As a dark comedy of heavy-handed and trashy entertainment, this Christmas horror movie may make you wonder if some of its laughs are intentional or a bit off the rocker. You’ll see buckets of blood, along with bellies full of laughter.
Filmed on location in South Lake Tahoe for just 13 days, the low-budget production comes through with a talented cast that’s stiff and nightmarish.
Written and directed by Sean Nichols, Red Snow follows Olivia Romo, played by Dennice Cisneros, as a struggling vampire romance novelist holed up in South Lake Tahoe. Here, she’s forced to defend herself against real-life vampires during the holidays.
It all starts with an injured bat named Luke, played by Nico Bellamy, who becomes a handsome vampire after slamming into her living room window.
Unbeknownst to Olivia, she takes pity on the wounded animal and places it in her garage. She nurses the bat a bit, and the next day, the little creature transforms into a real-life Edward, a full-size vampire.
Olivia knows when opportunity knocks, so she makes a deal with Luke. Read her unpublished manuscript, and he can stay a few days in the garage to heal from an unpleasant wooden stake injury. She keeps him satisfied with microwaved pig blood in a mug. In return, he gives his feedback on the manuscript.
Luke is your typical vampire, but he takes a liking to Olivia. Their relationship barely flourishes when Olivia’s suspicion of Luke’s true intentions surfaces as his deadly past catches up with him.
The humor takes hold with a rather odd private detective, played by Vernon Wells, who acts more like a voyeur, spying on her and rummaging through her garage.
The evenings become sinister with pale figures dressed in black visiting the cabin, who turn out to be Luke’s vampire friends, played by Laura Kennon and Alan Silva. They want Luke to return to their brood, of course, after they help themselves to the blood of Olivia.
More romance and less terror, sticking with the Edward and Bella theme, might have saved the movie in the long run.
Thank you, The Guardian, for the information about the movie.
Directed by Terence Young, Corridor of Mirrors is a 1948 film based on a book by Chris Massie. It appears Massie may be best known for his novel “Pity My Simplicity,” which was also adapted into a 1945 movie, Love Letters, starring Jennifer Jones.
Corridor of Mirrors is Young’s directorial debut. He’s best known for kicking off the James Bond franchise by directing the first two Bond movies, Dr. No and From Russia with Love. His last Bond movie was Thunderball. Additionally, he directed Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin and Richard Crenna in Wait Until Dark.
Edana Romney and Rudolph Cartier adapted Massie’s book for the screen. The script was a vehicle to showcase Romney’s talent and launch her career, which never took off, though she spent her later years writing a screenplay about the life of Richard Burton.
On the other hand, Eric Portman as Paul Mangin is impressive. His movie credits include A Canterbury Tales, The Golden Mask and The Bedford Incident. If you’re a Prisoner fan, he played Number Two.
With Young’s gothic horror, romantic melodrama and film noir, the movie held my attention despite the weak storyline. In fact, the remastered quality of the Cohen Film Collection’s Blu-ray makes the cinematic images fascinating. Watching Young’s camera work with low then high angles that include the striking contrast of the cinematography of Andre Thomas was a marvel.
The story follows Mangin as a contemporary artist obsessed with the Renaissance lifestyle and art. He wears clothes from the era and rides around in a hansom cab. He meets the stunning Mifanwy, and they become lovers. Even though she is married, Mangin becomes possessed with the idea that the two of them are past life lovers from the Renaissance. In their past life, they were married, but the relationship ended tragically. Mifanwy is mesmerized into thinking his fantasy is accurate, and she goes behind the corridor of mirrors in his mansion, where the fantasy begins. She dresses up in Renaissance gowns made by Mangin.
The fundamental problem with this movie is visualizing spiritual connections because such an occurrence is invisible to the naked eye. Though Young uses mirrors, angles and melodrama to help, it’s a challenging subject to film. Kenneth Branagh mastered it in his 1991 Dead Again with a clever twist at the end. As a matter of fact, Albert Lewin tried an earlier film in 1950 withPandora and the Flying Dutchman, which bettered Corridor of Mirrors.
The movie is worth seeing for those who’d like to see a suspense thriller that borderlines horror. Note that this movie is Christopher Lee’s film debut, playing Charles.
Thank you, Blu-ray Down Low, IMDB and Theater Byte, Good Reads, for providing information.
Written and directed by Nicholas Winter, A Dark Path follows sisters Abi and Lily on their way home from a party in eastern Europe. They get lost. With no signal and an unreliable GPS, they try to navigate their way out using road signs. Their front tire suddenly blows out along a narrow road through a deep forest.
They find themselves completely cut off from the outside world with no spare tire or cell service. Soon they discover that this is no ordinary forest. They understand why no cars come here because the locals know what lives in the woods. They’ve woken it, and there is nowhere to run.
The movie lacks a lot of essential elements. All the reviews I saw were negative.
I used to volunteer a lot of my time for the Citizen Commission on Human Rights, documenting, exposing, and disseminating psychiatric abuse. Today, I still volunteer, though not as much. Therefore, I feel qualified to say Killer Therapy into the making of a psycho killer.
Co-written and directed by Barry Jay, Killer Therapy follows a young man named Brain, played skillfully by Jonathan Taylor, who looks for help in his therapists, because he has issues with his father, mother, and adopted sister.
His life becomes lost in the mental health system, bouncing around from therapist after therapist, growing up into a young man, also played skillfully by Skyler Caleb, who is worse off than when he started going to the therapists. He still has anger issues, but it’s all twisted and confused from his psychotherapy.
When his life eventually hits rock bottom and falls apart, he correctly blames his therapists, embarking on the dark revenge of everyone who ever wronged him.
One-by-one, he kills his former therapists, then finally he comes to terms with the fact that that system doesn’t work, and he must accept his shortcomings by helping himself get better.
Killer Therapy is a horror, slasher movie, but not like the usual. Here you get the killers backstory, finding out that his therapists contributed to the making of a psycho slasher. It’s driven but a disjointed view that offers insight into the importance of reforming the mental health system.
The rest of the cast includes Elizabeth Keener, Thom Mathews, PJ Soles, Adrienne King, Daeg Faerch, Javon Johnson, and Ivy George.
Here is the only clip available, interviews with the actors and director.
Written and directed by Padraig Reynolds, Open 24 Hours follows a paranoid delusional woman, Mary White, played by Vanessa Grasse. Recently released from a mental hospital, the poor woman was smart enough to get out of that place. Making matters worse, she sets her serial killer boyfriend on fire.
Because of the abuse of the mental hospital, Mary suffers from severe paranoia and hallucinations. Her boyfriend, James Lincoln Fields, played by Cole Vigue, is a brutal serial killer known as The Rain Ripper. He enjoyed murdering people and making Mary watch.
The moment after being released from the hospital, Mary’s vulnerable demeanor aids her in obtaining employment at an all-night gas station. However, left alone to her own devices, her paranoia and hallucinations return with furious consequences. This is where the most gruesome images play out on film.
If you are into horrific stuff like hammering heads and such, then these things take a gruesome turn when customers and friends suddenly start turning up dead and mutilated all around her. It a tough movie to watch and enjoy.
Reynold’s inspiration for this movie came to him while filming Rites of Spring in Mississippi. “We were scouting locations for the movie and came across this time-worn Gas Station on a lonely rural road. This gas station was a character in itself, and I knew that it would make a great self-contained horror movie.”
The idea would not leave his mind, “I went back to my hotel room and began writing the script. I knew I wanted a strong female protagonist to be as lonely as our main location. Mary is a damaged doll in a thrift store dress. She is desperately trying to put her life back together after years of abuse from her serial killer boyfriend who made her watch while killing people. She gets a job and feels that her haunted past is finally behind her. But on a cold rainy night, the past returns with a vengeance.”
The rest of the cast includes Brendan Fletcher as Bobby, Emily Tennant as Debbie and Daniel O’Meara as Tom Doogan.
Kino Classics released some extraordinary German classic films from the silent era during the 1920s. Each one is available on Blu-ray or DVD. Presented in restorations by F. W. Murnau-Stiftung, I found each movie stunning and mesmerizing.
The films restored are The Great Leap (1927), directed by Arnold Fanck and starring Leni Riefenstahl, Paul Wegener’s The Golem (1920), G. W. Pabst’s The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927), and F. W. Murnau’s Tartuffe (1925), starring Emil Jannings.
The Great Leap (1927)
I first watchedThe Great Leap, which features an audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan. The movie stars Leni Riefenstahl, who is infamous as the great documentarian of Hitler. Before all that, she was foremost an actress, and she is good in this movie. It’s super funny. Apparently, Riefenstahl was a popular actress who starred in several mountain movies directed by Arnold Fanck. They included The Holy Mountain (Der heilige Berg, 1926) and The White Hell of Pitz Palu (Die weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü, 1929) as dramas of romance and survival.
The Great Leap suggests was something different as a playful romantic comedy set high atop the Dolomites. Riefenstahl plays an Italian peasant whose simple life is upended when a series of urbanites invade the slopes for a ski vacation. This bubbly comedy (featuring Riefenstahl’s usual on-screen love interest, Luis Trenker) combines slapstick laughs with stunning footage of acrobatic skiing and rock climbing, making it perhaps the most entertaining but unique movie out of all the German mountain films.
The Golem (1920)
Then I watched The Golem that contains both a 4K restoration of the German release version with three musical scores by Stephen Horne, Admir Shkurtaj, and Lukasz “Wudec” Poleszak, including U.S. release version with music by Cordula Heth. A feature comes with a comparison between the German and U.S. versions, and audio commentary by film historian Tim Lucas.
Hypothetically acknowledged as the source of the Frankenstein myth, the ancient Hebrew legend of the Golem provided actor and director Paul Wegener with the substance for an intriguing and adventure movie. Suffering under the tyrannical rule of Rudolf II in 16th-century Prague, a Talmudic rabbi, played by Albert Steinruck, creates a giant warrior, played by Wegener to protect the safety of his people. When the rabbi’s assistant, played by Ernst Deutsch, takes control of the Golem and attempts to use him for selfish gain, the lumbering monster runs rampant, abducting the rabbi’s daughter, played by Lyda Salmonova, and setting fire to the ghetto. The special effects for this time are impressive, creating the creation sequence with a dazzling blend of religion, sorcery, and the grand-scale destruction toward the end of the movie. The Golem was apparently an outstanding achievement from the legendary UFA Studios and remains an undeniable landmark in the horror’s evolution film.
The Love of Jeanne Ney came next and presents both the restored German release version with music arranged and orchestrated by Bernd Thewes, and the U.S. release version with music by Andrew Earle Simpson. It includes audio commentary by film historian Eddy Von Mueller.
The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927)
An epic of the Weimar cinema (Cinema of Germany), The Love of Jeanne Ney follows a young French woman’s struggle for happiness amid the political turbulence and corruption of post-World War I Europe. Directed by G. W. Pabst, who also directed Diary of a Lost Girl, Pandora’s Box, the film blends a variety of cinematic approaches as it weaves its complex narrative of moral chaos and political upheaval. Consider the use of the “American Style,” evocative of the Hollywood studio blockbuster; the avant-garde techniques of Soviet montage; and the eerie moving camerawork and shadowy perspectives are typical of German Expressionism. The result is a stunning cinematic experiment that never failed to surprise me with fast sequences that end with an exhilarating conclusion.
Tartuffe (1925)
Tartuffe includes both the German release version with a new score by Robert Israel and the U.S. release version with music by Giuseppe Becce, adapted by Javier Perez de Azpeita.
Tartuffe (1925)
Considered one of the most gifted visual storytellers during the German silent era, F. W. Murnau crafted works of great subtlety and emotional complexity through his absolute command of the cinematic medium. Known for such dazzling films as Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924), Faust (1926), and Sunrise (1927), Murnau draws toward more intimate dramas exploring the dark corners of the human mind.
I had a prime interest in seeing Tartuffe, where Murnau Moliére’s fable of religious hypocrisy to the screen. The story follows a faithful wife, played by Lil Dagover. She tries to convince her husband, played by Werner Krauss, that their morally superior guest, Tartuffe, played by Emil Jannings, is in fact a lecherous hypocrite with a taste for the grape. Twisting the story to heighten the contemporary relevance, Murnau frames Moliére’s tale with a modern-day plot concerning a housekeeper’s stealthy efforts to poison her elderly master and take control of his estate.
The sci-fi and psychological thriller follows a mother and her son, who is affected by a genetically engineered plant. The red-flowered plant mysteriously shares its scent while the story twists and turns until the end.
Directed by Jessica Hausner, Little Joe follows Alice, played by Emily Beecham, who won the Best Actress award at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. Alice is a single mother and dedicated senior plant breeder at a corporation engaged in developing new species of plants. She engineered a unique crimson flower, remarkable not only for its beauty but also for its therapeutic value. If kept at the ideal temperature, appropriately fed and spoken to regularly, this plant makes its owner happy. The story gets interesting when Alice goes against company policy and takes one home as a gift for her teenage son, Joe, played by Kit Conner. They christen it “Little Joe.” But as their plant grows, so too does Alice’s suspicion that her new creation may not be as harmless as its nickname suggests.
Don’t believe this mumbo-jumbo, but it explains how the plant influences people.
Hausner states, “In this sense, Little Joe is a parable about what is strange within ourselves. This becomes tangible in the film by means of a plant, which is apparently capable of changing people. As a result of this change something unfamiliar emerges, and something believed to be secure is lost — the bond between two people.”
The plant traumatizes those it pollinates with foreboding, austere colors and energetic drums and strings as a soundtrack. Throughout, you sense an awkward interpersonal relationship. It comes across in Alice’s contact with her colleague Chris, played by Ben Whishaw, who is devious and calculating while he tries to romance her. Having Whishaw play against type is ominous since we’re familiar with him as Q in the James Bond franchise and Mary Poppins Returns as the amicable father and brother. Chris courts Alice, demonstrated by uneasy offers for an after-work drink, then faltering struggles at kisses. Still, the red plant remains in the background, adversely affecting Chris’s ordinarily friendly and playful dog, bringing more tension to the story and jolting me out of my seat.
As a parallel, we watch human Joe begin his first romantic relationship with his first girlfriend, Selma, played by Jessie Mae Alonzo, another source of anxiety. Alice realizes her little boy is becoming a young man and more of his person, spending less time with her. It’s a sad moment for Alice, but something more profound is happening, and she discounts it. Perhaps she shouldn’t, giving the message to parents that they need to connect to their kids.
Hausner associates the film as more abstract and artificial than real life, even though scenes occur in greenhouses, laboratories, and real locations. Shot with mint green and white with the red flower. “We chose these almost childish colors to give the film the characteristics of a fairy-tale or fable.”
The movie sounds simple but is more complicated, and the story is driven as a psychological thriller about a plant that undermines a young boy’s life.
“Every working mother is familiar with being asked the question, which is often led with accusation: ‘So, who looks after your child when you go to work?’ Little Joe is about a mother who is tormented by her bad conscience when she goes to work and ‘neglects’ her child. A mother whose feelings are ambivalent because the plant is Alice’s other child: her work, her creation, the product of her labor. And she doesn’t want to neglect this child either or lose it. But which of her children will Alice choose in the end?” explains Hausner.
Written and directed by Travis Stevens, Girl on the Third Floor stars WWE legend Phil “C.M. Punk” Brooks and Trieste Kelly Dunn with a promotional campaign asking “Where the hell is the Girl on the Third Floor?” It appears the movie did quite well during its theatrical release, so horror being horror, you need to prepare yourself for what’s lurking on the third floor of this house.
The movie has the traditional formula for a haunted house, including rotting walls, bursting pipes, and unidentifiable, gross slime. Even WWE legend, playing Don Koch, couldn’t handle it, he does an excellent job of make-believing he’s in hell with the girl on the third floor.
It all starts with he convinces his wife, Liz, played by Dunn that he wants to remodel their new Victorian home himself.
Like any DYI, he instantly is way over his head, exasperatedly stress out to the max, and fascinated by his old vulnerabilities. Don realizes that the house has its own sinisterly wicked, sordid past and won’t be so easy to renovate after all, which makes for a fascinating watch.
The excellent cast rounds out well with Sarah Brooks, Elissa Dowling, and Travis Delgado.
I will say the movie is slow, and the storyline does not hold firm to the idea of the story. The potential is there, and it fell flat, and perhaps if the cinematography improved, and production design got behind the movie with a better script, the overall quality would have been worth the watch.
It’s a fun horror movie with lots of blood and gore.
Cameron Macgowan wrote and directed Red Letter Day, which is a rambunctious horror-comedy. A recently divorced mother, played by Dawn Van de Schoot, adjusts to a new life in a quiet suburban community. Her two teens, played by Hailey Foss and Kaeleb Zain Gartner, receive mysterious red letters instructing them each to kill or get killed.
The bloodshed begins, and the family finds themselves in a chase against time to defend the people they love from the ones they assumed they knew.
The movie world premiered at the renowned Cinequest Film Festival. It played at other horror fests, including Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, L.A.’s Screamfest, FrightFest London, and both Sydney Underground and Calgary Underground Film Festivals.
The movie is Macgown’s feature directorial debut. His previous work won awards and received critical acclaim worldwide for international film fests, including Fantasia, SXSW, and the Toronto International Film Festival.
The neighborhood nightmare flows well, and the acting is believable, with Schoot carrying the overall story well. The movie is low-budget, but it’s a funny, independent horror movie. I recommend it to diehard horror fans because they have a soft spot in their hearts for films like The Red Letter. Honestly, the special effects were impressive and convincing while entertaining the 75-minute runtime.
Some supporting performances were limited, but I liked the family dynamic, with Schoot strengthening the story. The story held itself with standard horror effects with vats of blood and gore — not a terrible option. The third act is intense, with a clever ending that pays off. I compare it to Stranger Things and Get Out.
The rest of the cast includes Tiffany Helm, Roger LeBlanc, and Peter Strand Rumpel.
The Blu-ray is available, including features such as an audio commentary with the executive producer, director, and cinematographer. The exclusive featurettes Suburban Skirmish—The Making of Red Letter Day and Her Eyes—My Dance through the movies with Actor Tiffany Helm.
Reviewing a movie that is confusing is a painful task because I find it hard to describe the overall premise of the story. I hope I convey what goes on in the movie.
Written and directed by Tom Botchii Skowronski, Artik takes the horror genre and twists its meaning by add undertones of thrilling situations in dark reds, yellows, and oranges. The storytelling twists and turns into a train wreck of unclear and murky chaos. A comic book fanatic serial killer, Artik, played by Jerry G. Angelo, teaches his son, played by Chase Williamson, and other children on the farm the secret to getting away with serial killing.
A series of brutal murders continue until the boy befriends an enigmatic man, played by Matt Mercer, who warns he will expose everything.
The undertones create a complicated story that is hard to absorb while it lingers in your mind days after seeing the movie. Artik is a sick, horrific character who uses his son Holton to suit his own macabre. Holton becomes an inadvertent allies young Adam, played by Gavin White. Adam is a neglected and abused boy, heading down a diabolical, dark path, which makes him easy pickings for Artik.
The unlikely friendship sets off a precarious circumstance after circumstance, one after the other, which will leave your jaw hanging more than once on the floor. Adam’s mother, Flin Brays, played by Lauren Ashley Carter, joins Artik and interacts with Adam. The undertones, again, come into play with neither Flin or Artik being honest with Adam.
The audience experiences a couple of sucker punches at the beginning. They are meant to fool the audience. The deception is sufficient for the development of the story. A few points in the movie leave one to assume they know what is going on in the story, but the situations don’t make sense.
Watching Artik is like watching a long, crazy disaster happening, though the movie is 77 minutes long. I asked myself several times, “Why am I watching this?”
It’s horrifying, disturbing, and gruesome, yet the story pulls at you to watch and discover how the insanity resolves.
The story doesn’t make sense, but exploring the argument that serial killers are born, not made by their environment, is one of the undertones that never delivers the answer. The movie is complex because there are many children in the movie. It is hard to recognize their son from the children.
Risking both his mental and physical well being, Holton’s investigation into what happened to his Al-Anon sponsor leaves behind a trail of blood and violence. With relentlessly growing intensity, Artik heads for a destructive, action-filled showdown.
Skowronski says the story is about growth wrapped inside a “genre sealed envelope.” “The character of Artik is based around my dad, who passed away three years ago. While the character of Holton is based around an ex-girlfriend, drawing from within is where the film’s tagline comes from, and I really hope it helps everyone out there turn the negatives in their life into motivation.”
He wanted to create a dynamic that pushes a straight edge character, that is entirely drug-free. “It’s been commonplace with film characters being developed around the idea that there is a cool factor behind drugs and alcohol, and I wanted to present the opposite. I’ve never seen it in film before, and I’m tired of seeing the same types of characters. Not drinking takes lots of balls, and the Holton character explores that a lot.”
