Years ago, I used to live in Sacramento, California, but spent part of my week working up in Incline Village, Nevada (near Reno). During the winter, this commute would occasionally involve driving through crazed snowstorms where my visibility was limited to ten feet. My car felt like a metal cocoon surrounded by malevolent and freezing…

This is a FANTASTIC novella. “Final Girl is Tired” is hooked around an obvious conceit, basically laid out in the title. Final girl Maxine Hart survived a Jason Voorhees-like killer decades ago. Now in her fifties, she gets lured into making an appearance at “The Camp Slaymore Experience,” a theme park that recreates the horrors…

Little-known fact about me: my favorite band is Devo. I’ve loved those mutant New Wave rockers ever since I first heard them when I stumbled into a record store in Honolulu (where I grew up) as a teenager in the 80s. And yet it was only in 2025 when I learned Devo had scored a…

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie where I genuinely thought parts were missing. Like scenes are referred to, and I’m rolling back the video to see if I accidentally jumped ahead. But that’s one of many things wrong with “Along Came the Devil.” It’s a straightforward possession flick (and y’all know I…

The more I think about it, the more I realize that 2005 “Stay” is a very interesting film. I think we’re also familiar with the notion that part of what the human mind does is “objectify“ its surroundings. So, for example, I see a brown cylindrical thing topped off with green, and I conclude that…

I’m a little perplexed with this one. It’s called “The Shadow Man“ and has a spooky looking shadow man on the cover, so I figured I was getting something pretty close to horror. But this is really more of a teenage soap opera with a certain amount of demon fighting. I’m not necessarily against teenage…

“Night Screams” starts with a film-within-a-film motif. A young woman is disrobing in a locker room and possibly being stalked by an intruder. But then—quelle surprise!—we find out that what’s actually happening is a married couple is watching this scene on the television. That couple is then stalked and killed within their home. Oh, the…

I came to watch this film via a roundabout process. Around twenty years ago, I lived in LA and went on a date with an attractive bartendress from a watering hole I frequented. She told me she’d acted in several horror films, including one of the “Creepshow” sequels, and a movie based on the H.P.…

Sometimes a movie tries too hard. Like everyone, I loved “Silence of the Lambs.” And I’m a fan of the follow-up, “Hannibal”, with its great “brain-eating scene.” (How could you not love a good (or even mediocre) brain-eating scene?) And, I appreciated the first time Hannibal Lector graced the screen, played by Brian Cox in…

“Deadly Manor”, made in 1990, is a horror film about a group of young people (including a hitchhiker who may be more than he seems), who enter a mysterious mansion in the middle of a forest. As you might predict, one by one they are killed off. Being that I would’ve been around the same…

So I’ve got a theory about horror films. They’re at their best when they’re subversive—celebrations of nihilism from hustlers working the film industry’s fringes, just trying to make a quick buck. Think Craven’s “Last House on the Left”, Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw…”, Cunningham’s first “Friday the 13th” films, and a lot of the 80s horror schlock…

If you’ve been reading my reviews, you’ve noticed I tend to focus my keen and critical eye on crime and horror films. As such, “Luce,“ a drama set around issues of race and class might stick out like a plucked eyeball in a bowl of Cheerios. But, there is a bit of crime in the…

What are young people in 80s horror movies supposed to do with themselves? All they wanna do is have sex, drink copious amounts of alcohol, and generally party-hearty. Yet there’s always somebody trying to kill them! In the case of 1989’s “Nightmare Beach“, the killing often occurs via electrocution, which leaves the victims as charred,…

I bet it would be a lot of fun to make one of these low-rent cheese ball horror films that populate the metaphorical bins of Amazon Video. You get some buddies together, track down a few sets, and just start filming, knowing you are in no way attempting to render a masterpiece. My guess is…

File this novella under: skin-crawling psycho-sexual thriller The protagonist, Dale, is your garden-variety passive creep. He’s a flop with the ladies and is pushed around by his hoity-toity family. But he’s got one thing going for him: the doll collection he keeps in his attic. He hears his girls talking, and they seem to hear…