The Thirsty Dead (1974) 1h 28m

How many of these cheap horror movie collections do I own?  The answer is a lot apparently.  Coming to us from a 13 film set entitled The Living Dead we get The Thirsty Dead!  I chose this film specifically because of the description on the back of the case which is as follows:

"A stewardess, an erotic dancer, and two beauty queens are kidnapped and taken to a cave in the jungle.  They soon discover their gruesome fate: They're captives of a cult of immortals who survive by drinking blood."

That was enough to hook me but The Thirsty Dead has so much more!  Each lady is kidnapped from the city by men in red cultist robes with giant hoods.  They're taken to a boat, unbound, and paddled down to the cave.  The erotic dancer just assumes they're going to become sex slaves and she is 100% down for that, saying something like "you can make money and never leave your bedroom."  We are then shown the cultists that are dressed somewhere between original Star Trek humanoid aliens and Flash Gordon extras.  The blond female with crazy Dolly Parton hair resembles the old queen of this group and, after consulting the head in a box, they try to get her to join the cult.  Will she drink the blood potion and live forever or will she deny the prophecy and complain about just wanting to be with her "friends" the whole time?

I see you want to live forever...

There was a lot going on in this film.  The beauty queens really don't do a whole lot in this film except for complain and one eventually has a snake on her foot.  The erotic dancer exists to be hyper sexual in her comments and actions, also to have the most hilarious death which I assume was some weird 70's way of saying that having loose morals leads you to dying in a pit of bones and rats.  The cult is insane and as the film goes on more and more crazy shit get s revealed.  Initially it's just a guy in a blue tunic, then there are tons of local women, then there's a head in a box, then there's a telescope and a glory hole?  Yeah, it gets weird and stays weird. 

It probably had a decent budget as well, or at least access to old sci-fi sets to have all the matching costumes and the strange cavern lair.  Unfortunately they didn't put any of that toward the special effects make-up as the appliances are poorly constructed and blended into the actresses.  While I think of it too, for a random horror movie in the 70's I don't recall seeing any bare breasts at any point in this film.  Even when the dancer was doing her routine in a cage at the beginning she was still wearing what equates to a two-piece bathing suit.  I don't know why I'm surprised by this but it just seems like an odd staple with 70's and early 80's schlock horror to throw in some breasts.  Maybe this film thought it couldn't contend with Hammer Films and kept it covered.

All in all, The Thirsty Dead wasn't bad.  It wasn't amazing, but it was a "watch this with your friends and laugh at it" kind of fun.  My husband joined me for this watching and it definitely made the film better.

I give The Thirsty Dead 2.5 stock photos of someone drinking water out of 5:

Night of the Death Cult (A.K.A. Night of the Seagulls) (1975) 1h 29m

Coming from another horror film 10-pack, but not the same 10-pack, we have Night of the Death Cult!  A film that is actually known as Night of the Seagulls but I'm told was something else.  Not only that, this is apparently an over watched VHS tape rip that is poorly overdubbed!  Yes! Get Into it!  Get into this fucking mess!

Night of the Death Cult is the final part of the Blind Dead series.  I don't know what the hell this series is but if all of these films are similar then they're bat shit crazy.  A cult of Knights Templar have been killing women and feeding the hearts of the victims to a strange frog statue.  In present day a village sacrifices seven women for seven days once a year.  The skeletal ghouls of the Knights Templar come and take the girls to continue their ritual.  A new doctor comes with his wife and the villagers treat them like shit until the secret comes to surface!  Oh, and the spirits of the sacrificed women turn into seagulls.  That's the seagull part.

Once the credits started I only had one reaction...

Honestly, this version of the film is terrible quality, but there wasn't much quality here to begin with.  I don't know if I need to watch the other films or if this is a stand-alone.  I still feel like the plot made very little sense.  Why were the Templars skeleton men that still need lady hearts?  Why did the village know of this?  Fire kills the skeletons but they can ride horses without a problem?  Why does that grocery store just have a basket of fruit and paper bags?!  FUCKING SEAGULLS?!

Don't watch this.  It's shit.  Fuck this shit!  FUCK IT SO FUCKING HARD IN ITS SHITTY VHS RIPPED BUTTHOLE!

I give Night of the Death Cult (a.k.a. Night of the Seagulls) 0 seagull dogs out of 5:

Gallowwalkers (2012) 1h 30m

Mother fucking Wesley Snipes!  Fuckin' Blade!  Mother fucking Simon Phoenix!  A man that has vanished from the public eye (except for the one time my friend was his Uber driver).  He's back!  Or at least he was back in 2012 with today's film.  Is my excitement warranted?  Does Snipes live up to my hype?  Does this film do him justice and vice versa?  Ehhhh......

Gallowwalkers (yes, all one word) takes us to the old west where a badass looking Mr. Snipes is hunting down a specific individual all while doing Sub Zero head-rip fatalities and being a rad cowboy.  We come to find that the man he's looking for is a strangely skinless person that steals the flesh from a young man and harasses a cult known as Enoch's Hammer.  His actions are all because he thinks that Mr. Snipes killed his son.  Wesley picks up a sidekick at some point and then everyone meets on the farm where our hero was raised for some final gun shooting and rock throwing.

Okay, real talk, as hyped as I have been sounding with this review, this film isn't that great.  Wesley Snipes looks cool but when he talks it feels lackluster for someone that is meant to be a shoot-first-growl-talk-later type of guy.  As a "presence" though, he kills it.

The plot and character design are what saves Gallowwalkers for me.  If this were just a bunch of jagoffs in cowboy hats shooting each other because of "reasons" then I would've counted this as a total loss.  Instead we have men that steal the skin of other men (and in one case, lizards), carrying around a crucified mummy, all while hunting down Wesley Snipes.  On the other side we have sick dreadlock and grey-in-the-right-places Wesley hunting them down in return and ripping people's heads and spines off to satisfy his own revenge, and counter the curse upon him.

I made this movie sound sick as hell again...

I give Gallowwalkers 3 Simon Phoenix's out of 5:

Abattoir (2016) 1h 38m

Abattoir (noun) - Slaughterhouse

I never learned this word while I was studying French in college so I'm let down it didn't mean something cooler.  I don't know what I wanted but I feel like "slaughterhouse" doesn't really fit.  I get what they were going for, and Abattoir is much better, but suck my ass with this being "slaughterhouse."

Abattoir starts with a Henry David Thoreau quote and a narrator.  Don't let this over pretentiousness turn you off though because the plot is kind of rad.  Julia, a reality reporter (which is a thing I guess) gets a call from a man that says he just murdered her sister and the sister's family.  After the funerals Julia, with her cop "friend" Declan, go back to her sister's house to find answers.  They find the room where the murder happened completely missing from the house.  Using her reality knowledge and reporter skills Julia finds that similar occurrences have been happening for around 50 years and trace back to Jebediah Crone as well as the town the sisters were born.

For the first two acts of Abattoir everything happens at high speed.  It's paced well, but when the time comes for the third act everything screeches to a halt in order for you to get a guided tour of the payoff you've been waiting for.  If they trimmed it by 5 or 10 minutes then it would've been just right.  They didn't, it made my interest wain.  Luckily, by the very end, this film got its shit together and I was all in.  It helps that this movie has one of my favorite things: the bad guy wins.

I want a sequel to Abattoir.  Don't do the same town or Jebediah again, but the plot of everything can go much further now that we have a foundation.  Make it!  Make it happen!  Appease me!

I give Abattoir 4 copies of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five out of 5:

Sacrifice (2016) 1h 31m

I've never been to Europe but, keeping with things I've learned from horror films, here's a list of things you shouldn't do:

1) stay in a hostel, because rich murder people will kidnap you
2) visit castles the locals tell you to stay away from, even if you have a contract with "The Count" or whomever owns that shit
3) be disrespectful to the Romani/Roma because that's just good travel etiquette and you shouldn't be a prick when abroad
4) visit random small inhabited islands, because cult murder people might kidnap you

Sacrifice breaks rule #4 because after having another miscarriage a doctor goes with her husband to the small Scottish island where he grew up.  They plan to adopt a child from the hospital/orphanage on the next island over.  However, the woman finds remains from a ritual killing buried on their land and this sets her on the path to finding out the truth about the island's inhabitants.

This isn't really a horror film.  At least not by my assumed guidelines of horror.  Aside from a few dull chase scenes there isn't any true sense of danger.  Some of the sets were really elaborate and well done.  I liked what I assume was a "ritual room" in the house.  My big question is why do you need to have engraved plates above the runed branding irons?  I would assume that you wouldn't need to label that as you should just know.  Kudos on the use of the Futhark rune set though, even if they did just make up a rune for "sacrifice."  Also, the pictures on the wall of fathers with adopted sons makes it seem like a creepy NAMBLA club. Come to think of it, they don't really ever give us a proper explanation of the group either and the dad makes some really misogynistic comments to our heroine...

I think my biggest complaint about Sacrifice is that it becomes so focused on the action and the escape toward the end that they get sloppy with continuity and execution.  For example, they're watching the woman run from room to room on a security camera, but despite someone standing there and still watching the cameras they don't see her and her husband start to escape with a third person?  Then he's watching security camera footage of a fight that is obviously just regular footage they threw an effect on because, A) a security camera facing some piping is pointless, B) the shot is perfectly framing the actors, and C) the camera sways with the action.  If I'm yelling at the TV about your slapdash fucking work then you fucked up hard.  Fucking sacrifice this movie to the devil in hopes you get a better movie or, like, an ice cream sandwich.

I give Sacrifice 1 bagpipe out of 5 only because I like cults in movies:

Bleed (2016) 1h 22m

You know that part in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy and those Nazis get to the grail room and they have to chose the Holy Grail?  The lady Nazi hands the one guy a cup and he says "it certainly is the cup of the King of Kings" and then fills it and drinks from it?  You remember that?  He fucking died super hard from that because he had chosen... poorly.  That's kind of how I feel with today's film.  I rolled a movie that I had already watched.  When that happens I try to go with the film before or after it then.  Upon reading that this was a bunch of people ghost hunting in a burned down prison I figured it would be good enough.  That's only a tiny bit of the plot and I felt this movie age me.  Not to dust, but enough that I'm not sure if my penis will ever work again...

Bleed focuses on a couple that just bought a house in southern fuck-all USA.  Our female protagonist has a strange crescent moon birthmark on her neck and is also eight or nine months pregnant.  These two things are related as the movie progresses.  Friends come to visit the couple and the woman's Burning Man burnout brother and his girlfriend convince almost everyone to go to a supposedly Satanic burned down prison to ghost hunt.  The ghost of Rob Zombie past appears, a bunch of pointless backstory and unnecessary character development happens, and the towns folk are a cult that want the baby for reasons never really defined.

This movie would've done well as a short film.  All killer, no filler, and we'd be just fine.  Unfortunately we have a rag tag cult with a religion thrown together based on no research other than "ummm... blood... babies... satan but not satan... Rob Zombie."  We get two thirds of the way through and a girl suddenly discloses that she was schizophrenic since she was a child and that's why she keeps taking pills.  This reveal has nothing to do with anything!  Ever!  Even the fact it's a prison is kind of worthless as it's just used as a building where Rob Zombie in Rasputin form could be chained up.  They could've used a spooky old shack for that.  It was just a dart board full of ideas and whatever they hit they tried to fit in and make it work.

On the plus side though, the acting was decent.  The accents were a bit thick on some of the locals but otherwise not too bad.  Camera work and sound were all good.  The score used a lot of cool instrumentation where I could tell it was metal bowls with water in them or doing slides on a violin or cello string.  I'm not knocking things like Carpenter's Halloween score here, but I would like horror to work more on atmosphere like that rather than traditional music.  Overall though, I think Bleed bled out, leaving a husk of a film on the floor.

I give Bleed 1 copy of Alice Cooper's Only Women Bleed out of 5:

Last Shift (2014) 1h 30m

If your first shift at a new job is guarding a building that after that night they're not going to use anymore then that shit is haunted.  There is no doubt in my mind that it's haunted.  There's no doubt in the ghost's mind that it's haunted.

Last Shift is set in an old police station where Officer Laren is starting her first shift.  All she has to do is watch the building and at some point a clean-up crew is coming through to get some stuff from the evidence room.  What starts where her hearing some strange noises turns into a full-fledged haunting from the spirits of cult members.

I really got into this film.  It reminded me a lot of the Silent Hill video games because there were seemingly two worlds. Officer Laren would blink or turn away and her surroundings would change in that moment.  It made me feel like when you see something out of the corner of your eye, but turn and it's gone.  Last Shift also had some of the most frightening foley I've heard this side of J-Horror.  I haven't cringed from a horror movie in a while but this one made my shoulders tighten up.

My only complaint is that this film was done in 2014 and Officer Laren still had a flip phone.  Honestly, get with the fucking times girl!  No wonder ghosts are calling you, that's like have a Victrola strapped to your hip for your music!

I give Last Shift 3 police shields out of 5:

White Coffin (a.k.a. Ataud Blanco: El Juego Diabólico) (2016) 1h 15m

You should be familiar with the analogy of something having layers like an onion.  While it makes sense, I've never spent time peeling an onion for anything.  I don't think that I know anyone that has actually been cooking and thought "I need to peel this onion to use it."  With this film though, I finally had a real understanding of what it means to have layers skinned away to reveal the new.

White Coffin takes us on an insane adventure.  Virginia's daughter is kidnapped (after she has already kind of kidnapped her own daughter) by some sort of strange cult.  While in chase with the initial kidnapper our heroine is run off the road by an ambulance and killed in a car crash.  Her body is resurrected from her coffin and thus begins a twisted game of riddles, a white coffin, and multiple women attempting to save their children from this murder cult.

When I read the description of this film I wasn't too into it.  The moment Virginia is resurrected then I was ready for whatever.  This movie had so much going on, but it paced itself well and each reveal became more intense until the finale.   Then the ending became a series of madness upon madness.  I loved this film.  It's one of those movies that I will pull out when I want to have rad discussions with friends after it's done.

I give White Coffin 4 cult members out of 5:

Don't forget, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter at 30daysofplight.

Kristy (2014) 1h 26m

If modern horror movies have taught me anything, it's that the internet was created by the devil to do the devil's work.  This blog: the devil's, Netflix: the devil's, ordering pizza online: absolutely the devil!  With all this fiber optic satanism running rampant, it's obvious that fake 4Chan cults would pop up, right?

That's kind of the baseline of Kristy.  An online forum known as "/the fold/" hunts down "Kristys."  The women aren't actually named Kristy (well, some might be) but it's a general name used for a girl who has her shit together and is attractive.  They refer to them as "Kristy" by saying that it means "child of Christ" (or something along those lines) and that by killing them they are killing god.  Whatever, it's a cult created on the internet.  The point is this cult has sects around the U.S. and they do these murders while filming on their cell phone cameras and upload them to the site.  Cell phones are the super devil, who is stronger than the regular devil!!

One group decides to go after this girl Justine who is staying on her campus over Thanksgiving because she's an idiot and is taking college too seriously.  This cult sect of a woman in a hood and three guys with shitty duct tape/tin foil masks begin fucking shit up on the like three people that are still working on the campus, a dog, and try to wreck Justine.

This film wasn't really anything new as far as a slasher/survival horror film.  The internet thing made me think of the show Dark Net (which if you haven't seen, check that shit out).  I do like that Justine isn't just the typical "run up the stairs instead of out the front door" type of heroine.  There are a lot of times she outsmarts the killers and a few times she impressed with her survival skills.  There was a brief moment too where her boyfriend shows up and I was worried this film was going to take the "straight white male savior" route, but he exists to get killed and be the spark that ignites the real survival fire in Justine.

Survival Fire kind of sounds like a sweet band name...

I give Kristy 2 pilgrim turkeys out of 5:

Don't forget you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter at 30daysofplight

Friday's Choice Cuts: VHS Massacre: Cult Films and the Decline of Physical Media (2016) 1h 20m

I've made it no secret that I'm a fan of Troma Films.  So recently I was on their website looking through the sale items and I noticed this gem:  VHS Massacre: Cult films and the Decline of Physical Media.

I'm old enough to remember the mom and pop video store.  Originally our local pharmacy had a small video rental section.  After that we had a place called Video and Sound where you could rent Beta and VHS tapes.  It eventually evolved to VHS and game rentals.  Our local grocery store opened their Iggle Video which was a full sized video store in one corner.  I remember turning 18 and getting cards for both of these places as well as the Blockbuster which eventually came to our town.  As of now all these places are closed.

VHS Massacre examines how VHS rentals, and especially mom and pop stores, helped independent film companies during its boom.  I still remember seeing VHS sleeve art like House or Critters and being scared of it as a tiny child, but those stuck in my mind.  Having that availability and visual presence helped to culminate that era of cult film.

This documentary gives us a decent history lesson, bringing up studios, films, actors/actresses, and even personal memories which I had forgotten about.  It also goes into detail about how corporate structures made it hard then, and make it hard now, for the indie companies to get things out or even keep up.  At the same time they tackle how people view things like torrents, where some use the term "piracy" but, in the case of Lloyd Kaufman, he uses the term "file sharing" and claims it has been helpful for people to see the films they put out.

The climax of the film is the actual VHS Massacre which was a competition where the people involved had to find VHS tapes where they would watch any random five-minute section of it to find the worst one.  The winner is well deserved.

All in all, this is a definite watch for anyone that is a fan of cult film.  The people in this film are very passionate about how they fit into this world.  It presents a ton of info that I never even considered and gave me a bunch of directions to pursue to not only expand my knowledge but to find some great movies I would be missing out on otherwise.

"Never give up the fight for truly independent cinema!"

Day 28: V/H/S/2 (2013) 1h 36m

I think I've seen all of the V/H/S series.  It's tough to remember because there are a lot of these horror compilation style films out there now.  Looking back at Creepshow and moving all the way up to more modern ones like Southbound, they all begin to melt together.  I do remember seeing V/H/S/2 though.

Technically there are five films in one here.  The first involves a man seeing more than he bargained for when he gets his new experimental eye implant.  Number two, which is my favorite of the group, is a zombie with a GoPro.  Our third film involves a strange Indonesian cult and a documentary crew.  The fourth pushes the focus more into a sci-fi/horror realm with a group of hormonal teens and tweens.  The final one is the very shoddy glue of V/H/S/2 which focuses on some private investigators trying to track down a college student, breaking into his home, and piecing things together by the VHS tapes and a laptop video.

I call the final one shoddy because I feel like they really had no clue how to fit together each of those shorts and they just created this component to make it work.  It's more like duct tape, or bubble gum and tooth picks.

Out of the remaining four, V/H/S/2 has two strong shorts, one decent short, and one that is forgettable. It's not bad, just forgettable.  The great thing about these short film collections is that if one isn't that great you know something else is coming soon.  For that, I say V/H/S/2 is pretty strong.

I give V/H/S/2 3 Betamax tapes out of 5:

Day 8: Convergence (2015) 1h 40m

I feel like Convergence was Netflix letting me know not to let my guard down.  I made my mistake yesterday with Baskin and assuming it wasn't going to be good, but it showed me wrong.  For Convergence I thought it was starting out really well and then it just suddenly shit the bed for me.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good crazy God-cult bad guy and realms existing between the worlds.  My issue comes when they felt the need to take what has been a really good concept with the movie and suddenly introduce the "real world" and do so with ghost hunters.  It's such a fuck you to the whole battle between "good" and "perceived good" that exists in this purgatory realm.  It cheapened it for me.

I had a much longer review for this film all typed up and ready to go but I deleted it to write this.  Why?  Because this film doesn't deserve any form of recap.  You don't need to describe a turd to someone to get the picture.  We all know a piece of shit when we see it.

I give Convergence 2 abandoned hospitals out of 5:

Day 7: Baskin (2015) 1h 37m

There are times in life where you will make horrible mistakes.  While not my worst mistake, writing this film off early was certainly a lack in judgement on my part.  What started off as a slow crawl turned into one of the most insane things I've ever watched.  It's the kind of horror that is in line with the Silent Hill video games where things are so grotesque and twisted you're not sure exactly what you're looking at.

Based off of the short film bearing the same title, the Turkish film Baskin (which translates to "police raid") focuses on what becomes the most surreal night for a group of police officers.  After acting more like a biker gang than cops at a late night restaurant, they receive a call for back-up at a location not far from them.  Along the way a series of strange occurrences happen, such as seeing a naked man run past and something unseen hitting their van and leaving symbols scratched in it.  Then their van hits a bloody man in the road and veers into a deep creek.

This is where we have the first of many dream realm scenes between the rookie and the "boss" of the officers.  We also find that they both see a cloaked man just beyond the door of the room these scenes exist in.  The rookie is pulled from the water and we briefly meet a group of Romani that give them directions to the site they were called to.  This is the point where things began to descend into madness and I became hyper focused on Baskin.

They arrive at a large building to find a single cop inside hitting his head off of a wall.  After he points to a door our cops decide to split up.  Then they enter Hell.  Literally.  As soon as I finished this film I begin extensively looking things up on it.  They don't enter a Dante's Inferno hell, or a fire and brimstone hell, but rather a cultish human-extremes version of hell.  It's an overly sexualized, bloody, grotesque, absolutely insane portrayal of hell.  To top it all off, their leader was this guy:

Mehmet Cerrahoglu

That is not make-up, he has a rare condition.  All they did was slowly add tattoos to his body as time passed.  This is also the only film he has ever been in and he was fucking amazing!  His voice and delivery and his actions kept me rapt on the entire ending of this film.  You are the fuckin' man, Mr. Cerrahoglu!

Watch this movie.  Trust me, it'll be slow to start but when it gets going it really gets going.  I didn't even go into the full details of the insanity because you need to experience it.  When my fiancé and I woke up this morning I instantly started rattling on about the craziness of this film.  Most people just wake up with a kiss and then shower, I gush about satanic cults.

I give Baskin 4 hellmouths out of 5:

photo of Mehmet Cerrahoglu from twitter.com/ellifdagg

Day 28: The Invitation (2015) 1h 40m

There are moments when I watch a film and I can identify with a main character.  Spending most of a party having one of those "something is going on that I'm not down with" feeling is definitely something I've done more than once.  Luckily, none of those parties involved anybody in a weird death cult that plans to kill their old friends.

The Invitation is a literal invitation to a dinner party.  A couple had returned to LA after being away for a few years after the death of a child and the end of a marriage.  While they were away they had apparently found a strange cult that embraces death.  Our main character, Will, is the ex-husband of the female in the cult couple and the father of the child that died.

Pretty much from the start Will keeps noticing little things that seem off.  His continued paranoid outbursts keep upsetting his friends and his girlfriend.  Truth be told, if someone had the doors locked and made me watch some cult recruitment video I'd be loosing my mind as well.  Will has a major freak out after he hears a voicemail from a friend that said he was at the party but hadn't been there all night.  The timing is just right for this friend to show up and Will kind of breaks down and accepts he has been winding up about nothing all night.

Then everything clicks for him...

During the toast he suddenly realizes the drinks are dosed and starts slapping drinks out of people's hands before they can drink.  A girl that was just a friend of the couple gets up and starts screaming that Will has ruined everything and attempts to attack him.  It's also noticed that one woman did drink and she is dead and foaming at the mouth.  The couple and the friends of the couple then begin trying to pick everyone off one by one.

The best part of the film was the very end when Will notices a red lamp lit outside the house, and then sees others lit outside a dozen other homes on the hillside.  It sent a definite chill down my spine at the thought of these bizarre cult murder suicides.

I was a teen when the Heaven's Gate group all killed themselves and had their purple sheets and Nike shoes to go on the Hale Bopp comet.  The fact that I remember all of those details and more is probably want triggered that chill.  That the death cult idea really isn't crazy enough to not exist...

I give The Invitation 3 Hale Bopp comets out of 5: