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DanXIII

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Movie Review: Smoke and Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini (2015)

Movie Review: Smoke and Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini (2015)

Look, if you cats n’ creeps don’t recognize the name Tom Savini, then you are most likely readin’ the wrong column… that being said, if you’ve seen the likes of Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, and the original recipe Friday the 13th (to name a few) you sure as shit know his handy work in the field of special effects! Speaking of which; the flick under the monstrous microscope today is all about Savini! Let’s focus our putrid peepers on Smoke and Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini… Filmmaker Jason Baker, himself a professional special effects artist, begins his documentary with a quick montage of the maestro’s work before getting down to the first 1/3rd of the picture’s main concern; exploring Savini’s personal life, from his formative years in Pittsburgh, some of which were spent working a travelling spook-show, to his service in the Vietnam War, in an effort to learn what led him to become one of the greatest

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 7, 2023
Movie Review: The Bat (1959)

Movie Review: The Bat (1959)

After one hell of a swinging opening theme, writer/director Crane Wilbur’s The Bat gets underway… Mystery author Cornelia Van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead, known best these days for her regular appearances on ’60s sitcom Bewitched) along with her assistant Lizzie (Lenita Lane), rents The Oaks; a Gothic mansion/summer home owned by bank prez John Fleming (Harvey Stephens)… who just so happens to have embezzled a million dollars from said bank, and is planning on faking his death with his doctor, Malcolm Wells (Vincent Price) who quickly pulls a double-cross in order to grab those sweet-ass greenbacks! Meanwhile the are has been plagued by woman-killer The Bat; a mysterious shadow-figure who soon makes the scene at The Oaks, and releases a bat which puts the bite on Lizzie which causes a fear of “the rabies” infection… and who do you think they call in to take a look-see? None other than Wicked Wells! Will the wily Wells get his hands on the

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 7, 2023
Movie Review: Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

Movie Review: Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

After the most Ray Dennis Steckler opening credits sequence that Ray Dennis Steckler never directed, Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein gets underway… and boy fuckin’ does it ever a graverobbing Dracula (Zandor Vorkov… much more impressive a moniker than Roger, the record store employee), an axe murder committed by a mute Igor-surrogate named Groton (Lon Chaney Jr. who is argurably most well-known from starring in 1941’s The Wolf Man for Universal, some groovy “kids”, B-Roll of the Vegas strip, and a mad scientist, a descendant of Dr. Frankenstein himself (played in his last role by J. Carrol Naish, no stranger to the monster biz having co-starred in 1944’s House of Frankenstein) performing “experiments” on comely, nude women. How does all of that fit together? Just wait, the movie isn’t done jamming shit together… Added to the monstrous mix, we also get a showgirl, Judith Fontaine (Regina Carrol of 1969’s Satan’s Sadists, another Adamson production) by name, looking for her missing

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 7, 2023
Movie Review: Sinphony (2022)

Movie Review: Sinphony (2022)

Sinphony is a new entry in the ever popular genre of horror anthologies; so let’s set our putrid peepers on each tale for a brief sinister synopsis: Things kick off with a wrap-around segment, Sebastien Bazile and Michael Galvanwith’s Symphony of Horror which details a woman delivering a demon baby and were off to the races my cats n’ creeps! Following that we get Jason Ragosta’s Mother Love; an effective stalk n’ slay number with a woman and her young son being accosted by a creepy clown… but there may be more to the situation than first appears! Next is Steven Keller’s Ear Worm; a putrid parable about a father and son mold abatement crew coming up a rather nasty new strain. After that comes Haley Bishop contributes Forever Young which concerns a woman’s attempts to beat the perceived ravages of Father Time via a social media app with expected unexpected results! As a breather we get to see the

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 7, 2023
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Movie Review: Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm (2022)

Movie Review: Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm (2022)

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions I share are my own. Running from 2000 to 2015, Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force concerned the adventures of three fast food items, none of whom are teens, that gather together to solve crimes which they never do. Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm is a direct-to-video film sequel to all that. Those aforementioned foods; Master Shake (Dana Snyder), Frylock (Carey Means), and Meatwad (Dave Willis) have gone their separate ways, with Frylock scoring an IT position at Amazin; a huge corporation ran by a lil’ dude named Neil (Peter Serafinowicz). On the job Frylock works with a scientist named Elmer (Paul Walter Hauser) who is working on both a machine to stretch Neil out, and intelligent plants, and neither are going well. Before you know it, Frylock and Neil get chummy after the former suggests using DNA splicing to

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 6, 2023
Movie Review: Creature From Black Lake (1976)

Movie Review: Creature From Black Lake (1976)

As with a lot of Bigfoot flicks, 1976’s Creature From Black Lake gives us two things; picturesque nature photography (here courtesy of cinematographer/John Carpenter mainstay Dean Cundey) and college classes devoted to Sasquatch. These things dovetail when trappers fall victim to a Bigfoot attack while simultaneously a college professor talks about how said creature has never attacked a human. Speaking of said Cryp-TED Talk, two students from that class, Pahoo (House of 1,000 Corpses‘ Dennis Fimple) and Rives (John David Carson, who would go on to appear in 1977’s nature-run-amok via giant insect shocker, Empire of the Ants) by name, head down to the Louisiana-Arkansas border from their Windy City home to investigate multiple reports of creature sightings over a stretch of decades. Once there, our heroes discover everyone in town has a bad case of “Shut-the-fuck-up-itis” and info is hard to come by until they meet Orville Bridges (Jim McCullough Jr., who also wrote and produced the film), a

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 2, 2023
Movie Review: Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)

Movie Review: Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)

Comin’ straight from Bob A Christmas Story Clark (okay he also gave us the original recipe Black Christmas and Porky’s) Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, concerns the mystic misadventures of Alan (played by the film’s co-writer Alan Ormsby); a truly pretentious prickus of a man who just so happens to be a stage director. Why is that important? Because he has a whole troupe of actor’s and stagehands at his service… mostly because if they go a single pussy hair out of line he goes psycho and threatens them with their jobs… which is handy when he gets a wild hair up his ass to head to a deserted island of the coast of Miami and try to resurrect the dead… as one fucking does. Well after a bit of ass-foolery involving a bum spell from Alan’s extensive arcane studies, the thespians manage to dig up a stiff, which Alan demands be taken to the abandoned cabin they are

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 2, 2023
Series Review: Tales to Keep you Awake (1966-1982)

Series Review: Tales to Keep you Awake (1966-1982)

Spanish filmmaker Narciso Ibáñez Serrador is a true punk rock filmmaker (yeah this is a weird way to start a review, but bear with me cats n’ creeps). Having dug on American horror and anthology series such as The Outer Limits, Thriller, and the like, the ambitious filmmaker just said “Fuck it, I can do this shit too.”… except he said it in Spanish (if at all)… and he did just that with his series Tales To Keep You Awake (albeit with way more vicious violence and sweet, sweet grizzly gore than all of those show’s combined)! Comprised of a series that ran from 1966 – 1968, a stand alone 1974 special, and a small revival series from 1982, Tales is chock full of adaptations of work from masters such as Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Bloch… not to mention a direct swipe or two from the aforementioned TV shows. Filmed in atmospheric black and white, these rippin’

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Dec 18, 2022
Movie Review: My Grandpa is a Vampire (1992)

Movie Review: My Grandpa is a Vampire (1992)

Lonny (Justin Gocke, whom you may remember as Raymond Burr’s grandson in the American inserts of Godzilla ’85) heads down New Zealand-way to visit his Aunt Leah (a delightful performance from Dame Pat Evison)… but who he is really there to visit is his Grandpa, Vernon Cooger (The Munsters‘ Al Lewis); a delightfully daffy ol’ coot whom Lonny’s monster-obsessed kiwi pal Kanziora (Milan Borich) is convinced is a vampire. Then Cooger dies, so that theory was right shit, wasn’t it? The End. Oh, except Cooger does come back to life, as he actually is a vampire… huh, there’s truth in advertising after all! Now as stated, Cooger is a vampire, but one that has chosen a (mostly) mortal life that allows him to age and eventually die, but that doesn’t stop him to getting up to a few rounds of Grade-A shenanigans once back among the living along with the help of Lonny and Kanziora… who in turn have to

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Dec 18, 2022
Movie Review: The Munsters (2022)

Movie Review: The Munsters (2022)

In deepest, darkest Transylvania; Dr. Wolfgang (Barbarian‘s Richard Brake) along with his sidekick Floop (Jorge Garcia, Lost) have created life in the Frankenstein-vein with Herman Munster (Westworld‘s Jeff Daniel Phillips); a walkin’ wonder of song, dance, and stand-up comedy! Meanwhile, ancient vampire The Count (better known as Grandpa, and played here by prominent character actor Daniel Roebuck) is trying to get his daughter Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie) hitched pronto to little success… but guess who she ends up falling head-over-heels for? What follows is a wicked whirlwind courtship, and before long Herman has inadvertently sold The Count’s ancestral home, because while he does have a brain in his head it isn’t a particularly functioning one. Will that freaky family be able to find a new dread domicile they can call home? Rob Zombie is back with his latest film, The Munsters… and while the on-line chatter was grumpy A.F. concerning this fun fright flick, fans of the popular sitcom upon

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Dec 17, 2022

More from DanXIII

Movie Review: Smoke and Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini (2015)

Movie Review: Smoke and Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini (2015)

Look, if you cats n’ creeps don’t recognize the name Tom Savini, then you are most likely readin’ the wrong column… that being said, if you’ve seen the likes of Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, and the original recipe Friday the 13th (to name a few) you sure as shit know his handy work in the field of special effects! Speaking of which; the flick under the monstrous microscope today is all about Savini! Let’s focus our putrid peepers on Smoke and Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini… Filmmaker Jason Baker, himself a professional special effects artist, begins his documentary with a quick montage of the maestro’s work before getting down to the first 1/3rd of the picture’s main concern; exploring Savini’s personal life, from his formative years in Pittsburgh, some of which were spent working a travelling spook-show, to his service in the Vietnam War, in an effort to learn what led him to become one of the greatest

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 7, 2023
Movie Review: The Bat (1959)

Movie Review: The Bat (1959)

After one hell of a swinging opening theme, writer/director Crane Wilbur’s The Bat gets underway… Mystery author Cornelia Van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead, known best these days for her regular appearances on ’60s sitcom Bewitched) along with her assistant Lizzie (Lenita Lane), rents The Oaks; a Gothic mansion/summer home owned by bank prez John Fleming (Harvey Stephens)… who just so happens to have embezzled a million dollars from said bank, and is planning on faking his death with his doctor, Malcolm Wells (Vincent Price) who quickly pulls a double-cross in order to grab those sweet-ass greenbacks! Meanwhile the are has been plagued by woman-killer The Bat; a mysterious shadow-figure who soon makes the scene at The Oaks, and releases a bat which puts the bite on Lizzie which causes a fear of “the rabies” infection… and who do you think they call in to take a look-see? None other than Wicked Wells! Will the wily Wells get his hands on the

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 7, 2023
Movie Review: Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

Movie Review: Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

After the most Ray Dennis Steckler opening credits sequence that Ray Dennis Steckler never directed, Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein gets underway… and boy fuckin’ does it ever a graverobbing Dracula (Zandor Vorkov… much more impressive a moniker than Roger, the record store employee), an axe murder committed by a mute Igor-surrogate named Groton (Lon Chaney Jr. who is argurably most well-known from starring in 1941’s The Wolf Man for Universal, some groovy “kids”, B-Roll of the Vegas strip, and a mad scientist, a descendant of Dr. Frankenstein himself (played in his last role by J. Carrol Naish, no stranger to the monster biz having co-starred in 1944’s House of Frankenstein) performing “experiments” on comely, nude women. How does all of that fit together? Just wait, the movie isn’t done jamming shit together… Added to the monstrous mix, we also get a showgirl, Judith Fontaine (Regina Carrol of 1969’s Satan’s Sadists, another Adamson production) by name, looking for her missing

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 7, 2023
Movie Review: Sinphony (2022)

Movie Review: Sinphony (2022)

Sinphony is a new entry in the ever popular genre of horror anthologies; so let’s set our putrid peepers on each tale for a brief sinister synopsis: Things kick off with a wrap-around segment, Sebastien Bazile and Michael Galvanwith’s Symphony of Horror which details a woman delivering a demon baby and were off to the races my cats n’ creeps! Following that we get Jason Ragosta’s Mother Love; an effective stalk n’ slay number with a woman and her young son being accosted by a creepy clown… but there may be more to the situation than first appears! Next is Steven Keller’s Ear Worm; a putrid parable about a father and son mold abatement crew coming up a rather nasty new strain. After that comes Haley Bishop contributes Forever Young which concerns a woman’s attempts to beat the perceived ravages of Father Time via a social media app with expected unexpected results! As a breather we get to see the

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 7, 2023
Movie Review: Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm (2022)

Movie Review: Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm (2022)

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions I share are my own. Running from 2000 to 2015, Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force concerned the adventures of three fast food items, none of whom are teens, that gather together to solve crimes which they never do. Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm is a direct-to-video film sequel to all that. Those aforementioned foods; Master Shake (Dana Snyder), Frylock (Carey Means), and Meatwad (Dave Willis) have gone their separate ways, with Frylock scoring an IT position at Amazin; a huge corporation ran by a lil’ dude named Neil (Peter Serafinowicz). On the job Frylock works with a scientist named Elmer (Paul Walter Hauser) who is working on both a machine to stretch Neil out, and intelligent plants, and neither are going well. Before you know it, Frylock and Neil get chummy after the former suggests using DNA splicing to

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 6, 2023
Movie Review: Creature From Black Lake (1976)

Movie Review: Creature From Black Lake (1976)

As with a lot of Bigfoot flicks, 1976’s Creature From Black Lake gives us two things; picturesque nature photography (here courtesy of cinematographer/John Carpenter mainstay Dean Cundey) and college classes devoted to Sasquatch. These things dovetail when trappers fall victim to a Bigfoot attack while simultaneously a college professor talks about how said creature has never attacked a human. Speaking of said Cryp-TED Talk, two students from that class, Pahoo (House of 1,000 Corpses‘ Dennis Fimple) and Rives (John David Carson, who would go on to appear in 1977’s nature-run-amok via giant insect shocker, Empire of the Ants) by name, head down to the Louisiana-Arkansas border from their Windy City home to investigate multiple reports of creature sightings over a stretch of decades. Once there, our heroes discover everyone in town has a bad case of “Shut-the-fuck-up-itis” and info is hard to come by until they meet Orville Bridges (Jim McCullough Jr., who also wrote and produced the film), a

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 2, 2023
Movie Review: Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)

Movie Review: Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)

Comin’ straight from Bob A Christmas Story Clark (okay he also gave us the original recipe Black Christmas and Porky’s) Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, concerns the mystic misadventures of Alan (played by the film’s co-writer Alan Ormsby); a truly pretentious prickus of a man who just so happens to be a stage director. Why is that important? Because he has a whole troupe of actor’s and stagehands at his service… mostly because if they go a single pussy hair out of line he goes psycho and threatens them with their jobs… which is handy when he gets a wild hair up his ass to head to a deserted island of the coast of Miami and try to resurrect the dead… as one fucking does. Well after a bit of ass-foolery involving a bum spell from Alan’s extensive arcane studies, the thespians manage to dig up a stiff, which Alan demands be taken to the abandoned cabin they are

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jan 2, 2023
Series Review: Tales to Keep you Awake (1966-1982)

Series Review: Tales to Keep you Awake (1966-1982)

Spanish filmmaker Narciso Ibáñez Serrador is a true punk rock filmmaker (yeah this is a weird way to start a review, but bear with me cats n’ creeps). Having dug on American horror and anthology series such as The Outer Limits, Thriller, and the like, the ambitious filmmaker just said “Fuck it, I can do this shit too.”… except he said it in Spanish (if at all)… and he did just that with his series Tales To Keep You Awake (albeit with way more vicious violence and sweet, sweet grizzly gore than all of those show’s combined)! Comprised of a series that ran from 1966 – 1968, a stand alone 1974 special, and a small revival series from 1982, Tales is chock full of adaptations of work from masters such as Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Bloch… not to mention a direct swipe or two from the aforementioned TV shows. Filmed in atmospheric black and white, these rippin’

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Dec 18, 2022
Movie Review: My Grandpa is a Vampire (1992)

Movie Review: My Grandpa is a Vampire (1992)

Lonny (Justin Gocke, whom you may remember as Raymond Burr’s grandson in the American inserts of Godzilla ’85) heads down New Zealand-way to visit his Aunt Leah (a delightful performance from Dame Pat Evison)… but who he is really there to visit is his Grandpa, Vernon Cooger (The Munsters‘ Al Lewis); a delightfully daffy ol’ coot whom Lonny’s monster-obsessed kiwi pal Kanziora (Milan Borich) is convinced is a vampire. Then Cooger dies, so that theory was right shit, wasn’t it? The End. Oh, except Cooger does come back to life, as he actually is a vampire… huh, there’s truth in advertising after all! Now as stated, Cooger is a vampire, but one that has chosen a (mostly) mortal life that allows him to age and eventually die, but that doesn’t stop him to getting up to a few rounds of Grade-A shenanigans once back among the living along with the help of Lonny and Kanziora… who in turn have to

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Dec 18, 2022
Movie Review: The Munsters (2022)

Movie Review: The Munsters (2022)

In deepest, darkest Transylvania; Dr. Wolfgang (Barbarian‘s Richard Brake) along with his sidekick Floop (Jorge Garcia, Lost) have created life in the Frankenstein-vein with Herman Munster (Westworld‘s Jeff Daniel Phillips); a walkin’ wonder of song, dance, and stand-up comedy! Meanwhile, ancient vampire The Count (better known as Grandpa, and played here by prominent character actor Daniel Roebuck) is trying to get his daughter Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie) hitched pronto to little success… but guess who she ends up falling head-over-heels for? What follows is a wicked whirlwind courtship, and before long Herman has inadvertently sold The Count’s ancestral home, because while he does have a brain in his head it isn’t a particularly functioning one. Will that freaky family be able to find a new dread domicile they can call home? Rob Zombie is back with his latest film, The Munsters… and while the on-line chatter was grumpy A.F. concerning this fun fright flick, fans of the popular sitcom upon

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Dec 17, 2022
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