★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ A VHS box really is worth a thousand words… Sometimes a picture’s worth a thousand words, sometimes...
★.5 out of ★★★★★
Anthology horror films are so full of creepy goodness! Moral tales. Freaky through lines. Peculiar and off-putting horror hosts and narrators. They give us everything we desire in spooky bite-sized chunks. Until they don’t.
★★★ out of ★★★★★ Found footage films can be a tricky business. You really have to sell the conceit that someone, or in this case multiple people, are going to be carrying around camera and recording every single move they make -- and they might even inadvertently catch a freaky apparition in the background. A tall task made even more grand by the sheer number of found footage films that have made their way to the bottom of the bargin bin at Best Buy.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
The Scariest Things got to check out the World Premiere of this Northwest myth put to film at the Portland Horror Film Festival!
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Who’s ready for an early 1990s straight-to-VHS horror-filled romp in the hood? Silly caricatures? Thin and well-trod plot? A vague rip-off of 1980s slashers and a not-so subtle rip-off of the Saw franchise? If any of this sounds remotely interesting then you’re in for a treat! Bitch Ass has got it all.
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Are you a fan of a) Metal, b) vaguely satanic possessions, c) explicit drug usage, d) nudity, e) lots of blood (read: LOTS), and f) the word FUCK? I mean, sure who isn’t in favor of all these things right? Each has lots to offer. They’re interesting. Taken in small doses they can be a very powerful antidote to a lagging cinematic undertaking. When taken in over-dose-like proportions the gore and bad words take on an underwhelming status.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Right around the corner from Horror Street, just next to Parallax View Way, and right near Marathon Man Drive, is a fascinating analog look at the lengths obsessives will go to in feeding their obsessions.
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
On the edge of the 40th anniversary of the seminal John Carpenter-Stephen King mashup it’s high time we pay proper due to a legitimate horror classic. Coupled with the fact that Blumhouse is in the works of producing a questionable remake — due in 2022/2023 — and the fact that this 1983 joint is now streaming on Netflix in UHD, it makes it the perfect time to consider where this fits in to the pantheon of horror greats.
★★★ 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.
★★.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.
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Horror comedy is a tricky bit of business. Too far in either direction can produce blood curdling, or alternatively, cringe inducing results. While it’s pure joy to dabble in both, sometimes films need to pick a figurative lane.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ The Demon Seed is one mighty mashup of technological/sociological concepts. Freedom of choice, meets man’s desire to concur his natural surroundings, meets the infallibility of the god complex, meets sexual politics, meets the ecology movement, meets the military industrial complex, meets a horrifying faux 2001 psychedelic freakout. Yes, it’s all here on display in a 1970s groove.
★★ out of ★★★★★
Ok, I gotta get something off my chest. I saw the trailer for this beauty back in 1985 and was so horrified by its content I could have sworn that I’d seen the whole film -- front to back. This was some seriously dense scar tissue built up over the years. But alas, I’d never seen this flic. That was, until a couple weeks ago.
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ Here’s a good one…Daryl Hannah (Splash), Joe Pantoliano (Risky Business) , Adrian Zmed (Bachelor Party), Rachel Ward...
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Now 37 years in to the franchise you probably have a good idea of what to expect from the latest installment of the Ghostbusters, AKA Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Every thing that you think you’re going to see is guaranteed to be seen. There are some sly and not so sly references to the original 1984 Ghostbusters film. But, at the end of the day, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is largely an exact duplicate of its 1984 grandfather.
★★★★out of ★★★★★
Uh...are you sure you want me to crawl in the oven, Grandma?
★★ out of ★★★★★
Now with 30 percent less jump scares!
★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Come for the insane 1970s Italian gore! Stay for the superb Goblin soundtrack! It’s all here! Frankly, is there anything more you could ever ask from a horror film? Well, maybe.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Last year brought us engaging septuagenarians battling it out the save their decrepit community center in VFW. Earlier this year saw the posthumous release of George Romero’s frightening PSA, Amusement Park. concerning the oft forgotten repugnance of elder abuse. Now, Amazon Studios is treating us to the latest in elder horror, Bingo Hell. The golden (girls) age is upon us with a new subgenera of horror, AARP horror. You heard it here first!
★★★ out of ★★★★★
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As uber-auteur Stanley Kubrick once famously opined “Everything has already been done. Every story has been told. Every scene has been shot. It’s our job to do it one better.” Christmas horror has been done. Space alien zombies have been done. Christmas and zombies have been done. Have they been done together under the banner of the worst holiday there is? May be not.
1/2 ★ out of ★★★★★
Ted Lange from Loveboat is not Sir Laurence Oliver, neither is Baywatch stalwart, David Chokachi. To be clear, the level of acting in Blood Pageant, and for that matter everything else, is a pretty thin stab at the horror genre.
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
We know them. We love them. They’re little rapscallions, religious zealots, and outcasts. But that’s why we love them! That said, the question is not whether we love them, but rather do we need to go back to the exact same Children of the Corn story 11 times. Really, it’s been 11 times and we’re not even counting the TV series.
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Part joke. Part satire. Part experimentation. Part loving homage to the Grindhouse era. A dash of RiffTrax. ALL Full Moon and Charles Band lunacy. Corona Zombies has many of these things and weirdly more.
★★★ 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.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
The son of De Palma’s Blow-Out! The grandson of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up! A new vision of paranoid conspiracy theories as told through the latest fandangled piece of technology! Or in this case technologies.
★ out of ★★★★★
It’s always disappointing when someone takes one of your favorite horror sub-genres and brutally bastardizes it. The “we’re trapped in a secret military base and there’s only one way out” storyline takes some care and feeding. The situation is made even worse when it’s given the ham-fisted SyFy treatment. Little attention, little point, and little effort.
🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘 out of 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
“This is rock and roll that is going to change your fucking life!” — Lita Ford.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
🚫 out of 🩸 🩸 🩸 🩸 🩸
Make no mistake, 2023’s Enys Men will fall into the annals of polemic filmmaking. Much like its recent brethren, Skinamarink, this film will have people talking, shouting, and even throwing a couple haymakers. Truly a "love it or hate it" outing at the movies.
★ 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.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Are you looking for that something extra to jolt you out of life’s day-to-day doldrums? That little something to shock your system in to a complete state of hysteria? Something so odious and vile that your mind won’t know how to process the capital "G" grisly-gore? Your pals at the Scariest Things Podcast have found just the thing. Enter...Green Inferno.