THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: JERSEY SHORE MASSACRE (2014) ** ½

God, remember when Jersey Shore was a thing?  Now you can relive those horrifying days with this tangibly related horror flick.  Oh, and by “tangibly related”, I mean because both have “Jersey Shore” in the title and the fact that it’s executive-produced by Jersey Shore cast member Jenni “JWOWW” Farley.

A bunch of Jersey girls head down the shore for a girls’ weekend.  When they learn their rental is double booked, they go to stay at a relative’s house in the spooky Pine Barrens.  Eventually, they are picked off one by one by an unseen menace.

The Jersey girls are thoroughly annoying, but that just means the actresses all did their job.  I can’t say you’ll root for any of them to make it out alive, but there is a sense of relief when one of them gets slaughtered.  The slaughtering, it should be said, is juicy.  We get throat slashing, death by tanning bed, a meat cleaver to the tiddy, double impalement via samurai sword, a dildo to the eye, some robust gut spilling, and in the film’s best scene, the killer uses an electric sander to sand away one juicehead’s chintzy tribal tattoos.

For most of the movie, you don’t know who is doing the killing.  Is it one of the inbred locals from the Pine Barrens?  Or is it the mythical Jersey Devil?  I wish the majority of the kills weren’t the work of an unseen killer from just offscreen.  Then again, I guess it doesn’t matter who the killer is as long as trashy Jersey Shore tourists get massacred. 

The movie is not without its faults.  A lot of the screen time is devoted to the girls hanging out on the beach, partying, and arguing.  There are also sequences from a film within a film (Fat Camp Massacre) that helps pad things out.  That said, it gives the viewer a reasonable amount of T & A and blood and guts (once the kill scenes finally occur), so I have to say, it was better than expected.  (It’s certainly more fun than watching an episode of Jersey Shore.)

Ron Jeremy has a cameo as a stoner landlord.

AKA:  Extra.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: HOMECOMING MASSACRE (2020) ** ½

When he was just a boy, Jonathan (Derrik Wynn) witnessed his mother being raped by her abusive boyfriend on Halloween night (which also happened to be Jonathan’s birthday… bummer), so he stabbed them both to death.  Ten years later, he’s released from a mental hospital into the care of his aunt and her family.  Has the painfully shy Jonathan truly been reformed, or is he merely biding his time until his next massacre?

Homecoming Massacre is a solid low budget effort that gets high marks for the better than average acting.  No one is going to be mistaken for Olivier here, but the performances are all better than the audience would expect (or even better than the movie probably deserves).  It’s almost a shame the paltry budget lets the cast down (especially near the end).  While writer/director Kenny White (who also wrote the decent Curse of the Snake Woman) gets a lot of mileage from the shoestring budget (it’s mostly a two-location film), the seams start to show as the flick approaches its climax.  The worst thing I can say for it is that some of the blue-tinted day for night scenes are hard to see.

Strangely enough, I liked the early scenes of the psycho kid trying (and ultimately failing) to reconnect with his family than I did the slasher-centric scenes in the second half.  In many ways, Homecoming Massacre is sort of a precursor to Halloween Ends as the film examines the repercussions of violence and how many are often doomed to repeat the cycle no matter what kind of interventions are tried.  The killer’s costume, which is a simple, but effective clown works too.  Sure, some of the kills are weak, but White delivers at least one memorable chainsaw death.  

Overall, Homecoming Massacre is a solid effort.  I just hope next time out, White has a budget befitting his vision.  Hopefully, he’ll keep the same stock of actors, as they were all believable and helped keep the movie afloat throughout most of the running time.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: HITCHHIKER MASSACRE (2017) ** ½

A killer is driving around the desert picking up sexy hitchhikers and selling their organs on the black market.  No one apparently told Sally (Ely LaMay) and she foolishly accepts a ride from a weirdo named Slim (John Blyth Barrymore).  Before long, Sally finds herself chained up in his basement with her vital organs ready to be put on an inventory list.

Usually, whenever some low budget filmmaker tries to ape the Grindhouse aesthetic, it comes off looking cheap.  Most of the time it resembles someone using an iPhone filter on the camera to recreate a scratchy print.  The opening scene of Hitchhiker Massacre is one of the best emulations of the Grindhouse look I have seen outside of Grindhouse.  They actually went through the trouble of making the lighting and camerawork match the old exploitation movies, so the illusion is near perfect.  If it wasn’t for the modern dress and cellphones, you’d swear this was a ‘70s flick.  They even use the “Missing Reel” gimmick to good effect and cap everything off with a great homage to Lucio Fulci’s Zombie.

Too bad they drop the aesthetic after the opening credits as it looks like a “real” movie most of the time.  They do dabble in some various artistic flourishes.  During one gore scene, the film switches to black and white, which I guess was an homage to Kill Bill switching color palettes for the bloody sequences.  The rest of the flick is OK (there’s a decent impromptu surgery with an Exacto knife), but I just wish they kept up the old timey look throughout the entire running time.  As it is, they pretty much shoot their wad in the first ten minutes.

I did like the fact that it co-starred lesser-known relatives of the Barrymore, Carradine, and Cronyn acting families.  That helps to keep the Grindhouse tradition going by trading in on nepotism.  Oh, and it was (posthumously) produced by Ivan Nagy (remember him?), which gives it a bit of cred too.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: GHOUL SCOUT ZOMBIE MASSACRE (2018) **

A mad scientist invents a formula to turn Emo band twinks into mindless gay porn stars.  In order to distribute formula, he gets his sister, the warden of girls’ reform school, to dress up the inmates as “Ghoul Scouts” and pass out drug-laced cookies to unsuspecting musicians.  Naturally, the cookies turn them into flesh hungry zombies, and the girls must band together to stop the impending zombie apocalypse.

Before we go any further, let me get this off my chest.  No movie with the words “Ghoul”, “Scout”, “Zombie”, and “Massacre” in the title should ever run one-hundred-and-eleven minutes.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s some good stuff here, but for every decent moment (like when the girls are “re-educated” by being forced to watch ‘50s housewife filmstrips) there’s one that flat-out doesn’t work (like when the doctor’s put-upon assistant stops the flick cold for an unnecessary musical number).  The set-up is long winded too, and the rock concert sequence eats up a lot of screen time.

It also takes forever to get the ball rolling.  I mean, did we really need to see every one of the Ghoul Scouts’ back stories?  Probably not.  Then again, since this sequence ends with the pregnant warden giving them a whipping, I guess it’s okay.  (This stretch also contains a solid Carrie homage.)  

The humor is hit and miss too.  Much of the stuff involving the mad scientist is borderline painful, and any scene with his assistant is even worse.  Fortunately, the parts with the Ghoul Scouts are sort of fun.  (The sex scene offers one of the biggest laughs.)  I mean, the zombie baby scene alone ensures this won’t get any lower than **.  If the running time was a good forty minutes shorter, the rating would’ve been much higher.

Oh, and be on the lookout for a cameo by Bloodsucking Freaks director, Joel M. Reed.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: GARDEN TOOL MASSACRE (1997) * ½

The plot for this shitty, no-budget, Shot on Video slasher is simple:  A man flips his wig and stabs his wife to death in her sleep. He gets sent away to the nuthouse but escapes years later to murder some teens having a party.

Parts of Garden Tool Massacre are hard to see due to the poor lighting and/or crummy video cameras the crew were using.  (The tape rolls get annoying after a while too.)  Parts are hard to hear too due to the shitty sound and the thick British accents.  It doesn’t help that it’s pretty slow moving in general and is filled with long scenes where nothing happens.  The attempts at suspense also fail spectacularly.  I mean, having not one, but two scenes where a guy takes a piss in a garden where he doesn’t get his junk cut off by a garden tool in a movie called Garden Tool Massacre is just lazy filmmaking if you ask me.  Sequences where guys wake up, put on their pants and shave don’t necessarily make for gripping cinema either.  Also, the party turns out to be a complete sausage fest, which is extremely disappointing.

The biggest gripe comes from the fact that the killer doesn’t take full advantage of the whole gardening tool aesthetic implied by the title.  Among the weapons of death are a knife, a corkscrew, and an axe.  The only real gardening tools that are utilized are garden shears and hedge clippers.  To be fair, in one scene he does crack a guy’s neck while wearing gardening gloves, so I guess that counts.

It's a shame because the opening murder is decent.  It’s obvious director David Hinds is a fan of John Carpenter as he apes Halloween every chance he gets.  Too bad the results are not very effective and kinda dull.  The poster is cool though.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: GARDEN PARTY MASSACRE (2017) ***

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THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: THE FUNHOUSE MASSACRE (2015) ***

Warden Robert Englund presides over a secret supermax prison that exclusively houses serial killers. There’s a jailbreak on Halloween night and the nutjobs take refuge in a nearby haunted house attraction based on their various crimes.   A group of friends then go to the park unaware that the “Scare Actors” have been replaced by the real McCoy. 

That’s a pretty neat idea for a movie.   It’s kind of like Slashers Meets Hell Fest.  It also helps that the cast is solid for this sort of thing.  In addition to Englund (whose role ultimately amounts to an extended cameo), we have Jere (Justified) Burns acting suitably tweaked as the ringleader of the group of killers.  Candice De Visser also makes a memorable impression as Burns’ clown-faced gal pal, who is basically a Harley Quinn clone, but is nevertheless fun to watch.  We also get Clint Howard as “The Taxidermist” who’s sort of like the Ed Gein of the group.  (Other killers are loosely based on Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter.)   The ’Burbs' Courtney Gains is also kind of funny as the owner of the haunted attraction, and Scottie Thompson makes for a fetching Final Girl as the sexy sheriff on the case.

The gore is great all around too.  There’s face ripping, gut ripping, death by coat hook, head bludgeoning via strongman mallet, plaque scraper in the ear, head ripping (multiple), and a face shoved in a hot dog grill.  The surprising thing about The Funhouse Massacre is that the humor is actually funny.  I liked the scene where the dim bulb girl thought her Marilyn Monroe outfit was a “Sexy Hilary Clinton costume”.  The bumbling deputy gets some laughs as he’s hopelessly out of his depth taking on a half dozen serial killers.  All in all, this is a fun time, and makes for perfect Spooky Season viewing.  It’s certainly much better than the similarly themed, but wildly overpraised, Haunt. 

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: 4/20 MASSACRE (2018) ***

In the opening scene, a killer in a ghillie suit (that I guess is supposed to resemble marijuana?) kills a stoner for messing around his weed stash.  Then, a group of girlfriends heading out into the woods for a camping weekend on 4/20 pitch a tent near his cash crop.  The girls wind up in possession of the killer’s weed and he'll do anything to get it back. 

Well, it looks like they’re starting to run out of legitimate holidays to base slasher movies around.  Now they’re resorting to using fake holidays like 4/20.  I guess it makes sense though, seeing how stoners have been prime slasher fodder since the dawn of the slasher film.  At least the filmmakers were smart enough to not make ALL the characters annoying stoners. 

As far as holiday-themed horror flicks go, 4/20 Massacre is solidly entertaining.  The gore is rather strong too, which is always a plus.  We get a gut spilling scene that earns extra points for the part where the guy tries to stuff his own intestines back inside his stomach and fails miserably at it.  There’s also a pretty gnarly cigar to the eye scene, a death by bong (naturally), and a champagne bottle to the face. 

What sets 4/20 Massacre apart from the rest of the pack is the surprising amount of LGBT content.  What’s even more surprising is its frank and honest portrayal of lesbian relationships, which is not necessarily something you’d expect to see in a film called 4/20 Massacre. Not only does it explore characters in the midst of a budding lesbian romance, there’s also a gay character who is unsure how to come out to her best friend (and hopeful partner), which manages to hit on real notes of truth.  These dramatic/romantic scenes are played so well by Jamie (The Bunnyman Massacre) Bernadette and Vanessa Rose (Samurai Cop 2) Parker that you almost forget there’s a weed-obsessed killer lurking about.  Almost.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: EASTER KILLING 2 (2022) **

This movie kinda derailed my streak of watching slashers with the word “Massacre” in the title.  Even though the title for this sequel to Easter Bunny Massacre is labeled as “Easter Bunny Massacre:  The Bloody Trail” on Tubi (and IMDb), the actual onscreen title is “Easter Killing 2”.  Now, Easter Bunny Massacre was also known as Easter Killing.  I don’t know why they didn’t bother to change the title in the opening credits.  Well, even though the titles got flippity-flopped, the premise is still about a killer hippity hop.

This is less a sequel than a remake of the first film.  Another set of friends are lured to a remote house in the middle of nowhere under the false pretense of an Easter party.  All of them share a dark secret on their past and soon, a Bunny garbed killer begins leaving them mysterious boxes containing threatening voice messages from a former deceased friend.  Before long, the friends are picked off one by one by killers in ramshackle Easter bunny costumes. 

Although the set-up is similar to the first film, this time, the flashbacks aren’t intrusive on the narrative.  While the original borrowed from several sources, this one’s main inspiration comes from Scream.  (It even rips off the opening sequence.)  I might say this is slightly better, but unfortunately, the kills are mediocre and forgettable. 

Even though it’s shorter than the first film, it still tends to drag, especially in the second half.  The good news is the climax has a surprise or two up its sleeve.  I particularly liked the way the filmmakers connected this back to the original.  (I won’t spoil it as it’s the best part of the movie.)  Perhaps if the film showed the same ingenuity throughout the running time that it displayed in the climax, it could’ve been a winner. 

AKA:  Easter Bunny Massacre:  The Bloody Trail.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: EASTER BUNNY MASSACRE (2021) **

A group of friends go out into the woods on Easter for a drug-fueled party.  The next morning, they all wake up covered in their dead friend’s blood.  Since none of them remember what happened the night before, they decide to ditch the body and cover up the murder.  One year later, they receive invitations from their dead friend to an Easter party where their mysterious host plays a series of games with them.  Is their friend really back from the dead and out to get revenge?  Or is someone else orchestrating the scheme on her behalf?

Easter Bunny Massacre is a British mix of ‘80s slashers like Slaughter High, ‘90s fare like I Know What You Did Last Summer, and your standard-issue holiday-themed horror flick.  The host makes the guests go on an Easter egg hunt for clues, has them solve riddles, and leaves mystery boxes in an attempt to make them confess their crime. Honestly, it all sort of works for the first half-hour or so. 

Sadly, things grind to a halt once the film turns into a half-assed version of Rashomon.  It’s here where the partygoers give differing accounts of what happened on the night of the murder, and the flashbacks really bog things down just when things should be getting juicy.  The finale is decent, but it’s just not good enough to overcome the second act doldrums.

The Easter Bunny mask the killer wears is ugly and bloody, but it’s not as cool as the suit featured in The Bunnyman Massacre.  The kills are sort of bland too.  The only novel touch comes when the Bunny throws scalding chocolate into a guy’s face before stabbing him to death.  I wish there were more Easter-themed murders here, but oh well.  Still, I can’t get too mad at any slasher movie in which the killer lines his victims up around the dinner table at the end. 

AKA:  Easter Killing.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: THE CLOWN CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022) **

Dustin Ferguson’s The Clown Chainsaw Massacre begins with a riff on the opening crawl from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre before moving on to a news report about creepy clown sightings.  (Remember when those were all the rage?)  Then, the plot begins.  And by “plot”, I mean a bunch of friends go to a Halloween party at a house where ten years earlier, a murderer who dressed like a clown, was killed by vigilante justice.  It doesn’t take a nuclear physicist to figure out what happens next.

There are scenes here that not only rip off The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but Halloween (the early stalking scenes) and even A Nightmare on Elm Street (the vigilantes were the parents of the main characters) as well.  Even though it’s only forty-five minutes long, there’s still a lot of padding in the form of a gratuitous montage of two girls roaming the aisles of Spirit Halloween looking for a costume and long scenes of people dancing at the party.  Despite that, as far as Dustin Ferguson movies go, it’s not bad.  While we still get plenty of dumb moments (like when the clown shoves a lollipop up a guy’s ass and it comes out his zipper, and then… the killer sucks on it?), it’s not nearly enough to make or break it. 

Also, the skimpy running time is a bit of a mixed blessing.  By the time the killer finally gets around to knocking off the teens, it feels like Ferguson is rushing through the death scenes to get to the end.  They would’ve worked much better had they been given a little suspense or at least some sort of build-up before they’re killed.  Wait.  Did I just criticize a Dustin Ferguson movie for being too short?  I’m starting to lose it.

Scenes from this also turned up in Ferguson’s compilation, I Drip Blood on Your Grave (under the title Night of the Clown.)

AKA:  Night of the Clown.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: CHRISTMAS CRAFT FAIR MASSACRE (2022) **

Holding a Christmas craft fair at a high school that was built on top of an ancient Indian burial ground probably wasn’t the best idea in the world.  Hindsight is 20/20, I guess.  Anyway, two warring factions of Satanists are seeking a “pure soul” to sacrifice on Christmas.  It’s up to a ragtag group of mystics, priests, and uh… holiday crafters to save an innocent woman from being sacrificed. 

Christmas Craft Fair Massacre is mostly comprised of scenes of non-actors holding long phone conversations while obviously reading their dialogue off a laptop that’s just off camera.  All the actors speak the needlessly wordy dialogue in an overly stilted and wooden manner.  These dialogue scenes run on so long that you might start to doze off due to their rambling monotone conversations.  If you do, you just might miss some hilarious lines.

I’m not gonna lie.  Parts of this are a slog to get through.  The end is weak too as the heroes use half-assed astral projection to form a “circle of light” to defeat the villain.  That might sound cool, but it ultimately amounts to nothing more than the psychic equivalent to having a Zoom call.  I will say, there are some funny bits here to make your Christmas merry and bright.  (Or Halloween, as the case may be.)  The scene where the disfigured janitor wraps body parts as Christmas gifts is good for a laugh, and the completely random “punk rock” version of “Jingle Bells” is appropriately WTF.

Sarah Featherstone delivers a sidesplitting turn as one of the sassy Satanic servants.  She gets a particularly great moment where she wears a goat mask in a shopping mall.  (“They told me not to, but I did it anyway”.)  Sadly, she’s the only performer that comes close to nailing the right tone.  The movie overall is kind of a bore, but when she’s on screen she brings joy to the world. 

This probably won’t usurp Elves, Jack Frost, or Silent Night, Deadly Night as one of my yearly go-to Christmas horror flicks, but I can conceivably see myself showing some unsuspecting Christmas guests highlights from this one.  That’s kind of a half-assed recommendation.  Then again, it’s better than no recommendation at all.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: CAMP MASSACRE (2014) * ½

A bunch of morbidly obese chuckleheads congregate in the woods to appear on a weight loss reality show called By the Pound.  Before long they are stalked and killed by a heavy breathing murderer who wears a fried chicken bucket over his head.  As the contestants are cut down to size (see what I did there?), the list of suspects gets slimmer and slimmer (ZING!).

The first thing you should know about Camp Massacre is that porn star Bree Olson takes a shower in it.  Sadly, that happens in the first five minutes as she gets Janet Leigh’ed before the opening credits have a chance to roll.  Bummer.

The second thing you should know is that it is one-hundred-and-twenty-nine minutes long.  I’ve watched some long movies with the word “Massacre” in the title this month, but this is the longest so far.   Do editors ever look at the time code when they make these things?  I mean, don’t you think the filmmakers would want to… you know… cut some of the fat (POW!) off the running time?

Adding to the length is a dumb animated opening credits sequence, way too many useless subplots, and a helluva lot of unnecessary characters.  You’ve got the whole reality show segments.  Then there’s the behind-the-scenes drama between the contestants.  Not to mention the romance that blooms between the husky hero and the show’s nurse.  Unfortunately, the horror stuff is a distant fourth on the filmmakers’ list of priorities.

I guess they were trying to flip the script by having a bunch of overweight dudes getting killed off in a camp in the woods rather than a bunch of hot coeds.  (Although there are a few here, just not enough to make much of an impact.)  This might’ve been okay I guess if the majority of the male characters weren’t obnoxious slobs.

 

The kills aren’t bad.  It just takes an eternity to get to them.  There’s death by shower head, some nominal gut ripping, a turkey leg down the throat, a guy’s face gets deep-fried, and a head winds up in a lawnmower. 

The cast is OK for the most part.  In addition to Olson, we also have wrestler Al Snow on hand as the head (if you're a fan of his wrestling persona, you'll know this is another pun) of security.  He tries to breathe a little life into the movie, but he isn’t given a whole lot to work with.  Halloween 2’a Dick Warlock also appears as the show’s producer.  You might remember co-star (and co-director) Daniel Emery Taylor as the little kid in Return of Swamp Thing.

AKA:  Fat Chance.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: BURIAL GROUND MASSACRE (2021) *

Burial Ground Massacre begins with Michael Madsen spouting a lot of Native American mumbo jumbo.  Then, a killer in a Native American mask runs around killing big-breasted women using tomahawks and bows and arrows.  Right then and there I thought we had a winner on our hands.  Sadly, it all goes downhill after that. 

A rich kid named Chase (Blaise Serra) lives in a manor nestled on an Indian burial ground that doubles as a Native American museum.  When his parents go out of town, he invites a bunch of friends over for a party.  Little does he know the psycho in the mask comes to the museum looking for a Native American ring with supposed magic powers, and he’s all too ready to kill anyone who stands in his way. 

Even though Madsen is top-billed, he more or less just voices the killer.  If you’re familiar with his ever-expanding frame, seeing his voice coming out of a scrawny guy in a mask looks and sounds ridiculous.  When Madsen finally takes the mask off and assumes the role in the end, his physique isn’t even close to what it looked like in the rest of the movie, which is kind of funny.  I guess that would amount to something if there were more unintentional laughs throughout the picture.  

Mostly, it’s just a bore.  It doesn’t help that Serra does a lot of shitty magic tricks, which eat up a lot of the running time.  This sort of thing might be okay, if it’s Terror Train and the magician in question is actually played by a real magician like David Copperfield.  As it is, these scenes are pretty painful to sit through.

Yes, this is another one of those hundred-minute-long slashers.  There’s just no justification for the overlength.  Other than the kills in the opening minutes, the murder scenes elsewhere in the picture are weak.  I mean, how can make a horror movie where there’s a bowling alley in the main character’s home and then not give us a scene where a head winds up in the ball return?  I’d ask for a refund if Tubi wasn’t free.

The film also takes a really weird turn in the last twenty minutes.  I’m not sure if they ran out of money or what.  It’s like they tried to leave things open for a sequel and it somehow went sideways.  Or maybe it was part of a partially filmed, but abandoned sequel.  Or maybe the first hour and twenty minutes were a pilot of a TV show that never got picked up, and the final minutes were just all the series’ cliffhangers that got tacked on at the end.  Or maybe it’s just a bunch of shit that was thrown in to piss the audience off.  Either way, it all amounts to a big waste of time. 

I will say the film is a good showcase for actress Chelsea Vale.  She reminded me a little bit of Audrina from The Hills and equips herself nicely in the Final Girl role.  She also produced this sucker, so she’s a double threat in front and behind the camera.  I wouldn’t mind watching her in something again.  I just hope her new projects are an improvement over this.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: THE BUNNYMAN MASSACRE (2014) * ½

The Bunnyman Massacre opens with a guy in a dingy bunny suit murdering a school bus full of children.  Isn’t that lovely?  Fortunately, he quickly pivots to killing big-breasted campers who are busy fornicating in the woods.  That’s shit’s more my speed.

These victims serve a purpose.  You see, the Bunnyman (Joshua Lang) kills people and then gives the bodies to his pal Joe (David Scott), a redneck who runs a grungy general store.  Joe, in turn, uses the flesh from the victims as the main ingredient for his homemade beef jerky.  When Joe kidnaps two sisters, the potential victims strike a bargain with their captors.  They’ll provide them with more jerky fodder if Joe and Bunnyman let them go. 

The Bunnyman Massacre isn’t exactly terrible, but the sheer overlength (one-hundred-and-four minutes) definitely takes a lot of wind out of the movie’s sails.  If the editor lost all the fast-motion shots of the moon and sun rising and setting (not to mention whittled down all the long walking scenes), this could’ve clocked in at eighty-nine (or heck, seventy-nine) minutes.  I’m not saying it would’ve saved the picture.  I’m just saying it would’ve got me onto watching my next shitty movie with the word “Massacre” in the title a whole lot quicker.

I will say the Bunnyman cuts a memorable image.  He looks like a hard-drinking version of Bugs Bunny.  Or maybe a mall Easter Bunny on meth.  It’s just a shame that Joe, a thoroughly generic redneck slasher if there ever was one, does much of the heavy lifting.  I did like the dinner scene between the two of them that kind of showed their day-in-the-life routine though. 

Look, I know characters are supposed to make stupid choices in horror movies, but these characters make some of the dumbest decisions I’ve seen in a long time.  Then again, if they made smart decisions, I wouldn’t have been able to talk about the gore.  Well, that isn’t exactly great either.  The only original death scene is when a girl’s eyeball is bored out with a drill press.  Other scenes blatantly rip off the sleeping bag kill from Friday the 13th Part 7 and the barrel sequence in Two Thousand Maniacs.  While some of this is appropriately bloody, I must admit I could’ve done without all the CGI blood splatters. 

Incidentally, this is a sequel to 2011’s Bunnyman (which I haven’t seen), which would explain the flashback scene. 

AKA:  The Bunnyman Resurrection.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: THE BUCKS COUNTY MASSACRE (2010) NO STARS

A group of friends gather at a house in the woods to celebrate their pal’s 25th birthday.  (He looks more like he’s 45.)  During the party, one of the girls wanders into the woods and disappears.  Her friends head out looking for her with video cameras in tow and discover there’s something in the forest that’s very hungry. 

The Bucks County Massacre is another tiring entry in the Found Footage sweepstakes.  According to the opening crawl, the footage is property of the Bucks County Police Department.  If it’s supposedly “evidence”, then why end the crawl with blood dripping down the camera?  And why add in a musical score?  And why are there random slow-motion shots?   And if this has been edited from the footage after the fact, why keep in the long scene of the annoying guy playing on the guitar?  Speaking of guitars, if the cops were using the video as evidence to find the killer, would you really keep the scenes of the partygoers playing Guitar Hero?  Or singing for what feels like forever into the camera?  And I know you have every right to film the police, but is it really necessary to keep the camera on the old cop’s crotch for minutes at a time?

Most of the partygoers are annoying to begin with.  They get even more abrasive as the night goes on and they become drunker and drunker.  Once the girl disappears, they start screaming at each other and get increasingly belligerent.  If this truly was a piece of police evidence, I would say my main suspect would be the cameraman because if it were me, I’d snap if I had to spend one more minute with these characters.  One thing is for sure:  After they saw the tape, no jury on Earth would convict me. 

This has got to be one of the worst movies the Found Footage genre has to offer.  It’s full of amateurish performers yelling at the top of their lungs, nauseating lime green night-vision, and scenes of people watching scenes we’ve already seen.  I’m not a drinking man, but if one was inclined to play a drinking game while watching The Bucks County Massacre and took a shot of their favorite libation every time someone yelled, “Rob!”, they would be (mercifully) dead of alcohol poisoning by the halfway point. 

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: BEACH MASSACRE AT KILL DEVIL HILLS (2017) *

Stacy (Taya Parker) brings her gals pals up to her beach house for a girls’ weekend.  They are surprised to find her sister is already there shooting a horror movie.  While they make the best of the situation, her psycho ex-husband (Ryan Izay) gets released from prison and comes looking for her. 

The best thing I can say about Beach Massacre at Kill Devil Hills is that it features a good amount of mid-tier low budget Scream Queens doing their thing.  Elissa Dowling, Sarah French, Dawna Lee Heising, and Diana Prince (AKA:  Darcy the Mail Girl from Joe Bob Briggs) are all present and accounted for.  Unfortunately, the movie never takes full advantage of their talents.  The only one who comes close to being utilized properly is Prince, whose nude scenes are either obscured by a stupid shower door or cut to ribbons by the editor.  I’m not saying more nudity could’ve saved this shit show, but it could’ve made it go down a little smoother. 

At ninety-nine minutes, it’s also way too long.  The film suffers from long driving scenes, black and white domestic violence flashbacks, and Lifetime Movie of the Week scenes of women talking about abusive relationships.  What’s worse is that no one gets killed until the hour mark.  Until then, it’s like being stuck at a beach house with people you can’t stand.  

Beach Massacre at Kill Devil Hills is also hampered by some wonky editing too.  There are jump cuts here that are so severe I momentarily thought the internet was cutting out on my smart TV.  We also have to suffer through inexplicable slow-motion scenes, dramatic scenes where the music drowns out the dialogue (which might not be a problem, depending on how you look at it), and scenes that are repeated.  I swear, the editor must’ve had narcolepsy or something.  In fact, it often feels like you’re watching an assembly cut of all the footage that was shot as some scenes run on forever, while others are filled with more random jump cuts than your average influencer video on Instagram. 

Also, at the risk of spoiling things, it almost seemed like overkill having two separate sets of killers.  “Overkill” is usually a good thing in a movie with the word “Massacre” in the title, but that’s unfortunately not the case here.  One duo or the other would’ve sufficed.  Either that or have one pair of killers go after the characters and send the other duo after the editor.

AKA:  You Found Me.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: BABYSITTER MASSACRE (2013) ****

A babysitter is brutally murdered on Halloween night.  Seven years later, the killer returns and begins picking off members of her babysitter club one by one.  After each murder, he texts pictures of the victims to Angela (Erin R. Ryan) who is holding a babysitter reunion/Halloween party.  The killer eventually comes for Angela and her friends, and the tough-talking survivor of the group, Bianca (Marylee Osborne) is all-too ready to kick his ass.

While you’re watching Babysitter Massacre, one thing becomes crystal clear:  Director Henrique Couto knows how to make a movie.  Or at least a slasher movie.  (You can tell he knows what he’s doing when one of the characters namedrops Sorority House Massacre… 2.)  He gives us long scenes of hot naked women bathing before they are abducted, tortured, and killed, which is the sign of any good slasher director.  Not one to rest on his laurels, Couto also peppers the film with dramatic dialogue scenes, which give his actresses an opportunity to not only showcase their bodies, but their acting range as well.  It’s a nice and balanced… shall we say… tit for tat.

Couto delivers a particularly amazing sequence where an enormously chesty curvy nerd dumps a bag of Halloween candy all over her nude body as an act of seduction that is like some Criterion Collection level of filmmaking.  There’s also a scene where the babysitters find a mysterious package on their porch, bring it inside, and open it up… only to discover… It’s full of lingerie!  Then, the plot stops dead in its tracks so each lady can disrobe, try on lingerie, and model it for their friends.  Eat your heart out, Orson Welles!

The casting director deserved some kind of award too.  None of the actresses are below a C-cup.  If they ever start remaking Russ Meyer movies, Couto would be near the top of my the wish list.

Couto was also responsible for some great dialogue too, like, “Hold onto your britches, bitches!”

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: AFTER SCHOOL MASSACRE (2014) ** ½

A girl commits suicide at a slumber party after her boyfriend breaks up with her. Unfazed by the ordeal, the girls plan another sleepover the next night without her (obviously). Meanwhile, a young, disgruntled teacher loses his job, snaps, and kills the principal.  He then sets his sights to slaughter the sexy students at the sleepover.

After School Massacre wears its inspiration on its sleeve, which is always appreciated.  It has a distinct ‘80s vibe as it’s essentially a homage to Slumber Party Massacre.  In terms of skin, we get a few sex, shower, and Truth or Dare scenes, but they’re all rather brief, and end before they can gather up much momentum.  Even though the running time is a mercifully short seventy-three minutes, there’s a long, unnecessary dream scene that seems like it’s only there to pad things out.  

Thankfully, it moves at a brisk pace and sports a decent body count.  The kills aren’t particularly graphic, but writer/director Jared (Deadly Punkettes) Masters has a few novel moments in store for the audience.  The memorable death scenes include a girl being drowned while bobbing for apples, another girl having her throat slit by an electric carving knife, and slumber partygoer getting a red-hot curling iron shoved down her throat.  The film also contains a death by mailbox sequence, which is something that I can honestly say I’ve never seen before.  So, bravo for that.  Probably the best moment though is the funny title sequence where all the credits appear as notes being passed back and forth between high school girls in class.

The cast is solid for the most part.  Danika Galindo, Lindsay Lamb, and Mindy Robinson all fair well playing the slumber party partakers.  It’s Dawna Lee (Amityville Clownhouse) Heising though who gets the best moments as the floozy mother who foolishly leaves the teens alone for the night.

AKA:  Teacher’s Day.  AKA:  A Teacher’s Day Massacre.

THE 31 DAYS OF TUBI-WEEN: PLAY DEAD (2009) ** ½

It’s inevitable when I do one of these 31 Days of Horror-Ween deals that I wind up watching something that looks like a horror movie and sounds like a horror movie but turns out to be only marginally horror related.  Such is the case with Play Dead.  It’s loaded with black comedy and has a dark edge to it, but it’s not exactly a horror flick.  Then again, after the one-two punch of Grotesque and Brutal, I needed something a little more lightweight.  Okay, maybe “lightweight” isn’t the right word here.  “Gory” was probably the word I was looking for.

An old man perpetually lets a poor young cobbler borrow money.  When he’s unable to pay his debts off in a timely manner, the old man takes it upon himself to make time with the cobbler’s wife as collateral.  In order to duck her obligations, she pretends to be dead.  At the funeral, the old timer takes the grieving husband out for some sake and suggests leaving two of his buddies behind to watch over her “corpse”.  That’s when their necrophiliac tendencies start to come out.  Naturally, she’s forced to play dead in order to keep up the charade.

The set-up is ripe with possibilities, but the filmmakers kind of go overboard with the comedy at some junctures.  I guess that makes sense, since some of the subject matter is so cringey.  I mean it’s basically a bedroom farce with some (presumed) necrophilia.  The two chuckleheads that molest what they think is a corpse are played much too broadly to get any real laughs though, and the Zatoichi impersonator is kind of an odd third act addition to the mix.  

Then again, I’m not sure there was a sure-fire way to play any of this.  If they went the horror route, it might’ve been too bleak and/or depressing.  If they went any further with the comedy, it would’ve just been… weird.  

The good news is after everything is conveniently wrapped up, the husband and wife get back together and have a lengthy, steamy, and erotic love scene.  It’s a nice reward for the audience for sitting through so much sketchy/questionable canoodling early on in the picture.  It’s just a shame that it took so long for Play Dead to come to life.