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Cat People, Nightmare, and Tales from the Quadead Zone

Cat People – 1982, US, 118m. Director: Paul Schrader.

Nightmare – 1981, Italy/US, 98m. Director: Romano Scavolini.

Tales from the Quadead Zone – 1987, US, 62m. Director: Chester N. Turner.

CAT PEOPLE (1982) Virginal Irena, orphaned as a child, travels to New Orleans to meet her brother Paul. Irena is immediately put off by his strange behavior and the unnatural way in which he touches her. That’s because Irena is played by Nastassja Kinski, one of cinema’s great beauties, and Paul is played by Malcolm McDowell, whose frightening performance in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange pegged the actor as the go-to psychopath for years. A prostitute is nearly mauled to death by a black leopard, which—after being captured and caged at the local zoo—rips off the arm of an employee. Through this bloodshed, Irena learns the leopard is actually Paul—and she, like her brother, belongs to an ancient race of incestuous people who transform into felines when sexually aroused. This bit of news spells doom for Irena’s budding romance with zoologist Oliver (John Heard), who hopes to bed the woman before movie’s end—and to supply moviegoers with titillating scenes of Kinski in various stages of undress. Cat People is by no means a mindless exploitation vehicle, but a thoughtful reimagining of Jacques Tourneur’s classic 1942 scare show. As with the original, the on-screen violence is played down in favor of suspense, although there are a couple of brutal deaths. The screenplay (by Alan Ormsby) drops the ball by offering a needlessly detailed historical account of the cat people, turning the mystery into a bunch of malarkey. Good, nonetheless. B (Not currently streaming.)

NIGHTMARE (1981) (AKA: Nightmares in a Damaged Brain) Schizophrenic psychopath George Tatum (Baird Stafford) suffers from lurid and violent night terrors but is released from an institution after being declared cured. George subsequently goes to a Times Square peep show and is triggered by the sight of sexualized women because, as a boy, he saw his parents having sadomasochistic sex. George ditches his court-appointed psychiatric meeting, steals a car, and drives to Florida with the intention of murdering his high-strung ex-wife (Sharon Smith) and children. When he isn’t graphically slicing people up, he’s sniveling on the phone to his shrink. In a completely unbelievable scene, the police try to bully George’s nine-year-old son (C.J. Cooke) into admitting his involvement in the brutal death of a woman George himself killed hours earlier. Why the cops or George’s doctors (who’ve been frantically looking for him since his disappearance) don’t connect the dots is just one of many glaring plot holes in the scattershot screenplay. But Nightmare wasn’t made with logic in mind. Director Romano Scavolini focuses mostly on George leering at his soon-to-be victims and the gory aftermaths, which are gruesome and convincing. Tom Savini admitted to having been a consultant on the film but is credited on-screen as Special Effects Director. How’s that for false advertising? Ugly and dumb, but entertaining in a sleazy train wreck way. Perhaps the only slasher movie in existence to reference Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up. B– (Not currently streaming.)

TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE (1987) A woman (Shirley L. Jones) entertains her invisible ghost child by reading two bizarre stories from a book called “Tales from the Quadead Zone.” The first tale centers on an impoverished religious family that solves its hunger issues by eliminating family members with a rifle. In the sophomore segment, a bitter man (Keefe L. Turner) steals his brother’s dead body and humiliates the corpse by dressing it in a clown costume. This is followed by an endless monologue in which Turner expresses his childhood woes of playing second fiddle to his sibling, with predictably gruesome results. The movie circles back to Jones, who’s forced to kill her abusive husband after he pitches a fit over her obsession with their deceased child. At times it’s difficult to tell what’s going on because most of the dialogue is inaudible. That’s not unusual with shot-on-video films, but it’s especially bad in Tales from the Quadead Zone. Other examples of poor production quality are the muddy picture (the movie was shot on a camcorder), sloppy editing, and dollar store special effects. The worst part of this mess is the closing credits, which tells viewers, “Tales from the Quadead Zone will return!” Luckily, audiences were spared this promise. Because of its ultra-rare availability on physical media, the film has become a collector’s item within the VHS circuit. D– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

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Contamination, Death Ship, and Fatal Games

Contamination – 1980, Germany/Italy, 95m. Director: Luigi Cozzi.

Death Ship – 1980, Canada/UK, 93m. Director: Alvin Rakoff.

Fatal Games – 1984, US, 88m. Director: Michael Elliot.

CONTAMINATION (1980) (AKA: Alien Contamination) A cargo ship filled with egg-like spores drifts into New York harbor with its crew dead. A government-sanctioned science team is brought in to study the bacterial eggs, which react to heat by releasing an acidic fluid that—when in contact with people—makes them explode (scenes of flying intestines and viscera are all shown in gloriously gratuitous slow motion). While viewing a video of what looks like the inside of a lava lamp, the scientists come to the conclusion the eggs are not from this planet and might have something to do with a failed Mars expedition two years earlier. With the help of astronaut Ian McCulloch (Zombie), the scientists discover a conspiracy of brainwashed humans being used by an alien intelligence to move the eggs around the world. This Italian trash epic is such a blatant rip-off of Alien that trying to take it seriously will result in a poor experience for the viewer. The film is more of a showcase for some spectacularly awful writing and acting—Louise Marleau’s unconvincing performance as a scientist makes a piece of wood seem lively by comparison. With that in mind, Contamination becomes a harmless bit of cheesy entertainment that won’t disappoint fans who like their gore served with high levels of camp. B– (Currently streaming on Pluto TV and Tubi.)

DEATH SHIP (1980) A cruise liner is sunk by a rogue ship, leaving a small group of survivors adrift in the Atlantic. Their only chance for help is the appearance of a derelict, unmanned German war vessel—the same ship that caused their plight to begin with. Unfortunately for them the boat is haunted by the angry ghosts of its former Nazi occupants, which don’t waste any time in terrorizing the new passengers. One of the survivors is caught in rope and dunked into the freezing water within minutes of boarding; another develops pustules on her face after eating candy she finds in a cabin. The situation is made worse when an American sea captain (an anemic George Kennedy) becomes possessed by a Nazi specter and turns into a psychopath. This sounds like the product of someone who saw The Poseidon Adventure and The Amityville Horror on a double-bill, yet Death Ship isn’t nearly as exciting. The film has a brooding atmosphere and excellent set design, but weak characters and utter predictability sink it into the bowels of mediocrity. Nick Mancuso’s demise in a slimy pit of bones and rotting corpses is a highlight. C (Currently streaming on Prime and Tubi.)

FATAL GAMES (1984) The young athletes of Falcon Academy are being systematically slaughtered by a javelin-throwing psycho. The first to feel the killer’s wrath is impaled so hard her body is thrown and pinned against the gym wall. More people are run through with the extra-sharp spear, leaving the remaining survivors trying to figure out who has the motivation to bump off their friends. The obvious suspect is the hotheaded javelin trainee (Nicholas Love) who spends most of the film scowling, but like the majority of early-to-mid-eighties slashers, Fatal Games has a twist up its sleeve—one that Final Girl (and Elisabeth Shue lookalike) Lynn Banashek figures out all too late. Similar in theme to Graduation Day (1981) but not nearly as gratuitously violent, although there is ample nudity—nearly every central character is at some point without clothes. Olympics fetishists will rejoice! A tacky but harmless post-Friday the 13th slasher melodrama that tries more for suspense than outright gore, and mostly succeeds, especially during its fast-paced climax. Look for Linnea Quigley’s derrière in a brief scene. B– (Currently streaming on Shudder.)

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Beast of the Yellow Night, Demon of Paradise, and The Thirsty Dead

The Beast of the Yellow Night – 1971, Philippines/US, 87m. Director: Eddie Romero.

Demon of Paradise – 1987, Philippines, 87m. Director: Cirio H. Santiago.

The Thirsty Dead – 1974, Philippines/US, 88m. Director: Terry Becker.

THE BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT (1971) In 1946, soldiers are deployed into a Filipino forest where killer Joseph Langdon (John Ashley) has been hiding from authorities. On his deathbed, Langdon is confronted by Satan (Vic Diaz), who promises the murderer eternal life as long as he becomes Satan’s henchman. The next twenty-five years has Langdon possessing several different men in an effort to fulfill Satan’s intention to bring out mankind’s “inner evil”—but Langdon’s humanity begins to seep through with his latest host, an engineer married to a friendly but unhappy homemaker (Mary Wilcox). When Langdon rejects Satan’s plan, his master turns him into a deformed monster. Langdon goes about the streets ripping off the limbs of unlucky passersby and feasting on their glistening innards. It’s hard not to enjoy this camp semi-classic from the ceaselessly imaginative but financially strapped Eddie Romero (Beast of Blood). While not worth writing home about, the man was churning out one to two movies a year on shoestring budgets, and could always be relied on to make colorfully moronic epics. C+ (Currently streaming on Prime.)

DEMON OF PARADISE (1987) A beast-fish concoction created from toxic pollution emerges from the waters off a Hawaiian island—actually the Philippines, which would explain the consistently murky waters. The creature begins eating the island’s fishermen, which the owner (Laura Banks) of a Club Med-type resort uses as publicity to attract tourists, ensuring a ready-made buffet for the watery terror. Luckily, the island paradise has its very own herpetologist (Kathryn Witt) who’s hot on the case. This film’s lunchbox budget is rather obvious considering how often (or how little) we see the monster, which is intermixed with endless scenes of two-bit characters spouting mundane dialogue. The writers were clearly not inspired to create any sense of originality as Demon of Paradise borrows heavily from Creature from the Black Lagoon, Jaws, Piranha, Humanoids from the Deep, and even Bog! Witt deserves a better role, and the viewer deserves a better film. D (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

THE THIRSTY DEAD (1974) A bikini-clad go-go dancer is kidnapped from a strip club in Manila by men in ceremonial robes. The Keystone Cops think her boyfriend is responsible, despite a city-wide news bulletin about a wave of disappearances in the area. The women were abducted by a cult of New Age flakes who live in some jungle caves and worship the disembodied head of a man named Raul. One of the abducted (Jennifer Billingsley) is chosen as the new High Priestess, while the others are bled and used in a ritual that grants immortality. Enlightened cult member John Considine falls for Billingsley, and the two escape but face the inevitable when Considine passes the “Ring of Age” and withers into a winkled prune. The abundance of beehives and flipped bob hairstyles gives the film a dated feel, as do the gaudy costumes and a musical score that would sound more appropriate in an episode of Dragnet. The lush green wilderness gives the film an exotic backdrop, but that’s not enough to make it worth sitting through this nondescript American/Filipino co-production. C– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

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Curse of the Crimson Altar, I Dismember Mama, and Zombie Holocaust

Curse of the Crimson Altar – 1968, UK, 85m. Director: Vernon Sewell.

I Dismember Mama – 1972, US, 82m. Director: Paul Leder.

Zombie Holocaust – 1980, Italy, 84m. Director: Frank Martin (Marino Girolami).

CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR (1968) (AKA: The Crimson Cult) In search of his missing brother, antiques dealer Manning (Mark Eden) drives to a posh country house called Craxted Lodge, which just happens to be located in Manning’s ancestral hometown. Upon his arrival, Manning meets the place’s owner, Morley (Christopher Lee), who insists he’s never heard of Manning’s brother. He eventually learns the place was once ruled by a witch called Lavinia Morley (Barbara Steele) who was burned at the stake but now dwells in some dusty dungeon/torture chamber and surrounds herself with bare-breasted women and a half-naked man adorned in chains and bikini underwear. No, this isn’t an Ed Wood film but a half-baked attempt at trying to create a serious (and unofficial) adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story, “Dreams in the Witch House,” by Doctor Who writers Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln. You’d be better off sticking with the original Lovecraft tale. Boris Karloff makes brief appearances, but even his presence can’t save this movie from descending into complete boredom. C– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

I DISMEMBER MAMA (1972) Within the first few minutes of I Dismember Mama, mother-fixated Albert (Zooey Hall, who’s awful) tries to strangle a nurse at the mental hospital he’s locked away in. Albert is a psychopathic nut job who believes his Mommy Dearest is nothing but a whore who, according to him, “would have been stoned during the Middle Ages.” Albert’s doctor can no longer give him the kind of help he needs and wishes to send the madman to a maximum security facility. It doesn’t matter because Albert kills an orderly, escapes the hospital, and murders his mother’s housekeeper. In a completely tasteless subplot, Albert kidnaps the woman’s young daughter, Annie (Geri Reischl), and grooms the child to be his bride. Annie ultimately realizes Albert is a creep and serves him a much deserved comeuppance by tossing him out a window. An unpleasant and leering film, I Dismember Mama‘s best trait is its bogus moniker—the movie’s real title is Poor Albert and Little Annie, which was most likely changed by thirsty distributors who paired it on a double bill with the equally lifeless Blood Spattered Bride. Director Paul Leder is the father of Hollywood filmmaker Mimi Leder (Deep Impact). Tacky and trite. F (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST (1980) (AKA: Doctor Butcher, M.D., Zombi Holocaust) A hospital orderly responsible for a series of cadaver mutilations is caught red-handed (literally) and throws himself out a window—the dummy’s arm flies off on impact. New York anthropologist Lori (Alexandra Delli Colli) believes the maniac stemmed from a remote Indonesian island where cannibalism and human sacrifices are still culturally accepted. Joined by a health inspector (Ian McCulloch), Lori travels to the island, where they discover a backwoods doctor is turning the locals into brainwashed zombies which—along with the jungle cannibals—offer the viewer ample amounts of blood and guts. One of Lori’s porters is impaled on a bamboo bed of spikes and then eviscerated by the cannibals who stuff their faces with the viscera as if they just sat down to a bowl of spaghetti and meat sauce. This film was clearly not made for vegetarians. Other barf-bag delights include a man getting his eyes gouged out and a zombie’s face getting pulverized by an outboard motor. While obviously fake, the gore effects are grisly and nonstop. For most of its length, Zombie Holocaust looks like an exact copy of Zombie (1979), but maybe that’s because director Frank Martin (a.k.a. Marino Girolami) used the same sets, locations, and even the same actors as the Lucio Fulci film. Being under the tutelage of Fulci definitely served Girolami well, as Zombie Holocaust is a crude but highly entertaining piece of Italian splatter. B (Currently streaming on Plex.)

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Blood Feast 2, City of Blood, and Spontaneous Combustion

Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat – 2002, US, 92m. Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis.

City of Blood – 1987, South Africa, 93m. Director: Darrell Roodt.

Spontaneous Combustion – 1990, US, 97m, 127m (rough cut). Director: Tobe Hooper.

BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL U CAN EAT (2002) Nearly forty years after he “revolutionized” the modern splatter movie with Blood Feast, Herschell Gordon Lewis returned with this absurd sequel about the grandson (J.P. Delahoussaye) of Fuad Ramses—the psycho killer from the 1963 film—aptly named Fuad Ramses III. How’s that for continuity? Young Fuad resurrects his grandfather’s catering company and, naturally, becomes possessed by the diabolical spirit of Ishtar, the Egyptian god to whom Fuad the First was sacrificing most of Miami’s nubile young women. Lewis manages to capture the overzealous spirit of the original and offers up several gore-drenched laughs throughout. Unlike the first Blood Feast (which was unintentionally campy), this sequel packs on the gaudy splatstick with such vigor audiences can’t help but view it as nothing more than enjoyable garbage. Despite its poverty row production values, Blood Feast 2 would make a fun double feature with the equally ridiculous Blood Diner, which itself is a send-up of Lewis’s work. B– (Currently not streaming.)

CITY OF BLOOD (1987) After a brief and confusing prologue—a man is pursued by the malevolent spirit of some sort of masked tribesman in a scene that was obviously inspired by The Evil Dead—we’re introduced to rundown medical examiner Henderson (Joe Stewardson), who gets involved in the investigation of a series of prostitute murders in Johannesburg, South Africa. Those victims were also stalked and slaughtered by ghostly tribal persons in masks and wielding spears. Meanwhile, a prominent Black activist is accidentally murdered by the police. To keep protestors from rioting, the government uses Henderson’s death certificate to suggest the man died of a heart attack—but Henderson would rather be bedding a hooker he’s been pursuing as part of his investigation. What all of this has to do with anything is something you’ll have to endure 93 minutes to find out. The question is do you really want to? If I have any say in the matter, I would highly recommend not wasting a minute on this interminable snoozer. D+ (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION (1990) All-American couple Brian and Peggy Jones participate in a government atomic weapons test project circa 1956—”Only You” by The Platters is playing on a background radio. But there’s a hitch: Peggy (Stacy Edwards) was pregnant during the last test and, come nine months later, produces a baby boy who can send nearby persons up in flames when he feels threatened. Thirty-something years later, the child is now a college teacher (Brad Dourif) who somehow doesn’t see a connection between his temper, constant migraines, and the fact people around him are burning to death under mysterious circumstances. Dourif eventually realizes he’s a ticking human time bomb when his rage culminates in his arm erupting in a geyser of blood and flames. Aside from a good performance by Dourif, there’s nothing particularly special about this Firestarter clone—the characters aren’t interesting, the story goes nowhere, and the pyrotechnical FX aren’t anything you haven’t seen a million times before. Another in a long line of disappointing post-Poltergeist films by Tobe Hooper. C (Currently not streaming.)

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Confessions of a Serial Killer, Dawn of the Dead, and Late Night with the Devil

Confessions of a Serial Killer – 1985, US, 89m. Director: Mark Blair.

Dawn of the Dead – 1978, Italy/US, 127m, 156m (extended cut). Director: George A. Romero.

Late Night with the Devil – 2024, US, 93m. Director: Cameron Cairnes, Colin Cairnes.

CONFESSIONS OF A SERIAL KILLER (1985) Daniel Ray Hawkins (Robert A. Burns) is a prolific killer driving through Texas. After slashing a woman’s throat on the side of the road, Daniel is captured by police, interrogated, and confesses to murdering over 200 victims. Daniel’s first is a prostitute he bludgeons to death after she turns him down for sex—this charming scene is followed by the requisite childhood trauma prologue, in which little Daniel is forced to watch his mother have sex with strange men. The majority of the film’s nonlinear flashbacks offers the viewer a possible account of real life murderer Henry Lee Lucas, who Confessions of a Serial Killer is modeled after. This is especially obvious when Moon Lewton (Dennis Hill), a gay hillbilly, participates in Daniel’s killing spree. Despite having been made and released a year before Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Confessions of a Serial Killer has been unfairly criticized as a rip-off. It’s by no means a good movie and it lacks Henry‘s brutal intensity (as well as Michael Rooker’s charisma), but the film is undeniably well made and acted, and its depiction of violence is treated with a little more realism than your typical slasher flick—a sequence in which a teenager stumbles upon Daniel’s and Moon’s living quarters as they slice up a woman with a chainsaw is both suspenseful and horrific without being graphic. Not nearly as exploitative as the much-ballyhooed miniseries, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. B– (Currently streaming on Tubi.) 

DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) Civilization has collapsed in the weeks after the initial zombie outbreak in Night of the Living Dead (1968). The last remaining TV news stations are going off the air, with a Philadelphia-based network falling apart at the seams. One of the employees discovers the station was knowingly airing false information on local rescue shelters just to keep the panicked viewers tuned in and the ratings high—a darkly humorous bit, one of many that underlines George Romero’s partially satirical screenplay. In an effort to escape large cities, a quartet of people steal a helicopter and fly to a more secluded part of the country. The gang eventually comes upon a massive indoor shopping center, which becomes a haven of food and shelter once they secure the place from the walking dead. As time goes by, the survivors find the mall too ideal to leave, ultimately making the place their private “island paradise,” a self-contained bubble of false security and happiness. That is until a murderous society of bikers crashes the party. Replacing the nightmarish atmosphere of Night with more of a black humor vibe, Dawn of the Dead encapsulates Romero at his prime as a filmmaker. The script works as both a social commentary on consumerism as well as a colorful comic book adventure, mixing comedy and suspense extremely well—despite its two-hour run-time, the film is breathlessly paced and delivers almost nonstop action. Add to the pot well-written characters, Tom Savini’s trendsetting gore FX, and a pounding score by Dario Argento’s favorite rock band, Goblin, and you have one of the defining horror films of the 20th century. Followed by Day of the Dead and a remake. A+ (Currently not streaming.)

LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (2024) Seventies television personality Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) becomes a national celebrity with his quirky late night talk show but fails to garner Johnny Carson-like numbers. Taking time off after the untimely passing of his wife, Delroy plots his comeback by hosting a live 1977 Halloween Night special in which his guest, 13-year-old Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), is the sole survivor of a demonic cult that kidnapped children and committed mass suicide. The less you know about the plot the better, which makes it all the more disappointing to discover the filmmakers spilling nearly whole story details within the film’s brief prologue. The TV-show-within-the-film angle gives Late Night with the Devil an authentic and fun vibe, yet whenever the Jack Delroy show (named Night Owls) cuts to commercial, the actual movie switches gears (too often—perhaps to pad out the running time) by offering behind-the-scenes exposition that viewers could have easily assessed themselves. An enjoyable but ultimately missed opportunity. C+ (Currently streaming on Shudder.)

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Bug, Popcorn, and Zombie Island Massacre

Bug – 2006, Germany/US, 102m. Director: William Friedkin.

Popcorn – 1991, Canada/US, 91m. Director: Mark Herrier.

Zombie Island Massacre – 1984, US, 88m. Director: John Carter.

BUG (2006) Damaged waitress Agnes (Ashley Judd), haunted by the disappearance of her child a decade earlier, fears for her safety (and sanity) when she learns of the release of her abusive ex-husband (Harry Connick Jr.) from prison. In need of some company, Agnes shacks up in a seedy motel room with a drifter named Peter (Michael Shannon), an AWOL soldier who was part of a secret government science project that infected him with microscopic bugs. Agnes allows Peter’s paranoia to “infect” her, and the two begin to develop mysterious skin rashes, which Peter says are caused by the bugs and must be cut out—in one harrowing scene, Peter removes several teeth with pliers. Ultimately, Peter and Agnes cover their room in tinfoil and bug zappers, fall in love, and the two realize they were just made for each other. An unconventional film (based on Tracy Letts’s stage play), Bug might have been ignored by audiences upon release, but proves a rewarding experience for the adventurous viewer. Judd sheds her Hollywood glamor (and clothes) to deliver a powerhouse performance. B (Currently streaming on Pluto TV.)

POPCORN (1991) A Charles Manson-like filmmaker named Lanyard Gates doesn’t take kindly to his critics and in retaliation kills his family on stage at a screening of his latest work—before burning down the theater. Fifteen years later, a group of film students holding an all-night horror movie marathon at the abandoned Dreamland theater are targeted by the apparently still-alive Gates, who turns the likenesses of his victims into masks in order to hide his Freddy Kruegeresque visage. Aspiring filmmaker Maggie (Jill Schoelen)—whose dreams bare a striking resemblance to Gates’s unfinished movie, Possessor—comes to the realization she’s Gates’s long lost daughter, and Daddy has returned to finish his cinematic masterpiece. Or has he? Style is something Popcorn has a lot of, which is good since the film doesn’t make a lick of sense and raises more questions than it answers. How does the killer seemingly obtain supernatural powers? Where did he get all of the advanced equipment to fashion his high-tech masks? In what world would a Southern California college’s film department only house seven students? The viewer can ultimately forgive the writers for their lack of logic because the film is entertaining and often suspenseful. An uncredited Alan Ormsby (who’s written everything from Paul Schrader’s Cat People to Porky’s II) directed the films-within-the-film, as well as wrote the screenplay under the name Tod Hackett—undoubtedly a loving tribute to Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust. B (Currently streaming on AMC/Prime and Shudder.)

ZOMBIE ISLAND MASSACRE (1984) Several nondescript couples on vacation are witness to a Caribbean voodoo ceremony where a dead body is brought back to life. One of the couples wonders off into the nearby jungle for some unscheduled nooky, but is killed off by an unseen figure with a wheezing problem. The rest of the vacationers get stranded when their bus breaks down, giving the mysterious wheezer prime opportunity to dispatch more victims. In a truly bogus twist, the noisy killer turns out not to be a zombie but a plot orchestrated by a local drug cartel—the voodoo ceremony was a ruse created to spike tourism. The biggest sin Zombie Island Massacre commits isn’t its misleading title but the listless plot that meanders to the point of exhaustion—the movie’s relatively scant 88 minutes feels like 128. Snails move faster than this snoozer. A Current Affair reporter Rita Jenrette bares her breasts, but her real claim to fame is ex-husband John Jenrette, a former politician involved in the Abscam scandal of the late seventies. D– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

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Leaving D.C., Plus an Interview with Director Joshua Criss

LEAVING D.C. (2012) Desperate to leave city life behind him, Mark Klein (writer/director Josh Criss) takes the plunge and moves from hectic Washington D.C. to serene Anole, West Virginia. Isolated country life agrees with Mark as he shares a semi-daily video diary with his friends to show off his seventeen acres of woodland—but his quiet homestead is interrupted when he finds a totem of animal bones in the nearby woods. This is followed by visitations of someone (or something) banging on trees and even playing a flute in the dead of night. Mark finds the strange incidents fascinating—until the noises increase in proximity, seemingly getting closer to his bedroom window. Criss wisely avoids the jump-scare cliches that have come with many found footage films in the wake of Paranormal Activity (2009) and instead places a lot of focus on Mark as a trustworthy character—a smart move considering Mark is only one of two people in the entire movie. Much like The Blair Witch Project, Leaving D.C. remains grounded in reality and uses backstory, mystery, and a reliance on the viewer’s imagination to create an atmosphere of isolation and dread. A smart and suspenseful slow burn. B+ (Currently available to rent on Prime.)

Below is a link to a Zoom interview I had with filmmaker/writer Joshua Criss in early 2021. He discusses his inspiration for Leaving D.C. and his love for truly unsettling horror films. Criss’s novel, The Moving Soul, is currently available on Amazon.

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Body Count, Night of the Demons, and Night Swim

Body Count – 1986, Italy, 87m. Director: Ruggero Deodato.

Night of the Demons – 1988, US, 90m. Director: Kevin Tenney

Night Swim – 2024, US, 98m. Director: Bryce McGuire.

BODY COUNT (1986) A group of monotonous friends on a wilderness excursion in the Colorado Rockies happen to pick the same campground where fifteen years earlier two teens were slaughtered by a masked madman. The land’s owner (David Hess) believes the place is haunted by the spirit of a Native American shaman, but when more bodies start to pile up it’s clear the killer is flesh and blood. A young woman is stabbed to death in an abandoned cabin while her boyfriend is thrown off a cliff—the actor has blond hair but his stunt double has black. The characters are too stupid to notice their missing friends, and the sheriff (Charles Napier) is too busy sleeping with Hess’s wife (Mimsy Farmer) to care. Two additional characters engage in sexual acrobatics in the same cabin, but the makers of this limp noodle have no idea how to film the scene and rob the viewer of some much needed excitement. Those lovers are dispatched, but not before the woman discovers the killer’s hideout, complete with the requisite head-in-a-jar gag. More people are chopped up while the synth-rock music blares on the soundtrack and director Ruggero Deodato loses any credibility he build around his cult classic, Cannibal Holocaust. Body Count is an Italian production masquerading as an American slasher (the video release even used the tagline, “In the tradition of Friday the 13th and Halloween“) created by people who don’t understand how American teens—or humans—behave. D– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

NIGHT OF THE DEMONS (1988) Teenagers looking for something to do on Halloween night are invited to a party at an abandoned, supposedly haunted funeral parlor. The teens are an assortment of typical horror movie personalities found throughout the eighties, including the virgin, the jock, the bimbo, the outcast, etc. Fortunately for the viewer, the material is written with care and the characters are played by a likable cast, most of whom become possessed, mangled, terrorized, and gored by demonic entities. Unfortunately for the viewer, the film takes too long to get going—but once it does, the story delivers plenty of imaginative makeup FX, though not many surprises. Linnea Quigley provides the best moment when she’s turned into a “lipstick demon” and shoves the tube into her nipple—this delightful scene is preceded by the gouging out of her date’s eyes as Quigley grunts, “Don’t look at me!” The plot is taken from The Evil Dead, and especially Demons, as the cast is slowly transformed into disfigured monsters who go about turning their friends into bloody stumps. Steve Johnson (Fright Night) supplied the top-notch special effects, but in the end, one can’t help wishing they were part of a better movie. C+ (Currently streaming on Freevee, Peacock, Shudder, Tubi.)

NIGHT SWIM (2024) Psycho screenwriter Robert Bloch once wrote an article about real horror lying in the out-of-place: a clown is just a clown—but a clown outside your house is horrifying. This seems to have been the idea behind Night Swim, in which a malevolent entity uses the mundanity of a suburban swimming pool as a place to hide. Unfortunately for the makers of Night Swim, the idea proves fruitless. After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an ex-baseball pro (Wyatt Russell, Kurt’s son) makes a fresh start with his family by moving into a picturesque two-story house complete with a backyard pool. At first the pool seems like the perfect form of physical therapy for Russell—until his disease miraculously begins healing and his children start seeing specters around the water. It turns out the pool is a conduit for a parasitic, supernatural being that possesses the sick and drags others to a watery grave filled with otherworldly spirits—sort of a soggy version of the Further from Insidious. As with most family-oriented ghost tales, love wins in the end, but that doesn’t keep the viewer from suffering at the hands of waterlogged writers who infuse the movie with predictable jump scares and a formulaic story structure. Stale and utterly uninvolving. D+ (Currently streaming on Peacock.)

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The Andy Baker Tape, Horror in the High Desert 2, and Tahoe Joe

The Andy Baker Tape – 2021, US, 70m. Director: Bret Lada.

Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva – 2023, US, 74m. Director: Dutch Marich.

Tahoe Joe – 2022, US, 88m. Director: Dillon Brown, Michael Rock.

THE ANDY BAKER TAPE (2021) Suave video blogger Jeff Blake (Bret Lada) sets out on a road trip with Andy (Dustin Fontaine), his wrong-side-of-the-tracks half-brother. Thinking it would make a great bonding experience—while at the same time creating content for his YouTube channel—Jeff records their adventure while sampling different foods around the Jersey Shore. Andy’s personality clashes with Jeff’s strict on-camera tactics, creating an air of tension between the two brothers. Their relationship crescendos when Andy decides to make his own home movies and reveals to Jeff what really happened to their deceased father. A well-produced, nicely acted, but ultimately predictable and disappointing found footage chiller that doesn’t go far enough. C (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT 2: MINERVA (2023) A series of bizarre disappearances and deaths within a small Nevada town is seemingly connected to the unsolved vanishing of explorer Gary Hinge a year earlier, documented in the first Horror in the High Desert (2021). Focusing their attention on circumstances surrounding the demise of geology student Minerva Sound (Solveig Helene), a film crew looks into the young woman’s last days, while staying in a remote trailer in the middle of some desert wilderness known as Cypress. Much like the first film, Horror in the High Desert 2 is structured as a faux-documentary and interweaves interviews with footage shot by neighbors, search-and-rescue teams, dash cams, and content from Minerva’s phone. There’s a videocassette found within the wall paneling of Minerva’s trailer that features some impressively unnerving footage reminiscent of the movie reels found by Ethan Hawke in Sinister. Details—such as that video tape and the climactic body cam footage of a volunteer fireman searching for a missing mother in a ramshackle house—give the movie an overwhelmingly creepy aesthetic lacking in many other found footage titles. Horror in the High Desert 2 can’t distinguish itself enough to truly separate it from the bulk of similar-themed POV vehicles, but an ending leaving the door open for Horror in the High Desert 3: Oscar should tickle fans. B– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

TAHOE JOE (2022) A former Green Beret (Michael Rock) is hired to search the last known whereabouts of a missing person in the wilderness of Lake Tahoe. When it becomes known that the missing individual was searching for a Bigfoot-like figure known as Tahoe Joe, Rock is joined by skeptical filmmaker Dillon Brown to capture possible evidence of the mythical creature. The set-up of Tahoe Joe sounds like the majority of POV horror titles released in the wake of The Blair Witch Project, although many found footage fans will link this to 2013’s Willow Creek, which successfully immersed the viewer in its claustrophobic, woodsy environment. Tahoe Joe makes the mistake of spending too much time out of the woods and focusing on details that should really only have taken a few minutes of plot exposition. The movie saves face by delivering likable characters in a suspenseful final fifteen minutes. C+ (Currently streaming on Tubi.)