If Stephen Norrington had only ever been a special effects guy he still would’ve made a mark. He worked under Dick Smith, Rick Baker, Stan Winston and Jim Henson. He did the Grand High Witch makeup in THE WITCHES, and designed creatures for Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. He played the Gump in RETURN TO OZ. He helped make the aliens in ALIENS and ALIEN 3, the robot in HARDWARE, the creature in SPLIT SECOND. I only know about him, though, because he later directed four movies, one of which was motherfuckin BLADE.
But the first one was DEATH MACHINE (1994), a low budget killer robot movie I watched once about a quarter of a century ago when I found out it was by the guy who did BLADE. I think I thought it was okay, but I retained no details in my memory, so now I have returned to it via the fancy-ass special edition blu-ray from Kino Lorber. I watched the director’s cut (which is 106 minutes, as opposed to the 100 minute U.S. version or 122 minute foreign version), which may or may not have been why it went over a little better this time. I don’t think it’s a great movie, but it’s an interesting one with a cool robot puppet, a cyberpunk world and a hell of a look for a ‘90s b-movie that went straight to video. Cinematographer John de Borman is the guy who did THE PASSION OF DARKLY NOON and THE FULL MONTY, but from the look of it I’d have assumed he was a music video guy, somebody that would’ve worked with the Scott Brothers or Russell Mulcahy or even David Fincher.
102 years after F.W. Murnau’s illegal copyright violation classic, here’s writer/director Robert Eggers following up THE WITCH, THE LIGHTHOUSE and THE NORTHMAN with THE NOSFERATU.
Nosferatu? Yesferatu. Absolutelyferatu.
In many ways NOSFERATU is pure Eggers: the meticulous attention to old timey visual, linguistic, and folkloric detail; the dreary natural lighting like you were sent hurtling to the past and forced to deal with a lack of electricity; the emphasis on mood, atmosphere and performance over modern horror tropes. The biggest way it’s different comes from being an adaptation (of an adaptation): while he maintains his trademark of presenting deeply researched superstitions of the past as reality, he has to do it with the more conventional horror set up that only the protagonists believe in the supernatural, and the others around them don’t buy it until it’s too late. (read the rest of this shit…)
Like all modern horror movies, CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS – a 2024 indie that came to Shudder on the 15th – is about a true crime podcaster who experienced trauma. But it does not feel like it’s trying to be “about trauma,” and the true crime aspect works because the protagonist, Lola Darling (Jeremy Moineau) is treated as a straight up detective character like Nancy Drew, Jessica Fletcher or somebody there’d be a BBC mystery series about. She’s very self-possessed, observant and knowledgeable, has an interest in the morbid, sneaks around crime scenes with a flash light, brings her own latex gloves.
She’s nervous about returning to the small town she left when she was 16. Yes, it’s the site of the aforementioned trauma (discovering the skeletal remains of someone murdered by a killer called “The Toymaker”), but also she hasn’t been back since she transitioned into a woman. I like that this overlaps a horror trope with a common coming out experience, but again, other than many of the characters/actors being trans I don’t think this is primarily “about” trans issues, but maybe it’s just over my head like I SAW THE TV GLOW was. The credits do label it as “A Transgender Holiday Film by Alice Maio Mackay.” (read the rest of this shit…)
If you knew there was a new Hellboy movie this year – the fourth live action one – chances are you weren’t thrilled about that fact. For most people, it seems, HELLBOY was two movies directed by Guillermo Del Toro and starring Ron Perlman and since those guys aren’t making a third one that’s it, end of story, no further questions your honor.
That was the response in 2019 when there was a third one made on not much more than half the budget of HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY, with a different tone, directed by Neil Marshall and starring David Harbour as Hellboy. The makeup just isn’t as good, it’s jokier than I wanted, but hell, it won me over. It’s less reverent than the Del Toros, more in the style of 2000s CG-driven studio b-movies, and even has Milla Jovovich as the villain. In some ways I thought it was more in the spirit of the comics by Mike Mignola than the Del Toro movies were, though with a whole bunch of different stories crammed into one movie, so it feels pretty hectic.
Before greenlighting HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN they must’ve checked around and found out I was the only person who liked the 2019 one. So they started over with a new Hellboy (Jack Kesy, DARK WEB: CICADA 3301), a new director (Brian Taylor, MOM AND DAD), and less than half the budget of the previous lower budgeted one. In the U.S. it went straight to V.O.D. with an ugly poster and publicity stills that made it look like a fan film.
When I was slasher searching on Tubi in October I was surprised how many wrestling-themed horror movies I was coming across. And now I went looking for Christmas horror on Shudder and the first one I watched turned out to have a pro wrestler character in it. I guess the whole world is wrestling now anyway. We can’t escape it. At least it’s fun in movies.
THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT is a Canadian movie from 2023, and once I started watching it I understood why its plot description (“A lone man with the Christmas Spirit trapped in his head must kidnap a teenage girl on order to save Christmas”) was so vague. Its strength is that it’s odd and doesn’t really follow any of the usual formulas. (read the rest of this shit…)
Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the holiday spirit, the cozy, crackling fire is back. ADULT SWIM YULE LOG 2: BRANCHIN’ OUT is a sequel to the brilliant 2022 Christmas surprise ADULT SWIM YULE LOG. If you’ve never heard of that, it was a yule log video that aired without explanation at midnight on Adult Swim, now viewable on [HBO] Max or on a special edition blu-ray from Dekanalog. As you watch the fire in the fireplace you start to hear conversations in the cozy cabin where it takes place, and someone comes to the door and there’s a murder. It becomes a found footage horror movie slowly zooming out to show more of the cabin and eventually changing format as the story turns increasingly absurd and surreal.
And now, in secret as far as I know, writer/director Casper Kelly (Too Many Cooks, the Cheddar Goblin commercial in MANDY) has made a continuation with a totally different, but still very impressive, Christmas/horror/comedy conceit. It centers on part 1 character Zoe (Andrea Laing, Step Up: High Water), revealed to have survived the massacre at the cabin (though her fiance did not). She wakes up in a hospital, haunted by hallucinations of the ultimate villain of the first film – the cursed yule log that flies around bashing people to death. Her failure to adjust to the trauma ends up costing her her job, so her fun gay friend Jakester (Chase Steven Anderson, “Ticket Booth Operator,” THE COLOR PURPLE [2023]) convinces her they should go to Cancun to get away from it all. But their car breaks down at the exit to a picturesque little town called Mistletoe, in time for “the festival.” You know – the annual yule log festival. (read the rest of this shit…)
STING is a 2024 killer spider picture, but it’s not the French one that I already reviewed. That’s INFESTED. This one is set in New York City but hails from Australia. I remember seeing a trailer and being interested, I think I heard not-great things when it came out, but then when I saw it was on Hulu I noticed that the writer-director was Kiah Roache-Turner. That’s the guy that did WYRMWOOD: ROAD OF THE DEAD (2014) and WYRMWOOD: APOCALYPSE (2021), two fun movies about people roaming a post-apocalyptic world with cars powered by zombie breath. Well shit, yeah, I’ll watch his spider movie.
Just like he did in WYRMWOOD, Roache-Turner uses an absurd and inexplicable sci-fi disaster to set up the scenario he wants to tell a story within. A news broadcast tells us we’re in the midst of the worst ice storm in New York state history, and that it’s believed to be connected to the asteroid shower that came unusually close to Earth. During the opening credits a tiny rock from space shoots through an apartment window and a dollhouse inside the apartment.
The rock cracks open and a spider crawls out and through the floors of the miniature home. The sequence is very stylized, and foreshadows that this spider will grow to this scale in relation to the actual building, so I wasn’t sure until after the credits that yes, this literally happened in the story – a spider fell from the stars, like the Blob or the Body Snatch plants or Venom in SPIDER-MAN 3. (read the rest of this shit…)
SKINNED DEEP is a movie released direct-to-video in 2004 by Fangoria and Gorezone Video. For that reason I recognized the cover but never paid any attention to it until Mr. Majestyk recommended it. Turns out it’s a really interesting one – if not great, at least very distinct. It’s the directorial debut of Gabriel Bartalos, a makeup effects guy who worked on DOLLS, the LEPRECHAUN movies and the BASKET CASE sequels. More recently he did the zombie horse in ARMY OF THE DEAD and worked on DESTROY ALL NEIGHBORS.
Different parts of it reminded me of HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, THE ROAD WARRIOR, THE HILLS HAVE EYES and TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE 2, except with acting out of a John Waters movie and a few characters that would work in FREAKED or a Brian Yuzna movie. It has a grimy indie look to it and okay, I’m doing the math in my head here and it does seem that 2004 was 20 years ago, but I definitely would’ve guessed this was older than that – in a good way. This does not seem like the same year as DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, SEED OF CHUCKY, CURSED and EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING. I don’t know, maybe it’s that low budget rawness.
It opens with a (reportedly done for real) scarification ritual branding an S and a D into skin, which is not part of the story, just an intense way to lead into the title card. Next an old man driving at night is killed by a monster-faced man with goggles bolted into his head and a bear trap jaw who swings a grappling hook at him and causes his car to flip. This is intercut with close ups of a bodybuilder flexing. We don’t see the muscle man’s face, and much later we’ll learn that he doesn’t have a head at all. This one is pretty different from other movies, is what I’m getting at here. (read the rest of this shit…)
WISHMASTER was a theatrical release, and given its low budget a profitable one. A year later, producer LIVE Entertainment was acquired by Bain Capital, restructured and rebranded Artisan Entertainment. While distributing real movies in theaters (including absolute classics GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI and THE LIMEY), they also started dipping into DTV sequels like the appalling CANDYMAN: DAY OF THE DEAD, the enjoyable THE SUBSTITUTE 2: SCHOOL’S OUT, and yes, a whole trilogy of WISHMASTER followups, starting with WISHMASTER 2: EVIL NEVER DIES (1999).
The sequels are not presented by Wes Craven, but funny enough the writer/director of part 2 is the same guy who did A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2, Jack Sholder. Sadly this is not on the level of FREDDY’S REVENGE, much less THE HIDDEN. He told interviewer Hellter from Gruemonkey that he’d turned down the first WISHMASTER and “didn’t especially like” it, then “needed the work” when part 2 came his way. But he was happy that he got to write it and “had a lot of creative freedom as long as I could do it for the budget.” (read the rest of this shit…)
I remember seeing WISHMASTER in the theater in 1997. More than that I remember cleaning the theater, because I worked there. There weren’t many people going, so there wasn’t much to clean, but I would try to be around at the very end of the credits because I thought it was funny that you hear the Djinn saying “Careful what you weeessshhh for!” in his ludicrous evil voice. That was the main thing I remembered.
It definitely did not impress me back then, and I’m afraid this is not one of those SLEEPWALKERS situations where I just wasn’t ready. But I can at least say that WISHMASTER is pretty good for a laugh when it’s decades after the fact and you’re not hoping for anything genuinely good, let alone an exciting new horror creation from Wes Craven (who “presents” it).
I’m not sure what Craven contributed, if anything, but the director is Robert Kurtzman, who is usually not known as a director. He’s the K in KNB EFX who in his capacity as a makeup FX genius helped create versions of Freddy, the Predator, Leatherface, Darkman, Pumpkinhead and more. As a filmmaker his biggest feat was writing a 24-page vampire treatment and commissioning newcomer Quentin Tarantino to write a script based on it, then after not getting it off the ground letting him give it to Robert Rodriguez.
Not that I wouldn’t love to see Kurtzman’s FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, but he obviously couldn’t have done anything slick like Rodriguez did. He makes true b-movies like THE DEMOLITIONIST, starring Nicole Eggert from Charles in Charge as as a zombie cyborg cop. Even though this here genie movie got a wide theatrical release, it’s coming from the same realm.
The villain of WISHMASTER is a nameless Djinn played by Andrew Divoff (TOY SOLDIERS, EXTREME JUSTICE, AIR FORCE ONE). We’re told by one of the movie’s exposition-providing mythology experts to “Forget Barbara Eden. Forget Robin Williams. To the peoples of ancient Arabia, a Djinn was neither cute nor funny.” Instead they are “creatures condemned to dwell in the void between the worlds.” (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
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If Stephen Norrington had only ever been a special effects guy he still would’ve made a mark. He worked under Dick Smith, Rick Baker, Stan Winston and Jim Henson. He did the Grand High Witch makeup in THE WITCHES, and designed creatures for Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. He played the Gump in RETURN TO OZ. He helped make the aliens in ALIENS and ALIEN 3, the robot in HARDWARE, the creature in SPLIT SECOND. I only know about him, though, because he later directed four movies, one of which was motherfuckin BLADE.
(read the rest of this shit…)
102 years after F.W. Murnau’s illegal copyright violation classic, here’s writer/director Robert Eggers following up 
Like all modern horror movies, CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS – a 2024 indie that came to Shudder on the 15th – is about a true crime podcaster who experienced trauma. But it does not feel like it’s trying to be “about trauma,” and the true crime aspect works because the protagonist, Lola Darling (Jeremy Moineau) is treated as a straight up detective character like Nancy Drew, Jessica Fletcher or somebody there’d be a BBC mystery series about. She’s very self-possessed, observant and knowledgeable, has an interest in the morbid, sneaks around crime scenes with a flash light, brings her own latex gloves.
If you knew there was a new Hellboy movie this year – the fourth live action one – chances are you weren’t thrilled about that fact. For most people, it seems, 
When I was slasher searching on Tubi in October I was surprised how many 
Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the holiday spirit, the cozy, crackling fire is back. ADULT SWIM YULE LOG 2: BRANCHIN’ OUT is a sequel to the brilliant 2022 Christmas surprise 
STING is a 2024 killer spider picture, but it’s not the French one that I already reviewed. That’s 
WISHMASTER was a theatrical release, and given its low budget a profitable one. A year later, producer LIVE Entertainment was acquired by Bain Capital, restructured and rebranded Artisan Entertainment. While distributing real movies in theaters (including absolute classics GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI and THE LIMEY), they also started dipping into DTV sequels like the appalling 
I remember seeing WISHMASTER in the theater in 1997. More than that I remember cleaning the theater, because I worked there. There weren’t many people going, so there wasn’t much to clean, but I would try to be around at the very end of the credits because I thought it was funny that you hear the Djinn saying “Careful what you weeessshhh for!” in his ludicrous evil voice. That was the main thing I remembered.
