THN Ramble: My Fave Streamers

Something I do a lot of is watch (mostly horror) movie streamers on the old YouTube. I really wish I had gotten into it a long time ago but the state of strikes and people out to fuck you over from what I see on these people's channels makes me have a lack of want for it.

So I turn to these 5 reviewers, now I love these 5 the most because they have a shtick. A good one too that adds and entertains on their channels. Here are the 5 that entertain me the most in no particular order.

1. Decker Shado

Hes the internet personality with the best hair, he certainly has amazing flowing locks too. I like Deckard as he puts a lot of himself into his videos, he's very down to earth.

He reviews some very off the wall or low budget films too that I might not of even known of if he hadn't.

Not only that he explains things very well no matter what he's reviewing. He's doing what he loves and you can tell because he's very annoyed by copyright claims, rightly so as he's doing it fair use. Not only that SOME of these places should be thanking him for exposure. I don't think he's had a good past from things he's said so I'm happy he's keeping this up and entertaining us all. Hope he never loses them locks lol.

2. Mike Bracken aka The Horror Geek

Damn I'm old, is one of my favourite lines from Mike. Usually so because I know exactly what he means lol. Mike very down to earth too and relatable in his love for gorehound movies.

Which is Mike's thing, he rates his movies on barf bag ratings. I like this because sometimes I just want to watch a splatterhouse kind of movie i can turn off too. Please take this the right way too, Mike's very informed compared to some Americans I even know personally. For a start he knows wales lol. He also suffers from the tyranny of YouTube censors. His channel also feels as close to something that I would like to make.

3. Brandon Tenold

Brandon is a Canadian who reviews a diverse number of films. From monster flicks, both sci-fi and horror to plain horror also. He's one of the more set in stone Tubers, he's even made documentaries on them, or at least had some input in them.

Everything from Decapitation! To him changing a music track makes me smile.

Also his extreme dislike of Kenny's in kaiju movies (watch them you'll get it then).

Another thing is he has a dry sense of humour which is something I like, he says everything so straight laced and serious but in a comedic way. Again thanks to him I've now seen some really obscure knock off films I don't think I ever would have otherwise.

4. Stitched Together Pictures

Or the maniacal cinephile, or Andy lol. A bandaged guy with multiple personalities, kind of reminds me of the guy you play in nightmare creatures 2. His thing is as said the multiple personalities, good Andy, normal Andy and evil Andy.

He's a functional schizophrenic as he knows about them and regularly converses between them. Despite normal Andy usually doing the bulk of the reviews we also get a simplistic good view smattering from the child like good Andy. Then a growling masochistic view from bad Andy. These are all of course done in a tongue in cheek comedic style.

In skits we learn Andy is a somewhat escaped asylum patient. We see in small skits from time to time. Often bad Andy has killed people to get them (or himself) something. Despite this he gives honest opinions on things he reviews. One of my favourite things he does is boots to reboots where he compares two movies usually the OG film compared to a more recent remake.

If he deems them bad he stamps on them with a big heavy metal boot destroying them in the process.

Would like to see more of his channel but I guess he's a busy guy, also I suspect his videos take a while to put together.

5. Fanboy Flicks

Is a newer one to me, Mark is also a Canadian I have fallen in love with very quickly. Again it's the dry sense of humour, there's a difference though. Every now and then Mark will break into laughter at his own jokes or at the scene he's trying to review.

One of my favourite things he does is put himself inside of the film in scenes. Very effectively to great comedic effect most of the time. Again a great source for more obscure films, espcially older ones.

Again a little sporadic with uploads but I'm also guessing all the work he puts in takes a lot of time too. If that means a sporadic upload then that's fine with me.

Since I'm writing this on a phone if any of the people mentioned read this please feel free to put your links in the message box. It's very hard for me to link so many on my phone, if I can re-edit this at some point on a pc or laptop I'll put in more stuff like pictures, links etc.

To anyone else since I'm in no way able to help monetary wise with these folks, please go find their channels and subscribe you won't be disappointed.

Review: Flight 7500 (2014)

Stars: Amy Smart, Ryan Kwanten

Budget: est. 5million

Directed By: Takashi Shimizu

A thriller/horror from Mr Shimizu of the Ju-on fame. Film in 2014 it took till 2016 to be widely released.

It stars a host of recognisable faces from around that time too. Such as Amy Smart and Leslie Bibb as well as others.

I'm surprised I've never seen or even heard of this movie before. It has a weird kind of Ghost Ship or house on haunted hill vibes for sure when you start watching it.

It actually had me guessing too as to what the he'll was actually going on, I mean I had 3 things in my head.

1. It's a monster

2. They are all dead

Or

3. Its a hallucinogenic experience.

I'll get more into it later but I was right with one of them so I wasn't to clueless. Quite seasoned to acting everyone does a good job in their roles.

So there's a flight, 7500 in fact we see many of our protagonists boarding the plane as the crew go through preflight.

They all seem to have something up with them. The newly weds but the wife is a hypochondriac. Smart and her partner have something in their past too. These all come up into focus at later times in the film. 

One of the more mysterious of the bordees is a man with a weird box. He later dies due to some complications. This is a little odd with it's timing and the overall plot of the film as I couldn't work out if it was due to this, after this or because of this other things happen.

Anyway this freaks out a few people as is course of things. Now a plot point introduced earlier comes into play.

When a seemingly drop in pressure endangers everyone, Smarts boyfriend (who us a paramedic and tried to help the guy eaflier) dashes around trying to help people again. There seems something wrong with the air masks too. Anyway after some worry it all calms down. Weird shit starts happening and they believe it's to do with the guy who died.

So some people vanish or are supposedly killed along the way. They look through his stuff and find a Shinigami death doll. If you know anything this solidified one of my theories if you know what that doll means. 

I want spoil anymore as usual, this film was pretty okay if you like any of the earlier movies I mentioned. THN awards Flight 7500 a reasonable 3 out of 5 stars.

Review: Killer Weekend (2018)

Cast: Mark Heap, Danny Kirrane

Budget: Unknown

Directed By: Ben Kent

Made for frightfest by Ben Kent I'm suspecting on a reasonably low budget as the only person I really recognised in the ensemble was Mark Heap, from Spaced, Big Train and a few other UK comedy programs. It has another working name FUBAR too. I enjoyed Mark in this though his part is relatively small.

I went into this knowing nothing about too, which I think is the best way to watch this film. So if you haven't seen it I suggest you don't read the lower half of the review. Mainly because I started watching this film thinking something else was going to happen that never did, which I actually liked. I'll expand on that later. 

So on with the movie. We join a group of lads going on a stag weekend. They've planned a zombie paintballing weekend for the groom. The friends are your usual group the one who's grown up has a family kid, the rich stuck up asshole, the still immature idiot who never grew up. Also on the trip is the groom, the father in law to be who doesn't really like the groom, a guy he knew in a job who is delusional that the groom is his best friend. Also his sister's boyfriend who doesn't really him either. Finally the friend who is a massive drug head.

They meet up with the other half if the group in a small cafe off the motorway. In there the ass is loud and obnoxious.  They get the ire of the waitress, then notice a large gentleman staring blankly at them who they also bad mouth.  When they get to the retreat the people running it are ex military (there's also a running joke the father in law was some kind of specail agent, though not disproven its highly hinted hes lying).

Anyway it seems one of the 'zombies' is the large blank faced man. This shits up the groom whose told to attack him with a soft baton. It doesn't go well.  Out in the forest they are attacked by the zombies the large man goes for the groom knocking his baton away then knocking him on his ass. Reaching for the baton the groom accidentally pick up a stick as he leaps on him impaling himself on it. Accidentally killing the man, though when he's not dead (just severely hurt) the idiot friend mistakes him for a zombie and finishes him off with a knife to the head.

They come to the conclusion to hide the body, they get him but take his phone. When the leader of the retreat texts him the idiot friend replies with a phrase that later he recognises when he says it. Anyway they go about and accidentally kill a few more people in the process. The other ex soldiers find the (poorly hidden) corpses then proceed to hunt the rest of the group.

I'll leave it there as the rest is a pretty decent watch, comedic but also quite gory in places, also the ending is pretty realistic in they pretty much say about the killings and consequences. Now I went into this thinking maybe the people really turn into zombies, there's a few flags through the film that suggest this is the case too, the way the initial guy is staring all blank and weirdly, they find nuclear warning signs in a building too. But it isn't, hope your haven't read this before watching it as I'm sure it'll trick you too.

It's nothing special unless you don't know what's going on. It's a decent film to pass the time too. THN awards this film 3 out of 5 stars.

Review: Werewolves Within (2021)

Stars: Sam Richardson, Milana Vayntrub

Budget: $6.5 million

Directed By: Josh Ruben

A gleefully fun film that is apparently based on a video game of the same name. I've never played it but the premise is pretty much you have to guess who the werewolf is.

This was unfortunately released at a time that movies weren't doing to well in the cinemas still so did not make it's budget back.

Whether this was truly to blame or that it just wasn't that great I'll get to a bit later in my review.

One thing I really did enjoy a lot though was the clue/cluedo vibe it gave me especially when they are all together in the hotel.

Though as always I did kind of guess who was what about halfway through, though it did throw me a few curve balls up until then which I enjoyed.

Was nice seeing Harvey Guillen in here from what we do in the shadows too. All the roles are pretty well acted and Milana exudes backwater sexiness despite being covered up a lot in this movie. All in all everyone is very believable in their given roles.

There's a few story lines going on in the film which i'm guessing is to throw you off who is what, but can some times bog down the pacing making the film a little all over the place from time to time. So lets get on with the main plot and a few tidbits from the story.

We join Sam Richardson playing Finn Wheeler a forest ranger travelling to a new area he's been assigned too. From the off we see Finn has confidence problems as he's listening to self help tapes about being more assertive. He's clearly had some relationship troubles too.

We are quickly introduced to the whole town as Milana's character Cecily, a mail delivery woman shows him around town. We see there's a dispute about with folks as a local businessman Sam Parker wants to set up a pipeline We have lots variety in the townsfolk a gay couple, the angry wife with cheating husband and your typical loudmouth hicks, lastly they go see Emerson Flint a crazy out of town loner hunter.

There's also the hotel owner Jeanine who thinks her husband ran off with someone, though we know from an earlier (that he was indeed going to cheat) scene that he was killed by, something.

There's also a environmentalist Dr Ellis staying at the hotel advising about the pipeline. When the one couple with the cheating husband dog is killed they go searching for who done it.

As more bodies appear and the electric gets knocked out seemingly by a blizzard then we later find out the generators were also slashed with giant claws.

This is where the film for me did pick up a bit as up until now I had guessed what was what but in a shocking twist the film makes you even question the existence of a possible werewolf and is it all just a set up?

So yeah really appreciated that, so as not to spoil anything I'll say no more other than, after a slow start I really did enjoy this film.

THN awards Werewolves Within a strong 3 out 5 stars

Review: Sanitarium (2013)

Stars: John Glover, Robert England, Lou Diamond Phillips

Budget: not found

Directed By: Bryan Ortiz, Brian Ramirez 

An anthology film featuring some actors you haven't seen for a while and some that become staple in these B-movie affairs.

It's based in a sanitarium where we have Malcom McDowell as a kind of narrator introducing us to the patients that the segments are based on.

I couldn't find any budget info anywhere but it's probably not a major amount. I'm always amazed by the people you see turn up in things like this these days. Always nice to see John Glover show up in things he's a good emoting actor in my books.

So we have 3 stories in this anthology 

1. John Glover is an artist who's a little delusional over his models. It's clear he's a big thing but he's paranoid everyone wants his models. Roberts also in this one as the curator to the gallery. When an offer for him to get bigger crowds in for $6 million but he refuses, his friend/aide doesn't seem to like this but says he says he trusts his judgement.  We have some shenanigans as Johns character seemingly loses the plot is it real or all in his head?

2. A bullied kid stars in this one I recognised some of the actors but none I really knew in this segment. He's not bullied at school but by his abusive single father, I'm not sure if he's supposedly sexually abused too or it's just his father taking of his belt to beat him. I suspect it's the former though, Malcolm introduces him as a multiple personalities schizophrenic. He's also adult by the time we see him in the asylum. One thing I did wonder while watching this if the other kids were real or not, the ones he was in a group with. Anyway a strange dark shadow that scares him throughout pops up in the end!

3. Lou Diamond Phillips stars in this one, u haven't seen him in anything significant since labamba or young guns this was a paranormal snoozefest, that's the best I can say about this one.

So overall it was nice to see some familiar faces in these, the film does have another title if you can't find it under this, in the US as monsters are real, which is one of the segments names. It's also on Pluto Tv at the moment too.

It wasn't anything special but worth a time wasting 90 minutes or so if you're bored. THN awards this 2 out 5 stars.

Review: Happy Birthday To Me (1981)

Stars: Melissa Sue Anderson, Matt Craven

Budget: $3.5-4.7 million

Directed By: J. Lee Thompson

nearly every holiday has a horror film based around it, but who ever thought that you most sacred of holidays, personal even, would be haunted by a killer nutcase.

The 80's was indeed a time of basing multiple horror films on holidays, from Halloween to even Friday the Thirteenth. Later things like even valentines day would see slashers based on them.

Made on quite a large budget for an 80s film, people like I wrote earlier say this film might be influenced from other slashers, but being released in 81 it was actually in pre-production before those films were released.

Unfortunately this film was seen as a video nasty and also was widely panned by critics. It has since gained a cult following like most things do as time goes by.

A lot of the money was used in promotions too which was a big foe-par. the studio did think they had something akin to Ft13TH on their hands.

So we join a group of students who are totted as the top ten in their school, each excelling at their chosen academics. This makes them appear privileged and popular to other students. The first kill is one of these students who is chased and harassed until she plays dead in her car, then running again she bumps into someone she apparently knows and gets herself murderised.

The rest of the gang become concerned when she, Bernadette doesn't show up to the pub, as they are all swots and generally never miss anything even a pub trip. It's quickly glossed over though. They leave the pub later and get silly playing chicken with a raising bridge.

Later our main girl Ginny stops in a graveyard to pay respects but as she is another member Etienne break int her room and steals some of her underwear. When Bernie fails to show for school the next day they all realise something is very wrong now, she wouldn't miss classes.

We also find out Ginny has a troubled past, she has repressed memories that keep surfacing to trouble her. We also find out she had some kind of operation after an accident with a drawbridge, which is why she was so freaked out earlier.

The rest of the top ten start to get murdered in a variety of different gory ways, one gets his scarf caught in a motorbike wheel. Another gets his neck crushed. The film tries it's best to put the blame of killer on a variety of other folk in the picture. Some, well most of which end up murdered themselves. Even Ginny at some points. But the film does end with a very odd twist that pretty much comes out of no where.

Which is where THN stops I though Happy birthday to me was okay, it's nothing special when compared with other slashers but I can see it being quirky enough to gain the following it has gained, you know I don't do half stars here so it does unfortunately miss out on 3 out of 5 for me, but really it's worth a watch if you haven't seen it then chalk it up to how you feel about.

put it in your menagerie of films 

or 

chalk it up to i've watched it now status.

THN awards Happy Birthday to Me a strong 2 out of 5 with recommendation to watch.

Review: Scream 5 (2022)

Stars: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox

Budget: $24 million

Directed By: Tyler Gillett, Matt Bettinelli-Opin

Well, well this got made didn't it, did we need a 5th scream movie? 

Probably not, but we got one anyway. I do like the dedication to Wes at the end it was very fitting. Now there's things I had heard from various sources about this film before I watched it.

Things like it was going meta like new nightmare etc but thankfully it didn't. This however is a double edged sword in this franchise, a franchise that tries to step out of the box with each part. Unfortunately only the first 2 ever coming close to this.

So 3, 4 and yes even this one become run of the mill who dunnit slasher flicks. Thankfully I went in spoiler free, so it did take me about 1/3 of the movie to guess at least one of the killers. Unfortunately this movie does the thing, you know white men not allowed to live or being the bad guy thing.

So from here out spoiler territory Dewey dies, yes the guy who has been stabbed in the back every movie before this yet lived meets his final stabbing. They do play it off in a nice send off for him in the end though, though I'd have preferred Gail to die myself. It's not particularly gory either though by today's standards the past films aren't to bad either but it's certainly tame, which may have helped a bit with OMG factor, but sadly not.

I won't spoil to much more other than once you guess who the killers are you'll be left scratching your head as to motive, though not entirely outlandish it just comes off as bland and by the numbers these days reasons for anything like that.

In film order I used to rank scream as 1-2-4-3 I now rank it as 1-2-4/5-3 why? Because as to now I'm flip flopping which I prefer/dislike the most. This did reasonably well at the box office with its smallish budget, we may see a 6 but I can already see the formula if they keep making them now, it'll be each older actor left killed off at some point in each subsequent movie.

THN awards Scream5 a meh-ish 2 out of 5 if you just want a slasher flick to watch.