The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Innocents (1961)

The Innocents

Based upon The Turn of the Screw by Henry James The Innocents stars Deborah Kerr as Miss Giddens a young woman who takes her first job as a governess for two children at a large country estate.

At first, things seem absolutely perfect. The estate is wonderful, the house is beautiful and there are lovely gardens and a pretty little lake that you can take a rowboat out on. Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins) the housekeeper is kindly and the children – Miles (Martin Stephens) and Flora (Pamela Franklin) are adorable.

She actually doesn’t meet Miles at first for he is away at school but Flora seems like an angel. They get along marvelously. Flora keeps saying that Miles will return home soon, but that can’t be correct for the term has just started. When he does arrive shortly thereafter – expelled from school – we know strange things are afoot.

Miss Giddens never seems to sleep well, she tosses and groans all night. She hears whispers echoing through the house. She sees visions of a man and a woman wandering about the grounds. When she describes them to Mrs. Grose she finds they look just like the former governess and groundskeeper both of whom died at the estate.

I won’t spoil where it goes from there, but it does go to some very interesting places. But what makes The Innocents so wonderful isn’t just the story but the filmmaking. It is shot in beautiful black and white that often uses a deep focus allowing people and objects in both the foreground and background to remain sharp. Director Jack Clayton uses this to great effect often placing a character very close to the camera while allowing someone much farther back to react.

It makes great use of light and shadow. The house is both enormous and claustrophobic, enchanting and terrifying. It has some of the best sound design I’ve ever heard in a movie. The musical score consists mostly of a hauntingly beautiful little melody that is played over and over, and sometimes sung and hummed by the children. The house is full of strange noises. There are footsteps and whisperings, creaks, and insects buzzing, and the constant howling of the wind. I’d love to see this film in a large theater with a great surround sound system for I know these noises would come from everywhere to great effect.

It isn’t a particularly scary film, but it is full of dread and a sinister mood. There is a lot of bubbling beneath the surface of the film. Miss Giddens comes from a small home in the country. Her father is a minister and she’s been quite sheltered. When she learns about the former governess having an affair with the groundskeeper she is quite shaken. When she finds out it was the children who caught them in the act she is completely shocked.

Quite a few people have pointed out that her visions of ghosts and her fear that the children are being possessed and need to be protected at all costs come from her own repressed sexuality.

I’m not smart enough for all of that, but I can say there is a lot to come away with and unpack.

This was a wonderful way to start my Great British Cinema month.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Stuff (1985)

the stuff

Late at night, in a snow-covered quarry, a man comes across a bubbling puddle of white goo seeping out of the ground. “What is this?” he asks himself and then proceeds to eat it. Yummy.

Thus begins The Stuff a very silly, messy, and deeply weird movie from the warped mind of writer/director Larry Cohen.

The Stuff, as the white goo is called is packaged and sold as a low-calorie, completely organic ice cream substitute. It has become incredibly popular, so popular in fact that the big ice cream companies have become nervous. They hire former FBI agent turned industrial saboteur David “Mo” Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) to spy on The Stuff Company and figure out exactly what’s in it so they can start making the stuff themselves.

He teams up with Chocolate Chip Charlie (Garrett Morris) a junk food mogul, Nicole (Andrea Marcovicci) an advertising exec who helped sell The Stuff to the masses before she realized exactly what it is, and eventually a young boy named Jason (Scott Bloom) who sees The Stuff independently moving inside his refrigerator and takes it upon himself to start smashing the stuff in a grocery store.

Together they come to realize that The Stuff is a living organism that turns humans into zombie-like creatures before completely consuming them. They’ve got to find out where The Stuff is coming from and find a way to destroy it before it destroys humanity.

I’m making that plot sound more coherent than it actually is. So much of what happens doesn’t make any kind of sense. The plot jumps around from place to place, event to event without any connective tissue allowing our heroes to take leaps that they couldn’t logically make. It’s really pretty ridiculous.

But it works. Mostly because of Michael Moriarity’s completely odd and off-kilter performance and the wonderful production design. There is a great mix of miniatures, puppets, and back projection to make The Stuff look menacing (it never actually does look menacing – it is about as scary as The Blob and just as fun).

The cast includes Danny Aiello as an FDA official who is terrified of his dog for some reason, and Paul Sorvino as an ultra-conservative and totally nuts military Colonel.

The Stuff isn’t a good movie by any stretch but it makes for a wonderful Friday Night Horror movie if you’re in the mood for a totally mid-1980s bit of silliness.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Grabbers (2012)

grabbers

Grabbers is a horror comedy about a bunch of squid-like Alien face-huggers that land off the coast of an Irish island. They live off of water and blood but seem to be allergic to alcohol. To survive the townsfolk must stay as drunk as possible as that makes their blood poisonous to the creatures. That’s a great premise. One the film struggles to live up to. It is a throwback to those old 1950s science fiction films like The Blob (1958) or The Giant Claw (1957). It takes its monsters seriously while also winking at the audience.

Garda Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley) volunteers her time on the remote island to allow the chief a couple of weeks off. She’s a workaholic and initially takes offense to Garda Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle) who comes to work half-drunk all the time. But mostly she figures it will be a quiet stay and will impress her bosses for working on her vacation time. When some mutilated whale corpses wash up on the shore she gets a little worried, but Dr. Smith (Russell Tovey) a marine ecologist assures her that while unusual such things are not unheard of.

Then the aliens attack.

Well, first the town drunk, Paddy (Lalor Roddy) captures a small “grabber” and our heroes all have a good look at it. When it lays some eggs they realize it is a female and figure there must be a male version somewhere on the island. He’s the big one and soon enough he’s attacking everybody.

Eventually, they realize the whole blood alcohol thing and then they hustle the town into the local pub and have a big drunken party to keep everyone safe.

The film reminded me quite a bit of Tremors (1990), a movie I loved as a kid. It has those same comic horror sensibilities. But Tremors had Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Michael Gross, and Reba freaking McEntire. While the cast of Grabbers holds its own, they don’t have the same charm, nor comic timing. None of the jokes are as good either. I was mostly mildly amused throughout, but rarely did I really laugh. Made in 1990 Tremors used all practical effects too, while Grabbers uses the same CGI sludge we see in everything now. The Graboids in Tremors might not look as “real” as the Grabers but they sure do look cooler.

There’s quite a bit of Slither (2006) DNA here as well, and one scene is quite reminiscent of Gremlins (1984). All of those are better films than Grabbers. But the thing is, Grabbers isn’t a bad time at the movies. It is an entertaining hour and a half. It just could have been so much better.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: House of Usher (1960)

house of usher poster

As a producer, Roger Corman helped launch the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jonathan Demme. His films were very low-budget, often exploitive, but they almost always made money. He famously developed a strategy as a producer and distributor that allowed directors to have full creative control (within budget, of course) as long as they had a scene of violence and/or sex every fifteen minutes.

He’s produced an astonishing 512 films in his life (and at the age of 96 IMDB lists at least one upcoming project with his name on it). And though with a few exceptions, he stopped directing in the early 1970s he managed to helm over fifty films.

The most famous of those films are a series of eight films (very) loosely based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. House of the Usher was the first of those adaptations. It is a good one.

Phillip Winthrop (Mark Damon) travels to the titular House of Usher, a grand, decaying, gothic old mansion, to visit his fiance Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey). He is told by the family butler, Bristol (Harry Ellerby) that she is very ill and bedridden. When he demands to see her anyway he is taken to see her brother Roderick (Vincent Price)

Roderick is afflicted with an illness that enhances all of his senses so that the slightest noise, or light, or rough surface drives him to near madness (well, as we’ll see later to total madness). He says his sister is afflicted with the same illness and tells a tale of their entire bloodline being infected with madness so intense it has affected the house itself.

He begs, no he demands that Phillip leave the house but he refuses. This only serves to drive Roderick further into madness and in turn, he drives Madeline to the very edge. Roderick is so intent in his belief that Madeline should not leave the house, nor marry, nor have children that he is prepared to murder her himself.

Corman makes great use of his sets. The mansion is sprawling with a seemingly endless set of rooms, hallways, and secret corridors. As Roderick’s insanity grows the house begins to crumble.

I’m used to watching gothic horror films being shot in stark black and white with great shadows overcoming the scenes, so it is surprising to see this in full, glorious color. It looks magnificent. There is a dream sequence toward the end that is saturated in color and even a bit psychedelic.

Mark Damon is a bit stiff, and Myrna Fahey is just ok, but good golly is Vincent Price great in this. I’m a huge fan of the actor and he’s full-throttling the role as only he can but it works oh-so-well here.

It is a bit slow to get going as these types of gothic melodramas can be, but once it gets into gear it’s a great deal of fun to watch.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Brides of Dracula (1960)

brides of drcula

Some of the best Hammer Horror films are the ones where they essentially remake the classic Universal Horror movies. Remake isn’t really the right word for the Hammer versions of the classic Universal Monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, and the Wolfman) often differ greatly from their Universal origins. The Hammer films were much more violent and sexual than the original films, and just as stylish. They all appear a bit tame by today’s standards, but realizing that many of them were made in the late 1950s and early 1960s it is fairly astounding that they got away with so much.

The Brides of Dracula is the first sequel to Horror of Dracula (1958) (they made several more). Christopher Lee was great in that one as Dracula, but he died at the end so they couldn’t put him in this sequel (he is very much missed here and so he shows up again, despite being dead, in the next movie). Peter Cushing does return as Dr. Van Helsing.

A French school teacher, Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) takes a position at an all-girls school in Transylvania. She takes the usual rickety coach through the usual creepy woods in the usual middle of the night. When they stop off at a little village for a bite to eat, the coach driver gets spooked and abandons her.

The innkeepers fret about, warning Marianne that she can’t possibly stay the night in their village alone. Just about that time in walks Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt). She’s old and creepy but kindly offers to put Marianne up for the night in her castle. Despite the innkeeper’s warnings, she agrees.

There she finds a strange servant and the Baroness’s son Baron Meinster (David Peel) locked in his room and chained to the wall. The Baroness warns that he is ill and maybe a bit crazy, but he’s nice to Marianne, and handsome so she unlocks him.

Of course, he’s a vampire. Of course, he pretty quickly starts turning the pretty ladies of the village into his brides and has his eyes on Marianne.

This is where Van Helsing comes in. He does his usual thing which eventually leads to a showdown with the vampire. I won’t spoil it but it has one of the best vampire kills in all of vampire moviedom.

The thing is I generally find Hammer Horror films to be slightly tedious in terms of plot and pacing. The Brides of Dracula is no different. The plot just kind of plods along. It takes ages for a vampire to show up and ages still for Van Helsing to come along. Even then the action is often broken up by too much talking.

But the real thing is that I don’t ever really mind. I love Hammer Horror movies. They always build these incredible sets and costumes. They light it spectacularly with all of these lovely reds, blues, and greens. Their films always look amazing. The men are always dressed in these fabulous suits and the women are draped in the most marvelous flouncy gowns.

I love Peter Cushing (he is so much more than Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars. He’s surprisingly athletic in this film, running and jumping all over the place. I love Christopher Lee, too and he is greatly missed in this movie (try as he might but David Peel is the palest of imitations).

So, yeah, plotwise The Brides of Dracula isn’t great, but it is so much fun to look at and watch I don’t really mind.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Hunt (2020)

the hunt movie poster

A group of strangers wake up in an isolated forest with gags locked in their mouths. They stumble about until they find a large crate in the middle of a field. Inside the crate, they find a whole bunch of weapons. They find the key to their gags on the ground. As they are unlocking their gags and grabbing the weapons someone starts shooting at them. Several are killed and the rest scatter and run. They are being hunted.

The Hunt is an update on the classic story The Most Dangerous Game but with a lot of unnecessary and rather clunky political satire thrown in.

It was directed by Craig Zobel from a script by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof. It was produced under Blumouse Production and it has that same dull slickness that so many of his films contain. It looks good and its production values are nice but there isn’t a distinct directorial voice. It is entertaining, but ultimately forgettable.

The hunters pretty quickly take care of most of their prey, leaving only Crystal (Betty Gilpin) as the last one standing. They apparently didn’t do their homework as she is one tough cookie and has been in more than one fight before.

Gilpin is wonderful in this and she makes it all worth watching. She’s tough and savvy, and there is a little more than a glint in her eye as she takes down her attackers one by one. I’m a fan of The Most Dangerous Game stories (and there have been a lot of adaptations of the 1924 short story by Richard Connell) and I enjoyed seeing it in this modern update.

The hunters here are rich, liberal elites and they are preying on poor, illiterate rednecks whom they seem as contemptible (or deplorable if you will). The film tries to satirize both sides but its humor is too broad and blunt to actually be funny. My favorite bit comes when the hunters are choosing their prey by looking through a slide show of potential victims, all of whom have online profiles they disagree with. It is mostly white, bearded dudes but then a black guy in a cowboy hat shows up. Immediately the response is that they can’t hunt a black guy but then someone chimes in that they’ll get in trouble if they don’t have some diversity.

They bang the satiric drum throughout the film, mocking both sides with broad strokes so much that it distracted me completely from the pretty good humans hunting humans thriller aspects of the film.

The cast is filled with names you likely know – Emma Roberts, Ike Barinholtz, Sturgill Simpson, Macon Blair, Ethan Suplee, Glenn Howerton, and Hilary Swank – most of whom are making glorified cameos, many of which are promptly killed. I love when movies do that, and I love how those early deaths give the movie a feeling of anything can happen.

Of course, it then settles down into relative predictability, but for at least a few minutes I thought they were going off the rails in really interesting ways.

Like I said it ultimately winds up being an enjoyable but forgettable film. Gilpin absolutely makes it worth a watch.

The Friday Night Horror Movie(s): Amityville II: The Possession (1982) & Amityvlle 3-D (1983)

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The Amityville Horror (1979) is one of those movies that I want to like more than I actually do. It has a good cast – James Brolin looking all masculine in his flannel shirts and beard, Margot Kidder is just lovely and Rod Steiger is doing his best Max Von Sydow in The Exorcist (1973) impression. I like the idea of haunted house movies and this has the coolest looking haunted house ever. But ultimately I find the film to be a bit of a slog. It isn’t scary, or eerie. It isn’t even very moody.

When watching a horror movie from the 1940s I have no problem overlooking hoary old special effects like objects moving across a room or curtains billowing without wind. But in modern movies (and yes I’m counting 1979 as a modern movie as it premiered in my lifetime and feels much more modern than say something like The Uninvited (1944) or House on Haunted Hill (1959)) similar effects just seem silly. The Amityville Horror employs a lot of silly effects that just aren’t scary or all that interesting.

Still, every few years I find myself drawn to it. Like I said I love the idea of it.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been watching a lot more horror films than I used to. This is mostly due to my creating this concept of the Friday Night Horror Movie. If I have to watch a horror movie (or more than often, two or three horror movies) every Friday then I’m going to naturally watch a lot of horror movies. One of the things I’ve been doing is watching a lot of horror sequels. It is a genre that naturally produces a lot of sequels and I’m finding it quite fun to watch them all in order. I’ve now seen all of the Friday the 13th films, the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, the entire Halloween franchise, and more.

This now brings us to The first two Amityville Horror sequels (there are technically a whole lot of sequels to The Amityville Horror because you cannot copyright the name of the town so anyone who wants to can throw Amityville in their name and tie it to the franchise. But the first two sequels are official and I watched them today.

But first, let’s briefly recap the original film. A newly married couple (played by Brolin and Kidder) along with their children move into a big, historical old house on Long Island. Quickly strange things begin to occur that can’t be naturally explained. By the film’s end, it is clear something has possessed the house and is trying to kill them. That something is the evil spirit that caused Ronald DeFeo, Jr. to kill his entire family with a rifle just one year prior.

Amityville II: The Possession is sort-of the story of what caused Ronald Jr to commit those murders. I say sort-of because in this film the family is called the Montelli’s and the murders happen in a slightly different manner than we see them occur in the first film.

But where The Amityville Horror was filled with classic haunted house tropes and was all the more dull for it, Amityville II just absolutely goes for it. There is no slow build-up, and no time to develop characters, it just takes off and hardly slows down to catch its breath. It begins once again with a new family moving into the house. But right off the bat, we realize this family is already messed up. The father (Burt Young) is abusive. He yells at the kids constantly and threatens to beat them, he actually does beat the wife and it is implied he forces himself on her. The kids are moody and angry.

On their first night they experience a mysterious banging on the door and a freaky drawing appears on the two small children’s bedroom wall. Soon enough the oldest boy (Jack Magner) becomes possessed. He starts hearing voices telling him to kill his family, he yells at his mom and seduces his sister.

It gets weirder from there. If the original played it safe then the sequel throws off the rails and just goes for it. Most of the script, especially the dialogue, is pretty bad, but I love that all of the actors and the direction just completely go all out.

Amityville 3-D (1983) is much more reserved, but I kind of liked it more than the other two. It is a for-real sequel in that it takes place after the events of the other films. By this point the house is famous, or maybe I should say notorious. It has set vacant for years because no one in their right mind would buy it.

Naturally, our film’s hero does just that. He is John Baxter (Tony Roberts) a journalist working for a magazine that specializes in debunking supernatural con artists. He and his coworker Melanie (Candy Clark) debunk a pair of hoaxsters working out the Amityville House and afterward, John decides to buy the place (he’s getting a divorce and it is being sold dirt cheap).

You know the story by now, weird stuff starts happening. What I like about this film is that John comes to the house knowing its history and he doesn’t care. He’s a skeptic. Because of this, the film rolls out its supernatural stuff very slowly. Some of the mysteries and even a couple of deaths happen outside of the house. For sure, supernatural events and gorey deaths happen, but it takes its time with them. The film is more the mood piece the original wanted to be, but here it is quite successful at it.

It was directed by Richard Fleischer who made great films like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Compulsion (1959), and my favorite Soylent Green (1973). This is a man who knows how to direct a film, not the usual hacks that wind up directing the third film in a horror franchise.

As the title implies it was originally shot in 3-D. While there are the usual effects you find in that type of film (various objects flying at the screen, long objects being turned slowly toward the camera) Fleisher and his cinematographer Fred Schuler make the best of the format. Their use of depth of field is masterful. There is almost something in the foreground – a lamp, a tree, anything – that gives the characters or other objects in the screen depth. Shots indoors often take place in a place that allows you to see down a hall or into other rooms. Characters move in and out of frame, etc. It must have been really something to have seen in 3-D, but even in 2-D it looks really cool.

The rest of the filmmaking is very good as well. The actors are quite good and I found the entire thing a pleasure to watch.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Whip and the Body (1963)

the whip and the body

At an isolated castle in the 19th Century, on some isolated European coast, Kurt (Christopher Lee), the prodigal son returns. There is no fatted calf for this son though, as his father (Gustavo De Nardo) is unwilling to forgive his many trespasses. The most treacherous of which was seducing the maid’s daughter and then leaving her, causing her to commit suicide in his wake.

The maid, Giorgia (Harriet Medin) has vowed her revenge a hundred times over, and there is no lost blood between him and his younger brother Cristiano (Tony Kendall). Thus when Kurt turns up murdered, there are plenty of suspects.

Nevenka (Daliah Lavi) who had been engaged to Kurt before the whole maid’s daughter incident occurred, and is now married to Cristiano, begins seeing visions of Kurt whenever she turns. When more bodies start to drop the rest of the family begins to wonder if he hasn’t returned from the grave to seek his revenge.

Mario Bava was one of the great Italian horror directors. He was a pioneer of gothic horror and his film Blood and Black Lace (1964) is often credited as the first Giallo film ever made. Bava began his career in special effects, working his way into cinematography before finally directing. His films are noted for their visual beauty and style. When not shooting in stark black and white he made bold use of color.

The Whip and the Body makes great use of its gothic setting and tropes. The design of the castle in which most of the film takes place is as haunting as it is beautiful. The film is simply bathed in purples. It makes use of greens and reds, but bold purple permeates every shot.

As the title implies the sex gets a bit kinky, surprisingly so for a film made in 1963. Nevenka, who in most aspects of her life has to be subservient to the men in her life, takes control of her own sexuality. She hands Kurt a whip more than once and writhes in passion as he uses it on her. She married Christiano, because that’s what she was suppossed to do, but it is Kurt she truly loves. It is Kurt she continues to long for and envision even after his death (Or did he fake that? Or has his ghost returned from the dead? The film has fun toying with those ideas).

I’m making it sound more exciting than it is. The Whip and the Body is more of a gothic romance/drama than a horror. There is a lot of talking and passionate declarations. Too much for my taste, if I’m being honest. But it is so beautiful to look at, I never much minded.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Taste of Fear (1961)

taste of fear

On Friday nights me and the family usually go upstairs to my room and watch Doctor Who. Afterward, the wife and daughter remain in our room to watch Youtube videos, while I go downstairs and watch a horror movie. Tonight, the daughter is staying over at a friend’s house. Which leaves me and the wife here alone.

Friends, I have to admit I didn’t know what to do with myself. We were too tired and poor to really go out for a date night. It is too hot outside to go to the park or anything. So, we had a little dinner and watched a movie. Two movies, actually.

Because I am a creature of habit I could only watch a horror movie tonight. That’s just what I do on Friday nights. Also, I write this article and I couldn’t let you all down, could I? I know every single one of my readers waits for me to tell them what horror movie I watch on Friday nights. 🙂

But my wife doesn’t like horror movies. So, I had to find something she could enjoy as well. Enter Hammer Studios. They made a whole lot of horror movies in the 1960s and 1970s that are not too scary, or gore-filled but are also a lot of fun. My wife can enjoy that sort of thing, and actually quite likes Hammer Horror as a genre.

The first film we watched was Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) which is the third film in Hammer’s Dracula series and the second to star Christopher Lee as the vampire (the second film The Brides of Dracula (1960) doesn’t actually have Dracula in it at all). It wasn’t great and since we decided to watch another film after that one, and it is actually quite good, I’ve decided to talk about it instead.

Taste of Fear (sometimes called Scream of Fear) is a wonderful bit of gothic psychological horror. It stars Susan Strasberg as Penny Appleby a wheelchair-bound heiress who has been away from home for ten years. When her father summons her she returns to his estate on the French Riviera. Strangely, when she arrives she finds that her father has just left on business. Stranger still, that night she sees a light on in the no longer used summer cottage attached to the estate. Upon investigating she finds the corpse of her father sitting in a chair.

Fleeing, she accidentally falls into the pool and knocks herself unconscious. When she awakes she is assured by everyone that it was all just a hallucination caused by fatigue and too much wine. As an avid moviegoer, I know at this point she’s being gaslit, but the reasons why are unclear.

The film has a lot of fun (very slowly) unveiling those reasons. Penny continues to see and hear things that make her believe her father is at the house, but no one will believe her. Well, almost no one. The chauffeur (Ronald Lewis) eventually does and becomes the love interest. The film gives us so many twists and turns that it is hard to know what is real and what isn’t. Just when I thought I knew what was happening the film mixed things up and I was completely surprised.

It is a bit of a slow burn, it takes its time to get interesting, but it is beautifully shot in black and white and is filled to the brim with atmosphere and mood. Once things do take off it becomes really quite wonderful.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Bloody Hell (2020)

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After accidentally killing a woman while trying to thwart a bank robbery, Rex (Ben O’Toole) is sentenced to eight years in prison. Upon release, he decides to go to Finland to escape the media circus (the trial made him famous) and start a new life.

At the airport, he is noticed by a strange couple who keep staring at him and talking about him in Finish. In Finland, just arriving at the airport, he takes a cab. The driver puts releases some gas into the back cabin knocking Rex out. He awakes to find himself tied up in the basement of the strange couple’s house, with one of his legs cut off.

To tell much more of the plot would be to spoil much of the film’s fun. And it is a fun film, despite all the horror, dismemberment, killing, and gore. Rex talks to himself and this is displayed by having him literally talk to himself, as in the actor plays a more sarcastic version of Rex which we literally see as two people. That allows for a lot of humorous back and forth, which works better than it should.

The family consists of a mother and father, and twin sons who are all murderous psychopaths. But there is also Alia (Meg Foster) who understands how screwed up her family is but has not been able to escape. Naturally, she becomes a love interest of sorts.

For the most part, the film deftly mixes its thriller/horror moments with some pretty funny comedy and a surprising amount of whimsy. When Alia first talks to Rex and realizes he might be her salvation we whip into a fantasy sequence with her dancing with Rex in a beautiful field while romantic music plays. That sequence will get a hilarious replay towards the end of the film with some imaginative changes.

It doesn’t always work. The back and forth between Rex and his imagination can be a little grating at times. The family drifts a little too far into cartoonishness, especially at the end. But I found it quite enjoyable. Horror comedy is difficult to pull off and Bloody Hell does it better than most.