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DanXIII

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Horror Fuel

Short Film Review: Lili (2019)

Lili (Lisa Smit) sits in a pitch black room ready for an audition for a juicy role. As she tries out different approaches to the material, the man holding the audition (Derek de Lint) reveals he has some sinister ulterior motives… but, Lili may have more than expected to give the role! Now make no mistake, at it’s core this nine-minute short film is a horror biz piece, but it touches on some real life terror as well, as Lili’s personal space is invaded and her comfort shattered when things move from exploring acting to full on grabby asshole territory with disturbing ease (and illustrated perfectly thanks to the strong acting displayed by Smit and de Lint). As for the visuals, writer/director Yfke Van Berckelaer keeps it simple as putrid pie with a black background being the only setting… and for like 99% of the film, Smit’s expressive face fills most of the screen. It keeps the image clean and

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 23, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: American Rickshaw (1989)

As American Rickshaw begins, we are treated to an image of a strange idol filmed in a manner that made your’s cruelly think “This is like some Boxer’s Omen style shit right here”… and I wasn’t wrong cats n’ creeps! The overall vibe of this pic has much more akin to those black magic shockers Shaw Brothers were crankin’ out in the ’70s than the western and sci-fi fare director Sergio Martino is known for… and that is an unexpected, and wonderful thing believe you me! The long and short of American Rickshaw goes as follows: Florida-based college kid Scott Edwards (Olympian Mitch Gaylord of all people) is a rickshaw driver (that most popular form of transportation in the States) who manages to get in the good graces of aged Chinese witch Madame Luna (Michi Kobi… giving off serious )… which is good because he ends up being framed for the murder of a pervert that filmed him having sex…

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 22, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Abrakadabra (2018)

A magician (German Baudino) finds himself at the mercy of a sadistic killer in Luciano Onetti and Nicolás Onetti’s (aided and abetted by co-writer/cinematographer Carlos Goitia) love letter to ’70s giallo flicks; Abrakadabra… one of the debut offerings from Cauldron Films, and what a debut it is cats n’ creeps! Now if the names of those two dudes up yonder sound familiar, they are the ones responsible for two other giallo-style flicks; 2013’s Sonno Profondo and 2015’s Francesca… and as they did with those flicks, they attempt to not merely homage the genre, the seek to replicate it 110% in Abrakadabra! To that end the screen is filled to bursting with what a giallo fan would expect, namely: bizarre fashions, outre set dressing (dolls, puppets, and more seek to unnerve the viewer), strange camera placement, a dash of kinky sex and gore, a painterly use of color and shadow… hell, they even make the film look as though the film

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 22, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Possession (2009)

Newlyweds Jessica (Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Ryan (Michael Landes) are diggin’ on being hitched, but there’s a snag… they share their home with Ryan’s psychopathic, ex-con brother Roman (Guardian of the Galaxy‘s Lee Pace), which is a stressful sitch in-fuckin’-deed… Long story short; Roman ends up hitting his brother with a car, and the two sibs end up balls deep in Comaland; population: them. Anyhow, Roman wakes up, Ryan does not… but here’s the fun part; Roman now claims he is Ryan. Now our heroine isn’t exactly ready to swallow that plate of what appears to be gourmet bullshit… but, Roman knows shit only Ryan could, ya dig? This eventually leads her to believe that whopper may indeed be the truth… but is it… is it? Well, Possession looks slicker than shit through a duck’s ass, that’s for sure. Directors Simon Sandquist and Joe Bergvall have a keen eye… four in fact, and they know how to get

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 22, 2020
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Horror Fuel

Movie Review: Blood Vessel (2019)

Peep this; it’s the Second World War, and things are gettin’ violent as fuck! Don’t believe me? Well, those dreaded Axis powers have hucked a torpedo at a military hospital ship… resulting in a motley crew of military personal being adrift on the open sea in a lil’ life raft. Fortunately for them, they are soon within spittin’ distance of a huge German vessel… okay, that’s not fortunate at all… but possibly a p.h. better than starving to death in a rubber raft… debatable. Anyway after an action-packed boarding of that beastly boat we get down to brass tacks; namely that the ship is mostly full of corpses… mostly… I mean there’s a pretty unreasonable amount of vampires on board as well… I mean, one would be more than enough to qualify as “unreasonable”, but there’s at least a few more than that. So it’s Das Boot by way of the ‘Demeter’ sequence from Dracula as our harried heroes attempt

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 21, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: Impetigore (2019)

Toll booth workers Maya (Tara Basro) and Dini (Marissa Anita) spend their shifts shootin’ the shit with each other via their cellphones, but that normalcy is shattered when a mystery man keeps givin’ Maya static before being shot dead by security after delivering a a bit of “doom-saying” that hints at our heroine having a dark family secret. After some investigation, Maya, with Dini in tow, believes she was born to a rich family, and to that end treks to a remote village in the hopes of inheriting the family’s home. Instead she finds out she’s inherited the hatred of the local villagers that believe her family has brought a curse to the village that condemns children to be born without skin… and the locals want Maya dead! Indonesian writer/director Joko Anwar (most known for his update of Putra’s 1980 cult classic Satan’s Slaves) once again delivers a disturbing yet slickly-produced fright flick with Impetigore; a deft blend of rural

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 20, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: The Pool (2018)

Day (Theeradej Wongpuapan) awakes to find himself trapped in a titanic empty pool with a gator nibbling on his leg. How did he end up in this nightmare scenario. well it tangentially involves a woman in clown makeup sitting on a fancy-ass couch underwater… as these things so often do. Long story short, Day (and his puppy) just completed work on a film set at the luxurious, but abandoned, pool mentioned above… and hangs around for a private swim the next day… a swim that finds him goofing off a bit too much, so that when the water drains a bit he is unable to exit the pool. This is bad news on a number of levels, as Day is unable to reach the insulin he needs to live, and when his cellphone falls in the water, he is unable to call for help. To make matters even worse, his girlfriend Koi (Ratnamon Ratchiratham) arrives, and gets seriously injured before

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 20, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: Carmilla (2019)

At an isolated country manor, Mr Bauer (Greg Wise) resides with his teenage daughter Lara (Hannah Rae) and Lara’s hard-ass governess Ms Fontaine (Jessica Raine). Lara spends her days being bored off her ass… that is until the survivor of a carriage accident (Devrim Lingnau) is taken in by Bauer. The girl claims she has no memory of where she’s from or who she is, but Lara takes to calling her Carmilla. Lara becomes absolutely smitten with Carmilla, as they mystery girl stirs new feelings inside her… but there is more to Carmilla than meets the eye which could spell doom for the Bauer household! Based on the novella by Sheridan Le Fanu of the same name, Carmilla is a tale of vampirism that pre-dates Bram Stoker’s more famous Dracula, but is every bit that novels equal… and where Dracula dabbles in homo-eroticism, Carmilla flaunts it. Admittedly, writer/director Emily Harris has dialed back the more overt vampire biz in this

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 17, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: Lake of Death (2019)

Lillian (Iben Akerlie) just can’t get her missing bro Bjørn (Patrick Walshe McBride) off her mind… so much so that she keeps seeing visions of his ass while her and her vacuous pals plop their asses down in that hoary ol’ horror biz chestnut; the isolated cabin in the woods. Along with that, bizarre-ass shit keeps going on that causes that gaggle o’ goofs to start blaming each other for the outre happenings… though something more sinister and supernatural may be to blame! Based on the 1958 fright flick from Norwegian director Kåre Bergstrøm (itself an adaption of Andre Bjerke’s 1942 novel of the same name); writer/director Nini Bull Robsahm’s film updates the tale, while adding a stylish flourish that looks tight as fuck (thanks to Robsahm’s eye as well as the work of cinematographer Axel Mustad and editor Bob Murawski)… but there a few bumps on this joltin’ journey boils n’ ghouls. For one, this flick is by-the-numbers Hollywood

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 15, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Revenge of the Living Dead Girls (1987)

While getting his fuck on with a comely injured hitchhiker, a dairy delivery dude has his milk cargo sabotaged by a mystery man on a motorcycle. The poison milk begins to kill young women (one of which apparently has a habit of eating breakfast with her mother while wearing see-thru lingerie as so many of us do), but we soon discover that the murder biz wasn’t intended by those behind the poisoning, who had hoped for mere “gut-wrenching illness” instead. Simultaneously, a German owned company (whom all of the poisoned girls worked for) is paying cash-money to have their toxic runoff dumped in a nearby cemetery, which naturally resurrects those aforementioned poison victims… and these zombie gals are hellbent for revenge let me tell ya… well after gingerly walking through the graveyard trying not to fall on their collective asses as gobs of manufactured smoke makes every step a hazard that is… And what a revenge it is, as our

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 12, 2020

More from DanXIII

Horror Fuel

Short Film Review: Lili (2019)

Lili (Lisa Smit) sits in a pitch black room ready for an audition for a juicy role. As she tries out different approaches to the material, the man holding the audition (Derek de Lint) reveals he has some sinister ulterior motives… but, Lili may have more than expected to give the role! Now make no mistake, at it’s core this nine-minute short film is a horror biz piece, but it touches on some real life terror as well, as Lili’s personal space is invaded and her comfort shattered when things move from exploring acting to full on grabby asshole territory with disturbing ease (and illustrated perfectly thanks to the strong acting displayed by Smit and de Lint). As for the visuals, writer/director Yfke Van Berckelaer keeps it simple as putrid pie with a black background being the only setting… and for like 99% of the film, Smit’s expressive face fills most of the screen. It keeps the image clean and

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 23, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: American Rickshaw (1989)

As American Rickshaw begins, we are treated to an image of a strange idol filmed in a manner that made your’s cruelly think “This is like some Boxer’s Omen style shit right here”… and I wasn’t wrong cats n’ creeps! The overall vibe of this pic has much more akin to those black magic shockers Shaw Brothers were crankin’ out in the ’70s than the western and sci-fi fare director Sergio Martino is known for… and that is an unexpected, and wonderful thing believe you me! The long and short of American Rickshaw goes as follows: Florida-based college kid Scott Edwards (Olympian Mitch Gaylord of all people) is a rickshaw driver (that most popular form of transportation in the States) who manages to get in the good graces of aged Chinese witch Madame Luna (Michi Kobi… giving off serious )… which is good because he ends up being framed for the murder of a pervert that filmed him having sex…

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 22, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Abrakadabra (2018)

A magician (German Baudino) finds himself at the mercy of a sadistic killer in Luciano Onetti and Nicolás Onetti’s (aided and abetted by co-writer/cinematographer Carlos Goitia) love letter to ’70s giallo flicks; Abrakadabra… one of the debut offerings from Cauldron Films, and what a debut it is cats n’ creeps! Now if the names of those two dudes up yonder sound familiar, they are the ones responsible for two other giallo-style flicks; 2013’s Sonno Profondo and 2015’s Francesca… and as they did with those flicks, they attempt to not merely homage the genre, the seek to replicate it 110% in Abrakadabra! To that end the screen is filled to bursting with what a giallo fan would expect, namely: bizarre fashions, outre set dressing (dolls, puppets, and more seek to unnerve the viewer), strange camera placement, a dash of kinky sex and gore, a painterly use of color and shadow… hell, they even make the film look as though the film

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 22, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Possession (2009)

Newlyweds Jessica (Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Ryan (Michael Landes) are diggin’ on being hitched, but there’s a snag… they share their home with Ryan’s psychopathic, ex-con brother Roman (Guardian of the Galaxy‘s Lee Pace), which is a stressful sitch in-fuckin’-deed… Long story short; Roman ends up hitting his brother with a car, and the two sibs end up balls deep in Comaland; population: them. Anyhow, Roman wakes up, Ryan does not… but here’s the fun part; Roman now claims he is Ryan. Now our heroine isn’t exactly ready to swallow that plate of what appears to be gourmet bullshit… but, Roman knows shit only Ryan could, ya dig? This eventually leads her to believe that whopper may indeed be the truth… but is it… is it? Well, Possession looks slicker than shit through a duck’s ass, that’s for sure. Directors Simon Sandquist and Joe Bergvall have a keen eye… four in fact, and they know how to get

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 22, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: Blood Vessel (2019)

Peep this; it’s the Second World War, and things are gettin’ violent as fuck! Don’t believe me? Well, those dreaded Axis powers have hucked a torpedo at a military hospital ship… resulting in a motley crew of military personal being adrift on the open sea in a lil’ life raft. Fortunately for them, they are soon within spittin’ distance of a huge German vessel… okay, that’s not fortunate at all… but possibly a p.h. better than starving to death in a rubber raft… debatable. Anyway after an action-packed boarding of that beastly boat we get down to brass tacks; namely that the ship is mostly full of corpses… mostly… I mean there’s a pretty unreasonable amount of vampires on board as well… I mean, one would be more than enough to qualify as “unreasonable”, but there’s at least a few more than that. So it’s Das Boot by way of the ‘Demeter’ sequence from Dracula as our harried heroes attempt

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 21, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: Impetigore (2019)

Toll booth workers Maya (Tara Basro) and Dini (Marissa Anita) spend their shifts shootin’ the shit with each other via their cellphones, but that normalcy is shattered when a mystery man keeps givin’ Maya static before being shot dead by security after delivering a a bit of “doom-saying” that hints at our heroine having a dark family secret. After some investigation, Maya, with Dini in tow, believes she was born to a rich family, and to that end treks to a remote village in the hopes of inheriting the family’s home. Instead she finds out she’s inherited the hatred of the local villagers that believe her family has brought a curse to the village that condemns children to be born without skin… and the locals want Maya dead! Indonesian writer/director Joko Anwar (most known for his update of Putra’s 1980 cult classic Satan’s Slaves) once again delivers a disturbing yet slickly-produced fright flick with Impetigore; a deft blend of rural

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 20, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: The Pool (2018)

Day (Theeradej Wongpuapan) awakes to find himself trapped in a titanic empty pool with a gator nibbling on his leg. How did he end up in this nightmare scenario. well it tangentially involves a woman in clown makeup sitting on a fancy-ass couch underwater… as these things so often do. Long story short, Day (and his puppy) just completed work on a film set at the luxurious, but abandoned, pool mentioned above… and hangs around for a private swim the next day… a swim that finds him goofing off a bit too much, so that when the water drains a bit he is unable to exit the pool. This is bad news on a number of levels, as Day is unable to reach the insulin he needs to live, and when his cellphone falls in the water, he is unable to call for help. To make matters even worse, his girlfriend Koi (Ratnamon Ratchiratham) arrives, and gets seriously injured before

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 20, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: Carmilla (2019)

At an isolated country manor, Mr Bauer (Greg Wise) resides with his teenage daughter Lara (Hannah Rae) and Lara’s hard-ass governess Ms Fontaine (Jessica Raine). Lara spends her days being bored off her ass… that is until the survivor of a carriage accident (Devrim Lingnau) is taken in by Bauer. The girl claims she has no memory of where she’s from or who she is, but Lara takes to calling her Carmilla. Lara becomes absolutely smitten with Carmilla, as they mystery girl stirs new feelings inside her… but there is more to Carmilla than meets the eye which could spell doom for the Bauer household! Based on the novella by Sheridan Le Fanu of the same name, Carmilla is a tale of vampirism that pre-dates Bram Stoker’s more famous Dracula, but is every bit that novels equal… and where Dracula dabbles in homo-eroticism, Carmilla flaunts it. Admittedly, writer/director Emily Harris has dialed back the more overt vampire biz in this

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 17, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: Lake of Death (2019)

Lillian (Iben Akerlie) just can’t get her missing bro Bjørn (Patrick Walshe McBride) off her mind… so much so that she keeps seeing visions of his ass while her and her vacuous pals plop their asses down in that hoary ol’ horror biz chestnut; the isolated cabin in the woods. Along with that, bizarre-ass shit keeps going on that causes that gaggle o’ goofs to start blaming each other for the outre happenings… though something more sinister and supernatural may be to blame! Based on the 1958 fright flick from Norwegian director Kåre Bergstrøm (itself an adaption of Andre Bjerke’s 1942 novel of the same name); writer/director Nini Bull Robsahm’s film updates the tale, while adding a stylish flourish that looks tight as fuck (thanks to Robsahm’s eye as well as the work of cinematographer Axel Mustad and editor Bob Murawski)… but there a few bumps on this joltin’ journey boils n’ ghouls. For one, this flick is by-the-numbers Hollywood

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 15, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Revenge of the Living Dead Girls (1987)

While getting his fuck on with a comely injured hitchhiker, a dairy delivery dude has his milk cargo sabotaged by a mystery man on a motorcycle. The poison milk begins to kill young women (one of which apparently has a habit of eating breakfast with her mother while wearing see-thru lingerie as so many of us do), but we soon discover that the murder biz wasn’t intended by those behind the poisoning, who had hoped for mere “gut-wrenching illness” instead. Simultaneously, a German owned company (whom all of the poisoned girls worked for) is paying cash-money to have their toxic runoff dumped in a nearby cemetery, which naturally resurrects those aforementioned poison victims… and these zombie gals are hellbent for revenge let me tell ya… well after gingerly walking through the graveyard trying not to fall on their collective asses as gobs of manufactured smoke makes every step a hazard that is… And what a revenge it is, as our

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jul 12, 2020
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