We Love Horror Movies

Wait…did she say…’Wood Bitch?’ If you’ve never taken psychedelics before, it would be hard for someone to describe to you the feelings that you get, the things you see, and the way the world can look. No matter, though. All you need to do is watch Jeremy Westrate’s first feature-length film,  Franklin: A Symphony of Pain,  and you’ll instantly know what it’s like to see the world through a warped perspective of a surreal nature. Visually speaking,  Franklin  is one of the best movies I’ve watched in a long time. Its use of color and blended images, color and black and white visuals, and acid trip-style montages are amazing. Westrate uses these complex pictures to tell the story of Franklin (newcomer Nikolas Franklin), a young man who is dragged through countless scenarios of violence, rape, and torture. His story is told through these surreal settings and situations, mixed with a voice-over narrative as he recalls the events and explains them to Father Hyde Pe...

I think that Alex Murphy said it best in the new movie  Pain Shack  when he mentioned that YouTube hits are the new currency. In this digital age, you’re nothing if you don’t have a web presence, and  Pain Shack’s  Alex has taken this concept to extreme levels. Pain Shack , which was written by, directed by, and stars Alex and Marissa Murphy (as Alex and Marissa, conveniently enough) follows the story of a new father who seems about as directionless as anyone could ever be. When we’re introduced to Alex, he’s coming home from what his wife Marissa assumes is his improv class, but we shortly learn that’s not the case, as he’s been kicked out, told that, essentially, he’s no good at improv. From there Alex seems to only lose more of his grip, as he decides that his calling in life is to make YouTube videos and gain as many followers as possible. What do you talk about on YouTube, though, when you have nothing to talk about? Seemingly growing crazier by the da...

I absolutely love when a movie with a heavy premise doesn’t take itself too seriously, and  House of Whores  fits that bill perfectly. With directing credits by Daniel Murphy, Tom Homisar, and Paul Arnone, this low-budget home invasion movie perfectly blends some extremely sick and demented torture with trippy, surreal images and, of course, a laugh track. House of Whores  starts off exactly how you’d imagine a film with a title like that to start – with a POV casting call for an adult movie. A guy has placed a local ad looking for women to come to his home and get nasty. We’re introduced, individually, to each of the three girls that have responded to the ad, and get to know them slightly. They are the Three Bears of women who would respond to an ad like that – the first-timer, who is too shy to even remove her shirt, the girl who is mostly just looking for a payday and is willing to try something out, and the token slut, who doesn’t mind that she might not ...

John Miller’s  $kumbagz  is the kind of film you’d love to watch with the whole family, if your entire clan were made up of filthy ratchet queens, drug dealers, pimps, and whores. As the title suggests, the film is rife with the lowest of lowlives, their penchants for violence, drugs, booze, and generally scraping the bottom of the metaphoric barrel of life. The film revolves around Stephanie (Krystal Pixie Adams,  Franklin: A Symphony of Pain, Die Die Delta Pi ) a 25-year-old who still lives at home with her parents, much to their dismay. We learn that she’s worked a slew of low-end jobs, and can keep none of them. Her father desperately wants her out of the house, but she seems like she has no interest in going anywhere. When she arrives at her low-level job that day (making tacos…or is it burgers, now?), her filthy boss propositions her for oral sex, which she’s not below performing, but his further, filthier requests are denied, getting her immediately canned. Cr...

In the LostWitch Releasing’s short film  Who Watched Them Die?,  there is very little dialog, but one of the few spoken lines is from a potential victim. “What am I gonna do?!” she asks herself, after frantically running away from three masked men in the woods – one-armed with a knife, the other two with video cameras. The answer comes quickly, as the one with the knife comes in from off-screen: “Nothing,” he says to her, but the real answer probably should have just been “Die.” Packed with blood over its very short 8 minutes,  Who Watched Them Die?  jumps in immediately and gets right into the action. We meet our three masked murderers as they stomp through the woods. They’re looking for something they’ve lost. We find out very quickly that it’s a girl. They find her writhing and slithering along the dirty ground on her belly, a small amount of blood falling from her mouth. When they find her, she begs them not to kill her. They can walk away, and ...

David Sandberg must appreciate 80’s action movies more than anyone in history. His film,  Kung Fury –  which he produced, wrote, directed, and stars in – was released for free on YouTube, and comes from one of the most successful independent crowdfunding campaigns for a movie to date. Highly anticipated, the film was seeking only $200,000 for this labor-of-love and ode to 80’s cop flicks, but the Kickstarter brought in almost $700,000 after being backed by almost 18,000 people.  Clearly there was a lot of love for t his film, even before it was realized as a full feature. The movie itself is clearly not meant to be taken seriously, from its plot, to its purposeful over-acting, to its classic 80’s soundtrack (featuring a theme song by David Hasselhoff, because of course it does),  Kung Fury  is everything you want from your 80’s cheesy cop flick, all crammed into 30 minutes. Clunky computers, DeLoreans, old-school digital effects and lasers, ext...

I grew up watching all kinds of movies, but horror films have always been my favorite. As much as I love the classics and the gore, though, there will always be a special place in my heart for the “teen horror” film, with movies like  The Monster Squad  being universally loved and known for their blend of kids, monsters, and horror mayhem. Less known, though, is the 1990 Brian Peck film The Willies, which stars Sean Astin and Michael “Donkey Lips” Bower. The movie, one of many horror anthologies to come out in the 80s and 90s, is based around a group of kids spending the night camping out in the backyard, telling each other scary stories. Sean Astin is one of the three, a group of cousins, and – of course – is played as the ringleader. All three of them are responsible for at least one of the stories told throughout the film. (Fun time: watch and listen for the joke made about  The Goonies , to which Astin replies looking severely annoyed that he had to mock one of his...

Computer Hearts  is a body horror film like you’ve never seen. Dubbed “The Computer Fucking Movie,” it’s a downright dirty short film that is quickly making a name for itself in the underground. Helming this grisly flick are filmmaking couple Turner Stewart & Dionne Copland of Hentai Cop Films. I recently had a chat with the pair, who told me a bit about what life is like, both on and off the set. —– TheFilmSplice:  First of all guys, thanks for taking the time. I just had a chance to sit down with your newly-released Blu-ray of  Computer Hearts , and it was a very impressive production – both the movie and the disc – done on a very low budget. Could you tell me a little bit about where the idea for the movie came from, and a little about the process leading up to shooting? Turner Stewart:  The making of  Computer Hearts  was an arduous journey that took up two years of our lives. I originally started writing the script in February of 2013 after ...

Everything about the first two  Insidious  movies I loved, for a big-budget, PG-13, Hollywood horror franchise. They had good acting and although the stories was basically just a generic,  P oltergeist- style haunting, I thought they brought something fresh to the genre, and had a general eerie feel about them. Something just a little dark, but flashy. Take those feelings and throw them right out the window for  Insidious: Chapter 3 , as it’s nothing at all like its predecessors. In the  Insidious  world, this film is a prequel to the others, focusing on a separate haunting story than that of the Lambert family, which is the plot of the first two films. In this one, a young girl, Quinn (Stefanie Scott,  Wreck It Ralph)  is haunted by a malevolent spirit after trying to contact her recently deceased mother. Seeking the help of Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye, reprising her role from the previous  Insidious  films), this prequel actually ...

We Are Still Here,  directed by Ted Geoghegan (writer of  Don’t Wake The Dead),  is being billed as the first “truly scary” movie of 2015, and it easily lives up to that marketing. As Geoghegan’s first film as director,  We Are Still Here  is a dark, heavy, slow-burn of a horror film that has a graphic, brutal crescendo that will leave you speechless. The film follows parents Anne and Paul Sacchetti (Barbara Crampton,  Re-Animator, You’re Next  and Andrew Sensening,  I Love You Phillip Morris)  who recently lost their son in a car accident. The couple move to a small New England town into a home that was once the local mortuary. Anne immediately senses a presence in the home, and holds onto the hope that it’s their son, Bobby. Skeptic Paul is less assured that there is anything amiss in the house. When friends May and Jacob Lewis (Lisa Marie,  Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood  and Larry Fessenden,  I Sell The Dead, Stakeland)...