"If we do happen to make contact, I expect nothing less than gratuitous violence from the lot of ya!"

One of my werewolves took a silver bullet last week. Shame. He was a good dog.

Werewolves are purebred, believe it or not, so they pack along a lot of issues with their joints when they get older, but not this wolf. He wouldn't lollygag. He'd leap right out at you and tear your throat right out, and boy did he hate vampires! I never understood that blood feud, but he lived it.

I'd have played fetch with him more, but he was a humpy one. He wasn't as bad as the goat or the cenobites, but I eventually had them neutered. The cenobites thanked me, then went up to earth to tear some new ones off of mortal perverts. You'd be surprised at how many of those folks there are, and astonished to learn how many of them get that damn box open.

Anyway, in honor of our fallen wolf, this week's Thursday Thriller is Dog Soldiers.

This 2002 action-thriller was written and directed by English filmmaker Neil Marshall. It's about Private Cooper (Kevin McKidd), who wanted to join the special forces, but Captain Ryan (Liam Cunningham) said he couldn't hack it because Cooper wouldn't shoot a dog.

Later, Cooper's unit goes on a training exercise in the Scottish Highlands against Ryan's unit. All of a sudden, they're set upon by werewolves, and manage to catch a ride with a zoologist named Megan (Emma Cleasby) back to a nearby farmhouse, where the monsters hound them all night.

Get it? Hound? Antichrist almighty, I'm turning into the Crypt Keeper.

Blood, shape-shifting monsters, gunfire, and an implausible number of plot twists -- This movie has a lot going for it. I usually prefer werewolf stories that focus on the hapless lycanthrope's struggle with living damnation, but 1428elm.com says this is a perfect werewolf movie. I'll concede, Night of The Living Dead but with Werewolves and Army Men is a lot of fun to watch.

Dog Soldiers streams on YouTube.

"To initiate your fate, roll the dice."

The 1980s are alive and well on Netflix. I'm not saying there are a lot of 1980s movies on there, but stylistic throwbacks have become something of a trend. You've got the series Stranger Things, as well as movies like Turbo Kid and Kung Fury, which pay homage to and poke fun at all the tropes of the Reagan era. 

The movie I want to talk about does a little of that with its cool synth wave soundtrack, but is rather more a reckoning with the dead technology that brought so much entertainment into our homes. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is Beyond the Gates. 

This 2016 Jackson Stewart film is about two brothers named Gordon (Graham Skipper) and John (Chase Williamson) whose father has gone missing, so they have to pack up the video store he ran when they were kids. In the process, they stumble onto a VCR game called "Beyond the Gates."

You remember VCR tapes, right? Of course, everyone knows about those, and some fetishists even collect the useless things, but do you remember VCR games? That's a little tougher to explain. You have a board, dice, cards, and player pieces, then a VCR tape to watch, rewind and fast forward while you're dealing with all that other shit. 

When Gordon and John play the tape Barbara Crampton appears on the screen, says a lot of creepy things, then screams, the screen flickers screeches so intensely, they have to turn it off.

John decides he wants the game, so they take it back to dad's house and try to play it after dinner with Gordon's girlfriend Margot (Brea Grant). In starting the game, Crampton tells them playing is the only way to save their father's soul. Weird, huh?

So to save their dad, they have to collect four keys, the finding of which seems to cause the explosively gory deaths of their friends.

Or something. I never really understand the rules to board games til I can play a practice round.

Beyond the Gates is a jumanji of death and bittersweet nostalgia with a cool synthwave score and a lot of purple smoke toward the end. It's worth a watch and it streams on Netflix.

"You can bring me the boy."

What makes a gay icon? Is it a mix of glamour in appearance and flamboyance in personality? Is it the ability to carry one's self with grace and dignity, even through times of adversity?

Such questions seem more relevant than ever now that it is Gay Pride Month, and the answer seems to be that, while all those things help, a little epic shit-posting never hurts.

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Babadook.

Thanks to some jokesters on Tumblr, the title monster of this 2014 Jennifer Kent film is the new mascot for gay pride in 2017. You can click on the hyperlinks for more on how that happened. I'm here to talk about the movie.

Amelia (Essie Davis) lost her husband in a car crash on the way to the hospital to have their son Samuel (Noah Wiseman). Young Samuel, now turning 7, is an annoying, little snot with bedwetting problems and a whole host of behavior issues. He's always underfoot, breaking things, getting kicked out of school. Amelia can't even jill off without Samuel interrupting her. Amelia's sister Claire (Hayley McElhinney) tries to be there for her, but is too wrapped up in her own life and hatred for Samuel to be much help. Amelia's hair is a mess, she's always late to work and her house is falling apart. Then a scary-ass pop-up book finds its way into the bedtime reading stack. The book is entitled "Mr. Babadook" and is about a monster that wants to come inside and kill them. Before it's all over Amelia goes full-on Jack Torrance on Samuel.

Opinions are divided among horror fans on this one, particularly the ending, but I enjoy the subtle layers of meaning and even came around to accept the somewhat confusing ending after my third watch. Davis's outstanding performance as a mom at wit's end carries the film.

The Babadook streams on Netflix and Hulu Plus.

"In my dreams, I am the Wizard Master!"

Hiya! I'm having visitors from the Midwest Haunter's Convention at The Devil's Attic this week, so I'll have to make this entry quick. In fact, I'm writing this a day earlier than usual, so we'll just have to hope famous comedians and world leaders can go a whole day without doing something so asinine it requires my commentary. Let's get straight to the movie. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

This 1987 Chuck Russell film is a return to form after iconic villain Freddy Krueger spent part two trying to get in a teenage boy's body. It seems there are still some kids whose parents were in the lynch mob that burned Krueger to death and he's got to get even. He does so, of course, by appearing in the kids' dreams and killing them.

One of them is Kristen (Patricia Arquette), whose mom finds her with slashed wrists after a dream about Freddy (Robert Englund). Kristen's mom commits her to a psych ward where a bunch of other kids have also been haunted by the dream demon. It's like a breakfast club of suicidal youth. As luck would have it, one of their counselors is fresh-from-grad-school Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) from the first movie. Together they learn Kristen has the ability to pull other people into her dreams and they all have special dream powers so they can team up and fight back.

What sets Dream Warriors apart from the earlier two films is that the kills are personalized. Freddy goes after the kids based on their fears and hobbies. You spend a little time getting to know the suicidal teens, and learn about their interests. They're into typical stuff, you know, Dungeons and Dragons, sex, heroin, marionette puppetry.

And though the cast has all the cumulative acting chops of an after-school special, the special effects are on point and the movie has some of the best kills of the series.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors streams on Hulu Plus.