Blue Monkey - 1987

 I'm straight up marathoning anything that sounds horror adjacent right now, and half of them or n=more are not getting reviews, sorry.  It's cuz most of them deserve only a few sentences...there's not a lot to say.

Also known as Insect!  Hell yeah with an exclamation mark.

Insect! stars Steve Railsback as a detective, though that will barely come up, all we really need to know is he's the good guy.  Dr. Steve is in this hospital concurrently as a old man is brought in who cut himself on the thorn of an unknown plant, and the man promptly dies.  Soon enough a worm like insect crawls out of his mouth and is kept in a jar by the hospital, and other people are showing symptoms of the worm disease.

This is a Canadian low budget movie and you can tell before you look it up, cuz there's for sure some nice "aboot" Canadian accents in here.  It's also very minimal, one setting, basic but cool and effective monster, and small cast of characters that work, have some decent chemistry, and even has a decent child actor.  Also, fucking very cool poster:

This is not a great movie, nor is it even that good, but it is fun enough and it is what you expect.  Real effects and a quick pacing help out a lot, and you could definitely find worse out there.  I'll give it 2.5 stars.

Wendigo - 2001

 So I am at the library and this is on a shelf and I'm like, "eh whatever, sure" and I grab it.

Wendigo is a early 2000s independent film, starring Patricia Clarkson and Jake Weber.  I put this is in and I'm watching kinda expecting this to be a SyFy adjacent stupid monster movie.  I am always down for a Wendigo movie, I like the creature and I like stupid movies so like, whatthefuck.

But as this movie goes on, I kinda get drawn into the plot and as this approaches an hour and then 75 minutes I'm already guessing, is there no Wendigo in this movie?  And if that is the case, which it is, what's the angle?  The angle is using this interesting backdrop, this mythology to drop a ambiguous element to this "other suspense" movie and then to ask questions.

The other real actual plot involves a family on vacation way out in the middle of the northeast somewhere, and they run into some yokel rednecks who are immediately hostile after the family hits the guys deer with their car.  The awkwardness takes a stronger turn when it turns out this guy is their neighbor, and then when the family finds bullet holes in their house, and then when the neighbor is spying on them.  

The couple's kid finds a weird Wendigo figurine in a store, and opens up the door to this alternate viewpoint, and to cut to the point - yes - there is a Wendigo in here, but always done in a weird way where it is possible or probable that it is a imagined or hallucinated.  The Wendigo itself looks pretty cool and the rest of the movie isn't hinged around it, so it works.

I was not expecting a rather arresting drama film when I rented a movie called Wendigo, but it is definitely more that than a horror.  So therefore, I give it 3?

Rat Man - 1988

 How bizarre is it that in one of the last shots of the rat man in Rat Man I paused it and said "I know that guy!"  I did think it was Weng Weng at first but it is in fact Nelson Dela Rosa, of The Island of Dr Moreau with Marlon Brando.

Rat Man, oh man, where am I going to go with this.  There is a lot to say, there is also nothing to say.

I'm on a fucking spree right now, in fact the other movie I just watched...inport this later... that one gets a three out of five, I liked it, its solid..  Rat Man comes up as a suggested thing on Tubi (the only streaming service you need, and its fuckin free, Tubi, sponsor me!!)  Rat Man is a completely unknown 80s horror?  Slasher? Thriller? Or something?  Genre undefined.  Idea, for that matter, undefined.

Basically plot wise, a genetically mutated rat man is killing people.  Where, when, how, I dunno I wasn't fucking paying attention you dig?  One does not "watch" rat man - one just kinda challenges oneself to get through it sober, then gives up and goes to the gas station about 5 minutes before they close buys two tall boys and drinks those with some Jager - which is awful, do people actually drink this?

Yeah it is a true story and no, I didn't pay attention to Rat Man, but I mean come on, its called Rat Man and stars a midget!  Question - would this ever have a snowballs chance in hell of getting made now?  Would this ever, and I repeat ever not get canceled?  Can midgets act as mutants anymore?  Surely the answer to this is no.  

Rat Man had bad kills and a no real effects and was clearly made on a miniscule "I work at a gas station " budget, so for what it is its ok, but overall I cant give this more than 1 star.

Red Corner - 1997

 My friend and I got this 90s Richard Gere thriller on VHS and started it, got maybe 30 minutes in before he pulled the plug, saying, "this shit is boring"

Red Corner is and was a relatively unknown cash in on the then current China and Tibet crisis.  Made not so much directly about China but rather about how awful China is, Richard Gere is lead as an American who is found with a dead Chinese woman after a night of sex and gets framed for her murder.  The corrupt, awful Chinese government gets placed as the villain while Gere goes up against them.

I mean....I dunno right?  I don't know what to say about this.  Number one, it is way too long at 2 hours.  We know he's not guilty cuz it's a Richard Gere movie, so its a movie about constructing the pieces to prove his innocence.  There's mild tension in some of the court room scenes as we watch the difficulty he has with the system there, but overall he is always granted enough leeway to prove his point.

Bai Ling is his attorney and sh'e pretty good, and other than it is extremely averagely made.  It was a bomb, got bad reviews, and will somehow live forever, which is odd.  I give it like 1.5 stars.

Witchtrap - 1989

 So I confused this with the other Kevin Tenney with movie, Witchboard, which I previously reviewed on this blog.  That stopped me from writing the review a while but bam here we are with Witchtrap.

Linnea Quigley stars in this awfully acted fantasy horror movie that was clearly made to try to capitalize on the bizarre success of Witchboard.   Linnea doesn't actually star, but that is to say that no one in this movie has been in much, and when I say the acting was bad earlier, that is a vast understatement.  It has been a while, dear reader, since I last saw anything this incredibly subpar and it's refreshing to see again.  I'm not watching a lot of movies these days, and I forogt what this was like.

Witchtrap involves an old building that the main woman Agnes (2 other IMDb credits)  wants to ride of a demonic presence.  She gathers a team which has a "speaker" person, her husband, and a "body" person, Whitney.  She summons the evil and the evil stars doing evil stuff and killing people.  Its what you expect and it even has full frontal from Quigley until she is killed off.

I dunno.  What does one say more about this?  Its not a good movie.  It has basically no production value, but what they do with very little is impressive.  Quigley's death is cool, she gets impaled through the throat by a shower nozzle!  Pretty cool, unique.

She really is the queen of low budget nudity.

It gets a lot more audacious and cool as it nears the end, and basically sticks the landing, so bad acting aside it's a lot of fun.  It really has that nice late night stoned bad movie vibe, so I will give it a solid 3 stars.

Darkroom - 1989

 I might have said I am googling "lesser known slasher movies" and then searching them on my phone.  If I didn't say that, well, I am.  This is in conjunction with re-re-re-rewatching Friday the 13th series with my girl.

So yeah dude, I find Darkroom and I put it on, its free online and most of these are not.  Darkroom is sorta you're whodunnit type slasher, though not aggressively steered that way.  I called dwho the killer was pretty early on and honestly they don't try hard to hide it.  I expected a lot more red herrings.  

There's a paper thin plot of a family living in the middle of nowhere and someone is killing their neighbors and soon enough after them.  The killer is a photographer, though that plot gets dropped midway through the movie in favor of just focusing on the victims.  

The victims are fairly flavorless and bland, but then again, the movie is fairly flavorless and bland so at least they match.  As we near the end and the killer is revealed, we have a completely revealing flashback with bizarre and creepy undertones.  I can't think of many slashers right off that do this, and its not like it is handled well in this movie but it is unique and memorable, so this does have that going for it.

Darkroom won't rock the boat nor make you think too much, but it will keep you watching and it offers some decent times to be had.  I guess I'll give it like a 2.