Saturday, September 23, 2023

Movie Reviews

Reviews of primarily American movies featuring actors and actresses of Black / African-American descent in the horror-movie, slasher, gore, supernatural and related spooky film genres.

Tales from the Crypt Ritual horror movie
Ritual feels about as much like a Tales from the Crypt film as Def By Temptation felt like a Troma film -- that is, not at all. With barely a hint of the humor or the gore (aside from a grisly opening scene) that marked the excellent Demon Knight...
The Purge: Anarchy
A year after the events of The Purge, The Purge: Anarchy focuses on a group of disparate individuals in downtown Los Angeles on the night of the Purge of 2023. Shane (Zach Gilford) and Liz (Kiele Sanchez) are a couple on the verge of separating who are heading to...
The Vampire's Ghost horror movie
The Vampire's Ghost is a vintage horror movie from Republic Pictures that, like most horror movies from Republic Pictures, has slipped through the cracks of public consciousness, overshadowed by Universal's classic monsters. That doesn't mean they aren't quality films, though. Take The Vampire's Ghost, for instance. Not only is it...
Leprechaun in the Hood movie poster
What can you say about a movie in which a man gets stabbed in the neck with an afro pick and a Leprechaun quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. within the first five minutes? At least it's not directed by Uwe Boll? Actually, this is above average for a direct-to-video...
Initiation movie
Initiation is more action-thriller than horror, but if 2013's captive-women-forced-to-fight film Raze can be considered horror by so many people, I suppose this can, too. The setup is similar to Raze, except with male captives, a smaller cast and presumably a much smaller budget. In it, masked men kidnap five...
The Strange Thing About the Johnsons
It's hard enough finding time to review all the full-length movies I want to discuss on this site, so I generally don't delve into short films very much unless there's historical significance, but The Strange Thing About the Johnsons is so striking, it's literally impossible to ignore. Its images...
Inhumanity
What Inhumanity lacks in budget, it makes up for in reckless ambition. With a sprawling slasher-thriller-action-sci fi-mystery-suspense story that incorporates serial killers, police corruption, medical experimentation, an international crime ring, a murder whodunit, a love triangle and a myriad of crosses, double-crosses and plot twists, it admirably aims for...
Breeders horror movie poster
This cheesy '80s monster movie stands out for two reasons: 1) It's directed by Tim Kincaid, who helmed the famously awful Robot Holocaust, which was parodied on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (He previously directed gay porn. Look it up.), and 2) It one of the rare horror films of...
Harold Lloyd in Haunted Spooks movie poster
Haunted Spooks is perhaps best known as the film that almost cost daredevil silent-film comedy legend Harold Lloyd his life -- a not-so-proppish bomb exploded in his hand, costing him a couple of fingers -- but it's also one of the earliest movies to feature the ol' "spook" stereotype...
Minotaur horror movie
I'm no expert on Greek mythology, but I've got to question the historical accuracy of casting Tony Todd as the king of Minos. Then again, given decades of seeing the likes of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor playing Antony and Cleopatra, erring on the other side of the racial...