Gabe Reviews Horror

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #30 - Witches of the Caribbean (2005) Watch it here on Roku! I don't remember much of my first viewing of Witches of the Caribbean, except that we watched it at a point when my wife was obsessed with witch-based media. (I'm almost certain we watched this right after watching Witchouse for the first time, and the fact that the two movies have some serious similarities does not seem like a coincidence.) But over time I forgot almost entirely about this movie, except for one scene where the characters dramatically walk from one side of the beach to the other for like five solid minutes. So I knew I was in for a treat with this one today. Witches of the Caribbean is about a group of (high schoolers?) who have been brought to a Caribbean island to take part in a (therapy program? research study? boarding school?) because it seems they're all having the same dream, and the professor in charge wants to find out why. Once there, a few of the (stud

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #29 - CrossBones (2005) Watch CrossBones on YouTube here! Okay, we're getting to the bottom of the barrel here. (No pun intended.) I first rented CrossBones around 2010 or so, and it was clearly part of a movie trend of trying to tie some unrelated plot to the Caribbean somehow (due to the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean series just a couple years earlier). Many years after seeing this for the first time, I don't remember exactly what, but something reminded me of it and I brought it up to my wife- we had a good time laughing as we remembered how ridiculous it was, so she surprised me with a copy of this terrible movie for my birthday while we were out at a restaurant with family. Since I knew nobody else in the world had ever seen this, I definitely knew I had to review it. CrossBones starts off with a (extremely long and boring) tale about Redblood, a pirate who buried some treasure and then was killed by some (totally not at all inc

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #28- Witches' Night (2007) [So, watching this movie is kind of a conundrum. It's not available on any streaming platform, and when I attempted to upload a ripped copy of my DVD to YouTube I was informed it's already been struck before at request of the creators so YouTube won't allow it. Originally I planned to include a Google Drive link so anyone who felt comfortable could download it from me, but while writing this review I found out that there is actually one single way to watch it online- I'll detail it at the end- and it felt kind of scummy to circumvent a legitimate method of digital purchase, even if it likely means nobody will see it. And I really do think this movie is worth watching, even for the $5 price tag that it costs!] I don't much remember my first time viewing Witches' Night, nor did I really remember much about the movie at all- except that I remembered being really impressed for some reason. I'm hap

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #27- Slumber Party Massacre (2021) [So, this is frustrating. When I started the month, this movie was available for free on Roku. It seems to have been taken down in the past couple weeks, and although Google says Sling TV still has it available for free streaming, whenever I try to watch it on there, it just plays the original Slumber Party Massacre instead. This movie appears to be available on Hulu as well as for rent on Amazon Prime and a few others, but it's frustrating that a free option seems to have been taken away and/or mixed up with the original.] A remake/reboot of the 1982 film, Slumber Party Massacre is really kind of a marvel: it puts a big new twist on the original story while taking it in a completely new direction, but along the way pays homage to all of the previous entries without taking itself too seriously. I can't quite call it perfect (there's some issues I have with the story and the film as a whole has a different

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #26- Slumber Party Massacre III (1990) Watch it here on YouTube! I am very conflicted about this movie. On one hand I think the story and characters are probably the best in the series, but on the other hand, it's chock full of some idiotic moments that really kind of ruin it. Let's see how I feel by the end of the review. It should be noted that this movie leaves the killer's identity a secret for the first half (with several red herrings thrown in for good measure) so technically that's a twist that can be spoiled- while I do think this movie is worth watching I am going to spoil it, both because it's not kept secret for very long and also because I really want to talk about how it affects the narrative as a whole. So, fair warning, spoilers a-coming. Slumber Party Massacre III has no connection to the previous movies (that I could find), and instead just features a new group of friends having a new slumber party until whoops, pe

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #25- Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Watch it here on Tubi! Unfortunately I don't remember my first viewing of this movie- my earliest memory of it was reading someone else's review that made us laugh so much my wife and I still quote it to this day. (It was short- I'll include the entire review down below.) Slumber Party Massacre II is very much an outlier in this series for being so completely balls-to-the-wall insane in several different ways, which is both a good and a bad thing. The plot is a lot less straightforward (but also kind of meaningless) than the last one. It follows Courtney, the annoying little sister from the first movie, who several years later is still living with the trauma of surviving an encounter with the drill-wielding maniac that killed all of the neighbor's friends. Trying to live a normal life, Courtney goes with her friends to a slumber party weekend at a friend's dad's condo- they do the usual stu