TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: GHOST OF CAMP BLOOD (2018) * ½

Despite the fact there is a Camp Blood 8, Ghost of Camp Blood was actually released after It Kills:  Camp Blood 7.  That would make this the ninth Camp Blood movie as there are apparently two Part 3s.  The whacked-out numbering system is one of the things I find so fascinating about this series.  Okay, so it might be the ONLY thing I find fascinating about this series.

Mark Polonia is back behind the camera for this one.  It picks up right where Part 7 left off with a Friday the 13th 3D-style opening that shows the climax of the preceding film where the killer is presumably killed, but then just shuffles offscreen with apparently only minor injuries.  Then, the plot begins.  A washed-up reality show host has one last chance at a hit.  To boost ratings, he decides to make his next show about the Camp Blood killer.  A trio of amateur ghost hunters tag along to Camp Blood, hoping to become part of the crew.  Eventually, the spirit of the Camp Blood killer possesses the host, and he takes after the new recruits with a big ass machete. 

The padding is out of control this time out.  There may not be as much padding as the Dustin Ferguson directed entries, but it’s jam-packed with scenes from Part 7.  Such scenes include a montage of the psycho’s best kills and a scene where some characters sit around and talk about their favorite Camp Blood murder (which gives Polonia another opportunity to show the same footage all over again).  There are also many repeated sequences (including one of a naked woman, which admittedly is okay with me).  Also, some of the dialogue scenes seem like they’re played in .75x speed in an effort to slow the picture down to get it up to feature length.  Characters speak slower and move slower than normal during these scenes, and it gets annoying awfully fast.  The fact that there’s more T & A than usual helps somewhat. 

The scenes where the killer speaks are really goofy too.  There’s a reason why psychos remain silent in these things.  The performances are pretty weak as well.  Overall, Ghost of Camp Blood is definitely a step down from the other Polonia directed sequels in the franchise. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: IT KILLS: CAMP BLOOD 7 (2017) **

More campers get stranded in the woods and come face to face with a killer in a clown mask.  And… well… that’s about it for the plot.  No one set out to reinvent the wheel this time out, which is good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it.  On one hand, it’s a solid, yet unspectacular slasher.  On the other, you can say that about a hundred or so other movies on Tubi.

It Kills finds veteran Z-grade director Mark (Cocaine Shark) Polonia returning to the Camp Blood fold.  Sure, it’s not quite as good as his Camp Blood:  First Slaughter, but at least it feels like an actual movie, which is more than I can say for the Dustin Ferguson directed entries in the franchise.  While I can’t say it’s effective, I think it's nice that Polonia wears his influences on his sleeve so brazenly as there are many touches straight out of the Friday the 13th franchise.  One character is in a wheelchair like in Part 2, there’s a hiker who is searching the woods for a missing relative (shades of Part 4), the road flare death is a direct homage to Part 5, and the finale owes a major debt to Part 4.  The music sounds quite similar to John Carpenter’s Halloween score as well. 

The bulk of the kills this time out are rather interchangeable and unmemorable. There are lots of machetes to the stomachs and hands getting cut off in this one.  The gore is weak too.  The guts in one scene look like they could be used to create a balloon animal, which is good for an unintentional laugh.  At least the cast has a little more personality this time around, which is appreciated, especially considering the rest of the picture is by the numbers for the most part. 

AKA:  It Kills.  AKA:  Camp Blood 7:  It Kills. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: CAMP BLOOD 666 (2016) **

The first thing you notice about Camp Blood 666 is that it starts off with brand new footage.  Surprisingly enough, it’s a decent enough scene in which a Satanic cult holds a black mass to resurrect the Camp Blood killer.  Upon hearing her brother has joined the devil cult, the concerned Betsy (Shoshanna Green) heads off into the woods to find him. 

Another thing of note about 666 is that it has actual stars this time out.  And by “actual stars” I mean George Stover and Tina Krause (although unfortunately her scene was cut out of the Tubi version).  That’s certainly an upgrade from the casts of the last two entries if you ask me. 

The scenes of our heroine playing Nancy Drew and trying to find her brother aren’t exactly involving, but at least they are scenes from THIS movie and not scenes from another entry in the series.  Sure, there’s still some padding here (like the weird scene where a character watches a vintage public access kids show where a little kid gets his face painted), and there’s still plenty of overlong shots of people walking aimlessly.  Yet, despite this, Camp Blood 666 remains watchable, even if it never really comes close to being… you know… good. 

Sadly, most of the kills just involve the Camp Blood killer stabbing people in various body parts with his trusty machete.  However, we do get a scene where he cuts a guy’s foot off and shoves it down his throat.  I can’t say I’ve seen that in a movie before, so… respect. 

The acting is a bit stilted, but amusingly so.  Alyson Rodriguez Orenstein is particularly fun as a talkative goth chick.  The sound is bad in some places though, and the music drowns out the dialogue in other scenes.  While I can’t even come close to recommending this one, it feels like Citizen Kane compared to the last two entries. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: CAMP BLOOD 5 (2016) ½ *

Dustin Ferguson returns to the director’s chair for this immediate sequel.  The padding this time out includes footage from Camp Blood 4, negative vision nightmare scenes, a lengthy sequence of a character shopping for a Halloween costume, long shots of people walking, a scene where characters sit on a couch and watch scenes from the anthology horror movie Things, characters watching long shots of people walking from the anthology horror movie Things, and long scenes of people walking in flashbacks to Camp Blood 4, 

Oh, and occasionally a guy in a clown mask will kill some campers in the woods.  Eventually, the lone survivor of the massacre in Part 4 decides to get revenge. 

In part 4, the plot didn’t start till the running time was halfway over.  In this one, the plot doesn’t start till the last ten minutes.  That’s right folks, this movie has even less movie in it than the last movie.  It’s like Ferguson made an hour-long movie and decided to split it in half and pad it out with scenes from other movies in order to get two hour-long movies.  It doesn’t help that the old scenes are even more tiresome this time around or that the new footage is severely underwhelming (especially the rushed and unsatisfying climax). 

The thing is, even if Parts 4 and 5 had been edited together as one hour-long movie, it STILL would’ve sucked.  Not half-star sucked, but at least one-star sucked.  Stretching the already weak premise out over two films and packing it to the gills with filler doesn’t really help anyone.  In fact, the long gratuitous sequences of people watching Things will probably just make you wish you were watching Things than wasting your time on this mess.  I mean, Things was no prize, but it seems like Oscar-worthy shit compared to Camp Bloods 4 and 5.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: CAMP BLOOD 4 (2016) ½ *

Dustin (Cocaine Cougar) Ferguson takes the reins from Mark Polonia for the fourth (or fifth, depending on if you count Within the Woods) entry in the Camp Blood franchise.  In pure Ferguson fashion, he pads out the film with flashback scenes from Camp Blood:  First Slaughter, a long opening credits sequence, gratuitous newsbreak footage, pointless walking scenes, gratuitous montages, dance sequences, irritating slow motion scenes, and multiple scenes of women applying their makeup.  In fact, this might be the first movie in history that doesn’t start till its halfway over. 

I never thought anyone could make me wistful for the cinematic prowess of Mark Polonia, but I guess Dustin Ferguson is that kind of guy. 

A group of friends on their way to a rock concert stop off at Camp Blood for a little R and R.  They instead wind up getting S and S.  (Stalked and Slashed.)

The flashbacks to Camp Blood:  First Slaughter take up roughly half the running time.  This might not have been a bad thing if I had never seen First Slaughter, but since I basically watched these two flicks back-to-back, it became repetitious and irritating in a hurry.  It also just goes to show how much better Polonia was at staging the murder scenes than Ferguson.  It’s especially obvious when you can compare the two almost simultaneously within the same flick.  Ferguson also gives us a lot of nighttime scenes that are hard to see, which also amps up the irritation factor.  

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it ends with an annoying cliffhanger for Part 5.  I mean, when you sit through a bad movie (or two halves of two bad movies as is the case here), you expect at least some kind of resolution.  Oh well, at least I didn’t have to wait long to find out what happened as I watched Part 5 soon after… 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: CAMP BLOOD: FIRST SLAUGHTER (2014) **

I figured I would round out the Tubi-Ween Hangover column by giving the Camp Blood movies a whirl.  The first two aren’t on Tubi, so I started with the third one.  The Camp Blood series is unique in that the numbering is all screwed up.  This is actually the second Part 3 in the series as it supposedly retcons the original Part 3, Within the Woods, which is also absent from the streaming service.  (There’s also apparently two Part 6’s, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.)  This entry was written and directed by Mark Polonia, no stranger to the Tubi Continued… column, so you might already know what to expect. 

A killer in a clown mask is beheaded by a psycho in a red mask who sets about murdering campers unfortunate enough to be camping at Camp Blood.  Meanwhile, a group of college students head into the woods to debunk the urban legend of the clown killer and are promptly slaughtered.  Once their footage from their fateful trip is found, it is shown to the masses on television. 

The stalking scenes are a serviceable imitation of the standard set down by John Carpenter all those years ago in Halloween.  The film does have one neat concept that I’m surprised hasn’t been tried in the genre before.  The killer tapes a camera to his head so that all his POV shots look like actual POV shots from a horror movie.  That at the very least breaks up the monotony of the typical handheld Found Footage camerawork. 

Fortunately, the Found Footage stuff only takes up about half the film, and since it’s edited together from different sources it almost sort of feels cinematic.  The practical gore effects are surprisingly strong too.  We get decapitations, a machete to the face, a machete to the throat, a machete to the back, and a machete to the head.  There’s also an axe to the chest, too.  It’s just a shame that the CGI touch-ups and blood splatters look so shoddy.  The gore doesn’t quite save Camp Blood:  First Slaughter, but it does make it more tolerable than countless similar slashers out there. 

AKA:  Camp Blood 3.  AKA:  Camp Blood III 3-D.  

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: DEMONIC TOYS: JACK ATTACK (2023) **

I’ve never really been a Demonic Toys fan.  The recent Baby Oopsie spin-off was pretty good though.  Because of that, I was hoping Demonic Toys:  Jack Attack would be about on par with that one, but it’s only intermittently amusing.  Overall, it’s closer in terms of quality to the Baby Oopsie sequels.

Lily (Sophia Castellanos) watches in horror as her foster mother is killed by the evil Jack in the box, Jack Attack.  The shock of the attack leaves Lily without the ability to speak.  She is then shuffled off to relatives of her deceased foster mother who live on a farm in the middle of nowhere.  Before long, a mysterious crate arrives containing the murderous Jack Attack who sets out to munch and crunch the family members one by one. 

Perhaps sensing that a sole Jack in the box that resembles a Killer Klowns from Outer Space hand puppet from Spirit Halloween wasn’t enough to carry an entire movie (even one that’s only fifty-nine minutes long), the filmmakers have given Jack an ugly clown sidekick to aid him in his massacre.  The carnage the duo creates is decent, all things considered.  There’s flesh ripping, head lopping, eyeball ripping, death by woodchipper, and a scene where Jack burrows into the chest of a victim.  It also features a scene where someone gets an anvil dropped on their head.  The last time I saw that was in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, so you’ve got to admire that. 

Unfortunately, the foster family drama is largely uninvolving.  The performances by Mabel Thomas (who plays a concerned CPS worker) and Castellanos are better than the film probably deserves, but writer/director William Butler doesn’t give them anything worthwhile to do.  He does a fair job connecting this to his previous Baby Oopsie series as the devilish doll baby is shown on a TV news report.  That suggests to me that he’s angling for an MCU team-up (although I guess “reunion” is a better word) down the road. 

Presumably inspired by The Criterion Collection, Charles Band has taken to numbering all his Full Moon movies.  (This one is number 386.)  If you’re a fan of his films and are making a checklist of these things, the best thing I can say is that you can cross this one off your list after you watch it.  I can’t say you’ll remember it a week or so afterwards though. 

AKA:  Jack Attack.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: DEMON DOLL FROM HELL (2023) *

A woman buys a creepy looking vintage baby doll.  She goes off to a continuing education seminar and her boyfriend Alec (writer/director Alec Balas) is left home in their apartment with the ugly doll.  Before long, it starts showing up in odd places and is even heard crying in the middle of the night.  Is the doll really possessed or is the guy just going crazy?

Balas tries for the minimalistic A24 approach.  He gives us many long scenes where nothing happens, but the camera lingers on that nothing for so long that it makes you think something’s going to happen.  Most of the time though, it doesn’t.   There’s even the typical accompanying swelling music on the soundtrack that gives you a Pavlovian response to make you anticipate a jump scare, and then… nothing.  Such scenes include our hero loading a dishwasher, cleaning out the lint trap of his dryer, and making his bed.  Whatever possessed Balas to make a movie that focuses half the running time on him doing household chores?  I get it.  I don’t like chores as much as the next guy.  However, that doesn’t necessarily make it the basis for a horror flick.  Seeing someone fritter their day away with menial tasks is not my idea of “horror cinema”, you know what I mean?

Demon Doll from Hell is also disappointingly low on your typical killer doll movie cliches.  In fact, the doll is pretty much forgotten about in the second half when a specter wearing a black cloak and Michael Jackson mask does much of the heavy lifting.  Why make a movie called Demon Doll from Hell if the doll doesn’t do anything demonic or hellacious?  

According to IMDb, the budget was only $100.  One thing I can say for Demon Doll from Hell is that it certainly looks more expensive than that.  Not much more expensive than that, but still. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: DEATH TOILET 3: DOODY CALLS (2020) **

Nam vet Brett (once again played by Mike Hartfield) is now an international man of mystery who goes hopping around the globe and executing possessed crappers at will.  (Even though they all look like the same toilet in the same bathroom.)  He returns home to learn the original possessed potty has been removed from his brother’s house and relocated to a church.  In order to stop the killer John once and for all, he’ll have to resurrect his dead priest pal Father Dingleberry (Isaac Golub). 

The toilet has gotten a nice upgrade this time around as it now has the ability to completely dismember its victims.  Instead of just taking their balls, it can cut off hands, feet, and heads.  Brett also uses a funny possessed toilet locator that beeps whenever he’s close to a killer commode.  Speaking of which, the clever(ish) script also comes up with some amusing alliterative slang for the terrible toilet this time around, which makes it all semi-worthwhile.  (My favorite was “Porcelain Poltergeist”.) 

All that doesn’t necessarily make Death Toilet 3:  Doody Calls “good”, but it’s certainly an improvement over the last movie.  Heck there were even a few moments where I have to admit, I chuckled to myself.  (Like when the ghost of the priest shows up dragging a trail of toilet paper behind him.).  That almost makes up for the long, annoying Nam flashback scenes filled with nauseating first person POV shots.  It doesn’t quite excuse the irritating music score that drones on and on.  Or the needless slow motion or the repeated dialogue scenes.  Or the flashbacks to the other movies that are only there to pad things out (which is odd, since at fifty-two minutes it’s the shortest of the series so far).  The zombie priest’s constant babbling gets a bit grating after a while, and the finale goes on too long as well.  Despite that laundry list of complaints, it’s not overly crappy.

AKA:  Death Toilet 3:  Call of Doody.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: DEATH TOILET NUMBER 2 (2019) *

I kinda liked Death Toilet (at least probably more than I should’ve) but unfortunately, the title is the best thing about this shitty (no pun intended) sequel. 

Years after he successfully sued the toilet company for selling him a possessed toilet, Nam vet Brett (Mike Hartsfield) is traveling the globe on the stock car circuit.  Still haunted by the evil John, he asks his friend Father Dingleberry (Isaac Golub) to help him be rid of the Satanic shitter once and for all. 

The big gimmick for this one is the onscreen fart counter so you can see just how much screen time is devoted to people farting.  It’s also a good way to gauge how much of your life you’re wasting while watching this mess. 

The first one was amusing and got a lot more mileage from the premise than I expected.  Death Toilet Number 2 gave me just about what I expected.  Maybe even a little less.  It’s also heavily padded with flashbacks to the first movie, needless race car footage, and scenes from an old military filmstrip hosted by James Arness.  There’s also a purposefully cheesy light rock theme song that doesn’t manage to elicit any laughs.

Even though it’s set years after the first movie, Brett still has a fresh bloody bandage on his neck from where he was cut by the toilet in the original.  Why is it still bloody?  Is he still picking at the scab?  (Sadly, we never get any confirmation if he still has his balls or not seeing how he got them cut off by the Death Toilet at the end of the first flick.)  

I guess you could say the highlight of all this comes during the toilet paper attack.  Or when Father Dingleberry calls the toilet a “mother flusher”.  Either way, Death Toilet Number 2 belongs in the shitter.

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.

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.

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.