Would You Rather looks like the kind of movie I usually despise. But recently, Bloody Disgusting’s YouTube channel give it a recommendation so I decided to check it out because I haven’t covered many newer movies this year. I must say I’m impressed.

Iris (Brittany Snow) is a wholesome young blonde who’s had to put her life on hold in order to care for her sick brother. One day she meets the super rich Shepard Lambrick (Jeffery Combs) who invites her and a handful of others to a mysterious dinner party. Iris reluctantly accepts, but when she makes it known she’s a vegetarian, Lambrick offers her a deal: if she eats all the meat on her plate, he’ll give her ten thousand dollars, cash. When Lambrick notices another dinner guest (John Heard) hasn’t touched his wine because he’s sixteen years sober, the charitable host offers the ex-alcoholic a similarly fucked up deal.

And that’s only the appetizer. What the guests soon learn is they’ve been invited to play a twisted version of Would You Rather, which goes something like this: Would you rather stab the person next to you in the leg, or give the person at the end of the table three lashes with a whip? The problem with most movies with built-in candy bar scenes is they find trouble topping the previous ones. Would You Rather manages to top everything that came before it time after time. This is one diabolically entertaining movie with a lot of gruesome surprises. The pleasure Lambrick gets from orchestrating the game is some darkly funny stuff to see.

Brittany Snow’s presence makes you suspect this is yet another mindless horror movie aimed solely at the kind of teens who’ve never seen a legitimate horror movie in their lives, but it feels more like a Twilight Zone episode or a Richard Matheson story. I think I would have preferred it more if the dinner guests were voluntarily playing the sick games, rather than forced by gunpoint, but that’s a superficial complaint. (I mean, come on, isn’t it sicker when good people do fucked up stuff when they don’t actually have to?)

I made three predictions during the movie and two of them (including the end) turned out to be right. Even so, I hesitate to call this movie predictable. “Predictable” suggests I disliked the movie, yet I really, really liked it. No, I don’t think it’s predictable, just that it’s a certain kind of a story that has to go the way it did. The more I think about Would You Rather, the more I like it.

Strap in, folks. It’s another “Who needs bathing suits for swimming?” movie which manages to show absolutely no nudity whatsoever. I mean, why even have that scene at all if everybody’s just going to be bobbing lazily up to their necks? No playful splashing? No erotic horsing around? What the actual fuck, guys?

The teens of Tourist Trap, which I happen to think is a great generic title for a horror movie, go skinny dipping after their Volkswagen Type 181 breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Chuck Connors, playing an overall-wearing good ol’ boy, happens upon the kids and warns them about the moccasins who nest in the very water they’re swimming in. Cut to: everybody fully clothed and miraculously dry, at which point Connors offers them a ride to his home. His home, as it turns out, is a “museum” full of all manner of junk. The overwhelming majority of his collection consists of mannequins, which the movie calls “wax statues,” but I know department store mannequins when I see them. One of the mannequins looks suspiciously like his dead wife. Its “wax” feels a lot like flesh. You can see where this is going, right?

I’m usually careful with spoilers, but it’s hard to extend that rule to anything so shamelessly derivative of Psycho. Tourist Trap thinks it’s pulling a fast one on the audience, but anyone who’s ever seen a movie will know, almost immediately, that Chuck Connors is the killer. It’s as obvious as a punch to the face. Yes, The Rifleman is the killer. The movie initially wants us to believe the strange happenings are caused by Chuck Connors’ unseen brother, but come on, guys. We all know it as soon as we see him. Hell, my fucking dog called it, too.

Once they get that reveal out of the way, we get a perfectly fine horror movie along the lines of the wonderful Motel Hell. You get to see Chuck Connors dressed bizarrely, playing with dolls as he chews the scenery in the best fucking way possible. The only reason I can’t give it a recommendation to everyone is the good stuff happens too late and only leaves you wanting more. They have such a great gag here, I just wish there was more of it.

Oh, boy. I may have hit my limit. I feel like I’ve blown my fucking mind out on bad movies this year. Here’s one so egregious I don’t even want to talk about it. You might accuse me of being too hard on this movie. Clint Howard is one of my favorite faces in the industry. This blog attests to the fact that horror-comedy is my favorite type of horror and comedy. I originally saw it when I was twelve years old, which should have been the perfect viewing age for something like this. Try showing it to a two year old and you might be able to dazzle ’em… maybe.

In its 85-minute running time there are about fifty seconds of awesome. The rest is slow, plodding, and boringly shot, not to mention entirely illogical. It’s like one of those “rad” children films that frequently turned up in video stores in the early-to-mid 90s, only there’s just a little bit of gore, which feels shoehorned in only to ensure a journalist from Fangoria showed up to take pictures on set. (The severed heads, by the way, look absolutely amazing. Everything else… oof.)

Clint Howard plays the titular ice cream man. When he was a kid, he witnessed the so-called Ice Cream King get gunned down during a drive-by shooting. His mother found her trauma-stricken boy sitting on the curb, eating an ice cream cone, mere inches from the dead body. He glanced up at her and asked, “Who’s going to bring me ice cream, Mommy?” That part was kind of funny, actually.

That’s the problem: a lot of the movie is kind of funny. It would have been much funnier if they weren’t trying so hard. It would have been a lot more watchable, too, if most of the killings didn’t take place off camera. Despite the subject matter, the movie’s so tame I don’t think they would have edited very much to show it on the USA network twenty years ago.

Anyway, now that he’s all grown up, the ice cream man kills children, grinds them up, and mixes their remains into the ice cream he sells around town. Three neighborhood kids uncover his evil scheme and take matters into their own hands. Armed with giant model rockets, they decide to finish the ice cream man, once and for all. I mean… fuck. Haven’t we seen this too many times before? It’s the same old shit, a decade too late.

So the main character, whose name is Tuna, is supposed to be fat kid. Instead of casting a tubby kid, the filmmakers cast a photogenically skinny kid and stuffed his hooded shirts with what appears to be ordinary bed pillows. The movie-long effort seems pointless until the payoff at the very end of the film: with the ice cream man dead, Tuna no longer eats so much ice cream and therefor loses all his weight. Excellent character arc, that.

George C. Scott plays William Kinderman, a grizzled police lieutenant whose best friend was Father Karras from the first film. (Kinderman was briefly portrayed by Lee J. Cobb in the original movie, but in the novel the character had a much larger role, providing an alternative viewpoint to Karras’s already shaky faith.) The cop is investigating the gruesome murder of a twelve year old boy who was decapitated and crucified. The killing fits the MO of the so-called Gemini Killer, who was shot dead by police the same night Regan was exorcised. What does this have to do with anything? Well, it’s a stretch, but the film is so well made it’s perfectly believable within the context of the story.

The Exorcist III came on TV when I was home sick from school one day and I unexpectedly enjoyed the hell out of it as it did not garner warm reviews at the time of its release. In the years since, I’ve always wanted to see it again. Cue Scream Factory’s re-release of the movie, which is now the best way to see it at. I watched it last night long after I should have been in bed. The improved sound mix alone is better than most of the movies I reviewed this month; the subtle use of surround speakers increases the creepiness as you never quite know if it’s a rustling leaf or a demon whispering in your ear.

The trailers in 1990 gave away one of the film’s biggest twists. I bet most reviews did as well so this one won’t. If you haven’t seen any of the marketing material yet, don’t. That way the mid-movie reveal about the man in Cell 11, who’s played by Brad Dourif, won’t get ruined for you. Dourif’s performance here is something special. I’ve seen hundreds of actors go for broke in their depictions of insanity, but few have hit the mark so well. He fulfills a role similar to Hannibal Lector in the sense he may be even more dangerous when he’s locked up (incidentally, this film preceded Silence of the Lambs by one year).

You can tell writer/director William Peter Blatty wanted to protect the secret of Cell 11, too, because the reveal is executed with great care and attention to detail. Blatty battled the studio on a lot of unnecessary changes. For one, he didn’t even want the word “Exorcist” in the title at all because he wanted to distance himself from the laughably bad The Exorcist II: The Heretic. His instinct was correct because the movie has largely been overlooked until horror fans reevaluated it relatively recently.

This isn’t a cash-grab. It’s an organic continuation of the original story. It happens to contain what many believe to be the most effective jump-scare in history. It’s remarkable how masterfully quiet the moment is when you analyze it the second time around.

In the cold opening of Splinter, a gas station attendant is attacked by what appears to be roadkill (Is it a rat? A possum? A rabid squirrel?). Then we’re introduced to an attractive young couple (Jill Wagner and Paulo Constanzo) who suck at camping and a couple of drug addicts (Shea Whigham and Rachel Kerbs) who are running from the law. The couples’ paths cross in the middle of nowhere and the fugitives take the would-be campers hostage. When the getaway car overheats, the four of them have to make a pit stop at the very gas station we saw in the beginning of the movie, which now seems abandoned.

That’s when things get predictably weird… just a little too predictable, in fact, which is one of the film’s few flaws. The writers even bring in a nifty biologist character who makes huge leaps of logic while spouting technobabble nonsense. They don’t bother to explain the origin of the monster, so why did they feel the need to explain how it functions on a cellular level? All I’m saying is I could have used a little more peer-reviewed research.

I certainly wouldn’t say this is a cheap-looking film (the trailer is a different matter), but it feels like the poor man’s Splice. Taking cues from John Carpenter’s The Thing, the creature effects are fantastic, if not fleeting, while the acting is better than most of the movies I feature. In fact, my only complaint about the acting is it breaks down whenever the performers interact with the special effects; I suspect the actors had nothing physical to react to.

I don’t want to spoil what, exactly, is attacking the characters, but it’s sufficiently hideous and the title is certainly relevant. The characters are trapped inside the gas station, which forces them to resort to desperate measures, some of which reminded me of the amusing solutions employed in Tremors. Unfortunately some of these solutions are a little too goofy for the film’s otherwise serious tone. (I’m reminded of The Blob and Jurassic Park, but I’ll let you discover why on your own.)

I tend to dislike movies that try too hard to be creepy. This one tries when it’s at its worst, but more often than not it’s effortless. It’s not too loud, not too spacey, and not too boring. The sweet spot, I’d say.

Madman with a campfire story, which serves as the backstory for the ax-wielding maniac. The group of campers consists of teens and small children. The children’s plot armor will prove extraordinary, but shouldn’t they be the easiest victims to dispatch? The teens are all played by adult actors who will become predictably easy pickin’s for the titular madman. The audience will have to endure one plodding POV shot after another, the pickup truck will fail to start when the characters need it the most, and people will amble about the woods to fill the targeted runtime.

The star of Madman is Gaylen Ross, who was also the star of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, my favorite horror film of all time. She’s more than adequate in the role, which isn’t particularly demanding, but appears uncomfortable in a sex scene and it doesn’t feel like acting. As soon as the awkward scene is over, her lover wanders the woods to get himself killed. Naturally, another character goes looking for him and also gets himself killed—off screen because Madman just isn’t a very remarkable slasher flick, notable only because it was among the first.

Later, a chick pokes her head into a tent where a couple are getting freaky. It would have been great if the killer chose that moment to decapitate her, so that her head would tumble into the tent with her horny friends. In another scene, the killer is hot on the trail of a young woman who takes an excruciatingly long time to empty the contents of a refrigerator so she can hide in it. The killer is so close when she does this, he’s literally in the same shot… worst attempt to hide ever. “Hey, just pretend you didn’t see me go inside, okay?”

The expected tropes, clichés—whatever you prefer to call them—are all here. Madman hits its notes with such soulless precision it’s artless and robotic. As a carbon copy, it’s perfect. As a movie, it’s fucking terrible. Ross appeared in Creepshow the same year and never acted again. I don’t know why she quit acting, but I’m going to go ahead and blame Madman. The film is so joyless, I feel like I want to quit watching movies.

It turns out there’s a documentary about Madman. Early on, those involved admit the production was only a stepping stone to the art film they actually wanted to make. Perhaps that’s why it feels so lazy. How a documentary got made about this forgettable film, I’ll never know.

Director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Strange Days) was married to James Cameron around the time she made Near Dark, which is probably why three of his preferred actors appear here: Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, and Jenette Goldstein. At one point the main character walks past a theater which is playing Aliens. Semi-trucks, another Cameron staple, features prominently in the plot. Though that filmmaker’s fingerprints are all over this alternatively grimy and sexy vampire picture, it’s undeniably a Kathryn Bigelow film.

Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) is a southern boy who gives an attractive hitchhiker a ride. Her name is Mae (Jenny Wright) and the chemistry between her and Caleb is immediately apparent. Their necking quickly turns into an accidental bite on Caleb’s neck, which changes him into a vampire. This thrusts him into Mae’s world, which involves drifting from one town to another in order to procure fresh blood. Caleb’s worried father, played by Tim Thomerson (Trancers), scours the countryside for his missing son.

It turns out Mae belongs to an odd band of outlaw vampires who have some pretty clever (and pretty gruesome) methods of acquiring blood. Homer looks like a young boy, but Jesse (Henriksen) calls him “old man,” suggesting the eternal child is in fact the elder of the group. Then there’s Goldstein’s Diamondback, who’s kind of the irresponsible mother of the group, and Paxton’s Severen is the weirdest of the bunch. At one point Caleb asks Jesse how old he is. The response: “I fought for the south.” Following a perfectly calculated beat, he adds with a smile, “We lost.”

Due to Caleb’s reluctance to kill humans, he tries hard to win the acceptance of his vampire comrades. They keep giving him opportunities to prove himself. He keeps letting them down. Cowboys, it seems, just aren’t cut out to be vampires.

Near Dark is no more a horror movie than it is a western, providing the themes and violence we expect from both. The title doesn’t just describe the tone, but the cinematography as well. (You’re going to have a very bad time if you’re trying to watch this one in a bright room.) My favorite thing about Near Dark is how cool it is. There’s a punk rock energy about it and a downright contempt for convention. It’s one of my very favorite vampire flicks.

“You have the right to remain silent,” the big cop said in his robot’s voice. “If you do not choose to remain silent, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. I’m going to kill you. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you?”

It’s been almost twenty years since I read Desperation and its parallel-universe “sequel,” The Regulators, yet I remember a lot about them. Why ABC didn’t make the obvious decision—simultaneously producing two television adaptations with the same cast—is beyond me. According to Wikipedia, the network practically sabotaged the movie by airing it at the same time as American Idol.

I try to look past the limitations of a medium, I really do, but made-for-TV movies are so quickly produced you’d have to be blind not to see flaws. What ends up on the screen often feels like a first rehearsal. Desperation is no exception. At one point you can plainly see the squib jacket on an actor’s back after his character’s shot in rapid succession. I can forgive the camera operators for not noticing it and I’ll assume the editors were under similar time constraints. What really hurts is that shot could have been easily trimmed to hide the flub.

What Desperation gets right is the casting of Ron Perlman and Tom Skerrit. Although Perlman looks nothing like the villain I imagined (wasn’t he, like, way bigger in the book?), he organically slips the “Tak!” catchphrase into his dialog with uncanny timing. Meanwhile, Skerrit looks exactly what I imagined Marinville would look like, which makes him the least distracting fixture of the cast. The best acting is when Perlman and Skerrit share screen time.

The film is chilling at times, but that has more to do with King’s involvement than anything else. There’s just something inherently scary about a psychotic cop framing unsuspecting travelers on a desert road. The helplessness comes through despite Standards’ best efforts to censor the hell out of it.

I’m a big fan of the director and I obviously admire the writer (King also wrote the teleplay), but I don’t have much more to say about this one. The end result is so mediocre, there’s no point dwelling on it.