House of Ghosts (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Saint Euphoria Pictures

Runtime: 77 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: Rich socialites have a tradition of throwing exclusive dinner parties. This time, while stuck inside during a massive 'snowstorm of the century', they've booked a spiritual medium who promises to open a portal to the great beyond. Can the group survive the night or will ignoring the medium's warning be the last thing they ever do?

Review: House of Ghosts is the 7th movie in the line-up of movies by Christopher R. Mihm, the maestro of new old, good bad movies from what's been dubbed by fans as the Mihmiverse. This micro-budget series also includes such greats as The Monster of Phantom Lake, It Came From Another World!, Cave Women on Mars, Terror From Beneath The Earth, Destination: Outer Space, and Attack of the Moon Zombies, all taking place in the same universe but mostly stand-alone from one another other then recurring side characters and the occasional throw-back to a previous movie. All are done in black and white and as a nifty love-filled throwback to the classic 1950s Drive-In B-Movies of old, so if that kind of stuff is your thing than you really can't go wrong with a Christopher R. Mihm film.

I couldn't sleep last night so I decided to throw on the next Mihmiverse movie, during which I realized it switched over across the midnight mark while in the middle of watching, making House of Ghosts the first movie I officially watched for Halloween 2013 and those circumstances could not have been more fitting. So this review is my Halloween treat to all my readers! Also, this movie totally failed as a cure for not being able to sleep... and as for exactly why, just continue reading!

To start, this entry in the Mihmiverse was done in the style of a classic William Castle horror movie (the original House on Haunted Hill, the original 13 Ghosts, The Tingler, ect), and it also came complete with Alfred Hitchcock-style intro opening with Christopher R. Mihm himself introducing the film in front of a total white background, and in a hilariously campy, yet oddly enthralling, way gave a great foreboding warning to the viewer that what they are about to witness is unnatural. He even offers a bit of a cheesy gimmick item as is par for the case of a William Castle movie. And as if that stuff didn't already set the tone right out of the gate, this intro also had some great creepy subliminal messaging going on during it, which actually continued at various strategically-timed moments throughout the movie for optimum uneasiness.

For this movie, our main cast of quirky characters are all fancy, proper, rich, snobby socialites that have gathered together for a dinner party when they decide to have a bit of fun with contacting spirits on 'the other side' when they get trapped in for the night due to a massive snowstorm outside. Right off the bat, Christopher R. Mihm has set the tone perfectly for this movie as I love horror movies that take place during snowstorms. Snow in general seems to always add an extra level of atmosphere and tension to a horror movie and I'm not really sure why. Even in not-so-good ones it manages to raise the atmosphere up a couple notches, especially if the snow is currently falling in said scene (I'm still waiting for a Friday the 13th movie set at Crystal Lake during the winter – I think that would be pretty damn awesome to see). Atmosphere aside, it was also a great and simple excuse to keep everyone stuck in the house all night, unable to leave during the terrifying events that end up taking place (and the one person who does try it anyway ends up freezing to death out there). I also really loved that once the experiment to open the portal to the Beyond 'failed' (or so they thought, anyway) and everyone starts going their own ways in the house, that's when the mysterious unexplainable events start happening and it kind of turned into a nice Scooby-Doo style mystery of people going missing (or eventually outright dying), and the characters having to band together and figure out if one of the missing people was really behind the events, trying to scare everyone for some sure-to-be-explained evil reason, or is it really supernatural forces that had been let loose? I'm not going to say which one it was, but it certainly had be guessing, second-guessing, and even third-guessing myself right up to the very end.

The entire package here really was genuinely creepy and unnerving at times, and that totally separates this from all the previous Mihmiverse movies that came before, which were mostly all played up for laughs (not to worry though, as there are still a few hilarious moments sprinkled throughout). I'm not really sure if it was due to the fact that I was watching this after the midnight hour when everything seems extra-creepy anyway, or if it was because of the subliminal messaging that kept popping up, or if it was actually just that good at being creepy, or a combination of all those things, but whatever the case was it worked. Despite being able to, at all times, see the purposeful cheapness of the effects (The living skeleton is clearly plastic, the excellently-crafted demon skull is clearly a rubber latex mask, the killer spider horde is clearly rubber spiders on strings) yet the scenes which deal with each of those things (and other creepy goodies I have not yet mentioned) still manage to get your heart racing and leave you about this close to clutching the armrest of your couch. I know all the Mihmiverse movies are made with families kept in mind, and that a lot of people are sharing these movies with their kids, but I honestly would recommend watching this one yourself first to see if your younger kids can handle it. I only give that recommendation because I'm a long-time horror vet and even I was fairly spooked and on-edge for parts of this movie, and found myself damn near in a panic attack come the zombie-infested climax. The fact that this is a B-Movie, on a micro-budget, that's purposefully-campy and cheesy aside...Christopher R. Mihm (and all involved for that matter) did one hell of a great job with the spooky atmosphere with this one, making this the perfect movie for me to be watching as the clocks moved us into the witching hour and having it officially be Halloween.

Oh, and in true William Castle style, there's a nice twist ending as well, which I kind of suspected there would be and spent parts of the movie trying to figure out exactly what it would be, but I'm glad to report that it's totally not something you'll easily be able to see coming and it certainly took me by surprise.

This entry is no different than the previous Mihmiverse movies in that it is filled with tons of familiar actors of the Mihmiverse, however they're all playing brand new characters this go-around. Sadly the one sour point I have with this movie is that none of these new characters were really likeable much, or memorable. That's not a knock against the actors as they all played the rolls perfectly, and I understand the entire point of these characters are that they're rich snobs and by extension unrelatable and unlikable, but I really could have done with something in their character traits to latch onto and find likeable (Mike Cook's character started to get there by the end). As it stands, I was actually looking forward to seeing every single one of these characters get taken out, and unfortunately none of them will really stick out in my memory quite like the majority of previous characters in this universe have.

What I did like with these characters though, were despite being new characters they still had some nice connections to previous characters of the series: The very original movie, The Monster of Phantom Lake, got a really great throw-back in that one of the characters here is actually the mother of the crazy hermit from that movie that ended up becoming the title monster, and you just know that with such a connection in a movie dealing with ghosts and the afterlife that the Algae Monster itself would thus be making a nice little cameo appearance. Michael Kaiser (the man under pretty much every monster suit in this series) also popped in for a cameo as either a relative of his cop character from Terror From Beneath The Earth, or as that exact character. Admittedly, I don't remember his character's name from that movie so I'm a bit fuzzy there as to which one it is, but either way I enjoyed the connection to that movie. Finally, there was a briefcase held by a character that I can't really go into any detail of without going into a bit of spoiler territory, but if you pay close attention there's a great connection with that briefcase to the previous movie, Attack of the Moon Zombies (even with just that little bit, I fear I gave away a bit too much). So despite all the characters being new to the series, and I doubt we'll ever see most (if any) again, there are still some strong connections tying this entry in with the other movies of the series.

As is expected with by this point with all movies in the Mihmiverse, this self-produced DVD is stacked right up with tons of excellent bonus content. There's a Blooper Reel that is admittedly a bit shorter than most of the other ones but is still laugh-out-loud hilarious (seriously, by this point I almost look forward to the side-splittingly funny outtakes almost more then I do the movie itself because they're always a great treat to watch directly after the movie), a pretty funny Alternate Ending that fans of Attack of the Moon Zombies like me are sure to love but I'm personally glad they didn't go that route as it would have ruined the flow of the atmospheric mood that the movie had set so perfectly, a trailer for the movie in addition to trailers for some previous movies in the Mihmiverse, a Photo Gallery of tons of Behind-the-Scenes photos, an introduction to the film by Horror Host Dr. Ivan Cryptosis, a Featurette on the actual real house that they filmed this movie in which was owned by recurring Mihmiverse actress Sid Korpi and her husband, and the usual informative full length Audio Commentaries, one by just Christopher R. Mihm by himself and a second one where he's joined by costume designer and SFX artist Mitch Gonzales and Behind the Scenes extraordinaire Cherie “Rhuby” Gallinati who anyone that listens to the Mihmiverse Bonfire Podcast will instantly recognize the voice of.

I honestly can't think of a more fitting movie to have broken in Halloween 2013 with, nor of a more perfect tribute to William Castle. Even as a long-time horror vet, House of Ghosts had me near full-on having a panic attack by the end and I wouldn't ask it to be any other way! The more serious spooktacular nature of this entry makes it quite unique from all previous Mihmiverse movies, and I think it just might fit in perfectly as the newest entry of my Annual Halloween movie Line-Up each year.

Seeing as how most of the advertising for these movies come from simple word of mouth from the fans, than if you do check his stuff out and enjoy it please help get the word out there on these movies and hopefully we can snag in a few other fans that may not even realize these exist. You can order these on DVD (and even BluRay for this movie and the following one!) over at his official site which is filled with all sorts of other goodies as well (including a monthly newsletter in addition to a very laid back, yet fun and informative, podcast). Hell, there's even an excellent deal on right now – Buy Three Movies, Get One Free, which seeing as how there's currently eight of these titles, if you do that twice then that is the perfect way to catch up with all of them and in the end save some dough – that's how I did it.

Suffice to say, this movie did absolutely nothing to cure my sleep troubles last night, and it pretty much had me on edge to the point where I ended up just staying awake until the sun came up - Happy Halloween everyone!

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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V/H/S/2 (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Collective

Runtime: 93 mins

Format: Itunes

Plot: Searching for a missing student, two private investigators break into a house and find a large collection of VHS tapes. Viewing the horrific contents of each cassette, they realize there may be dark motives behind the student's disappearance.

Review: V/H/S/2 (formally titled the much better S-V/H/S) dropped last night at midnight on the Video on Demand channels and Itunes. I was hoping to stay up and watch it then, but due to time differences, 'dropped at midnight' actually meant about 4:30 am for me, soo... yeah, it kinda had to wait for the following day, plus I then wanted to wait for it to be dark out before I watched it, otherwise what would even be the point, am I right?

Anyway, V/H/S/2 starts on a similar wrap-around story as the first movie. This time around, a private Investigator and his girlfriend are hired to track down and find a missing delinquent teen and their investigation leads them to an old abandoned creepy house, which has contained within it a very large collection of old VHS tapes, of which (like the first movie) the following anthology stories are contained on. Overall this wrap-around segment was actually quite a bit better then the one in the first movie and had some nice genuinely creepy moments within it, as well as acts like an actual proper wrap-around story and doesn't just randomly end midway through the movie like the one in the first movie did. However one aspect of it really grinds my gears and annoyed me quite a bit – The teen they're looking for? Not one of the teens from the first movie's wrap-around segment like I was thinking it would be. The old creepy house he finds? Not the same one as the one in the first movie's wrap-around segment either. Despite being very similar to the first movie's, this movie's wrap-around portion is not related to the first movie's in any shape, way or form, making this movie 100% completely stand-alone and unconnected to the first movie. While I didn't like that portion of the first movie, it still would have been nice (and expected) for this movie to tie into that one in some way, preferably via the wrap-around stories, especially since this one's seems like it was initially written to do just that. Just seems like a pretty big missed opportunity to create a bit of background mythology, especially with a third movie having already been announced.

With that slight disappointment out of the way though, the first of the actual short stories deals with a man that gets a cybernetic eye to replace his lost eye, and the camera for this story comes from inside that eye. For reasons he doesn't understand, that new eye allows him to see ghosts, and he meets up with a girl who underwent the same experimental surgery to get her hearing back and likewise, it's allowed her to hear ghosts. Teamed up and trying to figure out what's going on, the two start getting assaulted by some very nasty ghosts. This story had a pretty great premise, with a few fun scenes and plenty of scares to go around. While it wasn't quite on the same level of unease as the first movie's opening segment, this one had quite a bit of jump scares to keep you on-edge. There are two aspects though that stop it from being great; The acting was distractingly bad, like SyFy Channel Original Movie of the Week level of bad, and was constantly taking me out of the moment and ruining some of the scenes that should have been way scarier then they were due to the acting. In addition, a lack of answers to pretty much anything that's going on also hurt it a bit. With some better actors and more time to fully flesh this segment out, this could have been one of the stronger stories here. As it is, it's still decent thanks to some great jump scares and creepy moments, and I was never bored or wishing it would just end already, but at the same time it's could really have benefited from some tune-ups.

Moving onto the second story, this one has a man with some kind of cam attached to his helmet as he goes for a bike ride in the woods, during which he gets bitten by a zombie and we follow around with him as he becomes a zombie himself and shambles around, attacking other people in the woods. I feel this segment thinksits being revolutionary and doing something new and unique that's never been done before (that's the vibe I get from watching it), however, this exact thing has been done countless times in dozens of homemade youtube videos and student projects that are online. And this version of it does nothing at all to set itself out from the pack and doesn't even attempt to bring anything new to the table. Chances are, even just reading this paragraph right now you can probably tell exactly how this segment plays out and can probably guess every single thing that happens in it, because it's just that generic. I find most anthology movies have an entry that you can just skip and the movie will be better off for you because of it. With the first V/H/S it was the invisible static man killer entry and for V/H/S/2, it's this one.

The middle story of this anthology is probably my top favorite of not only this bunch, but of both movies, and was brought to us by Gareth Evans, the guy who made the excellent The Raid: Redemption. A camera crew shooting a documentary is following a cult leader around on the Eve of the great 'passing over', an event that he and his followers believe will allow them to open the gates to 'Paradise' and cross over into that mythical realm. While this was easily my favorite and I could probably write a full-length review on just this segment alone, it's also the one I feel I should talk about the least just because the less you know about what happens in it, the better. This segment revels in the unexpected, and it should be watched knowing virtually nothing about it in order to get the full effect. All I'll say is that this story goes from 'normal' to 'bat shit WTF insane crazy' in about half of its runtime, and uses the other half to go from 'bat shit WTF insane crazy' to about twenty miles past that, so that by the time this segment is over you almost need to take a break and recuperate your sanity and nerves before moving on to the final story in the movie.

Which while this final story was still pretty good and I enjoyed it, its placement really should have been swapped with the previous one as I feel that would have been a muchstronger and way more impactful way to end the movie off. In this last story of the movie, we get a camera attached to a family dog while the foul-mouthed children of said family (which at times pleasantly reminded me a lot of the kids from movies like E.T., The Goonies, and Super 8, among others) play a prank on their older sister and her asshole boyfriend, which is followed by a counter-prank...at least until some white-skinned, black-eyed aliens show up to abduct everyone. There's really not much more to the plot of this one then that, and it's easily the shortest entry of the movie at only 15 minutes long, but as someone who is pretty obsessed with the whole alien/UFO/abduction phenomenon, I found this one pretty damn creepy in its own ways, and it makes me wish for more creepy horror movies to cover ground like this (such as Dark Skies, which did a decent job with a similar plot when that was released earlier this year). As I said previously though, this entry would have fitted much better if it happened earlier in the movie and the previous entry took place here, because as much as I personally liked this one and was pretty creeped out at moments, it doesn't even begin to come close to touching the previous entry, and thus it seems very confusing to me as to why they would place this one as the final short story of the movie as it's very much a one-note, simple, cookie cutter entry that, honestly, not a whole lot happens in it and it kind of just peeters out instead of ending on a bang like the last one. Then again, at only 15 minutes long, that doesn't really leave much room for many things to happen.

In my review of the first movie, I stated that one of the biggest faults for some of the individual stories was that there just wasn't enough time for the subject matter and a couple of them could have benefited greatly from a slightly longer runtime. The exact same can be said for some of these entries as well, which is made even more frustrating this time by the fact that it's a much shorter movie to boot. Granted, it has one less short story then the first movie did, but they could have used that as the perfect opportunity to fill in that missing space by extending the length of each of these stories by an extra ten minutes each (except for that stupid zombie one) instead of just shortening the overall movie's runtime. My biggest complaint about most of these stories is just that, much like with the final story of the first movie, there's just not enough time allowed for the subject matter, and just about each one could have benefited from being given slightly more screen time.

Luckily that's the only thing about the first movie that's made worse, however that mixed with the utterly confusing decision to make a very similar-but-not-connected wrap-around story, the placement of some of these stories, and that terrible zombie segment does lower my score of this one a bit. But that's ok, because unlike the first, there's plenty of score to go around here. Most of the short story segments were vastly improved from the ones in the first movie (With the exception of that zombie one, which I could have done without) making this movie an overall improvement over the first, and since it's in no way connected to it other then in name-only, you can even skip that one and just move right on to watching this much-better version of essentially the same movie. Plus, between abducting aliens, zombie viruses, killer ghosts, and Chaos Death Cults (among a few other surprises in there) there's such a wide range of horror movie topics here that pretty much everyone will find something to love.

Now if you could just take the best segments from V/H/S, and the best segments from V/H/S/2, and mix them together into their own anthology movie (and make sure they're put in an order that makes sense), then we'd have a really nice and solid horror anthology film.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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V/H/S (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Collective

Runtime: 116 mins

Format: BluRay

Plot: When a group of misfits is hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house and acquire a rare VHS tape, they discover more found footage than they bargained for.

Review: V/H/S is a horror anthology movie made up of 5 short stories and a bookend wrap-around story, all of which was made in the found footage style of film making. Like with all anthology movies, some entries were great while others...well, not so much. I'll start first with the main wrap-around story. It involves a group of trouble-making hooligans that video tape their crimes and potential attempted rapes and all that, and they get hired by a mystery man to break into this old guy's house and steal a VHS tape. While in there they come across a room filled with VHS tapes and start checking them out, which leads to the various short stories this movie is made of. I really hated this wrap-around story, especially since it led to nothing at all and even finished mid-way through the movie, before the movie was even over and while more of the short stories were still to come. There was nothing scary here, and there was no build-up to anything good, just a quick flash of something before the camera shut off and that was it. Out of all the characters in all the stories of this movie, these were the most hateable and the ones you wanted to see get their come-uppance the most, which is why it's even more frustrating that you don't ever see anything all that bad happen to them, and most (if not all) get killed off-screen.

The first two of the actual short stories were great though. The first deals with a group of party-loving college friends that are having a night on the town and trying to get laid, but one of the girls they pick up and bring back to a hotel room isn't exactly what she appears to be. This one was creepy as hell and is easily my favorite of the bunch. Even the questionable CGI moments didn't bother me at all and if anything, added to the creepy factor more often then not.

The second story was classic Ti West movie, but in 20 minutes as opposed to full-length. Ti West is a controversial horror director, where I find people either love him or hate him and there isn't much middle ground. Personally, I love him. In this entry, a honeymooning couple is traveling across the U.S., but an unknown stalker is following them across the country and keeps recording them with their own camera, from inside their hotel rooms while they sleep at night. As is usual with his fare, this entry has a bit of a slow build and not a whole lot really happens until the very end, but it still remains creepy as hell and tension-filled through and through, and it uses that slow build, as Ti West often does, to make you A, care for the characters and B, slowly build the tension to a boiling point that comes to a head at the very end. My only complaint with this one is that the ending was really predictable, as I called it almost right away, however that doesn't make it any less shocking when it hits.

The third story is about a group of four college friends that head up to the family cabin that one of them owns, but their vacation is cut short by a vicious killer made entirely out of static, and seemingly only visible through a camera. No way around it, this entry was total lameballs. Not even remotely scary, just stupid. Not even on the same playing field as the first two stories. The first two felt like they could have easily been theatrical movies if made longer, while this one just comes across like a micro-budget student project, and a bad one at that. This one is the worst that this anthology has to offer, though also luckily the shortest. I can't recommend enough to just skip this one all together.

The fourth story deals with a girl webchatting with her doctor boyfriend, whom she's in a long distance relationship with, as weird paranormal activity seems to be escalating in her new apartment. Over all this entry was a nice step up from the previous one, and was actually pretty intense for the majority of its runtime, and it was kind of a better attempt at a Paranormal Activity movie then a couple of those sequels had been. Unfortunately it all comes completely apart in the final few minutes, once the big shocking twist is revealed, and that made this entry take a very quick nosedive for me, and just ended up leaving me more confused then scared. Also, when you stop to think about it, you can't help but wonder exactly how these webchats are being recorded? Especially when the fact that they're not being recorded is a plot point mentioned several times? While I liked this entry more then the previous one and more then the initial wrap-around story, it's still a far cry from the awesome first two stories, although the potential was totally there had it not been for that dreadful twist ending that just ruined the entire thing.

Luckily the final story is back to being pretty good, however it still doesn't quite reach greatness. It follows a couple of friends as they arrive at a Halloween party they had been invited to, only to find the mansion empty...that is until they find a cult in the attic doing very unspeakable things. This story's biggest fault, to me, is that its too short. Out of all the entries of this anthology, this is the one that could benefit the most from being extended into a full-length movie as I felt not nearly enough time was given for the subject matter, so its just a huge rush job on an otherwise really interesting story. You're not given time to get to know the characters, and thus you don't feel anything for them, and it starts throwing all these good ideas at you such as devil cults, possessed people, and a haunted house that seems to be alive with walls that morph over windows, doors that shrink or disappear entirely, and other creepy as hell things. But you only get to spend a few seconds on any given topic because they have to cram so much into such a short runtime, and you never really get the chance to enjoy any of it because it's instantly moved onto the next wild and crazy thing. With a longer runtime and more room to flesh everything out, this entry could end up being a really creepy and fun horror movie. As it stands as just one more short story in an anthology, it remains not as good as the first two stories, but certainly better then everything else in the movie.

Overall, there's some great stuff in V/H/S, but also some huge crap in there as well, just like with most anthology movies. Luckily, due to the wide range of quality, there's more then likely at least something in there for everyone.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

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