And it’s not like their influences on the film are subtle… the film’s Italian writer and producer Ovidio G. Assonitis was known as “The Rip Off King” for films like Beyond the Door (The Exorcist) and Tentacles (Jaws but with a killer octopus), wholesale copies of popular American genre films made cheap for the European market. But in “The Visitor” Assonitis and director Giulio Paradisi (credited as Michael J. Paradise, easily one of the best hack pseudonyms ever) go nuts and steal everything that wasn’t nailed down in the warehouse of 1970’s Horror Cinema Ideas and create a weird, wildly psychadelic and almost undefinable b-movie gem that’s greater than the sum of it’s many, many parts.

To call “The Visitor” another rip-off though, would be woefully inaccurate. It’s actually kind of genius in its own bonkers, impossible to explain way. We start in an hallucinatory, alien landscape, Jerzy Colsowicz (John Huston) experiences a mind-altering vision of a powerful and destructive storm brought about by a young human girl, Katy, who is the descendant of an evil alien guy named Zatteen (there’s that subtle writing in effect) who fled to Earth thousands of years ago. He was killed by a bunch of birds, somehow under the control of God, but his spirit lives on through his evil, bald-assed bastard children, whom he made dozens of by getting all kinds of 1979 freaky with some sexy ladies. Katy has mind-control powers that she sometimes tries to kill people with, and a pet hawk who she is telepathically linked with, and there’s a cabal of creepy old men led by Lance Henriksen as an Atlanta Billionaire (huh?) who are dead-set on getting her mom pregnant in a sort of reverse Rosemary’s baby meets Omen kind of thing to bring about a new world by opening a dimension portal. Or something. “The Visitor” is definitely “you just gotta see it” territory as Katy and her family battle forces beyond the realm of any logical plot you’ve seen before.

Film.com’s David Ehrlich referred to “The Visitor” as “a remake of The Bad Seed as filtered through the acid-tinged mind of Alejandro Jodorowsky”  and we’d have to agree. Evan Husney from DraftHouse Films, who led the restoration of “The Visitor” several years ago,  told Vice at the time:

“There are two ways to watch the movie. The first is where you just completely disregard the movie’s logic. The second is to put every scene down on a notecard and lay it out—then you’ll kind of see the A to Z plot going on, but there’s never a sense of you knowing what’s happening as it’s happening. It has this completely nonsensical logic and if you’re cool with that, great. The movie just seems like it’s a mashup of 40 different movies.”

A schizophrenic blend of shot-for-shot imagery from existing films and goofy, self serious 70’s symbolism that likely made sense to the moviemakers at the time of production, “The Visitor” is difficult to sum up as it defies logical explanation. It’s been called “The Mount Everest Of Insane 70’s Italian Movies” and championed by those that argue that It’s actually well made, but doesn’t make much sense. For Horror-heads there’s lots of kills, but we can’t really understand who most of the characters are and why they get murdered in so many ways: However none of this really matters, because like other films that champion style over story (Blood Machines anyone?), if you’re into it after the inter-dimensional monks battling an alien devil intro on another planet, you’ll probably have a blast watching it like we did.

Available on Shudder in a great re-master, this is definitely one we’d recommend to watch with some herbal suppliments for your 31 Days Of Horror. Check the trailer below and see if you’re down to get way, way out there with “The Visitor”

When the TV adaptation of EC Comics “Tales From The Crypt” became a surprise hit after its 1989 debut, it was only a matter of time before a feature film followed. But unlike “Creepshow” and “Tales From The Darkside“, “Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight” isn’t an anthology, but rather an entirely original film, a celebration of every trashy late-night cable horror film trope from the 90s packed to the brim with biblical bad guys, blood, boobs and of course … Billy Zane. The screenplay of “Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight” wasn’t actually adapted from the pages of EC Comics like other stories in ‘Creepshow’ or the television series, but was written in 1987 as a straight-to-video slasher two years prior to the HBO series’ debut, when it bounced around until being reworked as the first in a planned series of spin-off features. That plan was cut short by the disastrous second entry in the series: Bordello of Blood, but the less said about that one the better. What we’re left with as a final note in Tales From The Crypt’s legacy is a glorious monument late-night, cable TV trash packed with tons of fun for those who want something a little silly to celebrate 31 Days of Horror.

The story , such as it is, is simple: Ex-soldier Brayker  (William Sadler) is the immortal protector of a mystical key that can unlock a power of tremendous evil; his pursuer, the sleazy but charming Collector (Billy Zane in a scenery destroying role) is the demon who wants the key so he can kickstart the apocalypse. On the run for almost 100 years, Brayker finally stops in at a boarding house in New Mexico where he plans to finally face off against the Collector and his band of ghouls, preventing them from ever seizing the key. Brayker uses blood from the artifact to protect the building and tells the residents they must wait out the night. The Collector assembles a team of demons to attack, but is unable to get in. The Collector uses psychic powers to seduce and possess Cordelia (Brenda Bakke) who turns on the group. They escape through old mine tunnels under the building, where the other townsfolk, under demonic possession, drive them back into the church for another final showdown. That’s it: Story wise there’s nothing in here we haven’t seen in a hundred other bad b-movies, but “Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight” cranks everything up to 11 and goes completely over the top in the best possible way, as literally everyone dies, comes back and dies again in more and more eye-popping, goo splattering ways.

Releasing right before the tipping point of terrible CGI taking over in horror films, Demon Knight boasts some outstanding practical FX throughout from Todd Masters, on top of Billy Zane’s scene-stealing, ridiculously perfect performance which really carries the entire film. Much in the same vein of Demons (from which it clearly draws a ton of style), if you want to enjoy 90 minutes of ghastly ghouls getting dispatched in increasingly gruesome ways, this overlooked genre gem will get the job done… and then some. Check the trailer below, you can catch “Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight” on Amazon Prime or pick up the awesome Scream Factory special edition on Blu-Ray.

Interviews with the original Creepshow’s legendary make up artist Tom Savini seem to indicate that “Tales from the Darkside: The Movie” was to be the third film in the “Creepshow” series, and zombie-guru George A. Romero and Stephen King returned to write for the film as they had in the past. As well, project director John Harrison, who’d worked on both previous instalments, and Cinematographer Robert Draper who’s since returned to shoot the new series on Shudder return, along with much of the effects and production crew. In the most confusing origin story, Romero’s segment, “Cat from Hell” was originally supposed to be in “Creepshow 2,” but was scrapped due to budget, then brought back to be a TV episode when “Tales from the Darkside” initially began life as the first “Creepshow” TV series (but was transformed in to its own series before airing due to rights holder conflicts), then scrapped again, which then gave birth to it’s final incarnation in this 1990 film. The third segment, adapted by Beetlejuice and Thinner writer Michael McDowell, was already previously adapted in the Japanese horror anthology film “Kwaidan” before being reworked for this format. With all this mixed parentage, it’s no wonder the film wound up a bit of a mess, but, given the impressive players behind it, “Tales From The Darkside: The Movie” is a throughly enjoyable anthology stuffed with late-80s charm and just perfect for a spooky season afternoon during 31 Days Of Horror.

The framing story involves a modern-day witch (literal goddess Debbie Harry!) who is preparing her dinner: a little boy (Matthew Lawrence). To stall the witch he proceeds to tell her a series of tales from a book of scary stories, the titular “Tales From The Darkside“, and from here we jump into the first of three shorts. In the first segment, McDowell adapts Arthur Conan Doyle‘s short story “Lot No. 249” into a modern monster mystery with film-noir overtones. A graduate student, Edward Bellingham (played by a young but somehow still old looking Steve Buscemi), has been sabotaged by two classmates, Susan (Julianne Moore), and Lee (Robert Sedgwick), who framed him for the theft of an artifact to ruin his chances of winning a scholarship for which they were competing. As one does when theses things happen, Bellingham reanimates a mummy with an ancient scroll and uses it to murder them both, which turns out to be far more complicated than expected.

In the second tale, George A. Romero adapts a little-known Stephen King short story “The Cat from Hell“. We meet Drogan, a wealthy, wheelchair-bound old man (William Hickey) who brings in a hitman named Halston (David Johansen, best known for his role in ‘Scrooged’ as the undead cabbie) for a bizarre job: Drogan wants him to kill a cat, who is convinced is murderously evil. Drogan claims that one by one, the cat killed three other occupants of his house: his sister, her friend Carolyn, and the family’s butler, Richard. We learn that Drogan was the CEO of a drug company that had killed thousands of cats while testing a new drug, and he is now convinced that this black cat is here to exact a Lovecraftian, cosmic revenge.

The third short in “Tales From The Darkside: The Movie” is a dark love story borrowed from Japanese folklore. Written again by Michael McDowel, “Lover’s Vow” followed despondent artist named Preston (James Remar) who witnesses a gruesome murder committed by a demon-like monster. The monster agrees to spare Preston’s life as long as he swears never to speak of what he saw or describe the monster’s appearance to anyone. After a dreamlike encounter leaving him scarred for life, Preston’s situation suddenly takes a turn for the better and his struggling art career becomes wildly successful…until, of course, he breaks his promise with horrifying results. From there our wraparound story gets its own conclusion, and then the credits roll, leaving us with a grin.

Made during the height of pre-CGI practical effects, everything here has its own goofy, ghastly charm, with great performances from a lot of the actors “before they were stars” and knowing winks to the audience like George Romero’s movies playing in the background throughout. And while it’s far better than most anthologies, “Tales From The Darkside: The Movie” still suffers from the hit-or-miss nature of other anthologies, where one or two stories inevitably outshine the rest. Without the humour of “Creepshow” it doesn’t quite live up to it’s full potential, but as a guilty pleasure, and one many fans might not know about, it’s definitely found a home in our collection of Horror. Check the trailer below, or watch on Amazon Prime.

Jamie (Jim Sturgess) is a painfully shy young man who walks the streets of East London hiding his face. He is still a virgin at 25 because a lifetime of bullying have left him unable to make friends or attract women. Unfortunately, Jaime’s been cursed twice: once by a huge heart-shaped birthmark covering one side of his face and twice by recently losing his father. He works as a photographer with his older brother and cares for his ailing mother in their run down apartment, which is “Heartless“‘s way of saying he’s really got nothing to lose. One day while developing photos, he notices a disturbing face looking at him from the window of a house. Investigating, he follows a suspicious man to a group of hooded vandals around a fire, who emit eerie shrieks, and Jamie is shocked to see they have demonic lizard-like face masks with huge pin-like teeth. Over time Jamie becomes aware of a series of horrific murders by fire that have been occurring in the neighbourhood. A witness to one of the murders tells a TV reporter that they weren’t wearing masks; the demonic faces were real.

Jamie and his mother are walking in the neighbourhood when they are attacked by the demonic gang. His mother is immolated while Jamie watches helplessly, and he is savagely beaten and left for dead. While unconscious in hospital he glimpses a man in a dream who says he’s waiting for Jamie. Later, he receives a phone call from a man with the same voice, and is guided to the apartment of Papa B (Game Of Throne’s Joseph Mawle) and his assistant Belle (Nikita Mistry)…who looks just like the little girl from the TV report. Papa B offers a Faustian bargain: Jamie must fulfil Papa B’s desire for chaos with some occasional acts of …creative vandalism… in return for “everything he’s ever wanted”. Jaime accepts and quickly learns to be careful what you wish for.

Writer and director Philip Ridley is much like Richard Stanley (Hardware, Colour Out Of Space) in that he has only made a shockingly small number of films over almost thirty years despite clearly being a unique filmmaker, having only 3 directorial and one screenwriting credit (the classic gangster film ‘The Krays’) to his name. There is a broken, haunting beauty about “Heartless” that similar films of the time failed to capture, stemming from the director growing up in and around the areas the film were shot. Awash in a constant, depressing gray or oil-stained ochre, the film’s supernatural elements remain mostly in the shadows. The quick glimpses of shrieking demonic faces under hoods never lose their ability to shock through overuse, and the effects of arson and splashes of gore are even more striking against the film’s muted industrial palette. And while it’s obvious to us that our man Papa B is the devil, the film relies mainly on Joseph Mawle’s supremely menacing presence and creaking delivery to make us see his true nature. Sure, some of what comes in “Heartless” is telegraphed, but that’s part of the fun, as the film moves us to each plot point in unexpected ways with a heaping helping of gritty atmosphere.

It’s not a masterpiece, but “Heartless” is near perfectly paced throughout it’s runtime … save for a slightly slow start and a pre-final act falter with the sudden introduction of a villain who looks like a reject from Mortal Kombat, and even manages to be even a bit romantic in it’s depiction of Jaime finding confidence as a reborn version of himself…until of course he has to start murdering his neighbours. With strong performances throughout and a genuinely unique setting for a Horror film, “Heartless” deserves a watch by genre fans looking for something they may have missed. Check the trailer below, you can watch this one on Amazon Prime.

To start: “Jacob’s Ladder” is a literal fever dream, with the fractured narrative bouncing between the Vietnam War and New York, 1971 and 1975. In Vietnam, Jacob’s company is assaulted along the Mekong Delta, and strange things being to happen to his fellow soldiers as they’re cut down in front of his eyes. Suddenly, Jacob awakens in the New York City Subway, glancing a Lovecraftian tentacle protruding from a sleeping homeless person. Jacob is increasingly beset by disturbing experiences and surreal visions, including the iconic “faceless” men who follow him. He attempts to contact his regular doctor at the local VA hospital, but after first being told that there is no record of him ever being a patient there, Jacob is told that his doctor has died in a car explosion, one of many ominous mysteries that begin to occur in his life. Later at a party, a psychic reads Jacob’s palm… telling him he’s already dead, hurtling Jacob into a growing spiral of delusion as he tries to hold on to reality.

The plot twists and turns through time as Jacob desperately tries to solve the mystery of why these visions are plaguing him. Director Lyne downplayed script writer Bruce Joel Rubin’s original “intimidating” biblical imagery and instead unleashes Jacob’s nightmares in an ingenious homage to the styles of Francis Bacon, the Tibetan Book Of the Dead and the Body Horror maestro himself, David Cronenberg. In his screenplay, Rubin used traditional imagery of demons and hell, flashes of which do still pop up in the infamous party scene, However, Lyne decided to use images similar to thalidomide deformities and war injuries to achieve a greater shock effect, which gives the film an unsettling and disturbingly realistic feel. A stark departure from most genre filmmakers, Lyne used entirely in-camera effects, with no post production, adding to the realism of each scene. According to the director’s DVD commentary, test screening’s were “too overwhelming” for the audience. In response, about 20 minutes of disturbing scenes, mostly from the last third of the film, were removed from the final cut, since made available on the complete Blu-Ray edition.

For all its monstrous scenes of horror. “Jacob’s Ladder” is a profoundly spiritual film (after all “Jacob’s Ladder” is literally the bridge between Heaven and Earth). Scriptwriter Rubin got the initial idea after experiencing a bad acid trip in the ’60s, as he embarked on a spiritual quest spending several years meditating in Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. Interviewed at the time of release, he remarked: “If you watch this film with your mind, trying to understand what’s going on, you’re going to be torn into a million pieces”. The performances of Tim Robbins (who at the time was a semi-known character actor doing mostly popcorn comedies) and the late Elizabeth Pena anchor the story in dramatic realism, rather than in the b-movie hysteria that a lesser film would indulge in.

The horror of the movie would be in the revelation that hope is hell’s final torment, that life is a dream that ends over and over with the final truth: that life was never real, that we are all creatures trapped in eternal suffering and damnation.

–Bruce Joel Rubin

More serious in tone and subject than most Horror films, Jacob’s Ladder delivers seriously disturbing images that stick with you longer after the credits. Available to watch on Shudder, check out the trailer below if you’ve not yet seen this cinematic nightmare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDEoi16gXyw

The story is simple: After a man named Alderson (Our favourite Canadian character Actor Julian Richings, from The Witch and Urban Legend, in a grisly cameo) is killed in a mysterious cube-shaped room, five strangers – Disgraced cop Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint), Awkward office worker Worth (Pin’s David Hewlett), Holloway, a paranoid doctor, the bookish nerd Leaven (Nicole de Boer from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”), and Rennes, a prison escape artist, – awaken and meet in another seemingly identical room. No one knows where they are, how long they’ve been there or how they got there. Each room has doors on every surface, and, as there’s no food or water to be found, the group desperately sets off to find their way out.

Quentin tells the group that some rooms contain traps, which he’s discovered while exploring. The maze is beset by frequent tremors, and Leaven notices numbers inscribed in the narrow passageways between rooms. As the rooms become increasingly dangerous and their journey more and more surreal, the tenuous bonds between characters, and their own sanity, break down, creating a tense cat-and-mouse game between the captives that plays out to tragic results. It’s in the endless surprises that Natali keeps coming that “Cube” has earned it’s cult status, so if you’re one of the few who’ve not seen this Canadian classic, we’ll spare you the spoilers to allow maximum impact.

Questions of philosophy and existential matters are on touched on in the dialogue, and its obvious to read some pretty heavy-handed allegory into “Cube“, but the film never gets too far up it’s own ass in film-student philosophizing, keeping the pacing tight and the danger of the maze ever present. Working with an actual Mathematician, Natali’s unique maze design manages to be simultaneously surreal and anchored in technical possibility, adding to the terror we feel as the walls literally close in around them. Cinematographer Derek Rogers developed strategies for shooting in the tightly confined spaces of the 14×14 ft. set that keep us consistency engaged with the actors and the action at hand, and paired with an early, very solid score from composer Mark Korven, (best known for his work on “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” with Robert Eggers), Natali’s managed to make a compelling, concise thriller that stands amongst the best in Sci-Fi Horror. A marvel in filmmaking cleverness, “Cube” won the award for Best Canadian First Feature Film at the 1997 Toronto International Film Festival and the Jury Award at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film, establishing Natale’s voice as a genre Director and paving the way for future work like “Splice” and the more recent Stephen King adaptation “In The Tall Grass”.

“Cube” is available on the always awesome Shudder, as well as a solid anniversary edition Blu-Ray, but trust us when we say that once you love it as much as we do: avoid the sequels at all costs, which over-explain and under deliver on every aspect that made “Cube” a classic. Check the trailer below for a gem you may have missed for 31 Days Of Horror!

The third movie of Carpenter’s loose Apocalypse Trilogy (Which includes “Prince Of Darkness” and “The Thing”), ‘In The Mouth Of Madness’ starts with cynical, skeptical insurance agent John Trent (played by the always amazing Sam Neill) who we meet after being committed to an asylum, proclaiming not to be crazy. He is then introduced to Dr. Wrenn (David Warner in a great little cameo, one of many memorable character actors who pop up throughout) who hears Trent’s story about the events that led to his current situation. Unfolding in an extended flashback, Trent’s been hired to find Svengali-like novelist Jürgen Prochnow as Sutter Cane , currently the #1 Horror writer in the world, who’s disappeared along with his latest manuscript. His publisher, Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston!) at Arcane Publishing (one of many fun Lovecraft references peppered throughout the film) wants to know if it’s a hoax to build publicity, or if their golden goose really has flown the coup, which is strange because Trent’s just been attacked in broad daylight by an axe-wielding ghoul spewing those immortal words: “Do you read Sutter Cane?”. The publisher assigns Cane’s editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), to accompany him. Linda explains that Cane’s stories have been known to cause disorientation, memory loss and paranoia in “less stable readers”, and that the man who attacked Trent earlier was Cane’s agent.

As his waking dreams become increasingly horrifying, Trent notices that lines hidden on Cane’s book’s covers form the outline of New Hampshire and mark a location alluded to be Hobb’s End, the fictional setting for many of Cane’s works. They set out to find the town. Linda experiences bizarre phenomena in a surreal, Lynchian sequence during the late night drive, and they suddenly arrive at Hobb’s End in daylight. Trent and Linda search the small town, encountering deformed people and bizarre landmarks believed to be as fictional as Cane’s novels. Here the film suffers it’s only, and brief, lag in action, as the two detectives puzzle through the clues Cane’s left behind. Quickly though, ‘In The Mouth Of Madness’ shifts gears again into the final act’s fever dream of 4th-wall breaking, tentacled monstered madness, with far too many twists to go any further in revealing the plot if you’re one of the few who’ve not yet seen it.

One of Carpenter’s most technically impressive films, the effects from KNB (including Evil Dead’s / Creepshow’s Greg Nicotero) are amongst some of the last great practical puppets put to film, buttressed against some, at the time, impressive work from Industrial Light & Magic, and of course, we get another synth-soaked Carpenter score for the film, including his wildly goofy heavy-metal intro that ..somehow.. works perfectly to set the film’s tone. Shot in Toronto by longtime collaborator Gary B. Kibbe (who shot Big Trouble In Little China & They Live!), the film oozes that John Carpenter aesthetic in its excellent use of lighting, shadow and location, while simultaneously keeping the “fictional” feel of ‘In The Mouth Of Madness’ story intact, making great use of local landmarks and clever set dressing in the apocalyptic final act. By bringing together two major influences in style under one story, Carpenter left a lasting legacy with one of his final great Horror films.

‘In The Mouth Of Madness’ is not perfect, but it is very, very close, and if you haven’t seen it yet, there’s really no excuse. Available on a fantastic Blu-Ray re-release from late last year, as well as on Shudder, you can check out the trailer below to put you in the mood for madness.

We open with a scene of Teutonic Knights slaughtering an entire village of apparent Satanists in a pulpy, very “Monty Python” style intro sequence. Here, Soavi’s inventive framing (he is Terry Gilliam’s go-to 2nd Unit Director for good reason) and gleeful love of gore kick things off with a great energy, establishing our location, the titular Church itself, built on a pile of writhing, undead Satanic zombies, and a few unfortunate horses for good measure, with the hopes of locking their evil away forever. Heads roll, peasants are run through with pikes, and we’re quickly dropped into the present day with a classic, unending one-take shot through the now massive church. We meet our American visitor, Evan (a standard plot device in pretty much every Italian horror film) who, of course, notices things aren’t quite right with the bishop, the violent frescoes, and “The Church” itself, which has no graveyard and a mysterious cavern beneath it’s forbidding basement.

The inexplicably gorgeous restoration expert Lisa (Barbara Cupisti) who’s been working in the church restoring the violent, demonic artwork adorning its walls, discovers a mysterious manuscript foretelling the end of the world, and after some genre-standard and unexplained sexing, our librarian Even decides its time to see what’s going on in the basement, and sneaks off to pry open the tomb by removing the seven eyed satanic goat head locking the demons below. In a scene right out of Exorcist III, he’s attacked by dozens of hands emerging from the crypt in a terrifying vision, one of many he begins to suffer as the demons take control of his mind. There’s some fun stuff here, especially when he rips out and eats his own heart, but the energy wanes in the set up to the films extended final act, especially with the dead-eyed “performance” from Argento’s daughter, Asia, and Star Wars own Hugh Quarshie as Father Gus, the eventual “final priest” left to battle Evan’s monstrous transformation…. who spends a lot of time doing nothing much at all in a clumsy detective sub-plot the film never really needs.

However by the 3rd act, the origins of Demons‘ script begin to show through, as various side-characters get trapped in “The Church“‘s clockwork security system (explained in a great, gore soaked flashback to the inquisitions) and, of course, picked off one by one from the spreading Demon infection as our initial protagonist gets fully on the side of the demons, resurrecting previously killed priests and transforming into a giant, horny, goat monster. This is prime Giallo time, where you can turn off your critical thinking and enjoy the ride, as Sovai’s takes us through some fun jump scares, creative kills and impressive camera work towards the films conclusion.

If this is enough to get your interest piqued, then you’ll likely love “The Church” as a flawed, but fun, take on the Satanic apocalypse trope through the eyes of a genre legend. There’s more than enough monsters and mayhem here to keep most horror fans attention, and like all of Soavi’s films, his love of movie making is always on display even through the film’s clumsy construction. While definitely not perfect, “The Church” is indeed a rare find, difficult to classify but never boring, and a worthy addition to the library of any Argento fans. Watch the trailer below, and find it on Amazon Prime’s pretty amazing collection of B-movie horror.

A young David Hewlett, long-time Canadian character actor from Cube and Stargate fame, stars as Leon, an outwardly affable but obviously high-strung young man whose arms-length upbringing has left him on the edge of sanity. His father, Dr Frank Linden (the iconic Terry O’Quinn in a fantastically creepy turn) runs a medical practice successful enough to afford the family an enormous house in the countryside, but he himself is odd, distant … and may not be all together there…much like Leon’s germaphobic mother, who forbids him any outside “influences”. Leon’s world only has two friends: his younger, normal, sister Ursula (Cynthia Preston) and Pin (voiced by Breaking Bad’s Johnathan Banks), a life sized anatomical doll (nicknamed Pin from Pinocchio), complete with transparent skin, his father keeps at his clinic. Having a talent for ventriloquism, Leon’s father uses Pin to talk to his children, providing awkward lessons about human reproduction. An early scene where a Nurse enjoys Pin’s anatomy in a very personal way leaves Leon scarred and also, more unsettling, aroused by what he sees, adding layers of extra-creepy obsession to his character. Ursula laughs her Dad’s odd mannerisms off, while Leon slowly becomes convinced Pin is a living being. This strange belief lingers on well into the siblings’ adulthood, when an apparent tragedy orphans Leon and Ursula, leaving them, and Pin, alone in the family’s estate.

As is the way that these stories go, Leon becomes more controlling of Ursula, and Pin more controlling of Leon, through long, rambling conversations, imbibing their dynamic with a serious menace. When their Aunt moves in to help, and Ursula begins to leave the nest with a new job and lover, Pin’s control grows more complete, and violent, as Leon loses himself in obsession. Without spoiling the ending, “Pin” delivers it’s big payoff as Leon finally loses it, offering us a much more sympathetic character to fear than an unstoppable slasher or demonic puppet, which in turn makes the madness Leon ensures all the more real as he unravels completely by the film’s conclusion.

Director Stern’s use of slow pacing and a clear, ever building tension that overtakes Leon makes “Pin” feel like a cousin to David Cronenberg‘s Dead Ringers, a similarity heightened by its cold visual style and clean production design. Shot in Montreal and produced by the same team (Pierre David & Rene Malo) that gave us Scanners and Videodrome, Leon himself looks like a catalog model, serial killer hybrid, almost and early prototype to the characters in “Funny Games” and “American Psycho”, his immaculate hair and clothing betraying his frayed mental state. Pin himself is styled as an unsettling object, a red-veined ghoul who may, or may not, be real (At least to Leon), and, despite never actually doing much, brings a much more serious threat to our characters than many movie monsters can muster. And while it’s clear the leads are in no-way their apparent ages, some of the scenery-chewing can get a little hammy at times and there’s some of that classic “made-in-Canada” cheapness that you just couldn’t escape in the late 80s, “Pin” is as good as any, and better than most, of the psychological horror genre.

Currently unavailable on streaming, Arrowdrome, Arrow’s sister-label, delivered a hard-to-find DVD edition, and some kind souls have uploaded “Pin” to Youtube, where, albeit in VHS quality, you can still enjoy this disturbing tale of a boy and his doll. Check the trailer below for a taste of “Pin“s strange story.

“Possession” opens with the end of a marriage: Anna (an iconic Isabelle Adjani, in an award winning performance) tells her husband Mark (the legendary Sam Neill), a spy who’s always off on assignment, she needs to leave even though she says she doesn’t understand why. In reality, Mark is being cuckolded by Heinrich (Heinz Bennent), a new age nonsense-spouting slime ball whose reaction to being confronted by Mark is to embrace him as a friend, before beating him to a pulp. He’s like a leathery, German Hannibal Lector on poppers, one of many absurd, overwrought and unforgettable performances in “Possession“. Anna becomes ever more unhinged as Mark pursues her, sneaking off to another unseen lover and professing her newly-found independence in a variety of violent ways, involving some mutual domestic abuse, child abandonment and occasional self-mutilation. Not exactly subtle, Żuławski punctuates one of the couple’s shouting matches by throwing an unrelated and graphic car crash into the shot, just for added emphasis that things are really starting to become unglued.

“Possession” then takes a turn into the otherworldly as it enters its surreal, violent second act. Mark discovers Anna’s twin, or other identity, Helen, working at his Son’s school, shaking his grip on reality. We learn the true nature of Anna’s extra-marital trysts: she regularly visits a run down apartment in East Berlin, inhabited by a blood starved monster, with whom she engages in some hideous, lovecraftian coupling (The shape of water, this is not). Creature designer Carlo Rambaldi, made most famous for designing E.T. not one year later, delivers a legendary monster, both fantastic and disgustingly real. As her madness hits a feverish peak, Anna recounts to Mark a violent miscarriage she suffered in the subway while he was gone. She claims it resulted in a nervous breakdown; during the miscarriage, she oozed blood and fluids from her orifices, remembered in the film’s most memorable moment, and became “Inhabited” by a spirit. He has her tailed by private detectives, whom she then kills and feeds to the creature.

Without giving away too much of “Possession“‘s final act, the insane acceleration towards its ending is a masterpiece of singular vision from director Żuławski. As the first hour’s relatively straight family drama recedes into the distance, the looming, literal, end of the world comes hurtling at us with much more murder, mystery and surreal realizations of a crumbling reality, and every performance, every shot, drive us right to the edge along with it.

Shot on location in Berlin, the movie makes use of wide-angle deep-focus photography, a cold, concrete palette used throughout, with the communist eastern part of the city always in the background as a reminder of a enslaved reality that the film’s Polish director knew all too well. The spectre of war is also prevalent throughout, reminding us of the inevitability of death, be the cause natural or supernatural, or the death being of the body or of a relationship. “Possession” is pervaded by a genuine sense of casual dread and existential sadness. It’s not ‘Satan’ that takes over Adjani’s body – it’s an eternal, cosmic evil itself that we can’t ever escape.

While the intense, serious commitment to what could be seen as silly source material (She fucks an octopus man!) might off-put some who are looking for a little lighter monster movie, “Possession” stands alone as true landmark in not only Horror, but in cinema itself. “Possession” is a bit harder to come by, but Vinegar Syndrome / Mondo Vision did a great Blu-Ray restoration well worth the price, and you can get it on Apple’s iTunes Store for rent or purchase.

Meanwhile, next door, Juan’s neighbour Walter has his own problems. Walter is trying to capture …something … that comes out from under his bed at night, leaving him sleepless and terrified, desperately calling a mysterious Doctor who specializes in his “Problems”. Across the street, a grief-stricken mother mourns the death of her only son…until he re-appears in her kitchen. From here, Terrified kicks things into gear when a team of would-be paranormal investigators decide that something is very, very wrong in this neighbourhood and step in to solve the case and keep the public in the dark.

There is an ever building cloud of dread with each character in Terrified trying to quell the ghostly presences. A grizzled cop, officer Funes (Maxi Ghione), acts as our go-between for each haunt, with uneasy one-liners betraying a burnt-out policeman who maintains a sense of increasing uneasiness during his investigation. The storylines smoothly blend together and unlike most “ghost busting” premises, these paranormal investigators aren’t so much interested in destroying the unruly spirits in a one-on-one metaphysical fistfight, but rather they wish to study them to learn more about the other side. Here, the film’s sombre tone and commitment to a very tight and well paced script allow us to accept the some of the more fantastic elements as fact; in this film’s world the afterlife just…is…and everyone involved accepts that and we, the audience, are compelled to suspend our disbelief along with them. Genre tropes abound in Terrified, but by forgoing any attempt to explain any of the “rules” to how the afterlife works, we can focus on the action of the story itself, which zips along to an obvious but wholly satisfying conclusion.

And yes: while there are obviously ample jump scares given the material, they are delivered in a way that evoke dread and genuine gasps without being too cliched or overdone within the story. The special effects from Marcos Berta are fantastic given the films tight budget, with a very unique “ghost” mechanic and some sure to be iconic creature designs that succeed because of their simplicity, not in spite of it. With a mix of practical effects and CGI, his creations slink in the shadows and ooze through the cracks in reality with a creaking sound design that gives them real weight compared to the paper-thin poltergeists of so much throwaway Horror.

Director Demián Rugna delivers on the scares and shows why he’s a Winner of Fantastic Fest’s Best Horror Film for this one. Terrified knows exactly what it is and what it has to do to make your skin crawl and look behind the closet door at night, with the primary focus on the horrific events on screen instead of world building or character backstory. While very original, it’s stylistically still a clear love letter to its horror movie predecessors with some fun nods to classics like The Excoricist, Prince Of Darkness and The Grudge, which makes it even more endearing as a new addition to Horror’s best films. Part creature feature, part poltergeist detective story, Terrified is a great genre film for 31 Days Of Horror and shows tremendous promise for the new wave of South American directors working on small, tightly crafted films like this. Currently streaming on Shudder, check the trailer for this one below, a must see for all fans of Horror.

2001’s Thirteen Ghosts is a remake, directed by Steve Beck (the auteur behind cinematic masterpiece Ghost Ship) and produced by the venerable Dark Castle Entertainment. At the time, the production company’s goal was to upgrade classic William Castle films for modern times, and Thirteen Ghosts came along just a couple years after the equally mental House on Haunted Hill remake. This re-boot took the most basic framework of the 1960 original and just went fucking nuts: splattering the film’s impressive sets with over-the-top gore, some sweet ghost boobs, and that awful, hyper-kinetic editing that plagued the horror / nu-metal genres at the time. It’s a amazing time capsule for the terrible era at the millenniums end where X-treme dudes and Spike TV ruled the visual aesthetic, which is just all part of it’s fun.

The remake of “Thirteen Ghosts” is set in a crazy glass house that makes no sense, but looks fantastic, as Tony Shaloub, Shannon Elizabeth and Flipmode Squad’s own Rah Digga (!) battle a host of murderous ghosts that the moustache-twirling villain Cyrus Kriticos (F. Murray Abraham slumming it with gleeful abandon) and his pet psychic Matthew Lillard have unleashed in a tweak to the “spend the night in a haunted house for your inheritance” trope. The plot is threadbare but really it’s secondary to the goofy roller-coaster ride we take when watching Thirteen Ghosts. There’s some nonsense about magic glasses, magic glass, ghost traps and immortality, but none of this matters. Thirteen Ghosts delivers some great, gory kills and doesn’t spend too much time explaining why every character is so very, very stupid, and frankly, it doesn’t need to. We run from scene to scene as characters spew nonsense about spirits and spells and BOOM, somebody gets split in half and we’re right back into the hot mess.

The highlight of the film is the ghosts themselves, crafted by KNB FX. The various ghouls include a headless torso, a dude who looks like Pinhead as a bouncer, A brain-dead Boy Scout, and of course, ghost-boobs, one of the film’s most iconic characters. As the characters race around the maze-like set, each ghost gets their moment and before we know it we’re whisked into the next encounter. On the Thirteen Ghosts DVD / Blu-ray is a featurette titled “Ghost Files,” which provides a wealth of information about the individual ghosts that never made its way into the film, but it’s not needed. These are Halloween decor come to life in the best way possible, and while graphic and bloody, the ghosts are just so much fun it’s hard to take this movie as seriously as the special features would have you.

If you can abandon all hope for a coherent plot or quality acting, you will love 2001’s Thirteen Ghosts just as much as us. Right now it’s available on Amazon‘s surprisingly deep stash of B-Movie trash on Prime, or on a surprisingly great Blu-Ray re-master. Check the trailer below to get you in the mood.

More specifically, “We Go On” tells the story of Miles Grissom (Clark Freeman). Miles, while blandly handsome and succesful in a rudderless, early middle-aged way, is actually a mess: he’s neurotic, he has insomnia, he’s suffering from a laundry list of various phobias, including a crippling fear of death. He went to film school…but works from home editing infomercials, he’s well off…but never does anything…..and he’s miserable. One day, Miles is so sick of living in fear that he takes out a classified ad, pleading for someone, anyone, to prove to him the existence of life after death, offering $30,000 to the “winner”. He thinks this will let him know, one way or the other, if we “go on”. His mother, alarmed after seeing the ad in the paper, comes to his apartment to help him vet the thousands of crackpot responses he’s received in response to his public plea to prove an afterlife and cure his phobias.

Miles finds few entries that seem legitimate: there’s a paranormal psychologist, a Mexican medium, a reclusive billionaire … and, oh yeah, a weird guy named Nelson. And it’s from here that “We Go On” pulls ahead of the pack: the film could have easily ventured into any number of terrible and obvious routes: from slapstick horror comedy detective story to bog-standard, long mouth ghost jump-scares, but instead it eases into the story with complete sincerity, grounded in the realistic and natural performances delivered by Clark Freeman, Annette O’Toole as Miles’ no-nonsense mother, genre legend John Glover in a great turn as the Paranormal psychologist, and the effortlessly greasy Jay Dunn as Nelson, who really CAN see ghosts, DUDE, but is never played for laughs. There is nothing tongue in cheek about the mission Miles’ embarks on, and while there are a few scares and some clever playing with genre conventions, “We Go On” pushes you to view a “ghost story” through a different lens, that the journey Miles’ takes isn’t supernatural at all, but an entirely natural part of dealing with life and death that we all go through.

Writer/Directors Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton bathe the film in natural light (in fact, very little of the movie happens in the dark, one of many subtle but unique twists to the genre’s conventions), and eschew drowning us in industrial strength sound design for letting the silence of an empty room or lonely highway raise our anxieties. “We Go On” looks much better than the microscopic budget would have you believe, the eventual ghosts, and the film’s one scene of gore, are handled with a cool detachment and a deft technical skill that only adds to their lingering impact.  In fact, the film’s big reveal happens early, kicking off the film’s frantic 3rd act where most films had already ended on a cliched jump cut.

But, by presenting their story as a completely serious character study, the filmmakers pull off the films most special effect of all: making you care for these weird, lonely, sometimes dead people for the entirety of the films brisk, but un-rushed, 80-ish minute run-time. Even the ending is ultimately upbeat, but realistic. Nobody wins, nobody loses, and just like in real life, it just goes on and so do we.

“We Go On” is available to stream on SHUDDER. The trailer to this one is, frankly, a bit misleading: but trust us here…This film is worth a watch when you need a break from body horror, Italian gore or splatter porn for your 31 Days Of Horror marathon.