A new week, a new batch of horror flicks to talk about that are new to us. First we have Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla. I had heard some good things about it and liked the idea of it. I love dark films and was hoping it would be similar to God Bless America, Some Guy Who Kills People, Stitches or Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal. It wants to be like those films, dark, twisted, crazy killings, but unfortunately it takes forever for anything to happen. The premise is there, but they waited too long for him to snap. It’s an Australian film about an ice cream man who isn’t right in the head. He fantasizes about a TV actress and thinks she visits him at his ice cream truck. He’s been picked on his entire life and has a run in with a local bad guy who steals and beats people. It’s perfect material for a guy to snap and go full vigilante. Unfortunately he has a lot of buttons to push before he goes crazy. When he does, it’s pretty cool and the actor playing the ice cream man looks the part, but it’s a bit too little too late. The ending is pretty gnarly, but the set up is way too long. If you’ve heard about it, you might still want to check it out, but don’t get your hopes up.
Next we have Acid Bath. I really want to give credit to the filmmakers here, but I just can’t. I’ve done some indie film work myself including low budget stuff (no budget for a lot of it) so I want to give people credit for trying, but man is this bad. I really don’t get the film itself. On one hand it’s about a guy killing prostitutes and putting them in a bath of acid (hence the title), but on the other hand there’s a story about a bounty hunter and Spanish people. If those two stories connected, I think I missed the explanation. The bounty hunter stuff is laughably bad, but not always in the good way. The Spanish people speak Spanish, but I don’t and there’s no subtitles that I saw so I have no idea what they said. The actor, and I use that term loosely, playing the bounty hunter shouldn’t be on screen again. It looks like he took karate classes at a strip mall for 15 years and thought he should be an action star. His fighting is overly choreographed and fake looking and he has the appeal of a dry stick. The fight scene with the Spanish guys is a total joke. Although I will admit I laughed out loud when he shot the one guy earlier in the movie and they clearly threw a dummy off the ledge and then he carried the dummy. The acid bath killer parts weren’t as bad. They at least tried to have some special effects and story. The special effects aren’t good, but they did try with that part. It’s one thing to make a movie with friends, but how did this even get released? And how is it they got multiple women to do nude scenes too?
Third we have The Thrill of a Kill. This kind of reminded me of another movie I watched recently Whore. It’s from Europe as well and has a woman fighting back story. A man with a messed up childhood abducts, rapes and murders women. He keeps them around, tied up or harnessed in different ways. It reminded me a lot of the film Jacob as well. Both leads are that slow-ish style character who may or may not understand what he is doing is wrong. Of course some of the women try to escape and fight back and that’s something we’ve seen many times before. What stands out though is the gore. There’s some pretty nasty stuff in it and I like that. A certain body part is brutalized and I cringed watching it. On one side, the movie is completely unoriginal. There’s nothing new or groundbreaking in the slightest. On the other side, it has some good kills and what you want in a slasher flick. It doesn’t take forever to build up like Whore, but I don’t see non-genre fans getting into it. If you like slashers and blood, I recommend it though, but don’t get your hopes up beyond a B-movie foreign flick.
Third we have House of Afflictions. The film has some solid production value, but paranormal films just don’t do much for me. A writer moves into a house to write her latest novel. She hasn’t written a thing since the disappearance of her daughter and as soon as she’s in the new house, odd things start happening. If you read me consistently, you know a door opening or an object moving doesn’t scare me. I grew up with real slasher horror not paranormal activity junk. So to me this film isn’t scary in the slightest, but I will give it credit for not laying out all its cards on the table too quickly. There’s a twist that you might see coming, but I can see a lot of people missing it. Production is good and the acting is really good so despite not being my favorite type of film, I still can recommend it. If jump scares work for you, you’l probably like this one. I can actually see a lot of people liking this to be honest.
Last we have Blood Slaughter Massacre. This is an ultra low (cough no) budget film that looks ultra low. Most of the people aren’t actors or at least shouldn’t be actors because, well, they can’t act. The story is pretty much Scream or any other horror movie of the past 30 years. Ten years after a massacre, another massacre starts up and the local authorities have to figure out who is doing all the killing. Most of the cops in the film don’t look like real cops. One has a pony tail half way down his back and that wouldn’t be allowed even in a small town. And the detective’s cop car is a 2 door car, again, that’s not gonna fly in real life. But as low budget as it looks and feels, there are some positives. The killings are pretty solid and it has some good gore. The killer mostly uses knives to slash people and I support that! Guns are too easy, poke someone in the gut instead. It sticks with a classic horror theme, a man in a his mask and that is always creepy. Plus for a no budget film, how on Earth did they get almost every single female in this movie to go topless or more? You don’t have money for good actors or post-production, but you can can afford to get nudity? Kudos to you. If you like slasher flicks, there are far worse, just expect a low budget look and bad acting.
The Nerds Templar 