Q- What Are Your Favorite Obscure Subgenres of Horror?

A- I've always loved the cozy feeling of the breezy, studio b-movie action-horror-romance-comedy-buddy films of the early 1940s, particularly from Universal. This includes films like The Mummy's Hand, Night Monster, and my personal favorite, Horror Island.

Redneck Horror can be a lot of fun. There's the kind where the rednecks are the horror, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Two Thousand Maniacs!, but I prefer when the rednecks fight the horror. Nightbeast, Galaxy Invader, Slither, and The Giant Gila Monster all feature a bunch of people running around wearing flannel, chewing tobacco, and loading up their shotguns to go out and find the monster.

The surf-horror genre has always been a fascination of mine as well. Films like The Beach Girls and The Monster, Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster, Revenge of the Creature, and The Horror of Party Beach all brought their monsters to the surf, and the result is something delightfully dumb. Most of them, particularly The Beach Girls and The Monster and The Horror of Party Beach, heavily capitalized on the beach-movie craze established by Frankie and Annette during the early 60s, so we get rocking tunes, fast cars, surf stock footage, and a monster all rolled into one!

Review- Blood Shack

Ray Dennis Steckler is the only filmmaker I know next to Ed Wood who has the balls to shoot 10 minutes worth of rodeo footage so that his film can be over an hour. Yes, you heard me correctly. The action and "suspense" all come to a screeching hault (because they were gaining so much momentum, right?) and we get to enjoy cows getting lassoed and all that bullshit because the film wasn't long enough to get a theatrical release.

The Chooper, later renamed Blood Shack for obvious reasons (It sounds really dumb, like maybe a motorcycle film or porno hybrid. I guess the only reason horror fans saw it was because they thought it was called The Chopper, a surprisingly easy-to-make typo. So I guess the aforementioned reasons weren't that obvious), is a bizarre film about an actress (played by Steckler regular Carolyn Brandt) who inherits a farm that turns out to be haunted by a guy who yells a lot and looks kind of like Peter Stormare in The Big Lebowski (with the jumpsuit). Despite the fact that she "buys the farm" she never dies. *Spoiler*

Blood Shack was produced for $500, a testament to what imagination and craft can do for a film. Just kidding, Blood Shack has neither of those things. The acting sucks, there's a little bit of blood, and the cheese-factor is turned up high. There is one of the most bizarre fight scenes I've ever seen on celluloid, involving two guys duking it out whilst two little girls play around with a shovel. I thought for a while that these two events would converge, and one of the guys would get impaled on the shovel or something like that, but no. The fight ends and the girls just keep on digging. But what do you expect?

That's the whole vibe I get from the film. I want to criticize it, but you can't get your expectations too high, especially from the director who brought you such classics as The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies?!! (and yes, that "?!!" is part of the title) (damn, I have a lot of parentheses in this review)? At least he went for a bit more subtle approach with the title, instead of flat-out giving you a synopsis.

Blood Shack, or The Chooper, is a great b-movie sleepover slice of cheese with enough goof-ups to keep you and your friends generating those MST3000-esque quips. It doesn't overstay its welcome, independent on which version you see, rodeo or not.

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Review- The Innkeepers (2011)

For those of you who haven't seen Writer/Director Ti West's previous efforts, The House of the Devil and The Roost, I would highly recommend them. I can't hold his new film, The Innkeepers, to as high a level of praise, though I can say that it does offer its fair share of thrills and chills.

The only problem I can find with the film is that it is incredibly slow. Sure, The House of the Devil and The Roost take their time, but this one seems arduous at points. While the pacing does help to establish West's signature "What is going to happen?" atmosphere, other films have established the same amount of intensity with a relatively fast-pace. Take Paranormal Activity, a film which, in my opinion, is scarier than this one.

But this isn't meant to be a scary film. It's meant to be a spooky film. And it can be positively eerie. Two particular scenes, one in the middle and one towards the end, stood out for me. While almost every effective horror film manages to get my heart-rate up, this one somehow managed to give me goosebumps, something I don't get very often if ever when watching a film. It's a unique kind of fear.

Ti West has an obvious understanding for horror films and their audience. I hope he keeps up the good work and starts to realize that a snail-pace isn't always necessary. But it's refreshing to see a filmmaker who favors atmosphere over gratuitous blood and torture. His masterpiece will come soon enough.

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