The Spooktacular Eight #37: Leptirica (1973)

I’d say we digged a bit deeper than usual this time around, unless you daily dine your eyes on hyper-obscure 70s Yugoslavian vampire films….which you don’t.

Then again most likely you couldn’t, because outside of the Balkans, this movie had been literally uknown for years, and would have still been if it wasn’t for the internet, because if it wasn’t for some people finding, subtitling and sharing it around since 2012, i won’t be even here able to be talking about such an obscure piece of media never meant to leave its country of origin.

Always something peculiar when the movie was made under a nation that doesn’t exist anymore, and when i can claim to actually review a “serbian film”.

Loosely based on a 1880 story called “After Ninety Years” by Milovan Glisic, Leptirica‘s story revolves around the 19th century Serbian village of “Zaroshje” that is plagued by the vampire “Sava Savanovic” who has been systematically killing anyone who takes charge of the flour mill (situated in the woods outside the village). After four millers have been killed the council elders become desperate as food is rapidly running out and the community can’t really survive without the mill.

Meanwhile on the other side of the village a poor young man, Strahinja, is in love with Radojka, the daughter of the local landowner Zivan. After asking Zivan for his daughters hand in marriage and been refused on the grounds of his poverty, Strahinja decides to leave the village, but on the way he is met by members of the village council, who persuade him to take the job of the village miller.

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Hidden Dragon and Crouching Tiger and Sengoku Zombie [MANGA REVIEW] | Warring States Undead (Undead)

Zombies. The horror comfort food, that if an apocalypse actually happened without them, people would somehow make them happen just to not have that Y2K style survival book and mental training for a Walking Dead roleplay go to waste.

After all, we stuck them even in Pride And Prejudice, we had them destroyed by Abraham Lincon, and Sankarea exists to ask questions we shouldn’t really ask.

So of course we were gonna have them mixed with historical fantasy, going basically the Onimusha route but during the Warring States era of Japan (as depicted in popular media like Samurai Warriors more than actual historical drama), specifically reenacting the legendary rivalry between Kenshin Uesugi and Shingen Takeda… in modern day.

Mugen Tenshou: Hidden Dragon and Crouching Tiger and Sengoku Zombie is indeed the manga that dares asks: what if Sengoku era zombie samurais happened today, with a darkness castle emerging out ot nowhere, undead warriors of old, and of course Oda Nobunaga emerges as the Demon King that had been planning this while lying in Hell for centhuries?

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[EXPRESSO] Other Mommy (2026) | Doppel Mutter

Know what, i can’t claim that the trailers for Other Mother were misleading, this indeed the kind of slapdash, jump scare ridden thing you’d expect, boiling down to someone trying to make an entire horror movie about a screenshot of Other Mother from Coraline someone forwaded them.

Bela is a regular kid… well, aside the fact she is friends with an entity that lives in her house and she has come to call “Other Mommy”, because she looks like her actual mother.

The entity has had enough of just being “second banana”, so it manifests in increasingly dangerous fashion trying to sway the girl to her side…

In a way i was surprised because the movie doesn’t play any cheap trick of the “Unsorry Mommy” being just in the child’s imagination or not, this thing is real, tangible and will explode your brain into confetti, and there’s no half the movie predicated on the parents slowly realizing the entity is actually real.

… But that isn’t nearly enough to make this even mediocre, let’s not accept “things do happen” as an actual standard when there’s little to no plot, the characters are paper thin stereotypes, the jumpscares limp, most of the “weird morphing” fees like rejected Backrooms-esque material.

I’ts never proper scary, though it’s hard to even feel any tension because not a single character reacts appropriately to anything that happens, they all just shrugh it all off, regardless.

There’s little to no logic (or depth) to almost anything, and frankly this feel like an untentional “supernatural entity” variation of the Pickle Rick episode.

It’s not boring per sé, nor is it “the worse thing ever”, it’s not, yet at just 93 minutes feels stretched, and it’s also not quite unintentionally hilarious, just a “slightly different than expected” kind of garbage.

The Spooktacular Eight #36: Snoop Dogg House Of Horrors (2006)

I gotta admit, despite everything (and he sure has bought into some questionable shit) i love me seeing some Snoop Dogg bullshitting around, so yes, have him do a ghetto Cryptkeeper presenting and commenting an anthology of short horror stories themed around an American inner-city ‘hood.

So yes, this is basically a Snoop Dogg licensed “Tales From The Hood”, which i discovered only after locking this into the schedule (and i’ve heard it’s pretty dang good), sorry but we’ll make do.

Yeah, there’s not much to say about the presentation, but i was curious when this showed up on Amazon Prime Video and for some reason has an anime-esque style animated prologue… and yes, it’s because it customary for horror anthologies (as this way they also tribute the old horror comics these films often base their material on), but i was also right, because the animated intro and outro are animated by renowned anime studio MADHOUSE.

Kinda funny because this also predates their work on The Boondocks, though these sequences are stylish but they’re not well animated, let’s be honest, most likely as they were done on the extra cheap, which wouldn’t surprise me, since it’s indicative of the production as a whole.

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[EXPRESSO] L’Estranea/The Spiral (2026) | Not My Uzumaki

The latest from italian director Marco Strippoli, after his celebrated La Valle Dei Sorrisi (released worlwide as The Holy Boy), L’Estranea, which translates to The Stranger but is releasing under the international title of The Spiral.

And before you ask, no, it’s got nothing to do with Junji Ito’s Uzumaki/Spiral, this is actually a psychological horror revolving around the fall from grace of a previously wealthy and influent South Italian family.

After years, the mother shows up at her daughter’s house in Rome, trying to explain how all the disgraces the family had to endure where brought about by how, after an accident with the family dog, the mother struck a Faustian deal with a mysterious woman.

But after the first two very, very good chapters, the movie just kinda drops off, instead of exploring further its themes and ideas it just sticks to repeating them, to hold pattern, in a very traditional way that kinda clashes with the ambition of being more akin to a modern psychological horror film.

It’s a shame because the acting is great and direction is so good you almost won’t care…. until the finale, which is both fitting but doesn’t that much going on after all, and while not underwhelming, it franklyit feels like a compromise so we can fish for some Oscars and to be more like an A24 release, to walk an already overtrodden path, despite the intent to also give the movie its own Italian identity being successful.

I will subtract a point because i really respect Strippoli, i do agree it’s one of the new promising authors of Italian horror, so i won’t be handing out pity points to an author that doesn’t need them, since he had already demonstrated he’s capable of even better.

Still worth seeing, absolutely so.

The Spooktacular Eight #35: The Monster Of Piedras Blancas (1959)

The 50s were the new golden age of classic monsters… and a lot of stinkers, cheesy drive-in stuffers, often made to profit off each other.

This is case for the when Universal created a new monster icon, the aquatic Gill Man, in 1954’s Creature From The Black Lagoon, and while it’s not the more revisited of the classic “50 monster pantheon”, it created an enduring depiction of the “fish man” monster.

Riding the success of the 1954 debut film for the Gill Man, Universal pumped out two sequels the following years, to mixed reception, but when you have a successful trilogy, you attract imitators.

This is the tale of its most infamous drive-in knock off, The Monster Of Piedras Blancas.

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[EXPRESSO] Onslaught (2026) | Die Dudermensch

On paper, this should be an easy win, even if it’s a bit weird A24 is distributing what is really a genre offering reminescent of 80s exploitation grindhouse action flicks like The Exterminator.

Onslaught is about Celeste, an US army sniper, whom has defacto retired into a parking lot in the New Mexico desert to deal with her PTSD, complicating her troubled family life.

That is, until a trio of genetically engineered super soldiers, created by a former Nazi scientist, escape from the secret experiment bases they were held in, killing everyone in their path, and eventually moving their systematic massacre to Celeste’s parking lot..

Apparently this is a continuation from Adam Wingard’s 2014 movie Guest, which i didnt’ see, and on its own, Onslaught, despit some stylistical apt choices and some good old school practical gore effects, doesn’t really live up to its own title, in every aspect it lacks the substance, it never displays or conveys the raw fury it promises, nor manages to properly develop some of its ideas.

Maybe it would be easier to accept the movie for what it is instead of what could have been…. if it didn’t deliberately AND aggressively built up the final “onslaught” to be some this thing you need to brace for, and frankly you really don’t, it’s not even that excessive.

Even the literal super soldaten are kinda of a letdown, i liked the idea of these being de facto militarized slasher villains… but that is really as far as it goes.

It’s entertaining, the action is fun, the characters mostly stock but okay, and it’s barely above 90 minutes, so it’s not boring and knows to keep things as long as they need to, but you’d wish the movie didn’t set itself up for disappointment as it did.

[EXPRESSO] Her Private Hell (2026) | Kojima-ing In The Darkness

I don’t think Her Private Hell is a bad film, and i usually like his stuff, i loved The Neon Demon, but it’s a special kind of disappointing, as this feels Refn trying to imitate itself more than anything.

And not doing it that well either, to be brutally honest.

It’s definitely his vision, no mistake, but one that feels like he’s trying to recapture the old spark…and again, coming off as a self-imitation more than anything else.

The premise sees Elle, the daughter of wealthy man, trying to reunite with her stepmother (by shooting a movie in a luxury motel), but warned about a supernatural legendary serial killer, Leatherman, whom appears when the fog permeating this Blade Runner-esque city grows even thicker, its diamond fists shining in the darkness,

She ends up crossing paths with an american GI agent that has lost his daughter to this entity, and is desperately searching for a way to get her back…

Even more than before, it’s all about the vibes, the feel, as the hyperstilization here belies little for the audiences to care about or hold onto, the cinema pastiche of sci-fi, comic book, samurai and giallo cinema, one that does look good in screenshots, but lacks the strenght it had before, so you end up just kinda tolerating more than looking forward to see where it’s all gonna go.

wondering why should even care about anything, since the plot is more of a vague outline than something worth discussing, i’d complain about the characters… if there were any (aside the stepmother), these are ideas of characters, and the movie overall is just lacking much substance – or impact – to back up its pretense and stylization, so you end not even intrigued or curious to know more about this sci-fi world.

Sadly disappointing.

The Spooktacular Eight #33: Spawn (1997)

2004’s live action Devilman, consider yourself spared, as this year (due to recent events contributing to schedule changes) we’re doing instead 1997’s Spawn.

I did got the Blu Ray release by Arrow Video, and it was still in its factory wrap, so time to…. actually visit for the first time, i never saw this in theathers or TV, i was too young back then, my first time seeing Spawn at all was when Soul Calibur II console ports released and the X-Box version got him as the console exclusive guest character.

But it was hard not to hear about in the 2000s as one of the worst comic book films ever, an infamous reputation so widespread and radicated, a stink to it that even The Venture Bros couldn’t resist throwing a jab at it in late 2009-2010, a foul reputation that never really went away.

And just putting this out, i wasn’t aware until i decided to swap this into the 2004 Devilman‘s slot that they’ve been trying to reboot the brand with a new film for decades, and apparently this time around it most likely will happen, we got recent news of the reboot coming along… or maybe it won’t, as the superhero genre is well past his peak in terms of popularity.

I will not claim any responsability over that either way.

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Slotherhouse (2023) [REVIEW] | Slay Queen

While i’m sure i can find more old 80s school themed/adjacent slasher, this September we’re doing something a bit more recent for a change, from a chronological standpoint, by unearthing from my Blu-Ray collection 2023’s Slotherhouse.

And yes, indeed, this is a 10/10 title for you killer animal slasher film.

It really is indeed about a killer sloth, and the house is not any common house, it’s a sorority house, where Emily Young, a college student brings a three-toed sloth from the jungle, thinking it can work as a “house mascot” and hence help her be elected as the sorority’s president.

But of course things go awry as a series of sorority girls is being killed, and all the evidence strongly implicates it’s actually the cute sloth the one doing all the murders…

I’ll be honest, the promo material made it look like it was chomping off the modern “retro 80s trend”, specifically aping Happy Death Day…. but i was mistaken, this isn’t the case, as Slotherhouse – aside taking place in modern times – is oddly not even that much interested in aping other slasher films. Not too specifically, anyway.

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