[Review] WITNESS INFECTION (2021) SERVES UP A FRESH DISH FROM CINEMATIC LEFTOVERS

Director: Andy Palmer
Writers: Carlos Alazraqui, Jill-Michele Melean (as Jill-Michele Meleán)
Stars: Robert Belushi, Jill-Michele Melean, Vince Donvito, Errin Hayes, Bret Ernst, Monique Coleman

“Always leave one in the head!”

 -- Serrelli Family Motto

“It smells like death in here.”

Witness Infection (2021) is like a delicious repast made from leftovers. While the ingredients are familiar, mobster movies, rom-coms, zombie invasion films, they get mixed together into a unique dish. Occasionally the meal devolves  into an overcooked, tasteless mess by relying on overused stereotypes, this liberally spiced gangster-zombie-romcom is saved by a quick witted, funny script and over-the top gore. There are plenty laughs, thrills and even a little pathos to balance it all out. Some viewers may left hungry  for more substance, over all, it is a fun meal to feast on. 

When Clemenza schools Michael on the art of cooking for 20 in The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola forever linked together Italian families and food in cinema. Director Andy Palmer and co-writers Carlos Alazraqui and Jill-Michele Melean continue that tradition with a skilled cast of veteran comedy actors to create a movie about food, family, and the intestines that tie them together.

BATHED IN BLOOD

A Legacy of Brutality

Many fans of the horror genre are curious about the bizarre, the violent, and above all, the bloody and frightening. The prospect of a journey into the abject, that terrifying place where there are no boundaries and everything is hostile and alien, is an irresistible draw to us.   History is one of many resources available to help satisfy that curiosity.  Its frightful stories of monstrous men and women captivate our imaginations. One such pair who have left an indelible mark on public consciousness appeared in Eastern Europe along the bridge of the 15th and 16th centuries and their impact is strongly felt today!

[REVIEW] LUCKY (2020): A DARK AND HORRIFYING REFLECTION OF OUR OWN WORLD

 LUCKY (2020)

Director: Natasha Kermani
Writer: Brea Grant 
Stars: Brea Grant, Hunter C. Smith, Kausar Mohammed, Dhruv Uday Singh, Yasmine Al-Bustami

“ I am not lucky I just work really really hard”

The Brea Grant Appreciation Society will come to order

People who are obsessed with horror movies are also obsessed with the people that make them. Many horror fans keep lists of favorite personalities such as Stephen King,  John Carpenter and George Romero to name a few. After watching the excellent 12 Hour Shift, I added the name Brea Grant to my list. Ms Grant is a thought-provoking writer and innovative director. In addition to writing and directing, she is also an exceptional actress, having appeared in several notable films and TV series. The year 2021 is starting out to be a big year for her as well. March of this year will feature the release of two new projects that she has been intimately involved with; she stars in Jill Gevargizian’s The Stylist, and she wrote and starred in director Natasha Kermani’s Lucky (2020).

[REVIEW]FRIG YOU, GOLDEN GLOBES! IT’S PSYCHO GOREMAN (2020)

PSYCHO GOREMAN

Director: Steven Kostanski
Writer: Steven Kostanski
Stars: Steven Vlahos, Matthew Ninaber, Kristen MacCulloch, Nita-Josee Hanna, Owen Myre, Alexis Kara Hancey, Timothy Paul McCarthy

Psycho Goreman: The horrors you have just witnessed cannot be unseen. Your young minds will carry this until it consumes you in a miserable death.
Mimi: Cool.

On February 3rd, 2021, the Hollywood Foreign Press announced their nominees for the 78th Golden Globe awards, to spotlight excellence in film and television. I would like to address what I consider to be a grievous error of omission on their part. Their failure to nominate Stephen Kostanski’s Psycho Goreman (2020) as Best Intergalactic Feature is an unbelievable oversight and needs to be addressed!

[REVIEW] 'HUNTER HUNTER' GOES AFTER THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME

 Starring: Camille Sullivan, Summer H. Howell, Devon Sawa, Nick Stahl
Director: Shawn Linden
Writer: Shawn Linden

“We bring our problems to them, they bring their problems to us.” - Joseph

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THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION

Shawn Linden's (The Good Lie) third film, Hunter Hunter (2020) presents the viewer with a complex roadmap to navigate towards a shocking conclusion which firmly places it in the subgenre of Canuxploitation.  Linden takes his time to flense the skin and fat from his story to expose the bones and sinew before laying out the beating heart of  his thriller. The main characters, the Mersault family,  journey through many types of conflicts which drive the rising action and leads to a shocking climax and bloody resolution.

 

The Mersault family struggles with many different types of conflict as they live in their chosen setting, a cabin deep in the woods with minimal human contact. Joseph (Devon Sawa, Final Destination, Idle Hands), Anne (Camille Sullivan, A Dog's Way Home), and their tweener daughter, Renee (Summer H. Howell, Cult of Chucky), live off the grid. They make a simple, bare bones life as hunters and trappers. Their primitive existence is initially upset the return of a wolf that eats their traps the discovery that there is not enough money to buy supplies for the coming winter.

 

Revisiting The Dunwich Horror

Child of Dunwich rise
You have your fathers’ eyes
Child of Dunwich rise
End the world that you despise
     -Electric Wizard, “Dunwich,” Witchcult Today

Return to Dunwich

One of the most looked-forward-to horror movies of 2020 was Richard Stanley’s Color Out of Space. It was Stanley’s return to directing after 1992’s Dust Devil. There was much excitement about what the talented filmmaker would do with a work based on one of horror’s most beloved, and problematic authors–Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Upon release, the movie quickly was lauded as one of the year’s best movies. The reasons for its success are many, but Stanley’s unique envisioning of the story and his reverence for the source material were among the largest. Not surprisingly, the moviegoing public is anxiously expecting what he will do next.

Early in 2020, Stanley announced plans to make a Lovecraft trilogy. He had begun writing a script for The Dunwich Horror, based on Lovecraft’s story, first published in Weird Tales magazine in April 1929. This was exciting news for me because watching Daniel Haller’s The Dunwich Horror (1970) on late night television was my introduction to Lovecraft’s eldritch New England with its caches of forbidden knowledge, occult practitioners, and transdimensional monsters. I had been thinking about watching it again and now had a reason. With a new version coming soon, it was time to revisit spooky, aged Dunwich, Massachusetts to refresh myself on what devilry the Whateley clan did to earn their place in the hallowed halls of horror.

2020 YEAR END REVIEW

La Llorona

Holy shitballs has 2020 been a wild ride! But I believe we all learned a lot this year. Sadly, most of that probably falls under the “Good to Know” category rather than the “Good News” category. Who knew we would all end the year with Christmas lists that include day pajamas? Or be faced with the unsettling discovery that behind the burled, polished hardwood exterior of our system of checks and balances is the maggot laden, decomposing, hungry-for-your-brain zombie of despotism? Or just how easily many of our nation’s most beloved ideals could be subverted and perverted, used to attack the very principles they were established to protect?
But lets talk about the movies. Here is my first ever end of the year wrap up of favorite films from the last few years. I made an effort to concentrate on movies that I haven’t written about previously because everyone already knows that Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria is my favorite film. No, I mean Mandy, or was that Midsommer? Or…

I have been using the tools at Trakt to record what I watch and rate. My profile (please feel free to follow me!) is here: https://trakt.tv/users/mcubed1220

[LISTS] SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020 SIXTH AND FINAL EDITION

 

David Kajganich, screenwriter of Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria spoke on The Gaylords of Darkness Podcast about there being two kinds of horror: Rigorous and less rigorous horror. To me, that defines the movies I watch once or twice and forget about and the ones that I rewatch many times because they offer plenty to ponder. For this edition, I mixed in some less rigorous films and reveled in their easy-going charms!

[LISTS] SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020 FIFTH EDITION

Dear Past-Mike,

So much has happened in the world since you wrote to me in mid-September! Suffice it to say that life is still overwhelming, and our limbic systems are overburdened. The effects of long-term exposure to stress can lead to real changes in brain functionality and behavior. People can exhibit bizarre behavior and may become more susceptible to addiction and depression. Lucky for us, we have been dealing with those issues successfully for quite a while!

SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020 FOURTH EDITION, A ROUGH TRANSITION TO THE MODERN ERA

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This week’s edition of Shocktoberfest 2020 is about old world horrors under the modern world’s electric lights. A Bay of Blood, which I wrote about last week, is an apt milestone to delineate between the dignified, gloomy gothic horror films set in the past and the newer, present-day, violent, and gory horror films that began to push them aside. Viewers began to lose interest in watching movies set in the previous century and began to crave movies set in a more familiar world – the one they were living in now.