Blue Murder

 

I went scraping through what Tubi and Bloodstreamtv had to offer in the way of what I haven't seen or heard of yet lately, and I found Blue Murder. What caught my eye mainly was the cover art and just the title itself-Blue Murder as a name for a slasher/gore flick honestly in my opinion fits perfectly because it's quick, easy to say and it holds onto my favorite color. But I just have to bog myself down here unfortunately because when this thing finally came to it's close zits and zombies, I was left saying "meh" out loud a few times as well as shrugging my shoulders. I don't know what I really expected out of this particular title, but what I received was an honest to goodness mediocre romp that just adds yet another flick to my ever growing and seemingly endless pile of purgatory films. I know that this wasn't supposed to be some grand masterpiece that was going to change the face of horror or the holiday of Halloween itself-but I just personally thought that it was a little to out there and whacky for it's own good. There isn't much here to really reflect on because it's a similar type of situation to what happens in Child's Play when Charles Lee Ray uses some kind of magic to put his soul into a Good Guys doll so he can just keep continuing his work-and boy does he ever do that. But here in Blue Murder we start things off with a female serial killer named Gertrude that ends up in a hospital after she gets through another night of killing a bunch of really dumb girls living together, and there just so happens to be a nurse named Blue that works there as a nurse. And for Halloween, she's dressed up as a nurse. Oh man, that's so funny. But the comedy here in Blue Murder with my tastes just wasn't that funny at all-it was pretty stupid to be frank and just way to on the nose. I'm sure that was Justin Aramo's point and purpose for it when he wrote and directed this piece, but it really just didn't do anything for me at all. It felt like he was trying to recapture a lot of that really dumb comedy humor from the 90's and early 2000's that worked and was really great back then, but for whatever reason here in 2026 for Blue Murder, it just felt lame, pointless and made me roll my eyes a couple of times. Usually with this type of material I'll latch onto it right away and just think it's funny, but it didn't land here for me in the slightest and I really think that's a shame because everything that surrounds that layer is great-I really enjoyed the various kills and the gobs of gore here. It was put together really well in terms of blood and people being offed, and I usually at least find one chick that I think is a smoke show above all of them as well as a comedy relief character that just makes me smile, and I did in fact one of those things. I really didn't think any of the ladies here really did justice in that way, and the only character that I found to be great that was only in it for maybe a minute or two was basically at the end when Blue enters a diner after all the idiots that she killed through the night and is greeted by Bloodsucka Jones to have a seat and get a cup of coffee. This guy is just funny the second you see him and his energy and demeanor to me was just through the roof. I just wish he was in it longer than literally ninety seconds. His over exaggerated afro (it's a wig obviously) just caps the whole thing off and I just wished that there was maybe a spin-off flick with this dude as the main character-that would be awesome. Make it  a shitty 70's grindhouse type flick like a Pam Grier movie or Hobo With A Shotgun or something-that would be kick ass. But really though with Blue Murder, Blue inherits the spirit of Gertrude as she is shocked in the hospital, and the whole rest of it is her misadventures of killing sorority and frat jackasses at a near by college, trick or treating, breaking into people's homes, murdering a couple that doesn't celebrate Halloween but they are obsessed with Christmas and the absolute stupidest cop ever by the name of Officer McNulty. That's really all there is here, zits and zombies. I'll just say that if you're a Troma fan and just love really, really dumb comedy along with a lot of swearing (I don't care about cussing, but holy crap this was even to much for me) coupled with chicks that are mostly 7's and gore that's actually really well done, you'll get into Blue Murder. Other than that, don't touch it. You can do better. We can all do better this Halloween season. Blue is my favorite color-but not this time.

ACM Official: Ice Cream Man

 

I want to start this off with a side note stating that I woke up waaaayyy to late to have the time to watch a full horror flick to write about it, so I just went on YouTube and looked up "horror movie short films" and one of the first results that popped up was one for a three minute endeavor simply named "Ice Cream Man". The thumbnail is what's posted above to start this piece off, and I just had to watch this because ice cream is one of my favorite treats among how ever many thousands of other tooth-rotted parlays that are out there, and because this guy just looks way to goofy to ignore. I mean, just look at this guy-I wouldn't be caught dead hanging out with this weirdo let alone being okay with the fact that he would be my local ice cream man. He just screams "I just love serving frozen treats to little kids..." and I'm going to stop there because now I just want to take a bat or some sort of a heavy object-turned-weapon to beat the living shit out of him until one eye is sunken in and the other is so black and blue that he'll need reconstructive surgery after it's finally over. I don't know if I would ever let it be over. I'll state up front too that I don't know anything at all about ACM Official, I don't know who Alex Magana is and he did not contact me at all to review this, but here it goes...

So this young girl opens the freezer to look for something to eat and she gets out a pint of Dreyers (not Breyers) vanilla ice cream and her little sister just shows up out of nowhere behind the freezer door while it's open. Her name is Sophie and she warns her not to start eating the ice cream because it's their mother's ice cream and 'the ice cream man will show up if anyone but their mother eats it' and that she needs to be careful. So Riley (the older sister) shrugs it off and plunks down on the couch and starts eating it. Lo and behold, this guy does randomly appear off to the side in a doorway with a goofy-assed grin on his face, and then when Riley isn't looking in between bites his hand starts creeping out of the top of the ice cream container to to formulate some fear and dread. Then he just pops up behind her and tells her that she's going to give all the ice cream back that she just ate... every last scoop. Here's my favorite thing about this Ice Cream Man short-the ice cream man himself. I don't know who Brandon Joseph Burnette is, or if he's been in anything else (or even any other ACM Official productions) but this guy is great. His energy and demeanor that he employs for the villain himself really, really reminded me of Larry Drake as Dr. Giggles. He almost seemed like he wanted to have that sort of unhinged cackle with a layer of psychotic charm behind it just like Dr. Giggles did, but he held back. I think that would have added to it a little bit while he was actually scooping the ice cream back out of Riley's throat and tossing it back into the ice cream container. Man, now I just want to watch Dr. Giggles again for the hundredth time-but honestly zits and zombies, if you're limited (very limited) on time like I was this morning because I woke up a lot later than I normally do to write something on here and still need some kind of a horror fix, look up Ice Cream Man from ACM Official. I think you'll dig it. If you don't, then I don't know. I mean, there's always the Ice Cream Man from 1995 horror flick with Clint Howard in it playing Gregory Tudor, and that's a great one too. Or I Scream For Ice Cream from the Masters Of Horror series that was released on DVD a number of years ago, and that's also a fantastic ice cream centric piece that I've always enjoyed. So there's options out there for creamery based horror. Now go get it. I just won't be the one on the ice cream truck.

Freddy's Back-Leavy For Krueger

 

So, bit-by-bit recently my wife has been showing me pics, trailers, clips and various other pieces of media depicting Michael Leavy as the new potential Freddy Krueger and I have to say this guy has got it. He's got the voice, the tone, the look, the way he moves-everything. If you have not seen it yet or bothered to look it up, there is a four minute short film on YouTube with him in full make-up and Freddy attire with the glove, hat and sweater, doing his thing and invading the nightmares of some young chick named Natalie. This basically ends up being a promo piece or "bumper" if you will to try to get fans, press and audiences pumped up and ready to justify why Michael Leavy should indeed play the new Freddy Krueger. The feeling that was imbued in me almost immediately when the short started was that this would be in fact a fresh, new version of A Nightmare On Elm Street that I don't know if we necessarily need because we can all just go back and watch the original with Robert Englund, but we do actually all need so desperately to forget about that abomination remake with Jackie Earle Haley that was released in 2010. My wife and I saw it in the theater when it was released back then and us and everyone else in the theater hated it. I don't know a single fan of the franchise that liked it. At all. For any reason. Maybe there are some Freddy fans out there that embrace that film and like it at the very least for what it is, but there's no way in hell if I was still collecting physical copies of horror films would I reserve any kind of space on my shelf for that piece of shit. This however-this potential new flick starring Michael Leavy as Freddy Krueger-the invader and killer of our dreams-which is also approved by Robert Englund himself which is fantastic-this will be a legendary remake. I'd wager that this would most likely be on the same level of ten out of ten remakes in the realm of The Fly, The Blob, IT with Bill Skarsgard and John Carpenter's The Thing (everyone forgets that that's a remake too) because after all the pieces that my wife has shown me as well as watching the short film this morning, I'm confident. I'm very confident that this is the torch that needed to be handed off to carry this character into the future to garner possible new fans and audiences so that Freddy Krueger will never be forgotten. Let's be real though-this character is way to much of a horror icon at this point to ever be fully forgotten, it's just great to see someone a lot younger with the talent, looks, charisma and energy to be able to keep this going. 1-2 Freddy's coming for you... 3-4 better lock your door... 

I'm not a hashtag guy by any means, but I have to say #LeavyForKrueger. I'm all in. And he's getting shout-outs from fucking Felissa Rose, Barbara Crampton and Robert Englund himself. What more could he possibly need to make this happen? Nothing I say. Nothing. We as horror fans are here for it and there's nothing that can stop him. Unless of course there ends up being some kind of bullshit studio interference or something because that's an unfortunate possibility. But here we are. Can't wait until this comes to fruition. It's going to be one for the books. Watch for it.

Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil

 

I knew this already going in, but Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil basically has nothing to do with the first three entries in the franchise. This easily could have just been titled "Deliver Us From Evil" or "Jonas The Priest Needs His Meat" or something along those lines and I still think that this flick would have garnered a solid cult following. What we do have with Prom Night IV however is an entertaining departure from the Mary Lou timeline that takes place in parts two and three with a Catholic priest by the name of Father Jonas that becomes possessed by the devil back in 1957 during the Hamilton High School prom (which is the very loose connection we have to the previous films here) and is contained by holy words, drugs and physical restraints in the basement of the church that employs him by Father Jaeger. Thirty plus something years later, a young man that goes through all of the training he needs to become the new Father under Jaeger's wing by the name of Father Colin is set to take over, and his mortal duty given to him by Jaeger is that he needs to keep Jonas drugged and contained in the basement so that "the devil in him doesn't awaken". He of course flubs this duty the very first time he needs to perform it and Jonas comes to life and kills his ass right there in the church. Hamilton High School is once again having their annual prom dance and we now have new characters to romp around with by the names of Meagan, Mark, Laura and Jeff. I actually enjoyed all four of these main "teen" characters (the word teen has quotes around it because it's yet another case of twenty-somethings playing teen-somethings) and of course, my favorite has to be Meagan because she's the resident final girl and the steaming hot brunette played by Nicole de Boer, but she's also the sweet, innocent goody girl that learns and opens up about life along the way. There's a character arch there, which is saying something considering this is the fourth entry in a franchise where basically the main focus is slashing, silliness, a young girl that was whoring around in parts two and three and ultimately just doesn't have any focus other than being entertaining. I think that's what the main thing here about Prom Night IV I can say is is that it's just entertaining, even though it could have just stood on it's own as a singular piece without having to be attached to the Prom Night franchise. The music is excessively cheesy, the kills are varied and pretty gory to be honest, the cinematography is solid and Jonas himself is just a villain you can't really take seriously. His facial expressions and the way he moves around his environment when he's trying to snuff everyone in the third act is just to goofy to be heavy, and I genuinely just had a good time watching him act like the fool that he is. I want there to be a lot more to say about Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil, but there just isn't. It's a solid final entry into this seminal franchise even though it really has nothing to do with it at all besides the very weak connection to the series' central high school and the year 1957 from the earlier parts-other than that it's all it's own thing. If you can enjoy it for what it is like I did, you'll have a good time. I'm just glad that I never joined the priesthood-even though I actually had a chance at doing so when I was younger. What a waste that would have been. A man of the cloth I am not.

Prom Night III: The Last Kiss

 

The poster art for Prom Night III: The Last Kiss says it all-Alex eventually becomes a rebellious dude on a bike with a leather jacket, sunglasses, a hot brunette on the back and flames torching everything in his path. It's one of the times in horror film history where you get what you see because the marketing for whatever movie it is actually sells you what the film really embodies, and everything here encompasses just that. Except there's so much more. How does Alex make it there? How does he get everything that is shown on the cover on the box art? It happens because Mary Lou Maloney from Prom Night II still isn't all the way dead yet and she still has unfinished business with Hamilton High, so she breaks out of her chains that are keeping her in hell, dancing and jazzercising for all eternity. The main overall crimp with Prom Night III: The Last Kiss is that it's a fucking goofy movie. The tone has a heavy layer of cartoony humor about it and I'm always up for something off center like that and I will fully admit right away that I really enjoyed this one for it. My favorite so far in this franchise still has been Prom Night II, but Prom Night III is a very close second. I have a really strong feeling that Prom Night IV isn't going to be this way-it's probably going to end up being a try-hard return to how slow and rigid the original was, and there's nothing wrong with that either. I just hope it has some kind of energy behind it to keep things moving. Okay, so I'm not here to waste your time with my predictions about the next sequel though-I'm here to focus on Prom Night III: The Last Kiss and this honestly was a great time. I loved that Mary Lou came back full force and was the main enemy here, pulling Alex away from his girlfriend Sarah and his friend Shane to frame him and make it look like he was murdering people all around the school. There's only four main kills that take place during it's runtime, but they sure are great and the special effects are fantastic here as well as being campy as all hell which just compiles onto the already off-center nature that this flick embodies in the first place. I mean Mary Lou (played by Courtney Taylor this time around) is way hotter in this next sequel than she was in part II, but she wears a really sexy ice cream vendor outfit and ends up killing the biology teacher with two ice cream cones which pin his hands to the serving table at her creamery stand and then proceeds to shred the guys head and face with a blender sort of appliance that looks like it would be used for mixing said frozen treats. Sounds fun, right? It is a fun gag in the film and it also ends up being really damn brutal. Also, the other kill that I want to point out is that she ends up tossing a football to the captain of the football team at one point and half of the football randomly turns into a drill bit styled thing where it impales the captain onto the bottom pole of the field goal in the football field. All of the kills here in Prom Night III: The Last Kiss are like this-just ridiculous, over the top shenanigans that could only be employed into a fun, lower budgeted romp built specifically for the home video market back in the very early 90's. But that's the main basis-Mary Lou still wants revenge for what happened to her back in the second film, so she comes back and uses Alex as a scapegoat for all of her killings, hatred and vengeance. She kills anyone that annoys her, gets in her way and makes out with (and has sex with at one point) Alex just so he keeps coming back her to to keep her spirit going. This flick really is a riot and if you've never seen any of the Prom Night movies like I haven't until very recently and for some crazy reason you decide to start with Prom Night III: The Last Kiss, I really don't think you'd be let down. Unless you just don't have a taste or pre-disposition to watch a film like this anyway. Then I'd probably just say that you're a boring lump that needs to lighten up and learn how to have fun with this shit once in awhile. By the way, for the guys out there-towards the end there's a scene where Alex is already in jail and Mary Lou randomly appears to bail him out and she's wearing a really hot police uniform. Or at least, I though she looked great in it. I just had to throw that out there. May part IV be as entertaining as II and III. Now I just want a cone with strawberry ice cream. At 9a.m.-what a world.

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2

 

Right out of the gate I'm going to say here that Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 has energy for days which is the polar opposite compared to the original Prom Night flick starring Jamie Lee Curtis. The intensity, electricity and vibes just seething off of the edges of this sequel are so strong that if you bother sitting through this one, you'll be damned if you try to look away. It's mesmerizing to say the least and I'm also going to state here that the special effects, gore and sexual levels of tension here reach heights that I really didn't expect them to go to, but then again this film was put out seven years later which is insane to think about and it shows because this entry is so far removed from the first one that it could have just been titled "Hello Mary Lou" or "The Burning of Mary Lou" or maybe even "Possessing A Killer Prom Queen" or anything to that effect and it probably still would have worked. But since I don't know anything about marketing or any sort of business line like that it was just slapped with Prom Night 2 as the sub-title to boost attention and sales at the time to lure in more potentially burgeoning horror fans and teens of the 80's. Get those asses in the seats. But what happens here in Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 is that in 1957 we have a high school prom commencing. There is a very naughty bad girl among the ranks named Mary Lou who loves to booze it up, lie, cheat on her boyfriend and is just a general wild child. Billy Nordham (Michael Ironside of all actors which I did not expect to be in a film like this) is in fact the boyfriend that Mary Lou is cheating on with some dude in a backroom of the high school during the dance and Billy is having none of it. Some jackass in the men's bathroom is preparing some kind of a handmade stink bomb of sorts to try and prank the dance-which ends up looking like a really shitty quarter stick of dynamite-tosses it in the trash because he was going to get caught be a teacher or the principal. Billy is in the bathroom while this takes place and takes it upon himself to climb the rafters with it, light it and drop it down on Mary Lou right as she's on stage accepting her crown as prom queen. The flames from the wick get out of control and burns her ass alive on stage in front of the whole school and she is presumed dead of course afterwards. Multiple decades later, Billy himself ends up being the principle for the very high school that he burned Mary Lou at, and now his own son is a senior there and is dating Vicki who is the daughter of a very strict, staunch catholic couple. Plenty happens in between getting ready for the prom and the ending where in the third act Mary Lou actually physically comes back in a brutal way where she is basically born out of Vicki's chest a la' Aliens style where she just bursts out and still is covered in third degree burns all over her body to terrorize everyone. I mentioned this before but the special effects here honestly are incredible and I'd really have to say my favorite scene in the entire film has to be the scene where after Vicki is possessed early in the film by Mary Lou, she follows her friend into the shower after gym class, they're both nude and she starts kissing her on the face which is already weird in and of itself, but then she stalks her through the area where the lockers are and she drags her nails along them slowly like Fred Krueger to create that insane screeching sound and then proceeds to literally crush all of the lockers together to kill her friend because she was hiding inside her locker so Vicki wouldn't be able to see her. Brutality at it's finest if you ask me. If I'm going to sit here and choose which of the first two Prom Night flicks is better, I'm choosing to burn Mary Lou with a handmade stink bomb all over again. This second entry honestly was a riot and I had a great time this morning with it. I've seen and rad other reviews about how this sequel surpasses the original in basically every way, and now that I've seen it myself I completely agree. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 just sets the bar for the rest of the franchise so much higher that I'm now expecting them to be just as good if not better. Unfortunately I've been disappointed many times before and I just need to temper my expectations for part III. Who knows what level that one sits at. I'm crowning myself prom king because at this juncture it's the right thing to do.

Prom Night (1980)

 

There isn't a whole lot to spew here about the original Prom Night from 1980 because it's a slasher classic that pretty much everyone knows about these days or has seen at least once because of it's pedigree-except for me of course. It's kind of weird because I did in fact have a print of this flick compiled in with a bunch of other seemingly random films when I was still engrossed in buying up and hoarding physical copies of horror movies, and at one point I did try to sit through this one way early in my collecting days-except I never made it to the end. Mainly because whatever print of the film that was used to make the version that I had was so fucking dark that I could barely make it past the first five minutes or so because I just couldn't see anything on screen. So I just never watched it and never bothered to seek out a better way to ingest this piece from the beginning of the 80's. I always thought that the poster art was really cool looking with a young Jamie Lee Curtis standing in a dark high school hallway with a crown, bouquet and a bloodied axe looking like she did some shit to someone that deserved it. And with what happens here in Prom Night, there are a few people that get what they deserve, albeit at the opening heralding all of our main characters which couldn't be anymore than maybe ten or eleven years old. They are all playing a game of tag or "killers" if you will, and one of the girls basically falls out of a window while the rest of them are chanting "killer" over and over again, building her paranoia and anxiety as she feels the need to escape further by falling to her death. The rest of the kids get scared of being caught or accused, so they make a pact to never tell anyone about what happened at the abandoned school and ride their bikes away like nothing ever happened. Seems like a solid plan until six years later when they're all juniors in high school and the time comes to start getting dates and stoking the hype for the biggest dance in school history for any hormone riddled teen-the prom. I did everything I could when I was in high school to not go to prom, and I somehow was still bamboozled into going because of various girls and other things that changed my mind-but I'm not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about a Black Christmas-esque weirdo (the killer calling them also made me think of the bizarre phone shit that takes place in the film Night Killer) calling all of the surviving girls one by one to tip them off that someone is watching them and is planning on snuffing them out. I will have to say that having Leslie Neilsen as Jamie Lee Curtis' father here (and the principle of the high school) is kind of off and funny at the same time because every time I saw him on screen I was expecting some kind of hilarious bit from Airplane! or Naked Gun or Dracula Dead And Loving It or anything like that-but he's as straight as he can get here and it almost brings the energy of the entire film down. Prom Night does take it's time dragging itself to where it wants to be and makes the viewer slime their way to the third act which is when things start getting hectic and electrifying-especially the scene where Lou is about to go onstage to claim being the prom king with Jamie Lee, although he wasn't supposed to because he knocked Nick's ass out backstage and stole the crown out of hatred and jealousy. He's just standing there like a chump waiting for the cue to go on and shock everyone when all of a sudden the killer shows up with said axe that is being held by Jamie Lee on the poster art and chops his head clean off in one strong swipe. His head lands perfectly on the lit up runway where Jamie Lee and Nick are supposed to be crowned prom king and queen, and everyone loses it because Lou actually lost his head (literally) and it's just sitting there in a pool of blood for all to see. That scene alone is worth the price of admission here in my opinion because it's the biggest stress release valve you could of possibly opened with how slow the first two acts were, and it brings the viewer exactly where they need to be with the final fight on the empty dance floor between Nick, Jamie and the killer. I'm not even going to remotely hint at who the killer ends up being, but you can take a pretty good guess and you'll probably end up getting it without little outside help. Now that I've finally seen the original Prom Night, was it worth my time zits and zombies? Yes, absolutely. It's not perfect (very few slashers are) and the first two acts tended to be on the sluggish and lethargic side, but if you can get through that and make it to act three when everything starts ramping up, this ends up being a fun early 80's slasher that does deliver. I hate disco music, but I do have to say that it does fit here very well and the soundtrack is just great. I'm going to continue on with the franchise and just put out reviews for all of them so I will be watching part two soon. Tear it up on the dance floor and punch Lou in the face. That unibrow having bastard.