Cruel Summer (2021)

A group of college students steal the key to a house for sale so they can have a murder mystery weekend. They even print up invitations in advance. Since the theme is the 80’s, Heather insists they leave their phones at home, but the others think they need one in case of an emergency. Heather’s not the brightest bulb so she says no.

Caretaker Vince is surprised to see kids at the empty house, but he buy’s their story of being the owner’s niece.  He tells them the only other people around are mechanic Gunnar and nosy neighbor Bill.  You’d think the kids would be discreet since they have no right to be in the house, but they’re noisy enough to bother Bill.

If you’re wondering who the murderer is, they make no secret about it.  When Gunnar gets out of work, he kills a guy whose car broke down. Then he kills a father and daughter on a walk, a couple who ran out of gas, and Bill. After this, he heads towards the partying kids and the cops investigating the noise complaints.  There’s a lot of missing flyers up in town so apparently he does this often. 

No one has any self preservation.  They don’t fight back and only one victim tries to get away. When Gunnar walks onto the porch, Doug thinks it’s Robert wearing a mask which makes no sense.  Robert is thin and tall with shoulder length hair.  Gunnar is fat, the same height as Doug and has a crew cut.

The characters spend a lot of time complaining.   The cops complain about Bill calling them.  The patrol officers complain about having to investigate. The couple complains about running out of gas.  The neighbor complains about the noise. The kids complain about Bill and Victor.   It never ends. 

It’s hard to feel any sympathy for the kids. They’re guilty of breaking and entering, plus when Barb and Heather are looking for Victor, they go inside his unlocked home, go through his stuff, and Barb wants to steal some of it.  These kids are jerks.

Ridiculous dialogue

I heard a ruckus. Hello? There’s a ruckus going on.

Felisha: Did you fall in?

Doug: I can assure you that when I’m done you’ll be the second.

The 80s party with generic clothing that doesn’t scream 80s

A cop has disappeared? Be wary of this town

This clothing would pass for 70s

Who saves only the headlines of articles?

Why did Heather’s dad freak out when he saw this?  Did 
 he know they were breaking into the house to have a party?

They’d be unable to use this as a slingshot with the drawer open

Killdozer (1974)

While doing construction on an island 200 miles off the coast of Africa, a strange blue light goes from a meteorite into a bulldozer that’s trying to move it. After this, Kelly the foreman has trouble controlling  the machine and Mack gets fatal radiation burns from seeing the blue light.

When Kelly tries to drive the bulldozer the next day, it seems to have a mind of its own.  He cuts the hydraulic lines to make it stop and tows it back to base camp to have the mechanic look at it.  Nothing appears to be wrong with it so he fixes the hydraulic lines. But when Beltran gets in the drivers seat, the bulldozer takes off. Later they find Beltran’s body.  

With two of the six dead, Kelly starts to think Mack was right and the blue light did something to the machine.  While the others are skeptical, Dutch says machines can’t run by themselves.  Soon it’s a battle between the four men left and the slow crawling, yet stealthy and tricky bulldozer.

It’s not the most exciting film, but it’s got a great title and where else can you see a bull dozer try to take out a construction crew.

Robert Uriah is the first victim

Nice font

Killdozer attack!

A tiny jeep doesn’t stand a chance

Oh the humanity!

Listening for killdozer

Scream of the Wolf (1974)

When several people are killed in what seems to be an animal attack, Sheriff Bell asks John, a hunter, to help with the investigation.  John says the track are odd. They start out as four tracks, but then end up only two, and the weigh appears to be much heavier once they are walking on two feet.  They bring gods, but they lose the scent once the tracks turn into a biped.

John looks to his good friend Byron for help, but Byron can’t be bothered. He thinks fear is good for the townsfolk. They’re too boring and fear of death makes them more alive.  Okay weirdo.  

John’s girlfriend Sandy thinks Byron is a creep.  Later Sandy is attacked at home by an animal and begins to believe Byron is behind it. She tells John she believes Byron is a werewolf.  John is not amused.

Things are going to get worse before they get better, and no one believes there’s a werewolf even though it might explain those tracks. This movie was made by Dan Curtis, who did the 60s soap opera Dark Shadows. The music is done by Robert Cobert, who also did music for that show.  The movie features Peter Graves, Clint Walker and Jo Ann Pflug. 

Demon Cop (1990)

This movie is a confusing mess. A doctor at an asylum says he’s going to tell us the story of his patient. A man runs down the street. Cut to his feet running quickly and then two other feet lumbering along. I don’t think the first guy needs to be that concerned, but he runs into a car and rolls across the hood before sprinting off. 

The next day two cops are assigned to investigate some gang murders, which I guess are related to the guy from the night before. They aren’t happy about being on the case. They interrogate some people and we find out there is a man named Spongey who got beat up.

Meanwhile Horst aka Bloodhound calls in a warning to the radio station. It’s not aired since they don’t broadcast warnings from random strangers. Horst dictates to a tape recorder, stumbling over the dialogue as he goes, and prompting you to wonder why they didn’t bother to reshoot the scene. 

I have no idea what’s going on and it doesn’t clarify things when there is a close up of a man’s eyes while a male and female voice talk in an echo chamber. Is it in his head? Is he crazy? Then we see video of a woman. So he’s remembering something that happened to him?

We learn that Edward is a Vietnam vet who lost his wife and child.  He used to be a probation officer and now he just feels like killing. He’s got a girlfriend who keeps her own 8x10 glossy head shot by her bed.

Apparently a transfusion from infected blood can make the recipient seek vengeance for wrong doings. The illness is elevated at half moon and by full moon they’re a demon. You can’t destroy the demon, but you can stop him.  Then they say there is a special weapon to destroy its heart… so you can destroy it?

This movie is a confusing mess. Often I had no idea what was going on.  Multiple characters flub their lines and the filming continues. When the demon is shot, he starts singing.  Why? And why does his girlfriend have an 8x10 glossy of herself next to her bed?

Ridiculous dialogue

Your station became a legitimate accomplice to murder last night.

You didn’t get that knot on the onion by beating up on Spongey, right?

Suppose you and the other jive asses got people pissed off enough to become vigilantes.

If you really have the American public’s beset interest at heart, why hide behind some penny ante name like Bloodhound?

Someone’s been living there like Goldilocks without the three bears.

As sick as he is, he has sense enough to try to keep clean.

The doctor is going to tell us a story, and block his own light

The credits are chalk on a brick wall in a hard to read font

Demon cop

Nothing award about this

The glasses out of the late 70s

Look at this as you listen to a man and woman talk

Why does she have her own head shot by her bed?

Demon cop and his odd physique

This wheelchair shot made me laugh.

Curse of the Black Widow (1977)

Mark Higby is hired by Leigh Lockridge to investigate the murder of her fiancé Frank.  The bartender and a patron say a woman named Victoria asked Frank to help her start her car. Later they heard a scream and found him dead in the parking lot.

The police suspect Leigh. Her first husband vanished on a cruise and now her fiancé is dead.  The autopsy reports he has chest wounds and was completely drained of blood. Maybe the police should rethink their Leigh is the murderer theory.

While Lt. Conti says to keep things under wraps, Mark gets some information from Rags, who tells him there have been other deaths with this same M.O.  He gives him the name of a witness, who tells Mark he’s sick of being harassed and laughed at, but Mark assures him there’s nothing funny about a murder.  When the man says he saw a giant spider, Mark laughs.

Rags tells him there is a legend about a curse that goes through the female members of a blood line.  It can lie dormant for years until one is bitten by a spider, at which point she will occasionally turn into a spider during a  full moon.

Mark starts digging into the Lockridge family and finds the father was a flying enthusiastic who died in a plane crash. His wife surived and gave birth to twin daughters at the crash site. When she was found a few days later, one of the girls was covered in bites and was comatose for a week. Dun dun duh!

This made for TV movie is tame, but amusing. I don’t recall ever hearing a story about a person who turns into a spider during a full moon. It makes me want other movies with ridiculous back stories to explain turning into oversized creatures in the full moon.

Ridiculous dialogue

Once bitten by the spider, the woman periodically - but only during the cycle of the full moon - makes the transition into an incredibly large spider. 

What’s this? A giant web?

The family is referred to as Lockridge,
but the credits say Lockwood. 

Runaway (1973)

The ski train is heading back down the mountain and engineer Holly talks about how he’s been doing this run for years and is going to retire. Uh oh, that’s not a good sign.  Before you know it, the air brakes aren’t working and the train’s speed is increasing.

Meanwhile let’s meet the passengers.  Les is a ski bum who tries to get everything for free, utilizing such methods as hitting on wealthy women in hopes they’ll pay for his vacation or stealing someone’s train ticket. Ellen and her husband are planing to get divorced. John is with his young son who was afraid of something I can’t remember, maybe skiing.  There are some college students and a few professors making a racket, shouting and banging on things as if they’re drums.  Student Carol is declaring her love to Professor Dunn,  asking him to say he loves her and to sit with her. Dunn looks uncomfortable and brushes her off.

Based on these stereotypes, we can assume Les will grow as a person and stop thinking only of himself. Ellen and her husband will reconcile.  John’s son will learn to be brave and Carol will be rebuffed with extreme prejudice during the crisis.

Since the brakes fail within the first fifteen minutes, you wonder’s what sort of disaster is waiting for the rest of the movie. Well it’s mostly interpersonal disaster and a lot of people getting down on the floor to brace for a curve they’re going to hit at 60 mph.  Holly thinks he can make it but the guys in the office don’t believe him.  But damn it Holly’s been doing this run for years.  Plans include trying to use handbrakes or a faster train to catch up to them and attempt to help them brake.

This is a 1970s tv movie, it’s formulaic, and I’m all in. 

Ridiculous dialogue

Carol: I did it because you’re alone.  I don’t like it, being alone.

Les: That’s dumb.

Holly: We’ll try the emergency brakes in the coaches. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try the hand brake.  If that doesn’t work, by god, we’ve got a runaway coming off this mountain.

Les: I’m gonna be ready. I’m gonna make it. You run around pulling the shades, not me.

I like the graphic

Smarmy Les putting his arm around a woman who appears to have
money and suggesting they take a ski trip where she pays their way

The panic begins

Les proving he’s the weasel by hiding and refusing to help

The sketchy idea of hanging off the car to look at the brakes
while someone holds onto your jacket to keep you from falling

Smiles and horror in the same shot

Hurrah! Let’s mob the crippled train

The Elevator (1974)

Disaster movies follow a predictable pattern. Introduce a number of unrelated characters, stick them together in a stressful situation which could kill them all and see who gets out alive. Who will fall apart? Who will overcome their fears? Who will admit their flaws and become a better person? Who will reveal they are pretending to be something they’re not?

A Brinks truck makes a delivery to an office in a high rise, not realizing robbers know where they’re headed. Once the truck leaves, Pete and Eddie head upstairs while getaway driver Irene stays in the parking garage.  When Pete kills the man in the office, Eddie is upset but Pete says he saw their faces so it had to be done. 

As they try to act nonchalant and leave tthe scene of the crime, they find a number of people waiting for the elevator.  Eddie and the money get on, but there is no room for Pete who frantically asks Eddie for the briefcase full of money. When the doors close, Pete runs down to the garage to wait for Eddie but he never arrives. If only the workmen had used the freight elevator for their seven hundred pound safe, the bolts would have held and there’d be no damage to the mechanism.

Stuck in the elevator with claustrophobic Eddie are the rest of our cast of characters.  Mrs. Kenyon is looking for a penthouse for her son.  Marvin is the leasing agent who works for the building and showed her the penthouse. Dr. Reynolds is having an affair with his secretary, and is now trapped with her and his wife.  Robert is a young man who is upset with his fragile mother for trying to control the inheritance from his father. 

Questions you’ll have are why was Pete hiding in the trunk of the car, rather than sitting inside it with Eddie and Irene? Or why didn’t Eddie get out of the elevator since Pete couldn’t get on? Why was 

The Magnificent Dead (2010)

The town of Rosewood is under consideration as a new stop on the railroad.  The townfolks are excited about the business it would bring and how much easier it would be to travel.  Everyone wants it except Jared, a rancher who doesn’t want the railroad on his land.  I’m not sure why the railroad needs to use his land, but he’s not having it.

Meanwhile an injured man is found outside the saloon and brought to a holding cell in the jail to await help. When a household servant brings him food, the man bites her. The Sheriff says the doctor should arrive soon to check the man and urges her to stay so her wound can be looked at as well. But the servant goes home and she falls ill.

The mayor hasinvited the railroad representatives to town to convince them to designate Rosewood as the new stop.  This makes Jared mean mad since he’s made it clear his land is not available.  He and his men come to town and dust the railroad reps who turn out to be mostly gunfighters.

When a new preacher arrives, he says he can help them convince Jared.  Then he suggests hiring a group of gunfighters in a nearby town who’ll take up the fight. The only issue is they’re lepers.  People aren’t too keen on bringing lepers to town but he assures them they won’t catch the disease.

The preacher and a couple of men ride out to ask the lepers if they’ll convince Jared of his selfishness.  The lepers agree but the next morning are nowhere in sight.  Surprisingly no one is suspicious of the three large, upright boxes in the back of the preachers wagon that he won’t let anyone get near. Or that the lepers aren’t in town when they arrive, even though the preacher said the lepers had gone ahead to scout the town.

The leper gunfighters show up that night for a town meeting. They tell everyone to stay in their houses at night and not to leave town during the day. Oh this doesn’t bode well for our townsfolk, especially since their leader is sounding like a cult leader with lines like, “Whoever believes in me though he were dead will have eternal life.”

The only reason I watched this was because the gunfighters were lepers, but that didn’t have much to do with anything. Also were they really lepers or was that a ruse to avoid telling people they were dead? Are they vampires? Zombies? Lepers? All three? It’s not great, but it is the only western leper horror movie I’ve seen.

Ridiculous dialogue

Man: Are these lawmen?

Preacher: No, they are lepers.

The horror of their malady adds to the fear that they strike in the hearts of their opponents.

Carl: This town hates me.

Father: I think it’s you Carl who hates this town.

He doesn’t look too bad for a leper

Oh no,he’s deteriorated a lot in the past 24 hours.

Yeah, it just got way worse

I Trapped the Devil (2019)

Mark and his wife Karen decide to visit his brother Steven. They haven’t seen him in a while and have been unable to get in touch. When they show up, the house is a mess and he’s tells them to leave.  Mark says he has as much right to be there as Steve does and they’ve driven all this way to see him.  Steve relents and lets them stay the night.

Mark feels like something is off and after dinner Steve takes him down to the basement.  There is a closed door and Mark hears a man asking to be let out. But Steve says it’s not a man. It’s the devil.   When Mark tells Karen, she says they can’t be involved in this, but Mark thinks if they let the man go and pay him money, then they can get Steve some help.

Mark and Steve argue about if the man is the devil. Steve shows mark the attic which is covered with a string graph.  Meanwhile Karen contemplates letting the man out of the basement and worries because the gun she saw in the bedroom is now missing.    

The main question is what does Mark do? What if he lets him out and he’s made the wrong choice? But I also had other questions that are not addressed.  How did Steve trap him? Why does he think he’s the devil? If he is actually the devil, shouldn’t he be smarter than to be trapped in a basement? And most importantly, shouldn’t the devil be able to escape from a locked room, or are locks his one weakness? He’s the king of darkness but as long as you can keep a door locked, you’ll be safe.

Overall I liked it. It’s more a psychological piece with a slow burn rather than straight horror. But while I liked it, I wasn’t fond of the ending.  At first I thought, oh that’s it? But the more I think about it, it’s making me question some things.

Black Santa (2023)

Twenty five years ago, Stephon and Blake were sent to a foster home after their crackhead mother couldn’t take care of them.  Their foster mother kept them chained to the floor. When Blake wouldn’t stop crying, a doctor came to the house and shot him up with something which killed him.  They covered it up by saying Blake had a seizure. There was no investigation.

Twenty five years later, Stephon dresses up as Santa and kidnaps his mom, foster mother, doctor, CPS worker and a small child. The child was in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

As he’s in the middle of torturing everyone, his girlfriend calls and says she’s on her way to his place and they need to talk. It turns out she’s pregnant. So he slips her a mickey, brings her to the garage and ties her up with his other victims.  She was in the foster home with him, but doesn’t recognize the others.

Unlike Silent Night, Deadly Night, this isn’t any fun.  It’s mostly poorly done torture on people tied to chairs in a large garage or storage space.  The only fun part is the aging is accomplished by slapping some ill fitting gray wigs on the actors.

Stalled (2013)

During an office Christmas party, the janitor heads into the women’s bathroom to fix the fan.  While he’s in a stall, two women enter and he’s afraid to come out.  He listens to them trash talk about another woman and about the charity auction where they’ll wear bikinis to try to get the highest bids.

When one woman turns into a zombie and bites the other, he realizes he’s trapped.  Soon more zombies have stumbled into the restroom and they can’t figure out how to get out because the door opens in. 

Almost all of the movie takes place in the bathroom and is mostly one man and zombies. There does turn out to be someone else in another stall but we just hear her voice and her face is never shown. This probably would have made a better short film. It’s a horror comedy but not really funny or scary. 

Krampus vs. Bigfoot (2021)

Apparently Bigfoot works on a space ship, his friends refer to him as Foot, he looks like a gorilla and his voice sounds like Fat Albert. He works with Van Helsing, who’s gotten crew member Karli pregnant. Van Helsing is a jerk and a martyr.  He leaves the ship because he says Karli would be better off without him.

Krampus is in another space ship with his minions. So you’d think this would be awesome but it’s super boring.  It’s a bunch of CGI with voice actors and generic background music. 

 

Ridiculous dialogue

All she cares about now is that baby I put inside her.

Generic Space

Everyone wears helmets inside the ship

I thought this was a gorilla till they called him Foot
and he mentioned he’s a Sasquatch

 

A Christmas Horror Story (2015)

 This anthology has the stories running concurrently, rather than doing them one by one. The wrap around story is a DJ played by William Shatner.

1. Santa’s elves get ill and become zombies who try to kill Santa.
2. High school kids break into a school during Christmas vacation to investigate the year old murder of two students, not realizing what killed them is still around.
3. A crappy family visits their rich aunt to ask for money, but when their shitty son purposely breaks a Krampus statue, it unleashes evil.
4. A family trespass to cut down a tree for Christmas and choose the one property where creatures can assume the shape of a child.

Production is decent but most of the characters are jerks so you don’t care about them.

Ridiculous dialogue 

Molly: I get that he’s creepy but that doesn’t mean he’s a killer.

Dylan: then what’s he doing here on Christmas Eve?

The Christmas Tapes (2022)

While celebrating a quiet Christmas Eve, a family hears a knock on the door and finds a man holding a large present. He says his car broke down and his cell phone is dead so he wants to use their phone.  No one is suspicious except teen girl Rachel who thinks he’s weird and wonders why her parents are ignoring the stranger danger rules.

Her fears turn out to be valid when she comes out of the bathroom and her entire family is tied up.The stranger says watching regular Christmas movies is boring so he’s brought his own. 

1. Travel Buggies - Dave and Jess have been posting videos for years and have 200 subscribers. Dave’s tired of the manufactured experience all for content. He wants to stop filming and enjoy each other’s company.  Jess disagrees but says after this trip, maybe they can take a break. When her content doesn’t go as planned, she gets mad at Dave and blames him for not helping plan the trip. Things might have been okay if earlier in the day they hadn’t done a ritual next to a scarecrow calling on Hans Trap who snaps the neck of nasty kids.
2. The Christmas Gift - Dean is claustrophobic but since his kids only pay attention to YouTube, he’s going to ship himself to them in a giant box. He’ll film everything and make an unboxing video. Freight companies won’t ship humans so he finds someone on the internet who agrees to help. The guy shows up dressed as Santa and asks to stop by his own house to talk to Mrs. Santa. The two convince Dean to get into the box there rather wait until he’s a block from his house. Oh Dean, why would you ever trust a stranger to lock you in a box, especially when you are claustrophobic?
3. Untitled - a dating service puts a chip in a client’s head, tells them to deliver a package to a hotel room, and that they might see things that don’t exist due to the chip.  If they fail to deliver the package, they’ll die.
4. Christmas Spirit - A couple buys a house but the moving company can’t bring their furniture until after Christmas. The wife finds decorations in the closet and puts them on the mantle. Odd things happen so they call someone to investigate. He sends over a weird paranormal investigator who makes them so uncomfortable they don’t want him in their house.

It would have been so much more enjoyable if when the stranger brought out the VHS tapes, the family no longer had a VCR. Sadly they still have one hooked up in the living room. I noticed IMDB lists this as both horror and comedy, which is surprising since it wasn’t funny.

 

Christmas Cruelty (2013)

Aka O’Hellage Jul!

The movie opens with some horrific murders, and then transitions to the characters we’ll be watching for the rest of the film. Unfortunately they're really unlikable. We watch them get drunk, get ready for Christmas, and insult each other.  One guy hates women and talks about how all his girlfriends have been horrible, overlooking the fact that he’s the common denominator. 

Once in awhile they cut to the killer who sits at his desk at work, or goes home and has dinner with his family.  The editing is bizarre. In some scenes there are constant cuts. Sometimes they cut to a slightly closer shot of the same thing and then back.  It might happen six times in a single sentence. It’s annoying.

It’s not fun or interesting, everyone is unlikable, and you’ll feel yucky when it’s over.