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

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

Maybe I should be more specific. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week's Thursday Thiller is Zombeavers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Feed her! Feed her!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week's Thursday Thriller is Tokyo Gore Police. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Mist.

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

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

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

The Mist streams on Amazon Prime.

"Your weiner looks like Frankenstein's."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later in the movie some weird stuff happens.

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

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