The Spooktacular Eight # 5: Land Of The Minotaur/The Devil’s Men (1976)

While Greek mythology is arguably the most overrepresented in media (followed closely by Norse mythology as one of the many “free idea buckets”), you don’t exactly think of horror when you think of Greek cinema, as the many monsters from that mythos often are more used in videogames.

But of course, there are exceptions, odd relics that surface when you start digging hard and long enough, and Land Of Minoutar does have the allure of starring Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasance, which is enough to have it featured here.

Even if this isn’t the first time the two beloved actors worked together, as The Flesh And The Fiends is from 1960.

And because this is a very obscure film, it has alternate titles, like just “Minotaur” and “The Devil’s Men”, the latter being used for its UK release, and my copy as well.

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Resting Them Bones a Bit

Sorry folks, no review today, it’s been hectic and there has been… well not a “lack” per se of new movie reviews, but a combination of the major releases getting dripfeed now, previous weeks having a lot of releases of italian movies that i just don’t imagine even having any appeal or significance on a international scale (with some exceptions, maybe) and a busy period.

I have some cinema catching up to do, indeed.

I’m almost done watching Squid Game on my own leasure pace, maybe i’ll write my own 2 cents on the matter, not that i really care too much to do so, as people have banged on about it and written about it in an obsessive manner, so i don’t think i can add much (or anything), but we’ll see, if need be i’ll just ramble on about in a non spoilery way.

Tomorrow we’ll get back to it by visiting an old, flesh-less friend…

The Spooktacular Eight #3: Evil Of Dracula (1974)

We gotta have a vampire film in here, but i’m not feeling like talking of Vampyros Lesbos, the old Hammer Dracula films have been done to death, and Yakuza Apocalypse is pretty well known, so let’s compromise and by that i mean feature something not quite from left field, but close enough.

So let’s take a look at a 70s japanese vampire movies clearly going after the western depiction and aesthetic, with Evil Of Dracula, which is actually the last piece of the so called “Bloodthirsty Trilogy” (later rereleased worlwide by Arrow Video) of vampire movies, beginning with Bloodsucking Doll/Vampire Doll, continuing with Lake Of Dracula, then Evil Of Dracula.

I should have done the entire trilogy, i guess that’s what happens when you pick a movie for a random Halloween selection without doing any proper research on it beforehand.

That’ll learn me.

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The Spooktacular Eight #2: The Slayer (1982)

I did promise i would cover more Arrow Video releases.

I didn’t specify or pointed out that they also re-released a lot of slasher flicks, so we’re not talking about the works of Park Chan-wook, Miike or Buttgereit, not today.

Today we’re talking about one of the many cult slashers from the 80s (really, what slasher from that era ISN’T a cult sensation today?), The Slayer, the debut feature from genre director J.S. Cardone, and yet another one for the “video nasty” list, which in retrospect helped these movies gain more notoriety than they ever could wish for, so yeah, good one Thatcher and co.

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Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City trailer dropped, words and reaction ensue, etc.

Yesterday we finally got to see the first trailer for the Resident Evil film reboot, known as Resident Evil Welcome To Raccon City for a while, and people aren’t exactly going gaga for it.

Color me not surprised, since fanbases are notoriously both easy and fickle to please, and years of Paul W.S. Anderson brand of action have clearly rotted some people’s brain overtime, i haven’t seen them all, but i did witness the vomit inducing unwatchable mess of Resident Evil The Final Chapter in theathers, and that already should set the stage for things to go inevitably up. Or at least avoid triggering motion sickness in moviegoers.

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[EXPRESSO] There’s Someone Inside Your House (2021) | Mid Slashing

Netflix is ramping up the horror output in October as expected and as usual i test my luck choosing what actually sit and down watch by using a bit of the old “eeny meeny miny moe” strategy.

There’s no telling if it’s good, just that it’s on Netflix…and will actually remain there since it’s an exclusive.

A fresh release (debuted worlwide on Netflix 3 days ago), There Is Someone Inside Your House is a slasher film written by Henry Garden and directed by Patrick Brice, following Makani Young, a transfer student from Hawaii that made the terrible mistake of moving to Nebraska, it’s no wonder she founds herself caught up in a case of gruesome murders happing in her new town.

Aside from the title being both straightforward and a shoe-in for a weird ass Adult Swim short film, the set up is pretty typical, with a killer going around targeting people apparently connected to a hazing ritual in an american football college team, wearing replicas of the soon to be victims’ faces, the characters are the expected ensemble of teens…. actually acting like teens, the killer exposing the victims’ secrets, the main character and her friends trying to figure out who’s the killer, etc.

Some good gore effects, decent acting, some decent setpieces, but there’s….. not really much to it, and the execution it’s a messy, misguided affari. You do the usually game of watching people die, the likeable teen characters bite the obvious bait,, until it’s actually revealed who is the killer and why, as the narrative loses focus after the first act and kinda meanders about the usual throdden path without nteresting things happening. Even the reveal of the killer’s identity is a doozy.

It’s not BAD, it’s just…. fairly forgettable, kinda throwaway average slasher fare.

[EXPRESSO] Escape Room 2: Tournament Of Champions (2021) | Sequel Gauntlet

Why i’m even reviewing this one, since it already released here months ago? It’s because it was so scarcely distributed that just NOW it hit theathers in my region, i mean, it’s not like it reviewed well at all, and clearly even distributors didn’t gave much of a toss about the sequel to “non-horror PG Saw” .

I didn’t expect i would actually get another chance to see it in theathers.

I did enjoy the first Escape Room for what it was, a non-horror version of Saw made more for a teen audience, it was pretty obvious what they were going after, if the pandemic didn’t happen i’d figure we would already be at Escape Room 3, as this one was greenlit in hope to milk sequels emulating Saw and other popular horror series… while sidestepping the “horror” label.

Frankly i’m not even sure this series will even be able to count to three, more due to relatively bad timing and diminishing box office returns, as this one ends with an even more direct cliffhanger.

Whatever, is the movie itself any good? Not really, and not entirely due to the usual case of diminishing returns, as this one really doesn’t care about any kind of crescendo or building up to anything, just being a rollercoaster ride of deadly escape rooms scenarios, from beginning to end.

The upside it’s that the plot moves really fast, the “trap scenarios” are actually entertaining, varied, quite fun, but everything else surrounding them is as stock and predictable as ever, as the big brain characters manage to somehow still don’t see the obvious “twists” coming, despite them of all people should know better. They don’t.

It’s far from boring, but it just comes off as a worse version of the first movie…….. not quite ideal for a sequel.

The Spooktacular Eight #1: Doom Annihilation (2019)

Ah, yes, the newer Doom movie adaptation, one that basically came out direct to video 2 years ago, to the sound of not much fanfare and people claiming it killed their mum in cold blood it was so bad, so terrible.

Clearly these people don’t know any better, because i was surprised to finally come around, unwrap my Blu Ray copy i got on the cheap last year, and seeing it was actually not that bad, at all, far from the disaster people claim it is.

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[EXPRESSO] Intrusion (2021) | Expected Unexpected Invasion

More Netflix perusing, so far it’s often a 40-50 % chance of getting some good, at least in my attempts, so whatever, let’s see this new exclusive Netflix horror thriller about home invasion, simply called Intrusion, which i find to be a bit too simple and descriptive, but whatever.

Premise is also fairly straightforward, about a couple moving into their dream house only to have an attempt home invasion, leading the wife to search for answers and find out that what happened is only the beginning of more creepy things to come.

Intrusion has definitely some ambition, as it tries to nest surprises and twists into what initially seem a set up for a home invasion thriller, since the intrusion itself happens very early and the bulk of the movie is about the wife eventually learning more than she bargained about his architect husband and his secrets.

Problem is, it’s too committed to try and thwart your expectations, to avoid becoming predictable and surprise you, even going as far as trying to make an anti-climax…. problem is even that isn’t very convincing, as there’s half a hour of movie left, where the movie eventually goes into what you expected to it go from halfway through, as not to completely waste the long build up, so the script kinda sabotages itself in a quest to avoid being predictable, making the characters and the pacing worse in a transparent attempt to pull the wool over our eyes.

I feel bad because there’s definitely effort put into the movie, decent atmosphere and acting, but it focuses too much in trying to be not predictable at the expense of pretty much everything else, while ultimately being fairly easy to read and see where its going (and goes), making for a predictable, overall middling result.

Cobra Against Ninja (1987) [REVIEW] | Thai May Cry

Time to crush your flimsy hopes right away: sadly we don’t have ninja fighting a giant king cobra snake (or a giant James Latta), nor we get stock footage of snakes, the movie just has a guy that names himself “Cobra”, proper christian name as thai dudes called “Chester” and “Raymond”.

Why does he want to go against the ninja (♫ he will fight the battle to win ♫) ? The ninja of course being Ninja Master – read notes – Gordon (even though Cobra is also a ninja), this time also known as the “Red Champion”, despite his jumpsuit being red AND yellow for this specific movie.

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