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.

Black Christmas - 1974

 I haven’t reviewed Black Christmas??! What? I fuckin for sure thought I had. 

Keir Dullea and Margot Kidder star in what is quickly becoming one of my favorite horror film slashers of all time. Seriously, this one is beginning to eclipse even John Carpenter’s Halloween. 

A sorority group of girls has been receiving crank calls from some weird voiced freak who says disturbing things about pussies or killing people, the girls listen with bizarre interest. Margot Kidder is sorta the alpha of the group and won’t take that shit, and she takes charge of the situation. Could the crazy calls have something to do with the creepy attic?

This is an interesting blend of whodunit, slasher, and interesting character study. Keir Dullea is a pained piano performer, there’s jealous other guys around, and there’s suspicions on different people at different times. 

Couple that with a really dark atmosphere and believable small scale scares, this is a completely formidable and intense horror movie. I’ve seen it either at Christmas or Halloween for the last 3-4 years and I seriously adore the ending to this.

Really awesome and on display in this a lot is the perfect mix of journeyman directing straight forward approach, mixed with a few perfect auteur artistic shots. There’s sequences, such as the famous eye shot, which are so well done you feel such delight, coupled with such a great steady hand in the rest of the film it really allows those to shine. 

As a spoiler, the end of this seems to directly inspire Halloween, and the darkness of the ending is so great that you’re just left with shivers. The best thing about this movie is that it’s genuinely disturbing and scary, from the weirdness of the calls to the isolation in the shots. Leaving without a resolution is so macabre that you can barely even handle it. 

Also, I’ve been long thinking about sequels and legacy. As a film goes, we try to divorce ourselves from bad sequels (see: Star Wars). But we still have seen those movies and they’re still tainting the legacy. It’s really awesome this has no sequels even though it’s left open ended. What a fuckin triumph that this wasn't revealed to be some terrible actor who looked stupid in the second movie. 

 A couple years before Halloween, i do consider this a slasher origin story as well. 5 stars. 

Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! - 1989

 A random horror movie with three David Lynch actors in it?  Who'd have thought.

That's right, Laura Herring from Mulholland Dr., Eric Da Re and Richard Beymer from Twin Peaks are both in this dumb third part of Silent Night.  They jump the shark early as they throw in a blind girl with special psychic abilities who sorta somehow gets linked to the incapacitated, coma ridden Jerry from the last movie.  She raises him from his coma a la Friday the 13th part 7, and soon enough he's out killing people.

Not really a Christmas horror movie anymore, this one instead has a thankfully recast Jerry walking around with a glass thing over his head and lumbering like a Jason or Michael type, except he's woefully more boring.  

I'm glad they threw in a subtitle to shake things up, but it's not even really related to anything, and again you have a rated R movie which has so little of the good shit that'll get you an R rating it's like why did they bother.  This should be a fun romp with nudity and guts, instead its really slow and mild, with nary a memorable scene or moment in the entire run time.

I don't want this to sound like the worst movie yet, but it is, if only because at least the last one is so short and it has the ability to laugh at it or with it.  This one is just too boring to do that.  I give this 1.5 stars.

The Sign of Four - 1983

 I downloaded some movies onto my phone for my trip to Nicaragua this year and this was one of them.  After a few days of crazy Nicaraguan adventures, my girlfriend and I wanted to watch something, and this is what we put on.

The Sign of the Four was one of the longer Sherlock Holmes books, and I read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 2021.  I did vaguely remember this as it went, especially the revels as to the killers and their particular "characteristics" I guess you could say.

Holmes and Watson are there and they get summoned from Baker Street to a case involving a seeming mystery:  a dead man in a locked room with no seeming sign of struggle or signs of the murderer.  They start to assemble the clues and paint an odd picture involving one man with a wooden leg, missing jewels, and another killer who's either a child or child sized.  

Stuffy and talky, this hit the spot.  I still maintain if you're in the mood for this type of thing its no burden.  The mystery isn't really a mystery, nor was it in the book.  Meaning there is not a moment where there's a suspicion of someone who is later not the murderer.  They basically know who the murderer should be and then just have to find the dudes.  

Relying on old tropes like evil midgets and disfigured maniacs, the funny thing about Sign of the Four is a "other" types of horror this perhaps either invented or added to.  We still see horror and killer movies in which the killers are clearly these types of people, and its funny to see it as a Sherlock Holmes movie.  These feature a lot more monsters and atypical storylines one might assume, and if you though they were all magnifying glasses and pocket watches, you have something else coming.  

I give this a solid 3.5.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part II - 1987

 First one's a hit, make another.  That's how horror used to work... and I guess still does.

This movie is an hour 25 minutes with about 50 minutes of that being new footage.  That's because we get  a long and involved recap of the first Silent Night Deadly Night, which showcases exactly what made that movie likable in the first place.  Its a good movie you realize at the same time you're realizing this sequel...not so much as good.

Overacting Eric Freeman as a brother to the main character of the last film, Ricky Caldwell, is in a asylum of some sort at the beginning of this and is recounting his brothers story and then his own.  He describes the moment when he too decided that in the spirit of reenacting Santa killers, he would start killing people as punishment for being naughty.  He kills some folks including the somewhat iconic bad movie moment "garbage day" which is one of the many moments which show his drawbacks as an actor.

As a horror movie is okay, as a sequel its a far step down.  It makes you realize just how grounded and well acted the first one was, and that's not a grounded or amazingly acted movie - its just that this is worlds behind it.  

The series would go on to have 3 more sequels and a reboot, which I think I'll try to watch all of before Christmas this year.  This one can have 2.5 stars.

Silent Night, Deadly Night - 1984

 I think this series is the perfect thing to watch during this years Christmas season.

Silent Night Deadly Night I thought for sure I had reviewed.  I've definitely watched this is the time that I have been writing reviews for this blog.  This felt extremely memorable, it felt like I had even seen this in the last 5 years, though of course I do not remember.  It was not long ago whatever it was.

As a kid, Billy was in his car when they got stopped by a guy in a Santa costume.  Santa guy pulled a gun, shot his dad and began to rape his mom.  Billy grows up continually being persisted by Santas.  Whether it is Santa visiting his orphanage as a kid, or being forced to portray Santa at his job at a toy shop.  Its like he's plagued by the imagery.  He snaps on Christmas Eve, and begins to go around and kill people.

I do think that they hit on something here, the entire construct of a person who was traumatized reliving their trauma is not only realistic, it is common.  The example here is of course not one that has happened necessarily, but almost all killers come from some sort of trauma.

The movie like I said is very memorable.  There are some pretty iconic kills and moments, such as a beheading at a sled slope and the beginning, even the end is highly iconic.  I dunno what to say man, I remembered it all like it was yesterday, somehow.  The actor Robert Wilson as the adult Billy is surprisingly good, and the character has layers of empathy and pathos.  The story doesn't necessarily feel realistic, but it does feel grounded as well, and that helps.

They made 4 sequels and a reboot, I don't know if I've seen the sequels, so this might be fun!  I give this 4 stars.

Children of the Corn: Runaway - 2018

 Shot in the same building as Hellraiser: Judgment? One of these is much better than the other. 

CotC here is your average low budget “where do we go next with the series”. Anyone who looked at the original might say what happens to these kids, or what if one of them was not like all the others? A pretty realistic progression of the idea. 

Thus we have mystery woman Ruth with her son Aaron. They come rolling into a middle of nowhere little town and pickup work at a garage, make some friends and get a little place to stay. Everything is on the up and up until a mystery girl in a yellow dress keeps appearing, and the past gets brought back to haunt the present. 

What it also is:  a lot of slow build. I’m not going to dump on this but really an 80 minute movie which feels long is almost hard to do. It’s like there’s just no tension and the characters are interesting enough but we’ve seen this before… a lot before. 

The whole movie basically stays in the whatever mode and is basically rated R only for blood. Which sucks. This is fine n whatever but decidedly not as fun as the last one. 1.5 stars only for the actors being good. 

Children of the Corn: Genesis - 2011

 I watched 6 Children of the Corn movies back at the start of the blog and never finished.  Fuck it yo.  I only have a few left, lets do em.

Children of the Corn Genesis is a fun re-imagining of this story, set in a new place with no real connection to the original series except for someone saying Gatlin.  I haven't watched the movie that took place right before this, and much like Halloween as a series, this is a movie series in which 3 movies are named just straight up Children of the Corn - 1984, 2009 and 2020 all have one.

I haven't seen the one right before so I don't know if there is a lead in to this, but I do know that for a small scale, relatively straight forward horror movie, this thing actually does work.  I'm as shocked as I could be.

Billy Drago is a creepy weirdo living in the desert of California, two broken down 20-somethings find his house and ask to use the phone in the normal setup of these types of things.  They have to stay at his house and start hearing weird noises.  Going outside, the woman thinks she uncovers a kid trapped in a shed.  Cue the weird visions of corn related imagery, and the shit really kicks into gear then.

There's a really awesome moment where I audibly said "that was cool"  Any movie that can show you something that still somehow you haven't seen gets a good notch up in my book.  A cop arrives and because of magic or something he can't see or hear our two plucky heroes.  In a single instant he gets pulled up into the sky, presumably by He Who Walks Behind the Rows.  It was actually fucking cool.

This is a solid entry 8 movies deep into the franchise, and really an upswing from where I walked away from the franchise in frustration, throwing my hands up in disgust.  I give it 3.5.