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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AKA:  DeadThirsty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AKA:  Duncan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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