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Ghost hunter Reese (Jon Callaway) and his girlfriend and assistant, Kat (Abi Casson Thompson), visit a family being haunted by a ghost they dub "The Candy Witch". What we find out about the ghost, however, makes us wonder who the real bad guy is here. This low-budget flick from 2020 packs a whole lot of a lot of stuff we have seen in a lot of other movies. Needless to say, if you are coming into this anticipating something original, you won't find that here. The witch/ghost herself (Kate Lush) looks like what you would find in a medium-priced haunted house attraction.
See?
Cheap makeup aside, there is an impressive amount of gore and bloodshed in this movie, and when they bypass the even cheaper looking CGI, it's fairly impressive. The acting is what you would likely expect from a movie of this magnitude--nothing great, nothing horrible. The kills include the Candy Witch using items such as a candy cane and, my favorite, cookie cutter, so there's some sort of Christmas thing kind of going on here too. This all leads us to an ending that is abrupt and, much like the rest of the movie, forgettable.
It's Halloween Night in the 'burbs, and there's madness around every corner. Adrienne Barbeau seemingly reprises her DJ role from The Fog, and she's with us for this ride, introducing many of the stories we are about to see. Ten segments make up this 2015 horror anthology, so let's get right into it.
Sweet Tooth
Our first story shows a couple teens picking on a kid, letting him know that if he doesn't leave some of his candy for local legend Sweet Tooth, the creature will seek revenge.
"Make it a full-sized Snickers"
We get a ton of gore to start us off, and a fairly interesting story to boot. The acting is shaky (that's being nice), and the flashback scene is more irritating than anything. Still, this was a solid start to the film, and it left me wondering how Sweet Tooth would do as a standalone feature film.
The Night Billy Raised Hell
Mr. Abbadon (Barry Bostwick from The Rocky Horror Picture Show) catches young Billy in the act of egging his house. He brings Billy into the house, and takes another youngster in the same outfit for a night of terror around the neighborhood.
Looking for their next victims
This one is heavy on the comedy, but unfortunately, isn't really funny. It's not particularly scary either, but sort of redeems itself with a little twist ending. The one thing that stands out about this entry is the lighting--it's fantastic.
Trick
Four adults are terrorized when a group of kids invade their home. This outing starts off slowly, as we are briefly introduced to the adults--this is just long enough to find them uninteresting, and slightly annoying, but that is strangely the point (it makes sense, trust me). Why are the kids doing this?
The why is just out of the shot here
If The Night Billy Raised Hell took the foot off the gas for this movie, Trick pressed it back down. The segment is vicious, gory, and has a fantastic twist at the end.
The Weak and the Wicked
A boy dressed in a home-made superhero outfit and sporting a stopwatch stops three bullies from torturing a young boy, telling them he is there to "spill the blood of the wicked". When confronted by the bullies, our hero gets scared and runs away. Is he running out of fear, or for another reason?
Tick tock
Once the bullies catch up with the fleeing fella, we get a flashback scene, and learn who these four people are--to say they have a history, and that the Viking-helmeted hero has a very good reason for seeking revenge, is an understatement. The ending of this story is bloody and terrific. This was probably my favorite segment in this movie.
Grim Grinning Ghost
An older lady (Lin Shaye of the Insidious franchise) tells the story of Mary Bailey, a girl who was made fun of her entire life for having a deformed face. The story goes she comes back from the dead to laugh at the living behind their backs. The lady's daughter gets creeped out, and when she has to walk home after her car breaks down, she thinks she is hearing laughter, sending her into a near-panic.
As if this walk wasn't scary enough
This segment will leave you feeling a little on edge, as the tension is built quickly. The payoff is one you will see coming, and will miss if you blink it, but is one that is satisfying. The real question is how long will it be before Disney finds out about the title of the segment and puts together a lawsuit?
Ding Dong
A woman is distraught about not having children, making Halloween a night of misery for her. She turns into a demonic looking witch, and unleashes the fury on her poor husband, clawing his face. A year later, on Halloween Night, they are dressed as Hansel and the witch from Hansel and Gretel, and excited to be handing out candy. Side note: as I watched this, I was trying to figure out who the actress is. It turns out she's Pollyanna McIntosh, known as Jadis to fans of The Walking Dead.
What did you do with Rick?!!
The approach of this segment is almost exclusively that of comedy, so don't look for any scares here. This story is not really funny, but certainly very quirky, and entertaining enough that you will keep watching.
This Means War
A traditional Halloween fan is dismayed when new, loud neighbors (including James Duval) decorate their yard with gory effects and loud, heavy metal music. The man gets furious over the loud music, and the battle is on!
John the Mod goes metal!
I don't know why the guy was so upset--while certainly no fan of most metal, I would happily take that over the "music" my neighbors feel the need to share with the rest of the neighborhood. This is another segment that forgoes any bit of horror for a straight comedic approach, but there's really not much to it. The eventual fight is uninspired, and the finale is not unexpected. There is a dude in the crowd who looks like The Blue Meanie though, so there's that.
Friday the 31st
This one starts off with a woman running from a deformed guy (or a regular looking guy in a cheap mask...whichever) carrying a severed head. She ends up in his shed, where she finds he has a collection of heads. She escapes, only to be killed when he tosses a spear about thirty yards and directly through her. This obvious nod to slasher films then takes an unexpected turn when a U.F.O. flies over, and out of it appears a small alien looking to do some trick or treating.
Seriously
What starts off as a horror approach takes a quick turn to comedy when the little green guy shows up, and stays there until the end. It actually produced a moment, soon after the alien crawled into the woman's mouth, that made me laugh loudly, but it went south quickly from there. The segment ends with a showdown that reminded me of Freddy vs Jason, or a Monty Python bit. This segment started strong, but unfortunately, fell apart.
The Ransom of Rusty Rex
Two crooks decide to kidnap the child of a millionaire. Once they have him and remove his Halloween mask, however, they realize they have picked up more than they bargained for. For some reason, when I saw the reveal, the first thing I thought of was the cover boy of 1980's tabloid magazines, but he was actually played by the late Ben Woolf from American Horror Story.
Rusty...not Bat Boy
Speaking of the 1980's, director John Landis has a cameo in this one, playing the aforementioned millionaire. This one is also much more comedy than horror, but lacks any laughs and is just kind of there.
Bad Seed
A jack-o-lantern comes to life and bites its maker's head off. Now the police are searching the town for it.
I think she found it
Another legendary director, Joe Dante, pops up in this one. More than anything, this segment ties the rest together. The killer in this one, of course, looks ridiculous, but the pumpkin display it hides in looks cool, and the final shot is impressive. Unfortunately, this wasn't a great story to end the movie with.
Honestly, Tales of Halloween was a fun watch. While not on the scale of the great horror anthologies such as Trick 'r Treat or Creepshow, it is certainly better than most similar movies, especially the ones that have come out the past 30 years. It would have benefitted from more horror and less comedy--that said, nothing here is so bad it's unwatchable, and the better segments are quite enjoyable. One thing I really loved about this movie is it truly captures a Halloween feel. We have seen countless movies that are set during Halloween but don't deliver that feeling of it--this movie nails it in this department. Also be on the lookout for references to other horror films, as this is full of them. It may never become a go-to every Halloween for me, but I can say my first viewing of Tales of Halloween won't be my last.
A strange object crashes in the desert, near the home of the Kelley family. Soon after, animals, then people, begin behaving strangely, and seem to be on a mission to destroy the family. Based just on that short summary, we get the sense there's a lot going on with this 1955 "classic", but alas, it's not nearly as exciting as it sounds. The animals are almost exclusively of the stock footage variety, and their actions are less menacing and more mundane. But hey, if you like the footage, you will get a lot of it both at the start of the movie, then again throughout it. If you are expecting to actually see a beast sporting a million eyes, you're out of luck there, too--the title seems to reflect the alien's abilities to control other life, so through their eyes, the alien has a million eyes...or something. Speaking of our alien beast--while we hear his narration in the beginning, we get only a brief look at him, it's not until the end of the film.
I won't make you wait that long
In between our hello to the alien, and our inevitable goodbye, we see the spaceship in the desert, and every time we do, it makes an ear-piercing sound that will give you the sense your brain is vibrating. We get to know the family--for better or worse--and are treated to some hilariously bad dialogue--the exchange between the alien and Allan at the end is side-splitting, as the human preaches the idea of "all you need is love" a full twelve years before The Beatles did. This is concluded with the alien saying that notion is nonsense, getting frustrated, doing...something (I have no idea what) and flying back into orbit in his spaceship in what is a gloriously awesome shot. There are a lot of fun, entertaining, and even good science fiction films from the 1950's...The Beast with a Million Eyes is not one of them.
After their mother dies, sisters Olivia (Addy Miller) and Claire (Elizabeth Birkner) go to live with their Aunt Beth (Jan Broberg). Once there, they find the house holds a demon, safely contained within the mirrors of the basement. Beth tells the kids to stay out of the basement, which, naturally, is an invitation to go on down there and unleash evil upon everybody--this is done by repeating certain words three times (no, it's not Beetlejuice, Bloody Mary, or Candyman). That's the premise of this 2020 film, and if you have watched even a little bit of horror in your life, you know this isn't exactly an original story, so you won't be watching it for that. I guess what you hope is they bring at least something new to the table--this movie really doesn't, outside of maybe using one of the 21st Century's great killers to stop the demon.
NOOOOOO!!!!!!
You'll get just about everything you expect from this film--the brief glimpses of the demon, the jump scares, the creepy girl (Claire), the obvious questions (why not just destroy all the mirrors?). Something else you get is something you may not expect--decent acting. Birkner, who looks like a young version of Ghost from Ginger Snaps 2, does a good job as both the silent, grieving girl and the possessed, scary girl. Broberg, Philip Brodie, and Aimee-Lynn Chadwick of Return of the Living Dead 4 fame all turn in impressive performances as well. Miller is a step down from everybody around her, but she's not terrible by any means. Oh yeah, you may not recognize her while watching this, but if you're a fan of The Walking Dead, you've seen her before.
Claire takes over bunny duty in this movie
Casting has to be given a little credit for something else here--how many times do we see a movie that has siblings, but the actors chosen to play the roles look nothing alike? Yes, this can happen in real life (nobody ever believes my brother and I are, in fact, brothers), but more often, you can see at least some resemblance--Birkner and Miller actually do look like they could be sisters.
I'm convinced
There is nothing much in the way of horror happening for most of the movie, but the story still manages to move along nicely. Once we get to the scares--well, there's nothing really scary, but there is a slight bit of unexpected bloodshed. The ending is unremarkable--much like with the rest of the movie, it's nothing we haven't seen before, and is something you will see coming. Behind You isn't a bad film--it's just one that is destined to be lost in a sea of a million other movies just like it.
Set seven years after the events of the original The Hills Have Eyes, this one has survivors Bobby (Robert Houston) and Rachel (Janus Blythe) heading a motocross team that has a race in the desert...the same desert where Bobby's family was butchered and eaten by Rachel, then known as Ruby, and her family. Bobby says no thanks, but Rachel leads a group of victims, and they soon come across the remaining cannibals. If you are a fan of the original film and are hoping this one lives up to what Wes Craven brought us in 1977, you'll almost certainly be disappointed. The story goes that this was in production, then shelved, and Craven moved on to create the classic A Nightmare on Elm Street. After the success of that movie, production kind of came back together for this sequel, except Craven was told no more shooting could be done, and to throw something together with what he already had. There wasn't enough footage to make an entire movie, so the holes were filled in with a lot of flashbacks from the first film, including a dog flashback...seriously. Beast, the survivor dog from the first film, is back, and he has flashbacks from the first movie.
"The year was 1977..."
Remember how the original movie was brutal, gritty, and so chilling it was uncomfortable at times? That's pretty much gone in this movie, traded for a more conventional slasher approach--worse, there are many elements of comedy thrown into this one. Along with the return of Blythe and Houston, Michael Berryman also reprises his role of Pluto, and we get the rematch nobody at all waited for when he faces off with Beast once more. There's really not a lot going for The Hills Have Eyes Part II--I dig any scenes with a desert setting, some of the death scenes are mildly interesting, and you have to love Berryman, but these alone are not reasons to watch this movie. It had been years since I last saw it, and I forgot just how uninteresting this movie is. Berryman said it's a bad movie, and Craven disowned it. That says everything you need to know about this flick.
Ten-year-old Susan (Julie Christy Murray, in the only acting gig she has done to date) wanders into a mausoleum at her mother's funeral. Once there, she becomes possessed by a demon who has had it out for the girl's family for a long time.
She ends up with some groovy eyes too
We catch up with Susan (now played by Bobbie Bresee, who would turn up in bit parts in classics such as Ghoulies and Surf Nazis Must Die) twenty years later--she's married to a guy who looks like a cross between Daniel Stern and Larry Bird, and the demon is beginning to take over again.
She still has the eyes
As it begins, this film absolutely screams "made for television", but when we see the dude get half his head blown off, we know this isn't the case--this one actually began shooting in 1981 and received a theatrical release in May 1983. If you can get past the ultra-cheesy opening, the movie gets...well, it stays cheesy really, but turns out to be very entertaining. We find the green eyes of doom indicate the presence of the demon, and that it can do cool things, such as manipulate inanimate objects and tear a person inside out. The demon voice is also done surprisingly well here. The acting is fine--while nobody was recognized for their outstanding performance, none of it is too bad either. Bresee is okay while in demon form, as she is able to contort her face in naturally creepy manners. When she not a demon, she's usually naked and seducing men to kill them when she does take the demonic form. The demon itself changes often, going from minor touches, such as the eyes, to being some grotesque makeup, to a complete mask, to a total transformation using multiple shots layered on top of each other, to having monster faces for boobs.
Because I know you think I made this up
As you can imagine, there is plenty of blood in this one; harder to believe is the practical effects are, for the most part, acceptable. We get more 1980's awesomeness when Susan makes her way to a mall, because nothing really quite says 1980's like a packed shopping mall. One scene here has a man being suspended over the railing of the third floor and falling to his death below--the shots switch from a wide shot of the falling body going straight down, to a point of view shot, where the camera is spinning wildly...think about that one. We also get many shots of a glowing green light that will remind you of both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Pulp Fiction. The final scene is baffling, and honestly, a rather sizable letdown, but it's lack of sense makes it fit in nicely with the rest of the movie. I have often made the argument a movie does not have to be good to be enjoyed--Mausoleum is certainly not a good movie, but wow, I sure did enjoy it!
Real estate agent Renfield (Dwight Frye, The Bride of Frankenstein) visits a mysterious man named Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi). Renfield soon falls under the control of Dracula, who is a vampire (and if this is a spoiler for you, you may be on the wrong website right now), and they make their way to London. Once there, they team up to search out victims for the Count, eventually leading to a woman of particular interest (Mina Seward, played by Helen Chandler) and Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), a man who knows Dracula's secret. Released in 1931, this is the oldest of the non-silent "Universal Monster" classics (it is predated by The Phantom of the Opera, by six years), and is largely credited with bringing horror to Hollywood (though other horror films had certainly been made by this time). It inspired many, many vampire movies to come, and gave us the look many think of when they picture a vampire.
Yeah, this is it
While this picture does give us almost everything we expect to see in Dracula--the stare, the pale skin, the jet black hair, the cape--many may not know there is one thing we do NOT see from the Count in this movie--fangs. While implied the two sharp biters are there, we never actually see them. Also of interest--while practically every vampire movie made after this one acknowledges vampires can turn into bats, this one reminds us their shape-shifting is not limited to just the cute-faced, winged creatures--Dracula also transforms into a wolf, something not seen nearly as often in the years to come. This movie, obviously, is the defining moment in Lugosi's career, but Frye steals the show as Renfield, shifting comfortably from the laid-back demeanor of the character at the beginning to the lunatic he becomes. The rest of the performances are so-so, with nothing standing out as especially good or bad. Visually, the movie is a likely a step down from what you may expect--the sets are fine, and we know to expect flying rubber bats, but the directing and lighting leave a bit to be desired. Still, Dracula is an absolute classic--though not my favorite of the Universal Monster movies, it is still one that I always enjoy watching, and is one everybody--horror fan or not--should check out.
