THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN PRE-GAME: MONSTERS AND MANIACS (1988) ***

Hosted by Brinke Stevens, Monsters and Maniacs is an entertaining mix of horror documentary and clip show package.  While I don’t think anyone will glean any new information from the film, it remains breezy fun.  

The early going is especially amusing.  I loved how the filmmakers took the nameplates of the various horror stars from old trailers and edited them together to make it look like one big monster line-up in the opening credits.  From there, we get a brief history of vampires in cinema.  From Max Schreck to Bela Lugosi to Christopher Lee.  Then it’s on to Frankenstein.  What better way to follow that than with a segment on Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi?  The films of the fifties are then featured, and are represented by the likes of The Thing from Another World, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, and Plan 9 from Outer Space.  There’s a segment on future stars getting their start in horror like Dennis Hopper (Queen of Blood), Jack Nicholson (The Little Shop of Horrors), and Steve McQueen (The Blob) too.  Next is a tribute to Hammer with films such as The Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, and The Mummy.  Slashers and psychos are given their due in clips from Dementia 13, Alice Sweet Alice, and Blood Frenzy (which conveniently was written by Monsters and Maniacs director Ted Newson).  A look at giant apes (King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, and Konga) and lizards (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Giant Behemoth, and Godzilla) round out the collection.  There are also bits on Lon Chaney Jr., Abbott and Costello, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and the immortal trailer for Psycho is shown too. 

Most of the clips are taken from trailers, public domain movies, and behind the scenes footage.  Most of this will be familiar to horror fans, but there are some cool bits along the way that aren’t usually featured in these sorts of things like Bela Lugosi putting the bite on poor Betty Boop.  (“You have booped your last boop!”)  The best parts though are the supercuts of similar scenes that are found across the various genres (like the montage of carriage chases involving Dracula).

Brinke is as fine of a hostess as you can expect.  The puns and banter are mostly kept to a minimum (except for the shtick with the guy in the hockey mask) as the focus is mainly on the clips themselves.  However, my favorite quip was “Gorgo was a tale of a mother’s love.  A very big mother with a very big tail!”

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN PRE-GAME: THE BRIDE! (2026) **

After a hundred years of loneliness, Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) turns to a mad scientist (Annette Bening) in Chicago to create a mate (Jessie Buckley) for him.  After murdering some schmoes in self-defense, they go on the lam.  A pair of detectives played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz follow in hot pursuit.  Eventually, the duo becomes a sort of an undead version of Bonnie and Clyde. 

Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Bride! is a kooky but unsuccessful attempt to modernize the Frankenstein premise with contemporary mores inside of a gangster setting.  I think the problem has more to do with the script than the direction as Gyllenhaal manages to carve out a few memorable sequences within the middle section of the movie.  It’s just that some of the choices that were made are just… oof.

You know you’re in for it though as soon as you see the inexplicably awful prologue featuring Buckley as Mary Shelley (a nod to the 1935 original).  The Bride herself ain’t much to write home about.  With her schizophrenic nature and unruly behavior, this Bride seems to be an attempt by Gyllenhaal to confound expectations of the audience (mostly the males) about how the Bride should look/act.  Or maybe she was trying to give a voice to the original creators who have to suffer through awful Hollywood versions of their character that they never intended.  Whatever the reason, it just doesn’t work.  I can’t exactly fault Buckley as she was just following the script, but the shtick of her going back and forth between the Bride and Shelley’s voice gets tiresome almost immediately.  The subplot where women start cosplaying as the Bride and committing crimes is pretty dumb too.  The fact that the cast is largely comprised of actors who are related to or had previously worked with Gyllenhaal is the tip-off they probably didn’t even read the script and just signed on as a favor. 

Still, there are some nice moments here, most of which come from Bale.  He’s one of our greatest living actors and the prospect of him playing one of the screen’s coolest characters is certainly promising.  I’d say he more or less delivers what you would expect and/or hope for.  Jake Gyllenhaal is also a hoot as a Fred Astaire style movie star that the monster is obsessed with.  I also liked the scene where the monsters are ran out of a theater showing White Zombie (in 3-D).  I wasn’t expecting the tribute to Young Frankenstein either, which was fun. 

Ultimately, The Bride! never really earns its exclamation mark.  You can tell it has an anarchist spirit, but it doesn’t always know how to channel it.  Frankly, it’s a fucking mess.  If it had been a hot mess or even a mildly entertaining one, it might’ve been worth a look.  It’s just that the sparks the title character creates are few and far between. 

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN PRE-GAME: FACES OF DEATH 3 (1985) **

The third installment of the infamous Faces of Death franchise began life as a Mondo movie called Fear.  It was released overseas first, but by the time it hit our shores, the filmmakers retooled it and retitled it to ride the success of the series.  (The version I’m reviewing is the original “Fear” cut found on the 4K UHD release.)  It’s really fucking uneven, even more so than its predecessors.  That said, some of the shit in this one is downright bananas. 

The early scenes focus on serial killers, murderers, and a guy on PCP.  None of it is convincing and much of it looks like a fake version of Cops.  The part with the political prisoner being tortured is likewise phony baloney and goes on way too long.  Suicides, shark attacks, and even Bigfoot are also covered, with varying degrees of success. 

Much of Faces of Death 3 is a mess.  Some of it is indefensible (like the peek inside the squalid home for the handicapped).  However, on the occasion the flick strikes WTF gold, it’s a lot of fun.  The scene where a parachuter is blown off course and lands in a crocodile pit is exactly the kind of gore scene you hope for from a Faces of Death movie.  The sequence with the German exorcist is downright ludicrous too.  That is to say it’s good for a laugh. 

By far the best bit is on the swingers who eat placentas.  This sequence is fucking bonkers.  It starts with real birth of a baby footage, but the jaw-dropping highlight is the scene where the swingers sit around the dinner table in the nude and say grace before they chow down on placenta.  One of the interviewees says, “Viva la placenta!”  I say, “Viva la bad movies!” 

For every highlight like that, there’s at least two or three sequences that don’t work.  Only you know for sure if that’s an acceptable ratio.  Heck, I even found myself dozing off during one of the repetitive underwater scenes.  Still, you don’t see naked swingers eating placenta every day.  That’s the kind of grade Z shit I live for.  Because of that, Faces of Death 3 is hard to dismiss, even if it’s mostly hit and miss.

AKA:  Fear.  AKA:  Faces of Death:  Junk 3.  AKA:  Faces of Death 3:  The Final Assault.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN PRE-GAME: RETURN TO SILENT HILL (2026) *

Silent Hill was one of the worst non-Uwe Boll video game movies of all time.  Silent Hill:  Revelation was so forgettable that I actually forgot it existed.  Now here comes Return to Silent Hill.  It took original director Christophe Gans twenty years to return to Silent Hill.  If we’re lucky, he’ll wait twice as long for his next trip.

You know you’re in trouble right from the pre-title sequence.  It’s wonky as hell.  From the odd camerawork to the laughable narration, it almost feels like it was cobbled together with AI.  In fact, nearly all the greenscreen backgrounds in this look slightly off.  I’m not sure if the budget was too low or if they went overboard trying to make it look like a video game.  All I know is that it just looks cheap. 

Anyway, the plot has this drunk returning to his dead girlfriend’s hometown.  Almost immediately he is attacked by eyeless, armless, acid-spewing zombies.  You’d think that would be the tip-off to turn around and go home, but this idiot presses on. 

The flashback heavy structure helps further sink the film.  Our hero wanders around in the dark, sees something that triggers a flashback to his lost love, and gets chased by a monster.  Rinse and repeat.  Sometimes, it’s a brawny dude wearing a triangle helmet.  Other times it’s a spider woman that has an inexplicably thicc gyatt.  Or maybe it’s a horde of nurses with faces like Rorschach who move around like they’re part of a flash mob. 

The whole thing feels like cut scenes from a video game that you can’t skip through.  I guess fans of the game might appreciate that.  To make matters worse, it all ends with a lame twist that tries to justify its conveniently erratic narrative.  I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s a slight variation on the old “it was all a dream” deals.  I hate shit like that. 

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN PRE-GAME: BIG SHARK (2023) ***

More than two decades after directing the iconic cult classic The Room, idiosyncratic auteur Tommy Wiseau returns to the director’s chair with Big Shark.  Was it worth the wait?  Yes.  Will it have the replay value and longevity his previous film enjoys?  Probably not.  For fans of Grade Z shark flicks though, this will undoubtedly make for a perfect movie night. 

Tommy and his two best friends are firefighters.  When Tommy is out fishing, he sees a big shark, but no one believes him.  Soon after, the shark swims through the streets of New Orleans eating people.  Tommy and company are then tasked with bringing the beast down. 

Sounds simple enough, but Tommy is seemingly more concerned with the friendship between the three leads than he is with the shark attacks.  That makes sense since The Room is essentially about friendship and loss.  Those themes run through Big Shark too.  So much so that people expecting a typical shark movie may be left rather perplexed. 

Since this is Tommy Wiseau we’re talking about here, nothing about Big Shark is typical.  In fact, you’d be disappointed if it was.  The biggest surprise is that it’s essentially a hangout movie.  Tommy spends lots of screen time drinking with his firefighter buddies and doting on his girlfriend.  These interactions usually lead to the funniest and not memorable moments.  The way he says “Sophia” over and over again is amusing and the inexplicable song “Cowboys Don’t Cry” will be stuck in your head for days. 

There are portions of the movie that are frustrating.  There are whole scenes where dialogue is repeated almost verbatim from the previous scene.  I don’t know if Tommy was trying to hammer home plot points (which wasn’t necessary, I assure you) or what.  It just causes the momentum to stall out.  The way the characters react to the shark attacks is odd too.  One minute they freak out and the next they carry on like nothing happened. 

This could be seen as nitpicking, but it shows that with some tighter editing this could’ve been a classic.  When the movie hits the sweet spot and delivers on its promise (which is basically The Room Meets a SYFY Channel Shark movie), the results are appropriately ridiculous and funny.  I also have to commend Wiseau for using restraint and not having his character say “Oh.  Hi, Shark.”

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN PRE-GAME: STANLEY (1972) ) ** ½

I reviewed this a long time ago back when I had a fanzine.  I first saw it on one of those old “Horrible Horror” DVD collections of Crown International movies that Rhino put out.  I apparently gave it One Star and called it an “ecological yawnfest”.  I think I must’ve only given it such a low rating because it just didn’t stack up next to the likes of Horror High, Point of Terror, and Don’t Answer the Phone.  I watched it again recently and although it’s far from perfect, I didn’t mind it too much this time around. 

Yes, it’s Willard with snakes.  That is both a feature and a bug.  If that’s exactly what you want from a ‘70s revenge/horror/When Animals Attack movie, then it should fit the bill.  However, the problem really lies with the third act when it tries to turn our hero into a villain.  Willard also had the same problem in the third act.  Only here, the main characters’ switch is much more contrived.  It just feels out of step with the rest of the movie and lands kind of wobbly. 

The snake attack scenes work though, which will be the main draw for most people.  The scenes of Chris Robinson taunting his victims with his pet snake Stanley before ordering it to strike are fun.  The highlight is the great freeze-frame moment when the Big Bad Alex (The Godfather) Rocco (who is clearly having fun chewing the scenery) jumps off a diving board and into a swimming pool full of snakes.  It’s a real audience pleaser, and if the movie ended here, it easily would’ve received three stars.  Sadly, it plods on for another fifteen minutes. 

Director William Grefe basically remade this a few years later as Mako:  Jaws of Death but swapped out the snakes for sharks. 

AKA:  Snakes.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN PRE-GAME: THE SHROUDS (2025) ** ½

Vincent Cassel stars as a grieving widower who invents technology that allows family members to watch their loved ones decompose as they lie in their grave.  If that doesn’t sound like an idea for a David Cronenberg movie, I don’t know what does.  Naturally, he uses the tech often as he obviously has trouble letting go of his dead wife.  When vandals desecrate her grave, Cassel teams up with his brother in-law (Guy Pearce) to find the culprits. 

Cassel, with his gaunt appearance, steely eyes, and slicked back gray hair, kind of looks like Cronenberg if you squint hard enough.  He commands the screen with his soft-spoken charisma.  He also has a lot of chemistry with Pearce, who is entertaining as a kooky techie.  Diane Krueger is quite good too as Pearce’s ex-wife, who kind of has a thing for Cassel. 

Perhaps sensing that the slim premise would not fill a two-hour movie, Cronenberg instead uses it as a jumping off point as he spins the plot off into a Phillip K. Dick sort of tech noir detective story.  While initially intriguing, he just can’t really sustain the tension throughout the entire picture.  It’s watchable, sure, but overall, it’s pretty low key and is sorely missing the visceral impact of Cronenberg’s best work.  All the stuff with the international high tech graveyard espionage, while novel, doesn’t exactly land either.  However, die-hard Cronenberg fans will recognize passages like that to be a feature and not a bug. 

The Shrouds works best as a somber and depressing examination of grief.  I guess the best description of it is misery porn.  In fact, it contains a scene where two lonely people fuck and use dead relatives and medical procedures as part of their dirty talk during the act.  It’s almost enough to make the sex scenes in Crash seem quaint. 

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN PRE-GAME: A WET DREAM ON ELM STREET (2011) **

Many teenage girls from a small town have been left comatose and trapped in a state of perpetual orgasm.  Three women who miraculously hadn’t met such a fate attend their two-year high school reunion where their professor (Tommy Pistol) tells them the story of Freddy (Anthony Rosano).  Seems he was a sex toy salesman who was burned alive by angry customers.  He then got his revenge by using a glove equipped with dildo fingers to ravage women in their sleep.  Before long, Freddy comes after our three heroines. 

If you’re wondering what kind of high school A) has a two-year reunion or B) has professors and not teachers, then this porn parody of A Nightmare on Elm Street probably isn’t for you.  Not that dumb plot details in a porno matter, but it just goes to show how little thought was put into this thing.  It’s especially disappointing since the film doesn’t even attempt to recreate any scenes/moments from the original movies (or even the remake, which is what it was cashing in on). 

I guess that wouldn’t be a big issue if the sex scenes were hot.  I guess they are okay, but nearly all of them run on a bit long, suffer from repetitive positions and scenarios (there’s a lot of tit fucking if that’s your sort of thing), and are frankly, kind of vanilla.  The ladies in the cast, including Angela White, Gracie Glam, and Sophie Dee are sexy, sure.  I just don’t think anyone will mistake this movie for their finest hour. 

Freddy’s wisecracks aren’t especially funny, which is another debit.  I will say that some of the dialogue is so dumb that it’s good for an unintentional chuckle.  My favorite line was, “She’s getting fingered into unconsciousness!”

As a fan of horror movies and porn parodies in general, I’m glad this exists.  Do I wish they put more thought into it?  Yes.  Do I wish it was funnier?  Absolutely.  That said, you can’t title your movie A Wet Dream on Elm Street and not expect me to watch it, regardless of whether it’s “good” or not. 

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN

This year for the annual 31 Days of Horror-Ween festivities, I am going to be doing something a little different.  The bad news is that I am still running behind on getting caught up on all the reviews I didn’t get to post this summer, so October won’t be all-horror movies as it usually is.  The good news is that the majority of the reviews that I haven’t posted yet are for horror films.  Because of that, I’m going to label them as “The 31 Days of Horror-Ween:  Pre-Game”.  Once I am caught up, I will switch over to all-horror programming.  Since I won’t be able to give you all 31 days of horror, I am going to make this year’s theme The 31 Movies of Horror-Ween.  That way, I will still review a horror movie for each day in October, just posted later in the month.  Afterwards, we will continue as usual with November (and probably December) being “Halloween Hangover” where I review a bunch of other horror-related odds and ends.  I hope to at least be caught up on the reviews in the next few weeks so we can focus on pure horror all the time.  

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: THE PSYCHIC (1979) ***

The Psychic feels like an attempt by director Lucio Fulci to make a “respectable” movie.  It’s been labeled as a giallo by some (there is a killer wearing black gloves, but he doesn’t show up until the last act), but it’s more of a thriller in the vein of The Eyes of Laura Mars.  I can’t quite say it’s among his best work (if I had my druthers, I’d pick his gore-soaked zombie films over this flick any day).  That said, this is a solid second-tier effort that is quite entertaining. 

When she was a little girl, Jennifer O’Neill had a psychic vision of her mother committing suicide.  Years later, she has another premonition, but everyone seems to shrug it off.  The visions intensify once she moves to her husband’s abandoned mansion with the intention of fixing the place up.  Soon after, she finds a skeleton hidden in the walls, which inadvertently implicates her husband in the murder.  With him behind bars, O’Neill sets out to find the real killer and clear his name. 

The opening sequence where the white cliffs of Dover get painted blood red is quite effective.  It doesn’t even matter if some of the shots of the brutally skinned face as it hits the cliffside on the way down look a little fakey.  It’s still some good shit and a heck of a way to open a picture.  The same goes for the scene where O’Neill discovers the skeleton in the wall.  The great twist that sets up the third act is expertly sprung too and the Poe-inspired finale is a lot of fun as well (even if it ends abruptly).  Strong sequences like these make it easy to overlook some of the slower Nancy Drew-style scenes in the second act where O’Neill is questioning potential suspects. 

While those scenes tend to drag, O’Neill is nevertheless excellent in them (and indeed throughout the picture).  She really carries the film squarely on her shoulders and the audience is with her every step of the way.  We also get some fine support from Gianni (the Sartana movies) Garko as O’Neill’s husband, and Gabriele (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) Ferzetti as the prime suspect. 

AKA:  Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes.  AKA:  Demoniac.  AKA:  Seven Black Note.  AKA:  Death Tolls Seven Times.  

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: WEAPONS (2025) **

Zach Cregger is kind of like the white Jordan Peele.  By that I mean he pivoted away from doing sketch comedy in the early 2000’s to writing and directing critically acclaimed horror movies.  I wasn’t a fan of Barbarian, his first foray into the genre, but it had enough bright spots to make me curious what he’d do next.  His follow-up, Weapons wound up being a big box office hit, though I’m not exactly sure why. 

A small town is left in shock when seventeen kids simultaneously run away from home in the middle of the night.  Making their disappearance even more curious is the fact that they all had the same teacher (the omnipresent Julia Garner).  An angry father (Josh Brolin) then sets out to get to the bottom of the mystery. 

Weapons admittedly has an interesting hook, and the initial scenes suck you in right away.  However, the film gets bogged down almost immediately.  Like most “elevated horror” flicks, it suffers from an inflated running time (over two hours) and the structure isn’t exactly optimal for this sort of thing.  The movie is broken up into chapters that revolve around members of the town who are dealing with the disappearances.  Sometimes these scenes intersect a la Pulp Fiction.  The problem is that some of the stories seem like an attempt to tiptoe around the central mystery instead of dealing with it head-on.  I mean you can only get jerked around so much before you start looking at your watch.  In fact, the structure honestly is just a means to dress up the narrative.  Had things played out from point A to point B, it would’ve been really underwhelming.  The dream scenes are rather ho-hum too and only serve to eat up more precious screen time. 

It doesn’t help that by the time the woman who is at the center of the disappearances (Amy Madigan) finally shows up, she looks like a cross between Estelle Getty in Golden Girls and the mom from Rugrats. 

Weapons does have its moments, but they are mostly weighted towards the first and last ten minutes.  I mean, any movie that features an ending that manages to crib from both Point Break and Day of the Dead can’t be all bad.  It’s just a shame that script spends so much time chasing its tail in the middle section of the film. 

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: IT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE (2023) ** ½

On Christmas Eve, Henry Waters (Justin Long), a rich real estate asshole who is trying to gentrify a quaint little town, murders the last old codger who won’t sell his home.  He then sets his sights on killing some partying teens when a teenager named Winnie (Jane Widdop) electrocutes him to death.  One year later, everyone but Winnie seems to have moved on from the trauma of that night.  Feeling depressed and unwanted on Christmas, she wishes she was never born.  By doing so, not only does the killer come back to life, but he’s now become mayor of the town which allows him to constantly get away with murder.  It’s then up to Winnie and the town weirdo, appropriately named “Weirdo” (Jess McLeod) to stop Waters and get back to her own timeline. 

It’s a Wonderful Knife is basically Scream Meets It’s a Wonderful Life.  The title itself almost sounds like a gag you’d see on The Simpsons or something.  It’s actually similar in tone to another movie that tried to graft an old classic onto a slasher chassis, Freaky (which makes sense since it was written by the same guy).  However, it’s not nearly as successful or entertaining as that film.  Also, the way Long’s character turns the town into a veritable shrine to himself is reminiscent of the alternate 1985 scenes in Back to the Future 2. 

While the structure and plotting are clever, the slasher scenes are mostly ho-hum.  If only the filmmakers had put as much thought into the stalking and suspense sequences as they did the It’s a Wonderful Life homages, this might’ve been a modern classic.  As it stands, it’s a case of close, but no cigar.  The killer’s get-up is kind of lame too.  It looks just like Ghostface, but all in white and with a blank white mask to match.  You’d think a costume like that would be impractical considering how much blood gets on it.  I mean, how does he get the blood stains out from scene to scene?  Or does he have a never-ending supply of costumes?  You know it’s a problem when you’re thinking about stuff like that instead of concentrating on whether or not the characters will make it out of the house alive.  I did like the fight scene in the movie theater while the “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” ad was projected over the action though. 

The cast is strong, which helps neutralize many of the film’s shortcomings.  Widdop makes for a likeable lead, and she has genuine chemistry with McLeod.  Long makes for a funny villain as he really leans into the character’s yuppie scum persona.  We also have Joel McHale doing some fine dramatic work as Winnie’s grieving dad and Ginger Snaps’ Katharine Isabelle is a hoot as her feisty aunt.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS (1984) **

The prospect of legendary horror stars Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine teaming up for a movie is irresistible.  Add to that the fact it’s directed by Pete (House of Whipcord) Walker, produced by Golan-Globus, and (loosely) based on a story by the creator of Charlie Chan, Earl der Biggers, and you have yourself a recipe for fun.  Despite the pedigree, House of the Long Shadows still manages to be quite dull. 

A best-selling author (Desi Arnaz, Jr.) bets his agent he can write a gothic romance novel in 24 hours.  The agent then sets him up in a spooky old house to write the book.  One by one, the house is called upon by strange gentlemen who prevent him from getting any work done.  Turns out Cushing, Carradine, and Price have returned to the house to finally let their deranged brother out of the attic after forty years.  Lee is the new owner of the property who eventually shows up and demands to know what the hell is going on. 

It takes a while before the titans of terror finally appear on screen.  Till then, it’s mostly a bunch of scenes of Arnaz, Jr. walking down darkened hallways.  Even once the stars finally get together, they mostly just stand around and look grumpy.  It takes even longer for people to start getting offed.  A woman is strangled till her eyeballs pop cartoonishly out, another gets acid in her face, and someone is hacked to death with an axe.  The double (cheat) twist ending is kind of obvious too and only adds to the inflated running time. 

I’m sure everyone involved thought this was going to be a triumphant return for some of horror’s biggest stars.  Sadly, it was not a hit, and it became the last time any of them starred alongside each other.  Only Lee seems to be in his A-game as everyone else looks bored or disinterested.  Then again, YOU try acting alongside Desi Arnaz, Jr and see how you make out.  Leading lady Julie Peasgood isn’t bad though, and sort of resembles a Temu version of Britt Ekland. 

AKA:  House of Long Shadows.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: LIVING WITH CHUCKY (2023) **

A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th both got documentaries on their respective series. I guess it was a matter of time before Chucky got his.  If you’re looking for an exhaustive chronicle of the franchise, forget it.  This isn’t nearly as in-depth as the others I mentioned.  It’s a shame because it kind of feels like a missed opportunity. 

I was honestly kind of surprised by the number of cast and crew who were suspiciously absent.  Catherine Hicks and Chris Sarandon, the stars from the original are nowhere to be found.  The same goes for director Tom Holland and special effects man Kevin Yagher, who created the doll for the first four films.  (The director, Kyra Gardner is the daughter of Tony Gardner, who did the effects for the series from Seed of Chucky on, so maybe there was a conflict of interest there.)

The opening portion about the first film is good, but they really rush through the making of 2 and 3.  Oddly enough, Brad Dourif isn’t interviewed for these segments, which is disappointing as it would’ve been interesting to hear his take on them.  (Maybe he didn’t have anything nice to say, so they cut it out.)  Since this is a fluff piece, they don’t even mention the infamous Bulger case where a couple of kids murdered a schoolmate and blamed it on Child’s Play 3.  Conversely, they spend way too much time on the lukewarm DTV sequels. 

You can see in the interviews that Dourif takes the role of Chucky VERY seriously, which is I guess a testament to the character’s longevity.  The file footage scenes of him voicing Chucky in an audio booth are among the best in the film as you can really tell he’s giving it his all, even if his reactions aren’t being used in the film.  The interviews with Jennifer Tilly are fun too, but they aren’t all that in-depth. 

The film particularly hits a wall in the last half hour when the camera turns on the director.  It’s here where she talks about how the Chucky filmmakers are kind of like a second family she never met and that she’s using the documentary as an excuse to meet and talk to everyone involved.  (Fiona Dourif can also relate as she is also a second generation of Chucky participant.)  This segment is OK, but it just seems like it should’ve been its own thing.  Having it tacked onto a chronicle of the franchise just seems like a way to pad things out.  I mean, make a movie about Chucky or make a movie about your family.  Splitting the difference just doesn’t quite make for an engaging documentary.

While parts of Living with Chucky play like a nice jaunt down memory lane, it ultimately feels more like a DVD bonus feature than an actual documentary.  Some of the material will be an old hat for fans and/or people who read Fangoria back in the day though.  The parts with people who weren’t even involved with the franchise (like Abigail Breslin and Marlon Wayans) weren’t really necessary either.  At least they interview John Waters, who gets the best line:  “Chucky has sex!  Godzilla doesn’t have sex!  Frankenstein doesn’t jerk off!”

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: NIGHTWISH (1990) * ½

Nightwish is a frustrating mishmash of A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Haunting, and Alien.  That combination plays as schizophrenically as it sounds.  Not even a bunch of familiar faces from ‘80s horror movies like Clayton (Destroyer) Rohner, Elizabeth (Silent Madness) Kaitan, and Brian (Fright Night 2) Thompson can save this turgid mess. 

A group of parapsychology students go to a secluded house to conduct experiments to see if the place is haunted by an extraterrestrial supernatural entity.  (No, really.)  They get their answer pretty damn fast.  Adding to their woes is the fact that the professor snaps and starts killing his students. 

The opening scene where Kaitan is taking part in a dream experiment to see if she can cause her own death inside of the dream is intriguing.  It all goes downhill in a hurry after that.  Admittedly, there is some cool stuff here.  The most effective scene comes when Kaitan’s head is shoved inside a glass box crawling with spiders, which contains a POV shot from Kaitan’s tonsils.  (I think that might be a cinematic first.)  It’s just that you can only get jerked around so long before your brain begins to check out. 

Oh, and if you couldn’t tell after ten minutes this was going to end up being one of those “It was all a dream” things, you deserve your horror movie-watching license revoked. 

The ending is less of a “Gotcha!” and more of an excuse to justify the nonlinear nonsense in the film.  Scenes involving glowing green alien snakes and cyclones menacing the students are more puzzling than laughable, and the stuff with the alien embryos incubating in the victims feels like they came out of an entirely different movie.  There’s also a Halloween 3-inspired scene where bugs crawl out of a crushed skull because, why the hell not?

I’m a fan of Rohner, Kaitan, and Thompson, but they are all mostly wasted.  (Kaitan and Alisha Das do provide a fleeting amount of T & A, which does help take some of the sting out of it.)  At least Thompson gets to play an unpredictable character as the asshole of the group who gets his kicks by running over poor defenseless bunny rabbits.  Also in the cast is the director of Cleopatra Jones, Jack Starrett as the creepy professor, and Mr. Clean himself, Robert Tessier as his hulking assistant. 

AKA:  Nightwish:  Out of Control.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: DANCES WITH WEREWOLVES (2017) ***

As a general rule, I’m pretty much guaranteed to watch anything provided it has a great title.  And with a title like Dances with Werewolves, how can you lose?  The most surprising thing about it is there’s a legitimately good movie hiding inside the cheesy title. 

Cassie (Aqueela Zoll) runs out on her abusive boyfriend and heads to Los Angeles to make a fresh start.  There, she winds up getting entangled with Darcy (Tatiana DeKhtyar), a madam who goes around the city turning hookers into werewolves.  Meanwhile, Jay Nightraven (Omar Paz Trujillo), a Native American paranormal investigator and his sexy assistant/girlfriend (Lauren Parkinson) try to get to the bottom of a rash of murders committed by the streetwalking skinwalkers.  He then tries to cure Cassie of her lycanthropy, but of course Darcy comes looking to retrieve the lost member of her pack. 

Written, produced, and directed by the team of Donald F. (Dinosaur Valley Girls) Glut and Dan (Timegate:  Tales of the Saddle Tramps) Golden, Dances with Werewolves is more straightforward and serious than the jokey (but admittedly great) title would suggest.  It sort of plays like a low budget riff on Bordello of Blood, but with werewolves instead of vampires.  It’s pretty amusing too, all things considered.  While there could’ve been a little more T & A (there’s more A than T) and gore (we do get a decent gut ripping scene though), I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I’m especially glad they used practical effects for the werewolf women as spandex outfits covered with crepe hair will always be sexier than something that came out of a computer. 

The cast is particularly strong, and the women characters are well written.  DeKhytar is great as the sexy and assertive werewolf woman.  Zoll gives more layers to her character than was probably necessary, and Parkinson proves there’s more to her than just a token girlfriend.  Jacqui Holland and Madeleine Wae have their moments as well as the hookers who are under Darcy’s spell.  Phantasm’s Angus Scrimm (in his next to last role), Skinamax siren Debbie Dutch, and Feast director John Gulager round out the fine supporting cast. 

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: MY GRANDPA IS A VAMPIRE (1992) **

Lonny (Justin Gocke) is a little American kid who goes to spend the summer with his Aunt Leah (Pat Evison) in New Zealand.  His friend Kanziora (Milan Borich) soon becomes convinced that Lonny’s eccentric old grandfather (Al “Grandpa” Lewis) is a vampire.  His suspicions are confirmed shortly after Grandpa passes away when he returns sporting fangs, a cape, and the ability to fly around in the moonlight.  Problems arise when Leah’s loutish boyfriend (Noel Appleby) fancies himself as a vampire hunter and tries to drive a stake through Grandpa’s heart. 

From David Blyth, the director of Death Warmed Up and The Red Blooded American Girl, My Grandpa is a Vampire is a kid friendly horror flick that would feel comfortable sitting alongside stuff like My Best Friend is a Vampire and My Mom’s a Werewolf on the video store shelf.  It works mostly as a tribute to Grandpa himself, Al Lewis.  If you’re a fan of the man (and frankly, who isn’t?) the film should be at the very least tolerable.  The scenes of Lewis taking the boys flying out in the moonlight are sweet, but the rest of the movie is frustratingly uneven.  The jokes are lame, the Kiwi accents are annoying, and some parts are downright perplexing.  The scene where a drunk woman hits on little Lonny (at his grandfather’s funeral no less) is extremely cringeworthy.  The most memorable scene occurs when the boys take Grandpa to McDonald’s, which means it might make for a good WTF kids movie double feature with Mac and Me. 

Lewis looks like he’s having fun doing a slight variation on his beloved character.  I mean if you’re making a movie called My Grandpa is a Vampire, who better to play the vampire grandpa than Al “Grandpa” Lewis?  That’s just smart casting if you ask me.  However, if you’re really jonesing to see Lewis in action, you’re honestly better off with old Munsters reruns or those old Grandpa monster movie compilations than this.  Even when viewing it strictly as kids’ entertainment, My Grandpa is a Vampire still doesn’t quite cut the mustard.  There isn’t much here to please adolescent horror fans and younger viewers who scare easily will probably be bored more than anything. 

AKA:  Moonrise.  AKA:  Grampire.  

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: DEAD ANT (2019) ***

Dead Ant starts off with a hot chick having a peyote trip where she strips off all her clothes and runs naked through the desert while being chased by a giant CGI ant.  As far as ways to open up a picture go, I’d say this ranks right up there with the best. 

Michael (Twin Peaks) Horse is a Native American medicine man/drug dealer who sells a powerful brand of peyote to an over the hill rock band called Sonic Grave who are heading into the desert to play a low rent Coachella type concert.  He tells them if they don’t disturb the land, they will have a good trip.  Things immediately go wrong when the bass player (Sean Astin) pisses on an ant while tripping balls, which causes the ants to grow to enormous size and come after the group. 

Dead Ant has a strange but endearing cast.  In addition to Horse and Astin we have Jake Busey as the lead singer of the washed-up hair metal band, Tom Arnold as the band’s loudmouth manager, and Sydney Sweeney as a sexy groupie who wears a skimpy bikini the whole movie.  It’s an odd mix of talent, but everyone doesn’t take things too seriously (neither should you) and they seem to be having fun (you probably will too). 

I mean the premise is just weird enough to work.  It’s definitely a different way to do a killer animal movie, that’s for sure.  Usually in these things, it’s toxic waste or a hole in the ozone layer or some shit that causes the animals to mutate.  I don’t think we’ve seen one where the insects become killers when the white man fucks around with nature while high on Native American peyote. 

My biggest gripe was that the CGI effects are pretty lousy.  The claustrophobic setting (much of the film takes place in a cramped camper) doesn’t help either.  Still, the pace is rather zippy, and the film more or less skates by on oddball vibes alone. 

AKA:  Dead Ant:  Monsters vs. Metal.  AKA:  Giant Killer Ants.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: FRANKENSTEIN GENERAL HOSPITAL (1988) **

Six years after starring in the ho-hum Jekyll and Hyde… Together Again, Mark (Fridays) Blankfield tried his hand at another horror spoof of a beloved monster character.  This one is equally bland and unfunny. 

Blankfield stars as Bob Frankenstein, who works by day as a doctor in a hospital, but by night tries to create a monster (Irwin Keyes from House of 1000 Corpses) in his laboratory down in the basement.  The annoying Leslie Jordan is Frankenstein’s inept assistant Iggy who sneaks around stealing body parts when no one is looking.  After the experiment is a success, it doesn’t take long before the monster escapes from the lab and wreaks havoc on the hospital. 

Frankenstein General Hospital has been referred to as “the worst Frankenstein movie of all time”.  Well, it’s not THAT bad (Frankenstein Island, anyone?), but it never once comes close to approaching “good”.  If you enjoyed Jekyll and Hyde… Together Again, you may find something to appreciate here.  All others should probably steer clear. 

The big problem is that it’s a horror comedy that frankly never delivers on the laughs.  The jokes are feebly constructed and indifferently delivered.  There’s also a lame running gag of people laughing every time the doctor mentions his “secret experiment”. 

It’s not all bad though.  All the scenes in the doctor’s lab are in black and white, which was a nice touch.  These sequences at least look the part, even if the jokes land with a thud.  We also get some small servings of T & A, which help a little. 

I’ve never been much of a Blankfield fan, so this one didn’t do a whole lot for me.  Thankfully, Keyes is fun as the monster, especially when he becomes smart.  Playboy Playmate of the Year (1986) Kathy Shower is easy on the eyes as a sexy shrink who doubles as a dominatrix.  We also have Ben Stein as a doctor, a cameo by Bobby “Boris” Pickett of “Monster Mash” fame, and a photo of Colin Clive. 

AKA:  General Hospital.  AKA:  Monster Hospital.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: THE MALIBU BEACH VAMPIRES (1991) ½ *

The Malibu Beach Vampires is a nearly incomprehensible and unwatchable mess.  Before the title even appears, the film stock changes twice, time codes are visible at the bottom of the screen, and the editing is so bad it’s bound to make you cross-eyed.  Sadly, this is about as good as the movie gets. 

There’s no real plot to this thing.  It’s almost like a bunch of movies that got thrown in a blender and were fed to the editor via an Uno Attack game.  The easiest part of the movie to follow features a trio of girlfriends renting a beach house in Malibu for the weekend.  There are also subplots involving a vampire girl trying to find love, a telethon ran by a pair of televangelists modeled on Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and a fake Oliver North guy being interrogated by Congress.  These imposters horribly date the movie and none of them come close to eliciting the slightest chuckle. 

I guess it might’ve been okay if the Jim and Tammy Faye scenes were saying something satirical about the couple or about organized religion in general, but they most seem like a vehicle for long tapdancing scenes and inexplicable religious song and dance numbers.  It also doesn’t help that their telethon is just filmed at someone’s dance studio and not on an actual stage (or church).  Director Francis Creighton plays the Jim Bakker character, and his performance is downright painful to watch. 

Maybe I wouldn’t have been so upset if this had actually been about… you know… Malibu Beach Vampires.  However, the eponymous ladies only take up about 7% of the actual plot.  I’ve seen low budget movies where vampires wore cheap dime store plastic fangs, but this might be the first one where they wear Dracula fangs that are nothing more than Halloween wax candy lips. 

Most of the time, it feels like you’re watching TV while someone with ADHD has the remote and is channel surfing like a goddamned lunatic.  Either that, or it plays like a Kentucky Fried Movie kind of parody (minus the laughs), but the editor tried to (unsuccessfully) edit everything together into one continuous plot line.   The results are nothing less than a big incoherent mess.  In fact, the random cutaways to the sexy beach girls dancing to “Beach Blanket Bingo” are the only thing saving this turd from a No Stars rating.