Open Grave - a guy wakes up in a pit full of dead bodies and he doesn't remember a thing: not how he got there and not even his name. He gets help from an unknown person who throws him a rope and after he climbs out he finds a house where other people are gathered. They are terrified, aim a gun at him and, like him, suffer from memory loss: the person who helped the guy out of the pit is among them, but she is a mute so she can't tell anyone anything. Of course they are curious about their own identities, but they are also distrusting each other: who did this to them and for what purpose? After exploring a bit outside the building, they find out that there are other people in the forest around them: some in cages, some in chains and some wandering around. Who these people are, why they are in the forest and why the number 18 is so important, these are all questions they have to find out before they meet their demise because the people in the forest are starting to behave aggressively towards them. If you like mysteries, this is for you. You don't know jack shit like the characters and although you get some clues, they are very scarce and there are red herrings among them, so it's really difficult to guess what's going on. I was watching it for over half the running time before I had any idea and it was only a slight one. Really well done to keep it interesting nonetheless: you, as a viewer, want to know what's behind all this too. So the characters become very relatable. At first I thought it'd be something like The Hunger which I reviewed a few weeks ago, but it isn't at all. It's no slasher, but it is a horrormovie and it has enough gore for the gorehounds to stick around. It has more aspects of a certain other type of horror which I won't say as to not to spoil anything. Acting is well done, most stuff the characters say or do makes sense except for Nathan's actions in the final scenes. Atmosphere is kinda gripping because of the lack of info which makes you uncomfortable, another good thing. Setting is quite cheap with a forest and some old buildings but it doesn't matter: this film is a really nice watch. Recommended!

Sounds interesting

Let me know what you think if you get to watch it

The Witch - aka La Strega In Amore. A Damiano Damiani film, and from him I had only seen Amityville II: Possession. That is quite a late film by him, and this one is an early one. Black and white and with long drawn out scenes mostly in one place, this is not a very spectacular movie, but like most Italian films, it has a specific atmosphere which I like. The story is about Sergio, who is being hired by the old lady Conuselo to sort out some family history. As soon as he starts work, he meets the pretty Aura, Consuelo's daughter. He falls in love with her and he is being attracted to her so much that he can't make himself leave, not even when things turn very strange and she makes him do things he would have never dreamt of ever doing. Like I said, this plot develops pretty slowly and after a while you will find out how it will go but then it still takes a pretty long whole before it is being explained. Maybe it's the age (the film is from 1966) but that was a tad annoying imo. Acting is OK, the English dubbing wasn't that bad (although some dialogue was hardly audible) but the atmosphere wins the prize in this one. Without that, it would have been a boring movie. I noticed I lost attention a few times while watching, looking up things about Damiani etc, but it drew me back in time and again, a bit like Sergio was being drawn into the company of AUra. The ending is quite sudden, but not bad. I'd only go for this if you are an Italo fan and have two hours to kill.

Monster Party - the title implies the appearance of monsters in this film, and they are not what you might expect, so don't count on vampires or werewolves or the like. There are monsters though, but in a different way. Three friends, Casper, Iris and Dodge, who rob houses for money are about to do a big job on a Malibu estate, where they are being hired to serve the guests. They all need the money but Casper especially since his dad is being held for ransom by a criminal: he needs to get 10k before Monday or his dad will die. So he goes in desperately looking for the safe and a way to crack it, but in the process they find out the guests at the party aren't regular human beings... I thought this was a refreshing take on the slasher genre, it reminded me a bit of Vampires Anonymous in a way. There are several kills and lots of gore, and they aren't offscreen either. Acting is OK, but I didn't understand the female guest character, I guess maybe there was something edited out which explained her presence better. Good fun, loved the ending. Recommended.

The Rizen - the plot is sounding like the next nazi zombie film: it's 1955 and NATO is experimenting with a new weapon and things go wrong. The unkillable soldiers escape but there is a failsafe in the shape of a female commando, who almost single handedly prevents the weaponry from escaping the facility. The movie is almost entirely shot inside this facility, a maze of tunnels with no recogniseable landmarks, so they could be the same tunnel over and over again in each scene. The most interesting scenes are the flashbacks, where shots from outside the facility are being shown. The female commando is a tough girl, but unfortunately for her and the filmmakers, women only got combat roles in the British army since 2016. The point being made is pushed too hard down your throat repeatedly, making it an annoying feature in the story. The professor character was too wimpy, probably to press the point of the toughness of the female commando even more. Gore is pretty meagre, most of the u nkillable soldiers get taken out by punches. The first half hour was very boring, it became a tad more interesting after, it reminded me a lot of the game Half-Life (part one) where you also are in a facility where things go wrong, and you have to fight monsters with a crowbar and later on you find a firearm, but watching this film was by far not as exciting as playing that game. The ending was ridiculous, it totally didn't fit the movie. It seemed like the makers were contemplating for weeks on how to end this, and then late at night one of the crew came up with this idea and they implemented it because there were no better options. I'd avoid watching this, it's a waste of 100 minutes.

Had some friends over for bad movies, so we watched some of my recently bought stash.

Necronos, tower of doom - a German splatter movie, made by the Rohnstock brothers, supported by Andreas Schnaas who also has a cameo in it. The film turned out to be German audio only, but the amount of dialogue was rather limited so it wasn't hard to follow. The background story is told through some sheets of text, and it's about some medieval king who first got beaten and then took his revenge on a witch. This (male) witch, Necronos, returns to earth later (no explanation how or why) and now tries to make an army of the undead and also a Berserker. Kidnapping people, killing them and then making them drink blood turns them into the undead, so that's pretty straightforward. For the Berserker though, Necronos needs the heart of a man, the heart of a woman and the blood of an unborn child and of a virgin, which complicates things as you might understand. To achieve this goal, he sends out Goran, and to locate the targets he makes use of the powers of an unnamed witch. Necronos regularly has some facetime with Satan through some kind of smokey box, to keep him posted about the progress of the army and the berserker. Acting is atrocious in this film, because it's not about acting but about gore. And the gore is plenty, although at several points I was annoyed by the fact that the kills were offscreen, but that was made up by the rubber foam bars in the "prison" and the paper crown the king was wearing, great bad movie shots. Recommended for bad movie fans only.

Hybrid - aka Super hybrid. The title of this film combined with the cover art (the front of a car, about to drive over a girl) suggests that the title is referring to the type of car which is doing the killing, but that's not the case. Instead, something else is responsible for all the deaths in this film, but cars take a large role in the setting indeed. Taking place in an underground parking lot (where the police keeps their patrol vehicles and also vehicles that were part of an accident) for 97% of the time, this film must keep your attention by either showing great performances (and there is indeed a performance noteworthy - namely that of Oded Fehras the boss) or by enough action/gore. This last part is OK, there aren't many scenes in which there is no action but the gore could have been better. The kills are nice but sometimes very boring (the first few ones you don't even see) and when the killer appears it's all CGI of course but pretty well made: it also doesn't take that long for it to appear. We had fun calling the actors after the people they looked like, so we had "Budget Keanu" and "Budget Penelope" among other celebrities referenced, such as George Clooney and Sigourney Weaver. The ending was quite stupid, though. We had fun watching this, maybe we were a tad too positive about it since we watched it after Necronos.

Raving Maniacs - a great rave is being organised in a club and everyone wants to go there because it's the biggest and the best and it will last all night. A group of friends (Tuesday, her boyfriend JT, Tuesday's friend Katie and her brother Jacob - who at first didn't even want to go) arrive at the party but a strange man is walking around the premises dealing out fluorescent pills of which nobody knows what they do to you, but after a while everyone who took one (except JT all our friends take one) finds out: they are either turned into ghouls who want to eat human flesh, or they want to have sex immediately, right then and there (Tuesday has sex with JT on the dancefloor because, well, the drug). There is a side plot with a nerd wanting to score with the pretty colleague but she is involved with one of the higher ups so that is not gonna happen: he keeps fantasizing about having sex though and he can let his thoughts lose on the gameboy-like gadget he keeps carrying around. The rave turns into a bloodbath / orgy and there is only a man who thinks he is a Vietnam vet who can keep the ravers inside the premises by keeping the outside doors locked. This means the non-infected will have trouble to escape too, though, apart from the fact they need to stay clear of the infected. Gore was nice, there were plenty of kills on screen although they were not very spectacular. A large part of the film is just people dancing around so there is not much to that, it gets interesting when the small group of survivors want to escape. Nice effort for a limited budget I would say, if you like zombies, you can safely give it a go, it is much better than the cgi ridden zombie flicks that have been flooding the market since TWD.

Sawney Flesh of Man - a cannibalistic slasher with some nice shots of Scottish landscape and several cliches found in the genre. The sleeve of the DVD says 116 minutes runtime but that's about 30 minutes too many, my disc clocked in at 86 minutes something, so maybe it was with extras included, who knows. David Haymanplays the last descendant of a long line of Scottish cannibals, and he has a lair in the highlands where he keeps his inbred family members who have various levels of humanity vs monstrosity. Driving a black taxi with blinded windows into the nearby towns, he kidnaps and then murders victims in order to feed his monstrous family members, legitimizing his actions with quotations from the bible. The police are trying to catch on to the clan, but they always seem to be one step behind. In comes a curious journalist who decides to do his own research into the matter. Things become personal for him when his girlfriend is being kidnapped as well. Acting is decent and like I said the shots of the Scottish landscape are beautiful and they add to the atmosphere. The storyline isn't very strong though and riddled with cliches as you will see when you decide to watch this. The cannibalism is comparable to TCM, bodies (or rather parts of it) are being put on display and the family is as deranged as is Leatherface's. Nice pastime but nothing really special.

Faust - The Murnau classic from 1926. I've got the Masters of Cinema double-disc edition with both the domestic and the international cut so I started reading up on it a bit before watching, in order to pick a cut. Usually I'd go for the longer cut in any case but in this one I chose the shooter one (the international cut is about 10 minutes longer) because of some stuff I read: in the domestic cut the shots are the closest to what the director had in mind, the international cut has different angles. Also, when selecting the shots, the best ones go to the domestic cut, and, in this film, there was even a scene with a bear for which a real bear was used but also a guy in a bearsuit. The real bear went into the domestic cut. Some fan published a website where he states that the orchestral score was composed for the international cut and not for the domestic one, causing the music to be out of sync from time to time and I must say that that is true indeed, but for me the best picture was more important. The story is a classic of course, and it's very nicely portrayed. Some effects are great when you keep in mind this was in the 1920s. I enjoyed this one very much, I think after Metropolis this is my second favorite silent movie. Recommended (but go for the domestic cut if you can).

Bone Tomahawk - a western with a touch of horror. It's not a horror with a western theme, so if you are looking for that, maybe pick a different film. If you like western though, and aren't afraid of some gruesome scenes, then this is the perfect choice for you - at times it made me think of Four of the Apocalypse by Fulci. With a stellar cast (Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, Lili Simmons) and even some well known names in smaller support roles (David Arquette, Sid Haig), this sets out to be a good film and it delivers for sure. The story is centered around Sheriff Hunt (Russell) of the town Bright Hope, who gathers a small posse to look for some missing persons. They are probably kidnapped by a strange tribe of creatures called the Troglodytes and they are very violent and dangerous. Arthur ((Wilson) wants to come with the posse as it is his wife who is among the missing, but he broke his leg earlier, making the trip extra hazardous. Extra, because there are the usual hazards already: wild animals, thieves and robbers, etc. When they finally find the hideout of the Troglodytes, the violence begins. SInce this is pretty far into the film, you'll have to be patient if you are watching this for the gore, but it's worth the wait. The ending is good enough, not spectacular or anything but also not disappointing. Acting is great (was to be expected with a cast like this) and atmosphere is also nice. Even though there are several scenes in which not much else is happening than travelling through the countryside, it still got me glued to the screen, characters are interesting and you also want to know what the Troglodytes look like. Very good film, I can safely recommend this to anyone, just keep in mind that it's ~85% western and ~15% horror and you'll be good.

He's Out There - a family goes on a holiday trip to a remote house in a forest by a lake. The mother and her two daughters arrive first and meet a local guy who tells them about a boy gone missing from the previous owners of the house and they went mad and left the premises. After this guy helped them open the padlock locking the gate, they settle in: the father is due to arrive in the evening. The girls find a strange red rope close to the swings they were playing with and they follow it. When they get back it starts getting dark and a strange presence makes itself known to the woman and her girls: knocking sounds, laughing in the forest and other scary stuff makes the family really afraid. Soon they find a picture of themselves where the girls' and the father's faces are scratched out. When the dad arrives, he finds the gate closed again , but then he also sees a strange red rope... The opening part is nice and the atmosphere, leaning heavily on sound, gives you a creepy feeling. The part where the killer is hunting the family inside the house is quite unnerving, but several plotholes keep this film from being good, a small example being that the family acts surprised about the story of the missing boy while they have been visiting for years: they must have met the guy who told them this earlier. The whole background story of the killer is a tad vague, it doesn't really explain his actions. At one point the mother is very much able to save a life in the film but she doesn't seem to know what to do while it is really very obvious. When she finally does it, it's too late. Stuff like this (and some really noticeable cliches) makes the grade drop. Although I really felt for the family, this one is not gonna be up for a rewatch anytime soon.

The Kiss - this is not the 1988 film with Joanna Pacula of the same name, but a 2008 movie with Lendon LeMellen starring as Jeremy Williams, a high school kid without any friends who keeps being bullied by both the jocks, their girlfriends and the chemistry teacher (the only teacher he seems to have btw, lol). Only one gor; actually supports him a bit but he is suspicious and stays closed towards her for a bit. One day when he gets chased by the jocks he ends up in an abandoned building where he finds a shallow grave containing the body of an ancient vampire queen called Santa Maria (quite ironic that a vampire is named after a saint, lol), played by Lourdes Reynolds. When she helps him to get rid of the jocks, suddenly Jeremy is all confident and stuff and surrounds himself with the girlfriends of the jocks who had previously been bullying him but now started admiring him like the next big pop-idol. Of course Santa Maria has to get revived fully in order to exercise her powers, and Jeremy helps her out. In return he gets sex and several options to continue with his life as either a man or a vampire, what will he choose? A nice bad movie this one, no classic stuff like visible boom mics but a lot of weird plotholes and some bad acting, especially on the part of the jocks bullying Jeremy. Enough gore to go around aas things tend to get bloody with vampires. While Santa Maria in the opening sequence is sort of knocked out of the competition between severa vampire clans, there isn't a single moment where she is being threatened by them after her resurrection. I had a good laugh at the deaths of several ignorant teens and also by the choices Jeremy makes. Recommended for bad moviefans.

President's Day Axe Massacre - aka President's Day. Cliche highschool slasher with all the usual ingredients: a masked killer (cool mask btw, it's Abe Lincoln because the school is called Lincoln High - quite funny), a popular girl acting like a bitch, an alternative guy coming up competing with the popular girl in a school election, a new student keeping a secret, a detective from outside interfering with the school officer, Shawn C. Phillips acting as a student, etc. The kills are both on and off screen, and some effects are nice while others seem very amateurish, like the girl who gets killed with a hair straightener: her nose turns into gluey stuff a bit too easily. The plot was not too bad, red herrings all around and some of them are so obvious you will immediately know that the person in question is not the killer. But the actual killer was nicely thought out and you might not think about this option until it's really close to the reveal. Acting is a tad overdone at times, but I've seen worse. The biggest plus of this film is that there are so many kills of which some are really creative and quite gory, the biggest drawback is that you have already seen this all before, and mostly better.

Dead Air - when I read the description it reminded me immediately of Pontypool. Now that I have seen it I can assure you that it does have some similarities, but it's not the same. In this film you actually get shots outside the studio, there are several subplots and you get to see the infected (they are not really zombies), whereas Pontypool waits a lot longer to show you anything (or maybe they don't even show you anything, it has been a while since I saw that film). So while this movie is not as good as Pontypool in my opinion, it isn't bad either. Bill Moseley delivers a great part as Logan Burnhardt, a radio anchor reporting on a countrywide outbreak of what is called "riots" in the beginning. Soon enough (a bit too soon for my taste) it becomes clear that these aren't normal riots and something else is afoot. One of the subplots follows three guys who are at the origin of this outbreak and another follows a colleague of Logan trying to get to Logan's wife and kid in order to save them. The infected are not very original and they run around like headless chickens, not even able to stop a guy on a motorbike. The ending was very cheesy and lame. If you like infected movies you can watch it of course, but if you want a good movie, pick Pontypool instead.

Antrum, the deadliest film ever made - this movie starts with some sort of mockumentary, telling you as the viewer the history behind the film Antrum. Supposedly the film is from the 1970s and was featured in several incidents in which people died, for example when they had watched it in order to accept or reject it for a film festival. This sets a nice mood, even though it's all fake of course (it's comparable to what they did with TCM and Blair Witch), but you get into quite a spooky mood when this is presented first. After that you are being warned once more that watching the film is at your own risk. Then the film starts and although it's about a pretty simple story, it succeeds in getting you in as long as you are open to it. The story is about two kids, a young boy and his older sister (she is in her late teens I guess), whose dog was being put to sleep. Because their mother told them the dog went to hell, they start digging a hole in a forest in order to redeem the soul of the dog. Meanwhile, Dante's Inferno is being used to accompany their journey "down". This is a nice feature of the film, giving it a classic touch. Best part for me was the acting of the kids and especially Nicole Tompkins as Oralee. Her acting is so great that you can see that at first she is just playing along with her little brother and later her emotions turn and turn towards something very different. Very well done! Even before she reveals something to her brother about their trip you can see in her face the fact that she is not the biggest believer in the story. Atmosphere is nice, most of the horror is in what you don't see and that is also pretty well done. Don't expect any monsters or serial killers or spectacular looking demons. The most intense scenes are the ones with the hunters imo. I really enjoyed this film, it's something pretty different and the ending was near perfect, it left the actual ending (which looked to be very horrible in a positive sense if you catch my drift)) to your imagination as it already did with so many other aspects in this film. After that there is another part of the mockumentary expalaining some stuff about the occult etc. Not really necessary but still a nice touch. Really well done, this film. Highly recommended!

The Good Neighbour - not really a horror, this one, more a thriller. Two guys decide to spy on their creepy neighbour across the street, using an elaborate system with cameras and other devices in order not to just see what he does, but also scare him. All this is part of an experiment about perception, but when the boys notice that the neighbour is sometimes in his basement for hours, they make up all kinds of stories as to what he is doing in there. Part of this experiment was of course breaking into the house to set up all the devices they need, but when the project is going on for a while, they step it up a notch from time to time. which is causing some conflict between the two. How it all ends is what you should see for yourself, the film is hinting at stuff by shuffling the chronology: so you get a sneak peek into the future, but only in bits and pieces so you will have to guess for yourself what happened. A nice touch and the whole plot is turning the main reason for conducting the experiment around. Well done! Acting is top notch, especially by James Caan as the neighbour and Logan Miller/Keir Gilchrist as the two guys, they carry the entire film. Horrorfans might appreciate this film but don't expect much gore or anything, but atmosphere is a bit like in horrors. Recommended.

Before Dawn - a movie made almost entirely by British couple Dominic Brunt and Joanne Mitchell. They wrote, directed, produced and played in this film, so you know it will not be an AAA production. It's still a nice effort, because gore is looking pretty good and the zombies are also pretty well done, but when there isn't any zombie action, this film is utterly boring. The story is about a husband trying to save his marriage by taking his wife out on a weekend in the countryside but they end up in a remote place where there are some zombies. Some, because you never get the idea there is a massive outbreak or anything. The zombies are of the fast running type. If there would have been more action, more zombies and more of an overall feel of being threatened / in danger, this film might have pulled it off. As it is, I mostly remember it from being dull and having several hardly audible dialogues with some zombie action in between.

Sonata - a bit of a weird film, this one (it's the 2004 film by Boris Undorf). It's listed as a drama but it has some horror elements. Extra strange for me was that the main character was played by an actress who looks a lot like an ex-colleague of mine. This main character, Megan, is a young woman who is being overly protected and psychologically abused by her mother. She next to never leaves the house and is still being treated as a child. To deal with this situation, Megan fantasizes about people she can talk to. Because she is undeniably growing up she is also getting feelings which fit her coming of age and when she starts receiving letters and packages by an anonymous admirer, her mother gets really angry with her and locks her up. It is then that Megan's frustration about her locked up existence leads to a climax. It's more a psychological film than an action packed horror flick, so if you want gore and kills then you should pick something else. Scenes in this film can be eerie but there aren't any scary moments really. It's a bit arty at times, which might make it feel pretentious, but I thought it was more a disturbed coming of age film, maybe the director/writer made this story/film to deal with some kind of trauma, because Megan's experiences are pretty traumatic. The ending is quite extreme when compared to the rest of the film. Wouldn't know how to recommend this, really.

Headhunter - a film from 2004 but it looks like it's a lot older because of production values not being top notch: image is washed out a bit and sound is sometimes really muffled with several dialogues being (partially) inaudible. The story takes its sweet time to get going, and on one hand this means that you get to know the main character (ambitious Ben Caruso who wants a better paid job) better, but on the other hand it is also pretty boring. Makeup reminded me a lot of my favourite type of film: Italian movies from the 70s/80s, especially when it comes to props like severed heads, which made me smile. Ben gets into deep shit when he uses the services of Sarah Tierney, a pretty lady who is way more than Ben could fathom. Soon he finds himself in a surreal world where people say weird things and Sarah turns up and disappears at will. Because Ben wants to find out what's going on he tries to unravel the puzzle but realizes he and his girlfriend are in real danger. Best special effects are in the final scenes so you will have to wait for that, if you are impatient you can fast forward the first hour or so, and then the so bad it's good part really starts. Recommended for bad moviefans!

Under The Bed - Neal is a teenager who returns home after having been in therapy for something terrible which happened a few years ago. You don't get to know what it is (well, that is if you don't read the backside of the cover and instead just watch the film), just that his mother died in the process. He is really curious about his little brother Paulie, because they both know what happened, and nobody believes them but themselves, therefore they find support in each other. Talking to Paulie, Neal finds out that nothing has changed since he went away, just that their dad found a new woman to live with. They talk about "it", and "it" is a presence in their house, which has been there for years, hunting Neal. Now it's trying to get to Paulie and Neal does everything he can in order to save him. He has to fight this battle alongside the battle with his dad, who wants to forget what happened and move on, and become a normal family asap. I had read mixed reviews about his film and I can see why that is. The good things are that the story is comprehensive, the two battles are nicely portrayed and maybe the director wanted one fight to be symbolic for the other one, who knows. Acting is pretty good, the looks of understanding the boys give each other are often saying more than words, which is nice and fits the atmosphere. The effects are also pretty well done, the presence is not visible until about ten minutes before the end, which is a good thing in monstermovies. Some bad stuff is in continuity, like when Paulie takes off a bandage, it's clean on the inside while it was put on a fresh wound. Also the ending where Neal goes to extremes to save Paulie is pretty much over the top. All in all, a pretty nice film though, not a waste of time, that's for sure.

The Hunt - a film which reminded me of 88mm (the scenes where the journalist is visiting the prostitute he knows and asks around about juicy stories), of Manhunt - aka Rovdyr (the fact that humans are the prey in a hunting party) and of Hostel (the aspect of rich people paying loads of money to do gruesome things to other human beings). I was a bit surprised that the film is French, as the cover doesn't imply that in an obvious way: no French title, just a minor detail mentioning the audio. The English subs are hardcoded. Atmosphere is good, the gore and the acting are also pretty good and apart from the fact that the journalist gets away with a whole lot of things without being discovered by the members of the secret society, most of the things make sense. The ending is also well done. It's a pretty short film, I wouldn't have minded if it was going on for a bit longer and I think that's a good sign.

Broken - the movie starts with a woman waking up inside a coffinlike box. After she has fought herself a way out of it, she gets knocked out by a man wearing a long coat and a hat. After coming to, she finds herself tied to a tree with a rope around her neck, balancing on an unstable bench. The only way to release herself is by reaching for the razorblade buried inside her abdomen. This sadistic game is set up by the man with the hat, and when he does it again with Hope, who loses her daughter Jennifer in the process, Hope keeps fighting for her life, using both seduction and brute force to get out of the situation she is in. Although the film started promising (the "game" is pretty sick), it quickly devolved into a boring survival story where Hope could have saved herself much earlier, but because she makes some strange decisions she doesn't. Location is uninteresting, you just see a very small part of a forest most of the time. The number of characters is really limited, there were ten in total, of which you are mostly watching just two. There is an attempt at doing some character development but it never really takes off, and even though the ending isn't all that bad, you are left wondering why you just wasted 90 minutes of your life. So let's hope the makers use their experience on this one for making a much better film next time, otherwise this didn't serve any purpose.