And word of this apparently spread to the giant saltwater crocodile community…Because one of their ranks decided to take some time off in Black Lake…This film is a ton of fun…I can’t get enough of it…Especially the perpetually profane performance by Betty White…Everyone knows the only thing better than a toddler swearing…Is a little old lady swearing…But what really does it for me…Is the fact that growing up…I swam exclusively in ponds and lakes that resemble the one depicted in this film…And the fact that every time I stuck even a big toe in those pitch-black, mirrored shores…I was always completely shit-scared for a few minutes…Because…All I could think about back then…Was what the fuck might be swimming around…Just below the surface…And those dark, foreboding bodies of water…Instilled an inherent fear that coursed through my veins…And left behind a gnawing chill that once it had crawled up the back of my neck…It stayed there…For years to come…And that’s what makes New England lakes like this one…Such a scary setting.

 

Session 9 (2001) – Directed by Brad Anderson (Transsiberian)…This dark and undeniably eerie film…Takes us to New England…For real…Anderson doesn’t sell the setting as a fictional construct…Instead he chucks us headlong through the front gates of the Danvers State Hospital…A now defunct asylum in Massachusetts…One that not only has a haunted past that is well known in these parts…But it was also the inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft’s Arkham Sanitorium…Which in turn became the inspiration for Arkham Asylum…The institution which houses a great number of baddies from Batman’s rogues gallery…In this tale…We meet a group of workmen who have one week to remove the asbestos from within the confines of the hospital…Let me tell you folks…This setting was already so fucking spooky…That the director did absolutely nothing in the way of set design…Everything that you see there…Was there when they arrived on set…The film reveals the mystery within…In a purposefully measured pace…Which only serves to ratchet up the tension in this already tense New England horror.

 

We Are Still Here (2015) – Okay here’s a supernatural slow-burn that takes place in the dead of winter here in New England…This film is the directorial debut of  Ted Geoghegan (Mohawk)…And it starts out like your typical New England haunting…Grieving couple Paul and Anne move into a quaint little home…In a quaint little town…Following the tragic death of their son…Anne is played by horror legend, Barbara Crampton…Who thankfully has had a resurgence on the blood soaked screen of horror movies, lately…And if that wasn’t enough genre film street cred…You’ve got Lisa Marie (Sleepy Hollow) and Larry Fessenden (You Don’t Know Larry Fessenden?!?)…Rounding out the cast…And as Anne and her husband begin to peel away the mystery of this haunted home…The truth that is revealed…Comes skipping down the hallway…Holding hands with the stuff that fuels our nightmares…The final act of this film is one of the scariest…One of the bloodiest… and contains some of the most original special effects…That I have ever seen in a ghost story.

 

Knives Out (2019) – Although not a horror…And believe me…I ain’t apologizing for that…This film represents the long awaited, and delightful return of the whodunit…This wonderful film comes from Rian Johnson (Looper)…And takes us inside the walls of a New England mansion…Filled with some of the most colorfully crafted characters to ever hit the screen…This was refreshingly smart…And loaded to the rafters with acerbic wit…And not to mention…A heaping helping of biting social commentary…The goal of which….Is to shine a spotlight on the vast chasm between the two remaining classes…In not only New England…But the rest of the country as well…The rich…And the poor…And the water found in the raging river flowing through that chasm…Is poisoned with toxic levels of misunderstanding and disdain…Which builds great tension…Delivers great laughs…And uncovers great truths.

 

Color Out of Space (2020) – Two things that haven’t happened for me in quite a long time…The first…Is seeing a film based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft…Which hasn’t happened for about ten years…And the second…Is seeing a film directed by the incredible Richard Stanley…A man who following a failed attempt at bringing H. G. Wells’ classic tale, The Island of Doctor Moreau to life…Got royally fucked over by the machine known as Hollywood…And ran screaming away from the director’s chair…Hell…It has been over twenty-five years since his last feature film was released…And those of you that were fans of his debut film…The sci-fi/horror cult classic, Hardware…Or his sophomore effort…The horror/western with its own level of cult status, Dust Devil…Fear not my fellow Fanleys…He’s back…And after seeing this delightfully surreal addition to the canon of Lovecraft adaptations…I cannot help but wonder what magically maniacal movies…Would have been crafted by this artist…In the past two decades…Had he not been royally corn-holed by a couple of narcissistic, over-indulged actors, and the short-sighted, small-minded studio executives that indulged them.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Crappy Mother’s Day!

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Crappy Mother’s Day!

In 1976…

Brian De Palma brought to life…

Stephen King’s Carrie…

And this was the first time…

That I saw a mother on the big screen…

As scary as mine…

Especially when my mother wielded…

A wooden spoon…

Or a shoe…

Or a broom…

Or whatever the fuck…

Was within her reach…

You see…

The 70’s were like a zombie survival film…

All of us kids were cast as the zombies…

And the grown-ups were cast as the survivors…

And in order for them to survive…

They used anything they could get their hands on…

As a weapon…

Okay…

Pop quiz, hot shots…

Ever been smacked with a Sears catalog?

Ever been beaned by a beaded, brown leather handbag?

Ever discover which end of the vacuum cleaner hose…

Is the business end?

No?

Hey…

Good for you…

Because that means…

You’re probably way more normal than I am…

But a whole lot less likely…

To be able to take a punch.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Crappy Mother’s Day Movies…In the years following Carrie.

The Brood (1979) – From the warped and wonderful mind of David Cronenberg…Comes a tale that whips up a bizarre mix of therapy…Motherhood…And body-horror…This film has Oliver Reed playing Dr. Reglan, a psychologist, who uses an experimental therapy…To help a former abuse victim, played by the mega-creepy Samantha Eggar…To learn how to deal with her demons…But he underestimates, not only the effects of his treatment…But also, what his patient does with those effects…What’s that?…I’m sorry?…What effects, you ask? Well…What this treatment does…Is give her the ability to give birth to her psychological demons…And then these creepy little homicidal inner-children…Are running around doing all sorts of horrible things on her behalf…And folks, let me tell you…There are some startling and disturbing images here…And those images will stain your memory of Mother’s Day…Forever.

 

Friday the 13th (1980) – In this franchise-creating entry in the masked slasher sub-genre…Director Sean S. Cunningham introduced us to a character that would live forever in both films and our hearts…But before he did that…He introduced us to the woman that gave him life…Well…the first time, anyway…Let’s talk about this film…And to be fair…It needs no spoiler alert…Because if you are reading this list of horror film recommendations…Then you must have seen this one…And when you did…You discovered that the strong, unbreakable, maternal bonds between a mother and her son…Can make a mother hack the shit out of anyone that she blames for the death of her child…As far as crazy moms go…And this list has a lot of ’em…When Betsy Palmer turned in her performance of Mrs. Voorhees…She donned a pair of the ol’ crazy eyes that would have made a Rabid Rottweiler tied out in the yard… Run screaming into the woods.

 

Dead Alive a.k.a. Braindead (1992) – Peter Jackson gave us this gift…I can only assume that it is because he loves us…In this film…Elizabeth Moody plays the crappy mother…And she does it with style…While stalking her son Lionel and his new squeeze…She gets bitten by a Sumatran Rat-Monkey…Now…Her story arc following this bite…Takes her from domineering mum…To a monstrous undead mega-beast…And trust me when I say this…I have seen a shit-ton of blood-soaked films in my day…This is hands down…The bloodiest film that ever came across any screen that I’ve ever sat in front of…Now, don’t let the gore scare you away…Wait, that’s not right…Go ahead and let the gore scare you…But remember…As scary as all that gore is…There’s nothing scarier than Lionel’s mum.

 

Mother’s Day (2010) – Darren Lynn Bousman directed this film…Loosely based on a true events…This is a story about three brothers who don’t realize that their family home now belongs to someone else…After the youngest brother gets shot in a robbery…They flee to that family home…Where Beth, played by Jaime King (Black Summer)…Is throwing a birthday party for her husband, Daniel…Played by King of The Purge film franchise, Frank Grillo…The brothers take the couple and their friends hostage while they wait for their crappy mother to arrive and give them further instructions…And oh….What a crappy mother she is…Good ol’ Mom is played by none other than Rebecca De Mornay…Who somehow manages to turn in a performance that makes her character from the Hand That Rocks The Cradle look all sweet and innocent…She is the stuff of nightmares, people…Seriously…I hadn’t seen her in anything for years…And when I saw her in this…Let me tell you…I was blown the hell away…She is the twisted…Crooked…Scoliosis-riddled backbone of this film…You gotta check her out.

 

Mama (2012) – Jessica Chastain (Stephen King’s IT) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones)…Play a couple who take in their nieces…After they are lost in the woods…For far too long…Following a car accident…This one was produced by Guillermo del Toro…And within a few minutes…You can feel the influence of the horror master…So anyway…Five years later…After being found alive…They move in with this couple…Comprised of the twin brother of their deceased father…And his girlfriend…And for them…The feral nature of the children is the least of their worries…Seems that they weren’t truly alone out there in those woods…But maternal instincts are a running theme here…And Chastain was amazing in her portrayal…Of a woman who seems to be uncomfortable in such a maternal role…Yet…Is the one who develops a formidably fierce protective nature…And as things progress in the deeply swirling downward spiral of this film…It seems to me…That she is the only person in the film…Deserving of the title, Mama.

 

Stoker (2013) – In Chan-wook Park‘s American debut…He departs from the intense revenge flicks he’s become so associated with…And brings to life a slow-burning tale of family…Dysfunction…And mental illness…Quite a leap…From the visceral intensity of Park’s Oldboy…This film is atmospheric…And charmingly creeptastic…Top notch performances all around in this one…You’ve got…Mia Wasikowska as India…And Matthew Goode as Uncle Charlie…The way these two characters evolve at the same time…While still remaining intertwined…Is like watching kudzu growing on the side of a southern highway…Their relationship is…Well…It is unsettling to say the least…But in honor of Crappy Mother’s Day…The frosty performance of Nicole Kidman…As this film’s unhinged maternal figure…And the driving force in this film…Is the most unsettling thing of all.

 

The Babadook (2014) – Okay…Let me start with the fact that this was the first time in my life that a pop-up book made me shart myself…Okay, that outta the way…Here’s a story of a woman who in the deep dark depression that followed the passing of her husband, had a hard time mustering up motherhood. Her son suffers from what she believes is an irrational fear of monsters, that alienates them both from the outside world…Now…Noah Wiseman, is either an incredible child actor…Or he just might be the most annoying child on the planet…But that being said…It was pretty messed up…During the first and second act of the film…When his mom thinks he is full of shit…Because she isn’t exactly the warmest, softest place for a kid to land…It isn’t until she softens up a little…Shows a modicum of sympathy…And actually starts believing him…Cue the World’s Creepiest Pop-Up Book…And…That’s when things get really fucking messed up.

 

Goodnight Mommy (2014) – This Austrian film came into my life…About four decades after I had recovered from my traumatic twin experience with 1972’s The Other…And guess what, folks…It wasn’t nearly enough time…The twins here are Elias and Lukas, and they are kind of Yin and Yang at first, but as the darker forces of Lukas begin to have a greater influence on Elias…It’s all Yin and Yin from there on out…Elias, and his twin brother Lukas are focused…Or perhaps obsessed is a better word…On their bandaged mother…Who is home recovering from surgery…And as crappy as this mother is…She is not as bad as her kids…I think…I mean seriously…The mystery unfolds in a way where I genuinely didn’t know what the real story was…The tension ratchets up notch by notch in this film…Not just with the claustrophobic confinement that the country home provides…But the twins themselves create their own brand of tension…That will make the fucking hair stand at attention on the back of your neck…I found myself wanting to know the truth…And then immediately regretting that foolish fact-finding mission…And ultimately I spent the final act…Just wanting it all to stop.

 

Prevenge (2017) – Alice Lowe, who co-wrote and co-starred in Ben Wheatley’s 2012 pitch-black comedy, Sightseers…Takes the controls in this one…She wrote it…She directed…And she stars as, Ruth…A pregnant woman who after the loss of the baby’s father…Begins to take direction from her unborn child…These snarky requests from her thuggish fetus…Revolve around doing harm to the people…Who the unborn baby…Has deemed responsible for the climbing accident…That took her father away from her before they ever met…This unique slasher film is even more of a pitch-black comedy than Sightseers…And the hormone-fueled insanity of this main character…Our crappy mother-to-be…Could comfortably place her next to slasher icons of days gone by…But probably not…Most of those cats had some serious mommy issues…And this mommy…Would probably scare the ever-loving shit outta them.

 

Mom and Dad (2017) – This was a blast to watch…Brian Taylor the man behind the high-octane action franchise, Crank…And the man who developed the dark and twisted TV series Happy!…Wrote and directed this pitch-black horror comedy starring a deliciously over-the-top performance from Nicolas Cage as Dad…And Selma Blair as the majorly maniacal Mom…Who went from being a normal suburban mother…That is…Until the weird static started spewing out of all of the TV and radio speakers…And anyone that hears it…Is overwhelmed with the desire to murder their own children…And what makes this one extra freakin’ creepy…Is the calm, methodical, almost matter-of-fact way that the parents behave while trying to complete their task…They are not raging out like in 28 Days or Weeks Later…They are not killing machines hell-bent on killing all of the children out there, either…It’s rather personal…And that’s what makes this so scary…They are focused exclusively on the eradication of their own progeny…And as messed up as it sounds for me to say it…It was a fucking blast to watch.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: You’re Unbelievable.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

You’re Unbelievable.

It happens all the time…

Somebody knows what the fuck is going down…

And nobody believes them…

Especially…

In horror movies…

The first time that I experienced this in a film…

Was in the 1978 remake of…

Invasion of the Body Snatchers…

Where I got to see…

The deep desperate desire…

Of the protagonists in that film…

Attempting to convince everyone else…

That they knew what the fuck was going down…

And just like in the films that I am recommending to you…

If somebody actually believed them…

Things might have gone down differently…

But…

To be fair…

Probably the fuck not.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, You’re Unbelievable Movies…In the years following Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

American Werewolf in London (1981) – In this, one of my all-time favorite films…Director John Landis tells the tale of David and Jack…Two college students backpacking their way through England…In this film…At different times…Each of these characters has their claims and protestations…Disbelieved…David wastes countless breaths trying to convince both the authorities…And the medical staff that cares for him…That he and Jack were not attacked by a man…And poor…Ever-decomposing Jack…Wastes countless undying breaths…Trying to convince his best friend that he is a werewolf…And by the light of the next full moon…Will kill again…Both men…Were disbelieved…And had either respective listening party…Actually taken them seriously…Things definitely would have been…A whole fuck-load better.

 

Silver Bullet (1985) – I’ve always had a soft spot for this Stephen King adaptation…Maybe it was the Busey factor…Maybe it was the bone-chilling performance of Everett McGill…But most likely…It was the perpetually disbelieved character of Marty…Played by Corey Haim…That performance was genuine, organic, and filled to the brim with heart…It was easy to love this kid…But apparently…For those around young Marty…It wasn’t easy to believe him…He tried telling his sister…But to convince her…It took an intense nightmare of a scene with the recently enucleated Reverend Lowe…And then it took the two of them the rest of the film to convince anyone else…I mean…To be fair…As cool as Uncle Red was…He was still on the fence…All the way up until he was finally face-to-face with a fucking werewolf…But after that…Oh yeah…After that…He totally believed Marty…Better late than never, right?

 

Fright Night (1985) – In Tom Holland’s total freaking classic of a vampire film…We meet horror fan, Charley “You’re So Cool” Brewster…A kid who discovers that his next door neighbor is a vampire…And spends the majority of the film…Trying to convince everyone he knows and loves…Something that we the audience already know to be true…His girlfriend doesn’t buy it…Even his friend who bears the nickname, “Evil,” thinks Charley’s full of shit…So does his Mom…And the worst…The final fucking straw…Is when his girl and his friend enlist the help of Charley’s personal horror hero…Peter Vincent…And when a guy who spent his entire career portraying a Van Helsing-style vampire killer doesn’t believe you either…Well you just might be shit outta luck…William Ragsdale was perfect as the bumbling buffoon begging to be believed…And you can believe me when I say…That this is one of those great 80’s horror films…That never gets old.

 

Child’s Play (1988) – Tom Holland followed up Fright Night, with this disturbed little tale…And apparently…Holland loves when nobody believes his main character…Now to be fair…Nobody listens to the shit kids say in horror movies…But this is the penultimate example of this…When young Andy Barclay realizes that his new Good Guy doll is actually not such a good guy…He tries to convince everyone…Especially the choice few people who suspect that Andy has become a little…Well…A little murdery…But after a couple of truly shitty coincidences…Andy gets tossed into the booby hatch…But once he can no longer be blamed for Chucky’s stabby shenanigans…It becomes his mother who tries to convince others that a recently deceased serial killer inhabits the doll’s body…And not believing that Chucky is a killer…Well folks…That shit right there…Will get you killed.

 

Slugs (1988) – This Spanish/American production…Which was only released in a handful of theaters back in ’88…Was destined to flop at the box office…Hell if it wasn’t for home video…I wouldn’t have seen half of the movies from back then that I still adore today…In this one…We meet Mike Brady…Local health inspector…And apparently…An all-around unbelievable guy…He is the first, and for quite some time…The only person in this tiny town who believe that the recent outbreak of unexplained deaths…Is due to the toxic-waste-infused mutant slugs who now crave the taste of human flesh…He doesn’t catch a single solitary break until the slug expert shows up…Slug expert? Is that even a thing? Anyway…This film is a cheestastic good time…Chocked full of enough gooey gore to gag a maggot…Or in this case…A slug.

 

Candyman (1992) – This film is on the cusp of being rebooted…To be fair…It could go either way, folks…And I am skeptical…For one simple reason…This one…Is just fine the way it is…Fuck that…It’s way better than just fine…Especially for a decade devoid of great horror films…This film…Was born from the mind of Clive Barker…And the story…And the film…Became the stuff of legends…Virginia Madsen plays Helen Lyle…A graduate student who researches an urban legend from Chicago’s Cabrini-Green projects…As Helen summons this legendary figure…Her whole world begins to change…And not a soul believes her…In this film…The audience gets to experience not only the bridge between the worlds of reality and the supernatural…But also, the bridge between the world of an entitled, white graduate student, and the inhabitants of the projects…Unlike the supernatural force known as Freddy Krueger…An entity who also began as a man…Also became the victim of vigilante justice…And also became something more powerful…In order to facilitate his vengeance…The man who became Candyman…As a man…Committed no offense worthy of his demise…Therefore, his vengeance feels justified…Hell…It almost feels a bit like karmic recompense.

 

Take Shelter (2011) – Although not technically a horror film…This disturbing thriller comes from an incredible filmmaker named, Jeff Nichols (Mud)…And it takes us on a horrifying journey…Into the mysterious corridors of a potentially damaged human mind…And that potential is really what drives this film…Are his apocalyptic visions a precognitive response to an impending danger? Or just the dreams of a man slipping and sliding into a delusional state of psychosis? Curtis, is the man with the questionable mental health…And he is played to perfection by none other than, Michael Shannon…This actor is one of the most versatile actors currently in the business…Whether it’s the tender kindness that he displayed, as the morally-torn father in The Harvest…Or when he showed us who the real monster was, as the villainous Strickland, in The Shape of Water…Whatever he does…He has proven…That he can do it all…And with his portrayal of Curtis in this film…He makes us question his sanity…And that question…Once posed…Is what causes everyone in the film…And also most of us in the audience…To completely disbelieve him. 

 

Fractured (2019) – Brad Anderson…The man who gave us Session 9…Transsiberian…And…The Machinist…Is back…And tapping back into his dark, twisted psychological thriller wheelhouse…In this film…Anderson tells the tale of a fractured family…And the twists and turns that take the audience on its own journey of disbelief…Sam Worthington plays Ray…A husband and father who…Following an accident…Has to take his daughter to an out-of-town hospital to treat a broken arm…While waiting for his daughter, and his wife who accompanied her…To return from getting a scan…He falls asleep in the waiting room…When he awakens…All record of the admittance of his daughter have been erased…Hell…Even any memories of either his wife or his daughter…Have been erased from the minds of the hospital staff, as well…And what you are left with…Is a man who nobody believes…And this shit keeps on going like that for so long…That even the audience…Begins to have a hard time believing him.

 

After Midnight (2019) – Anyone who knows me…Knows how much I love The Battery…The directorial debut of Jeremy Gardner…It was a deeply personal, and utterly organic entry in the zombie genre…And this film…Carried a lot of the same heart and soul that Gardner clearly brings to both his scripts…And his films…In this one…Gardner plays Hank…A cat who following the sudden and heart-wrenching departure of his girlfriend…Is not just tormented by the loss…But also…Tormented by a monster…Each night…But much to his chagrin…And weighing heavily on his sanity…Is the fact that nobody believes him…This is a wonderful film…I dug the multi-layered relationship between Hank and his dearly departed Abby…That we get to see through a series of flashbacks…Gardner has a roguish charm…That by the delightful climax…Makes the audience incredibly sympathetic to the journey that he has been forced to take…On his own.

 

The Invisible Man (2020) – Leigh Whannell has been writing great horror films since he burst onto the scene with Saw…But after writing so many amazing films directed by his film school buddy, James Wan…Whannell took the helm for the first time with the third installment in the Insidious franchise…He followed that film…With a completely original and balls-to-the-wall sophomore effort called, Upgrade…And in that film…He displayed the same deft hand for suspense and chills…That he also brought to this tale…A classic tale that has been re-imagined almost as many times as Frankenstein and Dracula have…But this time…The once classic tale was flipped…And put squarely upon its head by Whannell…He made it something completely new…Something incredibly current…Something…In my opinion…So much more frightening than any other previous version out there…In this one…We meet Cecelia, played by the incredibly talented Elisabeth Moss…She is a woman suffering through spousal abuse on a level that would make Wendy Torrance shudder…And…She is completely convinced that even though her abuser is gone…Somehow…He is still tormenting her…And because nobody can see him…Yep, that’s right folks…You know what that means…Nobody believes a single fucking word that she says.

 

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes.

The human body…

Is subject to changes…

All the damn time…

Because…

With each passing day…

We age…

And due to this process…

In infinitesimal…

Microscopic ways…

With each passing day…

We change…

But sometimes…

Changes to the human body…

Can also come from outside sources…

And when these sources are found in horror films…

That’s when we start talkin’ ’bout things like…

Aliens…Parasites…Demons…Insects…

Or even…Dare I say it…

Viruses…

And for me…

The first film to show me those kinda ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…

Was the 1975 cult classic…

Shivers…

Also known as, They Came From Within…

It sprang from the mangled mind of the master of body-horror…

David Cronenberg…

Telling the story of an aggressive parasite…

That once inside a person…

Grabs hold of their steering wheel, and starts doing all the driving…

And then…

Just like with the folks in the films that I am recommending…

It ch-ch-ch-ch-changes them into someone…

Or something…

Else.

Let’s take a chronological look at the best, most underrated, and possibly even unknown to you, Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes Movies…In the years following Shivers…That you may not have seen…But should.

Rabid (1977) – So…This is the aforementioned David Cronenberg’s follow-up to Shivers…In this one…Seventies porn star, Marilyn Chambers stars as Rose…A woman, who after a motorcycle accident…Is given an experimental plastic surgery technique to treat her burns…This treatment ch-ch-ch-ch-changes Rose…In fact…It causes her to grow a weird, little asshole in her armpit…Yikes…That sounds pretty bad right? Yeah…Um…I am so sorry to tell ya, folks…But Cronenberg’s not done with you, yet…Within this newly formed bunghole is…Well…How do I put this…Um…Okay…It’s a dog dick with a stinger on the end of it…And she uses her red rocket to not only feed on her victims…But also to erase all memory of her attack…And leave them infected with this macabre virus…I recently watched the remake of this film, by the Soska Sisters (American Mary)…But folks let me tell you…Even though those were some really big, and very bloody shoes for them to fill…They did one helluva job filling them.

 

Altered States (1980) – Ken Russell (Tommy) uses his distinct visual style…To bring us this twisted tale…One that was born in the noodle of writer, Paddy Chayefsky (Network)….And it tells us a story that serves as a warning…A warning of the dangers of blindly undertaking erudite pursuits…Especially when those pursuits are fueled by unchecked and untested experimentation…Eddie Jessup is a Harvard professor played by William Hurt…He decides to do a little dabbling with a combination of Mexican hallucinogens and sensory deprivation…The results of these experiments become progressively worse with each attempt…And as these attempts take him further down the rabbit hole…They also take him on a backwards journey through human evolution…And…With each trippy trip…Jessup ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…Right before our eyes…Into a previous version of his evolutionary self.

 

The Beast Within (1982) – Let me start by saying…Who the fuck chooses to drive through Mississippi during their honeymoon, anyway…Okay sorry…While visiting the countless wonders of rural Mississippi…Eli and Caroline MacCleary get stuck in the mud on the side of the road…Showing that chivalry is not dead…But may be on life support…Eli walks to the nearest gas station, looking for a tow…But by doing so on his own, he leaves Caroline alone…Did I mention it was the side of the road in rural Mississippi? Oh yeah…I thought I did…Well…Big shocker…Poor Caroline gets brutally attacked by a rapey creature of unknown redneck origin…Flash forward seventeen years later…And her son, Michael…A byproduct of that fateful night…Is starting to feel the effects of maturity…And let me reassure you…These effects are just a wee bit more frightening than sprouting pubes and having wet dreams…You see…This kid is starting to…Well…He is starting to…Ch-ch-ch-ch-change.

 

Nightbreed (1990) – In this maniacal monster movie from the macabre mind of Clive Barker…We meet Boone, played by Craig Sheffer…Who was at one time under the psychiatric care of, Dr. Phillip Decker…A cold, calculated character portrayed by the frequently referenced, David Cronenberg…Once Boone is manipulated and framed by Decker…He finds his way to Midian…And once there…He starts to undergo the ch-ch-ch-ch-changes that he had previously only experienced in his dreams…And now that he resides in this seemingly abandoned graveyard…That in actuality is a network of catacombs…Filled to the brim with every monster imaginable…What Boone has ch-ch-ch-ch-changed into…Just might be the only hope that this secret community has…And just might be the hero that leads these monsters back into the light.

 

Splinter (2008) – This movie opens at a rural isolated gas station, and once the remaining members of the cast show up…The film remains tethered to this remote and desolate location…Seth and Polly were on their way to go camping…But after being car-jacked by a couple on the run from the law…And can I just say…The incredible Shea Whigham, who plays the escaped convict/carjacker…Played the part to perfection…And after the two couples get a “splinter” in their tire…They are now trapped inside a podunk Oklahoma gas station…A place where a vicious parasitic entity is plaguing them…And if this parasite kills you…It then ch-ch-ch-ch-changes you…And if you happen to lose a bit of yourself along the way…It will even ch-ch-ch-ch-change your lost bits as well…This film has an original creature…With some awesome practical effects to go along with it…And the dread-laden pace moves at one speed…Constantly fucking break-neck…I recently watched this one again…And it is for sure…One of my favorites on this list.

 

Horns (2013) – Okay…I dig going into a film with pre-existing street cred…The street cred in this one is two-fold…The first fold is that it is an adaptation of an incredibly imaginative novel by Joe Hill (NOS4A2 & Locke & Key)…The second fold is that it is directed by Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension)…So even with a high bar going in…I was never disappointed with this unique tale of love and loss…Betrayal and revenge…And a whole lotta ch-ch-ch-ch-changes to the film’s main character, Ig (short for Ignatius}, played by Daniel Radcliffe…Now when we meet Ig…It is right after becoming the prime suspect in a murder…And not just any murder…The murder of his girlfriend, Merrin, played by Juno Temple…Ig wakes up from a drunken stupor…Only to find that he is growing a set of horns…This fact…Surprisingly…Is not the weirdest one contained in this film…And as far as I am concerned…The weirder things became…The better the film became…I really dug this one, folks.

 

Clown (2014) – In 2010…Christopher Ford and Jon Watts did something really ballsy…They uploaded a fake trailer to YouTube that announced that Eli Roth was the producer of this movie about a man trapped within the confines of a possessed clown costume…Roth knew nothing about it…But admired the balls it took to put his name on it…And then decided to back the film anyway….It is a dark, and gnarled story…About a nice guy named Kent…Who tries to be a nice Dad…But ends up ch-ch-ch-ch-changing into something completely evil…Kent dons a clown costume that he finds…So he can come to the rescue of his son’s clownless birthday party…After the party…Kent discovers that the costume has become a part of him…And after a short while…He too…Has become a part of it…Just like I did…The audience will probably find themselves having sympathy for this nice guy…That is…Until he ch-ch-ch-ch-changes so much…That they’re just not sympathetic anymore.

 

Bite (2015) – Now here’s a film that when it premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival…The audience were handed barf bags as they entered the theater…Most thought it was a gimmick…But for many…Those bags were actually put to good use during the film…And…Let me just say…You had me…At barf bags…This is some good, ol’ fashioned transformative body horror, in the vein of Cronenberg’s The Fly…When the film starts…It totally feels like a found footage horror about a bunch of girls on a Costa Rican bachelorette party weekend…But after Casey, the bride to be, gets bitten by a strange insect…She returns home and everything begins to ch-ch-ch-ch-change…Starting with the film switching from found footage horror, to a dark and cinematic body horror…As this insect bite begins ch-ch-ch-ch-changing Casey…She gets nastier…And nastier…And nast…Urrrp…Sorry…I just threw up in my mouth a little…Damn…Wish I had one of those barf bags.

 

Night of Something Strange (2016) – This delightfully twisted film was part of my Gross-Out Horror Films list of recommendations…Why you ask?…Sure…I could regale you with stomach churning tales of all of the strange somethings that went on…But that would just spoil all the fun…Instead let me tell you the story…Of Cornelius…A janitor…Played to perfection by Wayne W. Johnson…Who does something you should never-ever do while cleaning up in the morgue…Because of his NSFW behavior…He contracts a very strange STD…One that ch-ch-ch-ch-changes him and its many victims into sexually charged members of the walking dead…This is a film that somehow manages to combine the horror and the hilarity in a way that would have made Tobe Hooper proud…It sends greasy gobs of gooey gore all over the screen…And makes you uncomfortable in your naughty regions…It never holds back…And it never apologizes…So…If you offend easily…First…I’m genuinely surprised that you made it this far through my list…And second…You should never-ever watch this film.

 

Snatchers (2019) – This wild and crazy freakshow…Is the feature film debut of directors Stephen Cedars, and Benji Kleiman…Who took their short film and web-series of the same name…And turned it into this madcap manifestation of the macabre…Sara’s boyfriend, Skyler…Has ch-ch-ch-ch-changed since his time spent in Mexico…In an effort to reconnect with him…Sara decides to bone Skyler…The result of this union is Sara waking up the next day…And finding herself completely ch-ch-ch-ch-changed, as well…You see, folks…Sara isn’t just pregnant…She’s nine fucking months pregnant…And with the help of her estranged friend, Hayley…She goes to the OB-GYN to get checked out…And much to the shock and chagrin of everyone at this small clinic…She begins to give birth…To what…It’s genuinely hard to say…Not because I don’t want to spoil it for you…But…Shit guys…I’ve seen this twisted little flick…And I don’t know what the hell that thing was…This film has some gruesomely gory practical effects…And also offers a brutally hilarious look at the perils of unprotected teen sex.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Craving Human…Contact.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Craving Human…Contact.

Now that most of us…

Are practicing social distancing…

One of the things that we are all craving…

Is a little human contact…

But having a craving for humans…

Is not an entirely new concept…

Especially in horror films…

And for me…

The first time I witnessed this craving being fulfilled…

Was when I watched folks savor the flavor…

Of Drayton Sawyer’s award-winning chili…

In Tobe Hooper’s hilarious 1986 sequel…

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2…

And in that film…

As well as the ones that I am recommending to you…

The covetous complex…

The carnivorous compulsion…

The cannibalistic craving…

For human flesh…

Cannot be stopped…

It can only be…

Fed…

And when it’s time to feed this particular craving…

Always remember…

The wise words…

Of Ol’ Drayton Sawyer…

“Don’t skimp on the meat.“

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Craving Human…Contact Movies…In the years following The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

 

Ravenous (1999) – In this film…The desire to eat people is derived from an ancient Native American myth…One that says…That a person who consumes the flesh of another person…Not only takes their power…But also acquires a powerful urge to feed again…This behavior is first displayed…When we meet Colqhoun, played to devious perfection by Robert Carlyle (28 Weeks Later)…A mysterious stranger who stumbles into a remote military outpost…Before long we realize that Colqhoun is not just a man who likes to snack on his fellow man…But he has definitely become a monster…And his monstrous behavior…Is similar to that of a vampire…Or perhaps even…A sentient zombie…And Carlyle plays it like a fiddle…Sometimes written off as a black comedy…This dark and gritty horror film…Has far more black than comedy going on…And although the cast and crew suffered through constant changes during production…The finished product didn’t suffer at all.

 

We Are What We Are (2013) – This film was directed by the amazing Jim Mickle (Stake Land)…And after receiving the blessing of, Jorge Michel Grau…Mickle and his long time writing partner, Nick Damici…took Grau’s 2010 Mexican horror film of the same name…In a whole new direction…And the tale they decided to tell…Is about an unusual and ritualistically strict family…Following the death of their matriarch…Due to something called, Kuru disease…Which is apparently…A deadly side effect to cannibalistic eating habits…One of her daughters is forced to take on a new role…While the other begins to question every aspect of their family’s rituals…Bill Sage (Fender Bender) is outstanding as the terrifyingly reticent, and domineering patriarch of the Parker clan…And the incredible performances of both actresses playing Parker’s daughters…Ambyr Childers as Iris…And Julia Garner as Rose…Were outstanding as well.

 

Eat (2014) – This film tells the story of professionally stagnant actress, Novella McClure…Who as she struggles to get noticed in Hollywood…Develops a really bad habit…Nope, not cocaine…No sir, she’s not addicted to hot yoga…Her thing…Her thing is that she enjoys snacking on her own flesh…This is sort of the disgusting cousin to the film Starry Eyes, which illustrates the desperation felt by the struggling Hollywood actress…This film takes that desperation…And the effects of having to endure such desperation for years…Now…Self-cannibalism is a concept that I was first introduced to, when I read Stephen King’s short story, Survivor Type…A short story that was a part of his Skeleton Crew collection…This was a story that King claimed, “goes a little bit too far, even for me.” And as this actress begins to unravel…Or be digested…Depending on how you look at it…It may just go a little too far…For you.

 

Bone Tomahawk (2015) – So you might be asking yourself…How the fuck did a western get on this list…Well folks…This ain’t your Daddy’s western…Kick-ass director, S. Craig Zahler (Brawl in Cell Block 99)…Gives us this smart and original tale…So chocked full of gritty realism…And rich characters…That it drives this unique story all the way home…I was on the edge of my seat…All the way through…To the utterly disturbing final act…The climax of this film is what makes it unlike any western that I have ever seen…The events that take place…Would fit in nicely…Within the walls of the Elite Hunting Club, from the Hostel films…The cannibalistic troglodytes that make up the army of antagonists…In this film…Are scary as fuck…And in case y’all forgot…Kurt Russell is still a bonafide bad-ass…It just goes to show you, folks…Sometimes a western, isn’t a western…Sometimes it’s a taut thriller…And sometimes…It is a visceral…Flesh-noshing…Gore-fest.

 

The Green Inferno (2015) – In this film by horror-guru, Eli Roth…The director pays homage to the film that started it all for cannibal horror…Cannibal Holocaust…Even the title Roth selected…Also comes from an old school cannibal horror film…The story takes place in a similar setting…But under a different set of circumstances…I mean…What could be more fun than watching a bunch of pompous, self-absorbed, narcissistic tree-huggers go to the rainforest to stage a protest? Oh…I don’t know…Watching them get eaten? Hey it worked for me…Even though this picture was poorly received by the majority of critics…I gave my typical zero fucks about that…And I am fairly sure that this perpetually maligned director…Has learned to give the same amount of fucks, too…In this film…Roth once again holds true to himself…And to the source material that he was paying homage to…He gathered a group of some of the douchiest douche-nozzles that ever douched…And man…That made it so that when they finally pay the ultimate price…It was a whole lot easier…To stomach.

 

He Never Died (2016) – I just love this film…And you know what…It’s all Henry Rollins’ fault…This film is the sophomore effort of Jason Krawczyk…And it tells the story of Jack…A man whose regimented routine of a life has been designed to distract him from an overwhelming desire to consume the flesh of humans…As we delve deeper and deeper into Jack’s world…We try to understand exactly what kind of monster he might be…And in the darkened recesses of his life…We discover that he is an immortal being…One whose origin story was ripped from the pages of The Bible…And as we discover this origin…The things he does…The man he is…All come into focus…Just in time…To blow our fucking minds…Just a heads up…If you end up becoming a fan of this film…Just like I did…Then the following tidbit of news will tickle you…Krawczyk penned the script for a sequel…It is called She Never Died…And it is currently in post-production from horror director, Audrey Cummings.

 

K-Shop (2016) – This film tells the story of Salah, a young man who returns from university to help his ailing father run the family-owned kebab shop…After a deadly late night encounter with a customer…Salah takes a hard left at the fork in the morality road…And delivers a vicious variation of vigilante vengeance…On the ever-incorrigible, shit-faced, late-night kebab-consuming crowds of weekenders…Found aimlessly stumbling the streets of London…Oh man…This film goes dark as fuck…As it follows Salah down his gore-plastered rabbit hole…And all of those wasted weekenders line up for a heaping helping of very special kebab…And maybe even a little bit of karma, too.

 

Raw (2016) – In this twisted little French-Belgian horror film…From first time feature film director, Julia Ducournau…We meet Justine, played by Garance Marillier, a vegetarian veterinary student, who attends the same veterinary school that her older sister attends…And it’s also the same one where her parents met years earlier…While Justine is being subjected to some weird hazing rituals at school…She is forced to consume animal flesh for the first time…And with the…Well…Let’s call it…Help…Of her older sister, Alexia played by Ella Rumpf…The younger sister begins to learn things about her family…And herself…As she begins to transform right before her own eyes…This film was unique, folks…It was subtle in its delivery…It had genuine and organic performances…And ominous and atmospheric visuals…And because of all of that…This is a director…Whose career I will be following…For sure.

 

Darlin’ (2019) – It’s a no-brainer that this sequel to Lucky McKee’s 2011 film, The Woman…Was the directorial debut of Pollyanna McIntosh…Because after all…She played the titular character in that film…A character that she first brought to life in the 2009 film, The Offspring…And now…She breathes new life into her with this film…She gives us a story that picks up after the events that took place at the end of the previous installment…When “The Woman” left the Cleek farm with three little liberated girls in tow…The youngest one…Was Darlin’…And now we see that she has grown into a feral teenager…One who has become pregnant…And deposited by The Woman into so-called civilized society…In order to give her a so-called safe place to deliver…This film was a ton of fun…It was as crazy and feral as The Woman herself…And that’s right folks…You guessed it…I dug it.

 

Rabid (2019) – I will admit…That even though I adored Jen and Sylvia Soska’s debut, American Mary…I was a wee bit more than skeptical…When they announced that their next film would be a remake of this David Cronenberg classic…But I did what all good horror fans should do…I sucked it up…Put my preconceived notions behind me…And went in with an open mind…And I am here to tell you…I was not disappointed…The Soska Sisters accomplished what few directors can when undertaking the daunting task of re-imagining the work of another artist…Especially when that work is from an artist considered by most…To be one of the masters…And here is the reason why it worked…They were true enough to the source material…That they captured the essence of the journey that Cronenberg took us on…While still managing to inject something new and exciting into the tale as well…Oh yeah…And if you have been wondering lately about how epidemics happen…Or curious about how viruses can spread so rapidly…Pay close attention to the viral transmission scene in the bar…It was…As they say…A little too on the nose.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?

Self-isolation…

For most folks out there…

This is a new experience…

That is going to require them to become…

More flexible…

More resilient…

More patient…

As they adapt to being locked inside…

For an indeterminate amount of  time…

But…

For horror fans…

Self-isolation…

Is a fairly familiar concept…

And one that I first experienced many moons ago…

During my first viewing of George A. Romero’s 1968 horror classic…

Night of the Living Dead…

You see, folks…

In that film…

And in the films that I am recommending to you…

It’s two very simple steps… 

Things get royally fucked-up out there…

And then you lock yourself in here…

But…

It’s when those royally fucked-up outside things…

Start trying to come inside…

That things can get…

Even worse. 

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Movies About Self-Isolation…In the years following Night of the Living Dead.

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) – With nods to movies like Rio Bravo…And the aforementioned Night of the Living Dead…This film was snubbed here in the States…But adored in the UK…When we finally woke up on this side of the pond…This film became a beloved cult classic action film with a great script full of ballsy, smart-assed, strong-willed dialogue…A tension building score, and vivid visuals…All courtesy of a true artist…John Carpenter…In this film…A soon to be shut down police precinct…With a skeleton crew…And a handful of prisoners…Has to self-isolate…In order to protect themselves from a rabidly violent gang…These multi-cultural madmen are hell-bent on getting inside…And without the tenacity and intestinal fortitude of the handful of misfits within the confines of Precinct 13…These psychos would have had no trouble pulling it off.

 

Critters (1986) – Ahhh the 80’s…We had Gremlins…We had Ghoulies…We had Trolls…We had Munchies…Hell, we even had Hobgoblins…But of them all…My favorite little creature from hell…Or in this case, outer space…Was hands down the rolling furry nightmares known as The Krites…A rolling herd of insatiable intergalactic carnivores descends on a rural Kansas town…Like they were paying a visit to the Old Country Buffet…These toothy freaks have forced Farmer Brown and his family to self-isolate inside their farmhouse…In an effort to not become the next course in their never-ending nosh-a-thon…The kick-ass creature effects were done by The Chiodo Brothers who gave us Killer Klowns From Outer Space…I loved the hell out of this film…It was a bonafide barrel of fucking monkeys.

 

Panic Room (2002) – I am a massive fan of David Fincher…His stunning visuals tattoo themselves upon my amygdala…Starting with the ominous title sequence…And then followed the dark, and brooding atmosphere that Fincher creates here…I found myself already on the edge of uncomfortable…With my sights set on feeling claustrophobic…And terrified…This happens around the time that Meg Altman, played by Jodie Foster, and her diabetic daughter, Sarah, played by a pre-twilight Kristen Stewart…Self-isolate inside their brand-new panic room…This is in response to a gang of unsavory characters…Who break into their equally brand-new flat in Manhattan’s swanky upper west side…Those cast as the nefarious gang are as star-studded as the ones locked in the panic room…Jared Leto…Forest Whitaker…And a deliciously cold-blooded performance from former country music star, Dwight Yoakam…Folks, let me tell ya…This is a killer thriller…And one of my all-time favorites.

 

Dog Soldiers (2002) – British and Scottish soldiers are lead…Or more appropriately…Mislead…Into the Scottish Highlands…And forced into self-isolation to protect their platoon from a pack of werewolves…This was the first film of Neil Marshall, who directed the incredibly taut, and frightening 2005 horror film, The Descent…Initially airing on the SyFy Channel…Back when it was still the Sci-Fi Channel…Dog Soldiers later found its groove on the shelves of the last few remaining video stores…This cast boasts talented character actors like, Kevin McKidd (Trainspotting), Sean Pertwee (Gotham). and my boy, The Onion Knight, Liam Cunningham (Let Us Prey)… This movie is dark…Claustrophobic…And at times…Gruesome…Which, in my opinion…Perfectly describes self-isolation…Well at least it does…In my house.

 

The Mist (2007) – When Frank Darabont tackled this, his fourth foray into the Stephen King multiverse…He knew that the film he was making would be less a film about monsters…And more a film about the monsters we become when we fall prey to dogmatic rhetoric…These themes were personified in the incredible performance of Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Carmody…A character who relentlessly preaches fear and exclusion…All while she and a group of her fellow townsfolk are forced into self-isolation within the confines of their local supermarket…I was genuinely on the fence about what would be more frightening…Being locked in self-isolation with her…In here?…Or avoiding the supernatural nightmare…Out there? Personally…I would rather contend with the Lovecraftian Kaiju roaming the enveloping mist outside the store…Than spend six minutes of self-isolation in Aisle 13 with that blindly devout zealot…Anyway…This incredible film…All the way through to the mind-bending, heart-wrenching, soul-crushing final scene…Reminded me of the aforementioned, Night of the Living Dead…A film that just like this one…All the way through to the mind-bending, heart-wrenching, soul-crushing final scene…Confirmed our biggest fear…Humans are the real monsters…They always have been…And they always will be.

 

Doghouse (2009) – Imagine if you will…A group of friends are trying to help their friend heal his broken heart…They rent a minibus, and take a trip somewhere special…The small English village of Moodley…A place where the women outnumber the men four to one…But…Before these gents can capitalize on their numbers advantage…A biological agent has infected the female residents of Moodley…And transformed them all into cannibalistic zombies…This was another new and hilarious twist on the zombie genre…Not only having women be the monsters…But also having their intended prey being exclusively men…And these men…Are forced to split up…And self-isolate in various locations throughout this formerly quaint village…In an effort to stay safe…Before these ladies can capitalize on their numbers advantage.

 

The Pack (2015) – In this rather rural, extremely isolated Australian setting…We have the Wilson family…They live on a sheep farm…Where recently…An ass-load of their sheep have been mauled by unknown predators…And those predators eventually make their way up the food chain to…Yep…That’s right…You guessed it…The Wilsons…And they have self-isolated inside and on top of their home…In an effort to stay safe against these deadly predators…Did I forget to mention that the predators are…Dogs?!? I know…I know…You’re like…”Oooooh…Dogs…Wicked scary, bro.” But let me tell ya, folks…These dogs are vicious…Fast-as-lightning…And apparently super excited about the job fair…This coming Monday…At the Hell-Hound Recruitment Center…This film has all the tension of a self-isolation slasher film…You know…The ones where the killer is trying to get into the house to get you…And stops everyone outside of the house…From helping you.

 

Extinction (2015) – In this film…Our main characters…All three of them…Have self-isolated in an effort to survive a regular old zombie apocalypse…This apocalypse is followed by a nine-year period of perpetual winter…And during that time…The relationship between Patrick, played by Matthew Fox (LOST), and Jack, played by Jeffrey Donovan (Villains)…Becomes so strained that they are now self-isolating in two separate homes…Separated by a fence…Now here’s the fun part…And I’ve said it before…And I’ll probably say it again…To push a zombie movie over the top…You’ve got to give me something new…And the something new that this film brought to the genre…Is a whole mess of what can only be called “evolved zombies”…And by evolved…I don’t mean the “sort-of-thinking-but-still-willing-to-look-at-the-fireworks-sometimes-because-they’re-pretty” type of evolved zombies that we saw in George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead…No I’m talking about a zombie that has been changed on the genetic level…And has become something entirely unique…And scary as fuck.

 

Stung (2015) – I am a sucker for monster movies…Current ones with big budgets, and amazing effects…Older ones with no budgets, and super-cheesy effects…And all things in between…But one of my guilty pleasures are the monster movies about little bugs that have turned big and come seeking revenge on the humans for…Oh, I don’t know…Inventing pest control, I guess…The love affair started for me…When I was seven years old…And I saw the film, Kingdom of the Spiders…And this film…Rekindles that love affair…It tells the story of Paul and Julia…Who are catering a fancy party at a local mansion…Some experimental fertilizer mutates the local wasp population into giant killing machines…That’s when the caterers and the guests have to self-isolate in the hallowed halls of the mansion…The surprising thing about this film, is that it actually took itself seriously…The characters are believable and so are the performances…I especially dug Clifton Collins Jr., as the creepy little fucker who lives in the mansion…Folks…If you like monster movies…Or giant insect movies…Or both…This one’s for you.

 

VFW (2019) – Joe Begos made his directorial debut with the amazing alien abduction film, Almost Human…After watching and loving that film…I have continued to check out everything that the guy puts out there…His latest…Is a grungy, groovy, gruesome, grindhouse gore-fest…And combined with capturing the nostalgia of those B-Movie exploitation flicks…Is the gloriously nostalgic cast of characters that was captured, as well…You’ve got Martin “Sweep the Leg” Kove…George “NORM!” Wendt…Blaxploitation film legend, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson…David Patrick “Warriors Come Out And Play-ay-ay” Kelly…William “The Man Who Was Death” Sadler…And Stephen “Baster Taster” Lang…These talented cats play a bunch of elderly veterans who are forced to self-isolate in their VFW post…When a young girl seeks refuge with them, carrying a sack of stolen drugs…Dragging behind her an army of brain-dead junkies…And psychotic drug dealers…The only thing standing between them and her…Are the walls of the VFW post…And a stalwart squadron of surly seniors.