Hitler didn’t die, but after World War II he was taken to Antarctica. However, plans fell apart and now his decaying zombie body is being kept in Adelaide, Australia while Dr. Josef Mengele prepares an alien-infused immortality serum for the Fuhrer. If you haven’t stopped been offended or stopped reading this by now, then you’re the audience for Hitler Lives!

While Hitler rots away in his new bunker, the world has moved on. Once, governments and agencies worshipped him and begged for his counsel, but now his dream of a thousand year Reich and taking the ubermensch to the stars has changed to embrace global one world government and bitcoin.

All Hitler has is a radio that barely works, powered by baby angels ala Eraserhead, living with the dreams and nightmares of the past as he slowly decomposes. His memories are shown to us via puppets and newsreel footage, interspersed with moments where he communicates with Mengele via video screen. Oh yeah — there are also burlesque dancers.

There are no professional actors per se in the main roles. Hitler is played by Morte, the singer for Australian black metal band Nazxul and his bandmate Rev. Kriss Hades also is in the film and created the soundtrack.

Your ability to enjoy this film will be colored by your patience and how many Nazi conspiracy books you’ve read. Seeing as how I can speak at length about Die Glocke, the Thule Society, the Ghost Army, inner earth theory and more, I made it through the film, even some of the slower parts.

Hitler Lives! is the first movie written and directed by Stuart Rowsell, who has worked on films such as Alien: Covenant, Scooby-Doo and two of the Star Wars prequels. The effects are pretty great and after all, when else are you going to see Hitler with breasts?

Want to see it for yourself? Head on over to the official site.

Disclaimer: I was sent this film by the filmmakers and in no way did that impact my review.

We’ve spent plenty of time learning how the Australians and Italians see the end of the world in cinema on this site. But have you ever wondered how the Dutch envision the world post-apocalypse? Wonder no longer — Molly is here.

Our titular heroine (Julia Batelaan) has incredible fighting skills — owing as much to her stamina as her striking abilities — and supernatural powers that have kept her alive in the teaming wastelands. But now, the powers that be in charge of the Thunderland fight club are on the hunt for her. Their champion, The Truth, was defeated in combat and they want the one called The Girl to be their new star. And their leader, Deacon, wants to infect her with the zombie-like disease that he uses to keep everyone under his control. And once he kidnaps Bailey, the girl that Molly has pledged to protect, a confrontation between the two is inevitable.

What really struck me about this film is the way the fight scenes are presented. They’re not gorgeous ballets filled with flashy bits of action. No, they’re down and dirty skirmishes, with Molly often emerging because she has more heart than anyone else. Between the innovative camera work and use of colors, the film’s low budget doesn’t distract. And it’s not played for laughs like Turbo Kid, a movie I’ve seen many reviewers compare it to.

I’ll be on the lookout for more from creators Colinda Bongers and Thijs Meuwese. The end of the film sets up a sequel and they’re already working on a prequel to this movie called Kill Mode.

Look for Molly on blu ray, DVD and VOD October 2.

Disclaimer: I was sent this film by its PR team and in no way did that impact my review.

You know what gets me to watch a movie every single time? Based on a true story. Nothing makes me want to watch something more. That’s what drew me to Blood Child, which is based on the Malay myth of the Toyol, which are ghost children raised by black magic.

After a devastating miscarriage in Singapore, Ashley turned to a witch doctor to start the process of raising a ghost child that would help her discover the spirit of her lost baby. This tragedy brings her and husband Bill back to the United States where his friends are amazed that he stayed faithful to her in a foreign country filled with beautiful women.

Soon, the couple finds themselves pregnant again, but their joy doesn’t last long. That ghost child — or the spirit of their lost baby — will not come in second place to a living child. And what about Siti, their housekeeper, who has come back with them, creeping out all of their friends?

What really struck me about the film is the incredibly casual misogyny of Bill’s friends toward his marriage and wife’s mental state. “You just need to get laid” seems to be their solution to a spouse in major need to support. And everyone in the film has no issue at all being racist toward Siti, who is one of the few sympathetic characters in the film.

I also enjoyed the fact that the spirit in this film chooses technology to make its presence known. In moments of physical interaction, some of the characters turn to stare into their screens, such as when a girl attempts to seduce Bill in a bar. Instead of enjoying that moment — when he shouldn’t be — he starts to film it and instead of watching her giving him a sexual favor in digital POV, he’s greeted with the face of evil.

The film marks the directorial debut of Jennifer Phillips, who is also the film’s writer and producer. The film looks way better than most current VOD features and while some performances aren’t as good as others, it’s a decent first effort — minus the surprise ending, which feels a little tacked on.

As is typical in horror films, people don’t always behave like you or I would in these situations. When a voice tells me to get out, I get out! I also know better than to try and raise a ghost child, but then again, as far as I know, I am not a character in a horror movie.

Blood Child is now available on all major platforms, including iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, inDemand, Dish and more. Plus, you can get the DVD from all major online retailers.

Disclaimer: I was sent this movie by its PR team, but as you know, that has no bearing on my review.

Six strangers are thrown together as part of a slasher movie re-enactment. It seems like good fun, what with them being left in the woods and pursued by serial killers. But what happens when it becomes real? And who will survive? And, of course, what will be left of them?

Marcienne Dwyer starts with the heroine, Alex, who is filling in for her boyfriend’s best friend as they go to Slasher Sleepout, an escape room style weekend. The relationship between her and Nathan, as well as the event itself, are not what they seem. While Alex seems like the best girlfriend ever, the truth is much different. And Nathan’s reasons for bringing her aren’t all that pure either.

All manner of slasher tropes show up here, from the sinister gas station to the victims that are along for the ride, like the gothy and gore-obsessed Marina and Pitch, horror film lover Larry and Tim, who is a cipher and may just be part of the game. They’re all abducted and taken into the woods for the game, where there are set clues and objects that they all need to get to the next point.

Halfway through the movie, a stylistic change suddenly happens, taking the film from Friday the 13th to Saw. That’s also when we learn a lot more about our two main characters. There’s a lot of fan service to slasher fans, but if you’re looking for a film that recalls those movies and says something new, this isn’t it. It’s not a bad film, but the narrative switch veers from pure slash and stalk to psychological horror.

This is co-writer (along with Trysta A. Bissett) Preston DeFrancis feature directorial debut and he does pretty well with it. I’ve read other reviews online complaining about the poor acting of some of the characters in here, but I didn’t really notice. That said, if you look at most of the stuff I watch, I care more about being entertained than by the quality of the performances. I chalked it up to the slasher roots at the heart of this one.

To be honest, I liked where the film was heading before the shift, but I was still entertained by where things ended up. But hey, make up your own mind. You should watch it for yourself. It’s streaming exclusively on Shudder.

Oliver is mentally unstable and a loner at best, living a life that was forced on him by his oppressive mother. By day, he slouches through his OCD ritual, but at night, he wanders the streets and bars on a deadly mission. His life is brutal and filled with doom, but out of all this violence comes the opportunity to leave it all behind, thanks to a girl named Sophia.

Who’s Watching Oliver is the directorial debut of Richie Moore, who has worked on the camera crew for the last two Hangover films and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. He also co-wrote the script with star Russell Geoffrey Banks and producer Raimund Huber.

When we first meet Oliver (Banks), we see him counting down the seconds until 1 AM so that he can take his pills and Facetime his mama (Margaret Roche). Then, we watch as he meticulously plans and executes his daily routine, alone save for a random stray cat that intrudes on his morning. He boards a water taxi and heads off for his day in Thailand, a place far from home.

Soon, we catch up to him at night, in a bar. I really like how Moore keeps the focus on Oliver in these scenes, having him speak directly to the camera. I don’t know what the budget was like for this film, but the assured camerawork and production design really make up for any deficiencies on that end. It looks like most of the money was spent making a great looking movie.

Oliver’s interaction with a girl at the bar, all to get her back to his place to do drugs, is the first sign we see of him being a bit different than normal folks. Once he’s alone with her, it’s unsettling how off he is and the way he handles himself around another human being. As he stands alone preparing himself while she gets high, we juxtapose their own rituals: the steps of doing drugs and the steps of getting ready to kill a human being.

The big surprise comes when he flips the laptop toward us and announces, “Mama wants to watch.” What follows is one of the more depraved scenes I’ve watched in some time. Jess Franco fans will be pleased by this one, trust me. Also: props to the sound design team on the disgusting foley noises that they added to this movie. Wow.

Turns out that Oliver’s OCD ways are the perfect mindset to have as a serial killer, as they lend him the same ability to methodologically clean up after himself and the crime scene. Then it’s back to the schedule: two pills and talking to mother by 1 PM.

The backstory for the film comes with Oliver painting a comic book for the stray cat that comes to visit him. It’s a quick way to explain just how things got this far.

Oliver becomes fascinated with Sophia (Sara Malakul Lane, Kickboxer: Vengeance), who he keeps running into at the park. His interactions with her are labored and strange, but she doesn’t refuse his attempts to speak with her. And she has no problem telling him all about her odd dreams. She becomes the break in his routine and puts him off his game somewhat, which may be exactly what he needs. The only thing that took me out of this movie is that she seems so far above his level that it feels like the first untrue thing in the film. That said — later scenes show that she isn’t that different from Oliver, at least in how she grew up, so perhaps I judged too soon here.

I got right back into things though and loved the scene where Oliver attempts to talk out his fight with his mother within the broken mirror. It’s a hard thing to build sympathy for someone who we’ve just watched ruthlessly snuff out a human life and then get upset about it, but that’s how good the acting is here.

This movie continues to shock me with how much it pushes things. If you’re easily offended, I would stay far away. If you like transgressive film and to see how someone could become a killer, this is the one for you. But wow — it’s not afraid to go all the way, circle the block and then go even further.

I’m really looking forward to what Moore directs next. The scene where Sophia follows Oliver home was really well executed and the lighting and camerawork were superb. For a first effort, this is way beyond expectations.

It says a lot about a film where I genuinely care about the characters’ happiness. I didn’t really dig the post-credit scene at all, as I felt that I took down what was a really interesting way to finish things. Your mileage may vary. It’s an interesting film — not for all, as I said before — but definitely worth checking out.

Disclaimer: I was sent this film by the star and co-writer, Russell Geoffrey Banks for review. I’ve not shared it with him or anyone else but was given a free screener to watch. If you’d like to see this movie yourself, you can watch it with on Hulu or Amazon Prime free with your membership.

A man runs into the night as a woman clad head to toe in body armor gives chase. She has a zombie on a leash that she uses to kill the man. And boom — I’m in as Dead Shack begins.

Jason is meeting up with his friend Colin’s family — sister Summer, dad Roger and dad’s new girlfriend Lisa (Valerie Tian, Juno) — to stay in a cabin in the woods that they got off Craig’s List for way too cheap.

Everyone gets bored quickly and heads out for a hike, where they see the sheer lunacy going on inside the home of the neighbor we saw earlier. She’s played by Lauren Holly (Dumb and Dumber) and soon, she’s looking to take out the family and/or add them to her family of zombies.

Writer/director Peter Ricq puts together a nice little Sam Raimi tribute here — complete with the she-bitch line getting lifted. There are plenty of practical effects and no shortage of gore. Ricq’s band The Humans feature prominently on the soundtrack, too.

You can catch Dead Shack on Shudder right now. It’s a quick watch that I enjoyed. It won’t change your life, but it’s perfect for an entertaining evening. My favorite part was the costume design and poster look — which got me to watch this in the first place!

Not many of the movies we cover have won Oscars, much less the Best Picture. But in my eyes, movies like W Is War or Rats: The Night of Terror are entertaining as hell and it doesn’t matter to me what the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences think. But hey — we have an actual Best Picture as our movie of the day.

Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins, Paddington) was found near a river as a child with wounds in her neck. She’s mute and lives alone above a cinema and follows an incredibly strict schedule, eating the same meal and masturbating underwater every day. Her life seems regimented and ordinary, except that she works in a secret government lab at the height of the Cold War.

She has two friends — Zelda (Octavia Spencer, The Help), a co-worker who acts as her interpreter and Giles (Richard Jenkins, The Cabin in the Woods), a closeted gay man who is struggling with sobriety and keeping his advertising career.

What makes the story move — and her life change — is “the asset.” It’s a mysterious Amazon creature that was once worshipped as a god (Doug Jones, Hellboy). Despite the warnings of Col. Strickland (Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals), she becomes close to the creature.

Somehow, the scientists want to use the creature to help America succeed in the Space Race. General Hoyt orders that they need to vivisect the monster, with only one scientist — Robert Hoffstetler — pleading for its life. The secret is that he is really Dmitri Mosenkov, a Russian spy whose masters have asked him to kill the monster, too.

Elise learns of the plans and convinces Giles and Zelda to help her. Mosenkov helps as well. She keeps the creature in her bathtub, planning on releasing him into a nearby canal in a few days. Strickland goes wild — whether because he was always crazy or because he fears for his job and life or the drugs that he’s taking, as the creature bit off his fingers and his body is rejecting them.

Meanwhile, Giles discovers that the creature has eaten one of his cats, Pandora. He startles it and it slashes him in the arm and runs away. Elisa finds him in the cinema and brings him back. As a way of apology, he touches Giles’ arm and head. When he wakes up the next morning, his wounds are gone and his hair has grown back.

In a fairy tale like scene, Eliza fills the entire bathroom with water, making a world for her and the creature to share. They make love. This scene turns many people off to the movie, as how could a human woman fall in love with this monster? This is something director Gullermo del Toro had planned since he worked on a reboot of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. And if we follow this theory, Eliza wasn’t fully human anyway.

The plot moves into overdrive, as both Strickland and Mosenkov are given ultimatums. The military man has 36 hours to get the creature back, while the spy is due to be extracted. The creature starts to die, too.

Strickland tracks the spy, killing his handlers after they shoot him. He tortures the dying man in a grisly scene until he gives up Eliza and Zelda. When he goes to Zelda’s home, her husband gives away the entire plan. But Strickland is too late — Eliza has already taken the creature to the water.

The government man arrives and shoots both Eliza and the creature, but the monster heals himself, slashes Strickland’s throat (taking his voice, just like Eliza has none) and brings her into the water, where he heals her wounds and transforms her scars into gills.

This is a gorgeous film, with a well-considered look and feel. The color palette is spectacular and makes sense, as Strickland fears the color teal and Eliza slowly gains more red color as the movie progresses.

There’s also a bravura scene that recalls Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Follow the Fleet. It totally takes the movie into an even more fantastic world, if that is possible. It’s my favorite part of a film that I found plenty to love in.

This still isn’t my favorite del Toro movie (I love Crimson Peak so much), but it’s still one of the better movies you’ll see. You know who doesn’t agree with me? Rex Reed. He called it “a loopy, lunkheaded load of drivel” and, referring to Hawkins, said that described people with disabilities were “defective creatures” and that her character was mentally handicapped. Oh yeah. And he also thought that Benicio del Toro directed it. I’ve hated Rex Reed’s reviews since I was a kid and this doesn’t change my mind at all. Perhaps we should remember his turn in Myra Breckinridge when considering his reviews.

Several have called out that this movie shares graphic similarities to the video game BioShock, as well as thematic similarities to the 2015 short film The Space Between Us, Rachel Ingalls’ novel Mrs. Caliban and a play called Let Me Hear You Whisper, where a cleaning woman falls in love with an intelligent dolphin and tries to rescues him by putting him a laundry hamper. Hmm. To his credit, del Toro claims that the movie was inspired by a conversation with author Daniel Kraus.

Polybius isn’t a video game. It’s an urban legend. Supposedly, the game was a government experiment, a game that produced not only intense psychoactive symptoms but also became addictive. Even crazier, the Men in Black would data mine these machines and study the users. Why? Who knows — legends like this have gone as far back as The Last Starfighter, stories like how Missile Command was being used to recruit people good enough to save the country when the bombs eventually (inevitably) fell.

Oz (Chase Williamson, John Dies at the End) is content to be alone with the ancient video games — fixing them, playing them, creating them — in his boss Jerry’s arcade. Everything in his life is thrown for a loop in one day: the arcade is closing, he meets a girl named Tess (Fabianne Therese, John Dies at the End) and a strange new game shows up unannounced.

What follows is a Cronenberg-esque body horror odyssey with sexualized video game controls being manipulated, bodies being distorted to add circuits and time loops where multiple versions of Oz can exist. It’s also a love story.

The game, when shown, looks like what Polybius has been described as. It gradually takes over Oz’s reality until he decides that the only person who made the rules for his game is himself.

It’s an interesting effort from actor/writer/director Graham Skipper, who starred in Almost Human and directed the film Space Clown. It’s an obvious tribute to Videodrome, but where that film had volumes to speak about culture, violence and the intersection of both, this movie doesn’t have nearly as much to say. I was kind of hoping for Oz to have more of a redemptive journey after he argued with Tess, telling her that he may have always been the person that he has become post video game freakout.

You can catch this movie on Shudder, where it has recently premiered.

We’ve been watching so many animated movies lately. And the truth is, so many of them blow away real movies. This movie wrecked us. It’s one of the most emotional journeys I’ve seen in some time and that’s no exaggeration.

Based on an original idea by Lee Unkrich (who directed Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo) and co-directed by him and Adrian Molina (a Pixar storyboard artist who was directing his first film), Coco is all about a 12-year-old Mexican child named Miguel. He dreams of being a musician while the rest of his family is content to make shoes and wonders why he should care so much about his family history as the Day of the Dead draws near.

Miguel figures out that Ernesto de la Cruz (voiced by Benjamin Bratt when he speaks and Antonio Sol when he sings) is his great-grandfather whose leaving the family made everyone hate music. He steals the revered man’s guitar and runs to the plaza to enter a talent contest. However, he has crossed over to the land of the dead and must now reconnect with the relatives he never wanted to know about, earn the respect of his great-grandfather and get back to our world before the sun rises.

Along with the con artist Héctor, who is being forgotten by his family in our world, Miguel will learn the truth about his family, his culture and the music that he loves. I don’t really want to spoil much more than that — this movie was pure joy from start to finish.

This film took six years to make — much longer than other Pixar movies. You can really see the care on the bonus features, where we learn about the inspiration for Dante, the Xoloitzcuintli dog.

Coco also features many Mexican celebrities, including El Santo, Cantinflas, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Emiliano Zapata, María Félix and painter Frida Kahlo, who saved the Xolo dog breed along with her husband, Diego Rivera. Dante is also inspired by that. Director Lee Unkrich claims that there are more celebrities hidden within the land of the dead, too.

Boasting a cast rich with authentic latino voices, the lone exception is John Ratzenberger, Pixar’s good-luck charm, who has been in every one of their films. Here, he plays a skeleton whose dentist remembers him in the living world.

What really struck me was the gorgeous near-realism of the animation, which contrasted with the cartoony elements. This is the first time that I’ve felt that computerized animation is on a par with the traditional cel era.

This is a bit rough for kids in parts, but ten-year-olds or older should be able to handle it. It comes to Netflix on May 29, so get ready to check it out. And grab some tissues. We cried from start to finish.

“I wish this was 1981 and we weren’t having these be our movies. We deserve way better.” That’s what Becca said after watching this movie and she actually enjoyed this one. Yes, you may say that horror is on the rise, with It being the highest grossing genre film ever and Get Out being considered for major awards. But give us the 70’s and 80’s, when you had a murder’s row of slashers and horror flicks to choose from every week at the movies or drive-in, instead one or two to pick from.

Written by comic book scribe Scott Lobdell and directed by Christopher B. Landon (Disturbia, that’s not even a word), the elevator speech for this film is pretty simple: it’s Groundhog Day meets Halloween. Yes, every single day, Theresa “Tree” Gelbma wakes up and is horribly killed, only for the same day to start all over again. And again.

Tree makes the heroine’s journey from self-centered mean girl to action-ready final girl across the span of around two week’s worth of being brutally murdered. The twist that a serial killer is involved suddenly grounds the film where previously it seemed like it was shooting for the giallo, where everyone and anyone could be the killer. That’s where Becca checked out.

Me? I liked it. I didn’t like the end of the film allusion to Groundhog Day, with Tree admitting that she’d never seen it. It seemed like such a Scream way to get around the biggest issue this film has — it’s only original because it’s a mash-up of previously made movies. There’s also a scene set exactly like Sixteen Candles, but this is where I realize that I’m old and that this film’s target audience has probably never seen a John Hughes movie.

Happy Death Day was in development for a decade, starting as Half to Death with Megan Fox attached. Director Landon even did a rewrite way back when, so when the film’s producer remembered that at a meeting, she brought up the unfilmed script. Thanks to his work on the Paranormal Activity series, Blumhouse was quick to greenlight the film.

The baby mask was designed by Tony Gardner, the same guy who made the Ghostface mask for Scream. There was a chance that it almost was a pig mask, but the evil baby killer face that keeps showing up in the film is pretty unsettling.

There’s talk of a sequel, which probably wouldn’t have happened if the film ended the way it was originally intended to. In that version, we’d follow Tree to the hospital after meeting up with the real killer and she’s murdered in the hospital by a nurse — who ends up being Dr. Butler’s wife Stephanie, in revenge for the affair that she is having with her husband. What a downer, right?

Here’s the weirdest part of the movie. There’s another film called Before I Fall that has the exact same plot, where a girl has to live the same day over and over again, trying to make things better but still dying. That’d be fine if the trailer for that film wasn’t on the DVD for Happy Death Day! Talk about weird placement. Hey — our film may only seem original until you see a trailer for a film that you may be confused into thinking is the same film you’re currently watching.

Maybe my steady diet of Sergio Martino and Joe D’Amato movies has made me crazy, because I expect more weirdness in every film I watch. That said, this is a mainstream Hollywood film made for teens and tweens, so perhaps I should have tempered my expectations. It’s good, but it never makes you jump, it never really makes you think (pther than the gigantic plot hole that if each death starts adding up, even after the happy ending isn’t going to be so happy, but that’s just ignored) and it passes by rather quickly.

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