39) A Christmas Horror Story (2015)

You better watch out!

Directors
Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban, and Brett Sullivan

Cast
William Shatner - DJ Dangerous Dan
George Buza - Santa Claus
Rob Archer - Krampus
Zoe De Grand Mason - Molly Simon

Recently, an article showed up on Ripley's Believe or Not's website speaking of an old tradition of ghost stories told around Christmas.
Just as the lyric goes in the Christmas jingle The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, "There'll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting, and caroling out in the snow. There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago."
One of the most famous Christmas ghost stories in history centers around an old money lender who's visited by three ghosts just before Christmas day. Charles Dickens wrote this story at a time when, as the Ripley's article suggests, ghost stories were common at Christmas.
This tradition may have disappeared for the most part, save for the continual popularity of Dicken's novel, A Christmas Carol being adapted into film over and over again, year after year. But it might still exist as the random Christmas horror movie released around the holidays.
I've seen the Christmas anthology horror flick A Christmas Horror Story pop up in a lot of my streaming services - Shudder, Netflix (I think?), Hoopla. I keep seeing the cover with a powdery white Krampus figure (he suddenly became a thing in horror, didn't he), locked in battled against a ragged looking Santa Claus show up as a movie suggestion.
I think the ghost of Christmas Past Horror Movies has been shoving this movie in my face for reasons I have yet to figure out. Needless to say, I watched it. And now that I watched it,  the ghost of Christmas Past Horror Movies can go back to hell where it belongs.
The movie consists of four stories happening simultaneously, rather than back to back like most anthologies.
Radio DJ, "Dangerous" Dan (William Shatner) is immersed in the holiday spirit as he sips some Brandy with his egg nog and brags to his listeners how much he loves Christmas.
While he's on the air, shortly after his call-screener leaves abruptly telling Dan to "F--k Christmas," messages start coming in about a disturbance at the mall.
Dan tells his listeners to stay clear of the mall while continuing to play Christmas music. This ties in with the end.
The first story involves three high school students, Molly, Dylan and Ben, surreptitiously recording a documentary on the murder of two students the year before in their school's basement. One of their friends, Caprice, is invited but unwillingly has to take a road trip with her family to visit their old Aunt Edda.
They sneak into the school, which used to be a Catholic convent, during winter break to shoot their film. They barely escape getting caught by their principal by sneaking into the basement.
They end up locking themselves in.
Molly (Zoe De Grand Maison) sees an apparition of a bloody young girl - the girl who was murdered in the basement. She possesses Molly and forces her to seduce Dylan (who is Caprice's boyfriend). He resists her advances, so she turns her attention to Ben. He's more of a pushover and ends up getting her pregnant...immediately! Fast work.
Why the ghost possessing Molly wants her to get pregnant isn't well explained. All the audience knows through flashbacks is that there was an unwanted pregnancy and nuns performed an abortion on the now dead teen. Again, nuns performing an abortion? Never look to Hollywood for accurate depictions of religion. But why this constitutes the need for Molly's pregnancy is as mysterious as the ghost herself.
Meanwhile, Caprice (Amy Forsyth - Hellfest) and her brother Duncan (Percy Hynes White - 11.22.63) are reluctantly heading to visit their elderly Aunt Edda with their parents.
During their visit, old Edda tells the children about the legend of Krampus - the demonic adversary of Santa Claus.
Duncan intentionally knocks over a figure of Krampus Edda keeps on an end table. She's placed it there in order to annoy Edda's caretaker who wholeheartedly believes the creature's folklore.
Their aunt then insists they all leave. On their way home, the father has a car accident forcing them to walk out in the cold, snowy weather. It doesn't take long before they all realize they're being followed by someone or something otherworldly. So, they hide themselves in a small church.
The third story taking place at this time centers on a police officer, Scott Peters (Adrian Holmes - Red Riding Hood) who's the same officer that investigated the murder of the two students.
Due to the traumatizing nature of the case, he takes a necessary leave of absence.

George Buza as Santa Claus in A Christmas Horror Story

The day before Christmas, he encourages his wife, Kim (Olunike Adeliyi - Saw 3D) and his young son, Will (Orion John) to sneak into a privately owned spot of land to cut down a Christmas tree. As they're searching for the right tree, Will disappears. 

Scott soon finds his boy in the hollow of a tree. They finally return home, but it becomes clear that Will isn't quite acting like himself. And it turns out, he actually isn't their son.  
On top of all these stories is the one centered on Santa Claus himself as he's preparing his sleigh for Christmas.
One of his elves has become infected by a virus causing him to turn into a raging, ravenous zombie. The other elves quickly become infected, as does Mrs. Claus, and Santa is left to take care of this problem alone.
I love a good anthology movie. They remind me of the nostalgic, straight-to-the-horror EC comics such as Vault of Horror, Tales From the Crypt, or DC Comics' Ghosts: Tales of the Weird and Supernatural. 
The anthology horror movie Trick R' Treat is a favorite of mine that I make a point to watch every October 31. So, I was naturally curious to see another holiday get the horror anthology treatment. With Christmas, it has certainly been done before - The Holidays (2016), All the Creatures Were Stirring (2018), and Deathcember (2019).
When it comes to tying all these stories into one connected thread, it's quite a stretch. Characters alone tie the stories together, but each of their storylines don't seem to. It left me expecting something big by the end, but the movie certainly didn't deliver in that regard.
The suspense, twist and intrigue for most of the stories is done rather well, especially surrounding Krampus. 

However, the story of the students locked in the school's basement drags on with an effortless fizzle of a payoff. This story in particular leaned too far into the area of convolution. It made me think something big would tie everything together.
The acting in this particular story seemed tired and mundane, even for typical teenage shenanigans leading to fear. It seems like this story should have been the big payoff.
All the while, Santa taking on his zombie elves becomes the center story (so it seems). While its ending is certainly an unexpected one, the story itself takes a more comedic and different tone than the rest of the stories. It's the grittiest part of the film unlike the rest which are scarier, suspenseful, and intriguing.
Watching Krampus and Santa go head to head was a fun experience cut too short.
There's a lot of room for improvement within A Christmas Horror Story. It has potential, and did well in some regards, but failed in others.

Krampus attacks Diane (Michelle Nolden).

  

38) Death Warmed Up (1984)

Our salvation belongs to medical engineers. We are the new messiahs. We will be wearing the most beautiful of lab coats. Not in insane asylums, but in chemical biological laboratories. 

Director
David Blyth

Cast
Michael Hurst - Michael Tucker
Margaret Umpers - Sandy
William Upjohn - Lucas
Norelle Scott - Jeannie
Gary Day - Dr. Howell

Continuing on with my Night Screams collection is the 1984 New Zealand "zombie splatter movie" Death Warmed Up. 
It's a science fiction/ horror movie that tries to be at times over the top with gore, serious at other times, and trippy the rest of the time with flashes and extreme high angles or close-ups.
The plot makes for a good horror setup. A young man named Michael Tucker (Michael Hurst), who reminds me of Billy Idol, becomes a test subject for scientist Dr. Howell (Gary Day) who is researching mind control.
In the midst of his research, Howell traps Tucker in a shower and forcefully injects him with a drug capable of mind control.
This drug causes Tucker to kill his parents without his realization of what he's doing. As his parents happened to be obstacles in the way of Howell's scientific research, this certainly makes sense.
After the murders, Tucker ends up in a mental hospital. He's eventually released after several years.
Shortly after his release, Tucker and his girlfriend Sandy (Margaret Umpers), along with their friends Jeannie and Lucas, decide to take a road trip to an island which happens to be where Dr. Howell has a clinic. Of course, only Tucker is aware of Howell's clinic while everyone else, including Sandy, is oblivious.
Tucker is bent on finding Howell and inflicting revenge.
Meanwhile, Howell has a collection of zombies under his mind controlling influence which Tucker and his crew will soon discover.
The final confrontation between Tucker and Howell didn't build up until the last half of the movie, only to end quickly in a poof. It was anything but climactic.
The real challenge for Tucker was getting past the zombies (not your typical walking dead, but rather insane killers willing to do Howell's bid as drastically as they can) and locating Howell.
In one scene, they make their way into a tunnel which ultimately leads to Howell's clinic. The four of them are confronted and chased by these zombies in the tunnels amidst dark corners, flashing lights, and corridor after dark, dank and confusing corridor.
The comedic element, which I found confusing and distracting begins with the group's journey on the ferry to the island. While the four are on the ferry, they encounter a small group of strange individuals.
One is a hunchback named Tex who's under the control or employment of the ferry captain, I don't know what his story or significance is other than someone who's previously crossed paths with Howell.

Michael Hurst in Death Warmed Up

Tex appears randomly throughout the movie.
Also while on the ferry, they meet two other guys - one named Spider (David Letch) - who watch from their van as Jeannie and Lucas have sex in the back of their 1963 Ford Fairlane parked on the main wide open deck of the boat.
The four confront the two guys which ultimately leads to the two stalking and attempting to kill all of them.
I'm guessing all these characters are merely under Howell's control.
I was slightly taken in by this movie, its touch of surrealism and gore, while struggling to determine if it was trying to tell a more serious tragic story or portray a comedic fever dream. It may have pulled some inspiration from Mad Max as far as visuals go. Otherwise, Death Warmed Up was another predictable B-movie.
It ended on a climax that was tragic yet pointless. I couldn't help but wish it would hurry up and end. It was as though the movie was under budget so producers just shot film to use up what was left of their budget. I don't know if that was the case, but it sure felt like it.
It was fun for the mere sake of watching a B-film. And though it started off decently enough, it went nowhere by the middle of the movie.
It's a trip for sure, but I don't think I'm going to remember it in a year's time despite the zombies and the splatter. In fact, I had to struggle to recall what I watched while I was writing my review. I couldn't get invested in this movie. I didn't care about the characters. The story line was just another mad scientist sort of plot. Death Warmed Up just didn't warm up to me, even as a cult film. 

37) L'Aldila - "The Beyond" (1981)

The seven deadly gateways are concealed in seven cursed places. Woe be unto him who ventures near without knowledge.

Director
Lucio Fulci

Cast
Katherine MacColl - Liza Merrill
David Warbeck - Dr. John McCabe
Cinzia Monreale - Emily
Maria Pia Marsala - Jill

Not only is the Italian movie, The Beyond, a true gorefest, it's a gorefest that takes its gory effects seriously and executes them carefully. This movie will make sure the gag inducing scenes will leave an impression on you. It wants the audience to cringe with its extended shots of bloody, foamy, slushy images.
The film starts off in 1927 inside Louisiana's Seven Doors Hotel where a lynch mob is hellbent on finding a painter named Schweick whom they believe to be a warlock.
He's seen painting a disturbing image of a wasteland with dead bodies strewn throughout.
The mob breaks into his room and considers his painting to be part of a ritual. So, they literally nail him to the cold stone wall. Little do they know his murder is reckoned as a human sacrifice necessary to open one of the seven doors to hell the hotel sits upon.
More than fifty years after this event, Liza Merrill (Katherine MacColl - House By The Cemetery), a young woman from New York, takes possession of the hotel and begins renovations to reopen.
In one scene that is nothing short of unsettling and strange, Liza is driving along an empty highway overpass when she comes upon a blind woman standing in the middle of the highway with a German Shepherd dog. This woman, Emily, warns her not to reopen the hotel as doing so will be a big mistake. Of course, Liza moves forward with her plans as Emily sticks around the hotel.  
These renovations open another portal to hell, and souls of the dead begin crossing over, which is never a good time under any circumstance, really.
These damned souls begin manifesting themselves to Liza and others in various and gruesome ways, killing the living in all kinds of crazy ways.
The paranormal events and horrific deaths continue until Liza is forced to confront these demons face to face. 
The Beyond was directed by Lucio Fulci who also directed House by the Cemetery which I previously reviewed. With watching these two Fulci movies, it seems he is a master at unsettling and appetite losing imagery.
The story though was rather muddled and simply not executed well. It lost me towards the second act of the movie. The supernatural element was as clear as day with constant references to the gates of hell that Liza and others unwillingly opened. It's a satisfying premise for a gory movie like this.
This movie had a serious tone to it. In fact, I think it takes itself too seriously with its surreal, otherworldly nature. The story just doesn't live up to the lofty flow and attempt at the dream-like overtones.
I was too caught up in the blood fest and gruesome scenes to pay close enough attention where the movie was going. It looks so real!
Fulci once commented on the lack of understanding many audiences have with his movie.
"People who blame The Beyond for its lack of story have not understood that it's a film of images, which must be received without any reflection. They say it is very difficult to interpret such a film, but it is very easy to interpret a film with threads. Any idiot can understand Molinaro's Le Cage aux Folles, or [John] Carpenter's Escape From New York, while The Beyond or Argento's Inferno are absolute films," he said.
Images indeed. Those images are done well, save for a few minor laughable details that surely a perfectionist would re-shoot to maintain realism. With prolonged shots on one disgusting scene after another, I can see what Fulci means by "film of images."

Maria Pia Marsala as Jill in The Beyond.

Otherwise, the gore is accomplished with artistic care. There's much attention into obtaining the utmost realistic yet practical (at times) special effects.
The superb bloody, foamy, runny, protruding, melting, tearing, steaming realism quality in the gore props is seldom seen in movies from this era.
I recall the scene from Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist (1982) where the researcher's face begins to peel off in the bathroom. It's disturbing, but not nearly as real looking as the gore in The Beyond.
I appreciate the efforts the movie puts forth to tell a story that's not just another ghost story. It's closeups of fear seen on the faces of victims reminds me a little of The Grudge which utilized the same tactic. Fear is in the eyes, and is the savory salt of horror/thriller movies as it helps establish fear in the psyche of the audience. It works when it's done well!
This movie had a few laughable scenes that clearly weren't supposed to be such. In one scene with tarantulas sneaking up on a man who fell off a ladder while sorting through history books and is lying paralyzed on the floor, someone had the "bright" idea to use both real spiders and puppet ones. The contrasting difference stands out like a rubber thumb.
The real tarantulas creep their fat, hairy legs while prop spiders just bounce along barely moving their plastic limbs. But the payoff in that scene, in all its biting and bloody goodness, is well worth it for horror fans. Arachnophobes may want to cover their eyes or leave the room.
Despite the slow pace of  the story, the movie was still entertaining. Where it fails in storytelling, it makes up for in horror, horror, horror. The effort to entertain audiences shines in this movie. And it's worth watching again.

  

36) Il Boia Scarlatto - "Bloody Pit of Horror" (1965)

"The day of the Crimson Executioner has come."

Director
Domenico Massimo Pupillo (credited as Max Hunter)

Cast
Mickey Hargitay - Travis Anderson
Walter Brandt - Rick
Luisa Baratto - Edith
Ralph Zucker - Dermott

Like the movie House by the Cemetery which I previously reviewed, Bloody Pit of Horror comes to American audiences by way of Italy. But unlike House by the Cemetery, it's a lot more trashy and campy.
This is the second movie from my collection of 50 "cult classics" and B-horror/ thriller movies called Night Screams. I mentioned it in my Anatomy of a Pyscho review.
With scenes bordering on risque, and attempts at humor, alongside scenes of young women nearly allowing themselves to be taken captive and tortured, Bloody Pit of Horror certainly lives up to its namesake. It's bloody and pitiful.
A group of people made up of a writer named Rick, his publisher Daniel, and his secretary Edith, along with a photographer Dermott, and five young female models, stumble upon what they believe is an abandoned castle. The models - a group of young women credited as "the Cover Girls" in the credits - are stereotypically naïve, defenseless, scantly clad, and running deathly close to empty when it comes to the will to fight their assailant.
They decide the castle would be the most ideal location for a photo session for the horror photo novel Rick is working on. It doesn't seem to matter to anyone that they have no permission to be inside this castle, nor do they have any regard for safety.
Little do these people know that a former actor named Travis Anderson has taken up residency inside the castle. And the castle was once the scene of an execution.
The opening takes place in the 17th century where we see a man calling himself the "Crimson Executioner" being put to death by impalement for taking laws into his own hands and torturing otherwise innocent people. They place him in a device similar to an iron maiden - a box with spikes on the interior side of a door. His executioners close him in as he screams. Blood oozes from the bottom of the small coffin-like chamber in an attempt to set the horrific mood.
As the crew explores the castle, they find an assistant of Anderson's who takes them to him.
Anderson immediately tells them they have to leave. But rather than leave the castle they're all trespassing in, they pretty much beg to be allowed to stay.

As Anderson sticks to his demands, Edith walks into the room and once Anderson sees her, he reconsiders. It turns out Edith was once his fiancé. What are the chances, right?
However, he tells them the castle's dungeon is absolutely off limits. And as expected, they completely ignore his one rule and hold their photo session in the dungeon with these young, gorgeous models  lasciviously draped over torture devices dating back centuries.
Obviously, this makes Anderson mad. He dawns the mask and costume of the Crimson Executioner, claiming that he's the new embodiment, and he gets to work rather quickly.
Anderson picks them off one by one in the most harshest way he can, until only two remain.
The first to die, dies "accidentally" when a torture device "fails" during a photo shoot.
Rather than react the way anyone would when someone dies in such a gruesome manner, the crew is nonchalant about it. They merely shift their focus on finishing the photo session. Their reaction is more on par with the way a person would act if their car battery died. It sucks but there's still stuff to do.
"Don't tell the girls. They'll just panic," one of the group members says.
When it appears that the accident may actually have been intentional at the hands of an unknown assailant, their attitude doesn't change much. Needless to say, the acting is terrible. The lines were dubbed in English, but that's still no excuse.
Later, one of the girls gets stuck in a device that looks like a huge spider's web with trip wires extended between the web and a door. These wires are attached to several harpoons that'll fire at the slightest touch or vibration. On top of that, a mechanical spider with poison on its mandibles is slowly approaching the trapped model. It could easily be a scene straight from the early Batman series from the 60s. If the Joker had been standing next to her, dastardly explaining his plot to her rescuers, just as she did, he wouldn't be out of place.
How this girl wound up in the web is a mystery. But she explains the situation when two others find her and attempt to a rescue.
Mickey Hargitay as Anderson really gets wild with his character, who's obsessed with his body image, and hell bent on torturing these women for their "sins" as cruelly as he can. He's animated in his actions. His dubbing is rather monotone and lacking appropriate inflection. That's common in early film dubs.
The movie relies much more on it leaning very close to an autoerotic picture without crossing the line into something even partially x-rated, then it does on story.
But it doesn't hold back in the horror with impaling, burning, slashing, cutting, stretching, and screaming.
For 1965 standards, I'm guessing this is hardcore for a mainstream film - even one from Italy.
This isn't the only time director Domenico Pupillo used a scary castle as a backdrop for a horror movie. His 1965 film Terror-Creatures from the Grave about an attorney settling an estate belonging to a deceased client is also set inside a castle.
This movie utilizes the fear of pain, domination, captivity, and stage blood to scare the audience.
Otherwise, it has nothing else going for it. It's meant for screams, cringe worthy torture scenes, twitchy laughter, and helpless young women at the mercy of a muscular, overpowering, demented male executioner. It reminds me of the types of stories you'd read in a classic EC horror comic - Tales from the Crypt or Vault of Horror. It's just plain schlock.
For reasons unknown, the movie concludes with unnecessary exposition as it explains what the audience just saw moments ago. Fans of obscure B-horror might get something out of this movie. Otherwise, it's worth passing up.