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.)   

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: NUTCRACKER MASSACRE (2022) ** ½

Okay, so, imagine you’re Patrick Bergin.  One day, you’re playing Robin Hood.  The next day, you’re co-starring with Julia Roberts, the biggest movie star in the world, in Sleeping with the Enemy.  Life is good.  Then, in the blink of an eye, thirty years goes by and you’re starring in a movie about a six-foot-tall sentient homicidal nutcracker.  I guess there are worse ways to pay the rent.

Bergin plays a Russian toy shop owner who literally twirls his mustache, so the audience knows he’s evil.  He also ominously hums “The Nutcracker Suite” while rubbing his hands together like a villain in a silent film.  That is to say, he’s pretty great in this.  

Bergin tells a long, confusing origin story of the Nutcracker before selling one to a babe who just broke up with her boyfriend.  She buys it as a Christmas present for her auntie, whom she’s spending Christmas with.  It doesn’t take long before auntie’s prized six-foot-tall nutcracker comes to life and begins knocking off her relatives. 

The deaths, it must be said, are solid.  One person is murdered by an ice skate, and another is strangled with Christmas garland.  We also get a great scene where the nutcracker not only cracks a guy’s nuts but rips them off too.  Admittedly, the rest of the movie is kind of ho-hum, but this scene is badass enough to boost it an extra Half Star. 

I guess I should’ve known this was going to be better than expected because it was produced by Mark L. Lester.  Yeah, THAT Mark L. Lester, the man that gave the world Commando and Showdown in Little Tokyo.  It was also directed by Rebecca Matthews, the director of the greatest fake Amityville movie ever made, Amityville Witches.  With a pedigree like that (not to mention Bergin’s fun performance), Nutcracker Massacre should make for breezy fun for seasonal horror film fanatics.

PRISCILLA (2023) *** ½

Elvis was the King of Rock ‘n Roll.  As such, he was the closest thing America has ever had to royalty.  By proxy, that would make his wife, Priscilla, a Queen.  Millions of girls would’ve killed to be in her shoes.  As Sofia Coppola’s poignant and melancholy mood piece shows, those shoes weren’t exactly a pair of ruby slippers.  

Priscilla isn’t so much a biopic, but a snapshot of a life.  It shows only Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) from her first meeting with Elvis (Jacob Elordi) till the moment she leaves him.  It shows how a (very) young girl can get swept off her feet by the most famous man on the planet.  The catch is, she has to be at his beck and call 24/7.  She’s gotta stay in Graceland and keep the home fires burning for him while he’s off making movies and shaking his pelvis.  She’s got to wear what he says and do her hair just so.  Even when this grows tiresome for her, at the end of the day, she’s still dating Elvis freakin’ Presley. 

Once they are married, she finds being Elvis’s wife has its ups and downs.  Just like every relationship, I suppose.  Except when you’re married to the King, those ups and downs were often extreme and volatile. 

There’s still genuine love and affection between the two.  His overreliance on pills to keep him going eventually transfers over to her too.  Snippets of his hot temper come out and his erratic behavior and womanizing threatens to derail the relationship.  Still, she stands by her man because at the end of the day she’s married to Elvis freakin’ Presley. 

The film is a fascinating look at when enough is finally enough in a relationship.  Their romance is a lot like any long-distance relationship.  Resentment, unfulfilled longing, and boredom cause the two to further drift apart.  Of course, when you add fame and drugs to the mix, it tends to put a magnifying glass over every bump in the road the couple has.  Naturally, the road this couple is on is a lot more surreal since we’re talking about Elvis freakin’ Presley here.  

Priscilla might be the first love story where the main character’s suitor buys her an expensive wardrobe AND a handgun to match each dress. 

Spaeny is excellent as Priscilla.  Coppola gives her lots of closeups of her to show that Priscilla is putting up a pleasant front for Elvis, the Memphis Mafia, and the press, but her eyes suggest deep sadness and loneliness.  Elordi is good as the King.  He dials down the persona we are accustomed to, but he captures Elvis’s boyish fidgetiness (especially in the early scenes) rather well.  He doesn’t quite show off the King’s larger than life personality during his Vegas era, but I think that helps to ground the film as it’s essentially a two-character relationship drama. 

Much has been made of the lack of Elvis music in the picture.  Even as a die-hard Elvis fan, I can’t say I really missed his music, mostly because it would’ve taken away from Priscilla’s story.  Consider the final scene of Priscilla walking away from Graceland.  If you put “Suspicious Minds” on the soundtrack instead of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”, it stops being a scene about Priscilla and becomes a scene about Elvis, even if he isn’t even present.  This scene (one of the best in the film) deftly shows Priscilla has left the building.  

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: 1962 HALLOWEEN MASSACRE (2023) ½ *

Four friends attend a Halloween party at a house in the middle of nowhere.  While they drink and dance, a killer in a white mask stalks the grounds.  Later, he switches his mask out for a black hood as he picks off partygoers one by one.

1962 Halloween Massacre starts off with a long Found Footage sequence of the core four driving in a car and arguing.  Since it takes place in 1962, that means they’re filming with an 8mm home movie camera.  If that’s the case, then why can we hear them?  Sound home movie cameras didn’t come out till the ‘70s.  Did the filmmakers ever bother to research this?  All it would’ve taken was a Google search.  I guess we already know the answer to that one.  Also, would it be too much to ask that the characters from the ‘60s not use modern slang like, “Too soon!” 

Look, if you can’t accurately represent the time period on a small budget, then why even try?  Just call it Halloween Massacre, set it in present day, and be done with it.  I mean it would probably still suck either way, but at least it wouldn’t be annoying every time something anachronistic happens.

Luckily, the film breaks the Found Footage format after about fifteen minutes.  Unfortunately, we’re still stuck following around the same four annoying characters.  I guess seeing them in a party setting is better than spending all our time in a cramped car with them like in the early part of the picture.  However, once the action switches over to the party, things are nearly just as claustrophobic as the camera frequently holds tight on our four principles to disguise the fact that the budget was so low, they couldn’t afford many extras to play party guests.

Also, the movie has a weird pro-incest message that’s just confounding.  Oh, and just when it should be over, it continues on unnecessarily for ten more excruciating minutes.  If it wasn’t for the presence of the extremely cute Caroline Beagles (who plays the least annoying member of the cast), this would’ve been a No Stars flick for sure.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: HOLLYWOOD MEAT CLEAVER MASSACRE (1976) *** ½

I was kinda familiar with this one thanks to seeing the trailer starring none other than Christopher Lee on countless trailer compilations, but I had never actually seen the movie.  He originally filmed the scene for another film, but the footage wound up being sold to a different company who repurposed it to sell Meatcleaver Massacre.  (Although I’ve seen reviews mentioning he’s in the movie in wraparound segments, Lee unfortunately doesn’t appear in the version currently playing on Tubi.)  Oh, and while everything I’ve always seen for the film has referred to it as Meatcleaver Massacre (that’s even how it’s listed on Tubi), the actual on-screen title is Hollywood Meat Cleaver Massacre, so that’s the title I’ll be reviewing it under.  (I was trying to keep all these “Massacre” movies in alphabetical order, but oh well.)

So, I already knew the backstory of Hollywood Meat Cleaver Massacre going into it.  However, I had no idea it was (presumably) co-directed (uncredited) by freakin’ Ed Wood!  Plus, he also appears in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as a photographer.  Also cameoing is the future writer of Jaws 3-D Guerdon Trueblood, who plays a nuthouse doctor.  I know they were probably never once in each other’s sphere, but I think it’s amazing that Lee, Wood, and the writer of Jaws 3-D all worked on the same movie.

A professor’s home is invaded by a gang of psychotic students who kill his family (including his dog) and leave him paralyzed.  While drifting in and out of a coma in the hospital, he invokes the name of a Gaelic spirit of revenge (don’t fuck with a professor who is an expert on occult studies) so the little shits will receive their just desserts.  That’s right, folks.  It’s Death Wish Meets Patrick… with nary a meat cleaver in sight.

I’m not sure what scenes Wood was responsible for because it all seems fairly cohesive.  If I had to guess I would say he had a hand in some of the hilarious voiceovers as some of the dialogue has a distinct Wood ring to it.  I’m thinking specifically of the scene where one of the killers contemplates suicide.  (“This is gonna leave a mess.  I hope the landlord won’t be too mad.”)

The dialogue between the killers regarding the professor being in a vegetative state is great too:

“He’s gonna lay there like a carrot!  A big carrot!”

“I never did like carrots!”

Hollywood Meat Cleaver Massacre has that look that only late ‘70s horror movies have.  It has redder than red blood, sleazy shots of Hollywood Boulevard, and chintzy fashions galore.  The print is excellent too, which makes it all really pop.  The simple use of library music really works too.  (I think that one guitar sting was stolen from the trailer for Torso.)

Most times when movies like this have freakout and nightmare sequences, it’s just because the filmmakers needed to pad out the running time.  The freakouts here are legitimately eerie, effective, and genuinely unsettling.  The psychic murders are a hoot too.  In one scene, a guy gets his guts ripped out by sentient desert grass.  I can honestly say I’ve never seen that in a picture before.  Another person is crushed by the hood of a car, and one dude gets his eyeball ripped out.  And when we finally see the monster, it’s revealed to be something that looks like a cross between Swamp Thing and Rob Zombie cosplaying as Jordy Verrill.  That is to say, it’s awesome.

And to think, if someone… ANYONE got massacred with a meat cleaver (or if there was actually a single SHOT) of a meat cleaver, this might’ve got Four Stars!

AKA:  Meatcleaver Massacre.  AKA:  Morak.  AKA:  The Evil Force.  AKA:  Revenge of the Dead.