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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AKA:  Jack Attack.

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

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

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

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

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