TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: DEATH TOILET (2018) ** ½

This is the second film for this column with the words “Death” and “Toilet” in the title.  The first, naturally was Amityville Death Toilet.  Coincidentally, this one comes to us from Evan Jacobs, the director of Amityville Death Toilet.  In fact, there are no less than SIX movies in the Death Toilet series.  (Seven, I guess if you count the Amityville one as canon.)  You know, to be successful in this industry, you have to find your niche and stick with it.  I guess Jacobs’ niche is death and toilets.

Brett (Mike Hartsfield) returns home from Vietnam (somehow sporting a Van Halen shirt) to find his brother has died under mysterious circumstances.  On top of that, he has to deal with his toilet making weird moaning noises at all hours of the day.   He eventually calls a plumber who can’t find anything wrong with it, despite it having “bad vibes.”  (“I’m a plumber! I’m not a priest!”)  When that fails, he calls a priest (Isaac Golub) to perform an exorcism on his toilet. 

The film benefits from a solid opening scene where the toilet cuts a guy’s balls off while he’s taking a shit.  There’s also a funny scene where Hartsfield interrogates the toilet at gunpoint, and it talks in a series of farts.  The best bit though is the montage where he goes through the phone book calling up churches and getting quotes on toilet exorcisms. 

Sure, some of this is crude both in terms of humor and filmmaking.  There are a lot of jump cuts, and the martial arts training montage goes on way too long.  However, when it hits the sweet spot between absurd and stupid, it kinda works.  It’s certainly funnier than I expected, especially considering most of the movie is just one guy acting alongside a toilet.  (And the fact that Amityville Death Toilet was such a… pardon the pun… turd.)  The priest’s final words during the exorcism are good for a laugh too. 

Say what you will about it, but I think it’s kinda hilarious that a fifty-four-minute movie has an intermission. I can honestly say I’ve never seen that before.  While it isn’t great by any means, at least Death Toilet didn’t stink up the joint.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: BIG F*CKING SNAKE (2023) * ½

A giant snake is seen attacking Los Angeles.  We then flashback to see how it all got started.  It seems a swarm of snakes got into a batch of contaminated chemicals, turned crazy, and went on a rampage killing a bunch of folks.  A team of small-town cops and scientists then must band together to try to stop them. 

Big F*cking Snake (that’s the actual onscreen title as it’s list as “Big Freakin’ Snake" just about everywhere else) is sort of like a Dustin Ferguson version of a SyFy Channel “When Animals Attack” movie.  And you know what?  The results aren’t terrible for the first half-hour or so.  The flick is only forty-six minutes long, and he manages to pack a lot of kill scenes into that timeframe, not to mention a ton of herpetologist jokes.  (“You study STDs?”)

Too bad the whole thing just sort of fizzles out in the end and the titular snake is barely glimpsed.  Instead of an actual climax, Ferguson gives us a long montage of snakes in their natural environment, which looks like it was taken from a YouTube nature documentary.  Not the best way to end a movie in my estimation. 

As for the CGI snake?  I’ve seen worse.  Size-wise, it certainly lives up to the title.  It’s just a shame we don’t see much of it. 

The cast is decent, even if they are a bit underutilized.  The highlight comes when Brinke Stevens gets attacked by a bunch of rubber snakes in her bathtub.  We also have Mel Novak (looking like he’s using orange bronzer two shades darker than Trump’s) as the crooked commissioner trying to keep a lid on the snakes.  The Queen of Tubi horror, Miss Dawna Lee Heising and Shawn C. Phillips also pop up as attendees of a Fourth of July fireworks display that is crashed by the snakes. 

AKA:  Big Freakin’ Snake.

THANKSGIVING (2023) ****

I’ve been waiting for Thanksgiving for a long time.  Sixteen years, to be exact.  In fact, do you realize the wait between Grindhouse and Thanksgiving was longer than the wait between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace?  That’s sort of mind-boggling.  Let me tell ya folks, it was worth the wait.  Director Eli Roth has given horror fans something to be thankful for. 

After a Black Friday sale at a big box store ends in tragedy, a small New England town tries to move on.  One year later, a guy dresses up in a pilgrim outfit and begins offing the people he blames for instigating the riot.  Before long, he sets up a table for his victims and serves them revenge on a silver platter. 

Thanksgiving is a well-oiled slasher full of gory set pieces and finely crafted suspense sequences.  The kills include someone cut in half, decapitations, head twisting, a trampoline death, corn cob holders to the ears, death by table saw, bludgeoning, and a woman cooked alive like a giant turkey.  It’s the opening carnage-fueled Walmart massacre that’s most effective though.  (It almost plays like the Saving Private Ryan version of a slasher movie).  I especially liked the way Roth stacks the deck with obnoxious characters so that when it comes time for the axe to come down on them, you can’t wait till they get their just desserts. 

Despite the gory goodness Roth serves up, I kind of missed the down and dirty aesthetic that hallmarked the trailer in Grindhouse.  I guess it’s not much of a complaint, but the movie just looks too slick at times, and feels more like a post-Scream slasher than the early ‘80s one depicted in the trailer.  (Also, some of the best moments from the old trailer are toned down and/or missing here, sadly.)  I mean, as good as it is (and don’t get me wrong, this is certainly a crowd-pleaser), I don’t think it would crack my Top 3 Grindhouse universe movies or my Top 5 Roth films.  That just goes to show how good the man’s body of work is.  The King don’t miss. 

That’s where my bellyaching ends.  Thanksgiving is a lot of fun.  I saw it with a bunch of friends, and we all had a blast.  You don’t get a chance to see a gory holiday-themed slasher on the big screen very often, so we have to support them every chance we get.  Fortunately, the flick is doing decent enough business, which makes me hopeful that we’ll hear Rob Zombie announce a feature-length version of his Grindhouse trailer, Werewolf Women of the SS any day now. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: TWILIGHT DINNER (1998) ***

Twilight Dinner proves the rule that any movie that’s first line of dialogue is, “What made you literally eat her pussy?” is destined for greatness. 

That line is spoken by a detective interrogating a suspect accused of the heinous act.  He tells a flashback about how it all… uh… went down.  It seems two hot sisters moved in across the street from him and he fell in love with them both.  These freaky gals are wine connoisseurs who have a mysterious skin condition that makes it hard for them to go into the daylight.  Before you can say “Bram Stoker”, the girls bite him, and he slowly begins turning into a vampire with an insatiable thirst for human blood. 

Before I go any further, I have to point out that the sex scenes look like they were edited for content as they sometimes end abruptly.  The fact that the Tubi version is forty-three minutes long, and IMDb lists the running time at sixty-four, sort of supports that.  Either way, there’s still some good stuff here even if some of the T & A sequences seem to end before they start heating up.  The most surprising thing about Twilight Dinner (the original title was the infinitely more hilarious “House of Immoral Sisters Messing Around”) is the wealth of LGBTQ content.  In addition to the brief incestuous tryst between the two sisters, we also have a subplot where the vampire virus turns our hero bisexual!  I don’t think I’ve heard of that in any of the accepted vampire lore that’s been passed down throughout the ages, but I certainly commend the filmmakers’ progressive approach. 

When it comes to the horror elements, they are predictable, but effective for the most part.  The finale (which also looks like it was probably edited down) also works rather well.  Overall, vampire fans who’ve think they’ve seen it all need to take a bite out of this one.

AKA:  House of Immoral Sisters Messing Around.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: THE TWELVE SLAYS OF CHRISTMAS (2022) **

Three women (Lauren Nicole Smith, Dare Taylor, and Cody Renee Cameron) are traveling in a snowstorm when their car breaks down.  They seek shelter in a remote manor that’s all decked out for Christmas where they are greeted by their creepy old host, Ignatius (Tom Fitzpatrick).  He then proceeds to let them open twelve gifts and tells them the story behind each one.

If you’re hoping this is going to be a Christmas anthology horror flick, you might be disappointed to learn it’s just another one of those Full Moon Features clip show packages.  Instead of holiday themed stories, Ignatius just hands the girls gifts containing a different toy of a Full Moon character as he relates flashback montages/greatest hits collection of their kills.  The monsters include Jack Attack, the murderous jack-in-the-box from Demonic Toys, the Gingerdead Man, Baby Oopsie, Evil Bong, and various puppets from the Puppet Master franchise.  The toys themselves look like an attempt by producer Charles Band to advertise a new Full Moon toy line, which makes this kind of feel like an overlong toy commercial.  

It’s a shame all this is so disposable, because the Christmas mansion set has some nice production values.  The trio of ladies are all easy on the eyes too, which helps.  (Speaking of eyes, it looks like Smith is suffering from a wicked case of pink eye.)  Ignatius himself is a neat mix of Scrooge and Nosferatu.  I just wish he had more to do.

Writer/director William Butler deserves credit for his ability to scrunch a whopping twelve segments into a scant forty-one minutes.  Despite the breezy running time, you still walk away wanting more.  Who knows?  With a little bit more care, and a better choice of clips, this could’ve worked.  Maybe it all depends on how much eggnog you consume before you watch it.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: WRESTLE MASSACRE (2018) ** ½

Wrestle Massacre brings me to the end of my streak of watching movies with the word “Massacre” in the title on Tubi.  I hope this is the last one I watch for a long time that doesn’t have the words “Texas”, “Chainsaw”, and/or “Slumber Party” in the title.  This is also our second wrestling-themed “Massacre” flick this month.  Although there are many wrestlers in the cast, the only ones I recognized were Tony Atlas, Jimmy Valiant, and Nikolai Volkoff. 

Randy (Richie Acevedo AKA: “The Cuban Assassin”) is a landscaper with aspirations of becoming a pro wrestler.  After he gets fired, has his wrestling dreams squashed, and is chewed out by his abusive father (Volkoff), he finally snaps and goes on a killing spree. 

Things get off to a good start with an opening credits sequence where Acevedo chases a naked chick through the forest.  The gore is also strong throughout as there is plenty of throat ripping, face ripping, finger ripping, ear ripping, tongue ripping, gut ripping, tit ripping, head ripping, arm ripping, leg ripping, and spine ripping to go around.  Other kills include electrocution, death by garden implements (among them:  Weed whacker, garden shears, and shovel), head stomping, eye gouging, and stoning.  The most horrifying sight of all though is seeing Shawn C. Phillips in drag.  There’s also a cool scene where Acevedo makes like a combination of Ed Gein and Andre the Giant and creates a wrestling belt out of human skin.  Despite the gory goodness on display (not to mention a healthy dose of T & A), it falls just short of being King of the Ring. 

The main issue is the inflated running time.  At an even one-hundred minutes, it could’ve easily been a good twenty minutes shorter.  It takes almost an hour for Acevedo to snap too.  I know the filmmakers were trying to draw it out and make you sympathize with him, but honestly, the constant stalling really prevents it from getting into gear.  Also, the revenge scenes feel kind of rushed, which is unfortunate, and most of the carnage occurs during a montage, which is odd.  (It would’ve been more effective if it had been allowed to play out longer instead of a series of quick-cut murders.)  The finale takes place in near total darkness too, which kinda sucks.  There are also too many characters (the guy who owes loan sharks a big gambling debt gets way too much screen time) that get in the way of the wrestling vengeance plot.  

Even with all the unnecessary characters and subplots, this could’ve easily been a *** movie at eighty minutes.  One-hundred minutes is a different story altogether.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: WEREWOLF MASSACRE AT HELL’S GATE (2015) *

Werewolf Massacre at Hell’s Gate kicks off with an odd music video for a song called “The Ballad of Straws” about a vengeance-seeking pumpkinhead scarecrow.  It uses some admittedly cool vintage horror images and old-timey Halloween photos and video (including footage from Begotten!), although most of the photos are just Google search images of Halloween costumes.  It’s a pretty awful song though.  It’s like, really shitty blues with a riff that sounds like a slightly reworked version of “Midnight Rider”. 

Then (Spoiler Alert), it just turns out to be a commercial for a book written by the filmmakers!  I can honestly say I’ve never seen a movie that started out with a music video that’s also a trailer for a book before, so there’s that. 

Even after all that, we STILL don’t get to the movie!  Nope, we have to sit through a horror host intro by “Lord Victor Fleming”.  Then, there’s a long title scene filled with even more Google images and a long textbook definition of werewolves.  (Did we really need this?  I mean, you’re watching a movie called “Werewolf Massacre at Hell’s Gate”.  I’d think you’d know what a werewolf was before you pulled the trigger on watching it.)  After that, we get ANOTHER long text scene, this one a crawl that’s used to set up the plot. That’s right folks, nine minutes (NINE) into the movie, and the movie hasn’t even started yet.  

This movie plumbs new depths of padding, I’ll tell you that. 

A woman named Frankenstein is accused of being a witch and is burned alive at the stake.  With her dying breath, she curses the village and vows to return four hundred years later.  Although this scene resembles the opening of Black Sunday remade with local public access TV equipment and talent, it’s at least… well… something.   Unfortunately, from there we get more text on-screen (reading is fundamental, kids) before switching gears to a Found Footage sequence of some bozos in the South American jungle.  Then, we cut back to shit that happened ten years ago… and three years ago… and all sorts of other shit.  There’s red tinted POV shots of a cameraman running after little kids, black and white dreams of paint ballers shooting a guy in an ape mask, etc.  The mind boggles.   

Folks, I’ve never been so dumbfounded from finding something so dumb. 

That’s kid stuff though.  Wait till you get to the scene where a priest calls an old redneck guy for help.  Folks… it’s just a guy wearing an old man mask and using an overly exaggerated old timey prospector voice!  You won’t fucking believe it. 

I thought things were looking up for the movie when this redneck and his cronies (affectionately known as “The Brotherhood of Guns, Jesus, and Pick-Up Trucks”) started to hunt (and then get killed by) werewolves (and by “werewolves”, I mean, “guys in Halloween masks”).  Then. the story shifts focus YET AGAIN and turns its attention to an annoying couple.  When her husband is killed by werewolves, the wife grabs a machine gun and fights for her life. 

Werewolf Massacre at Hell’s Gate is one of the weirdest fucking things I’ve seen in a while.  It’s really fucking bad for 90% of the running time, but that redneck section is pure Bad Movie Gold.  The rest, unfortunately, is the pits.  Then again, it does feature werewolves being massacred at a place called Hell’s Gate, so it’s got that going for it. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: WEENIE ROAST MASSACRE (2007) **

Marty (David Prouty) is a high school football player with a promising future who has the rug pulled out from under him when he suffers a brain injury while being scouted by a college coach (at a backyard barbecue).  Even though he’s taking medication for his condition, Marty still has bad dreams and doesn’t quite act like himself.  When some friends invite him to a cabin in the woods for a party, he does some drinking which interferes with his medication, and he starts to imagine finding dead bodies in the woods.  Is that just a byproduct of his pills, or is there really a killer on the loose?

Most of this, if you can’t already tell, plays like an After School Special on the dangers of concussions and/or a cautionary tale about teenage drinking, and frankly doesn’t come close to living up to its admittedly awesome title. 

I guess it would’ve been OK if the story just stayed with the horny teens in the woods.  However, the subplot about the asshole reporter trying to get the scoop on the murders doesn’t add a whole lot to the proceedings.  The scene where a guy whips out his guitar and starts singing a lame song about freedom doesn’t help matters either.  The sound is bad is some scenes too.  To add insult to injury, it takes an hour to get around to the damn weenie roast. 

In fact, only one weenie gets roasted.  Kind of a rip off if you ask me.  Couldn’t they have done a scene where a guy gets his dick cut off by the killer who puts it on a stick and roasts it over the campfire?  Do I have to think of everything?  At least the filmmakers don’t disappoint on the massacre front as we get a couple of stabbings, a guy cut in half, gut ripping, axing, forking, and shoveling.  If it wasn’t for that, you could’ve thrown this one on the fire.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: TOKYO HOME STAY MASSACRE (2020) ***

Three American college students go to Japan to study abroad and are put up by a host family in Tokyo.  Since they also happen to be annoying YouTubers, they film the house while the family is asleep without permission.  Before long, the teens discover the family is keeping a deadly secret and have sinister plans for their American houseguests. 

Tokyo Home Stay Massacre wastes no time plunging in headfirst with the weirdness.  From their strange run-in with a crazy taxi driver to the oddball antics of their host family, every encounter our American characters have with the native Japanese people is a bit off.  Directors Kenta Osaka and Hirohito Takimoto also do a fine job capturing the off kilter feeling of being in a strange house so far away from home.  They also have a knack for ratcheting up the tension.  Sometimes, they hold onto shots for too long, potentially portending a jump scare.  Other times they straight-up spring the surprise on you without warning.  These cinematic gymnastics may not work 100% of the time, but they are nevertheless moderately effective.  It would be fun to see what Osaka and Takimoto could do with a bigger budget and more than one location next time out.

Things really go off the rails in the finale, and I mean that in the best way possible.  It all eventually boils down to a fight to the death with the sole remaining student and the weird host family.  It’s here where the movie becomes gleefully unhinged.  We get toenail ripping, a tooth extraction with a hammer, and throat slashing among others.  In fact, the last twenty minutes is one of the most impressively sustained arrays of violence that I’ve seen in some time.

One thing is for sure:  I’m definitely not going to Tokyo any time soon. 

AKA:  Tokyo Home Stay:  Blood Ritual Legend.

THE SACRED SYMBOL (1984) **

The Sacred Symbol is The Ormonds version of a Mondo movie, and the results are as uneven, odd, and uniquely Ormond as you might expect.  Since the late Ron Ormond’s son, Tim directed the picture, there are some Christian aspects to the film, although it’s rather muted compared to the family’s other Christploitation propaganda flicks of the ‘70s.  This time out, they seem to want to give a non-judgmental look at the other religions the world has to offer.  (Or more likely, make up an excuse to use up as much stock footage as possible.)

The film opens in Biblical times with a couple of dudes being stoned to death for worshipping Christ.  Then, we switch to the present day where an archeologist brings together members of an adventurers’ club to show them filmstrips of different religions around the world.  After a lot of scenic stock footage has been spent, some grumpy members want to know what the fuss is all about, which is his cue to show off the titular sacred symbol. 

The Sacred Symbol is basically a cut and paste feature.  It contains everything from travelogue scenes of the Far East to a recreation of the crucifixion to a bad magic act (no, really).  None of this ever gels in a meaningful sort of way, but the Ormond brand of filmmaking assures the audience they have no idea what’s going to happen next.  The most memorable scenes are the Mondo movie footage of a guy lying on a bed of nails and rolling around on broken glass.  The segment on self-flagellation is kinda gruesome too.  (We even get to hear from Ron Ormond narrating one of the segments from beyond the grave, which is a nice touch.) 

Sure, it might not be as jaw-dropping as If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do, or as wild as It’s About the Second Coming, but for a religious flick that’s been cobbled together with a Mondo movie, it’s surprisingly watchable. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: CAESAR AND OTTO’S SUMMER CAMP MASSACRE (2011) *

Here’s another bait-and-switch “Massacre” movie on Tubi.  The menu calls it, “Summer Camp Massacre”, but the actual on-screen title is “Caesar and Otto’s Summer Camp Massacre.”  Apparently, it’s the second in a series of comedies starring the two eponymous idiots.  I’ve never seen any of the others, and I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to check them out, especially considering how bad this one is.  The fact that it stars Felissa Rose, Brinke Stevens, and Joe Estevez, made it go down a little smoother though.   

Struggling actor Caesar (writer/director Dave Campfield) loses his taxi job when he beats up a mentally handicapped man.  That means he and his dim-witted brother Otto (Paul Chomicki) have to find somewhere to lay low.  They eventually decide to get jobs as camp counselors.  Predictably, there’s also a psycho lurking in the woods looking to rack up a body count. 

I’m not sure how there got to be four of these movies (SEVEN, if you count shorts).  This one is plain just bad.  Not only is the humor painfully unfunny, but it’s often so technically inept that it makes things hard to watch.  (There are a lot of jump cuts during dialogue scenes early on.)  The film improves somewhat once the action switches over to the camp, although that’s not saying much. 

Fortunately, the gore isn’t bad.  We get a decapitation, a death by shovel, and a scene where a guy hides in a barrel that unbeknownst to him is full of toxic waste.  That’s about all the flick has going for it.

That is, unless you count the supporting cast.  While it’s amusing to see Rose, who starred in the ultimate camp horror flick, Sleepaway Camp, sending up her iconic role, the material she’s been given here is less than stellar.  (Yes, she makes a Sleepaway Camp reference.)  Brinke has a small part as Otto’s girlfriend and Estevez plays an unemployment office worker (who also happens to be Joe Estevez). 

The leads are pretty dire though.  Campfield looks and acts like Justin Long impersonating Chris Kattan.  Or maybe Hal Sparks imitating Andy Dick.  The only time he comes close to getting a laugh is when he mentions his favorite horror movie is House 2.  Chomicki is barely memorable as he lacks any discernible personality, other than he’s the opposite body type of Campfield. 

Bottom Line:  For Joe Estevez completists only.

AKA:  Summer Camp Massacre. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: STRIP CLUB MASSACRE (2017) **

Megan (Alicia Watson) loses her job and catches her boyfriend fucking her roommate, all on the same day.  With nowhere left to go, she goes to stay with her best friend whose husband works at a strip club.  He gets her a job there as a waitress, and before long she’s butting heads with a psycho stripper named Jazz (Misty Mundae).  It’s only a matter of time before Megan learns that Jazz, who aided by her loyal kill-crazy stripper cronies, has a nasty habit of killing anyone who gets in her way. 

At one-hundred-and-one minutes, Strip Club Massacre suffers from a lot of padding (including an overlong opening credits sequence).  Heck, it takes a half-hour before we even get to the strip club.  Till then, you have to hear all about Watson’s financial and romantic woes.  In fact, it seems like more screen time is devoted to her personal problems than it is Misty and company… you know… massacring people.  (The third act revelation about her past is kind of in poor taste too.)

Things take a turn down the homestretch when the film switches gears and becomes a mash-up of Thelma and Louise and a rape ‘n revenge flick.  Even though the kills are decent during this section of the flick (brick bashing, throat stabbing, castration, coke straw through the nose, and a crowbar gets shoved into a very uncomfortable place), it all feels a bit rushed.  If the editing was tighter in the first two acts and a little looser during the third, it might’ve worked. 

Misty is unfortunately saddled with a bad wig, but there is one scene where she sports a John Holmes tee-shirt, so there’s that.  At least she looks like she’s having fun while chewing the scenery.  I’m glad she’s getting work outside the Alternative Cinema fold, but ultimately, Strip Club Massacre sorely lacks the pizzazz those features had. 

AKA:  Night Club Massacre.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: THE SPANISH CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2017) **

A rock band called “The Metal Cocks”, who have a pregnant lead singer (who sports a hairy bush), go on the road to play a gig.  Naturally, their van breaks down on the way to the show.  The stranded musicians are almost immediately taken in by the weird locals who at first seem hospitable, if a little eccentric.  However, it isn’t long before they reveal themselves to be cannibals who want to dismember, kill, and eat the band. 

Despite the title, it’s really nothing like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  In fact, it’s more like a Spanish version of Two-Thousand Maniacs with a sub-Troma budget.  Or maybe a gory tribute to Jess Franco’s Killer Barbys since it features a rock band with a female lead singer.  Whatever way you want to view it, it still comes up short.

The film relies heavily on grossout humor, although none of it is actually funny.  It’s just gross for the sake of being gross.  There are scenes of guys jacking off, lots of shit and fart humor, and even a Lambada joke.  The gore includes a bloody bludgeoning, a weird scene where a clown puts a Spider-Man mask on a guy and beats him to death in front of happy children, one guy gets his dick bitten off, and a gut-eating contest.  The scene where a little girl performs an impromptu C-Section by ripping the pregnant woman’s baby out of her stomach with her bare hands may have been objectionable if it hadn’t been done so crudely.  

Oh, and no one uses a chainsaw until the last fifteen minutes. 

As an over-the-top gore and grossout show, I guess it’ll do.  I mean, if you want to see a guy shit in another guy’s face, you might enjoy it.   It’s just that it never succeeds in doing anything besides grossing you out.  If that’s what you came for, you may dig it.

THE MARVELS (2023) ***

While investigating a wormhole in space, Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) gets shocked by whatever cosmic energy is in that sucker.  Since she, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), and Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) all have light-related superpowers, it causes them to switch places with one another every time they use their abilities.  They must then come together and learn to work as a team to defeat a hammer-wielding lady (Zawe Ashton) whose bangle bracelet (which is similar to the one Ms. Marvel wears) gives her the power to teleport through space. 

The Marvels is a breezy, lean, and most of all, fun romp that doesn’t take itself too seriously.  Most of these superhero movies bend over backwards to be dark and gloomy.  This one is refreshingly goofy, with a tone that’s closer to the last couple of Thor sequels. 

The power-switching gimmick is kind of neat.  It forces the heroines to work together and learn how to coordinate their abilities (not to mention figure out who’s gonna end up where afterwards).  It’s sort of like a mixture of teleportation and tag-team wrestling, and the results are entertainingly goofy. 

One major debit is the lack of a strong villain.  Ashton just sort of swings her hammer around a lot, and her revenge scheme is barely memorable.  It also doesn’t help that her character doesn’t have much of a personality.  

That said, there’s some fun silliness to be had here.  I liked the detour to a planet where the alien language is music, which turns every conversation into a musical number.  You won’t find Bollywood dance numbers in a Batman movie, that’s for sure.  There’s also a brief, but fun animated segment, and some cool use of split screen too. 

The highlight though is Goose the cat.  He stole the show in the first Captain Marvel, and he does so again here.  The best sequence of the movie almost plays like a homage to the “Trouble with Tribbles” episode of Star Trek that only gets more outrageous as it goes along, ending with a hilarious needle drop, which is the perfect icing on the cake.  I know the film was a dud at the box office, but I’d see a Goose spin-off in a heartbeat.

Also, say what you want about The Marvels, but it’s relatively short for the genre.  It’s not perfect, but thankfully, it’s missing a lot of the bloat that drags these things down.  It also boasts solid performances by the three leads, all of whom have plenty of chemistry together.  While Samuel L. Jackson could probably do these movies in his sleep by now, it’s always nice to see him showing up once again as Nick Fury. 

Marvel Cinematic Universe Scorecard: 

Spider-Man:  No Way Home:  ****

Avengers:  Age of Ultron:  ****

The Incredible Hulk:  ****

Iron Man:  ****

Thor:  Ragnarok:  ****

Avengers:  Endgame:  ****

Ant-Man and the Wasp:  ****

Spider-Man:  Homecoming:  ****

Iron Man 3:  ****

Captain America:  Civil War:  *** ½

Ant-Man:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:  *** ½ 

Avengers:  Infinity War:  *** ½

Black Panther:  *** ½ 

The Avengers:  ***

Captain America:  The First Avenger:  ***

Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  ***

Thor:  Love and Thunder:  ***

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness:  ***

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings:  ***

Captain Marvel:  ***

Spider-Man:  Far from Home:  ***

Thor:  ***

The Marvels:  ***

Thor:  The Dark World:  ***

Iron Man 2:  ***

Ant-Man and the Wasp:  Quantumania:  ** ½ 

Doctor Strange:  ** ½ 

Black Widow:  ** ½  

Eternals:  * ½  

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: SORORITY PARTY MASSACRE (2012) **

Detective Watts (Thomas Downey) is like two seconds away from being taken off the force for police brutality.  Lucky for him, his Captain’s daughter is missing, so instead of being suspended, he gets assigned to find her.  Seems she was supposed to arrive at her sorority, but she never showed up.  After Watts arrives at the sorority house to investigate, more and more girls are murdered.  It’s then up to him and the dim-witted town sheriff (Ed O’Ross) to apprehend the killer. 

The big problem with Sorority Party Massacre is the tone is all out of whack.  It starts off with a solid opening sequence that copies Scream as a gravelly-voiced killer threatens a sexy co-ed over the phone.  So far, so good.  However, its many attempts at comedy are mostly unsuccessful (there are fart jokes).  It’s not really a spoof of the horror genre, and it’s just too goofy to work as a straight-up slasher.  Ultimately, it never decides if it wants to be a comedy with occasional bloodshed, or a horror flick with occasional laughs. 

Another stumbling block is the film’s over-reliance on flashbacks to propel the plot forward.  The comedic flashbacks of Downey dealing with his anger management issues are especially lame and go on far too long.  There are a lot of montages too, but since many of them revolve around girls wearing bikinis (or sometimes even less), I guess I can give them a Mulligan on that. 

The pacing (not to mention the editing) gets increasingly erratic as the film wears on, and the hefty one-hundred-and-three-minute running time doesn’t do it any favors either.  It’s also a bit of a rip-off that the sisters never have a sorority party per se.  (The girls are just gathered to partake in a scholarship contest.)  The ending is needlessly convoluted too, which also holds it back.  On the upside, it boasts a pretty decent cast, all things considered.  We have Leslie Easterbrook as the sorority den mother, Kevin Sorbo as Downey’s captain, Louis Mandylor as the mayor, Ron Jeremy as a cop, and the late Richard Moll as a creepy boat captain.  The kills aren’t bad either.  There’s death by acid, a bee attack (which occurs offscreen, unfortunately), burning, and a hatchet to the head.  

It’s just a shame that everything else in between the carnage is so overcooked.  The film would’ve been just fine if it concentrated on the sorority babes in the house being menaced by a killer.  Unfortunately, all the subplots and detective bullshit weigh it down. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: SLIME CITY MASSACRE (2010) ** ½

Twenty-two years after the release of Slime City, writer/director Gregory Lamberson returned with this super-goopy sequel.  It’s bigger in many ways (especially in scope and budget) than its predecessor.  That said, it’s just as uneven as the original, although admittedly, some of the slimy special effects are sporadically amusing. 

After a dirty bomb drops on New York, scavengers Alexa (Jennifer Bihl) and Cory (Kealan Patrick Burke) work their way through the city wasteland.  They meet up with another couple (Debbie Rochon and Lee Perkins) and team up to survive.  While foraging for supplies, they come across a stash of homemade hooch and Himalayan Yogurt.  When they eat and drink the slop, they turn into drippy, oozy, horny slime people. 

Slime City Massacre is hit and miss both in terms of tone and humor.  It honestly didn’t need the constant black and white flashbacks to the cult leader who created the slime-inducing microbrew, and the whole backstory of the killer yogurt was probably more convoluted than it needed to be.  However, it does feature a great scene where Debbie turns into a bathtub full of orange goo and her boyfriend STILL manages to find a way to have a little sexy time with her. 

The cast is ideal for this sort of thing.  Rochon is a lot of fun as one of the mutating slime junkies, and her final form is pretty sweet too.  I also enjoyed seeing Roy Frumkes turning up as a greedy land developer (named “Ronald Crump”).  His appearance here makes sense since these films have always been a homage to Street Trash.  (A bottle of Tenafly Viper makes a cameo.)  Also, it’s hard not to like any movie that features Lloyd Kaufman disintegrating before the opening credits.  While it does take a while to get to the gory bits, when the blood and slime finally start flowing, there’s a great gag where someone gets wine bottles shoved into the eyeballs. 

I can’t say Slime City Massacre was worth the wait, but it’s about on par with Slime City.  In fact, I’d probably watch a third installment if Lamberson ever concludes the trilogy.  Hopefully, he won’t wait another twenty-two years to make another one.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: SERIAL KILLER MASSACRE (1997) ** ½

Serial Killer Massacre is a Shot-on-Video horror movie that sort of plays like a serial killer version of a chick flick.  As camcorder horrors go, it’s better than most.  Then again, if you have a low tolerance for this sort of thing, you probably won’t walk away impressed.  That said, the performances are certainly better than you would typically see in something like this.

A guy in a ski mask runs around kidnapping and killing women.  He also hears voices and is so unhinged that when his therapist tells him, “Have a nice day”, he snaps and strangles her!  Meanwhile, a female serial killer is going around picking up dudes and murdering them.  It’s only a matter of time before their paths cross.  After they unsuccessfully try to kill one another, they figure, it must be love at first fight… err… sight.  But will it be a match made in heaven or a match made in hell?

The murder sequences are kind of hit and miss as the film offers you a mix of the standard stabbings along with some assorted shootings.  One scene blatantly rips off the iconic bathtub scene in I Spit on Your Grave, although it’s not nearly as effective.  Then again, it’s like I always say:  If you’re going to steal from somewhere, steal from the best.  We also get an OK decapitation and a solid scissors-to-the-eyeballs scene.  There’s even some gratuitous T & A in there for good measure, including a comically long scene where a decent looking lady starts sexing up an ugly fella. 

Honestly, there are no real surprises here.  This is one of those movies where what you see is what you get.  However, at fifty-five minutes, it doesn’t waste any time getting down to business, which is always appreciated, especially in the SOV horror genre. 

AKA:  Dying to Meet You.  AKA:  Serial Killers:  A Love Story. 

ALBERT BROOKS: DEFENDING MY LIFE (2023) *** ½

Usually, a red flag goes up when a director makes a documentary about his best friend.  It’s almost a sure bet the film will be a puff piece full of softball questions that won’t really cut to the heart of the subject.  I mean, if a director was making a documentary on a controversial subject that just so happened to be his best friend, it would be one-sided and boring. Then again, when the subject is Albert Brooks and the filmmaker is Rob Reiner, all that kinda goes out the window.  

So, basically what we have here is two friends eating dinner and talking shop, while Brooks takes Reiner on a trip down memory lane.  He talks about his early life, his groundbreaking stand-up career, and his equally entertaining work in the movies.  Because it’s just two friends talking, the conversation is casual, not interrogational.  Like most documentaries, Reiner peppers the film with snippets and clips to illustrate points and highlight Brooks’ career milestones, while occasionally cutting to talking head interviews from fans and contemporaries. 

We see Brooks early in his career via his cutting-edge comedy appearances on TV variety shows to his sets on Johnny Carson to the short films he made for Saturday Night Live.  The big revelation here is that Brooks was initially tapped to be the permanent host of the show, and he was the one who suggested they should have a different host week to week.  (Another cool tidbit is the fact that he and Steven Spielberg, who is among the interviewees, used to cruise Hollywood Boulevard with a home movie camera and do impromptu man on the street interviews for shits and giggles.)  By the time you get to the clips from his films, you’ll be making a mental checklist of Brooks-related bits to YouTube after you’re done with the movie.

One of the most innovative comedic minds of the 20th century, it’s almost unfathomable that Brooks hasn’t had a documentary made about him until now.  It also happens to be one of Reiner’s best films in years and shows that even though he made the immortal This is Spinal Tap all those years ago, he maybe should’ve been making real documentaries all this time. 

Ultimately, Albert Brooks:  Defending My Life acts as a fun, if lightweight, career retrospective.  While it may stop short of being the definitive film on the subject, it’s massively entertaining to see two comedy greats picking each other’s brains for ninety minutes.  It’s certainly in the running for one of the best docs of the year.  

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: THE SCISSORS MASSACRE (2008) ****

A young schoolgirl named Mayumi (Rin Asuka) seemingly has everything going for her.  She’s in love with the captain of the track team, and now that her older sister has been married off, she’s taken over the best bedroom in the house.  Life is good.  Tragically, her family is subject to a horrific attack that leaves Mayumi’s mother dead and her face horribly disfigured.  Once life begins returning to some semblance of normal, a killer in a red coat starts to kill off her classmates with a pair of extremely sharp scissors. 

For the first half hour or so of this movie you’re gonna think this is just a sweet coming of age story.  You’ll be wondering how can such a sweet and innocent drama be called The Scissors Massacre?  Once it turns on a dime, shit gets real in a hurry.  Folks, trust me when I tell you, this flick features some of the ghastliest bloodletting I’ve seen in a while. 

Surprisingly enough, the dramatic scenes are exceptionally strong for a movie with the words “Scissors” and “Massacre” in the title.  We really get to spend time with Mayumi and her family before everything goes to hell.  Even then, we get to see their interactions and how they come together in the wake of tragedy.  Just when it seems like the wounds are healing, problems arise to threaten to tear them apart yet again.  The film is full of some genuinely heartbreaking moments and well-crafted drama.  In fact, some of the dramatic scenes are more painful to watch than the horror stuff. 

This is actually a sequel to a flick called A Slit-Mouthed Woman.  I’m not sure if it’s directly related or if it’s just a tale about another Slit-Mouthed Woman (which is a popular Japan folktale).  Either way, this is one unsettling, effective, and unforgettable horror movie. 

AKA:  A Slit-Mouthed Woman 2.  AKA:  Carved 2.  

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: REUNION MASSACRE (2014) * ½

Breana Mitchell stars as a woman who recently broke up with her boyfriend (Jarad Allen).  She receives an ominous warning from an automated Zoltar fortune teller at a carnival but thinks nothing of it.  When she gets home, she finds an invitation to her high school reunion waiting for her in the mail.  On her way to the reunion, her car runs out of gas, and she is captured and tormented by a killer in a clown mask. 

Reunion Massacre is only an hour long, so writer/director Dustin Ferguson added bumpers starring a horror hostess named “Grindhouse Ghoulia” (Kerrie Waybright Smith) to beef up the running time.  It’s kind of funny when she goes to say the title of the film, someone else says “Reunion Massacre” over top of her dialogue, which makes it obvious that this was repackaged and/or re-released for Tubi.   (Apparently, the original title was Invitation to Die.)

While Ferguson has the bare bones for a solid horror flick here, it’s mostly undone by all the padding.  He gives us long scenes of Mitchell cooking and eating spaghetti, a montage of her and a gal pal putting up Halloween decorations, pointless driving scenes, black and white domestic abuse flashbacks, negative image dream scenes, needless shots of Mitchell hanging around a botanical garden, and a lot of time is spent on her carving a pumpkin.  There’s even a scene where she lies on the couch and watches Casablanca.  Note to prospective filmmakers:  Never show a scene of someone watching Casablanca in your crappy movie because it will just make the audience wish they were watching Casablanca instead. 

Oh, and can you even call this Reunion Massacre if she never even makes it to the reunion?  Shouldn’t it be called On the Way to the Reunion Massacre?  Still, as bad as most of this is, it’s far from the worst Dustin Ferguson movie I’ve seen. 

AKA:  Invitation to Die.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: REDWOOD MASSACRE: ANNIHILATION (2020) ** ½

We pick up ten years after the events of The Redwood Massacre.  Tom (Jon Campling), the father of one of the Redwood Killer’s victims, has written a book about the Redwood Massacre.  While on a book tour, an obsessed fan named Max (Damien Puckler) claims he’s discovered new evidence of the Killer’s whereabouts, prompting the author and his daughter Laura (Danielle Harris) to join in a search of the area.  Little does the family realize, the fanboy is also a serial killer himself and may be leading them into a trap. 

It seems that returning writer/director David Ryan Keith went into this sequel with the intention of playing with the audience’s expectations.  Everywhere the first film zigged, this one zags.  Instead of having an English cast this time out, they managed to get nothing but American actors (including Halloween franchise fan favorite Harris).  Instead of taking place in the woods, it’s set in an underground military base/mad scientist lab where the hulking killer was born and bred.  Speaking of the killer, he’s given a lot less screen time in this one, which means the body count is lower and the gore isn’t as over the top.  (We still get plenty of stabbing, hacking, gut ripping, and head lopping though.)

Like a lot of sequels, Keith’s under the impression that bigger is better.  The budget is obviously larger, we have not one, but two killers, and the running time is expanded to a cumbersome one-hundred-and-three minutes.  The killer is also given an unnecessary backstory, which I guess can be said for many horror sequels.  I’m not saying that it doesn’t work.  It’s just that it doesn’t work quite as well as the first time around, and there are a lot more lulls in between the highlights. 

Harris is likable as ever.  She gives a feisty performance and is credible in her ass-kicking scenes.  She also gets a memorable moment where she gun-punches someone.  Puckler is pretty good too as the fledgling serial killer as he looks like a slightly more intense version of Casper Van Dien.  Their efforts don’t quite push this one into the win column, but they do help keep it afloat throughout the overly bloated running time. 

AKA:  Redwood Massacre 2:  Annihilation.  

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: THE REDWOOD MASSACRE (2014) ***

A group of friends go camping in the woods.  Of course, the main reason they’re going there is because it just so happens to be a famous murder site… because… you know, fun times, right?  Predictably, the mythical killer is still lumbering around the forest, and he’s just hankering to hack even more campers to pieces. 

The Redwood Massacre is another one of those movies where annoying British people get on your nerves, stumble around the woods, argue with one another, and then (finally) get killed.  Despite my initial restlessness and general distain for British slasher movies, once the killer got around to slaughtering campers wholesale, I had to admit it was pretty effective. 

The killer is pretty cool too.  He kind of looks like what would happen if Scarecrow escaped from Arkham Asylum and went on to become the drummer for Slipknot.  The kills are surprisingly juicy too.  The axe murder/cannibalism flashback sets the bar pretty high early on.  From there, the various axing and stabbings leave just about everything coated in crimson.  Heck, even when the killer’s just punching dudes in the face, the blood flies every which way.  I tell ya, true to the title, this guy sure knows how to turn the woods red. 

Some of the kills have a torture porn vibe to them as many of the victims are either tied up or helpless while the killer is twisting his blade into them.  That may or may not turn some viewers off.  I will say that the copious amount of red stuff will surely please the gorehounds out there.  The bad news is the finale is a little protracted as we get too many new characters popping up late in the game.  If the filmmakers decided to pack everything in about ten minutes earlier, it might’ve skated by with *** ½.  That quibble aside, The Redwood Massacre is a gory good time. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: RAVE PARTY MASSACRE (2017) *

I never really got the whole rave thing.  People take a lot of drugs and listen to lots of terrible music.  So, it’s basically Disco without the mirror balls.  And the music and fashions are way worse.  And you’re dancing in a condemned building instead of Studio 54.  Doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time. 

A feuding couple goes to a rave.  Two minutes into the dance, she’s high as a kite and banging some other dude.  Not exactly marriage material, if you ask me.  Anyway, a few minutes later, she and a couple other ravers (including her understandably upset boyfriend) who all had partaken in an illicit party drug, wake up in an abandoned hospital where an axe murderer in a dog mask hunts them down and chops them up one by one. 

So, if you’re playing along at home, what we have here isn’t really a “Rave Party Massacre” as the “Massacre” occurs at a hospital.  It technically should be called Hospital Massacre, but I guess since there’s already a movie called Hospital Massacre, the filmmakers wanted to avoid confusion.  I suppose they could’ve called it Abandoned Hospital Massacre.  Or maybe Post-Rave Party Massacre, but now we’re just splitting hairs.  I guess when you start focusing on what the movie SHOULD be called, and not on the movie itself, it’s safe to say, it sucks. 

Oh, and the movie is set in 1992, for some reason.  There’s a lot of footage of George Bush and Bill Clinton on the tube, and there’s mention of Ruby Ridge too.  All of this is supposed to give the killer a murky motive for the killing, but about the third time you hear Bush’s “Thousand Points of Light” speech, you start to wonder if you haven’t accidentally switched channels to C-SPAN Retro.  Maybe in order to enjoy all this you have to be hopped up on X and waving Glo-Sticks around like a madman.

Well, that wasn’t exactly a “rave” review now, was it? 

AKA:  DeadThirsty.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: THE PUPPET MONSTER MASSACRE (2010) **

The Puppet Monster Massacre is a little bit like Meet the Feebles as the cast is nothing more than hand puppets who speak in a variety of four-letter words.  Most of this is crude, both in terms of the lowbrow humor and the ramshackle design of the puppets.  It might be good for a snicker or two, but ultimately, it’s a bit of a chore to get through.

A mad doctor (voiced by Steve Rimpici, the voice of Duke the Unicorn in the CarousHELL movies) with the aid of his penguin assistant incubates a monster inside an unsuspecting victim.  Meanwhile, a guy receives a letter telling him he can win a million bucks if he can spend one night inside the doctor’s haunted mansion.  At the mansion, he’s met by other contestants, including the girl he’s had a crush on for years.  Little do the contestants know, the doctor is scheming to get revenge on them by unleashing his ever-growing monster. 

This was probably better off as a short.  Scenes run on way too long without much of a comic payoff.  Unless, that is, you count lots of unfunny fart jokes as a “comedic payoff”.  It also doesn’t help that many of the jokes run on way past their expiration date.  (Like the unending geyser of blood.)  The monster itself is pretty neat looking, but it doesn’t have much of a presence and lacks personality.  There’s also an odd, animated WWII flashback that’s kind of lame and seems like it’s only there to bulk up the running time. 

In addition to Meet the Feebles, The Puppet Monster Massacre seems to take inspiration from Let My Puppets Come during the scenes of puppet sex.  Unfortunately, the instances of puppet nudity and gore aren’t particularly engaging enough to make it all worthwhile.  Even with the puppet nudity, bloodshed, and foul language, it all still somehow manages to feel lightweight and tame.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: POOL PARTY MASSACRE (2017) ***

A group of catty, entitled, spoiled brats (who admittedly, look great in bikinis) gather at the home of Queen Bee Blair (Kristin Noel McKusick) for a pool party.  Little do they know a lumbering killer is lurking about the premises with an arsenal of garden tools at his disposal.  Before long, he’s making mincemeat out of the stuck-up sorority sisters.  Who will survive?  Probably Blair’s bestie, Nancy (Margaux Neme), seeing as she’s the only one at the party who wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth. 

From the awesome 8-bit style opening credits sequence, you can tell Pool Party Massacre is going to be a lot of fun.  Writer/director/star Drew Marvick delivers a solid amount of T & A (not to mention some S & M) and blood and guts.  There’s throat slashing, a screwdriver to the eye, a hammer to the jaw, a pickaxe to the brain, an axe to the neck, an electric hedge clipper to the stomach, a power drill to the back, an axe to the head, and a machete to the chest.  He also gives us what is possibly the screen’s first Psycho shower scene homage involving a weed whacker.  That is to say Marvick is a talent to watch.  (Porn star Alexis Adams is especially memorable in her nude/death scenes too.) 

I have to hand it to Marvick, a lot of the girls’ bitchy dialogue is pretty funny, and they make a lot of pop culture references along the way too.  The film is also laced with enough random bits of goofiness to make it memorable (like the crazy old biddy whose creepy tea party is ruined by the heavy metal music blaring from poolside).  The twist ending is also extremely clever.

It's Neme, the Final Girl, who gets the best line of the movie during the climax after she hears the killer’s motive and asks, “You did all this to be famous?  Why can’t you make a sex tape like everyone else?”

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: THE PIZZAGATE MASSACRE (2020) **

I vaguely remember when the whole “Pizzagate” thing was trending on Twitter a few years ago, but I never bothered to even click on any of it because I figured it was just a bunch of crackpot idiotic bullshit.  Before I watched this, I did a quick search of Pizzagate on Wikipedia and it pretty much confirmed what I already suspected.  It seems Pizzagate was a right-wing conspiracy theory that (allegedly) linked Democrats to child sex trafficking by lizard people Illuminati members who apparently keep the sex workers in the basements of D.C. pizza parlors. 

The Pizzagate Massacre suggests the improbable proposition that all of this is true.  Not in a “Told you so!” kind of way, but rather, “It’s all real, but it just sounds so weird that nobody will ever take it seriously”. 

Karen (Alexandria Payne) is a fledgling documentary filmmaker who loses her job at a right-wing news network right after they break the Pizzagate story.  She joins forces with an alt-right militia nut named Duncan (Tinus Seaux) to make a movie about Pizzagate and expose the truth.  It doesn’t take long for them to get into hot water with the authorities, the militia, and (possibly) the lizard people who run the world.  

Writer/director John Valley shoots the film with style and the John Carpenter-inspired synth score is pretty good.  However, despite the title, it’s not a horror movie.  In a way, it’s kind of a high wire act for Valley as he’s presenting right-wing conspiracy theory gobbledygook as stone-cold fact while (presumably) not believing a word of it.  Unfortunately, the movie never really commits to the bit.  It could’ve taken some interesting turns, but Valley just opts to turn things into sort of an oddball concoction of Coen Brothers/Tarantino/Scorsese crime movie cliches in the third act. 

Seaux is solid in the lead.  He sort of resembles Chris Hemsworth playing a Phillip Seymour Hoffman character.  He has oddball energy to spare, but the movie itself never really clicks. 

AKA:  Duncan.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: PILLOW PARTY MASSACRE (2023) *** ½

After an April Fools prank goes wrong, the prankee gets revenge by shooting the prankster.  Two years later, the friend group who witnessed and/or were involved with the prank hold a reunion and decide to party it up.  Predictably, a killer shows up to poop in the punch bowl.  (Well, not literally.)

Pillow Party Massacre has a snazzy ‘80s vibe and is packed with cool music and strong performances.  It also contains several scenes where the characters have honest, heartfelt, and dare I say, moving conversations about loss, guilt, and grief.  Look, this is definitely not something that’s necessary in a picture called Pillow Party Massacre, but I’m happy to know it’s here, especially when it’s played so nicely by actresses Laura Welsh, Chynna Rae Shurts, Allegra Sweeney, and Jax Kellington.  Heck, even the horror movie staple “Truth or Dare” scene plays more like a therapy session between the friends as they ask “Truth” questions that are more of the “checking in on your friends” variety than the typical “tell me something dirty” dialogue you’d normally hear in something like this.

Eventually, things erupt into a heated argument between the girls, and when all their pent-up feelings come out, they finally settle things with an all-out pillow fight.  Director Calvin Morie (An Amityville Poltergeist) McCarthy sure knows how to shoot one of these things.  He gives us lots of slow-motion shots of feathers floating in the air, plenty of close-ups of hot co-eds giggling, and gratuitous shots of girls ripping their tops off.  In short… Cinema.

McCarthy doesn’t rest on his laurels when it comes to the gore.  He delivers a knife through the back of the skull and out the eyeball, a geyser-riffic throat slashing, a hand hacking, a scene where a guy is cut in half LENGTHWISE, head smashing via pillowcase full of rocks, face burning, and one gal gets impaled to a tree.  The biggest takeaway here is that McCarthy shows us you can make a gory ‘80s style slasher with characters that are three-dimensional and that you genuinely care about while still delivering on the demands of the genre (AKA:  T & A and blood and guts).

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: PAINTBALL MASSACRE (2020) **

Paintball Massacre opens at a high school reunion filled with awkward encounters and annoying grown-ups stuck in a state of arrested development acting like doofuses.  The next day, the former classmates work past their collective hangovers for a game of paintball in the woods.  Naturally, it doesn’t take long for a killer to infiltrate the game and begin hacking the competition to pieces. 

Like Nutcracker Massacre, this is one of those low budget British horror movies where everyone speaks with muddy accents that are hard to understand (at least to these American ears).  I think the filmmakers were trying for a horror-comedy feel, but it’s never really successful as the slasher scenes are weak and the dismal attempts at humor fall flat.   The use of faux-Spaghetti Western music when the paintballers enter the playing field is groan-inducing and the scenes where one of the girls keeps trying to equate the group’s situation to a Fast and the Furious movie gets old quick. 

Most of the kills happen offscreen, which is the big problem.  Because of that, we usually just see the aftermath of the carnage.  We do get death by land mine, an impalement with a real estate “For Sale” sign, and a face peeling.  Ultimately, there’s just not enough here to really satisfy horror fans. 

It's a shame too because the set-up is sound enough.  (Well, maybe without all the unnecessary reunion scenes in the beginning, that is.)  I have to wonder if it all might’ve worked better if they just made the killer someone using real bullets rather than having a slasher in a paintball mask picking off the friend group one by one.  This would’ve made it closer to something like Masterblaster than, say, a feature length version of the paintball scene from Friday the 13th Part 6.  Seeing how the horror elements rarely click, the action movie approach might’ve been the way to go.  (All the Fast and the Furious comparisons would’ve made more sense too.)   

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: NUTCRACKER MASSACRE (2022) ** ½

Okay, so, imagine you’re Patrick Bergin.  One day, you’re playing Robin Hood.  The next day, you’re co-starring with Julia Roberts, the biggest movie star in the world, in Sleeping with the Enemy.  Life is good.  Then, in the blink of an eye, thirty years goes by and you’re starring in a movie about a six-foot-tall sentient homicidal nutcracker.  I guess there are worse ways to pay the rent.

Bergin plays a Russian toy shop owner who literally twirls his mustache, so the audience knows he’s evil.  He also ominously hums “The Nutcracker Suite” while rubbing his hands together like a villain in a silent film.  That is to say, he’s pretty great in this.  

Bergin tells a long, confusing origin story of the Nutcracker before selling one to a babe who just broke up with her boyfriend.  She buys it as a Christmas present for her auntie, whom she’s spending Christmas with.  It doesn’t take long before auntie’s prized six-foot-tall nutcracker comes to life and begins knocking off her relatives. 

The deaths, it must be said, are solid.  One person is murdered by an ice skate, and another is strangled with Christmas garland.  We also get a great scene where the nutcracker not only cracks a guy’s nuts but rips them off too.  Admittedly, the rest of the movie is kind of ho-hum, but this scene is badass enough to boost it an extra Half Star. 

I guess I should’ve known this was going to be better than expected because it was produced by Mark L. Lester.  Yeah, THAT Mark L. Lester, the man that gave the world Commando and Showdown in Little Tokyo.  It was also directed by Rebecca Matthews, the director of the greatest fake Amityville movie ever made, Amityville Witches.  With a pedigree like that (not to mention Bergin’s fun performance), Nutcracker Massacre should make for breezy fun for seasonal horror film fanatics.

PRISCILLA (2023) *** ½

Elvis was the King of Rock ‘n Roll.  As such, he was the closest thing America has ever had to royalty.  By proxy, that would make his wife, Priscilla, a Queen.  Millions of girls would’ve killed to be in her shoes.  As Sofia Coppola’s poignant and melancholy mood piece shows, those shoes weren’t exactly a pair of ruby slippers.  

Priscilla isn’t so much a biopic, but a snapshot of a life.  It shows only Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) from her first meeting with Elvis (Jacob Elordi) till the moment she leaves him.  It shows how a (very) young girl can get swept off her feet by the most famous man on the planet.  The catch is, she has to be at his beck and call 24/7.  She’s gotta stay in Graceland and keep the home fires burning for him while he’s off making movies and shaking his pelvis.  She’s got to wear what he says and do her hair just so.  Even when this grows tiresome for her, at the end of the day, she’s still dating Elvis freakin’ Presley. 

Once they are married, she finds being Elvis’s wife has its ups and downs.  Just like every relationship, I suppose.  Except when you’re married to the King, those ups and downs were often extreme and volatile. 

There’s still genuine love and affection between the two.  His overreliance on pills to keep him going eventually transfers over to her too.  Snippets of his hot temper come out and his erratic behavior and womanizing threatens to derail the relationship.  Still, she stands by her man because at the end of the day she’s married to Elvis freakin’ Presley. 

The film is a fascinating look at when enough is finally enough in a relationship.  Their romance is a lot like any long-distance relationship.  Resentment, unfulfilled longing, and boredom cause the two to further drift apart.  Of course, when you add fame and drugs to the mix, it tends to put a magnifying glass over every bump in the road the couple has.  Naturally, the road this couple is on is a lot more surreal since we’re talking about Elvis freakin’ Presley here.  

Priscilla might be the first love story where the main character’s suitor buys her an expensive wardrobe AND a handgun to match each dress. 

Spaeny is excellent as Priscilla.  Coppola gives her lots of closeups of her to show that Priscilla is putting up a pleasant front for Elvis, the Memphis Mafia, and the press, but her eyes suggest deep sadness and loneliness.  Elordi is good as the King.  He dials down the persona we are accustomed to, but he captures Elvis’s boyish fidgetiness (especially in the early scenes) rather well.  He doesn’t quite show off the King’s larger than life personality during his Vegas era, but I think that helps to ground the film as it’s essentially a two-character relationship drama. 

Much has been made of the lack of Elvis music in the picture.  Even as a die-hard Elvis fan, I can’t say I really missed his music, mostly because it would’ve taken away from Priscilla’s story.  Consider the final scene of Priscilla walking away from Graceland.  If you put “Suspicious Minds” on the soundtrack instead of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”, it stops being a scene about Priscilla and becomes a scene about Elvis, even if he isn’t even present.  This scene (one of the best in the film) deftly shows Priscilla has left the building.  

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: 1962 HALLOWEEN MASSACRE (2023) ½ *

Four friends attend a Halloween party at a house in the middle of nowhere.  While they drink and dance, a killer in a white mask stalks the grounds.  Later, he switches his mask out for a black hood as he picks off partygoers one by one.

1962 Halloween Massacre starts off with a long Found Footage sequence of the core four driving in a car and arguing.  Since it takes place in 1962, that means they’re filming with an 8mm home movie camera.  If that’s the case, then why can we hear them?  Sound home movie cameras didn’t come out till the ‘70s.  Did the filmmakers ever bother to research this?  All it would’ve taken was a Google search.  I guess we already know the answer to that one.  Also, would it be too much to ask that the characters from the ‘60s not use modern slang like, “Too soon!” 

Look, if you can’t accurately represent the time period on a small budget, then why even try?  Just call it Halloween Massacre, set it in present day, and be done with it.  I mean it would probably still suck either way, but at least it wouldn’t be annoying every time something anachronistic happens.

Luckily, the film breaks the Found Footage format after about fifteen minutes.  Unfortunately, we’re still stuck following around the same four annoying characters.  I guess seeing them in a party setting is better than spending all our time in a cramped car with them like in the early part of the picture.  However, once the action switches over to the party, things are nearly just as claustrophobic as the camera frequently holds tight on our four principles to disguise the fact that the budget was so low, they couldn’t afford many extras to play party guests.

Also, the movie has a weird pro-incest message that’s just confounding.  Oh, and just when it should be over, it continues on unnecessarily for ten more excruciating minutes.  If it wasn’t for the presence of the extremely cute Caroline Beagles (who plays the least annoying member of the cast), this would’ve been a No Stars flick for sure.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: HOLLYWOOD MEAT CLEAVER MASSACRE (1976) *** ½

I was kinda familiar with this one thanks to seeing the trailer starring none other than Christopher Lee on countless trailer compilations, but I had never actually seen the movie.  He originally filmed the scene for another film, but the footage wound up being sold to a different company who repurposed it to sell Meatcleaver Massacre.  (Although I’ve seen reviews mentioning he’s in the movie in wraparound segments, Lee unfortunately doesn’t appear in the version currently playing on Tubi.)  Oh, and while everything I’ve always seen for the film has referred to it as Meatcleaver Massacre (that’s even how it’s listed on Tubi), the actual on-screen title is Hollywood Meat Cleaver Massacre, so that’s the title I’ll be reviewing it under.  (I was trying to keep all these “Massacre” movies in alphabetical order, but oh well.)

So, I already knew the backstory of Hollywood Meat Cleaver Massacre going into it.  However, I had no idea it was (presumably) co-directed (uncredited) by freakin’ Ed Wood!  Plus, he also appears in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as a photographer.  Also cameoing is the future writer of Jaws 3-D Guerdon Trueblood, who plays a nuthouse doctor.  I know they were probably never once in each other’s sphere, but I think it’s amazing that Lee, Wood, and the writer of Jaws 3-D all worked on the same movie.

A professor’s home is invaded by a gang of psychotic students who kill his family (including his dog) and leave him paralyzed.  While drifting in and out of a coma in the hospital, he invokes the name of a Gaelic spirit of revenge (don’t fuck with a professor who is an expert on occult studies) so the little shits will receive their just desserts.  That’s right, folks.  It’s Death Wish Meets Patrick… with nary a meat cleaver in sight.

I’m not sure what scenes Wood was responsible for because it all seems fairly cohesive.  If I had to guess I would say he had a hand in some of the hilarious voiceovers as some of the dialogue has a distinct Wood ring to it.  I’m thinking specifically of the scene where one of the killers contemplates suicide.  (“This is gonna leave a mess.  I hope the landlord won’t be too mad.”)

The dialogue between the killers regarding the professor being in a vegetative state is great too:

“He’s gonna lay there like a carrot!  A big carrot!”

“I never did like carrots!”

Hollywood Meat Cleaver Massacre has that look that only late ‘70s horror movies have.  It has redder than red blood, sleazy shots of Hollywood Boulevard, and chintzy fashions galore.  The print is excellent too, which makes it all really pop.  The simple use of library music really works too.  (I think that one guitar sting was stolen from the trailer for Torso.)

Most times when movies like this have freakout and nightmare sequences, it’s just because the filmmakers needed to pad out the running time.  The freakouts here are legitimately eerie, effective, and genuinely unsettling.  The psychic murders are a hoot too.  In one scene, a guy gets his guts ripped out by sentient desert grass.  I can honestly say I’ve never seen that in a picture before.  Another person is crushed by the hood of a car, and one dude gets his eyeball ripped out.  And when we finally see the monster, it’s revealed to be something that looks like a cross between Swamp Thing and Rob Zombie cosplaying as Jordy Verrill.  That is to say, it’s awesome.

And to think, if someone… ANYONE got massacred with a meat cleaver (or if there was actually a single SHOT) of a meat cleaver, this might’ve got Four Stars!

AKA:  Meatcleaver Massacre.  AKA:  Morak.  AKA:  The Evil Force.  AKA:  Revenge of the Dead.