Jennifer is a private school student who, after being merciless tormented by her classmates, uses her psychokinetic powers to exact revenge. If this sounds similar to Stephen King’s Carrie, which was released two years prior… it is. It’s exactly that movie.

The bullies in Jennifer are a group of snotty prep girls who torment Jennifer because she’s an outsider, what with her southern drawl and all. The leader of the prissy pack is Sandra, the daughter of a senator and a particularly cruel girl who derives great enjoyment from bullying Jennifer when she’s around, and everyone else when she is not. Despite being a less than ideal student, Sandra comes from money, and money buys a lot of favors in this prep school.

Jennifer’s complaints about the bullies to her father Luke fall on deaf ears. Luke’s a crazy old religious zealot after all who believes his daughter was blessed with the ability to talk to, control, and materialize snakes.

(She can.)

Revenge movies don’t work unless the entire audience agrees that the mean kids deserve what’s coming to them, and Jennifer goes out of its way to make sure they won’t sympathize with anyone except Jennifer (and eventually one lone defector, Jane). Sandra and her squad aren’t just cruel to Jennifer. During swim class, Sandra straight up tries to drown her. Later that night, Sandra and her goons hide Jennifer’s clothes up a ladder and take naked pictures of her. In another one of Sandra’s schemes, she kills her own cat and hangs it Jennifer’s school locker in an attempt to frame her. When one of the girls in Sandra’s posse (Jane) starts to fall out of line, she tells her boyfriend to rape her. In the final act of the film, Sandra and her friends kidnap Jennifer, throw her in the trunk of a car and take her to the roof of a parking garage to torment her.

Well, the joke’s on them, because — ha, ha — Jennifer can not only control snakes but has the power to materialize them out of thin air. In a manic and psychedelic sequence, Jennifer summons a multitude of venomous snakes that proceed to bite and strangle every last one of those prep school jerks. I didn’t go into Jennifer thinking I would be rooting for poisonous snakes to kill a bunch of teenagers, but that’s where I found myself. The following day when the headmaster tries to pin the whole thing on Jennifer, MORE SNAKES.

Sometimes when a horror movie ends, I like to imagine what the following day might be like. Even the dullest detective is going to be asking how a dozen people in two different locations suffered snake bites, and if the school thought they were getting pressure from a senator before, wait until someone calls to tell him his daughter wrecked her car, burned to death, and was strangled by a snake all at the same time. The odds of any of those things happening seem slim; all three happening simultaneously seem astronomical.

It’s difficult to find a deeper meaning in this film. Luke, Jennifer’s crazy old father, knew Jennifer had the power all along. The one teacher who stuck up for Jennifer is run off. At least a dozen people have fresh holes in their necks. If Jennifer has any lesson at all, it’s beware of who you pick on, because they might be a crazy psychokinetic who can create and control snakes.

After Robert Kraft is appointed as the chairman of a committee that manages the local cemetery, he accidentally places two black pins (used to denote a purchased grave has been “filled”) on a large map of the cemetery’s plots. Hours later, Kraft learns that the two people whos plots he placed pins on died in an automobile accident. In an attempt to prove the deaths were a coincidence, another black pin is placed marking another purchased plot. Within 24 hours, that person has also died. As Kraft struggles to determine whether the deadly power lies in his hands, the pins, or the map itself, the board of directors ask him to place black pins on all their reserved plots on the map. They soon wish they hadn’t.

Convinced the deaths have a more earthly explanation, the local police department asks Kraft to place a black pin on a man’s plot who is known to be out of the country. The following day when a telegram arrives announcing the man’s death, the mystery deepens as Kraft blames himself for the deaths.

While I Bury the Living was billed as a horror film, it’s really a murder mystery that itself feels like an episode of the Twilight Zone. To maintain suspense viewers don’t actually see any of the deaths and so there aren’t any special effects to speak of, save for the map itself which appears to grow, wobble, and glow at different times throughout the film.

With roughly half a dozen major characters to choose from, what might have fooled audiences 60+ years ago is pretty obvious today. Still, the director did a good job of keeping the audience guessing as to who (or what) is behind the murders up until the film’s climax. With a run time of 77 minutes, most the fat has been already been trimmed, save for an unimportant side plot involving Kraft and his fiancé. Fans of gore can safely skip this one, but anyone looking for a morbid mystery might enjoy its twisty plot.

Hell High rode in on the tail end of the 80s slasher film wave and got lumped in with them, although it’s really more of a revenge flick. The film opens with a six-year-old child causing the death of two horny hooligans. One of the hooligans was attempting to date rape the other which makes it tough to feel too sorry when he is killed moments later, a trend that runs throughout the film.

After an eighteen year jump, we arrive in modern times. The little girl, Brooke Storm, is revealed to be a high school teacher, still occasionally suffering from the traumatic childhood event. Several of her students are creeps who like to peer into people’s homes, pull mean-spirited pranks, and display a general disdain for authority. The teens continue to push things too far (one of them molests the teacher in bed after she accidentally takes one too many Quaaludes) until the teacher snaps and turns on them. Very quickly, the hunters become the hunted.

The first hour of the film is a slow burn that builds up to the final twenty minutes. The kids don’t know their teacher is after them until it’s too late. The teens are separated in a ways that make sense, which make them — or at least most of them — easy pickings. The film wraps things up in a satisfying way; there’s a twist that mostly works, but isn’t strong enough to make it a true classic.

The film’s biggest problem isn’t the special effects or back-loaded action; it’s that there’s nobody viewers can relate to or root for. The film’s conflict lies between a group of despicable teens and a murderous, psychotic teacher. Which one’s the good guy?

Fans of modern horror may find the first two thirds of the film too slowly paced, but the third act makes up for it. Worth a watch if only as a reminder that students should be nice to their teachers.

In Jaws, it took an entire town — and ultimately, three men — to bring down a great white shark. In Ghost Shark, two rednecks manage to drop one with a 357 Magnum, a crossbow, a grenade, and a bottle of hot sauce. Unlike Jaws, viewers of Ghost Shark won’t have to wait for the sequel for the shark to return. In fact, the shark has already returned from the grave and claimed its first victim before the opening credits.

With a new thirst for blood, Ghost Shark begins feasting in Smallport. Unlike Jaws, it turns out ghost sharks can pretty much materialize wherever there’s water, including, but not limited to: swimming pools, Slip and Slides, fire hydrants, car washes, rain puddles, and in one very unfortunate incident, inside a guy who just happened to be drinking a glass of water.

The only person is town who seems to know what’s going on is Finch, the mysterious lighthouse keeper played by Richard “Bull from Night Court” Moll. It seems there’s a cave near the lighthouse that works a little bit like Pet Sematary, and unfortunately that’s where the great white’s corpse ended up. It also happens to be where Finch murdered his wife, but that’s another story. While the adults in the film run around disbelieving everything they’re told, it’s the kids who formulate and execute the winning plan.

The acting in Ghost Shark isn’t terrible as far as SyFy movies go, but any lack in urgency by the largely teenage cast is made up for by Moll, who yells and slams his fists down enough for everyone. For the most part the film is played seriously, although a few lines delivered a genuine chuckle. (“We don’t need to chum. We are the chum!”)

While the movie’s premise is obviously ridiculous, it’s played pretty much straight throughout the film. The special effects are obvious CGI but surprisingly good, and the kills, and there are many, are better than you would expect from cable fodder. There aren’t any huge plot holes, and it keeps things moving along. It’s no Jaws and it’s not trying to be, but it is a fun 90 minute romp with a few jumps and a few laughs hidden in the belly of the beast.

Before I talk about Frankenstein 1970, let me talk about what Frankenstein 1970 is not. For starters, Frankenstein 1970 was not released in 1970; it was made in 1958. And the film doesn’t appear to actually take place in 1970. The sets look like they’re leftover from a haunted house Three Stooges film. Finally, despite starring Boris Karloff, Frankenstein 1970 doesn’t feature anything that looks like Frankenstein’s monster.

It does, however, feature a mummy with a bucket on its head.

Frankenstein 1970 is a sequel to the original Frankenstein of sorts, although the setup is so similar to the original that it could almost be considered a reboot. Baron Frankenstein (Karloff), the last living relative of Dr. Frankenstein, is determined to follow in his family’s footsteps and animate the dead. Unfortunately castle living is expensive, and although he has the vision, he’s missing the funds. Lucky for him, a documentary film crew interested in the Frankenstein legacy arrives and agrees, in exchange for rights to film at the castle, to provide Baron Frankenstein with enough money to buy his own atomic reactor — the irony being that as the film crew wanders around filming the castle, Baron von Frankenstein is in the basement working on his experiment.

Baron, like his ancestor, successfully animates his creation, but accidentally drops the only pair of eyeballs he has on hand. Because of this, his creation spends much of the movie stumbling around with a bucket over his head. Don’t worry; the monster eventually obtains a pair of eyeballs the hard way.

If I had to guess, I’d say the director was banking on two names (Frankenstein and Boris Karloff) to sell this film, and shooting in black and white must have been an attempt to draw comparisons to the original. Unfortunately, Karloff plays Frankenstein (Baron, not the monster) a little too lightly. His performance is all over the place, and his menacing presence as the monster is sorely missed here (a guy hidden by bandages and a bucket is no replacement). Perhaps the most confusing part of the film is Frankenstein’s motivation. We never learn why he wants to animate a corpse, or what his plans are if he succeeds.

Between the atomic reactor and a lethal radiation cloud, Frankenstein 1970 is unmistakably a film of the 1950s, when such topics were popular. As a whole the film isn’t terrible and there are some interesting ideas, even if they aren’t fully fleshed out. That being said, if you haven’t watched the original in a while, watch that instead.

Evil Toons opens as a four-woman cleaning crew is dropped off at suburban home for a weekend-long deep cleaning engagement. The house was the site of multiple murders and is rumored to be haunted, but the women don’t mind staying there alone and unarmed because I don’t know why. Should you have any doubts as to what kind of cleaning crew this is, the four actresses are former adult film star and December 1982 Penthouse Pet of the Month Monique Gabrielle, AVN Hall of Fame member Madison Stone, fellow AVN Hall of Fame member and former Essex and Vivid film star Barbara Dare (billed here as Stacey Nix), and Suzanne Ager, whose single line biography reads “ex-girlfriend of director Fred Olen Ray.”

Shortly after the crew settles in (fighting the urge to immediately change into lingerie), a strange old man (played by strange old man David Carradine) drops off a copy of the Necronomicon. Later that evening (after one of the girls shows the others her sweet strip tease moves, as women often do), one of the ladies decides to read aloud from the ancient book (never a good idea) and ends up summoning a demon right out of the book. The demon turns out to be a cartoon wolf that seems too comical to be deadly, but that turns out not to be the case. And when I say “cartoon,” I’m being literal — this is a two-dimensional, hand drawn cartoon wolf. The wolf has his way with one of the women before killing and possessing her, who in turn attempts to kill all of the other girls, because that’s just what adult film stars who have been possessed by Satanic cartoon wolves do.

The cast (rounded out by Arte Johnson and Dick Miller) never take the material too seriously, and neither should viewers. The actors frequently call out horror movie tropes and make self-aware jokes to the audience. Aside from less than 30 seconds worth of hand-drawn animation, the film’s most expensive prop was a pair of plastic fangs (I’m guessing the ladies brought their own wardrobe). Parts of the film made me uncomfortable (the animated wolf is a little rapey, and David Carradine hanging himself was a bit on the nose), but for the most part this is horror comedy by adults for adults.

Directed by Fred Olen Ray, the man who brought you Beverly Hills Vamp, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Bad Girls from Mars, and Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold.

When I began watching Deadly Friend, I wasn’t expecting to see Matthew Labyorteaux (Little House on the Prairie), Kristy Swanson, or Anne Ramsey. I wasn’t expecting to discover a film directed by Wes Craven. I wasn’t expecting a robot named BB, a cross between Johnny 5 from Short Circuit and the robots from Chopping Mall, to be voiced by Charles “Roger Rabbit” Fleischer. Most of all, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this film as much as I did.

As Deadly Friend opens we see Paul (a teenage genius) and his mother relocating to a college town. Paul is the creator of BB, a robot with a nearly human capability to learn. Shortly after moving in, Paul meets another boy his age (Tom) and his next door neighbor, Samantha, who lives with her abusive father.

BB is cute, but there are hints he’s not as innocent as his cute face would seem. Early on we witness BB nearly kill a potential purse snatcher, and dispose of a neighborhood bully with a metallic pincher to the crotch. Unfortunately while trying to retrieve an errant basketball, BB turns out to be no match for cranky Anne Ramsey’s shotgun. Bye bye, BB.

BB isn’t the only one being disassembled. After a night of drinking, Sam’s father hits her with a right cross that sends her tumbling down a flight of stairs and headfirst into a wall below, leaving her braindead. Before the hospital has a chance to pull the plug, Paul comes up with an idea — if he can transplant BB’s brain into Sam’s body, he could save her life.

Or, you know, turn her into a killer human robot. One or the other.

Fortunately for Paul, reanimating Sam’s corpse and replacing her dead brain with a computer is as simple as cutting a square into her skull, mashing a CPU down into her gray matter, and sewing up the patch. Paul spends a little time teaching Sam/BB to walk all over again, but fortunately he doesn’t have to teach her how to kill! Not only does Sam quickly even the score with her father, but BB’s murder is also quickly avenged.

(Never play basketball with a killer robot.)

Sure, you can spend the movie wondering how that CPU works, or why Sam walks around like a cross between a zombie, a robot, and a Vulcan, but you’ll be wasting your brain cycles. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, and reanimating your dead girlfriend’s corpse isn’t always a great idea. Okay, it’s almost never a great idea, but in some cases, it’s a really bad idea, especially when your creation gets all emo and sad. Best-laid plans, and all.

What begins as a killer robot movie ends as Frankenstein, with people chasing BB/Sam through the streets. The way BB/Sam is defeated honestly makes no sense, and the film concludes with a Wes Craven twist scene that makes literally less than zero sense. Despite the last five minutes, the film remains entertaining. It’s a little creepy, a little kooky, and a whole lot of fun. If the film has any fault at all, it’s that the more you think about it, the more difficult it becomes to root against the antagonist.

Creepozoids, released in 1987, is a post-apocalyptic film that takes place in 1998 — “six years after the superpowers have engaged in a devastating nuclear exchange. Earth is now a blackened husk of a planet.” Through additional opening text we learn small groups of humans “eke out a miserable existence in the ruins of cities” while avoiding bands of deserters, mutant nomads, and avoiding acid rain.

It’s the impending threat of acid rain that sends five deserting soldiers in search of cover. After breaking into a seemingly abandoned warehouse, the group spreads out to search the new location and fortunately, there’s a little something for everyone — the nerd finds a computer, the two leaders find a place to rest, and Linnea Quigley finds a shower and an excuse to take her clothes off because… well, she’s Linnea Quigley. Through a floppy disk full of electronic diary entries, the nerd learns that whoever previously occupied the location was working on a way for humans to generate their own amino acids so that they would never have to eat and some other scientific-sounding gobbledygook. We can assume the experiments didn’t go well when one of the soldiers erupts into a volcano of black goop, another member is attacked by a rodents of unusual size, and a third encounters a six-foot tall monster that seems less than friendly.

Once the Creepozoid arrives in all his man-in-a-suit glory, the team of less-than-elite soldiers are quickly converted into exploding oil wells, zombies, and sometimes both. Because the acid rain prevents the group from escaping, they are forced to stay and fight the Creepozoid (with mostly disastrous results). The group’s laser blasters prove ineffective against pretty much everything, forcing the team to find alternate ways to defeat the monster. And just when you think the good guys have won, it turns out the Creepozoid was hiding a secret (she’a a mommy!) at which point I was treated to the most uncomfortable man vs. baby fight since the park scene in Dead Alive.

Despite aping Alien beat-for-beat, Creepozoid isn’t all bad. I would have liked to have seen more scenes of the wasteland and a slightly more developed monster, neither of which I expect the budget allowed for. That being said, 1987’s Creepozoids is a 1950’s monster movie — it’s not a matter of if the monster will show up, but when, and who will have the wits to survive the attack.

Blue Monkey isn’t a great movie, which is impressive as it’s almost a direct rip-off of Aliens. Instead of a Xenomorph, in this film it’s a killer insect that plants its larva inside its unsuspecting victims (poor Fred). After a group of children decide to randomly pour chemicals on the larva, it morphs into a giant killer insect before retreating to the bowels of the hospital which look so much like the Nostromo I expected the hospital to zoom off into outer space.

Sometimes as a group and sometimes on their own, members of the hospital staff (two female doctors, the janitor, an entomologist and the hospital’s director) team up with a visiting detective to locate the insect. The insect is pretty easy to find; it’s usually in whatever area has the most fog machines, blue spotlights, and strobe lights.

The fact that the insect is a big puppet is mostly hidden by poor lighting and POV camera shots, but occasionally we do get a glimpse of the creature and… yeah.

As with Alien, the monster is only half the problem — the basement is filling up with oopy-goopy egg sacks, and eventually the whole hospital will be bug city. Fortunately, two lushes discover that the creature has an aversion to alcohol. If only COVID worked the same way!

As the insect returns and the chase is on, the monster is portrayed by a guy in a giant insect suit who stumbles around, flails his insect legs, and is probably only the fifth worst actor in the movie. From the children to the doctors and particularly the star detective, no one seems all that interested to be in this film.

The tone in Blue Monkey is all over the place. For the most part the film is presented as an honest-to-goodness horror film, but in between scenes we get two elderly woman wandering around drunk, a woman giving birth (and her goofy husband), and a dead doctor that gets stepped on by fleeing patients like an old Three Stooges gag. It’s often hard to tell how serious we are to take the film, and unfortunately the actors don’t help in this department.

After a nearly 30-year wait, Blue Monkey was finally released on disc (Blu-ray!). Sadly, I suspect high-definition works against the shots of the monster rather than for it.

I really wanted to like Blue Monkey, and I did… when it was called Aliens.

We meet every main characters in Ants! within the first five minutes of the film. There’s the shiesty real estate mogul and his secretary who have arrived in town, scouting locations for their next casino. There’s the elderly owner of Lakewood Manor and her daughter, who disagree on whether or not they should sell the lakeside hotel. There’s the hunka-hunka handyman who by chance meets a drifting blonde bombshell. And finally, there’s the construction crew working next to the hotel who just so happen to uncover a hoard of killer ants.

If you’re imagining giant ants like the ones from Them!, think again. These killer ants look like plain ‘ol, regular-sized ants. In fact, it’s eventually explained that ants aren’t aggressive at all, and will only attack people who invade their space. Fortunately for us, a few people do — a contruction worker, a curious child, and a kitchen chef all find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Representatives from the State Department of Health (but not the police) arrive to investigate the mysterious deaths, but no one can figure out what’s causing them (apparently, killer ants don’t leave bite marks). Even when one of the construction workers is bitten (but survives), the state department employees refuse to believe him and instead insist they’re dealing with a virus.

By the time the truth is revealed, it’s too late. Every character we met in the first five minutes of the film finds his or herself trapped in the motel, surrounded by ants. Again, these appear to be normal ants, just with poisonous bites. Any human being could out-walk one, or step over them. The only possible way to get trapped by the ants would be to retreat to a hotel with only one entrance and then allow them to surround and infiltrate the building, which is exactly what happens.

Unlike the crews from Jaws (who had to deal with a mostly non-functioning shark) or Jurassic Park (which sprayed down their life-size T-Rex only to discover it didn’t function well when wet), as far as I can tell, Ants! used honest-to-goodness real ants. Sure, there’s plenty of stock footage and some fake ants in the background, but there are plenty of scenes in which it appears right before the director yelled “action,” someone dumped live ants all over the actors.

Before the end of the film, a helicopter, a moat of fire, and rolls of wallpaper are used to defeat the ants. Along the way, in a single and somber piece of exposition, a scientist tells the audience that we’ve been using poison against insects for many years, and it appears they’re figured out a way to turn it against us.

Snort.

I thought this film felt like a made for television movie, and later learned that it was. Originally titled It Happened at Lakewood Manor, the movie was renamed Ants for its 2014 release on DVD. The movie contained a star-studded cast, including Robert Foxworth, Lynda Day George, Gerald Gordon, Myrna Loy, Suzanne Somers, Bernie Casey,
Barry Van Dyke, and Brian Dennehy as the Fire Chief. While Ants! is a better name for the film, it’s not a great movie no matter what you call it. Slow pacing and a pretty avoidable insect make the stakes on this one pretty low.