Gross Movie Reviews #489

Crawl (DVD) – A Category 5 hurricane is roaring through Florida and Haley is asked by her older sister to go check in on their father. He isn’t picking up the phone and the storm is getting worse. Even after everyone has been evacuated Haley chooses to risk her life to drive to their old house where she finds her father’s truck but he isn’t responding when she enters the house. Haley investigates further and heads into the crawlspace under the house where she finds her father out cold and injured. When Haley’s father comes too he warns her about the gators which Haley figures out quickly. As the water rise with the storm the more the gators become feisty! If the storm doesn’t kill them the gators from the gator farm will as they are feasting on anyone nearby. Wonderful gator effects! This has to be one of the best killer animal flicks since the old school “Alligator” as I give this 4 stars and for sure will be on my ‘Best of 2019’ list.

Trick (On Demand) – The movie opens in Benton, New York on Halloween 2015. A young man goes completely nutzoid during a harmless high school Halloween party and is stopped by one of his classmates. Patrick Weaver or Trick the kids’ call him is taken into custody at the hospital but refuses to answer any questions. Soon as he is left alone with an officer in Omar Epps he escapes only to be shot three times, fall several stories off of a building and disappear. A year passes with no real concrete answers and it happens all over again in a different small nearby town. Then again in 2017 and then again in 2018 and by now Trick has gone viral where teenagers are copying the urban legend wanting to be true and keep it alive. Meanwhile officer Denver has retired because no one believes his theory of the same person is doing this. Things get real interesting with the climax of the film as the real reason these murders keep happening on Halloween every year. A cool Halloween slasher flick that doesn’t use the usual formula to get you sucked in as I give it 3 stars.

US (DVD) – Jordan Peele is back to trying scare the pee pee out of everyone with this smart horror film that will having you think after the last 30 seconds of film. It is 1986 and a little girl gets lost off the boardwalk and finds a mirror maze to enter. Something completely weird happens and stays with her all her life. Present day and now with a family that little girl now an adult heads to the same beach and boardwalk for a vacation. One night the family’s parallel universe dark doppelgangers pay the family a visit and it is a fight to the death for who will survive in this world. A really fun 70s weirdness vibe to this that will make the horror film very rewatchable for years to come as you will be looking for different things every time. I give this wonderfully uncomfortable horror flick 3 stars and thank Mr. Peele for giving us horror fans something to talk about.

Ever After (Shudder) – I know there is a lot of weirdoes like me out there in the horror community especially people who like watching just zombie flicks. Well, do not let this one pass you by as this newer German zombie film is about two cities that have survived the zombie apocalypse a couple years later. Two women decide to sneak out on a supply train that goes between the cities for totally different reasons but both want out. They rely on each other to keep watch and keep each other company as they must set forth on foot after the train dies out. And the recovery team has been eaten by zombies. The zombie film doesn’t exactly play by the usual movie zombie rules with running zombies and possibly one character talking to God or Mother Nature? It depends how you look at it… Well worth the watch for being a different twist in a bloated zombie genre as I give it 2 ½ stars.

Wax Mask (DVD) – I thought it was time to revisit this weird supposedly big Italian mess because Fulci got sick and eventually died during production. Set in the early 1900s a new wax museum has opened up and people have begun to go missing and presumed murdered. Boris the owner of the new attraction as a tendency grabs living or mostly dead humans and makes them into an exhibit with his weird machine. It is a pretty straight forward horror film exception Boris is like a vampire and can live forever and the machine is never fully explained. It’s more of Boris has unlocked some weird art thing of making his art more lifelike as I give this movie 2 stars.

Disco Exorcist (DVD) – If you like lots of flapping dongs, flapping melons, sex, and it mixed with satanic rituals then this is the flick for you kids. Rex is an oversexed male who cannot get enough women. But in the end he is just looking for that one woman to satisfy him. He meets Rita one night at disco and after a night of bumping uglies they both think it may be the right thing to be together. But soon after Rex meets one of his favorite porn actresses Amoreena Jones and quickly become friendly under the disco ball. Rita not having it curses Amoreena and Rex. Any women that are with Rex will become flesh eating demons! Rex believing Amoreena is the one he sticks with her if she is a demon or not so he can put an end to Rita’s evil ways. A hilarious horror film if that is what you want to call it but honestly if you need to raise your movie sex quota along with bad joke quota this fits it as I give the hilarious flick 2 ½ stars.

Child’s Play (DVD/remake) – So this flick took me by total surprise just because out of the horror franchises this one may have be the least yelling for a remake. Especially when the past two sequels which were made recently and most likely reinvented the series for the long haul? So I put aside anything I knew about the series and gave this a chance. The ‘Buddi’ dolls are made in Vietnam where a disgruntled employee fucks with the protocols and program inside a doll and then commits suicide. The Buddi doll does just about everything like the ‘Alexa’ which we will get back too. At first Andy wants nothing to do with the doll because he is getting too old but soon sees the benefit of Chucky because he is the only friend he has. But because of the wonderful horror film “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” Chucky believes it would be funny to kill Andy’s friends. After this attempted Andy and friends try to destroy Chucky. But of course it is never that easy as Chucky gets an Iron Man upgrade and tries to take over a whole toy store just to kill Andy and anyone else there. Now… why the movie isn’t called “Alexa Will Kill You” I am not sure? It was like the movie was made to warn us about ‘Skynet’ sorry, I mean Amazon aka Alexa but anyhow if this isn’t called “Child’s Play” I am cool. The movie has some cool kills, I laughed my ass off about TCM 2, and Mark Hamill did a good job (still not Brad Dourif) voicing Chucky but why couldn’t this been called something else and yinz go remake “Hellraiser”? Or maybe some other horror franchise that hadn’t reinvented itself without a remake recently? Just pointing it out as I give the film 2 stars. It’s not bad just go make “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 5” with Jeff Burr and we will call it even.

Undertaker (Blu-ray) – Synapse Films has taken the time to give this independent zombie film from Japan the Blu-ray treatment. But this isn’t your typical zombie film as the usual case when we get to see horror films from overseas. Filmmaker Naoyoshi Kawamatsu goes for something a little more dramatic but cool as it begins with a young boy named Ryouichi. Ry survives an accident during an evacuation of his building at the beginning of the zombie infection. Years pass and now the young boy is an adult and known to the people as an assistant to the Undertaker. Ry is hired by a family to go look for their daughter, cut off her head, and bring it back. This is so families know their loved ones are at rest and this family is ready to move but first they want to bury their daughter. So Ry goes into the post-apocalyptic major city, Japan, only to struggle with what life was like. A very smart and dramatic touch to the independent zombie genre as I give the “Undertaker” 3 out of 4 stars. The Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes, a making-of, and a short film called “On Your Back”. Zombie fans will want to have this as part of their collection. You can find the film at www.synapse-films.com .

Watch Me When I Kill (Blu-ray) – A late 70s giallo from director Antonio Bido, where a young woman walks into a pharmacy only to witness a man murdered. Some giallo fans may also know the film as “The Cat’s Victims” as that is the title in this new transfer of the film. Mara is now being stalked throughout the film and people are dying left and right. Mara’s boyfriend takes up the cause to track this person down and put a stop to it as the police are nowhere to be found. The film does have it usually intense scenes and tries to keep the killer a mystery until the end but I believe giallo buffs will more excited by all the extras that come with this 4K remastered film. The package sports the new transfer which looks beautiful by the way, a commentary, interviews, three short films from Antonio Bido, and what giallo fans will most likely wet their pants for a bonus CD soundtrack of the film score. The movie is your usual Italian giallo but all the extras in this package make a lot more than that and I am thankful for Synapse for that as I give the package 3 out of 4 stars and great work as usual. You can find the package at www.synapse-films.com .

Any comments please send to grossmoviereview@verizon.net or www.facebook.com/grossmoviereviews . Remember folks always support your local independent movie theater, independent video store, and independent filmmakers! It will keep horror alive………

Don’t forget you can also hear Kyle Poling, John Shatzer, and me talking about horror flicks on the Bloodbaths and Boomsticks podcast at: www.bloodbathspodcast.blogspot.com .

Plus you can always go to the greatest T-shirt place online or if you are in Texas visit the store of “Fast Custom Shirts” where T-shirt Joe is the only place you should purchase your horror T-shirts: Go to www.fastcustomshirts.com and support!

It will be here before you know it: Grossfest 3: Season of the Gross, July 25-26^th, 2020. Check out www.grossfest.com for details.