Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Halloween Horror Movie Watch A-Thon Reviews: From Deathgasm to Tales of Halloween

It's almost Halloween and we know you want to stream or download something to see for your Halloween party. So create those Jack-o'-lanterns and munch on candy while watching these recently released films.

This list has been updated

Deathgasm

Rock on my Halloween metal heads. A fun horror indie for the whole...don't share it with the family. An idiotic death metal band summons a demonic lord to their small town. They'll have to stop him or he'll bring Hell on Earth. Most of the town is already possessed and those alive are being killed.

Deathgasm, also the name of the band, is that old trope movie of a kid whose life sucks asking for more through supernatural means. The dirty jokes and blood shed-anal beads as as nun-chucks and dildos for weapons anyone?- make this movie funny while disgusting. We start of with our protagonist having to live with his very Christian family because his Mom was trying to blow a department store Santa, that's only the start of the jokes.

Highly stylized to have a punk feel we were surprised at how professional the film looked coming out from an indie team. Special effects aren't cheap, they're high on making the head rolling real. It's two stupid hours of hi-jinks of demonic damning fun.

Dude Bro Party Massacre III

Hands down, our top choice for your Halloween pleasure. At our early Halloween party our friends came for an evening to enjoy this 80's inspired treatment on the slasher genre where the frat guys are being hunted instead of the frat girls. Don't worry, it's got boobs in it. Sadly, we had to cut the movie short for more Halloween activities and we've been e-mailed on an night to finish it.

This horror comedy comes to us thanks to 5 Second Films, check out our interview with the them here. Makers of comedy on the Internet for years they set out to make a dumb horror movie that would make them pee themselves every time they watched it. They succeeded, piss is everywhere.

There are no previous Dude Bro films, it's just paying homage to the slasher genre  The plot revolves around one of the new pledges to frat trying to find out how he's twin brother was murdered. Mother Face is out to kill him and the rest of his crew in over the top deaths. Though if you look at death tolls the frat has killed more innocent people than the murdered with their pranks.

Fall in love with jokes a minute and some of the great frat friends you'll make with crazy cameos and editing with the style of coming from an old VHS copy that someone copied years ago. Seriously, be a dude bro this Halloween for more laughs with deaths than any other film out.

From the Dark

This vampire movie doesn't suck. A couple gets lost on their way through the woods of Ireland, the car breaks down and then the find someone worse off then them. Sadly, the person worse off is afflicted with a certain disease that has you thirst for blood. With a very small cast this film pulls off the frights with the struggle that the couple faces of keeping themselves well lit. This take on vampirism establishes the rule that all light hurts the undead creeps. Where another film on the list, Hellions, drops this for a uneven nightmare tone, FtD keeps rules in place that helps the audience connect with the struggle of the poor protagonists who just wanted a nice vacation together.

From the Dark captures all the elements that a horror film should and will terrify you until the very end. Perfect for viewing with all the lights off, late at night.

Gravy

The plot revolves around being locked in a Mexican restaurant at a Halloween party...with cannibals. This horror comedy takes a bite out of too much. There's gore when people get eaten. There's games to be played by the unwilling host forced on those stuck in the restaurant. Bad jokes from the cast of party goers who all have played bit parts in TV shows and other films. Then a weird soundtrack, it's like how well the soundtrack for Guardians of the Galaxy was used...was not used in this film. So many songs for every moment.

The oddest part is the tacked on moments with Sarah Silverman-who does almost nothing in the film- and a surprise cameo from the team from USA's Psych. Oh, wait looking up on IMDb, it's from a director and co-writer on Psych. I guess that's why we felt nostalgic for the show while watching it. Too bad the lead actors in it just aren't as good Shawn & Gus.

You can do better for horror comedies.

Hellions

Damn you Hellions' director Bruce McDonald! You had such a great concept with creepy Trick-or-treater children monsters wanting the unborn baby of a teen. Why'd you have to phone in that ending with artsy nightmare garbage? For what could have easily launched a new horror series with horrifying children sized antagonists comes a good horror movie at the start and then becomes you going "What?"

At the start we learn a 17-year-old is pregnant by accident and on a Halloween night supernatural monster children come for her child, they also want her blood to feed it. We follow our female antagonist trying to fend them off in her rural country farm house.

By act two the director either forgot what he was doing or was starting to get into his pile of cocaine as the film breaks down into a nightmare within a nightmare scenario with a cheezy last word from the bad guy ending.

Oh, from all the build up and the lead learning to defend herself  from the the monster children we felt it was ready for a sequel series. Then you start seeing the cracks, already killed monsters come back to life. The film goes all nightmare and hallucinations too much.

You should watch if you want to see one of the best looking horror films-exploding pumpkin fields- that's plot dies somewhere in the middle of the film.

Tales of Halloween

It's hard to hate an anthology film. You're only in a story for a few minutes before the next one. So don't worry, it's watchable. Not my favorite Halloween anthology series, but you have to give credit for all these directors coming together and naming themselves the October Society, so cool.

Ten films all set on Halloween in the same city. Boogeymen to a killer pumpkin horrify you in one go. Some shorts are better than others, to be frank some don't make any sense... cough,  "Ding Dong." Others are just dumb fun, "Friday the 31st" has a supernatural psycho killer running away from a supernatural psycho killer thanks to alien intervention. It's going to be a hard kill for each psycho. Then you have more classic horror story telling like, "Sweet Tooth", about a killer who'll get candy from your belly if you don't leave out some for him.

The best part of the anthology is they all  tie together. Though not in order exactly, you'll see trick-or-treaters and their parents pop-up in each others stories. Though we wish maybe next time-we're sure they'll be a next time-the other stories could influence each other.

The Editor

This film perfectly mimics and makes fun of the classic 70's Italian horror movies that play at any classic horror film festival. Complicated and convoluted plot, check. Badly dubbed, check. Boobs, check. Funky synth tracks, check. I'm amazed Shout! Factory picked it up and not Drafthouse, it's just so damn good as a parody.

The off-kilter crazy plot involves as an editor, Rey Ciso played by Adam Brooks, who lost four of his fingers on his right hand in a horrible accident. Now a psycho killer is killing the cast and crew where Ciso works and everyone is blaming him because the killer is leaving all his victims missing four fingers on their right hand as well. Ciso continues to work an edit a film that keeps losing cast while a lead detective thinks he's doing it and even Ciso starts to question if he's losing his mind.


Couldn't Even Finish

Nightmare on Elm Street 7 aka Wes Craven's New Nightmare-This movie is so meta it has the actors and the director from the first film starring in it and somehow willing Freddy into reality.

Father's Day-Not a fan of Father rape.

Student.Bodies 1981-Like Airplane!, just not funny at all.