Sleeper Hold!! Available from Splatter Theatre Press!

Professional wrestling can be dangerous. Broken bones, crushed dreams... murder. Twenty years ago, acclaimed writer, David Hayes, told author Jeff Dolniak about a project former professional wrestler Joe Broni wanted to do. This was his story of love, betrayal, and murder. It tells the sordid tale of how an independent wrestling promotion was menaced by a black-gloved killer, hellbent on destroying everyone... except for the popular Tanya the Tyrant. What connected her to the deranged fiend? Find out here, in Sleeper Hold! From the author: "Joe invited me out to his favorite greasy spoon for lunch. I paid. It was ok because it was Joe. We chatted for hours on how we would attack the project. It was surreal. I loved watching Joe as a kid. He lost every match but he still left an indelible mark on young Jeff. As time went on, I found out things about Joe. Things about the business that would forever change how I thought about the circus surrounding the squared circle. Horrors. A darkness that went beyond the sweaty athletes in spandex. Splatter Theatre Press has been brave enough to distribute this book." Featuring contributions by Paul Counelis , Kurt Belcher, Caleb Thusat, and Dalyn Viker. Buy your copy now! https://splattertheatre.com/products/sleeper-hold

Reel Gore Releasing Brings on the Splatter with "The Curse of Doctor Wolffenstein"!

Movie Review: "The Killer 4 Pack" (2014; MVD Visual/SGL Entertainment)

...as an ardent and embraced lover of genre films...especially those produced independently, and on nothing less than a shoestring-budget (...I've found that they tend to try harder, aspiring to be something great, despite their limitations), this viewer...every year, about the May time frame...harbors a desire...a dream...a fantasy, to attend the Festival de Cannes, in France, and exclusively, albeit waywardly partake of the genre film offerings, often featured there. Just wander about the film festival, taking in and 'binge-watching' (...man, don't you just love these social 'terms of the moment') the newest of the new, and some often nostalgically celebrated, as far as the realm of horror and dark fantasy, both big-budgeted and micro-budgeted alike...

...alas, this viewer's own financial limitations have, at least for the time being, curbed any possibility of one day attending the internationally renowned film festival (...understandable, as word has it, the cost of attending the yearly fest, is one of those 'ouch' level of expenses...Yikes!!); still, such obstacles hardly gives cause to cease and desist the dream itself. And as amiable consolation and substitute for what cannot be, but might be, one day...well, there's always the much more compact and convenient venue of home video. Browsing the store shelves...or perhaps more succinctly, the item entries listed over at Amazon or Ebay...one cannot help but express a measure of exhaustion, in filtering though the countless multi-movie collections, out there. Public domain trash, side-by-side with mainstream pairings and couplings. Bargain basement bounty...titles, merging over titles, blurring into more and more titles. It would be so easy to miss the occasional jewel, or jewels amongst all of this generic colored glass...tarnished jewels, to be sure, but jewels, nonetheless...

Movie Review: Camp Blood: First Slaughter (2014, MVD Visual)

...in our childhood, we all had hamsters, at one time or another, right?? Cute little buggers, weren't they?? Running around their little cage, grabbing a glug of water over here...occasionally stopping nervously, to see who's looking...snagging a little morsel of food over there...again, stopping and looking around...maybe even, just to show off, grabbing more morsels of food, and stuffing it in their cheeks, until they look like furry little roadsters (...always good for a little chuckle). And then, they scurry over, climb up on the wheel, and away they go, go, go. And after the novelty wears off, one cannot help but watch that cute little rodent, working that wheel with great vigor, and wonder...does it know that it's putting out all that effort, and not really going any place?? And we watch...and watch...and watch...possibly even fantasizing that the little bugger, all too well knowing that it has our full attention, will suddenly dismount the wheel, quickly don a top hat & cane, and break into an impromptu well-choreographed and animated Busby Berkley number, a la Michigan J. Frog. But then, reality hits, and we come to realize that, yes...that spry little hamster is just gonna continue going round, and round, and round...and getting nowhere. Alas, that is the relevation which most will resign themselves to, after engaging the ho-hum, beat-by-beat, by-the-numbers slasher-film throwback, "Camp Blood: First Slaughter"...a lackluster follow-up to a rather surprisingly successful and prolific micro-budgeted, direct-to-video horror film franchise...

Movie Review: Bloody Moon (Blu-ray)

                                               Review By:
                                               James D.





Jess Franco's Bloody Moon is his stab at the slasher film genre. Our main character, Miguel, we learn early on that he was sent away for murdering a woman who was turning him on. Well, years pass and he seems that he is healed and is set free from the asylum. He comes back to the scene of the crime which now is a resort his family owns and soon after he is back as you can guess, the body count starts to rise. Is Miguel truly healed, or is something worst going on? Bloody Moon is not Franco's best work nor is it anywhere near his worst, this film lies somewhere in the middle. It seems that when Franco goes away from his comfort zone as in films like this, he does try to resort to some of his old tricks which make this film really shine above your standard 80s slasher.

Movie Review: Sean Weathers Presents: Vault of Terror (2013, Full Circle Filmworks)

...gotta admit, it's a pretty damn good idea. Getting one's independently produced stuff out there, for all to see, by wrapping around it, classic stuff that's much more familiar to the masses...perhaps even attempting to correlate a connection between the two, in some way, shape or form. But it seems that's exactly what we have here, with the under-the-radar and off-the-charts cult film collection, "Sean Weathers Presents: Vault of Terror". For those unfamiliar (...and as of recently, not so much, as far as this viewer), Sean Weathers is a micro-budget independent film producer & director, who since 1996, has specialized in underground feature films and shorts, with a flavored emphasis on gritty, urban-based exploitation, horror and erotica...while providing a reportedly underlining social commentary, where applicable. Regularly expounded upon, via a weekly podcast, are notable titles in his repertoire, such as "House of the Damned", "They All Must Die" and "The Trade-Off", amongst others; and amidst these broadcasts, he (...along with fellow filmmaking associate, Aswad Issa...both of whom spearhead film production, with their small, maverick company, Full Circle Filmworks) features classic independent and low-budget films of the past...for the most part, public domain properties...and provides insightful commentary & personal thoughts on these films, as well as how such films have inspired his own unique work...

Movie Review: Motel Hell (1980, Blu-ray)

...ya' know?? For years, "Motel Hell" was a sort of a flavor-of-the-moment 'holy grail' film, for this ardent fright film fan. It was 1980...the year that this viewer 'crossed over', having just turned 17, and now able to, at least legally, partake in 'R' rated film fare, all by my butt-squirmin', horror-movie-lovin' lonesome. That year, of course, was overwhelmingly dominated by the splatter classic, "Friday the 13th", which was hacking and slashing it's way through enormously huge box office bank, much to the dismay of countless distractor critic reviews. For this undiscriminating genre lover, who had always kept a constant finger on the pulse of horror films, via magazines and TV snippets, even at a young age (...uh, without the aid of internet, might I add), this little upcoming, mad-looking oddity, called "Motel Hell", seemed right up my alley. Articles in Famous Monsters of Filmland and Fangoria, whetted my appetite for the film...a panning review of the film, offer by stuck-up critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, on their then-relegated-to-PBS 'Sneak Previews' show, only goaded me on, as far as seeking the film out...and a lovingly displayed movie poster of the film, hung up on the wall in my bedroom...scrounged up by my dad, who serviced a number of the local L.A.-based movie distributors at the time, only served to stir my imagination, as to what I might expect from the film, and at the same time, agitated my fearful sense of anticipation, whereby I would daringly ask myself, "...do I really want to see this??" Uh, dumb question...

......it's late, and Vincent Smith...a middle-aged farmer, juggling a renowned and successful smoked meat business, along with a roadside hotel... is restless. Finally, he gets up out of the rocker, seated on the hotel manager's porch, and giving the neon hotel sign the stinkeye (..."...damn flickering second 'O', in 'Motel Hello's got a dang short...gonna have to fix that...people liable ta' think that..."...), Vincent shrugs his shoulders, goes inside the office, grabs his hunting rifle, fires up the pick-up truck, and barrels down the road. Pulling off to the side, turning off the truck lights, and finding a hidden, inconspicuous spot, he looks across the dark fields, barely lit by the moonlight, and...Wait!! What's that, up ahead?? Taking careful aim, Vincent fires off a couple shots...

Movie Review: The Initiation (1984, New World/Arrow Video)

 ...alright, folks!! Let's see a raise of hands out there, whose partial joy of one's bygone high school years, was spent hanging out with friends, at the local shopping mall. With a hand elatedly raised high, yes, this viewer most assuredly engaged in this adolescent ritual...a demandant after-school prerequisite...a cartel of your best buds, or on some nights, just your best gal...a mass invasion of the food court...checking out the record stores and game shops...emptying a pocketful of quarters, obliterating asteroids, saving monkey-enslaved princesses and chomping on ghost-guarded power pills, at the arcade...and seeing the latest blood-spattered horror flickage at the multiplex. In a time when one's first taste of splattery cinema was the one-two-three punch of the original "Halloween", "Dawn of the Dead" & "Friday the 13th", and the onslaught of horror films to come, was just short of emphasizing a preponderance of holiday-based horrors (...jeez, didn't any holiday miss the ravages of horror filmmakers?? Oh wait...hey, how about that?? Arbor Day wasn't touched...horror filmmakers, take note), the idealist possibility of horrible horrors at a shopping mall weren't fully and wholly considered (...even after the siege of Romero zombies), especially after the more reflectively exuberant fun of hanging out at the mall was joyously upheld, with a certain little comedy ditty, in and the about the area of fictional Ridgemont High. That all changed, in the excellent '80's, when even a wayward and nocturnally covert jaunt at a shopping mall or department store proved to be quite horrific...even deadly, in notables like 1984's "Night of the Comet", 1986's "Chopping Mall", 1988's "Hide and Go Shriek", 1987's "The Outing" (...oh, OK...that was a museum, not a mall), as well as a quaint and underappreciated little whodunit slasher entry from 1984, entitled "The Initiation"...

Movie Review: Zombie Babies (2012)

I think I've found a film that would go beautifully as a double-bill with Ryan Nicholson's Hanger. This little bad boy’s called Zombie Babies. Abortion/ comedy epics are really at a minimum for the sickos that dig them so what a pleasant surprise to see Eamon Hardiman's highly offensive and surprisingly occasionally funny flick about aborted babies who come back to life to kill and feast on a group of dopes at an abortion clinic / hotel/casino. Yes, that's the plot. Ohh... the shit we get here for review... wow!

Movie Review: Grotesque (2009)

Directed by Koji Shiraishi

Starring Tsugumi Nagasawa, Hiroiki Kawatsure and Shigeo Osako

Reviewed By Kenny B.

With the success of the Saw & Hostel franchises (for better or worse) it has become quite apparent that there is a niche in the horror genre that needed to be filled. Most of us know it as “torture-porn” or “splatter films”, a movie which focuses on graphic depictions of gore and violence centered around a preoccupation with the vulnerability of the human body and the theatrical portrail of its mutilation. The majority of these films lacking any type of comedic tone, I personally find them for the most part, a bit tough to watch. And in all honesty, most of them are poorly made piles of dog shit in my opinion. Koji Shiraishi's Grotesque has climbed to the top of that pile of dog shit and proudly planted its flag as the king of the mountain for the time being. This film was made for one reason, to disturb and shock even the most hard-core of horror fans, and it succeeds in doing just that.

The Puppet Monster Massacre Coming to DVD on July 26

This is The Puppet Monster Massacre, a wild and raucous love letter to the monster films of the glorious 1980's. Heads will roll and felt will fly in this visually rich splatter-fest.

Buy Puppet Monster Massacre on DVD

SYNOPSIS: A group of teens are challenged to spend a night in the Wagner mansion on the edge of town. Little do they know the owner (Dr. Wolfgang Wagner) has concocted a monstrosity in the basement and plans to make the hapless teens the creature's first big meal.