I hope everybody had a good Big Mia Weekend this year! For me, MAXXXINE was easily the most anticipated non-FURIOSA movie event of the summer.
In case you haven’t met Maxine Minx, she’s a character from Ti West’s X (2022). That’s a slasher movie set in 1979, when a group of amateur pornographers rent a farmhouse to shoot their first movie and are terrorized by the octogenarian owners (and an alligator). Mia Goth (A CURE FOR WELLNESS) plays both Maxine, the star of the porno shoot, and Pearl, the withered psychopath she runs over at the end. The prequel PEARL (shot back-to-back and released in the same year) is set in 1918, with Goth playing young Pearl growing up and losing her shit in the same farmhouse.
Now MAXXXINE completes the trilogy with Goth playing Maxine in 1985. Since surviving the massacre she’s had a successful porn career in Los Angeles and is now trying to move into “real” movies, like Marilyn Chambers or Traci Lords. But just when she seems to have her big break a sleazy private detective named John Labat (Kevin Bacon, FRIDAY THE 13TH, WILD THINGS) starts to harass her about her past, and also someone starts killing her friends and co-workers. (read the rest of this shit…)
ABIGAIL (2024) is the new humorous horror-crime movie from directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, a.k.a. Radio Silence, the team behind SOUTHBOUND, READY OR NOT, SCREAM (2022) and SCREAM VI. The screenplay is credited to Stephen Shields (THE HOLE IN THE GROUND) and the usual Radio Silence guy Guy Busick.
I enjoyed this one, it’s a fun movie, but it kinda seems like it was designed without considering how it would have to be advertised. In order to explain the premise the trailers had to reveal information you don’t get until surprisingly far into the movie. It feels weird how long it pretends we don’t know, and how much of a shock it seems meant to be when it happens. You can see how much more fun it will be for anyone who sees it by accident on cable or whatever other blind viewing opportunities may exist. So in case someone out there still has that possibility, I’ll follow the movie’s example in taking my sweet time with the set up and then I’ll warn you when to cut out. (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m not a religious horror or nunsploitation connoisseur, but right now there’s a brief window of two new nun horror movies playing in theaters, and I’d heard good things about both of them, so I decided to do a double feature. IMMACULOMEN. IMMACULATE was already down to one show a day here, and I had to take the light rail up to Northgate to see it, but the timing worked out just right to get back downtown and see THE FIRST OMEN immediately after. As if by God’s will.
I enjoyed both of these movies, and they made a good double feature because they’re weirdly overlapping in their stories, but tonally and stylistically pretty different. Both are about an American woman who comes to Italy to become a nun and (mild spoiler?) becomes pregnant with something not normal. In one it might be Jesus and in the other it might be the opposite, and both happen as the result of a secret Christian plot that has been in the works for years, with many previous failures. Both have (spoiler) a not-up-to-spec c-section attempt, and a horrifying scene where a nun falls off of the roof of a convent. Also they have little insignificant similarities like I think they both have an extreme closeup of the protagonist’s eye when she wakes up, they have her peeking through a door crack or keyhole and seeing nuns torment someone, they have her get locked into a room against her will and then bang on the door and cry as the camera pans across the room, they have someone telling her how pretty she is before she takes her vows, they have a version of “Ave Maria” of course… the list could probly go on. (read the rest of this shit…)
I don’t know why I never got around to seeing the THE CROW sequel from the director of SIX-STRING SAMURAI. Always was curious. Still took me 19 years. Lance Mungia’s THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER, just like the previous one, was meant for theaters, but I think it only played somewhere around here? Wiki(dprayer)pedia says its theatrical run was only in Seattle and only for one week, and I do remember seeing an ad for it and being confused, but I was thinking it was in Eastern Washington. Anyway, I didn’t go.
EL CONDE is a pretty simple idea: what if Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile from 1974 through 1990, was in fact a vampire? Sort of the opposite of our “what if Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter?” It’s kind of a horror movie in that it shows us graphic bloodlettings, beheadings of both humans and animals, eating a cat, crushing a skull, and it puts even more revolting imagery into our heads through verbal descriptions. It also gets a classic horror atmosphere going with its gorgeous Academy Award nominated black and white cinematography by Edward Lachman (LIGHT SLEEPER, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, THE LIMEY, CAROL). But mostly it’s a satire hitting on a very old, very obvious, but still very relevant point: the rich and powerful are monsters. You could say we’re all human, we’re all petty, but that doesn’t make us all the same. These people are fucking weirdos, the bad kind. I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but it seems like more often than not the type of people who seek power, and the families who inherit it, and feel it is their right, there’s something very wrong with them. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but also it attracts a bunch of freakos in the first place. I mean, part of the joke of this movie is that the fucking guy wears a cape. Like Dracula. (read the rest of this shit…)
When I first saw the trailer for LOVE LIES BLEEDING I thought “I need to see SAINT MAUD, don’t I?” It’s the first movie from writer/director Rose Glass, which was heavily hyped after playing TIFF and Fantastic Fest, and was picked up by A24, who of course gave it an intriguing trailer that was playing on all the horror movies. But that was in 2020, so the pandemic happened, it got delayed for a while, and ultimately only received a limited release in January of 2021, which was a no-go for me because it was well before vaccines were available.
So the hype train grinded to a halt, and personally I needed it to push me over the small hill of it looking like religious horror. You know, you put “Saint” in the title, you show her in some kind of robe on the poster, you show her levitating, I’m gonna assume it has something to do with possession or some shit. I can watch a movie like that if it’s a really good one, but I need some encouragement. Glass’s follow-up looking amazing gave me that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Seeing LISA FRANKENSTEIN pushed me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for years – rewatch JENNIFER’S BODY (2009). Uncharacteristically, I came right home from the theater and put it on. It made a good double feature.
In a way it doesn’t seem like that long ago, but in other ways it seems like ancient history. It was Diablo Cody’s second movie, coming two years after JUNO, which won her the best original screenplay Oscar. Director Karyn Kusama was on her third movie, trying to make a comeback after AEON FLUX (2005), her one studio project after the indie smash GIRLFIGHT (2000). Since then she’s done THE INVITATION (2015) and DESTROYER (2018) and lots of acclaimed television. (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m a fan of the Academy Award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody. I enjoyed JUNO and TULLY and her directorial debut PARADISE, but it was YOUNG ADULT and its more friendly cousin RICKI AND THE FLASH that made me a die hard. Two movies about women who are assholes. My life is so different from either of theirs, but somehow Mavis Gary and Ricki Rendazzo are two characters I relate to deeply.
Of course she’s also got a foot in horror world – she wrote JENNIFER’S BODY for Karyn Kusama and even did some script revisions on the EVIL DEAD remake. She’s said she didn’t have to do much on that, but I still wonder if she was the one who named the dog Grandpa. Now she’s returned to the genre, sort of, with LISA FRANKENSTEIN, a teen movie with a zombie and some murders, directed by Zelda Williams (KAPPA KAPPA DIE). (read the rest of this shit…)
SUITABLE FLESH is the latest from Joe Lynch, a director who has a certain credibility in my book because his debut was a DTV sequel. I was mixed-positive on WRONG TURN 2: DEAD END (2007) and wrote some things in the review that I now consider out of line, but I definitely respect its joyful spirit toward sequelizing and in many ways outdoing a studio movie I really wasn’t that into. Since then Lynch has directed a comedy that got taken away from him, the Salma Hayek action vehicle EVERLY, the gory outbreak-in-an-office-building movie MAYHEM (which I liked but apparently didn’t review) and the Frank Grillo/Anthony Mackie car chase buddy movie POINT BLANK. But now he’s returned to horror with a sacred task: to manifest an unfinished project of the late great Stuart Gordon.
I didn’t realize it from the name, but it’s one of those unfulfilled ambitions we read about for years – here’s an example of Gordon talking it up while promoting STUCK in 2008, but using the title of the H.P. Lovecraft story it’s based on, “The Thing on the Doorstep.” The script is by Gordon’s regular collaborator Dennis Paoli (RE-ANIMATOR, FROM BEYOND, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, CASTLE FREAK, DAGON) and it’s produced by RE-ANIMATOR/FROM BEYOND/CASTLE FREAK star Barbara Crampton. (read the rest of this shit…)
In the interest of jolliness, as well as continuing the Stream Warriors (formerly Slasher Search) project of scouring for unknown slasher gems, I spent last night searching for watchable holiday horror obscurities on Tubi.
For my tastes this can be rough going. There’s a whole cottage industry of boring, off-brand Krampus movies and shit, but that’s not even the biggest threat. Their library is also a bottomless well of no budget, non-professional movies of the current digital video era, and so far in my experience not many of those have the same appeal as the regional horror movies shot on film in the ‘80s with hopes of a drive-in or VHS release.
Film had a magical power not just because of how it looked, but because of the difficulty of acquiring and properly using it. If a movie was made by some weird dude and his friends from work but he was able to pass the test of shooting it on 8mm or whatever, then that was a weird dude and his friends from work worth respecting. They were true dreamers, if not artists then at least romantics reaching from something outside of their small town, day job existence. So even their worst movies might be interesting, maybe even fascinating. I don’t think that’s the case with many of these. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Toxic on Ballerina (2025): “Just saw it and really enjoyed it. I liked that they made it almost more grenade-centric than gun-centric. If they…” Jun 15, 12:22
Max K. on Ballerina (2025): “The first thing this movie did to win me over was given a sub-villian role to frigging Jung Doo-Hong (City…” Jun 15, 00:33
The Winchester on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: “Ok. Seen this twice now. First time, I was In an off mood to begin with. The rushed nature of…” Jun 14, 17:26
The Winchester on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: “Ok. Seen this twice now. First time, I was In an off mood to begin with. The rushed nature of…” Jun 14, 17:26
CJ Holden on Ballerina (2025): “Hell yeah! Action Concept was basically 87 Eleven long before they existed. A stunt company that produced their own movies…” Jun 14, 09:39
Mr. Majestyk on Ballerina (2025): “That would be DER PUMA, the pilot of which got released as a standalone movie that I bought on semi-bootleg…” Jun 14, 06:42
CJ Holden on Ballerina (2025): “It’s incredible. Even more so since it comes from a country that isn’t known for breathtaking action. But these Action…” Jun 14, 04:11
Ben on Ballerina (2025): “@cj that kinda sounds like the coolest fuckin thing I’ve ever heard of.” Jun 14, 02:13
CJ Holden on Ballerina (2025): “On stunt related news: After a loooooong time in semi-obscurity, Germany’s action epic DER CLOWN will be shown on TV…” Jun 13, 23:49
Franchise Fred on Ballerina (2025): “The most disappointing thing about The Continental is how it went from this ambitious idea to expand the world to…” Jun 13, 16:52
burningambulance on Ballerina (2025): “Haven’t seen this yet (waiting for it to make it to Amazon) but kinda interesting that the Korean movie BALLERINA…” Jun 13, 13:09
Miguel Hombre on Sinners: “Ryan Coogler just showed up in the Criterion Closet and it’s a barn burner. In 8 minutes he deals out…” Jun 13, 11:37
VERN on Ballerina (2025): “Fred – I did watch The Continental and I enjoyed it for what it was. It was interesting to see…” Jun 13, 10:58
Lorin on Ballerina (2025): “I completely agree that the movie jumps in quality with the post-fight knife collection walk out. The final flame thrower…” Jun 13, 08:59
I hope everybody had a good Big Mia Weekend this year! For me, MAXXXINE was easily the most anticipated non-FURIOSA movie event of the summer.
ABIGAIL (2024) is the new humorous horror-crime movie from directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, a.k.a. Radio Silence, the team behind SOUTHBOUND, 
I’m not a religious horror or nunsploitation connoisseur, but right now there’s a brief window of two new nun horror movies playing in theaters, and I’d heard good things about both of them, so I decided to do a double feature. IMMACULOMEN. IMMACULATE was already down to one show a day here, and I had to take the light rail up to Northgate to see it, but the timing worked out just right to get back downtown and see THE FIRST OMEN immediately after. As if by God’s will.
EL CONDE is a pretty simple idea: what if Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile from 1974 through 1990, was in fact a vampire? Sort of the opposite of our “
When I first saw the trailer for 
Seeing 
I’m a fan of the Academy Award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody. I enjoyed 
SUITABLE FLESH is the latest from Joe Lynch, a director who has a certain credibility in my book because his debut was a DTV sequel. I was mixed-positive on 
In the interest of jolliness, as well as continuing the Stream Warriors (formerly Slasher Search) project of scouring for unknown slasher gems, I spent last night searching for watchable holiday horror obscurities on Tubi.
Film had a magical power not just because of how it looked, but because of the difficulty of acquiring and properly using it. If a movie was made by some weird dude and his friends from work but he was able to pass the test of shooting it on 8mm or whatever, then that was a weird dude and his friends from work worth respecting. They were true dreamers, if not artists then at least romantics reaching from something outside of their small town, day job existence. So even their worst movies might be interesting, maybe even fascinating. I don’t think that’s the case with many of these. 
