Author Archives: surgeons of horror

Ice Cream Man (1995): A Cold Treat That’s Long Since Soured

08 Thursday May 2025

Posted by in retrospective

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Chilled to Imperfection: Three decades on, Ice Cream Man remains a sticky splatter of missed opportunities and cult oddities.

By 1995, horror had begun to lean into its self-awareness, but Ice Cream Man, directed by Norman Apstein, wasn’t quite in on the joke—or if it was, it delivered its punchlines with a busted scooper.

Set in a seemingly idyllic suburb where childhood innocence melts into madness, the film stars Clint Howard as Gregory Tudor, a traumatised boy turned deranged adult who inherits an ice cream truck… and uses it to serve up frozen desserts laced with severed fingers, eyeballs, and worse. It’s a premise ripe for absurd horror-comedy gold—but what we get is a lumpy mess of gore, uneven pacing, and tonal whiplash.

There’s a certain offbeat charm to Ice Cream Man, thanks largely to Clint Howard’s twitchy, off-kilter performance. He leans into Gregory’s tragic backstory with a kind of unhinged commitment that almost makes you feel for him—almost. But even Howard’s peculiar screen presence can’t save a film that struggles to balance grotesque horror and campy fun. It often veers too far in either direction and ends up stranded in a sticky, blood-stained middle ground.

The film’s greatest crime isn’t the body parts buried in sundaes—it’s the wasted potential. There’s an entire subplot involving a gang of precocious kids playing junior detectives, seemingly lifted from a Spielbergian playbook, but with none of the polish. Their interactions often feel like a rough draft of The Monster Squad, minus the cohesion or chemistry. And while the kills are creatively grotesque, the direction and editing drain them of impact.

Still, Ice Cream Man has nestled itself in cult corners for its sheer oddity. It’s one of those late-night cable curiosities—the kind of movie you stumble upon half-awake, unsure if it was real or a fever dream. There’s a cheap, backyard-horror spirit to it that some might affectionately admire, especially with its practical effects and lo-fi aesthetic. But admiration doesn’t equal success.

The Prognosis:

Three decades later, Ice Cream Man remains a curious artifact of mid-90s direct-to-video horror—part slasher, part black comedy, part botched parody. It never manages to be scary, funny, or compelling, but there’s something to be said for its persistence. Like freezer-burnt leftovers, it’s still there… but only the brave or nostalgic should dare a second bite.

  • 30th Anniversary Retrospective by Saul Muerte

Creature (1985): A Pale Echo from Saturn’s Shadows

07 Wednesday May 2025

Posted by in retrospective

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

An icy moon, a forgotten monster, and a film still trapped in the shadow of its predecessors.

By 1985, the cinematic trail left by Alien had already spawned a legion of imitators, each trying to harness the same claustrophobic dread in cold, inhuman spaces. Creature, directed by William Malone, was one of those echoing attempts—big on promise, but undermined by budgetary constraints, pacing issues, and a story that always feels like it’s playing catch-up with better films.

Set on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, the film follows a team of American explorers who stumble upon an ancient alien lifeform… one that’s been resting, quite undisturbed, for about 200,000 years—until now. But instead of unfurling as a fresh nightmare in the vein of Ridley Scott or John Carpenter, Creature quickly shows its hand as an awkward patchwork of sci-fi horror tropes, leaning on atmosphere it can’t fully conjure and characters we barely come to know.

The film does score points for its setting: the barren, icy terrain of Titan is a fitting stage for isolation and cosmic dread. There are moments—fleeting though they may be—where you can feel the weight of that space, the crushing silence, the desperate last gasps of human life under alien pressure. But these moments rarely evolve into anything more than background mood. The tension is never sustained.

Much of Creature’s legacy has survived in cult circles, owing partly to its practical effects and its modest but ambitious creature design, which—when shown sparingly—can deliver a jolt or two. Yet the creature itself, supposedly the film’s main draw, feels underutilised and poorly revealed. The mystery dies the moment we see too much, too soon. It’s less terrifying predator and more sluggish, rubbery reminder of what could have been.

Performances are serviceable, but thinly sketched. Klaus Kinski shows up as a wild card—naturally—but even his brand of manic energy can’t elevate a script that barely holds together under scrutiny. His presence, like the alien, feels like something stitched in for effect rather than organically grown from the narrative.

What Creature most sorely lacks is identity. It wants to be Alien, it wants to be The Thing, and it even wants to nod at Cold War paranoia with its American and German tensions, but never manages to settle into a rhythm of its own. The result is a film that feels more like a VHS relic than a true lost classic—better suited to playing in the background of a late-night sci-fi marathon than being revisited for serious chills.

That said, there’s still a strange charm to it all. The film is a product of its time—ambitious in scope, restricted in execution, and clearly crafted by filmmakers who loved the genre. William Malone would go on to prove himself more confidently in later works like House on Haunted Hill (1999), but here, he was still wading through derivative waters.

The Prognosis:

Forty years on, Creature remains a faint star in the vast constellation of 80s horror sci-fi. Not quite forgotten, not quite worth remembering—it lingers, orbiting obscurity, its promise still sleeping beneath the ice.

  • 40th Anniversary Retrospective by Saul Muerte

Ink, Flesh, and Fire: Teruo Ishii’s Inferno of Torture (1969)

03 Saturday May 2025

Posted by in retrospective

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

A feverish plunge into Edo-era exploitation, where the beauty of art is carved from the cruelty of flesh.

By the late 1960s, Japanese director Teruo Ishii had cemented his reputation as a provocateur—an auteur of the abnormal whose films constantly tested the limits of good taste. Following the surreal sadism of his Joys of Torture series and the florid transgressions of Orgies of Edo, Ishii would return once more to the nexus of eroticism and agony with Inferno of Torture (徳川いれずみ師：責め地獄). Released in 1969, this film marked yet another swirling descent into the baroque horrors of Japan’s past, tinged with the obsessions of modern exploitation cinema.

Set during the Tokugawa era, Inferno of Torture builds its narrative around the booming trade of tattooed geisha—women whose bodies are transformed into canvases to satisfy the exotic desires of wealthy Europeans. What begins as a lushly costumed tale of artisanship soon mutates into something darker and more sinister. The competition between two rival tattoo masters (each with their own brand of brutality and artistry) spirals into a portrait of obsession, commodification, and systemic cruelty, where the female form becomes both sacred and sacrificial.

Ishii’s camera lingers with equal reverence on the intricacies of traditional Japanese tattooing (irezumi) and the often shocking violence enacted to “preserve” or “perfect” these living artworks. His aesthetic is unmistakable: elaborate production design, garish colour palettes, and sudden, shocking cuts that blur the boundary between the ceremonial and the obscene. Here, torture is not only spectacle—it’s also currency. Beauty is literally etched into pain.

While some of Ishii’s contemporaries were leaning into more psychological or supernatural horror, Inferno of Torture embraced the physical and the performative. The film sits on a precarious edge, asking the audience to reckon with the allure of suffering while never quite condemning its purveyors. It is this ambiguity—this refusal to clearly moralise—that makes the film both fascinating and uncomfortable. Is it an indictment of patriarchal cruelty, or an indulgence in it? Ishii leaves that question open, daring the viewer to look closer.

It’s important to view Inferno of Torture not as an isolated work, but as part of Ishii’s greater obsession with the grotesque pageantry of pain. Like his earlier Shogun’s Joy of Torture (1968), this film pulls from real historical punishments and court practices but filters them through a lens of stylised surrealism. Yet, where Shogun’s Joy was fragmented and episodic, Inferno is more narratively cohesive—anchored by the rivalry of the tattoo artists and the women who bear the consequences of their egos.

As noted in our prior discussion of Ishii’s legacy, the director had a unique ability to cloak exploitation in aesthetics. Inferno of Torture exemplifies this duality. It is a film of contradictions: gorgeous yet grotesque, meditative yet exploitative, artistic yet undeniably sleazy. Ishii revels in this tension, crafting a work that is less about resolution and more about confronting the audience with their own thresholds of taste.

Inferno of Torture remains a vivid example of the extremities that defined the tail-end of the 1960s in Japanese genre cinema. It’s a challenging watch—not merely because of its brutality, but because of its beauty. That beauty, as Ishii reminds us again and again, comes at a price.

  • 1960s retrospective review by Saul Muerte

Until Dawn Falls into the Loop, but Misses the Fear

02 Friday May 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

This adaptation of the cult horror game spins a promising premise into a stylish but shallow spiral of déjà vu.

Translating a beloved video game into a feature-length film is no easy feat, and Until Dawn (2025) finds itself caught between reverence and reinvention—never fully satisfying either impulse. Directed by David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation), the film adaptation of Supermassive Games’ acclaimed 2015 interactive horror experience arrives with expectations as high as the snowy mountain peaks that once haunted the original. Unfortunately, the result is a visually competent, sometimes eerie effort that ultimately loops on itself in more ways than its premise intends.

Gone are the sweeping tracking shots of icy cliff edges and gothic ski lodges that defined the game’s snowy isolation. In their place is a mist-shrouded valley and a rusting visitor centre—less operatic in tone, more grounded in survival horror clichés. The story follows Clover (Kaitlyn Bernard) and her group of friends who venture into the remote wilderness where her sister Melanie vanished a year earlier. But this isn’t a straightforward slasher. Soon, each grisly death resets the evening, plunging the characters into a surreal time loop. Every death becomes part of a macabre routine—a concept ripe for tension and innovation.

Yet despite this intriguing setup, Until Dawn struggles to replicate the game’s carefully balanced atmosphere of dread, character interplay, and escalating supernatural unease. While the film toys with repetition in the vein of Happy Death Day or Triangle, its execution feels flatter. The stakes should rise with each iteration, but instead, the sense of urgency dissipates into predictability.

One of the most glaring issues is tonal dissonance. The game deftly shifted between teen horror, creature feature, and psychological thriller—leaning into its interactive nature to let players explore moral ambiguity and consequence. The film, however, strips away much of that complexity. The characters are archetypal and underwritten, with little of the branching narrative depth that gave players a stake in their survival. Despite Bernard’s earnest turn and a committed supporting cast, we don’t get enough time or texture to care deeply when the inevitable deaths arrive—especially when the film keeps undoing them.

David F. Sandberg, known for his knack with shadowplay and minimalist dread, brings some eerie flourishes to the visuals—particularly in the initial sequences of isolation and the early deaths. But his more intimate, character-driven horror style doesn’t always sync with the sprawling, meta-narrative scope the story requires. There are moments of atmosphere, to be sure, but they’re rarely sustained.

Perhaps most disappointing to fans of the game is the near-total omission of the Wendigo mythology that underpinned its final act. In favour of streamlining the plot for a film-length runtime, the supernatural elements are toned down or erased entirely—leaving a more conventional masked killer in their place. It’s a simplification that robs the story of its distinctive edge and sense of mythic terror.

The Prognosis:

Until Dawn isn’t an outright failure—just a missed opportunity. It flirts with high-concept horror and offers a few moments of stylish unease, but never quite captures the pulpy grandeur or narrative inventiveness of its source material. As a standalone film, it’s serviceable. As an adaptation, it’s trapped in its own loop, chasing shadows of something far more chilling.

  • Movie review by Saul Muerte

Wax Works: Two Decades On, This Remake Still Doesn’t Stick

29 Tuesday Apr 2025

Posted by in retrospective

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Jaume Collet-Serra’s glossy 2005 slasher remake remains an empty vessel — preserved only by Paris Hilton’s headline-making death scene.

Time can be kind to horror. Cult classics rise from the ashes of critical scorn, reputations rehabilitate, and even the cheesiest slashers earn nostalgic affection. But House of Wax (2005), Jaume Collet-Serra’s glossy, grimy remake of the 1953 Vincent Price classic (itself a remake), remains stubbornly embalmed in mediocrity.

Released in the mid-2000s horror boom — where slick aesthetics and disposable casts were the norm — House of Wax offered little beyond surface-level thrills. A group of attractive, personality-deficient teens become stranded near a creepy roadside attraction, only to discover the wax figures inside were once living people. What follows is a tired parade of genre clichés, vapid character development, and an overlong runtime that melts what little tension ever existed.

Most remember the film not for its suspense or horror, but for Paris Hilton’s much-hyped on-screen death — a moment so cynically marketed that it became the film’s entire selling point. Ironically, Hilton ends up being one of the more memorable parts of the film, simply by virtue of being a cultural lightning rod. The rest of the cast — including a pre-Supernatural Jared Padalecki and Elisha Cuthbert — do what they can with a script that barely gives them anything to work with.

To Collet-Serra’s credit, the production design is occasionally striking. The titular house of wax itself is grotesquely fascinating, and there’s a certain warped artistry in the film’s finale, as it literally burns and collapses around the surviving characters. But by then, it’s too late — the film has already drowned in a pool of derivative ideas, manufactured edge, and PG-13 posturing disguised as R-rated grit.

The Prognosis:

Two decades on, House of Wax isn’t exactly worth scraping from the bottom of the wax vat. It’s not so-bad-it’s-good, nor is it completely unwatchable — just forgettable, slickly packaged horror that’s all sheen and no soul.

  • Saul Muerte

Dead Eyes and Dim Hopes: 30 Years of John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned

27 Sunday Apr 2025

Posted by in retrospective

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

This cold, contract-bound remake fails to capture the chilling essence of its source — but still boasts moments of eerie charm and unexpected star power.

When Village of the Damned landed in cinemas in 1995, it was already staring down the impossible — updating a revered British sci-fi horror tale (The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham) and stepping into the shoes of the eerie, monochrome classic from 1960. And despite the might of genre legend John Carpenter behind the camera, the result was a forgettable misfire, marked by studio compromise and artistic disinterest.

The story still carries a chilling premise: a mysterious force knocks out a coastal town in California, and shortly afterward, every woman of childbearing age turns up pregnant. The children born from this strange phenomenon are pale, intelligent, and utterly devoid of empathy. It’s fertile ground for psychological horror and social allegory — but this version mostly settles for surface-level spooks and some unfortunately lifeless storytelling.

Christopher Reeve (in what would be his final film role before his tragic accident) brings dignity and gravitas as the town’s conflicted doctor, while Mark Hamill, in an uncharacteristically stern role, plays the local reverend. Seeing Superman and Luke Skywalker in the same frame offers a brief thrill for fans, but even their presence can’t overcome the flat tone and narrative inertia. Lindsay Haun as Mara, the children’s chilling leader, is one of the few bright spots — channeling icy menace with a gaze that deserves better framing.

Carpenter himself later admitted that Village of the Damned was a contractual obligation — and it shows. Absent is the spark of passion or innovation that shaped his earlier masterpieces. Even the usually standout Carpenter score feels half-hearted, composed in collaboration with Dave Davies of The Kinks but largely forgettable. What little levity the film does offer comes in moments of unintentional humour or scenery-chewing camp, rather than any clever writing.

And yet, there’s something strangely watchable about it. Maybe it’s the morbid curiosity of watching a great filmmaker go through the motions, or the way the story’s unnerving core still peeks through the cracks — a disturbing parable about control, conformity, and fear of the unknown. But in the end, this Village feels more like a ghost town.

  • Saul Muerte

Whispers in The Mad Room: A Slow-Burning Descent into Familial Fear

26 Saturday Apr 2025

Posted by in retrospective

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

This under-the-radar 1969 thriller simmers with quiet dread and strong performances, even if it never fully embraces its madness.

In the shadow of better-known psychological thrillers of the 1960s, Bernard Girard’s The Mad Room sits in a strange limbo — a Gothic-tinged chamber piece that doesn’t quite unravel as boldly as its premise promises, but nonetheless simmers with intrigue, dread, and the occasional jolt of melodramatic madness.

A reimagining of Ladies in Retirement (1941), the film casts a young Stella Stevens as Ellen Hardy, whose attempt to build a respectable life is threatened by the sudden return of her institutionalised siblings. With a wedding on the horizon and a matriarchal employer (a scene-stealing Shelley Winters) to appease, Ellen’s composure begins to unravel as past horrors threaten to bleed into the present — culminating in a suspicious death and an ever-darkening sense of claustrophobia.

While The Mad Room never fully descends into the psychological chaos it flirts with, it crafts a tense atmosphere within the confines of its limited setting. Girard’s direction is largely restrained, letting the performances do most of the heavy lifting, particularly Stevens, whose nervous energy gives the film a pulse even when the pacing sags.

However, despite its sinister setup and a few genuinely unsettling moments, the film doesn’t push far enough. Its secrets are telegraphed too early, and the final revelations feel like a missed opportunity to truly shock. The film lingers just on the edge of greatness, unwilling to let itself go mad.

The Prognosis:

For fans of slow-burning, character-driven thrillers with a taste for domestic unease and lingering trauma, The Mad Room offers a slightly underappreciated detour into late-60s psychological horror — flawed, yes, but not without merit.

  • Saul Muerte

Ash (2025): A Sensory Voyage from a Singular Artist

24 Thursday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Flying Lotus has never been a filmmaker to colour inside the lines. With Kuso (2017), he exploded onto the scene with a hallucinogenic blend of body horror, surrealism, and sound design that dared viewers to stick with it—or run screaming. With Ash, he reins in the chaos just enough to create what is arguably his most accessible film to date, while still packing it with enough aural and visual flourishes to remain unmistakably his own.

Set on a remote planet and anchored by a creeping sense of cosmic dread, Ash follows a woman (Elza González) who wakes up to find her crew slaughtered and must unravel the mystery before a darker truth consumes her. It’s a premise steeped in sci-fi tradition, but Flying Lotus isn’t here to offer a straightforward space thriller. Instead, he weaves a waking dream of sound and vision—atmospheric, meditative, and disorienting in equal measure.

The real marvel is in the film’s sensory layering. The soundscape—unsurprisingly exquisite—is a collage of ambient dread, industrial echoes, and meditative melodies that feel like transmissions from another dimension. As a musician, Flying Lotus has always been a sound alchemist; here, he pushes that instinct into the very bones of the film.

Elza González gives a committed, emotional performance that grounds the film’s cerebral tendencies. It’s largely her show, and she rises to the occasion with a mix of vulnerability and resolve. Aaron Paul appears in a supporting role that brings both tension and quiet depth, acting as a counterpoint to González’s isolation and inner turmoil.

The film’s Achilles’ heel is its plot. Beneath the rich surface textures and hypnotic editing, Ash tells a story that is familiar, even predictable. But it’s cleverly concealed beneath the stylistic veneer, like a well-worn book with a mesmerising new cover. There’s craft in how Flying Lotus reshapes and recontextualises sci-fi horror tropes, but at times, it feels like style just barely holding up a sagging structure.

The Prognosis:

There’s no denying Ash is a step forward—a distillation of Flying Lotus’s eccentricities into something more narratively digestible while retaining his unique artistic stamp. For fans of bold sci-fi that dares to flirt with the abstract, Ash may not be the deepest story, but it’s one hell of a ride through an artist’s ever-evolving mind.

Ash is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

  • Review by Saul Muerte

Sinners (2025) Burns Slow, Strikes Deep: A Southern Gothic Horror for the Soul

24 Thursday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ryan Coogler’s masterful period horror blends haunting performances, rich character work, and a chilling exploration of generational trauma in 1930s Mississippi.

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is a searing slow-burn period horror that dances with dread and walks hand-in-hand with grief. Set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, the film follows twin brothers Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore—both masterfully portrayed by Michael B. Jordan—as they return home to bury their past and sow new beginnings. What they unearth instead is a long-dormant evil that has been waiting, watching, and whispering ever since they left.

The true triumph of Sinners lies in its narrative depth and the emotional complexity that Coogler and his cast mine from every silence, glance, and haunted memory. This isn’t just a horror film—it’s a reckoning. Coogler, whose storytelling instincts have never been sharper, peels back layers of trauma, familial guilt, and the deep-rooted scars of racism, infusing the piece with a quiet fury and poetic sorrow. The horror grows from within, shaped by generations of silence and sorrow, before it ever manifests as something supernatural.

Michael B. Jordan’s dual performance as the Moore brothers is nothing short of riveting. As Smoke, the reformed bootlegger-turned-father haunted by regret, and as Stack, the charming yet damaged twin desperate for purpose, Jordan crafts two fully realised personas that often share the screen but never blur. It’s a feat of nuanced acting that few could carry off with such clarity and emotional intelligence.

Hailee Steinfeld is quietly devastating as Mary, Stack’s ex-lover who embodies both the warmth of a past life and the cold reality of its collapse. Miles Caton delivers a breakout performance as Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore, a cousin torn between faith and family, while Wunmi Mosaku brings aching humanity to the role of Annie, Smoke’s wife, whose inner strength glows amid the encroaching darkness.

Visually, Sinners is a stunning amalgamation of Southern Gothic decay and modern horror stylings. Coogler references films like The Thing and From Dusk Till Dawn not through mimicry, but through spiritual succession—mood, tension, and a willingness to go where many fear. He weaves these references into the very fabric of 1930s America, evoking a time where the devil wore not just horns, but hoods. The racist undercurrent of the era isn’t just backdrop—it’s part of the horror itself, as oppressive and insidious as any demonic force.

Ludwig Göransson’s score is another masterstroke—an eerie, pulsating blend of Delta blues, spirituals, and ambient dread. It doesn’t just accompany the film; it guides it. The music conjures the Devil at the crossroads, the sorrow of the land, and the weight of sin—historical, personal, and inherited.

The Prognosis:

Sinners isn’t a film that offers easy scares or tidy conclusions. It’s a powerful, slow-burning descent into a uniquely American hell—one born of blood, legacy, and the terrible things we choose to bury. Coogler has delivered something rare: a horror film with heart, history, and heat. A Southern ghost story for our times—and for all time.

  • Saul Muerte

“The devil don’t wait in the shadows. He walks the road with you.”

Cherry Falls Trips Over Its Own Premise

24 Thursday Apr 2025

Posted by in retrospective

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

A provocative twist on slasher tropes can’t save this Scream-inspired misfire, despite strong turns from Brittany Murphy and Michael Biehn.

Cherry Falls arrives on the heels of the late ’90s slasher revival, clearly aiming to ride the wave created by Wes Craven’s Scream, but instead crashes headfirst into its own uneven tone and underwhelming execution. Released in 2000, Geoffrey Wright’s high-concept horror flick flips the slasher trope on its head — targeting virgins rather than the sexually active — yet it ultimately lacks the finesse or wit to carry its premise beyond surface-level shock.

The film is buoyed, in part, by the late Brittany Murphy’s off-kilter, captivating presence as Jody Marken. Her performance injects the film with some much-needed emotional depth and unpredictability. Alongside her, Michael Biehn brings a grounded seriousness as the town sheriff, delivering a performance that feels like it belongs to a more sophisticated script.

However, despite its intriguing central idea and flashes of satirical promise, Cherry Falls struggles with identity — caught between wanting to parody slasher tropes and simultaneously embracing them without the cleverness that made Scream a genre-defining success. Its tonal inconsistency makes it feel more like a pale imitator than a bold reinvention.

By the time the third act rolls around, the film loses what little momentum it had. A rushed and weak resolution undercuts any tension or investment, leaving viewers with more questions than satisfaction. It’s a finale that feels as though the filmmakers ran out of time — or worse, ideas.

The Prognosis:

Cherry Falls is a curious relic of post-Scream horror, notable more for its cast than its execution. Brittany Murphy’s performance remains its most memorable asset, a haunting reminder of a talent taken too soon. But beyond that, the film fails to leave much of a lasting impression.

  • Saul Muerte