A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, a little kid named Ed Jr. decided that he’d clean out his father’s guns for him as a birthday surprise. Dad (Ed Sr., as you’ve probably already guessed) was a big game hunter, you see, and had a cabinet full of rifles and shotguns. One of which goes off accidentally when Ed Jr. is messing with it, blows a hole through the door, and, more crucially, blows a hole through mom. Ed Jr., shockingly, grows up to be a normal college kid. Ed Sr. grows into an old and bitter alcoholic serial killer bent on revenge. Their paths are about to cross.

Nope, there’s not much mystery as to “whodunnit” in one-and-done North Carolina-based writer/director Buddy Cooper’s (with a “co-director” credit going to John Douglass) 1984 slasher The Mutilator (also released under the considerably duller title of Fall Break

I may have thrown in the towel in utter disgust as far as The Walking Dead is concerned (in both its television and comic-book iterations), but what can I say? I’m still a sucker for low-budget direct-to-video zombie flicks and probably always will be. I’d first heard mention of Re-Kill, which was being touted as a kind of “action movie set after the zombie apocalypse,” a few years back when it was being filmed on the cheap in Bulgaria (which is also where Steve Miner’s atrocious Day Of The Dead re-make was lensed), but that was about the last I’d given any thought to it until I saw that it was finally released in 2015 as part of After Dark Horror Fest’s 8 Films To Die For package for that year (which I already talk about like it was the distant fucking past or something). “Okay, that’s cool,” I…

In the pseudo-field of cryptozoology, the chupacabra is a creature that’s been moving up the “popularity” ranks in recent years thanks to radio shows like Coast To Coast and, of course, the internet, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before it joined fellow probably- (or should that be possibly-?) mythical monsters like Bigfoot and Nessie on the movie screen. It’s just too bad for the bloodthirsty critter that its cinematic debut comes by way of a thoroughly lackluster un-credited remake.

Okay, that might be a little unfair since director Alastair Ott’s 2014 indie horror Indigenous isn’t exactly a remake, per se, but it borrows so many elements from Neil Marshall’s The Descent — right down to aping its famous “night-vision” scene — that it may as well be. As evidence for the prosecution I offer the fact that this film centers on five immediately unlikable “adventure…

They tell me that the new season of some popular purported “quality drama” is now available on Netflix and that everyone is staying in this weekend to “binge watch” it, but if you’re no more a fan of sleazy soap operas with delusions of grandeur than I am (and really, what is House Of Cards other than Dynasty, with a better cast, transposed from a mansion in Denver to the White House?), you may be looking for something else on there to watch — if so, allow me to humbly recommend the recently-added 2014 Danish supernatural horror/thriller When Animals Dream, an artfully-crafted, beautifully-shot, often harrowing look at a teenage girl going through some serious changes.

I’ve seen some folks comparing this austere film to another Scandinavian genre entry from a few years back, Let The Right One In,  and while on paper that makes sense, please don’t…

Free time has been a scarce commodity in the life of yours truly lately, but when I actually did have a little bit of it the other night, I did something really stupid. I was thinking of heading out to the theater to see The Witch — which I should have done and still need to do — but instead I stayed home, fired up Netflix, and watched the 2015 modestly-budgeted indie horror The Diabolical. Big mistake.

Oh, sure, I’ve seen worse horror flicks than this — if you can even fairly classify this debut effort from director/co-writer (along with Luke Harvin) Alistair Legrand as a “horror flick” — but seldom do you encounter one trying to punch its way up out of its weight class with so little success. The Diabolical takes a heck of a long time to get going, and once it does, the simple fact…

As we’ve already established around these parts in earlier reviews for his Shaft and Shaft : Imitation Of Life series, David F. Walker is the man. I don’t think it’s an act, either — this guy just plain knows the streets. He understands the vibe, tempo, rhythm, and flavor of an urban setting in a way that no one else working in comics right now does, and so when I heard that Marvel had chosen him (minus usually-present the “F” in his name, for some strange reason) to spearhead their umpteenth relaunch of Power Man And Iron Fist, I knew they had hired the right guy for the one-time Heroes For Hire. Now all I have to do is sit back and say “I told you so” for a few paragraphs.

Simple, straight-forward, and to the point — that’s Walker’s M.O. across the board, and here he uses…

Let’s be honest : for at least a good decade or more, the only reason to follow M. Night Shyamalan’s once-promising career (remember when Time called him “The Next Spielberg”?) has been to see just exactly how much further it can plummet. Every time he directs a new film, he seems to dig himself in a little deeper : you think The Village is going to be as bad as it gets and then he serves up Lady In The Water. Followed by The Happening. Followed by The Last Airbender. Followed by After Earth. Are you detecting a pattern yet?

Of course you are. And so is everyone else. This guy’s movies just keep getting worse, and not just by small steps, but by leaps and goddamn bounds. Clearly, he seems to be following some sign that says “this way to rock bottom,” and that sign…

So, I’m looking around online for an image of the poster for director Iain Softley’s 2015 Blumhouse-distributed horror flick Curve and I notice that all of them have that little “bonus :  a twisted alternate storyline” blurb on them, which tells me that not only was this thing released straight to video (since I’m assuming the “bonus alternate storyline” is some sort of Blu-ray/DVD extra), but that there was never even any intention of giving it any sort of theatrical play, even as a limited release or a one-off screening, given that a “proper” movie poster, complete with credits, is usually done up for films that are going to get some action on the festival circuit or, at the very least, a single-showing “premier” at a rented theater in LA. Hell, poster mock-ups of some sort are usually done even for films where the distributor/production company might be considering having…

Talk about going from bad to worse —

As my last review no doubt made crystal clear, I was in no way enamored with Franco Zeffirelli’s 1981 cinematic adaptation of Scott Spencer’s Harlequin-novel-on-bad-acid Endless Love, but measured against what director Shana Feste did with (essentially) the same story in 2014, it’s fucking Citizen Kane. Sure, much of the book’s subject matter had either been neutered or twisted into new and unrecognizable (yet somehow decidedly less interesting) shapes, but damn — giving it the Nicholas Sparks treatment is just beyond the pale, and that’s exactly what this hollow, insipid, worthless remake does.

Probably to reduce confusion with (or an injunction from) President Obama’s political adviser of the same name, our David this time out hails from the Elliot rather than the Axelrod family tree, and while the actor who plays him, an empty shell named Alex Pettyfer,  certainly looks