What if there were two — well, for now — Mickey Mouse public domain slashers both set in arcades?

Once called Mickey’s Mouse Trap, the film was announced on January 1, 2024, the same day Mickey’s Steamboat Willie version went into the public domain.

Rebecca (Mackenzie Mills) is the only survivor of a mouse massacre. She starts to tell her story to some cops in the framing device and we learn that her boss Tim Collins (Simon Phillips) got possessed by watching Steamboat Willie and killed all of her friends, including Alex (Sophie McIntosh), who gets a surprise birthday party in the arcade where she works. Let me tell you, workplace birthday parties are the worst, because you spend your whole life there anyway and suddenly, a place that gives you trauma is supposed to be a source of fun.

This was filmed in Funhaven in Ottawa, which has Ottawa’s only roller coaster.

For some reason, the evil Mickey can teleport and is afraid of light. A lot of this movie feels like it was barely edited together and they keep going back to the police station scenes to cover things, which kills the slasher vibe. If you expected nothing, The Mouse Trap is ready to award you with abundance.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Doesn’t Lionsgate feel above making cash in Amityville movies?

No?

Let’s look at the logline: “When Heather West, a paranormal investigator, receives a call from a terrified woman who claims her house is inhabited by a ghost, she discovers the building has a horrifying history. After a presence from beyond our world reaches out to her, Heather begins to feel a pull to the other side of the spirit plane. Can this hunter of specters deliver an innocent soul to a place of peace and discover an eternal truth in time to save her own life?”

Notice that Amityville is nowhere to be named. At least the Echo is the student news site of Amityville Memorial High School.

This was made as The Girl from the Other Side, and like all Amityville movies, it has nothing to do with the house or the place. It’s about paranormal investigator Heather West (Saran McDonald) and her need to learn what happened to Maryanne and her killer, Ronny Bushik (director and writer Carlos Araya). The owner of the house where it happened allows her to come in and explore, but as you can imagine, things get bad once the Tarot cards get dealt.

However, much of the movie is about Heather watching a TV show called Hauntings of the South and House On Haunted Hill. There’s a lot of voiceover, supers on the screen, and unconnected dialogue, making me think this was a foreign movie re-edited for American streaming. This movie wasn’t well-made, or there was something in between. That said, even as bad as it is, it’s still heads, shoulders, and bloody walls above most Amityville movies, but that bar is so low that you can’t limbo under it.

I have no idea why this was divided into chapters, why some scenes looked all gauzy, or why there were so many slow-motion moments. It’s trying to be arty, stumbling and then getting up and running full-speed into being arty all over again, but it never gets steady, so it runs right into a wall and kind of pauses a bit before it falls down.

How did this end up on Peacock? I could see Tubi, but people are actually paying to watch this!

Directed by Traci Hayes (Blood, Sweat and Cheers) and written by Sarah Eisenberg and Becky Wangberg (who have primarily worked in cartoons), On the Run is set up years ago when bikers Vince (William Mark McCullough) and Rick (K.C. Clyde) end their friendship over a drug deal. Vince goes to jail and the moment he gets out, he comes after Rick, who has a new life with his wife Laurie (Kara Luiz) and daughters Kayla (Sofia Masson) and Paige (Taylor Geare). It’s no spoiler to tell you that Paige is Vince’s daughter and wants her back as much as he wants everyone dead.

Rick and the girls are on the run—yes, Mom dies, there’s another spoiler—but there’s also the woman they think is their aunt, Steph (Pamela Rose Rodriguez), who is the witness protection agent who has been protecting them for years.

One daughter is the good girl, the other is kind of bad, their dad used to be a criminal biker, and their mom is dead. There’s everything you want in a young girl on the run movie. It’s not life-changing, but like most Tubi Originals, it’s a competent film other than, you know, cops never acting like cops really act, such as calling for backup, not taking innocent people into dangerous situations and not indiscriminately shooting everyone around them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

How do you know this is from Cleoptra Records? The soundtrack has The 69 Cats, Front Line Assembly, Pink Fairies, Switchblade Symphony, Hawkestrel, Synaesthesia, The Brains, Mike Pinera and Hollywood After Dark on it.

Directed by Mark Polonia and written by Ford Austin and Tyger Torrez, this is set in the familiar woods of Pennsylvania where Polonia has made so many movies, but never one where a New York stockbroker named Jack (Brice Kennedy) gets bitten, the moon gets full and he snorts a whole bag of coke. Actually, the moon doesn’t even matter. It just takes cocaine to make this beast go feral.

There’s also a movie getting made in those woods about an evil clown, but mostly, the actresses (Jamie Morgan and Greta Volkova) are making out with each other. This bit of exploitation follows a girl in a Little Red Riding Hood outfit shooting content for her adult site who gets torn up by the original werewolf. This leads to Jack’s Uber driver getting killed, and we have a movie.

I want all Mark Polonia movies to come out on this label from now on, and I want more goth and rockabilly bands to find their songs in microbudget horror movies. I’m used to these films just showing up on Tubi, so seeing them on Blu-ray makes me overjoyed.

You can get this from MVD.

Why is this Amityville movie better than almost all of the other cash-in films? SRS has put out so many of these, but not one directed by Matt Jaissle, the director of The Necro Files. So while this has all of the things you expect from an Amityville movie — scenes shot on camera phones and edited in to appear that actors are all in the same place, lots of Zoom calls, people screaming at the screen — it’s also strange enough that it keeps you engaged.

Stuart Birdsall (William Childress) has moved into a new house in Amityville, which he feels is the perfect place to experiment with VIC 3000, an AI program he invented.  I have to share the sell copy for this, because I love the capitalized parts: “The only problem is that the house is possessed, and now so is his PROGRAM. What began as a technology designed to make our lives easier has transformed into a SATANIC FORCE Hell-bent on making our deaths GHASTLIER.”

Have you ever wondered, “How do those people appear disconnected from the movie and seem to be in it?” That’s an IndieGoGo perk. When will I pay the money to be in one of these? Do you think Becca would stay with me if I spent money on that?

This has a possessed sex bot (Laura Reyes), a chubby longhaired and bearded hero — am I triggered? — who can do a roll under a garage door and has an attractive wife (Laura Schubring) yet all he does is yell on Zoom calls. I mean, did they film me down here in my horror basement? This also ends abruptly because there’s a sequel, Amityville VR. Yes, I will watch that.

If you haven’t watched 62 Amityville movies like I have—check out the Letterboxd list—you may watch this and think it’s horrible. But for those who have been through microbudget horror and keep watching these Amityville films, you will see the magic that this has and the others lack. I do wish the flying baby from The Necro Files was in it. That said, I want to say that it was in every movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Before Adopted even has its credits, ten-year-old Dylan (Jayden Aguirre) has already killed his foster family, a fact that no one believes except for Detective Dante Miller (co-writer Marques Houston). The story that he tells about a killer biker who came into their home seems a bit too wild. Yet, who can not believe a child? Indeed, all kids are innocent.

Nope. Get ready for a Chris Stokes take on The Bad Seed, but instead of killing another child over a handwriting contest, people of all ages get killed.

Carrie (Drew Sidora) and James (Daniel J. Johnson) have always wanted a family but can’t. Luckily — well, you know — they are able to adopt Dylan immediately and never learn that his past family died. He’s the perfect kid and even calls them mom and dad on his first day in the house. But in just minutes, Dylan and Ryan (Jahlil Muhammad) — the nephew of next-door neighbor Diane (Shalet Monique) — are playing with a real gun and faking deaths. He also gets way too into Melissa (Victoria Nuckles), who is much older than him, but Dylan is already coming on to her, and when she tells him that she has a boyfriend, he shoots both her and her mother, Diane.

Somehow, Carrie and Jamescano adopt a second child, Bella (Livy Neachell), days after Ryan kills himself mysteriously. Bella might be just as bad as Dylan, but he’s all for killing her before we find out by drowning her in a pool.

Dylan is my favorite Tubi villain now because he’s risen above being verbally abused by his mother and physically attacked by his father — his legs have been scarred and burned from being doused with boiling water — to turn the tables on everyone else, shifting from being a good little boy to suddenly questioning his parents’ abilities ranging from being able to raise him to even calling Carrie’s cooking out by telling her that he’s never had chicken this dry before. It’s incredible how good he is at being the worst child ever.

The end of this movie is something. I’m not going to spoil it for you—Tubi has already teased a sequel—but I didn’t see it coming. Moms will be thrown down the steps, fathers will be attacked, and police will be called. It’s really got the most “woah” cut to credits I’ve seen in some time, as well as a square-up reel PSA before the credits.

This may be the best Chris Stokes movie ever.

You can watch this on Tubi.

My brother has a significant sneaker collection. As I am to Joe D’Amato, he is to Nike. When I watched this movie, I recognized so many people who live for the next drop. But is it any different than collecting physical media, toys or comic books? Well, you can probably make more money investing in shoes.

I liked that this goes back to Chuck Taylor shoes and the world of athletic equipment, which all looked the same, as well as the athletes and brands that changed how we see shoes and sports. Beyond that, it goes into celebrities and shoe customizers, so if you have no idea what shoe collecting is about, this is a good introduction.

My brother could find a lot wrong with it, but he’s an expert. As someone naive to the scene, I thought it was a good hour to watch.

Directed by Sia Savvy (Gone Before His Time: Kobe Bryant) and written by Christine Nusbaum (Famously Haunted: Hollywood), this doesn’t shy away from some of the issues with shoes, from gangs wearing their colors to people being attacked and killed for their shoes, as well as the difficulty of even getting some Nikes.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Caroline Labrèche (Marry F*** Kill) and written by Catharine Park, this Tubi Original is based on the true story of Viktoria Nasyrova, who in 2016 visited her stylist, Olga Tsvyk and gave her a piece of poisoned cheesecake.

Tsvyk nearly died and came home to find that a lot of her belongings were stolen. She blamed Nasyrova before learning they weren’t the only people looking for her. Herman Weisberg, a former NYPD cop turned PI, had been searching for her online. He did find her by paying attention to her social media images, leading the police to her. When arrested, she had ID cards belonging to Tsvyk. As the women looked similar, they believed she planned to steal her identity.

Weisberg was working for Nadia Ford, a Russian woman who believed that Nasyrova had robbed and murdered her mother in Russia and came to the U.S. to stay on the run from Russian police. It took six years for the case to go to trial and just hours to convict her; Russia may still extradite her for crimes there.

This Tubi Original has Victoria Diamond as Nasyrova and Nastassia Markiewicz as Tsyvk. They don’t look much alike, while the real people could have been related. If you don’t know this story, it has been on several true crime shows, and this is a good way to catch up.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Another winner from director Chris Stokes, who wrote this with Marques Houston; this somehow gets together crypto, affairs and murders into a delectable stew of sex and murder. In short — when crypto moneymaker Nathan Maywood (Tremayne Norris) finds his business losing money — he decides to kill his wife Riley (Drew Sidora), who he thinks is cheating on him, and get the insurance money. Nothing works out right, though.

She seems to be sleeping with his financial advisor, Kevin (Francis Nouvi), whose lousy advice has caused the $250 million dollars Nathan has in the bank to suddenly be worth nothing because no one understands cryptocurrency, and I certainly don’t, so I’m not the person to make sense of it for you. Sorry. But anyway, Nathan decides to get ex-con Jesse (Stephen Barrington) to start sleeping with Riley and eventually kill her.

Jesse falls in love with her, so they hatch a plan where Riley will get her husband back in her bed — instead of between his mistress’ thighs — and as they’re reconnecting, a masked man breaks in who we’d think was Jesse, but no, it’s Kevin, who Nathan shoots and kills. Riley calls the police and claims that her husband has just shot and killed her lover, but what she hasn’t figured out is that he has friends in high places and gets out, visiting her and Jesse in bed where he beats his one-time henchman and now quicker about the head before killing his wife in self-defense.

Where’s the crypto cash? Look, I really have no clue.

Just about everyone in this movie is both gorgeous and horrible. Chris Stokes will make more movies this year than some directors make in their lives, and somehow, he will make so many that I will remember and actually enjoy. Well done.

You can watch this on Tubi.

A serial killer is on the loose, targeting nurses, despite the movie’s title. The hospital, where traveling nurses Drew (Mia Challis) and Jade (Jonetta Kaiser) are working, seems oblivious to the danger and more interested in partying. When their roommate Gigi (Kabby Borders) becomes a victim, Drew and Jade, amidst their busy rounds, embark on a suspenseful journey to unmask the killer.

Directed by Haylie Duff (remember her as Summer in Napoleon Dynamite?) and written by Danielle Dominique Nelson and Mary Risk, this film follows Drew and Jade as they uncover the truth about Dr. Lawrence C. Hartsen (Rob Mayes). Despite the serious theme, the movie’s medical realism has been criticized in many reviews. But let’s be real: You’re watching a Tubi Original called Killer Nurses. It’s not about perfect medical facts; it’s about the thrill of the chase.

Yes, I may have revealed a significant plot twist, and if you were planning to watch this, I apologize. But fear not, it won’t spoil your viewing experience. This low-demand movie is perfect for a lazy afternoon, whether you’re hungover or battling the flu. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the casual viewing experience unless your need for realism overshadows the fun of just watching something.

Also: If you were showing up for nurses as killers, this title is a liar.

You can watch this on Tubi.