5AM FEVER

Leslie has been dealing with an abusive stalker of a boyfriend, so it's only natural that her good friend Janna swoop in to help whisk her away to a scenic lake town where a serial killer has been offing young women and is still very much at large. Before the gravity of that particular situation hits them, though, Leslie and Janna will both discuss and get calls from the boyfriend in question, as Janna continues to suggest she leave him for good while Leslie hems and haws about the future of her dismal relationship.

This is the general vibe of TERROR AT TENKILLER, a 1987 slasher directed by Ken Meyer that is both fairly uninteresting and rarely boring. That's completely counter to the pacing and structure of the film, which is the very formula for what one might normally consider to be a totally dull entry in an overpacked genre. Instead, TENKILLER is like a hangout movie without any fun hangouts. It's a slasher with zero mystique. You know who the killer is essentially from frame one, and the conclusion is all but inevitable.

While I would never be bold enough to claim that TENKILLER intentionally bucks any trends or is innovative in any way, it ends up being a Mister Magoo of a success, blindly stumbling its way to the nearest steel girder and way up to the top of an impossibly high building only to have a perfectly placed crane hook lower it safely to the ground on the other side. It's languid at best and repetitive at worst—especially when it comes to how Leslie deals with her boyfriend, who continues to pester her from a distance while she's taking a breather in Oklahoma lookalike locales that are standing in for the actual Tenkiller Ferry Lake.

What TENKILLER lacks in finesse it somehow manages to make up for through sheer determination. Director Ken Meyer and screenwriter Claudia Meyer—the latter being the only one with a couple other credits to their name—use the time that would otherwise be spent weaving some semblance of mystery on a few dodgy kill sequences and at least one that is legitimately inspired. There's a scene in which the killer chops an arm off one of his victims and, to my bleary early morning eyes, it was done to shockingly convincing effect. While I would never recommend a film based on a single lost limb, it's these little moments that end up turning your head when your mind is otherwise occupied by a flimsy domestic drama that has an ostensibly simple solution behind it. 

Ever since I watched 2021 Argentinian horror-comedy FINDE I find myself wondering exactly why it is that I gravitate toward this sub-genre. Almost every movie I've watched that can loosely be described as "couple stays at a seemingly normal vacation home only to find its owners are total creeps" plays out mostly the same, but like a character who can't leave well enough along, curiosity always gets me in the end. Sure, I know that the folks who run the property in question likely dip their toes in some kind of sadistic wading pool, but what flavor? These questions must be answered.

And answered they are, if not in spectacular fashion, at least in a funny way in director Nano Garay Santaló's FINDE. Agos (Malena Pichot) and Santi (Julián) are a couple experiencing a unique brand of cabin fever during the pandemic. Cramped together in their small flat before, during and after work and occasionally clashing over minor squabbles, they end up getting a good deal on a villa for a nice weekend getaway. They leap at the opportunity, and it serves as a bonus bit of extra credit for work since Agos is always on the hunt for attractive new destinations to point her company's clients toward. Maybe this could be another diamond in the rough?

When they arrive at the villa they meet the charming pair of Lore and Emi, played respectively by Paula Grinszpan and the scene-stealing Leonardo Sbaraglia. Their villa is lovely, but there's one not-so-small catch: Their plans fell through and they have nowhere else to stay this weekend. Agos and Santi are hesitant to spend this getaway living with another couple, but their hosts promise to stay out of the way and even act as their own personal servants for the entire visit. They cook, they clean and there's absolutely no way any of this could go south, right?

As you may have guessed by the very premise, Lore and Emi have their own dark secrets that go beyond simply making their guests incredibly uncomfortable, whether it be through a complete lack of respect for personal space, Emi's sudden outbursts or an unexpected pill-powered boner. FINDE has all the trappings of the genre, but while it's not a full-blown comedy, it definitely eschews any sense of dread and prefers to revel in the absurdity of it all. From disturbing stories about Emi's past to the mystery behind Lore's "evil" twin sister, FINDE manages to maintain this tonal balance without dipping into parodic territory. It succeeds in being funny without coming off as trying too hard or taking you too far out of the proposed reality of the situation. 

If you're going to do a double bill, you might as well go hogshit wild, and that's exactly what I did do the detriment of my own sanity with back-to-back viewings of CENTIPEDE HORROR and CALAMITY OF SNAKES, both from 1982 and both stupid in their own unique ways.

CENTIPEDE HORROR finds the grandchildren of a man who burnt down a village 50 years ago being punished by a powerful sorcerer, and the recipe for this particular punishment is centipedes. Lots and lots of really big centipedes. The film opens with shocker shots of centipedes crawling across wooden platforms, emerging from the shadows and poking their little pincers out from drooping foliage. If I were the type of person to get skeeved out by these shots and the chitter-chitter-chitter SFX that accompany them, buddy, this flick woulda been turned off quick. 

What follows is roughly 90 minutes of centipede curses, a few solid gross-up close-ups and a climax that finds two wizards dueling from afar in the ultimate battle of the mind that includes not one, not two, but at least three ghost chickens. Describing this in vague terms is about four times as fun as actually watching CENTIPEDE HORROR, which comes from director Keith Lee Pak-Ling and has enough lulls between its standout moments to put a human centipede to sleep. 

It is, however, a positively delightful experience when placed next to the following feature, which aims to top even the most abundant acts of animal cruelty on film with one central, slithering focus.

In a bold move that would leave Indiana Jones positively beaming, Chi Chang and his team of dipshits decided to make a film about karmic retribution for cruelly killing snakes by… cruelly killing a bunch of snakes. This isn't like a single lingering scene of a turtle being torn apart that you can skip in CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, this is CALAMITY OF SNAKES, and it lives and dies by its title while its creators dance like lunatics in a special circle of Snake Hell. 

The story revolves around a greedy company buying up land for a massive condo and cutting corners during the construction process. One of those corners happens to be the nest of snakes living on the land, so they dispose of them all in the meanest and laziest way possible. Ignoring a couple scattered pleas warning against this, the workers pick up their shovels and start chopping up snakes while the boss man hops in an excavator and mashes hundreds of snakes to a bloody pulp in a few gleeful scoops. 

It's not like the filmmakers were ignorant during all of this. It's in the script that there will be some form of divine retribution for the acts of the characters, so does that apply to the crew, as well? Either way it clearly doesn't matter, because construction continues and we're eventually treated to a condo full of residents screaming and writhing as snakes are tossed their way and then summarily executed for the crime of starring in a rather shitty film. 

To give you an idea of what CALAMITY OF SNAKES is working with, the Blu-ray from Unearthed Films has a "cruelty-free" version of the feature on-disc, and it's 10 MINUTES SHORTER. A few of those minutes are spent filming various animal fights as they send in some mongooses to take out the snakes, a sequence that goes on for so long I had to fast forward out of sheer boredom. It's a shame, because there are some entertaining moments throughout—including a martial arts master who has to fight a colossal python—and it has a sense of humor about its dumb-as-rocks premise, but they went about the production in the stupidest and most shameful of ways. 

There's a very specific art to the made-for-TV movie. When they touch upon the horror genre they can be more unsettling than anything you'll see on the big screen, and while I wouldn't call director John Newland's 1973 feature DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK terribly frightening, it certainly fits the bill of something that can only be accomplished within the quaint and unassuming confines of your television set.

Sally (Kim Darby) and her husband Alex (Jim Hutton) recently finished renovating an inherited home, and they're… mixed on the results. There's still a lot of work to be done, and one thing that would really wrap it all up nicely is a fresh take on the previously-locked study. This room, dark by design, has pretty much nothing in it but a chair and an old fireplace that doesn't work. Despite its dank and foreboding nature, Sally insists that the house would finally be a home if she could just sit there in front of a roaring fire. 

As their handyman (William Demerest) advises, though, they should leave well enough alone. The fireplace is sealed with brick and iron all around, with the only opening bolted tight. There's clearly a history here with Sally's late grandfather, and we get some hints at what awaits within those bricks when the movie opens to the ominous sound of faint whispers. Hushed calls for action that declare they—whomever or whatever it is that might be speaking—will soon be free at last.

Much to the delight of audiences around the world who also happen to be fans of nasty little freaks, that's exactly what lurks behind closed doors. After Sally unwittingly frees these creatures, they constantly harass her in the dark and make her husband think she's completely lost the plot. It all comes to an embarrassing head during a dinner party the couple hosts one night, when one of the pint-sized monsters yanks the napkin off Sally's nap like a bored child trying to get their mom's attention. 

Just as I'm assuming TV audiences did 50 years ago, Sally shrieks when she sees these abominations. Meanwhile, her husband is totally fed up to the point where he actually agrees it might be best to get rid of the house and tough it out in an apartment all over again. Now they just need their handyman to agree to come back for a little more work so they can finish renovating and sell this haunted hellhole. But perhaps it might be too little and too late for all of that. 

As much as I'd like to protest that I don't just watch modern day video nasties, here comes a quick and dirty write-up about KFC to provide a counterpoint. This 2016 film by Vietnamese director Lê Bình Giang—which apparently premiered in Vietnam back in 2012, at least according to IMDb—is a short little ride at just a little over an hour, but it manages to pack in enough gross-out moments to make you second guess chowing down on a drumstick while watching.

KFC is billed as an omnibus of sorts, and while it comes off at first glance as a bitch's brew of unsavory and violent vignettes, there is an inkling of a narrative throughline to be found. At the heart of it all is a twisted little group with a doctor who is… unethical, to say the least, in the lead. They serve as the impetus for introducing the audience to other ne'erdowells who do their best to push the boundaries of good taste—cannibalism, rape, torture; you name it—in as brief a timespan as humanly possible. 

The grislier moments come in short bursts, often unexpectedly so, but what really makes KFC stand out is a distinct air of detachment from it all. It's one thing to present violence in a way that supposes the audience is already desensitized, but in KFC it's abundantly clear that the characters themselves are, too. It's like they're all committing horrific acts upon themselves and others in a wholly disembodied manner, staring at the scattered and ruined remnants from above and not really giving a damn about the consequences. 

As for the connection with Kentucky Fried Chicken, well, let's just say the proof is right there on screen. While it seems like a completely batshit business move to sponsor such a grody little grinder of a flick, the Colonel might as well have ponied up the dough himself (that's gotta be tainted plantation money, right?). We've got the chicken itself and a branded soft drink cup in the first scene, scenes set within a KFC restaurant complete with KFC employee uniforms; what more do you want? KFC might not want to own up to it, but I'm going to go ahead and consider this to be a tacit endorsement. 

Rod Serling steps into view, looking just a little more rundown than usual. "Picture of a man," he starts, "a man so violent they named him Violence Jack. Now, picture if you will, a town so vile they named it Hell Town. A subterranean town of debauchery and dastardly deeds. A town that would go on to inspire an OVA so evil it would take on the moniker of... EVIL TOWN."

He takes one final drag of his cigarette, sighing deeply. "That's the signpost you see up ahead. The signpost that signals your entry into… 1988's VIOLENCE JACK: EVIL TOWN." Thinking the crew is no longer rolling film or sound, Serling spikes his smokes on the floor. "This thing is just vile, repulsive even. This Go Nagai fella, well, he's just a nasty little freak!" 

In the world of post-apocalyptic media, you have everything from shows and movies about zombies to funky little Italian dune buggies. Dwindling resources. Familial bonds put to the test along endless stretches of barren asphalt. And then you have one of the best sub-genres: Inexplicably Big Dudes. Like Fist of the North Star, Go Nagai's Violence Jack manga fits right into that mold. Unlike Kenshiro and co., though, Jack is willing to explore every dirty little nook and cranny of what our bleak future has to offer. 

Folks, it ain't pretty. 

Deep in the depths of the appropriately named Evil Town, a small group of survivors crack open a wall to find the colossal Violence Jack just kind of standing there. Apparently he's been standing inside this wall for six months? When they let him out he's just kind of like, "thanks." From there we transition into a battle between Evil Town's A, B and C Zones, each with their own unique brand of denizens, with Jack ultimately playing a pivotal role in who lives and who gets torn to shreds.

At first Jack partners up with the Zone A folks, promising to help them take on the slice of beef known as Mad Saurus, who hails from the extra loathsome B Zone. Before long, though, he finds himself teaming up with the women of C Zone, who are almost all fashion models—with a couple wrestlers thrown in for good measure—since they were heading to a fashion show in Kyoto when disaster struck. How convenient! Jack is tasked with protecting them from the brutes and rapists of both A and B Zones, so either way you slice it this is destined to culminate in a Big Dude versus Big Dude Beefdown. 

Over the course of roughly one hour, kids die horrible deaths, women are savaged in the most unpleasant of ways, there's cannibalism, necrophilia; basically nothing is off limits in the world of Violence Jack, more so here than anywhere else. It's all fairly reprehensible… and the animators at Studio 88 went obscenely hard on it! Director Ichiro Itano—yes, he of the famed style of action sequence that came to be known as the "Itano Circus," featuring incredibly stylized aerial combat and missile volleys—made sure his animators put all their blood, sweat and tears into the blood, sweat and tears on screen. Everything from the extremely gross depictions of sexual assault to Jack's expert knife play, which usually ends up splitting heads in half or sending punks into a somersault of guts, is depicted with the kind of love and care one might put into a sentimental Mother's Day card. 

Italian special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi had an incredible career, with work ranging from some of the '60s HERCULES flicks to classics like Dario Argento's DEEP RED, the 1976 KING KONG, E.T. and many more. Naturally, heads gotta turn when his son Vittorio Rambaldi jumps behind the camera to unleash 1988's PRIMAL RAGE with the help of his daddy's FX, and they'd be right to! While it isn't the animals attack, monkey-gone-ape-spit feature you might be expecting from the premise and cover art, it's a rabid 92 minutes of very stupid fun. 

PRIMAL RAGE starts with a pair of student journalists, Sam and Frank, looking for their next big scoop, and they have their eyes set squarely on Ethridge—played by Bo Svenson with the help of a glorious little rat tail—a doctor suspected of performing unethical experiments on lab monkeys. When Frank jumps the gun and breaks into the lab to get evidence, he unwittingly causes the monkey to escape, biting him in the process and setting off an infectious chain of events that will leave Frank and others afflicted with what one might call a primal rage. 

Prior to the initial attack, it's very important to note that PRIMAL RAGE features an intricate animatronic baboon. Yes, there's also an actual baboon in the movie, but I want to put more emphasis on the fact that this animatronic baboon is grossly underutilized. Perhaps it was too powerful to keep on screen in a state other than "drugged and sleepy," but it's a cinematic crime from which the world is still reeling. 

Featuring a script written by Umberto Lenzi and James Justice—and one that it sounds like stemmed from a choice between two not-so-great scripts and a lot of rewriting—PRIMAL RAGE has decent enough performances, some great on-screen freakouts and a third act Halloween party with some of the most buckwild costumes you'll ever see on screen. I have a hard time believing any college students would go to much effort beyond Frankenstein's monster and Sexy Frankenstein's monster, but the proof is right there on screen. That, my friends, is some Rambaldi magic at play. 

There's also a Noid cameo.

When you fire up a movie and it has a very wooden castle dungeon set, a mad doctor and a hunchback who looks like he'd be more at home in an Andy Milligan flick, you know you're in for 76 minutes of pure, glorious nonsense. That's exactly what you get with 1974's HELP ME… I'M POSSESSED, a compact little creeper that manages to squeeze torture, beheadings, sexual assault and more into its "no one's looking so do whatever you want" PG rating.

Straight from the school of Herschell Gordon Lewis comes Charles Nizet, who has this as one of seven directorial efforts to his name. The story follows Dr. Arthur Blackwood (Bill Greer), who starts things off by declaring that "death is a fabrication of the mind," just so we know the score right out the gate. In his cozy little home for the questionably deranged, he claims he is able to successfully rehabilitate even the most evil of person, but the process ain't pretty. He previously saw success with his younger sister, who was as feral as could be before he worked his magic on her and turned her into a full grown woman with the mind of a small child. 

Now, as his wife comes to stay at the castle—curiously, she's somehow never met his sister before—the good doctor must keep up a facade of normalcy while evading the ever-prying eyes of the local Sheriff. Nothing to see here is the proclamation of the day, but there is, in fact, quite a bit to see here. It all looks like leftovers from another film set, with minimal on-screen violence save for the aforementioned beheading and some light leg sawing, but there's still a diabolical drive-in heart beating within it.

At such a brisk runtime, it doesn't take long to work your way through Dr. Blackwood's twisted web. Greer snarls in sinister style at all prying assumptions that he might be doing anything beyond Good Work™ within these gaudy halls. He brushes off the dangers inherent to his patients, even as his wife claims she just saw a gnarly bearded man appear right in front of the caged organ in the main hall. He's just doing what he must to perfect his experiments, like any definitely-not-deranged doctor from a '70s exploitation movie would do. If you get in his way, well, that's your problem, and you're probably going to die at the hands of whatever that tentacled worm monster is deep within the bowels of the doctor's cavernous hideaway. 

Filled with a deliberately off-kilter style of framing and oppressive lighting and atmosphere inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER, you'd be surprised at how familiar and oddly comfortable writer/director/producer Abdelhamid Bouchnak's 2018 film DACHRA can be, despite being pretty much the first of its kind to come out of Tunisia. While the subject matter is anything but cozy, DACHRA takes structural notes and story beats from horror history to weave a darkly intriguing tale of witchcraft and other more culturally contentious topics. Even if you can see some of its turns coming way out in the distance, you still ultimately haven't seen anything exactly like it.

Yasmine is a student of journalism tasked with taking on a unique documentary subject for class—anything is fair game outside of the Tunisian rebellion, which, as the professor reminds everyone, is well-trod ground—and with the help of the two bumbling, bickering bros with which she's partnered, she lands on the case of a deeply disturbed woman named Mongia. As the old tale goes, Mongia was found at the edge of the road with her throat slit 20 years ago, miraculously still breathing, and has been in the care of a local asylum ever since. She's considered among the most dangerous patients, such that the director of the facility won't even acknowledge her existence. With some clumsy negotiation, the trio is eventually able to take their equipment deeper into the asylum to interview Mongia. Speaking of well-trod ground, you'll recognize this as the quintessential horror film depiction of mental care; screams echoing off the walls and bug-eyed patients practically licking their lips at presence of their new visitors.

Shortly after they enter her cell—where Mongia sits in the shadows, cutting an imposingly enigmatic yet still clearly human figure—the violent whisperings of Mongia's behavior are confirmed. She may not get her teeth on Yasmine or her friends, but soon after they leave we learn why she's notorious for taking a bite out of her caretakers. Is she really a "witch" or merely a representation of the oppressed, or both?

Thankfully, DACHRA isn't that interested in overtly answering many of the questions it supposes. The setting's promised threat is fulfilled when Yasmine, Walid and Bilel end up stuck in a remote village (hence the title of the film, which translates to a remote village or hamlet). The horrors, while never terribly over the top or shocking, ramp up from there. As we barrel toward the climax there's also a major revelation, but again, DACHRA doesn't hammer it home. We don't need a lore dump in the third act, we just need to keep chugging along through this grim scenario and see it through to its inevitable conclusion. 

A little over 20 years ago a friend and I were making a sprawling epic of an SOV horror film called RIVERHAUS RANSOM. On a night totally unrelated to the process I was driving down the interstate and smashed my 1988 Chevrolet Celebrity into a deer, sending it flying over the hood and onto the side of the road. I was fine, the deer was not. The Celebrity was somewhere in the middle, matted with a bit of hair, spattered with blood and left with a severed coolant line and some other miscellaneous issues that would make it sound like the yawning apocalypse every time its engine was running for the brief remainder of its life.

There are a few select scenes in RIVERHAUS RANSOM (pictured above) during which you can hear it bellowing out of hell down the street, its garbled engine noises taking over the VHS camera's meager audio capabilities and adding a new kind of ambience into the mix. When I really think about it, this is why I appreciate homemade movies in the first place. Not because they all need to have a beater screaming for dear life (and ending deer life), but because they capture a moment in time that even small indie films can't manage. A time when a group of like-minded—or not—folks got a wild hare up their ass to make something, even if that something can barely muster material worthy of a z-grade rating.

From one Kentucky filmmaker—hey, I can call myself whatever the hell I want—to another, it was my solemn duty to pop in Jack Shrum's BLOOD HUNTER at the wild-eyed witch's hour. Released in 1996, just a few years prior to the filming of RIVERHAUS RANSOM, BLOOD HUNTER tells the tale of Victor, a vampire who relocated to rural Kentucky due to the similarities he finds its environment has in relation to the vague Russian location from which he hails. It's here that he posts up in a cave and lives a relatively quiet life as a nighttime auto mechanic, at least when he's not killing some of the more unsavory denizens of Brownsville. 

Shrum wasn't originally supposed to play the blood-sucking lead, but that didn't stop him from delivering plenty of deliciously dry one-liners you can see coming from a mile away. They're all welcome, and it's clear everyone involved in the film was very welcome in town, too, as they brought a slice of Hollywood to add to the local flavor in a place that apparently didn't even have any stoplights at the time. Who could fault their enthusiasm? There are plenty of locations that give residents a chance to laugh it up in the background, or even step into the occasional role. Shrum loves tasking his actors with spewing out full scenes of dialogue exchanges without any cuts, which makes it extra delightful when an actor stumbles over a word in one of their final lines. You can practically feel the "fuck it, we're not doing that scene again" energy floating through the air. There are almost no actors here anyway outside of Chuck Ellis, who plays Sheriff Ben Taylor from deep down within his soul. 

When BLOOD HUNTER came out it made the local news in an incredible time capsule of a report that's included in VHShitfest's Blu-ray, which gives the film about as loving a home as humanly possible. BLOOD HUNTER was produced for around $18,000 depending on who you ask, most of which came from Shrum himself and little of which is visible on screen at any single moment. It may not be a masterpiece even by the standards of its contemporaries, but it was money well spent, clearly, and the only fallout was that poor fella who played the child molester. Apparently everyone thought this role reflected reality and his reputation quickly turned to dirt, forcing him to relocate. 

There are countless sub-genres when it comes to horror films, but none are quite as reliable as those that fall within the Donald Pleasence Plays a Weird Doctor category. By my unreliable count, I've already watched three movies that aren't HALLOWEEN in which Pleasence plays a Loomis-adjacent wackadoo—including PHENOMENA and BURIED ALIVE—and the latest to be blasted into my brain at an ungodly hour was 1983's THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR.

As should come as no surprise, this effort from director Uli Lommel (THE BOOGEYMAN) was given the luxurious Blu-ray treatment thanks to Vinegar Syndrome, and it fits in well with their very specific brand. We start our tale 300 years ago in the humble town of Devonsville, where a trio of women are being mercilessly tortured and killed under suspicion of being some bitchin' witches. The methods of torture are worth noting, because when Mary is placed upon the breaking wheel and set ablaze, we get to watch this wooden wheel go tumbling down a hill with a rubber doll attached to it in all its burning glory. Flash forward to the present and the town is just as humble, only it's about to welcome three women who bring with them echoes of the past and the potential for glorious retribution upon the descendants of those hateful, ignorant townsfolk. 

Or hell, maybe they really were witches the whole time. Donald Pleasence's Dr. Warley is directly related to one of the main instigators of the inquisition, and as such he is cursed to constantly pull writhing worms from his flesh, one little grub at a time. He's got worms, folks! Before we get a chance to see Donald Pleasance yank more bugs out of his wrist, Jenny Scanlon (Suzanna Love) moves into town along with two other women who are way too liberated for the locals. Jenny is a teacher who dares to casually insinuate that god might be a woman while teaching a bunch of little kids about mushrooms. Chris is an environmental scientist investigating potential contaminants and Monica is a DJ who everyone seems to listen to but no one seems to like, mostly because she gives the women who call in advice on getting out of their toxic relationships. 

No one digs these progressive ideas, especially residents like Walter Gibbs (Paul Willson), the store owner who got so tired of having to wait on his ill wife that he smothered her with a pillow. This combined with our newcomers serves as the catalyst for a real rural reckoning, with a resurgence of potential witchery giving Dr. Warley the long-awaited opportunity to right some of the wrongs of the past.