Filmmaker Izzy Lee gathered shorts films from different fellow short film makers and will be showing them to the crowd at Boston Terror’Thon 2016 this weekend. For those unable to attend, here’s a sneak peek of four of the shorts in small bit sized reviews.
Tag Archives: Slasher
Black Christmas (2006)
Glenn Morgan’s remake of the Bob Clark 1974 slasher film is one of most preposterous, blatantly awful films I’ve seen in the last two years. As a remake and as its own film, it’s awful. Director-Writer Morgan seems to aim for the exact opposite effect the original established, and does so through often hilarious methods of murders, and vague characterization. All the characters are loud, one-dimensional, and despicable, none of the actors give stand out performances, there’s an awfully predictable plot twist involving our killer, gross out gore for the sake of gross out gore. Of course, Billy uses every element of Christmas as a method of murder for his victims.
Girl House (2015)
If you can accept that Nick Gordon’s “Girl House” is a digital age version of “Slumber Party Massacre,” you might be able to make it through the so bad it’s good horror film just fine. I feel like punching people that use the term “Hate watch,” but “Girl House” is the very definition of a Hate Watch. It’s stupid, tedious, and makes no sense, but is saved miraculously by a very mean spirited and intense second half. It’s not often a movie starts out as a cheesy thriller about an internet stalker and transforms in to Leatherface: The Handy Man in “California Power Tool Massacre.” Actor Slaine does as grand job as monstrous villain “Loverboy.”
All Through the House (2015)
Todd Nunes takes “Black Christmas” and wraps it in the Santa slashing madness “Silent Night, Deadly Night” for what is a pretty wonky slasher film. I appreciated the humor and inherent mean spiritedness of it all, as Todd Nunes definitely has a love for slasher films. He and his crew even seem dead set on creating their own iconic slasher with our silver faced Santa who has a knack for mutilating his victims with garden sheers. There’s also his habit for turning his male victims in to eunuchs, which is of shocking importance once the finale rolls around. I really like that Todd Nunes stuffs the film with more Latin and Hispanic actors, providing a very welcome diverse cast.
Lake Nowhere (2016)
I don’t know if I’d called Maxim Van Scoy, and Christopher Phelps’s “Lake Nowhere” a masterpiece, but I have to say that the more it unfolded, I appreciated its enthusiasm more than anything. It wants to deliver a genuinely retro horror experience, and by god it succeeds most of the time. I’m not completely bowled over, though, as “Lake Nowhere” is really only fifty minutes in length. Five of those minutes are devoted to some faux horror movie trailers you’d find in front of a cheap horror VHS.
Tales of Halloween (2015) [Blu-Ray/2-DVD/CD]
Just in time for Halloween 2016 comes one of the best horror indie anthologies of the last six years. “Tales of Halloween” is a sick, demented, and fun ode to the thrill of Halloween and its mythology and brings together up and comers and veterans of the horror film world to spin their own twisted yarns concerning the holiday many horror buffs hold so dearly to them. Epic Pictures grants fans a wonderful box set edition that holds all sorts of goodies for them. The best prize of all is “Tales of Halloween,” a movie that pays tribute to everything fun and horrifying about the holiday with ten short tales starring folks like Lin Shaye, and Adrienne Barbeau who unofficially reprises her role of Stevie Wayne as the film’s Halloween DJ who narrates every story. The neat touch to the movie is that every story unfolds within the vicinity of a normal suburban neighborhood on Halloween night.
CarousHELL (2016)
I never would have believed it if I didn’t see it for myself. Director Steve Rudzinski is a man who is not satisfied with creating your typical indie fare, and while his films may be a bit rough around the edges, you’re almost always assured an original film that has a keen sense of what kind of entertainment it wants to be. “CarousHELL” is a movie I, for some reason, assumed was some kind of horror anthology, and boy was I way off. Not prone to just delivering a slasher movie you’ve seen a thousand times, Steve Rudzinski offers up a slasher movie you’ve never seen before. Duke is a sentient carousel unicorn who has spent years and years being ridden on by nasty, smelly, and ungrateful children.