The Spooktacular Eight #23: Mutant Girls Squad (2010)

I planned to review Blood Friends for this year’s Spooktacular Eight, after finally seeing and reviewing Vlad Love earlier this year, but since i can’t manage to find some actual english subtitles for the thing and time is a-ticking, instead of a Mamoru Oshii film we’ll feature a Noburo Iguchi one, with Mutant Girls Squad.

Which is also co-directed by fellow gore-tastic filmmaker Yoshihiro Noshimura (Tokyo Gore Police, Helldriver, Vampire Girl VS Frankenstein Girl) but also Tak Sakaguchi, better known as an actor in many films, like Versus, Godzilla Final Wars, the Azumi films, and even some of the aforementioned Iguchi-Noshimura gore flicks, but he also directed a live action Otokojuku film adaptation and Yoroi: Samurai Zombie.

Here they direct a chapter of the three the movie is divided in, and you can tell which one did, definitely if you have previous experience with their works.

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[EXPRESSO] Halloween: Match Made In Horror iOS | Realtor Squallor

One day, i get an email of recommended apps from the Apple algorhythm… and among the endless anime gacha games, i saw his face. Or his mask, in this case, as the app icon for something called Halloween: Match Made In Horror.

I shouldn’t be surprised, since we even got a match-3 puzzle game to promote Godzilla 2014 and there’s even shit like WWE Champions, but still, i was stunned by the creative entropy on display, ensnared by the utter audacity of it all i did end up downloading, playing it more than necessary and making this review, because if i have to know this is a thing, now you have too.

And no, it’s was not meant to advertise the David Gordon Green legacy sequel to Halloween (which would become a pointless trilogy), it’s just based around the first movie, and beyond the Halloween licensed skin, it’s just another match-3 puzzle game, a shitty free-to-play one too, with the semblance of progression provided by spending the stars collected by finishing levels on renovating the various houses seen in the film, like the Stroude house, because when i think Michael Myers i think of the cut-throat world of real estate.

Just the more barebones generic and non-descript viable product you can squeeze out of your bumcheeks, with some of the more desperate window dressing i’ve ever seen, and it look like ass in very conceivable way, even still images of the franchise characters look like they were sculpted out of expired bootleg butter, and the “animated” cutscenes that either are too brief to make any sense, try to recreate various shots from the 1975 film, or some weird meta shit like the one where we get the POV of someone playing this very game and then briefly sees Michael Myers.

[EXPRESSO] Smile 2 (2024) | Aphex Twin

Smile was a surprise release in many regards, but i guess we couldn’t leave it alone as a single good horror film, hence there’s a “sequel”, quotations because after seeing the trailer i figured this was more of a loose continuation than anything else.

While is true that the plot basically doesn’t really require to have seen Smile to be followed, it does actually pick up after its ending, with a police officer trying to pass on the curse on a couple of criminals, somehow managing that only to try escaping and getting torn apart by a car that smashes over him. Later on, in NY, we follow popstar Skye Riley preparing her comeback tour, after struggling with drug abuse and surviving a car crash that killed her boyfriend, a famous actor.

While she is helped by her mother, manager and assistant, Riley sneak out to buy vicodin for her crippling back pain from a dealer that begins to sport a vicious smile, and then kills himself before her, passing on the curse…

The first Smile worked so well in spite of everything sounding like it shouldn’t, committing to the idea and making for quite the good film that managed to walk the fine line between the silly and the freaky, and this one is arguably another surprise, as it does know the novelty factor of the “Richard D. James” face is gone, so it upstages the first in gore, jumpscares, plot, spectacle, freaky visuals, special effects, arguably even in terms of main character, with Naomi Scott being great as the manic, guilt ridden popstar with everything to lose from even the smallest fuck up on her way to reclaim her career.

It’s a rare case of a sequel being on par with the first good entry, arguably even better.

The Spooktacular Eight #22: Wendigo (2001)

At the turn of the millennium, found footage horror was born and while it’s often a very divisive subgenre nowadays (as big budget companies co-opted it since it lowered the already low costs for horror films), it can’t be denied The Blair Witch resparked interest in urban legends, the lore of the suburbs or previously forgotten folklore myths, which affected even films not made in what now we call “found footage” or “mockumentary”.

This is i guess was the overall unspoken mood of the era, even though in this case director and writer Larry Ferdessen (1997’s Habit, the Until Dawn videogames, The Last Winter, Depraved) set out more to channel the 30s classic horror monster films (which the director himself confirmed are a great influence on his works) but in modern arthouse fashion, with a psychological horror thriller named after the mythical monster figure of Native American/First Nation folklore (Algonquian one, to be precise), of the titular Wendigo.

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[EXPRESSO] Megalopolis (2024) | Golden Experience Requiem

Megalopolis it’s Francis Ford Coppola doing a more modern take on Metropolis, basically, just with the city of the future being a New York-Imperial Rome hybrid, and the framing of “a fable by Francis Ford Coppola” setting the angle right… but that won’t really soften the blow.

The plot sees New Rome, a city split between tradition, embodied by the city mayor Cicero, and innovation, represented by Catalina, a genius architect willing to seek a new better way, with the crux of the conflict incarnated by Cicero’s daugher, Julia, whom falls in love with Catalina.

Aside from the opening really making you feel like you tuned into the movie 1 hour in (which is a costant all throughout, btw), and the implication of Adam Driver’s character having a time-stopping Stand power of sorts…the movie is a mess, it’s a long, sprawling, unwieldy mess of scattered plotlines (some never resolved by the end), trippy imagery, pretense of being profound when its all so utterly blunt it’s almost comical, and even when you do where the hell is going, it’s hard to care, with too many characters (though that would imply “characterization”), the starfilled cast having no chemistry, bad dialogues, and the direction that makes it all feel like they’re rehearsing for when they gonna actually shoot the scene… doesn’t help.

It’s not boring, at the very least, but it’s an hilarious damning moment when the best scene of a Francis Ford Coppola film is John Voight as an old gajillionaire shooting Shia Labeuf in the ass with a bow. Twice.

It’s a weird, messy, disjointed vision that becomes outright bizzarre with these Hollywood high production values and quality cinematography, so in a way, it’s a fascinating bad movie from a legendary director, the kind that don’t come around so often anymore.

The Spooktacular Eight #21: The Awful Doctor Orloff (1962)

Ah, good ol’ Jess Franco, the master of lesbian vampire action, the exploitation master from Spain that both film dozens of softcore trash but also worked with Christopher Lee as either a vampire or the old villian Fu Manchu, that deals in adaptations of Marquis De Sade but also completed the previously (and unfamously) unfinished Orson Welles version of Don Quixote.

I really can’t do him justice, but i did pick one of the films from before he really declined and put out some really atrocious stuff, like the final entries in the Fu Manchu series (the Castle Of Fu Manchu being the subject of a popular MST3K episode ), shit like Dracula VS Frankenstein, or even pseudosequels that cannibalizzed on Franco own’s Dr. Orloff series with reused stock footage to make in name only adaptations of Poe works, in particular his The Revenge in The House Of Usher, which is a mess and a half since it has 3 different cuts (often having different titles as well). 2 of which reuse even more footage from this 1962 Dr. Orloff film that started the series.

But let’s pretend we do not yet know of this, and let’s talk plot.

Which is not quite original, as it’s an amalgamation of Frankenstein and french classic Eyes Without A Face (especially the latter), as the titular Dr. Orloff attracts young women to his castle so he can harvest her skin with the help of a disfigured, blind assistant/henchman named Morpho (a Mighty Monarch approved name indeed).

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[EXPRESSO] My Hero Academia: You’Re Next (2024) | Mafia Might

Ok, that was fast, i didn’t heard any marketing for this new My Hero Academia film, but i guess its hitting theathers internationally and simultaneously this 10^th of October onwards (after its Japanese premiere in early August), so let’s go!

I wasn’t exactly too excited about this one, as this is the 4^th MHA movie, the premise screams of “taking time” until the TV series catches up, but then again the manga actually concluded and this released in Japan precisely close to the last chapter’s publication, which means this is the last MHA film, ever, and is set chronologically at the start of Season 7 of the anime.

This time we have Dark Might, an impostor italian mafioso willing to forcefully “carry on All Might’s will” by replacing him, using his mysterious powers and his Quirk enabled mafia goons to engulf anyone into his giant flying fortress, including the 1A students and a lone assassin, Giulio….

Minor villains are forgettable, and even the better of the movie’ original characters, Giulio, even he is a bundle of cliches, and while Dark Might as the main villain has some potential, the script never explores any potential themes that would naturally come with the “Dark Might” concept or character, so he ends up being… basically a less interesting Gild Tesoro from One Piece Film Gold while also doing the “villain posing as the superhero” sthick, and yet he’s not the worse of these sadly lukewarm MHA movie villains.

Animation is pretty good and more consistent than in WHM, and let’s be clear, MHA You’re Next it’s far from bad, it’s quite enjoyable, it’s not even the worst one of the films, heck, it might arguably be the second best, it’s decent overall, but its disappointing for the final film bout of the series.

The Spooktacular Eight #20: Satan’s Blade (1984)

This is not any blade, old boring knife or fancy hookbill, this is Lucifer’s very own slashing “Miracle Blade as seen on TV” apparel, it’s the SATAN’S BLADE ©.

Once again a pick from my collection of Arrow Video releases of obscure slashers, this one being kinda unassuming, solid title aside, and one i’ve never heard before AV rereleased it with their usual quality restoration, sleek new cover artwork and bundle of extra contents.

Then again, it’s no surprise this is primo “never heard of the fucking thing” material for (re)discovery, as it comes with one of the classic production woes common to smaller/low budget films of the era, as in it was shot in 1980 at Big Bear, California, but wasn’t released until 1984.

So more regional US low budget slasher horror, which is almost guaranteed when digging deep in the layers of obscure and “actually obscure” slashers from the genre golden age.

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The Spooktacular Eight #19: Dead Trigger (2017)

Generic zombie movie with Dolph Lungren?

What if it’s THAT and also a live action adaptation of a videogame you’ve never heard of?

YAY.

Even YAY-ier when the videogame is a generic as hell mobile free-to-play smarthphone FPS, generic but popular enough to get a sequel… and a live action film adaptation.

There is a bit of wit in the premise as yes, there’s the usual zombie apocalypse, but it leads to the government making a videogame about zombies in order to recruit the top-players for real life zombie massacring military exploits, as they need to cut through the undead hordes to reach some scientists that may have found a cure for the zombie virus.

So it’s kinda, a bit, kinda like Ender’s Game, but way stupider, and also not that original as i’m pretty sure there’s at least another movie made earlier, i think just called Hunting Grounds (my UK DVD release has it retitled as Zombie Hunters”), with the same “recruiting the gamers for fighting the supernatural menace”, though without embarassing Twitch channels.

I still have to got around to that so i can’t say for sure but then again need i recall the 2009 film called “Gamer”? Let’s just say the Dead Trigger film it’s not entirely original, regardless of how you slice it, who cares, i doubt many even knew Dead Trigger was originally a game to begin with.

And the “let’s recruit people that play VR games” angle really isn’t used in any interesting or significant way, only to get some stereotypes and random ass characters into the suicide squad in question, it becomes quickly showed aside because the movie it’s more interested in being an off brand Resident Evil wanna-be, and just incredibly generic as hell in all regards for a zombie flick.

Hordes of zombies that are not silent somehow managing to sneak up from nowhere to the back of an elite trained soldier when the script wants to kill him off (or bite him so we can have him sacrifice himself by being blown up with the zombies or some self-sacrifice shit)? Check.

Dumbass, stupid and flavorless characters? The inevitable, seen coming from miles away double-cross at the hand of the evil CEO of the multicorporation set on betraying everyone and sell the potential cure for the virus? A super-mutant fruit of the very same company’s experiments?

For a bonus round, there’s also a priest that believes the undead are a punishment from God, just to completely fill the cliches bingo card, the cornucopia of stock conflicts, betrayals and predictable plot twist that you can easily all imagine and easily guess with a high rate of success.

Acting is mediocre, with even the top named actors in it just doing the bare average, at best, the other ones not so much, but at times the special effects, even some of the gore is quite decent, honestly it’s not a bad production but most of the time it’s hard to forget you’re watching basically a lesser version in every regard of Paul. W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil live action films.

those weren’t really good movies either, but this is the bootleg version, the one with less money, lesser actors, lesser anything, really, making Dead Trigger the subpar movie you’d expect it to be, just subpar, not atrocious but one i would skip still, since it’s so tiresome in its predictability too.

Hilariosly though it ends with a cliffhanger ending, like yeah, mate, it’s a miracle this one got made, Dead Trigger 2 with Jason Statham isn’t gonna happen, not unless you get a lot more money on the project or if by the time it happens Staham won’t be senile, bored and/or strapped for cash enough.

[EXPRESSO] Never Let Go (2024) | Always sometimes monsters

After the flood crocodile horror bout of Crawl, Alexandre Aja returns with a new horror thriller, Never Let Go, a supernatural tale with a folkish horror bent that feels a little Bird Box and a bit of The Watchers, as it tells the tale of a family of three living deep in the woods, with the mother and children leaving the safe haven of their blessed home only with a rope tying them to the house, so that “the evil can’t get them”, as the mother -often seeing monstruous creatures lurking upon them – tells her sons.

As we learn more of the daily rituals and customs the family performs in order to survive deep in the woods, we start to wonder if this is just the extreme result of the mother being mentally ill or hallucinating after a trauma, alongside the younger brother, whom once stayed outside the house ropeless and never felt or saw the “evil”.

And it would have benefitted the movie if continued the mystery or opted for a different resolution, because the drama is intriguing, you wanna see where exactly this situation can lead as it becomes clearer this is most certainly the horrible and unwanted outcome borne out of motherly love and schizophrenic degrade.. but then in the final act the script retires to the obvious and expected “countertwist” we have seen coming and wished it didn’t do, kinda writing itself into a corner where it either that or feeling like the movie is “throwing away” its entire set up.

It’s a shame because the final act basically makes Never Let Go slide from “quite good” to “quite decent”, the performances and direction are great but the final nosediving into cliched territory, with a banal ending too… it’s quite frustrating.

Still worth checking out.