Gabe Reviews Horror

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #31 - Blood Diner (1987) Watch it here on Tubi! Happy Halloween everyone! Well, it's the end of another October. I started this month off with some of the most important movies that jump-started my love for B-horror, so it makes sense that I end the month just the same. When my wife Lisa and I first started our weekly Bad Horror Movie Night tradition, we would spend most weeks hanging out at our friend Mike's house with a big box of old movies on VHS that had been donated to the library where Lisa worked. There were a lot of ridiculous ones in there (like Blood & Donuts or Microwave Massacre, or the time we had three different 80s horror movies called Mom, Mother, and Mother's Day) but the one that instantly became an all-time favorite had to be Blood Diner. This movie is the perfect mix of campy, creative, and horrific, and has so many ridiculous moments that I won't even be able to mention them all. Blood Diner starts off with a

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

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #24- The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Watch it here on Tubi! I don't quite remember the circumstances, but I feel like buying The Slumber Party Massacre on DVD was some kind of a milestone for me. Maybe it was the first movie I bought on Amazon? (I remember my first Amazon purchase ever- back when Amazon only sold books- was four copies of The Monster at the End of This Book, which I gifted to anyone I met that had never read it.) Whatever the case, I ended up with a copy of this movie, but didn't realize it was a Region 2 DVD (meaning it wasn't meant to be played on American devices) so I had to kajigger my computer's disc drive in order to get it to play. Ultimately I remember having more fond memories of the sequel but I still think The Slumber Party Massacre is a very fun film, doubly so if you have a group of friends to watch it with. The Slumber Party Massacre has a fairly simple plot: a high school girl, Trish, is having a slum

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #23- The Haunting (1999) [Last month The Haunting was streaming on Pluto; unfortunately it appears to no longer be. I don't think there is anywhere free to stream The Haunting, but I believe it's available on AMC+, Paramount+, and Philo if you have a subscription, or can be rented/purchased on other platforms as well.] I remember seeing trailers for The Haunting when it first came out in '99- although I'd seen a small handful of horror films by that age (and although it was rated PG-13, which meant I totally could have seen it if I wanted) I always just assumed it wasn't for me. I finally did see the movie, however, many years later- I watched it specifically because my wife and I had taken such a liking to Scary Movie 2, and we were overjoyed to see how closely the parody stuck to the plot and even included lots of obscure details. We watched this movie many times back in the day, but my re-watch today came after at least ten year

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #22- Scary Movie 2 (2001) Watch it here on Pluto! I said yesterday that Scary Movie is, by most metrics, a better movie than Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth. That's definitely true, but I think Scary Movie 2 is even better than the first. I think it does a great job of showing the strengths of the Scary Movie series over Shriek If You Know- yes there's a ton of pop culture references and easter eggs in both, but the Scary Movie series makes sure that even if you don't care about all of the topical jokes and references, there's still a consistent story throughout that you can appreciate regardless. While the previous Scary Movie was a mashup of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scary Movie 2 is almost exclusively cribbing from The Haunting (which I'll be reviewing tomorrow) with other movies relegated to just the smaller vignettes and one-off jokes. Scary Movie 2 follows several of the characters f

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #21- Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth (2000) Watch it here on Vudu! (You'll need a Fandango account but it's free to watch.) A bit of a departure from what I usually review, this one might come as a bit of a surprise. If you've even heard of this movie (and/or if you've noticed that I'll be covering Scary Movie 2 tomorrow), you're probably asking, "Hey Gabe, why this one and not Scary Movie?" And that's a good question. Shriek If You Know... and Scary Movie are, by almost every metric, basically the same movie. And Scary Movie is, by almost every metric, the better of the two. But I like this one better, and almost nobody has ever seen this one- so I'm here to bring it to your attention and give it the attention (I think) it deserves. Shriek If You Know is (like Scary Movie) a parody of late-90s pop horror, as well as a melting pot for every single pop culture reference they could fit

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #20- Witchouse 3: Demon Fire (2001) Watch it here on Amazon Freevee!  (You'll need an Amazon account but the movie is free to watch with ads.) As with Witchouse II: Blood Coven, I don't remember much about my first viewing of this movie, except I vaguely recalled the ending twist. (I don't think this is a great movie but the twist is by far the best part of it, so I'm going to try not to spoil it.) By and large this one didn't leave much of an impact on me and I'm pretty sure I know why. Witchouse 3: Demon Fire is about three friends- Annie, Stevie, and Rose- who reunite after a long time apart, when Annie shows up after apparently having been physically abused by her live-in boyfriend. Stevie has an enthusiasm for both video production and witchcraft, so while filming a documentary about witches she convinces the other two to join her in a ritual to communicate with a witch named Lilith. Despite Stevie later admitting that she

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #19- Witchouse II: Blood Coven (2000) Watch it here on Plex! Similar to Camp Blood, about twelve or thirteen years ago we discovered that this movie we loved and watched a hundred times (Witchouse) had not one, but two sequels! So we immediately ordered a copy of the trilogy and... proceeded to watch each sequel one time and never again. This movie is as forgettable now as it was then, and I can confidently say I won't be revisiting it again anytime soon. Witchouse II: Blood Coven takes place in a small town in New England where a spooky abandoned mansion is set to be demolished so a shopping mall can be built, but the demolition crew somehow noticed that the land had four 200-year-old coffins buried on it. So they called in a college research team to analyze the bodies so they can determine who these graves were for- and (after a lot of back-and-forth) it turns out they were a group of evil witches led by Lilith LeFey. But while doing their inves

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #18- Witchouse (1999) Watch it here on Tubi! Which house? This house. We're back with another Full Moon Pictures film; and as you might expect, this one is full of cheesy late-90s goodness. I don't remember much about my first viewing but Witchouse quickly became a favorite of my wife's and mine at our first apartment, and it was regular viewing while we were doing things around the house or background noise while we slept. There's several lines from this movie we still quote regularly and as bad as it is, it's bad in all the best ways. Witchouse starts off like so many other cheap horror films do: two members of a friend group arrive at a destination before everybody else, decide they're just too horny, and then get killed by the villain (only for none of the other characters to give them more than a passing mention for the rest of the film). After an absurdly long and intense title sequence we're introduced to the rest of

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #17- The Cold/The Game (1984) Watch it here on Amazon Freevee! (You'll need an Amazon account but the movie is free to watch with ads.) I first watched The Cold about fifteen years ago, after receiving a DVD boxed set of "50 Chilling Classics" - low-budget horror films mostly from the 70s and 80s. The description sounded interesting- a group of people are invited to a secluded mansion by three eccentric billionaires to take part in a mysterious game, and each contestant must face their wildest fears for the chance at winning a million dollars. Sounds cool, right? (It's been done, of course- House on Haunted Hill had the exact same premise almost thirty years earlier- but hey, nothing wrong with reusing a good plot like that.) The problem is that this movie looks bad, sounds bad, and most importantly, doesn't make a lick of sense. So, nine people are brought to this resort on an island to take part in this game. They're told

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #16- Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland (1989) Watch it here on Tubi! I know I already made a joke about Sleepaway Camp 2 being made without knowing what made Sleepaway Camp 1 good; the problem here is that Sleepaway Camp 3 makes Sleepaway Camp 2 look like Sleepaway Camp 1 by comparison. SC2 was horrible but at least there was ostensibly "a camp" and "a plot"- this time around, we don't even have those. Sleepaway Camp 3 begins with an inner-city girl named Maria getting dressed to go to summer camp, but as she walks down the street to wait for the bus, a garbage truck runs her over. Out steps Angela (with her hair made up to look like Maria's and somehow even wearing the exact same outfit) who hides the body and then takes her place. We are then introduced to the "summer camp"- a government-sponsored program has been set up for twelve kids (did I say kids? I meant grown adults) from across the country to get toge