BASKET CASE (1982) is one of those cult movies everybody knew about in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It stayed alive by having a couple sequels and being in video stores or being mentioned often in Fangoria. Now it’s on 4K disc and on Shudder with credits saying it was restored by the Museum of Modern Art. But it was genuinely a creature of the grindhouses, a $35,000 exploitation movie conceived in Times Square by twentysomething New Yorker Frank Henenlotter, written on napkins at Nathan’s Famous, and shot in 16mm, partly in front of XXX theaters on 42nd Street. The producer was a hospital administrator whose only other films are Henenlotter’s and two yoga videos.
It opens with a mysterious murder at a house out in Glen Falls, before cutting to Times Square and a strange young man named Duane Bradley (Kevin VanHentenryck), who carries a large wicker basket. He checks into a shitty hotel, the kind where the v-neck undershirt-wearing clerk asks, “Couple of hours, couple of years, what? Give me a hint.” It’s twenty dollars a night up front and the lobby is crowded with residents gossiping about the death of somebody named “Dirty Lou.” (read the rest of this shit…)
MATERIALISTS is a movie I missed in theaters, caught on blu-ray a while back, and this week it will start streaming on Home Box Office Maximum, if you want to catch it to. I really needed to see it because it’s the second movie from writer/director Celine Song. Her first was PAST LIVES (2023), which I didn’t review, but I loved it. It’s about an American woman (Greta Lee) reuniting with a guy (Teo Yoo) who she knew before her family left South Korea when she was little. He’s handsome and in love with her and reminds her of her roots, but also she loves her life and her boyfriend and oh man. It’s so good. Swooningly romantic, achingly beautiful, keenly observant, feels so true to people and to life, never like a formula. Why didn’t I write about it? Maybe I was afraid I couldn’t do it justice. I should watch it again.
The last time I saw Guillermo del Toro’s debut CRONOS (1992) must’ve been more than thirty years ago. I know I was aware of it before he came out with 
AMERICANA is an ensemble crime movie set in rural South Dakota and Wyoming, where regular, likable doofuses clash with dangerous, organized crime doofuses. It definitely falls into the category of contemporary westerns (complete with a siege), but it might also be fair to say it’s in somewhat of a ‘90s post-Tarantino indie crime movie vein. Only in a good way, I’d say. Not a copycat. It’s a good variation on a clever but unpretentious story with some violence, some laughs, a good cast playing colorful characters, and even some interesting themes running through it. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
There was a time when I was 14 years old and Clive Barker’s NIGHTBREED was my favorite movie. Maybe that was too soon to move on from 
Slasher Search: A New Beginning: Stream Warriors: The Next Generation – Part I: Shudder
But many of you seem to enjoy the ritual as much as I do, so I’m trying my best to do some variation on it, and the most realistic approach seems to be checking for newer slasher-ish movies on streaming services. When it comes to Tubi, the trick is digging through a million horror movies you never heard of trying to find the good ones. I plan to do some of that soon (probly after the holiday, sorry), but this month I’ve mostly been using the actual curated horror service, Shudder. So here’s an investigation of a trio I watched that are in the slasher tradition.
When IT CHAPTER TWO came out six years ago I heard that it was really bad (a subjective opinion) and two hours and fifty minutes long (a verifiable measurement). The “bad” part isn’t really a dealbreaker for a courageous viewer like yours truly, but combined with the length it was intimidating. Still, I intended to see it because I’m a horror fan and a merciful soul (I didn’t even hate director Andy Muschietti’s followup 
I saw that Shudder had a new movie from David Moreau, one of the directors of that 2006 French movie THEM (ILS). We all thought that one was scary at the time, I seem to remember. He had one last year called MADS that I’ve been intending to see but this OTHER stars Olga Kurylenko, and I enjoy her action works such as 
BRING HER BACK is this year’s release from Danny and Michael Philippou, the Australian twins “known for their horror comedy YouTube videos” according to Wikipedia, but I know them for the 2023 ghost movie 
BLACK PHONE 2 is an interesting sequel, and not just because they dropped the ‘THE’ and streamlined the title, 
