October 12: A 3D Horror Film that you watch with red and blue glasses

I had a lot of 3D movies to pick from, but when a poster promises “The funniest, wackiest 3-D movie ever,” I know which one to pick!

One of six 3D movies made by Earl Owensby’s crew — Rottweiler: Dogs of Hell, Hot Heir, Hyperspace, Chain Gang and Tales of the Third Dimension in 3-D are the others — this has Beau Jim Donner (Owensby) coming home to deal with Sam Grady (Rudy Thompson), who is buying up the small town. Uncle Rusty (Jack Payne) refuses to sell his business, so he’s crippled. Beau Jim starts working for the cops but is really messing up Grady’s schemes; he becomes a hero to the people thanks to DJ Freight Train Fremont (Dee Barton in his only acting role; he did the music for Every Which Way You Can, Play Misty for Me, High Plains Drifter, Death Screams and most of the Owensby films).

Barton also did the music for this, along with narrator David Allan Coe. So yes, if you think, “This sounds a lot like The Dukes of Hazzard,” you’re totally right. Except this is in 3D. And you pay for it.

Director Worth Keeter was on so many Owensby films, like the two Ginger Alden-starring movies Lady Grey and Living Legend: The King of Rock and Roll, as well as The Order of the Black Eagle, Unmasking the Idol, Snapdragon, and many more movies. Writer Thom McIntyre was right there with him and also directed Tales of the Third Dimension in 3-D and The Rutherford County Line.

I was so happy to find this online. Not many people care about the Owensby back catalogue, and now that the company’s website is down, finding the movies is nearly impossible, except for some of the releases that Severin and Vinegar Syndrome have put out. I think I might be the one person who needs to see Hot Heir, a 3D balloon race movie.

You can watch this on YouTube.

October 11: A Horror Film That Features a Roller Coaster

Kristy (Aimee Brooks, Critters 3) and James (Damian Maffei, Haunt) try to get over their fear of amusement parks through immersion therapy, but end up fighting an evil clown and learning that they must experience all of the urban legends of the park and ride all of the rides before they can leave.

Shot at the abandoned Chippewa Lake Amusement Park in Medina, Ohio before it was demolished, this at least was made somewhere filled with urban legends, like a crocodile that escape in 1800s, a monkey escaping in the 1940s, residual hauntings including big band music playing in the middle of the night and nature growing over the rides, it was quite the set for the movie. Joe Unger, who plays The Carny, claims that his father was a carny and may have actually worked at the park.

I really liked the flashbacks in this and how they reveal the stories of all of the people trapped here; that said, I prefer director and writer Jay Woelfel’s Beyond Dreams Door. This seems to go on way longer than its nearly two-hour length. The acting isn’t bad, and there are some ideas here. I just wish they were a little tighter. Still, it’s rather ambitious.

You can watch this on Tubi.

October 10. An Indigenous Horror Film

Directed by Ted Geoghegan (We Are Still Here), who co-wrote it with Grady Hendrix, Mohawk is about Mohawk woman Okwaho (Kaniehtiio Horn), a woman torn between two men, Mohawk warrior Calvin (Justin Rain) and British soldier Joshua (Eamon Farren). One is the father of her child. While her tribe is trying to stay neutral in the battles between the U.S. and the UK, their people are being killed by the Americans. Calvin is driven to do something; he sets a fort ablaze and kills more than twenty soldiers. Only six soldiers and a translator Yancy (Noah Segan) survive.

As they plan their revenge, they encounter the Mohawk. In the first battle, Okwaho’s mother, Wentahawi (Sheri Foster) and the American commander, Colonel Charles Hawkes (Jack Gwaltney), are killed. They will not be the last casualties, as Captain Hezekiah Holt (Ezra Buzzington) hunts Calvin, finally killing him, but at the cost of several of his men, including his son Myles (Ian Colletti). In retaliation, he also hunts down Okwaho, shooting her in the chest and killing Joshua.

Somehow she survives and shaves her head before creating armor and, well, killing everyone in her way, including the gigantic Private Lachlan Allsopp (Jonathan Huber, the sadly departed pro wrestler Brodie Lee). Finally, she battles Holt into a tree, leaving him impaled as her people look to her as if she’s a spirit. Maybe she is.

Kaniehtiio Horn is a native Mohawk; Justin Rain is Plains Cree; Sheri Foster is a member of the Cherokee Nation.

I’ve always loved the work of both Geoghegan and Hendrix. In spite of, or maybe even because of, the budget, this succeeds in presenting a violent and unyielding world where the guilty, for once, are punished.

You can watch this on Tubi.

October 9. A Horror Film Directed by John Gilling

John Gilling’s first film since leaving Hammer Films in 1967, La Cruz del Diablo was written by Paul Naschy and based on three short stories by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. He gave the project to writer Juan Jose Porto, who cut him out, as did Gilling, who didn’t like his acting. He won a lawsuit and his name is on the movie, but he felt that what he wanted to make had been ruined.

Alfred Dawson (Ramiro Oliveros) has been dreaming of the Knights Templar attacking a woman. Is it all the drugs he smokes or is this a vision of his sister Justine being in danger? Well, by the time he arrives in Spain, she’s dead, and now he has to go to the ruins of the Templar castle, which does not seem like a good idea. There, he meets the woman from his dreams, Beatriz (Emma Cohen) and a magic sword.

This doesn’t have the lunacy of a Blind Dead movie, but it does have some drone doom going for it. I wanted to love it, but just liked it. That said, I don’t hate the time I spent watching it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

October 8. A Horror Film That Mostly Takes Place in a Library

Decades ago, inside Blackwood Manor, wildlife painter Lord Emerson Blackwood took the teeth of his maid and those of the creatures who lived within the fireplace and tried to reason with them. They turn him down and kill him, as they only want the teeth of children. This scene got me — teeth smashing is that one taboo even I can’t get over.

Sally Hurst (Bailee Madison) has come to live with her father (Guy Pierce) and his girlfriend (Katie Holmes), as her mother is too depressed and he’s renovating the manor. She awakens the creatures, and fortunately, Kim, her father’s girlfriend, believes her. They visit a library and discover Lord Blackwood’s unpublished artwork, which depicts these tooth fairies. The librarian is even aware of them, saying they sometimes transform humans. One of them is Blackwood, who wasn’t killed but has become the leader. Sally is trapped in the library but manages to escape, even killing a creature with a bookshelf.

Co-writer and producer Guillermo del Toro chose comic-book artist Troy Nixey to direct and art direct this. Obviously, it comes from the TV movie of the same name. This even has an ending that is so close to the first film. It’s good, but it can’t be compared. That’s fine — the original is such a big deal to me. But this is still a good film.

7. A Texas Chainsaw Massacre Ripoff

“Cindy just lost her job and home. Desperate for money and a place to live, she accepts a job offer but doesn’t know that her new employer is a deranged psychopath who specializes in hunting humans. Metalface is a degenerate killer who does not know any compassion and makes trophies from his sacrifices…and Cindy is next.”

After an unsuccessful run as Playing With Dolls, Lightning Pictures released this in the UK as Leatherface: The Legend Lives On. Legally, how could they even do that? Director Rene Perez was upset about this and has made two sequels.

Cindy Tremaine (Natasha Blasick) has no money, major life issues and the chance to be a housekeeper in a cabin in the woods, one watched all the time by The Watcher (Richard Tyson), who has set masked serial killer Prisoner AYO-886 loose with the goal of him killing Cindy.

So the guy has a barbed wire mask, and that’s all we learn. In fact, the movie ends before there’s even a beginning. Is it better or worse than recent Chainsaw movies? It’s close. That’s no praise. It’s frustrating because this feels so close to actually being something.

You can watch this on Tubi.

October 5. A Horror Film Featuring a Killer Flying Head

Which came first, this or Mystics in Bali? Could they have been made right around the same time? Was this made years before? Who can say? All we know is that they both feature women with flying heads.

Yu Chun has a problem. A sorcerer put a curse on her, which results in her head, once a month, removing itself and flying around to hurt people. Is it at the same time as her time of the month? I would hope so, so two birds, one rock. Anyways. Not even an exorcism can help, so she has to live with it for years.

This flying head is dangling a spine and guts, flying about while most of the Star Trek II, The Black Hole and Conan the Barbarian soundtracks play. That’s kind of perfect. I mean, as perfect as a movie where a snake that becomes a sorcerer who poops a snake out of his eye that crawls into a praying woman’s lady business can be. And by that, I mean absolutely perfect.

Are you afraid of snakes? What if a movie had people puking snakes for most of the film? Would you be frightened then? You should be. The head also breathes fire, has fangs and can shoot lasers out of its mouth.

I wish the head and the hand from Demonoid would get together and have a shoulder for a child.

You can watch this on YouTube.

October 4: A Horror Film from Kazakhstan

Bullets of Justice starts with a flyover of a post-apocalyptic city, followed by a pigman crapping his pants before being shot directly between the eyes. Now that’s how you get my interest.

Pig men? Well, back during World War III, which is expected to arrive in 2020 any day now, the U.S. government initiated a secret project codenamed Army Bacon. Yes, that sounds like something out of Alex Jones, but here we are. Now, a quarter of a century later, the Muzzles have become the top of the food chain, replacing humans, and only a few humans remain.

Directed by Valeri Milev, who also worked on Wrong Turn 6 and served as second unit director on Van Damme’s We Die Young, and written by Timur Turisbekov, who also plays hero Rob Justice, this film serves as a send-up of pretty much every post-Mad Max movie that I love. No, really. I created a Letterboxd list to track all the end-of-the-world films I’ve watched.

To get this on the shelves of Walmart, Danny Trejo shows up as Gravedigger, the father of our hero, who returns as a ghost to help him. Really, Danny Trejo against pig men is all the review I need to give this. People will want to watch it, much less telling you that there’s a scene where a jet pack flying pig man gets decapitated. Its bloody head drops right into the spread eagle crotch of a female bounty hunter, which slowly dissolves into a lovemaking scene.

Seriously, Trejo is in twenty or thirty movies a month — he and Nicolas Cage must have a running bet — but this is probably the best one you’ll see him in this year, even if his part is incredibly minor. It’s also full of absolutely ludicrous stunts, dirt all over everything, a near-obscene level of gore and a hero who has lost so many girlfriends that he has a shrine to all of them in his car.

There’s also a bad guy named Benedict Asshole and our hero’s new girl, who is also his sister, who has a mustache. And plenty of male frontal nudity. Of course, it’s also all acted phoentically in English, has all the directoral chops of The Asylum and doesn’t have a coherent plot.

The best of times. The worst of times. A lot blows up. I tried not to think too hard. Also, this is a movie that taught me that bullets are birds of justice made of lead, and if you don’t want them to kill you, they won’t. That literally made me laugh for five minutes, which is enough to say that this is a success.

This movie makes me think that Bulgaria and Kazakhstan got together and said, “Why the hell do Italy and the Philippines get to make all of the great Road Warrior rip-offs?”

October 3: A Found Footage Horror Film Directed by Koji Shiraishi

Directed and written by Kōji Shiraishi, this starts when Tomoe Kaneda (Sayuri Oyamada) and her 15-year-old daughter Miho catch paranormal activity in their new home on camera. A paranormal TV show sends actresses Yu Abiru, Mayuko Iwasa, Natsumi Okamoto, and Mari Iriki — playing themselves — along with Buddhist priest Unsui (Shigehiro Yamaguchi) to investigate.

Yet when Unsui tries to move the spirit from the home, it possesses Miho, who murders her dog. Bringing in his superior, Ryugen (Hajime Inoue), Unsui and the older man are unable to stop the entity and are both killed. Another exorcist, NEO (Ryosuke Miura), learns that Miho is the perfect conduit between a cult and their god, bringing it to this world to take over.

This film is tied to the EisukeNaitō movie The Crone and Norio Tsuruta’s Talk to the Dead.

You can watch it on Tubi.