CategoryReviews
Honest horror reviews of films, series, games and books — no hype, no spoilers, just whether it is worth your time and your nerves.
3,462 stories
IndieReviews
Producer Sam Katzman was responsible for a stunning array of poverty-row shockers, and this new box set from Arrow Video (along with MVD Entertainment) brings forth the creepy cream of the crop! Without further arcane ado, let’s dip out terror toes in this putrid pond, shall we? First comes Creature with the Atom Brain (1955): Gangsters are being found tits up, with radioactive dead man’s fingerprints found all over the scene, so the police are baffled. How is this a thing? Well, exiled gangster Frank Buchanan (Michael Granger) hooks up with Wilhelm Steigg (Gregory Gaye), a Nazi mad scientist who is trying to create a new mindless work force created from the bodies of the dead. Frank likes the sound of that shit, believe you me, and before long him and Dr. Feelbad are back in the States and putting a murder on each and every gangster that has ever crossed Buchanan… wait, why are the police angry this dude
Continue reading →
Reviews
Holy hell, how in the shit am I going to condense down David Lynch’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 epic sci-fi novel; Dune for the sinister synopsis portion of this revoltin’ review?!! Umm, so the Emperor of the Universe (José Ferrer) decides that the two most powerful houses in the galaxy; the noble House Atreides and the vile House Harkonnen… the latter of which is about to be relieved of their duty running the day to day of the harvesting and processing of the most precious item in all of space; the Spice Melange (which can be used to “fold” space making travel times nearly non-existent) on the dessert world of Arrakis by the Atreides (who have been developing a fighting system based on sound) by command of the Emperor… which will not only put the House Atreides so far away that they can’t possibly cause him static… and just to make sure they won’t, he has plans of returning
Continue reading →
Amazon Prime VideoBooksReviews
Plot As Elizabeth gets more and more settled into her ordinary (if not boring) life, she suddenly gets thrown into a Wild and Dark world of magic, sex, drugs, and horrors beyond her imagination. Austin Case presents Wild, Dark Times and it absolutely lives up to its name. This plot is very well crafted and it is powerfully obvious that Case has done heaps of research for his novel. The plot winds through so many different things that it is an adventure that will keep you guessing and intrigued from start to finish. The “ordinary” person getting tossed into extraordinary situations is a plot we all know and love and will be used an infinite number of more times in stories, but it is there because it works and makes the plot seem more tangible and realistic. Case uses this setup to perfection and takes us out of our “ordinary” lives and into whatever twisted adventure he chooses. Characters All
Continue reading →
IndieReviews
Bill Rebane; that Wisconsin bred mother fucker of a regional schlock-meister… I love him, and I wager after you park your ass in front of this rich motherload of drive-in awesome-fuckery flyin’ your way from Arrow Video (along with MVD Entertainment) you will too! Kicking off the collection is 1965’s cobbled together mess-terpiece, Monster a Go-Go: A space capsule (pronounced here as cap-soool, which was too much for me) tumbles back to Earth and the astronaut inside goes missing. Coincidentally, a ten foot tall, radiation scarred mutant begins wandering about, just waiting to put the gruesome murder biz upon anyone that stands in his way of… well, wandering around killing people mostly… In a flash of cinematic Frankenstein frenzy, the Godfather of Gore himself; Herschell Gordon Lewis acquired the footage to an unfinished Rebane picture from 1961, added some new footage and narration (provided by H.G. Lewis himself), and released the jarring results to horror hounds everywhere back in ’65!
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Film FestivalsReviews
Strap on your seat belts and turn the volume up loud for The Retaliators (2021), a high-octane combination of revenge thriller, crime drama, and outright horror movie from codirectors Samuel Gonzalez Jr. and Bridget Smith. Power plays, power tools, and power chords abound in this gore-fueled exploitation shocker that serves up a fair amount of surprises. In the film’s opening sequence, two women have trouble with their van and are attacked by what look to be either zombies or backwoods mutants (I won’t spoil what they actually are). A bloodied rescuer attempts to save one of them, laying the groundwork for the scare fare ahead. Pastor John Bishop (Michael Lombardi) is the widowed father of two daughters, living in a peaceful, upscale small town. His teenage daughter Rebecca (Abbey Hafer) accidentally witnesses a crime in progress and is ruthlessly murdered by a vicious baddie named Ram Kady (Joseph Gatt). When local cop Jed (Marc Menchaca) offers Bishop an opportunity at
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
Director David Buchanan’s Laguna Avenue is a low-budget, black-and-white sci-fi noir with body horror elements and some dark humor that is strong on building a paranoid vibe. If that sounds like a lot of genres to tackle in one film, it is, but Buchanan and his game cast and crew make an energetic go of it. Russell (Russell Steinberg), a former musician who lost one of his hands in an accident and now wears a prosthetic one, was recently fired for repeatedly sleeping on the job. He lives with his girlfriend Rita (Stephanie Brait), who has a well-paying executive-level job and is tired of supporting Russell. When Rita goes away, ostensibly on a business trip, Russell is attacked in the couple’s apartment and saved by their downstairs neighbor Gary (James Markham Hall Jr.), who begins rattling off — what initially sounds like to Russell — paranoid delusions and conspiracy theories that put people close to Russell at the center of
Continue reading →
NetflixNewsReviewsStreaming TVTrailers
Netflix has been killing it lately when it comes to horror with movies. They also have a new series that just came out titled “Brand New Cherry Flavor”, that’s the one we are here to talk about. “Brand New Cherry Flavor” follows Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar), a filmmaker who has traveled to California for a meeting to meet a producer (Lou) in hopes of getting her short film adapted for a feature film. After meeting Lou (Eric Lange) she is double-crossed when he basically steals her film. Not long after she meets a mysterious woman, a witch (Catherine Keener), who tells her she can get Lisa revenge. This is where the series goes completely goes off the rails as Lisa begins to cough up kittens (yes, kittens), encounters zombies, and more, as Lisa fights to survive the hitmen Lou has hired to kill her. And that’s just the beginning of the insanity that is “Brand New Cherry Flavor.” I don’t
Continue reading →
Amazon Prime VideoBooksReviews
Plot Monsters come in all shapes and sizes and Joshua Radburn’s upcoming novel Shells proves it. At it’s core, Shells is a menagerie of genres and styles that all blend together to create a captivating horror/mystery that is incredibly unique. I am not going to give much of the plot away here because it is one that reader’s need to experience. Radburn has created a plot built of tried and true tropes (like a down and out cop) that are tried and true because they work. The brilliance of this plot is not because it is exciting, terrifying, and keeps the reader guessing (although it certainly does all of that), the true brilliance is how Bradburn pieces everything all together to create his mystery. I think that the plot is best described in the novel’s forward. It is a “plunge into [the] underworld of gangsters, guns, and monsters.” Characters The characters in Shells feel real. They feel like they are
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Picture it, France, 1764 a giant beast stalks the lands of Gévaudan and gives zero fucks when it comes to eating women and children. Enter: the knight Grégoire de Fronsac, (Samuel Le Bihan), the royal naturalist of King Louis XV of France, and his Iroquois/Mohawk martial-artist companion Mani (Mark Dacascos, who’s been in a ton of great stuff, but you doubtless know him as the host of Iron Chef America) two dudes hellbent on figuring out the exact nature of the beast… a beast all who have glimpsed it swear is a giant wolf! While investigatin’, Fronsac gets the hot n’ hornies for comely Marianne de Morangias (Émilie Dequenne), the daughter of a local count… who just so happens to have a one-armed brother named Jean-François (Vincent Cassel); the victim of a lion attack and a big-time hunter/pain-in-the-ass in his own right. Oh, Fronsac also fucks an Italian, fortune telling prostitute named by Sylvia (Monica Bellucci)… Relationship Status: It’s complicated
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Jet-setting, gold diggin’ beauty Elisa (Carmen Sevilla delivering the sexy in spades) peeps her neighbor Miguel (Vincente Parra), chucking his dead wife, Nuria (María Asquerino) down an elevator shaft… but it’s a double-peep back-fire as Miguel sees her seeing him and forces her to help him thus making her an accomplice and more likely to keep her flappin’ yapper closed, ya see? As you may not expect, Elisa digs on this action and goes balls deep in helping Miguel keep that lil’ indiscretion on the down low… until she doesn’t and tries to kill him… and then things go completely sideways. Spanish giallo (sort of) ensues! Coming hot on the heels of the previous year’s Cannibal Man (which I set my eerie eyeballs right here), but predating perhaps his most well-known work; the juvenile delinquent pictures he dove head first into in the early ‘80s (and which I covered right here), Eloy de la Iglesia’s No One Heard the Scream
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
IndieReviews
Producer Sam Katzman was responsible for a stunning array of poverty-row shockers, and this new box set from Arrow Video (along with MVD Entertainment) brings forth the creepy cream of the crop! Without further arcane ado, let’s dip out terror toes in this putrid pond, shall we? First comes Creature with the Atom Brain (1955): Gangsters are being found tits up, with radioactive dead man’s fingerprints found all over the scene, so the police are baffled. How is this a thing? Well, exiled gangster Frank Buchanan (Michael Granger) hooks up with Wilhelm Steigg (Gregory Gaye), a Nazi mad scientist who is trying to create a new mindless work force created from the bodies of the dead. Frank likes the sound of that shit, believe you me, and before long him and Dr. Feelbad are back in the States and putting a murder on each and every gangster that has ever crossed Buchanan… wait, why are the police angry this dude
Continue reading →
Reviews
Holy hell, how in the shit am I going to condense down David Lynch’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 epic sci-fi novel; Dune for the sinister synopsis portion of this revoltin’ review?!! Umm, so the Emperor of the Universe (José Ferrer) decides that the two most powerful houses in the galaxy; the noble House Atreides and the vile House Harkonnen… the latter of which is about to be relieved of their duty running the day to day of the harvesting and processing of the most precious item in all of space; the Spice Melange (which can be used to “fold” space making travel times nearly non-existent) on the dessert world of Arrakis by the Atreides (who have been developing a fighting system based on sound) by command of the Emperor… which will not only put the House Atreides so far away that they can’t possibly cause him static… and just to make sure they won’t, he has plans of returning
Continue reading →
Amazon Prime VideoBooksReviews
Plot As Elizabeth gets more and more settled into her ordinary (if not boring) life, she suddenly gets thrown into a Wild and Dark world of magic, sex, drugs, and horrors beyond her imagination. Austin Case presents Wild, Dark Times and it absolutely lives up to its name. This plot is very well crafted and it is powerfully obvious that Case has done heaps of research for his novel. The plot winds through so many different things that it is an adventure that will keep you guessing and intrigued from start to finish. The “ordinary” person getting tossed into extraordinary situations is a plot we all know and love and will be used an infinite number of more times in stories, but it is there because it works and makes the plot seem more tangible and realistic. Case uses this setup to perfection and takes us out of our “ordinary” lives and into whatever twisted adventure he chooses. Characters All
Continue reading →
IndieReviews
Bill Rebane; that Wisconsin bred mother fucker of a regional schlock-meister… I love him, and I wager after you park your ass in front of this rich motherload of drive-in awesome-fuckery flyin’ your way from Arrow Video (along with MVD Entertainment) you will too! Kicking off the collection is 1965’s cobbled together mess-terpiece, Monster a Go-Go: A space capsule (pronounced here as cap-soool, which was too much for me) tumbles back to Earth and the astronaut inside goes missing. Coincidentally, a ten foot tall, radiation scarred mutant begins wandering about, just waiting to put the gruesome murder biz upon anyone that stands in his way of… well, wandering around killing people mostly… In a flash of cinematic Frankenstein frenzy, the Godfather of Gore himself; Herschell Gordon Lewis acquired the footage to an unfinished Rebane picture from 1961, added some new footage and narration (provided by H.G. Lewis himself), and released the jarring results to horror hounds everywhere back in ’65!
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
Strap on your seat belts and turn the volume up loud for The Retaliators (2021), a high-octane combination of revenge thriller, crime drama, and outright horror movie from codirectors Samuel Gonzalez Jr. and Bridget Smith. Power plays, power tools, and power chords abound in this gore-fueled exploitation shocker that serves up a fair amount of surprises. In the film’s opening sequence, two women have trouble with their van and are attacked by what look to be either zombies or backwoods mutants (I won’t spoil what they actually are). A bloodied rescuer attempts to save one of them, laying the groundwork for the scare fare ahead. Pastor John Bishop (Michael Lombardi) is the widowed father of two daughters, living in a peaceful, upscale small town. His teenage daughter Rebecca (Abbey Hafer) accidentally witnesses a crime in progress and is ruthlessly murdered by a vicious baddie named Ram Kady (Joseph Gatt). When local cop Jed (Marc Menchaca) offers Bishop an opportunity at
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
Director David Buchanan’s Laguna Avenue is a low-budget, black-and-white sci-fi noir with body horror elements and some dark humor that is strong on building a paranoid vibe. If that sounds like a lot of genres to tackle in one film, it is, but Buchanan and his game cast and crew make an energetic go of it. Russell (Russell Steinberg), a former musician who lost one of his hands in an accident and now wears a prosthetic one, was recently fired for repeatedly sleeping on the job. He lives with his girlfriend Rita (Stephanie Brait), who has a well-paying executive-level job and is tired of supporting Russell. When Rita goes away, ostensibly on a business trip, Russell is attacked in the couple’s apartment and saved by their downstairs neighbor Gary (James Markham Hall Jr.), who begins rattling off — what initially sounds like to Russell — paranoid delusions and conspiracy theories that put people close to Russell at the center of
Continue reading →
NetflixNewsReviewsStreaming TVTrailers
Netflix has been killing it lately when it comes to horror with movies. They also have a new series that just came out titled “Brand New Cherry Flavor”, that’s the one we are here to talk about. “Brand New Cherry Flavor” follows Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar), a filmmaker who has traveled to California for a meeting to meet a producer (Lou) in hopes of getting her short film adapted for a feature film. After meeting Lou (Eric Lange) she is double-crossed when he basically steals her film. Not long after she meets a mysterious woman, a witch (Catherine Keener), who tells her she can get Lisa revenge. This is where the series goes completely goes off the rails as Lisa begins to cough up kittens (yes, kittens), encounters zombies, and more, as Lisa fights to survive the hitmen Lou has hired to kill her. And that’s just the beginning of the insanity that is “Brand New Cherry Flavor.” I don’t
Continue reading →
Amazon Prime VideoBooksReviews
Plot Monsters come in all shapes and sizes and Joshua Radburn’s upcoming novel Shells proves it. At it’s core, Shells is a menagerie of genres and styles that all blend together to create a captivating horror/mystery that is incredibly unique. I am not going to give much of the plot away here because it is one that reader’s need to experience. Radburn has created a plot built of tried and true tropes (like a down and out cop) that are tried and true because they work. The brilliance of this plot is not because it is exciting, terrifying, and keeps the reader guessing (although it certainly does all of that), the true brilliance is how Bradburn pieces everything all together to create his mystery. I think that the plot is best described in the novel’s forward. It is a “plunge into [the] underworld of gangsters, guns, and monsters.” Characters The characters in Shells feel real. They feel like they are
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Picture it, France, 1764 a giant beast stalks the lands of Gévaudan and gives zero fucks when it comes to eating women and children. Enter: the knight Grégoire de Fronsac, (Samuel Le Bihan), the royal naturalist of King Louis XV of France, and his Iroquois/Mohawk martial-artist companion Mani (Mark Dacascos, who’s been in a ton of great stuff, but you doubtless know him as the host of Iron Chef America) two dudes hellbent on figuring out the exact nature of the beast… a beast all who have glimpsed it swear is a giant wolf! While investigatin’, Fronsac gets the hot n’ hornies for comely Marianne de Morangias (Émilie Dequenne), the daughter of a local count… who just so happens to have a one-armed brother named Jean-François (Vincent Cassel); the victim of a lion attack and a big-time hunter/pain-in-the-ass in his own right. Oh, Fronsac also fucks an Italian, fortune telling prostitute named by Sylvia (Monica Bellucci)… Relationship Status: It’s complicated
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Jet-setting, gold diggin’ beauty Elisa (Carmen Sevilla delivering the sexy in spades) peeps her neighbor Miguel (Vincente Parra), chucking his dead wife, Nuria (María Asquerino) down an elevator shaft… but it’s a double-peep back-fire as Miguel sees her seeing him and forces her to help him thus making her an accomplice and more likely to keep her flappin’ yapper closed, ya see? As you may not expect, Elisa digs on this action and goes balls deep in helping Miguel keep that lil’ indiscretion on the down low… until she doesn’t and tries to kill him… and then things go completely sideways. Spanish giallo (sort of) ensues! Coming hot on the heels of the previous year’s Cannibal Man (which I set my eerie eyeballs right here), but predating perhaps his most well-known work; the juvenile delinquent pictures he dove head first into in the early ‘80s (and which I covered right here), Eloy de la Iglesia’s No One Heard the Scream
Continue reading →
