The Devil in the Details

Dog Soldiers is a unique blend of folk horror and military action, propped up by a structure that references The Night of the Living Dead and the many siege films of John Carpenter. The feature film debut of one Neil Marshall, who would go on shortly to direct the millennial horror classic The Descent,  it follows a squad of trained soldier bros getting torn apart by monsters in the woods as opposed to a group of spunky female spelunkers getting torn apart in a cave. Could this little film about G.I. Joes fighting mythical beasts ever hope to compare to its more popular sibling? Well, the answer may shock you *rolls eyes* Anywho, our leads are participating in what they believe to be a routine training exercise out in the woods, only to discover that things are not what they seem. The special forces squad they were initially supposed to be meeting up with is discovered mangled and mutilated by some awful creature, which leaves behind only one cleverly-hidden survivor and no bodies...

Welp, with another Halloween behind us and the year fast wrapping up, it’s time to really buckle down and start covering some of the great horror films from this year that are just now being released to home video. One such film, really the toast of the ’22 Halloween season, was Terrifier 2, an infamously graphic and spooky creepy clown film created by up-and-comer Damien Leone, writer, director, and makeup effects artist by trade. His creation, Art the Clown, has been really blowing up since its release, and for good reason: he’s an instantly iconic villain who takes the creepy clown trope in a new and unsettling direction, all thanks to his reliance on mime and violent dismemberment. Well, that and the passionate performances of the actors who have portrayed him over the years. The thing is though, it’s been a long journey for ole’ Art from his birth in a few low-budget short films to his current status as the newest addition to the slasher canon, so I thought it’d be fun to go bac...

Larry Fessenden is something of a Stan Lee-esque figure in the world of horror, appearing in countless cameos in films from those he's influenced, not to mention name-checks aplenty. It also helps that his film company Glass Eye Pix has released some of the finest independent films in the genre, many of which credit Fessenden as a producer. Here's the thing though: I'd never seen one of the man's own films until popping in this little-discussed folk horror film from '01, and boy, did it make an impression. Wendigo opens with a very grounded example of horror: an argument between two men. One angry, possibly intoxicated, and swinging a gun around the whole time; the other nebbish, quite reasonable, and yet firm, with a frightened family in the car waiting on him. It's tense, and very real. And just when you think the tension is going to boil over, everything kind of works out and we're on our way. It makes a lasting impression, though. You see, our lead and ...

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, besides having one of the best movie titles ever, is noted for receiving critical acclaim and accolades at the time of its release, though I personally came into contact with it as a young teen thanks to its status as an X-rated film, of which there were only so many back in its day. Despite always having an interest in seeing it, it's taken until now for a proper Blu-ray release of this film to grace the shelves of lovers of cinema everywhere. And even then, it has to lie and say on the back of the box that it's region-encoded to only play in Region B drives when that's absolutely not the case. Oh well, at least we can finally appreciate this film the way those who saw it at time of release did. This story is something of a modern fable, concerning the gangster Albert Spica and his tormented bride Georgina. You see, Albert is a bully; specifically the kind of bully who is given free rein to terrorize anybody within earshot. He...

It's safe to say I would not want to live in Everett De Roche's Australia. If you don't get killed by some trucker and dumped beside the road, perhaps you'll have a run-in with a comatose telekinetic who can kill you from a million miles away with nothing more than his mind. And that's to say nothing of the local wildlife: first, they were karmic enforcers in Long Weekend, taking revenge on humanity for their mistreatment of the environment, and now they're not much more than chum for the chaotic force of nature at the center of 1984's Razorback. I would normally summarize the film, but honestly: I feel that doing so would just spoil it. It isn't hard to get the gist: a gigantic, freakishly large boar is loose in the Australian outback wreaking havoc on anything and everything that it runs into (or rather through,)  and really that's probably all you should know going in. The premise was clearly inspired by the dingo that ate that poor woman's b...

Alright, so despite my best judgment, I've been on something of a found footage kick recently, inspired by the recent re-release of cult film The Last Broadcast and its wild twist ending. It's got me thinking back on great found footage horror films I've stumbled across before, and searching for new ones to add to the pile. The Poughkeepsie Tapes was one that immediately sounded interesting, given that I have enjoyed my fair share of true crime books and serial killer documentaries over the years. Its shadowy release history certainly stood out as well, with it having been pulled from the release schedule just before it was supposed to make its debut. The Shout! Factory Blu-ray that I watched is actually the first time the film has gotten a wider release, and it comes almost exactly ten years after the day it was originally supposed to arrive. Sounds interesting, right? Was MGM trying to keep the lid on this thing for any specific reason? Or could this be something far mo...

Finally! After all these years, there now exists an all-region Blu-ray of the cult horror flick The Last Broadcast, a film which is generally considered one the very earliest found footage horror films. Coming out just before The Blair Witch Project would hit the silver screen and wow audiences worldwide,  The Last Broadcast is more of a mockumentary than a found footage film, but is notable for technically beating its far more popular contemporary to the punch... iiif you just pretend Cannibal Holocaust doesn't exist, that is.  Anyway, this film follows the exploits of a couple of goofballs shooting a public access show, hungry for attention. After an anonymous internet user suggests they do a show on the mythical Jersey Devil, our two leads hire a few more tagalongs to help them produce a live broadcast on location from the Jersey Pine Barrens in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the beast.  Here what we know: the group made it to their destination, and they successf...

After years of waiting, I'm happy to announce that Vampire's Kiss has finally made the jump from obscure, out-of-print DVD to Blu-ray. It's a film I can't wait to discuss, as I've always found it kind of fascinating, but it's more than a little overwhelming attempting to figure out where to start with this strange little gem.  Despite what the marketing materials, box art, and muted public response to the film both then and now might imply, this isn't some forgettable whacky rom-com about a man who falls in love with a vampire. No, this is a film about a very twisted man who is lonely and desperately looking for love in all the wrong places. A successful yuppie living in New York, Peter Lowe is having something of an existential and/or identity crisis. He sleepwalks through life, day in and day out, with little time for anything besides idly passing time at the office, engaging in either corporate brown-nosing or torturing his poor secretary Alva. He is a...

After tackling the first two-thirds of the plot in pts. 1 and 2 of this exhaustive analysis, digging into their specifics and rendering a verdict on how I felt in pt. 3, it's time to begin wrapping things up in this final bit. Be warned: there will be spoilers from here on out. Welcome back, dear readers! Last time we were summarizing this absurdly dense tale, we were just beginning to get a full picture as to what the so-called “Strangling Ritual” entails, and it wasn’t pretty. Now, it’s time to learn a bit more about our “Sleeping Priestess” who lies at the center of the events that led to whatever calamity broke out in Kuze Manor. So, if you’ll recall, the Kuze clan is an all-female clan, so much so that they callously dump baby boys that are born to members of the Kuze clan down a well (Kei even comes across the well at one point while exploring and hears the wailing of babies coming from its depths.) Only one day, as was inevitable, a mother decided she didn’t much care to ...

In pts. 1 and 2, we summarized everything up to the point of spoilers, and you know what that means: it's now finally time to get opinionated. After that last summary, I’m pretty sure most of you have checked out, right? I might as well carry on as though I’ve been marooned on an island somewhere and I’ve got to keep talking just to keep my sanity, but I can’t help but wonder who is actually reading this. Huge Fatal Frame fans? Well, probably not, thanks to all my snarky asides and goofs on this earnest but often silly horror game, but what do you want from me? I made the stupid, stupid decision to cover them this way, in this much detail, and now I’ve got to stick with it. If I didn’t play around a bit and pick on the game while recounting its dense and lengthy narrative, literally no one would ever read it except as some kind of sleep aid. What? No, I’m not feeling insecure. Why do you ask? But enough stalling, it's time to jump into analysis, and it could not have come ...