The Straw Ban Has Been Lifted

 

I've mused a lot on the different vibes of horror on streaming sites. I can't quite explain why, but I can generally count on finding something sharp but soulless on Hulu, flawed but interesting on Shudder, zany and positively cheap on Tubi, and often, mean on Amazon.

Anyway, let's get going.

Quick Plot: After her car breaks down, waitress/manager Nancy discovers she's pregnant en route to her shift at her father's 24-hour diner. The day gets even more stressful when a batch of bratty masked youths on mopeds show up for some fries. She manages to scare them off without the support of the rest of her staff. Trying to assert some new managerial authority, Nancy fires salty line chef Jake, alienates puppy-eyed bus boy Bobby, and takes on the night shift alone.

Nancy uses her free time to do what any normal human being would: blast the music and lip sync to her favorite tunes. 

Her fun is interrupted by the return of those masked bikers who, according to the grumpy and inept policeman who shows up at her call, have committed the most horrific murder this town has ever seen. 

There's more to the story, and the target on Nancy's back (or Fat Bottom, as the restaurant name insists) is particularly personal. Can she make it through the night? Some clever use of deep frying oil and raw meat will certainly help. 

Last Straw is a tricky movie. It's competently made and nicely shot, with a solid score by Alan Palomo and very good performances all around. Jessica Belkin has an almost Jessica Rothe-esque charisma in pulling us in while playing a rather unlikable woman. Our antagonists' motives come from a real place of understandable pain. The action is both real and suspenseful.

But by golly, that doesn't make it fun to watch.

Everyone is miserable. Bad things happen to the vaguely not terrible people. The world is dark and these people die in it.

Director Alan Scott Neal clearly has talent. I just hope his next film also has a little more light. 

High Points

Nancy is a young woman who mostly makes terrible decisions, but Jessica Belkin is incredibly watchable in the role. I'm excited to see more from her

Low Points

This movie isn't necessarily Red White and Blue puppy crushing, but it's just so darn dour

Lessons Learned

The best gateway drug is trauma

Telling your customers to bring their fat bottoms back, even if your restaurant name is Fat Bottom Bistro, is still probably not the best plan for repeat business

The smaller the town, the dumber the small town cop

Rent/Bury/Buy

Last Straw is well-made, but awfully unpleasant. If you're in the mood for that kind of gritty ride, find it on Amazon Prime. 

Lock Them Up

 

Sometimes you're simply too worn out by the world to stop and think about what to watch. Instead you queue up the first streaming app on your list, pop to the horror section, spot a few promising keywords ("abandoned prison," "Frank Whaley," and most importantly, "1 hour 25 minutes") and simply hit play.

Sometimes you are a fool.

Quick Plot: A bunch of awful white 20somethings are having a house party with the normal white 20something things: beer pong, secretly videotaping a couple having sex, and reminiscing about just how awful wannabe filmmaker Hank was in high school. 

I hate everyone and wish them much pain.

Insufferable Hank convinces his pals (by paying each of them $200, making him apparently RICHLY insufferable) to sneak into a nearby abandoned prison and gather some film footage. Because this baker's dozen batch of interchangeable friends are all functioning with a collective IQ of 99, they happily agree. 

As you might guess, the abandoned prison is dark and large and haunted by something. Hank orders his friends to split up into pairs to explore, which helps us as the audience in that people start dying with efficiency. 

You would think that the characters who last the longest might at least start to accumulate personality, but that's just silly. This is tone of the most disposable batches of characters in any horror movie I've ever seen and friends, I've seen a LOT of horror movies.

I don't normally watch any film from a place of hate. Sure, sometimes a slasher benefits from having an unlikable batch of victims so that the audience can take a bit of pleasure in their inevitable tragedy. But even then, we want them to be interesting. 

Against the Night did not get that memo. There are something like nine people who go on Hank's journey. Aside from hearing the name "Rachel" a lot (as she frames the movie), not one of them registers. At one point, Rachel starts rattling off the rest of her pals: Brooke, Michelle, Sean, Dan, Nick...you get the idea. Even their NAMES are generic. Maybe the idea was to up the body count by having a larger-than-usual cast, but since the attack scenes are shot in darkness, what does it even matter?

Writer/director Brian Cavallaro has some good ideas. He mixes filming styles from standard narrative to handheld camera in a way that makes sense. The story eventually shows some surprises, but even one hour into an 85 minute movie is a LONG one hour. The payoff simply isn't worth it.

High Points

I won't spoil it, but the last act reveal upon reveal of Against the Night is a tad more interesting than you'd expect (considering the actual quality of storytelling on display)

Low Points

Part of the reason I figured I could take a gamble on Against the Night was that the trailer heavily featured Frank Whaley. Would it surprise you to know that he's barely in it?

Lessons Learned

Becoming an adult happens to the best of us

Believe it or not, you don't have to hang out with horrible people who film you having sex without your consent

Making fun of One Missed Call is fine for the average horror movie fan, but if your movie makes One Missed Call look like The Exorcist, it's probably not the best line of dialogue

Rent/Bury/Buy

In case you had not yet figured it out, I hated this movie. I can't imagine who it's for, other than the cast and crew's most forgiving relatives. If that happens to be you, find it on Peacock. 

Behind the Haunt

Occasionally, I remember to make the most of October by actually watching seasonal movies. 

Quick Plot: With four weeks til Halloween, private school senior Zack is thrilled to work at his cousin Mark's haunt. Everything is all pumpkins and satisfying jump scares until Mark's top employee Jacko turns up hanging from the zipline.

Naturally, things get worse from there. One employee accidentally injures a patron with a real chainsaw, but these are the kinds of local news stories that seem to draw even bigger crowds. When Halloween night finally hits, the mayhem matches with its seasonal peak.

The Haunted Forest is clearly not a high budget production. Writer/director/editor/co-star/probably lots of other roles Keith Boynton makes the most out of what he has, which mostly adds up to two keys: enough acres to build a haunt, and young lead Grayson Gwaze.

Playing a high school senior, Gwaze has an easy charm onscreen and makes his Zack an earnest, likable kid. It goes a very long way in keeping The Haunted Forest engaging. There's nothing particularly, how do I say it, interesting about the story. Bodies start piling up right as the season hits its stride. Every speaking character is a suspect. The reveal occurs on Halloween night.

That's about it. For a movie filmed on the grounds of a real Halloween haunt, it's pretty disappointing to find no actual scares. There's some decent black humor in the film's last act, as a batch of ill-fated influencers (including the cast of a fake reality Real Housewives-type show that's cleverly sprinkled in throughout the film) get the VIP treatment that goes predicatably wrong. But 

This is an odd film to discuss because I can't necessarily say it's good, but watching it, I could tell that the creatives behind it actively did their best. The setting looks great. The acting is generally good enough. And probably most notably, it feels made by someone who loves Halloween. Which actually makes the final coda feel quite strange. Is this ultimately a morality lesson in NOT celebrating the darker parts of the holiday?

High Points

I really do think a huge part of my softness for this movie comes from Gwaze's charm

Low Points

...Which also makes it even odder that his character is so vaguely written. A single throwaway line about his mother being ill (physically? mentally?) opens up questions that the film seems to simply forget about in the end

Lessons Learned

Being smart is the next best thing to being rich

Chanting doesn't wash away your people's sins

Scare acting is best done with a clear mind

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Haunted Forest isn't a particularly good horror film, and its final message may be to NOT revel in, you know, the fun of a good horror film. That being said, it's loaded with Halloween vibes and like many a Tubi exclusive, feels better than you'd expect for a free network. 

Come Right In!

Folks, do you realize just how many horror movies there are in the world? I know, I know. You're probably thinking, "I've been a genre fan my whole life, of course I know and of course I've seen them all."

Trust me: you haven't. 

Take today's feature, Deadly Manor. It's a supernatural slasher from 1990, filmed in New York with a Spanish crew. Never in my 44 years have I heard of this movie.

Quick Plot: Six young people are road tripping to a lake when they realize they have no idea where it actually is. Thankfully, a mysterious hitchhiker named Jack shows up to help direct them. 

Well, they're still hours away due to some very bad navigation, but at least they find an abandoned house that should due for a restful night. Helen feels a sense of dread and promptly storms off, leaving her boyfriend Tony and the rest of the gang to explore their strange new digs. 

There's a smashed car staged like a shrine on the lawn, a batch of caskets in the basement, dozens of photographs of a naked woman on the walls, and most troubling, a collection of human scalps on a shelf. In other words, slightly better than your last stay at a Knights Inn.

For reasons only '80s slasher screenplays can fathom, the kids still decide to stay the night. Tony even helps himself to some house wine, despite just skimming through a photo album of murdered young people a minute before. 

There are dumb teenagers, and there are Deadly Manor's dumb teenagers. 

As you might guess, they're not lasting long enough to reproduce. As the night slowly finds reasons for the kids to split up, the house gets a whole lot bloodier.

Directed by José Ramón Larraz (whose Edge of the Axe was also a, "hey, I never saw this VHS cover" discovery for me), Deadly Manor delivers on its promises. Horny young people are hunted by some kind of entity, and the reveal is both fitting for the genre and slightly new. It doesn't quite go as bonkers as Edge of the Axe, but any horror fan with a soft spot for this era should walk away satisfied.

Low Points

It's an odd choice to give us virtually no context or insight into the actual characters. Yes, they're designed to be disposable hot teenagers by the rules of the genre, but there's absolutely nothing on the page to define them. We can't even identify the lead until we happen to have one person left. The actors are perfectly appealing and deserved a little better

Lessons Learned

Everything collapses sooner or later

All a young couple needed in the '90s was wood and condoms

Don't count on the police to arrive to an emergency quickly, but do appreciate it when they're really sorry for being late

Rent/Bury/Buy

Deadly Manor didn't rock my world, but it was perfectly entertaining in a, "hey, there's a '90s slasher I haven't seen!" way. You can find it, you guessed it! on Tubi. 

Needs More Topless Forster

 

It took me quite a long time to see the mild cult classic Alligator, but that also meant it hit me at exactly the right time. I went in with low expectations and was charmed by how it navigated its Jaws references while working in some sly humor. It was the smartest dumb movie I'd seen in quite some time, so why not set my DVR to record TCM's late night showing of its lesser loved sequel?

Quick Plot: Through land developments and the usual corporate greed, some very toxic substances are flowing through the lake of Regent Park. Only Detective David Hodges seems to be concerned about the growing number of missing persons, perhaps because most of them are either unhoused or part of the Latino community.

The mayor is naturally under the thumb of wealthy real estate developer Vincent Brown. Wealthy real estate developer Vincent Brown is naturally responsible for polluting the waters which leads, of course, to THE MUTATION.

I'm trying to drum up some enthusiasm for the story because my gosh: Alligator II: The Mutation is one big slog.

The opening credits raised my hopes. Richard Lynch in the first film's Henry Silva role? Dee Wallace Stone as an adorable biologist? Clowns on stilts who will likely topple into the mouth of a mutated alligator? Surely we've got a good thing here!

Whew boy. We don't.

There was an 11 year gap between Alligator and Alligator II: The Mutation. That seems like quite a bit of time to develop a decent or at least creative sequel. The world at large wasn't clamoring for an Alligator followup, so making one had to come from a place of passion, right?

Not right. There's no passion in Alligator II: The Mutation. The film is a near complete retread of the first but without any of its weird little spark (sorry ladies, but Bologna keeps his shirt on). What should be the climax, where the alligator tears through a carnival, is about five minutes of some of the laziest mayhem I've ever seen. The alligator doesn't even eat things! He just whacks them with his tail!

I'M ANGRY!

It's Alligator II, for goodness sake. Where's your sense of joy? 

High Points

He's no Robert Forster, but Bologna tries, and has a certain charm that at least kept my interest

Low Points

Why is this lethargic, charmless Alligator sequel nearly two hours? Why does it even exist? Now I'm grumpy, so let's cheer up with a reminder of what made the first film so memorable:

This is the 17th time he takes his shirt off

Lessons Learned

When you get paid, you do your job

Alligators can't be professionals

Rookies never listen (which is why they often end up handcuffed in the bathroom)

Look! It's - 

Kane Hodder menacingly standing behind Richard Lynch!

and

Professor Toru Tanaka popping up briefly to throw another wrestler onto a table. In this (deadly doll's) house, anyone on the receiving end of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Running Man puns is celebrated

Rent/Bury/Buy

Ugh. I found very little joy in this movie. I can't imagine anyone else finding much more. 

Married...With Tubi

Ever wake up on a Thursday and find yourself saying, "Life would be okay if I could just have a smoothie and watch an early '90s made-for-TV crime saga?"

Really? Just me?

Sometimes I think of Tubi as my own personal Needful Things. It just knows exactly what I desire and delivers it. The cost is a few ads, which is only slightly worse than my soul. 

What a fine time to be alive. 

Quick Plot: Librarian Susan is four months pregnant but separated from her cheating husband. Teenage daughter Justine is bitter about the demise of her parents' marriage and rebels by making out with her boyfriend Ryan, turning mean girl to former best friend Ashley, and being snotty to her mother. 

While Susan is out enjoying a sweet date with her old high school flame Eric, Justine is having a complicated girls night. Ashley has told her that Ryan has been cheating with fellow cheerleader Vicki (such a cheating cheerleader name), and Justine has both gals over to chat. 

Things don't go well.

Vicki storms out with Ashley and Justine fast behind. There's hair pulling and screeching, and before you know it, Vicki is reported missing. The cops, including detective Eric, trace her last steps back to a lying Justine right as a jogger stumbles on her dead body in the woods. 

Clovis is a small town. Justine and Ashley are the prime suspects, with both girls tangling themselves in their knotty lies. Susan quickly becomes an outcast, and her burgeoning relationship with the case's head investigator doesn't look good for anyone. 

Violation of Trust, also listed as She Says She's Innocent, is a perfectly fine little TV movie. The story seems annoyingly straightforward until a third act twist, at which point you as the viewer will kick yourself for not spotting the obvious casting choice that tells you what you need to know about the film's real villain.

High Points

Director Charles Correll lucks out with a decent cast. Katey Sagal was a few years into her epic Married...With Children run and clearly wanted to show a different side of herself as a much more sympathetic (but still quite daft) mother. Charlotte Ross had just left Eve Donovan behind on Days of Our Lives and easily transitions as a slightly realer, still spoiled teen. These are very watchable women.

Low Points

Maybe it's just a very 2020s read, but I wanted so much more from what seemed like an incredibly toxic relationship between Justine and Ashley. Was Ashley in love with her too-cool best friend? 

Lessons Learned

Never ask a pregnant woman how she feels at 5AM

Homicide doesn't wet the appetite on a first date

Teenage couples don't share keys

Rent/Bury/Buy

There's nothing revolutionary about Violation of Trust. It's an early '90s TV movie with familiar faces and a melodramatic murder mystery. It scratched my itch exactly as I'd hoped. Bless you, Tubi.