"I'm going to commit murder at midnight."

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and all your petty, materialistic dreams were realized. 

Ha! I know better. 

That's the thing about petty, materialistic dreams, they're never satisfied. There's always something Kris P. Kringle forgot to bring you. All the stuff is never enough. Keep it up, mortals. I love it.

A new year is right around the corner, and in the spirit of letting auld acquaintance be forgot, I hope you'll forget about my track record of recommending holiday films. Thankskilling was painfully not even funny, and Santa Sangre didn't even have Santa in it. This week is different, though,  because I have a New Year's movie for you -- 1980's New Year's Evil,  by director Emmett Alston.

With all the parties happening, you may think your dance card is too full for a Thursday Thriller this week. The good news is you don't even have to pay New Year's Evil that much attention. It's a real party movie. The plot's fairly straightforward. 

A TV personality called Blaze (Roz Kelly) hosts a big new wave party called New Year's Evil in L.A. and the biggest names in punk rock are there. You've got Shadow, and Made in Japan, and Shadow, and Made in Japan, and Shadow... you get the idea. They're not bad for a couple of punk bands you've never heard of prominently featured in a movie you've never heard of.

The show is so big it's being simulcast in New York, Chicago and Aspen, so every time it turns midnight in North America, they've got live coverage of it. It's like having four big parties in one. Between songs Blaze takes calls to hear viewer's pics for song of the year. She receives a call from a guy who calls himself Evil (Kip Niven). Evil resolves to kill someone at midnight, and thanks to the coverage of eastern, central, mountain and Pacific time zones, that means he's going to kill four people. 

Simple, right? I think you can handle this one, no matter how much fun you've already had straight out of the bottle, you pathetic lush. 

One last thing: I'm not entirely sure the significance, but Evil also looks a little like Bruce Jenner. It seems like it's just a coincidence, but it's hard to overlook in the film's final scenes, in which he wears a red, white and blue track suit. I'm obviously talking about Wheaties box Bruce Jenner, not Vanity Fair Bruce Jenner. If you're looking for that kind of movie, you should watch Sleepaway Camp. 

Caitlyn might have tried on a whole other persona before realizing she was trapped in the wrong body.

New Year's Evil streams on Amazon Prime for zero extra dollars and zero extra cents. Throw it on in the background at your New Year's party for an atmosphere of punk rock and murder.

"I was having an hallucination..."

I was looking for a good Santa movie to tell you guys about, and I thought I found the perfect gift. I had picked out Christmas Evil because IMDb told me it streamed on Amazon Prime for zero extra dollars and zero extra cents, but when I logged into Amazon Prime, it wanted to charge me an extra $2.99 to watch the movie.

So very typical. I love using IMDb as a research tool, but it will only tell you if a movie is available on Amazon. The words Netflix and Hulu do not exist on that site. Something shady is afoot, like an exclusive sponsorship.

It's not like I can't afford the $2.99, but I'm not here to recommend movies that cost more. I'm here to help you get the most for your streaming video dollar.

So I had to do some last minute shopping to deliver you a good Santa movie, and I wound up watching Santa Sangre on Hulu Plus. It stars Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra and Guy Stockwell. None of these people play Santa Claus.

This 1989 effort by Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky is a weird one,  and not just because good ole Father Christmas appears nowhere in it.

It's a surreal nightmare about the inevitability of damnation... I think.

What it's literally about is a guy named Fenix (Axel J.) who lives in a mental institution. After all, you're bound to be a little screwed up when you're raised in the circus. When your mom is the head of a religious cult whose baptismal rites involve dunking young acolytes in a pool of blood, that doesn't help, either.

It's a textbook case of watching your favorite elephant die, blood pouring all out the poor thing's trunk, and after the funeral, where a lot of clowns were sad, your dad gives you your first tattoo with a throwing dagger, and outside the smiles and gestures of a deaf-mute clown, that's the most genuine show of affection you're going to get for the rest of your life.

What I'm trying to say is,Santa Sangre could be a statement on the conflict of man's dual natures, and the struggle to balance the need to be a devout son and Christian, and the compulsion to whoremonger. 

It might instead be about one man's difficulty finding and maintaining a healthy relationship with a woman, because his dad cheated on his mom, then cut off her arms, then slit his own throat; made all the more difficult because mom is jealous and domineering, psychically takes control of the man's arms, and forces him to kill everyone he tries to hook up with.

There's a lot of opportunity for interpretation, so if you're writing an undergraduate thesis, I'm pretty sure any old bullshit you wanna throw at the wall will stick. To be honest I was confused about the absence of Kris Kringle the whole time.

So no Santa, but it does have a lot of things you may never have known you needed to see in a movie. 

For example: 

1.) Some clowns and a heavily-tattooed woman with a big booty

2.) Some coked-up special people, prostitutes, and a pimp with a boombox

3.) A bunch of naked, undead women in bridal veils

4.) Strange, religious imagery

5.) More strange, religious imagery

I recommend checking this movie out at least once, with the lights out, with the phone off, with a strict rule that everyone in the house remain quiet. Make sure you've had plenty of rest. Pop your popcorn and go to the bathroom in advance. Take your shoes off. Get comfy. If your home theater has a door, hang a sign on it that says, "Watching a disturbing, Chilean art film. Please do not disturb further." Then close the door.

Or you could just have it on in the background a whole bunch of times and see something new every time you play it. Personally, I like maintaining a little mystery about what the hell is going on on my TV. That's why I still haven't watched the companion documentary, Forget Everything You Have Ever Seen: The Making Of Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre, also available on Hulu Plus.

That's because I don't always have to understand things to enjoy them, and neither should you. I mean, obviously, I got it, but I don't want to spoil the journey for you by explaining everything. At the very least, Santa Sangre is a puzzle for your mind that's a lot of fun to look at. So look at it. It's also worth talking about, so leave your thoughts in the comments section. Maybe you can tell me where Santa is. 

"This world dries up your soul."

It seems everybody is losing their minds because the new Star Wars opens tomorrow, and wouldn't you know it, Episodes I-VI aren't available on any legitimate streaming source.

I suppose you could pay an extra $19.99 and watch A New Hope on Amazon Prime, but my view is, if you have to pay extra on top of your regular subscription fee, that movie really isn't included in the service.

I don't care for your little shell game, Amazon. It's true, I'm a man of wealth, but I'm also a man of taste.

So I scoured the sci-fi galleries and found a space western for your nerdly consideration during your Force Awakens pregame.

It's called Oblivion,  and you can find it on Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime (for an additional cost of zero dollars and zero cents).

I'm not talking about Universal Pictures's 2013 Oblivion, directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman. I'm talking about Full Moon Entertainment's 1994 Oblivion, directed by Sam Irvin and starring Richard Joseph Paul, Jackie Swanson and Andrew Divoff.

You might not have heard of those people, but the supporting cast was a who's who of who's not any more for the mid-1990s.

You've got Meg Foster from They Live as Stell Bar, the cyborg deputy; pre-South Park Isaac Hayes, the Black Moses of Soul, as Buster, who runs a frontier trading post; Catwoman Julie Newmar as Miss Kitty, the madame of an insinuated brothel, who purrs and hisses and fills out a catsuit quite well for a woman her age; Carel Struycken, the giant from Twin Peaks, as Gaunt,  the undertaker who never knows who, but always when and where someone is going to die; Irwin Keyes, Hugo from The Jeffersons, as Bork, a dim-witted thug; and a pre-Facebook George Takei as Doc Valentine,  the drunk doctor and robotics handyman.

Whenever I see a lineup like this, I can't help but imagine clusters of character actors hanging around outside fan conventions, like a bunch of migrant day laborers, waiting for a pickup truck to come haul them to a set.

The standout star, though,  in my opinion, is Musetta Vander, who plays Lash, a leather-clad villainess who wields and electrified whip.

The story centers around Zack Stone (Paul),  a pacifist empath who returns to his hometown of Oblivion to pay his respects to his father, the sheriff (Mike Genovese), who was gunned down in the street by a reptilian gangster named Redeye (Divoff). With the help of Stell Bar,  the wisdom of his native sidekick Buteo (Jimmie F. Skaggs), and the incessant bitching of sweet widow Mattie Chase (Swanson), Stone must overcome his hatred of violence and restore law and order to Oblivion.

The jokes are corny, the makeup and effects are cool, and the whole movie feels stamped with that mid-90s sci-fi vibe -- if it were a TV show, it would have nicely filled the gap between Hercules and Babylon 5.

Is it any good? It's at least as good as The Phantom Menace, and without the burden of iconic branding, you have no reason to get your hopes up. Give it a look, you might be pleasantly surprised. 

May the Force be with you.

"Well, it ain't fuckin' Frosty."

The temperature is finally starting to dip. Solstice is almost here and boy, am I in the holiday spirit.  So what's your problem?  Are you worried about money? Are you missing dead relatives? Are you realizing another year has almost passed and you're no closer to realizing your hopes and dreams than you were when it started? 

Maybe a dose of nonsensical, fantasy violence will snap you out of it, and I have just the movie. This week's Thursday Thriller is the 1997 horror/comedy Jack Frost, by director Michael Cooney. The title character is a serial killer who, through freak accident on his way to prison, mutates into a snowman,  escapes and comes back to seek revenge on the sheriff who caught him. 

Put more simply, this is a movie about a killer snowman. 

You're probably thinking, what is this trickery, Satan? That sounds even dumber than Thankskilling. 

Take a breath, there is no movie dumber than Thankskilling. Just check your suspension of disbelief at the opening titles and you'll have a good time. 

It seems turning into a snowman is the best thing that could happen to a serial killer like Mr. Frost, because he's disguised, virtually unnoticeable in the winter landscape, he can turn parts of himself into deadly sharp icicles, he can separate himself into flurries and blow into drafty rooms or melt into water and leak under doorways. He's almost unstoppable. 

It works within its own twisted, logical framework. Thankskilling has no such framework.

IMDB lists Scott MacDonald, Christopher Allport and Stephen Mendel as the stars of the movie,  but the most memorable moment features a pre-American Pie Shannon Elizabeth in a bathtub. I hate to date myself, especially because I'm immortal, but I watched this movie on a VCR when it first came out, and the bathtub scene has haunted me ever since.

Jack Frost streams on Hulu Plus. Look at it. Maybe it'll make you feel better. 

"Why did you stop?"

I hope everyone had a bountiful Thanksgiving and an even more bountiful Black Friday. From my perspective, there's nothing better than a day of gluttony and sloth, followed immediately by a day of greed and covetousness. Did you see all the stampedes and brawls on the news? Warms my heart. It truly is the most wonderful time of year, and it really gets me pumped about that other holiday nightmare -- travelling with family.  That's why this week's Thursday Thriller is the 2003 film Dead End, starring Ray Wise, and helmed by writer/director team Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa. 

Wise plays Frank Harrington,  a dad who grows bored with his usual route to the in-laws for Christmas and decides to take a back road and cut across the butt end of nowhere. Like a lot of dads, he may be a little square and out of touch with his son's musical tastes, but you can tell he's a good man, because he stops the car to help a mysterious Lady In White (Amber Smith) who's wandering around in the woods with her baby.

Next thing you know, daughter's boyfriend Brad (William Rosenfeld) is being hauled away in the back of a hearse, only to be found later as a big pile of glop in the middle of the highway.

As the Harrington's continue their journey, things keep getting weirder, and tensions run higher. Frank admits he's always hated wife Laura's mother, daughter Marion (Alexandra Holden) announces she's pregnant, son Richard (Mick Cain) confesses his marijuana use, and Laura (Lin Shaye) goes generally bananas and shoots Frank with a shotgun. 

There are some good performances and lots of darkly funny moments, but Dead End isn't a great movie so much as it is a great opportunity to watch a family turn on each other under strange and bloody circumstances. Isn't that what the holidays are really all about? 

Be warned: there's a lame cliché of a twist ending, so you might like the movie a little better if you turn it off five minutes before it's over. Like the death of Spinal Tap's drummer, some mysteries are best left unsolved.

Dead End streams on Amazon Prime, which you might already have if you didn't want to pay shipping on Cyber Monday.

"Turkeyologists all over the world know it as... Thankskilling!"

 Are you really looking at a horror movie blog on Thanksgiving? What gives? Don't you have better things to do? Shouldn't you be cooking or eating or washing dishes? Isn't there some cousin or uncle you hardly ever see and have nothing in common with you're supposed to be smiling and nodding politely at? Isn't it time for a carb-induced coma? The stores are gonna be open in a couple hours.  Have you clipped all your coupons and charged your stun gun?

Seriously, it's Thanksgiving.  Why are you reading this? What do you want from me? Aren't you thankful for all the other movies I've told you about?  For the art and culture I've brought into your life? The Red Guy deserves a holiday, too, you know. Do you have any idea how busy I'm going to be tomorrow on the busiest, most violent shopping day of the year?

Fine. This week's Thursday Thriller is called Thankskilling. It's the kind of movie that promises boobs in the first second on the poster, so maybe you should wait until Grandma leaves.  Then again, if Grandma won't leave, maybe you can throw on this 2009 horror/comedy to motivate her old ass out the door.

This is a rare case in which I will just let the IMDB plot summary explain what goes on: "A homicidal turkey axes off college kids during Thanksgiving break."

The turkey puppet has a potty mouth. One might even say there's a lot of fowl language in this film by writer/director Jordan Downey. 

If you think that joke was bad,  wait til you watch the movie.  The gags range from intolerable to OK. The funniest part is where the turkey, disguised as a person, sits down for coffee and awkward conversation with the sheriff, disguised as a turkey. 

I'm not saying Thankskilling is totally worthless. The turkey puppet looks cool, and there's a piece of the score that sounds John Carpenter-ish. So click open Hulu Plus and watch it. It'll serve you right for bothering me today.

The best part of the movie.

"This truck runs on zombies."

If there's one thing I'm sick of seeing, it's horror movies that are blue.  Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like the trend these days if you're making a horror film is to color correct it so the whole movie has a bluish tinge to it. I suppose the thinking is to create cold, bleak atmosphere, but I always just assume the director has some residual Smurf-related anxiety left over from the 1980s.

Don't get me wrong. Blue is one of my seven favorite colors. It's right up there with orange and purple. It just feels like Hollywood has forgotten it's got a whole rainbow at its disposal for scaring people.

That's why Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead caught my eye. Australian director Kiah Roache-Turner has delivered a zombie epic that is saturated in blood reds, slime greens, and hazmat-suit yellows.

I know you're already rolling your eyes and saying, "Another zombie movie? That's been done to undeath. What's left to see?" but this 2014 film, available on Netflix, is a lot of fun to look at.  Its fast-paced, highly visual storytelling will get your heart pumping,  so you'll get your couch cardio in.

The plot revolves around a mechanic named Barry (Jay Gallagher), who goes through the usual heart-wrenching ordeal of dispatching his wife and daughter with a nail gun. His sister Brooke (Bianca Bradley) has been captured by the army and is subject to bizarre experiments by a disco-listening, mad doctor (Berynn Schwerdt).

Barry goes looking for Brooke and meets up with some other handy gents who discover that the zombies exhale a highly flammable gas that can be used as fuel. So they armor up their bodies and their truck all Mad Max-style and hit the road. The trip hits a snag when they discover the zombies only give off the gas in the daytime, but at night they use it to run fast.

Or something.

Yeah, this movie works best when the action is telling the story. That's not to say there isn't some good acting. With minimal dialogue Roache-Turner delivers strong characters you can care about, and it doesn't take a lot of jibber jabber.

It may tax your suspension of disbelief in moments, but with lurid colors, bad-ass action, quirky humor and high-octane halitosis, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead is a refreshing reminder that zombies can still be funny, tragic and scary all in one film.

"This is just wrong."

So there I was, resolved in my purpose to dig a little deeper into horror's past, to offer consideration on films long forgotten, to rehash some classics, when Netflix had to go and drop The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence).

As a longtime fan of sewing people's lips to other people's buttholes, I had to put my plans aside and watch this 2015 film by writer/director Tom Six immediately. I was not disappointed.  

Dieter Laser, who you might recognize as the bad guy from the first Human Centipede movie, plays psychotic prison warden Bill Boss. Laurence R. Harvey, who you might recognize as the bad guy from the second Human Centipede movie, plays weaselly prison accountant Dwight Butler. Bree Olson, who you might recognize from a ton of Internet videos you wouldn't admit watching in polite company, plays Boss's ditzy secretary Daisy.

Boss is in charge of the rowdiest, most violent, prison in America, and he's tried everything to keep the inmates under control. He's tried breaking arms, he's tried peeling skins off faces, he's tried random castration,  and still the inmates give him no respect. The nightmares of being raped to death by them won't go away, and Governor Hughes (Eric Roberts) is breathing down his neck to get a handle in the place or he's fired. 

Boss finds a little solace in the simple pleasures of eating dried clitorises and having sex with his secretary, but he needs an idea, and Butler's got one for him -- how about stitching all the prisoners together, mouth-to-anus, just like in the Human Centipede films. 

They schedule a meeting with Six, who plays himself, to verify the medical accuracy of the experiments his films portray. Six shows up in a light brown suit and straw fedora, tours the facility, and throws up.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, this film is disgusting. It's true. I know you can't go anywhere and say anything is disgusting without some fanboy saying, "Pfft! That's nothing. What about Martyrs or A Serbian Film?" To those folks, I say, aren't you late for your court appointed therapy?  I'm talking about good, old-fashioned, gross-out fun, not deep, psychological scarring.

This installment in the trilogy is a lot goofier than the others, with exchanges in Boss's office reminiscent of John Waters's earlier works. Laser's characterization of Boss was especially fun, as he spouts obscenities in his thick German accent,  and struts around showing off his creation in the film's final sequence. He's comically creepy, not unlike Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, or Christopher Walken in general.

In summary, I acknowledge Human Centipede III ( Final Sequence) is not everyone's cup of diarrhea, but it made me chuckle.

"It's true! Vagina dentata! Vagina dentata! Vagina dentata!"

Wow! What a Halloween that was! I can't even begin. Just.... just wow!

Hope yours was just as exciting and you've still got plenty of fun - size Snickers to eat for breakfast. I also hope you're finding a lot of good deals on scary stuff off the clearance racks.

I've decided to go ahead and keep this blog active even though I've closed up my menagerie of evil souls for the year. After all, now that Halloween is over, the pressure is off. I don't have to pander to those looking exclusively for the best of the newest horror movies on the most popular streaming service. I can dig a little deeper and talk about movies people haven't thought about for a while. I can even review stuff on Hulu.

Just not this week.

This week's movie streams on Netflix and it's called Teeth.

This 2007 film by writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein tells the story of a teen girl named Dawn (Jess Weixler) who discovers in a most traumatic way that her pet cooter bites.

Dawn's one of those confused but well-meaning youth group kids that believes in sexual abstinence before marriage. She volunteers her time talking to younger kids about saving their precious gifts until their wedding nights. She even wears a red, rubber ring on her left hand to remind herself that she's married to Jesus until someone replaces it with a gold band.

Disgusting,  right? But who can blame her? The lack of useful information available about her lady bits borders on criminally negligent. Her health textbook even has a giant sticker covering up a diagram of the vagina, per school board regulations. 

That's not to say she doesn't think about sex, though. After all, she is becoming a woman, and she has the hots for Tobey (Hale Appleman), the new boy in her youth group. As they talk constantly about not having sex, they find they have a lot in common, like virginity,  except not Tobey. 

Tobey has trouble with what words mean in general. Take the word "no", for instance. Dawn tells him no when a date in the woods gets too heated for her liking, but he continues, and that's when they both discover that Dawn has a rare mutation known as vagina dentata, which means exactly what you think it does. Tobey is righteously dismembered, and Dawn finds she has some soul searching to do.

Losing your virginity is tough enough, but to be raped, and learn your lady business is armed with flesh-mangling incisors is a lot to handle in one afternoon. Dawn's crisis of faith that follows is only natural, as is the trail of severed heads she leaves in her wake, even if they're not the kind of heads you're used to seeing roll in a horror film.

Some eggheads might say Teeth is an exploitative pile of cheap gags and gross-outs. I prefer to think of it as a coming - of - age tale, an empowering allegory about the struggles a young woman typically endures when coming to terms with her burgeoning sexuality, but I'll put the Oprah - speak aside and let you decide for yourself. 

"Would you rather..."

I bet you thought I wasn't going to post a review this week.  I bet you thought just because the Devil's Attic is open tonight, Ole Scratch was gonna leave you high and dry to pick out a movie for yourself.

Don't worry.  I know this is gonna be my last review before Halloween and picking out a scary movie at this critical juncture is too much responsibility for you. You've got a lot on your mind,  like whether to dress like a slutty princess or a slutty pirate. You know who you are, ladies, and I do not care how many nerds say that trend needs to go, you keep up the good work.

That all said, I am incredibly busy whipping my collection of evil souls into a hellish fury, so I gotta keep this review pretty tight. Let's get to it. 

Would You Rather is a movie from 2012 directed by David Guy Levy.  Brittany Snow plays Iris, a young woman going broke trying to care for her sickly brother. The family doctor refers her to a philanthropic trust to help her with the bills.

Jeffrey Combs, of Re-Animator fame, plays Shepard Lambrick, the super rich guy who wants to help. He tells Iris she'll be all set with her schooling and her brother's medical needs. All she has to do is attend a dinner party at his house,  play a game and win.

But philanthropy turns to misanthropy when Iris finds herself seated at the table with half a dozen strangers, just as desperate as she, ready to play a grisly version of "would you rather". The first question: Would you rather give the stranger next to you an electric shock, or would you rather shock yourself? The violence escalates with each round of the game until the last person alive is named the winner. 

 

It's like House on Haunted Hill meets Saw.

Would You Rather streams on Netflix. Look at it. I'll see you soon.

"I will do whatever it takes for this role. "

Traditionally, I expect a ceremonial pentagram to be illuminated by candles, but this week's Thursday Thriller sets a precedent for glow sticks I can no longer ignore. The movie is called Starry Eyes and it's about an ambitious, young actress named Sarah (Alex Essoe) who  must decide how far she is willing to go to achieve her Hollywood dream.

You know, to fellate or not to fellate. That old saw.

Her day job is at Big Taters, one of those awesome, chauvinist restaurants that require its waitresses to wear skimpy uniforms.  She quits when she lands a series of successively creepier auditions that lead to the casting couch of the producer of Astreus Pictures.

But Sarah's not that kind of girl. She refuses the producer's advances, and goes back to Big Taters to beg for her job back. Her friends try to console her. A cool guy who lives in a van offers her a part in his movie, which won't mean any money, but at least they'll make a movie. She accepts the role, and they celebrate by dropping acid. During the pool party that follows, Sarah has a change of heart. Maybe performing a little penilingus to achieve your dreams isn't so bad. I mean, she already had to say, "I'm a Taters girl," just to go back to slinging curly fries. How much worse could it be? She calls Astreus and reschedules.

When she finally puts her mouth on it, he says, "The gateway is open, Sarah. Kill your old life, bury it in the earth, and join us in the skies."

(If anyone has ever said anything that crazy to you while you were doing them the Good Deed, I want to hear about it in the comment section.)

I don't know what was in the old fellow's old fellow, but after Sarah sucks it, she gets really sick and loses her serving job for good. She starts acting like a junkie. Her hair and nails start falling out. She asks her roommate if that's her menstrual blood she smells. She pukes live maggots. When she receives a taunting phone call from Astreus, she comes to the conclusion that a murder spree will put all this right.

I don't want to give any more away. You'll have to watch it yourself. Starry Eyes was made in 2014 by Kevin Kolsey and Dennis Widmyer. It's available on Netflix.

I hope it can tide you over for the live thrills and chills we have in store at The Devil's Attic. Only two weekends left. I'll see you soon.

"Tubby time"

This week's Thursday Thriller is a fairly unlikely pick called Creep.

This 2014 film stars Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass, who also wrote the movie. They're the only two people you see on screen. Brice directed it. The whole movie is pretty much a two-man operation.

I call it an unlikely pick, because, for starters, that title couldn't be more generic. Secondly, it's a found footage movie, which is a style I thought I'd long grown tired of, with a few standout exceptions (Blair Witch Project, Troll Hunter, V/H/S). It's also short on special F/X, and because it has only two people, that puts the bulk of the scary on Duplass's shoulders in his characterization of Josef. More on that in a bit.

Creep opens like a lot of horror films, with the main character driving to the butt end of nowhere. Aaron (Brice) explains to his camera that he's going into the mountains because he took a videographer gig that pays $1,000 and requires he be discreet.

When he reaches his destination at the top,  he meets Josef, who promptly welcomes him with a hug, pays him, and fleshed out the details of the assignment.

Josef tells Aaron he has cancer and wants to make a film about who he is, in case he dies before his child is born, like in My Life starring Michael Keaton. Once the goal is explained Josef gives Aaron another hug, and goes straight to the bathroom and takes off his clothes to shoot the tubby time sequence. 

See, when Josef was a baby, his dad would take baths with him, and they called it tubby time, so Josef's just trying to recreate a bonding moment for his yet unborn son, during which he sits in the tub and mimes giving the baby a bath.

Shortly after that, Aaron discovers Josef's werewolf mask. It's okay, though, that's just Peachfuzz. Josef's dad used to wear it to make kids laugh. He even had a little song and dance he did while wearing the mask, which Josef demonstrates. Josef has a lot of fond memories of his dad.

Once Josef has had Aaron film him naked in the bath and dancing around in a werewolf mask, he starts acting a little weird. Aaron slowly discovers that Josef is a manipulative psychotic with a penchant for stalking as the layers of deceit peel back and fall away.

As a performer,  Duplass walks a tight rope as Josef is often sympathetic and scary. One minute,  you feel sorry for the guy, the next you want to get as far away from him as possible, and yet you keep watching, wondering what he's going to do next. 

My only complaint with the movie is it begs of Aaron's empathy one time too many, and in the third act, he makes a decision far removed from any realism or common sense, so I didn't care for the ending. Still, I enjoyed Creep overall and I hope it whetstone your appetite for live, in-the-flesh scares at the Devil's Attic this weekend. 

See you soon.

"Somebody got fucked. Somebody got killed. I'm going to gym."

I know how you feel: A lot of the haunted houses you want to visit don't open til tomorrow night, including The Devils Attic, but you need something now! You need something to get you in the mood, to whet your appetite for live scares. You need a Thursday Thriller!

My pick for this week is All Cheerleaders Die.

The title alone builds expectations of a certain kind of movie, a well-worn VHS rental from 1983 that comprises helpless teenage girls with taut, little bodies being terrorized by a faceless maniac with a power tool of some kind. Toss those expectations aside. Yes, there are taut little bodies, but they're not displayed collectively in a gratuitous shower scene or anything. The nudity is fairly brief.

Society has made a lot of progress in 30 years. Now the girls are the monsters, unless you want to count the football team captain as the monster, or maybe you think the real monster is the intense pressure and rigid social pecking orders of life as a teenager. I'm getting sidetracked here.

This 2013 film written and directed by Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson delves into the world of high school cheerleading, the most dangerous of all high-school sports, according to squad captain Lexi in the opening sequence. She's only referring to catastrophic injuries, which happen soon enough. She and most of the other characters lack the self-awareness to see that the true danger lies in chasing a fleeting bit of social status above all else. In that subtext, All Cheerleaders Die is kind of like Mean Girls. In fact, if it was my movie, I might have called it Very Mean Girls, or Bloodthirsty, Undead, Incredibly Mean Girls, Indeed.

Again, I'm sidetracked. Sorry.

If I can just tell what happens quickly and without giving too much away, Lexi dies in one of those catastrophic injuries she was talking about. So Tracy steps in as squad captain and immediately starts dating Terry, the captain of the football team. That leaves a place open on the squad for Maddy, a misfit, closeted lesbian, who has an axe to grind against Terry. Maddy's been working on her revenge plot for a while and spends all her money on fancy clothes so she can blend in with the cheerleaders. She successfully infiltrates the squad and seduces Tracy.

So Tracy and Terry get in a big fight at a back-to-school party and Tracy tells Terry in front of everybody that he has a small dick. That doesn't sit well. One thing leads to another and on the drive home, the football boys run the cheerleader girls off a cliff, and just as the title promises, all cheerleaders die.

But it turns out Maddy's lesbian ex is a stalker who's into witchcraft. She uses some glowing rocks to revive the squad, who do a slow-walk into school the next day looking hotter than ever and ready to kill.

After that it gets kinda gory. Gossip Girl got nothing on this drama.

All Cheerleaders Die is streaming on Netflix, if you wanna give it a look. See you soon.