Sure, the trailers look cool and the poster artwork has been on point, but on Christmas day you can finally see for yourself how good Robert Eggers’s NOSFERATU really is.
Reviews have been predictably wonderful: Meagan Navarro at BloodyDisgusting.com nearly shit herself, proclaiming in her 5/5 review that the film was a “mesmeric macabre masterpiece”, while Jordan Hoffman over at Fangoria claims it’s “what a perfect, classic horror movie looks like”.
A film of such incompetence, it gives hope to all fledgling directors and screenwriters.
I started out really pumped to write about ELVES, and then I remembered just how deliciously god-awful it was. Nazi elves. A coked-up Santa getting stabbed in the crotch. The perverted little brother. Grizzly Adams getting pissed on. Possibly the most incompetent shoot-out in film history. Trying on lingerie at the mall. Electrocution. Cat murder. And the special effects…ah yes, how special indeed! There’s no way I can fit the wonder that is ELVES into approximately 500 words, and just the thought of trying to encapsulate it is giving me an anxiety attack.
With this said, I hope the citizens of Colorado Springs, where this hilarious abomination of a film was lensed, celebrate it every single holiday season. I’m not talking about showing it in a dive bar for five drunks to harangue it MST3K-style, I mean Mardi Gras-level shit here. A week-long party where 100-proof Christmas cocktails flow freely, people don nicotine-stained Dan Haggerty beards, and residents dress up as the titular elf (and yes, there’s only one, not multiples as the title would suggest). I’m telling you, folks, once you see this film, you become part of a Secret Society. We’re very small in number, but we’re the ones who have the best chances of surviving imminent nuclear fallout.
Okay, indulge me for a minute while I attempt to give you the “plot”, and I use that term loosely. A teenage girl, with possibly the most fucked-up home life you could have without starving, joins her friends in the woods to carry out some wannabe-pagan ritual that (whoops!) awakens a demonic elf. Stick with me here. This elf is the result of Hitler’s tinkering with a planned Fourth Reich–okay, maybe third-and-a-half?–fashioned from a hybrid of humans and elves. (I’m literally laughing as I type this.) Said teenage girl finds out that her grandfather was a Nazi who was, of course, involved in this little elf/Aryan mixmaster experiment back during WWII. With only the help of a down-on-his-luck former cop, said teenager now has to to figure out a way to defeat the elf, as well as not let it impregnate her to carry on this half-assed attempt to realize a Nazi nirvana commanded by the Master Elf Race (patent pending).
I can’t go on! People, you have no idea how tough it was to cull this plot down into one paragraph. Also, I’ve never chuckled this much writing a blog article. However, I implore you to check out the movie, because ELVES is a prime example of where the devil truly is in the details. All of the supporting characters are so unlikable (bitchy stepmothers, peeping little brothers, Valley-girl teens who live nowhere near the Valley, no-good Santas, incestuous grandfathers, incompetent hit men) you’re praying for some kind of deus ex machina to take all these fuckheads out and turn this feature film into a short subject comedy skit. To make things even richer, the demonic elf itself doesn’t really move, so director Jeffrey Mandel had to figure out, or at least attempt to figure out, ways around this. The results are nothing short of uproarious.
Gentle readers, films like this are why we have the term “guilty pleasure”. Come on, you’ve been good all year. This holiday season, give yourself the gift of ELVES. Just don’t forget to keep the receipt.
Some things are just destined for greatness. Well, not really greatness. Maybe just notoriety. Such is the case with SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2, a lame sequel to a lame slasher that’s remembered solely for the media shit storm it created 40 years ago when a film about a killer Santa Claus debuted during the 1984 holiday season.
For no reason whatsoever, we got a sequel in 1987. Consisting mostly of flashback footage from the original film, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2 didn’t even recoup its meager $250,000 budget and only turned a profit once it hit home video. For all intents and purposes, such a lousy follow-up should have rightfully fallen into eternal obscurity. That’s exactly what happened…until the internet got hold of it.
The film’s notoriously bad “Garbage Day” scene is the kind of camp gold that starts as inauspicious, discarded junk cinema before being retooled into a hilarious virtual tribute. Much like how the “Oh My God!!!!!” scene from TROLL 2 (1990) became a runaway sensation at the peak of DSL in 2006, these types of internet memes became a new way for younger generations to finally enjoy the low-budget crud from the 80s and 90s they missed out on its first time around.
Years ago, those whacky folks at Screen Rant posted a neat and rather concise article about the “Garbage Day” phenomenon, tracking its origins and history while trying to explain why it went viral in the first place. Do them a solid by checking it out here. You can still watch the original scene that birthed a thousand parodies over at YouTube, as well. If, after this historical deep dive into horror cinema history still leaves you empty inside and you feel that you absolutely must watch the whole film, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2 is currently showing on Tubi.
I probably shouldn’t tell you that there are three more sequels, as well as a fairly decent 2012 remake. However, you may want to wait until the interwebz come up with some quality memes from those films before you swan dive down any more chimneys.
Time to dig down deep into the memorabilia for another prism sticker. This snazzy one features the artwork from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II.
I took a friend to see this flick when it was in theaters in early 1988 and only remember one thing about it: a really funny scene involving a screwdriver. (All you folks who’ve seen it know the one I’m talking about!)
Like everyone else, I figured the next sequel would be called “28 Months Later”, but the filmmakers waited so goddamn long, it looks like we’re in 28 YEARS LATER!
We’ve finally been blessed with a trailer and, I gotta say, it’s goooood. After all this time, it’s going to be tough to make something that doesn’t look like a clone of THE WALKING DEAD universe, but I’m looking forward to this one. Director Danny Boyle has gone on to build a solid reputation since 28 DAYS LATER (all the way back in 2002), and I was a big fan of writer Alex Garland’s 2018 mind-bender, ANNIHILATION. We’ll see what the two of them can do with this latest entry when it drops into theaters June 20th. In the meantime, you can catch the trailer here.
Some things were destined for one another, just like Harry Manfredini and his Echoplex.
The summer of 1985 was one of the hottest in decades for Los Angeles. Having just arrived, the place seethed with electricity, zapping me with my first sensations of culture shock. Not really shock–more like electrocution. Music, gritty urban danger, and opportunity seemed to be around every corner. The media went batshit over Live Aid and the fact that serial killer Richard Ramirez was still on the loose. The daily high temperatures, which blasted way past 100 degrees in the San Fernando Valley where we now lived, made all these new symptoms even more severe. So, as our frozen yogurt melted, the blacktop squished under our feet, and people keeled over the middle of crosswalks, I’d be fibbing to say it wasn’t a way of life that took a long time to get used to.
As August crept up, it was time to get registered for school, and things like finding me and my sister’s immunization cards suddenly became more important than my upcoming birthday. I’m sure my poor mother had no idea what to get me after such a whirlwind year highlighted by a cross-country relocation on a very tight budget.
As soon as I visited Boulevard Music Mart at the corner of Winnetka Avenue and Ventura Boulevard, I wanted only one thing for my 11th birthday: Harry Manfredini’s soundtrack to the first three FRIDAY THE 13th films, which was originally released by New York-based Gramavision Records. The copy I came across that day was the only time I’ve ever seen it. The $8.99 price tag was hefty for that era, and so I had to leave the store that day without it. It was a horrible feeling.
In the following weeks, my mum finally agreed it could be my birthday present, and so off we went back to the store the weekend before my big day. I remember being so excited as I walked into the store…until I flipped through the “F” section of the vinyl soundtracks and it was gone. I almost puked up my heart, liver, and everything else, just like that woman in CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t. Vinyl sleeves flew through the air and cashiers started to side-eye me as I refused to leave the store. I was on a quest, prepared to flip through every motherfucking soundtrack album, from APOCALYPSE NOW to ZORBA THE GREEK.
Finally, there it was. Someone had nestled it in the “J” section (for “Jason”?), probably in a George Costanza-like attempt to hide it so they could purchase it at a later time. Nice try, jagoff. This one’s mine.
The 3-D album sleeve appears to be a zoomed take of a FRIDAY THE 13th PART 3 promo poster that was in stores during the second half of 1982. The album even came with its very own blue/red glasses for proper viewing! Most of maestro Harry Manfredini’s now-classic music cues from the first three FRIDAY THE 13th movies can be found here, sometimes combined into mini-suites with such fitting names as “Introduction to Horror” and “Moments of Madness”. And yes, for all you boogie-down disco fans, we get this party started with a full-length take of the theme to PART 3.
After more than a dozen moves over four long decades, I still have my beloved 11th birthday present. I easily could have sold it, broken it, or forgotten it over the years, but I will never part with it. Except for maybe Amy Reilly in first grade, horror was my first true love, and some things are meant to be together forever.
Here at UBHB, we’re gearing up for tomorrow’s entry spotlighting the first vinyl soundtrack release from the FRIDAY THE 13th series. In the meantime, dig this original advert I saved from the summer of 1986 when JASON LIVES stormed theaters. It wasn’t a huge blockbuster for Paramount–if I’m not mistaken, it was the first film in the series to not hit the top spot at the box office–but it’s garnered a surprising amount of critical praise, both then and now. Writer/director Tom McLoughlin injects a lot of meta fun into the usual slashings, ultimately winning over a big chunk of fans who still list the sequel as one of the very best Jason films.
Regardless of how you feel about the film adaptation of RAWHEAD REX, you gotta admit he’s quite the spectacle. However, he always seems to lose out to those other pesky Clive Barker creations, the Cenobites from HELLRAISER.
Today, we have a great fold out of our rarely-seen snaggle-toothed guy, who was inspired by an English folktale dating back as far as the mid-16th century.
And yes, for all you alternative music fans, the legend also inspired the 1988 Siouxsie and the Banshees song, “Rawhead and Bloody Bones”.
The savvy folks at Bloody Disgusting dropped the news that yet another EVIL DEAD film, this one titled EVIL DEAD BURN, will gallop into theaters in 2026. Director Sébastien Vaniček, recently coming off his creepy-crawly genre entry VERMINES (INFESTED), will be working from a script he co-wrote with Florent Bernard. How this will impact the previously announced EVIL DEAD film slated to be directed by Francis Galluppi is anyone’s guess.
Needless to say, it’s too soon for details about Vaniček’s project, but we’ll keep our ears to the ground for updates in the coming months! For now, you can check out Bloody Disgusting’s original article here.
It’s time for another neat prop that was on display at the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle, WA. Today’s offering is an actual ‘facehugger’ Xenomorph from the ALIEN franchise!
UNBOUND HORROR BLOG 