7th Cut / Final Cut: 240 Movies Reviewed So Far

Once again we wrap up another Cut and I'm looking forward to a much needed break.  I love horror but subjecting myself to boring or just bad films makes me feel like I'm stuck on the Satellite of Love only without quirky robot friends to keep my sanity.  Instead I develop something more akin to Ren & Stimpy's "space madness."

 So what is going on with 30 Days of Plight while I'm taking my break between cuts?  A lot actually:

I'm waiting on an Elgato to arrive so I can do proper streams of horror games over on my Twitch channel which is Twitch.TV/30DaysOfPlight.  I'm looking to do at least an hour or two once a week during this break.  A lot of Friday the 13th The Game will be shown and I'll be announcing those streams on our Twitter and Facebook.

I'm working on a t-shirt design to sell through an online vendor which will hopefully be available at the start of the 8th Cut.

I'm going to start reaching out to try to get some screeners of newer films and once that starts then I'll be doing a "Screener Saturday" once or twice a Cut.

Speaking of format changes, I'm going to be going back to a Monday-Friday post schedule for our regular reviews.  The Sunday-Thursday existed because of my previous work schedule but being that I'm Fun-employed for the time being I can go back to a normal set-up.  What does this mean about my Friday's Choice Cuts?  I haven't been avoiding them, there just hasn't been a lot I've come across that I've felt like talking about.  More than likely I'll just shift these to open Saturdays or maybe I'll keep them for a second post on some Fridays.  They're kind of nebulous at this point.

Finally, we will return for not only our 8th Cut but also our 2 Year Anniversary on Monday, March 26th.  If you have any suggestions for anything related to the site or just want to reach out and say "hi" you can contact or catch me at any of the following:

E-mail: 30daysofplight@gmail.com
Facebook: 30daysofplight
Twitter: 30daysofplight
Instagram: 30daysofplight
Twitch: 30daysofplight

You get the point.  So thank you for reading and I'll see you all again on March 26th.  So until then, I'll be right back...

13 Days of Christmas Day 4: Santa's Slay (2005) 1h 18m

Holy sweet goddamn did I luck out with this one!  I had no previous knowledge of this film aside from the title alone but look right above that!  Bill fucking Goldberg!  WCW/WWE wrestler Bill fucking Goldberg gets top billing in this film.  Do you know why?  He's Santa in this!  I honestly don't know why I'm even writing this and not rushing to buy every last copy of this from the $5 bin at Wal-Mart to stuff each copy into my husband's stocking.  He doesn't care about wrestling but I can't justify buying those all for me, but if I say it's a gift for him...

Santa's Slay has a simple premise: Santa is actually the spawn of Satan.  One-thousand years ago an angel challenged Santa to a curling (the ice sport, not weightlifting) competition and won.  In return Santa had to stop being a dick and instead only commit good deeds for a thousand years.  Now that the deal has been fulfilled Santa goes on a murder spree with his buffalo reindeer drawn viking slay.  Can some lame teenagers stop him?  I don't care so long as Bill Goldberg keeps delivering one liners and killing people!

This film knows exactly what it is and turns that awareness into its greatest strength.  When carolers are out in the day the main characters question why, but it's a setup for Santa to wreck some carolers.  We know that, and the film knows that, so we're okay with it.  The opening scene has Fran Drescher, Chris Kattan, and Rebecca Gayheart in it and they only exist to be the first kills that set the pace.  There are some other recognizable faces in here too but I'm still too hyped on Bill Goldberg killing people as Santa.

Speaking of which, Bill has never been great on the mic.  Mind you, he's better than some *cough*Brock Lesner*cough* but every line delivered by him is great.  Sure, we get a lot of holiday puns but we do get some golden ones like "I'm Santa Claus, not fucking Dracula!" which I think I want etched on something when I die.  I don't know what yet, but somewhere, on something.  My only regret with this film is that Santa didn't give anyone the Jackhammer finisher, although I do think he speared at least one person.

I give Santa's Slay 5 ripped Santas out of 5:

13 Days of Christmas Day 3: Krampus Unleashed (2016) 1h 30m

At some point in the last decade the U.S. caught a whiff of the Germanic folktale of Krampus and lost its collective mind.  A creature to rival Santa which kidnaps and beats and/or devours bad children?  Sign us the fuck up!  Kids are jerks!  Unfortunately, like most things we lose our minds over, people start cashing in on it.  With the release of the 2015 film Krampus making $61.8 million in box office alone then why wouldn't knock-off versions begin to pop up?  This is how I found Krampus Unleashed.

Following absolutely nothing in regards to the Krampus lore (aside from his look and setting the film during Christmas) we get some backstory about a bandit named Klaus that supposedly hid some treasure in the desert in Arizona.  A group of treasure hunters find the buried loot but it just ends up being some dirty socks and a large black stone.  This stone summons Krampus and he kills with wreckless abandon until the stone falls into a creek.  Fast forward years later and the stone is found by a boy that is part of a family get together on some land in the desert.  Krampus is summoned and this movie continues its sickening spiral into hell.

I don't know what I expected with this film, but I'm damn sure it isn't what I watched.  The acting was competent.  That's all.  The director got a bunch of people in front of a camera and they said their lines, but a lot of the emotional response or just physical acting lacked any talent.  When you tell a boy that his dad and grandfather were just murdered by a monster, and you do a close-up shot of the kid's face, you better make sure he looks upset.  Instead we get the "did I leave the stove on" face.  This movie had a plot, and it worked, but in that sense that if you put enough glue on things then they have to stick together.  Right?

The only redeeming moments of this film are each of the kills done by Krampus.  I thought Troma did some low budget stuff, but damn!  The blood was the reddest blood I have ever seen and every time a limb or head was severed it was apparent that some poor mannequin was getting fucked up.  The thing is, I can't fault them on it.  Even though it looked cheap it made me laugh every time.  It wasn't what they intended but at least I got enjoyment out of it.  If you look up anything from this movie then please look up Krampus punching the grandmother's head off.  That might be all you need to see.

I give Krampus Unleashed 1 ripped Santa out of 5:

13 Days of Christmas Day 2: Silent Night, Bloody Night (a.k.a. Night of the Dark Full Moon, a.k.a. Death House) (1972) 1h 21m

I had no clue this movie existed.  I was trying to find a version of the original Silent Night, Deadly Night to watch and clicked on this while not looking at the full title.  Between this, Silent Night, Deadly Night, and Black Christmas also being known as Silent Night, Evil Night, the horror industry needs to calm their fucking tits when it comes to this pun.  Nevertheless, I watched Silent Night, Bloody Night and it does count as a Christmas horror movie, so turn on the weird video of a log fire and let's get into it.

We start and end our journey with Diane attempting to tell us the bleak story of what happened and how she survived.  It's hammy and overdone but it's what we have to work with.  On Christmas Eve 20 years prior Wilfred Butler ran out of his house on fire.  Rather than rolling in the snow (which would make a lot of sense) he basically ran until he burned to death.  I got stop drop and roll shoved down my throat as a kid, but I was also a kid in the 80's when things like Mr. Yuck stickers were common but so was going into the woods at 9am and not coming back until it was almost nightfall.  In Butler's will he requested that his property would be taken over by a family member but that no one lives there for 20 years or else something garbled when being told would happen.  Time passes, someone escapes a mental hospital, and the strangest gathering of town elders get foreboding phone calls.  Then a journal is found, at night, by a sheriff wearing sunglasses (let that sink in for a second) and later re-found and that's how we learn the true story of Wilfred Butler.

I did an inflation calculator to find out what this movie's budget would be by today's standards and it would've been made now for $1.71 million dollars.  I figured this movie was made for a hot dog dinner and a case of Coke.  What the hell did that money go toward?

This film tried way too hard to make each character unique.  There's the woman with a million bird cages in her house, the old man that speaks primarily by just ringing a desk bell, and the lawyer's girlfriend that seems as though she's so foreign that she's from another planet.  I actually spent more time playing Broforce on my laptop than paying attention to this movie because it was a messy slog.  By the time we get the explanation from the journal on everything that's going on it comes out as this deluge of information that's too much too fuckin' late.

I could've gone on never knowing this film existed, but now that I do I feel as if just watching that made some sort of horcrux and it stole a piece of my soul.  I can never die now because I watched this movie.  It's a hellish existence.

I give Silent Night, Bloody Night 0 ripped Santas out of 5:

Guest on Rank & Vile podcast Ep: 42 Ol' Petey Ten Dicks

Hey everyone, I'm a guest on this week's Rank & Vile Podcast. We discuss the foreign horror films The Untamed, Honeymoon, and Train to Busan. You can find that on iTunes as well as on Podbean at https://rankandvile.podbean.com/

Are you ready for the 13 Days of Christmas?

 

Get ready! One week until our 13 Days of Horror advent calendar starts! Thirteen days, thirteen Christmas themed horror movies.... Get hyped!

Final Cut for the 6th Cut!

original photo from Winnin.com

So we come to the end of another Cut here at 30 Days of Plight.  This pushes to total movie count to over 180 films with no sign of stopping.  Except I am going to take a short break to catch up on other things I haven't been watching before I start the 7th Cut.  However this won't all be down time.  I have a couple of things planned.

First, I'll be an upcoming guest on the fantastic podcast Rank & Vile.  Quincy and Ryan were nice enough to ask me to come on and we'll be discussing and ranking three films for their already epic list of horror, wrestling, and video nasties.   You can find them on iTunes at Rank & Vile or on Podbean at Rankandvile.podbean.com.  I would recommend checking them out even if I wasn't going to be a guest on the show because they know their shit in regards to both horror and wrestling and it's a fun podcast to listen to.

Second, I'm going to be doing a horror film advent calendar this year.  Calling it The 13 Days of Christmas, starting on the 13th of December and running up to and including the 25th, I will be reviewing one Christmas themed horror film each day.  If I have to suffer through terrible crowds and PA piped in carols then I'm going to soften the blow from Old Saint Nick's southpaw hook.  My only exception is that I already covered A Christmas Horror Story on here so I won't be covering it again.

Finally, I'll be starting the 7th Cut of 30 Days of Plight on Sunday, January 7th.  In the meantime look for the advent calendar I mentioned and we do have a Facebook and Twitter you can follow by clicking on the links on the right or searching 30daysofplight.

In the meantime... I'll be right back...

Friday Final Cut!

We did it!  After some rockiness a few months ago we got this cut started and finished!  I don't know if it was worth it because holy fuck were there a ton of zeros this time.

Actually, I do really like doing this.  Despite every piece of trash I slog through I did get some great ones.  The winner this time would probably be Beyond the Gates since I bought the damn movie.  The loser is whatever that fucking Indian horror movie was for 8-year-olds.  Fuck that shit.

I also want to say thanks for everyone that stuck with me while I got this rolling again; the occassional comment or message to help with the site, every like on Facebook.  All of that stuff.  Mostly though, thanks for reading the curse laiden posts which sprawl across this blog.  I'm not sure how the fuck the "views" thing works really but it says we passed 10,000 views in just over a year.

So please, share this with your friends, your family, people you want to make uncomfortable with swearing and talk of my penis, fellow horror fans, you know...

This will now be the down time between Cuts.  We'll start back up on Sunday, July 9th.  I'd do it sooner but I have a stack of DVDs and Blu-Rays I've purchased recently and would like to watch and not have to type about.  Don't forget you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter at 30daysofplight.

I'll be right back...

Friday's Choice Cuts: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (Capcom)

I mentioned during the last mini-Cut that our household purchased the latest in the Resident Evil series.  Now, we played through it once and I've since watched the Super Best Friends LP of it as well as the Game Grumps LP so I've seen a ton of stuff we missed on our sessions.

Resident Evil (or Biohazard as it's known in Japan) set the stage for modern survival horror video games.  When Resident Evil 4 was released it evolved the series out of survival horror and into a more action-horror feel.  RE4 and RE5 were both great games but moved further away from what the original fans wanted.  Resident Evil 6 was rough.  Really rough.  It became the turning point which lead to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.

(A quick aside:  I know I'm totally skipping things like Outbreak, Dead Aim, the Chronicles games, Revelations, and Operation Raccoon city.  For the sake of this review I wanted to stick to the core series.)

Resident Evil 7 was herald as a return to survival horror, a game for the original fans.  When we first started playing this game we got super hyped on it.  There were jump scares, sneaking around while trying to solve puzzles and find items, and more importantly, a scary human element chasing you.

The story follows Ethan (you) going to a random home in the swamps of Louisiana after getting a video message from his missing wife, Mia.  You end up being captured by the Baker family that lives in the house and when you find your wife she seems to have these violent episodes where her personality switches.  You eventually are contacted by Zoe, the daughter of the family, who attempts to help you find the cure you need to help Mia and also cure Zoe.

A majority of this game was really good.  My issues with it come in the form of the boss fights.  Typical to an RE game you have boss fights where you need to find the target item or spot in order to win.  They broke up the flow of the game and killed the immersion.  To go from sneaking around a decaying house to suddenly having to fight a spider-person with huge orange eye targets all over its body is a jarring experience.

We also encountered a poor cut in this game where if you choose Zoe instead of Mia at this one point there's an event and cut but it still has you just become Mia instead of Zoe in the next scene which made no sense.

It's not perfect, but it's definitely a great big leap in the right direction.  The game looked amazing, played really well, and from what I saw of people doing the VR, it makes for a much more frightening experience.  There's DLC which revolves around each of the members of the Baker family but it isn't necessary and one is just a shitty mercenaries-mode esq thing where you play as Zoe to get food and booze for Jack to eat on his birthday.  There is some shit animation there as Jack appears to just eat the bottle of wine.  That said, I'm looking forward to when RE8 comes out... unless they fuck that up.

Best moments:
+ Jack doing sick burnouts in his garage
+ Old woman's face melting scene which reminds me of Raiders of the Lost Ark
+ Creep ass clockwork clown

Fairlane Road (2016) 1h 32m

 

Johnny Depp's "Tonto" make up should never be copied... ever!  Not because it's iconic or anything like that, but because it looks like shit and is probably offensive to Native peoples.  With that image in your head, a woman definitely ends up with similar shit on her face toward the end of this film.  So buckle the fuck up because we're taking a ride down Fairlane Road!

We start with a man going outside and falling to his knees while dragging his oxygen tank.  He goes to screen but it ends up being a phone ringing noise that comes out instead.  Jumping to our main character (of whom I didn't even bother to remember his name, and don't care enough to hit my IMDB bookmark to look up) we find out that he has a shitty mom that convinces him to go take care of his uncle (the man we saw at the beginning) for the weekend while his nurse is away.  Fuck this phone mom with a rusty manhole cover, she sucks so hard.  So our guy drives out to take care of his uncle who doesn't really want him there.

Eventually we found out that his uncle is less his uncle and more of his actual dad.  Not only that, but he came home drunk, knocked down his then pregnant (and alive) wife, and on the way to the hospital ran over a Native girl and left her by the side of the road.  Oh, also, because he was drunk and not paying attention that accident caused his wife to hit the windshield which lead to her death.  The mother of the Native girl was coming back for revenge and after finding out that uncle-dad did have offspring, she causes Jack (the uncle-dad) to accidentally kill his son.  We're then treated to the same intro sequence again only we get the scream instead of the phone ring.

Moral of the story:  Don't be a scumbag drunk?  Do a better job of keeping your kids away from the curses of Native people?  Don't watch this film?  Yeah, the last one.  Fuckin' ignore this shit's existence.

I give Fairline Road 0 cacti that phone mom can jam in her can out of 5:

Don't forget, you can follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/30daysofplight or on Twitter @30daysofplight

Friday's Choice Cuts: Yakuza Demon Killers (IDW Publishing)

Keeping with the new format, Fridays are going to be a kind of grab-bag day for me to keep myself from getting too swamped with bad films.  Hence, Friday's Choice Cuts, where I going to cover something I like that's horror related.  So for our first entry in the FCCs I'm presenting the comic series Yakuza Demon Killers; written by Amit Chauhan, with the artist Eli Powell, and published by IDW Publishing.

Currently spanning four loose issues (with a hardback version of these on the way), Yakuza Demon Killers ties Eldritch horror with modern day Japan and throws in a sprinkle of Silent Hill-esq character design.  The art style reminds me of the earlier Walking Dead comics but more frantic.  Its sketchy moments add to action of the panels and helps to add a certain sense of "edge" reminiscent of the small publisher comics of the 90's.  Story wise, it's pretty solid.  If they never make a 5th issue then I wouldn't really be too torn up because I always like a good "the villain wins" reveal.  I know that's kind of a spoiler, but without the story you have no clue who I'm talking about anyway.

I bought all four issues at once solely based on the name, covers, and a quick flip through an issue.  I can say that I am definitely not disappointed with my purchase.  I recommend checking it out or at least waiting until the hard bound version comes out because I'm sure it'll have some extra stuff thrown in as well.


Don't forget, you can follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/30daysofplight or on Twitter @30daysofplight

Midnight Meat Train (2008) 1h 40m

For years my mom kept talking up how good Midnight Meat Train was.  Previously I had watched about a half-hour of the film before falling asleep or doing something else.  You know, man stuff!  I find it fitting though that when I'm coming back in and really making a serious attempt at keeping up with this blog, the movie I would end up rolling would be this one.  I started this blog shortly after she passed away, partially out of our shared love of horror.  So this one is for you mom. *cue "Crossroads" by Bone Thugs n' Harmony*

Midnight Meat Train focuses around a photographer named Leon (Bradley Cooper).  After realizing a woman he photographed on the subway has disappeared he becomes obsessed with a series of missing person cases.  His obsession leads him to discover an underground cabal of murder in order to maintain a balance between the known and unknown world.

I think I might have made this movie sound way better than it actually is (sorry, mom).  Somehow a short story was adapted to an hour and forty minute movie (of course, Hellraiser was based on a short story too).  Mostly they did this by padding it with scenes of the train murders, which was probably smart.  Some of these kills were great and the CGI stuff of eyes popping out and arterial sprays made this much more interesting.  There were talks of Barker making this into a trilogy but, despite being a Clive Barker fan, I wouldn't watch this again, let alone two more films.  I've got man shit to do!

I give Midnight Meat Train 2 hotdog trains out of 5:

Don't forget, you can follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/30daysofplight or on Twitter @30daysofplight

Updates from the lab...

Hello from the 30 Days of Plight lab!  So, much like Herbert West, I'm looking to reanimate this blog.  I have come up with a new and more structured set-up.  So here's how it's going to run:

Sunday thru Thursday will continue the typical 30 Days of Plight structure with the random movies from Netflix and reviews from that.

Friday is going to be kind of a grab-bag day.  I plan to use it for reviews on films I may have seen in the theatre or at a film festival, books I've read related to horror, horror themed toys, horror video games, things like that.  I hope this will keep me from breaking up the regular posts but also give me that decent break to talk about something else horror related.  This also gives me a day at the end of a cut to do a recap.

Saturdays are going to be nothing.  I scheduled a day off.  I'm my own boss!

So right now I'm in the process of doing small graphical updates that will be up and running by the time the 30DoP 2.0 launches which will most likely be May 7, 2017.  It's then because I know I have to travel in the next month and I don't want a shitty break in the middle of things.

So with that dear readers, I'll see you in just over a month!

30 Days of Plight Special Halloween Post!

30 Days of Plight on Werewolf Ambulance!!

Hello to any Werewolf EMTs that made their way over after listening to the latest Werewolf Ambulance podcast.

As I mentioned earlier, I joined Katie and Allen to record an episode focusing on one of my favorite horror-comedy films, Murder Party.  The episode is officially out and you can find it on iTunes under the Werewolf Ambulance podcast or go to werewolfambulance.libsyn.com to listen to this and previous episodes of their podcast.

Just a reminder, despite being on break between Cuts right now I will be doing a special Halloween post next week.

Also, if you haven't yet, you can go over to Facebook and like our page on there.  I will occasionally post related updates between Cuts and any other 30DoP news.  Just click on the banner to the upper right or go to facebook.com/30daysofplight

See you in a week!

3rd Cut Wrap-Up

Holy shit!  I'm actually getting around to doing a wrap-up this time.  Before I jump into that I want to say "thank you" to you, the readers.  30 Days of Plight passed 3000 views during the course of this Cut and I can't help but be amazed and grateful.  When I started 30 Days of Plight I wasn't even sure if anyone other than my fiancé would read this blog, so seeing that people do read this make me know I'm not just torturing myself with awful movies.

Next, I want to let everyone know that I recently was a guest on the fantastic horror podcast Werewolf Ambulance.  We discussed one of my favorite horror comedy films, Murder Party, and I will post a link to it once it's up in the next few weeks.

Finally, I want to do something special for Halloween. While I'm trying to narrow things down, I haven't come to a conclusion just what yet.  So I'll have a post then, but otherwise I will begin the 4th Cut the last week of November/first week of December.  I promise this time to post as consistently as possible.  I know this Cut has had some large gaps.

So without further ado, here is the rundown of the last 30 films I've watched and what I rated them.  My overall recommendations from this Cut are Baskin and Hush.  They're definitely worth it.  Also, I guess I fucked up this Cut and did two films as #23.  So bonus film?

1. The Vampire's Coffin (1958) 1/5
2. Necrofobia (2014) 0/5
3. Mercy (2014) 1/5
4. Cam2Cam (2014) 0/5
5. Hangar 10 (2014) 0/5
6. Splatter (2009) 2/5
7. Baskin (2015) 4/5
8. Convergence (2015) 2/5
9. The Fog (2015) 1/5
10. Dementia (2015) 0/5
11. Kill Zombie (2012) 2/5
12. 12 Days of Terror (2004) 1/5
13. Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014) [didn't rate because it wasn't a horror film despite it being listed as one]
14. Para Elisa (2012) 1/5
15. The Abandoned (2015) 1/5
16. Spiders (2013) 2/5
17. Curve (2015) 1/5
18. Exit to Hell (2013) 3/5
19. High Lane (2009) 1/5
20. The Diabolical (2015) 3/5
21. Killennial (2016) 3/5
22. The Barn (2016) 4/5
23.1. He Never Died (2015) 3.5/5
23.2. Indigenous (2014) 0/5
24. Odd Thomas (2013) 4/5
25. Hush (2016) 5/5
26. Bloody April Fools (2013) 0/5
27. Final Destination 3 (2006) 3.5/5
28. V/H/S/2 (2013) 3/5
29. Exeter (2015) 3/5
30. The Amityville Horror (2005) 2/5