Horror Fuel
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Honest horror reviews of films, series, games and books — no hype, no spoilers, just whether it is worth your time and your nerves.

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Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: The Wretched (2019)

Ol’ Ben (John-Paul Howard) is travelling the bumpy-ass road of adolescence and seemingly hitting every pothole; to wit: his parents are separated, he has no wheels, and he’s busting ass working a lame job at the local marina… oh, and he has to deal with being the only one that knows some ancient evil or other (specifically the kind of wicked witch that crawls full-born from the carcass of a deer… as is usually the case, amirite?) has gotten it’s hooks into the metal A.F., MILF, next door neighbor Abbie (Zarah Mahler)… putting her family, and everyone else truth be told, in preternatural peril! Look dude, we’ve all seen this one before; you get the “kid” no one believes witnessing someone being turned evil (whether it’s aliens, demons, witches… that’s all ghoulish gravy baby), yet no one swallows the seemingly insane yarn… which of course turns out to be terrifyingly true… but I’ll be damned if The Wretched (or more

Continue reading →
Aug 5, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-Ray Review: The Outsider: The Complete First Season

Warner Bros. is set to release the complete first season of the amazing, intense series “The Outsider” on home video tomorrow. Inspired by Stephen King’s best-selling novel, the ten-episode first season takes us on what law enforcement thinks is a straight forward investigation of the brutal murder of a young boy whose body is found in the Georgia woods. Police detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) believes a local teacher, Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman) is the killer, after all that’s who the evidence points to. Or does it? What he doesn’t know it that a dark, ancient entity is at work. Cynthia Erivo, Marie Winningham, Marc Menchaca, Julianne Nicholson, Paddy Considine, Yul Vazquez, also star, each playing their part to perfection with Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo giving standout performances. Anderson is an officer that seems detached for everything around him due to the death of his son. He’s a skeptic of the supernatural world through and through, but he’s desperate to

Continue reading →
Jul 31, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: Amulet

Every once in a while, I come across a movie the leaves me speechless. As I sat down today to watch Amulet I thought I had some idea of what to expect. I was wrong. Where to start? I guess the premise would be a good place. Amulet is the debut feature from Romola Garai and follows Tomas (Alec Secareanu), a homeless ex-soldier, suffering from PTSD and heavy guilt. He meets a nun who arranges a place for him to stay, with a young woman (Carla Juri) whose mother is sick and living in the attic. But not everything is what as it seems to be. Normally, I do my best to avoid giving out spoilers, but to work through this film, I need to reveal a few things. To avoid spoilers stop reading this review now. The first half of the movie is a SLOW burn. But at the halfway mark things go off the rails and morphs into

Continue reading →
Jul 30, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Bloodstone (1988)

The Bloodstone, giant-ass ruby of antiquity, has been pinched by small potatoes thief Paul Lorre (Jack Kehler) at the behest of Ludwig Van Hoeven (Christopher Neame, Johnny Alucard from one of my all time fav fright flicks; Dracula A.D. 1972) down India way. Enter: corny-as-fuck American newlyweds Sandy and Stephanie McVey (Brett Stimely… who has played President Kennedy in like four million films, and Anna Nicholas… who was on an episode of Mr. Belvedere once). While these two ham it up to the Nth degree, Lorre secretly slips them the ruby to avoid being arrested by the Indian authorities headed by Inspector Ramesh (Charlie Brill… more on this guy in a bit)… a man so bumbling and full of pratfalls it’s near impossible to imagine him being able to walk and chew gum successfully, let alone actually perform his job… but anyway… These two don’t keep the stone for long, as one wild-as-fuck taxi ride later, courtesy of Shyam Sabu

Continue reading →
Jul 29, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Black Rainbow (1989)

Gary Wallace (Tom Hulce) is all hot and bothered to prove that nomadic psychic medium Martha (Rosanna Arquette) and her professional alcoholic manager (and father) Walter (Jason Robards) are nothing but first class bullshit artists… although the shit they sling does make the audience feel better that their tits up relatives are havin’ a swingin’ time behind those ol’ Pearly Gates, ya dig? About all that; Wallace is half right as Martha has indeed been faking that shit for years… but as of late her predictions have been actual paranormal events… events that spell doom for those who’s deaths she predicts… you know, now that I think of it, that will be really shitty for creating return customers… Personally I had never heard of this flick until it arrived across my dread doorstep for a revoltin’ review, and now that I have I simply can’t believe it! Directed by Mike Hodges (who directed one of my all-time fav flick’s, 1980’s

Continue reading →
Jul 29, 2020
Horror Fuel

Game Review: ‘Maid Of Sker’

A big thanks to the hardworking folks over at Wales Interactive for allowing me the opportunity to try out their first-person horror game, Maid of Sker (pronounced Scar)! In Maid of Sker, you play as Thomas, a songwriter, who goes to Hotel Sker to find his wife Elisabeth who is forced to be the new “Maid of Sker” after the original, her mother, died. After arriving, Thomas quickly learns that Elisabeth is being used as a tool in a cult ritual that needs her to sing in traditional Welsh Gaelic to appease something that Elisabeth’s family has kept secret. Onto the game itself. The game heavily relies on sound as it’s suggested that you wear headphones or play with the volume high up. The only downside is there’s way too much ambiance noise, and the player’s footsteps get annoying pretty fast. The music is pretty good, especially the traditional Welsh ones, but at times the music is intense when there’s

Continue reading →
Jul 28, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: The Complete Lenzi/Baker Giallo Collection (1969 – 1972)

As you may infer from the name of this collection, Italian horror maestro Umberto Lenzi and Pennsylvania-born actress Caroll Baker worked on a film or four together… and my fabulous freaky fiends at Severin have boxed ’em up with plenty of extras and sent them out the diabolical door! Let’s kick off our look at The Complete Lenzi/Baker Giallo Collection with 1969’s Orgasmo! High-maintenance and horny widow, Kathryn West(Baker), heads down Italy-way to shack up in her rich late old geezer’s posh-ass Villa. And there she stays, painting, lounging, being annoyed by her perpetually bitchy maid Theresa (a fantastic Lilla Brignone) and generally being bored off her tits. All that changes when equally horny, sports car enthusiast Peter Donovan (Lou Castel) breaks down right in front of our heroine’s front gate; an event that leads to some soggy sexcapades in a steamin’ hot shower (the water of which, must be noted, is drank by Donovan before he starts a-drillin’… “just

Continue reading →
Jul 27, 2020
Horror Fuel

‘Destroy All Humans!’ Is One Giant Step On Mankind’s Boredom!

Black Forest Games and THQ Nordic have given me the chance to relive a part of my gaming past with the revamped Destroy All Humans! that surely will gain a bigger audience full of old and new fans. Some brief history of Destroy All Humans!, the game came out in 2005 from Pandemic Studios and THQ(before the name change) that was a nod to the cold war era alien invasion films and comics of the 1950s that also parodied 1950’s society that mirrored attitudes in the US at the time in ’05. I played and loved the hell out of that game back in the day, so when it was announced they were revamping it, I had to see if it held up. Destroy All Humans! is about an alien named Cryptosporidium-137, or Crypto, a clone, is tasked to go to earth to harvest human brainstems that contain DNA of their species to help further their cloning which is how

Continue reading →
Jul 27, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)

1880’s Japan, but it’s like the American old West. That’s the main conceit of the blazing insanity that is Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django… a picture that has about as much to do with Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 epic Django as anyone of the four billion sequels-in-name-only that followed it. Along with that lil’ elevator pitch up yonder, the plot of this frenzied flick concerns two gangs; one coded red (the Heike clan), the other white (the Genji clan)… both lead by mentally unstable maniacs… who have a wild hair up their ass about having the biggest dick in the ol’ East, and to hell with the town caught in the middle. Enter: a mysterious unnamed gunman (Hideaki Itô) who’s none too thrilled about the gangs, or their effect on the community… hell, he’s just plain ol’ none too thrilled, and it doesn’t take long for the tensions and body count to rise… all in some of the most ludicrous ways

Continue reading →
Jul 26, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Zombie for Sale (2019)

A diabolical pharmaceutical company has been experimenting on college kids and turning them into the shamblin’ dead. One such unfortunate is Jjong-Bi (Ga Ram Jung) who has went on the lam and found himself the houseguest of a wacky-ass family that owns a rural gas station (though most of their dough comes from scamming motorists). Before long our undead hero bites the family patriarch, but instead of turning him into a flesh-eating ghoul, it fills the ol’ boy with vim and vigor! Ever the entrepreneurs, the family sells invigorating zombie bites to the geezers of the village for a profit. Of course this plan goes tits up when the folks he’s bitten actually do pass on the zombie virus… which also results in the family having to fend of the fiends as well as the authorities all while saving their own bickering asses from the fire! Let’s just get this out of the way; Zombie for Sale is mostly a

Continue reading →
Jul 23, 2020

More from Reviews

Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: The Wretched (2019)

Ol’ Ben (John-Paul Howard) is travelling the bumpy-ass road of adolescence and seemingly hitting every pothole; to wit: his parents are separated, he has no wheels, and he’s busting ass working a lame job at the local marina… oh, and he has to deal with being the only one that knows some ancient evil or other (specifically the kind of wicked witch that crawls full-born from the carcass of a deer… as is usually the case, amirite?) has gotten it’s hooks into the metal A.F., MILF, next door neighbor Abbie (Zarah Mahler)… putting her family, and everyone else truth be told, in preternatural peril! Look dude, we’ve all seen this one before; you get the “kid” no one believes witnessing someone being turned evil (whether it’s aliens, demons, witches… that’s all ghoulish gravy baby), yet no one swallows the seemingly insane yarn… which of course turns out to be terrifyingly true… but I’ll be damned if The Wretched (or more

Continue reading →
Aug 5, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-Ray Review: The Outsider: The Complete First Season

Warner Bros. is set to release the complete first season of the amazing, intense series “The Outsider” on home video tomorrow. Inspired by Stephen King’s best-selling novel, the ten-episode first season takes us on what law enforcement thinks is a straight forward investigation of the brutal murder of a young boy whose body is found in the Georgia woods. Police detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) believes a local teacher, Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman) is the killer, after all that’s who the evidence points to. Or does it? What he doesn’t know it that a dark, ancient entity is at work. Cynthia Erivo, Marie Winningham, Marc Menchaca, Julianne Nicholson, Paddy Considine, Yul Vazquez, also star, each playing their part to perfection with Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo giving standout performances. Anderson is an officer that seems detached for everything around him due to the death of his son. He’s a skeptic of the supernatural world through and through, but he’s desperate to

Continue reading →
Jul 31, 2020
Horror Fuel

Movie Review: Amulet

Every once in a while, I come across a movie the leaves me speechless. As I sat down today to watch Amulet I thought I had some idea of what to expect. I was wrong. Where to start? I guess the premise would be a good place. Amulet is the debut feature from Romola Garai and follows Tomas (Alec Secareanu), a homeless ex-soldier, suffering from PTSD and heavy guilt. He meets a nun who arranges a place for him to stay, with a young woman (Carla Juri) whose mother is sick and living in the attic. But not everything is what as it seems to be. Normally, I do my best to avoid giving out spoilers, but to work through this film, I need to reveal a few things. To avoid spoilers stop reading this review now. The first half of the movie is a SLOW burn. But at the halfway mark things go off the rails and morphs into

Continue reading →
Jul 30, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Bloodstone (1988)

The Bloodstone, giant-ass ruby of antiquity, has been pinched by small potatoes thief Paul Lorre (Jack Kehler) at the behest of Ludwig Van Hoeven (Christopher Neame, Johnny Alucard from one of my all time fav fright flicks; Dracula A.D. 1972) down India way. Enter: corny-as-fuck American newlyweds Sandy and Stephanie McVey (Brett Stimely… who has played President Kennedy in like four million films, and Anna Nicholas… who was on an episode of Mr. Belvedere once). While these two ham it up to the Nth degree, Lorre secretly slips them the ruby to avoid being arrested by the Indian authorities headed by Inspector Ramesh (Charlie Brill… more on this guy in a bit)… a man so bumbling and full of pratfalls it’s near impossible to imagine him being able to walk and chew gum successfully, let alone actually perform his job… but anyway… These two don’t keep the stone for long, as one wild-as-fuck taxi ride later, courtesy of Shyam Sabu

Continue reading →
Jul 29, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Black Rainbow (1989)

Gary Wallace (Tom Hulce) is all hot and bothered to prove that nomadic psychic medium Martha (Rosanna Arquette) and her professional alcoholic manager (and father) Walter (Jason Robards) are nothing but first class bullshit artists… although the shit they sling does make the audience feel better that their tits up relatives are havin’ a swingin’ time behind those ol’ Pearly Gates, ya dig? About all that; Wallace is half right as Martha has indeed been faking that shit for years… but as of late her predictions have been actual paranormal events… events that spell doom for those who’s deaths she predicts… you know, now that I think of it, that will be really shitty for creating return customers… Personally I had never heard of this flick until it arrived across my dread doorstep for a revoltin’ review, and now that I have I simply can’t believe it! Directed by Mike Hodges (who directed one of my all-time fav flick’s, 1980’s

Continue reading →
Jul 29, 2020
Horror Fuel

Game Review: ‘Maid Of Sker’

A big thanks to the hardworking folks over at Wales Interactive for allowing me the opportunity to try out their first-person horror game, Maid of Sker (pronounced Scar)! In Maid of Sker, you play as Thomas, a songwriter, who goes to Hotel Sker to find his wife Elisabeth who is forced to be the new “Maid of Sker” after the original, her mother, died. After arriving, Thomas quickly learns that Elisabeth is being used as a tool in a cult ritual that needs her to sing in traditional Welsh Gaelic to appease something that Elisabeth’s family has kept secret. Onto the game itself. The game heavily relies on sound as it’s suggested that you wear headphones or play with the volume high up. The only downside is there’s way too much ambiance noise, and the player’s footsteps get annoying pretty fast. The music is pretty good, especially the traditional Welsh ones, but at times the music is intense when there’s

Continue reading →
Jul 28, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: The Complete Lenzi/Baker Giallo Collection (1969 – 1972)

As you may infer from the name of this collection, Italian horror maestro Umberto Lenzi and Pennsylvania-born actress Caroll Baker worked on a film or four together… and my fabulous freaky fiends at Severin have boxed ’em up with plenty of extras and sent them out the diabolical door! Let’s kick off our look at The Complete Lenzi/Baker Giallo Collection with 1969’s Orgasmo! High-maintenance and horny widow, Kathryn West(Baker), heads down Italy-way to shack up in her rich late old geezer’s posh-ass Villa. And there she stays, painting, lounging, being annoyed by her perpetually bitchy maid Theresa (a fantastic Lilla Brignone) and generally being bored off her tits. All that changes when equally horny, sports car enthusiast Peter Donovan (Lou Castel) breaks down right in front of our heroine’s front gate; an event that leads to some soggy sexcapades in a steamin’ hot shower (the water of which, must be noted, is drank by Donovan before he starts a-drillin’… “just

Continue reading →
Jul 27, 2020
Horror Fuel

‘Destroy All Humans!’ Is One Giant Step On Mankind’s Boredom!

Black Forest Games and THQ Nordic have given me the chance to relive a part of my gaming past with the revamped Destroy All Humans! that surely will gain a bigger audience full of old and new fans. Some brief history of Destroy All Humans!, the game came out in 2005 from Pandemic Studios and THQ(before the name change) that was a nod to the cold war era alien invasion films and comics of the 1950s that also parodied 1950’s society that mirrored attitudes in the US at the time in ’05. I played and loved the hell out of that game back in the day, so when it was announced they were revamping it, I had to see if it held up. Destroy All Humans! is about an alien named Cryptosporidium-137, or Crypto, a clone, is tasked to go to earth to harvest human brainstems that contain DNA of their species to help further their cloning which is how

Continue reading →
Jul 27, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)

1880’s Japan, but it’s like the American old West. That’s the main conceit of the blazing insanity that is Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django… a picture that has about as much to do with Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 epic Django as anyone of the four billion sequels-in-name-only that followed it. Along with that lil’ elevator pitch up yonder, the plot of this frenzied flick concerns two gangs; one coded red (the Heike clan), the other white (the Genji clan)… both lead by mentally unstable maniacs… who have a wild hair up their ass about having the biggest dick in the ol’ East, and to hell with the town caught in the middle. Enter: a mysterious unnamed gunman (Hideaki Itô) who’s none too thrilled about the gangs, or their effect on the community… hell, he’s just plain ol’ none too thrilled, and it doesn’t take long for the tensions and body count to rise… all in some of the most ludicrous ways

Continue reading →
Jul 26, 2020
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Zombie for Sale (2019)

A diabolical pharmaceutical company has been experimenting on college kids and turning them into the shamblin’ dead. One such unfortunate is Jjong-Bi (Ga Ram Jung) who has went on the lam and found himself the houseguest of a wacky-ass family that owns a rural gas station (though most of their dough comes from scamming motorists). Before long our undead hero bites the family patriarch, but instead of turning him into a flesh-eating ghoul, it fills the ol’ boy with vim and vigor! Ever the entrepreneurs, the family sells invigorating zombie bites to the geezers of the village for a profit. Of course this plan goes tits up when the folks he’s bitten actually do pass on the zombie virus… which also results in the family having to fend of the fiends as well as the authorities all while saving their own bickering asses from the fire! Let’s just get this out of the way; Zombie for Sale is mostly a

Continue reading →
Jul 23, 2020