"Guys, 911 isn't supposed to have an answering machine."

Rejoice, mortals, for I bring glad tidings. Christmas is finally over. I hope each and every one of you found the holiday was worth the torture you put yourselves through. You're almost out of the woods with this holiday garbage and the last one just involves getting hammered and waking up in a new year.

So let's ring in 2019 with a movie you're not going to remember anyway.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Antisocial.

Cody Calahan directed this highly forgettable film from 2013. It's one of a handful of horror films set on New Year's Eve. Five friends gather in a house for a party while subliminal messages designed to make social media more addictive mutate into a virus that infects people all over the world and gives them black, worm-like tumors in their brains. The tumors turn people into raging, homicidal maniacs. The only treatment is to drill into the skull and extract the tumor, which the last surviving characters learn how to do, obviously, by means of a DIY video on the internet.

Sounds great, but this one just didn't grab me. I can't put my finger on why. Maybe it's because you don't actually see very many raging, homicidal maniacs. Maybe it takes too long to get to the drilling. Maybe it's because there's something dodgy going on with the sound mix so you have to crank the volume to make the cast barely audible.

Who's in it? Who cares? I was busy checking my social media.

Antisocial streams on Amazon Prime.

"He was a pervert and a drug addict and somebody killed him. Isn't that the spirit of Christmas?"

Don't despair, mortals. You've almost made it. It's the last Thursday before Christmas. By this time next week, you'll be planning on getting drunk with your friends for New Year's. Now that's a real holiday.

You've still got some hurtles to overcome before you can declare Yuletide over, however. For example, you've got to check out this movie. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is Elves.

This 1989 film was directed by Jeffrey Mendel. Dan "Grizzly Adams" Haggerty stars as Mike McGavin, an alcoholic ex-detective who takes a job as a department store Santa after the first Santa was stabbed in the dick to death by the title characters.

See, this girl Kirsten (Julie Austin), who also works at the department store, accidentally raised the elves while trying to cast a spell with her friends in the woods where she's not supposed to go, using one of her grandfather's books, which she's not supposed to look at.

The elves follow Kirsten around because they're supposed to impregnate her at midnight on Christmas Eve so she'll give birth to the Master Race.

Or something.

Speaking of things Kirsten isn't supposed to do, she also lets her friends into the department store after hours so they can camp out with some boys and have an all-night fuck party. It turns out Mike is also sleeping at the department store because he's homeless and there are Nazis trying to track Kirsten down since the elves surfaced.

After a shootout with the Nazis and elves in the department store the police chief tells Mike he's implicated in the deaths of Kirsten's friends. He gives Mike the old 24 hours to clear his good name. He has to solve the mystery of the elves.

Is it a good movie?

Mortals, I'll be honest. It's a mess, but a fun mess. I've tried to watch it five times and haven't yet made it all the way through. It's got some great moments, funny bits of dialogue and a couple big surprises, though. I recommend it as a bedtime story or perhaps a party movie.

Elves streams on YouTube. 

"I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubble gum."

Boy oh boy, did Death ever bring me a huge present just before my deadline last week! It was a truly thoughtful gift, exactly what I wanted.

I am of course speaking of George Herbert Walker Bush.

It shouldn't have been a surprise. He was old and in poor health, and I get to keep just about all the politicians, but it's always a special day when I receive a warmongering U.S. president.

Just looking at him, watching his flesh bubble and dissolve in the flickering light of a blue, sulfur flame makes me nostalgic for the 1980s. They were simpler times.

Corporate downsizing, the widening gap between rich and poor, and climate change were just becoming a part of the national conversation, but in 1988 the elder Bush rode a wave of mud-slinging, race-baiting, negative ads to the White House.

And it's no coincidence that same year John Carpenter released one of my favorite movies.

This week's Thursday Thriller is They Live.

On its surface, They Live might look like another sci-fi/action flick about a mullet-headed tough guy whipping alien ass, but if you pay attention it's a chilling satire about Reaganomics. Carpenter has said as recently as October that the film is a documentary.

Infamous wrestling heel Roddy Piper stars as John Nada, an honest, hardworking but down-on-his-luck fellow looking for a break. He gets a job on a construction crew where he meets Frank (Keith David) who shows him the way to the nearby homeless camp. The two men are friendly, but they have their differences. Nada believes in America, that he's just hit a rough patch, and with hard work, he'll overcome it; whereas Frank thinks the system is rigged against the poor.

They later have a grueling, bare-knuckle, 5 1/2-minute difference over trying on sunglasses. See, Nada found a box of them in the church near the homeless camp after the church was raided by police. He puts the sunglasses on and notices there are subliminal messages on every billboard, magazine and TV program. The messages say things like, "OBEY," "CONSUME," and my favorite, "MARRY AND REPRODUCE." Money says, "THIS IS YOUR GOD" on it. Then Nada notices with the sunglasses some people look different, too -- like their skin's been peeled off and they have big, buggy eyes. He calls a lady "formaldehyde face" in a convenience store, then the police show up and he whips their asses with his pro-wrestling moves.

You know how these things go. Once you've beaten up four or five cops and you've got their shotgun, it's time to go shoot up a bank and escape by taking Holly Thompson (Meg Foster) hostage. After that, it's tough to go back to work, because your face has been all over the news.

Nada wants Frank to see the truth, and Frank would rather not because he doesn't want even more trouble than being homeless and estranged from his family back in Detroit. So when Nada urges Frank to try on the sunglasses (and thus confirm Frank's suspicions were a gross underestimation), they have one of the longest, most glorious, one-on-one street brawls in modern cinema.

As for the rest of the movie? You know how I hate to spoil things. Suffice it to say, lots of shit blows up.

They Live is social commentary so cleverly disguised as ass-kicking fun you won't even care. It streams on Starz.

"There were bikers and gnarly psychos, and... crazy evil."

I understand most of you mortals are feeling the pinch this time of year. It feels like you just don't have enough time or money to make everybody happy. Some of you are trying to cram for finals. A lot of you still haven't put up your tree, much less bought any presents because you're still waiting on your Christmas bonus. You can't convince your dad and your grandma that if they could just get over themselves and sit in the same room for two hours you wouldn't have to drive all over creation on the 25th, and there's no escaping that damn Mariah Carey song.

It's enough to make any sensible person hate the holidays.

In times like this, I like to remind mortals of the reason for the season. You're celebrating the birth of the savior Jesus Christ.

That's right. It's all his fucking fault.

I'm right there with you, mortals. In a couple weeks all the movie critics are going to roll out their Best of 2018 lists and I haven't reviewed a single movie from 2018. Let's fix that right now.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Mandy.

This bad acid trip by director Panos Cosmatos stars Nicolas Cage as Red Miller, a logger who lives with his old lady Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough) in a damn nice house in the deep woods of the Pacific Northwest.

You can tell they're in love because they lie around in each other's arms and talk about their favorite planets and the time Mandy's dad encouraged the neighborhood kids to kill baby birds with a crowbar.

One day while walking along the lonesome road to nowhere, Mandy catches the eye of hippie cult leader Jeremiah Sand. He decides he must have her, so he dispatches his followers summon a gang of cenobite berzerker bikers to kidnap the lovebirds.

The cultists prepare Mandy for her audience with Sand by dosing her with LSD and having a giant bug sting her. While Mandy basis in the mystic's purpledy-pink, tracer-laden presence, Sand tells her about his former career as a rock star and shows her his dick. She laughs at Sand's stupid music and ridiculous penis, so he burns her to death right in front of Red, who is tied up outside. Sand then stabs red and leaves him for dead. Red wriggle free, crawls home, and that's when he gets mad.

How mad?

He gets so mad he goes to his buddy's camper to get his crossbow back, and they don't even discuss why his buddy has Red's crossbow in the first place.

He gets so mad he goes down to the foundry and forges by hand a battle axe.

He gets buggy-eyed, teeth-gnashing, Nicolas Cage mad.

And when the bikers catch him and rip his favorite shirt, he remembers just how damn mad that is, wriggles free from getting tied up again, takes a heaping helping of berzerker dope and is unstoppable.

I feel like I've already said too much in summary and don't want to spoil the third act. Suffice it to say it is a glorious display of violence and what-the-fuckery.

Mandy is batshit Nicolas Cage in a balls-trippy revenge thriller that takes a while to start swinging, but when it does it really swings for the fences. It is the best movie of 2018 that I'm going to review this year. It streams on Shudder and Hoopla.

"Meat's meat, and a man's gotta eat!"

I just can't get over it, mortals. Has Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman never disappeared anybody before? Because the day Jamal Khashoggi went missing, just about everybody who isn't dependent on Saudi defense spending said, "Whoa, they just straight-up had that guy killed." It was a sloppy job. Witnesses saw the bone saws.

The Saudis' version of what happened have changed almost weekly ever since, and almost no one has ever believed them. It's the most high-profile hit job anyone's seen in a long time, which means it's a failure, because hit jobs are supposed to have low-profiles.

So it would seem bin Salman isn't very experienced at this, and I find that hard to believe, because come on, the head of one of the wealthiest families of dictators in the world never disappeared anybody before? Why wasn't this handled more discretely. It's baffling.

You know who's good at disappearing people? Farmer Vincent.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Motel Hell.

Kevin Connor directed this 1980 comedy about Farmer Vincent (Rory Calhoun), an entrepreneur with a lot of irons in the fire and bodies in the garden.

Vincent and his sister Ida (Nancy Parsons) are the proprietors of the Motel Hello, a cozy, little place off the beaten path -- a place you can really get away from it all. Vincent's primary claim to regional fame, though, is his line of smoked meats, which he sells only within a 100-mile radius of home, and, naturally, in the motel's gift shop. The secret to his flavor is that he blends his meats, mostly pork with human.

He keeps a little hidden garden behind the hedge where he buries his victims up to their necks. He and Ida remove their larynx's so they won't scream. Instead they gurgle and hiss. He keeps them fed until he's ready to throw them in the smoker.  His victims include a couple sexual adventurers who found the motel through an ad Ida placed in the swinger's guide, a nosy government inspector, and a punk band called Ivan and the Terribles (featuring John Ratzenberger). There's also Bo (Everett Creach), the biker boyfriend of Terry (Nina Axelrod), a pretty blonde Vincent decided to bring into the motel instead of planting.

Paul Like plays Bruce, Vincent and Ida's little brother. Bruce is also the sheriff and he knows nothing about the cannibalism business. He takes an immediate shine to Terry, even takes her out on a date, but Terry falls for Vince, and eventually the dispute has to be settled by chainsaw duel, beating Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 to the punch by about 7 years.

What I really like about Vincent is his devotion to his work. He's speaks reverently of its importance and feels blessed when he can be creative. It's not just a job to create delicious, smoked meats for people to enjoy. It's his calling. Calhoun is creepy and hilarious in the role.

It's a funny movie, hardly gory at all. There are a couple good songs in it. Wolfman Jack plays a TV preacher. Definitely worth a watch.

Motel Hell streams on Amazon Prime and YouTube.

"I guess I'm not used to being chased around a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots."

I'm sitting here, mortals, thinking about your holiday. I'm sure it has different meanings for each of you. Some of you are genuinely excited about eating turkey. Some of you just want to see your families. A ridiculously high number of you can't wait to get out and shop.

Even though many of you are catching on, there are still a lot of you caught up in the Black Friday scam. You can't wait to jab and elbow and trample your way to the front of the line. Some of you can't wait for a reason to use that pepper spray, maybe it's nearing its expiration date.

The reason you behave this way is obvious. You love violence in a retail setting.

That's why this week's Thursday Thriller is Chopping Mall.

This 1986 Jim Wynorski film is about some mall employees whose after-hours fuck party goes seriously awry when the mall's security robots spazz out and start killing.

Of course the company that sold the Protector 'droids to the mall assured all the merchants that it would be highly unlikely that the robots, equipped with tasers, lasers and sleep darts, would do any such thing. Their job is to incapacitate burglars and haul them to a detention area for police to pick them up. The salesmen also threw in some heavy, time-locked, blast-proof, steel doors that would keep anybody from getting in (or out) of the building from midnight til opening time.

A malfunction in the system would be as unlikely as their main sever being struck by lightning three times on the same night the guys at the furniture store convince the boss's nephew and trusted keyholder Ferdy (Tony O'Dell) to let in their girlfriends to test out the mattresses after the store closes.

Well, guess what happens?

One guy's girlfriend Suzie (Barbara Crampton) brings her friend Alison (Kelli Maroney) to introduce to Ferdy. They hit it off, but they don't get it on. They're happy enough to watch Attack of the Crab Monsters on TV. Everyone is safe from the robots so long as they stay in the store but then Leslie (Suzee Slater) realizes she's out of cigarettes. Shortly after, a Protector's laser explodes her head. Then the kids have to fight the robots by breaking into stores and using whatever they find guns, propane tanks, paint thinner. Lots of stuff blows up and catches fire. People die. Somewhere in there Suzie takes her top off. It's a lot of fun.

Chopping Mall is a silly, gory, independent, sci-fi/horror flick that I enjoyed quite a bit. It streams on Amazon Prime and YouTube.

"You tell him it's open season on all suckheads."

I received Stan Lee this week. What a guy. Did you know he started writing professionally at age 16? Just obituaries at first, but still. Then at 19 he took over as interim editor of then Timely Comics, which later became Marvel. In a career that started in 1939, Lee saw times that weren't as comic-book friendly as the world we see today.

For example, in 1954, psychologist Frederic Wertham suggested comics contributed to juvenile delinquency in his book Seduction of the Innocent, which is ironic because few industries have done so much to help young men maintain their virginity.

Lee is credited with creating the Marvel Universe, and as a way of helping you mortals say goodbye, I'd like to talk about a movie I've plucked from there.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Blade.

This 1998 martial arts film by Stephen Norrington stars Wesley Snipes in the title role as a guy whose mom was bitten by a vampire when she was pregnant, so Blade is half-human, half-vampire. Sunlight and garlic don't bother him, but he still has a blood thirst, for which he has to take injections of a special serum. He has sworn to kill all vampires for what they did to his mother. He has the help of his mechanic/weapons maker Whistler (Kris Kristofferson).

Blade barely rescues a hematologist named Karen (N'Bushe Wright) from a vampire attack and she begins working on a cure for vampirism, if only to save herself.

Meanwhile, there's a schism in the vampire community between those who were born vampires, the old-money types, and those who were turned into vampires, the nouveau riche led by Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff). Frost thinks it's ridiculous that vampires should hide. He thinks vampires should take over the world. He throws wild parties where he drains human slaves for laughs.

Frost's grand scheme of world conquest involves summoning a blood god, and he needs to sacrifice Blade to do it. Blade clearly has other ideas. Blade and the vampires often resolve their differences with kung fu, sword play, silver stakes, stuff blowing up, and hollow-point bullets with garlic in them that cause the vampires to dissolve.

It's a good action film. The opening sequence where Blade destroys a whole vampire rave is compelling stuff. I would highly recommend it, but I feel like that might be letting the movie off too easily.

I don't know what year it started, but at some point, vampire movies started playing fast and loose with the rules, and every time they do, a character has to say something like, "forget what you see in the movies, these are REAL vampires we're dealing with," and thus scores of writers get to throw away whatever vampire norms they find too inconvenient to write around. It seems kind of lazy after you see it a few times, and it happens in Blade.

Not that the write-arounds are much better. In a broad daylight scene when Blade and Frost exchange tough words, Frost doesn't explode because he's wearing sun block. Sun block? You've got millennia-old vampires running around and none of them ever thought to use sun block? It's so simple it's stupid.

An ambitious production, Blade features state-of-the-art computer generated effects. Frost pulls off a Matrix-style bullet dodge a year before The Matrix even came out.  The problem is the state of the art in 1998 was not very good at all. It looks kinda wonky.

Glad I could get that stuff off my chest. It didn't ruin the movie for me, just kept from being perfect. It's still kicks ass.

Blade streams on Netflix.

Excelsior!

"You go by the name of being alive and you are dead."

Do you mortals find shopping the day after Halloween more rewarding than shopping the day after Thanksgiving? Don't you just love getting glow-in-the dark mad scientist beakers for 80 percent off at the craft store or socks with skulls on them at the grocery for two bucks?

If you're one of those smart shoppers, you've found the right blog, because Old Scratch is here year-round to tell you about where to find the best horror movies online.

You've no doubt noticed your creepy gear occupying less and less shelf space to make room for Christmas bullshit, which can only mean one thing -- the holidays are upon us. Now, I love a good orgy of consumerism just as much as the next demon, but I want to remind you to think of those less fortunate, specifically the homeless, as y'all start bickering about what the coffee cups at Starbucks look like this year.

This week's Thursday Thriller is C.H.U.D.

This 1984 conspiracy theory was directed by Douglas Cheek. It stars John Heard as George Cooper, a photographer who makes ends meet doing fashion shoots with his girlfriend Lauren Daniels (Kim Greist) but would rather spend his time doing gritty, hard-hitting photojournalism. His pet project in progress is a series documenting the homeless and he's way past deadline because his preferred subjects have gone missing. One of them, Mrs. Monroe (Ruth Maleczech) turns up in jail for trying to steal a gun from Officer Crespi (Sam McMurray). George ditches a commercial shoot immediately to go bail her out.

Meanwhile, A.J. "The Reverend" Shepherd calls police captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) down to his soup kitchen to report some of his regular clients, particularly those who live underground in the sewers, are missing. What's more, the ones who still show up to eat are arming themselves and babbling about monsters.

As you can probably tell by my summary, C.H.U.D. takes a little while to get moving, but otherwise it's not a bad movie. Hang in there for the gnarly looking, glowing-eyed, sewer monsters, massive explosions, and a brief appearance by a young John Goodman as a beat cop.

C.H.U.D. streams on Shudder.

"Instead of a perfect human being the evil in Frankenstein's mind created a monster."

Now that was a Halloween for the books, right mortals? We processed more souls through the Devil's Attic than ever and I still had time to take the Antichrist out trick or treating.

My head is still pounding with the shrieks of the tormented, not to mention all the souls I snorted, so this week I want to talk about a movie that's quiet and isn't too long, a silent short, if you will.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Frankenstein.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's classic novel about a scientist who discovers the secret of reanimating the dead. J. Searle Dawley directed the first film adaptation in 1910 for Thomas Edison's production company. It is not the first horror film. Most say that honor goes to Georges Melies's Le Manoir Du Diable in 1896, though I think the Edison Company deserves a mention for the first simulated decapitation in 1895.

Director Alfred Clark's The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots is credited with cinema's first film edit.

I'm drifting off topic and if I'm not careful I'm going to start rambling about 1903's Electrocuting an Elephant. Let's get back to Frankenstein.

In an absolutely disposable opening, we see Frankenstein (Augustus Phillips) wave adieu to his fiancee Elizabeth (Mary Fuller) and head off to college. Two years later, in another disposable moment of studying, Frankenstein discovers the secret of creating life. The boring parts out of the way, we're ready to see the apparatus by which Frankenstein does what he's famous for. With the flourish of a stage magician, he throws a couple explosive chemicals into an oven, closes the door and watches through a peephole.

The camera trickery in play looks a little primitive by our jaded modern standards, but was no doubt ambitious for its time. They clearly built at least one puppet, set it on fire, let it burn to ashes, then played the film backwards so we can watch flesh crawl into a bare skeleton as it sucks in all the smoke and flame. It looks pretty cool.

Then The Monster (Charles Ogle) emerges from the oven. Frankenstein is horrified by its large head, long hair and weird fingers. The Monster chases Frankenstein around for a few scenes before ultimately seeing how horrific he looks and dissolving. Frankenstein watches The Monster's reflection fade from the mirror and is left looking at who the real monster is.

It's definitely not the best Frankenstein movie, but undeniably the first. Frankenstein streams on YouTube.

"Death has come to your little town, sheriff."

Well mortals, we're coming up on the big day, the best holiday no one gets off of work for -- better than Flag Day, Arbor Day and
Valentine's Day combined. I am of course talking about Halloween.

I have to say we've had a good season bringing fear to those who need it at my menagerie show, The Devil's Attic. We've only got four more nights to go, so make sure you come see me.

In honor of Halloween, I've saved back a very special film to talk about.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Halloween.

A lot of people consider this 1978 John Carpenter film the first slasher, though some say it was actually 1974's Black Christmas. I happen to think slasher films were invented in Italy by somebody like Mario Bava. Of course, all of this debate ignores the early gore films of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho came out in 1960, as did the British film Peeping Tom.

None of this matters. The influence of Halloween on the slasher boom of the early 1980s is undeniable. It spawned a sprawling franchise of sequels, remakes and reboots, including a film last week whose opening weekend box office receipts broke the record for slasher films.

No one saw this coming in 1978. All Carpenter and his writing partner Debra Hill had was a simple story about an escaped lunatic Michael Myers (Tony Moran) returning to his hometown of Haddonfield, Ill., and stalking Jamie Lee Curtis, brutally killing off her friends.

Donald Pleasance gives an outstanding performance as Dr. Sam Loomis, Myers's psychiatrist, who is intent on chasing the maniac down and stopping his killing spree.

I've got a busy four nights ahead of me, mortals, so I'll spare you a full-on critique. After all, after 40 years there's not a lot I can say about this movie that hasn't already been said.

Halloween is an all-time classic. If you haven't seen it yet, it's time, and if you have, it's time to see it again. It streams on Shudder.

The Devil's Attic is open tonight, Thursday Oct. 25 - Sunday, Oct. 28. Mention Halloween at the ticket booth and get $2 off admission.

"I didn't sign up for a second-degree assault party."

I'll level with you mortals -- some of you are sexy as Hell. You should have seen this piece that came through The Devil's Attic Saturday night.

She wasn't even 5 feet tall and didn't even weigh 100 pounds. Usually I like my mortals with a little more meat on their bones, but here's what did it for me: she wasn't a day under 70 years old.

She was the kind of woman with experience. You know what I mean? And oh so close to death!

So I start putting on a little show of my demonic swagger, thrashing my tongue, thrusting my hips. You know, real sexy like.

Then this cockblocking douche canoe starts yelling at me.

"Hey buddy, that's my mom!"

"And?"

"That's MY mom!"

"So?"

I could have played this game all night, but more guests were on their way into the throne room.

What a selfish twerp, though! On the day of his birth he shredded this sweet woman's vagina. He spent the first year of his life gnawing her breasts raw. Let's not forget the countless nights she was too exhausted from taking care of his whiny ass to make love to Douche Canoe Sr.

And finally, in her dotage, she catches the fiery eye of a man of wealth and taste, and the devoted leech has to claim ownership of her sexuality.  Hasn't he done enough? This septuagenarian babe has needs!

Speaking of douches, this week's Thursday Thriller is Murder Party.

Jeremy Saulnier wrote and directed this 2007 dark comedy. It's about a dork named Chris (Chris Sharp) who intends to spend his Halloween alone at home watching some horror movies. But on his way from the video store, a mysterious invitation to a Halloween riding the October breeze rolls to his fate. He figures it must be fate, so he bakes a pumpkin bread, improvised himself a knight costume out of cardboard and duct tape and takes the subway to a bad neighborhood. Following directions he printed from the internet, he arrives at a warehouse wherein a group of pretentious art douches plans to murder him to impress a wealthy patron named Alexander (Sandy Barnett) so he will give them grant money.

Lucky for Chris, the artists aren't as smart as they think they are.

It's a funny movie. I laughed a lot.

Murder Party streams on Netflix and Shudder.

Mention Murder Party at The Devil's Attic this weekend and get $2 off admission.

"Be afraid. Be very afraid."

In case you mortals have any doubt, I am real. If you come see me at The Devil's Attic I'm going to move. After all, it would be a complete rip-off if you paid to get into the Devils Attic and the Devil  just sat his fat ass on his throne the whole time. I wouldn't cheat you on this.

Nevertheless, as obvious as it sounds some people like to tell their friends what's about to happen when they go to haunted houses. "That guy is real! He's going to move!" They say it as if they've solved some great mystery, as if their friends paid to hear them talk about how smart they are.

Why do people feel the need to play tour guide? Why spoil the surprise for their friends? If you've been following my recent comments on strange behavior of haunted house customers, you already know: because they're afraid.

Just like the mom who told her daughter to "stop being scared" these folks are looking for a way to control a situation. If you can give away all the secrets, there's nothing to be afraid of, right?

More importantly, they're afraid of looking foolish. They want everyone to know they're not so easy to trick. To those people, I have a question: if you're so smart, how do I still get your money? And why do you still jump like Hell when I move?

Anyway, this week's Thursday Thriller is The Fly.

David Cronenberg directed this uber-pukey 1986 remake of the 1958 monster classic that starred Vincent Price.

Jeff Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, a certifiable genius and incredible dork who is determined to change the world by inventing teleportation so he doesn't get car sick anymore. Geena Davis plays Veronica Quaife, a journalist Brundle convinces to come back to his lab to check out his invention. How many of you ladies have fallen for that one?

In what looks like a magic trick, Seth teleports Ronnie's stocking from one of his telepods to the other. No big deal. Later he tries a baboon and winds up with an inside out baboon. Then he tries a steak, but it doesn't taste very good, and from that he figures out the changes he needs to make to teleport the baboon's brother. Seems like mice would be cheaper.

While Seth and Ronnie are celebrating the success of the baboon experiment, Ronnie sees a piece of mail from her editor/ex-boyfriend and rushes off to break things off with him for good. Left alone, Seth gets drunk on champagne and tells the baboon all his problems. Then he decides to get in the teleport himself, but there's a fly in there.

At first Seth comes out none the worse for wear. In fact, he's suddenly good at gymnastics and can fuck for hours. He starts talking manically like he's on meth. He's got a weird patch of hair on his back. Come to find out the teleport has fused his DNA with the fly's, so he begins to turn into an altogether new organism, Brundlefly. This causes conflict in his relationship with Ronnie, especially when she learns she's pregnant.

As Brundlefly's condition deteriorates (or improves, as he sees it) his skin is covered with lesions, he has to vomit on his food to dissolve it before he can eat it, and his ears fall off right in front of Ronnie, again, just like he's on meth. In fact, I think the whole movie might be a meth-aphor.

The Fly is Cronenbergian body horror at its most commercially successful. Goldblum and Davis are great. The film is utterly disgusting and it streams on Hulu.

Mention The Fly this weekend at The Devil's Attic and get $2 off admission.

"The last guy I saw get kissed got stabbed in the head with two knives."

It's finally October. It's time to get out this weekend and go to a haunted house, specifically The Devil's Attic.

I've been giving you mortals guff over the past few weeks of how funny you act when you're scared. I'd like to continue this series tonight with a salute to men who use their girlfriends as shields. 

They wrap their arms around their main squeezes and whisper assurances of "I'll protect you, babe," and when the monsters lunge at them, they use their superior upper body strength to hoist the gals off the ground and push them toward the monsters. 

"Get her!" they yell. "Get her!" And they laugh and laugh and laugh. Meanwhile the girls are too busy screaming and thinking about what jerks these guys are to notice they are also cowards. 

We notice, though, buddy. You're scared. We see you, and to be fair, that is pretty funny. Your secret is safe with me.

Unless I don't like you. Then I will forewarn your date. 

Speaking of pretty funny, this week's Thursday Thriller is The Babysitter.

This 2017 comedy was directed by someone called McG. It's about a boy named Cole (Judah Lewis) who's such a pussy at age 12 he still has a babysitter. Her name is Bee (Samara Weaving) and she's hot. 

Cole has one other friend, the girl across the street. Her name is Melanie (Emily Alyn Lind). Melanie tells Cole that babysitters always wait til the kids are asleep and bring their boyfriends over to have sex. So that night Cole waits up to spy on Bee and discovers she's into devil worship. 

To survive, Cole has to overcome his fear of needles, spiders and bullies. He has to toughen up and learn to stand up for himself. 

I don't want to say too much and give the story away, but I was impressed how well every gag is set up in the movie. Pay close attention in the first act. It all pays off. 

In addition, it's got some good scares, lots of blood and Bee's fellow cult members are cartoonishly funny.

The Babysitter streams on Netflix.

Mention The Babysitter at the Devil's Attic this weekend and get $2 off admission.

"Dead. Dead, all dead. He's killing them one by one by one like cows."

Look, mortals: all year round I seek out the strangest, sickest, most depraved films I can find and tell you via this blog where you can watch them online. I provide this service free of charge -- there's no advertising on my page, no subscription fees, nothing.

Except maybe for around Halloween time when I drop a couple references to my own live horror show, The Devil's Attic. It's a haunted house in Louisville, KY.  Then some of you get your panties in a twist about the overt marketing message.

Think of it like public broadcasting. You get free content, but a couple times a year they hit you up for money, and I'm not even asking for that. I'm just saying if you're in the Louisville area around Halloween and you like this blog, maybe a trip to The Devil's Attic is for you. Think about it -- that's all I ask. It's pledge drive, strap in.

I have so much fun at The Devil's Attic.

For example, last weekend I popped off my throne at this group and a mother yelled at her adolescent daughter to, "Stop being scared."

I informed the family that, "THAT IS THE SINGLE DUMBEST PIECE OF ADVICE I HAVE EVER HEARD! YOU PAID MONEY TO BE SCARED! LOOK AT ALL THE SCARY STUFF IN THIS ROOM! IT'S SCARY IN HERE! BY ALL MEANS, BE SCARED!"

Not only is it dumb advice, it's unhelpful. Why not tell the kid to lower her body temperature while you're at it?

I continued my introduction with multiple interruptions from Mama Dumbass, and though I admonished her every time, "Shut up, Mom, no one cares what you think!" she kept interrupting.

A lot of secrets were in play here, though. I was no longer interested in scaring or even entertaining mom, so she could interrupt me all night. What was fun was watching the twinkle of mischief in her child's eyes grow every time I undermined her maternal authority. My mission was to inspire teenage rebellion, and 10 to 11 years old is as good a time as any for a child to learn their parents are assholes.

Also, I saw no reason to scare the mother because she was clearly already frightened. Is there a more obvious, desperate grasp for control over a situation than yelling at a child for having emotions? Why would anyone need to exert that much control over another person and their feelings?

Because she herself is terrified.

We'll talk more next week about how people try to hide their fear by trying to control a situation, but now it's time to tell you about a movie, at no cost, because telling you about movies is a public service I provide.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Terrifier.

The debate among horror fans over this 2017 Damien Leone film is a hot one. A lot of folks seem to love it, and who can blame them? It's been decades since we've seen a slasher with an original, iconic look and Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) fills the bill.

Art brutally murders just about everybody. That's it. That's the whole story. That's why a lot of other folks don't like it. No plot. No character development. It leaves so many questions unanswered, like, what's Art's problem, anyway? When Mike the exterminator (Matt McAllister) guides Tara (Jenna Kanell) to the bathroom in the vacant, dilapidated building, why does he put his earbuds in and go back to killing rats instead of seeing her safely out? Does Art work out, because when he saws Dawn (Catherine Corcoran) lengthwise in half with a hacksaw he doesn't even get winded?

For me, it kind of hit the spot. I've been feeling impatient of late and can't hang with the unrelenting cabal of moody, slow-burning supernatural thrillers.

The acting is decent, the photography is competent, and it's gory as all get out. Terrifier is a great movie if you just want to get to the kills already. It streams on Netflix.

Mention Terrifier at The Devil's Attic this weekend and get $2 off your admission.

"Well for me, the worst way would be for a bunch of old men to get around me, and start biting and eating me alive."

I want to thank you mortals for providing me with so much amusement. Sometimes I think it's crazy so many of you would pay to come to The Devil's Attic and put on little shows for me. The theory is I put up my little menagerie to entertain you, but I can't deny I appreciate the look on the face of a satisfied customer. 

Some of you come in with a dozen or so of your closest friends, and I have to practically pry you out of that first corner so that you can tumble down the hallway -- a high-velocity, jostling knot of jabbing knees and elbows -- toward the next corner, where you will crash and pile on top of each other to get away from me. Sometimes I have to remind people there's no running in the haunt. If it's a slow night I might see how long I can keep you in that corner, because it is absolutely hilarious watching your huddled mass regain its collective balance, overcome inertia, and start to build the momentum that will send you scrambling for that next corner, when invariably one of you will step on another one's untied shoelace. A couple more of you will faceplant, and the ball of panicked humanity rocks forth and back again while the guy at the bottom points out that someone is stepping on his face. 

That's when I lean in, pound on the wall inches away from the head of whoever's most upright and say, "NO RUNNING IN THE HALLWAY!"

That usually gets them moving. 

This isn't every group, but on a really good night I get to see this show about a dozen times. 

I'll be talking more about my favorite haunted house scares as we get closer to Halloween, but speaking of great shows, I want to tell you about a zombie movie. I know I just talked for six straight weeks about zombie movies this summer, and I was going to be done with them until next summer, but I have to make an exception because this week's Thursday Thriller is Return of the Living Dead. 

This 1986 comedy by Dan O'Bannon takes place in Louisville and contains footage of zero identifiable locations in Louisville because it was shot in Los Angeles. 

It's about a gaggle of L.A.-style punk rockers who want to party with their friend Freddy (Thom Mathews), but he got a lame job in a medical supply company, so they have to wait for him in the nearby cemetery. One of them, Trash (Linnea Quigley) decides she can't wait to party any more, and in a highly sexualized monologue about being attacked and devoured by a mob of gross, old men, she tears her clothes off and starts dancing on tombstones. 

Meanwhile a guy named Burt (Clu Gulager) gives Freddy the grand tour of the warehouse, full of cadavers, both canine and human. Down in the basement is where they keep the olive-drab tanks of mystery gas that say "army" on them. While Burt and Freddy are farting around, a tank busts open and we find out what the gas does. 

It raises the dead. 

The problem starts with only one or two cadavers, but while Burt connives to cover his mistake the gas drifts over the cemetery, where Trash is still naked. Soon you've got zombies everywhere. There's a really cool looking one called The Tar Man. There's one who eats some paramedics' brains, then gets on their CB and tells dispatch to send more paramedics. 

"Wait, they do what?" you cry out pitifully. "Zombies can't do that." 

The influence of Romero's Night of the Living Dead is strong. Burt and Freddie even mention the film by name, but O'Bannon departed from the canon on a few main points. 

1.) His zombies can talk.

2.) Instead of hungering for human flesh, his zombies desire only the brains.

3.) Shooting them in the head doesn't work. 

As the throng of brain-eaters spills past police barricades, what are they going to do? Luckily, the Army has a plan.

It's a film made of great moments with a fun soundtrack. It's the ultimate punk-rock zombie party movie. It is a true classic. If you haven't seen it, it's time. If not, it's time to see it again.

Return of the Living Dead streams on Amazon Prime.

Mention Return of the Living Dead at the Devil's Attic this weekend and get $2 off admission.

"I told you not to go out tonight."

The time has come, mortals.

The time for craft breweries to start pushing nasty pumpkin beers.

The time for children, well established in their school routines, to start thinking about what they want to be on that magical night at the end of October, a night they transform themselves into supernatural creatures and walk the streets in search of things to eat.

The time to throw open the doors to my attic, and allow the public to witness my top shelf collection of evil souls. That's right, The Devil's Attic opens Friday night.

I'd like to tell you about a film that inspired one of my favorite exhibits.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Maniac.

This 1980 slasher film was directed by William Lustig. It's about a painter named Frank (Joe Spinnell) who copes with his childhood trauma at the hands of an abusive mother by killing women, scalping them, and nailing their hair to mannequins in his apartment.

Caroline Munro co-stars as Anna, a glamour photographer who might just have what it takes to turn Frank around and help him trust women again. After all, she survives the first date.

What sets Maniac apart from other slasher films is it actually has nuance. Spinnell, an accomplished character actor with roles in The Godfather and Rocky, helped write the screenplay. Frank is a layered character with a full range of emotions. He's angry, he's sad, he's remorseful. He can be charming and self-effacingly funny when talking to Anna. He is gentle when talking to the mannequins and can fly into a rage when murdering.

He also blows Tom Savini's head off with a shotgun.

It's a gritty, gory kind of film.

Maniac streams on YouTube.

Mention Maniac at The Devil's Attic this weekend and get $2 off admission. 

"For your safety, you should keep him away from booze and donuts."

Mortals, I haven't commented on your petty current events in a while because you've gotten way too weird. I mean, it's great fun, but there's no way I can keep up with it all in my once weekly writing cycle. It's all happened so fast.

For example, before Elon Musk donated a submarine to help soccer players trapped in a cave, he released a $600 civilian-model flamethrower. Do you remember that? Do you ever wonder what happened to those things?

I'll give you another example. Do you remember a month or so ago when you looked up Bigfoot porn, because what the fuck is everyone talking about? How many pages did you make it into Bigfoot Knocked Me Up: The Complete 10-Book Set by Carrie High?

Were you aware that Amazon also has plenty of werewolf erotica for your Kindle reader?

The movie I want to tell you about is not werewolf erotica, per se, but it definitely has its moments.

This week's Thursday Thriller is WolfCop.

This 2014 splatter comedy was written and directed by Lowell Dean.

The town of Woodhaven is getting revved up for its annual Drink 'N' Shoot, but when a local mayoral candidate who's sworn to clean up the town is found killed in an apparent cult ritual, the reckless redneck festivities are canceled. Also, a solar eclipse is coming up, and the last time the Drink 'N' Shoot was canceled, someone was murdered then, too, and there was also an eclipse coming up. That was 32 years ago  -- a strange coincidence as pointed out by Deputy Tina (Amy Matysio).

Deputy Lou Garou (Leo Fafard) had just been out by the murder scene the time before. There was a disturbance, kids making noise in the woods or something. He saw Terry. Everything went black. There were people in black robes and weird masks. Knives? Possibly.  Something happened to Lou, but he couldn't remember exactly. If only he hadn't been drunk! He decides for the first time in his career to crack open a notebook and actually do some police work... at the bar. He starts feeling woozy. He retches. He goes to the men's room to pee and there he turns dick-first into a werewolf.

It hurts at first, but later he has all kinds of fun. He stops an armed robbery by three men in pig masks, marks territory on some vandals, blows up a meth lab, and has a soft focus, softcore, Skinemax-style romantic tryst with hot bartender Jessica (Sarah Lind).

WolfCop is a silly, raucous, down 'n' dirty, gory good time. It's the kind of movie that will have you grinning as you watch, thinking, "Somebody made this. Specifically, a man named Lowell Dean was able to pull some money together, hire some people, and he made this. How in the fuck did he get away with it?"

WolfCop streams on Shudder.

"Welcome to this world. I am your master."

Greetings mortals, I trust everyone had a good time at the Louisville Zombie Walk. It certainly was nice to unleash all those zombies and free up some space down here. Now the real work can begin, whipping my most evil souls into shape to scare the hell out of you at The Devil's Attic.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Ghoulies.

This 1984 puppet show was directed by Charles Band. The mid-1980s were a special time for slimy puppets. Gremlins also came out in 1984. You had Critters in '86. When a half-alien slime puppet was born on V: The Final Battle, it was all kids could talk about in the playground the next day. Somewhere in there a toy called Boglins hit the department store shelves and mothers everywhere were all kinds of out of sorts.

But Ghoulies stood out because it made children afraid to go to the toilet.

Peter Liapis plays Jonathan, a young guy who never knew his father, but has inherited the spooky, old mansion and moves in with his girlfriend Rebecca (Lisa Pelikan). There's not much to do in the secluded estate except study dad's black magic books so Rebecca suggests they throw a party with their weird, high, horny friends from the city. As weird, high and horny as everyone is, somehow the party loses steam, Jonathan decides to liven things up by conjuring an entity.

Nothing really happens. Everybody goes home. Jonathan decides to practice until he conjures up three little slime puppet demons, but Rebecca thinks he's gotten too far involved in the black magic and leaves, so he summons some little people demons to get her back. By this point his eyes are glowing green, so they decide to have a dinner party where everyone wears novelty sunglasses, and the slime puppets and little people kill everybody.

It's an OK movie, fun if you need a fix of '80s nostalgia.

Ghoulies streams on Starz.

"If I had a box of bad things, I'd put you in it and close the lid."

Having a Hell of a week, mortals. Louisville Zombie Walk, where I will unleash around 45,000 undead onto Bardstown Road is Saturday. I will see you in front of Mid-City Mall around 8:30 p.m. Come be creepy and dead while you listen to live music and have a few drinks with dead friends. Bring the kids if you like. It's a good time.

While I was in the middle of getting that together, who should drop by, but my old buddy Plague?

Don't get me wrong. I love Plague. He means well, but there's a limit, you know. He gets to going on about how diseases can mutate until human science has no idea what to do about it, and it's hilarious for the first five minutes, but after that you're like, "I get it, man. Can you please take your hemorrhaging lesions elsewhere? You're getting pus all over everything."

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Girl With All the Gifts.

This 2016 Colm McCarthy film is built on a premise that there's a fungus that causes the zombie disease and it hast spread all over the world. There are first generation zombies, the mindless, flesh-craving automatons we all know and love, but there are a second generation, who have minds of their own and do well in school, but wear red sweatsuits and have to be strapped down when they go to class because they still have the hunger.

Now I'm going to go ahead and cut you hair-splitters off at the pass. You're going to say, "they can run and use weapons, they're not zombies. They have rage, like in 28 Days Later. This is my point about mutation. Monsters, diseases -- they mutate, okay. This is an obvious mutation on zombieism. Shut up. You're boring. Listen a minute.

First off, smart kid zombies are super creepy.

Secondly, Dr. Glenn Close, looking more like erstwhile co-star Michael Douglas than ever, hopes to use these children to extract a vaccine against zombiesm. She likes to keep them sharp by bothering them with Schrodinger's Cat puzzles right before they go to bed.

Sennie Nanua shines in her role as Melanie, the title character who tries to help guide her humans to safety after zombies crashed the gates of their home research compound. She's a thoughtful and lovable young girl, and yet also a cannibal monster.  There's a great scene when she fights off a bunch of other zombie children who aren't as bright. It's a real tearjerker.

I can't really tell you what happens beyond that. Partly because I don't want to spoil it, but mostly because Plague started coughing and sneezing and diarrheaing all over the throne room and it was very distracting. I'm going to give it another spin, though, as soon as I have a quiet minute.

The Girl With All The Gifts streams on Amazon Prime.

"It's Satan's arm. It's a long story."

I'm so excited, mortals. The Louisville Zombie Walk is just a shade over a week away, this is my 150th review, and I've got a very special zombie movie to put you in the mood, so let's get straight to it.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead.

You remember the first Dead Snow, right? It was that 2009 Norwegian homage to horrors past, especially Evil Dead, where the Nazi zombies kill a bunch of young folks on a skiing trip who found the accursed Nazi gold. The blood and guts really flew in that one, remember?

Well, Dead Snow 2 picks up right where the first one left off.

If you recall, Martin (Vegar Hoel) had to chainsaw his arm off in true Evil Dead fashion. The last survivor, he flees the Nazis in a car, but the zombie leader Herzog (Orjan Gamst) hangs on to the side and snatches and grabs at Martin, desperate to get that last gold coin. Martin uses an oncoming tractor-trailer to peel Herzog off, but the zombie's arm, torn from its body, plops into the passenger seat.  Martin discards the last coin, passes out and crashes.

He awakens in the hospital, the chief suspect in his friends' murders. It seems the medics were confused about whose arm was still in the car and a surgeon has attached Herzog's arm to Martin's body.

Martin has trouble controlling the arm at first. It helps him escape from the hospital, but it murders a child in the process. It also kills a police officer by using the hood ornament off a Mercedes as a shuriken.  Martin notifies a group of American experts called The Zombie Squad about the Nazis.

Meanwhile, the Nazis are still on a killing spree. They remember they had a mission to destroy a town that they hadn't completed. Hitler himself had given the order.

The Nazi zombies kill everyone in sight for pretty much the whole movie. They don't their guns, so they have to use knives, hammers, hatchets, everything but the kitchen sink. The bathroom sink is another story.

They raid a World War II museum, tear a bus full of tourists to pieces and use one's intestines as a siphon to fill up the old tank parked outside.

As Martin gains more control over the zombie arm, he finds he can punch so hard it makes someone's heads explode. It can also raise the dead and bind the zombie to him as his slave. The Zombie Squad leader Daniel (Martin Starr) pursuades him he has to go raise an army of dead Russian soldiers buried nearby to defeat the Nazi scourge.

Should you watch this 2014 action/comedy splatter fest by director Tommy Wirkola?

To quote Martin when the army of Russian undead rise from their graves and call him master: "Fuck yeah!"

Dead Snow 2 streams in English on Amazon Prime.

"I don't want that dog messing with her. Anybody humps her leg, it's me."

What does it mean to be a man? The question has plagued teenage boys from time immemorial. Do you have to smoke cigarettes and drink beer? Do you have to shoot guns? Do you have to bench press a lot? Do you have to be captain of the football team? Maybe you just have to get a lot of pussy on the reggie.

I bring this up because the Louisville Zombie Walk is later this month and I've been watching a ton of zombie movies. I've seen gory, gross-out zombie movies. I've seen quirky, funny zombie movies. Sometimes they're packed with action. Often they're tales of survival that some viewers take as parables about disaster preparedness.

Yes, we all know at least one person who stockpiles ammunition and canned goods for the Armageddon of the undead, but the movie I want to tell you about is more of a cautionary tale about where you stick your dick and it's the most fucked up movie I've seen in a while.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Deadgirl.

Toxic masculinity is a central theme in this 2008 film about Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) and JT (Noah Segan) two misfit teen-age boys who, during an afternoon of quaffing some brews and vandalizing an abandoned mental institution (you know, bro stuff) find a zombie girl chained to a table. JT can't pass up the opportunity to have sex that isn't quite consensual, but who's she gonna tell, right? Because it's the manly thing to do.

What could go wrong? Only a million things that you should probably expect during intercourse with a zombie. What if she gets loose? What if she bites you? What if you're too rough and her dead tissue doesn't heal back? What if she develops pus-filled, infected lesions on her abdomen?

The script by Trent Haaga leaves few if any such questions unexplored.

If it's not weird enough that JT starts routinely fucking the dead girl, he starts pimping her out to their dumb friend Wheeler (Eric Podnar). Rickie wants no part of JT's sick nonsense. He's too busy pining after Joann (Candice Accola), a redhead he went steady with in fourth grade or something. Joann is a cheerleader now and dating Johnny (Andrew DiPalma), a big, dumb jock who likes to rough Rickie up for looking at his girl.

In Rickie's defense, she is cuter than a whole bucket of baby toes. As the competition for Joann's affection heats up and the violence escalates between Rickie and Johnny, JT's personality takes on more dominant, alpha-type traits. He's King Hustler of the necrophiliac dungeon and he wields his authority with merciless abandon.

The cast delivers believable, sometimes funny, sometimes sad performances, but Segan is outstanding as JT as he struts around spewing villain monologues. Also, it's easy to hope that Rickie and Joann wind up together, no matter how much JT and Wheeler tell him it's never going to happen.

Deadgirl is the most beautifully disturbing zombie movie I've ever seen. It was directed by Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel and it streams on Shudder.

"Let the hunt begin!"

About a week ago, a guy who says rapey things on Twitter brought it to Disney's attention that 10 years ago director James Gunn said some rapey things on Twitter. Disney summarily fired Gunn from the next installment of Guardians of the Galaxy.

I'm sitting here thinking, nevermind Gunn's tweets. Did Disney read his resume?

Gunn started his show business career as a writer for the notoriously tasteless Troma Entertainment, where he penned the notoriously tasteless films Tromeo and Juliet and Terror Firmer. He's written and directed disturbingly dark comedies such as Super, as well as a segment for the gross-out sketch film Movie 43.

And I loved every one of them. If you ask me, he made better movies when he wrote horrible tweets.

Since we're perusing his back catalog, and getting geared up for the Louisville Zombie Walk on Aug. 25, I've got the perfect movie to talk about.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Slither.

This 2006 comedy is a contemporary take on the alien invasion films of the 1950s.

A meteor carrying an alien life form crashes just outside a small town like you might expect, but with updated special effects, it looks awesome.

Michael Rooker plays Grant Grant, a shitkicker who can't help but poke the alien with a stick, because that's what shitkickers do in these movies. It's like the shitkicker's biological imperative. The alien shoots a barb into his chest, the first step of its biological imperative.

Grant begins to act strangely, compulsively. He begins to hoard meat. He hides it from his too-hot-for-him wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks). He grows tendrils out of his chest. He decides he loves Starla too much to use them on her, so he sneaks out and uses them to impregnate another woman Brenda (Brenda James). The tendrils puncture Brenda's stomach and pumps her full of something disgusting. He then secrets Brenda away in the woods and feeds her raw, shredded animals.

Nathan Fillion plays the understated wise-acre police chief Bill Pardy, who also happens to have been Starla's high school sweetheart. He is tasked with leading the investigation into Brenda's disappearance. When he and his officers catch up to Grant, Grant has started to mutate something awful. When officers find Brenda, she has swollen to a barn-sized boulder of flesh that bursts open to release millions of slug like creatures who like to crawl in people's mouths, and turn them into hive-minded zombies.

It's all quite gross, bloody fun. Practical and computer-generated effects are well-integrated in bringing out all the gory details, but the slugs look a little fake.

Slither streams on Starz.

"You ungodly warlock! Because of you this hotel and this town will be cursed forever!"

It's time to get excited, mortals. The Louisville Zombie Walk is only a month away.

At 8:29 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 25, I will unleash some 45,000 staggering, slobbering, rotten teeth-gnashing zombies onto Bardstown Road. We will convene as usual in front of Mid-City Mall.

If you're planning on doing battle against my legions of the damned, take heed: no guns will be allowed at the event -- not even replica weapons. Louisville Metro Police will take your gun if they see it.

What can I say? Insurance companies take the fun out of everything.

I did check with the organizers. They said Super Soakers would be fine.

Let's get in the mood.

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Beyond.

Lucio Fulci directed this 1981 film as the middle chapter of his Gates of Hell trilogy, which started with City of the Living Dead one year previously.

Apparently there are seven gates to Hell, but he only made movies about three of them. One of the gates is in the basement of a hotel in Louisiana. A lynch mob believes an artist named Schweick (Antoine Saint-John) opened it up in the 1920s, so they chain whip him to death for it. The chains tear the flesh right off his bones and it's the best chain whipping I've ever seen in film. Then they nail him to the basement wall and plaster him in.

In the present day, a New Yorker named Liza (Catriona MacColl) buys the hotel with the intent of fixing the place up, but accidents keep happening to her contractors. Joe the plumber (Giovanni De Nava) goes to see why the basement is flooded and gets his eye ripped out.

Then Liza picks up a blind hitchhiker Emily (Cinzia Monreale) and her German shepherd Dickie. Emily comes back to the hotel and warns Liza that the warlock is still there. She should know. She was there in the '20s when she still had her eyesight.

I could go on about the story, but it's pretty thin. You've got an old hotel that's haunted as fuck with zombies because there's a gateway to Hell in the basement. You don't watch Fulci for intricate story lines. You watch for the absurdly gory vignettes and this movie delivers.

While no single Fulci film is my favorite, each seems to have a scene that I love. Zombie (aka Zombi aka Zombi 2 aka Zombie Flesh Eaters) has the underwater undead versus shark scene. City of the Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell) has the part where the lady vomits her guts up before turning. The Beyond has a few great moments.

The scene where a bottle of acid turns over on a lady's face and it dissolves and bubbles off is pretty cool.

Then there's the part where a bunch of tarantulas eating a guy's face off, bit by bit.

And then Dickie has a great moment that I would rather not spoil.

The Beyond is absolutely gross-tastic and a perfect film to get you in the mood for zombie cosplay in the streets. It streams on Shudder.

"Curtis? Are you dead?"

Hey mortals, hope you had a great Friday the 13th despite your limited viewing options for Jason movies. I see a lot of you made the best of it and checked out The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder. I tuned in myself, but after two hours of waiting for the signal to load, I realized I was drunk on Miskatonic Revivers and still had some damned souls to torment.

The Internet connection in Hell isn't that great to begin with because we're actually stealing bandwidth from Limbo, where every one binge watches Pawn Stars reruns until the end of time, so at first I had no idea that the problem was that Shudder was not prepared for the success of its big promo.

I caught up the next day. It was good seeing Joe Bob again. I stole everything I know about film criticism from that guy.

In fact, I'm about to tell you about a movie I watched Joe Bob host 20 years ago on Monstervision, but because I'm still salty about the technical difficulties, it's not on Shudder.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Maximum Overdrive.

Stephen King himself directed this 1986 film. He explains his reasoning in his epically coked-out trailer.

The action takes place in Wilmington, N.C. It seems a comet is passing over the earth, leaving in its wake a wave of radiation that causes all the machines to become sentient and hostile towards humanity.

First, an ATM calls King an asshole. Then a drawbridge raises while a bunch of cars are still on it and you get to see several minutes of gloriously mindless wreckage. At the Dixie Boy truck stop, the gas pumps quit working until the grease monkey looks down the tube to see what the problem is and it sprays him in the eyes. An electric knife goes crazy on a waitress. And a truck driver playing an arcade game finds new meaning to the term "game over."

Then over at the little league field a Coke machine shoots a coach in the nuts and a steamroller runs over a kid. The scene cuts before we get to see an awesome head splatter that was edited out.

Emilio Estevez plays the heroic line cook. Pat Hingle, who also played Commissioner Gordon in 1989's Batman, portrays Hendershot, the truck stop owner. Yeardley Smith, best known as the voice of Lisa Simpson, plays a none-too-bright country bride, but the real star of the movie is a tractor-trailer with a giant Green Goblin head mounted on the grill.

The Green Goblin truck appears to be the leader of all the trucks who descend on the Dixie Boy and establish a reign of terror. And what is it the trucks want? You guessed it, gas! So they enslave the people to pump the gas for them.

Luckily, there's more to the Dixie Boy than meets the eye. It turns out Hendershot is a gun runner and has a basement full of rocket launchers.

With most movies, you see one guy blow up an evil truck with a rocket launcher, it's awesome and the movie ends. A lot of directors figure if you've seen it once, you've seen it, but not King. No fewer than three trucks meet their demise via rocket-propelled grenade. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Somehow it never gets old.

This movie is deliriously goofy, but despite its flaws, it's the best movie King ever directed. I guess he figured he did it right the first time because it's also the only movie he ever directed.

Still, it's hard to hate 90 minutes of wanton destruction, and the havoc isn't completely bereft of a philosophical viewpoint. The opening titles are accompanied by AC/DC's anthemic "Who Made Who?" because, like, who did make who? Did people make the machines or did the machines make the people, man?

A lot of cocaine was involved in the making of this film.

AC/DC provided the entirety of the all-rock soundtrack, except maybe the cheesy orchestral jabs that punctuate the scary bits.

Maximum Overdrive streams on Hulu, Amazon Prime and E-pix.

"Guys, it's OK. He just wanted his machete back."

Do you mortals want to hear about some bullshit?

Every Thursday the 12th, I try to review a Friday the 13th movie. It's been a problematic run because a lot of times, two weeks before the big day, whatever streaming service has the movies drops them, because the last thing they'd want to offer their viewers is movies they want to watch when they want to watch them.

I thought Starz might be different, because it carried the bulk of the series forever, but alas I was wrong.

I wanted to tell you this week about Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter.

It's a good one. It's got Crispin Glover in it as a geek who can't get laid, and Corey Feldman as Tommy, a young boy who keeps spying on the older kids while they're skinny dipping and having sex. More like Peeping Tommy.

And of course two weeks ago Starz dropped the whole franchise...

Except for one film.

We just have to make do and skip ahead a few chapters.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Jason X.

James Isaac directed this often maligned 2001 entry in the franchise.

A lot of Jason fans think this one is dumb, which I find odd because the series was at least five films past its prime by the time Jason X came out. How many times in a row can you tell the same story?

What distinguishes this one and no doubt fuels the ire of so many fans is it couldn't take place much further from good ole Camp Blood. Jason goes to space.

As the movie opens Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is hanging in chains at the Crystal Lake Research Facility, waiting to be cryogenically frozen, but then David Cronenberg shows up with a bunch of green berets and says he's there to transfer him to another lab because his proven ability to regenerate damaged tissue is too important to stick in the freezer and think about later.

Rowan (Alexa Doig), who is in charge of the cryostasis, tells Cronenberg this is a bad idea and is immediately proved right because Jason has already escaped from his chains and killed a security guard. He proceeds to kill all the green berets. Rowan fights Jason into the freezer, but he stabs her through the door, triggering an automated lockdown and the two are frozen for 500 years.

In that time, the earth became uninhabitable and humans fled for another planet. Still, college students from Earth 2 come back from time to time for archaeological studies. One such class finds Jason and Rowan and decides to take them on board their ship.

Jason is so lethal he cuts one kid's arm off just falling out of the freezer.  Luckily for the dreadlocked, stoner doofus Azrael (Dov Tiefenbach) nanotechnology is advanced enough by then to regenerate him a new arm once he's back on board the ship. This technology helps Jason out later on when his head gets blown up and he regenerates looking like a knockoff Terminator.

Also on board the ship is a bevy of midriff-baring space babes, who are just as horny as the kids back at Camp Crystal Lake. Some things never change. Even the android Kay-Em 14 is looking to get some.

Essentially, this movie is just Alien with Jason in the place of the xenomorph. The ridiculous premise allows for more comedic exploration of the killer than a lot of fans might be happy about, but I'd hardly call it a total loss. It's got a couple of my favorite kills -- one involving a vat of liquid nitrogen and the other occuring in a moment of self parody aboard the ship's Star Trek-style holodeck.

Give it a try. It might be as bad as everyone says, but you'll never know unless you take a chance.

Jason X streams on Starz.