Monthly Archives: November 2022

The Killing Tree (2022)

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Once known as Demonic Christmas Tree, get ready for the story of serial killer Clayton Slayter,  who even after execution comes back when his wife Magna figures out the kind of body transference voodoo that turns a man into a holiday tree.

Yes, a killer — killing — tree.

Somehow, I got two movies by director Rhys Frake-Waterfield this week. I enjoyed this one much more,  as it tries to take the whole concept seriously. Clayton wants revenge on Faith, who put him in jail after he killed her parents, but right now she’s so busy playing marriage counselor to her friends Tina and Louisa that she might not even notice the garland and bulbs inching their way menacingly toward her.

I mean, a tree hunts down a woman while holding a knife. That’s the kind of quality this movie is delivering. Frake-Waterfield also has a slasher Winnie the Pooh, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. He might be inventing a whole new genre of child book slashers, as he is also involved with the making of Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, Mary Had a Little Lamb and Three Blind Mice.

There will come a time very soon that you will need a holiday movie. If you want to make your family think you’ve finally lost your milk and cookies, choose this one to show them all.

You can watch this on Tubi.

 

MILL CREEK NIGHTMARE WORLDS: Unknown World (1951)

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Unknown World was made by two Hollywood special effects men, Jack Rabin and Irving Block, who are two of the film’s three producers. It was directed by Terry O. Morse, who shot the American scene in Godzilla, and written by Millard Kaufman, who also wrote Bad Day at Black Rock and The Klansman.

Victor Kilian, who plays Dr. Jeremiah Morley, lost an eye in a fight scene with John Wayne and was blacklisted for decades due to his political views, which is why he is uncredited in this. He’s invented a big tank that can drill into the center of the world, the Cyclotram, and has taken a crew of scientists through Carlsbad Caverns, Bronson Caves, Nichols Canyon and finally Pismo Beach to find a place where the human race can survive a nuclear war. Sadly, that unknown world makes everyone sterile.

Let me tell you, people were obsessed by the center of the Earth in 1951. The Shaver Mystery was maybe not in Amazing Stories any longer — editor Ray Palmer claimed a conspiracy got them forced out of the pulp magazine — yet still found an audience in Palmer’s newsletter called… The Hidden World.

Kino Cult Midnight Movie double feature deep cuts in November

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This November, the Kino Cult linear FAST channel streams deep cuts of cult horror titles as thematically-paired “midnight movie” double features throughout the month all free with ads.

Kino Cult is a free ad-supported streaming destination for genre lovers of horror and cult films, Kino Cult also has hundreds of new and rare theatrically released cult hits, all presented in beautiful high definition. Additionally, Kino Cult offers an ad-free subscription plan for $4.99 per month.

There’s a Joan Collins day! A Jean Rollin day! A double feature of Phenomena and The Visitor! A double blast of Jess Franco! It’s all free!

The Area 51 Incident (2022)

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Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, the man whose Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey got some buzz, and written by Scott Jeffrey (Exorcist Vengeance, Don’t Speak) and Tom Jolliffe, this even has Jeffrey doing more than producing and writing. He’s in this, too.

I learned from this movie that Area 51 is in England and it’s the same bunker from Kingdom of the Dinosaurs. The CGI is either so good you can’t believe it or, you know, so bad you can’t believe it. There’s nothing in between.

When the time comes to defend our planet from aliens that have come from another dimension, the skirmish will be fought by club goers, three unkempt soldiers and some family members of a scientist.

If you’re into movies where people stumble around a basement and get eggs thrown up into their mouths, well, here it is.

The Area 51 Incident is available on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment.

Ash and Bone (2022)

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Cassie (Angelina Danielle Cama) just moved out to the sticks because her father Lucas (Harley Wallen)  was starting to worry about how bad she was getting. Add a new stepmom (Kaiti Wallen) and a new town and an urban legend and you have quite the plot here.

Directed by Wallen and written by Bret Miller, this movie makes a quick jump from underage drinking to busting into a haunted house along with new friends Anna (Jamie Bernadette) and Tucker (Mason Heidger). What they find are video upon video of women being abducted and assaulted and when the home’s residents, May (Erika Hoveland) and Clete (Jimmy Doom), come home they figure out who broke in and go after them with extreme prejudice.

Wallen has a good eye for putting together his films, which include this as well as Tale of Tails and A Bennett Song Holiday. While not a high gloss production, this has some nice dark tones and looks like some care was put into making it. Growing up in a small town like this, I felt like yelling at Cassie to maybe avoid local bars — even if Mel Novak is the owner — and just drink at home, not getting into trouble.

Ash and Bone is available on demand and on digital from Deskpop Entertainment.

MILL CREEK NIGHTMARE WORLDS: UFO: Target Earth (1974)

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I kind of love that this movie starts with accurate eyewitnesses before telling the tale of Alan Grimes (Nick Plakias), an electronics expert who is trying to figure out where strange signals are coming from, along with a psychic named Vivian (Cynthia Cline) and two experts from the college named Dan Rivers (Tom Arcuragi) and Dr. Mansfield (LaVerne Light). There’s been a formless alien waiting inside a lake for a thousand years, afraid of assuming the shapes that humans force it into. He claims that only three other humans have embraced alien nature and ascended, which Alan embraces, getting rapidly aged and walking into a lake. Oh man, the sheer smell of dank 70s grass is all over this movie, which ends with a quote from Revelations and ties in UFOs to New Age religion and old-fashioned Biblical prophecy.

Despite being shot in Atlanta with minimal resources, director and writer Alessandro De Gaetano managed to create a series of films, including Haunted, Scoring, Bloodbath In Psycho Town, Project: Metalbeast, and Butch Camp, which featured Judy Tenuda.

The end of this movie is filled with words, ideas, video effects and, quite literally, lo-fi magic. It’s the most BS of all non-Hollywood UFO cash-in mania, and I loved it. It reminded me of the days when I’d eat those UFO candies that had info from Project Blue Book inside them, as well as watch Battlestar Galactica with its wild square-up reel at the end about how aliens might be real and then stay awake all night, hoping that tonight would finally be the one where I got abducted.

You can watch this on Tubi.

What’s On Shudder: November 2022

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Halloween is over but Shudder is keeping the scares up all year long. Plans start at under $5 a month and you can get the first week free when you visit Shudder.

Click on any of the links to see an in-depth article on the movie.

November 1: Anna and the Apocalypse, Creepshow, To All a Good Night, Alone in the Dark, Silent Night Deadly Night 3, Silent Night Deadly Night 4, Silent Night Deadly Night 5, Silent Nights.

November 4: The premiere of Satan’s Slaves: Communion.

November 7: Evil Dead Trap, Evil Dead Trap 2 and Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell.

November 10: Mandrake.

November 14: Dr. Tarr’s Horror Dungeon and The Last Broadcast.

November 18: Slash/Back.

November 21: Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It

November 22: Blood Relatives.

There are also episodes of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula: Titans.

What are you excited to watch?

What’s On Arrow Player In November

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Arrow Player will have the following movies in November:

November 4: Jean Rollin Vol. III: Deeply misunderstood and widely misrepresented, during his decades-long career as a film director (1958-2009), Rollin’s work received absolutely no recognition in his native country of France, and was completely unknown anywhere else. In the nineties, because of home video, Rollin attained a marginal cult status in niche English speaking genre circles. Otherwise he has remained completely obscure to many audiences. But come on! It’s time to discover his haunted and haze-filled magic with Fascination, Lips of Blood, The Grapes of Death, The Night of the Hunted, The Escapees and Zombie Lake.

November 7: Incredible but True

November 11: Humanoids from the Deep, Inseminoid, The Long Haul. of A.I. Bezzerides and Dark and Deadly: 50 Years of Film Noir, as well as Reel Life: Based on Truth and Lies, which also will have The El Duce Tapes and Coup D’État.

November 18: Shawscope Vol. 2 has The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Return to the 36th Chamber, Disciples of the 36th Chamber, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, Five Superfighters, Kid with the Golden Arm, Invincible Shaolin, Magnificent Ruffians, Ten Tigers of Kwangtung, My Young Auntie, Mercenaries from Hong Kong, The Boxer’s Omen, Martial Arts of Shaolin and The Bare-Footed Kid.

November 25: The Devil’s Rain and The Final Terror.

Head over to ARROW to start watching now. Subscriptions are available for $6.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Samsung TVs, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

BROOKLYN HORROR FILM FESTIVAL: Old Flame (2022)

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Calvin (Andy Gershenzon) is away from his family at a college reunion, preparing a speech, when he meets Rachel (Rebeca Robles), who as we learn as the movie progresses is the great regret of his life. How deep and how wrong that regret is will come out as these two characters continue this conversation over the course of the evening, growing more and more uncomfortable and veering into so much more.

Ninety minutes, two actors, a lifetime of secrets. Director and writer Christopher Denham has put together quite the film here, one that demands that you stay with it at first. Yes, it’s a slow and at times even cliche-ridden conversation between two potential old friends. Yet you need to stay with it. You need to hide like a fly on the wall and see what happens next, because things — many things — happen.

The ending of it all comes as we constantly shift protagonist and antagonist, as the truth comes out, but come on. Once that dildo gets put on the table, we all know where it’s going.

BROOKLYN HORROR FILM FESTIVAL: Influencer (2022)

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It’s easy to hate influencers. It’s simple to say social media has ruined everything. And yet, to look into oneself and the world and realize that these things just magnify how bad things are and therefore, it’s easy to blame the shiny and pretty people, because no society functions without a scapegoat.

Kurtis David Harder directed Spiral and this is worlds better than that film. Along with co-writer Tesh Gutti, he tells the story of Madison (Emily Tennant), a social influencer in Thailand who meets up with CW (Cassandra Naud), a woman with a huge birthmark on her face and creeping darkness in her soul. She brings Madison into her world, at first showing her how it’s more real than her reality to taking photos of every meal and every outfit. As Madison lies about how much she’s experiencing and pines for the end of her relationship to Ryan (Rory J. Saper), the man who got her into influencing in the first place, she’s kidnapped to CW’s special place on the island, a space that is as gorgeous as it is potentially deadly.

So yes, by all means hate on influencers, but do not miss this film, which just plain works.