"I'll show you which one of us is crazy."

I'm starting to reassess my partnership with Death.

You might think it would be cool all the famous souls he's brought me over the past year, but it's starting to feel like he's trying just a little too hard. If a friend brings you a present, you might say, "Oh how thoughtful. I didn't even know how much I needed that. Thank you ever so much," but if that same friend brings you a present every couple weeks for a whole year, you start to wonder what it is they're after, like they're building up credit in the favor bank because they're about to ask for something big, uncomfortable and inconvenient.

Maybe I just think that way because I'm evil and so are most of my colleagues, but that's how I think.

Then sometimes I think, man, I haven't watched a good movie with a ton of maggots in it in a while.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Phenomena.

This 1985 Dario Argento film is about Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly), a pop star's daughter who's been shipped off to a fancy Swiss boarding school. Jennifer has a psychic connection with insects and.there's a maniac on the loose near the school who likes to kill girls who are Jennifer's age.

One night Jennifer goes sleepwalking and witnesses a murder, then falls in the middle of the street, where two guys in a convertible pick her up and drive off with her. She puts up too much of a fight for their liking, so they throw her out of the car into the woods. As luck would have it, a smiling chimpanzee was in the neighborhood and takes Jennifer by the hand to meet Professor John McGregor, an entomologist. The two become instant friends because they like bugs.

Were you aware insects can be used to fight crime?

Back at school, the headmistress is angry at Jennifer for sneaking out at night. Then she gets angry at Jennifer for summoning a swarm of insects to cover the building when the other students are taunting her. The headmistress tries to have Jennifer committed to a psych ward.

Jennifer escapes back to McGregor's lab, where he shows her a fly whose larvae only feeds on dead bodies. He sends Jennifer off with one such fly in the hope that it will lead her to where the murderer is hiding the remains of his or her victims. I'd say she succeeds, more or less, then a bunch of gross, weird stuff happens. I'd rather not spoil it for you, though.

Phenomena is like Suspiria with bugs. Its soundtrack includes music by Goblin, Iron Maiden and Motorhead. It streams on Amazon Prime.

"You do with mogwai what your society has done with all of nature's gifts. You do not understand."

Mortals, as you look forward to another trip around the sun, and you engage in your ritualistic feasting and giving of stuff to one another, a lot of you still find yourselves with the same old dilemma: what are you going to watch tonight?

Given that so many of you think the seasonal festivities are about family, I guess I'll go ahead and tell you about a movie you can watch with the kids, the Christmas movie that tells you there is no Santa Claus.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Gremlins.

This 1984 Joe Dante film is about what happens when inventor named Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) kinda half-buys, half-steals an exotic pet from a Chinatown shop owner who doesn't want to sell it to him. The pet is called a mogwai. Rand gives the mogwai as a Christmas present to his son Billy (Zach Galligan).

There are three strict rules for raising mogwai and because Billy is the kind of guy who thinks no one will notice he brought his dog to work at the bank, he immediately breaks two of them, and that results in multiplication and metamorphosis from a single, kindly mogwai to hundreds of conniving, nasty gremlins that destroy the whole town. They run over the snow plow driver with his own snow plow, screw up traffic lights so cars crash, break everything in sight, get drunk and trash a bar.

I love this movie for two reasons:

1.) The gremlin that explodes in the microwave.

2.) The monologue in which the female lead Kate (Phoebe Cates) explains she doesn't like Christmas because her dad fell halfway down the chimney playing Santa Claus, broke his neck, and rotted there for five days before anyone found him. You simultaneously feel sympathy for Kate, and laugh at her for having such a stupid dad.

What else can I say? It's probably the best puppet movie ever. Corey Feldman is in it. You'll never get the theme song unstuck from your head. It both exemplifies and condemns Western culture's decadent obsession with novelty.

Gremlins streams on Amazon Prime.

Oh hey, and if you like strange, funny, scary, violent Christmas stories, my buddy Todd Merriman just published his story "Santa Claus Meets Frankenstein" as an e-book on Amazon Kindle. I read it. It's worth the dollar.

"I gave him life."

I didn't always have the prestige of a blogspot address. Way back when I still had my own personal Facebook page, I heard tell of an unfortunate mortal, so young, so innocent, she had not grown up going down to the local video store to rent horror movies. Streaming video was the only world she had ever known, and thus, she lived in slobbering ignorance of one of the greatest films of all time.

Her conundrum inspired me to report in a Facebook status that the movie was on Netflix, just sitting there, waiting to be discovered by a new generation of fans. That simple, three-sentence review I wrote has been lost to the ages, and the movie is still sitting there, which has to be some kind of record for a good movie to still be on Netflix.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Re-Animator.

This 1985 Stuart Gordon film is based on an H.P. Lovecraft story called "Herbert West: Re-Animator". Jeffrey Combs plays West, a student who studied under the famous Dr. Gruber in Munich. One day, they were doing an experiment and Dr. Gruber's eyeballs exploded all over the place, so West had to switch schools. He attends Miskatonic University and immediately confronts his instructor Dr. Hill (David Gale) with charges of plagiarism, and the two build an adversarial relationship consisting mostly of mad scientist smack talk.

West rents a room in the house of fellow medical student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott). Cain is dating the dean's daughter, Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton), who spends a fair amount of her screen time naked. West shows Cain the special reagent he developed with Gruber. The reagent raises the dead. If you could raise the dead you'd be the best doctor ever, right? So why not study it?

There are really only two problems:

1.) West can never seem to find a fresh enough cadaver. Mere minutes of decomposition so compromises the specimens so on returning to life, they come back as juiced-up rage zombies.

2.) Miskatonic University frowns on medical research about raising the dead, which seems pretty conservative considering its reputation in the Lovecraft mythos as a place where people are always summoning trans-dimensional demons because the library keeps loaning out the instructions. You'd think they had admitted West on the strength of his essay, entitled, "I have a syringe full of glowing green shit that makes dead people jump up off the gurney and try to kill everyone they see," but that's not the case, I guess. If West and Cain are caught, their careers are over.

What Re-Animator does so well is blend silliness and gore. The mid-1980s saw a lot of horror-comedies, and I'd put this one up there with the greats like Evil Dead II and Return of the Living Dead. It's one of my all-time favorites, and it streams on Netflix and Shudder.

"If you can't find a friend, make one."

Let's face it: people suck.

Don't get me wrong. Everyone has their good qualities.

For example, someone might have an obnoxious laugh, but maybe the way their flesh burns is interesting. As the heat sets off glowing embers in their hairs and their skin blackens just before it starts to glow red along the lines where it breaks apart, then FWOOMPH! Fat spatters and crackles. Sinew and muscle dissolve in flame as the meat falls from the bones.

What's not to like about that?

This week's Thursday Thriller is May.

This 2002 Lucky McKee film is about a veterinary assistant named May (Angela Bettis), who never had any friends because of her lazy eye because people suck. When May was a little girl her mom gave her a homemade doll to be her friend, but wouldn't allow her to take it out of the glass case because May's mom sucks. May kept the doll well into adulthood, and talked to it every day. The doll silently expresses some jealousy when May tells it that she wants to make a new friend, a man named Adam (Jeremy Sisto) who works at an auto body shop. May thinks his hands are beautiful. May and Adam try dating for a while, but ultimately, he breaks her heart because people suck.

Lonely, May runs to the arms of Polly (Anna Faris), the lesbian receptionist at work whose neck she admires. Because people suck, Polly breaks May's heart as well.

After that May tries to scratch her itch for human interaction by volunteering to work with blind children In a curious move, she takes the doll in one day to show the blind kids, and because people suck, they tear it out of her hands and the case smashes all over the floor. The real fun starts when the kids try to crawl around in the floor and find the doll and learn the hard way that broken glass is hard on the hands and knees.

So May gives up on people and decides her best solution is to make a new friend out of the parts she likes about people.

May is a good movie about a weird girl. It streams on Shudder.

"There is an evil here, an evil you don't want to wake up."

The word "Nazi" has been tossed around a lot lately, and I'm starting to get the feeling people don't know what they're talking about.

The Nazis were a political party that in Germany rose to prominence under the direction of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Hitler blamed the economic ills of the day on ethnic and religious minorities, and promised to make Germany great again.

OK, so maybe they do know what they're talking about.

Hitler and the Nazis rode a wave of populist outrage into the highest offices of power, exterminated millions of people and set out to conquer Europe. Anyone who passed 10th grade history should know this already, but did your teacher tell you how they bankrolled the war effort?

Legend has it they looted every place they conquered and accumulated a massive stash of what's now referred to as "Nazi gold."

By the way, this week's Thursday Thriller is Dead Snow.

This 2009 film by Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola is about a group of medical students on a skiing trip who find some of the famous Nazi gold in their cabin, inciting the ire of a bunch of Nazi zombies who will stop at nothing to protect their booty. They're kind of like ghost pirates, but with swastikas instead of skulls and crossbones.

When I first watched this movie a couple years ago, I didn't care for it. Maybe I was just in a bad mood, but it seemed a little too desperate to make countless nods to other horror films, most especially Evil Dead. As I watched it again this week, though, I was a lot more taken with the gory action sequences and found it to be a lot of fun. It's one hell of a bloody movie.

Dead Snow streams on Netflix and Shudder.

"Gobble gobble, motherfucker!"

It's a big family holiday here in America, so even if you're not working, you still likely have a dozen things you'd rather not do today. For example, you might have to eat some frozen, jellied turkey-vegetable salad, because your aunt tried the recipe in 1975 and everyone told her it was good just to be polite and now you're doomed to eat two spoonfuls of this slop every year until she dies. You don't want to pray for someone's death, especially not your own flesh and blood, but come on, it's frozen, jellied turkey-vegetable salad.

Alas, you must endure because it's tradition. That's how I feel about reviewing the movie I'm about to tell you about. Last year I wrote about ThanksKilling, so this week's Thursday Thriller is ThanksKilling 3.

If you're wondering why I'm not reviewing ThanksKilling 2, it's because there isn't one. According to the 2012 sequel by director Jordan Downey, ThanksKilling 2 was the worst movie ever made, in addition to having a curse on it, so a spaceman robot guy and a worm puppet that looks kinda phallic, have destroyed every copy but one.

Turkie, the ugly puppet that's the star of the franchise, catches wind there is only one copy left and sets off with his son to find it.

The movie has fallen into the backpack of Yomi, a Muppet-style creature who has lost her mind and is in desperate search for it. She asks a powdered wig-wearing entrepreneur named Uncle Donny (Daniel Usaj) to take her to Thanksgiving because it might be there. He brings her home where she meets his brother Jefferson (Joe Hartzler) and his grandmother, who is a rapping puppet.

Uncle Donny and Jefferson tell Yomi about their dream to one day open Thanksgivingland, a theme park with rides like The Gravy Train and so on, then Turkie shows up and starts causing trouble trying to get his movie. Not to worry, because they run him through Uncle Donny's invention The PluckMaster and kill him, but then some skeleton turkeys resurrect him, but they couldn't put his penis back on so Turkie attaches a chainsaw in its place in a nod to Evil Dead 2.

After that it gets a little weird.

This movie is a sloppy, all-over-the-place mess with lots of puppets, tasteless humor and trippy, flashy bits with throbbing dubstep for background music. It's annoying on purpose. If I have to say something nice, I'll admit I laughed at parts of it. It's a unique viewing experience and even more outlandish than the first one.

ThanksKilling 3 streams on Amazon Prime.

"Tonight might just be the night you finally outrun those wicked demons once and for all."

As funny as I find the whole situation in America right now, there's not a lot I can honestly say that hasn't been said angrily, thought poorly, spelled badly and delivered confidently with only the slipperiest finger-hold on reality. And that's just the stuff on your new president's top advisor's Web site.

It's still up for grabs whether the last minute panic about Hillary's e-mails had any thing to do with her losing any more than, say, calling half the country deplorable, but I still wish she'd come clean about all the dirty  messages she's been sending me. They're not as dirty as Mike Pence's, so I think people might understand.

And the way you've been treating each other! I honestly couldn't be prouder of you, but you don't click on this blog for adulation. You click on this blog to find out where they're hiding the good horror movies online, and you're looking for good horror movies because you want some harmless thrills that make the truly scary shit people say on social media seem timid.

I don't know if anything can compete with the horror of Americans trying to interact with each other on social media right now, but I found a movie I liked.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Southbound.

This 2015 film is an anthology, of sorts, five stories connected by one thing, a desert highway with no name and no number. It starts with two men, Mitch and Jack, both covered in blood trying to escape their recent past. They pull off at a gas station to use the bathroom and fill up the truck, and get back on the highway. After hours of driving, they find themselves back at the gas station. It then occurs to them that a flying skeleton with no facial features was been following them, and it's really weird because how does it fly when there's no skin on its wing bones? It kills Jack and Mitch checks into a motel where his daughter keeps screaming for him but he can't find her.

After that you're off to the races -- Dana Gould plays an occult priest in one segment, a guy trying to help a girl he ran over with his car gets tormented by 911 operators, there's some strange business about making sure the door of the bar is latched shut. This movie is a hell-ride. The interweaving stories are cool, but I felt like the movie lacked something to tie it all together and make you say, "Oh, that's what the fuck was going on!" if that sort of thing is important to you. I could take it or leave it.

So I'll take Southbound. You should take a break from yelling at each other and watch it. It streams on Amazon Prime.

"I am infected with the filth of pride."

Americans are a funny lot. About half of them will spend the whole day after a presidential election crying, "How? How did this happen?" then two weeks later, sit down with their families and celebrate their heritage as countrymen in a nation that started as a colony founded by buckle-hatted religious nuts, and never draw any connection.

I can hear you now.

"Hey Devil, how come you're always spreading misleading stereotypes? I know you're the Father of Lies and all, but come on!"

And you're right. The Puritans didn't actually have buckles on their hats, and in the movie I'm about to tell you about, you will see zero hat buckles because the costume department obviously got their history straight.

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Witch.

This 2015 period drama by writer/director Robert Eggers is about a pilgrim named William (Ralph Ineson) who's too nutty even for the other pilgrims so they banish him and his family to go live in the woods by themselves. 

That's a pretty good beginning even though it's a little hard to follow what's going on through their thick accents and 1600s dialect. The first step in a lot of horror movies is to isolate the victims. It's rare to find a horror movie these days whose opening title sequence isn't a montage of a car driving out to the ass end of nowhere. Generally, it's either college kids on spring break or a young family moving into a new house with a dark past. It's become so common that if I see people unpacking cardboard boxes in the first five minutes, I turn the damn thing off. So maybe you can appreciate, as I did, the novel approach of having this family shunned by angry pilgrims.

Once in the woods, William's family becomes easy pickings for destruction by supernatural forces. The baby vanishes. The crops go bad. At one point the mother, Katherine (Kate Dickie), hallucinates she's nursing her baby again, when in fact she's letting a raven eat her titty off. The real fun starts when the kids accuse each other of witchcraft and William can't decide which one to kill. 

I've noticed opinion on this movie is split. Some horror fans hate it. I have to admit it's not typical Thursday Thrillers fare. The screams and splatter are minimal, but sometimes I enjoy a movie that's not constantly exploding.  I found the performances compelling, especially from the child actors Anya Taylor-Joy and Harvey Scrimshaw who portray William and Katherine's two eldest. The atmosphere is brooding and the sound design keeps the tension simmering throughout. Story-wise, I'd say it's like The Crucible meets The Exorcist with a dash of The Shining thrown in.

The Witch streams on Amazon Prime, now shut up and eat.

"When are you going to demand what you deserve?"

Well, Halloween's over, and what a blowout it was. I've had five straight nights of heavy haunting at The Devil's Attic, including something called Chaos Night that ended in an all-out brawl -- all my monsters set loose on one unlucky group of visitors. I could barely tell what was happening for all the smoke. Whips were cracking.  Chainsaws were revving. My minion Arshlok was riding around on his victim's back. So was The Jackal. I've been laughing so hard about it over the past few days I almost forgot to pick out a movie.

If you've been following me here since March, then you know I've been reviewing movies in chronological order of their release. I started the Thursday before people in the U.S. set their clocks forward with the first feature-length horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and wound my way through the ages up until last week's review of Holidays. On Sunday, it will be time for America to set its clocks back, and the Earth will rotate away from All Hallow's Eve, so my coverage of horror cinema will go backwards in time for the next six months. That means I had to find the newest watchable movie on Netflix.

It wasn't easy to find. Some real crap has come out in the last year.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Scherzo Diabolico.

This 2015 film by Spanish director Adrián García Bogliano is a twisty tale of greed, abduction and revenge. An accountant named Aram can't get a promotion no matter how much overtime he puts in at the office. His wife bitches at him for never being home and having no extra money to show for it. Finally, Aram decides to stand up for himself by kidnapping his boss's daughter. 

He plans and prepares meticulously. He practices his sleeper hold on his dad. He gets tying-people-up lessons from a prostitute. He even practices a few abduction techniques on his son. It nearly goes off without a hitch, but when he throws the girl in the trunk of his car, his iPod falls in while playing his favorite classical piano piece. 

Eventually, the girl goes free and the real fun starts when her father plays the same track and triggers in her a psychotic episode. After that she sets her mind to fucking up Aram's life. 

I liked this movie, but as I say, had a little trouble focusing because I'm still laughing at all the punishments I've inflicted on mortals over the last week at the Devil's Attic. For those who didn't get to come see me, there's always next year. Until then, you can follow me here for hot movie picks every week.

"Because he had what I wanted and I was tired of being nice."

Picking the last movie I'm going to review before Halloween, a question occurred to me? What's it take to make you watch a movie every year? I'm sure directors and producers and studios have spent a lot of time on that very question.

Christmas movies seem to do well. People are still making money off It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. But what about other occasions? John Carpenter had a hit in 1978 with Halloween. Arriving just in time for the home video boom, it quickly became a classic of the horror genre, and people watch it every year. Sean Cunningham stole the formula to make Friday the 13th in 1980, and soon independent filmmakers were racing to their calendars for ideas. Christmas Evil, New Year's Evil, My Bloody Valentine, Bloody Birthday and Graduation Day were just a few titles released from 1980-1981.

Let's be honest, though. No one's really champing at the bit for Dec. 31 to get here so they can watch New Year's Evil again.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Holidays.

This 2016 film is an anthology comprising eight short films about different special occasions on the American calendar. Kevin Smith directs his daughter Harley Quinn Smith in the Halloween chunk. Seth Green stars in the Christmas bit. The shorts tend toward the darkly humorous end of things.

The producers had to have been thinking, "Why should we settle for people watching our movie once a year for the rest of their lives when they can watch it eight times that many?"

I liked this movie. I can't say it's eight-times-a-year good, but I'll probably check back on it around Easter for the slimy rabbit man with a crown of thorns on his head who gives birth to baby chicks out of his stigmata holes.

Holidays streams on Netflix.

As I mentioned, this is the last movie I'm reviewing before Halloween, which means you only have one weekend left to come see me at The Devil's Attic. Lucky for you, Hell is open through Monday night, and Sunday is Chaos Night. Mention Holidays at the ticket booth and get $2 off admission all weekend long.

"When you wish you're dead, that's when I'll come inside."

Facebook wants to see my ID.

It seems the social media giant has a rule where you have to use your real name, which has confused me since I started my account there because I typed in S-A-T-A-N just like it's spelled in the Judeo-Christian tradition and it fired back that I can't use that name, my name.

This was bound to not end well.

I used the Muslim spelling.

It's a confusing question for me anyway: what is my name? I am known by many names. Zoroastrians call me Angra Mainyu. Buddhists know me as Mara. In a former incarnation my name was Lucifer. If you're up to speed on your demonology you can debate whether it's appropriate to call me Asmodeus, Azazel, Beelzebub, Belial, Mastima or Lilith. Nicknames include The Evil One, The Father of Lies,  Lord of the Underworld, Mephistopheles, Old Scratch, The Prince of Darkness, The Red Guy. On a busy Saturday night, I get about a dozen misguided adolescents who try to call me Dad.

I tell them a joke I stole from Jim Rose: "I can't be your dad. I didn't have change for a five that night."

My list is hardly complete, but my point is that some soppy-pants mouth-breather reported that I haven't been using my real name. How can I? Facebook won't let me use it.

Now Facebook wants to see my ID. Do I look like a guy who has a lot of time to hang around at the BMV all day waiting for some unimaginative bovine to take my picture and try to sell me on being an organ donor?
I take organs, bitch! I don't give them. I don't need a license. It's not like I drive, anyway. What would be the point? Wherever I want to go, I just appear in an explosion of sulfur.

Who would take the time to turn me in? I'll never know, and I can only guess at why. Maybe they don't think big, silly men in rubber masks should go around telling people about what horror movies they like. Maybe they're hyper-Christian. Maybe they had something to do with the making of Thankskilling.

It really doesn't matter.

Did you know there are special exceptions to Facebook's insistence on using your real name?

If you've been abused, bullied, stalked, et cetera, you can use a fake name. As someone who was kicked out of the house in his rebellious youth, and has been hunted by religious nuts for centuries, I'm sure I kind of fall into one of these categories.

If you're a member of an ethnic minority, you can use a fake name. Hey, I'm red, and not just the Indian or Native-American variation on the kind of beige all humans are. I'm candy-apple red, and I have horns. You don't see my kind walking around every day.

If you're LGBTQBBQ and so on and so on, you can use a fake name. I'm all those things and a half dozen other variations human sexuality hasn't even discovered yet. You get a little freaky when you can manifest yourself as either an incubus or a succubus according to your whim.

I could claim any or all of their exceptions, but they're still going to want ID.

I plead nolo contendere. This might be goodbye to all my Facebook followers, but it doesn't have to be. I started a fan page. You can still follow me under my simpler namesake The Devil Himself at facebook.com/bigrednsexy. It says I'm fictitious, because the greatest trick I've ever pulled was convincing humanity I don't exist.

Thanks.

It's been fun.

By the way, this week's Thursday Thriller is Hush.

Director Mike Flanagan co-wrote this 2016 film with star Kate Siegel, who plays a writer who is deaf and can't hear stuff like a masked weirdo killing her neighbor just outside her glass door.

On a scale of horrible to outstanding, it falls somewhere between not bad and pretty good. Hush streams on Netflix.

You only have two more weekends to check out the Devil's Attic in Louisville. Mention Hush at the ticket booth and get $2 off admission.

"Your worst quality can also be your best."

I've felt so embarrassed about all the time I've spent on this blog not writing about werewolf movies, that I've decided to tell you about another one.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Uncaged.

This 2016 Daniel Robbins film is about a college boy named Jack (Ben Getz). When Jack was a child, his mom murdered his dad, but you'd never know it by how well-adjusted he seems at a frat kegger, at least compared to his friends Turner (Kyle Kirkpatrick), who, wearing a camera on his head, busts into a room where two girls are making out and tries to negotiate a three-way, and Brandon (Zack Weiner), who takes his first bong rip and gets himself kicked out of the party for grabbing a girl's boob.

The three bros go to spend their Christmas break at Jack's uncle's house, and soon Jack finds himself waking up naked outside. He borrows Turner's Go-Pro to find out why and discovers he's a werewolf. One of his killings makes the news and Jack decides to track down the only eyewitness to find out what she saw. Turns out she's the wife of a gangster. Complications arise and Brandon's sexual awkwardness escalates.

But was it a good movie? It was better than Little Dead Rotting Hood.

Uncaged streams on Netflix.

Don't forget to come see me at The Devil's Attic this weekend. Mention Uncaged at the ticket booth and get $2 off admission.

"She was kind of crexy, though."

I'm not sure how it slipped my mind, exactly, but somehow I've been writing this weekly horror movie blog for almost a year and I've not talked about werewolves yet. I must correct this oversight before Halloween, and I will start right now.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Little Dead Rotting Hood.

This 2016 Jared Cohn film is about a girl named Samantha (Bianca A. Santos) whose grandmother has been training her her whole life to fight wolves. When a wolf chews Samantha's throat out, Grandma (Marina Sirtis) decides it's graduation day and buries Sammy with a red cape and a sword, then slashes her own matronly wrists and bleeds out on the grave.

In town Grandma was known as the Wolf Lady for reasons which never seem sufficiently examined by the sheriff (Eric Balfour), who should maybe have at least dismissed the coincidence that when the Wolf Lady died, wolves start attacking horny college students around town. He could have said something like, "Ha! That doesn't even make sense that those two things could be related. I need some sleep," just to show he was dialed in and looking for any clue he could find. Instead Sheriff Adam organizes a wolf hunt, during which he and his deputies are set upon by ravenous wolves, only to have a necrotic Samantha turn up and fight the wolves off with her razor-sharp claws.

Little Dead Rotting Hood isn't the best werewolf movie I've ever seen. It's a bit on the silly side without swinging too hard for that self-aware irony indie filmmakers seem to think covers up their lack of budget and storytelling ability. It's a cheaply made film with a cameo from Counselor Troi, some barely passable computer-generated effects, and a hot chick with a sword. It's watchable, and it streams on Netflix.

Don't forget to mention Little Dead Rotting Hood at the ticket booth this weekend for $2 off your admission to The Devil's Attic.

"Who brings a dice purse to a demon apocalypse anyway?"

Over the past century or so, it seems if anybody sings a song that doesn't praise the Lord God High and Mighty, I get the credit. The blues was my music. Jazz was my music. Rock 'N' Roll was my music. Some dipshit even thinks I'm in charge of Beyonce.

But heavy metal? That one's true. It really is my music.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Deathgasm.

This 2015 splatter comedy by writer/director Jason Lei Howden hails from New Zealand. It's about a boy named Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) whose mom goes crazy and he has to move in with his uncle. The new kid in school, Brodie can't find any fellow headbangers to hang out with, so he winds up playing Dungeons & Dragons with a couple of dorks because they're the only ones who'll have him. Such a fate is hardly befitting Brodie because he has heavy metal daydreams, specifically about gusts of wind throwing his hair around as he stands shirtless atop a mountain shredding a guitar while naked women wrapped around his legs swoon.

Then one day he meets a thief named Zakk (James Blake) at the record store, they bond over studded leather and start a band with the dorks. Soon Zakk pressures Brodie into breaking into the home of one of their favorite musicians. For reasons I can't spoil, he gives them the sheet music to the Black Psalm, they play it and people start vomiting blood all over the place and turn into Evil Dead-style demons.

Or are they more like Lamberto Bava-style demons? Whatever they are, they're cool.

It's gory. It's silly. It's brutal, dude. Totally fuckin' metal. Deathgasm streams on Netflix.

This weekend only, mention Deathgasm at the ticket booth, and get $2 off your admission to The Devil's Attic.

"Are you ready to be one with the cosmos?"

You hear a lot about Turkey these days -- that they're a pivotal nation in the fight against ISIS, that it's capital was once called Constantinople, that Vlad Dracula used to impale people from there.

But have you ever seen a movie from there? Would you have guessed in a million years that the scariest movie of 2015 came from there?

Now I'm a busy devil, so to catch a new movie I have to wait for it to hit Netflix. I admit I haven't yet watched all the scary movies from 2015 yet, but I'm willing to call it today.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Baskin.

This dark fantasy by director Can Evrenol is a heavy-ass fever dream of sensual cruelty. It has a Clive Barker vibe to it.

It's about five cops who like to sit around a diner and recount their past sins -- the usual stuff, really -- gambling, bestiality, closing the deal with a transvestite prostitute. But Yavuz (Muharrem Bayrak) gets a little sensitive about the waiter overhearing that last part, and has to beat the waiter's ass to prove he's a man, while his partners in law-enforcement look on and laugh. Later in the van, to seal the bond of fraternity, they have a sing-along about what assholes they are. Then they get a call on the radio. Backup is needed in Inceagac. If you're unfamiliar with Turkish geography, Inceagac is apparently just across the Mediterranean from Bumfukt, Egypt.

Things get weird when they answer the call. The driver thinks he sees a naked guy running around, they run over somebody, there are frogs everywhere. When they arrive at the location, they find an empty squad car with the lights still flashing, and an abandoned building. Inside the building? Not a lot at first, but then they find a lone, catatonic officer banging his head against the wall, evidence of some bizarre sex ritual, and then there's people still participating in the ritual. Most of them still have all their limbs.

I don't want to spoil the third act, but suddenly they're in Hell, where the master Baba assists people in opening their heart to the universe by cutting out their eyes and forcing them to have sex. I know that sounds fun, but that's not how it plays in the movie.

Actor Mehmet Cerrahoglu steals the screen as Baba, a wiry muscular guy with a laughing Buddha sculpture on his face. I would call his makeup an outstanding achievement, but it turns out that's just Cerrahoglu's face. According to IMDb, he has a skin condition.

This isn't a movie you watch, so much as study. It's disorienting and hard to follow in places, but it's so weird, you'll probably want to watch it again. Even if you don't, it will definitely haunt you on Friday morning as you wonder, "What the hell did I watch last night?" I recommend you open your heart to Baskin. It streams on Netflix.

"Is it true what they say about this place? That someone tried to conjure the devil here once?"

The Devil's Attic opens this weekend. What's that all about? Well, I wrote a poem about it.

Since before the dawn of recorded time,
when humans first crawled from the slime,
I have harvested all the evil souls.

With punishments both harsh and strident,
I've poked and prodded them with my trident
and roasted them all over beds of burning coals.

But here I store my top selection,
the most wicked in all of my collection.
Into this, my attic, they're all crammed.

And on display in demonic glory,
they await to unleash their hellish fury
upon your heads, my hapless little lambs.

So step inside my house of horrors,
witness all the pain and sorrows, 
and feel the wrath and vengeance of the damned.

If that doesn't answer every question you might have, you'll just have to come see it. Now that's out of the way, let's get to this movie review. I found a really good one to set the mood for your forthcoming haunted house visit.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Darling.

This 2015 film by writer-director Mickey Keating is a minimalist, atmospheric showcase for the many expressions actress Lauren Ashley Carter puts her face through while her character Darling goes slowly insane.

Darling has agreed to house-sit the oldest home in town, and because it's the oldest home in town, it's obviously haunted by the ghosts of all the horrible tragedies that have happened there over the years. Homeowner Madame (Sean Young) informs Darling that the last caretaker committed suicide.

Exploring the house, Darling finds a locked room she doesn't have a key for. When she mentions it to Madame over the telephone, Madame tells her not to go in there. All alone in a big house, Darling starts to lose her mind, so she goes out and picks up a stranger to bring home and murder. She stabs him half to death, then puts a plastic bag over his head and suffocates the other half, or so she thinks.

But man oh man, the way she stabs that guy!

I don't want to give too much away, so let's stop talking about the story and get to how it looks. There is no clutter in this movie. The home is tidy and clean with a few modest antique furnishings. It's in black and white. Throw in some vintage costumes, and it all gives the film a timeless quality in its look. The photography is striking. If you cut a couple dozen frames out of this movie, they would hang well in a modern art exhibition. Some jarring, choppy editing here and there, along with a super creepy sound design, keep the hairs on the back of your neck raised. Take your Dilantin before watching, and keep a wooden spoon your mouth for good measure. Flashy-stroby effects figure heavily in this story's style.

Carter put in good performances in Lucky McKee's The Woman and Chad Crawford Kinkle's Jug Face, but those were ensemble pieces compared to Darling. With only a couple supporting characters, Carter has to carry this movie on her own, and she does it well. There are so many close-ups of her having so many mood swings, she practically tells the whole story with her face, with most of the workload resting on her gigantic eyes. Luckily, she has a pretty broad emotional palette and she shines in what's almost a solo performance.

All in all, Darling has some of the best photography, editing, sound, acting and stabbing I've seen in a horror movie in a while. It streams on Netflix.

"Make your face the last thing they see."

In an especially divisive election year, it's always heartwarming to find Americans of disparate political interests agreeing about something.

For example, being a feminist and an open-carry gun rights activist aren't mutually exclusive, but not many people fall in the center of that Venn diagram. Both groups have been expressing outrage over the recent release of rapist Brock Turner. The latter is having a lot more fun with it -- hanging around outside his house with their scariest guns and picket signs that ponder what their sentence would be if they drag him out and make him squeal like Ned Beatty. 

It just goes to show not all prisons have bars. In all my eternity as the Supreme Lord of the Underworld, I have not witnessed an empire ever so mighty as the United States of Fuck That Guy.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Final Girl. 

This 2015 action-thriller by director Tyler Shields is about a girl named Veronica (Abigail Breslin). When Veronica was about 6 years old a man named William (Wes Bentley) was impressed by her aptitude for maze puzzles and trained her to hunt serial killers because he's some kind of G-man or something and someone murdered his wife and child.

Twelve years later, William points Veronica toward her mark, four teenage boys in tuxedos. They are all poster children for affluenza. If you were scrolling through Facebook and saw any of their pictures you would immediately assume the accompanying article to be about how they got a light sentence for rape or intoxication manslaughter. They've been linked to the disappearance of at least a dozen girls, and it's up to Veronica alone to take them out. 

After meeting at the local greasy spoon, they drive Veronica out to the woods for a party, play a game of truth or dare, then break the news: they intend to kill her. They give her a sporting head start, Most Dangerous Game-style, and the hunt is afoot. 

What they don't know is that she has dosed them with DMT and sodium pentothal, so before long they're all tripping balls.

I can already hear some of you: "Hey Scratch, isn't some of that kind of similar to La Femme Nikita?" I wouldn't know. It's not on Netflix, and I'm not about to lose the hours to find out if the TV series is any good. Final Girl is on Netflix, and the third act is the best 20 minutes of action I've seen in over a month. 

Oh hey, by the way, The Devil's Attic opens next weekend. 

"Snap out of it, grow some balls and do what you have to do."

Let's say for argument's sake that you have a child. Don't deny it, buddy. It's yours. Maury said so. We've seen the pictures. Little guy has your mean mug and everything. 

Maybe I should be more specific. 

Let's say you have a child that you care about, that you love, that you would do anything for. Let's say that child becomes possessed by a demon and to save her soul you have to kill six of the child's blood relatives.

I'm sure most of you already have a short list of people in your family you wouldn't mind sending to Hell to keep your own kid out of there. Maybe you have a doddering, old grandpa who's already in a vegetative state anyway, or an uncle who's a drunk, unemployed moocher. But what happens when the last few people on your list live too far away or your spoiled douchebag cousin just won't die? Do you kill your mom? Your sister? Yourself?

The movie I'm going to tell you about considers all these very pertinent questions. This week's Thursday Thriller is The Chosen.

This 2015 Ben Jehoshua film is about a teenager named Cameron (Kian Lawley). His family is dysfunctional to say the least. He lives in his grandmother's house with his mom Eliza (Elizabeth Keener), and the aforementioned Uncle Joey (Chris Gann). Together they take care of Grand Dad (Harvey Popick) and Angie (Mykayla Sohn). Angie is the daughter of Caitlin (Angelica Chitwood). Caitlin is Eliza's daughter. That makes Cameron Caitlin's brother, Caitlin Cameron's sister, and Eliza their mom and Angie's grandmother. Got it?

Eliza has custody of Angie and won't let Caitlin see her because Caitlin's a drug addict, and one of her babies has already died. Angie becomes possessed by the demon Lilith when Cameron ignores mom and takes the child to see Caitlin, then can't mind his own business during a domestic disturbance in the apartment next door. 

It's fun. Cameron and Caitlin bicker about who they're going to kill next as Cameron picks off members of the family, smears blood symbols on their heads, and feeds them to a smoke monster under Angie's bed. The scares are more driven by character interactions than startling splatters. The Chosen is a good drama. It streams on Netflix.

"We cannot turn against each other right now. That's exactly what the beavers would want."

Wow! I can hardly believe it's only two more days until I unleash 40,000 walking corpses on Bardstown Road. Saturday could not come sooner for me. I have been so busy making the rounds with local media to make sure everyone knows to meet me at Eastern Parkway and Bardstown Road. At 8:29 p.m. on my command, and the Derby City Roller Girls will lead the legions of the dead toward the party zone where all in attendance will rock out to bands like Dead Room Cult, Vice Tricks and the Nulydedz. There will be so much going on, I can't be bothered to type it all. Check out louisvillezombiewalk.com if you must know everything. I'm too excited to function and I still have a movie to tell you about, a zombie movie, no less.

This week's Thursday Thiller is Zombeavers.

This 2014 film by Jordan Rubin is a broad, raunchy comedy about three raunchy broads set to spend a girls' weekend at the lake. Mary (Rachel Melvin) thinks they need some time away from boys while Jenn (Lexi Atkins) gets over her boyfriend cheating on her. Rounding out the trio is Zoe, a sassy brunette played by Cortney Palm. You might remember her performance in the titular role of Sushi Girl. You can see her titulars in either movie.

Despite Mary's best intentions, boys show up anyway, and no one foresees the danger that awaits them. Some toxic waste got spilled by two idiot truck drivers, played by Bill Burr and John Mayer. The waste mutated the local beaver population into viciously cheesy puppets with pointy teeth and glowing eyes. The real fun starts when their victims themselves turn into zombeavers.

Zombeavers is a silly movie. You'll probably get a few laughs out of it, but is it any good? I'd say Zombeavers is dam good. It streams on Netflix.

"Or maybe that black gas is a fart from the ass of God."

It has been a hellacious week, faithless readers, and my schedule is only getting busier as we roll toward Halloween.

First off, Lemmy crashed my Segway trying to recreate his entrance in the Killed By Death video. Now I can't ride it at the Louisville Zombie Walk, at which I intend to unleash thousands of the undead and a few rock bands on to Bardstown Road on Saturday, Aug. 27. Plus, I'm only weeks away from The Devil's Attic opening back up.

Busy is an understatement, but I'd be lying if I said I don't take the occasional moment to enjoy the fruits of my labors. The international audience for Thursday Thrillers is ever-widening, and I pick up clicks from a new country or two every time I post. Views from the U.K. have surpassed 100, and Germany isn't far behind. I even seem to have a following in Russia, but to be honest, it's probably just a couple of hackers trying to find the dirty love letters Mrs. Clinton's been e-mailing me for the past eight years.

In light of my progress toward worldwide domination of the cult film criticism industry, I decided to throw an international horror film festival, but then I remembered I'm too busy, so this week's Thursday Thriller is The ABCs of Death.

This 2013 anthology film comprises 26 shorts by directors from around the world. Each short details a different way to die that starts with its respective letter of the alphabet. For example, A is for Apocalypse, B is for Bigfoot, and so on. I'm not going to give you the complete rundown, because the titles appear at the end of each short and sometimes reveal a poignant comment on the preceding work, and I'm definitely not about to summarize all 26 chapters. In the time it takes me to write them up, you could be watching them. To fit 26 shorts into one feature-length film, they have to be music-video short, sometimes shorter.

I will say, though, that some of my favorite moments included D, L, and X. If you'll indulge me one spoiler, the alphabet ends in Z, wherein Tokyo Gore Police director Yoshihiro Nishimura presents a grand finale of gratuitous sex, violence and Nazi iconography that will have you wondering all weekend what the fuck you just watched.

How good is this movie? It's so good, that if you showed it to a bunch of high school kids, you would go to jail. The ABCs of Death is an international horror film festival you can throw in your own living room. It streams on Netflix and Shudder.

"Feed her! Feed her!"

Of all my side projects going on this year, The Devil's Attic, The Louisville Zombie Walk, and the American presidential election, I'm pretty proud of this movie blog. I think I'm doing well for my first year as a film critic. 

Have I made mistakes? Sure. Sometimes I review sequels before the original movies. Usually it's because the first movie isn't streaming anywhere I can find it, but last November I got so excited that Netflix posted the final sequence of a certain trilogy that I just skipped over the first two. I guess I assumed if you were following this blog, you'd seen them already. 

Maybe you have. Maybe you haven't. Either way, I'd like to correct the oversight. This week's Thursday Thriller is The Human Centipede (First Sequence).

Whatever you may have heard, this 2009 work by Dutch filmmaker Tom Six is nothing more, nothing less than a traditional European folk story, a fairy tale of sorts.

Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) are two young, beautiful, American tourists on their way to a party and they get a flat tire somewhere in the German wilderness, which we all know was once a favored stomping ground of the Big Bad Wolf. After wandering around in the woods they find a house and they are momentarily so relieved you'd think the place was built out of candy. Instead of a witch inside, there's a mad surgeon named Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), the world's foremost separator of conjoined twins to hear him tell it, and instead of eating the girls up, he wants to sew Lindsay's mouth to the butthole of Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), another man he's kidnapped. Then he wants to sew Jenny's mouth to Lindsey's butthole to create one long digestive tract. Whatever the Katsuro eats, he then feeds the girl's behind him. Lindsay has to be in the middle for trying to escape. 

So it's pretty much exactly the same as Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel. 

Although it has been thoroughly maligned by a solid consensus of film critics, I found The Human Centipede (First Sequence) to be a decent shocker, well worthy of its two sequels. It streams on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Shudder.

"I will become the king of murderers! I will unite this country!"

Readers, as my power and influence grows worldwide, I hope you're learning I wouldn't waste your time telling you about a movie I don't love. You can trust Ole Scratch, at least as far as finding you a cheap, pre-weekend entertainment option. 

Every week, my research across four paid streaming subscriptions and YouTube yields something worth watching. If I can't always guarantee you'll shit your shorts, any discerning viewer can agree the movie I pick has its moments. 

But the movie I'm about to tell you about holds a special place in my flinty heart. It may or may not be the weirdest movie I've reviewed to date, but it's definitely the bloodiest.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Tokyo Gore Police. 

What I love about this 2008 extreme action flick by Japanese director Yoshihiro Nishimura, with all its mutilations, amputations and resultant Wham-O Water Wiggle-like fountains of blood, is that it's cartoonishly outlandish.

I hate to disappoint those who click over here every week for some topical jabs, but this movie is too strange to relate to anything you might have seen on the news lately. There's a maniac trying to crush society under his heel, a highly militarized police force takes to killing people indiscriminately so as to wipe out an undesirable segment of the population, and toward the end, a man blames a woman for her own rape. At the heart of it all is a conspiracy to protect corporate interests. Everything about this movie is far-fetched and blown way out of proportion.

Tokyo Gore Police seems to get misclassified as horror. Yes, there are chainsaw fights, but the story itself has more in common with the original Robocop than any Texas massacre I've ever seen. It even features little breaks from the action in the form of commercial parodies, my favorite being the one for Wrist Cutter G, the cute razor for the stylish teen who just wants to feel something. Or did I laugh harder at the PSA urging people to "stop the harakiri"?

The story is about a police officer named Ruka (Eihi Shiina) who is assigned to hunting down engineers, deranged killers who are genetically altered to grow weapons wherever on the body they suffer a wound. For example, when an engineer's arm gets lopped off in the opening fight sequence, he sprouts a chainsaw in its place. If you were curious, yes, this deadly regeneration can also occur in the genitalia.

In the course of Ruka's duties, she discovers clues that lead to the identity of her father's murderer. I don't want to give away any more of the mystery than that. Tokyo Gore Police streams on Hulu and Shudder. 

"...you throw people in the dark, you scare the shit out of them - no more rules."

What a week it has been, America! Half of you have spent the entire week yelling at each other about who to vote for and what would be good for your country.

You know what would be good for America? You getting a job!

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Mist.

This 2007 Frank Darabont adaptation of a Stephen King tragedy dares to ask what might feel like too relevant a question in these chaotic times: If you've only got a short time left anyway, do you stay indoors to get carved up by a bunch of religious whackos, or do you take your chances outside where it's very likely you will get eaten by gigantic, trans-dimensional, Lovecraftian bug-monsters designed by legendary horror illustrator Bernie Wrightson?

As amazing as the creatures look, the story focuses more on the human drama that might occur if a bunch of people are trapped inside a grocery store as a dense fog swallows a small New England town. They soon learn that the fog is just swimming with terrible monsters that will rip people to shreds or even use their bodies as nests in which to lay thousands of eggs. David Drayton (Thomas Jane) is one of the cooler heads who try to find a rational solution to the problem while the town Bible-thumper Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) whips the other yokels into a bloodthirsty frenzy.

The Mist is a good, solid creature-feature that relies more heavily on good character development than guts and gore. In fact, one of the scariest moments in the first act includes almost a full minute of character close-ups while an air raid siren blares.

The Mist streams on Amazon Prime.

"Your weiner looks like Frankenstein's."

Congratulations, America! You have survived until the final day of the RNC (The Reptilian National Convention). Once you've read about the movie I've picked out for the week, people will have moved on from plagiarism and its accusers and have started gearing up for the next great outrage, which will undoubtedly occur at next week's DNC (The Other Reptilian National Convention).

I honestly don't know which I find more hilarious -- the unmitigated gall with which these alien slimeballs convince you that they are representative of your species (you have to consider on par with dolphins a pretty honorable distinction) or the repetitive-to-exhaustion way you keep believing them.

One bunch of assholes says the only way to create jobs is to tax the rich. The other assholes say the only way to keep jobs is not taxing the rich, plus hunting homosexuals for sport is a good way to build a strong, healthy bond with your son. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Blah. Blah. Blah. Do you need a job? Click here.

America's volume has been up so loud this year that I need a two-hour break from hearing the English language.

That's why this week's Thursday Thriller is Gozu.

A simple, two-sentence plot summary will not do this film justice, but here goes, anyway:

A yakuza named Minami (Hideki Sone) is charged with putting his deranged brother Ozaki (Sho Aikawa) out to pasture when the latter's psychotic outburst makes their boss uncomfortable. Complications arise when Ozaki's body goes missing before Minami can dispose of it.

Sounds pretty cool, right? On those two sentences alone, you can tell it's going to be at least as good as Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead or In Bruges. Who knows? In the hands of a Quentin Tarantino or a Guy Ritchie you might have yourself a Trans-Atlantic cult hit.

But Tarantino and Ritchie had their hands in the completely wrong hemisphere. This surreal and horrific 2003 mystery was directed by Takashi Miike, also known for Audition, Ichi the Killer, and As the Gods Will. Miike doesn't make movies that will fit easily into a TV Guide description of what happens.

For example, expecting a conventionally gritty, Western crime-drama, you might not be ready to see Ozaki swing a pomeranian around by its leash before smashing it against a diner window. You might not know what to make of it when Minami calls his boss to tell him Ozaki's body has disappeared and the boss conducts the entire conversation whilst having sex with a woman, a gilded ladle hanging out of his ass. "This is certainly uncharaceteristic of the genre!" you may exclaim, when you learn that the staff at the hotel Minami stays at in the busted, hick town of Nagoya is so dedicated to service that its aging proprietress tries to seduce Minami by demonstrating that her large breasts still lactate on his first night. She just wants her guests to be happy.

Later in the movie some weird stuff happens.

Gozu is so strange it must be a work of genius. It streams on Amazon Prime.

...and now a special message from The Devil Himself.