Movie Review: Puppet Show (2008)

Puppet movies can be scary (Puppet Master). Clown movies can be terrifying (IT). Put these two together and you’ve got the biggest disappointment since Ray Finkle missed the winning field goal for the Dolphins.

Puppet Show is about a homicidal psychopathic killer clown puppet, Charlie Chowderhead. That in itself is just all kinds of layers of creepy. We discover through a series of flashbacks that old man Rick Springer used to be the famous ventriloquist, Ringmaster Rick, on an old television show called Circus Town. He and his puppet, Charlie, were a huge success on the children’s TV circuit despite the fact that Charlie looks like he’d slit any random 8 year old from crotch to skullcap in three seconds and enjoy every moment of it.

Michael, RR’s number one fan and journalist, is finally granted an audience with the retired ventriloquist for an exclusive interview. Even though he never does interviews and keeps Charlie padlocked in a closet in the back of the house, Rick deems now an appropriate time to talk about his past. But before he can tell the whole truth, his heart starts to give him fits and he sends Michael on his way.

Movie Review: "Farm/Ominous/Evidence of a Haunting/Meadowoods/Deadrise" (2015: Echo Bridge/Green Apple/Midnight Releasing/Brain Damage/Monterey/Brauer)

...OK!! OK!! I admit it. I am an absolute sucker for those Echo Bridge multi-movie bundles. Yes, those bargain-bin, mish-mash cult film collections, often butting the most familiar, up against the most obscure. A treasure-trove of long-time movie favorites, with preferred-to-be-forgotten cinematic fumbles. Big-budgeted matter-of-facts, mated with low-budget, independents oddities. Cheezy, no name direct-to-video fodder...and big starring, director-notable okie-dokes. The 'dumping grounds' for lesser studio efforts and public domain classics. The campy, crazy and nutty stuff, originally released singularly, from distributors like Midnight Releasing, Full Moon Pictures, The Asylum, Brain Damage Films, Alliance Releasing, York, and countless others...

...a buck or two'll typically get ya' four or five of these films, laid out on one disc...four or five bucks'll get ya' ten of 'em, and so on. Most of the film titles on the smaller bundles will usually all be found on the 'step up to eight-or-ten' film' collections, along side one or two rarities. And most of those will be found on the 15-to-20-film collections, along side even more obscurities. And often, it genuinely becomes worth the slight extra cost to double dip on a bunch of others, which might be sitting on one's video shelf, in one previously purchased collection, to get that singularly unique and obscure rarity, which might be only available on that attention drawing second collection (...heck, I remember collectors going all ga-ga over the unceremoniously released, under-the-radar editions of the bloody, 1980 'Bigfoot' horror obscurity, "Night of the Demon", as well as the under-appreciated 1983 slasher entry, "Curtains" in this venue, before a couple of the major cult film distributors picked them up, 'legitimately' and the allure of collectible 'special features' editions)...

Movie Review: Porn Shoot Massacre (2008, Lost Empire Films)

...ya' know?? This viewer truly misses the bygone days of the mid-'80's, to the early '90's, at which time, mail order ad blocks, exploitatively detailing exclusive, micro-budgeted, and independently-produced VHS-formatted horror gems, could be found inconspicuously dotted amidst the other advertisements and articles, in various genre magazines. For a mere 20-spot, on the average, some of the most unique...touch and go, as far as good or bad...titles were rendered available, in this venue...with such offerings, disappearing as quickly as they appeared...and in acquiring these exclusive titles...typically produced by eager fledgling filmmakers, who manage to gather a plethora of friends together, for a bit of fun in grinding out a cheapie...one could proudly engage conversation, in claiming to be the only one within miles, to genuinely have such titles. Titles, such as "555", "Color Me Blood Red...Again", "Splatter: Architects of Fear", the infamous pornographic 'gore' trilogy (..."Gorgasm", "Gorotica" and "Gore Whore"), "Unnaturally Born Killer" and "Mad Ron's Prevues from Hell" (...and yes, this viewer proudly possesses all of these), amongst countless others, were shuffled in with micro-production company titles, from folks like 'Brain Damage Films', 'Tempe Video' & "E.I. Entertainment, and surprisingly enough, many of these obscure horror indies bore enough greater style, imagination, creativity, attitude and ambition, to counter even genre titles produced by the much larger production studios. Yep, such exclusive acquisition days are in the past; however, thanks to the 'net, such eager sophomore genre efforts have proven somewhat more readily available, nowadays, but elatedly, the attitude, style and sense of ambition remain unchanged constants. Considering all that, one might well relish a trist of nostalgic deja-vu, in that respect, with the amusing and oh-so cheesy 2008 softcore horror/comedy effort, "Porn Shoot Massacre"...