There may be a portion of the audience for this site that says, “Thanks for all the recommendations of Joe D’Amato and Jess Franco movies, Sam, but tell me, is there something that you’ve seen that I can watch with my young children and not get protective services called on me?”
Yes, Emily and the Magical Journey is the answer, as it is Dove approved to be shown for audiences of all ages. See? It’s not all bodice-ripping and throat-slashing around here, even when it totally is.
Originally titled Faunutland and the Lost Magic, this is a movie about Emily, who has lost her father and wants to help her mother be happy again. She finds a magic chest that brings her into a new world of magic. While there, she must confront all of her fears to keep her new friends safe and get back home.
Directed by Marcus Ovnell, this has some gorgeous effects and cute creature design. It really is like a storybook come to life. Fans of stuff like The Neverending Story will enjoy this and it might end up running on a loop for your young kids.
Plus, if you’re a fan of DC Universe TV, Pennyworth’s Harriet Slater and Supergirl’s Tipper Seifert-Cleveland are in this.
Emily and the Magical Journey is available on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment.
Hey, did you know there’s a pandemic? Well, if you didn’t this film will remind you. As for me, I use movies as an escape, so confronting it through film felt, well, not like something I wanted to do. But I pushed on and watched this anyway.
As a virus spreads quickly throughout the world, Jason (Ian Stout) slowly comes to terms with the fact that his life of working in a restaurant and being a playwright at night may never come back. So as writer’s block sets in, he turns to online dating, where he meets a friend for the Apocalpyse in Sorrel (Tiffany Groben).
Jason’s family tries to reach him as well, to varying degrees of success, but until he starts dating Sorrel, he’s so self-obsessed that you may find yourself having difficulty relating to him.
Like I said, it was hard for me to get excited about a romcom set during the days of COVID-19, but you may feel differently. That said, making a film — much less during our uncertain times — is a real accomplishment.
Love in Dangerous Times is available on all major VOD platforms including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, and Vudu from Dark Star Pictures. You can learn more on the official Facebook page.
Sure, there are a lot of streaming horror movies, but the real money these days in the direct to streaming game seems to be making holiday movies. Once a place strictly the domain of Hallmark, now these movies are everywhere. Get a name from the past — this one uses Michael Pare — and a story hook — this one is about a holiday concert to save a high school — and you’ve got cash rolling in.
Directed by Dale Fabrigar from a story by Suzanne DeLaurentiis* and Tricia Aurand, this movie tells the tale of high-school dean Alana D’Angelo (Eileen Davidson from The House On Sorority Row) and her teenage daughter Samantha (Kennedy Tucker), who are planning to save the school with the aforementioned concert. Helping them are maintenance man/Army vet Johnny (Pare) and his son Max (Michael Varde).
A car crash throws all the plans off and Max must make a decision to help his friend as everyone contemplates sacrifice over the holidays instead of just wondering if they should go out in the middle of the night for Black Friday.
If you like holiday films, you’ll probably enjoy this. I’m more of the whole, you know, people getting killed by leather gloved maniacs side of the film world.
*Fabrigar directed the DeLaurentiis-produced D-Railed, which follows a similar formula but is horror and not holiday: a hook — a train derails in a swamp full of monsters — with Lance Henriksen as star; they also made Area 407 about a plane crash into a government alien test site and the upcoming It Crawls Beanth (Aurand wrote that as well) together.
In 1979, a science nerd named Jessica (Mary Madaline Roe) stumbles upon a possessed tape player, which has kept a demon inside a reel to reel tape. After she lets that demon loose on her hometown of Clarkston, she must ask her friends Sam (Morgan Chandler) and Cheddar (Eden Campbell), who is always eating a corndog, to help save the day.
While They Reach aspires to be a kid-friendly comedy ala The Monster Squad — or more to the point Stranger Things — it has more scares and gore than the former and feels much more like the latter.
Written by Bry Troyer and Sylas Dall, who also directed, this definitely has a nostalgia feel for the 80’s. The idea of a haunted tape containing an attempt at an exorcism is pretty cool and if you have some room in your heart for another attempt to mine the past with precocious kids battling supernatural evil while riding their bikes around a small town, then this movie is ready to serve it up for you. Just be warned — again — if you bring the kids, this has some face peeling and blood spewing special effects in store.
It also has a pair of cops named Jay and Bob that seem like they belong to a decade ahead of this, but why quibble?
You can find this on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment. You can also learn more at the official Facebook page.
The film starts interesting enough, as we watch a woman (Gabrielle Graham) insert a needle inside her head and attach it to a machine. She then goes to work at a party where she repeatedly stabs a man, then nearly turns a gun on herself before the police shot her. It turns out that she’s controlled by a possessor named Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough), which means that she can directly implant her mind into someone else and use them to kill people.
As her boss (Jennifer Jason Leigh, always a welcome actress) talks her through the end of the assignment, Tasya must identify objects from her past to prove that she is still herself. That’s another lie, as she can barely speak like a normal human being when she meets her ex-husband (Rossif Sutherland) and son.
But there’s no time to consider that. There’s another job, as they have been hired to kill the owner of a data mining company, which excites everyone because they’ll be able to control the company by blackmailing the man who hired them. They use the owner’s daughter Ava’s boyfriend Colin (Christopher Abbott) for the hit, but for the first time, the company doesn’t have all of the answers. And even after he completes half the job, killing his girlfriend — yet only wounding her father — he takes back over and causes Tasya to vomit blood.
Can Tasya complete her assignment and get her mark to kill himself so she can be released? Or is this her final possession? And how does her son get involved?
The main reason most have discussed this film is because it was written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, the son of, well, you know. This definitely has style, the colors and camera angles are gorgeous but there’s an icy edge that ill serves the movie to me. It’s as if we are as much on the outside looking in as the titular possessor. I wanted to feel more, to get really excited about it and to find a new favorite, but it was just good.
And I learned, yet again, that hype can really sell a movie, but once it’s playing in front of your eyes, it’s your call whether or not you really enjoy it. But hey — your experience may vary and you might completely adore this. Also, knowing me, once Brandon Cronenberg’s second movie is hated by everyone else — see this same story played out in Under the Silver Lake and Southland Tales — I’ll fall in love with one of his movies.
That said — it has a psychic possession threeway, so there’s that. And oh yeah — of course he points to Argento as an influence, which makes sense, as this film is awash in dream imagery and primary colors. There’s also female as male as female — or whatever the possessor is — full frontal nudity, if you’re looking to get your mind blown.
There are some great ideas and images here, so I’ll definitely keep an eye on what comes next.
Following her mother’s death, Jenny’s (Lily Patra) battles with her stepfather have reached the breaking point. That’s what has taken her to rural Thailand, where she is to live with her grandmother. Her unhappiness grows and grows, leading to her lashing out and running into the jungle, where she gets lost. There, she meets a mute peasant named Boonrod, who one of the first people she’s ever connected with.
Seeing as how Jenny has refused to speak to anyone and Boonrod cannot talk, their communication is on a much higher level.
Together, they challenge the elites of the village to a buffalo race, which is kind of like a horse race without the benefit or saddles or any rules. Through this event, they both learn so much about themselves and one another.
This was written and directed by Joel Soisson, whose career has been all the place, but mostly involved in making the kind of movies we usually review here. He directed two of The Prophecy sequels, as well as Pulse 2 and 3, Children of the Corn: Genesis, wrote The Supernaturals, Dracula 2000, Hellraiser: Hellworld and one of my favorite movies ever, Trick or Treat. Beyond that, he was in the art department for the gory and under appreciated Superstition, worked the boom for To All a Goodnight and produced Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence, Piranha 3DD and several more films. He also shot another version of this in 2015 called Buffalo Rider, which you can find on Amazon Prime.
Coming of age movies generally don’t get much watching on our site, but this is the kind of movie that the whole family can enjoy and learn from.
Of all the films that I’ve watched over quarantine, Love and Monsters is the one that deserved to play in a theater.
Directed by Michael Matthews from a script by Brian Duffield (who wrote The Babysitter and wrote and directed Spontaneous) and Matthew Robinson (Monster Trucks), this movie creates an interesting world from the first frame, a place where an asteroid almost hits the Earth, but nuclear weapons destroy it. However, the fallout transforms any cold-blooded animal into a mutated monster and within days, most of the human race is dead.
This all takes place seven years before this movie, on the night that Joel Dawson (Dylan O’Brien) is separated from his girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick). After reconnecting with her via the radio, he decides to leave behind the bunker where he’s spent his life and cross the dangerous world left behind to find her.
Joel has no survival skills at all, mostly acting as the cook for his group. Once he gets to the outside, he’s quickly saved and taught what he needs to know by Clyde Dutton (Michael Rooker) and Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt). Then, he’s on his way, seeking true love, which he learns the meaning of once he gets to Aimee’s settlement.
If you have older kids who aren’t frightened by big monsters, this is a great movie. I’ll give you a small spoiler and let you know that Boy the dog survives, if you worry about that like I do.
Originally titled Monster Problems, this has moments of true beauty amongst the monster mayhem, such as when the Mav1s robot plays music for our hero and luminescent jellyfish float through the air.
I would more than recommend this movie and hope for a sequel. It was an absolute blast and a real escape from the issues of the world, as all good movies are.
Scott and Vincent are top recruits at Cicero Market Technologies Corporation, where their job is to use cutting edge technologies to bring about world-changing medical, environmental and physics advancements.
But like anyone creative, they can’t shut off when they leave work. At home, they continue working on pushing the limits of particle collision science until they find a parallel world and another version of Scott.
Expulsion is written and directed by Aaron Jackson (who also plays Vincent) and Sean C. Stephens (who also edited and produced the film). They make the most out of their low budget by pushing their high concept, all without forgetting the emotional parts of the story. After all, if your friend could build a dimensional gateway in their garage, wouldn’t you be interested in trying it out?
You can watch this on Amazon Prime. It’s also available on demand and on DVD and blu ray. You can learn more at the official site.
After the sudden death of his wife Sara (Tara Buck, Ginger from True Blood), Richard (John Mese) is left behind to care for his non-verbal autistic daughter Emmie (Faye Hostetter). Before she died, Sara had set up an experimental therapy for her daughter and rented a house near the center that would treat her. However that house is haunted, as is Richard, who has started to indulge in drinking and drugs, all while the voices in that house — and the ones in Emmie’s head, begin to possess her latent psychic powers.
To add to that cocktail, now Sara has seemingly come back from beyond, speaking to Richard, who is sure she’s here to help him. But is it really his wife? Or something evil?
Noise In the Middle has an intriguing idea, which was written by Glen Kannon and Marcus McCollum, who also directed. You may grow frustrated with Richard, who is continually pointed in the right direction by, well, everyone in this movie, only to do the exact opposite at pretty much every turn.
That said, there’s some solid acting here and the actual emotion of loss and trying to understand how to be a parent afterward seems honest, even when the horror elements get in the way.
You can see this exclusively on the Kings of Horror channel until it is available on demand on December 11.
We’ve covered a few of Dustin Ferguson’s movies here before — we have a few more in the stack of films to watch as well — and he’s been as busy as anyone I can think of in years when it comes to getting out new horror movies. He’s made everything from Die Sister, Die! and Silent Night, Bloody Night 2: Revival to two (going on three) Amityville films and continuations of the Meathook Massacre and Nemesis films. He’s definitely a fan in his heart — he had dreams of owning his own video store — and the fun of that comes through in his films.
The Beast Beneath is all about a 2,000 year old monster — I’ve seen it described as a daddy long-legs — that gets released after an earthquake. There’s only one person who can stop it and that’s brilliant and gorgeous scientist Charlene Brinkeman (Brinke Stevens, the model for Betty in The Rocketeer comics as well as the scream queen who was in such favorites as The Slumber Party Massacre, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Nightmare Sisters and so many more). Luckily, she has her brother Aaron (Eric Prochnau, Meathook Massacre Part VI: Bloodline) along for some help.
However, the town has a mayor who has seen Jaws way too many times, Mayor George Reid (Mel Novak, Black Belt Jones, Truck Turner and, of course, the Chuck Norris movies An Eye for an Eye and A Force of One and the Bruce Lee film Game of Death). Fergusson is smart to keep his movies tight — 70 minutes — and filled mostly with in-camera effects and good looking cast members. There’s even a bonus scene in 3D, if you can find a pair of glasses.
And how cool is it that this movie debuted on WGUD, an actual low power television station in Pascagoula, Mississippi?
Ferguson claims that he was inspired by films like Rattlers, The Savage Bees, Bog and Blood Beach, as well as made-for-TV horror movies. It shows — this is a fun throwback to those movies while it’s constantly changing look ads fun for movie geeks.
Also appearing are Shawn C. Phillips (who will be in Ferguson’s upcoming Amityille In the Hood), Jennifer Nangle (who is horror host Malvoila The Queen of Screams and also is in the upcoming sequel to the Italian film series Zombi VIII: Urban Decay), Sheri Davis (Blind), Mike Ferguson (who was in the DMX and Steven Seagal movie Beyond the Law), Ken May (Meathook Massacre 4), Raymond Vinsik Williams (Los Angeles Shark Attack), Geovonna Casanova (Angry Asian Murder Hornets), Lee Turner (who hosts the After Hours Cinema TV show that this movie debuted on) and Tino Zamora (Tales from the Campfire 3).
You may notice that several of the movies mentioned come from Ferguson. Like I wrote above, the guy sure is prolific. It feels like he would have fit right in to the Shot On Video horror section of some imaginary mom and pop video store, right alongside Spine, The Ripper andSplatter: The Architects of Fear.
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