Alfonso Gomez-Rejon directing the movie Me, Earl and the Dying Girl probably wouldn’t make you think that he could knock it out of the park when it comes to horror. Seeing that this was produced by Jason Blum and Ryan Murphy (Gomez-Rejon also worked with the latter on the excoriable American Horror Story) isn’t something that would give you any hope, either. But man — this is way better than I would have ever thought and is actually a movie I’ve recommended to many people.

October 31, 2013. Texarkana. The local drive-in is showing its annual event of the original The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which the film at once presents as an actual film in its universe but also one based on the true story of the Phantom Killer of 1946. Corey Holland and Jami Lerner do the typical slasher move of leaving the drive-in to make out before the Phantom attacks them, saying, “This is for Mary. Make them remember.”

With that, we’re let loose in the modern world, where people have started to forget the Phantom but are about to get a devastating reminder of his power. There’s a bravura sequence where a soldier comes back home from leave and instantly finds himself in a hotel with his girlfriend before leaving to get a drink. He’s beheaded and the Phantom brutally kills her before calling Jami with Corey’s phone, saying, “I’m going to do it again and again until you make them remember.”

Just like in 1946, people start locking their doors and demanding that the police do something. Much like an Americanized giallo, Jami responds by starting her own investigation with a former classmate named Nick. And then “Lone Wolf” Morales (Anthony Anderson) takes over the case from the locals, like Chief Deputy Tillman (Gary Cole, always a welcome face).

Jami keeps getting emails from the killer, yet the police don’t believe her. They already have the killer — a depressed teen who has dressed up as the Phantom to die via suicide by cop. But the murderer isn’t really dead, as the remake/reimagining redoes the first film’s infamous trombone murder one better by having the Phantom wipe out a young male couple.

The cops decide to look closer at the email and determine that it came from Reverend Cartwright (Edward Herrmann in his last role) but don’t believe he is the killer. Jami hasn’t stopped looking and learns that Charles B. Pierce’s (the creator of the original as well as The Legend of Boggy Creek) son still lives in the area. He believes that this Phantom is the grandson of Hank McCreedy, the forgotten sixth victim of the original Phantom, who had a wife named Mary.

Meanwhile, the Phantom moves on to even killing cops, wiping out Tillman while he’s instigating a sword fight with a lady he’s brought home from the bar. While all this is going on, Jami decides to leave town to go to college and loses her virginity to Nick, who is quickly killed by the Phantom.

As she tries to leave town with her grandmother, the Phantom attacks them at a gas station, killing nearly everyone with a rifle. Jami finds Nick’s body just as she’s pinned to a wall by arrows and learns that there are two killers — Deputy Foster, who is McReady’s grandson and her boyfriend Corey, who had faked his death.  Corey tries to tell her that Texarkana had a box made for them and they are the same, but she rejects him. Foster then shoots Cory so that he has a patsy to blame, but Jami shoots him and escapes. His body is never found.

In the end, Jami is off at college, far away from small town life. Yet even there, the shadow of the Phantom is still there.

This movie is never going to replace the original, obviously. It has none of the abrupt shifts in narrative tone, instead staying firmly in dark territory. But unlike so many modern remakes, it both honors and adds to the movie that it came from.

You can watch this movie on Amazon Prime.

I want you to look at that awesome box art. I want you to imagine just how insane a pairing of legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper and Bigfoot could be. I want you to notice Linnea Quigley and Eric Roberts names above the credits. And then, when you realize that David DeCoteau directed it, you’ll realize that things are about to take a turn.

Sure, DeCoteau started his career making movies like Creepozoids and Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, but of late, he’s been making cover versions like The Brotherhood, which reimagines The Craft as a homoerotic battle of magical boys.

I started watching this and Eric Roberts’ narration of the legend of D.B. Cooper had me hooked. I put my head down to start writing this review and looked up and thought, why is every guy just wandering around topless? Soon, I realized that no one had on any shirts at all and were all gradually taking more and more of their clothes off. Once a scene turns into a softcore JO event, I decided to do some research, thinking “David DeCoteau has to be behind this.” And yes, pardon the pun, be he sure was.

You have to admire the audacity of a director that promises you a movie where Bigfoot battles another myth and delivers a movie with hairless boys parading around with guns. In fact, I love that this movie is on Amazon Prime, complete with reviews that all contain the phrase “not that there’s anything wrong with it.”

Bigfoot erotica is a thing. David DeCoteau movies of bros with pecs all posing for the voyeuristic lens of the director are a thing. If that’s what you’re looking for and you have no interest in just straight up watching porn or an actual Bigfoot film, then let me recommend this one to you. I’m glad that there’s something for everyone and this film is certainly that something for those that always wanted to watch a movie where dudes stroke themselves until being murdered by a man in a horrible looking Bigfoot costume. But hey! The scenery is nice!

And if you were planning on Linnea Quigley rescuing you from the odd stirrings you’re feeling, bad news. It’s just her voice. You’re gonna have to deal with whatever you’re dealing with like a man.

I love that Fangoria even interviewed DeCoctau about this project, in which he said, “I remember the evening when D.B. Cooper leaped from that plane. I was 9 years old and living with my family in Portland, Oregon, where Cooper boarded it. It was all over the local news. Even at a young age, I knew it would be near-impossible for anyone to survive that jump—at night, during a rainstorm. I knew the area of Washington State where the FBI thought he could have landed. It is so remote and dangerous that if the jump didn’t kill D.B., then maybe something else did. Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper is my theory of what actually happened to the hijacker.”

So basically, at nine years old, he imagined a movie where Bigfoot traced the outline of a dude’s package through his boxers before killing him. I love that we live in this reality, everyone.

You might be reading this and wonder, “Should I watch this movie?” I’d say yes. You’re not going to see another film that has this many repeated shots, this much stock footage (there’s literally a 3D render of an airplane used in the place of stock footage) and this much ADR. It’s the kind of movie you can brag that you finished. It’s 76 minutes of running time feels like 76 months. I stuck it out just wondering, “Would Bigfoot ever battle D.B. Cooper?”

I’m going to save you some time and tell you that yes, they battle. And that D.B. Cooper is now Bigfoot. If you want some explanation beyond that, you’re going to need to watch this yourself.

I love that this movie was available on DVD at Wal-Mart and can only imagine that this was made only as a Trojan horse to get male softcore porn into the unwanting hands of far-right conspiracy lovers. And if me sitting through this painful film had to happen to make that come true, I regret that I only have one life to give to my country.

Who decides what is art and what is junk? Is there much of a difference between Alejandro Jodorowsky and Lucio Fulci? What is good and what is bad? This movie raises those questions and more. Does it answer them? Kinda.

Albert is a strange man — a hotdog vendor who can barely communicate with the rest of the world. Played by Jon Wachter, a first-time actor who is usually a writer and director, he’s an unsettling presence everywhere he appears. Suddenly, he becomes the muse of a Richard Kern-like photographer and forced to endure all manner of bloody and disturbing photo sessions.

Our hero — is he the hero? — decides to become a photographer himself. But all he knows is how Ivan acts. And the only people he knows how to hire are prostitutes. This can’t end well. And it doesn’t.

This isn’t a perfect movie. But it will keep your attention throughout. It has an odd undercurrent beyond its subject matter, making the viewer think they are watching a real maniac and not just one on the screen.

You can grab this video from Severin or watch it on Amazon Prime.

Charlie watched her pro wrestler dad die in the ring, was raised by wrestlers and is now in the middle of an end of the world zombie extinction level event. From Parts Unknown: Fight Like a Girl! is that kinda movie.

This movie is based on director Daniel Armstrong’s (MurderDrome) time in the video game industry, specifically a failed wrestling game project. There are a lot of shout outs to Evil Dead 2 in here, as this film aspires beyond its small budget to be an Australian Shaun of the Dead, except, you know, with pro wrestlers.

While originally shot in 2006 and 2007, the film sat on the shelf until Armstrong’s later work got known. Over the following years, attempts to finish the movie were made. At one point, the director’s car was destroyed by a drunk off-duty police officer and the insurance money was just enough to allow shooting to continue. Finally, in 2014, after the success of MurderDrome, shooting and editing were both finally finished.

This is a movie that’s not afraid to be beyond goofy and silly. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a fun take on the genre and most of the cast trained to be actual wrestlers, which is pretty cool. There’s plenty of gore and one scene that legitimately made me laugh when the zombie personal assistant kept trying to find the exact right pose and had to keep pulling her body into position.

Check it out for yourself on Amazon Prime.

Remember when we discussed Horror House on Highway 5? Well, there’s another house, this time on highway 6. There, a doctor lives in a bomb shelter and awaits the second coming of Elvis Presley. There’s also a killer armed with an axe.

Four college students are searching for the horror house and want to prove the reality of ghosts when a possessed soda machine hurts one of them. That brings them to a clinic that is really the horror house.

I think I love the original — love is a strong term, I think — because it may be amateurish, but it looks better on film. This shot on digital video film loses something as the cheese in it is way more evident. It feels more amateurish than the first, if that’s even possible.

There’s all sorts of weirdness in here, so much so that I can’t totally dislike the film. Weird symbols ala Fulci, discussions about multiple versions of reality all happening at once, random characters showing up only to get killed and an ending that approaches — but does not match — the strange close of the original.

I’m glad there’s a sequel and I’m pleased that Richard Casey is still making movies. I just wish that they were better than this one. I kind of wish he’d write the script and oversee the film with an actual crew, DP and director, as he definitely has some great themes. He just needs a team to make them happen.

You can check it out on Amazon Prime.

I was discussing the holiday movies that I’ve been reviewing with the fine folks at Grindhouse Theology and I was asked: Are you watching Kirk Cameron’s movie? This was the sell job: “It’s definitely a front-runner for worst movie ever put the celluloid. There’s just something wrong with the folks behind it.” Well, obviously that was all it took to get me to watch it.

This is a movie so poorly reviewed that Kirk Cameron himself claimed that the low scores — including being ranked at the very bottom of the IMDB’s Bottom One Hundred Films — were the result of “haters, pagans and an atheist conspiracy that was allegedly hatched on Reddit.”

Directed by Darren Doane — who also directed music videos for Blink 182, Nile, Buckcherry and Uncle Cracker — this is a 79-minute sermon delivered by the former child star of TV’s Growing Pains. It’s also a movie where he tries to convince his brother-in-law that Christmas is wonderful — even the modern version of it — while proving the Biblical roots of the commercialized parts of the holiday.

Honestly, I don’t even know if I can properly encapsulate this film for you. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.

Before the story even begins, Kirk Cameron — as himself, not the fictionalized version of Kirk we’ll soon meet — addresses us directly from his fireplace. He loves Christmas, but hates that atheists have taken the holiday away while fundamentalist Christians have pushed their agenda that the holiday is based on pagan traditions and make accusations that the holiday has become too tied to materialism. Also: Santa Claus is a Christian.

The movie then starts. It takes place at a Christmas party attended by what I can imagine are Tyrell Corporation replicants. Kirk is there but he notices that his brother-in-law Christian (the film’s director, Darren Doane) isn’t celebrating because he feels that the holiday has become too commercialized and he feels uncomfortable as a Christian (named Christian) with the pagan elements of the season. Kirk then dropped some (well, certainly not) science and explains the Nativity while two other party guests discuss conspiracy theories.

The narrative flow of the movie works like this: Christian says something he believes in and Kirk gently chides him and then explains what an idiot he is. For example, Christmas trees are not Biblical in original, right? Wrong. God made trees. And we should see a cross every time we see a Christmas tree. You can see the logic. But it’s a leap. If you can make these leaps, then you can watch this film and get something from it. You just have to let Kirk take you on a ride.

Sure, the date and role of the Wise Men may be questionable, but the swaddling cloth of the baby Jesus is the same as his burial shroud and the gifts of the Magi were embalming medicines and oh yeah, nutcrackers should represent the Herod’s soldiers in your Nativity scene.

But hasn’t Santa co-opted the holiday from Jesus? Isn’t Santa just another way to say Satan? Kirk has the answers to this, too. Santa is Saint Nicholas, showing the First Council of Nicaea in which Jesus’ divinity was questioned and Nicholas beat the shit out of Arius for his heresy, winning over the people. Afterward, he’d beat up any atheist he met, which means that Saint Nick was “bad, in a good way.” After a day of beating up those who don’t believe, the man who would be Santa’s wife tells him it’s time to deliver gifts to kids as he stares at the camera like a maniac. It’s one of the most disconcerting moments in the film. Christian is won over and yells that “Santa is the man.”

Christian and Kirk return to the party. Kirk makes fun of people who say the holiday is too commercialized, explaining that because God took on material form, it’s fine to celebrate that by giving expensive gifts. After all, God gave us a pretty expensive gift. I need this logic to explain why I’ve bought so many DVDs. Kirk then breaks the fourth wall and asks us to make Christmas religious again for our children.

Remember Christian? Well, he’s done something great for his family. He’s organized a hip hop holiday dance, at which point we get an extended breakdance sequence set to the tune of an EDM “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

Kirk says it’s time to feast, but reminds us to not forget about God. Then, nine minutes of credits pad out the film’s running time.

For everyone that delights in making fun of this movie, it really feels like shooting fish — Jesus was a fisherman — in a barrel. This is a $500,000 movie that tries to be an earnest sermon on how its creators believe. Except it’s also a movie that tries to tell a narrative story.

It’s only when we read too much into things — if that’s Kirk’s real sister, why isn’t the brother-in-law played by the real brother? Where’s Candace Cameron, his somewhat of a bigger star sister, and her husband, hockey player Valeri Bure? Why was there no hot chocolate in Kirk’s mug in the overly earnest open? Does anyone who made this movie not realize that the DeAndre character is racist in its depiction of black people? Is anyone mad that they co-opted dubstep? Why wasn’t POD in this movie?

That said, I’m not going to make fun of Kirk for being a child star or his earnestly vacant stare. Obviously, this was not a movie made for me. I also don’t think it was made for Christians. I think it was made for Kirk, his family and close multiethnic friends. Things just got out of hand and it ended up being released in theaters and they had to go along with it. I mean, I don’t think this is Kevin Sorbo’s Let There Be Light or Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party. I don’t think this is some far right wing conservative religious let’s get the Apocalypse and Rapture (not in that order) started early propaganda film. And it’s not the worst holiday movie I’ve ever seen — trust me, I’m getting to that. I’ve seen Christmas movies that have ruined my mind and destroyed my soul. And I’ll be sharing them with you soon enough.

Based on the 2001 book Beware the Night by Ralph Sarchie and Lisa Collier Cool, this film claims that it was inspired by the actual accounts of an NYPD sergeant, a throwback to 1970’s Satanic film. Directed by Scott Derrickson (Dr. Strange, Sinister), it’s a stylish modern take on those films and their various tropes.

Where those 70’s shockers dealt with the spectre of Vietnam and society’s changing views of religion, this film takes the PTSD afflicted survivors of Iraq and posits occult reasons for their suicidal and murderous urges. NYPD office Raphie Sarchie (Eric Bana, Hulk) and partner Butler (Joel McHale, Community) work the dangerous streets of the 46th precinct, a place where the veteran office recounts finding dead infants in dumpsters and real-life horror in every alley.

A domestic disturbance call brings them into the world of Jimmy Tratner, a marine that has beaten his wife and whose home has scratch marks all over it. They assume that the man is on drugs or has gone insane as they make an arrest.

Before they get a chance to rest, they’re called to the Bronx Zoo, where a woman literally threw her son to the lions. The power is down, a stranger painter has released the lions that he talks to and the woman scratches at the ground reciting lyrics from The Doors (an interesting inclusion due to the witchcraft behind their lyrics, such as the inversion of Morrison’s name to Mr. Mojo Risin and the Boys from Brazil urban legend of multiple Morrisons being alive all at the same time).

The woman from the zoo is transferred to a mental health facility and her family asks that a Jesuit named Mendoza help, which leads to us learning that Ralph has issues with religion.

Another call to a house where a family will not leave the living room leads to a possessed basement where that woman’s husband, David Griggs, was a painter. His dead body — filled with maggots and flies — emerges from a wall in a great scare. They learn that Santino, a Marine commander, was the painter at the zoo. This scene is rich with occult imagery — strange voices, lightbulbs being instantly extinguished and static coming from the police band.

As Ralph gets deeper into the case, he discovers hidden owl iconography, Doors lyrics and more static at each crime scene. There are some effective slices of gruesomeness here, such as the look of Santino and strange bursts of gore, like a crucified cat. And the horror has followed him home, haunting his daughter.

After deciding to work with Mendoza, they learn that Ralph has an instinctive radar for the dark side. The three men track Santino and Jimmy. The former overcomes and kills Butler (who did not die in the original cut of the film) and the latter is stopped by the power of a crucifix.

Santino escapes, taking Ralph’s wife and daughter hostage. An exorcism is performed and all works out fine, including Ralph’s return to the Catholic faith as he baptizes his second child.

Deliver Us from Evil suggests the start of a new Insidious style franchise, which didn’t happen, but still leaves us with a modern take on The Exorcist. It’s more stylish and somewhat better than you’d expect, which has led to frequent rewatching in the B and S About Movies household. That says volumes, as most modern horror is barely mentioned in this homestead!