★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Part hucksterism. Part faux science. Part Unsolved Mysteries. All exploitation. This film is a sad commentary on many levels, but it’s also a fascinating peek into horror history that’s impossible to turn away from.
Tag Archive for ‘evil’
Dead List: All the Boston Strangler Films Ranked!
Do you know everything there is to know about the Boston Strangler? Really?!?! The Boston Strangler is an incredibly complicated tapestry of lies, mistruths, deception, greed, murder, and avarice. Using beautiful early 1960s Boston as its backdrop, this story is the pure embodiment of truth always being weirder than fiction.
To celebrate this year’s most recent take on the Boston Strangler, aptly titled the Boston Strangler, the Scariest Things went back and looked at each and every film adaptation of the Boston Strangler story and ranked ‘em all!
Mike’s Review: Satan Wants You (SXSW 2023)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
🚫 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
If you know horror you know Satan. You might even say horror and Satan are best pals. They’ve been hanging around for a long time always pushing boundaries and always trying something cheeky and new.
Sometimes this friendship is on the down-low and sometimes Satan gets a pinch uppity and decides to out the entire relationship. Or at least his (or her) relationship to the general public. When that happens it’s a messy and ugly affair.
Mike’s Review: Talk To Me (SXSW 2023)
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸for some gnarly gore, eye gouging, and repeated head wounds.
Each and every year there’s THAT horror film that shakes things up. Hits the festival circuit and creates tidal wave-sized buzz. Sometimes it’s deserved and sometimes it’s not. In the case of 2023’s festival darling Talk to Me, the buzz is profoundly deserved.
Mike’s Review: The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (SXSW 2023)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild gore and violence.
A hundred years on we’ve been blessed and not-so-blessed with hundreds, or maybe thousands or Frankenstein-related films. Remakes, reboots, re-imaginations, reworking of the Mary Shelley source material, and even re-re-working of Shelley’s book. The Frankenstein mythos has comfortable slipped into our collective horror zeitgeist.
Mike’s Review: Late Night with the Devil (SXSW 2023)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild gore.
If you’ve even run across Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, or Dinah Shore you’ll know that they all roiled in a very specific talk show space in the 1970s. Talk shows were smarmy, boozy, and informal affairs that gave audiences time each day to let their hair down and forget about the doldrums of the Viet Nam War and the crushing presence of socio-economic injustice in America.
These talk shows were also incredibly competitive. Johnny Carson was king, but there was a lot of room under him to vie for advertisers and Neilson ratings. Late Night with the Devil follows that exact story line, by exploring frustrated talk show host Jack Delroy played pitch perfectly by David Dastmalchian.
Mike’s Review: Only The Good Survive (SXSW 2023)
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild comedic gore.
Midway through Only the Good Survive the local sheriff and Dennis Miller impersonator (Frederick Weller) is interrogating young Brea Dunlee (Sidney Flanigan) about her involvement in a string of ritualistic murders and asks “…is this a comedy or a horror?” While the film chugs along like an Edgar Wright-inspired effort, this very sentiment is really the film’s problem. It wants to be both. Unfortunately, juggling these two juxtaposed art forms is a tricky bit of business that is almost never accomplished.
Mike’s Review: Spoonful of Sugar (2022)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild gore and a frayed family.
Weird babysitter. Weird kid. Weird parents. A deeply weird connection to regular usage of LSD. And to top it off a weird poster. Spoonful of Sugar definitely traffics in the world of weird. Not Skinamarink weird mind you, but still firmly in the weird camp.
Mike’s Review: Craving (2023)
★★★ out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for lots of gore.
Nothing’s better when a small indy production punches WAY above its weight class — especially in the visual effects department. Sometimes the effort is a miserable failure and sometimes, yes sometimes, its indy deficiencies don’t even show for a minute.
Mike’s Review: Friday the 13th (2009)
★ out of ★★★★★
Because of money grubbing, legal hassling, and Hollywood head-butting, we haven’t seen a Friday the 13th film since 2009. Word on the street is that the 1980 Friday the 13th originator Sean Cunningham is BACK. Just like Jason never died!!! He’s teaming up with the writer and the director from a new horror flick, the Night Driver, and they’re making a reboot/sequel/requel happen.
Mike’s Review: House of Usher (1960)
★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Since Netflix recently teased out a new Mike Flanagan series based upon Edgar Allen Poe’s haunting short story, the Fall of the House of the Usher, we decided it was high time to jump in the way-back machine and give its 1960 forefather a discerning look. Turns out Flanagan may be on to something by following this chilling story.
Mike’s Book Report: What Moves The Dead (2022)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
HP Lovecraft dug writing short stories. Edgar Allen Poe did too. Even the great Stephen King has been known to clack out a short story or two (hundred). Most horror writers have the keen ability to take a simple concept and extemporarily expound the idea in fairly concise and confined was. Sometimes this works and sometimes there’s a lot of questions begged and a lot more exposition that’s required.
Mike’s Review: Schizoid (1980)
★★★ out of ★★★★★
Sleazy, greasy, grimy, grindhouse fare. It’s all here. Right down to a chilling and rather off-putting performance by one of the more odd actors to ever grace a horror film, Klaus Kinski. Hot on the heels of one of the all-time great horror performances in 1979’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, Kinski sleazes his way throughout SCHIZOID!
All the Exorcist Films Ranked!
In 2020, at the height of the global pandemic, the braintrust over at Morgan Creek Entertainment, announced — with very minimal fanfare, that they’d be taking a crack at one of the most vaunted franchises of all time — The Exorcist.
To get the Scariest Things Podcast ready for 2023, and potentially the most polemic film in years, we sat down and poured through the entire EXORCIST universe. Some brilliant, some soup-soaked, some awfully-awful, and some filled with the most horrifying images ever put to film.
Mike’s Top 10 Horror Films of 2022
SO. MANY. GREAT. HORROR. FILMS. THIS. YEAR! Really. Our cups runneth over with gallons of blood, guts, and scares. Interestingly, 2022 also had some really awful films. Truly awful.
But we’re not here to talk about crappy films you don’t want to see. Au contraire. We’re here to tell YOU about the films that you’ll be gabbing about well in to 2024 — and beyond.
Dead List: All the Silent Night Deadly Night Films Ranked!
Merry Christmas from the Scariest Things Podcast!!! This year we’re giving you the gift that no one asked for, ever expected, and certainly one that no one ever put on their Christmas wishlist. It’s free and it’s here waiting for you. Totally unwrapped and ready to go…
We give you all the Silent Night Deadly Night films ranked! And…you’re welcome.
Mike’s Review: The Requin (2022)
★ out of ★★★★★
Laughably bad CGI. Overcooked and undercooked use of green screen. A shrill, bothersome, and awkward performance by Alicia Silverstone. And the sharks don’t even appear until the 50+ minute mark. These are just a few of problems with The Requin that could honestly fill an ocean.
Movie Posters We Love: Top Ten Movie Posters from 2022
Another year and another dollar! Once again Hollyweird cranked up the hype machine and had us parking our collective butts back in the theaters. What got your butt back in the theater? What got you to risk exposure to another Covid variant? What got you to shell out $14 bones for a mountain of greasy popcorn?
The POSTER! That’s what did it.
Mike’s Review: Cryptid (Another Hole in the Head Film Festival 2022)
★★★ out of ★★★★★
While no one on the Scariest Things Podcast is a licensed cryptozoologist, it’s fair to say that we all have an interest in this murky science. There’s even a few of us — gasp — that might actual believe in the cryptids! When this most recent offering popped up at the Another Hole in the Head Film fest we knew we had to search it out.
Mike’s Review: Pig Killer (2022 Another Hole in the Head Film Festival)
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
An evocative film name for an equally evocative true story. Pig Killer should not be taken lightly and nor should the horrible tale of Willy Pickton who killed and killed until he made his way in to Canadian history books as the most prolific serial killer in the country’s history.
Mike’s Review: Pilgrim (2019)
★★ out of ★★★★★
Tucked neatly between two pretty cool holidays is a celebration that’s pretty mundane. Face it Thanksgiving ain’t all that great, nor is gluttony. It’s definitely a tough spot to be in. The equivalent in the world of horror is being unfortunately stuck between horror and comedy. That’s exactly where the 2019 Blumhouse/Hulu film Pilgrim fits.
Sort of funny. Sort of horror. But really neither.
Mike’s Review: I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday (2017)
★★★ out of ★★★★★
The holidays are just around the corner! Well, technically the holidays are ALWAYS just around the corner. The only thing more bleak than the constant crush of forced holiday frivolity? I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday.
Mike’s Review: No Exit (2022)
★★★ out of ★★★★★
Part thriller, part mystery, part horror, and all metaphor! No Exit is a pretty fun thrill ride that never gets too gory, grimy, or grody. Just a little bit of each, but not too much of any.
Mike’s Review: Satan’s Slaves: Communion (2022)
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
If 2022 has you a little jaundiced with reboots, sequels, prequels, and re-imaginations your feelings are not unwarranted. Let’s face it, Halloween Ends was confusing and largely devoid of Michael Myers. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was silly and uncooked. Hellraiser was pretty to look at, but became an unnecessary and boring reboot.
Have no fear. The Indonesians are here to save us!
Mike’s Review: Dark Glasses (2022)
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Black gloves! The stabiest of stabbings! Groovy Goblin-esque soundtrack! Mysterious subterfuge! A nod (maybe) to the 1971 classic Cat O’ Nine Tails. Argento is back! Well, maybe he’s back. The vote’s still out on that wild proclamation.
Mike’s Review: Halloween Ends (2022)
★★ out of ★★★★★
Like all hyper-beloved franchises there’s no way to end them in a satisfactory way. Save for MASH and the great Hawkeye Pierce, every last franchise has fumbled, bungled, and tied themselves in the most Gordian of Gordian Knots. Sadly, even with a stellar writing and directing crew, Halloween was not able to properly end.
Mike’s Review: Hellraiser (2022)
📍📍📍 out of 📍📍📍📍📍
You either love the Cenobites or you don’t. You’re either interested in freaky BDSM emo-demons or you’re not. You either like non-linear otherworldly sci-fi based horror or it holds little interest to you. It’s possible there’s a third category — indifference — and that’s probably where I fall on the Hellraiser spectrum.
Mike’s Review: My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2022)
★★ out of ★★★★★
A “C” is passing, but it ain’t that great in the scheme of things. It’s just OK. Sometimes it’s from lack of trying, sometimes it’s from a poor teacher, and sometimes the student doesn’t have a lot to work from. In the case of 2022’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism, it had great source material, a great story, and the backing of one of the biggest corporations on the planet. So what the hell happened to one of the most anticipated films of 2022?
Mike’s Book Report: Whisper Down The Lane (2021)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Heavy subject. Breezy presentation. That’s really the brilliance of Clay McLeod Chapman. The ability to pick apart a heady emotional construct in a way that’s engaging, insightful, and most of all frightening!
Mike’s Review: Men (2022)
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
This might seem like a stretch, but you’ve never seen a film quite like 2022’s Men. Really. It’s in a pretty singular place in the world of psychedelic horror. Frankly, there’s nothing that really compares to this shocking bit of A24 business. Unless you count David Cronenberg’s 1979 classic the Brood as a contemporary — but that was 43 years ago.
Men, directed by friend of horror, Alex Garland (28 Days Later and Annihilation) is exactly the film that 2022 needed, nay required. By managing to expertly weave through a minefield of trauma, sexual repression, male insecurity, and post-#metoo movement dynamics, Garland turns in one of the best horror films of the year.