‘From the twisted minds who brought you Bite’

Bed of the Dead is a 2016 Canadian horror film co-produced and directed by Jeff Maher from a screenplay co-written with Cody Calahan. The film is being produced by Black Fawn Films with Chad Archibald (director of Bite), Christopher Giroux, and Jeff Maher.

The film stars Colin Price, Alysa King, Gwenlyn Cumyn, Dennis Andres, George Krissa, Alex Loubert, and Hamza Fouad.

Plot:

Four twenty-somethings find themselves stuck on a haunted antique bed where leaving means suffering a gruesome death. Plagued with frightening hallucinations, they must figure out the bed’s secrets before they are ultimately picked off one by one…

Filming locations:

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

IMDb | Official site | Related: Death Bed: The Bed That Eats

‘They live… They suck…’

They Bite is a 1996 American science fiction comedy horror film directed by Brett Piper (The Screaming Dead; Drainiac!; Queen Crab).

The film follows a similar premise to the plot of Roger Corman-produced horror exploitation classic, Humanoids from the Deep (1980), in depicting sea creatures coming to shore and attacking and mating with humans, but also contains the idea of a film-within-a-film device. Briefly released on VHS in the US by MTI, the film is currently unavailable on DVD.

Main cast:

Donna Frotscher, Nick Baldasare, Christina Veronica, Charlie Barnett, Ron Jeremy (Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead) George Mazzone, Alex Pirnie, Patrick Williams, Susie Owens, Roy A. Peddle, Blake Pickett, Jeremy Steele.

Plot:

A film crew (Nick Baldasare plays the director ‘Mel Duncan’) are on location making a film Invasion of the Fishfuckers – which happens to be a story about sea creatures coming ashore and attacking and mating with humans. Ron Jeremy (one of his few non-porn roles) is part of this film crew.

Whilst they are making the film coincidentally the very thing they’re filming seems to be happening around them. Thus, there’s a blurring between reality and fiction…

Trailer:

Killer Vagina from Space clip:

Filming locations:

New Hampshire, USA

Panama City, Florida, USA

Wikipedia | IMDb

Jaani Dushman (“Beloved Enemy”) is a 1979 Indian Bollywood supernatural horror film produced and directed by Rajkumar Kohli from a screenplay by Inder Raj Anand. The soundtrack music was composed by Laxmikant-Pyarelal. It should not be confused with the 2002 film of the same title.

The film stars Sunil Dutt, Sanjeev Kumar, Jeetendra, Shatrughan Sinha, Vinod Mehra, Rekha, Reena Roy Neetu Singh in lead roles.

Buy soundtrack: Amazon.co.uk

Review:

For a film that’s two and a half hours in length, Jaani Dushman is one of the most frantically, manically edited films I’ve ever seen. We jump from scene to scene, location to location at a breakneck pace. The film only ever comes to a grinding halt in its sometimes shockingly lengthy musical numbers. There’s also a handful of torturous comedy sketches revolving around goofy, cross-eyed characters who seemed to have little to no connection to the movie. It’s disjointed, regularly confusing, packed to the brim with a pile of characters who are hard to keep track of, and it’s also kind of great. Why? Well, mostly because it features a hairy wife-murdering monster.

The film opens with a loony and speedy intro. We meet a young married couple whose car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Their driver attempts to fix the car, while the couple try for help at a nearby big, imposing house. From the moment they enter the creepy abode, it becomes clear that it’s haunted as fuck. A ghostly face of an angry ghost appears and tells them his story. This furious spirit is Thakur Jwala Prasad (Raza Murad). In a flashback we discover that Jwala was poisoned by his red-clad wife (Sheetal) on his wedding night. She married him for his money and ran off, cashed up, with her lover. Prasad’s angry soul lives on, killing any bride in red he comes across.

The spirit of Prasad chases the married couple out of his haunted house then WHAM! We cut to what appears to be a totally unrelated scene of a creepy guy (played by the face that haunted my childhood — Amrish Puri of Temple of Doom!) who has kidnapped a bride. He’s forcing himself upon the bride when suddenly he becomes possessed by Prasad’s evil spirit, which I guess just makes him extra evil? He was, after all, already a rapist. He turns into a hairy, long-armed monster and kills the bride by crushing her neck with his giant, hairy foot.

The terrified married couple see this go down and run away. The monster chases them, but they manage to escape. Hurray! Uh, but yeah… then they get on a train and the monster kills them. The murder scenes in Jaani Dushman are utterly insane and genuinely unsettling. The camera becomes a wild mess of wild angle lenses and fast cuts, and, while they’re not gory scenes, they’re pretty brutal and unpleasant.

So anyway, the bride’s dead, so is the creepy guy that Prasad possessed. Problem solved, right? NO! We’re only five minutes into the film! We then flash forward some kind of small amount of time. We’re thrown into the middle of some village drama where a local bride has just been kidnapped. No one knows what happened, but we do! It was the hairy bride-killing monster! We begin to meet all the important people in the village. There’s Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar), the benevolent dictator of the village who is considered a literal god by the idiotic villagers. There’s Thakur’s shit son, Shera (Shatrughan Sinha), who likes to molest women, and is confusingly presented as something of an anti-hero. There’s the very fun Reshma (Reena Roy), a sexy lady who cross dresses as a moustachioed man for reasons I didn’t understand. And, best of all, there’s Lakhan (Sunil Dutt), the village’s favourite cool guy and king of horse flips.

A whole bunch of brides start getting murdered left, right and centre, and a romantic tug-of-war between Lakhan and Shera with Reshma in the middle ensues. In-between all this nonsense we get goofy sketches with characters who I think we’re supposed to be blind acting stupid. There were long sequences in this where I honestly had no clue what was supposed to be going on. The film also breaks the fourth wall regularly.

Jaani Dushman acts like the identity of the killer is a mystery, but it flat out tells us very early on that Thakur, the village leader, is possessed with the evil Prasad. It shows him having a sweaty, mental breakdown seeing a bride in red, and we may even hear his inner thoughts clarifying that he is in fact possessed (I could be totally making that up… I can’t be bothered scanning through the two and a half hour running time to re-watch this bit). But nope, we get red herring after red herring, despite knowing full well who the killer is.

According to Wikipedia, Jaani Dushman ‘recorded as Super Hit at the box office.’ I don’t know what that means, but I guess it was a successful film. As messy as it is, it’s not hard to see why it might have been popular. It features a crazy big cast of Bollywood stars, the music is mostly great, the locations are lavish, and the horror is completely wild. There’s some wonderfully melodramatic moments (Reshma distracting Shera with a song and then holding him up at gunpoint), and a few twists that took me by surprise (even though they were largely irrelevant to the plot). And there’s a man wearing a silly monster suit and fangs strangling ladies to death. What more could you want?

Dave Jackson, Mondo Exploito

Buy: Amazon.co.uk

Buy: Amazon.com

Further review:

“Compared to today’s Bollywood standards the film may seem technically outdated and jaded but keeping the late 70s in mind it was quite suitably placed in terms of technique: special effects (B. Gupta), make-up, costumes (Bhanu Athaiya, although men’s dresses were rather outlandish, sound (Mangesh Desai), editing (Shyam maintains continuity and ensures that the number of diversions from the main screenplay are kept minimum), stunts (Abdul Ghani) and cinematography. At times, art direction (Sant Singh) is tacky and patchy for scenes shot indoors. The dialogues by Inder Raj Anand add spice and flavour to the proceedings.” Aps Malhotra, TheHindu.com

Wikipedia | IMDb | Thanks to Dave Jackson at the highly-recommended website Mondo Exploito for allowing us to reproduce his review

Indian horror on Horrorpedia: 1920 | 1920: Evil Returns | Aatank | Aatma (2006) | Agyaat | Alone | Bandh Darwaza | Bach ke Zara | Bees Saal Baad | Bhoot Returns | Cape Karma |Dahshat | Darling | Darwaza (1978) | Dracula 2012 | Ek Thi Daayan | Horror Story | Khooni Panja | Ludo | Mahakaal |  Mallika | | Miruthan | Mumbai 125KM | Nagin | O Sthree Repu Raa! | The Other Side of the Door | Phoonk | Pizza | Purana Mandir | Purani Haveli | Pyasa Shaitan |  Qatil Chudail | Ragini MMS | Tahkhana | Vaastu Shastra | Veerana (1988)

Terror 66 is a 2016 American horror anthology film written and directed by hardcore musician Bobby Blood (drummer for the bands First Blood and Merauder). Originally filmed during 2009/10, the project was revived and reshot for release this year.

The film will premiere on August 15th, 2016, at Cannery Casino’s Galaxy Movie Theater in Las Vegas, along with Blood’s short Hearse Hotel.

Plot:

Motel 666: Cherie is a young student traveling across the country to finally be with her fiancé. When she has car trouble, she encounters the Clown Motel, which sits alone in the middle of the American desert along Route 66. What follows is a night of extreme horror as she attempts to escape with all of her vital organs intact. Stars Garvin Lee and Finnish actress Outi OuTou.

The Road to Hell: A small desert town harbours a dark secret in the form of a serial killer intent on discovering the most brutal and horrifying ways of murdering human beings. Due to an unspoken community truce, his voracious appetite for torture and death is relegated to outsiders traveling through town via Route 66. Stars Uriah Matamoros, Stephanie Marquis, Vanessa Giselle and Mike Blood.

The Grave of Bleu Chambers: Throughout the years, urban legend has it that the ghost of a small boy, killed by a speeding car decades earlier, is responsible for the sporadic disappearances of Route 66 travellers near an adjacent cemetery, in which the boy’s body is interred. Stars Nathalie Ben-Kely, Ayden Michael and Lorn Blood.

Trailer:

IMDb | Official website | Facebook | Source: Fangoria

‘First they dance, then they kill!’

Stripperland – also known as Stripper Zombieland – is a 2011 comedy horror film directed by Sean Skelding from a screenplay by Brad McCray and Shawn Justice. It is a parody of Zombieland.

The film stars Ben Sheppard, Maren McGuire, Ileana Herrin, Jamison Challeen, Daniel Baldwin, Linnea Quigley, Boyd Banks,  Thom Bray, Lloyd Kaufman, Hank Cartwright and Brad McCray.

Reviews:

“I’d like less time spent lazily rehashing scenes from Zombieland, especially since the original material is so much better than the direct spoofing. The message about treating sex workers like actual people should have been handled more subtly, woven less obtrusively into the fabric of the film. And at the same time, Skelding shouldn’t have shied away from having some of the zombies take their damn clothes off, since that tends to subliminally undermine his contention that there’s no shame in what strippers do for a living.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

“It does have some original things going on as well, as they end up battling a mad scientist and find themselves at a mall briefly (in a pretty cool nod to Dawn of the Dead), Overall there is enough here to make fans and non-fans of Zombieland both happy. There is plenty of over the top gore and violence here to keep gorehounds happy as well.” Todd Martin, HorrorNews.net

“Stripperland seems to try to diffuse comparisons to Zombieland with pointed asides to the original’s flaws, like the bizarre scarcity of Twinkies, but there’s no comparison beyond unflattering imitation. Stripperland is a meandering film that wanders slowly from one vignette to the next, many of them little more than a pause for a celebrity cameo.” William Bibbiani, Crave

Buy: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

“I laughed many times throughout, sometimes at the film but other with it. It knows exactly what it is, but is a little bit desperate in getting there. It doesn’t have quite enough jokes or plot to fill the whole film so there are overly-long scenes and random dullness, but if you don’t go in expecting genius, you might have a good time.” Stuart Taylor, Shouting at Cows

IMDb | Facebook | Related: Strippers vs. Werewolves | Zombie Strippers

Frankenstein is a 2016 British ballet directed by The Royal Ballet’s Artist in Residence Liam Scarlett at London’s Royal Opera House. The ballet is a music and dance adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Gothic tale of morality and love.

American composer Lowell Liebermann, composes a new score for the production. John Macfarlane created the stage designs, while David Finn provided the lighting design. The ballet is being simultaneously screened in a number of select cinemas. The main stars are Laura Morera, Federico Bonelli and Steven McRae.

Plot:

Victor Frankenstein is sent away to university, away from his family and his closest friend Elizabeth. Just before he leaves, his mother dies in childbirth. Distraught, Victor throws himself into his studies, learning obsessively all that he can from his Professor. Fuelled by his experiments and in a desperate hope to find a way to bring his mother back, Victor works furiously, and eventually succeeds in giving life to non-living matter – but, horrified at what he has done, Victor abandons his Creation.

Six years later, Victor returns home. The Creature follows him and, watching Victor with his family from afar, longs to be accepted and loved as one of them. On the day of Victor’s wedding to Elizabeth, the Creature draws closer, enraptured by Elizabeth’s beauty. Victor discovers the Creature, who, in his panic, kills Elizabeth. In his grief, Victor takes his own life, leaving the Creature once again alone and abandoned, cradling his creator…

Reviews:

“The dancing is superb, the sets magnificent, but Liam Scarlett’s new full-length ballet squanders Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece … That the Royal Ballet has allowed Scarlett to get in so far over his head is reprehensible. He is unquestionably a great talent, but he is equally clearly not ready for a commission on this scale.” Luke Jennings, The Guardian

“With great virtuosity and choreographic diligence, Scarlett crafted carefully each one character of the story, especially the three main one’s taken on by principal dancers. Frankenstein’s ideas of the new scientific world and galvanism, his visions, memory recollections and dreams are animated vigorously by Federico Bonelli; his feelings, however beheld in his expressionless countenance, are exposed through his vivid body language.” Gabriella Daris, Blouinartfino

“Lowell Liebermann’s score is equally murky as the theme might suggest but he does lock in rhythms, action and emotion clearly enjoyed by the dancers. And what dancers! Laura Morera played Elizabeth, the hero’s love interest, and I have never seen her dance better. She brilliantly captured the character’s middle class niceness and the wonder of a young woman’s unqualified first love.” Jeffrey Taylor, Express.co.uk

“Liam Scarlett is a talented abstract, neoclassical choreographer, but his Frankenstein is the least enjoyable full-evening work I have ever seen the Royal Ballet perform … The result is a piece that reeks of desperation – that, and what seems very much like the unchecked hubris of its creator. Nor do the sad parallels with the story itself end there – for this expensive-looking new work feels largely (de)composed of body-parts from other, infinitely superior British ballets.” Mark Monahan, The Telegraph

‘Evil most foul’

Zombeak – aka Zombeak! and The Devil’s Cock – is a 2006 American comedy horror film written and directed by Sam Drog.

Main cast:

Melissa K. Gilbert, Daryl Wilcher, Illya Allman, Barry Bishop, Sarah Frances Conkle, Stephanie Conkle, Adam Morris, Tarjatta Rose, Haley Ruth Sands, JimmyLee Smith, Nathan Standridge, Jason Von Stein, Doug Walker, Susan Waters

Plot:

On the darkest night of the year, when Satan is allowed free reign to walk the earth, a motley crew of Satanists kidnap a sharp tongued southern waitress to be a given up as the Dark One’s bride and mortal host of the Antichrist.

However, when her rowdy redneck friends botch up the ritual in a violent rescue attempt, all power of Hell is inadvertently transferred into the most unlikely of hosts: a sacrificed chicken! Now, the Satanists and rednecks battle one another as an evil most fowl threatens to swallow their souls and transform them into a demonic army of the walking dead…

Buy: Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“It’s definitely low budget; the special effects (a combination of traditional effects and some really low quality CGI) are bargain basement, the acting is substandard and the script goes from funny to abysmal and back again. Despite all those things, it’s still a decent enough film. The script works in many places, has you laughing because it’s funny (and far too often when it’s bad) and the whole film is quite creative in its use of its budget.” Dave Adamson, Den of Geek!

“It’s not exactly easy to make a story of devil poultry both believable and funny. The script is filled with great one-liners and decently funny jokes. If the director had tried to take this totally seriously or go too far off the deep-end with his humor, he’d have hurt the overall product. By finding a decent zany balance, he keeps the tone where it needs to be and the film watchable.” James Lasome, Best Horror Movies

“Watching the film’s titular creature peck maniacally at the faces of its adversaries never gets old, even when the performances and dodgy effects threaten to defecate wildly all over your cinematic merriment. However, the never-ending stream of one-liners, combined with the inherent goofiness of the premise, somehow manages to keep this slipshod production from completely falling apart.” Bloody Good Horror

Buy/rent VOD: Amazon.com

Filming locations:

Georgia, USA

IMDb | Official site

‘Six hundred feet. Beneath the surface. Terror runs deep.’

Below is a 2002 World War II horror film directed by David Twohy (Pitch Black; Riddick). It was co-written by Twohy with Lucas Sussman, Darren Aronofsky.

The film stars Bruce Greenwood, Olivia Williams, Matthew Davis, Holt McCallany, Scott Foley, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Flemyng and Dexter Fletcher.

Plot:

August, 1943: The USS Tiger Shark is a Navy submarine on patrol in the Atlantic Ocean during World War II. The sub receives orders to pick up survivors spotted adrift by a British PBY Catalina patrol plane. Three survivors – the British nurse Claire Paige (Olivia Williams) and two men, one of them wounded – from the British hospital ship Fort James, are picked up.

Meanwhile, the submarine has several encounters with a German warship and suffers damage from depth charges in the process. Later, the commanding officer, Lieutenant Brice (Bruce Greenwood), discovers that the wounded survivor is actually a German prisoner-of-war, Bernard Schillings (Jonathan Hartman). Brice shoots Schillings dead when the German panics and grabs a scalpel to defend himself.

Brice reveals to Paige that the Tiger Shark had sunk a German submarine tender recently and that her previous commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Winters (Nick Hobbs), had died after the sub surfaced to confirm the sinking. Winters was apparently using a boathook to try to obtain a souvenir from the flotsam left behind by the sunken German ship when the Tiger Shark struck a submerged object, causing Winters to hit his head, fall overboard, and drown before he could be rescued…

Reviews:

“In its best moments it can evoke fear, and it does a good job of evoking the claustrophobic terror of a little World War II boat, but the story line is so eager to supply frightening possibilities that sometimes we feel jerked around. Isn’t it possible for a submarine to be haunted without turning it into a museum of horror film devices? Of those devices, the most tiresome is the convention that surprises make sounds.” RogerEbert.com

“It is kept as a “more is less” presentation while enhanced with the strange surroundings of a haunted environment. We expect “something” to occur, just never know when that something will rear its spooky head. The cast is enhanced with a few familiar faces that interact in a believable way. Even as the horror unfolds in small doses, a mystery thriller begins to surface in this under-rated gem. Below succeeds as a dark suspenseful filled adventure.” HorrorNews.net

“As to the ghost story — well, if you aren’t able to guess the “twist”, then you haven’t been watching nearly enough Twilight Zone episodes yourself. And did I mention that the pacing and plotting is horrible? Or that the film is as scary as taking a nap?” Beyond Hollywood

“By changing out the horror movie model of women being scared with an almost all-male cast, save for Olivia Williams as the sole female survivor from the British ship, Below is able to prey on tension and reactions that one might not necessarily find in the inverse situation. Furthermore, Below offers restraint to its horror, allowing the viewers to experience the scares right alongside the characters in ways that feel unexpected and undeniably rattling.” Ken W. Hanley, Fangoria

Cast and characters:

• Bruce Greenwood as Lieutenant Brice
• Matthew Davis as Ensign Douglas Odell
• Olivia Williams as Claire Paige
• Holt McCallany as Lieutenant Paul Loomis
• Scott Foley as Lieutenant, Junior Grade Steven Coors
• Zach Galifianakis as “Weird” Wally
• Jason Flemyng as Stumbo
• Dexter Fletcher as Kingsley
• Nick Chinlund as Chief
• Andrew Howard as Hoag
• Christopher Fairbank as Pappy
• Nick Hobbs as Lieutenant Commander Winters

Filming locations:

Lake Michigan for exteriors (using the World War II-era U.S. Navy submarine USS Silversides)

Pinewood Studios, UK, for interiors

Wikipedia | IMDb

‘Evil’s in the house’

Gnome Alone – aka Gnome – is a 2015 American supernatural horror film directed by Timothy Woodward Jr. and John Michael Elfers. It was scripted by the latter with Lauren De Normandie and Glenn Ennis. The film’s original title was Legend.

The film stars Verne Troyer (as the Gnome), Kerry Knuppe, Bill Oberst Jr., Marlon Young, Ross Bagley, Travis Eberhard, Josh Berger, Matt Cinquanta, Willow Hale, Kodi Saint Angelo, Rachel Applehans, Erik Aude, David Baptiste, Angela Denton, Massimo Dobrovic, Lonna Drewes, Kinley Farrow, Georginna Feyst.

Plot:

When Zoe inherits the magical protection of a bewitched Gnome, she quickly realizes that he isn’t your garden variety gnome, when he begins eliminating her enemies in extravagant displays of revenge…

Buy: Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“It’s an awful film on all levels imaginable (yes, it even fails on the humor end, which was the one element of the flick that looked slightly appealing). There’s nothing endearing, or charming about the production. It looks cheap, it feels cheap and in the end one gets the impression that it’s nothing more than a desperate cash grab…” Matt Molgaard, Best Horror Movies


“Unfortunately, there’s no horror to be found as Verne Troyer hobbles around dressed like an angry lawn ornament, barely standing up to your kneecap, but a few genuine laughs are available for those who love a good tongue-in-cheek death scene oozing with B-Movie antics. It’s certainly nowhere near as horrid as Leprechaun: Origins…” Matt Donato, We Got This Covered

“It honestly feels like the only reason this movie exists is because someone thought that dressing Verne Troyer up in a Gnome costume and watching him pretend to be scary would be funny. But it wasn’t. Hell, it wasn’t even all that exploitative, and it should have been that, if anything.” The Horror Club

” … we have a gnome running around chopping peoples hands and scalps off and then for the film to put Knuppe’s character in danger at home of being molested by her step-father, it all just seems odd and out of whack to me. Throw in A LOT of lesbian and stripper scenes, it’s hard to take anything serious in the film especially when none of it is done very well at all.” Daniel K, HorrorNews.net

Buy: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

” … this is one of those movies that is only made to be mocked with nary a scary moment, ham acting by Troyer – though to be fair it did seem like at least he was having a good time – and poor performances by most of the supporting actors. For her part, Kerry Knuppe wasn’t bad in the lead, although I hope she gets some better material to work with in the future.” Movieman’s Guide to the Movies

IMDb

‘Ancient. Evil. Unearthed.’

Evil Exhumed is a 2016 Canadian horror film directed by David DeCoteau (Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama; Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy; the 1313 movies).

The film stars Eric Roberts, Aisling Goodman, James Drew Dean, Caz Odin Darko, Jayden Holman, Samuel Graeme Martin, Steve Harwood and Nicholas Simmons.

The film is released via Rapid Heart Pictures on June 1, 2016 on VOD (platforms include iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Vimeo and others) and DVD on June 14.

Plot:

A vengeful young man who uses dark arts to send a recently unearthed mummy on a killing spree…

Shooting locations:

Vancouver Island, Canada

IMDb

The Naked Beast – original title: La bestia desnuda – is a 1967 Argentinian mystery thriller film written [as Raúl Zorrilla] and directed by Emilio Vieyra (Blood of the Virgins; The Curious Dr. Humpp). It wasn’t released until 25 March 1971.

Cast:

Susana Beltrán, Aldo Barbero, Norberto Aroldi, Gloria Prat, Osvaldo Pacheco, Rolo Puente, Catalina Speroni, Sonia Grey, Rosario Blanco, Amarilis Carrié, Aldo Bigatti, Myriam van Wessen, Héctor Biuchet, Mary Albano, Norberto Nelson, Víctor De Verona, Jaimito Cohen.

Plot:

The police, led by Inspector Ibanez, are baffled by the murders of several attractive female dancers who all work on a musical TV show that features a horror-themed tableaux. The killings are the work of a masked psychopath with a taste for human blood and there are many suspects…

Review:

” … unbearable homage to Dario Argento’s first giallo.” 2000 Maniacos, quoted in Latsploitation, Exploitation Cinemas, and Latin America, edited by Victoria Ruétalo, Dolores Tierney, 2009

IMDb

Swiss Army Man is a 2016 American surrealist dark comedy written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. It stars Daniel Radcliffe (The Woman in Black; Horns; Victor Frankenstein), Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Paul Dano.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2016 and is released in the US on June 24, 2016, by A24.

Plot:

Hank, a man at the verge of his suicide and marooned on an island, finds a corpse washed up on the beach and engages a surreal relationship with the dead body…

Reviews:

“It’s entirely to the directors and the two lead actors’ credit that what sounds like a bunch of overextended body humor gags of the most juvenile variety evolve, by sheer repetitious attrition, into something bizarrely poetic and strangely touching. It certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste, and the reliance on flashbacks and repeated shots conspire at times to make this feel like an attenuated short.” Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter

“I could never prep you enough for the degree to which farting plays a pivotal role in Swiss Army Man. In addition to its plot contrivance (it’s the gas that keeps these lost men on their voyage) the taboo of passing wind (as well as masturbation) becomes the central metaphor for the need to be true to oneself. It’s coarse and it’s stupid, but it is, thanks mostly the two good performances and some stylish use of music and editing, a little bit moving. Profound gas, indeed.” Jordan Hoffman, The Guardian

Cast and characters:

• Paul Dano as Hank
• Daniel Radcliffe as Manny
• Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Sarah
• Timothy Eulich as Preston
• Marika Casteel as Reporter
• Richard Gross as Hank’s Dad
• Antonia Ribero as Chrissy
• Aaron Marshall as Police Officer
• Andy Hull as Camera Man

Wikipedia | IMDb | Official site

‘Every night you stay, we’ll be watching you’

The Woods is a 2016 American horror film directed by Adam Wingard (Home Sick; A Horrible Way to Die; You’re Next; The Guest) from a screenplay by Simon Barrett. 

The film is due to be released on September 16, 2016 by Lionsgate. The official plot synopsis has yet to be released.

Main cast:

Callie Hernandez, James Allen McCune, Brandon Scott, Wes Robinson, Corbin Reid.

IMDb | Official site

‘Flushed away at birth…’

The Suckling, also known as Sewage Baby, is a 1990 American horror film written and directed by Francis Teri.

The film features Frank Rivera (Sasquatch Mountain), Marie Michaels, Gerald Preger, Lisa Petruno, Janet Sovey,  Tim Martin Crouse, Susan Brodsky, Allen Lieb, Bobby Shapiro, Caesar Monroy, Antoinette Greene, Brian Muirhill, Jeff Burchfield, Hector Collazo, Fangoria editor Michael Gingold, Ella Aralovich.

Plot:

A teenage couple, Rebecca and Phil, seek an abortion at a Brooklyn brothel. Following the operation, toxic waste transforms the discarded foetus into a mutant beast, complete with prehensile umbilical cord and hooked talons for hands.

Hunting the customers and employees of the house of ill repute, the mutant envelops the house in an enormous placenta and slaughters the inhabitants one by one…

Buy: Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“The Suckling is cheap and cheesy, ugly and sleazy. It is trashy, ridiculous and badly acted but bloody hell; it is a film about a giant killer toxic-waste-mutated aborted fetus … It definitely made me laugh and it certainly provides its share of what the fuck moments. I kind of appreciated their enthusiasm; they sure as hell include a lot of wacky shit into their plot.” Goregirl’s Dungeon

“The film starts off looking like it will be reasonably promising; the abortion scene is suitably distasteful and the ‘birth’ of the creature is accomplished using nicely effective foam latex and animatronics special effects. After that though, it goes downhill fast.” Daniel Benson, DVD Talk

” … there are some genuinely amusing moments in here from time to time (just not enough of them) and the filmmakers clearly tried to put on a good show within their limited budget (though they’re ultimately not quite successful). The best thing this has to offer is its creature design, which is truly excellent.” The Bloody Pit of Horror

“This poorly acted horror film has a few inspired, loony moments here and there but it’s mostly a trying, fairly stupid attempt … A guy in a suit plays the fully-grown creature, but the baby creature is an inspired, moving model. Other scenes include some strange S&M games, but very little nudity.” Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid

Buy: Amazon.com

Wikipedia | IMDb

Friday the 13th: The Series – also known as Friday’s Curse – is an American-Canadian supernatural horror television series that ran for seventy-two episodes over three seasons, from October 3, 1987 to May 26, 1990 in first-run syndication.

The series follows Micki and Ryan, owners of an antiques store, and their friend, Jack Marshak, as they try to recover cursed antiques, to put them into safety in the store’s vault.

Originally, the series was to be titled The 13th Hour, but producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. thought this would turn away viewers and instead took the name Friday the 13th to deliberately draw in audiences using “the idea of Friday the 13th, which is that it symbolizes bad luck and curses”.

Despite this title, the series has no story connections to the film series of the same name, as Jason Voorhees does not make an appearance, nor does any character connected to the films.

The series and the films have several cast and crew ties, however. The show’s producer, Frank Mancuso, Jr., was producer of the movie series from Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) until the final instalment distributed by Paramount, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan in 1989. The show’s star, John D. LeMay, went on to appear in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, guest star John Shepherd played Tommy Jarvis in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, and episode director David Cronenberg appeared in Jason X. Fred Mollin, Rob Hedden, and Tom McLoughlin worked behind the scenes of both series.

Buy: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Premise:

“Lewis Vendredi made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques. But he broke the pact, and it cost him his soul. Now, his niece Micki, and her cousin Ryan have inherited the store… and with it, the curse. Now they must get everything back and the real terror begins.” — prologue that opened each episode

An antiques dealer named Lewis Vendredi (“Friday” in French), played by R.G. Armstrong (Race with the Devil; Evilspeak; The Beast Within) has made a deal with the Devil to sell cursed antiques out of his shop, “Vendredi’s Antiques”, in exchange for wealth, magic powers, and immortality. In the show’s first episode (“The Inheritance”), he rebels against the Devil and breaks the deal. The Devil kills Vendredi and claims his soul for breaking the deal.

After Lewis’ death, his shop is inherited by his niece, Micki Foster (Louise Robey) and her cousin by marriage, Ryan Dallion (played by John D. LeMay). They decide not to keep the store, and sell off many of the cursed antiques before being stopped by Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins). Jack was Lewis’ friend, a retired world-traveller and occultist who originally collected many of the antiques for Vendredi before they became cursed.

The series follows the protagonists as they hunt down the cursed antiques, which are usually in the possession of people who have discovered their magic powers and are unwilling to give them up. In some cases the object is in the possession of the one who originally discovers the curse (“The Inheritance”), while in others (e. g. “Tales of the Undead”, “A Cup of Time”, “Vanity’s Mirror”, “Read my Lips”, “The Mephisto Ring”, “The Prisoner”) another person has learned of the object’s power and obtained it before the object is recovered.

Since the cursed antiques are completely indestructible, they must be locked away in a vault beneath “Curious Goods” (the rechristened antique store) that is designed to magically render the objects inert. A manifest, written by Lewis, holds the records of all the cursed objects sold by him. The city of this antique shop is unidentified, the series mostly being vague about whether it is in the US or Canada, but in the third season episode “My Wife as a Dog” showed the local fire department crew wearing the US flag on their uniforms and a bar’s cash register filled with US currency.

Most of the stories in the series deal with people using the cursed objects’ magic for personal gain or for revenge. To use the objects’ magic powers, a human sacrifice is required, with the victim being killed by the object itself or in some particular manner reflecting the object’s history.

Buy music: Amazon.com

Typically, the person using the cursed object ends up becoming a victim of the object’s curse after failing to meet its demand for more and more human sacrifices. Some objects are sentient and intelligent, such as the doll (“The Inheritance”) and the radio (“And Now the News”). Others do not actually speak but demonstrate intelligence and awareness in other ways (“Spirit of Television”, “The Playhouse”) or confer intelligence on other inanimate things (“Read My Lips”, “Double Exposure”, “Wax Magic”). Still others function without intelligence, mechanically dispensing a certain benefit in response to human sacrifice (“Root of All Evil”, “The Mephisto Ring”, “The Prisoner”). Occasionally, there would be an object-free episode in which the trio would confront their uncle’s spirit or some other Satanic evildoer (“The Prophecy”, “Hellowe’en”, “Wedding in Black”).

Like some other sci-fi/horror shows in syndication in the late 1980s, such as War of the Worlds and Freddy’s Nightmares, Friday the 13th: The Series pushed the limits of “acceptable content”, featuring violence on par with that of the R-rated horror movies of the time. Certain episodes such as “Night Prey” also depicted a level of sexuality that was taboo for network television.

Wikipedia | IMDb

Season 1 (1987–1988)

Season 2 (1988–1989)

Season 3 (1989–1990)

‘He wants you out!’

Field Freak – also known as The Monster Outside – is a 2014 American horror film written and directed by Stephen Folker (The Orange Man).

The movie is available on a German Blu-ray release in English.

Main cast:

Dave Juehring, Trena Penson, Glenn Harston, Thomas Ely Sage, Tristan Coppola, Jim Nieciecki, Robert Kemp, Linden Clayborne, Amelia Atkinson.

Plot:

A family move into an abandoned cabin in Beaver Pelt Falls, Idaho. Charles (Dave Juehring) a former best selling writer, is desperately trying to pen his next book and needs a place free of distractions. Little does he know, his entire family is being watched. Strange bumps in the night escalate into a nerve wrecking encounter with the creature by Charles’s wife Linda (Trena Penson).

Things take a strange turn when they hire a psychotic, pest-control guy (Thomas Ely Sage) and are led to believe Rabid Beavers are to blame. It’s not until they visit a road side root beer distillery and meet a man named Ned Perkins (Glenn Harston), that they learn what the bumps in the night really are. According to Ned, they’re all going to die…

Reviews:

“Then there is the field freak itself. The name alone sounds kind of dumb. If you have a monster, you can surely think up a better name for it than field freak. Aside from that, the look of the creature is pretty bad. It looks like a guy dressed in a lower end Halloween costume of some sort of ape. Unrealistic fur, horrible mask, weird looking chest…” Jesse, HorrorNews.net

Choice dialogue:

Ned Perkins: “People came from 500 miles away to try his root beer. But there was somethin’ watchin’ us in dem woods dat day. Yes, there was. Just prowlin’ and growlin’.”

IMDb | Official synopsis

‘Love sucks’

This Ain’t Dracula XXX is a 2011 American adult movie horror film directed by Axel Braun (This Ain’t Ghostbusters XXX) for Hustler Video. The plot is very loosely based on Bram Stoker‘s novel, Dracula. The film is available in a 3D version.

Italian-born Axel Braun – son of Lasse Braun, a key 1970s European adult filmmaker – now specialises in porn parodies of mainstream movie hits and has directed many, based on Star Wars; Spider-Man; X-Men; Wonder Woman; Batman v. Superman; Avengers vs X-Men and The Empire Strikes Back.

Cast:

Evan Stone (Count Dracula), Jessi Palmer (Mina Harker), Marie McCray (Lucy Westerna), Ryan Driller (Jonathan Harker), Tom Byron (R.M. Renfield), Bridgette B. (Vampire Bride), Jennifer Dark (Vampire Bride), Brandy Aniston (Vampire Bride), Krissy Lynn (Girl in Seward’s Sanatorium), Alan Stafford (Quincey Morris), Joey Brass (Lord Arthur Holmwood), Andy Appleton (Abraham Van Helsing), Amber Cherry (Maid), Steve Crest [as Jack Lawrence] (Dr. John Seward), Michael Troughton (Sailor on the Demeter #1), Rob McEvilly (Sailor on the Demeter #2).

Review:

“This is a basically a very accurate adult version of the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As weird as it may sound though, the rated R film was a bit more sexual than this version.” Vampire Beauties

” … sticks pretty close to the source material (from what I can tell). And although the end scene unravels some in terms of narrative and timing, Dracula XXX is a serious, sexy flick that I think anyone even marginally into this subculture will enjoy. And the final frames, when Mina bites Dracula’s chest after some incredibly intense sex… well, that was pretty hot.” PV Online

“This Ain’t Dracula XXX worked better in the non-sexual portions of the show than most Hustler titles have in recent years, the sexual encounters coming across as somewhat generic and cramped (as though they couldn’t move for lack of space on the sets) but certainly strokable and worth picking up if you are interested in the subject matter.” XCritic.com

kl

IMDb | Related: Dracula Exotica | Dracula Sucks

”Get on board to stay alive’

Train to Busan – original title: Busanhaeng – is a 2016 South Korean action horror film written and directed by Sang-ho Yeon. It stars Yoo Gong, Dong-seok Ma,  Yu-mi Jeong, Ahn So-hee, Kim Soo-ahn and Jung Yu-mi.

Plot: 

Sok-woo and his daughter Soo-ahn are boarding the KTX, a fast train that shall bring them from Seoul to Busan. But right at the moment of their departure, the train station is overrun by zombies, killing the train driver and several others. With the driver-less KTX now shooting along the tracks to Busan, the passengers have to fight for their naked lives against the zombies…

Reviews:

” … like most Korean blockbusters, the production cannot resist showing off its visual and special effects clout, resulting in a bombastic stunt toward the end that’s incongruous with the film’s lean, gritty style. Likewise, the screenplay piles on the hysteria and the schmaltz in the last leg, and the hitherto restrained cast have no choice but to dial up performances to a borderline farcical level.” Maggie Lee, Variety

“Visually, Yeon takes the zombie hoard and portrays it almost like a wave. Individual zombies, though very fast, pose little threat by themselves, but in large numbers they pile into locations, falling in streams over ledges and through holes and building on top of each other whenever an obstacle gets in the way. Coupled with the motion of the train, this creates some memorable visuals within the cars.” Pierce Conran, Twitch

“Train to Busan is largely set on board the express, but as it is forced to make stops along the way, Yeon gets an opportunity to move to grander set-pieces, including aerial shots which give context to the scale of the outbreak. Many of these exterior scenes are more reliant on CGI, which is ironically where the film starts to lose steam. The CGI itself is competent and creative in places, but ultimately, the film works best when the passengers are on board battling it out for survival.” Jason Bechervaise, Screen Daily

IMDb

‘The last sound you’ll hear is the rattle of his bones.’

Bonejangles in a 2016 comedy horror film directed by Brett DeJager from a screenplay by Keith Melcher. The titular killer is presumably named after a character from Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.

Main cast:

Reggie Bannister (Phantasm franchise; Bubba Ho Tep; Doctor Spine), Elissa Dowling (Orgy of the Damned; Fetish Factory; The Black Room), Jamie Scott Gordon, Devin Toft, Kelly Misek Jr. (V/H/S Viral), Christopher Hunt, Wade Everett, Julia Cavanaugh, Hannah Richter, Lawrence Wayne Curry, Katie Walgrave, Allen Regimbal, Connor Quinn, Brett DeJager, Nadine Purvis Schmidt, Ben Gersch, Scott Wessels, Brandon Scott Jacobson.

Plot:

A rag-tag group of cops tasked with delivering an unstoppable killing machine must survive a hellish pit stop: a cursed town where the dead rise from their graves…

IMDb | Facebook

‘The game will possess you’

The Ouija Exorcism is a 2015 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Nick Slatkin (Placebo).

A British DVD release is scheduled for 26 September 2016 by Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment.

Main cast:

J. Damian Anastasio, Brittney Bertier, Cameron Bigelow, Jay Brothers, Tony Harutyunyan, Lola Kelly, Laura Kirchner, Walker Mintz, Ben Morrison, Lynne Newton, Michael Palladino, Julia Rae and Branden Smith.

Plot:

In 1985, a celebrated exorcist trapped a horrific demon inside a ouija board. Thinking the board to be a game, his son played without obeying the rules, and let the demon loose. In order to save his son, the exorcist sent him far away until the demon could be destroyed.

Thirty years later, and after his death, his grandson finds the board and makes the same mistake his father did. Now the evil is back and roaming the earth to terrorise those responsible for its imprisonment…

Filming locations:

Los Angeles, Glendale and Simi Valley, California, USA

IMDb