11/28/16 - The Giant Claw (1957)

The Giant Claw is pretty much perfect as far as super cheesy 50s monster flicks go. It's corny, kind of stupid, and overly earnest but still really fun. It moves briskly and has a goofy looking monster that you see cause a decent amount of destruction. Good times all around.

11/27/16 - Dark Amazon (2014)

Alexis, take me to Dark Amazon - where you can buy drugs and guns with one-click shopping? Or Dark Amazon Smile, where .05 % of your snuff film purchases will go to a charity of your choice!

Obviously, no. I doubt the fine folks at amazon.com would allow for such a thing to happen. This Dark Amazon is a crappy found footage jam about some folks searching for a cure for cancer in the Amazon. Rainforest, that is. Do you think kids today even know that the Amazon is actually a place and not a website?

Anyways, Big Spoilers ahead for a movie that I think you shouldn't see.

11/25/16 - The Funhouse (1981)

Funhouse? More like Not-so-Funhouse, amirite? I just expected more from this film, I guess. What with the Tobe Hooper brand and the can't miss "slasher at a carnival" premise. (Both of which, it turns out, very much can miss.) The opening credits are pretty solid and are the highlight of the film. They're just tightly framed shots of creepy animatronics from around an old, rickety carnival funhouse. Unfortunately, it's pretty much downhill from there.

Especially when the very first thing you get (post-credits) is a shower scene with nudity from an actress that looks about 15. She was actually 18 or 19 at the time, but still. It's disconcerting, and not in a good way. Anyways, her little shit brother scares her - he grabs a bunch of horror paraphernalia from his room and pranks her by pretending to stab her while she's showering. First, gross. Second, it's set up like this kid will have *something* to do with the story. And while he hangs out at the periphery of the plot, he's literally a nothing character. It's hard to say why he's even in the film, other than to just pad the runtime. Maybe he had something better to do (like get killed?) in a different version of the script, but as it is he's just a waste of space.

11/17/16 - The Alligator People (1959)

The Alligator People is one of those 50's monster flicks that feels rather dull by today's standards. It feels like not an awful lot happens - you kind of hope for more alligator people going berzerk. But Alligator People is content to keep the promised hybrids hidden until the end of the film. But there's actually a decently executed (if not generic and a little bit cheesy) story going on here. That and a few creepy touches make The Alligator People stand a little above the rest of it's late 50s/early 60s movie monster brethren.

10/24/16 - The Neon Dead (2015)

I really rather liked The Neon Dead. It's a scrappy little indie flick with a lot of style and a unique visual hook. Plus, it's hard for me not to like a film made in 2015 that has uses stop motion animation for its big bad.

And I hate having to put this disclaimer on all of these indie horror entries, but that's the world we live in. Thanks Obama... The Neon Dead is not a slick, big-or-even-modestly budgeted film - imdb has it listed at $17,000. It does feel amateurish at times, and the acting isn't always so great. So while I'll be talking about how much I dug it, it's probably not going to change your mind about inexpensive indie stuff. Although I will say it's considerably more ambitious than something from the "let's make a documentary about ghost hunting" genre. And for those of us who can swing cheap music, normal looking people, and the other "warts and all" in this sort of movie, that ambition pays of in a really fun film.

10/7/16 - The Dread (2007)

So I guess I was tempting fate by mostly recommending Bleed yesterday. Despite its flaws (and very low imdb rating), I kind of dug its kitchen sink approach, and could easily look past its iffy story telling choices and confusing plot points. But today brought me The Dread, which is even lower rated on imdb. And while it had the same approach in terms of mashing up genres (slasher/monster/ghost, in this case?) and a similar disinterest in explaining much story-wise, it didn't fare nearly as well.

It's clearly a cheaper film than Bleed, and considering The Dread was made about 10 years prior it's not going to look as good. I think indie films like this get dumped on more than they should, but even when a taken with a considerably sized grain of salt (I want to take it easy on films in this budget range, you know?), The Dread is not very good.