Claws Without Consequence: Grizzly Night (2026)

06 Monday Apr 2026

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“There’s something inherently terrifying about nature turning against us.” It’s a truth that has powered creature features for decades, from Jaws to The Edge. With Grizzly Night, director Burke Doeren attempts to tap into that primal fear, revisiting the real-life 1967 grizzly bear attacks in Glacier National Park — a chilling historical event that, on paper, should provide fertile ground for a gripping survival horror.

Yet despite its harrowing source material, Grizzly Night struggles to translate fact into fear.

A True Story, Softened

The film’s greatest asset is also its most frustrating shortcoming. The true story — two fatal bear attacks occurring on the same night, miles apart — is inherently horrifying, grounded in the unpredictability of nature and the vulnerability of those caught within it.

However, Grizzly Night dilutes that tension with a narrative that feels oddly restrained. Rather than leaning into the raw, chaotic terror of the attacks, the film opts for a more conventional, almost sanitised structure, one that prioritises character set-up over sustained suspense.

The result is a film that never quite captures the immediacy or brutality that its premise demands.

A Cast Left Adrift

The ensemble cast — including Brec Bassinger, Jack Griffo, and Oded Fehr — bring a level of professionalism to the material, but are ultimately underserved by a script that struggles to give them depth.

Characters are sketched in broad strokes: the carefree campers, the cautious authority figures, the inevitable victims. While there are attempts to build emotional stakes, these moments often feel rushed, making it difficult to fully invest in their fates when the inevitable attacks occur.

Even seasoned performers are left navigating a narrative that rarely allows them to elevate the material.

Tension That Never Quite Bites

For a film centred on two brutal animal attacks, Grizzly Night is surprisingly light on genuine suspense. Doeren shows flashes of promise in isolated moments — the stillness of the forest, the creeping sense that something unseen is watching — but these are too often undercut by uneven pacing and predictable execution.

Where the film falters most is in its depiction of the bears themselves. Whether constrained by budget or creative choices, the attacks lack the visceral impact needed to make them truly unsettling. In a genre where physical threat is paramount, this absence is keenly felt.

Comparisons to more effective natural horror films are inevitable, and unfortunately not in Grizzly Night’s favour.

A Director Finding His Footing

As a feature debut, Grizzly Night offers glimpses of Burke Doeren’s potential. There is an understanding of atmosphere in certain sequences, and a clear ambition to tell a grounded, fact-based horror story without resorting to excessive sensationalism.

However, the film ultimately feels like a director still finding his voice. The balance between realism and tension remains elusive, and the storytelling lacks the confidence needed to fully capitalise on its premise.

The Prognosis:

Grizzly Night is a frustrating near-miss — a film built on a deeply unsettling true story that never quite harnesses its full potential. While there are moments that hint at a more effective, atmospheric thriller, they are too few and far between to leave a lasting impression.

A restrained and uneven natural horror that proves the real events were far more terrifying than their cinematic retelling.

  • Saul Muerte

Before the Ice Cracked: The Thing from Another World (1951) — 75 Years On

06 Monday Apr 2026

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Seventy-five years on, The Thing from Another World remains a cornerstone of science fiction horror — a film that helped define how cinema would visualise extraterrestrial threat in the atomic age. Directed by Christian Nyby and heavily shaped by producer Howard Hawks, the film stands not merely as a relic of its era, but as a foundational text whose influence continues to echo through decades of genre filmmaking.

Adapted loosely from Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr., the film trades the novella’s paranoia-driven shapeshifting horror for something more direct — a physical, tangible threat lurking within the frozen isolation of an Arctic outpost. And yet, in doing so, it taps into something equally potent: the fear of the unknown during a time when the world itself felt on the brink of irreversible change.

A Product of the Atomic Age

Emerging in the shadow of post-war anxiety and early Cold War tensions, The Thing from Another World channels the era’s unease into a narrative of invasion and containment. The alien — a towering, plant-based organism — is less a character than a symbol. It represents the foreign, the unknowable, the unstoppable force that science alone may not be able to control.

The film’s famous mantra — “Watch the skies!” — became more than just a line of dialogue. It crystallised a cultural moment in which humanity’s gaze had shifted upward, toward the possibility of extraterrestrial life, but also toward the looming threat of annihilation from above.

In this sense, the film helped establish the template for 1950s science fiction cinema, paving the way for works like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Day the Earth Stood Still, both of which similarly grappled with themes of paranoia, conformity, and existential dread.

Hawksian Dialogue Meets Sci-Fi Terror

One of the film’s most enduring qualities lies in its rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue — a hallmark of Hawks’ influence. The characters speak over one another, trading quips and technical jargon with a rhythm that feels remarkably modern even by today’s standards.

This approach lends the film an immediacy that many of its contemporaries lack. Rather than pausing for exposition, the narrative unfolds through conversation, immersing the audience in the chaos and confusion of the situation.

It also grounds the film in a sense of realism. These are not archetypal heroes, but working professionals — scientists and military personnel attempting to navigate a crisis that defies their understanding. The tension arises not just from the alien itself, but from the clash between scientific curiosity and military pragmatism.

The Birth of a Genre Blueprint

While later adaptations would push the concept further — most notably The Thing directed by John Carpenter — The Thing from Another World laid the groundwork for many of the genre’s most enduring tropes.

The isolated setting.
The enclosed group dynamic.
The slow realisation that something is terribly wrong.

These elements would go on to define not just science fiction horror, but the broader language of suspense cinema. The Arctic outpost becomes a microcosm of society under pressure, a space where trust erodes and survival instincts take precedence.

Even the creature design — though limited by the technology of the time — contributes to the film’s legacy. Its humanoid form, while less overtly monstrous than later interpretations, reinforces the unsettling idea that the alien is not entirely separate from us.

Legacy Frozen in Time

To view The Thing from Another World today is to witness the origins of a cinematic lineage that continues to evolve. Its DNA can be found in everything from Alien to contemporary survival horror, each iteration building upon the foundations established here.

Yet perhaps its greatest legacy lies in its restraint.

Where modern horror often leans toward excess, Nyby and Hawks understood the power of suggestion. The creature is used sparingly, its presence felt more through implication than explicit depiction. The result is a film that remains eerily effective, even in an age of advanced visual effects.

The Prognosis:

The Thing from Another World endures not because of what it shows, but because of what it started.

It is a film that captured the anxieties of its time while quietly shaping the future of genre cinema — a blueprint for the countless stories of isolation, invasion, and existential dread that would follow.

A seminal work of science fiction horror whose cultural impact remains as enduring as the frozen landscape it inhabits.

  • Saul Muerte

Filth, Flesh and Freedom: A Brief History of Trash Cinema

04 Saturday Apr 2026

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To understand Fuck My Son!, you have to understand the ecosystem it belongs to — a long, disreputable, and fiercely independent tradition of “trash cinema.”

This is not an insult. It’s a badge.

The Godfathers of Good Taste’s Death

Few companies embody this ethos more than Troma Entertainment, the studio behind cult landmarks like The Toxic Avenger. Under Lloyd Kaufman, Troma built an empire on bad taste, bodily fluids, and anti-establishment energy.

These films weren’t just crude — they were defiant. A rejection of mainstream polish in favour of anarchic expression.

From Midnight Movies to Modern Filth

The lineage stretches further:

  • Pink Flamingos by John Waters — perhaps the ultimate provocation, turning taboo into performance art.
  • Bad Taste by Peter Jackson — DIY gore with punk sensibilities.
  • The Greasy Strangler — a modern cult entry that revels in discomfort, absurdity, and bodily grotesque.

These films share a common DNA:
They reject refinement, embrace excess, and often blur the line between comedy and horror until both become indistinguishable.

Why It Exists

Trash cinema thrives because it offers something mainstream cinema cannot:

  • Total creative freedom
  • Unfiltered expression
  • A space to explore the unacceptable

It is cinema without a safety net.

And while not all of it succeeds, its existence is vital. It keeps the boundaries of film elastic — constantly tested, stretched, and occasionally snapped.

Where Fuck My Son! Fits

Rohal’s film sits comfortably within this tradition — arguably pushing even further into taboo territory than many of its predecessors.

Whether it will achieve the same cult longevity is another question.

Because in trash cinema, notoriety gets you noticed…
but voice is what keeps you remembered.

  • Saul Muerte

Bad Taste as Baptism: Fuck My Son! (2026)

Fuck My Son! will be screening in select cinemas from Apr 9 for a limited time.

Bad Taste as Baptism: Fuck My Son! (2026)

04 Saturday Apr 2026

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There are films that provoke… and then there are films that weaponise provocation as their entire identity.
Fuck My Son!, directed by Todd Rohal, firmly belongs in the latter camp — a grotesque, confrontational descent into taboo that feels less like storytelling and more like an endurance test.

Adapted from the underground comic by Johnny Ryan, the film embraces its origins with unapologetic aggression. Narrative coherence is secondary. Characterisation is almost incidental. What matters here is impact — how far it can push, how hard it can hit, and how long an audience can withstand the onslaught before recoiling.

The Aesthetics of Offence

Rohal’s approach is not without craft. In fact, what makes Fuck My Son! so confronting is how deliberately constructed it is. This is not chaos by accident — it is chaos curated.

The practical creature effects, in particular, demand attention. There is a tactile, squirm-inducing quality to the film’s physical grotesqueries that places it in lineage with boundary-pushing auteurs who understand that revulsion is most effective when it feels real. Flesh stretches. Fluids flow. The body becomes both canvas and battleground.

In an age of digital sanitisation, this commitment to the physical image is perversely admirable.

Taboo as Currency

But provocation, when used as currency, quickly devalues itself.

The film’s central conceit — deliberately offensive, aggressively transgressive — initially shocks, then unsettles, and eventually… numbs. Without thematic grounding or emotional counterpoint, the transgression begins to feel repetitive rather than revelatory.

This is where Fuck My Son! falters.

The most effective works of extreme cinema often use taboo as a gateway to deeper commentary — on society, morality, repression. Here, the suggestion of meaning is fleeting at best. The film gestures toward satire, but rarely commits to it.

Know Your Audience

And yet, to dismiss the film outright would be to misunderstand its purpose.

There is an audience for this. A dedicated, discerning subset of genre fans who seek out the extreme not for narrative satisfaction, but for experiential confrontation. For them, Fuck My Son! is not a failure — it is a badge of honour. A film to be survived, debated, and worn like a scar.

It is cinema as dare.

The Prognosis:

Fuck My Son! is not interested in pleasing you. It barely cares if you understand it. It exists to provoke, to repel, and to challenge the limits of what can be put on screen.

A technically committed but narratively hollow exercise in taboo, elevated by its practical effects and sustained only by the endurance of its audience.

  • Saul Muerte

Fuck My Son will be screening at select cinemas from Apr 9 for a limited time.

Filth, Flesh and Freedom: A Brief History of Trash Cinema

Love, Blood and the Loss of Shadow: Dracula (2025)

02 Thursday Apr 2026

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There is something perversely fitting about Luc Besson tackling the story of Dracula — a filmmaker long enamoured with heightened emotion, operatic visuals, and characters driven by obsession. With Dracula, Besson does not so much adapt the myth as he attempts to drown it in longing, reframing the Prince of Darkness as a tragic romantic caught in an eternal spiral of grief, rage, and devotion.

It’s a bold swing.

But one that doesn’t always draw blood.

A Vampire in Love with Loss

Besson’s Dracula leans heavily into the oft-explored notion that monstrosity is born not of evil, but of heartbreak. The film traces Vlad’s transformation from mortal prince to cursed immortal, driven by the brutal loss of his bride and his subsequent renunciation of faith.

It’s familiar terrain — territory previously carved out with gothic grandeur in Bram Stoker’s Dracula — yet Besson strips away much of the baroque sensuality that defined that iteration, replacing it with something colder, more abstract.

The result is a film that feels emotionally intense, yet curiously distant.

Where the gothic tradition thrives on atmosphere — on shadows, candlelight, decay — Besson opts for a cleaner, more stylised visual language. His Dracula exists in a world that is visually striking, but rarely suffocating. The rot beneath the surface is implied, not felt.

And in a story like this, that absence matters.

Performances That Bleed Through the Fog

What anchors the film — what almost saves it from its own indulgence — are its performances.

Caleb Landry Jones delivers a portrayal of Vlad that is as fragile as it is feral. There’s a volatility to his performance, a sense that beneath the stillness lies something constantly threatening to fracture. His Dracula is not a figure of dominance, but of disintegration — a man hollowed out by grief and sustained only by obsession.

Opposite him, Christoph Waltz brings his trademark precision, injecting the film with moments of clarity and control. Where Jones spirals, Waltz steadies. It’s a dynamic that gives the film its most compelling exchanges — brief flashes where character overtakes spectacle.

And yet, even these performances struggle against the film’s broader uncertainty.

Style Over Myth

Besson has always been a visual storyteller first, and Dracula is no exception. The film is filled with striking imagery — battlefields soaked in blood, vast landscapes frozen in time, bodies moving through space with an almost dreamlike detachment.

But style, here, becomes a double-edged sword.

In prioritising visual expression over narrative clarity, the film allows its mythology to drift. The rules of this world — its logic, its structure — become increasingly opaque, leaving the audience to navigate a story that feels more like a sequence of emotional impressions than a cohesive arc.

This is where the film falters most.

Because Dracula, as a figure, thrives on myth. On clearly defined boundaries between life and death, sacred and profane, desire and damnation. When those boundaries blur too far, the character risks losing his shape.

And here, he occasionally does.

The Missing Gothic Pulse

Perhaps the film’s most surprising omission is its lack of true gothic weight.

For all its talk of damnation and eternal suffering, Dracula rarely feels haunted. The atmosphere — that essential ingredient of any great vampire tale — is present in fragments, but never fully realised.

In stepping away from the heavy shadows and oppressive dread that have long defined the character, Besson creates something more ethereal… but also less impactful.

It’s a Dracula without fangs.

The Prognosis:

Dracula (2025) is a film caught between impulses — romance and horror, spectacle and substance, myth and mood. It reaches for operatic tragedy but often finds itself lost in its own aesthetic.

And yet, there is enough here — in its performances, in its ambition — to keep it from collapsing entirely.

A visually striking, emotionally charged reimagining that gets lost in the romance, leaving its mythology and gothic soul just out of reach.

A vampire story that longs for eternity… but struggles to leave a lasting bite.

  • Saul Muerte

Gooey Glory and Gallows Laughs: Slither (2006)

30 Monday Mar 2026

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Long before he was steering blockbuster juggernauts for Marvel Studios and DC Studios, James Gunn made his directorial debut with something far slimier, stranger, and far more sincere in its love for the grotesque. Slither arrived in 2006 as a love letter to classic creature features, splatter cinema, and the kind of horror-comedy that delights in pushing good taste to its absolute limits.

And nearly two decades on, it still squelches with personality.

Practical Effects That Refuse to Play Nice

If Slither has a beating heart (and it has many), it lies in its gloriously excessive practical effects. This is a film that revels in the tactile — in flesh that mutates, stretches, bursts and oozes with gleeful abandon.

Drawing clear inspiration from genre staples like The Thing and Night of the Creeps, Gunn leans into the artistry of physical transformation. The alien parasites — slug-like invaders that burrow into human hosts — are both repulsive and oddly playful, writhing across the screen in a way that feels refreshingly tangible in an era already leaning heavily into CGI.

The centrepiece, however, is the grotesque evolution of Grant Grant, played with unnerving commitment by Michael Rooker. His transformation is a slow, tragic descent into body horror — a man losing not just his humanity, but his physical form in ways that are as disturbing as they are darkly comic.

It’s disgusting. It’s excessive. It’s absolutely the point.

Macabre Humour Done Right

What elevates Slither beyond a simple creature feature is Gunn’s razor-sharp tonal control. The film walks a precarious line between horror and comedy, never allowing one to fully undermine the other.

The humour is pitch black, often absurd, and frequently rooted in the sheer extremity of what’s unfolding. Gunn understands that the best horror-comedy doesn’t deflate tension — it amplifies it by forcing audiences to laugh at things they probably shouldn’t.

This balance would later become a defining trait of his work, visible in films like Guardians of the Galaxy, but here it feels rawer, more unrestrained — like a filmmaker gleefully testing how far he can push both the audience and the material.

A Cast That Gets the Joke

A film like Slither lives or dies on its performances, and Gunn assembles a cast that fully commits to the madness.

Nathan Fillion anchors the film as Sheriff Bill Pardy, bringing a dry, understated charm that grounds the chaos. His everyman sensibility provides a necessary counterbalance to the escalating absurdity, allowing the audience to latch onto something recognisably human amidst the carnage.

Opposite him, Elizabeth Banks delivers a performance that adds emotional weight to the film’s more grotesque elements. As Starla, she becomes the emotional core of the story, her relationship with Grant adding a surprising layer of tragedy to what could have easily been pure exploitation fare.

And then there’s Rooker — unhinged, committed, and unforgettable. His performance is the film’s grotesque centrepiece, embodying both the horror and the humour in equal measure.

Small-Town Horror with Big Personality

Set in a sleepy town slowly overtaken by alien infection, Slither taps into familiar genre territory but injects it with a chaotic energy that keeps it feeling fresh. The invasion narrative unfolds with increasing intensity, each new mutation escalating the stakes and the spectacle.

Yet beneath the slime and spectacle, there’s a genuine affection for the genre. Gunn isn’t mocking horror — he’s celebrating it, embracing its excesses while understanding the craft required to make them work.

A Cult Classic That Still Sticks

Despite a modest reception upon release, Slither has rightfully earned its place as a cult favourite. It’s a film that understands exactly what it wants to be and executes that vision with unapologetic enthusiasm.

It’s messy. It’s grotesque. It’s often ridiculous.

But it’s also incredibly well-made.

The Prognosis:

A gloriously goo-soaked horror-comedy that showcases James Gunn’s early voice, blending practical effects, macabre humour and a committed cast into one of the most entertaining creature features of the 2000s.

  • Saul Muerte

Slither will celebrate its 20th Anniversary with a limited UK theatrical release from 10th April, a 4K Digital release from 1st May, and Special Edition Steelbook from 18th May which can be pre-ordered through HMV, ZAVVI & Amazon

Steel, Sorcery and Splattercraft: Deathstalker (2026)

29 Sunday Mar 2026

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In an era where digital spectacle often overwhelms texture and tactility, Deathstalker arrives like a relic unearthed from a more visceral cinematic past. Directed by Steven Kostanski, this Shudder-exclusive fantasy-horror hybrid leans unapologetically into the aesthetics of sword-and-sorcery pulp, resurrecting a subgenre that thrives on excess, grime, and the physicality of handcrafted effects.

Kostanski, whose reputation has steadily grown through cult favourites such as The Void and Psycho Goreman, has long been recognised as a modern custodian of practical effects artistry. With Deathstalker, he reasserts that position with confidence, delivering a film that feels less like a reinvention and more like a reclamation — a reminder that horror-fantasy can still breathe, bleed and rupture in tangible ways.

A Return to Practical Alchemy

The narrative itself is deliberately archetypal. When a battle-hardened warrior, played by Daniel Bernhardt, retrieves a cursed amulet from a battlefield littered with corpses, he becomes entangled in a web of dark magick, pursued by assassins and shadowed by an encroaching evil. It is a familiar framework — one that echoes the mythic simplicity of Conan-era storytelling — but Kostanski is less interested in narrative innovation than in experiential immersion.

Where Deathstalker distinguishes itself is in its commitment to the physical image. The creatures, transformations and grotesqueries that populate this world are rendered with a devotion to prosthetics, animatronics and practical ingenuity that feels increasingly rare. Flesh tears, bodies distort, and the supernatural manifests not as weightless pixels but as textured, often repulsive forms that occupy space with convincing presence.

There is a tactile pleasure in this approach — a sense that the horror exists within the frame rather than being layered atop it.

Kostanski’s Controlled Chaos

Kostanski’s direction walks a delicate line between reverence and reinvention. His work here feels informed by the splatter traditions of filmmakers like Stuart Gordon and Sam Raimi, yet it avoids slipping into mere pastiche. Instead, he channels those influences through a contemporary lens, maintaining a playful awareness of genre conventions without undermining their impact.

There is, crucially, a sense that Kostanski is enjoying himself.

That enjoyment becomes infectious. The film’s more excessive moments — of which there are many — are staged with a gleeful confidence that invites the audience to revel in the absurdity. Limbs are dispatched, creatures emerge from unlikely places, and the boundaries of taste are tested with a wink rather than a nudge.

Yet beneath the chaos lies a disciplined craftsman. Kostanski understands rhythm, allowing sequences of visceral intensity to breathe before plunging back into the grotesque. It is this balance that prevents the film from collapsing under the weight of its own indulgence.

Form Over Function

If Deathstalker falters, it does so in its narrative ambitions. The story, while serviceable, rarely transcends its archetypal foundations. Characterisation remains broad, motivations are often sketched rather than explored, and the emotional stakes never quite reach the same level of engagement as the film’s visual spectacle.

But this feels, to some extent, intentional.

Kostanski appears less concerned with crafting a deeply layered narrative than with constructing a world — one defined by its textures, its grotesqueries, and its commitment to physical effects. The result is a film that prioritises sensation over introspection, experience over exposition.

A Leader in His Field

In many ways, Deathstalker serves as a reaffirmation of Kostanski’s position within contemporary genre filmmaking. At a time when practical effects are often relegated to novelty status, he continues to push their boundaries, exploring what can be achieved through ingenuity, craftsmanship, and a willingness to embrace imperfection.

The film may not fully transcend its pulp origins, but it doesn’t need to. Its value lies in its execution — in the sheer commitment to a mode of filmmaking that refuses to disappear quietly.

The Prognosis:

Deathstalker is not a film that seeks to redefine fantasy horror. Instead, it embraces its lineage, revels in its excesses, and delivers a tactile, visceral experience that stands in stark contrast to the polished artificiality of much contemporary genre cinema.

A rough-edged but invigorating return to practical effects-driven storytelling, with Steven Kostanski once again proving himself a vital and playful force in modern horror.

  • Saul Muerte

Deathstalker will stream on Shudder from Fri 3rd April

Pedigree Meets Pulp: Cold Storage and the Limits of B-Movie Ambition

28 Saturday Mar 2026

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Movies and names.
It’s a subconscious thing with some, or sometimes, the only thing people do before considering a movie.
And that is, look at the names.
Specifically, the ones on the poster.
Actors (obvs) but “written by” and “directed by” are also big ones. And if you consider yourself a real cinephile, “produced by”.
Cold Storage has some impressive names attached to it. Also, “based on a novel” usually means there has been creative interpretation applied to the script, and most film makers usually LOVE flexing their game at such activity.
Throw in the fact that the writer is the man who wrote Carlito’s Way, the first Mission Impossible and a shit ton of Jurassic Park movies, and you have pedigree right there.
Plus, there is the cast. One made up of the cool guy from Stranger Things, the lead from (masterful) horror film Barbarian, Kevin Bacon’s daughter (the lead in the first Smile) and Liam frickin Neeson and Vanessa frickin Redgrave! Those are all decent hitters!
Plus-plus it is directed by… err someone with a lot of TV & doco credits, so we’ll see…

So, this film is a horror sci-fi set in a storage facility. And as locations go, that’s pretty cool. (Except I’ve yet to see a sci fi horror set in one be any good… 2012’s Storage 24 was one of the first and when you shoot an entire film in close up, it makes for a really shitty movie).
But I digress. Will this film be the exception?
It starts back in 1979 when Skylab fell to Earth, Western Australia (an event I actually remember, as I was both alive and on the same continent when it happened IRL). Once this happens, we soon find ourselves in Alien-bug-has-landed-on earth territory.
Fast jump to the exotic future of 2007 and said bug has been locked deep down inside a military storage facility all this time.
Except with time comes change and the facility has now become (on the surface at least) just a regular commercially-available-for-hire-by-the-general-public storage place.

And of course, 2007 is the year the deep cold vault containing the bug starts to fail…
So – what happens next – I’ll let Chris Dawes take you through.

This film hopes to answer two age old questions – Firstly, has the mold growing in my shower been conscious all along, and if so, have all the times I have smudged it with my arse driven it to vengeance?
And second! Is the reason we haven’t found aliens in Area 51 was that they hired Bazza to put up gyprock?
Cash job, of course.
The answer is yes to both, and thanks to top tier government fuckery uncolding the subterranean fridges, two down on their luck minimum-wagers are forced to do battle with a sentient sludge so profoundly roided up neither the Marines, the Hell’s Angels,
nor your butthead neighbour’s cat can knock it on its arse.
Damn your weakness, Ajax Spray and Wipe!
This film is pap. But it is pap made with a love of the genre and stars a cast of award winners who clearly enjoyed making a high budget B-Movie.
If you have two hours to switch your brain off and have a solid good time, you can do far worse than spending twenty bucks on this. Back to Ant.

So, as you can see, this is a fun popcorn romp, with some very strong ingredients.
But is it Tremors level B-grade horror/comedy par excellence?
For mine, not really. It has some very fine moments held up by an outstanding afore-mentioned cast, but its pacing is at times uneven. And certain story elements feel rushed or glossed over.
And for that I can only think to blame a director who is still finding his movie legs, as this is just his second feature. Although he has a lot of excellent TV credits, so maybe studio interference stuffed him around?
Who knows?

The Prognosis:

Worth a look, but lower the expectations the better. A good facility for some silly fun.
See what I did there?

  • Antony Yee & Chris Dawes

Party Games and False Starts: Revisiting April Fool’s Day (1986)

25 Wednesday Mar 2026

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By the mid-1980s, the slasher boom was already showing signs of fatigue. The formula — isolated setting, attractive young victims, a masked killer patiently thinning the herd — had been repeated so many times that even filmmakers seemed unsure how to keep it fresh. Into this increasingly crowded field arrived April Fool’s Day, directed by Fred Walton, a film that gestures toward clever subversion but ultimately settles into something far less memorable.

Four decades later, April Fool’s Day remains a curious entry in the slasher canon: not outright terrible, but strangely inert.

A Familiar Setup

The premise feels immediately recognisable. Wealthy college student Muffy St. John invites a group of friends to her parents’ secluded island mansion for a weekend getaway. Predictably, tensions simmer, practical jokes escalate, and before long the group begins disappearing one by one.

The film initially hints at a more playful approach to the genre. Given its title, audiences might expect elaborate trickery or a sly commentary on slasher conventions. Instead, much of the runtime unfolds with a slow, almost perfunctory rhythm as the characters wander through the house and surrounding island, occasionally pausing for mildly suspicious developments.

There’s nothing particularly offensive about the structure — but there’s also very little urgency.

A Slasher Without Much Bite

Part of the problem lies in the film’s strangely subdued tone. Director Fred Walton, who previously crafted the tense holiday thriller When a Stranger Calls, seems unsure whether he’s making a suspenseful whodunit or a tongue-in-cheek genre experiment. The result lands awkwardly somewhere in between.

The murders themselves lack the visceral punch audiences had come to expect from mid-80s slashers. While this restraint may have been intentional, it leaves the film feeling oddly toothless compared to contemporaries dominated by the likes of Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger.

Tension rarely escalates, and the pacing drifts through long stretches of exposition and character banter that never quite develops into meaningful drama.

Amy Steel Brings Much-Needed Presence

One bright spot comes from Amy Steel, best known to horror fans for her role in Friday the 13th Part 2. Steel manages to inject a degree of credibility into the proceedings, grounding the film whenever the narrative threatens to drift into complete inertia.

Her performance carries a quiet sincerity that lends the character a sense of intelligence and awareness often missing from the genre’s stock archetypes. Even when the script falters, Steel maintains a level of gravitas that suggests a stronger film lurking somewhere beneath the surface.

Unfortunately, she’s working within a story that rarely gives her — or anyone else — much to do.

A Twist That Divides

Without venturing too deeply into spoiler territory, April Fool’s Day hinges on a final twist that attempts to reframe the entire narrative. For some viewers, it’s a clever subversion of slasher expectations. For others, it feels like a narrative rug-pull that undermines the tension the film spent its runtime trying to build.

The twist certainly makes the film memorable but not necessarily satisfying. Instead of elevating the material, it retroactively highlights how little suspense was actually generated along the way.

A Mild Curiosity of the Slasher Era

Viewed today, April Fool’s Day feels less like a forgotten gem and more like an interesting footnote in the evolution of the slasher genre. It gestures toward the kind of self-awareness that would later define films like Scream, but it never fully commits to the satire or the horror.

What remains is a mildly diverting curiosity — a film that isn’t particularly scary, particularly funny, or particularly inventive, but manages to coast along thanks to its charming cast and unusual ending.

  • Saul Muerte

Blue Light Special on Mayhem: Revisiting Chopping Mall (1986)

23 Monday Mar 2026

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Few films capture the peculiar charm of 1980s B-movie excess quite like Chopping Mall, the gleefully silly sci-fi slasher directed by Jim Wynorski. Promising a blend of high-tech terror and consumerist satire, the film strands a group of teenagers in a shopping centre stalked by malfunctioning security robots. On paper, it’s a wonderfully ridiculous premise — Short Circuit by way of Dawn of the Dead — but the result is a somewhat uneven cult oddity that never quite lives up to its gleeful concept.

A Mall After Midnight

The setup is pure 1980s sci-fi pulp. The Park Plaza Mall installs a trio of sophisticated security robots — affectionately dubbed “Killbots” — designed to patrol the complex after hours. Naturally, the system works perfectly… until a lightning strike short-circuits the controls, turning the machines into lethal enforcers with a very loose definition of trespassing.

Meanwhile, a group of young mall employees decide to throw a secret after-hours party inside one of the stores. Predictably, their night of rebellious fun quickly transforms into a cat-and-mouse game as the robots begin hunting them through the darkened corridors.

It’s a premise that promises chaos and ingenuity, yet the film often settles for repetition. The Killbots trundle through the mall with mechanical persistence, firing lasers and delivering the occasional electrocution, while the teens scramble from store to store in search of escape.

Campy Energy, Limited Bite

To its credit, Chopping Mall embraces its B-movie identity with enthusiasm. Director Jim Wynorski, who would become a prolific figure in low-budget genre filmmaking, keeps the tone playful rather than frightening. The film operates firmly in the realm of camp rather than suspense.

Unfortunately, that playful spirit doesn’t always translate into momentum. Much of the middle section consists of characters hiding, running, or debating their next move while the robots slowly patrol the premises. The mechanical villains themselves — squat, boxy machines topped with blinking lights — look more like malfunctioning appliances than unstoppable killing machines.

The result is a film that feels more goofy than dangerous.

Barbara Crampton Brings Some Spark

One of the film’s more enjoyable elements is the presence of Barbara Crampton, who would soon become a beloved icon of 1980s horror thanks to films like Re-Animator and From Beyond. Even within the confines of a lightweight script, Crampton manages to bring charisma and a touch of sincerity to her role.

She stands out in a cast largely composed of archetypal 80s teens, providing moments of charm that briefly elevate the otherwise disposable proceedings.

Consumer Culture Meets Killer Robots

There’s also a faint whiff of satire running through the film’s premise. The idea of automated security systems turning on the very consumers they were designed to protect carries a subtle commentary about technological overreach and corporate obsession with efficiency.

Yet these ideas never develop beyond the surface level. Unlike Dawn of the Dead, which used the shopping mall as a biting critique of consumer culture, Chopping Mall seems more interested in using the setting as a convenient playground for laser blasts and exploding heads.

The film gestures toward satire but ultimately settles for spectacle.

A Mildly Amusing Cult Curio

Despite its shortcomings, Chopping Mall has endured as a minor cult favorite — and it’s easy to see why. The premise is delightfully absurd, the setting wonderfully nostalgic, and the film’s brisk runtime prevents the silliness from overstaying its welcome.

Still, nostalgia can only carry a film so far. While it offers a handful of entertaining moments and plenty of retro charm, the movie never quite capitalizes on the chaotic potential of its killer-robot-in-a-mall setup.

  • Saul Muetre