"Stinking in the basement is OK if you're reading the right books."

Meth heads, am I right? You ever watch them shop? They twitch like insects as they flitter about from one shelf to the next, every product a magic bauble that must be scrutinized carefully and purchased at once. The clerk, keeping watch over this frenzied spree, anticipates a respite as they approach the counter with arms full of impulse items, when suddenly the meth heads see a rack of butane lighters, and have to click all of them five to eight times in a desperate search for "the good one.'

Can you imagine what a meth head would do with a few million dollars in a warehouse full of film-making gear?

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Evil Within.

I can't say for certain whether oil heir Andrew Getty ever visited such a warehouse, but he did die in 2015 with toxic levels of methamphetamine in his system after having spent $4 million to $6 million on making this damn scary movie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it remained unfinished when Getty died, but producer Michael Luceri made the final edits to get the film released. Plenty of web sites are carrying the story, and they're all practically the same, so let's just talk about the movie.

A mentally retarded man named Dennis (Frederick Koehler) has had escalating night terrors about a blue Michael Berryman since he was a child. In a recent dream, Berryman stapled a zipper to Dennis's back, so he can unzip his skin and try to crawl inside it, sorta like in Freddy's Revenge. In fact, there are a lot of elements of classic horror films in play here. While it's a unique story, there are elements reminiscent of Hellraiser and a Nightmare on Elm Street in it, with maybe a dash of dialogue from The Exorcist, and topped off with a little homage to Psycho.

Dennis's brother John (Sean Patrick Flanery) is his caretaker. John puts up an antique mirror in Dennis's room one day. Dennis hates it and throws a fit, until his reflection starts talking to him. Dennis and his reflection have long conversations and one day the reflection suggests that if he wants to be smarter, he needs to kill a cat, starting Dennis down the path of serial murder.

Trippy, disturbing and intense, The Evil Within is a hidden gem that's worth watching a couple times to see all the stuff you didn't notice the first time. It streams on Amazon Prime.

"I will not be threatened by a walking meat loaf."

I stand corrected. You can't just keep pig's blood in a cooler in the trunk of your car for a couple nights. It will clot. To keep it from clotting you have to keep it super-cold, and perhaps add an anti-coagulant. I'm sorry I just took Stephen King's word for it, and am thankful for those readers who've played with enough blood to know better. I hope all you teens and guys in their 20s who have skeezy moustaches and drive muscle cars get this in time to adjust your prom plans accordingly. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is An American Werewolf in London.

This 1981 horror/comedy by John Landis is about two young American bros backpacking across Europe. David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) stop into a pub called The Slaughtered Lamb one night to get out of the cold Northern England countryside. Their reception is only slightly less chilly, and just as one of the regulars lightens the mood with a mildly racist joke, Jack has to screw it up by asking why they have a five-pointed star painted on the wall. David and Jack decide to leave, taking with them nothing but a little advice to beware the full moon and stay off the moors. They screw that up. Jack gets killed and David winds up in a coma.

While still in the hospital, Jack's shredded corpse visits David and warns him that he is now a werewolf, while Jack is undead and will have no rest until the werewolf line is severed. He asks David to kill himself. 

Naturally, David declines. He gets out of the hospital and moves in temporarily with his hot nurse Alex (Jenny Agutter).

Sounds pretty good, right? Even if David is a werewolf, that just means once a month he develops an unquenchable bloodlust, kills a few people and wakes up naked and disoriented with no memory of the previous night's maulings. What's so bad about that?

Well, first and funniest, the people you kill start following you around telling you to kill yourself. Secondly, animals don't like you any more. Thirdly, wolfing out hurts like hell, and you know it's coming, so there's a lot of pacing around listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival beforehand.

This movie strikes a great balance between the comedy and the horror. The characters are funny and relatable, but when it's time to deliver the scare, it doesn't hold back. The transformation is one of the best that's ever been done, and cinched special effects man Rick Baker an Academy Award for best makeup.

An American Werewolf in London streams on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

"I can see your dirty pillows. Everyone will."

Faithless mortals, Old Scratch has a favor to ask of you.

You see, the movie I want to tell you about is based on a Stephen King book. It's actually one of the better adaptations of one his better books. Inevitably, some literate person is going to display their prowess not by actually reading this review, but instead by commenting that the book was better.

Obviously, the book format allows for a more detailed story, in case you wonder things like where Billy Nolan kept two buckets of pig's blood those couple days between butchering the animals and crashing the prom. It's generally taken at face value that reading a book is better for your brain than watching a movie. I've always been of the opinion that you can simply enjoy both.

Here's the favor I'm asking, mortals: contradict these self-righteous people. You don't have to attack them or insult them. Just get under their skin by telling them, "No way. The movie was way better than the book." You can make up reasons if you like -- the dumber, the better. For example, you could say, "The book wasn't even in color." I just want to see what happens. Thanks in advance.

Without any further ado, this week's Thursday Thriller is Carrie.

Brian De Palma directed this 1976 adaptation of King's first novel about a 16-year-old social misfit named Carrie White (Sissy Spacek). Carrie's mom Margaret (Piper Laurie) is such a religious nut she didn't warn her daughter about menstruation, because she thinks the curse of woman is punishment for sin rather than biological fate. When Carrie gets her first period in the shower after gym class, the poor girl thinks she's bleeding to death, and runs screaming to her classmates to help. They respond by pelting her with tampons and chanting, "Plug it up! Plug it up!"

If that's not enough trauma for Carrie, when she gets home from school, Mom locks her in the closet and tells her to pray for forgiveness.

You can probably guess how mom reacts when Carrie tells her that Tommy Ross (William Katt), the most popular boy in school asked her to prom.

Everyone except Tommy is pretty cruel to Carrie the whole movie, and King didn't give her a whole lot of self-esteem or coping mechanisms to deal with it, unless you count telekinesis as a coping mechanism. You know what? Maybe it comes out even.

John Travolta is in it. P.J. Soles from Halloween is in it. Carrie is one of the best films of the 1970s. It streams on Hulu Plus.

And remember, the book wasn't even in color.

"For believing what you do, we confer upon you a rare gift these days -- a martyr's death."

Spring has returned to the northern hemisphere. It's time to do some gardening. It may sound like a chore, but I think once you get out in the sun, get down on your knees and get your hands dirty, you'll find yourself reconnected with nature, your spirit invigorated.

Spirit schmirit, though, right? A bond with the earth is nice and all, but if you're going to put in the time not watching horror movies, you want a bountiful harvest, so I'll give you quick and easy tip.

To ensure your labors bear fruit, all you'll need is some good dirt, good seed and a ritual human sacrifice. Not only will your sacrifice curry favor with the Old Gods, but the nitrogen content in the blood will do wonders for the soil. After you've dispensed with the busy work, you just watch and wait.

Or you can go back inside and watch a movie, and I found one that is perfect for the occasion. It's so good Christopher Lee took the gig for free.

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Wicker Man.

I'm not talking about the 2006 remake with Nicolas Cage. I'm talking about the real one from 1973, the murder mystery directed by Robin Hardy.

Edward Woodward plays Sgt. Howie, a police officer and devout Catholic, who flies to the remote island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a little girl named Rowan Morrison. He gets no help from the locals, not even the child's alleged mother, so he rents a room at the local inn for the night. There he meets the landlord's daughter Willow (Britt Ekland) about whom the bar's patrons sing boistrous, dirty songs and the landlord (Lindsay Kemp) is just fruity enough to be OK with it. After dinner Sgt. Howie takes a walk out to the cemetery where he sees multiple people having sex and a crying nude woman with her legs wrapped around a tombstone. He decides then to go up to his room to sleep, but a naked Willow in the next room keeps him awake by singing him a song of seduction, slapping out a beat on the walls and her own ass.

The next morning Howie visits the schoolhouse, and overhears the lesson about the ritual of the Maypole and its importance as a phallic symbol. If he's not upset enough to discover that he's in the midst of a bunch of penis-worshipers, he figures out they lied when they said Rowan was never in the class. He later finds the child's grave, and has to go see Lord Summerisle (Lee) the island's spiritual leader and justice of the peace for permission to exhume Rowan's body to find out what happened to her. Howie's conversation with Summerisle leads him to the conclusion that the whole island is full of religious nuts who are in on a conspiracy to cover up Rowan's murder.

But really, who's a religious nut? Howie turns livid at the sight of any woman expressing her sexuality, and, as Summerisle points out, believes in the divinity of a man born to a woman who was impregnated by a ghost. Howie tries to leave the island to get reinforcements, only to find his plane has been sabotaged. It's then that he notices the townsfolk are starting to watch him through animal masks. He's stuck on the island for the impending pagan orgy that is May Day, and determined to catch Rowan's killer, even if he has to do it by himself.

This is a weird movie. It's good. It's not really a horror movie so much as a psychological thriller with upbeat musical numbers, clashes of faith, and a parade in which Lee dresses like Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Way better than watching plants grow, The Wicker Man streams on Shudder.

"We can call it an 'atomic high,' then we can charge the kids more money for it."

It's April 20, and things are blazing in Hell, if you get my drift. Devil's lettuce? I'm having the salad. I don't care I got kicked out of Heaven. I'm high enough down below. I'm in the mood to watch something silly, disgusting and cheaply made, something with naked girls and heavy metal hoodlums. If one of the hoodlums could be a guy with breasts and another a girl with a Hitler moustache, that'd be just about perfect.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Class of Nuke 'Em High.

This 1986 horror/comedy by Richard W. Haines and Lloyd Kaufman takes place in Tromaville, the toxic chemical capital of the world. Tromaville High School abuts the nuclear power plant, which has routine maintenance problems. The honor society smoked the marijuana that grows on the plant's property and mutated into a gang of mutants called the Cretins, who start a business selling the irradiated weed at school.

Otherwise good kids Warren (Gil Brenton) and Chrissy (Janelle Brady) try a little of it at a party and wind up having sex for the first time. They both have crazy dreams that night about parts of their bodies swelling up and wriggling, black appendages poke out through their skin.

Chrissy winds up pregnant and barfs up a spiny slug in the slug in the girl's room at school, while Warren develops superhuman strength and burning skin. He kills two Cretins, provoking the wrath of the surviving gang members.

I don't want to give away too much of the story, but by the end the Cretins are riding around the halls of the school on motorcycles, and a really cool monster emerges from its basement.

Loaded up with corny humor and gross-out gags, Class of Nuke 'Em High is the perfect movie to celebrate 4/20. It streams on YouTube.

"Whatever you do, don't fall asleep."

A few years ago, I had a pretty gnarly DVD collection. It filled six rooms. It was the kind of thing some nerd would trade his soul for. In fact, some nerd did trade his soul for it. He wanted every horror movie on DVD, which seemed an odd request considering the emergence of Blu-ray and online streaming, but who am I to turn away a soul, especially since I needed the space for a new yoga studio? I couldn't do downward dog without knocking over the complete Masters of Horror collection with my horns. Besides, in these times of ever-evolving technology, would I get such an offer again?

I gripe sometimes when this title or that aren't streaming anywhere, but I have to admit, having hundreds of movies available at the click of a remote control is dag-gone nifty. Still, I'm a collector by nature, so I use this blog as a way of collecting them. If I've reviewed it, it's the same as having it. That's why when an old classic pops up on one of my channels, I feel the need to pounce on it, even if I've seen it a dozen times already.

This week's Thursday Thriller is A Nightmare on Elm Street.

This 1984 film was written and directed by Wes Craven, acclaimed auteur of The Hills Have Eyes and A Vampire in Brooklyn. It's about a burn victim named Freddy (Robert Englund) who torments teenagers in their dreams. If he kills them in their dreams, they die in real life. A girl named Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) is determined to solve the mystery of why Freddy's killing off her friends and how she can stop him, so she resolves to not sleep, which can be hard on a young person's mind and body.

To this day, Elm Street stands out among slasher films, typically populated by silent, masked brutes who butcher kids in the woods. Not camping is easy. Not sleeping is a little tougher. Freddy's ability to kill in the realm of dreams lends itself to more imaginative deaths, like when Johnny Depp gets sucked into his bed and turned into a geyser of blood. In his ugly sweater, razor-glove and crumpled hat, Freddy is an icon of horror, in part because he can talk, you can see his scarred, blistered face and greasy smile, and you can hear his maniacal laugh. Freddy has something else the other movie killers don't have -- a sense of humor..

This is one of those movies where I have to say, if you haven't seen it, it's time and if you have, it's time to see it again. A Nightmare on Elm Street streams on Netflix.

I'm gonna go catch up on some Z's.

"This isn't what you think it is. Nobody stores cotton candy like this."

Horror fans everywhere lost whatever was left of their fragile little minds last week over a trailer for a movie about a scary clown. I am, of course, talking about Stephen King's It just like everyone else. The internet is abuzz with fans who can't wait and fans who can't understand why Pennywise dresses like a 16th-century Flemish nobleman. I'm straddling both camps on this one.

If I have gained any wisdom in my eternity, let me offer this advice to those who can't wait. Treat every day from now until Sept. 8 as a gift, because on that day, if the movie is bad, you'll have to hear a million times how much better Tim Curry was, and if the movie's good, that the book was better.

Besides, there are other scary clown movies to watch while you wait. For instance, I'm here to tell you about a coulophobic comedy classic.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

It's a great pleasure to finally be reviewing this 1988 film by Stephen Chiodo, because it's been a little hard to keep track of. I wanted to tell you about it during the Great Clown Panic of 2016, but it wasn't available with any of the sites I use. Then, right around Christmas, it was on at least one service, then suddenly disappeared. I'm not letting it get away this time.

Killer Klowns is a parody of 1950s flying saucer movies and thus, the beats of the plot are basically the same. A young couple see a shooting star and decide to go see where it landed. They discover a spaceship with hostile aliens on board and go tell the police, who are skeptical. Before you know it, the aliens have abducted half the town. But these aliens are clowns and they do clowny things. Their ray guns encase their human prey in cocoons of cotton candy. They use vicious balloon doggies to track their game. One uses a shadow puppet of a dinosaur to eat whole bunch of people at once. They never speak, but one of them uses Animal House's John Vernon as a ventriloquist puppet.

Slightly gory, very silly, Killer Klowns from Outer Space offers up cool visuals and a lot of laughs. It streams on Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime.