Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Viruses, Pandemics, and Quarantines…Oh My!

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

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

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Viruses, Pandemics, and Quarantines…Oh My!

So here we are…

In the midst of a global pandemic…

And as I prepare for the possibility…

Of being locked in with my family…

I find myself oddly drawn to the films…

That bear a striking resemblance…

To the current situation that we are all facing…

And for me…

The first time that I witnessed anything bearing such a resemblance…

Was in the 1971 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name…

The Andromeda Strain…

An intense and, analytically-driven medical thriller…

Where a team of scientists are confronted with the threat of a deadly pathogen…

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

It shows us that not only can things always be worse…

But they also…

Always get better…

When we listen to those smart fuckers out there…

Who know more about this shit than we do…

I hope these recommendations help a little bit, my horror-loving friends…

Take care…

Stay safe…

And…

Be well.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Movies About Viruses, Pandemics, and Quarantines…In the years following The Andromeda Strain.

 

12 Monkeys (1995) – In this twisted little nugget from the cartooned brain of Terry Gilliam…Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a prisoner forced to travel back in time in search for a sample of a virus that decimated our planet…In hopes that the scientists of the future can find a cure…While dealing with the hiccups of imperfect time jumps…Each and every person Cole meets, thinks he is bat-shit crazy…And when he is finally institutionalized…He meets Jeffrey Goines, an early and iconic role that showcased the talents of Brad Pitt…Goines is the apparent leader of The Army of the Twelve Monkeys, a group believed to be the source of the epidemic…This film is as nutty as a fuckin’ Snickers bar…It has all of the elements that, if you love Gilliam, will make you love this one too…It has a lot of moments that stick in yer craw…Especially with what’s going down right now.

 

Cabin Fever (2002) – Eli Roth brought us this gnarly, gory, gross-out movie about a flesh-eating virus that attacks a gaggle of unsuspecting teenagers faster than a lumbering psycho in a mask…In this film we see the power of isolation and honesty when these viral outbreaks occur…Every person that roams around with an infection…Even if it is a regular, old, everyday flu…Is potentially risking the lives of their friends, families, and even innocent strangers…And in this film we see some of these whippersnappers not only having to be forced into isolation…But also…Hiding their symptoms, even after they are fully aware of the repercussions of their subterfuge…It is a frightening look at the way humans tend to act in these situations…And a parable that could provide a lesson to those among us…Stupid enough to act like these moronic teenagers did.

 

I Am Legend (2007) – When I was a kid…I was obsessed with The Twilight Zone…This obsession infected me with a virus that made me equally obsessed with the stories of the show’s creators…Cats like Rod Serling…Charles Beaumont…And most of all…The creator of this particular story…Richard Matheson…Here was a writer who captured the essence of what really drives a story about a global pandemic…It’s all about finding a cure, baby…And in this, the third adaptation of Matheson’s novel of the same name…A virus has wiped 90% of us off the planet…And the majority of the rest of us…Are vampiric creatures with an overwhelming desire to destroy the rest of us that just so happened to be immune…One of the immune folks out there is an army virologist named Lt. Col. Robert Neville…Neville is played by the guy who used to be cast as much as The Rock is now…Will Smith…And he is the only one left that is kicking vampire ass and trying to save what’s left of humanity…And hey…As long as you squint a little bit at the CGI creature effects…You will dig this one.

 

 

Quarantine (2008) – This film is a remake of the 2007 found footage zombie movie, REC…In this remake, Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter, The Exorcism of Emily Rose), plays Angela Vidal, a reporter who takes her cameraman on a night with the Los Angeles Fire Department…They are sent to a building where they discover the residents within are being viciously attacked by their neighbors…As they attempt to flee…They discover that the CDC has locked them in, and forced a quarantine of the entire building…This action…Although necessary to prevent the spread of this deadly outbreak…Is sure going to provide those trapped within…One truly fucked-up night…And we are lucky enough…Or unlucky depending on how many times you shart your shorts…To be able to watch.

 

Carriers (2009) – Okay…In this one…We are introduced to a world in the throws of a deadly pandemic…Two brothers…Danny, played by Lou Taylor Pucci (Spring)…And Brian, played by Chris Pine…Are planning on isolating themselves in a secluded motel in Turtle Beach…And waiting it out…Despite the intelligence of this plan…As you may have guessed…Things don’t work out quite the way these brothers planned…This is an intense, gritty, and realistically terrifying look at the dark and harrowing journey one must endure in a pandemic of this nature…The performances were genuine, and organic…And of all the films on this list…As I sit here…Nearly locked in my apartment…Waiting for this whole thing to blow over…This one…Hits pretty close to home.

 

The Crazies (2010) – The Purity Police will be calling for my head on a pike for recommending the 2010 remake of George A. Romero’s 1973 classic…Instead of the original…But I gotta tell you…I re-watched this one recently…And you know what…It really holds up…And stands on its own…As a kick-ass viral outbreak horror film…Now with this one…We can have a little fun…Take ourselves out of our current reality, and visit a world where the virus that is spreading through a teeny town in rural Iowa…And this particular virus…Is a whole fuck-load scarier than the one we face now…Sure, my neighbor could disobey the recommendation to stay six feet way from me, and piss me off…Sure, my son might come home from his job at the grocery store, and neglect to wash his hands…But at least they’re not slobbering, monosyllabic, violent psychopaths…Well at least…Not yet.

 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) – Although admittedly not even close to being a horror movie…The idea of a virus that not only wipes out a shit-ton of humans…But also passes the evolutionary baton into the stinking paws of damn dirty apes…Is a pretty fucking horrific concept…And folks…I loved this film…Hell…I loved all of the films in this trilogy…But this is the one that deals more with the viral outbreak side of things…And less about the shift in who’s rocking the top of the food chain…And the whole end of the human race shit-storm is born from the search for a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease…That search, and the resulting experimental drug, is the cause of both of these terrifying outcomes…And once again…As this film draws to a close…We bear witness to some of those things that really make a viral outbreak so gawdamn scary.

 

Hidden (2015) – This film was written and directed by The Duffer Brothers…In case you have been self-quarantined for the last few years…They are the creators of the Netflix series, Stranger Things…This film stars Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood) and Andrea Riseborough (Black Mirror) as parents who have isolated themselves and their precocious daughter Zoe into an underground bomb shelter following a cataclysmic event…The event…Which is pieced together slowly…In a patchwork quilt of flashbacks…Reveals to the audience…That a virus has infected the human race…And it just might be…That this family hidden under the ground…Are the only living survivors…I dug this one…A lot…And…There was a tasty little twist at the end…That I didn’t see coming….So…If you’re looking for something suspenseful and original…Something claustrophobic and thought-provoking…Something well-crafted and genre-bending…Or even just something from the brains behind Stranger Things…Then this is the flick for you.

 

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) – This film began as a spec script from Josh Campbell and Matthew Stuecken…Once J.J. Abrams‘ Bad Robot Productions got a hold of it…The decided to make it a pseudo sequel to the successful found footage horror film, Cloverfield released in 2008…This film is a very contained, claustrophobic, character-driven film about being forced into a quarantine…Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Final Destination 3) plays Michelle, who after a car accident wakes up in the fallout shelter of Howard, played by John Goodman…Also locked in…Is Emmett, played by John Gallagher Jr. (Hush), who also happens to be the man who helped Howard build it…These three unlikely roommates are told by Howard that not only is the air above unbreathable…But he has also saved their lives by quarantining them into his shelter with him…His altruism and apparent motives come into question as the story moves along at a breakneck pace…And Winstead…Oh man…Her performance as Michelle…In my opinion…Made her one of the best heroines to ever kick ass in a horror flick.

 

Bird Box (2018) – Some critics took a nice steamy dump on this film when it was released on Netflix…But not my boy, Richard Roeper…He said if someone told him that this was based on a Stephen King story…He’s buy that for a dollar…Because the film was, “Chilling…Suspenseful…And oh yes, that scary”…And you know what…I agree with him…Now in this apocalyptic epidemic film…The virus is equal parts truly unique and totally messed up…Kind of like the film, Pontypool…But rather than a virus that is spread aurally…Carried on the shoulders of spoken language…Like the one in that film…In this one, the virus is spread visually…As mysterious entities infect the masses…And in order to contract the virus…All it takes is a simple gaze upon their visage…Hence the fucking blindfolds…Anyway…This is a straight-up survival film, folks…But in times like we are living in now…A little survival…Goes a long way.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Pleased To Meet You…Hope You Guess My Name.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

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

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Pleased To Meet You…Hope You Guess My Name.

Beelzebub…Old Scratch…El Diablo…Lucifer…Satan…

They are all names for a guy known to most of us, as…

The Devil.

Now…

Have you ever noticed…

That the Big Guy downstairs…

Has appeared in way more films…

Than the Big Guy upstairs?

And…

Have you ever wondered why?

It’s definitely not because our collective theological beliefs put more stock in The Devil’s existence than God’s…

On the contrary…

A much higher percentage of believers out there, are believing in the existence of God, and not believing in The Devil at all…

So what is it?

What makes this evil deity a more compelling character in films than God?

Personally, I think it’s a lot like when people vote for a politician because they can see themselves having a beer with them…

I mean, seriously…

Think about it…

The Devil’s probably a pretty fucking charming guy…

He’s most likely got a whole lot of interesting stories to tell, too…

I would also assume that he’s got a dark, and twisted sense of humor, as well…

And to be honest…

If I was forced to choose between God and The Devil…

When searching for a potential drinking buddy…

Yup…

That’s right…

You guessed it…

I’d choose to have a beer with The Devil.

Now…

In an effort to avoid spoilers…

And…

As long as it is not a big reveal…

I’ll tell you who portrayed The Devil in that film…

But if it is a big reveal…

Well then…

You’re on your own.

Let’s take a chronological look at the best, most underrated, and possibly even unknown to you, Movies About The Devil that you may not have seen…But should.

Angel Heart (1987) – Director Alan Parker (Pink Floyd: The Wall) pulled this dank, dirty, and desperate detective story from the depths of a Louisiana bayou, wrung it out, and hung it up to dry from a balcony on Bourbon Street for us…A still normal-looking Mickey Rourke stars as Harry Angel, a New York detective who is hired to track down an elusive former singer named Johnny Favorite…This twisted tale takes you through the soft white underbelly of the city of New Orleans…A place where jazz, blood magic, and the ultimate evil come together to make a delicious, and oh-so-spicy gumbo of a movie…It’s kind of like Shutter Island meets Oldboy, but with a dark omni-present evil force guiding the plot along with a clap of his clawed hands and a stomp of his cloven hoof.

The Devil in this one…

Yeah, I know the film is over thirty years old…But you still have to wait and see.

 

Prince of Darkness (1987) – One of my all-time favorite John Carpenter films here…And also in my never silent, not so humble opinion…This is the best film about the devil ever made…Here’s why…The cast of characters are primarily made of up some very scientific-minded scholars…The skepticism that they display while investigating the potential existence of the Devil…Mirrors that of the audience…So when the group begins to discover…One by one…Experience by experience…That the demonic elements contained within this story…Might not be as fictional as they thought, when they first entered this spooky old church…And when this happens…We the audience begin to suspend our disbelief, as well…Oh yeah…And be on the look out for Alice Cooper, who stars as the King of the Demonic Homeless Zombies.

The Devil in this one…

A swirling vat of green goo.

 

The Witches of Eastwick (1987) – This one comes from George (Mad Max Franchise) Miller…And in it…He tells the tale of three women, who are close friends, living in a small, New England community…And unbeknownst to them, these three women possess strange, supernatural powers…A fact they soon discover following the arrival of an enigmatic, and wealthy stranger…A man whose name is easily and mysteriously forgotten by those that meet him…The women are all single and begin to form individual relationships with the mysterious man in his mysterious mansion…But being close friends, the relationship waters are easily muddied and clouded by this delightfully devilish manipulator…It is too disturbing to be a straight-up comedy…Not gory enough to be a straight-up horror…But whatever this thing is…I dig it.

The Devil in this one…

Jack Fucking Nicholson.

 

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) – This is the second installment in the immense Hellraiser series…And sadly the last to have the incredibly talented Clare Higgins portraying Julia…Ashley Laurence also reprises her role of, Kirsty, from the previous installment…In this one…We find Kirsty in a mental institution under the care of a deranged psycho…Sorry…I meant to say psycho-therapist…And this time around…It is Dr. Channard, the aforementioned psycho-therapist, who is the one trying desperately to break into Hell…And much like Kirsty’s mean ol’ Uncle Frank…He accomplishes this with decidedly evil assistance from Julia…But he also pulls it off, by using the coerced help of his patients…And once he accomplishes his mission…We the audience…See a wider landscape of what the place the Cenobites call home looks like…This one ended up being my favorite, of all of the Hellraiser movies…Not sure why, but there you have it.

The Devil in this one…

A giant free-floating puzzle box…Or if you’re into the whole brevity thing…Leviathan, Lord of the Labyrinth.

 

The Prophecy (1995) – The amazing Elias Koteas (Fallen)…Who I have had a soft spot for since I first saw him in Some Kind of Wonderful…In this film, he plays Thomas Daggett, who while studying to become a priest…Loses his faith due to a vision of things to come, and bails on seminary school…And when we find him years later, he is now a Los Angeles police detective…When a couple of celestial beings descend from the heavens…Daggett is thrust back into the moment when he left his former life behind…Dives head first into the vision that robbed him of his faith…And is shot out of a circus cannon…Directly into a cosmic power struggle…You know…The ones of biblical proportions that you’ve heard so much about…The stellar cast includes a portrayal from the perpetually creepy Christopher Walken, as the archangel Gabriel…And as Gabriel starts to fuck shit up royally…He gets discovered by not only Daggett…But eventually…He also gets noticed by a darker and more powerful force…Yeah…That’s right…You guessed it.

The Devil in this one…

Viggo Mortensen.

 

Constantine (2005) – This film takes a heaping helping of shit from fans and critics alike…Not from me though…Nope…I was a huge fan of the Hellblazer comics back in the day…And I will admit…That although I would not have picked Keanu Reeves as my first choice to play John Constantine…And even though the current small screen incarnation played by Matt Ryan, sure does look the part…I’m sorry to tell you, folks…Ted Theodore Logan did a damn fine job as the chain-smoking occult detective…Fine…He wasn’t blonde…Sure…He wasn’t speaking with a heavy cockney accent…But get over it, fuckers…He played it like a man with a plagued soul and a dark determination…And if you strip away all of the facade that makes John Constantine look like John Constantine…That’s the stuff that really matters…And because he brought that shit to the screen with his performance…Ol’ Johnny Utah captured the essence of the man.

The Devil in this one…

Peter Stormare.

 

The House of The Devil (2009) – Director Ti West has established his ability to create a throwback…Others have tried…But what separates this young filmmaker is that he does it with a prowess for the technical skills required to pull it off…Thus giving his finished product such an authentic appearance…That it could easily have been created by a filmmaker from the time period in which he honors…So much so…That in this film…There’s a good chance that you will actually start to think that you are watching a horror film from the early eighties…This one is definitely a slow burn…And like those great slow burn horror movies out there…When the burn…And also the film’s menace…Is finally revealed…Oh man…It is well worth the wait…Keep your horror fan eyes peeled for Tom Noonan… In this film…He is as ominous and creepy as he usually is…And also adds some serious horror movie street cred to the film.

The Devil in this one…

The title gave you a hint, folks…That’s right…You’re getting warmer…I think it’s somewhere in the house.

 

Devil (2010) – This is the only thing that has ever had anything to do with M. Night Shammalammadingdong, that doesn’t suck flacid ferret phallus…I even tried his attempt at a found footage horror, The Visit, in hopes that it wouldn’t be another typical all-twist/no-story concept…But lo and behold…All fucking twist…But this film was directed by someone else…The script was written by someone else…Shammalammadingdong’s contribution was coming up with the story that the script was based on, and producing the film…Now in my opinion…Considering how negatively I felt about his previous films…Versus how positively I felt about this film…I’m comfortable saying that this could actually be a recipe for success for him…And that looked like it might happen when he came up with a concept for Devil to stand as the first in a three part series known as The Night Chronicles Trilogy…Back in 2012, there was buzz about the second film being released in the following year…With Chris Sparling (Buried) tasked with writing the screenplay, and Daniel Stamm (13 Sins) in the director’s chair…I was intrigued, and had almost started to think that this could be a turning point for the director…A man, whose work I had grown to despise…And boy…He sure did capitalize on the success of Devil, with The Night Chronicles Trilogy, didn’t he, gang?…What’s that? You guys didn’t see the other two films in the trilogy? Mmmm…Yeah, me neither…You know why? Because the fuck-puddle never produced them…That’s why.

So anyway…The Devil in this one…

Screw you guys…I’ll never tell.

 

The Shrine (2010) – This is the sophomore effort of Jon Knautz (Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer)…And in it…He tells the story of a troubled couple that get into an even more troubled situation…Journalist Carmen, played by Cindy Sampson (Supernatural) and Aaron Ashmore (Locke & Key), as her photographer boyfriend Marcus…Follow a story about a tourist gone missing in a rural part of Poland…They, along with a young and naive intern, head to a remote and isolated village that right away feels…Well…In a word…Wrong…We once again get a dose of Trevor Matthews (Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer) turns in a menacing and intense performance as Henryk, one of the Polish locals…These fellas are trying desperately to protect a local legend…At any cost…It was great to see that Knautz continued the trend of using practical gore and monster effects, instead of CGI, in this, his second film…I gotta say…I dug this film…And am amazed by the fact that I have never heard anyone else talk about…

The Devil in this one…

An evil link of Polish Kielbasa…Nah…Just fuckin’ with ya.

 

I Trapped The Devil (2019) – This is the debut film for writer-director Josh Lobo…And pays some pretty clear homage to one of my favorite episodes from The Twilight Zone…In this modern version of Charles Beaumont’s The Howling Man…Matt, played by AJ Bowen (You’re Next) and his wife Karen, played by Susan Burke (Southbound)…Pay a visit to his estranged brother, Steve, over the Christmas holiday…It isn’t too long before they discover that Steve, played by Scott Poythress (The Signal), believes that trapped inside a room…In his basement…Behind a door with a cross on it…Is the Devil…And once that hard-to-swallow fact has been revealed…Everyone in that house has a reservation at Chez Clusterfuck for a nice steaming bowl of their signature Shit Stew…Despite some minor flaws in this film…I really picked up what Lobo was putting down…And I will definitely be keeping my eye on this director.

The Devil in this one…

Was definitely inspired by this one.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: A Fistful of Characters.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…

I mean Frightday…

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

Okay…

This Frightday’s theme is…

A Fistful of Characters.

In 1990…

Rob Reiner’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery arrived in theaters…

The intense, intimate interplay between the characters in this film…

Added not only an elevated level of tension…

But an overwhelming sense of empathetic claustrophobia, as well…

The audience was able to have a more narrowed, almost laser-like focus on the events depicted on-screen…

Without the distraction of a vast array of secondary characters…

Or the never-ending parade of extras…

And just like it did with this film, and the films that I am recommending to you…

That experience brings the audience that much closer…

That much deeper…

To what is unfolding before their eyes…

Especially when that minimalist cast…

Is trapped within the confines…

Of a horror movie.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Horror Movies with a Fistful of Characters…In the years following Misery. 

Them (a.k.a. Ils 2006) – This French-Romanian production tells the tale of a French couple Lucas and Clementine who’ve recently moved into a sprawling country home in Romania…What this film lacks in gore…It makes up for with a heaping helping of dread, tension, and fright…Throughout the course of this celluloid nightmare…This couple is relentlessly tormented…For no fucking reason…And us poor hapless assholes in the audience just keep on hoping that they will find some way out of it…But…When the big head-spin comes…It is not only when we discover who their tormentors are…But also…When you remember that you were told in the opening scene that this whole sordid mess is based on a true story…It was a fun and totally messed-up ride…One I highly recommend that you take.

 

1408 (2007) – Here’s a Stephen King adaptation that is often forgotten…But not by me…John Cusack plays Mike Enslin…A writer who is a surprisingly cynical skeptic…Surprisingly…Considering the fact that he writes about the supernatural…The next haunted place he is going to write about, is a room within The Dolphin, a hotel on Lexington Avenue in New York City…The room bears the selfsame number as the title of the film…And the hotel manager, played by Samuel L. Jackson, does his level-best to convince Mike that staying in that room is a bad idea…But Mike lets his skepticism take the wheel…And stays in a room that usually convinces its inhabitants to commit suicide in less than 60 minutes…Sort of reminds me of this little Motel 6 that I stayed at, just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska…But that overwhelming urge to throw myself into oncoming traffic was due to boredom, lack of alcohol, countless cockroach roommates, the door adorned with a small, torn, left behind piece of caution tape, and a far-from-empty waste basket, that for the previous inhabitants, served as the depository for their used condoms.

 

The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009) – This classic tale of kidnapping for a ransom comes from director J Blakeson (The 5th Wave)…This was his feature film debut, and he created a well-written and intense thriller with twists and turns aplenty… Gemma Arterton (Byzantium) plays Alice and delivers an outstanding performance as a woman walking the line between victim and heroine…Martin Compston and part-time actor, full-time chameleon, Eddie Marsan (Ray Donovan) are the kidnappers who have their hands more than full with their chosen victim…I was reminded of the delightfully awkward elements of the kidnapping in Fargo…As I watched the inherent bumbling that takes place in this gritty and presumably rather realistic amateur kidnap scenario…And their captive…As the story progresses…She starts in a box marked fear…Climbs out to a place called anger…And from there…She eventually summons the resolve needed to find her way to survival.

 

Monsters (2010) – Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) wrote and directed this story about a not too distant future…Where we are told…Alien lifeforms have infected a quarantined section of Mexico….Now I say told, because the director deftly applies restraint and waits to reveal them to us until the final act…Scoot McNairy (Argo), plays a photojournalist who heads into the quarantine zone to find his boss’ daughter…He is tasked with returning her to the safety of the United States…The film was shot in six weeks, and had no real script to speak of…Edwards had moments of dialogue that he wanted to reach, but let the actors improv their way to them…It made the relationship between McNairy, and Whitney Able who portrayed Sam, feel so organic…It’s as if you’re watching two people who were getting to know each other, and eventually falling in love…And in fact, it turns out that we were…Because, Able and McNairy have been married since they finished filming this gem.

 

Frozen (2010) – Right before the first sequel to his awesome slasher throwback, Hatchet was released…Adam Green wrote and directed this very simple…Very frightening film…At the end of a day of skiing in New England…Three friends convince the lift operator to let them take one last run…They find themselves stuck on the lift, when the lift operator gets called away…And that folks is when they say…Shit got real…One of the friends decides to jump down…Let’s just say…Without too much spoiling…It probably didn’t work out the way he wanted it to…But it does shine a big, bright, scary light on the additional threat of hungry-ass wolves who are dying to eat…Um, I mean meet…Nope, I was right the first time…Eat the two remaining skiers…I remember when this film first came out…All the little hater-trolls were clamoring over how this film wasn’t even scary…Each time that I re-watch this film…I like to imagine those trolling ass-hats stuck on the lift…Freezing their fucking taints off…Above a circling pack of predators…And the whole time…Yeah, that’s right folks…I’m fucking humming “Hungry Like the Wolf.”

 

Backcountry (2014) – This is the impressive-as-hell feature film debut of Adam MacDonald (Pyewacket)…And once you’re in it…The tension gets going, and never lets up…Not for a single fucking second…This is a story about Alex and his girlfriend, Jenn…Played by Missy Peregrym…Who turned in a brilliant performance…So here’s the scoop…They are a couple of urbanites camping in the Canadian wilderness…And for the first half of this tightly wound little beast of a movie…Alex makes a series of really bad decisions that get them completely lost…Men! Pfft…Typical…Am I right, ladies?!?…Anyway…This is a delightfully organic horror movie…The only threats are the known unknown…No boogey men…No ghosts…No demons…Nope…Just a really fucking huge bear…In this intense pulse-pounding story, the villainous bear is not enhanced by science, or mutated by the environment…Nope…He’s just enormous…And totally fucking hangry.

 

Curve (2015) – I was genuinely surprised by this simple little survival horror film…I found the performances of Julianne Hough and Teddy Sears and the well written script by Kimberly Lofstrom Johnson were what made it work…Such is the case with a minimal cast…Without the performances and the story…It’s nothing…The story is simple and taut…Mallory picks up Christian, a drifter whose sweet demeanor turns sour rather quickly…And, in an attempt to survive a dangerous life or death situation, she propels herself into an even more dangerous life or death situation…I never hear anyone talk about this hidden jewel…And that’s just another reason to recommend this psychotic little road trip to you.

 

Hush (2016) – This intense and original nail biter of a home-invasion flick tells the story of Maddie, played to perfection by Kate Siegel, who co-wrote the film with her husband Mike Flanagan…Recently…The couple teamed up again for the amazing Netflix series, The Haunting of Hill House…In this film…Siegel portrays a woman who has lost her hearing and must somehow try and survive a home invasion…Man, that was such an unsettling element that these two artfully added to the film…You cannot hear your attacker approaching…And you cannot hear yourself making a shit-ton of noise while trying to hide…Holeee Sheepshit…That really ended up taking the film to a much higher tension level than I was prepared for…But through it all…As the psychotic intruder, played by John Gallagher Jr. (The Belko Experiment)…Is killing the handful of people that surround this woman’s rural home…Maddie does almost as impressive a job in striking back at her assailant…As she does at completely fucking things up along the way.

 

Creep 2 (2017) – For fans of the first film in this franchise…This was a welcomed sequel…Especially because it was once again directed by Patrick Brice…And once again written by Brice, and the titular Creep himself, Mark Duplass…In this second installment, Josef now goes by the name, Aaron, and has offered $1,000 to a videographer to record him for the day…Enter Sara, played by Desiree Akhavan (who went on to write and direct The Miseducation of Cameron Post)…Sara has a YouTube series called Encounters, where she films strange friendships with strange people she meets on Craigslist…And because that isn’t a dangerous enough career choice…She has chosen to have Aaron/Josef be her finale…Hey folks…This was a damn fine sequel…But it also stands alone as a killer found footage horror…And there are talks of making this franchise a trilogy…To which I say…Bring it the fuck on.

 

Gerald’s Game (2017) – Ol’ Mike Flanagan is at it again…And in top form…Adapting a novel from Stephen King that for many years was deemed “unadaptable…” But he got the seal of approval from The Master of the Macabre himself…So much so…That he was also given the job of adapting his follow-up to The Shining…Doctor Sleep…But anyway…In this one…Flanagan cast Carla Gugino in the powerful lead role of Jessie Burlingame…Who for a short time in this film shares the screen with Bruce Greenwood…Until his untimely exit…And then this is a film about a woman handcuffed to a bed…Alone except for her dead husband, a stray dog…And a whole host of images, experiences, and visitors that one cannot really be sure of how tangible any of them are…But one thing is for sure…Most, if not all of them…Are scary as fuck.

 

 

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Hospitals 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…

Hospitals Are Scary AF.

In 1981…

A direct sequel to the classic slasher film, Halloween was made…

John Carpenter and Debra Hill once again wrote the script…

And Carpenter hand-picked Rick Rosenthal to direct…

It is one of those films that I revisit every October…

And…

Not only was it a great sequel…

Especially considering the height of the bar left behind by the first film…

But it also exposed me to a film where the setting played an equal part in the final product…

And that setting was a hospital…

On a normal day…

When you are stuck in one of their beds…

In one of their rooms…

It is confinement taken to a new level…

Because you are not just confined…

You are…

Hooked up to machines…

In various ways…

Through various parts of your body…

In a place where people are either suffering or dying…

All around you…

And honestly…

That’s scary enough…

But when it serves as the setting for a horror movie…

That shit right there…

Is even scarier.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, It’s Hospital Horror Movies…In the years following Halloween II. 

Visiting Hours (1982) – I got two words for ya…Two words that epitomize what made this film stick in my craw all those years ago…And those two words are…Michael Ironside…This creepy sumbitch played serial killer Cole Hawker so well that I may have peed my twelve-year-old shortpants a little, while watching this on home video back in the day…Journalist Deborah Ballin, played by Lee Grant…Is attacked by Hawker, who got all pissed off and fixated on her, following her appearance on a talk show…She is then hospitalized…And that’s when this film, and her stalker kick it up a notch…Every nurse, or patient that she befriends start turning up dead, and even her boss, played by ol’ Cap’n Kirk himself, William Shatner, can’t help her…This cat and mouse serial killer flick was scary as hell…The setting of the hospital made it even scarier…But nothing…And I mean nothing…Is as scary…As Michael Ironside in a leather tank top.

 

Bad Dreams (1988) – Here’s an 80’s horror film that was trashed by critics…But for some crazy reason…Loved by me…I dug it…A lot…I dug the back story about the mid-seventies hippie cult…I think Richard Lynch was unbelievably scary in the role of the cult leader…And even though this film drew comparisons to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise…From the burned cult leader entering the dreams of the lone survivor of the cult…To the fact that it had Jennifer Rubin, one of the stars from the most recent Nightmare installment, in the role of that survivor…I didn’t see it that way at all…This film took itself very seriously…And the plot was not the least bit supernatural…It is story about a hospital…And a patient…Who along with her fellow patients…Are being stalked by a tangible monster…A monster that is not a manifestation of the subconscious at all…So I once again ask you to tell the critics to collectively go fuck themselves…And give this one a shot.

 

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) – This is the second installment in the immense Hellraiser series…And sadly the last to have the incredible Clare Higgins, who played the hell out of her character, Julia, as a member of the cast…In this one, a deranged psycho…Sorry, I meant psycho-therapist…Named Dr. Channard, played by Kenneth Cranham…Is the one trying to break into Hell…For years he has been collecting puzzle boxes in an attempt to get there…After he hears the story that Kirsty, who is once again played by Ashley Laurence, tells them, when she is admitted…He goes to her former home to verify the story…And reconstitutes Julia from a bloody mattress along the way…And then by using and abusing his patients…He manages to find his way t o Hell…When he gets there…We finally get to see a wider landscape of what the place the Cenobites call home looks like…And the douchey doctor gets a whole lot more than he ever bargained for, too…This one…Is my favorite, of all of the Hellraiser sequels…Not sure why, or how, but at times…For me…it almost manages to edge out the original.

 

Mister Frost (1990) – I have not seen this one in years…To be fair…It wasn’t because I haven’t wanted to…But this film is one of many that I was not able to upgrade from VHS…And sadly…I still have not been able to…But when I was compiling this list…This film was definitely going to counted among them…So if you were lucky enough to score the European DVD before it went out of print…Or if you’re still rockin’ around with the VHS…Then this one’s for you! But for everyone else…Cross your fingers, folks…Cuz this one was something…Let me tell you…It is not only a great hospital horror…And one that takes place in a psychiatric hospital…Which instantly adds a level of tension…But more importantly…The title role and the performance of Jeff Goldblum in it…Will be well worth the wait, and whatever the hell the price for admission is…And when you get there…And he shows up on screen…You will definitely be pleased to meet him…And…I hope you guess his name.

 

Cold Prey 2: Resurrection (a.k.a. Fritt Vilt II 2008) – Those in the know…Know how much I loved the first film in this franchise…It was a frosty masked slasher film from all the way up in Norway…The sequel is the closest living relative to the film that started this list, Halloween II…In this one, just like that one…We pick up right where we left off…Our heroine, Jannicke, played once again, by the incredible Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (Westworld)…Has been taken to the hospital…And much like Laurie Strode…Is left dealing with a still alive masked slasher with a bit of an unhealthy fixation on her…And since belief of her story is in short supply…Jannicke is the only one able to take on the task of dispatching this creepy fucker straight down to Náströnd, the part of Viking Hell where Níðhöggr chews on the corpses of murderers…How ’bout that shit…Oh man…Ain’t Viking mythology cool?

 

The Ward (2010) – This is the last film made by my favorite director of all time, John Carpenter…And it came on the heels of a nine year break from feature film making, following the release of Ghosts of Mars...Carpenter felt burnt out after Ghosts, and it wasn’t until after he made his two incredible episodes for the Masters of Horror series, that he got the bug for directing back…And that was when the script from Michael Rasmussen, and Shawn Rasmussen came across his desk…These two were responsible for the screenplay for the recent natural horror film, Crawl…And as much as this film took harsh criticism…I personally enjoyed not only Carpenter’s tight visuals…But the hospital setting was unsettling to say the least…The hospital was actually an active mental hospital in Spokane, Washington…Carpenter, the cast, and the crew had to be caged in, while filming their scenes, to prevent the patients from interfering…So basically…I am once again asking you to ignore those fucking critics…And give ol’ J.C. a chance.

 

A Cure for Wellness (2016) – Gore Verbinski hadn’t touched a horror film since he directed 2002’s The Ring…He came back to the genre with this slimy bucket of slithering mindfuckery…And let me tell you…The ethereal world he constructed is creepy as hell…Dane DeHaan (Chronicle) stars as our protagonist, Lockhart…An executive, sent from the Big Apple to a bizarre little spa in the Swiss Alps, in an attempt to bring back their eccentric CEO…Following an accident, Lockhart becomes an unwitting patient in this place…A place that more closely resembles a mental hospital than it does a spa…And during his time there…He is exposed to the odd behaviors of the other patients…And the even odder behaviors of the guy in charge, the ever-resistant Dr. Volmer, played by the delightfully devilish, Jason Isaacs…And where the enigmatic mystery woman, Hannah, played by up and coming scream queen Mia Goth, is concerned…Everything about her is odd…It doesn’t take too long, but it is too late by the time Lockhart realizes that this place isn’t exactly what it seems to be.

 

Cult of Chucky (2017) – Before news of the recent reboot hit the interwebs…This twisted little nugget…A direct sequel to 2013’s Curse of Chucky…Came into our lives…From the mind of the creator of this franchise, Don Mancini…This film brings back characters from the original film…And from the sequels as well…For fans of this franchise like me…Bring-backs and shout-outs fill us with glee…The biggest of the bring-backs, is Alex Vincent reprising his childhood role, Andy Barclay, from the original film…Andy is all grown up…And fills his spare time with the task of torturing the disembodied, still animated head of his lifelong nemesis, Chucky…At the same time…We revisit the story of Nica, who in the last installment was given what’s known in the business as “the full Chucky treatment”…You know, when he kills your whole family, and then frames you for it…Nica is once again played by the incredibly talented Fiona Dourif (Yeah that’s right, the daughter of the man behind the puppet)…Who has spent the past four years, and the rest of the film…In a mental institution…This film was a ton of fun…And a welcome addition to the series.

 

The Void (2017) – This twisted little throwback to 80’s classics like The Thing, Hellraiser, The Beyond, and Prince of Darkness…Was written and directed by Jeremy Gillespie, and Steven Kostanski…two-fifths of the creative team known as Astron-6…They are the folks behind one of my 21st Century Cult Classics, Father’s Day…This film tells the story of the one night when all of the dark and nefarious things just happen to be afoot in this small town…Right under the noses of not just the townspeople, but also the police force…And as this frightening story unfolds…You will see some amazing practical effects that will fill your screen with gruesome gore…You will see outstanding performances from talented Canadian actors, like Aaron Poole…Whose portrayal of Deputy Daniel Carter was both authentic and organic…You will see things in this hospital that you’ve never seen before…And you might just see a film that will become one of your favorites, too.

 

Unsane (2019) – This is a gawdamn good thriller right here…Kept me right there on the edge of my seat the whole time…Say what you will about director Steven Soderbergh…Love him or hate him…Either way…When you watch this taut, psychologically-charged suspense film…You will have a jaw-dropping moment as you realize that he filmed the whole damn thing with a fucking iPhone 7 Plus…In this one…Sawyer, played by Claire Foy, has moved to a new city to avoid her stalker…While she talks with a counselor about her ordeal, she inadvertently admits herself to a mental institution…Once there…Sawyer is convinced that her stalker, played by Joshua Leonard (The Blair Witch Project), is not only a staff member at the mental hospital…But she is also convinced that he has orchestrated the entire nightmare that she is currently trapped in…The question to ask…Is she right…Or is she as nutty as a Snickers bar?

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: School is 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…

School is Scary AF.

The same year that Brian De Palma’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie was released…

Another film that peered in at the darker side of high school…

Flew quietly under the radar…

And then landed gracefully…

In the downy nest of my Cult Classics collection…

That film was…

Massacre at Central High…

It is a film that at its gooey, cheesy epicenter…

You’ll find the essence of what made the years we spent in high school and/or college…

The nightmarish hell that it can often be…

The tribal classifications…

The surging hormones…

The underdeveloped brains…

The strong, the rich, and the attractive…

Taking their rightful positions of power…

And wielding that power wildly…

With its aim directed towards those…

That just don’t quite…

Make the grade.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, School is Scary AF Movies…In the years following Massacre at Central High. 

 

Disturbing Behavior (1998) – Ahhh…the rare 90’s movie that makes the list…Like a friggin’ unicorn, I tell ya…This one was directed by David Nutter (X-Files, Game of Thrones)…And it’s sort of like The Stepford Teens…When Steve, played by James Marsden (HBO’s Westworld), moves to Cradle Bay after his family tries to rebound from his brother’s suicide…He becomes fast friends with the school’s outsiders…Who are all a wee bit more than troubled by the “Blue Ribbons”…An elite group of kids that have been subjected to mind control to correct their unruly or awkward characteristics that are keeping them from fitting in…There are some creepy and violent side effects that occur once the Stepford 2.0 software gets installed in these kids…And the ever-shrinking group of outsiders is all that’s left to stand up to those attempting to rob every last one of them of their uniqueness, or worse…Their lives.  

 

The Woods (2006) – The follow-up to director Lucky McKee’s May, was a much-anticipated release…And although this film is more understated than his last, it did not deserve the much-maligned reception that sometimes comes on the heels of a successful first effort. May was a runaway train of a horror film whose intensity almost rattled it right off the tracks…But, The Woods, is a restrained carriage ride through the countryside, where the driver keeps pausing to let you gaze into the darkened forest…That being said, this is the story of Heather, a troubled teen who is dumped off by her parents at a strange little all-girls private school in rural New England…Pretty quickly, the audience can smell that something went funky in the fridge…The staff are both mysterious and menacing…The students are both dominating and disappearing…And both of these facts have a lot to do with the history of the forbidden woods adjacent to the school grounds…Oh yeah…And I have to mention that my boy Bruce Campbell has a small but crucial role as Heather’s father.

 

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) – Here’s one of those films that hit the festival circuit in 2006…But then wasn’t released to theaters until 2008…And then when it was…It was only released in the UK…Despite critical acclaim both at the festivals and following its theatrical release…Hell…Some critics even compared the cinematography to Tobe Hooper’s early work…It was sadly a full seven years later before audiences here in the states got a look at it…But I found this film to be a fantastic slasher film wrapped in a deep-fried wonton wrapper of high school angst and misery…It has great twists and turns as you dive head-first into the third act…And each of those twists and turns gave the film a real kick in the ding-ding…So many horror films falter in the third act…They don’t have the steam to get all the way home…Not this one…Nope…This one comes screaming across the finish line with blue smoke billowing up from its screeching tires.

 

Tormented (2009) – This film was directed by Jon Wright, the man who brought the two great tastes of Alcoholism and Alien Invasions together in his sophomore effort, Grabbers…He made his feature film debut with this supernatural slasher that really does an amazing job of showing the extreme measures of cruelty…On both sides…The in-crowd that abuse their fellow students at Fairview High School…And this spectral spook giving this remorseless gaggle of British bullies their fair share of comeuppance…The idea of a malicious ghost that can inflict serious slasher-style harm on those it attacks has been something that I always loved John Carpenter for…In films like The Fog, and Ghosts of Mars…His apparitions aren’t wispy little now-you-see-me-now-you-don’ts that float out of a fucking armoire and say “Boo!”… Nope not these ghosts…And just like a classic Carpenter ghost…The formerly alive student in this film carries out his revenge in the selfsame way.

 

F (a.k.a. The Expelled 2010) – This British masked slasher film is a favorite of mine…It was directed by Johannes Roberts, who recently helmed The Strangers: Prey at Night…And sure…It totally capitalizes on the hoodie horror craze that has been unnerving the teen-a-phobic masses across the pond for some time now…But it stands out among them…Instead of a bunch of ruffians causing havoc, and being generally disrespectful…In this film, we watch them fly from the confines of their hooded chrysalis as they become faceless, and relentless killers…Without genetic testing…Proving that these teens aren’t the distant progeny of Michael Myers might be a wee bit difficult…That is the magic of the masked slasher…When done right, the killer is like an emotionless robot…And here, we have a whole gaggle of them…It is like the freakin’ Myers Family Reunion…And…I don’t care how good the potato salad is…I ain’t going to that barbecue.

 

The Final (2010) – Part of the After Dark Horrorfest 8 Films To Die For…This film takes revenge on high school bullies to a whole nutha level of messed up…You know…That Hostel level of messed up…So…That being said…If you like your bully vengeance with a heaping helping of torture porn…Than this film is just what you’re looking for…Those who have been bullied have hatched a plan to pay back their oppressors…They have invited them all to a costume party…Once there…The bullies partake in some delicious punch which tastes surprisingly like a handful of roofies…When the elite group of teens with a superiority complex wake up…They are chained and surrounded by those deemed inferior to them…For reasons like what they look like, or what they believe in…These bullied ones take their time and brutally torture both the bodies and minds of those who perpetrated their daily doses of abuse…Yep…This is some pretty twisted shit.

The Lesson (2015) – Unlike the British film, F (a.k.a. The Expelled)…That I mentioned earlier…Rather than a gaggle of hooded hoodlums harassing a schoolteacher…In this film…The tables…Or rather the desks…Have turned…Mr. Gale is a twenty year veteran of teaching high school, and just might be at the end of his rope…This film begins its journey as a sort of art-house indie drama about being young…Being troubled…And being in love…But by the time Mr. Gale has the full attention of his students…It becomes a dark twisted smorgasbord of torture porn…And at first…I was sort of in Gale’s corner…Thinking these apathetic youths deserved the punishments that they were receiving…But as the third act gets underway…And another student joins the makeshift detention in Mr. Gale’s garage…We discover that these kids aren’t nearly as apathetic as we thought…And Mr. Gale is not nearly as justified…And he just might be in store for a little bit of detention himself.

 

Happy Death Day (2017) – I don’t know what to tell you…I dug this film…And I know…I know…It was totally a slasher film set to the music of Groundhog Day…But…So fucking what…It was a ton of fun…And I had a blast watching it…Mainly due to the diabolical resting bitch face of the film’s star, Jessica Rothe…Whose performance as Tree, carried with it, a scathing level of bitchiness that is both horrifying and delightful…As Tree starts each day following each death…She is brought closer and closer to discovering who is trying to murder her…Christopher Landon (Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) directed this film, as well as the sequel, released earlier this year…And despite both films being rated PG-13…Which can be a horrible curse for a horror film…This film manages to maximize its scares despite the minimized gore…I try not to simply write off a film for any reason…Sure this was a PG-13 horror…Sure it was ripping the shit off of Groundhog Day…But I went in…Sat down with an ass-load of people a third my age…And enjoyed every minute of it.

 

Pledge (2018) – As the nerdiest nerds to ever nerd attempt to pledge the fraternity with the best parties…They are met with resistance at every turn…Until they are given the opportunity to pledge a very exclusive fraternity…And this is when these three nerdy freshmen enter a bizarre and entirely inescapable world…And rather quickly…This is a decision that fills each of them with an overwhelming sense of regret…As soon as we are introduced to these geeky guys…There is a real likable quality to them…They really are…At there core…Just innocent kids who are trying to fit in…And as they descend deeper and deeper into the steaming pot of shit stew that they have jumped into…We are not only empathetic…We are also completely frightened by what we think is coming…But…The good news with this film…What you think…Isn’t always what you get…And the seventy-five minute running time…Flies by at a brisk pace, due to the thrilling events unfolding on the screen before you.

 

MA (2019) – Oh man…Did I dig this twisted little fucker…Tate Taylor, who directed this film…Has worked with Octavia Spencer, who plays the titular character…Several times…Most notably when he directed the film, The Help…In that film…Spencer played Minny, a woman who after being treated unfairly for quite some time, served up some -uurrrp- just desserts to the woman who had wronged her…In this film…Those that bullied, abused, and tormented her in high school…Are about to be dealt some revenge that is a whole lot scarier than -uurrrp- a chocolate cream pie…Because she has transformed herself into, Ma…A “cool” grown-up who buys booze for high school students, and lets them party in her basement…And a handful of these teenagers get a whole lot closer to Ma, than the others…And when they do…They find out that she might not be as “cool” as they thought she was…And that my friends…Is a giant fucking understatement.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: They Did The Monster Mash.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…

I mean Frightday…

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

Okay…

This Frightday’s theme is…

They Did The Monster Mash.

It is a rare and wonderful thing…

When more than one type of monster…

Can be found within the confines of a single horror film…

The first time I experienced this…

Was in Fred Dekker and Shane Black’s creation…

The Monster Squad…

There…

I was able to enjoy modern versions…

Of the monsters that my parents watched…

In black and white…

But here they were…

In living color…

And all in one place…

There is something genuinely groovy about a multi-cultural monster mash-up…

It’s the way these very different creatures interact with each other…

The way they get along…

Or…

The way they don’t…

Either way…

For us horror fans…

It is a truly awesome experience to behold.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Multi-Cultural Monster Mash-Up Horror Films…In the years following The Monster Squad. 

 

Waxwork (1988) – This film marks the feature film debut of prolific horror writer/director, Anthony Hickox…And what an ambitious debut it was…You’ve got a bunch of unlikable yuppie teenagers played by Dana Ashbrook (Twin Peaks), Michelle Johnson (Blame it on Rio), Zach Galligan (Gremlins), and Deborah Foreman (April Fool’s Day)…Who enter a wax museum run by David Lincoln, a sort of deranged, secondhand Willy Wonka…Played to perfection by the perpetually creepy, David Warner (Time Bandits)…Lincoln’s museum is filled with a multitude of multi-cultural monstrosities like…Zombies…A werewolf…A mummy…The Phantom of the Opera…And even…Count Dracula! Now this may seem like a rip-off of The Monster Squad…But trust me…As these spoiled brats breach the barrier to their respective displays in the museum…The journeys that each one of these douchey teens goes on…Sends them to a destination where they are immersed in the world of that specific monster…This is a fun 80’s horror-comedy that I revisit fairly regularly.

 

Nightbreed (1990) – In this multi-cultural monster movie from the macabre mind of Clive Barker…We meet Boone, played by Craig Sheffer (Hellraiser: Inferno)…A cat who dreams of Midian…A mythical city where the monsters go…Boone was at one time under the psychiatric care of, Dr. Phillip Decker, a man we discover is an artery-frosting, masked slasher…This cold, calculated character was portrayed, like no one else could have, by the King of Body Horror himself…David Cronenberg…I did a list of the scariest Masked Killers Who Weren’t Jason Voorhees once…And this creepy motherfucker made it all the way to the top…Once Boone is manipulated and framed by Decker…He finds his way to Midian…A seemingly abandoned graveyard…That in actuality is a network of catacombs filled to the brim with every monster imaginable…This monstrous community is led by a messianic monster named Lylesberg, played by Doug Bradley who stars in a Clive Barker film without a single pin sticking out of his head…This film was completely shat upon by both critics and viewers at the time of its release…But you know what I say…I say…Fuck those guys.

 

Undead (2003) – Before the Spierig Brothers made their highly original vampire film, Daybreakers…Or their critically acclaimed time-travelling paradox-play, Predestination…They made this super-weird, dark, gritty, totally original, sometimes funny, mega-cheesy Aussie zombie flick…Everything about this one is over the top…The performances…The gore…The zombies…The aliens…That’s right, I said it…Aliens…The mash-up here is zombies and aliens…Stellar performances from the two leads…René, the former beauty queen, played by Felicity Mason, and Marion (an obvious nod to John Wayne), the gun-enthusiast/prepper/sasquatch played by Mungo McKay…So if you haven’t seen this one…Which has made it into quite a few of my lists of recommendations…Then…1) You haven’t been listening to me…And 2) You are definitely missing out.

 

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (2007) – Hands down the best Plumber-Turned-Monster-Slayer movie that I’ve ever seen…What’s that? Oh, sorry…Apparently, this is the only Plumber-Turned-Monster-Slayer movie that has ever been made…Anyway, this is the first film from director Jon Knautz (The Cleaning Lady) who co-wrote the script with ol’ Jack Brooks himself, Trevor Matthews…This is a delightfully cheesy horror comedy…And Jack Brooks is the perfect anti-hero…For all of his angst, and anger-management issues, he is somehow still a likable cat…And he genuinely tries to make his three-car-pile-up of a life work out…He suffers through therapy that doesn’t help…He remains loyal to his annoying pest of a girlfriend…Attends a slumber-inducing class that he takes to “better himself”…A class, by the way, with a very special instructor…One that pushed this film way over the top…And it does deserve a bit of a nod…The amazing Robert Englund stars as Professor Crowley, who unwittingly awakens the evil source of an ancient curse,…Which subsequently causes the monster shit to hit the slayer fan in the third act…And that’s when the main character comes into his own as a rogue kicker of monster ass…I both love and respect that the monster and gore effects are practical and not CGI…Pffft…As if I needed another reason to love this one.

 

The Cabin in the Woods (2011) – This film marks the directorial debut of the highly prolific screenwriter, Drew Goddard (Bad Times at the El Royale)…Who got his start in the business writing shows for the dude who shares the screenwriting credit with him on this one…That dude is, Joss Whedon…And those shows were Buffy and Angel…He has gone on to write a number of successful screenplays…But this one…Is a tongue-in-cheek meta horror to end all meta horrors…We follow two intersecting story lines…The first is the standard horror movie set up for a film that carries this title…A group of attractive young people climb into an RV and head out to the titular cabin for a weekend of debauchery…At the same time…We follow two employees of an organization that both monitors and controls the events of the first story line…These employees are hilariously played by Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford…And bring enough levity to put the spotlight on the comedy in this horror-comedy in so many of their scenes…I was amazed to find out that this film sat on a shelf for two years before it was released…I can tell you…It never stays on my shelf for that long.

 

Freaks of Nature (2015) – In this cartoonish 80’s throwback film we get to see what it would be like if we lived in a place where humans, zombies, and vampires all coexisted together harmoniously…The place is Dillford, Ohio…And the harmony…Is interrupted by a full scale alien invasion…Now this film comes out of the gate like a bolt of lightning…And is loaded with equal parts hilarity and fast-paced, action-packed horror sequences…As well as a whole slew of delicious cameos like…Keegan-Michael Key…Patton Oswalt…Joan Cusack…Bob Odenkirk…And everybody’s favorite A-S-S-H-O-L-E…Denis Leary…The three leads were outstanding and are a representation of the town’s population…Nicholas Braun (Red State), plays the human…Mackenzie Davis (The amazing Black Mirror episode, San Junipero), is our vampire…And the hilarious physical comedy of Josh Fadem (Bobcat Goldthwait’s Misfits & Monsters), is our lead zombie…Now to be fair…This film struggles with an identity crisis in the final act…It sorta becomes an angsty, mildly Hughesian teen drama…And sadly leaves behind a lot of what I enjoyed in the first and second acts…But still…Even with that being said…I sure did dig it.

 

The Monster Project (2017) – My good buddy, Jason and his wife, Cheryl turned me on to this one…And in this found footage horror film that they put on my radar…A couple of aspiring horror filmmakers decide to make a documentary about real-life monsters…They actually do a casting call…Asking any monsters to come forward and be filmed…And that’s when these fellas run into a bit of trouble…They get a crew together…Rent a spooky old house for the night…And invite three self-proclaimed monsters to join them…A Navajo skinwalker…A vampire…And a girl possessed by a demon…All three are being filmed under the skeptical guise that they “believe” that they are monsters…But in the burgeoning light of the lunar eclipse…Their beliefs become far too realistic…And this amateur film crew finds themselves fighting for their lives……And by the time the end credits rolled…I felt confident saying…This one here…Is found footage done right.

 

Slice (2018) – Here’s a “slice” of 80’s throwback horror for ya…In the bizarre little town of Kingfisher…A town with a gate to Hell…A section of town where all of the ghosts live…A coven of witches…And a werewolf…It is almost surprising that things could actually get more strange there…But with a mysterious slasher murdering pizza delivery drivers…Somehow things just got more strange…This film is a schlocky good time…With terrific visuals…And some top-notch B-Movie performances from Zazie Beetz…Chance the Rapper…Paul Scheer…And many more…This is a film that made it’s mark as a cheesetastic cult classic…I had never heard of first time writer/director Austin Vesely…Who has a brief cameo as the killer’s first victim…But I can tell you right now…That after watching this film…I will be keeping my eye on him.

 

Blood Fest (2018) – When a group of friends attend this year’s Blood Fest…They are expecting some scares worthy of hardcore horror fans…But what they get…Is a whole lot more than they expected…The horror film festival has been transformed into the love child of a theme park and a slaughterhouse…Where fans and celebrity guests alike…Have to fight to stay alive as they are being aggressively pursued by all manner of sub-genre villains…Zombies…Vampires…Masked slashers…And killer clowns have joined forces in an effort to spill the blood of fanboys, and fangirls alike…Dax, played by Robbie Kay (Heroes Reborn)…And his closest friends Krill, played by Jacob Batalon (Spiderman: Homecoming)…And Sam who was played by Seychelle Gabriel (Falling Skies)…Use their vast knowledge of the various genres…To navigate their way through the equivalent of an elaborate corn maze designed by a psychotic farmer who lives on the tenth ring of Dante’s Inferno.

 

Hellboy (2019) – Oh…What a surprise…The critics took a big, fat, steamy dump on this film…Wanna know why? Okay…Two reasons…The first…Is because it was instantly compared to the first two Hellboy films…Which by the way just so happened to be created by the bar-raising talents of Guillermo del Toro…But if you are a fan of comic books like me…Then you went into this film thinking that this is kinda like when you’re reading a title for a while, and then a new artist and writer take over…Sure you know that they’ll change some shit…And it might look or sound different…But it’s okay…You just let that shit go…Unless of course…You are a critic…And the second reason why they hated it…This film…At its core…Is a straight-up horror movie…It is overflowing with gruesomely gooey gross-out gore…And we all know how much critics like that shit…But for me…That is the stuff that made this film…Unique…And it made it stand out…Even in contrast to those two films by del Toro…In his films…The monsters are…Well…In a word…They are…Beautiful…But Neil Marshall’s monsters…Beautiful isn’t how you would ever describe them…There are a multitude of different monsters in this film…And there isn’t a bit of beauty to behold…Hell…Even Marshall’s version of a vampire is straight-up fucking nasty.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Religion Is 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…

Religion Is Scary AF.

In 1976…

Richard Donner directed a film…

That exposed some of the shit found in the Catholic religion…

That is scary as fuck…

That film…

Was The Omen…

And although this was the first film that frightened me with Catholic imagery…

To be fair…

Catholic imagery has been scaring the shit outta me…

Since the first time my parents dragged me into a church…

 

Scary imagery?

Like what? You might ask…

 

Okay…

 

How about the crucifixion for starters?

 

What a great idea…

Let’s take our small children…

Every single Sunday morning…

To a place…

Where there is a horrific and blood-soaked life-size statue…

Of a man nailed to a wooden cross with six-inch iron spikes…

It is a statue that captures the snapshot moment…

Of this man’s brutally abusive death…

And…

It is on display…

At the front of the fucking room…

 

These statues are more of an example of torture porn…

Than any boycotted 70’s Italian Giallo film…

Or an 80’s slasher labeled a Video Nasty…

 

Hey…

Here’s another one for ya…

 

How about the image of an altar boy kneeling in front of a priest?

What does that image brings to mind for you?

 

I’d ask Father John Geoghan, former priest at St. Andrews in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts for his opinion on the subject…

But…

Somebody shanked that pedophile piece of shit in prison…

 

Or is it shivved?

 

I’m never quite sure…

 

Anyway…

 

The films that I am recommending to you…

 

Will make you more scared…

 

Than a masturbating Catholic.

 

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, scariest, and possibly even unknown to you, Religion Is Scary AF Films…In the years following The Omen.

 

Prince of Darkness (1987) – One of my all-time favorite John Carpenter films here…And also…In my not-so-humble opinion…The best film about the devil ever made…Here’s why I feel that way…The cast in this one is primarily made of up some very scientific-minded scholars…They are tasked with the job of ascertaining the answers to a mystery buried beneath a church…That mystery…Coupled with some pretty bizarre supernatural activity…Pushes the skeptical scientists to their limits…What makes having them as main characters so freakin cool, is…Their skepticism mirrors that of the audience…So when the group…One by one, experience by experience…Begins to believe the demonic elements of this story…We the audience begin to suspend our disbelief, as well…Oh, and for an extra treat…Look out for Alice Cooper, who stars in this film, as a demonic homeless person.

 

The Prophecy (1995) – I’m sorry…But I fucking love Elias Koteas…He had me at his performance of the skin-headed punk in Some Kind of Wonderful…In this one, he plays Thomas Daggett…A cat, who while studying to become a priest, bails on seminary school…And eventually becomes an L.A. police detective…He is thrown head first into the deep-end of his lost faith pool…And has to doggy-paddle his way into a cosmic power struggle of biblical proportions…Featuring none other than the archangel Gabriel…Skillfully played by the perpetually creepy Christopher Walken…Gabriel has decided to take matters into his own hands to try and win a secret war against a rogue faction of angels…But as he starts to fuck shit up royally…His ever-decreasingly secret plan not only gets discovered by Daggett…But also gets noticed by a darker and more powerful force…That’s right…The Devil himself…And it is one of the better portrayals of Ol’ Scratch that I have seen…This time around he is played by…Viggo Mortensen.

 

Frailty (2001) – Oh man…Do I 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 on a side note…One night while working in my basement video store…On the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury Street…In Boston’s Back Bay…This one, along with the film, Frequency…Was recommended to me by the man, the myth, the legend…Stephen King…It tells the story of the bizarre relationship between two sons, Fenton (Matt O’Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter), and their uber-religious, and most likely insane father, played by the aforementioned Paxton…The film plays into the established belief that religious extremism accounts for the majority of life’s problems…But then…Out of left field…The film tosses those beliefs, and many others…Into a reality wood-chipper…And as the chips come flying out the other side…This film will have taken you on a trip…That will keep you guessing…Keep you uncomfortable…And most of all…Keep you entertained.

 

REC (2007) – This is the Spanish film that inspired an almost immediate remake here in the states with the movie, Quarantine…But the one thing that was lost in the adaptation…Was the religious element in the original…In the original…The virus that spreads throughout the building is some sort of contagious version of demonic possession…This is found footage done right, folks…For me, found footage has to make at least some sense…You know what I mean?…When you’re sitting there saying – “Why the hell is he or she still filming?” It just doesn’t make sense, and then it pulls you out of the film…So in this one, it’s a reporter and a cameraman who are documenting the outbreak…And for me, that makes sense…A cameraman will keep filming…They will keep viewing the world through that lens of theirs…It’s what they do.

 

Martyrs (2008) – This French film is sort of a classic, in my opinion…It’s already been re-made here in the states…And…Well…As far as the remake goes…I recommend that you skip the American version and dive right into this modern French horror classic…The film opens with a young girl named Lucie escaping torture at a very young age…She is sent to an orphanage, where she makes a friend so loyal, that she’d be willing to do anything for her…Flash forward to when the young girls are grown…We find Lucie and her friend Anna…Breaking into a home that Lucie believes is the home of one of her former torturers…Seems normal enough, right?…Straight up revenge-flick, right?…But wait…It’s only like twenty minutes into the film…Yep, you’re right…This ain’t the climax, folks…That’s right…It’s only the beginning.

 

Red State (2011) – Kevin Smith began dabbling with horror movies with this film…He stuck his toe even further into those murky waters with a trilogy of Canadian themed horror-comedies…But with this one…He went after the folks like those from the Westboro Baptist Church…The people that have protesting his films since he first blasphemed his fucking ass off with 1999’s Dogma…In this film…Doing his best Fred Phelps impression, is Michael Parks…His portrayal of Pastor Abin Cooper is as deranged as it could possibly be…This film takes us inside the walls…And shows us…The inner workings of religious extremism…It isn’t always of foreign origins…Sometimes these archaic and violent acts are perpetrated by folks who live right down the street from us…And the dark thoughts that are born in their brainwashed, narrow minds…Will never be changed…And are dangerous as hell.

 

Deliver Us From Evil (2014) – Following his film, Sinister, which contained a collection of the freakiest home movies I’ve ever seen…Scott Derrickson gave us this film which sort of smells like a straight up cop procedural at first…But slowly…This film shrugs off the uniform and becomes a dark and disturbing tale of supernatural possession unlike anything that I have ever seen…When I say that this film goes to some pretty dark places…I’m not kidding…I mean…The sight of a mother hurling her own toddler into the lion enclosure at the Bronx Zoo…Was enough to convince me…Anyway…The basic story here is about a cop, played by Eric Bana, who discovers a series of bizarrely related and supremely supernatural events that are linked to a group of Marines that unearthed something decidedly evil from a cavern in Iraq…Playing the antagonist in this film is the uber-creepy Sean Harris…Whose work I have been following since he starred in Christopher Smith’s 2004 debut, Creep…And in this one…The creepy fuck does it once again…His performance in this one…Sends frightening shock waves through anyone who watches it.

 

Let Us Prey (2014) – In this dark and twisted little nugget that brings together characters from two of my favorite television shows…First…You’ve got my boy, Liam Cunningham, Also known as Davos Seaworth on Game of Thrones…As a mysterious stranger who wanders into a small village in Scotland…Carrying nothing but a list of names…He winds up in the local police station…As the prickly briar patch of a story begins to unravel…We start to discover not only the motivation of the stranger, but also the dark, secret corners of the lives of those he seems to be toying with…Thus bringing me to the second one…Jadis, former Queen of the Trash-People in The Walking Dead, Pollyanna McIntosh…Who portrays the one character in particular that this mysterious stranger wants to bat around like a kitten with a ball of yarn…She feels like the moral compass navigating the viewer through a choppy sea that is sorely lacking in anything that resembles morality…This was a truly unique film…And the originality is one of the things that drew me in…The performances of the actors, and the rancid underbelly where they performed…Is what kept me enthralled for an hour and a half…This one was groovy…And I dug it…A lot.

 

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’s rabbit hole…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.

 

The Nun (2018) – Okay…I know what you’re thinking…How did this poorly received branch on the Conjuring tree get on this list…Well…Quite simply…Because I enjoyed it…I go into reboots, remakes, sequels, and prequels the same way every time…With a low bar…For what it is…This film feels like a Gothic horror film that could have come from the Hammer canon of films…It also has that matinee horror vibe that just might be the reason why I give the sagging plot a pass…But here’s what it got right…The director Corin Hardy, created some very dark, and atmospheric visuals…Similar to the ones found in his debut, The Hallow…The performances of Demián Bichir, and Taissa Farmiga were spot on…And let’s be honest…The Conjuring universe created a movie monster that was equal parts original, and frightening…And you know what…These positives…Far outweigh the negatives…Giving me a fun ride…Right into a dark, and foreign place…A place where the religion was scary AF.

 

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: 3 Is A Magic Number.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

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

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

3 Is A Magic Number.

There you go…

Just in case the title of today’s list of film recommendations didn’t get the song stuck in your head…

So what is it about the number 3…

That makes it so…

Well…

Um…

Magical?

There is no reason for the third film in a series…

To wind up being even mildly entertaining…

Or even halfway decent for that matter…

But for the third film in a series…

To occasionally rise above not only its predecessor…

But sometimes even the original?

I know…

It seems outlandish…

But in the countless horror films that have earned sequels…

There are…

A surprising number that happen to be the third in the series…

That stand out…

That showed us something different…

That forced us to pay attention…

Now…

This phenomenon translates to a lot of other genre films as well…

Many would argue that Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, is the best in that series…

And that Die Hard With A Vengeance is leaps and bounds beyond its predecessor…

Or the fact that Thor: Ragnarok, is the ass-kickingest, balls-to-the-wall wild-ride of the entire Thor series…

For me…

The first time this happened in a series…

Horror or otherwise…

Was Halloween III: Season of the Witch…

To this day…

Regardless of the vitriolic feedback that I receive…

This film did just what I described…

It stood out…

It showed me something completely different…

And forced me to pay attention…

And…

Hopefully…

The films that I am recommending to you today…

Will do the same.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, 3 Is A Magic Number Movies…In the years following Halloween III: Season of the Witch. 

 

Day of the Dead (1985) – Following the passing of Joseph Pilato…I was reminded of his standout performance as Rhodes…And I gave the film another watch…It is a delightfully subversive film that makes the military even scarier than the zombies…Hell…Sherman Howard’s likable performance as Bub, is still one of my favorite portrayals of a zombie…And yes…That’s what I said…A likable performance of a zombie…But that was always what the great horror filmmakers did…They always had something to say…And George A. Romero says it so well in this one…We as humans are in constant battle within ourselves…Logic battles incessantly against primal urges like violence…And those two sides are represented within the confines of that Florida bunker…The scientists…Searching for a cure…And the military…Thirsty for blood.

 

 

Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987) – Next to the original…This is the one from this franchise that I visit most often…It is a perfect horror film in my humble opinion…I wouldn’t change a hair on its wee little head…The cast is phenomenal…The bringback of Heather Langenkamp as Nancy…Adds a shit-ton of street cred as well…Some absolutely incredible dream-killing-sequences in this one too…The self-sculpting little clay Freddy golem that turns Phillip into a marionette is a personal favorite of mine…Not to mention being the origin of the most quoted Freddy line in the history of the franchise…Yeah…That’s right…You know the one…”Welcome to prime time, bitch!” I’m sorry folks, but when I’m looking for a fun horror romp and it’s like two-in-the-freakin-morning…Every time…This is the one I choose.

 

The Exorcist III (1990) – Not just a standout film compared to its predecessor…This film is a standout…Period…Written and directed by William Peter Blatty…Yes that’s right…The guy who wrote the original source material for the first film in the franchise…This film was one of my favorite horror films from the 90’s…It was darker…Creepier…And got all up under my skin…More than most films coming out around that time…I mean you’ve got creepy-ass Mary Jackson skittering across the ceiling like a fucking water-bug…You’ve got Brad Fucking Dourif…Oh man…Oh geez…Oh come on…I forgot about that one scene in the hospital…Never mind…Those of you that haven’t seen this film yet…Take this recommendation…And when that scene comes…Let me tell you, buddy…You’ll know it.

 

Alien³  (1992) – I am a huge fan of David Fincher…And no…I did not become a fan of this film after watching Se7en…Or even Fight Club…I was, and am, a fan of his because of this, his first film…I found it to be unique to the other two that preceded it…This film was gritty…And dirty…And raw…And Ripley was a bald-headed bad-ass walking around a bunch of convicted rapists and murderers with a fucking baby alien queen incubating in her chest…She as a character…And Sigourney Weaver as an actor…Was at her absolute best…She had more meat to chew on in this one than any other film in the franchise…And the setting was harsh…Because Fury 161 wasn’t just a prison colony…But it was a foundry as well…Adding to the grit…Was the supporting cast of a veritable who’s who in British character actors…You had Paul McGann (Doctor Who)…Brian Glover (American Werewolf in London)…Pete Postlethwaite (The Usual Suspects)…And Phil Davis (Quadrophenia)…Just to name a few…I can’t say enough good things about this film…I recently watched the remastered Assembly Cut, on the blu-ray box-set…And gawdamn if it isn’t better than the theatrical version.

 

Army of Darkness (1992) – If this isn’t one of your favorite films about Ashley J. Williams…Than you are a primitive screw-head…This highly quotable followup to 1987’s Evil Dead 2…Picks up the story right where that film left off…Ash and his ’73 Olds Delta 88 go flying through a vortex to the middle ages…And that’s where this horror franchise takes a slight left turn and becomes a fantasy film…For a little while…But by the time Ash enters the windmill in the haunted forest…It delves down deep into the type of horror-comedy that we’ve grown accustomed to…In fact…It is some of the best physical comedy from any of the installments including the short-lived but awesome series on Starz…You’ve even got Ash battling a horde of tiny Ashes…Which leads to a shit-ton of hilarious hi-jinx…Gawd…I love this one…It’s goofy…It’s ballsy…It’s…It’s…Well…It’s…Groovy.

 

Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993) – After the enjoyable…But unquestionably more mild-mannered follow-up to Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 cult classic…There was no reason at all for the next sequel to have any value at all…But it did…It even recaptured a bit of the punk swagger of the original…And it all came down to Melinda Clarke’s performance as Julie…And man…What a chick Julie is…I mean seriously…As far as girlfriends go…They don’t get much better…You see…The reason Julie looks the way she does in the cover art…Is because…To prevent herself from snacking on her boyfriend’s brains…She realizes that extreme pain takes away her urge to gorge on his medulla fucking oblongata…So she pierces herself…All over…With every fucking pointy thing that she can lay her hands on…Yep…That’s right…Julie’s a beast.

 

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) – Following the subdued sequel, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, which was heavy on the Brigitte, and light on the Ginger…This prequel…Which takes us back to the early 1800’s…Gives the audience a whole lotta Ginger this time around…And as a fan of Katharine Isabelle’s work…In my opinion…You can never have too much Ginger in your Ginger Snaps movie…This film is incredibly well shot…And recaptures that magical bond between the sisters that we experienced in the first film…That total, “it’s you and me against the world, kid” vibe that made them such a strong duo…And it is in full effect in this really cool, and totally original concept for a horror prequel…It’s almost like an alternate reality origin story…And I dug it.

 

Final Destination 3 (2006) – Now I love this franchise…The films in this series give you exactly what you ask for…Time and time again…Legendary kills…But the third film in this series was one of my favorites…Mary Elizabeth Winstead (10 Cloverfield Lane) stars as Wendy…She is this film’s Alex…And her vision makes people already scared of roller coasters shit their ever-loving shorts…After the initial amusement park nightmare…This one follows the standard path…Each of the survivors take turns either dodging the swing of Death’s scythe…Or letting it land squarely in their faces…Even though it is a predictable journey…There are a ton of twists, turns and unexpected setbacks along the way…Leading up to a killer climax…And an even better final scene…Give this one another look…It’s worth it.

 

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) – This film holds a special place in my heart…When my daughter was fifteen…We were eating dinner at a BBQ joint…And when my wife and I witnessed her devouring a piece of cornbread like she was making out with a Jonas brother…We realized that she was stoned out of her gourd…We said nothing…But following dinner we treated her to a movie night…I bought three tickets to this film…At about the halfway mark…Whilst she was pulling into the stop for Pee Pee Pants City…I leaned over and whispered…”We know that you’re high.” It was one of my most evil and proudest moments as a parent…Besides the torturing of my weed-addled daughter…This film was an unexpected treat…It is a prequel of the events of the first two films…This time…We learn about how this whole nightmare got started…And it actually started almost twenty years earlier…This one was the most frightening entry in the series, in my opinion…It’s because of the kids, man…There is something about when kids are the ones in danger that the stakes are always just a bit higher…I enjoyed the first film…But with the second installment, I started to feel like the excitement that I felt with the first film could not be recreated…I was dead wrong…This third film had me, and my stoned daughter, on the edge of our seats the whole damn time.

 

Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015) – This third film in the Insidious franchise marks the directorial debut of Leigh Whannell…The man responsible for writing not only this series…But also the first three Saw films…He followed this film with his sophomore effort as a director…Upgrade…And has already proven himself a worthy filmmaker…This film is not only a prequel to the first two films…It also marks the introduction of our trio of supernatural soldiers…This is the one where ghost whisperer extraordinaire Elise, played by Lin Shaye…Meets up and joins forces with Tucker, played by Angus Sampson, and Specs, played by the writer and director himself, Leigh Whannell…For this franchise…This trio is our Scooby Gang…Our Winchesters…And peering through the window, parting the curtains, and watching their introduction was…Well…It was kinda fucking awesome.

 

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: This Is Your Horror Movie On Drugs…Any Questions?

It’s Friday…

Ahem…

I mean Frightday…

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

Okay…

This Frightday’s theme is…

This Is Your Horror Movie On Drugs…Any Questions?

Sheesh…

I haven’t seen a bald lady acting that crazy since I came home from work…

And found my ex-wife…

With her head freshly shaved…

Sitting naked in a bean bag chair…

Chanting like a deranged Buddhist monk…

But…

That’s a story for another day…

Anyway…

You see…

The bat-shit crazy bald lady in the picture above…

Went bat-shit crazy and bald for a very specific reason…

While in college a decade before…

She took some acid…

That just gave her a madness-inducing flashback…

And that acid…

Bears the same name as the film it came from…

Blue Sunshine…

This was Jeff Lieberman‘s follow-up to his 1976 killer worm cult classic, Squirm…

And it tells the tale of a group of college kids who ten years after taking that Blue Sunshine acid…

Begin to suffer psychotic breaks…

And then…

Kill anyone that happens to be around them…

 

Now, that’s what I’d call a bad trip…

 

But to be honest…

As bad as that trip was…

 

If you’re taking any mind altering drugs…

 

Within the confines of a horror movie…

 

Oh man…

 

That’s gonna make your bad trip…

 

 

Even fucking worse.

 

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Drug-Fueled Horror Movies…In the years following Blue Sunshine. 

 

Altered States (1980) – Ken Russell (Tommy) brings us this twisted tale of erudite intellect run amok…Eddie Jessup is a Harvard professor played to brainy perfection by William Hurt (The Big Chill)…Jessup decides to do a little experimenting with Mexican hallucinogens and sensory deprivation…The results are progressively worse with each attempt…Because the experiments take him on a backwards journey through human evolution…With each trip down the dark and twisted rabbit hole…He is transformed into a previous version of his evolutionary self…This film is loaded with some outstanding and totally memorable visuals…I guess you could call them dream sequences…But whatever you wanna call ’em…The stunning sequences while Jessup undergoes his experiments…Were a lot like having your very own acid flashback.

 

Brain Damage (1988) – This warped late 80’s yarn comes from writer/director Frank Henenlotter, the man who a few years earlier created the cult classic, Basket Case…In this one, he opens a window into the long and bizarre life of Aylmer…A fairly-phallic, host-hopping, brain-noshing, drug-dealing, parasitic creature…Aylmer gets tired of eating cold calf brains from a Jewish deli…And decides to bail on his roommates, Morris and Martha…He moves down the hall…And finds Brian…Aylmer injects his extremely euphoric, highly hallucinogenic, and acutely addictive drug directly into Brian’s medula oblangata…A gift that he trades with Brian in return for field trips outside to find Aylmer some fresh food…And that food is the brain matter of freshly killed humans…This film is as nutty as a fucking fruitcake…And does more to educate viewers about addiction than an ABC Afterschool Special would.

 

Naked Lunch (1991) – Here’s my bold statement of the day…This is David Cronenberg’s most fucked-up film…And considering some of the wacky shit he’s done…You can see why this is such a bold statement…But there it is…In this one…He adapts not only the titular work of William S. Burroughs…But he added excerpts from some of his other works…And bizarre events from Burroughs’ life as well…Peter Weller (RoboCop) leads an amazing cast in this film about…Um…Exterminators?…No…Uh…It’s about insects?…Or maybe…Er…Writing?…Nope…How about drugs…I think it’s about drugs…To be honest…Meaning isn’t the important thing about this film…But as far as the drug use goes…It is as bizarre as everything else in this strange realm…People are either getting high from the shit used to kill insects…Or they are getting high from the insects themselves…So kick back…Snort a line of live fire ants…And enjoy this one.

 

The Tripper (2007) – This one was directed by David Arquette (Scream)…And asks the question…Who hates hippies enough to slaughter them in a horribly violent fashion? The answer: Ronald Fucking Reagan, that’s who…There is a delightful retro 80’s masked slasher vibe here…But there is also a fair amount of socio-political commentary as well…But this pot-fueled, counter-culture horror-comedy pokes fun at both sides of the fence…The lampooning is 100% bi-partisan…The kills are gory and brutal…And the cast is pretty damn good for a low budget slasher throwback…You’ve got Lukas Haas, Thomas Jane, Jaime King, Balthazar Getty, and Jason Mewes…Just to name a few…I dug this one…It was subversive in the best possible way…It was a well-made slasher effort…And at times…It was downright hilarious…Like the brief but side-splitting cameo from Courteney Cox…So sit back…Take a toke from your favorite spliff…And enjoy this one.

 

Shrooms (2007) – With a title like this…Nobody is shocked to discover that this is a drug-fueled horror film…In this one…A pack of American students hungry for hallucinogens have traveled to Ireland to hang out in the wilderness and trip balls on magic mushrooms…Jake, played by Jack Huston (Mr. Mercedes), is their tour guide to both the area, and the mushrooms growing within…And considering what transpires in the first act alone…He’s not really very good at his job…This film plays out like a traditional slasher…But with a few twists…Because of the hallucinogenic fungi they’ve ingested…We see what they see…And what they see…Isn’t always there…So we the audience share in the collective confusion…But in the final act…This film gives us yet another twist…One that makes it rise above the stoner slasher film it could have been…And transforms it right before our eyes…As if we just drank a piping hot cup of Jake’s Psilocybin Tea.

 

Toad Road (2012) – This film starts out like a documentary about total fucking wastoids…A chronicle of their drunken exploits and drug experimentation…And despite a low-budget documentary style of film-making…It is deftly and at times beautifully shot…At about the halfway mark…James and his new girlfriend Sara embark on a journey down Toad Road, an urban legend that purports to be a trail that leads to the Seven Gates of Hell…Now is this the best film that you will ever see? Fuck no…But as I mentioned it is beautifully shot…And the two unknown leads do an outstanding job…And the urban legend that they walked into…Was creepy enough to keep me completely engaged…And I wasn’t even half as wasted as the cast was in this one.

 

John Dies at the End (2012) – This film comes from Don Coscarelli, the director of some of my favorite films…Like…Bubba Ho-Tep…And the balls to the wall, ass-kicking Phantasm franchise…In this one…He adapts the novel filled with trippy-as-hell mindfuckery written by David Wong, a.k.a. Jason Pargin…About two friends who take a bizarre drug known as “Soy Sauce”…This stuff doesn’t just get the user high…But it also breaks open the doors of perception and zig-zags the user down a corridor filled with alternate dimensions and timestreams…This film and the drug that it features are off-the-fucking-wall…And as you watch Dave, played by Chase Williamson (Beyond the Gates) and John as they navigate through this drug-fueled existential mine field…Just know…You will never have more fun not knowing what the fuck is going on…Unless of course…You just took a healthy dose of Soy Sauce, yourself.

 

A Field In England (2013) – One of the things that I love about filmmaker, Ben Wheatley is…Each and every one of his films…Are completely unique…And unlike anything else that he has done…In this beautifully brutal black and white film…We are taken to the war-torn battlefields of the English Civil War…Where an alchemist’s assistant named Whitehead gets rescued by a soldier named Cutler…The two men meet two deserters and the four of them band together in search of an ale house nearby…What they find instead…In this strange field…Are copious amounts of hallucinogenic mushrooms…And maybe a buried alchemist…And possibly some buried treasure…And perchance a magical wind storm…But no ale house…I think…One thing I can say for sure…Is…This film is the trippiest historical period piece…That I’ve ever seen…Except for the time I watched Barry Lyndon on shrooms.

 

Antibirth (2016) – In this drug-addled horror comedy, writer-director Danny Perez tells a tale within the dark recesses of a remote Michigan town…It’s all about Lou, played by the ever-awesome Natasha Lyonne…She’s a girl who likes to party…Perhaps a bit too much…But, hey…Who’s judging? So after yet another dysphoric night of excessive drug and alcohol consumption…Lou wakes up with symptoms that seem eerily similar to those associated with pregnancy…Her BFF Sadie, played by the equally ever-awesome Chloë Sevigny, believes that Lou is actually pregnant, even though Lou insists that she hasn’t had sex…But as the symptoms increase and point to pregnancy…So do the moments of bizarre horrific hilarity…As well as some seriously gooey, gross-out moments…Moments that will probably take more drugs and alcohol than you watched Lou ingest…To erase the disturbing images from your memory bank…Give it a shot, though…Screw that…Bartender! Make it two shots!

 

Devil’s Acid (2018) – This delightfully off-the-wall little number comes from the obviously twisted mind of Garrett Kruithof…This actor made his directorial debut with this one…And he also stars as the film’s storyteller…One night while consuming a bunch of beers…A dad tells his two sons a story…About an asshole…Named Johnny…Johnny is the nastiest little person that I have ever seen on my TV…And that’s saying something because I saw the episode of Webster where Emmanuel Lewis climbed on a chair and kicked Mr. Papadopolis in the balls…Or maybe that was a dream…Anyway…The convoluted drunk ramblings of this father to his sons…Is exactly what makes this film so enjoyable…Had it just been the cheesetastic story about a bunch of women partying in an abandoned prison with that asshole Johnny and his brother…I would not have cared…But because it was framed by the inebriated storytelling of a father trying to appease his son’s insomnia…His story takes wild turns…And he is forced to answer questions throughout the film when it does…So…To sum up…It was sort of like The Princess Bride…But with sex…Drugs…And possibly even the Devil.

 

 

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Horror Fans In Horror Films.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

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

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Horror Fans In Horror Films.

In 1984…

Corey Feldman played a twelve year old boy named Tommy Jarvis…

A character who was not-so-loosely based on special effects wizard, Tom Savini…

Now by the time I watched Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter…

I had already sculpted a bust of Kurt Barlow from Salem’s Lot out of clay…Made a plaster cast of the head…And used liquid latex to make my very first monster mask…

And even though I was a little bit older than Tommy…

I really identified with this kid…

You see…

Like me…

He was a practical effects fan…

And a monster make-up fan…

But most of all…

He was a horror fan…

And to be honest…

There is nobody better suited…

To navigate their way through a horror film…

Than a horror fan…

So, that’s why…

In horror films…

And this includes the films that I am recommending to you today…

When there’s a horror fan in it…

That horror film…

Is guaranteed to be…

A whole lot better.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Horror Fans In Horror Films…In the years following Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. 

 

Fright Night (1985) – In Tom Holland’s total freaking classic of a vampire film…Horror fan, Charley Brewster is the perfect (or worst possible, depending on your perspective) neighbor to have when a vampire moves in next door…He obsessively watches horror movies…Especially ones starring and hosted by his hero, and vampire hunter extraordinaire, Peter Vincent…This obsession is the reason that he can so easily identify the nature of the beast next door…But that selfsame obsession is also why nobody believes him…And everyone thinks he is losing his mind…His friend, Evil…His girlfriend, Amy…His mom…Hell, even his hero, Peter Vincent thinks he’s nuts…But that doesn’t stop Ol’ Charley…No sir…His tenacity becomes the bane of this bloodsucker’s existence…And without Good Ol’ Charley standing in his way…It would give the term ‘There Goes The Neighborhood’ a whole new meaning.

 

The Monster Squad (1987) – For a director with only a handful of films in his filmography…Fred Dekker managed to create quite a legacy with this one, and its predecessor, Night of the Creeps…In this one…We have a whole …Um…Well…Squad of horror fans in the role of protagonist…Their vast knowledge of all things monstrous makes them aptly suited to defend the world against this onslaught of monster mayhem…Even though they are little whippersnappers…They still have a better shot at handling this than the local police force…And with the help of Scary German Guy, and Sean’s kid sister, Phoebe…They discover that all of that horror movie watching they did…Gave them all the knowledge that they would need to stop the coming monsterpocalypse…Well almost all the knowledge…It really would have been super helpful to know whether or not…The Wolfman had nards.

 

Scream (1996) – So in this shining star of a horror movie…One that sprang from the bleak starless sky known as the 90’s like a comet…Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson not only gave us Randy, the video store clerk by day, horror film buff by night, played by Jamie Kennedy…Educating both the cast of this film, and the audience a list of rules that if followed…Just might help you survive…But they also gave us the first slasher to ever throw a bunch of horror movie trivia at his victims…And this ain’t your daddy’s pub trivia…With this one…The price of a wrong answer is death…Having so many meta-horror moments from both protagonists and antagonists made this a really fun film to watch if you are a fan of horror films…And if you’re not…It just might educate you enough to make you want to become one.

 

The Faculty (1998) – Now technically this is a science fiction film…But hey…Alien invasion is some scary shit…So you gotta give me a pass on this one…Once again the scribe from the previous film on this list, Kevin Williamson…Has written in a couple of ringers to help navigate the island of misfit high school students and the audience through the murky alien life-form infested waters…Casey, played by Elijah Wood and Stokely played by Clea DuVall…Have read or seen every single alien invasion scenario out there…And their combined love of sci-fi and aliens…Will provide their group with the insight necessary to have even half a chance at survival…And considering that this group are rather quickly the only ones not under alien influences…From where I’m sittin’…Half a chance looks pretty freakin’ good.

 

The Hills Run Red (2009) – Tyler is the best type of horror fan out there…The Obsessed Horror Fan…We all have that one film…That stuck in our craw…That we defend with self-righteous, reckless abandon…That we know every single molecule of minutia about…Tyler’s obsession is a film that bears the same name as this one…The Hills Run Red…And he is determined to track down clues to not only the only known copy of the film…But also the long lost filmmaker himself, Wilson Wyler Concannon, played by the awesome, William Sadler…In every way…Tyler gets way more than he bargained for…And most likely wishes that he was obsessed with a different film…Because this obsession…Definitely didn’t work out the way he wanted it to.

 

The Final Girls (2015) – Imagine the film, The Last Action Hero…But instead of one young super-fan of action movies getting sucked into the world of action movies through a supernatural portal in a movie theater…You have a pack of teenagers, and one super-fan of horror movies getting sucked into the world of horror movies through a supernatural portal in a movie theater…Basically…It’s The Last Horror Hero...And, that’s not a bad thing at all…You see, both films poke a ton of fun at the cheese in their respective genres, while at the same time creating more of that same delicious cheese that we the fans crave so much…And the horror super-fan in this one…Was brought to life by Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley)…And he is an absolute delight as Duncan…

I mean…Just look at his reaction to one of the kills…Versus that of the others…

Priceless.

Fear, Inc. (2016) – This tongue-in-cheek meta-horror-comedy contains more horror movie references than I’ve ever seen on film before…The always hilarious Lucas Neff (Raising Hope) plays dopey, perpetually wasted, unemployed slacker, Joe…He is living an idyllic life due to the fact that he is dating way outside his paygrade…After taking his wealthy girlfriend to a underwhelming haunted house…He receives a business card for something called Fear, Inc…A nod to the David Fincher film, The Game…When Joe’s high school friend and fellow horror fanatic, Ben, played by Chris Marquette (Fanboys) shows up for a visit…The Fear, Inc. team starts to take over and the line between what is real…What is fake…What is funny…What is horror…Become beautifully blurred.

 

Tragedy Girls (2017) – This is a film for a whole new generation…A generation birthed, nursed, weaned, and raised on social media…And although these two deranged ladies are huge fans of horror…They are even bigger fans of the instant gratification that comes from the views, likes, loves, and comments of their throngs of adoring followers…I would like to mention that both of these actresses have spent a little time in the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters…Brianna Hildebrand, who plays Sadie…Played Negasonic Teenage Warhead in both of the Deadpool films…And Alexandra Shipp, who plays McKayla…Previously starred as Storm, AKA Ororo Munroe…In both X-Men: Apocalypse, and the upcoming summer blockbuster, Dark Phoenix…But in this film…We get a look at their darker side…And it really is quite frightening…Because as we all know…There ain’t much scarier…Than a teenage girl.

 

Blood Fest (2018) – Let me introduce you to the film that Hell Fest wanted to be…This film is bloodier…Bolder…More interesting…And contains more horror fans…The story goes a little something like this…Young Dax experiences a real life trauma…And grows up using horror films as a way to cope…He and his friends attend Blood Fest…An event that starts out as a film festival…And rather quickly becomes something more sinister…More dangerous…Let’s face it…More bat-shit crazy…A bunch of different horror genres are at play here…And the group of friends must somehow navigate their way through it…This was an original concept that played out in a thoroughly entertaining way…I dug it.

 

You Might Be the Killer (2018) – When Sam, played by Fran Kranz (The Cabin in the Woods) calls Charlie, played by Alyson Hannigan (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)…She is working her shift at the Rings of Saturn comic book store…He is calling to say that he is a camp counselor and he is currently being stalked by a masked killer…Charlie is his resident horror expert…And serves as the guide that navigates both Sam, and the storytelling for the rest of the film…A film that feels like it sprang from a time capsule that was put underground back in 1986…It is an off-the-wall, and completely original concept…And is executed brilliantly…This is a great Friday night horror film…Filled with laughs and gore…And crying out for you to pour a tasty beverage…And enjoy the ride.