Corey Norman’s “Tickle” watches a lot like an episode of “Tales from the Darkside.” It seeps with eighties aesthetic, unfolds like a classic campfire tale, and has a great novelty about it that will go over well with horror fans. It’s also a hell of a good Halloween yarn that I expect will really click with fans of the holiday.
This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but a zombie kangaroo. Ryan Coonan’s short horror film is the prologue of a bonafide zombie apocalypse (and feature film currently in development), all thanks to a contaminated water hole in the outback. Set in Australia, a local park ranger proceeds to take samples from a water hole, despite the resistance of a local who insists that he’s creating an unnecessary hysteria with his testing.
Typical of Sam Raimi, his “Evil Dead” series managed to become so much more insane and wacky the more it progressed. If “Dead By Dawn” wasn’t an indicator that he’d embraced the overall sheer chaos and insanity of Ashley Williams battling demons from another dimension, “Army of Darkness” dives head first, transforming Ashley’s newest misadventure in to something of an action horror movie with a stern tongue in cheek. While Raimi does inject his share of humor, though, “Army of Darkness” retains its essence, never once reducing the concept of the series in to an embarrassment.
A schizophrenic military man, Martin, with heavy PTSD is holed-up in his family’s cabin when his brother and sister eventually come to have an intervention for him. Foil on the windows and constant talk of a pod and military experiment on him as well as others only convinces his brother further that he needs help now while his sister is starting to take his side and believe him. As Martin talks of having the pod trapped in the basement, things escalate quickly.
I fondly remember renting “Meet Rockula and Frankenstone” quite often from our local videos store when I was a kid, and thankfully the movie genuinely holds up. Like all great comedy series, the Flintstones have had their share of crossovers, and this time they have the misfortune of meeting Dracula and Frankenstone. Or their stone age counterparts, as it were. While it’s not raucously funny as when Abbot and Costello met them, it’s a darn good short movie with the Flintstones doing what they do best.
Keenan Ivory Wayans never really hit that high that he did with “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka!”, but it’s interesting to see that “Scary Movie” comes shockingly close to the same comedy gold that the aforementioned film did, many times. Brandishing the original title for Wes Craven’s “Scream,” Wayans and co. never quite hit the timelessness of “Airplane!” mainly because you didn’t have to see the original movies from “Airplane!” to understand its humor. With “Scary Movie,” however, you have to have an education in late nineties horror.
Urban Folklore and Legends have comprised some of the best tall tales and words of warning ever created. Often times they’re based on some grain of fact, and can serve as subtext for the dangers of premarital sex, and not talking to strangers. “Campfire Tales” from 1997 is one of the few anthology films that pulls from the catalog of urban legends and utilizes them to produce a pretty great horror film. Directed by a trio of talented filmmakers, “Campfire Tales” is one of the few anthology films that have shrunk away in to obscurity unfairly. In the gamut of anthology horror, “Campfire Tales” is a strong contender for one of the top ten. It’s shocking that the movie is barely discussed when good anthologies are discussed.