Encounter with the Unknown - 1972

 Rod Serling was really a TV guy and a writer, and even then mostly known for TV.  He did, however, provide narration for two movies, with that trademark voice of his.  This is one of those movies.

Encounter with the Unknown is an anthology film consisting of three stories.  Then, oddly enough, a giant recap at the end when they couldn't fill enough time.  They suggest witchcraft and mention the Egyptian book of the Dead.  They seem to add a whole second viewpoint to the thing, as if the original intros by Serling were either ignored or just not enough.

Segment 1: A guy on a plane talking to a preacher about a kid that him and his friends played a joke on, which ended with the kid accidentally getting killed.  The mom of the kid put a hex on them that they'd die, one by land and two by air.  Just so happens they're on an airplane when the story is being told...

Segment 2: A missing dog.  A mysterious hole in the ground emitting smoke and strange noises.  How far would you go for your scared son when these two circumstances happen?

Segment 3: A mystery woman on a bridge with no explanation.  She gets driven home as her story unravels, the story of two young people in love.  A love not approved of by her father.  A couple that ran away together despite their parents to get married, with an entire musical sequence involved.

The fist two are maybe 20 minutes including intro and the wrap around moments.  The third segment is about 35 minutes. Not because it is the most fleshed out or the best story, simply wasting time with the musical sequence.  These are all presented as real stories, and I suppose they're vague enough to be based on folklore or similar happenings. 

Very 70s feeling is production value and budget, this has it all from awesome wallpaper to the outfits.  I wonder if Serling was in his groovy 70s hairy phase when he did the recordings?  No trivia online about how Serling got involved with this movie, I suppose they hired him in some desperate move for legitimacy.  Its kinda nice because as this is vignettes it feels somewhat similar to The Twilight Zone, but these stories are very inferior to the Zone.

This is actually kinda fun, and it moves by like a breeze.  I give it 3.5 stars.

Island of Blood - 1982

 Also known as Scared Alive and as Whodunit?

It appears the song that sounds like a direct rip off of Peter Gabriel featured in this movie is Black Hole by Gary Philips.  If I'm going to mention the soundtrack, I must also mention Face to Face by Factor Four, At least 3-4 "versions" of this song are present in the movie, with the lyrics being changed to reflect how someone just died!  It might sounds kinda dumb, but hey, all these slashers need is one gimmick and suddenly they become memorable and different.

Island of Blood is a grainy early 80s slasher thing with some interesting deaths and no real blood, no nudity, nothing offensive in it whatsoever.  Which works in the vein of "fun factor" which this movie traffics in more than like "horror factor".  Its completely fine when movies do this, as long as they commit to their choice.

The biggest problem with some of these movies in general is that it seems like they don't commit, or even worse, they're not aware of how dumb they come off as.  It should be evident by the acting, by the scarceness of the effects, that these aren't going to be truly scary, so if you know that, lean into the cheese factor since that's essentially free.  That's what they did here.

This is a fun romp, mild and quick moving, nothing challenging here, it goes down easy.  Gives it a straight 3.5 stars.

Death Screams - 1982

 Janusary 2nd mini-slasher marathon.  Sorta.

In the realm of what makes you a movie worth mentioning, a formulaic slasher is a nice little thing to have.  That's partially because even little things make these fun, and its an easy baseline to elevate yourself from.

A making out couple gets killed and there's breasts in the first 2 minutes, so I'm obviously in early.  Starring a future Playboy centerfold girl, this movie could have had more nudity, but I won't be an asshole about it.  It had some great nice perky tits.

Then there's a couple good kills including a good sequence on a carousel.  The kills in this are pretty decent, and though its clearly all low budget and handmade, it has enough heart and soul to keep you interested enough.  

Overall relatively not much else, its kinda a thin story and slight on most things but you know, its fine enough.  I give it 2.5 stars.

Coda - 1987

 A couple girls kiss in a car and moments later one of them is killed.  Thus we start Coda.

An Austrailian made-for-TV movie I'm surely not going to have a lot to say about, this movie is only remarkable for a couple reasons:

1) almost the entire cast is women.  Its basically a bunch a single ladies and ladies with ambiguous sexuality, interacting and talking.  And talking.  And talking.  And talking.

2) Its a whodunnit where its more like oh she did it.  There is no mystery here.  The woman who is acting like an antagonistic bitch?  Yeah, she's the killer.

That's about it really.  Its really by the numbers with zero thrills, blood, nudity, language, nothing fun.  Its about as fun as listening to the accents.  Gets old quick in other words.

The Fugitive Kind - 1960

 Criterion released this Sidney Lumet directed Marlon Brando film, and that's the version I watched.

Brando stars as the wandering, murmuring Xavier, a somewhat mystery man, who becomes entangled in the happenings at a town he happens to be wandering through.  Partially he gets entangled because everywhere he goes he gets hit on by women, whether it be the alcoholic and problematic Carol, or married and desperate Lady Torrance.

Most of the movie, though, is his listening to monologues or being semi involved in them, as characters dialogue about the wears and whiles of their lives to him.  Written by Tennessee Williams, this is rejoining Brando with his material from A Streetcar Named Desire.  This is case in point that not everything the guy touched was gold.

I dunno, I read a few things online about exactly why this didn't work.  A lot of people blame the actress who plays Torrance, Anna Magnani.  Certainly that is part of the problem.  I'd be interested in seeing her in her Oscar Winner role in The Rose Tattoo, because here she is very uninspiring, and the chemistry between her and Brando is non-existent.  

But also, this is not one of those where Brando's character gets involved in crime or in a caper or whatever.  There is a climactic ending, but wow do you have to wait and wait for anything to happen.  In the meantime its just boring, without the crackling dialogue or the amazing shot composition present in Streetcar.  

Brando is great in it, but beyond him its not like the worst thing ever but it is not very interesting or special.  2 stars.

Children of the Corn - 2020

 It looks like CotC: Revelation and the direct to DVD one from 2009 are both not online. So not sure what to do about that. 

This remake doesn’t follow the book or the original film. So, you know, start there. Children in the town of Rylstone have been angered by their parents deciding to raize the cornfield when their corn turns out bad.

The kids are up to all sorts of creepy other shit, making other kids go off planks, etc. Outsider Boleyn is tentatively allowed to view from the outside as the younger children of the town decide to start killing adults. 

The ringleader girl is surprisingly good, very measured and underplayed performance. The main issue isn’t that, it is that we have the evil surface at minute 20 and this is over 90 minutes and yet somehow SLOW and boring. It seems like we’re just waiting for something to happen a lot, even when ostensibly things ARE happening. 

We are finally treated to seeing He Who Walks Behind The Rows, and for a giant corn stalk monster it’s not that bad. I got my brother a silly Cryptid Babies book for my new niece, and it brought up the conversation of what is the difference between folklore, legend, and a cryptid? Maybe it’s part of the endurance of this series is that at times this feels adjacent to modern cryptids like The Mothman. 

This movie feels callbacky to the SyFy movies i used to watch and love in the early 2000s and you might enjoy it in the “so bad it’s good” and or “set your brain off” mode.  I give it like a 3.

Family Reunion - 1989

 I’m doing a long streak of Christmas horror movies here since I couldn’t find the next Children of the Corn streaming. 

Family Reunion is a fairly unknown 1989 thriller suspense kinda horror where a family drives to a ghost town and discover it means something to them. Also happening concurrently with that is a silent weirdo found in that ghost town who has mental powers. 

It’s loosely mentioned that it’s Christmas, otherwise it really doesn’t stamp itself to that time of year. A strange vibe in this that does work is the weirdness of the characters and the ideas combined with a constant off kilter soundtrack. 

A strange movie that’s not really horror but more mystery, or something, this is not one really to seek out or anything. I give it like a 2.5

Silent Night - 2012

 I really thought I remembered this coming into theaters, but Wikipedia tells me this was released to only 11 theaters, and I highly doubt I'd remember that.

This about marks the last time Malcolm McDowell was in a big movie, and even if I did not see this in theaters, I knew this came out, and I do think I saw this.  I think this was fairly recognized remake, at a time when a few classic horror movies were being remade.  The cover with Santa holding a flame thrower was pretty instantly iconic, and I believe I saw this and then forgot it ever existed.

This is also coming at the end of the Saw type of splatter trend that was on a kick for a while, and horror was in a bad place (see my review of 2011's The Howling Reborn).  The characters at this point wore their unlikeability on their sleeve, such as this unrepentant cunt of a teenage daughter that says "Fuck Christmas!" in this movie early on.

Along with the tone and Malcolm McDowell, this is clearly drafting a lot from the Rob Zombie Halloween movie.  Everyone is a disgusting slimy freak, grainy color soaked extremity is everywhere, and the film shoves it all in your face telling you that you like it and you should ask for more. Look, again, a bad time for horror specifically.

I’m trying not to overstate this and I’m also not laying it all to blame on Silent Night. But I’m going to say if horror had kept going this way and not transitioned into elevated horror, I might be out on the genre entirely. It’s a game of one-up-manship, it’s excess for the sake of excess. It clearly would have been tired by now. 

There’s still this type of thing out there, just not as in the spotlight. It’s not even a remake, so if someone from the original got a paycheck for this, good on them. This isn’t horrible compared to its ilk, it’s just an entire movement I never liked and has clearly aged poorly. I’ll give it about 2 stars. 

The Howling Reborn - 2011

 So here come to the end of another series. I’m a little sad!

Apparently taking more from the original novel than the second book this claims to be based on, Howling Reborn has possible sorta hybrid teenager Will confronting werewolves in his urban city. It’s a high school setting and there’s a degree of bullshit relationship and typical bully stuff in here as filler. 

Dumb music and a made for tv look aside, this thing doesn’t…like…hurt, it’s just very much a product of it’s time at a time when low budget direct to DVD horror was truly awful and horror in general was in a bad state. 

That made me curious. I’m googling “2011 horror movies”. Paranormal Activity 3, Scream 4, Red State, Hostel 2, Final Destination 5… need I say more? That’s digging too, most of these I don’t even remember and look incredibly stupid. Okay, Kill List and Cabin in the Woods. There’s two good ones. What the hell happened to Ben Wheatley anyways?

This movie has a very simple setup with one of those overdone beginnings of: "Hey guys I am a werewolf and let me tell you my story."  In fact, the main character and his bad voice over narration is all entirely bad.  But that beginning ruins perhaps the only thing this could have had going for it, which is the mystery of what is going on with our main character.  Instead, the first hour or so is just getting to the point where he knows.  Since we already do, it's all just tedium and boredom.

This plays like your of-the-times C grade werewolf movie clearly trying to jump in on the Twilight thing,  which means now it plays even worse.  Its very much lifeless and scareless, I want to give it a 1 but I think its probably like a 2ish star range.  I'll split the dif.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker - 1991

 I just checked to see if this was filmed back to back with the last film Initiation, but it appears it was not.

I checked because this movie shares multiple actors from the last one of these films, and I have to say since Mirror Mirror did that, and Star Trek does that, it is something I do like.  Just call them something else and have them be a different character is all, and hay I enjoy that.  It also makes me feel good about the relationship between them and the filmmakers, like they were friends or whatever.

I suppose the connective tissue beyond the actors (and perhaps what brought over the actors) is that this is also written by and produced by Brian Yuzna.  This time, there is a string of toys that are coming alive and killing people, first with a weird round Santa toy, and then a cool badass larvae toy.  Little kid Derek is caught in the middle of all this, and somehow a old toy shop in town ran by Mickey Rooney is also involved.

One of my favorite tropes in the comedic horror movie is the fifth hand added to a sex scene.  Either by a third person who's entered the room, or by a rogue hand monster or whatever, I feel like this has been in a few movies and it hits every time.  The uninvited hand will usually play with the man's ass, who of course likes it so much as to comment on it; "Oh baby, you're frisky, playing with my ass?!" I love this stupid joke, it gets me every time, its done to just the right degree where it's not overused.  Just as an aside.

I was sitting here thinking that the plot and the turns in this could land this in your horror version of Pinocchio watch along with Pinocchio's Revenge and then I realized the character in this is named Pinno...They were going for that.  Geez.  Am I dumb.

The end of this is a awesome thrill ride, and the effects and the creep factor is also great.  I dunno dude, the latter two of this series are actually quite good!  This isn't quite as dark and good as the last one, but I'll give this a solid 4 and its a lot more like a slasher than any yet in the series.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation - 1990

 Da fuuuuuck...?!

This one I did not see coming.  In any way.  I am a huge Brian Yuzna fan and I thought I had seen his best work.  His 80s and 90s stuff is all really solid, and I love the effects heavy creepy demented shit him and Stuart Gordon did in their heyday.  Well, I didn't know shit, cause I hadn't seen one of his true masterpieces.

Who'd have thought that 4 movies in, ditching the Christmas thing entirely, and taking this in a lesbian worm infestation plot was the right move for this series?  Now immediately, I'll say this movie should not have been titled what it was.  This should be a horror movie called Initiation or whatever, and should never have been tied to the SNDN franchise or series.  Likely this would be known more also if that were the case, and let me tell you, this should be known more.

Maud Adams from James Bond stars as the sexy lesbian-ish seductress who leads a female parasite cult type thing that main character Kim encounters and gets drawn into as she works as a reporter on a case of spontaneous combustion.  The combustion seems that it was caused by the women, and as they seduce her with Clint Howard as a creepy weirdo, Kim begins to get in deeper and deeper.

The practical effects in this thing are top notch, the lesbian stuff is all really sexy and done right, the main actress pulls it off, and the linear qualities keep you knowing whats happening.  When this hits full stride you're watching it truly pulled in, disgusted, titillated, and freaked da fuck out.

Disturbing, unique, and having the best of Yuzna is really nice, and Maud Adams as well, this thing just works.  Well.  I give this 4.5 stars.