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Terrifier 3, The Omicron Killer, Sleepaway Camp, Hellraiser VII, and The Best from 20,000 Fathoms
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Terrifier 3, The Omicron Killer, Sleepaway Camp, Hellraiser VII, and The Best from 20,000 Fathoms

Horror Weekly Issue #308

We’re back to our regular mix of new and old films, this time, starting off with a holiday special, “Terrifier 3” (2024). We’ll look at a very odd indie film, “The Omicron Killer” (2024), and then finish off with some older films. We’ll look at the twisted “Sleepaway Camp” from 1983, another Pinhead installment in “Hellraiser VII Deader” (2005), and then go way back in time to “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” (1953). It’s a ride!

The latest issue of “Horror Monthly” is now on sale, and it’s our biggest issue yet, with 54 reviews plus a short story by none other than Kevin himself. 

Don’t miss out on our most recent members-only edition of the newsletter, just out! This month's “extras” contain the full synopsis and commentary on all five of the “other” Tremors films, numbers three through seven. Paid subscription info can be found at https://www.horrorweekly.com. November’s special episode will cover all the “Alien” films that we haven’t already watched. 


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Mainstream Films:

2024 Terrifier 3

  • Directed by Damien Leone

  • Written by Damien Leone

  • Stars Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton, Antonella Rose

  • Run Time: 2 Hours, 4 Minutes

  • Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The movie is a nugget of a story hidden in a thick layer of gore and violence. The effects are impressively realistic, and the deaths are excessive, so you are warned. Art the Clown’s mime work is great, and the rest of the cast is fine. If you’re a fan of the previous two, you’ll probably like this one too. It’s at least as good as those.

Spoilery Synopsis

A little girl comes into the bedroom; “There’s someone on the roof. There were footsteps.” Her parents talk about the kid having too much sugar before bed; it causes bad dreams. “Maybe it was one of Santa’s elves.” The girl goes downstairs, and sure enough, she sees Santa in their living room. He reaches into his bag and pulls out an ax before going upstairs. Yes, Santa is really Art the clown, and none survive. Credits roll.

Five years prior… We cut to a cop who finds a decapitated clown. The headless body soon attacks the cop, who empties his gun into the thing’s torso. The clown then puts on the cop’s head and rides the subway.

We cut to an orderly at the mental hospital who interrupts one of the patients, cannibalizing another. The headless clown is there, and so is his head, assisting the crazy woman. The clown puts the head on, and of course, it’s Art. The crazy woman, Vicky, goes with him to his lair, eating a real clown along the way. 

In the present day, Uncle Greg comes to pick up Sienna, from the previous film, from the hospital. He takes her home where Gabbie and Jessica await them. 

Not far away, Dennis and Jackson, some construction guys, go into an old house that smells terrible. One guy is spooked; there are stories about the place. A maniac killed a dozen kids and buried them in the basement of this house. They find Vicky and Art’s bodies there, both in some kind of hibernation– but not for long!

We soon see that Sienna isn’t completely recovered, as she sees the ghosts of the people she saw die. At the dinner table, one of the ghosts gets a little overbearing. 

We cut to Jonathan, Sienna’s little brother, now at college, where he meets Mia, who is really into those old “clown stories.” Mia wants him as a guest on her true crime podcast. She gets a call from Sienna, who is upset. 

Back at Art’s house, he plays with some liquid nitrogen and freezes a rat solid and then shatters it. He then goes to a bar where he runs into three old men in a bar, one of whom is playing Santa. They all have a laugh as Santa and the clown trade hijinks. We soon learn that Art doesn’t care for alcohol, and things go south really fast when Art steals Santa’s outfit. It gets worse when Art pulls out his new freeze-gun and gives Santa a really white Christmas. 

Sienna and Gabbie go out Christmas shopping at the mall. While there, Sienna has a PTSD flashback Jonathan watches Mia’s podcast, and she believes that Sienna is the prime suspect in the murders of the previous film. Sienna and Mia finally meet, and Sienna shows disinterest in her podcast. 

Sienna doubts that it’s all over, but Jonathan knows she cut off Art’s head five years ago. He wants to move on, but she’s stuck with her psychological obsession. 

Art comes to the mall, dressed like Santa. He’s a bloody mess, and his face looks nothing like Santa, but nobody seems to notice. He calls up the first little girl, and he gives her a doll. When the kids see he’s handing out presents, he’s swarmed. The elves and security guard realize quickly that he’s not their regular Santa. He gives one kid a massive explosive device, and things get really messy in the mall. 

Jonathan goes to a campus Christmas party that night, and Art sneaks in the back door. Gabbie reads Sienna’s diary, which causes some predictable drama. Art overhears Mia and Cole talking about the “Art the clown murders” five years ago. They go off to have a show together as Art prepares his chainsaw. Cole goes to pieces pretty quickly, so Mia does in fact get the full “Art experience.” 

Sienna hears about the explosion at the mall on the news; she thinks she saw Art there earlier in the day, and she knows he’s back. Greg and Jennifer think she’s having a psychotic break. Jennifer gives her something to make her sleep while Greg goes to pick up Jonathan. 

She dreams about her father and the making of the magic sword as well as Art, of course. No wait– that’s really him! He knocks her out and ties her to a chair in the living room. Jennifer’s there, also tied to a chair, and Greg's headless body is nailed to the wall. His head is the new tree-topper. 

Art unwraps Gabbie’s half-eaten head, which is in a cage full of rats. This upsets Gabbie’s mother, so Art and Vicky put a tube in her mouth and fill it with rats. Vicky points out that the head wasn’t really Gabbie; it was Jonathan. 

Vicky attacks Sienna, but then Sienna’s eyes glow and Vicky backs off. Art breaks both of her hands with his mallet before making her open the Christmas presents under the tree. She opens a along package, and inside it– is the magic sword! She immediately impales and decapitates Vicky and slices Art’s throat. It even makes her hands better! 

Art, of course, isn’t dead and comes back with a chainsaw. The two fight in the living room, chainsaw to magic sword. When they lose their weapons, they continue to go at it, using whatever is at hand, and it all looks very painful. 

Sienna kills Art excessively, but Vicky's head melts and the juice creates a gateway to Hell, and Gabbie falls in. When Sienna looks back, Art is gone. Her hands completely heal. 

We cut to Art, waiting at the bus stop. The bus stops, and Art gets on, dripping with blood. 

Brian’s Commentary

You know when the police show up, they’re going to pin all the deaths on Sienna, right? 

“It’s a Terrifier Christmas” is definitely going on my Christmas playlist this year– if they ever release it. 

The many, many gore shots here are impressive, and there are a lot of them. Sienna’s character has PTSD, and it seems relatively realistically portrayed, as does her family’s reaction to it. 

There is a story this time around, but as with the previous installments, it’s really more about the gore and torture. Still, if you liked the previous film, this one has more of all the stuff you liked. 

Kevin’s Commentary

This was well made with a bigger budget and more people working on the effects this time around. David Howard Thornton is excellent in his miming and expressions as the silent Art, who never speaks or makes a sound. I found myself getting a little weary of the excessive gore at times, it was done to the point of tedium for some of the kills. I liked it, but didn’t love it.

2024 The Omicron Killer

  • Directed by Jeff Knite

  • Written by Johnny Careccia, Jeff Knite, Paugh Shadow

  • Stars Bai Ling, Felissa Rose, Lynn Lowry

  • Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes

  • Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

We got well into this before we realized it was a sequel to “The Covid Killer,” which we have not seen. It seems like we were okay story-wise missing that first one. It’s a watchable indy-level project with enough good elements to keep it amusing. It gets a moderate thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch camera footage of a man with a knife breaking into a kitchen, but the woman inside isn’t what he was expecting. The Covid killer is now dead, but the copycat killer is still out there. 

A year passes, the Covid Killer is trending all over social media. The copycat killer has mostly been forgotten, and the news says the new “Omicron Variant” of Covid has been identified. 

On the street, the Omicron Killer is mugged by three armed men. He beats them to death with their own weapons before passing out himself. 

The police show up and examine the three bodies; Captain Callahan isn’t impressed with the overweight, silent victim. Credits roll. 

The overweight mugging victim is taken to the hospital, and he growls at the nurse. 

Meanwhile, four kids go to their grandmother’s grave; she was a victim of the killer, and we get flashbacks of that. Meanwhile, a group of cultists arrive and run the kids off. The cultists do a whole ritual, drinking blood, and they summon the Covid Killer from Hell. 

Dr. Frueger talks to John Doe, the killer in the hospital. “John” doesn’t speak to him either. The very weird nurse seduces the guard outside the door and gets rid of him. The doctor tries to force-feed the patient strawberries, and we see that he’s the worst doctor ever. “I dabble in pain,” he says. 

At the police station, Captain Callahan assigns two sloppy cops, one of whom is her son, as partners. At a house, eight-year-old Bobby devises a plan to capture, and maybe kill, the Omicron Killer. 

Suddenly, the killer is outside, wandering around with a crowbar, at the corner of Elm Street and Vorhees Road. There’s also a singing clown. Copycat Omicron and the clown fight, and back in the hospital, we see that it was just a dream. He gets up, kills some people and roars as he tracks down the doctor and follows him across town. 

Brock, the cop, figures out that the guy in the hospital is the Copycat Killer. He and his partner rush to the hospital to find the bodies and the unconscious nurse. The Captain briefs the cops about the “Covid Cult” who are trying to bring back the original killer. 

The Copycat Killer, on the other hand, goes to a video game store and buys a new mask. Brock and Healy talk about events from the first film. The cultists argue over Steven’s “Sling Blade.” 

Bryan goes to the strip club, and Natasha and Delicious make him feel welcome in the back room. We see the Killer is there as well. He impales Bryan and Delicious with his crowbar. 

The Killer puts on his scary new mask and is then beaten up by the four little children. The cops question some people. The cultists make more plans. There is a vast amount of talking, mostly between characters that we haven’t seen before. 

The media starts calling the Copycat Killer the Omicron Killer now. The Omicron Killer follows Detective Healy’s  girlfriend home. She stops to take a bath and he kills her. 

Meanwhile, the cultists try their ritual under the Blood Moon. This time, the police arrive and arrest all but the main necromancer. 

The police notice from security footage that Omicron keeps returning to the hospital, looking for Dr. Fuegel. Brock sets a trap which leads to him getting beaten badly. Healy blows the killer’s leg off and arrests him. 

We cut to the cemetery, where the real Covid Killer reaches up from the grave…

Brian’s Commentary

Was this sponsored by Kit-Kat and the lemonade company? 

We went into this blind, not realizing that it was a sequel to 2021’s “The Covid Killer.” It started out fairly promising, with a lot of humor, but it mostly just devolved into a bunch of people talking and talking and talking. 

It had some very funny bits to it, but it also was way longer than it needed to be. 

Kevin’s Commentary

We missed the first movie not realizing this was a sequel, but that’s probably okay. This one is watchable, with some good qualities. It’s got a serious indy level vibe and flow, a decent story, decent effects, hit and miss acting. It could have been a little less talky at times, but it’s not too bad. I met my primary goal of being entertained, so I’d call it a win overall.

1983 Sleepaway Camp

  • Directed by Robert Hiltzik

  • Written by Robert Hiltzik

  • Stars Felissa Rose, Jonathan Tiersten, Karen Fields

  • Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes

  • Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a who-is-the-killer kind of movie with people gradually getting picked off. The body count is fairly low, and it’s kind of slow-moving here and there. But the payoff is worth sticking through the whole thing. It’s an overall thumbs-up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on shots of a camp as credits roll. We see that Camp Arawak is for sale. 

A young couple drives a motor boat with a water skier behind as a dad, son, and daughter watches from a little sailboat. The sailboat tips over, and sure enough, the motorboat runs right into the family, killing the father and one of the kids. 

Eight years later, Richard's mother (She’s quite the actor) and Angela’s aunt, bring them a whole bag of snacks for their trip to camp. And their physical slips which she prepared herself since she’s a doctor. Angela is the surviving child from the boating accident.

The young campers all arrive, and the staff watch, “There’s no such thing as being too young,”  says one pervy staff member. Ricky greets Paul, but Angela doesn’t speak. Judy’s Ricky’s ex-girlfriend, and she’s outgrown him. 

Meg is in charge of the girl’s dorm. The girls don’t care for the silent and morose Angela. Quite a while later, Ronnie, one of the adults, learns that Angela hasn’t eaten since she got there and takes her into the kitchen for real food. Artie, the perv from earlier, is tasked with taking care of her. He tries, but Ricky interrupts before he can get his pants unfastened. 

Artie is alone in the kitchen not long after, and we see someone watching him. He prepares a huge tub of boiling water to cook the corn, but the unseen person makes sure Artie pays for his choices. The paramedics come and haul him away and Mel, the owner of the camp, offers the kitchen staff raises to keep quiet about all that. 

We then get a number of scenes that show us that life in camp is worse than prison, and maybe gayer, as well. Paul, at least, is nice to Angela, but no one else is. He knows what happened to her family. Judy is the “bad girl,” and she doesn’t like Paul’s friendliness with the quiet girl. She finally decides that she’ll talk to him. 

That night, all the guys get naked and jump in the lake. Kenny runs into the killer, and in the morning, the guys find his body. Mel says it was just an accident. 

Paul and Angela go to the movie together, and Judy fumes. He kisses her, and she kinda likes it. Meg also starts bullying Angela. Billy is another bully, and he gets locked into a restroom and has a beehive dropped on his head. Mel can’t come up with a way to spin this death as an accident. Even he thinks there’s a killer, but Ronnie convinces him he’s imagining it. 

Paul and Angela go to the lake that evening. They start kissing, and she flashes back to her father in bed with another man and her playing doctor with Ricky when they were little. She runs away from Paul. 

The next day, during a game of capture the flag, Ricky finds Paul and Judy kissing in the woods, and so does Angela. Paul apologizes to Angela a little later, but Judy horns in on that as well. 

Mel seems to suspect that Ricky is the killer and confronts him. Judy and Meg pick up Angela and carry her to the lake, which terrifies Angela. Ricky gets away from Mel too late to stop her from getting thrown in. 

It’s the night of the big campout out in the woods. Meg and Mel get together for dinner while everyone is out of the camp. Meg gets ready by taking a shower, but gets stabbed right through the wall. Mel goes looking later and soon finds what’s left of her.

We see someone who resembles Angela or maybe Ricky come to pay a visit to Judy, and the killer smothers the bad girl with a pillow while shoving a hot curling iron where hot curling irons should not go.

Some of the little kids don’t like sleeping in the woods, so Eddie drives two of them back to the main camp. Eddie returns to the kids’ camp and finds everyone else dead and mutilated. 

Mel still thinks Ricky is the killer, and he grabs him and beats the kid up. Except then, the real killer gets Mel with a bow and arrow. The remaining counselors call the police and start rounding up all the kids. 

Angela and Paul go to the lake, and she tells him to take his clothes off, which pleases Paul tremendously. The cops find Ricky beaten senseless in the woods and carry him back to camp. 

Ronnie and Susie find Angela, who is obviously now the killer since she has decapitated Paul. We get a flashback to Aunt Martha telling young Peter that she always wanted a little girl. Yes, Angela is the little boy in the opening sequence- that’s why she didn’t shower or swim with the others. He’s been living as a girl all this time, and he/she is totally screwed up!

Brian’s Commentary

Felissa Rose, as Angela, was really only 13 here, which is a little creepy considering what all goes on in the film. There’s just lots of weird little details in this one that set off lots of red flags. 

Even without the killer, summer camp looks like a pretty miserable place, except maybe for all the short-shorts. It’s like “Lord of the Flies,” only with counselors. 

It’s a slasher film, but the body count is surprisingly low.  The memorable part of the film is the surprise ending. 

Kevin’s Commentary

This was more slow moving than I remember, but it wasn’t too bad. It made me nostalgic for the days of short-shorts being in style. Overall, I didn’t enjoy it as much on a rewatch as I did the first time, but I’d recommend it if you’re into 80s slashers at all and haven’t seen it before.

Hellraiser VII: Deader (2005) 

  • Directed by Rick Bota

  • Written by Clive Barker, Neal Marshall Stevens, Tim Dep

  • Stars Kari Wuhrer, Ionut Chermenskia, Hugh Jorgin

  • Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

  • Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a mediocre horror movie with some Pinhead and Cenobite action stuck in almost like an afterthought. They were heading in the wrong direction with this one as far as overall quality, but it’s probably not the worst in the series. We’d say skip it unless you are serious about wanting to see them all.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open in an old house where everyone has passed out from doing too much drugs. We focus on Amy Klein, who wakes up and takes pictures of everyone in the place. She’s an undercover reporter, “How to Be A Crack Whore” is her latest article. She gets called into the boss’s office. 

Charles has something new to show her on a videotape. He wants to know if she’s heard of “Deaders.” The tape shows a group of young people in some sort of cult. They have a terrified woman lay down on a bed of plastic and then they make her play Russian roulette; the girl loses. The cult leader then kisses the corpse and the blood and guts all flow back into the girl, who wakes up. 

Amy wonders if it’s special effects, but Charles thinks the tape is legitimate. He wants her to pursue the story in Bucharest. He’s already bought her tickets. 

In Bucharest, Romania, Amy tracks down the return address for the videotape. There’s quite a smell, and inside, she finds the woman from the video, quite dead and rotten. She finds and takes a book of photos and papers. She has to get uncomfortably close to the gross dead body, but finds an envelope, “Help Us.” The dead woman also has a very familiar looking puzzle box. Amy steals everything from the woman’s cold, dead hands.

She goes back to her hotel and finds a key and another tape. The tape shows Marla, the dead woman from the video, and the apartment, and she talks about never opening the box. “It’s now up to you to stop this.” She gives Amy instructions on how to proceed. 

Naturally, Amy opens the box and sees Pinhead, who warns that she’s in danger. She also has visions of her father. 

Amy gets on a train and sees all sorts of fetish-bondage people until she comes to Joey. She says she wants to meet Winter, the cult leader. He tells her what she needs to know but also warns her not to go there. 

She gets off the train and sees Winter following her in the subway. She watches him jump in front of the train, but later, there’s no evidence of it. She gets arrested, and Charles has to bail her out. He’s creepy, but he’s on her side. 

Amy continues following leads to some catacombs where she follows a strange man who leads her to watch the “Deaders” doing their thing, just like on the videotape. Winter sees that Amy is there, but he doesn’t care. Everyone in the room is a Deader. 

Winter says, “I chose you.” Amy pulls out the puzzle box, and he says it’s a way to cheat death, an entrance to another world. He says the box is a sort of family heirloom, and he wants to reclaim what is his. He wants her to open the box. She gets a vision of her abusive father. 

She wakes up on the plastic table, surrounded by Deaders and Winter, who’s holding a knife. No, she really wakes up in the bathtub. Later, there’s a lot of blood. Was she stabbed, or wasn’t she? Since she’s got a big knife still in her back, probably that was real. She uses a cupboard door to pull out the knife, which looks awkward and painful. 

Pinhead is there, and he denies doing anything to her. He asks her why she doesn’t feel pain with all her blood on the floor. This is no dream; she’s been recruited as a soldier for Winter. The Deaders have found a way into his world, and he wants her to stop them. She duct-tapes her wound shut, but she’s still bleeding. 

Amy goes back to the party train to find Joey, but she sees everyone on board is dead. There’s a Cenobite on board as well. Marla is there, and she helps Amy get off the train. She explains that Winter needs her help to open the box. 

Amy wakes up in the mental hospital, strapped to the bed, with Charles trying to get her released. Marla says that Amy has a dark past, which is why only she can open the box. She remembers stabbing her abusive father to death back in the day. 

Passing out yet again, Amy wakes up in the Deader place again. Winter hands her a knife. She insists that she’s not one of them, but she raises the knife to stab herself. Nearby, the puzzle box starts flashing with power. She drops the knife, picks up the box and opens it, releasing Pinhead and the Cenobites to do their thing. 

Pinhead references Marchand the Toymaker from “Hellraiser: Bloodline” (1996) and says Winter is his descendant. The chains come out and rip Winter apart… slowly. Pinhead then does bad things to all the Deaders. Only Amy remains, and Pinhead says she must pay the price. She stabs herself to prevent going with him to see her father again, and Pinhead goes back in the box. 

Charles watches on the news that the building Amy was in burned to the ground, and Amy is completely missing. That’s OK, because he’s got another reporter to put on the case. 

Commentary

There’s only a brief glimpse of Pinhead in the first hour. Like the previous two films, this one focuses on an investigator solving a mystery and chasing leads. Since that didn’t work at all in the previous two films, one has to wonder why they’d just do that again

It’s… not great, but it’s not the worst of the series, either. This is one to watch for the sake of completion and nothing else. 

1953 The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

  • Directed by Eugene Lourie

  • Written by Lou Morheim, Fred Freiberger, Ray Bradbury

  • Stars Paul Hubschmid, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway

  • Run Time: 1 Hour, 2o Minutes

  • Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

For an early creature feature, this is a pretty good one. The effects are dated of course, but it’s well put together and entertaining. The cast is good, and the story flows well. It was a fun watch.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re told about a secret base and experiment way north of the Arctic Circle. It’s “Operation Experiment," and the men have been preparing for a long time. We get a tense countdown as the airplane detonates an atomic bomb. 

The radar tech sees something unexpected on the radar, but by the time Colonel Evans shows up, it’s gone. Professor Tom Nesbitt warns that we don’t really know what the effect of the bomb’s radiation will be, but they’re headed to the blast site to find out. 

The scientists go out to check their radiation meters, but there’s a blizzard coming up. Not only that, but there’s some kind of giant, roaring dinosaur walking between the snow drifts. The creature scares George, one of the scientists, into falling into a crevasse, and only Tom is there to help him back out. Just then, the monster creates an avalanche that completely buries George. Tom goes back to base alone and unconscious, babbling about “the monster.”

Tom is flown back to the States, where he recovers from his “traumatic hallucinations.” A psychiatrist is assigned to help Tom; no one believes that there’s really a giant dinosaur out there. Colonel Evans visits, and he doesn’t believe that story either. 

We cut to a fishing boat as it’s attacked by the monster. Tom reads a report about a giant sea serpent in the newspaper. Tom then goes to his paleontologist friend, Professor Elson. Tom believes that an ancient dinosaur got frozen in the ice and revived when the bomb blew up. Elson’s assistant, Lee Hunter, tries to help Tom’s argument, but the old man reasonably refuses to get involved. 

Tom hears another radio report about a sea monster, and he just laughs. Lee comes to see Tom about the monster, but he’s tired of being ridiculed. She shows him many pictures of known dinosaurs, and he identifies the one he saw; he goes to see the captain of the fishing boat to see if he’ll corroborate the story. 

Tom and the sailor-witness, Jacob, come to Dr. Elson. He also picks out the animal from the pile of sketches. They call Colonel Evans for help, Elson finally believes. Two men hang out in a lighthouse for some reason, and sure enough, that’s where the monster attacks.

Tom and Lee go to the ballet but are interrupted by a message from Evans. More and more places are being attacked by a sea monster, as far south as Massachusetts. It seems to be heading towards New York City. Dr. Elson wants it captured alive. 

The old professor talks the navy into letting him go down in a diving bell to find the creature in the deep canyons of the ocean. We see shots of a shark and an octopus fighting. Then they see the big monster; yep, he’s real. It gets closer and closer as the old man reports to the surface. They hoist up the diving bell, but the two men are dead. 

Meanwhile, at the docks in NYC, the giant lizard arrives. It crawls through town, and everyone sees it and runs away in fear. A cop shoots at it, but it eats him. A state of emergency is declared, and even Times Square is shut down as the National Guard arrives on the scene. 

The army shoots at the thing with their big gun, but the skull is eight inches thick. Bazookas annoy him but don’t kill it. It doesn’t like it when it touches the electrical lines, so there’s that. They do manage to make it bleed with a powerful shot to a tender spot, and they follow the giant drops of blood down the street. 

Except… the soldiers start getting sick and falling down. It’s carrying some kind of lethal disease; if they blow the monster up, the plague could spread everywhere. Tom thinks shooting a radioactive isotope into the dinosaur will kill it quickly and non-explosively. 

As the monster chews on a roller coaster, Tom enlists Lee Van Cleef as a sharpshooter; he only gets one shot that has to go into the previous wound to make sure it penetrates. Tom and the sniper have to ride a car up the rollercoaster to get close enough to hit the thing. They succeed, but things still go badly; the roller coaster car gets away, crashes, and starts the whole place burning. The two men have to climb down as the fire and the creature rage. 

The creature staggers for a while and then collapses. Lee gives Tom a big hug; it’s over!

Brian’s Commentary

This was said to be one of the inspirations for the original “Godzilla” film and is the first atomic creature. This one is entirely stop motion, done by Ray Harryhausen himself, and it set the format for essentially all the giant monster films to come. 

There was a lot more of the creature than I was expecting. The storyline with the actors was engaging, if a little predictable. Overall, it was well paced and fun. The stop motion is pretty jerky compared to modern cgi, but for the time, this isn’t bad!

Kevin’s Commentary

The effects were cutting edge for the time as far as effects go, and I thought that added to the fun. It was a hint of the Godzilla movies to come, and the special effects were actually better than some of those later films. This is where it began. I’d seen it once many years ago. I was entertained this time around.

Short Films:

2019 Short Film: Ayuda

  • Directed by Patrick Mason

  • Written by Patrick Mason and Raul Serpas

  • Stars Tom Belfry, Caleb Velasquez, David LaMorte, Laura Ruperez

  • Run Time: 11:34

  • Watch it:

What Happens

Two Spanish-speaking men are hired by an American who doesn’t speak Spanish to do some work for him. The three men climb into the van alongside a coffin-sized box. They stop near the woods, and the man wants them to bury the box. Curiosity gets a hold of the two men, and bad things ensue. 

Commentary

We don’t ever really find out what the man’s intentions were toward the immigrants: was he going to kill them both or pay them as planned? Dunno. Still, he wasn’t the villain of this story after all. 

This is nicely shot with a creepy atmosphere and good acting all around. It’s a mystery, as we want to see what’s in the box as well. 

Very nice!


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