Indie Horror

All posts tagged Indie Horror

Review: Looky-loo

Published May 3, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

I know not to make contact with the delirious, searching eyes of the unfortunates on my early morning train rides. Disaster assuredly lies there. It’s probably why I can’t stand watching true crime broadcasts. Something bad really can happen to me at any moment in time and I, for one, don’t want to dwell on my imminent demise unless I truly have to. 

In an artful way, Jason Zink’s Looky-loo takes us into the heart of this fear. A feature length travelogue of a serial killer’s journey throughout the neighborhoods of a city, done entirely through their point of view, this experimental exercise reminds viewers of how vulnerable they really are. What is especially interesting here is how Zink allows the everyday objects this stalker comes into contact with – a welcome mat, bathroom products, kitchen utensils – to really come to life here. The heightened colorization and savage utilization of these ordinary items really illustrates a true invasion of personal space, resulting in visual takes that remain in the consciousness long after the film ends.

Zink should also be commended for always taking risks with his art. While 2014’s Night Terrors celebrated more traditional horror. his 2019 feature Straight Edge Kegger was a gritty, punk infused exploitation flick. Looky-loo, which might be more at home in a museum of contemporary art than a movie theater, continues that determined evolution with varied, almost Warhol-ian results. 

Learn more about Zink and his work at https://www.facebook.com/weirdontoppictures.

Be My Bai-by: Mega Ape (2023)

Published October 27, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

(A new column dedicated to the projects of the truly singular Bai Ling)

Much like the multi-layered Irwin Allen disaster flicks, Mega Ape‘s writer and director Dustin Ferguson introduces us to multiple characters and plot points in the quick 72-minute running time of this furry feature. (Amusingly, 10 minutes of that is actually devoted to the pre and post action credits – so you’ve got just a little over a television episode’s worth of stuff here.) To wit, briefly beheld, there are a group of animal activists, a hysterically gesticulating mad scientist (Ling), a woman scorned, a rambling duo of conspiracy theorists and multiple hikers in danger. 

Following the usual path of these things, our titular beast is unwittingly released by some overzealous puppy loving civil servants. Soon, ever growing and growing ever angrier, it is on the warpath. Death and mayhem, naturally, ensue. Interestingly, it seems that the power of this creature is also linked to the subconscious and soon the whole world may be one Empire State Building away from Kong-ing out.

As a creator, Ferguson is obviously having a blast here. Working with a visibly miniscule budget, technology, it seems, has finally allowed him to make one of his dream projects  –  an ambitious, leveled monster flick. Of course, the cheese and wacky humor practically ooze out of this celluloid sandwich – with our favored goddess being a huge part of that.

While it appears as if Ling’s scenes were all filmed in one spastic afternoon, her appearances are, thankfully, scattered out amongst the project’s complete length. As it stands, as Dr. Li, our heroine generally works only one emotion – mania. But I, for one, wouldn’t have it any other way. Her shining exuberance is the flowery bow on an already very colorful present. 

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Review: Shady Grove

Published December 7, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

I never really gave being a parent much thought…except for the year or two directly following my father’s unexpected death in his mid-fifties. As with many males before me, I felt the need to carry on my dad’s lineage, to produce a bloodline namesake for our rapidly diminishing family tree. That notion, thankfully, quickly passed as my romantic status remained unchanged. (Who wants to raise a kid alone?!?) But that kind of patriarchal methodology, while never mentioned outright, definitely inspires the reactionary DNA of Shady Grove, a horror feature co-written by & starring the talented Niki McElroy. The societies represented here, for both better and for (far, far) worse, definitely seek the antithesis of that testosterone driven narrative. 

With both parties rattled by her recent affair with a woman, longtime couple Shauna (McElroy) and Mark (Todd Anthony) rent a quiet country cabin for the weekend in an isolated area. (First mistake, right?!?) Despite the over-the-top antics of their traveling companion, Eli (Juhahn Jones), the two try to tenderly navigate the newness of their rekindled relationship & the unexpected emotions brought on by Shauna’s surprise pregnancy. The mysterious smells emanating from a locked room in their vacation home soon take on a different meaning, though, when Eli disappears after a night of partying with two local women. The sheriff, authoritatively played by hearing impaired actress Becki Hayes, reads as concerned, but there appears to be little that she can do about the strange presences that are now seeming to stalk the very frightened couple. Thus, as the night wears on, it appears that one of them may not make it alive come morning while the other’s life may be irreversibly altered in a very deep seated way.

Ultimately emerging into something that resembles The Wicker Man mixed with more current fare like Vacancy & The Strangers, this well acted production is definitely a slow burn and a nice alternative to the neo-slasher route that many independent creators take. More importantly, the diversity displayed, onscreen and off, makes this a golden viewing experience and one that any woman living in this post #MeToo, nauseatingly right wing era can relate to on multiple levels. 

For more information, please check out https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086453926442 and

& https://instagram.com/shadygrovemovie?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Review: Bride of the Killer Piñata

Published November 2, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

At the end of the premiere screening of Bride of the Killer Piñata, Angry Mule Films’ latest homegrown horror movie sensation, I got stopped in the aisles by an acquaintance. When you’re gay, people assume you always want to talk about penis and, latching onto that thought spectrum, this fellow film buff was immediately chuckling about one of the film’s very outrageous, totally fun dick jokes. I’m almost 100% certain that his reasons for finding that sequence humorous were totally different than mine, though. I can almost guarantee you that, as a straight man, he was hooked by that presented hi-jink via the imagined embarrassment, if not outright humiliation, that would envelop him if he were to find himself being attacked by a very dangerous, evil-minded phallus. I, on the other hand, a veteran of the consequences of the mid-thrust, caught completely unawares gag reflex, know that a hard cock can do some serious damage to the body. Thus, that moment’s silliness rang out for me with a different sense of hilarity. I know the cock can kill!

Thankfully, the makers of Bride seem squarely, unintentionally or not, in the camp of making films for those of us in the killer cock crowd. Honoring both the past works of John Waters & modern society’s ever burgeoning fluidity, this fun sequel to 2015’s Killer Piñata, is not only highlighted by its a leading characters, a charismatically flawed lesbian couple, but by the introduction of puppet sex-body domination as a prime erotic expression and a possibly bi-sexual co-lead villain. (See that dick joke for that final thought.)

Plot line-wise, the film finds Lindsay (Eliza-Jane Morris), the first film’s plucky heroine, with a baby daughter and a very disinterested wife (Nat Younger). But when the killer piñata is not only roused from terror flick slumber, but also joined by a female counterpart, this duo, with the engagement of various members of their neighborhood, bands together to defeat them. With outrageous killings, nefarious subplots and the return of beloved characters, with a heartfelt shout-out to Joette Waters’ fabulously arch The Shopkeeper, screenwriters Megan Macmanus & Stephen Tremontana, gleefully, throw everything they can at the audience here. If it feels a bit too much at times, director Tremontana & his cast always amaze with a professionalism and sense of over-the-top style that is miles above and beyond most indie horror film productions. Thus, this whole outing, insightfully produced by Jennifer Kunkel, a proud member of the LGBTQIA community, is highly, highly recommended, guaranteeing audience members of every bent & inclination a truly enjoyable time.

https://www.facebook.com/angrymulefilms

https://www.facebook.com/KillerPinataMovie

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

In Memoriam: Robyn Griggs & Anne Heche

Published September 16, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

Dying, tragically, within days of each other, former Another World actresses Anne Heche (May 25, 1969 – August 11, 2022) & Robyn Griggs (April 30, 1973 – August 13, 2022) both had strong connections to the world of horror, as well. 

10 years after her popular reign as Maggie Corey on the lauded soap ended, Griggs began appearing in a bevy of zero budget, indie terror epics with titles like Severe Injuries, Slashers Gone Wild!, Demon Divas and the Lanes Of Damnation and Hellweek. Often cast as a villainess, her enthusiasm and love for the genre definitely bled thorough in her performances. Of special note, she gives a delightfully spastic turn as a member of a murderous tribe of ne’er do wells in Hellweek. But Severe Injuries, a feministic take on traditional slasher tropes by Amy Lynn Best and Mike Watt of Happy Cloud Pictures, may just be the best of her many scare-based offerings. She also was the force behind her own homegrown horror convention, further proof that her death at 49 from an aggressive form of cancer was a huge loss to the world of genre cinema. 

The projects of Heche, who passed away after a tragic car crash, definitely had a higher mainstream pedigree. But her major terror credit, an almost frame for frame remake of the classic Psycho (1999), was a controversial offering that was, overwhelmingly, ripped apart by critics, who found its existence unnecessary. Still, the film’s queer influence can be highly felt. Gay director Gus Van Sant definitely invests understanding in the film’s outsider themes while giving us the ass shot that John Gavin never would have allowed by recasting his role with the gamely beautiful Viggo Mortensen. His encouraging Julianne Moore (in the Vera Miles role) to dive into her role with a no bullshit Sapphic energy also stands proud while Heche’s wispy beauty here makes one feel the intense attraction that Ellen DeGeneres, who she was involved with at the time, must have felt for her. Counting 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer & 2013’s Nothing Left to Fear among her other genre credits, Heche left behind not only a legacy of great acting work but an advocacy for the LGBTQIA community that has too long been under appreciated. Proclaiming the truth about her three-year love affair with DeGeneres definitely hurt her career and the stony backs that greeted her upon the dissolution of that romance were truly unnecessary- especially for a woman who helped narrow the scope of the public’s prejudices and broaden their overwhelming personal limitations. 

Indeed, both Griggs and Heche have left this coil far too soon. May their AW peers, including such profound talents as Constance Ford, David Oliver, Philece Sampler & Charles Keating, rise among them to assist them to their new planes of existence.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Dagger Cast: Chris Moore

Published April 19, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

Actor-director-writer Chris Moore is one of the most inspiring gay artists that I know. In the past 6 or 7 years, he has produced 4 accomplished horror films. Nicely, Children of Sin, which begins streaming on Amazon on 4/22/22, is his queerest and bloodiest yet. We were thrilled to have him on the latest episode of Dagger Cast to talk about all the behind-the-scenes magic (& low budget craziness) at hand and know that only the most determined and antisocial Mary Esthers would not want to check out what this brilliant young artist has to say.

Be sure to keep up with all the future devilry of this project at https://www.facebook.com/childrenofsinmovie, as well!

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Flashback: Crystal Gayle Meets the Sin Stalker

Published January 18, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

“That was a very naughty song, Crystal! You should be more careful” – The Sin Stalker

Once upon a time, the powers-that-be at Another World conspired to make country goddess Crystal Gayle the final girl with the longest tresses ever! In the spring of 1987, Gayle, who was a huge fan of the daytime drama, guest starred on the show for a week. While she performed plenty of musical numbers during her stay in Bay City, the producers also worked this raven-haired singer into a major plotline by making her a target of the Sin Stalker, a ghoulish entity who was terrorizing women that struck him as being anything less than moral.

Finding some of Gayle’s sweet pop ballads a bit too suggestive, the peeved stalker wrote her threatening letters, spied on her in her dressing room bathtub and eventually, disturbed beyond all measure, went in for an aggressive kill. But this momma fixated psychopath should have known better than to count this satin voiced yet rough-hewn country gal out. Fighting back with a ferocity, this slasher reminiscent scenario found Gayle leading the killer through a myriad of unoccupied hallways and backrooms of the hotel she was booked in – trying to, desperately, escape him. Her extremely luxurious locks floating, spirit like, in her wake, she eventually clobbered the killer with a fire extinguisher. Momentarily stunned, this malicious entity was, ultimately, scared off by the arrival of Adam Cory (Ed Fry), the show’s handsome police detective. Determined not to let this lurid attack offset her life, Gayle rounded out her run on the program by performing its new theme song with her duet partner, fellow hit maker and future Broadway star Gary Morris.

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“I’m going to sing. No one’s going to get the best of me!” – Crystal Gayle

Nicely accentuated by the participation of a sweet character named Lisa Grady (Phantoms’ Joanna Going), a young psychic with a strange connection to the demented marauder, the story developed further horror film references as it continued. Much like Psycho, the twisted exterminator here was soon being egged on by the voice of his dead mother, a demented audio presence that encouraged him to kill. Unfortunately for dedicated viewers, a surprise victim of those sadistic monologues was one of the show’s elegant, longstanding citizens, Quinn Harding (Petronia Paley). Thankfully, while devotees mourned her departure, the talented Paley later found work on Guiding Light, playing the matriarchal Vivian Grant for 7 years in the ‘90s.

“Good boy! You knew she was living with that lawyer.” – The Sin Stalker’s Mother after Harding’s Murder.

Happily, for the curious, portions of this macabre undertaking, including the entirety of Gayle’s run, can be found on YouTube.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Brian Dorton’s Truly, Madly

Published September 19, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

When I was a pre-teen, my mother and I looked like we were exactly the same age. Other high schoolers would avoid us in movie theaters, sitting rows away, muttering to their friends that they wanted to watch the movie in peace. Their idea of fun wasn’t witnessing two kids holding hands and making out the entire time, fer christ’s sake! My mom, of course, ate this assumption up. I, quite understandably, was revolted. I would beg her to set the record straight. “Tell them we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend, mom,” I’d whisper as loudly as I could. But she would smile softly to herself and say, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that, Brian. It’s really not a big deal. Let them think what they want.”

Years later, this type of closer than close genetics goes the extra (psychotic) mile in Brian Dorton’s truly fun looking horror-thriller Truly, Madly. Here, a widow seems to take an especially violent approach to her child’s burgeoning homosexuality.

With a Blu-ray release scheduled for 2021, all eager fans of LGBTQIA influenced genre films can keep up-to-date with this project’s bloodily familial progress at: https://www.facebook.com/trulymadly2019.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrofan

No – High School. Yes – Reunion from Hell!!

Published August 28, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

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What is the one place that someone who grew up gay in a small farming town with a love for horror & theater & punk rock music NEVER wants to go back to?

  1. High school.
  2. High School.
  3. High School.

Correct Answer – All of the above!

Now, I don’t know if that is the exact concept that director-writer Hayden Newman is playing with in the upcoming ‘90s referencing horror film Reunion from Hell, but whatever focus this LGBTQIA based piece takes, it ultimately sounds like it will be a lot of fun – a true treat for genre lovers from all backgrounds.

Newman, who hopes (COVID willing) to begin filming this fall, has also announced an amazing cast for the project. Sordid Lives co-star and noted gay activist Jason Dottley will be playing Reese Sanders here, while Cathy Podewell (Night of the Demons) and Camille Keaton (I Spit on Your Grave) have also been added as the project’s topliners.

For more information on the film and its indie-a-go-go campaign, please visit https://www.facebook.com/reunionfromhell and https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/reunion-from-hell-filming-funds?fbclid.

Until the next time, screw teenage angst…& SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Review: The Bloody Man

Published July 15, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

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I grew up in the heart of Amish country in Western New York. The skies seemed to grow inconceivably dense above the tree swept hills there, turning black at night, the only light a cautious flecking of far-away stars. On evenings when I was left alone with my younger brother and sister, it seemed like anything could happen…like something sinister would surely unfold, all that space breeding uncertain wonder….and fear.

In Daniel Benedict’s incredibly creative and extremely ambitious The Bloody Man, a nostalgic horror offering, bar none, young Sam (a sympathetic David Daniel), the film’s troubled protagonist, actually does find something lurking in the shadowed recesses of his home and he and his siblings (the relatable Sam Hadden and the truly adorable Olivia Sanders) must band together and fight for their survival. With their mother recently killed in an accident and a new step mother tentatively trying to forge a bond with them, the odds seem against this emotionally damaged trio. But apprehensive viewers need only to recall that celluloid history is littered with iconic villains who have fallen due to a little familial ingenuity, so all hope may not be lost.

Nicely wearing his influences proudly on his sleeve, Benedict includes elements of superhero films, John Hughes coming-of-age comedies and delirious references to such anthology films as Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt here. A strong love for the works of Wes Craven and Fred Dekker also emerges as the proceedings unfold. Yet Benedict has tricks all of his own. The opening sequence featuring Sam trying to catch up with the morning school bus is a feat of ingenious planning, highlighting the director’s comic timing and intrepid filmmaking skills. 46463393_1880538832015170_7751063814790971392_o

Fans will rejoice at the casting of Tuesday Knight and Lisa Wilcox, as well. While their connection to Craven and his iconic A Nightmare on Elm Street series makes their inclusion a natural one, these two seasoned performers definitely supply more than mere name value. They give detailed, heart filled performances in major roles. Knight also brings her rock n roll heart to the film’s beyond cool soundtrack, singing several of her own pop compositions – including a theme song that is reminiscent (in all the best ways) to Nightmare, her popular sonic contribution to the Dream Master’s opening moments.

Indie horror film fans will also be sure to rejoice upon discovering the presence of such homegrown terror stalwarts as Jason Crowe (Dead Moon Rising, The Bad Man), Roni Jonah (Shark Exorcist, The Legacy) and the always personable, scene stealing Mercedez Varble, the heroine of Benedict’s truly fun slasher throwback Bunni.

More information on The Bloody Man is available at www.redserial.com and https://www.facebook.com/RedSerialFilms.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan