Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

Sometimes I get into a headspace, and only this movie will do. 

The opening montage may rank in my top 5 favourite ever. The BALLS to have your opening shot be a clearly violently murdered woman. Cut to Henry, going about his business and appearing normal. Cut back to another dumped corpse, and on and on. The motel bathroom scene is particularly grisly (my fave, only just beating the one face down in a trash-ridden pond). I really adore this start to the story, it's so fucking BLEAK, and the reveal of the violence left in Henry's wake is all the more impactful for the slow pan outs/zoom ins, which clarify - along with the soundtrack as it plays garbled, condensed audio from the murders - maybe a little of the "how" but absolutely none of the "why". Because there is no "why". There's just Henry. 

It's a depressing-as-shit heavy hitter, and I love it, down to the intro/outro score. PLUS, I always seem to be surprised he doesn't stamp that terrier to death. Deserving of full marks.

Fuck the Bears.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

The Poughkeepsie Tapes is on Tubi right now! Tubi comes through again!

After a serial killer leaves a cache of tapes to be discovered by New York murder investigators, we're shown "choice cuts" of the decades of footage; from the disturbing to the horrific, to the downright weird, while context and background are given on those featured.

Ya girl got some spoilers ⬇

We watched this on the brink of my being home alone for a couple of nights, and I'm REALLY pleased I didn't save it for then. And not because of the strange balloon stuff.

At this point, this film had become somewhat infamous to me, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. What I got was a fictitious crime documentary that's often downright uncomfortable to watch. One scene in particular I couldn't get out of my head for a couple of days. Many aspects - including, obviously, the fact that it's found footage - contribute to this feeling very grounded in reality. 

Full of bleak moments and clips of terror and torture, this story is successfully very, very creepy. A thread that runs through it is one particular female victim (Stacy Chbosky as Cheryl Dempsey) and her abduction, imprisonment and forced complicity through physical and mental torture. 

Her interview and the information we're subsequently told about Cheryl is shattering. Hell, her entire story is shattering. This is probably the film's strongest aspect as it gives a heart to the story - even if it ultimately dissects that heart in front of our eyes.

❝I don't know what you want me to say...❞

− Cheryl Dempsey

As someone who deals with intrusive thoughts about home invasion (and yet watches horror movies and listens to true crime podcasts almost non-stop 👋🏻) the thought that his guy just moved on, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer style, and set up shop elsewhere is terrifying. The audience witnesses him begin, escalate, shatter countless lives through murder, torture and the justice system itself - then simply disappear. The only reason the police ever found the tapes was because he wanted them to.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes was shot in a staggering fifteen days, and was written (along with his brother Drew) and directed by John Erick Dowdle (As Above, So Below, Quarantine, Devil). He is also married to Stacy Chbosky. It must have been incredibly intense to direct her in some of these scenes.

If you like your scares stark, this is worth checking out. Not for those seeking buckets of blood; it's understated and implied a lot of the time, views often obscured or distorted so that we're forced to fill in the blanks. Nasty and unforgiving, if you're prone to movies sticking with you, this one just might.

The Devil's Candy (2015)

The Devil's Candy was pretty much buried on Netflix, and it's only because I regularly make a pass through the horror section that its artwork caught my eye (see above - how could it not?). So I read the blurb, took a swift look at the IMDB and Letterboxd pages (more to see what its average user rating was than anything else) and that was enough. Onto the list it went.

This was written and directed by Sean Byrne, whose only other horror credit seems to be The Loved Ones. The plot revolves around a close family of three (mum, dad, daughter) moving into a new house and strange, dark forces at work both inside and out of their new home. 

Daughter and father metalheads 

The house seems to speak to those with an open enough mind to hear it, including dad Jesse (Ethan Embry - who has come a LONG way since Empire Records) and Raymond (Pruitt Taylor Vince), a troubled individual who used to live there.

Jesse is a struggling artist and takes over the garage/barn area of the new place to paint. However, even for a metal fan, what ends up being committed to his canvas in this new studio takes an extremely dark turn.

Going into rapture-like states to create these images, Jesse loses all track of time, painting solidly for hours on end and failing to pick up his daughter Zooey (Kiara Glasco) from school on more than one occasion.

The images he creates are frightening. The reason he's creating them, we learn eventually, is extremely tragic.

Taking place during an unnaturally hot Texas summer, this feels oppressive and intense. Jesse most of all is seen sweating and/or shirtless, a panicked and pained expression permanently on his face as he tries to make sense of what is threatening his family. 

❝He's no mask in a Halloween store, he's not what you see in the movies. He is an active, violent, anti-God personal reality. And as much as we refuse to admit it, he lives through us.❞
− TV Preacher

An "active, violent, anti-God personal reality" is a perfect description of the villain in this movie.

I could not shake how much Raymond looked like Harvey Weinstein, too. Just to add another layer of evil repulsiveness on top of an already detestable character.

It's not just in atmosphere that this film succeeds; stylistically too, The Devil's Candy knows what it's doing. Watch for the use of light in the final shot, and for the scene with cross-cutting between paint hitting the canvas and blood spilling from a murder. There really isn't much gore to be had in general here, with the more brutal stuff happening off camera, but the glimpses of a bathtub dismemberment are more than enough to unsettle. 

This one may be my favourite new discovery so far this month. Simple, satanic, stylish, and streaming on Netflix now. At 1hr19mins it's definitely worth the time commitment.

A Horrible Way To Die (2010)

Gorgeous poster alert!

Coming before the big hitters for which they've become known (You're Next, The Guest, Blair Witch) A Horrible Way To Die is a sombre - apparently the term "mumblegore" is a thing now? - effort from director and writer team Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett.

We meet our two leads: Sarah (Amy Seimetz) a recovering alcoholic haunted by guilt because of her past, and Garrick (AJ Bowen), an escaped prisoner who can't stop killing. He's also Sarah's ex boyfriend.

Unfolding in a non-linear fashion, we slowly learn the details of their relationship and their lives in the present day. Sarah is extremely fragile, she's managing to hold down a job, attending group therapy and very tentatively embarking on a new relationship. Garrick is travelling, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake - the blurb for the movie states that he's on his way to find Sarah, but I don't recall that being made explicitly clear in the film itself - nevertheless, there's a sense of build up. Garrick is in motion and Sarah appears to be healing... so it's only natural that these two damaged individuals are going to cross paths again by the end of runtime.

The whys and the hows would be giving too much away though ;)

The power of A Horrible Way To Die lies in how intimate it feels. Seimetz and Bowen are shot in close-up a lot of the time, and we feel like we're sitting right there with them in hotel rooms, at work, or in diners. Everything is slow and considered, with scenes lingering a couple of beats before fading out. The scene transitions themselves were something that struck me as contemplative: fading to black, going out of focus or panning away from the actors, letting the prior action really sink in.

Both leads give restrained, impressive performances of anguished vulnerability, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for more of their work in the future. (AJ Bowen seems to be a Wingard/Barret regular to some degree, having starred in You're Next and The Guest).

As the "mumblegore" label may suggest, this is a carefully constructed slow burn of a horror. This is the story of people stuck in a reality that is painful to them - one of whom happens to be a serial killer. The chills and unease come from witnessing them negotiating a life that is a constant struggle to exist in. I found this tale to be dark and sad, but completely engrossing and unpredictable.

This is streaming on Shudder right now, and whether you are a Wingard die-hard or not, I highly recommend it. However, there's a lot of "shaky-cam" on display, so if you're prone to movie-induced seasickness, you have been warned!

Tony (2009)

Have you ever gone days without speaking to anyone? Maybe you didn't leave the house for a bit, too. It definitely leaves you feeling slightly disconnected from the world, and aware of everything continuing on around you, regardless. This is basically how our titular main character in Tony exists.

Tony (Peter Ferdinando) has no job, no friends, and his only reliable company is action movies on VHS. He's... an odd chap, so he finds it hard to meet new people; his manner seeming to irritate and/or scare anyone who does ever get particularly close. It's this detachment from people, and the anonymity of London and its boroughs, that makes it easy for Tony to do what he does (kill, keep, and eventually dismember and dispose) and - as far as we know - get away with it.

As someone who spent may years living in London, seeing it displayed in a less than romantic light is really great. The truth of London life, if you're living there as a normal person earning a normal wage, is housing estates, shady looking neighbours and dilapidated buildings. On his many wanders, Tony passes closed down pubs, shop-fronts and unappealing looking blocks of flats (as well as more harmless sights like launderettes and kids playing in the street). 

In amongst the more suburban stuff, we catch glimpses of big London landmarks in the background, like the "Gherkin", Canary Wharf and BT Tower. The city exists all around Tony, the ant hill rumbling along behind it all as he walks, and stalks, and kills. I found this a beautiful and terrifying way of illustrating just how removed from "normal life" an individual can become in a city, with little to no problem (though there is an amusing moment toward the end where Tony is getting grief from the dreaded Television Licence man). This receding back from civilization can work in a loner's favour, as a sort of protection - and this theory is certainly backed up by Tony successfully navigating various situations by either killing his way out or being saved by pure dumb luck.

Tony's kills do become more desperate rather than opportunistic toward the end of the film though, which makes us wonder how much longer he has before someone finally puts two and two together. That said, he's such an invisible presence as he moves through the world, it's also possible that he could continue for years to come. How many killers are operating at any one time in any city? How many have been caught only through fluke or because they wanted to be? Here, Tony does not seem anywhere close to remorseful about what he's doing (he commits murder with a demeanor of pure detached matter-of-factness) so his end will likely come about through being caught, or perhaps killed himself by an underestimated victim.

To make Tony's story even more uncomfortable, Gerard Johnson (who wrote and directed) gives us multiple instances in the film where you kind of feel bad for the guy?! For the most part he's treated like shit if he's noticed at all, and this frustration and sense of further being removed from "normal" people undoubtedly fuels his urge to kill.

The first time we see him he's trying to make small talk to an uninterested DVD seller on the street, and his earnestness and complete inability to read social cues is on full display (see also: watching the arguing couple in the pub). I think this is meant to show him as someone not inherently "evil", it's just that he wants to be part of something... to make a connection, but he lacks the skills to do so successfully. If this is reminding you a little of a serial killer named Dahmer, then yes, there are definite parallels. I'll let you see for yourself to discover just how far those similarities go.

My one gripe about this film is the renaming to Tony: London Serial Killer for certain markets. It's cringe-worthy in its obviousness, and way too on-the-nose for a film so quiet and mundane. "Tony" is one word, one short word, and not even a particularly interesting name... its normality suits the unembellished horror much better.

See, the beauty of Tony is its simplicity. User comments I read (don't ask me why, it's always a mistake isn't it) complained that it was "boring", and "nothing happens". And that's pretty close to being true. If you're the kind of horror fan who needs something to jump or shriek or otherwise spike your blood pressure every few minutes, then this is not going to be an enjoyable movie experience. However if, like me, you love a slow, almost ordinary-feeling film punctuated by violence, Tony is definitely worth checking out.

Streaming on Shudder (I'm doing a 30 day free trial) at time of writing.

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.

Maniac remake.

Have you seen this? (skip to around 40sec in to avoid the billion boner-killing studio logos).

I am having so many feelings about it. All of them good. The MUSIC, the END to that clip. Elijah Wood doing yet another good job at creepy and fucked up. Hubba hubba, I want to see!!!

(Out March 2013 in the UK).

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...!!!"