The Mutilator (1984)

Okay, I think I finally realised something. It's taken my entire history of watching horror movies for this to click, which is kind of embarrassing, but I think I just figured out that my approach to slasher films has been all wrong.

So my main complaint with a lot of these movies always seems to be the interminable downtime between the kills. For me to really enjoy a slasher film, there has to be something interesting happening to bridge the gaps between the blood being spilled. It doesn't have to be Citizen Kane over here, it just needs to hold my attention and, ideally, lay the groundwork for actually giving a shit about who survives and who doesn't. I don't necessarily mind a conveyor belt of victims steadily making their way toward death; I just want to care, just a little bit!

The Mutilator (original title: Fall Break) is a perfect example of the giddy highs and woefully bad lows of films like this.

Written and directed by first-timer Buddy Cooper - a film reviewer for a newspaper who wanted to make movies, so he did. I have to respect that! - this is part of what must have been a bloody cascade of films made after the success of Friday the 13th in 1980. In it, we see a group of college kids staying in a beach house and being murdered using a different weapon each time (hence that awesome tagline).

And the gore, courtesy of SFX man Mark Shostrom (Videodrome, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Evil Dead II, a couple of Phantasms) is really good, but the price of admission for it is TERRIBLE dialogue, DELIVERED TERRIBLY for extended amounts of time. 

At one point, we follow the worst character in the entire film (the "joker" of the friend group 😐) for fucking ages as he walks around looking for his mates. He cracks jokes and does voices and funny walks to no one in particular for soooo looooong until he's finally killed. There's no tension here at all, and just like in The Prowler, it gets boring and frustrating waiting through these slumps.

I found myself wishing I were a) more drunk, b) with a group of friends, or c) drunk with a group of friends. And that's when I realised that my sitting alone or with my husband just chilling and watching this stuff isn't how it was originally meant to be consumed. Stuff like this was meant to be drive-in fodder; where you're laughing and goofing around with friends and/or making out while the movie is playing. That's what passes the time while you're waiting for fucking Ralph to die. You're meant to be throwing popcorn, cracking open another beer or making snide comments - that's what makes this stuff bearable.

So, mental note for the next 80s stalk and slash that I suspect might be like this: cheap beer, funny friends are essential.

Unless you're coming to it armed with the above, I'd say The Mutilator is a "fast forward between the kills" kind of situation, as everything else is painful to sit through. The odd, melodramatic feel, the sluggish pacing, frankly insane theme song, the appalling acting... it's a lot.

Streaming on Shudder right now. What a waste of such an amazing tagline.

Lake Nowhere (2014)

*kisses fingertips*

Coming in at a mere 50mins long (including the amazing fake trailers and ads at the start) Lake Nowhere is a small but perfectly formed homage to 80s slashers, complete with its own deliciously weird spin on things.

If you're old enough to be nostalgic about watching scary movies on VHS and all of the character-building little details it involved, like murky visuals, tracking lines and glitches, then this film is something you're going to want to check out.

Written by Ryan Scott Fitzgerald and Christopher Phelps, and directed by Phelps and Maxim Van Scoy, Lake Nowhere keeps it simple but strong in two important aspects.

Story. A group of friends (and a dog) arrive at a remote lakeside cabin for the weekend and set about merrily exploring, chopping wood, and settling down for a couple of days of fun. They drink, smoke some pot, have some sex - the usual.

What they don't anticipate is a masked killer lurking around outside (cue lots of cool POV peeping shots). To say any more would give too much away... but rather like a micro budget version of The House of the Devil, this largely sticks to well-worn horror paths. Where and how both elevate themselves above mere imitation and remain an actively enjoyable watch, is due to the fact they're so clearly made with a deep love and understanding of the genre.

Lake Nowhere gets so much, so right. Plus there's also enough of a twist in the tail to still shock.

One of my favourite shots.

Style. I've never had a movie so perfectly mimic the behaviour of VHS, to the point where ancient muscle memory kicked in and I almost found myself reaching for the remote to try and stabilise the playback.

To the haters on Amazon leaving bad reviews because of the picture quality: I truly pity your misunderstanding of this aspect of the movie! ️🤦

The titles and soundtrack/score too, are spot on. Bright red words glare at us over grainy shots of the shoreline, and the upbeat rock music played by the kids sits perfectly next to scuzzy atmospheric electro.

I debated showing the screenshot directly above, but want to draw attention to what a simple, eerie choice this was to have the killer's eyes upside down when shown. These shots are extremely creepy as they punctuate the film. Genius idea.

This is honestly the kind of horror movie that makes fans want to make movies. It took a little over a year from concept to screen; was funded by the makers themselves and an Indiegogo campaign, then shot in just 6 days at a last minute back-up location. Lake Nowhere is a solid gold example of creating something beautiful if you have the guts to go for it.

I wrote simply "YES" and the end of my notes for this.

Seriously considering buying one of the posters from their aptly dated looking official site.

See it, see it, see it!

I watched on Shudder but it's also available on Google Play, Amazon Prime and Vimeo.

Creep 2 (2017)

A strong sequel from Brice and Duplass featuring our favourite unpredictable, slightly goofy killer. This was a DELIGHT.

Formally "Josef" but now going by "Aaron" (so he's adopted the name of the victim in the first film), Duplass's anti-hero teams up with a female videographer called Sara (the amazinggg Desiree Akhavan) for another 24 hour video-making project.

Don't be fooled into thinking this is a re-treading of the original concept, because it surpasses it. Aaron tells Sara exactly what he is: that he's killed 39 people to date, that he prefers the term "murderer" to "serial killer". He says since hitting middle age he's feeling like he's losing his edge and passion for the kill. In an effort to document his story and maybe evolve his approach, he wants Sara's help. 

Sara herself is looking for the perfect final episode for a video series she's been producing. Watching back over her previous work, she confesses to her camera how lame it all seems, and really she just wanted to connect with other weirdos. The next day, her interest is piqued by Aaron's ad. Ignoring internal alarm bells during their initial contact, and not wholly believing the one thing the audience actually knows to be true - that he's a serial killer - she continues to stick around, possibly even growing fond of him, and wondering if she's just met the ultimate weirdo.

❝I think I might be deeply untalented...❞

− Sara.

Akhavan is instantly likeable as Sara. Self-deprecating, intelligent and fearless, she's shown as someone who knows this is a fucking stupid idea, but can't help but get pulled deeper into the strange existence of this oddball.

As in Creep, the "horror" really comes from the moments of extreme tension and unease we're made to feel as the story develops. We KNOW that Aaron/Josef is a gold-plated psychopath, and his abilities to charm and disarm are even more powerful in this sequel (confession: I fell for him a little bit watching this. Sorry not sorry?!). He tells a lie as easy as breathing, and everything he says seems genuine and delivered with such conviction, but we know from the first film that anything and everything he's feeding Sara could be false. This is now the second movie we've spent in his company and even we know barely anything about the guy. 

*swoon*... er, I mean "eeek!"

Working off of some solid writing, it's the chemistry between the two leads that really elevates this to something special. These characters really appear to be connecting, and it's super suspenseful watching them interact, wondering what exactly this relationship between them could mean. Will this be a twisted love story? Or just that both are willing to play along for the sake of what they have to gain? ...Or something else entirely?

Creep 2 is sitting at 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and I completely understand why. This is found footage done with such ease that you forget it's found footage. It leads you down a path in the dark, not even asking you to trust it, but you can't help but follow. I urge you to follow!

Streaming on Netflix right now - and there's a third installment in development, according to IMDb! If you enjoyed the first, you must see this. Bonus points for normalising female body hair and full frontal male nudity, too!

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

For the past few years I've been meaning to get hold of Silent Night, Deadly Night. My collection is sadly lacking in Christmas-themed horror and this always seems to be doing the rounds with my horror friends and acquaintances.

(Black Christmas is the only spooky xmas movie I know well, so if you have any suggestions I am excited to hear them!).

Silent Night, Deadly Night was more or less what I was expecting:

• that immediately greasy, scuzzy feel of an 80s horror movie
• a fair amount of boobs
• some pretty creative/amusing kills
• optimistic setting up for a sequel - I didn't even know there was one sequel to this - turns out there are FOUR more SNDN films!

This film gives a very comprehensive lead-up to exactly why the killer has the motivation he does. We don't just see Billy at the moment his life completely derailed (the day he witnessed his parents assaulted and murdered by a guy dressed as Santa); we see the mid-point of his journey, too. And maybe if he'd been shown some human decency, care and love, he might have grown up to be faintly okay. Unfortunately for him, he's at a home for orphans run by a sadistic bitch of a Mother Superior.

In wonderful, classic 80s horror style, some superb groundwork is laid to monumentally fuck Billy up. This nun will have none of Billy's troubled past, and instead beats and berates him into submission. She thinks she is molding this poor kid into behaving (not that he is ever shown as being actually naughty), when really she is creating a perfect, messed up monster.

When we finally cut to Billy as a man, one of the nuns is getting him a job in a local toy shop. We're treated to a jarring musical montage of him successfully getting along in his new employment, that is... until the day comes that he's asked to dress as Santa. Already sweaty and freaking out, his true trigger moment comes when he witnesses his shithead coworker raping the girl Billy has a crush on. He kills him, obviously, and when she reacts (understandably) hysterical at this, he kills her too!

And so we continue with Billy making his way through workplaces and households, killing as he goes, and murmuring "naughty..." and "punish..." as he does so(!). The apparently one good nun in the orphanage is onto him though, and so are the police. This creates a fantastic narrative twist of innocent Santas all over town paying the price for Billy's homicidal tendencies.

Stand-out kills - and surely everyone's favourites who've seen this - are Denise (Linnea Quigley) being impaled on the antlers of a mounted deer head, and Billy decapitating a sledder as he comes down a hill.

This is a so-dumb-it's-kind-of-great movie. It may well become a fun yearly tradition to put on and giggle at it by the light of the xmas tree.

Lumberjack Man (2015)

This wants to be American Pie with added horror, but fails so miserably I don't even know where to start...

You know it's not going well when you check how much run-time is left and it's not even halfway through yet. By the 30min mark it's already pretty well established that this one is going to be heavy on the boobs but lacking on the gore and downright woeful on the comedy.

The film is as good as this picture suggests.

There are "summer camp stereotypes" to the point of being offensive (remember, this was made a mere two years ago) including a fat kid, bitchy mean girl, dorky camp counsellour and a black chef - who they at least don't kill off, I suppose!?

The kills are so-so, the most memorable probably being when a woman gets her breast implants ripped out, but again, emerging from the flat writing and acting around it, this comes across as gross and unnecessary rather than anything else.

The "Lumberjack Man" in question is a hulking brute with a tree bark mask(?!) and a squeaky wagon which he uses to cart around oversized pancakes to each of his kills. OH GOD I WISH I WERE JOKING. 

He's given no personality and, despite being large and lumbering with a distinct look, he has no presence and nothing remotely interesting to make us care about him either as a villain or an anti-hero.  

Why Michael Madsen signed up for this piece of shit I'll never know. 

I was going to say this film would have benefited from being 30mins shorter, too, but ultimately the horror genre world would be a better place if it had never been made at all. Lumberjack Man is going to make you want to watch a decent summer camp movie, and I strongly urge you to do just that. Don't waste your time with this.

Creep (2014)

Not the 2004 one set on the London underground after the last train - though I am fond of that one too! - this is an odd but ultimately satisfying little film from writers / directors / starring a couple of dudes by the names of Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass.

And I use the term "little" with consideration here, as this "found footage" flavour flick has a cast of two (not counting a voice on the phone).

Answering a vague Craiglist ad - for Craiglist is surely the beginning of a lot of hellish stories - videographer Aaron heads to a remote cabin for a one day filming job. He's met by eccentric (but, he assumes) harmless Josef, who leads him around telling tales and doing weird and faintly creepy things. 

Josef is strange from the get-go, but never really lurches too far into it to be all out scary. Thus, Aaron sticks around, films him, hears some strange shit and then tries to leave. After too much to drink and the night culminating in a scuffle, he gets away and tries to put the strangeness behind him. 

Only, he hasn't left it behind. Aaron keeps having strange dreams, hearing noises outside his apartment and most alarming of all, he's receiving packages from Josef, containing gifts and videos.

In a fit of exasperation and panic, he calls the police, only to realise when questioned that he knows absolutely nothing about Josef. He was paid in cash, never got a second name from him and that "holiday home" cabin turns out to be a rental.

Who is this guy and why won't he leave Aaron alone? Is he just a lonely person in need of a friend, with no sense of social cues - or is he something much more sinister? And what's with the wolf obsession?!

Creep is kind of a slow simmer with moments of high tension and some pretty effective scares. I am now five films into my Octoberfest of horror, and this is the first one where I've felt the need to brace myself because I was sure a jump scare was coming. Usually, it was!

This film's strength comes from the simplicity of the story and the portrayal of Josef himself. Duplass plays it with a dopey, earnest face that you find hard to think of as belonging to a bad guy.

But we know that's probably our first mistake ;)

🍺 For this film I was sipping on... 🍺

Pumpkin Ale by Saranac Brewing Co.
Three pumpkin beers into this and I am starting to wonder if I do indeed like pumpkin beer! I am sure I've had some in the past that I loved, but sadly this is not one of them. The quest continues... Again, I'd give it 2/5.

Pieces / Mil gritos tiene la noche (1982).

I've just traded up my LOVEFiLM subscription so that I have unlimited streaming, rather than disc rentals. It's only until I wrote that sentence just now that I feel a little sad about it! I am giving up properly renting films, probably for good. It's another step into "the future" but also another reason to be nostalgic.

Pieces is the film that may very well be my last ever disc-in-the-post rented movie, then. A good one to go out on!

Um, hello awesome poster art, too...?!

From here.

The tagline "It's Exactly What You Think It Is!" pretty much sums this film up, although don't make my mistake and presume this to be a bad or un-entertaining thing.

I put this DVD on for the simple reason that my unlimited streaming isn't activated until LOVEFiLM get their outstanding disc back. I wanted to watch this so that I could return it. Effectively, I put Pieces on because I wanted it out of the way.

Well ladies and germs, my face is red, because this film is pretty damn good.

From the get go we have that wonderful sense of slight disconnection, due to the film being dubbed from its original Spanish. That, and the seedy 80s look of the thing bring Fulci to mind, which can only be a good thing.

The plot, in all of its uncomplicated glory: a young boy murders his violent overbearing mother, back in 1942. (Did they have plastic bags in 1942? There's a moment in this sequence when she screams for him to fetch her one so she can bag up his things to burn them. Hmm) In any case, the kid's having none of it and chops her into bits - or pieces, if you will - with an axe.

It might have been this moment, this face, which made me realise I was gonna love this movie.

And this one which clarified the fact.

Many years later the little boy is all grown up and he's been serial killer/stalker wardrobe shopping. Black gloves, brimmed hat, long black coat... the works. He prowls around a Boston college campus breathing heavily, killing women - now using a chainsaw - and collecting body parts in order to assemble a gruesome human puzzle, harking back to the moment he offed his mum.

She flipped out when she caught him putting this together.

With each real "piece" he collects, he builds this puzzle along with it. We follow the many murders as the police, aided by male student Kendall (Ian Sera) try and mostly fail to work out what the bloody hell is going on. Bizarrely, the university seems pretty happy to continue to stay open and fully functioning, even as the body count rises. I love you, horror movie logic.

There's even time for some dancing.

But mostly there's a lot of this.

As the above shows, the first thing to love about this film is the gore.

The internet informs me that a pig carcass was used for this one.

Keeping to the Pieces keyword of "simple", the butchery is just that. The quick, bloody and solid practical effects do the job in each and every appearance. Shots of dismemberment tend to be fast, giving them more impact and the viewer less time to nitpick. Not that there's much to complain about for the most part. I mean, look:


Wonderful!

This film is so capable in its gruesomeness though, that even the "mistakes" (such as the disembodied head pictured earlier obviously moving during its short screen-time) come across as endearing.

Another excellent facet of the Pieces personality is how gratuitously it sets up characters as potentially being the killer. Two favourite instances of this are...

Willard the sweaty, squinty-eyed groundskeeper lovingly polishing his chainsaw. It couldn't be... could it?!

This one made me laugh out loud. So unnaturally posed, it's brilliant.

A tableau of suspects! These people weren't even standing near one another a moment ago in this scene, now they're suddenly all crammed into shot like this!

The adorable heavy-handedness continues with the clumsily inserted inclusion of a Bruce Lee kung-fu type for no reason other than he was starring in the director's other film at the time (see the first trivia point here) and an early mention of something which was later to become a murder scene. Why was this heavy handed, you ask? Because it's a water bed. A water bed in a college gymnasium. Hush with your protestations though, because the kill is worth it.


The audience aren't told of the killer's identity until just before the final showdown. Being as I am someone who doesn't generally try to work out things like this and who suspends their disbelief to a ridiculous degree, I hadn't guessed it (I never do, it's great).

For what on first glance appears to be nothing more than a scuzzy Spanish slasher flick, there are some rather wonderfully composed shots in here.

Climax of the water bed scene. Love this.

Thankfully it also manages to be something of a scuzzy Spanish slasher flick...! So many tits!


A shot of a girl peeing herself in fear!


Furthermore, I was delighted surprised to notice an appearance of a cock, too. No I didn't screencap that. Tempted, but no. The character of Kendall, doing remarkably well for someone whose fuck buddy was drowned and dissected only days ago, is seen in bed with an insatiable brunette before jumping out and yes, introducing us to Little Kendall. Ahh the 80s; ahh the European casual attitude to nudity.

Hitting the spot right up until the end credits, we have the eventual discovery of the human jigsaw by way of... a comedy lean onto a revolving bookcase.

The composite corpse promptly flops forward onto our campus stud.

Arggggh!

One final treat, one final scare: in a moment of vulnerability, Little Kendall is mauled by the pieced-together corpse!


Maybe that was the purpose of showing us the healthy, apparently very well performing penis earlier on? We became attached to it and then its demise is all the more tragic! RIP little guy.

And no, there is no explanation as to why the franken-lady is able to come alive that way, but it doesn't matter. It makes for a brilliant ending! Freeze-frame, screaming continues and then fades out with an electronic echo. Fantabulous.

Speaking of screaming, have a bonus screencap which will only amuse those who have seen the film...

"You baaaaaaastaaaaaard...!!!"

30 Days of Night (2007)

"When a man meets a force he can't destroy, he ends up destroying himself instead."

I didn't ask for much, just a modern horror. Something with a lil' slickness to it, something that took itself seriously and might yield a review which didn't involved the word "meh".

30 Days of Night was what I reached for. I wasn't expecting miracles and I didn't get them. But honestly? I have to say that on a couple of levels, this film still kind of blew me away.

The story takes place in Barrow, Alaska. It depicts how the city fares when attacked by vampires, during an annual occurrence of thirty days of complete darkness.

As if you needed telling, it doesn't fare very well.

The vamps knock the city's legs out from underneath it at the beginning of the blackout, proceeding to pick its bones for the rest. A small group of terrified survivors are left to fight for their lives, whilst counting down until the sunlight comes to save them.

Early on, the sequence showing the violent taking of Barrow got me extremely excited, as a fan of the aerial tracking shot. The camera travels rigidly along a main road, observing the tiny figures below, vampires and humans in bloody conflict: bodies strewn all over, snow sprayed red, cars alight.

The caps don't do it justice. It's a simple tableau and a short sequence in itself, but within moments conveys the devastation upon which the others will have to exist.

Clearly, these vampires are not the romantic, tortured, frilly-bloused type. Thank god.

They are more like animals, screaming, scratching and ripping out throats. The way they feed on their victims is reminiscent of a dog shaking a rabbit to death.

Barrow is completely isolated and this isolation becomes a villain itself. It aids the creatures in their capture of the city and serves to drive many of the leftover normal folk mad. Near the end of the film, at day 27, a policeman is found to have slain his family. His desperate thinking that he'd save them from a fate at the hands (well, mouths) of the invading monsters. He had three more days to get through, but instead he chose to put bullets in the brains of his wife and daughters.

Every group needs a leader, and a natural choice here is Sheriff Eben Oleson (Hartnett). He, more than any other character here, must overcome the shock of what is happening and face up to what he must do to survive it.

Just yer standard good-guy stuff in horror I know, but Hartnett - someone I formerly thought nothing of, to be honest - does a surprisingly good job. From heartbroken loner to axe-wielding hero to ultimately, a sacrificial lamb.

Speaking of the axe, I was pleased this one played quite a large part in the film, being Eb's weapon of choice. It's been a while since I watched a horror flick with decent axe action in it. Maybe I should do a series of axe-centric reviews...?

When Eb encounters a former towns person who has been turned, he takes drastic action and makes his first kill of someone he knew as a human. He... well he hacks the guy's head off. For something so brutal (it's off screen but c'mon, we can and do imagine it) the post-act shot is a thing of beauty.

This isn't an isolated incident, either. The film is chock full of stunningly composed images. This should come as no surprise, bearing in mind this film is based on a comic. It should look incredible, like art, in order to honour the medium that birthed it. It's fair to say this is achieved and then some.

Take a look at these, some breathtaking shots I simply had to share...

That last one... You could show me that, tell me nothing else about the movie it came from and I'd be sold.

As those images illustrate, the film follows the comic's lead, appearing in dark, muted colours. Until red appears, leaping out of the murk, often garish and startling.

Red, the only colour shown with any depth. Red: signifying blood, a warning of danger. Uh-oh.

The group of survivors whittles down to practically nothing. and then, then my friends, one of the most well done graphically violent scenes I think I've ever seen occurs. Be warned, I have obsessively capped this...!

As already discussed, Eb uses an axe throughout - but for the most part what he does with it is not shown on screen. As we near the film's climax, however, when the Sheriff finds himself faced with an act of killing his own deputy, we get an absolutely unflinching view of the beheading.

It is good, SO good. So horrifically, stomach-churningly good. Almost beautiful, actually. Should I be worried about myself, thinking this way? I got disturbingly carried away capping this. Oh dear. It's just such an incredible sequence, look:

I think this is a fair enough reaction for a bystander.

Do you have any words for that? Because I don't. I can't even really tell where the actor, prosthetic and CGI work cross over, it's just one gloriously horrendous collection of images, soundtracked with screaming and axe chopping heavily through thick flesh. THIS is why I love horror, moments like this!

Ahem, anyway.

Where can the film go after something like that? There's only one place really, destination Turn Hartnett Into A Vamp And Have Him Punch Through The Skull Of The Bad Guy.

It sounds worse than it is! Yeah it sits a little ridiculously next to what went before, and I did vocalise something like a "Say wha...?" when it happened. Thankfully though this double take of a plot development is sandwiched between two of a higher calibre: the wonderful beheading and an admirably low key, downbeat ending.

Eb's estranged wife Stella (Melissa George) holds him as he burns in the long awaited sunrise. Surprisingly powerful stuff.

I've thrown a bit of a spoiler party with this review haven't I? Apologies, but I assumed in my being three years late to see it, it was pretty much fair game.

Having not read the comic I haven't attempted a comparison in that respect, but as a film in its own right it entertains to a far higher standard than I anticipated - giving me two new 'favourite genre moments', in fact. It's well worth checking out.