Alex Essoe was the star of one of my favorite films, Starry Eyes, and showed up as Wendy in Dr. Sleep. Here, she plays Michelle, a newlywed interior designer who gets snared up in the life of Linda (Precious Chong, who is great here), a woman who seemingly spends her entire day in exercise classes. Their chance meeting is something way more than it seems however, in a movie that is a social media update to Misery.
Chong and Essoe wrote the script with director Zach Gayne and there’s a real joy here in the way the actresses get to communicate back and forth. The truth serum idea, where Linda just wants Michelle to tell her the truth — and then hates every minute of it — is inspired.
Gayne also directed a movie called States that we watched last year that stood out for its dialogue and willingness to get weird. I’m excited to see what he does next, as I’ve found so much to enjoy in both of his films that I’ve seen so far.
Homewrecker will be released in select theaters on June 26. It will then be released on demand and on DVD on July 7.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR company.
The tagline for this movie is “We’re gonna need a bigger board.” No matter how bad this was going to be, I knew that I had to see it. A title like this certainly takes some balls.
Brett Kelly also directed Raiders of the Lost Shark and Jurassic Shark, so it seems as if this is some kind of fetish or something for him. It takes all kinds, you know.
A group of teenage girls find a spirit board on the beach and decide to use it to, well, who knows why they decide to use it. But before you can say “blood in the water,” an ancient shark has washed up and begun to kill everyone. Hopefully, that occult specialist can get rid of this spirit shark before it’s too late.
I thought Shark Exorcist and Amityville Island were the best shark themed movie ideas of the last few years. I was wrong. That said, the idea is, as nearly always when discussing movies like this, way better than the execution. Great poster. Great title. Better tagline. Worse actual follow through.
Ouija Shark is now available on demand and on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing. We also recently reviewed Kelly’s previous outing, Countrycide, also available through Wild Eye.
DISCLAIMER: This was sent to us by Wild Eye Releasing.
Adventures In the Center of the Earth is the translation for this film, which follows a crew of explorers as they try to find the reason why a young man was killed and his girlfriend driven mad.
Director Alfredo B. Crevenna had a few Santo movies to his credit, but that did not prepare me for this sojourn, as that injured girl joins the brave band who head deep, deep into the Earth, so far down that they meet a cyclops, a spider and a giant bat that falls in love with the aforementioned Hilda Ramirez (Kitty de Hoyos, who was the villainess in the astounding La Loba).
There’s also footage that feels like it didn’t come from this movie at all — one assumes it’s from 1940’s One Million B.C. — and all of the monsters look like they’re in a totally different room and have much better masks when they get their closeups, which only adds to the charm of this movie.
I’ve seen so many movies that go to the center of our world and they are all boring. This one is anything but, so if anyone ever says, “What’s the best center of the Earth movie?” you can confidently answer with this one.
You can watch this on YouTube to see if I’m right.
Folks kept making movies over the last 40 some odd years, but after Intrepidos Punks, why did they bother?
Imagine if you will. The best biker movie that you never saw in the late 1960’s, but instead of Bud Cardos or Russ Tamblyn, you have an army of punk rockers and luchadors that look like they emerged straight out of a 1980’s Capcom beat ’em up. Now, give them all the drugs, dress them like nuns while they rob a bank and watch as they play Russian roulette and have rough sex like there’s no tomorrow because there isn’t.
Everything the Satanic Panic feared has become true in this film, as these mowhawked and bemasked biker maniacs swear allegiance to every demon you can imagine when they’re not shooting off weapons, playing surf rock or assaulting the citizens of a small town before you know, setting them on fire.
Let me explain something about this movie. It’s not enough to kidnap the wives of every jail guard and abuse them. No, you have to cut off their hands and send it to their men, letting them know that you’re coming to kill them, too. Beast, the leader of the women, rescues Tarzen (El Fantasma, who was an awesome luchador and whose son is Santos Escobar in NXT now and he has a gang too) and takes off for a cave concert black mass orgy.
It’s that kind of movie.
There are two annoying cops and a mob association that the punks have to deal with, but thanks to their makeup heavy bedazzled forces, blasting around on trikes and dune buggies and predating even The Road Warrior and the post-apocalyptic cinematic magic of Italy and the Philippines, you know that they’ll win eventually.
They made another one of these — La Venganza de Los Punks — that’s just as good. If you ask me, they could keep making them until the world stops rolling around the sun.
Let me translate the lyrics to the theme song for you and explain why you need to watch this movie right now.
“On the roads and cities too / stealing from anyone they always break the law.
On motorcycles with their girls they go / Looking for adventures.
They worship Satan.
Sex, drugs, violence / they always look for action.
Sex, drugs, violence and a lot of rock & roll.”
Princesa Lea, who plays Beast, was born in Montreal and made her way to Mexico via Miami, soon becoming Majestad de las Vedettes, a queen of cabaret, where she did acrobatic dance and appeared nude in a giant champagne glass. She’s a Russ Meyer-esque dream who isn’t afraid to be the toughest woman you’ve ever witnessed. She also appears in The Infernal Rapist, Midnight Dolls and 1981’s El Macho Bionico, an erotic film that dares to mix up The Six Million Dollar Man and The Incredible Hulk.
Vinegar Syndrome keeps tickling me with a feather promising this is coming out on blu ray. Until then, huff some paint and watch the scuzzy version of this — maybe that’s the best way to see this — on the Internet Archive.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article was posted way back on October 30, 2019 and ignited my love of late 80’s Mexican horror. Please check this out and join me in bugging every horror DVD label about releasing this.
It appears like director and screenwriter Ruben Galindo Jr. wanted to make his own version of A Nightmare On Elm Street but somewhere along the way he decided to he’d like to make a Mexican version of an American teen sitcom, too. Honestly, if you told me Ruben came from another dimension, I’d believe you just as much. This is one of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen — I’ve watched it three times just to try and get my thoughts together — and if you take a look through the films on our site, you can see that that is no idle boast.
Our hero Michael is going through some stuff. His parents are fighting so much that his dad sends him and his mom to Mexico City, where his mother decides to drink herself into oblivion. While trying to fit into his new school, he turns seventeen and his frien Tony gives him a Ouija board.
Now, unbeknowst to us, the viewers, Michael and Tony had a past session go wrong with a Ouija board, so this really was a bad idea. Virgil — what a name for a slasher villain — is released and begins killing people.
Now, up until this point in the film, this has felt like a teen coming of age movie, filtered through the lens of a Mexican filmmaker trying to create a movie that would make sense for American audiences. But just like how huge chunks of The Last American Virgin seem to make no sense to Western eyes, this movie also feels like it was beamed down directly from space.
How else do you explain the fact that our hero — who appears to be in his late 20’s playing a high schooler — wears dinosaur pajamas for nearly the entire film? This isn’t some Troma movie trying to play it all for laughs. This is a serious movie with such lunacy inside it that you can’t take it seriously.
It does, however, have awesome special effects courtesy of Screaming Mad George, including a face that emerges from a TV years before The Ring and huge chunks of gore, like a person stabbing through the chin and the blade emerging inside their mouth.
This film was a total surprise and delight to me. I’m shocked that Mondo Macabro or Severin hasn’t picked this up yet, because this is the kind of movie that would sell for them. I found it heartwarming just how insane and inane and odd this all was. Now pardon me, I’m about to watch this movie for the fourth time.
I am a complete fanboy for Ruben Galindo Jr. who made Don’t Panic and Cemetery of Terror. I’ve never been let down by any of his films so far and I am getting the idea that I may never be disappointed by them after reading the description of this film on IMDB — “Teenagers accidentally resurrect a Satanic killer who targets the local police captain’s daughter to birth the Antichrist.”
It’s like people are making the exact movies I want right now, except they made them in Mexico 31 years ago.
Like all great Satanic movies — I’m looking at you Black Sunday and Evilspeak — this movie starts in the past, as the executioner of the Mexican town of San Ramon throws in with the devil instead of God, assaults a virgin and battles the other monks of his order before he’s stopped with an axe right to the chest. He then says, “Some day someone will come and wrench the ax out. Then I’ll return with more power to father Satan’s son in one of your descendants.”
If you’re not all in, get out.
That descendent is Olivia, the lovely young daughter of Captain Lopez and she is the lone virgin amongst her slasher victim friends. Woe be to them, as they’re camping next to a cemetery that’s beset by — get this — grave robbers. That foursome includes Manolo, his psychic girlfriend Rebeca (trust me, Mexican films are not content to stay within one genre, they’re going to toss in every ingredient) Armando and Diana.
You may wonder if they’re about to find an abandoned church and tear the axe out of the body of the villain, setting this all in motion. Wonder no more. And when the first villagers die, of course the grave robbers are blamed by Olivia’s dad. So he does what any real cop would: he tells them to go find the axe killer themselves. Yes, two people are dead, they’ve been blamed and he asks them to be junior detectives.
I love this movie.
Nearly everyone dies — by axe, by magic, by getting mashed into a pulp, bye bye and adios — until a priest explains that a Satanic idol and the axe itself, not to mention a whole bunch of TNT, are what it takes to kill off the executioner. This being Mexico, the action is intercut with Padre Jeronimo conducting a midnight mass while the cop uses a machine gun to continually blast the undead killer.
This may not be the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it’s edging closer to that space every time I watch it, just by sheer force of will and my belief that if Fulci lived in Mexico, this is the kind of lunacy that he’d have made. As Mexican Nicholas Cage might say, ” Eso es un gran elogio.”
Five college witches have come together in order to perform a ritual to invoke the ancient powers of the witch Ashura, but their leader takes things too far and kills one of the younger witches in a fit of bloodlust. Now, she’s gone over the edge while the rest of the coven needs one more witch to remain in power.
Margaret Malandruccolo has directed several shorts, but this is her first full-length film, working from a script by Lizze Gordon. Gordon also stars in this film as Sophie, one of the witches. (Lizzie Gordon’s latest film, as a writer and director, Escape: Puzzle of Fear, is out now.)
I was struck by just how good the effects are in this. They really go next level from the majority of on demand movies, with the witches’ powers treated with real care. It really gives this movie way more of a blockbuster look than you’d expect.
Coven is available on demand and on DVD and July 14 from Uncork’d Entertainment, who were kind enough to send us a review copy.
This Friday — yes, Friday! — travel to the Groovy Doom Facebook page at 8 PM for another double feature evening! We’re about to travel to 1977, which I always refer to as the end of the world, as pre-millennial tension gives way to serial killing and mayhem.
Up first…the one and done director/writer/producer/editor/stuntman and probaly the caterer too Dave Adams created a movie that posits that Berkowitz wasn’t the only little brat driven to ritualistic murder.
1 1/2 ounces light rum (Bacardi Silver is a decent one)
1/2 ounce apricot brandy (Jacquin’s is a good brand)
1/4 ounce lemon juice
2 teaspoons grenadine
1 teaspoon sugar
Fill your shaker with ice until the dog next door tells you to stop, but probably around half-full. Pour all the ingredients in and mix well.
Strain into the glass of your choice. Some say a cocktail glass but I’m probably going to use my Profundo Russo mug.
Our second film is made on a $3,000 budget 1977 exploitation film that has plenty of credits, but most of them belonging to one man: Roger Watkins, who also made the porn films Corruption and Her Name Was Lisa. It was shot on a camera given to the director by Otto Preminger.
Jack and Yaya first met one another at the very young ages of two and three, as their families shared a backyard fence. Growing up together in South Jersey, they saw each other as they truly were, a girl and a boy, despite everyone else seeing them as they appeared from the outside. As they grow up, they learn how to support one another as they both come out as transgender.
This documentary tells their story.
Decades later, Jack and Yaya remain best friends. This film shows where life has taken them through conversations, home movies and by recording a year in their lives.
This is a life I will never live, so it was very intriguing to me to watch it as a voyeur and learn the struggles these two have endured.
You can learn more by visiting the official site. This film is now available on demand Freedom Cinema LLC.
DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR company.
There’s a reason why Mexican late 80’s horror movies have an edge in my heart. It’s because they’re willing to make you a combo platter of all your favorites. Instead of just giving you Friday the 13th, they say, “What if we gave you a little Rambo: First Blood PartII, threw in some The Final Terror and then gave the bad guy Freddy’s glove and a crazy mask?”
Pedro Galindo III, yes, the same lunatic who made Vacaciones de Terror 2, was behind this movie and he brought its star, Pedro Fernandez, with him. What starts as several teens out to kill a bear — and if you’re asking why, you’re thinking too hard about this movie — ends with a battle for survival against a near-unstoppable menace.
I’ll tell you why. Nacho (Fernandez) and Maurico have had a paintball playing rivalry for some time, so killing a bear feels like the natural conclusion. They bring their friends along but no one told them that these are Jesse’s woods.
Yes, Jesse, the Vietnam vet who hides behind a porcleain mask, who isn’t afraid to fight back with machine guns, tear gas, grenades and when all else fails, a gloved with knived fingers, as if he were a South of the Border Springwood Slasher.
This movie is so 80’s slasher that despite an old townie warning them to stay away, the girls still dance around in swimsuits and the chubby friend still acts the fool and still everyone is positively shocked that bear killing transforms into near ritual sacrifice.
The kids never find that bear. They do, however, find death. Lots and lots of pure death, delivered by a killing machine that keeps going even after you rip his hand clean off. The end of this movie got me so excited, I thought that I was on a coke binge. It’s that kind of manic energy and zeal that only comes from these kind of Mexican VHS masterworks.
This is 77 minutes long. Literally all killer, no filler. Other countries should take note.
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