Category: Reviews

Directed by Michael Storch [Other horror films: Schism (2020)]

Rather psychological in its approach, Phantom of the Woods is a decent film. It’s actually quite a bit better than I expected, and while I still think it falls around average, I have to say that the film impressed me a bit.

One of the reasons I had this on my list of films to check out is that it’s filmed in Indiana. In fact, it was filmed in the Fort Wayne area, and as I live quite close by (Columbia City representin’), I was definitely interested in seeing this. There’s not many horror films from Indiana – a point I pontificate about in my review for Scarecrow County – so this one sounded like it had potential.

And I enjoyed how they tackled the story. There’s an entity out in the nearby woods, and it makes people see what they fear most – some teenagers and a cop get entangled in figuring out how to defeat it, and things go from there. It’s a lower-budget film, but the effects are generally decent, and while nothing really stands out as far as kills go (aside from maybe a scene involving a scarecrow), I was impressed with most of what I saw.

I was also quite impressed with the performances. I don’t know the budget for the movie, but this didn’t feel like The Night Before Easter or Don’t Go to the Reunion. It felt quite polished, and the performances are a good example of that. Both J.R.S. Storch and Delaney Hathaway did great, and I really enjoyed their budding friendship. Mark S. Esch was great as an old-fashioned Marine Corp police officer – I couldn’t stand him from his first scene, and I appreciated that. Richard Hackel and Matthew Finney were both quite good also.

More than anything, I wanted to like the movie more than I did, but the thing is, while I liked a lot of what they were going for, I question whether it really had to be an hour and forty minutes. The time generally went by quickly, and the pacing wasn’t a big issue, but even so, some portions probably could have been trimmed a bit.

For an ambitious film, though, Phantom of the Woods was a surprise. To be frank, I was expecting something a lot less polished than this, and this movie impressed me. It’s not really a film I think I’d watch all that often, but when it comes to Indiana-based horror, it’s certainly a movie that I’d recommend.

7/10

Directed by Joseph Henson [Other horror films: N/A] & Nathan Johnson [Other horror films: N/A]

While The Night Before Easter isn’t a terrible offering of low budget horror, and certainly not that time-consuming, I have to say that I wasn’t overly enthralled. The basic idea is fun, but it seems there was far more drama than there was killing, and while that helped build some of the characters, I’m not sure it did the overall movie great favors.

The plot here, or more specifically, the setting (being a storage facility) reminded me a bit of another lower-budget film, The Murder Game (from 2006), which also took place in a similar setting. That had probably the same amount of characters as this one did, but I also thought the story was a bit more solid, and while this film does boast a killer in a bunny suit, I tend to think The Murder Game was more memorable also.

As it was, the kills here are okay. Someone gets a saw blade thrown into their back, another takes an ax to the face, leaving  gnarly gash. There’s a throat-slitting, along with a decapitated head, so there’s a bit here if that’s your main interest, but a lot of these kills don’t happen until the second half, and it’s not really until the final ten or so minutes that things really start going.

To be fair, the movie’s a short one. The Night Before Easter runs at just over an hour – 65 minutes total. It’s easily digestible, but even with the time spent building some of the characters (such as Kelly’s infatuation with Riley, or Riley’s opening of a comic book store, or Brooke’s drinking problem), I feel like some of the characters here just don’t get much spotlight, and either could have been cut or given a bit of a chance to explore their backgrounds.

As far as performances go, I think that April Sinclair was the most note-worthy, and her scenes with Alyssa Matusiak were perhaps the most interesting non-murder scenes of the movie. I thought both did quite well with troubled characters. Keldon Flint (“She called me Danti!”) was amusing at times, Bonnie Marilyn Jean played the stereotypically bitchy girl well, and Emily Chidalek had some strong moments early on. I do sort of wish we got a little more from Eric Wyatt – he was okay, but I definitely thought his character could have been fleshed out a bit more.

Otherwise, there’s not really a lot going for The Night Before Easter. It’s an okay lower-budget film, and it can be fun at times, but there’s a lot of other lower budget films from the same time-range I’d probably want to spend my time with instead (such as Don’t Go to the Reunion, Silver Cell, You’re Not Getting Out Alive, and Vampire Ticks from Outer Space), and I don’t know if this film will end up being all that memorable.

5.5/10

Directed by Jack Curtis [Other horror films: N/A]

Though it pains me to say it, I don’t think The Flesh Eaters is a great film. It’s certainly notable in some aspects, and it can be reasonably fun, but the final third of the film never did much for me, and portions do drag. Even so, it’s worth seeing at least once for the special effects.

I have a little history with the film. Way back in the day, I saw this multiple times playing on AMC – I probably watched this two times, perhaps three, so it was a bit of an odd favorite. It’s not been unpleasant revisiting it, by any means, but I definitely don’t think it’s as strong as I used to.

I love the plot, though, dealing with glowing organisms in the water that can strip flesh to the bone, and people trapped on an island having to contend with the microscopic entities. This movie’s surprisingly gory at times – it’s in black-and-white, but even so, it can provide a good time.

During the pre-credit opening (definitely an earlier example of this), a couple goes for a swim that doesn’t end well. That’s a tame opening, but it’s a good portent of what’s to come. A man in a motorboat gets some water splashed on him, and his face rather melts, and there’s also a scene in which someone drinks a beverage with the microscopic organisms in it, and it eats out of him from his stomach, in beautifully gory fashion. Earlier films did have more gore than you might expect – look at Fiend Without a Face – but The Flesh Eaters is a surprisingly bloody film at times.

Otherwise, the special effects aren’t great, but that has more to do with the route of the story than anything else. See, for the first two-thirds of the film, the microscopic glowing organisms are all they have to deal with, but events occur that create a giant monster out of the organisms, so instead of millions of small things, there’s one large monster (technically, two, but I wanted to simplify things), and at that point, things feel a bit more on the generic side.

Byron Sanders made a solid lead, and he had that typical strongman physique. In fact, I’m sort of surprised he wasn’t a bigger name, as he had great looks. Barbara Wilkin made for a decent, inoffensive love interest, Rita Morley had some great scenes as her character was an alcoholic (in fact, Morley might be one of the strongest performances here), and as an antagonist force, Martin Kosleck (The Frozen Ghost and House of Horrors) was a bit generic, but overall decent.

Funnily enough, it’s the one with the least acting experience that I dug the most. Ray Tudor plays this random beatnik who rafts onto the island halfway through the film, and he has the kookiest dialogue, man. I mean, he speaks the word, man, about the power of love. You speaking my language, Max? That character was a hoot, and Ray Tudor did a great job with it.

Despite my nostalgia at seeing the movie again for the first time in a long time (for detailed context, I watched this on October 25th, 2021, and last saw it around 2010, if not earlier), I don’t think The Flesh Eaters is a great film. It’s decent, but it’s a bit slow at times, and the finale is a lot more generic than anything previous in the film. I think it evens out to about average, but I know plenty out there enjoy it more than I do, so if you’re into 60’s horror, this is definitely a movie to look into.

7/10

Directed by William Girdler [Other horror films: Three on a Meathook (1972), Asylum of Satan (1972), Abby (1974), Grizzly (1976), The Manitou (1978)]

I fundamentally think Day of the Animals is a fine movie. It’s not quite as action-packed as I personally would have hoped, and the build-up at the beginning takes a bit, but it’s an okay film. I don’t think it’s a necessarily good movie, but for what it is, it’s okay.

I think what really took a bit to get used to is that despite having a variety of animals going wild to a depletion of the ozone layer, there’s not really that many animal attacks. Sure, there’s a wolf, a bear, some snakes, big cats, and birds, but it’s not quite as quick-paced as you might hope. That might make sense, though, given William Girdler directed this one, and he was also behind Grizzly, which I also found a tad on the sluggish side.

The story’s not bad, with a bunch of people going on a guided hike and coming across the wild and dangerous behavior of the animals, which of course causes some dissent in the group in the form of Leslie Nielsen’s character. It’s almost sociological in it’s approach at times – if man loses all sense of law and order, what horrors might they commit? It’s not heavy in that type of thing, but from Nielsen’s character, is does come up.

I’ll say that Neilsen (Prom Night, Dark Intruder, Creepshow) played a horrible character pretty well, and when he got #mauled, I can’t say I wasn’t glad (though I do wish it were a lot more violent, with screaming and limbs being torn off in gory agony and the like). I think the best character here, without much hesitation, would be Michael Ansara (Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, The Manitou, Dear Dead Delilah), who is a great guy, and has to deal with racism (he’s Native American) along with the killer animals. Both Christopher George (Graduation Day, City of the Living Dead, Pieces) and Lynda Day George (Beyond Evil, It Happened at Lakewood Manor, Fear No Evil) were fine, but neither one was that memorable.

And despite the premise of the film, I don’t think many of the animal attacks were that memorable, either. You had the white water rafting with wolves (technically dogs, but I liked the alliteration I had going) at the finale, which was fun, and there was a good scene in which someone’s getting into a car without noticing the nest of snakes on the seat behind them, which was playful, but that’s virtually it. There was a bird attack early on – the victim fell to their death in amusingly fake fashion – and I guess that was okay, but overall, I was sort of expecting more.

Day of the Animals is a movie I’ve wanted to see for a while, and I’m happy I did, despite not having loved it. It’s certainly better than some other 70’s creature films, such as The Food of the Gods, but when movies like The Swarm and The Pack exist, it’s hard to really go out of my way to recommend this one.

6.5/10

Directed by Don Swan [Other horror films: N/A]

This is one of those films that I have a hard time hating. Goremet, Zombie Chef from Hell isn’t a good movie, but the first half can be pretty amusing, and though the second half is a bit of a struggle, it’s still sort of fun in that ultra low-budget type of way.

At least the plot is unique – a man, Goza, is cursed by the Holy Order of the Righteous Brotherhood to live forever, feasting on the flesh of people to sustain himself. And so he does – he owns a seafood restaurant, and engages in killing people and practices cannibalism.

The first half of the film just sort of follows a few of the people who enter the establishment. A woman gets killed, and her boyfriend finds her ring in a hamburger. A health inspector gets killed after warning Goza he’d have to shut him down. A police officer finds hair in his beer and soup, and upon investigation, finds dismembered body parts, leading to the greatest scene in the film, in which his head is punched clean off his body.

It’s in the second half of this short film (it runs around 70 total minutes) that things become a little less interesting, though arguably more consistent. Members of the aforementioned Holy Order of the Righteous Brotherhood regret that they made Goza into what he is, and want to destroy the flesh-eating abomination that they created. With the High Priestess and loyal members, they fight back against the evil of Goza.

To be fair, it’s not a bad way for the story to go, but it felt far more fantasy to me than I personally care for, albeit in a very low budget form. Seeing people killed and chopped up into food is more interesting to me than seeing some Brotherhood strike back against Goza, but that’s because I come to a movie like this for the violence. It’s perhaps partially inspired by Blood Feast, and sometimes feels similar to Blood Diner (though this is a better movie, and I would die on that hill), but whatever went into creating this, boy, what a movie.

Theo Depuay, who played Goza, didn’t really have the suave personality you’d expect from a 600 year old cannibal. People didn’t seem to mind him too much (aside from this guy coming in for a short order cook job – this asshole played by Arnold William may have made one of the funniest scenes in the film), but boy, his personality needs work. There’s also Michael O’Neill, who does most of the killing, and has a solid, hulking menace vibe to him.

If you’re familiar with the VHS cover of this movie, you’ll see why this movie might stand out. Personally, I’ve always found it one of the most memorable covers for a horror film, and way back when I first heard about this movie and saw the cover, I knew I wanted to see it.

As such, it didn’t really impress me when I did finally see it, and I can firmly say it’s not a good movie after seeing it a second time, but that doesn’t mean Goremet, Zombie Chef from Hell can’t be an amusing film at times.

5.5/10