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31 Days of Horror 2020 Day 09 Pilgrim

TITLE-Pilgrim
SOURCE-Hulu

Last year in October I covered the film School Spirit. After getting Hulu right at 2 years ago I saw that Blumhouse was doing 1 horror film a month that was exclusive to Hulu. They were usually themed after a holiday in the month their premiered.

Since at least 85 I have wanted a good Thanksgiving themed horror. But the only ones I know of are that bad slasher with the Body By Jake guy,and the Thankskillings series. The latter isn't horrible.

Wanting more Thanksgiving set/themed horror I remembered Into the Dark. That is the title of the monthly series of films from Blumhouse.

One thing I have noticed is since Hulu considers this a TV series you will get like 3 or 4 ad breaks during the film.

Now yea the Into the Dark films usually get horrible reviews. The only one I had started before Pilgrim and finished was School Spirit,which was a fun but kinda by the numbers slasher set at a modern high school.

So Pilgrim.... Yea.....this was well it was a gory and in parts fun Thanksgiving themed horror. A stepmom,father,daughter and sickingly sweet young brother live in a nice neighbor hood. The stepmom invites some Pilgrim re-enactors to her big Thanksgiving party.

But these Pilgrims are strict strict puritans. And anything they find sinful or evil is killed in a bloody way.

Now sure the gore is well done and appears to be mostly practical effects. It is the acting and kinda dumb as fuck script.

Let me explain the dumb as fuck script a bit more. After the party where the Pilgrims come off as creepy, the mom invites one to stay with them.

This guy looks that insane from the moment he appears on the screen until his death near the end. Plus he loves to chew the scenery and just comes off as maybe he is small town theater guy getting his first shot at a legit movie.So ya the stepmom invites this nutty looking dude to stay with them until Thanksgiving.

Speaking of the dumb as dirt stepmom,there she is on the right in the stocks. Took me a bit to realize it is the actress that plays Daniel Larusso's wife on Cobra Kai. She is the only person in the movie I had seen before. And besides her just being totally obvilous to the creepy Pilgrim dude being uber creepy she isn't bad in the film.

The dad is the normal can't put work away when he is home dad you have seen in hundreds of things. Nothing he does stands out.

This lady is the other main pilgrim. She was staying with the daughter's boyfriend's family. Then kills them and then comes to live with creepy Pilgrim dude.

She was not bad really. Even if I still wonder how if these people appear to be human she survived a huge turkey needle to her brain.... There is a great scene where she is stalking the annoying little brother. And yea I was wanting her to kill him.

The stand out actor/actress in the film was the lady that played the daughter. She managed to play a fairly believable teen. And you could buy that she was smart enough to finally pull a fast one on the Pilgrims and manage to use tradition to kill them.

Yea the twist near the end,well the first of two,isn;t bad. Even if it was so obvious from about 35 minutes into the film. THe lead pilgrim is forcing the daughter and stepmom to help prepare the Thanksgiving feast. "No do not touch the ones with the green stems those and Jerusalam berries they are deadly."

Now he might have said cherries instead of berries,I didnt have the subtitles on. But Cherries makes less sense to me. Cause I always thought a traditional Thanksgiving feast item,one I dont eat,is cranberry sauce.

I hear him say this I knew it would be how the family,wasn't sure who all would survive,would defeat these evil ass Pilgrims.

The daughter manages to palm some of the deadly berries/cherries. Then places them in the bowl that she is mashing the non poison berries. But why did the Pilgrims bring the poison ones?

Now that final twist. When I saw what it was I laughed cause I wouldnt have seen it coming. Early on in the film the daughter wishes on a wishbone,for the THanksgiving day to be a disaster. All because her mother doesn;t like the guy she is dating.

The sometimes dumb as fuck script plus some of the acting being just janky hurt this movie. But the gore helped make up for those flaws.

Pilgrim gets a C+

31 Days of Horror 2020 Day 08 Kingdom of the Spiders

TITLE-Kingdom of the Spiders
SOURCE-DVD Rip on Youtube

Back in the 70s,this film came out in 76 or 77,there was plenty of creature run amuck films.I had seen lots of these. Thanks mostly to late night syndicated tv. Seen Tarantulas Deadly Cargo,which I reviewed here for 31 Days of Horror a few years ago,seen Grizzly,seen SSSSSSSSSSSS,another I reviewed here of 31 Days of Horror a few years ago. But until earlier this year I had never seen Kingdom of the Spiders.

That changed back in the spring. We were all kinda stuck at home.Bat32 of Sleaze Fiend Magazine fame wanted to bring back his old podcast. Exploited Cinema had been one of the best cult/sleazy movie podcasts for years. So Bat rounded up Zach from the Behind the Mask Podcast and asked me to come on. The film on discussion was of course Kingdom of the Spiders. Bat had found 2 copies of this film on youtube. One was a rip of the Shout/Scream Factory DVD release. The other was a VHS rip of when this filmed aired on Commander USA years ago.

Set in the Southwest this is a fairly entertaining PG rated creature feature. William Shatner(Rack in
this movie) is a vet. He also is helping out his dead brother's wife and daughter. He gets called to Woody Strode's farm.

Woody Strode and his wife at the farm

Seems Strode's cow is sick. Shatner gets there the cow is dead and he sends the body off to see why it died. Strode  and his wife are worried it is the black plague and they will get quarentined. Strode is a ex football player/pro wrestler. In an interview Shat talks about how Strode kept in amazing shape,even at the age of 62 when this film was made. Seems Strode would do all kinds of push ups every day. One handed,Elevated,diamonds "He could even do no handed ones" Shatner joked.

After finding out thru various tests that the cow died from spider venom,Shat calls in some help. This  lets Tiffany Bolling
to enter the film. She gets to fuck around with spiders,be Shat's love interest and a chance to get a big time movie role. Before this Bolling ,while a decent star on tv,had mostly done low budget films that are cult films now. Now she is getting a chance to be in a pic that costs 1 million bucks and has the Shat as her co star!

The rest of the cast and the film are decent. This film feels like either a big budget made for tv mid 70s horror or a low budget theatrical mid 70s horror. It had a 1 millon dollar budget,but so did Dawn of the Dead. And Dawn is a way more impressive film. Cause with Kingdom of the Spiders besides all the spiders,almost all the spiders we see in the film is real spiders,the only other things in the film that could have cost a decent amount is the water tower stunt,the plane crash stunt and of course The Shat!

In the deaths is where the films lower budget shows. It is odd with the director being a former stuntman but the film having so few stunts. For example Woody Strode's death. He is in his truck heading somewhere. Spiders start to crawl out from under and behind the seat and all over Strode. We see them on his face. The truck starts to swerve,cut away and we hear the truck crash. Most of the people that die we see the aftermath. In which it looks like the FX team ran to Dollar General 2 days after Halloween and bought a bunch of bags of clearence spider webs. The water tower crash looks great. Looks like something you would see in a big budget film of the era.

Then you got the biggest stunt in the film. After being told by Tiffany and the Shat that using poison on the spiders is not a good idea,the spiders are attacking dogs and cows and humans cause all of their normal food has been killed off by DDT. No not Jake the Snake's finishing move ! The now banned pesticide from the 70s. So a local yokel fills his cropduster plane up with some spider poison and flies all over the town dumping it. He forgot to check his plane before heading up and ends up with a pile of spiders all over him. Causing him to crash the plane and a great explosion happens. This was damn impressive. And the action highlight of the film.

The Shat gets attacked by spiders!

There is a hotel/bar and grill in town. Ran by this older redhead lady. Tiffany is staying there. Shat ends up taking his sister in law and niece there. The last 20 minutes of the film is what is left of our cast in this place.Boarding it all up like Night of the Living Dead. I guess Shatner knew the plane stunt was pretty damn good,and in the interview I saw he talked about how "I was in great shape back then. Wanted to do a stunt". The power goes out,the Shat goes into the basement to fuck with the breakers.
Spiders attack and he stumbles back to the others with a giant spider on his cheek biting him. Now any one else in the film that got bit died. But not the Shat. He is too tough for this venom that can kill huge cows. You get to see this great one long take part with Shatner stumbling into frame with the spider biting him he falls to the floor in perfect view of the camera. It is a great scene.

The next morning the few living people are listening to the radio. Shatner prys a few of the boards off a window. Looks out... and sees...THAT THE ENTIRE TOWN IS COVERED IN HUGE THICK SPIDER WEBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The END!!!!!!

I loved the fuck out of this film. It gets better with each viewing. Everything about it is just average. But all of that blends so well you get a film that is really so much more than the sum of it's parts. The acting is good from the names I mentioned to the smaller parts like the hillbilly with the flat tire. Or the gas station owner he tries to fight off a spider by spitting tobacco juice at it. The film looks nice and has some great shots of the southwest scenery. The music.,fuck I haven't talked about the music yet.

The score is all music from library tracks. All of which was used on the original Twilight Zone tv show. At first the score wasn't working for me. Not far into the film the score started working for me. THe few actual songs in the movie aren't bad. The feel like 70s early pop county stuff. So nothing I would buy but also nothing I hate.

Besides the DVD release from Shout Factory there is a Blu Ray from Code Red. Not sure I would pay what they want for it. If I see the DVD for say 15 bucks or less I will grab it.

Kingdom of the Spiders gets a C+

House II The Second Story Marvel Comics Adaptation Flipthru

31 Days of Horror 2020 Day 07 Verotika

TITLE-Verotika
SOURCE-Blu Ray/DVD/CD Soundtrack editon from Cleopatra Entertainment

Every year I try to buy and try out a film I heard a buzz about the previous year from various festival screenings. A few years ago I got lucky and picked out WolfCop and loved it. And that Blu Ray happened to be fairly cheap. This year I took a chance on Glenn Danzig's first movie that he directed and wrote Verotika.

Back in the 90s comic boom Danzig started up a horror/erotica comic company,that still somewhat exists still. The longest running and best selling title was Verotik,which was a erotic horror anthology series. With some damn good talent like Grant Morrison,Simon Bisley and even splatter punk author Edward Lee did some writing for Danzig's fairly decent horror comic.

Too bad none of that great talent worked on this movie. I had heard it was pretty bad. But thought nah,,, it can't be as bad as I am hearing. It wasn't as bad,it was worse.

This is a three story film. Hosted by a fairly attractive brunette,I know the Verotik title had a host but can't remember what her name was. First story is about a model who has permanent duck lips. We see her at her apartment on the couch with some guy who looks like he was a roadie for the Damn Yankees.

In the foreground of the shot is a flower. On this flower is crawling a albino spider.This spider is CGI. It looks like something you would have seen on the Jaguar CD. I have seen much better CGI work in Made for SYFY originals by the Asylum.

Back to Ducklips on the couch. Her and the guy and fucking and he keeps on trying to take her top off. She does all she can to stop him,it starts getting really creepy as she tells him to stop while continuing to grind on top of his crotch. He over powers her takes off her tops and.... she has eyeballs where her nipples are suppose to be!

Dude runs out of there and we finally get the plot of this short. Whenever Ducklips goes to sleep the albino spider morphs into a white tall 3 armed spider/man creature. Who likes to strangle strippers and models.

The rest of the short is Ducklips trying to not fall asleep and the Albino Spider/man killing what I assume are French porn stars making a quick buck off Danzig.

The cops kill the albino spider and this ends. Well at least it wasn't too long.

The second story has a stripper,who wears a lower face mask while stripping. Her face is revealed to be horrible fucked up. And she goes around killing strippers and hookers.Then skinning their faces.

Wow after that first story I wasn't expecting the second one to be amazing or nothing. What I got was a boring trope filled "horror" story set at a strip club. Tits and bad 80s hard rock looking for a plot.

A Elizabeth Bathroy inspired short is the film story. This time Danzig managed to cast some gorgeous ladies for all the parts. The acting is the best of the film,outside of the host's parts before and after stories. And it seems like most of the budget was saved for this final part.

Lots of blood of course. Some decent camera angles and it is almost enough to make up for that horribel second story.

No clue what this set costs now when I pre ordered it I paid like 25 bucks. Thinking,OK it will be so bad it is good and can give someone the dvd.Plus the soundtrack is going to be amazing!. The soundtrack sucks and after two listens got put back into the blu ray/dvd case and won't be listened to much again. I don't hate anyone enough to give them the dvd of this.

Like Rob Zombie,Glenn Danzig appears to be a director who proudly displays the films/eras he is inspired by. Verotika feels like lots of 70s eurohorror. The look of the film is early 90s porn. Back before they kinda figured out how to light videotape. Some of the angles in Verotika reminded me of 1989's Dr Caligari. Which of course was made by a guy best known for directing porn.

Oddly for all the crap I gave the movie I got this nagging feeling that it is gonna become a cult hit.Once it hits a streaming service like Amazon Prime,Netflix or Shudder word of mouth will get so many people to watch this.

Verotika gets a D+

31 Days of Horror 2020 Day 06 Resident Evil

TITLE-Resident Evil
SOURCE-DVD

Wow hard to believe this film came out almost 20 years ago. I can remember hearing that a Resident Evil movie was gonna happen and that George Romero,RIP Sir,was going to direct it. So myself and every horror fan I knew was super excited.

Then we hear that nope Romero isn't going to direct it. Instead Paul W.S. Anderson is the director. And he cast his wife Milla Jovovich as the lead.

Under Raccon City the Umbrella corp is doing some nasty stuff. After someone steals some of the T-virus. This causes the computer that is in control of the old mansion this is happening under to shut down the mansion.

Milla plays Alice. She wakes up in the mansion. And quickly meets up with a commando team that has been sent in to take care of the issue.

So instead of say a good moody zombie horror film,we got a action film with zombies. Back when I first saw this I enjoyed it but kept thinking "Man I hope the sequels are closer to the games." I had no clue back then that each film in this franchise would get more and more away from the games.

The FX work is pretty damn good. The scene where the security lasers cut a bunch of the commandos into pieces is well done. Too bad the acting is all pretty much shit.

Milla is a gorgeous woman. But her acting talent isn't that great. Really the best actor/actress in this film is Michelle Rodriguez. But Michelle is just playing the tough woman role she seems to be stuck playing for the past 30 years now.

There is currently 5 films in this series. I saw the second and third film. And they were so bad I just gave up on this franchise.

Back when this came out it was considered the best movie based on a video game.Back then it's competition was shit like Super Mario Brothers,Street Fighter and those two horrible Mortal Kombat films. I have been trying to think if there is a movie based on a video game that is better than Resident Evil,and I can't think of any that are live action.  But the Double Dragon movie comes close to being better than this film.

Resident Evil gets a C+.

31 Days of Horror 2020 Day 05 Zombieland

TITLE-Zombieland
SOURCE-Netflix Streaming Service

I know I know I should have reviewed this years ago. Honestly I had forgotten about this movie until the sequel came out last year.

Jesse Eisenberg is trying to survive a zombie outbreak. Through out the film he is giving us his rules for surviving in Zombieland. Most of which are pretty good. I also like how they worked Amber Heard into the film.

Not that far into the film Jesse meets Woody Harrelson. Woody is a bad ass. Has a truck full of weapons. And is on the search for a Hostess Twinkie. And at first Woody seems to be a one note character. But thankfully  thru out the film Woody's backstory gets fleshed out. And by the end of the film you feel for the guy and all he has been thru.

During a trip into a grocery store,with Jesse looking for supplies and Woody on the hunt for Twinkies,they run into two sisters. Played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. These two trick Woody and Jesse. They steal the guys' car. But not long after this all four of them team up.

They have all heard that there is a amusement park on the west coast that is free from zombies. So they start heading out west. Once they are out west they end up running into Bill Murray,who is playing Bill Murray. Seems he has hidden out in his huge home. And will go out for supplies while he is done up as a zombie.

Sadly Bill dies. And our gang of misfits makes it to the amusement park. The girls go off to ride a ride and Woody is on his hunt for Twinkies. Then the zombie invade.

This movie is a great blend of drama/horror/comedy. For every scene that makes you laugh there is one that makes you feel for the various characters.  The FX work is pretty damn good. And I am still surprised it took 10 years for a sequel to this movie to be made. I know that a few years back Amazon Prime Video did a pilot for a Zombieland tv show. But they got none of the original cast back. And the pilot bombed.

Zombieland gets a A-.

31 Days of Horror 2020 Day 04 Scary Movie

TITLE-Scary Movie
SOURCE-Netflix streaming service

Was looking for a horror/comedy to watch. Saw Netflix had this and I haven't seen it since it hit home video what 2 decades ago.

The movie is pretty much a spoof of Scream. Anna Faris is our lead. And I will give her this she is good at comedy. The rest of the cast is ok. With Shannon Elizabeth being a stand out. And Carmen Electra does great with what is pretty much a cameo,Carmen is pretty much Drew Barrymore in Scream. Sadly the younger two Wayans Brothers are in this. Marlon is ok. But Shawn is horrible. He should have stuck to being a DJ on his older brother's show.

Now being a horror/comedy there isn't a bunch of gore in the movie. But there is plenty of gross out scenes. Like when Shawn Wayans is in the bathroom at a movie theater. He spots a gloryhole and sticks his ear up to it. So of course a penis comes thru the hole and goes through Shawn's ear and comes out the other ear.

Really the best parts of the film happen near the beginning and near the end. The part when the killer stabs Carmen Electra in her breast and a breast implant is caught on the knife is pretty funny.  Then the reveal at the end that Doofy,a even dumber version of David Arquette's Dewey character,is the killer was a surprise.

Sadly this franchise was whored out until no one wanted to see it anymore. And after the second film it went from being a horror/comedy parody to being just a "Hey remember this film? Yea isn't it so funny that we also remember that film". The same trap that sadly too many parody films fall into.

Scary Movie gets a B-.

31 Days of Horror 2020 Day 03 Trailer Park Shark

TITLE-Trailer Park Shark
SOURCE-DVD

Last year while looking at used media at a thrift I found Trailer Park Shark. Saw the title and that it stars Tara Reid and Dennis "Mr Belding"Haskins so grabbed it.

Made in 2017 this modern piece of Sharkploitation cinema was directed by Griff Furst. Who is best known for directing stuff like Swamp Shark,Atomic Shark and Ghost Shark.

The Soggey Meadows Trailer Park gets badly flooded. Causing the residents to end up on top of their mobile homes. And with all that water there is also a shark.

Pretty sure this debuted on SyFy channel on Saturday night. And it feels like one of the many Sharkploitation films you would see groups like NuImage or say The Asylum pump out.

Now of course with this being low budget Tara Reid's part is a cameo basically. But she at least supplies the residents of Soggey Meadows with weapons to fight off the sharks. Dennis Haskins is our villain and he is pretty good playing the role.

As long as you go into this movie knowing you are gonna get a low budget Sharkploitation film you should enjoy it. There is much much worst Sharkploitation films. But there is also much better Sharkploitation films. This one at least realizes it has a crappy premise and runs with that.

Trailer Park Shark gets a C+.

31 Days of Horror 2020 Day 02 Evil Bong High 5

TITLE-Evil Bong High 5
SOURCE-Tubi TV streaming service

Well at least this time the movie is over an hour. Which I hope means we get a full plot. Rabbit,Larnell,Sarah and Velicity are stuck in Bong World. But Rabbit thinks he has figured a way out. He has created a new way of life called Nothing Head. When he empty's his mind he has access to great powers.

But before he can use his new powers to escape the Bong World,EeBee shows up and says she is sending Larnell,Rabbit and Gingerdead Man to the real world. Where they have to make a shitpile of money in a short amount of time. If they don't EeBee's evil women,played by Pornstar Skin Diamond and some generic looking blonde lady,will pleasure Sarah and Velicity to death.

Now back in the real world Larnell,Rabbit and Gingerdead Man open up a headshop,kinda like Larnell and the guys had in part 3. And try to make the money by selling EeBee's magic weed.

This just leads to various people coming in to buy weed and what amounts to short skits. We get appearances from Hambo,Joe Cracker,The Gook and his lady and others.

The guys,well 2 guys and a killer animated cookie,don't make the money in time. But Rabbit manages to use his new powers to stop EeBee. And it ends setting us up for the next installment of what is now Full Moon's second biggest franchise,of course Puppet Master is their biggest franchise

Ok so this is better than the previous film. But it ain't great. Pretty much unless you just gotta see every Full Moon film I would say stream this on Tubi TV or maybe luck into a DVD copy for cheap.

Just like the last Evil Bong film a good chunk of this movie feels like an advertisment for the Full Moon website.

Evil Bong High 5 gets a C-.