Suitable Flesh
Watch afterAvatar: The Way of Water (2022) Evil Dead Rise (2023), Five Nights at Freddy's (2023), Leave the World Behind (2023), Saw X (2023), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
There have been numerous film adaptations of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, featuring everyone from Sandra Dee (The Dunwich Horror) to Nicolas Cage (Color Out of Space). However, it was the late filmmaker Stuart Gordon who best managed to capture the peculiar and often perverse charms of Lovecraft’s work. With their combination of weirdo humor, bizarre imagery, kinky sex, grisly bloodshed and better-than-expected performances, his Re-Animator and From Beyond became instant cult classics and unquestioned high points of the entire horror genre in the 1980s. Continue Reading →
Christmas Bloody Christmas
SimilarA Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Happy Death Day 2U (2019),
Shudder’s Christmas Bloody Christmas, about a killer Robo-Santa that wreaks havoc in a small town, is that present that catches your eye under the tree. The wrapping paper is beautiful, and the object hidden within looks big and expensive. You finally get to open it. Alas, the magnificent gift in your head turns out to be nothing more than an Amazon box with an ugly sweater inside. Continue Reading →
VFW
Grizzled veterans go up against a drug dealer’s zombie-like henchmen in Joe Begos’ gory, fast paced action-horror film.
We’re in a peak era for horror, when filmmakers are exercising their most creative, artful muscles to make beautiful, slow-paced nightmares like Midsommar and the recent Gretel & Hansel. Sometimes, however, you just want to see something a little more simple and direct in its attempt to shock and exhilarate audiences, and that’s where Joe Begos’ VFW comes in. An exciting entry in the “long night” trope, it pits the last survivors of a group of old war buddies against an unexpected and relentless enemy.
Released at the same time on the festival circuit as Begos’ excellent (and delightfully gruesome) vampire flick Bliss, VFW shares some of Bliss’s actors, its similar candy colored neon lighting, and gallons and gallons of fake blood. Both movies even feature a personality-altering designer drug - here it’s “hype,” which turns its users into rage zombies. VFW, however, right down to its synth-heavy, very John Carpenter-esque score, leans more towards Assault on Precinct 13-style action than straight horror, with a few touches of Escape From New York and From Dusk Till Dawn.
Stephen Lang leads a cast of largely underrated character actors, including Fred Williamson, Martin Kove, George Wendt, David Patrick Kelly, and the great William Sadler. Lang plays Fred, a Vietnam veteran who runs the local VFW hall, a beacon of normalcy in a rapidly decaying city. It’s Fred’s birthday, and he and his pals, who seem to be the only people left who show up at the hall, are determined to celebrate. They’re quietly acknowledging that they’re the last of a dying breed before the actual dying begins, giving the movie a bleak and poignant angle from the start. Continue Reading →