31 days of horror Day 24

Rats Night of Terror

Source- OOP Anchor Bay DVD

After a nuclear disaster a band of survivors find an abandoned town. The discover that this town has huge supplies of food,so they decide to stay. Little do they know that this town also has a major rodent problem. The rats of this quiet town are many and bloodthirsty. One by one the survivors are killed by the rats in many graphic and bloody ways. Until there is only 2 people left. Then they get "saved" by the people that live underground. But are the underground dwellers still human? Made by Bruno Mattei in 1985,Rats is a very weird twist on the typical Italian Mad Max ripoff. Italian directors made lots and lots of post-nuke movies after the success of Mad Max,but this one has the twist of the killer rats. It is rumored that painted guinea pigs were used in place of the rats,but to my eyes it looks like real rats. The actors and actresses are what you will normally find in an mid 80's Italian ripoff movie,Not bad but not anything to write home about. Most of the gore effects are pretty good,and are a main reason the film is entertaining. Nowadays this film if remembered is remembered for the twist ending. Which really doesn't hold up if you think about it too much. But if you are looking for some to pass some time and something that you can just shut your brain off and watch you could do a lot worse than this. Rats nights of terror earns a B-.

31 days of horror Day 23

The Hills have Eyes-Unrated Remake

Source- 20th century fox DVD

A family of 7 are traveling though Yuma Flats heading to California. They stop at a gas station for fuel,and the gas station attendant tells them about a short cut. Turns out this is a set up,on the shortcut they end up driving over something that pops their tires. They crash into a rock. The dad and the oldest sister's husband head out to look for help. And as night falls all hell breaks loose. 2 mutated men attack the camper,while another ties the father to a Joshua tree and sets it on fire. After a gruesome battle,the oldest sister,the mom,and the father are all dead. And the oldest sister's baby has been kidnapped. The husband heads out to get his baby back,while the brother and younger sister stay behind. The two siblings booby trap the area around the trunk and camp and wait. The husband comes upon a town that was built when the government was testing nuclear bombs in this area. He sneaks into a house a finds his child there,but on his way out he is attacked by one of the mutants. He comes too and is inside a freezer that is full of various body parts. Turns out these mutants are the descendants of the miners that refused to leave the area when the nuclear testing was happening. The husband ends up killing most of the mutants and sees a younger female one running off into the hills with his child. He follows and has to fight off the leader of the mutants,the fight is long and bloody,but at the end he knocks him down and think he has killed the mutant. The young female mutant hands over the baby,and sees that the leader is about to attack the husband again,she ends up tackling the leader and they both fall over a cliff. Finally victorious the husband,with his baby in tow,head back to meet up with the other two. They hug and all that kind of happy shit. Then the camera pulls out and we realize someone in the hills is still watching them. The end. This wasn't a bad remake,it took parts of the Wes Craven original. But changed enough to not end up being a total rehash. The special effects were really good The makeup on the various mutants was a highlight for me. It is worth seeing,either by buying it for cheap or a rental. The Hills have eyes remake gets a C+ from me.

31 days of horror Day 22

House on Haunted Hill-William Castle Original

Source-Rifftrax DVD release

Ah a movie I loved when I was a kid. Vincent Price and his wife decide to throw a exclusive party at a supposedly haunted house. They invite 5 people,a airline pilot,a doctor,a drunk tabloid reporter,a Secretary,and a guy who's family owns the house. The all arrived in black cars and go to the living room to meet up with Price.Vincent shows them around the house,and they get to see the acid pit in the basement. Turns out 5 people have already died in this house. The deal is at midnight the doors will be lock from the outside and each person to spend the entire night in the house gets 10 thousand dollars. All kinds of cheesy spooky events happen,IE crazy old blind lady that seems to roller skate over the floors,Vincent's wife hanging her self then showing back up outside someones window,etc. In the end it turns out the doctor and Ms Price are working together to kill off Vincent. But he manages to outwit them. First time I saw this was many many years ago,a local UHF channel would show at least one horror movie every Saturday night. Even as a young kid this movie didn't scare me but it sure did entertain me. And it still does. House on Haunted Hill is a great horror classic to watch with young kids,and earns an C+.

31 days of horror Day 21

Motel Hell

Source-OOP MGM Midnite movie DVD

Farmer Vincent is well known for his smoked meats. But most people don't know what is in his smoked treats. Vincent and his sister run a motel,The Motel Hello. But the O in hello is usually burnt out so it says Motel Hell. Early on we see Vincent setting a trap on a road. It causes a wreck were the man is killed and his girlfriend is injured. Vincent takes the girl,Terry,back home to the motel. She slowly falls in love with Vincent. Late on night we see the farmer going to a fenced off place on the back side of his property. Inside is his secret garden,where he buries people up to their necks and force feeds them. When they get to the size that he wants,he uses a tractor to pop off their heads. Then he grinds them up into his smoked meat treats. For a movie with such a grim premise it actually is very funny. Vincent's sister is played by the heavyset female coach from Porkys. She helps him out with his meat business. The ending is a nice set piece of two guys fighting with chainsaws while one of them is wearing a giant pig mask. Good film,would be perfect to see at a drive in. Solid B.

31 daysof horror Day 20

Last House on dead end street

Source-OOP Barrel Entertainment DVD

I have no idea how to even begin reviewing this film. Up until I saw this I thought David Lynch was the only director capable of delivering the logic of nightmares to the big screen. Well now I know another man that can,Rodger Watkins. The only real way to describe this movie is someone managed to film a nightmare. What little plot there is is about a man,Terry,fresh outta jail. He decides to start making movies,and wanting to do something that hasn't been done before he starts making snuff movies. Watkins has admitted to being on amphetamines during the filming. And it shows. The movie jumps from one nightmarish scene to another. Very gory and very very disturbing,this is a movie that will stick in your mind for days after watching it. Sadly now that the DVD is outta print,and the VHS releases have always been hard to find,people will have to rely on either dvd-rs or bad bootleg VHS to watch it. I have been pondering in my mind what grade I would give it,and finally gave it a B-.

31 days of horror Day 19

Masters of Horror The Screwfly Solution

Source-Anchor Bay DVD

Based on the 1977 short story by Alice Sheldon,this episode from the second season of Masters of Horror. Directed by Joe Dante,This episode stars Jason Priestley and Elliott Gould. It's starts with a bunch of women being killed in Jacksonville Florida. Ahh the murderers are male and all of them say that God told them to cleanse the earth. Priestley and Gould are scientists that specialize in insects. Pretty soon there are outbreaks of violence against women all over the globe. Priestley realizes this has to been caused by someone or something that is trying to wipe out the human race. He calls his wife and tells her to get a gun,and take their daughter and drive as far north as they can. Flash forward about a month,and the wife and daughter are staying in Gould's cabin up in Canada. They come home one day to find Priestley there. After a confrontation the wife shoots Jason. And her and her daughter head further north. She pulls over on the side of the road to use the restroom,and while she is out in the woods the daughter steals the car and drives back to the cabin. The next morning when the wife gets back to the cabin she finds her daughter dead. Flash forward a month. We find out that Elliott isn't effected by the virus since he had him self chemically castrated. He dress the wife up as a man and him and her head even further north in Canada. They end up living in a tent way out in the woods,where Elliott gets a bad cold and dies. The wife buries him and goes into town to get supplies. The other men in the store notice something weird about her and follow her. She notices them following her and tries to lose them by running off into the woods. But they chase her. She finally hides in some brush and sees a bright light. The two guys come out in the clearing and see that the light is from two aliens. The aliens kill both the men and take some kind of fluid from their heads. The final scene is the wife huddled in a small shelter somewhere out in the woods,and you get the feeling that she is one of the last living females. I had read the story this was based on about 2 years ago,and was impressed by it. From what I can remember the film follows the story fairly closely. I don't remember the short story having the part with the aliens,but I might have just forgot that part. The low budget and filming it all in Vancouver Canada shows,mainly in the very beginning. Which is set in Texas,the people shown have very weird accents that are nothing like the normal Texas accent. But that is just a small nitpick. This was an enjoyable way to kill and hour and it gets an B.

31 days of horror Day 18

Jack Ketchum's The Girl next door

Source-Anchor Bay DVD

Inspired by true events,this film is based on the Jack Ketchum novel of the same name. Set in 1958,this is the story of David Moran and the girl next door Meg Loughlin. Meg has moved in next door along with her little sister. They now live with their Aunt Ruth and her 3 sons. Ruth is the mom that all the kids in the neighborhood love. She talks about all kinds of stuff that most adults won't mention in front of kids,plus she lets her boys,plus the other boys from the neighborhood drink beer with her. She is jealous of Meg for some reason. And starts taking this out on her. At first she does stuff like not allowing Meg to eat for 2 or 3 days in a row,but soon it progresses to harsher punishment. After not too long Ruth has her boys tying Meg up in the basement. This slowly starts to involve more of the neighborhood kids,and it starts to get more and more cruel. David is a witness to all of this but does nothing to stop or prevent it,finally he has seen enough and tries to save Meg and her little sister. The last 15 minutes of the movie are some of the most heartbreaking,gruesome scenes I had seen in any film in many years. The acting is very good,when you consider that most of the cast is preteen and early teens. This is one of those films that well most people couldn't make it through. But if you want to see what I thought was the best horror film of 2007,at least give it a rent. Jack Ketchum's The Girl next door gets an A.

31 Days of horror Day 17

Drag me to hell

Source-Universal DVD

Finally Sam Rami has come back to horror/comedy. Alison Lohman is a bank loan officer. She is wanting to get the position of assiant manager. An old gypsy lady comes in and asks for a third extension on her mortgage. She is denied and puts a curse on Alison. Turns out in 3 days this goat like spirit will come and take Alison to hell. She spends the rest of the movie trying to stop this from happening. At first when I finished watching it I was amazed at what they got away with in a PG-13 movie,but then I looked closer at the DVD and realized I had watched the unrated cut. Like most of Rami's horror films this one is filled with lots of jump scares,low angle cameras,and plenty of comedy. The special effects ,extra for 1 scene,were really well done for being mostly CGI. The cast was great,especially Alison's boyfriend played by Justin Long. And this was the first horror film in a long while that had an ending that really surprised me. I will have to give this a strong A.

31 days of horror Day 16

Buried Alive

Source-Dimension Extreme DVD

Man what a stinker,I picked this up last year around this time at a flea market. The redneck dealer with 3 teeth,gave it to me for free since I bought about 10 other DVDs from him. After I watched it today I see why it was free. 5 college friends head up to one of theirs old family home. Which is supposed to have a treasure hidden somewheres on the property. Before they get there they stop to talk to the caretaker,played by Saw's Tobin Bell. The college kids finally make it up to the house,where they pair off for some fun. Weird creepy old woman ghost keeps showing up,and the kids mostly don't notice her until it is too late. Basically this movie sucked more than Vanessa Del Rio. The premise is tired and cliche. Hardly no action happened until the last 10 minutes. Avoid at all cost. F-

31 days of horror Day 15

Christmas Evil

Source-OOP Brentwood DVD

Released in 1980,Christmas Evil AKA You better watch out AKA Terror in toyland,is a very early example of the "killer Santa" subgenre of horror films. The movie starts off in the late 1940's when a boy sneaks downstairs on X-mas eve and catches Santa,his dad in a Santa suit,groping his mom. This scars the poor Lil boy,and he grows up with an obsession with Christmas. He works at a toy factory that makes shoddy cheap toys. He has his apartment decorated year round in holiday decorations. Plus he even sleeps in a Santa suit. But wait things get creepier,when you see him spying on the neighborhood kids with his binoculars. He has 2 ledgers,one for nice kids,and one for naughty kids. And he keeps tabs on all the neighborhood kids in these two ledgers. After not too long his already fragile mind finally snaps. He steals alot of toys from work,and he goes home puts on his Santa suit. He takes the toys to the local children's hospital. The next night he sneaks into a co-workers home. He leaves toys for the kids,and kills the co-worker. He keeps up giving toys to the good kids,and killing the bad adults. Finally there is a huge mob,with torches,after him. Since the film is set in NYC I wonder where the mob gets torches from. It looks like they have him cornered in his van when .... well lets say a Christmas Miracle happens. OK film was kinda slow,and I can see where someone raised on more current horror movies would find it unbearably slow. On little piece of trivia,The killer Santa is played by Brandon Maggart who is Fiona Apple's father. Christmas Evil is a sleeper film,when you consider the X-mas Horror genre. Luckily now it is easy to find on cheap DVDs. And a nice remastered version is also out for those that want better picture and sound. I enjoyed this movie,even with the slow parts,and give it a B-.