31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 19: BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (2024)

                                                                        Here we go again.

There's really not much to say about BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, a legacy sequel that came nearly forty years too late. It's not the debacle that GHOSTBUSTERS II was, but its efficacy depends on how much one loved the first BEETLEJUICE and how nostalgic one is for it. The new film brings back Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, and of course Michael Keaton, and finds Rydar's Delia Deetz now a famous TV ghost investigator (remember, she has the ability to see and interact with the dead) who's involved with an irritating producer who's pressuring her into marriage, while she weathers a dysfunctional relationship with a daughter (Jenna Ortega) who hates her. And along with all of that, Delia is haunted by images of Betelgeuse, visions that point to the spirit's return, but what does he want? And what's up with the new boy that Delia's daughter just met?

 BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is not bad by any yardstick, but it's a tedious case of "been there, done that," with only a flashback to Beetlegeuse's origin as a grave robber during the Black Plague being a standout. He was married to a luscious woman named Delores (Monica Bellucci) who revealed herself to be a soul-sucking entity who poisons her husband as part of a ritual that will grant her more power and immortality, but Betelgeuse had enough time to dismember her before his death, placing her severed components into several crates, where they remained separate and alive for centuries. But now Delores is back, having pieced herself together with a staple gun, and she's got her sights set on her spectral hubby.

The return of Delores (Monica Bellucci).

If you're a franchise completist, you can definitely do worse, but in the end BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE registers as little more than a passable way to kill 105 minutes. It's far from Tim Burton's worst effort, but it's definitely a nostalgia-fueled shameless cash grab. You'll probably forget it a day or two after sitting through it.

 Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 18: TAMARA (2005)

High school drama collides head-on with teen witchery.

A weird, unattractive high school girl named Tamara Riley (Jenna Dewan) incurs the ire of some vicious jocks by exposing their football team's use of performance enhancing drugs, so the jocks engineer a revenge prank that goes horribly wrong, killing Tamara in the process. The bullies bury their victim, but they soon find out that her perceived "witchy" affectations were in fact the real deal, and a love spell she had cast earlier resurrects her as the acme of jailbait hotness and grants her the ability to read minds with a touch and also make her victims love her and obey her every command. 

 

Tamara (Jenna Dewan): back from the grave, hot and homicidal. 

The revived Tamara has two things on her mind: vengeance against her tormentors/killers, and enchanting the teacher she has majorly damp panties for, only he's happily married, so his wife has to go...

The resurrected Tamara's hunt begins.

Basically a CARRIE knockoff with outright witchcraft in lieu of telekinesis, TAMARA is a pretty derivative affair, but it moves briskly and is quite entertaining. It's nothing you haven't seen before, but it features some very creative magickal revenge. The two lead jocks are as vicious as any found in the works of Stephen King, only with serial drugging and raping of girls added to their roster of heinous acts, so our teen witch's plan for them is especially satisfying.

When a witch countermands "no homo." 

As lesser efforts go, this one's not bad at all, and is definitely worth checking out. It would make for a good co-feature with THE CRAFT, only with gore and real nastiness for added seasoning.

             Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 17: THE SUBSTANCE (2024)

                                 Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore). What a drag it is getting old.

Long-running TV aerobic star Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is aging out, her looks being deemed as too old by her smarmy showrunner (Dennis Quaid), so when she is booted from her show, a search for a new, younger, sexier host begins. After being examined during a checkup, a handsome young nurse hands Elizabeth a piece of paper with a phone number on it, noting "It changed my life." The desperate Elizabeth calls the mysterious voice and a mysterious voice on the other end requests her mailing address and once it is received, the voice hangs up. She soon receives a flash drive containing a promotional video for "The Substance," a chemical means by which the user will physically divide into two bodies — the original and a new, younger iteration — with the original body laying dormant for seven days while the new body, containing all of the original's memories, roams free. There are a number of rules that must be strictly adhered to if one opts to use the Substance, and the terse communication of the customer help line only provides the most minimal of information. At first reluctant to use the stuff, Elizabeth finally relents and goes to pick up her first regular shipment of the chemical, plus the equipment for administering it, as well as assorted nutrient supplements for the dormant original body, and a kit for stitching up the huge, gaping wound on the original body's back after the new self is birthed like a crab molting its shell. 

When Elizabeth injects the Substance, she ends up naked and comatose on the bathroom floor of her luxury apartment while the younger, almost inhumanly beautiful and sexy new her emerges. Taking the singular moniker of "Sue" (Margaret Qualley), she auditions to be her own replacement on the aerobics show that launched her to wealth and fame, and in no time Sue has taken the popular zeitgeist by storm with her hyper-sexualized workout routines. 

 Sue (Margaret Qualley) takes the nation by storm.

But in tales of this nature there's always a catch, and it's only a matter of time before things rapidly spiral into a maelstrom of gruesome, gory, and occasionally stomach-churning body horror (which I would love to show you, but you should really experience it for yourself).

Okay… 

I enjoyed most of THE SUBSTANCE. Everyone and their parakeet recommended THE SUBSTANCE to me up and down for months, and when I finally saw it I was entertained, but I found its examination of female insecurity over the inevitability of aging and loss of youthful sexy "oomph" to be overlong for the story it has to tell and perhaps intentionally cartoonishly ridiculous in its lampooning of the "male gaze." The film is a jet black satire, replete with the nudity of its female leads, but the scenes of that involving the body switching and resulting nakedness are strictly in service of the story and make organic sense, rather than being mere gratuitous titillation. The gratuitousness comes in the form of. the hilariously over-the-top aerobics show starring Sue, with much gyration and crotch-thrusting straight into the camera as she is flanked by a cadre of similarly toned eye candy mirroring her moves. As for the inevitable body horror, it's well-executed and a lot of it is done practically, which can be quite visceral and squirm-inducing, but it all goes off the rail and gets downright ridiculous during the third act. When it comes to movie examining women willing to do anything to maintain their youth, I’ll take the B movies THE LEECH WOMAN and THE WASP WOMAN over THE SUBSTANCE. They’re shorter and they got right to the point. Also, the ending evokes BLACK SWAN's disastrous final ballet. Was I meant to find the climactic reveal as hilarious as I did, rather than simply grotesque?

The film includes many nods to the stylistic touches of John Carpenter, Stanley Kubrick. Ken Russell, and, inevitably, the legendary body horror of David Cronenberg, but while fun for sharp-eyed cinephiles, such flourishes add nothing to the final work and only serve to remind viewers of superior films. But don;t get me wrong. I was very entertained by THE SUBSTANCE and found it to feel like an extended episode of either THE TWILIGHT ZONE or BLACK MIRROR. My only major gripe with it is its needless overlength, so keep that in mind if you opt to check it out.

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 16: THE TOXIC AVENGER (2025)

A new Toxic Avenger for a new millennium. 

THE TOXIC AVENGER, the 1986 cult classic, got a 2025 reboot, and I have to ask who this film was made for. Although slickly crafted, it won't lure back fans of the original, as it possesses none of the fun, charm, over the top performances, ultra-violent gore (okay, a mild smattering of that), and just general sleazy bad taste that made the 1986 version a must-see. 

An example of the film's meager gruesomeness. Too little to scratch the itch of any serious gorehound.

This latest iteration of the tale of a put-upon janitor becoming a mutated super-violent superhero is a played-straight jet black comedy, but it is greatly watered-down from its '80's progenitor, so much so that if not for its occasional explosions of gore, it would play like a slightly edgy sitcom with an underlying would-be heartwarming them of a stepdad's love for his semi-estranged stepson. 

Peter Dinklage begins his mutation/power-up.

I've certainly seen worse movies, and I will gladly sit through anything featuring Peter Dinklage — Yes, I endured TIPTOES — but this was a huge nothing burger that I would have been pissed about if I had done the traveling and shelling out of twenty bucks to see it at one of the few remotely-located theaters that played it during its theatrical run. The original is a million times more fun, low budget, rough edges, and all.

 Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 15: THIRST (1979)

Finally, a bloody good vampire movie that I had never heard of.

Kate Davis (Chantel Contouri) is believed to be a descendant of Countess Elizabeth Bathory (look her up), which catches the interest of the Brotherhood, who kidnap her and subject her to endless conditioning with drugs and psychological programming. 

                                                                             Our heroine.

The Brotherhood is an international cabal of 20th Century vampires who have eschewed the usual lore of their dark species, save for the fangs, the eternal youth, inhuman strength, and the consumption of blood, because, after all, they are not the product of some medieval peasant's imagination. Kate is taken to the Farm, a Kubrickesque compound that serves as both a living and care space in which human "donors" are kept drugged into accepting docility, as well as massive blood processing and distribution plant that resembles industrial dairy farming and relies on the regular bleeding of the donors. 

 

"Donors": drugged into total docility and drained. 

With all of this in mind, a horrified Kate refuses to join the Brotherhood, and from there problems spiral. But why do they want Kate in particular? How does involving her further their mysterious global agenda?

I had never heard of this film until a few days ago, and its concept intrigued me enough to check it out. Its distinctly modern take on vampires and how they might adjust to the 20th Century was not at all what I expected from one of the most over-saturated horror genres, and what I got gets my vote as the hidden gem among this year's 31 DAYS OF HORROR entries. 

THIRST is an Australian film that made me think of what Hammer might have come up with if they made more films set in modern times, and also if they had a really solid scripter for this particular yarn. Watching Kate's descent into manipulated and hallucinogen-induced madness while fighting vampiric urges is fascinating stuff, and THIRST would have worked just as well as a medical thriller sans the undead suckface angle. And while central character Kate is well-portrayed by Chantel Contouri, two other cast members stand out due to their familiarity. David Hemmings, perhaps best known to us geeks as the revolutionary Dildano in BARBARELLA (1968), plays Dr. Fraser, a high-ranking member of the Brotherhood who opposes the harsh conditioning methods used on Kate. The other notable is Henry Silva, who's been in more stuff than I can name, as Dr. Gauss, anohter of the Brotherhood, and if you ask me he gets the most memorable scene in the entire film. (No, I will not spoil if for you, but you will know it when you see it.)

 

Somehow both leisurely-paced and nail-bitingly tense as Kate battles for her sanity and humanity, THIRST is a must-see for those who are sick of conventional and predictable vampire tales. Now one of my Top 10 vampire films, though I admit it slow pace and embracing of its cerebral nature over outright gore may not be for all tastes. Nonetheless, I urge you to see this one. 

 Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 14: THE BIRDS (1963)

It's the end of the world as we know it.

Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock's followup to his epochal and groundbreaking PSYCHO (1960) is one of the more interesting and enigmatic end of the world narratives. In a nutshell, THE BIRDS chronicles horrifying attacks on the people of Bodega Bay, California, all with zero explanation given, while a budding romance collides with family dysfunction born from a mother's jealousy over the women in her adult son's life.

I first saw THE BIRDS during a TV airing when I was about ten years old, after having heard about it for years and how terrifying it was, but when I saw it for myself I must admit that I was disappointed. I tuned in expecting wall-to-wall avian mayhem and violence, but what I got instead was a character study on the aforementioned meet-cute love story trying to blossom under the interference of a jealous, insecure mother. At age ten I did not appreciate such narrative nuance, but I sure do now, considering that my own mother did her level best to sabotage any relationships I had with the girls I brought home. (That started when I was an adolescent and it lasted until I stopped bringing girls home, because I was tired of my mother's rudeness to said girls, plus her serial attempts at infantilizing me around them, so I have not brought a paramour home since 1984.) But a distance of fifty years can lend one a different perspective, and upon seeing THE BIRDS for the first time since 1975, I finally got it.

The look of the film possesses the aesthetic artificiality common to many films of the early 1960's, what with some rather egregious blue screen shots that looked super-fake even back then. (It was similar to such process shots as seen in the early James Bond films, which were also products of that era.) But the sequences featuring the savage bird attacks are truly the stuff of nightmares, as a seemingly endless amount of winged assailants throw themselves bodily at human, shrieking and clawing and pecking, and some of the images of dead victims creeped me the fuck out when I was a kid, and they are no less effective today, particularly the sight of a dead Suzanne Pleshette, and one victim whose eyes have been pecked out. I would have loved to have seen the audience's reaction to that one back in 1963, an era when American horror didn't deploy much gore. If you wanted that sort of gruesomeness, you had to rely on British imports from Hammer Studios.

Even by the standards of 2025, this is just plain nasty.

 I have not broken down the film's plot because it is best experienced cold, much like PSYCHO, though, unlike PSYCHO, THE BIRDS has not had its signature set pieces and visceral horror diluted by over six decades of endless references and parodies. Yes, there's been some of that, but nothing like what happened with PSYCHO, and THE BIRDS does not have any crazy reveals at the end, so its ambiguous climax can still allow the audience to draw its own conclusion. Will the end of humanity be wrought by torrents of screeching feathered fiends? Who can say, but the ride this movie takes grownup audiences on should be experienced as least once. 

                                        Lobby card from the original theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 13: THE HAUNTING (1963)

Is Hill House haunted or is it all just a load of bullshit? The investigators are about to find out...the hard way.

 

A team of paranormal investigators is summoned to Hill House, an estate defined by a history of eerie deaths, and their investigation intends to either prove or disprove the mansion being host to evil entities. Only two of those invited by the renowned Dr. Markway show up, the rest flat-out refusing to attend. The two who do show up are Theodora (Claire Bloom), a stylish lesbian psychic, and Eleanor "Nell" Lance (Julie Harris), who was traumatized by a childhood experience involving a poltergeist. Also along for the investigation is Luke (Russ Tamblyn), the  skeptical heir to Hill House who intends to turn the place into a night club. Since her traumatizing childhood, Nell had lived a sheltered existence with her mother, but the recent death of the mother finds Nell relegated to living with relatives who are none too thrilled to have the family "crazy" foisted upon them, and it soon becomes quite apparent that Nell's inclusion in the investigation was a bad idea. She's skittish and rather unstable, plus she's suffering immense guilt over her mother's death, so when the spooky stuff kicks off, Nell is the perfect mark for the dread forces that rule Hill House. By the end, it is quite clear that the house is utterly haunted, and that the evil spirits want Nell to join them.

 

Along with THE INNOCENTS, THE HAUNTING is considered one of the first of the 1960's wave of horror aimed squarely at grownup sensibilities, and its slow burn and lack of sensationalistic set pieces go a long way in cementing that perception. There's no gore or violence, and the emphasis in on suspense and eerie mood. Julie Harris as Nell is memorable, and she's clearly unstable from the get-go, so her mental state spirals down the toilet as the narrative progresses. 

 

Theodora and Nell: enduring some of what Hill House has to offer.

 

And Theodora is interesting because films of this era barely ever depicted LGBTQ characters, and she is treated as arguably the coolest person out of the group. She'd be a hoot to hang out with, but even with what's pretty much a well-rounded depiction, she is met with suspicion and verbal abuse over Theodora's status as "one of nature's mistakes." But what the fuck does Nell know? Theo's cool, and that's that.

 

As I have stated many times over the years, ghost/haunting stories are my least favorite flavor of horror, but I enjoyed THE HAUNTING as the landmark work that it is. Definitely one of the best haunting flicks ever made, this is absolutely worth a look from ghost enthusiasts and scholars of the important works of horror cinema. 

Poster for the original theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 12: THE INNOCENTS (1961)

The new governess and her two cherubic charges. Our central characters.

 

Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) is hired as a governess by the affluent bachelor uncle of young Miles (Martin Stephens, best known as the leader of the alien children in 1960's classic VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED)) and Flora (Pamela Stevens), with the strict stipulation that she take full responsibility for the children in all matters, and that she is not to bother him with any of their goings-on. He simply values his freedom and ability to travel far more than fostering any sort of familial connection with the children, stating in no uncertain terms that he has "no room, mentally or emotionally" for the kids.  Upon arriving at the uncle's labyrinthine mansion, the governess meets young Flora and the pair immediately become friendly. Miles is away at boarding school but soon comes home after being expelled for being a danger to the other boys, information imparted via a letter that Giddens keeps to herself, sharing it only with the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (Meg Jenkins). As The governess gets to know the brother and sister, it soon becomes quite apparent that the pair are as creepy as all get-out, with Miles displaying a preternaturally mature way of expressing himself, as well as revealing a disturbingly sadistic side. 

 

 

 

 Flora and Miles.

 

As the weirdness percolates, Giddens comes to believe that the mansion and its grounds are haunted by the ghosts of the uncle's Valet, Quint (Peter Wyngard), and Miss Jessel (Clytie Jessop), whose apparitions she begins to regularly see. The pair had been engaged in an illicit relationship, and now Giddens is convinced that their ghosts have possessed the children in order to pick up their affair from where they left off. But are the children actually in the thrall of un-restful spirits, or is Giddens descending down a spiral of paranoia and outright madness? And if she's right, how can she save Miles and Flora?

 

 

 Is the governess losing her mind, or are the children haunted?

 

THE INNOCENTS was among the first of the serious "adult" ghost story films and was adapted from Henry James's 1898 novella the turn of the screw, which I have not read, so I cannot speak for the film's fidelity to the source material. That said, the film's tone is very much aimed at grownups, and the plot is rather a slow burn that wallows in its own ambiguity. It is never made clear if this is a case of genuine ghostly possession or the governess simply descending into madness, and while I applaud the film for having the balls to be so vague when it comes to concrete answers, I would have liked to have an explanation, one way or another. Nonetheless, THE INNOCENTS is well-crafted and engaging, as we witness the weirdness of the children and the apparent ghosts of the illicit couple, and it stands enshrined as one of the ghostly sub-genre's masterpieces. It has a hallowed reputation and will likely be greatly enjoyed by those who favor ghost stories, but I freely admit that ghosts and hauntings are my least favorite sub-genre of horror, so I found it quite staid and tepid. It is not bad by any means, but it's just not my kind of thing. Your mileage may vary.

 

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DYAS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 11: I LIKE BATS (1985)

Izabela (Katarzyna Walter). Not Ingrid Pitt, but I ain't complaining.

In a 1980's Polish city, beautiful blonde day-walikng vampire Izabela (Katarzyna Walter) is nagged by her aunt and the ghost of her grandfather, both of whom want her to find a man and settle down, thus putting an end to her perceived empty life. When not feeding local bats at night, Izabela hunts obnoxious men who harass her in various ways, even resorting to disguise while cruising discotechs. She's quite content with her lifestyle until a handsome man comes to her aunt's curio shop and she falls in love at first sight. The man is Professor Rudlof Jung (Marek Barbasiewicz), who operates an expensive psychiatric facility in a chateau, so Izabela checks in as a patient, being up front her vampirism (which no one believes) and expressing a desire to be cured of her condition. Hoping to bewitch him, Izabela basically throws herself at Jung, but he's too much of a professional to mess around with a patient, especially one he considers delusional, but ass the narrative progresses and the bodies pile up, the psychiatrist must face the facts, no matter how paranormal they are. In the end, love conquers all, though vampirism is apparently transmissible via genetics...

 

I LIKE BATS is a well-crafted little comedy-shocker that wears its mid-1980's flavor on its sleeve and serves as welcome relief from the era's glut of slasher bloodbaths. The gore in minimal — at best you get a bit of what Hammer called "Kensington gore" — though there is occasional full-frontal female nudity that clashes with the overall tone/feel of the film, but I chalk that up to the film being the product of foreign sensibilities. That said, maybe it's just me, but I found the whole thing rather tepid and predictable, with Walter's gorgeous undead suckface distractingly resembling Blodie's Deborah Harry. There's plenty of Euroslease atmosphere to be had, bringing to mind 1971's CAGED VIRGINS, though that film was infinitely more in-your-face sleazy. For me, the movie's dreamlike atmosphere is compounded by its leisurely (some would say "dull") pace, and when it was over, all I was left with was a pretty vampire, a love story I did not care about, mediocre comedy, no scares, and a silly "shock" ending. It's not terrible, but I would recommend it solely for the most diehard of vampire enthusiasts.

 Poster from the Polish theatrical release.

 Poster from the Polish theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 10: TEENAGE MONSTER (1957)

"And the sign said 'Long-haired freaky people/Need not apply...'"

In 1880, somewhere in the Southwestern United States, an unexplained meteor crashes near a mine where young Charlie Cannon's gold prospector father works. Charlie's father is killed instantly, and Charlie, who was stopping by to visit, ends up exposed to the radiation from the meteor, which has the effect of horribly mutating him and causing him to age and grow alarmingly fast. Charlie's mother convinces the town that her son is dead, raising him in secret for the next seven years, during which time her late husband's mine has yielded a considerable windfall of gold. She buys a house in town and hopes to keep Charlie's existence quiet, but Charlie is now roughly 17 or 18 years old and stalks the local countryside, terrorizing or outright murdering locals. Judging by the evidence on display, Charlie either never matured past the mental level he had reached when irradiated/mutated or was rendered severely mentally ill by the event, as he communicates in semi-intelligible gibberish (which gets annoying really quick) and can be reasoned with and even commanded, but his murderous urges are too strong and it's only a matter of time before the shit hit hits the fan for the childlike titular creature. During one of his day-for-night rampages, Charlie kills the abusive gambler boyfriend of Kathy, a pretty local whom he first scares the living shit out of but soon takes quite a shine to. (More in a puppy dog infatuation way rather than any grow-up lusty urges.) His mother pays Kathy to keep silent about Charlie's existence, as well as hiring the girl to act as a companion for Charlie and be nice to him. What Charlie's mother did not count on was that beneath her sweet girl-next-door veneer, Kathy is in actually a heartless blackmailing manipulator who soon has control over Charlie,  whom she freely deploys as her personal one-man hit squad. Kathy not only uses Charlie for nefarious purposes, she also extorts cash from Charlie's mom in order to fund her dreams of moving away and living the high life in a glamorous big city. In short, poor Charlie is a victim of baleful urges that he cannot control, is easily manipulated by seeming kindness and a pretty face, and inevitably meets his fate when he finally twigs to Kathy true vile nature.

Though heavily steeped in trashy, cheap B-and-Z-grade horror flicks since I was in diapers, somehow I had never heard of TEENAGE MONSTER until I stumbled upon it for free online the other day. I added it to this year's roster, and what I got was a film that was the very definition of scare-free mediocrity that was also very much a product of its era in mid-20th Century American pop culture. It was released in the late 1950's, when movies and television were absolutely dominated by westerns, so what we have here is an ultra-low-budget western cross-pollinated with a "teen" horror flick along the lines of I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, only bearing none of the fun nor the entry level scares of those two superior efforts. As horror goes, this one's a tepid dud, wearing its western trapping very prominantly on its sleeve, but even by the standards of the most lackluster television westerns of the era (and there were far too many to attempt to count), TEENAGE MONSTER is about as tepid as it gets, with the sole interesting element in the narrative being when Kathy turns out to be a villain of the foulest order. I was raised in. a western-loving household during the ass-end of the genre's dominance on TV, by which time dozens of the classic idiot box oaters had been put out to pasture in syndication, thus ensuring that kids my age got to see them, so with that experience in mind, TEENAGE MONSTER played to me like a forgettable episode of damned near any 1950's-era frontier drama, only with a "monster" that looked like Charles Manson and Larry Talbot had an illicit tryst behind a dumpster at a local Piggly Wiggly and Charlie was the resulting crotch fruit.

To make things perfectly clear, I only watched this one because I had never heard of it. I did not expect to get a dull western disguised as a delinquency-era monster movie, and what I got can kindly be deemed instantly forgettable. If you skip this one, you miss nothing.

                                                         The very misleading poster from the theatrical release.