It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

There’s a bar in the middle of nowhere. It’s just an average night until a blood-drenched man with a shotgun bursts through the door and orders the patrons to fortify the place. “Who the hell are you?” the bartender asks. “I’m the guy who’s gonna save your ass,” the stranger replies in heroic confidence. A split second later, a monster bursts through the window rips his head off.

The monsters in Feast are draped in roadkill coats and cattle-skull masks. They’re gnarly-lookin’ creatures who rip and tear with gruesome panache. In a misguided act of desperation, the bar patrons attempt to scare them away by dangling a dead monster baby from a stick. In the gory aftermath of that scene, Henry Rollins’ character admits: “Yeah, that was a bad idea.”

I don’t know why I closely followed the development of Feast on Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Project Greenlight, but never watched the movie until now. In case you’re unfamiliar with Project Greenlight, it was a reality TV show in which the famous actors plucked an unknown filmmaker from obscurity to make a feature length film. The first two movies that came out of Project Greenlight sucked so bad, Affleck and Damon decided to go for broke and make a balls-to-the-wall horror film.

Feast would be improved if the shots were just a little longer and the director didn’t try to be so damn cute in the first act. There’s an exhausting amount of wink-wink, nudge-nudge bullshit in the beginning, in which the filmmakers practically announce they’re going to give us the unexpected. Unfortunately, when you’re expecting the unexpected, you get exactly what you expected. If the film had lured us into believing it was a by-the-numbers horror picture (You’re Next comes to mind), the unexpected stuff would have been more rewarding, not to mention not as self-congratulatory. Never mind that. Everything else about Feast is great.

Most of these actors you’ll either know by name or recognize from other movies. Not only does it feature western actor Clu Gulager, it was directed by his son, John Gulager, the third season winner of Project Greenlight. After a success like this, John might be relegated to horror pictures for the rest of his life. I hope he’s comfortable with that because it’s clear that’s what he was born to do.

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It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

When a movie has Vincent Price, Clu Gulager, and Rosalind Cash, you don’t need to do much deliberating. Just watch the damn thing. That’s what I did. Then I groaned when I realized it was an anthology film.

I’m not saying anthology films suck, I’m just saying even the best ones tend to have at least one shitty entry. The first segment in From a Whisper to a Scream is weak, and it embarrassingly cops out before showing us what we all really wanted to see. Nevertheless, the second story tops it. That’s not exactly hard to do when you set the bar so low.

These stories mostly adhere to the rules of EC comics: something terrible must happen to an innocent person. In the end, the instigator must get what they deserve, usually in an ironic manner. It’s a little old hat and there’s not much room for suspense. From a Whisper to a Scream tries to deviate from the formula, but when it does the outcome is needlessly cruel.

The container story begins with the lethal injection of a deranged woman. A reporter who witnesses the execution later ends up at an old library cared for by Vincent Price. Price tells the reporter their town is haunted. He presents his case by showing the reporter four stories from various points in the town’s history.

In the first story, Clu Gulager plays the part of a hallucinogenic old man who falls for an uninterested younger woman. In the second story, a gunshot victim, played by Terry Kiser (Weekend at Bernie’s), ends up betraying the swamp-dwelling man who nursed him back to help. The third story is about a woman who falls in love with a glass-eating circus freak who’s bound by voodoo to remain in the carnival for the rest of his life. Pretty standard stuff.

Then there’s the fourth story. Like I said above, it’s hard to play around with such a simple formula, but when you have a real piece of work like the protagonist in this story, you’ve got yourself a great throwback to the stories often seen in The Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt. This one reminds me of a cross between Vic Morrow’s story in The Twilight Zone: The Movie and the classic Star Trek episode, And the Children Shall Lead.

The unreasonably prolific Cameron Mitchell plays a Union sergeant who doesn’t mind gunning down Confederates (or his own soldiers) even after he’s learned the war has ended. He and his group of immoral soldiers are taken captive in a town run by children. It’s later explained that their parents were massacred in the war and the kids decided to form their own society. When, at last, they reveal the oft-discussed “magistrate,” it’s wonderfully bizarre.

As a whole, From a Whisper to a Scream is pretty solid, even if some of its elements are structurally weak. Vincent Price doesn’t seem particularly enthused to be here and three of the five stories are meh. But Terry Kiser’s and Cameron Mitchell’s stories make the slog worth it.

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It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

Keanu Reeves plays a forty-something architect whose family has gone on vacation without him. Later that night, a couple of young women show up on his doorstep, seduce him, then refuse to leave his home. When he threatens to call the cops, they giggle and say they’ve got a good story to tell: “You want to check her ID?” asks one of the women. “She’s too young to have one.”

From that point forward, Keanu’s character is forced to take part in their nightmarish games. After tying him to a bed, one of the women wears his daughter’s clothes and rapes him while the other woman videotapes. At various points throughout the movie, Keanu gets the opportunity to make a run for it, but he chooses not to, hoping until the bitter end that he’ll find some way to fix this problem and cover up his infidelities.

Not many movie stars would do a picture like this. Hell, most would have run the other way when offered The Matrix after getting burned by Johnny Mnemonic. It’s clear Keanu is a genuine fan of genre films. Knock Knock is obviously not a movie he did for the paycheck—the entire budget was less than most movie star salaries. It’s a brave move to take a role like this for such little pay.

Knock Knock is probably Eli Roth’s best-looking film, but it’s perhaps his least entertaining. I liked it, but maybe I would have liked it more if I had seen Death Game, which Roth apparently wanted to remake. I missed the old Roth—the juvenile and fun Roth—but he doesn’t get up to his old tricks until the credits are about to roll. There’s actually a very funny bit near the end involving Facebook. Had the rest of the movie been so unhinged, I probably would have been able to recommend it more.

2023 Update: I’ve seen Death Game now and, as I suspected, my opinion of Knock Knock slightly improved.

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It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

There are those who will tell you Mark of the Devil is a proto-torture film along the lines of Saw and Hostel. I’ve even heard it compared to films like Cannibal Holocaust and Blood Feast. These comparisons are wrong. This is no more a torture film than Passion of the Christ. It’s a lot less exploitative, too.

Mark of the Devil was certainly marketed as an exploitation film. The producers drummed up publicity by having theaters pass out barf bags. It was probably a cash-in on Vincent Price’s Witchfinder General (a.k.a. The Conqueror Worm), which came out two years prior. Unfortunately, I think too many reviewers are remembering the hokey way Mark of the Devil was promoted rather than the film itself.

A man who’s been accused of witchcraft has his fingers chopped off before he’s tarred and feathered for the villagers’ amusement. Moments later, two more accused witches are burned on the pyre. The blasé man responsible for these horrific acts is known as “the Albino.” Business is booming for the Albino until a traveling witch hunter arrives with his eager protege, played by Udo Kier.

Kier’s character humiliates the Albino for falsely accusing a local woman (Olivera Vuco) of witchcraft simply because she won’t have sex with him. Naturally, Kier falls in love with the damsel, which leads to one of the film’s major conflicts: Kier’s mentor also accuses this woman of witchcraft and temporarily convinces Kier he’s going against God if he doesn’t do the same. While the woman’s official indictment is prepared, which will make her torture legal, the other accused witches are burned, stretched, and mutilated in various ways until they fabricate confessions which name future victims. Rinse and repeat.

This is a film which is full of memorable villains and beautiful performers. The photography is masterful in its use of contrast, juxtaposing these beautiful faces with images of shocking violence. If anything is a surefire sign this isn’t a straight-up exploitation movie, it’s the music, which isn’t the ominously droning theme you’d expect from such a title, but something softer, flowerier, akin to Theme from a Summer Place. It’s clear the director wishes to underline the tragic love story, not the senseless torture.

A lot of films about witch-hunting are metaphors for modern issues. Mark of the Devil, though, is literally about witch-hunting, a dark chapter in history which should never be forgotten, much less watered down by panning the camera away. Movies like this remind us that unspeakable violence is often committed by “good, god fearing people” in the name of dearly held beliefs. Despite any historical inaccuracies or technical problems it may have, Mark of the Devil is one of the most effective films about the subject, period.

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It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

I’m beginning to suspect I’ve seen Deranged before and completely forgot it. That’s because it’s a completely forgettable film despite decent acting, better-than-average camerawork, and a wonderfully odd séance, which involves a lonely widow pretending she’s possessed by the spirit of her dead husband; the spirit, the woman claims, wants the main character to “make her feel like a woman again.”

The movie opens with the following card: “The motion picture you are about to see is absolutely true.” I never believe a movie when it goes out of its way to tell me it’s a true story, but I believe it even less when it adds the word “absolutely.” For extra realism, the movie is hosted by a newspaper columnist who breaks the fourth wall with his asides. The newsman gives the film a hokey Faces of Death feel, which is fun for half of the movie, but this mockumentary gimmick is abandoned by the second half.

Roberts Blossom, best known as the sweet old man from Home Alone, plays Cobb the serial killer. In an introductory scene it’s made clear he loves his sick mother a little too much; at one point he’s trying to feed her pea soup even as her nose bleeds all over it. When she dies, he’s heartbroken, but he gets the brilliant idea to dig her up and bring her back home. When the town sheriff pulls Cobb over with his mother in the passenger seat, the policeman mistakes the smell of a rotting corpse for alcohol on Cobb’s breath… and sends Cobb on his merry little way. It’s the seventies, after all.

All is well for Cobb now that Mom’s back at home—other than the fact her skin is deteriorating. No matter; he’ll just borrow skin from living women to keep her fresh. It’s not long until Cobb is wearing the skin himself (What part of “Deranged” was unclear to you?), baiting more women than he actually needs to complete his restoration project.

I enjoyed the first half of Deranged, but the second half stretches the premise too thin. I like good horror movies and I like bad ones, but mediocre is unforgivable.

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It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

With a title like TerrorVision, a movie can go either way, but it won’t be mediocre. The very first shot is a close-up of the monster, which reminds me equally of Audrey II and the one-eyed creature from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. What we have here is a bonafide monster movie, which greatly tickles me. No plodding POV shots. No hiding in the shadows. Just front and center, for better or for worse.

In the cold open, an alien civilization disposes of something, which unsurprisingly finds its way to Earth. Cut to: the opening credits, which are accompanied by an 80s pop song designed specifically for the movie. It’s not a particularly good song, but it suggests TerrorVision is the kind of movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. In other words, it’s right up my alley.

The Puttermans have just installed a tacky satellite dish on the edge of their property. Satellite receivers back then were the size of SETI dishes and were usually nestled between above-ground pools and broken trampolines. Grampa (Bert Remsen) thinks it’s a World War II era radar dish; when the family turns on an old war movie, he shouts, “Troop movements!” and tightens his grip on the loaded gun that never leaves his side.

The Puttermans’ little boy idolizes Grampa while the daughter is an MTV-obsessed mall rat. Mr. Putterman (Gerrit Graham) drives a Porche with the vanity plate MR. COOL and pursues the swinger lifestyle with his vain wife (Mary Woronov). While the couple is preparing to wife-swap, Mr. Putterman puts on his disco-flavored gold chains and complains that his daughter’s new boyfriend “looks ridiculous.” The boyfriend, by the way, is played by Jon Gries of Real Genius, The Monster Squad, and a hilarious death in Get Shorty.

What the Puttermans don’t know is a monster, which is later described as an energy being, has made their TV system its new home. Grampa and the little boy are the first to discover the terror in the television and waste no time arming themselves with military-grade weapons, stockpiled in the old man’s bunker beneath a confederate flag (of course). The monster begins picking victims off one by one and the movie doesn’t go amiss until it attempts an extended parody of E.T.

The acting is so over-the-top it goes well past the point of being funny, becomes downright obnoxious, and finds its way to funny again. Its sitcom-quality sets enhances the actors’ intentional goofiness as it takes a boiling hot piss-take on the superficiality of suburban life in the Reagan era. Terrorvision is a refreshingly fast-paced horror film which currently holds a 0% on the Rotten Tomatoes. Sure, it’s stupid, but it’s not stupid, if you know what I mean.

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First the series lost Kevin Bacon. Then it lost Fred Ward. Then I stopped giving a shit. Fast forward several years later and Netflix recommends I watch Tremors 5. Hey, why not?

I’ll tell you why not: Jamie Kennedy. As soon as I saw him put on a helmet so that his stunt double could ride a motorcycle around the opening credits for five minutes, I almost turned the movie off. Here’s an actor who sucks so bad, instead of trying to make better movies, he made a documentary to attack his critics. What a crybaby.

You’re probably thinking: Surely he’s an expendable character, right? Surely no one thought they could replace Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward’s chemistry with Michael Gross and Jamie Kennedy! Unfortunately, Kennedy really is the sidekick. Here’s a character who says “dome” because he thinks it’s funnier than just saying “head.” The rest of the time you won’t know if he’s referencing famous movie lines or outright ripping them off. Either way it’s fucking terrible.

So is the addition of piss humor. This movie seems to think piss is hilarious. Getting pissed on, drinking piss, singing while spreading piss all over your body. These things could be funny in a better movie, but they’re not here. And while Michael Gross still seems mostly genuine as Burt, the filmmakers think they can make us laugh simply by having him do little more than speak military jargon. Are words like “rendezvous” really that funny? (Let me suggest Nick Offerman for the inevitable reboot. While we’re dream-casting, move Kevin Bacon to Ward’s part.)

At best the movie is kind of entertaining and, at worst, it isn’t quite bad enough to turn off. Considering it’s free for anyone who has Netflix, the price is right if you don’t value your time. Frankly, I think the franchise derailed with the addition of ass-blasters. Credit where credit’s due: Tremors 5 has some of the best CGI I’ve seen in a straight-to-video movie and the camerawork is surprisingly good, too.

Considering some of the other stuff I’ve recommended this month, maybe I’m being a little too hard on it. I don’t know why I expected more. If you liked the last few, you might have a good time with this one. At least until they reveal… eh, I won’t spoil it for you. Best to let you throw popcorn at your TV, too.

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A mission to Haley’s Comet discovers a gigantic derelict spaceship hidden in the corona. Once inside, the astronauts are shocked to discover two men and a woman preserved in see-through capsules. After transferring the bodies to their own ship, the human aliens are brought back to Earth for experimentation. Just as they begin to dissect the female specimen, she wakes up and sucks a scientist’s life force right out of his body, leaving him a decayed shell of his former self. The woman escapes the facility in the nude and manages to evade the police as if that’s not an APB every cop in the country would respond to.

While the main characters are trying to track the woman down, the corpse of the man she drained unexpectedly comes back to life and steals the life force of another victim. The scientists later discover that people who’ve been drained in such a manner always come back—via awesome animatronic effects—and if they don’t get life force they explode. London is the center of this pandemic. The military quarantines the city and prepares to quarantine it with nuclear weapons. The aliens, however, have other plans.

What’s strange about Lifeforce is I enjoyed the movie tremendously, but have little desire to talk about it this month. Maybe it doesn’t belong in 31 Days of Gore despite the fact it has plenty of gore, bitchin’ animatronics, and more nudity than a porno. None of that stuff is presented in an exploitative way. It’s probably the most tasteful movie I’ve featured all month.

I’m slipping. I’ll do better, I promise.

Sexuality aside, Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce has more in common with a modern blockbuster than it does with the horror film the marketers wanted to promote. Which is probably why it bombed: the people the ad campaign targeted expected something more terrifying from the guy who brought us Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Both movies are great. I wish this one was better known.

The acting is solid. The special effects are bombastic. The Blu-Ray edition was well worth the wait—and I did wait because the DVD edition I obtained last year was presented in 4:3; meanwhile the Scream Factory edition goes for over fifty bucks on eBay. If the plot made a little bit more sense (or any at all) it likely would have found more love from critics. It’s just not very compelling when all the aliens want from us is humans’ life force, represented as mystical blue stuff that might as well be fairy dust.

This is a very serious film. Tobe Hooper has made something unique, which makes it hurt all the more that he’s making cheap movies like Djinn today (I confess I have not seen that one yet, but it looks awful). Considering movies are rarely made for adults anymore (I guess that’s what TV’s for these days even though it’s often a poor substitution for production value), it’s hard to imagine a time when movies with such overt sexuality would be marketed to summer crowds. If you ever wanted to see Patrick Stewart get possessed by a feminine creature and make out with another man, here’s the movie for you.

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It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

Say the opening credits: Original Idea by Charles Band. I’m not sure about “original.” If you’re expecting anything other than a throwback to 50s monster movies, you’re gonna be disappointed. You might be disappointed anyway. Movies like this are only as good as their mad scientist. The scientist in Seedpeople could’ve been great—he’s a kooky drunk with UV lights taped to his head and arms—but he’s relegated to explaining the plot, which really isn’t complicated enough to warrant as much dialogue as they give it.

Before we go any further, I just want to point out the greatest thing Seedpeople has to offer is the following line, spoken by a not-too bright farmer who’s just stumbled upon an alien spore, Blob-style: “What in the ding-dong-heck-a-ma-doodle is that?” It may be the dumbest line in movie history. And I love it.

The film is set in a remote town called Comet Valley. Conveniently, there’s a single bridge which leads in and out of the community. Even more convenient: it’s about to be closed for maintenance. The main character arrives just before they close it down. He’s a geologist (or something) who’s still in love with an ex-girlfriend who now runs a bed and breakfast. She’s also dating the town sheriff, who hates the main character in a junior high school kind of way. Which is to say nothing about the main character’s childish advances on his old flame: he pursues her with a persistence that’s downright creepy.

I’m a fan of Full Moon movies, but I just can’t recommend this one. Although there’s plenty of cheese to enjoy, the movie itself is boringly routine. But that’s the great thing about horror movies: the bad ones remind you to cherish the good ones.

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