It Came From Mill Creek

The ABCs of Death is a horror anthology film consisting of 26 stories of, you guessed it, death, each corresponding with a letter of the alphabet. If you’ve seen any horror anthologies before, you know that each individual chapter can vary wildly in quality, and nowhere is this better exemplified than in The ABCs of Death. Each segment was written and directed by completely different people, and based on the absurdity of some of them, they all seem to have been given little to no guidelines. Some are legitimately scary, some are just plain awful, and some are downright strange. The segment “Q is for Quack” shows the two real life filmmakers Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett lamenting over the fact that they were stuck with the letter Q, and they also mention that they had been given a budget of $5,000. If we assume that they were telling the truth, and that all of the directors were given the same budget, then some of the chapters are very impressive, while others have a lot of exp...

             My Mom’s a Werewolf is an absolutely awesome horror comedy (leaning more on comedy) from 1989 that’s about, well, basically what the title says. It tells the story of teenage Jennifer, whose mother, during an extramarital affair, is bitten by a werewolf, and Jennifer’s struggle to cure her. Well, at least, ideally. A good chunk of the movie is dedicated to the mom slowly turning into a werewolf and being all confused and embarrassed. Those parts are pretty gosh dang boring, but I think the rest of the film more than makes up for it. This is absolutely one of my favorite B movies; it definitely lands above Snowbeast (1977) on the Wolfman-Wongo scale. It’s just so campy and full of really weird scenes, I can’t help but love it. Literally my only complaint about the movie is there’s too much time devoted to the mom’s transformation, that’s it, everything else is perfect. Since I enjoy this movie so much, I don’t re...

Beyond the Gates is a B movie from 2016. It tells the story of two estranged brothers, John and Gordon, whose father has been missing for several months and is presumed dead. They meet up to clean out their dad’s old VHS rental store, and they discover the last tape their father ever watched: A VCR game called Beyond the Gates (roll credits). They take it home and play it, along with Gordon’s girlfriend, Margot, and soon begin to discover the game’s deadly consequences.     When I watched this movie, I did not intend to write about it, but I feel like I need to talk about it. This movie represents a lot of missed opportunities and lost potential for me. The acting is good, the writing is pretty solid, the effects are awesome, especially considering the budget (only $300,000!), and the score is absolutely incredible, but onto the bad stuff. The pacing is not very good. The trio doesn't start playing the game until, like, halfway through the movie, and they don't actu...

     Night Fright , not to be confused with actual good movie Fright Night , tells the story of the aftermath of a government experiment to test the effects of cosmic rays on animals by sending a bunch into space. The rocket crash lands back on earth, unleashing a giant evil monster that roams around in the woods killing people. It's basically like a bad horror movie version of the Fantastic Four. We follow the local sheriff as he hunts down the murderous creature and eventually kills it by blowing it up with a landmine. Now that you know the basic gist of things, let's dig into this pile of cinematic garbage.      One of the biggest issues with Night Fright is really no fault of the movie's, it's that the audio quality is terrible and the picture is ten times worse. I can't really blame them, given the time and budget, but it does definitely hurt the overall enjoyment of the film from a modern perspective. Another big problem is something that's...

    Two days ago, Netflix surprised all of us with the announcement that it would be releasing the third Cloverfield movie, The Cloverfield Paradox, later that night after the Super Bowl. That's right, the movie was released the same day it officially got a title. The release was definitely strange, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. I got around to watching it last night, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite being a big fan of the other Cloverfield movies, I went into this movie knowing virtually nothing about it, aside from the very basic plot summary provided by Netflix and what I could take away from the teaser. I found the story compelling, the characters likeable, thanks to some great performances, and that did a great job connecting and explaining some of the events from Cloverfield. Basically, I liked it a lot, and I was very, very surprised when I found that I was in quite the minority with that opinion.     The film i...

In my previous post about the 1977 film Snowbeast, I mentioned the Wolfman/Wongo scale. You probably had no idea what that was, if you read it, and for good reason, because I conceived it while writing that review. Basically, the Wolfman/Wongo scale is just a simple tool to convey how good a B movie is, for B movie standards. The Wild Women of Wongo, is the worst movie I’ve ever seen, B movie or otherwise. I’ve never finished watching it because it was so bad, a feat only accomplished by two movies*. Maybe someday I’ll finish it and then talk about it, but don’t hold your breath. So, If a movie is really bad, as in, not entertaining, even for a B movie, it’s on the Wongo side of the scale. If it’s good, for a B movie, it’s on the Wolfman side, referring to Universal Picture’s 1941 classic, The Wolfman. Now, The Wolfman is in no way a B movie, I only chose it because A. It’s really good, B. It fits the theme of the movies that I talk about here (Monster movies) and C. It...