Sometime in the early to mid 90s, there was a badly worn VHS copy of The Serpent and the Rainbow in a sun-faded box at my neighborhood video store. I clearly remember it was on the row closest to the front window, at the absolute bottom of the shelf. I passed it countless times, thinking: “How good can a horror movie be if it has ‘Rainbow’ in the title? Probably some Carebears shit for weenies.” When at last I read the back copy, I wondered how I had lived so long (which was like twelve years at the time) without knowing that Wes Craven had directed a zombie movie with Bill Pullman. Surely it must have been forgotten for good reason, right?

As it turned out, A) it’s not a zombie movie in the Romero sense and B) I’m not sure why the film seems overshadowed even today. Of the thirty or so movies Craven directed, I would rank it in his top three, trailing only Nightmare on Elm Street and perhaps The People Under the Stairs, depending on my mood. (Yes, I really do love The People Under the Stairs. No, I don’t know why.) It’s a remarkably mature horror film for the era, reminding me of Jacob’s Ladder, Angel Heart, and The Ninth Gate. I can’t resist a horror movie with the structure of a detective novel.

Boston anthropologist Dennis Alan (Pullman) is hired by a pharmaceutical company to investigate the credibility of Haitian practices, particularly those that Vodou priests may use to turn the dead into their slaves. The simplified technobabble in the first act is probably the least believable dialogue in the entire film, but long story short: the corporate lackeys have surmised that, through centuries of trial and error, bokors have created a concoction that makes living persons appear dead for some hours before rising from the grave healthy. With dollar signs bouncing in their eyes, they decide that researching such an elixir would revolutionize modern medicine, specifically anesthesiology.

When Dennis arrives in Haiti, the country is fractured as the people there are on the precipice of revolution. As it turns out, the head of the secret police is a bokor by the name of Captain Peytraud (Zakes Mokae). Dennis finds himself in the care of Marielle (Cathy Tyson), a doctor who doesn’t let her cultural convictions conflict with her medical knowledge, and the street-wise Lucien (Paul Winfield) who will help Dennis navigate the country’s dangers. Meanwhile, Captain Peytraud doesn’t want a white foreigner poking around his territory and conjures all manner of terrifying visions to scare Dennis away before graduating to more physical tortures.

This is the first time I’ve seen The Serpent and the Rainbow in a high definition format. The pan-and-scan nature of VHS really didn’t do the film justice, cheapening its sweeping shots of presumably real rituals performed by real locals (there’s a lot of production value in those scenes). It’s not the first time a horror movie has dealt with a non-Romero variety of zombies, but it is perhaps the first time one has done it in a culturally respectful way. Haiti isn’t scary because it’s a foreign country, it’s scary because of the political backdrop and the corruption. Likewise, Dennis is not the white savior with a sophisticated Harvard education, but the guy who needs saving more than anyone else.

Whereas most horror movies lose steam as their ethereal terrors become literal ones, Craven conjures a wonderful finale that employs imagery and gore fitting of his Freddy Krueger films. Yeah, there’s some goofy stuff in there, too (near the end, Peytraud jump-scares the hero in a manner that immediately reminded me of Craven’s Shocker), but overall it’s a good time with an excellent cast of character actors. This is very much a multiple-viewing kind of film.

An archeologist defiles a tomb in Egypt and lasers blind him. At the same time, his daughter Susie is given an ancient amulet by an old lady who promptly vanishes before her eyes. The family returns to New York City while the father (Christopher Connelly) recovers his eyesight. The weird happenings begin almost immediately, but I’m not sure the happenings are weird enough for fans of director Lucio Fulci. Egyptian eye-seeking lasers would be pretty wacky in most movies, but in a Fulci film they’re kinda tame.

Having made more than sixty films, even the most diehard Fulci fans can be forgiven for skipping Manhattan Baby. I’m a weirdo who eats, sleeps, and breathes this kind of weird shit; I’ve bought at least two editions of The Beyond; I’ve raved about The New York Ripper, City of the Living Dead, and even A Cat in the Brain on this very blog. Yet even I don’t remember hearing about this one until it appeared on streaming services several years ago. Nor have I felt a pressing need to watch it.

None of this is to say Manhattan Baby is a bad movie. Purveyors of elevated horror will probably hate it, casual moviegoers will probably laugh at it. But if you’re subscribed to this blog, I think it’s safe to say you’ll find roughly as much enjoyment as I did. Which isn’t a lot of enjoyment, but it’s enough. Again, the only thing hampering it is you simply expect more from Fulci. He’s uncharacteristically restrained here, even as victims fall into spike traps and stuffed birds come back to life to rip a man’s face to shreds.

On the other hand, I find Fabio Frizzi’s upbeat score as nostalgic as summer break, the cinematography is solid, and the acting feels stronger than in most of the director’s films. You also get creative imagery involving scorpions and cobras. I particularly liked it when the camera takes the point of view of a snake and slithers, absurdly, across the floor. It’s exactly the kind of flourish I would have attempted when I was a kid, making Evil Dead rip-offs on a hand-me-down camcorder.

The gore, when it’s there, is a solid three. I’m only docking it a point because there’s too little of it. Don’t sleep on it if you’re a Fulci completionist, but I’d save it for a rainy day if I were you.

When Tales from the Hood 2 showed up on streaming services, I passed, assuming it was a forgettable sequel. Recently, however, someone told me “it’s much better than a straight-to-VOD sequel has any right to be.” It turns out we were both right. Screenwriters Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott return, this time splitting the directing duties (Cundieff was credited as the sole director of the original film). Also returning is executive producer Spike Lee.

The sequel anthology trades Clarence Williams III for Keith David, whose mysterious Mr. Simms has been invited to tell stories to a robot… yes, the premise of the container story really is that thin. The project is the brain child of an unscrupulous prison profiteer who promises his robot will “clean up America’s neighborhoods” by patrolling the streets like a cop (a “robo-cop,” if you will). Mr. Simms, as it turns out, will be the only person who will tell the robot stories from a black perspective.

The tales involve a road museum dedicated to racist imagery, a scumbag psychic medium, and a couple of date rapists who predictably get their just deserts. Released in the middle of Trump’s first term, the timing was certainly right for another collection of angry black allegories. Unfortunately, the filmmakers’ anger feels tempered, perhaps by age, but certainly by the lower budget. Though the original film was not without humor, the softer sequel leans more on goofy comedy, resulting in an uneven atmosphere that clashes with the dead serious fourth tale (the longest of the bunch), which attempts to combine time travel with real life Civil Rights figures such as Emmett Till.

Tales from the Hood 2 doesn’t have a content problem; all of this could have worked fine with a bigger budget, stronger performances, and craftier special effects. Nothing in the film is bad, it’s just that its presentation is a little more suited for network television than a feature film (whoever decided to make it longer than the first one should’ve reconsidered). The ideas are fine, but it’s simply not a worthy successor to the landmark original and its genuine don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. There are a few thrills to be had and the absurd conclusions of the first two tales amused me very much, but the overall ending was even too goofy for me.

My review of the previous film can be read here.

Despite seeing the terrible sequel twice, I had never seen the first Witchboard… or so I thought. About twenty minutes into the movie—too far along to abort—I remembered I had seen it and it wasn’t even that long ago. It later dawned on me that I must have watched it on The Last Drive-In, at which point an internet search revealed I had seen it as recently as 2023. This says less about how forgettable the film is and more about how many cocktails I drink whenever Joe Bob’s on. Don’t get me wrong: it’s probably forgettable to sober viewers, too, but it’s not terrible.

The film opens on a house party which introduces us to the heroine, Linda. Played by Tawny Kitaen, the gorgeous redhead from Bachelor Party, I always suspected she might have found greater fame if she had been a supermodel instead of an actress. Kitaen certainly punches above her weight here, coming off surprisingly natural despite a cast full of stiffs. What’s also surprising: the lofty ambitions of the screenplay, which assigns a backstory to both of the dimwitted male leads. Most films like this wouldn’t have bothered.

Linda’s boyfriend Jim is an alcoholic who ended up working in construction despite going to med school. Brandon is a smarmy socialite who thinks his former best friend took the path of least resistance. The two begin the movie at odds and ultimately team up to save Linda’s life. The reason they must save her: she’s become helplessly addicted to a Ouija board, convinced she’s communicating with the spirit of a ten year old boy. In reality, she’s unwittingly inviting a demonic presence to possess her body.

As the demon occasionally murders people peripheral to Linda’s friend group, Brandon recruits a psychic medium who’s gotta be in the running for the most annoying character ever put to film. The medium’s name is Zarabeth and the actress tries way too hard to be funny. I refuse to believe no one on the cast and crew realized this role was so obnoxious. It’s just that in the breakneck pace of low budget movies, you’ve kinda gotta commit to your decisions for better or for worse.

Despite the lack of gore, I don’t hate the movie and fans of 80s horror should find enough substance to entertain them. Unfortunately, there are only a few unintentionally funny moments and precisely zero intentionally funny moments that elicit laughter instead of eye rolls.

Hell Night opens with a bloodcurdling scream. The next shot reveals the cause of distress: a bevy of young women have just been soaked in a wet T-shirt contest. This is but one facet of the impressive party scene. The camera tracks along the street in a surprisingly technical one-shot, which ultimately settles on Alpha Sigma Rho, where coeds are hanging out of the windows and off the roof like drunken Muppets. It’s immediately clear this isn’t your run-of-the-mill slasher flick, shot in the woods for a scant hundred-thousand dollars. The film’s budget, north of a million bucks, puts it in the esteemed company of Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Hellraiser.

The cause for celebration is the fraternity’s initiation ritual, in which pledges will be forced to spend the night locked in Garth Manor, a palatial estate whose gates, as one character puts it, “are nearly impossible to climb!” The pledges are a rich boy, a surfer dude, a party chick, and Linda Blair. I’ve long been fascinated with Blair’s post-Exorcist career, in which exploitation filmmakers desperately tried to pivot her into a wide range of roles before her stardom cooled. The filmmakers beg us to believe this cherubic young woman would turn more heads than the abundance of conventionally attractive babes at the party. You certainly couldn’t accuse Blair of ever being typecast, though, if only because she immediately aged out of the type that made her famous.

Just so we’re clear on what kind of movie Hell Night is, Garth Manor has been shuttered for decades, yet none of the college kids wonders why there are a hundred candles already burning when they arrive. After such a wonderful party scene, it’s disappointing that the film will focus on the four pledges, which greatly reduces the victim pool. Thankfully, three more characters will sneak back in to play pranks on the main characters. These pranks involve speakers, wired doors, and projection technology that’s clearly superior to the hologram that brought Tupac back to life more than thirty years later.

Someone begins picking off the dimwits as they inevitably find ways to split off from the group. Yes, it becomes a lot more routine at that point, but it’s worth noting that these tropes had yet to become old hat by the film’s release in 1981. Even if you won’t give it leeway for that, give it leeway for being better acted and better filmed than ninety-percent of these things. Hell Night is no classic, but I wouldn’t look at you sideways if you owned it on physical media. There are actually a couple of scenes that are surprisingly tense, one involving a character discovering that the aforementioned gate is topped with razor-sharp spires.

If you’re wondering why the horrors of Garth Manor have long remained dormant, only to reawaken on this particular night, who cares? A film like Hell Night doesn’t owe us logic, only thrills, and it pretty much delivers the goods even though it’s a little light on the gore.

The full title is Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf. In some territories, it was Stirba—Werewolf Bitch, referring to the villain of the picture, played by Sybil Danning. I can sum up what kind of movie Howling II is by describing the end credits: a second-rate 80s song plays while the editors slap together a kinetic highlight reel, repeatedly including a shot of Stirba baring her breasts to the beat of the music. I am simply not objective enough to review a movie as shamelessly goofy as this. I literally could not dislike it.

My brain is telling me Joe Dante’s original picture is the better film with its ensemble cast of seasoned actors. My heart, however, is infatuated with this undeniably dumb blood-and-tits feature, which coasts on the singular presence of Christopher Lee as an occult private investigator. Any movie which concocts to portray Lee and Sybil Danning as siblings is immediately endearing, so it’s with a heavy heart I must report that Lee considered the film an embarrassment; he later confessed he only took the role because he had yet to do a proper werewolf picture despite appearing in a dozen vampire flicks.

Spoilers for The Howling follow….

At the end of The Howling, we saw Karen White transform into a werewolf and sacrifice her life on live TV to warn the world that lycanthropy is real. In this film, nobody seems to remember that this was clearly broadcast on live TV. Her brother, Ben (Reb Brown), is shown mourning what he believes was a senseless murder. At the funeral, werewolf-hunter Stefan Crosscoe (Lee) approaches Ben and informs him his sister is not really dead as the silver bullets were removed during the autopsy. Ben is understandably skeptical, but one of Karen’s news buddies (Annie McEnroe), convinces him to hear the hunter out. It’s not long before the three of them head to Transylvania to find the werewolves’ leader: Sirba, the werewolf bitch herself.

This isn’t your grandpa’s werewolf flick. When they aren’t feeding on innocent victims, the hyper-sexualized werewolves spend most of their free time throwing orgies (in and out of their hairy wolf forms) and preparing virgin sacrifices to maintain Stirba’s youthful appearance. Whenever Stirba is dressed, which is rarely, it’s in a costume that’s equally goofy and gorgeous, like something out of Flash Gordon. Danning is amazing in this movie, even going so far as to hold her own with Christopher Lee in the hilarious showdown at the end. It’s not that she’s rises to the occasion so much as Lee lowers himself to it.

Okay, it may not be better than the original picture, but it is a little more entertaining in some places. And if hairy tits are your thing, you’re gonna love this movie.

The Video Dead is an amusing horror-comedy with better-than-average special effects and lower-than-average acting, though incidentals like that don’t matter when your movie is as charming as this. In it, a couple of latchkey kids move into their new house, days ahead of their parents who are currently living abroad. The boy gets the hots for the neighborhood blonde while the sister doesn’t do much of anything until the final act of the movie, at which point it’s suddenly revealed she’s our main character.

What the kids don’t know is there’s an evil television in the attic that’s capable of summoning the zombies from a generic horror movie. A Texas rancher arrives on their doorstep one day, having tracked the television set to their location. It turns out he’s the previous owner of the TV, which conjured the zombies that killed his wife. He warns the boy that he should place the television in the basement with the reflective side of a mirror strapped against its screen. Isn’t that a fun bit of world-building?

The DIY special effects are the biggest reason to watch this movie. What they lack in budget they make up for in design: every one of the zombies is distinct from the others. Taking a cue from the rambunctiousness of Gremlins, the zombies playfully enter their victims’ houses to try on wigs, glasses, hats, etc. Whenever one has her head sawn off, she picks it up and carries on without missing a beat. Another zombie has a clothes iron permanently lodged in his skull. This is the same rule cartoonists employ in their character designs: make sure the silhouettes are instantly recognizable and the audience will never confuse them with one another.

Also fun is the Texan’s expository dialogue, which conveys the mythological rules of the video dead: they don’t like mirrors, they only attack those who show fear, and burial doesn’t keep them down. Instead, one must dismember the Video Dead and leave the remains where they lie, letting nature reclaim them over time. Otherwise, they’ll just keep getting right back up and attacking over and over again. And instead of fortifying their home with garlic and crucifixes, the characters hang shards of mirror they can find on the front door.

The Video Dead has a “have camera, make movie” attitude. While it’s only slightly more than satisfactory, nothing in it is egregious or particularly insulting. It’s a pleasant watch for cult movie aficionados. I love that it exists. I’ll watch it again someday.

Long before Joe Dante directed Gremlins and the vastly superior Gremlins 2 (fight me), he made Piranha for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. Corman was hesitant to make a Jaws rip-off, as that movie was so good, but had no qualms about making a Jaws 2 rip-off, as that movie was so bad. Universal Studios considered suing Corman, but legend has it that Steven Spielberg himself intervened, having seen and loved an advance showing of the film; he would later hire Dante to direct a segment of The Twilight Zone movie and Gremlins.

In Piranha, a school of genetically modified piranhas are making their way down an unspecified North American river, eating everyone who’s unfortunate enough to be swimming in the their path. As luck would have it, the bloodthirsty fishies are on a direct course to a summer camp downstream, which just so happens to be holding swim-team tryouts that day. When even Friday the 13th films are reluctant to harm children, you can typically roll your eyes whenever most filmmakers employ children-in-peril scenes to build suspense… but this is a Roger Corman production, by god, and the legendary film producer is well aware that his fans would feel cheated if at least a few children didn’t die.

A spunky young private investigator (Heather Menzies), an alcoholic living off grid (Bradford Dillman), and the mad scientist responsible for the mutant fish (Kevin McCarthy) must race downstream to warn the camp counselors before the piranhas reach them. Unfortunately, the military arrests the heroes as part of a cover-up operation. I’m not going to dwell on why the military’s involved because the movie doesn’t care that much, either. Dante is only concerned with giving the audience exactly what it wants to see: girls in bikinis, bloody violence, and a stupendously fun climax that goes above and beyond what’s required of it.

It’s an acquired taste, to be sure, but few B-movies have embodied Roger Corman’s unique blend of subtle humor and self-awareness. He and the many filmmakers who got their start with him made these films for the love of the craft… so long as it the pursuit of art didn’t get in the way of a profit. I would describe Piranha as one of the quintessential Corman productions, right up there with Death Race 2000.

Dick Miller is fantastic as always and I’m always thrilled to see cult icon Barbara Steele in literally anything, but Kevin McCarthy’s mad scientist is chewing the scenery with the same gusto as Jack Palance in his later flicks. The novelty has worn off for the modern day imitators—the cocaine bears, the meta anacondas, the hybrid animal-disasters with loads of horrible CGI and too much winking at the camera. The B-movie used to be a sacred thing, the only place you could get cheap thrills and fucked-up laughs, but there used to be an art to it. I can think of few examples better or more authentic than Piranha.

Mind Ripper supposedly began as a sequel to The Hills Have Eyes II. Wes Craven, who produced this film (co-written by his son), apparently had a last minute change of heart, removing all references to those other films. I’m going to guess it was because he didn’t want to smear the reputation of his duology once he saw how poorly this project was shaping up.

A group of research scientists, led by Lance Henriksen’s character, discover a John Doe in the desert outside their secret facility, left badly injured from a failed suicide attempt. It just so happens the scientists are developing a regenerative tissue serum that is the man’s only shot at survival. After wrestling with the moral implications for all of sixteen seconds, the scientists inject the serum into their unwitting test subject. Sometime in the following months, Henriksen grows a conscience and quits his job to spend more time with his kids: a young Giovanni Ribisi and a daughter whose boyfriend is constantly trying to screw her, even when her dad’s in the room.

As expected, the John Doe breaks free of his confines and hides in the shadows of the ventilation shafts, picking off the scientists one by one. We’ve all seen this monster-in-a-facility movie a hundred times before (this my second one this month!), only this time the monster is played by a rather human-looking young man, nicknamed THOR (trans-human something-or-‘nother), until the filmmakers finally slap a pair of yellow eye contacts on him. THOR is played by Dan Bloom, a long-haired fella who has a number of credits playing the hunky bimbo on shows like Married with Children, Baywatch, and HBO’s Dream On.

THOR’s ineffectiveness as a movie monster is not a failure of the actor. In fact, Bloom brings a surprising amount of physicality to the role, lending the film its best scenes. Late in the movie, he’ll undergo a tame metamorphosis in which his ears and hair fall off while a sufficiently gross tentacle occasionally emerges from his mouth to suck his victim’s brains out of their skulls. The gore scenes are few and far between, but they are up to snuff whenever the camera doesn’t cut away prematurely.

The biggest groaner: THOR catches our heroes, kills all but one, then awakens from a nap. It turns out it was all just a dream, deep in the third-quarter of the game—much too late for such a play. It’s the first time during this year’s 31 Days of Gore that I call shenanigans. Yellow flag on the field. 25 yards to the away team.

Mind Ripper is one of the more competent Alien rip-offs, but that’s not saying much. It’s too long, too bland, and stiffly acted. There’s nary a reason to watch it, even for horror junkies. I confess a certain nostalgia for this era of cheap brain candy, but even I was unmoved for much of it. I was on the fence on giving it a passing grade for the gore, but unfortunately there just isn’t enough to justify it. I don’t hate it, but I don’t like it very much, either.

Geoffrey Rush is Stefan Mortensen, a proudly independent judge who suddenly ends up in an assisted living facility after suffering a stroke. The staff encourage the curmudgeon to make friends with the other residents, but he insists he’ll only be there long enough to recover the ability to walk. He thinks of himself as too good for the situation as a way to distance himself from his new reality. Even as others extend an olive branch, he quickly pushes it away.

Enter John Litghow’s character, Dave Crealy, who terrifies the other residents into submission. Despite his advanced age, Dave is a dimwitted bully, forcing his way into the community dance to step on toes and collide with the other residents to ruin their fun. With a clear understanding of the facility’s bureaucracy, he wears the guise of senility so that he can get away with his psychopathic antics. Lithgow has been relishing villain roles for more than forty years and he’s at his nastiest here. It’s as if his mean-spirited character from Cliffhanger entered assisted care.

A permanent fixture of Dave’s wardrobe is his hand puppet, which he named Jenny Pen for reasons unexplained. Whenever he’s feeling especially cruel, he flips the puppet upside down and forces his elderly victims to “lick Jenny’s ass,” or in other words: his wrist. What’s especially effective about Dave’s puppet is the fact it has no eyes; as light shines through the rubber skull, it makes the void beyond Jenny Pen’s eye sockets turn an unsettling shade of pink. Dave and his puppet’s antics are cruel, darkly funny, and terrifying at the same time.

It’s not long before Dave targets the cantankerous judge as he’s the only one of the residents whose will hasn’t been broken. Dave enjoys free range of the coop as no one else will corroborate the judge’s stories in fear of what Jenny Pen will do in retaliation. Worse, the staff believe the judge is suffering from night terrors and possible dementia as his condition worsens; whereas lesser horror movies often go for the “no one believes the main character” angle in the face of logic, this movie goes to lengths to prove Dave is cunning enough to get away with his antics. What unravels is a cat-and-mouse game in which the mouse is confined to a wheelchair.

It’s rare to have performers as great as Rush and Lithgow slumming it up in a genre movie. This isn’t elevated horror and it doesn’t have anything Important to say… in other words, its greatest strength is pure storytelling (which in my opinion is how you make a movie on hard mode). Years ago, I wrote that the reason Child’s Play is such an effective film is because there are few scenarios as unsettling as a mother unknowingly tucking her child in with a serial killer every night. That’s exactly the kind of diabolical writing on display in The Rule of Jenny Pen.