DAY 18. ONLY ON VHS Day: Watch something on true psychotronic format. If you don’t have access to a VCR then watch a movie with a VCR/VHS theme in it.
Thanks to the Found Footage Festival, so many people have gotten the chance to see a lost part of the VHS era — board games that relied on your VCR.
Nightmare was chief amongst those games. Released in 1991, the game took place on The Other Side, a place of six Harbingers who claim authority over a region while dreaming of taking over the entire dark dimension and escape into the human world. When you play, you become one of them — Baron Samedi the zombie, Gevaudan the werewolf, Hellin the poltergeist, Khufu the mummy, Anne de Chantraine the witch or Elizabeth Bathory the vampire — and follow the rules of the Gatekeeper, whose wants to ensure that you don’t escape The Other Side.
The game was part of the Atmosfear series, created in Australia by Phillip Tanner and Brett Clements. It even came back in the 2000’s with two new games released on DVD.
To win the game, each player must use their opponents’ greatest fears against them in order to collect six keys. Over multiple versions and booster tapes, the game stayed more popular in Australia then it did in America, even getting its own music video and Pepsi-branded drinks.
Two brothers, Gordon (Graham Skipper, who wrote and directed Sequence Break) and John Hardesty (Chase Williams, John Dies At the End) have reunited at their father’s video store, sorting through the mountains of unwatched VHS tapes as they prepare to sell it. Dad’s been missing for seven months, Gordon has left town long ago and John’s life is going nowhere.
The next day, after finding a key to their father’s office, they discover a VCR board game entitled Beyond the Gates. The tape is still in the VCR, which means it may be the last thing their father ever watched. The boys play the video and a woman’s face appears. Her name is Evelyn (Barbara Crampton, who also co-produced) and she asks if they’re willing to wager their souls. After a flash of light, the two discover that they’re lost hours of time.
Later that evening, Gordon’s girlfriend Margot (Brea Grant, Halloween II) joins the brothers for another game, which tells them that if they want to save their father, they must play the game and locate the four keys. Soon, the time 3:13 will wake each person up to a TV showing only static.
Inside the box is a receipt for an occult store run by a man named Elric He tells them that they must play the game once it starts. On their way out, John steals a dagger.
As they continue playing, actions in the game world impact real people, like their friend Hank being disemboweled by unseen forces. Even when they try to throw the game away, it soon returns. That’s because they only have two choices left: win the game or die. That said — no one has ever won before.
The game itself becomes a metaphor for the lives the brothers are living, stuck in old empotions and memories of the past. Whether or not they can use that knowledge and escape, well, you’ll have to watch the movie to discover that for yourself.
DAY 7. DAIKAIJU: The bigger the better. Who needs a city anyway?
We already did War of the Gargantuastoday, but you can never get enough giant monster movies, much less one that is endlessly self-referential!
Japan is in a mess to say the least. The weather is all screwed up, volcanoes have stopped erupting, there are too many virgins and that can only mean one thing — a giant monster named Mono is on the loose.
Disgraced scientist and Sailor Moon cosplayer Doctor Totaro Saigo has a special formula that can transform anyone — even the lowly assistant Nitta — to become a gigantic super soldier ready to take on even the largest of kaiju.
Syuusuke Saito plays Nitta before the transformation. He’s Kyoryu Black from Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger, if you watch Japanese sentai shows (think Power Rangers). Once he transforms, he becomes Kota Ibushi, current New Japan Pro Wrestling star who started his career in the DDT promotion, or Dramatic Dream Team. If you like just plain strange things to happen in your pro wrestling, I’d advise you to check them out. For example, Ibushi once had a series of matches with Yoshihiko, an inflatable doll.
The movie begins as the SpiritSpots.com team visits Specter Pass, where eyewitnesses have reported strange lights. After urinating on a special idol, Professor Nindo Izumi appears to warn them of the danger that this area of Japan presents. They don’t listen and are all killed one by one, just like a slasher movie.
The next day, Nitta and Professor Saigo’s daughter Miwa discover the Juganda, a prehistoric flower that’s based on the Juran from Ultra Q and an egg that contains the key to Setupp X Cells, which Saigo believes are the key to jump-starting the next stage of human evolution.
Meanwhile, at Mount Myojin, the kaiju Mono emerges before a crowd of soldiers and monster rights protestors, who it promptly devours. That’s when Saigo uses Nitta’s love for his daughter to convince him to take the Steupp X Cells and put on a pair of magical briefs that change size as he grows. After nearly three minutes of pro wrestling mayhem, Mono retreats and Nitta retains his sexy new body.
Nitta becomes a big celebrity called “The Great Giant” and is chased by a mysterious girl named Lisa who only wants his magical size-changing underwear. Miwa grows depressed and Mono grows stronger thanks to a second egg and her newfound poison fog power. Luckily, Saigo has even better Setupp X Cells and Izumi has trained Nitta to even be able to stop the flow of waterfalls.
However, even Lisa coming back to the good side and Miwa getting back Nitta’s special briefs isn’t enough. Saigo must inject Nitta with evil cells that transform him into Japanese legend Minoru Suzuki, the most intimidating pro wrestler perhaps ever. He basically annihilates the monster, who it turns out is really an old woman.
Ibushi isn’t alone in having matches with strange opponents. Suzuki has had a several years-long feud with Mecha Mummy. One of their matches involved an extended sequence where they became friends and went fishing before hatred overcame their truce. The strange thing is, Suzuki was the co-founder of Pancrase, one of the first MMA groups in the world. Despite most of their matches not always being 100% real, he has the reputation of being one of the best fighters in all of Japan. He was also the motion actor for King in the video game Tekken.
Your sense of humor may vary, as this is very much in the vein of the Airplane movies, but all about Japanese monster movies, to the point that even scenes from Frankenstein Conquers the World get referenced. It also helps to know a little about Japanese pro wrestling, as Professor Saigo is so out of touch he only knows Giant Baba’s moves, which aren’t as dangerous as the modern powerbombs and top rope — err, top of the building — Phoenix Splashes that Nitta uses on Mono.
My subtitles and the English track on this film were absolutely different, which was kind of great, as they each added their own unique commentary to this completely out there movie. There’s even a scene that shows that training to battle a giant monster is just like getting ready for a boxing match like Rocky! Even the original Ultraman star Sandayu Dokumamushi shows up at the end to save the day!
There’s actually precedent for this movie, believe it or not. In 2004, The Calamari Wrestler featured Osamu Nishimura as a pro wrestler who becomes a giant squid and does battle with wrestlers Akira Nogami.
On February 28, 2016, George’s Miller’s beleaguered, long-gestating fourth film in the Mad Max-franchise swept the 88th Academy Awards with ten Oscar nominations and, deservingly, won six for its technical prowess. Mad Max: Fury Road not only surpassed all other nominated films for the evening; it broke the record for the most wins for an Australian film, previously held by The Piano (1993), which won three Oscars.
Mainstream critics across the wasteland praised the film—with movie goers giving it an 8.0 on the IMDb, 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 90% on Metacritic. As you can tell by those scores, there’s a segment, the hardcore post-apocalyptic fan segment—the ones raised on the ‘80s fucked-up futures of Sergio Martino and Enzo G. Castellari—that slogged the film as a “poor remake,” a “poor sequel,” and “don’t believe the hype.”
Yep, it’s the ‘ol “you say ‘tomayto’, I say ‘tomahto’” adage. While you, the mainstream swimmers who dare not dip so much as a toe into the toxic video-fringe waters, say “modern classic,” we, the apoc-rats of the ‘80s post-nuc generation, say “mundane crap.” Then we wash away the Hollywood hysterics with entertaining waste-barrel scrapes from the masters of the genre: the Philippines’ Willy Milan and Cirio H. Santiago.
So, yes. I’m on the side of the 489 IMDb reviewers who rated the film between 1 to 5 Stars out of 10 (248 gave it a “1”); where 1 to 5 Stars serves as a barometer, that translates to about 2, to 2 1/2 Stars. Now, if I was a studio executive, I’d be enraged. That’s not the feedback my studio was paying for with that $150 million price tag.
Flush the bombers. Get the subs in launch mode, General Jack Beringer. We have a few contaminated bones to pick.
Def-Con 5: The Pursuit Special, the baddest-badass car of the apocalypse, stolen and driven by others? We came to see Max tear up the radioactive roads—not have the car repainted, driven by others . . . and destroyed.
Def-Con 4: Tina Turner draped in chainmail lording over the Thunderdome—in place of The Humungous and Wez—bitching about the “Raggity-Man” and pop-crooning about heroes? Thank god Willy Milan and Cirio H. Santiago came to wash that Def-Fuck from our minds.
Def-Con 3: We didn’t come for some high-art, exploding vehicle POV-CGI shot tomfoolery threading us through the spokes of a tumbling steering wheel. We didn’t come for flame-throwing guitars, just so Conan O’ Brien could annoy us with an unfunny apoc-parody and piss us off.
Def-Con 2: Regardless of who fitted into Max Rockatansky’s leathers: We came for Max: not a “Mad Maxine.” When we are in the mood for an apoc-babe, we’ll pop in our copy of Phoenix the Warrior and cheer on Kathleen Kinmont. Your feminist bait-and-switch, which strung-up Max as a blood-bag hood ornament grunting through a face-cage for half of the film pissed us apoc-rats off.
Def-Con 1: No Mel Gibson. That’d be like John Carpenter doing his Escape from New York remake, I mean, reboot, I mean, sequel, Escape from L.A, without Kurt Russell. We came for Kurt. Kurt is Snake . . . and Mel Gibson is Max. Period.
Boom! You screwed us, McKittrick.
What we apoc-rats really want is a flat-out, crazy-ass, bigger-budgeted homages to Cirio H. Santiago’s Philippine-apocalypse series: Dune Warrior, Equalizer 2000, Raiders of the Sun, The Sisterhood, Stryker, and Wheels of Fire. We want Willy Milan’s Mad Warrior and W is War. Why? Because when it comes to the apocalypse: You stay the hell out of America, Canada, and South America. You go straight to the wasteland sands of the Philippines, then Italy, then Australia, and then New Zealand, in that order.
So while the cinematic, western Imperialism of Hollywood shoves down one bloated Armageddon and Geostorm* conniption after another on the East, China said: no. And Mad Max: Fury Road didn’t receive a major release in China. Then China’s film industry made their own.
Mad Shelia is not a faded Xerox of an Asylum mockbuster. It’s not a blatant and cheap, direct-to-video SyFy channel pukebuster that justifies it’s awfulness with an “it’s a parody,” excuse. This fun film is not a copyright infringement. Its homage to the Pacific-rim knockoffs, of the Italian rip-offs, of the English-language-made originals that birthed Snake Plissken and Max Rockatansky.
So put on your Cirio H. Santiago rose-colored glasses and enjoy the ‘80s apoc-throwback ride that travels the familiar radiated sands of our VHS upbringing with souped-up battle cars, jousting motorcycles, and steampunk-adorned vagabonds. We’re off on the road warrior adventures of Xi Liya who, with the assistance of her father, wonders the desert disguised as a man. For in this wasteland, the hordes aren’t after food, water, or the all-precious petrol—this Earth needs women, which are in short supply, and virginity is the gold they seek. After discovering Shelia’s sex, the warrior hoards want her. They murder her father.
That’s it. Shelia downshifts to “Def-Con 1” and rescuers a group of virgins on the auction block. Then she just starts kicking ass with aplomb from one end of the China Wall to the other.
I’m in love.
Yeah, I hear you, mainstream apoc-naysayer. This is the cleanest bunch of contaminated wastelanders since Barry Pepper’s pristine, post-apoc snowy whites lit up our soiled, post-WW III screens in Vinnie Barbarino’s Battlefield: Earth.
“So what?” I say to you.
In my tribute to Italian apocalypse cinema on Medium, I discussed the 20 “go to” spices and herbs added to the pasta pots of the apoc-world. And Mad Shelia boils it’s dumpling-apocalypse exactly the way it is supposed to. For in the post-apocalypse:
—Women always seem to not only find cosmetics, but the make-up stays on in the hottest and dirtiest, war-ravaged environments.
—Even in the absence of dental hygiene products . . . everyone has perfect teeth and gums.
—After running through sewers, deserts, and rubble, etc., men and women hop into the first burnt-out car or rat-infested hovel to have sex—body odors be damned. Where the deodorants stick stash is, is anyone’s guess.
—When it comes to body maintenance, there’s always a stash of finger and toe nail clippers to maintain hands and feet. Where’s the nail polish come from?
—There are no ugly women suffering from nuclear fallout hair loss in the apocalypse. Only well-endowed women with perfectly coifed hair survive.
Yeah, you can call me an apoc-chauvinist, but pretty girls with guns kicking wasteland ass is welcomed in my celluloid wheelhouse.
So, where can you see Mad Shelia, you ask?
Sadly, in the domestic marketplace, all we have are the two official trailers and the film’s numerous promotional stills/screen caps on the web to enjoy. Since the film was made exclusively for video streaming websites in China, there’s no Region-specific, dubbed or subtitled, physical releases—no Blu-rays or DVDs on this one.
The film is available on TenCent Video’s (Chinese Mandarin) streaming site. Sadly, even with an online language translator, the site is difficult for non-native speakers to navigate. As of March 2019, the site’s VOD traffic spiked to 900 million mobile users and 89 million subscribers, content which TenCent also distributes through China’s largest television maker, TCL. The film’s success also spawned two equally successful (and equally cool) streaming-sequels: Mad Shelia: Virgin Road (2016) and Mad Shelia: Revenge of the Road (2017).
So take that, George Miller.
Director Lu Lei is China’s prolific “Alfonso Brescia.” Brescia, or, as we VHS video hounds know him under his Americanized director-nom de plume, Al Bradley, was Italy’s Star Wars knockoff king. While George Lucas was still piddling around with the production of the second Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back (1980)—Brescia was already on his fourth out of five not-Star Wars romps. (You can read about my affection for Alfonso Brescia’s oeuvre in detail on Medium).
Bottom line: Director Lu Lei’s films are awesome. He knows what his audience wants, he knows how to work a budget, and he delivers the goods—and brings the studio great returns on their investment. He’s a director’s director and, we hope, Lei takes a dilapidated page from the Cirio H. Santiago ancient wasteland playbook and bestows us nostalgic video fringers with more desert sands dust-ups and war and action films.
Here’s to hoping that, one day, possibly a retro-Digital imprint, like Arrow Video, will make Mad Shelia—a well-shot, fun film—easily available outside of China. It deserves it.
And be sure to check out review for another ignored blockbuster from China: 2019’s The Wandering Earth.
* As much as we bash Geostorm around here and would never review such a picture, we broke down and reviewed Gerald Bulter in Greenland. So much for our credibility, huh? Ah, but we did that review to call out Spanish director F. Javier Gutierrez and his film, Before the Fall. So, credibility restored.
From the “We Broke Another Promise File”: So, err, ah . . .we reviewed Geostorm for our recent “Disaster Week” of reviews . . . and, as it turns out, Greenland wasn’t so bad . . . well, not as bad as Geostorm. Hey, we’re the guys who reneged and reviewed Underwater, after all.
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.
Jeb’s cartoon is on the verge of cancellation, so the studio sends him and his writers to a house in the mountains to write the entire next season as fast as possible. However, Jeb’s controlling personality and obsessive work ethic ruins things immediately. And when he starts to plant cameras all over and call people on their hidden conversations, things go from bad to murder.
Jeb is soon fired by the studio, yet he keeps watching the house from the home of his mother, who never wanted him in the first place. He then returns, killing the rest of the writers one at a time, making his own snuff film.
Originally known as Wichita, this movie was written, directed, produced, and scored by a group of film-school friends who graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, including directors Justyn Ah Chong and Matthew D. Ward. It stars Trevor Peterson (Grizzly Park), Persia White (The Vampire Diaries) and Caitlin Gerard (Insidious: The Last Key).
Seeing as how this was the filmmaker’s first full-length film, it’s unfair to demand much of it. There are some intriguing ideas here, but the movie never seems to feel like it develops much before it wildly veers in tone. There are some good ideas here and I’m interested to see what everyone does next.
American Killing is available via On Demand and DVD on August 6.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR department. That has no impact on our review.
There’s a moment early on in The Boy where you’re either going to think it’s the dumbest movie you’ve ever seen or completely brilliant. I err on the side of the latter, loving the audaciousness that demands that you believe that a porcelain doll could be alive. Director William Brent Bell brings you along for a great ride, keeping you wondering until the end who is really crazy here.
Greta Evans (Lauren Cohan, Maggie from TV’s The Walking Dead) has come to the UK from Montana to work for an elderly couple named the Heelshires. Thinking she’ll be watching over a child in her role as a nanny, Greta is shocked that her charge is really a porcelain boy named Brahms.
This is the point where you might want to give up on this film. I urge you to stick with it, as it gets really good from here on out.
It turns out that Brahms has rejected many sitters, so Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire closes the doors to a room and begin speaking to him, asking if he approves of Greta. Now comes the time when they must instruct her on all the rules of caring for their child, which include always reading to Brahms in a loud and clear voice, playing his music loudly and always putting his food in the fridge if he doesn’t finish it. Also: remember to keep setting and changing the rat traps outside so they don’t get into the walls of the estate.
Of course, Greta ignores these rules and does her own thing. While on the phone with her sister, she learns that her abusive ex — who she left the country to escape — has been looking for her. She also falls for Malcolm (Rupert Evans, who was on Charmed and is now on The Man In the High Castle), a grocery deliveryman.
That’s how she learns that when the real Brahms was eight — twenty years ago — he died in a fire. The real boy was also incredibly odd, which seems to be why strange things happen in the house: locked doors, stolen clothes and strange noises like the crying of a child. Even more frightening is that the doll is able to move between rooms on its own.
Greta comes to believe that the spirit of the dead child is inside the doll, so she begins to take the rules seriously. This freaks out Malcolm, who relates a story that Brahms may have killed a young girl, but before the police could get involved, he died in the house fire. He warns her not to stay in the house, but she reveals that she had a miscarriage when her ex beat her, so she feels that caring for Brahms is her chance to atone.
Do you think this film is crazy yet? It gets even more bonkers, because the Heelshires — happy that they’ve finally found someone worthy of their son — write a goodbye letter before drowning themselves.
Of course, her ex-lover finds her and smashes the doll. But that only means that this film unlocks the next level of insanity because Brahms has been alive all along, living inside the walls, his ruined face covered with a mask that resembles the doll. The letter from his parents reveals that Greta is to be his mate. Can she escape? Will anyone survive? And how the hell are they going to top this in the sequel?
Originally called In a Dark Place and starring Jane Levy (Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe) before the switch to the title of The Boy and recasting the lead.
I recommend this one, as long as you keep an open mind and accept that its ridiculous premise will lead to some major scares later.
BONUS: You can listen to us discuss this movie on our podcast.
The team of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore started their careers by contributing uncredited rewrites to movies like Wedding Crashers, 27 Dresses and Monster-in-Law. Their breakthrough was The Hangover, which gave them the juice they needed to start co-directing movies of their own. This film was a surprise success for them, grossing around $183 million worldwide.
Amy Mitchell (Mila Kunis) is married with two kids, living in the Chicago suburbs and working for a cool coffee company. Even though she does everything right, she feels like she’s constantly losing, which is exacerbated when catches her husband having cam sex with his mistress.
Now, she must learn to deal with being a single mom and battling the moms who do everything right, like Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate), Stacy (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Vicky (Annie Mumolo).
Joining up with Carla (Kathryn Hahn, who voiced the new Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and Kiki (Kristen Bell, who is great in this), they decide to quit the PTA. However, Gwendolyn gets to our heroine and she decides to challenge her presidency.
My favorite part of this film was the credits. No, I’m not being mean. It’s a cute little comedy. But the best part is that at the end, the stars answer questions with their real-life mothers. Christina Applegate mentions that her mom (they appeared together in Jaws of Satan) took her to see Al Pacino in Cruising when she was 9 years old. This is even funnier because her TV dad, Ed O’Neill, is also in that film.
After Hot Rod, The Lonely Island team of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone tackled the world of pop music yet bombed bigger than the movie’s hero, Conner4Real making only $9 million back from a $20 million dollar budget.
I have no idea why. This is the kind of movie that rewards multiple viewings, sticking to the maxim that makes so many 80’s comedies work. Come up with a simple plot and let hijinks ensue.
Once, Conner4Real (Samberg) was in The Style Boyz with his childhood friends Lawrence and Owen (Schaffer and Taccone), but his success made him a spinoff act. Now, Owen is his DJ, forced to wear a giant head that plays the sound from the Tom Cruise era War of the Worlds, while Lawrence hides at his farm.
The joy of this film is how it juxtaposes real life artists — Mariah Carey, the Rza, even Arcade Fire — with the unreal world that Conner lives in. He employs thirty people, including a man who punches him in the privates so that he remembers where he came from.
But the second album just can’t live up to his debut — Thriller, Also — even when his sponsor, Aquaspin, plays them in all of their appliances. Soon, his tour is joined by a new opening act — Saturday Night Live‘s Chris Redd as Hunter the Hungry — and their friendship quickly sours.
There’s a really deep joke in the midst of all this silliness. After saving Conner and his fiancee from wolves — don’t ask — the singer Seal claims that wolves caused his scars. In real life, they came from lupus, but seeing as how the scientific name for wolves is canis lupus, that’s a pretty far way to go for a throwaway laugh.
If you don’t like movies that get completely stupid, there’s nothing I can do to convince you to watch this. But for those that just like being entertained, this one does it every time.
Five teenage friends just want to go to the beach for Spring Break. However, one of them gets a deadly sexually transmitted disease from a toilet seat and soon spreads it through the group as they spend the night at an isolated motel. What’s even scarier than an STD? One that transforms you into the living dead.
Directed and co-written by Jonathan Straiton, this is not a movie that I’d recommend for the squeamish. Or the easily offended. Beyond the rampant gore and general mayhem, there’s also a lot that is ready to upset nearly everyone: vaginas with teeth, masturbating zombies, zombie bukkake and more. So much more. I’d compare this movie to Night of the Creeps, if that movie had more sex.
I’ve seen people both love and hate this movie, both for the same reasons. It’s silly at best and its humor is completely over the line offensive at worse. It just depends where your morals lie. Me, I laughed at a lot of the film and groaned at some of its goofier scenes, but still enjoyed the practical effects and evil janitor Cornelius’ antics. If you’re homophobic, afraid of blood or easily upset by tentacle porn, just don’t watch it.
You can check out more about the film — and grab plenty of merch from it — at the official site. You can watch it on Shudder.
Dylan Avery produced and directed Loose Change, a movie many cite when they bring up 9/11 conspiracy theories. Now, he’s turning his directorial lens toward the issue of police brutality and corruption, from a DJ beat up by off duty DEA agents in town for a convention to a man arrested for filming a police officer. Full disclosure, just like Loose Change, the project began as a fictional narrative film and eventually became a documentary.
Avery was inspired to make this movie after moving to a small neighborhood named La Crescenta, which is patrolled by deputy sheriffs instead of a police force. After being hassled many times himself and profiled as a potential criminal, he began looking into the issues of police brutality.
Obviously, this film is very slanted toward one side. But there’s no way you can’t watch the news and come to realize that we’re in a police state. There’s plenty of worth in keeping an open mind and seeing both sides. I did like that Avery got the point of view of many former police officers. There’s an interesting quote here that really got my brain going: “Being a police officer is the only occupation where you get to be the boss of everybody your very first day on the job.”
Paul Andolina is back to share an anthology movie with us. He’s always a welcome guest on our site. If you like his stuff, check out his site Wrestling with Film.
Lately, I have been finding it increasingly difficult to sit down and watch a movie. I’ve started half a dozen in the past week and a half and never finished a single one. It’s been a while since I’ve written about a film as well but I managed to wake up at a normal time and start a film that had been on my watch list ever since I first heard word of it, The Dark Tapes.
My close personal friends are all too aware of my obsessions with certain genres and sub genres of film. When I first started collecting movies as a hobby in 2011, my obsession was found footage films. I’m still wildly taken by them and track down and watch them like an insatiable maniac.
The Dark Tapes is a found footage anthology film. It involves 4 tapes plus a wraparound. The longest of these tapes is To Catch A Demon which involves Martin, a physics professor, his assistant, Nicole, and a technician, Jason. They are setting up an experiment to catch a trans-dimensional entity but things don’t quite go as planned. This tape is broken into 4 segments that air in between the other 3 tapes. It is the most fully realized out of the tapes and feels like a movie in of itself.
The other tapes are The Hunter & The Hunted, Cam Girls and Amanda’s Revenge, then there is the wraparound which concerns the location where Martin and his team conduct their experiment in To Catch A Demon.
The Hunter & The Hunted is about a couple, David and Karen, who is being disturbed by some sort of entity. They hire a team of ghost hunters who attempt to help them when something goes wrong during the investigation. This one had a lot of promise and I still enjoyed it but the ending was a bit of a let down.
Cam Girls is about a young girl, Caitlin, who moves out west to get away from her overbearing Christian family and to be with her girlfriend Sindy. Caitlin is worried about her little blackouts and not remembering what she has been doing during that time. They run a little cam show where they choose a lucky viewer for a private session. The girls are acting weirdly though as Sindy wants Caitlin to get their viewer to draw some blood. This one was sort of uncomfortable to watch being a fly on the wall during a private cam session. There isn’t much nudity if any but it still has some oddly disturbing scenes of sensuality.
Amanda’s Revenge is about Amanda, who after getting pretty wasted at a party wakes up screaming about what they did to her. It turns out she has been getting abducted by aliens and she enlists the help of her friends to make sure she never gets abducted again. This segment was the most fun as Amanda also has developed some sort of telekinetic powers which leads to some pretty cool visual effects.
Overall, this movie was extremely entertaining. It had great practical and visual effects with a particular part of The Hunter & The Hunted that involves a light up ball and a hallway left me wondering how did they accomplished it.
The girl who plays Caitlin in Cam Girls was also in another found footage anthology film, VHS Viral, that I feel gets a bum wrap most of the time. It’s still an enjoyable film if you are a fan of found footage.
The Dark Tapes is a must see if you are a fan of unique ways to record and frame a portmanteau film, especially with the use of older technology in Amanda’s Revenge. The way they bring in old recording equipment in that tape is really neat. It may be emulated using newer technology but it still looks really freaking cool. You can check out The Dark Tapes on Amazon Prime video or pick it up on DVD online When I first bought it, it wasn’t very readily available and I had to wait for my local video rental store to put it on sale. It’s the best $5 I’ve spent in a while.
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