Christmas Craft Fair Massacre

 

I don't even know where to begin with Christmas Craft Fair Massacre. This is one of those rare times on here where I'm actually at a loss for words because for the most part in this "film" there's really nothing for me to even talk about. I think for this review, I'm just going to straight up put on here exactly what I wrote in my phone for my notes and I'll let you decide if you want to bludgeon yourself with the 71 minutes that this thing burns through.

Note 1: The acting and dialog is so petrified and stiff that there's no way in hell or in real life that that anyone actually acts like this.

Note 2: The cinematography and editing style reminds me of Bikini Girls Vs. Dinosaurs.

Note 3: This film is just sheer pain all around and feels like it's giving me kidney stones the longer it drags on.

Note 4: Everyone in here is so on the nose about 'being evil' to the point where it literally feels like all the actors are in a children's play for an elementary school about people being evil.

Note 5: I also have to point out as a former metal musician and as a music nerd in general that you don't play punk rock with a Jackson guitar at all... you just don't.

Note 6: 90% of this flick is comprised of everyone on their cell phones talking to each other about how Mortimer Shade is evil and he's the new principal at Central High School, where the Christmas craft fair is going to be held at.

That's it. That's exactly everything that I put in my phone as notes to write something on here about Christmas Craft Fair Massacre. And I think the funniest thing about this entire piece is not the fact that it actually exists and not the fact that people actually tried their best and failed miserably-no, it's neither of those. I've seen horrendous horror films many times over the years because of my work here on Cinema Slayer-and yes, this film is a shit stain that needs to be soaked and washed-but that's also not even it. If I do end up watching enough movies this year to make a worst of the year list for 2026, this will absolutely be on there. But that's not even it either. This is the most hilarious part of this whole offering... the way it ends. I don't care about 'spoiling' how this abomination ends because most of you will tap out before you make it there (hell, I almost did) but what happens is Mortimer Shade finally captures his woman which is purest of heart for his sacrifice to awaken Satan, has her chained up on a table in the basement of Central High School as the craft fair is commencing, the girls' boyfriend finds her and kills old Morty, all of the evil people's heads blow up in their own little mushroom clouds, then the entire school goes up in one as they escape. And no one-and I really mean no one-seems to care. Nobody even remotely standing in the proximity of the school gives two shits that the whole thing just went up in one of the cheapest and most glorious mushroom clouds that I think I've ever seen. But that's how the inside of my head looked as this movie came to a close. The school was nuked, my soul was nuked, my mind was nuked and my eyes were nuked behind the lenses of my scratched and worn pair of glasses. Did I have a good time with Christmas Craft Fair Massacre? Fuck no I didn't. And at the top of my worst list so far it will stay.

    

Killcast

 

I'll be straight up here zits and zombies with Killcast-don't fucking watch it. Just don't. This is another one to add to the pile where almost nothing happens for 72 minutes (I didn't even watch this flick to the end mind you) and there is a continuous mountain of characters that you don't and won't give a shit about. The kills that take place here are so sporadic and spaced out during the runtime that you start wondering if what this film is supposed to be about is even going to live up to it. I really don't have a whole lot to say about Killcast because it doesn't provide anything worth mentioning. The only plug to another flick that this waste has is that the Kat Von D/tattoo chick that's in the opening scene of Late Checkout is present here except she's our main girl this time and she hosts a serial killer podcast named "The Final Bitch Podcast" and even that within the film itself is just godawful and dreadful. I really was behind the concept here where she hosts a killer podcast and ends up getting involved in what the newest serial killer is doing to her friends in her own home town-but it never delivers on that slender promise. This movie doesn't do much of anything besides boring the living hell out of the viewer and it's honestly a shame. I should have known what to expect from this regurgitated ramen soup when the SRS logo popped up on-screen when this thing started because I came to the conclusion many, many years ago when Cinema Slayer was in it's infancy that that logo is the kiss of death. It's the smooch of boredom, the cheek-to-cheek slick of poison and the hand holding of suicide. There's no hope when it comes to a horror or cult film with the SRS stamp on it, and right when I saw that I should have just skipped this one. But no, I'm to stubborn for that-I wanted to give Killcast a chance. Maybe this flick would redeem the brand and swoon me back into their fold after all of these years, but no... it didn't. It solidified my resolve to what I already knew was true even more and once again I'm going to state on here that if you watch anything that has that red lettering in front of it or in the opening credits somewhere to lure you in, just fucking turn the thing off and read a book. Hell, if I would have known that Killcast was going to be an entry for a possible worst of the year list for the end of here at 2026, I would have either watched something else on my list or I would have continued reading more of the Life Expectancy novel by Dean Koontz that I'm in the middle of at the moment. So basically it comes down to awful, pointless kills, almost no plot and characters that mean absolutely nothing to anyone here in Killcast. Just don't attempt this one and maybe, just maybe I'll end up having the time to watch enough films this year to put together a worst of the year list for 2026. And this is prime meat for the grinder.

Top 10 Horror Movies Of All Time + Runners Up

 After eclipsing the eleven year mark doing various things under the Cinema Slayer name, I can't even believe that I have never ever even considered pasting a post for my top ten horror flicks of all time. Shame on me. But I'm about to rectify that problem because on my old cell phone that I still have laying around my desk where my pc and all of my dust-encrusted notebooks full of my bullshit reside, I do have a solid list for my top ten as well as my top ten movies in general of all time as well as my top ten S.O.V. flicks of all time. All lovingly saved and packaged on my old cellular device, just waiting for me to transcribe them on here for my completionist mind and for you to possibly waste your timing giving a shit about. So here it is-I'm not going to embellish, I'm not going to alter anything I have written in the notepad on the app, I won't change anything. It's just going to be what I have here as my top ten because even after looking it over (with the runner-up films included) the list that I have is pretty set in stone and my opinions haven't changed in the slightest from whenever the hell it was that I even put these down on here in the first place.

So now I present to you, whoever you are, whether zit or zombie-my personal top ten horror movies of all time. With some runners up.

10. Fright Night (original)

    

The original Fright Night from 1985 really is my favorite vampire film of all time, and it's a damn 80's classic. You have Peter Vincent, Charlie Brewster and Evil Ed, but you also have Jerry Dandrige whom I've always considered to be the slickest, unassuming, and most suave vampire-next-door you could've possibly ever had. If he wasn't a vampire and just ended up being your new neighbor, the guy would have been a cool dude to hang out with and probably would have hosted party after party which would have led to you meeting a lot of girls and scoring more than you could have ever imagined. But it didn't turn out that way. Fright Night is a fucking 80's bloodsucking gem and you should not miss it if you've never seen the original.

9. Return Of The Living Dead

  

Much like vampire flicks, I've never been a massive fan of zombie movies either because they've been so overdone at this point, but Return Of The Living Dead is different. It's wild, unapologetic punk rock zombies in your face and it doesn't care if you want to see chicks naked in broad daylight with piercings and tattoos. It wants you to go against the grain because this isn't some run of the mill George Romero zombie flick-this is damn Return Of The Living Dead and there isn't anything you can do about it. The attitude suggested on the cover art is exactly what you get-no frills, against authority hoodlum undead running amok. Love this flick. Even at number nine.

8. Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

When it comes to Freddy and the Nightmare On Elm Street movies, nothing for me even comes close or holds a candle to part three which is the Dream Warriors. I'm going to go out on a limb here and even state something crazy: I think I may even enjoy this sequel more than the original film. Sure, this wouldn't have been made if it wasn't for the first one being the smash hit in the 80's for Robert Englund as it was (and the second one just fucking sucks) because in all honesty, I think this evolution really is the most logical place that this franchise could have went at the time. The characters are better, the special effects and kills are better, the overall idea just kicks ass because Freddy is just doing what he does, but instead of just terrorizing regular kids to get back at their parents for burning his ass alive in their dreams, he's terrorizing kids in a hospital that have way more issues than what any of them held onto in the original. It makes the plane here for Freddy to exist more creative, and therefore for me it's more exciting and more entertaining in the end. Put my ass in the hospital with them-killing Krueger in my dreams, here I come. 

7. The Fly (1986 remake)

We're getting into a film from my childhood here because The Fly remake from 1986 is one that my dad had on VHS when I was a kid, and I still remember to this day the one time I saw the scene for the first time where Jeff Goldblum is going through the physical transformation of becoming the fly in front of the mirror-it messed me up for weeks upon weeks. My feeble and fragile little elementary school brain couldn't comprehend what was actually happening to him when his skin started falling off onto the floor and I still recall asking myself if this was something that was actually real. There's no way that it could be real. And it isn't. But this damn masterpiece of a Vincent Price remake is, and it is leaps and bounds better than the cheap (but fun to watch) original from 1958 because this zits and zombies is how a remake is done. The story is way more fleshed out, it was better written, the effects are award worthy and it's just such a dark film that I would contest anyone that would say otherwise. This has to be here and it isn't going anywhere.

6. Evil Dead (original)

Man, what could I possibly focus on here with the original Evil Dead film that hasn't been pointed out already. This is the flick that born Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi's careers out of blood, sweat, tears and just all-american hard work in the state of Michigan. This film is legendary in pretty much every horror circle and I don't even think that I need to spell anything out for you if you've only ever seen the newer movies in this franchise. All I'm going to spit on here about Evil Dead is watch this one, watch the second one and watch Army Of Darkness. All classics, all entertaining and all horror fun. Get to it already. Groovy.

5. Halloween (original)

We're getting in the top five and we're touching on another horror film from my childhood that my dad also had on VHS that I watched a few times when I was growing up and it's the original and the only Halloween film that really matters. This is one of the greatest slashers in the history of horror and it is one of the greatest films ever made period. We all know about how this takes place in the fictional Illinois town named Haddonfield, we all know that the original title was supposed to be "The Babysitter Murders", we all know that Michael Meyers' mask was a spray painted William Shatner mask, and we certainly all know how much of a masterpiece this is from the mind of John Carpenter. I think my favorite thing about this movie that I've learned about it over the years is that he did the music and score himself, and he fully admits that he has no clue how to even write or compose music in the slightest. That shows John's talent, creativity and destiny-and it all resides with Halloween.

4. Hellraiser (original)

I've read the novella that Clive Barker wrote titled "The Hellbound Heart" a couple of different times, and I have to say that the idea of morphing that story into what became the original Hellraiser was fantastic. I love the whole idea of the cenobites being middlemen just to get blood for Frank to be resurrected and on top of that this has to be one of the most fucked up, darkest love stories to ever be put on screen. There's always some twisted shit that people get themselves involved in, but basically hiring demon figures from hell through a puzzle box to go to earth to help with a flesh debt of some kind is an idea for a plot that you never really hear about. Ever. But Hellraiser does it for me every time and I get sucked into just how secretive and wrong this could all be if it was real, and the price to pay to get your soul back just isn't worth it. If I'm going to burn for all eternity, so be it. Pinhead is going to ask about pain or pleasure-I'm going to try and confuse him by saying that I want both. And I'm never touching the lamentation configuration ever again.

3. Friday The 13th (original)  

My favorite in the entire Friday The 13th franchise has always been #7 because I liked that something different was done with the final girl and Jason in the final battle that they have towards the end-but it will never garner what started the series in the first place. I'm pretty sure that no one will agree with this being on my top ten horror films of all time, but I don't really care either. I think this flick is a classic because Jason isn't the killer, but his mother is and that's what drives this piece to wedge itself onto my #3 spot. Right at the start you're already expecting this lumbering lummox with a hockey mask to come out from behind the trees to start lopping off horny teen's heads, when in reality this franchise started at the very, very beginning before Jason was even thought of as the slasher icon that he has become. Sure, this first picture is slow and it doesn't have a lot of gore or sex or any of the business that we all expect from it now-but it has character, heart and a monumental build-up that grows until it reaches what I consider to be where this thing should have ended... entry #4. Yeah-even though my favorite is part seven, the fourth one really is where this should have stopped. It's when Cory Feldman actually finally kills Jason, it's when Crispin Glover performs the funniest horror movie dance of all time and it's when the train for this haul should have reached it's final stop. But here it is-the first and the original Friday The 13th. Take it or leave it. For me, it's my number three.

2. Trick Or Treat

Words can't even begin to describe how much I love Trick Or Treat. This is single-handedly the horror movie that got me into the horror hobby, into putting together this whole Cinema Slayer thing and publishing the books that I have through Amazon. This film has done so much for me that if I was going to be physically buried when I die instead of being cremated, I'd want to be buried with a copy of this movie along with some of my favorite video games and heavy metal albums. But what is so special about Trick Or Treat? There's a warm feeling to this movie that I've never felt with any other flick in this genre-which I've never felt before or since-and I don't think anything can replicate it. There's just something about Ragman's adventures through what happens after he gets the only copy of Sammi Curr's last recording titled "songs in the key of death" from Nuke (who is played by Gene Simmons by the way) that warms my heart because at the end of the day-I actually identify with Ragman as a character. I was an outcast in school just like him, I was made fun of for the music that I listened to just like him and I could never get the girl-just like him. Trick Or Treat will live on in my heart forever as my second favorite horror flick of all time because it's just the movie that keeps on giving. And I'm going to keep on writing on here and beyond because of it. Sammi Curr will never die. 

1. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original)

Here we are zits and zombies... my personal #1 favorite horror movie of all time. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a shocking piece of cinema that gets into the back of your subconscious, slowly starts gripping your psyche, and squeezes the juices that make you tick. It starts making you question reality. How can a family actually live like this? How could this all be real? Is this the end of my existence? Who is this monstrosity that lurks behind a steel door with a sledgehammer and a fully gassed chainsaw? If you were Sally or Franklin or any of our main people here and found yourself at the foot of this house, you'd be asking yourself all of these things and more. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is raw. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is gritty. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is brutal without actually being brutal. Would you be able to survive the dinner scene with the Sawyer family? In real life, probably not. Getting filleted for the barbeque would most likely be what would happen. There are cannibals out there, but not like this. I don't think any piece of celluloid here could possibly change the face of horror the way The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did. It opened the floodgates-never build a dam.

Runners-up

1. Maniac

   

If there was a mentally broken, psychologically twisted man out there posing as a janitor/maintenance guy who was going around stalking and slicing up women because of his mommy issues, I would warn you to not go out tonight too. Frank Zito has no limit to his depravity and will stop at nothing to satiate it. If you were a beautiful woman anytime or sometime during the 80's, I'd want you to have a knife and a .45 in your purse at all times. This is the type of flick that would make people paranoid of wanting to party and to hang out late at night because the crazies come out at night, and Maniac definitely surrounds you with it's mental sickness. The way this film ends too has to be one of the best and satisfying climaxes of all time because it really is a complete karmic circle of you get what you give. If you've only seen the first person remake with Elijah Wood and have always been curious about the original, here it is. I think you'd like it better.

2. Society

  

I've always been a heavy handed pundit for body horror, and I have always held onto the fact that I believe Society to be one of the greatest films in this category above them all. There's so much going on here that you really have to take the time to sit through this one more than once because this thing points out all of the ills of, well, Society, as plainly as it possibly could. It's all in the breeding and it's all in who knows who, who's fucking who and who's born into money. And yeah, that's how it is in reality, but here there's so much under the surface that if I explained all of it, it would just ruin the picture and you would never want to take the time to watch Society. Do yourself a favor-if you want to see the directorial debut from body horror master Brian Yuzna mixed with the genius tier special effects work by Screaming Mad George for "the shunting" than just find a way to give this thing a go. You'll really hate our society after it's over.  

3. Magic

I used to own a copy of Magic on dvd and the one and only time I watched it was when my wife and I lived in Champaign. The one viewing was more than enough for me to savor this flick as one of the strongest psychological films I've probably ever sat through, and all three of our main actors here are fucking fantastic-Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith. You can't go wrong with any of those three, and they certainly didn't get it wrong here. The dummy named 'Fats' that Hopkins uses for his ventriloquist act starts coming to life and wants to control him mentally-or does he? You keep asking yourself this through the entire film because it was written, acted and filmed so well that you can't tell if it's all in Hopkins' head or if Fats really is coming to life and screwing with him. It's a psychological wringer that never lets up and if it weren't for the existence of some of the other films that populate my top ten, this would absolutely be somewhere up there. If you want Magic, there's either Fats or Ann-Margret. I know which one you'd want to go after-and she's not made of wood and lacquer.    

4. Scalpel

In a similar way to Magic completely being on my top ten if it weren't for other masterpieces existing, Scalpel would be there as well. I randomly found this film on VHS back in the Champaign days at the Gordyville flea market for a measly dollar, and the first time I watched it, it captivated me. I loved the yellowed cinematography, I loved the southern gothic vibe, I loved the characters and I just fell in love with everything about Scalpel. The plot itself really isn't anything life changing or wholly original, but that isn't what matters here-it's the pace, the presentation and the disturbing nature at which Robert Lansing's character will go to secure the inheritance from his missing daughter. The entire reason behind him employing his surgical prowess is pure power and greed as he makes some random woman he finds look identical to his daughter, and when his daughter finally comes back, he has two women living with him that look exactly the same, and he's, a-hem, 'doing things' with the other woman that he did surgery one to make her look like his daughter. So, I mean, there's a bizarre layer of almost-but-not-quite incest going on here and it's just... wow. If you've never seen Scalpel and know someone that has the Arrow Video blu-ray release or can find it streaming, please do so. This film needs to be seen and talked about. 

The Mutilator 2

 

If you're an avid 80's slasher fan like me, you've already seen the original Mutilator flick by now. Probably, most likely, more than once. I've sat through it two different times and I have to say that even the first entry is pretty okay considering it's contemporaries-it has a pretty sad and wicked plot involving the death of a boys' mother at the beginning of the film where he accidentally shoots her with one of his fathers' shotguns because he's cleaning it for him before he comes home from work or wherever the hell he was at, and it sets him off about twenty something years later wanting to 'mutilate' his own son and his friends when they party at his dad's beach house. It encompasses some nasty kills with a giant fish hook among other things, and it has become a pretty solid cult classic of sorts among horror fans these days, especially after Arrow Video put it on blu-ray. Before I ended up selling about 95% of my horror collection fairly recently, I myself had a copy of it on blu-ray and I did enjoy it for what it was. I always liked the whole thing with the Fall Break opening as opposed to just the regular Mutilator one and it presented itself almost as some kind of a lost 80's sitcom or something that needed to be preserved for all time. Look-if you've been here for awhile and have read most of (if not all) my bullshit on this website, you already know that I always try to seek some kind of a balance with any sort of horror flick (hell, just movies in general) where I don't even care if all of the girls are hot or cute, there needs to be a decent story to keep things going. If the movie is fucking boring as all hell, at least garner some gore or solid kills to have something for the audience to grab onto. Because I'm here to let you know right here and right now that The Mutilator 2 is fucking abysmal. It doesn't have any of the energy, any of the flair or any of the staying power that the original had. It just fucking doesn't. And quite frankly, what did I expect? I actually received pretty much what I was expecting-a selfish, meta, re-tread of the first film with no garnish and no extra ketchup. The Mutilator 2 is a giant basket of hand cut french fries that are under cooked, lazily chopped and half seasoned. There was absolutely no reason for Buddy Cooper himself to attempt making a comeback with this hog snot, and he would have just been better off either wallowing in his 80's horror obscurity or just directing and writing something completely new for the fans of his that he's lassoed in after all of these years with the original. What is the biggest, cardinal sin that this new movie of his commits? I already mentioned it, but it's so damn boring. It's a drag fest, and I'm not meaning an actual drag show with dudes dressing up as chicks-I mean this thing just has no substance and no character. The actors Chaney Morrow and Anna Clary from the film Late Checkout are both here as main people, and I would be hard pressed to find out if they starred here for anything more than their paychecks. Also (and I didn't even realize this until the very last time you see him) the horror film collector and reviewer on Youtube named Pizowell makes a cameo here too, and I honestly thought that was pretty cool. I always enjoy seeing implements in these pictures like that. But none of that makes up for how manically laggy The Mutilator 2 ended up being. With all of that being pointed out, the kills are pretty good special effects wise and they are for the most part pretty brutal-but it still just isn't good enough. You do see most of the cute girls' boobs at some point peppered throughout here-but it just isn't worth it. It just isn't. So if you're a bigger fan of the first Mutilator film than most and were and or are still excited to watch this 'sequel' if you will, I warned you. I fucking warned you. If you even make it half way just to see what happens, I'll applaud you. You'll never know it, but I'll clap in pure jeer just for you. And you'll probably never want to watch this ever again.   

Las Vegas Bloodbath

 

I was paroozing Youtube and beyond this afternoon to try to stumble upon something shitty to ingest because I was in the mood for some junk food film, when all of a sudden a gem fell into my lap that I had never heard of or seen before-Las Vegas Bloodbath. I won't lie here zits and zombies-I was about to just skip beyond it because how entertaining could an S.O.V. from 1989 with that generic of a title possibly be? Well, there's plenty that have bland titles who end up being glorious mantle pieces which end up on display to sicken our family and friends, and now that I've sat through Las Vegas Bloodbath, it's a new entry to join the crowd. It's actually been quite awhile since I've really dug my toes into something in this universe because I unfortunately don't have as much time as I used to (or as much as I would like to) indulge in searching for and discovering new ground in the do-it-yourself category of crappy horror flicks from the 80's and 90's because a lot has changed in the last 5-6 years, but that has nothing to do with my experience viewing Las Vegas Bloodbath. I'm going to state right off that bat here that this was wildly great, surprising and highly entertaining because it has a no nonsense attitude about it with our main man Sam flying off the handle after he finds out that his wife Ruth is cheating on him with some loser sheriff/cop dude that looks like a z-grade version of Iceman from Top Gun. Yeah. Also, Sam himself also looks like a hard mix of Nicolas Cage and Jerry Seinfeld if they were in their mid twenties and were partying together briefly after both of their careers took off around the same time. It's fucking hilarious. Want to know what else is hilarious that takes place in Las Vegas Bloodbath? There's a scene where Sam is driving the red sports car he bought for Ruth through town after he brutally murders her and sheriff boy, and some random asshole drives up to him with his middle finger out of the window saying "hey asshole, why don't you get off the road, you don't know how to drive!" to which Sam responds by shooting the dickheads finger off and yelling "try picking your nose with that!" Jesus, this shit is hilarious-I literally almost fell off the edge of the couch when this scene first happened because I was laughing so hard. I rewound it and watched it a second time, which for me is a rarity these days. There's also a scene that happens before the middle finger incident where Sam has a prostitute with him in his car in the middle of the day (he calls them "daytime whores") to which he stops the car in a random alley that has some kind of piping on the side of the building and he ties her up to it. This is also the first time that we see that he has Ruth's severed head in a bag with him throughout the rest of the film-but he gets Ruth's head out of the bag, sets it next to the street girl and ties only one of her legs to the back bumper of the car. He then picks up Ruth's head, puts it back in the bag and into the trunk, only to start driving away while yelling "are you keeping up?" as the woman's leg gets torn off and gets drug down the street. Sounds brutal, but when you see how it is in the movie in real time, it's everything hilarious and nothing gruesome in the slightest. All of this crap takes up basically the first half of Las Vegas Bloodbath because the second half (this flick is 67 minutes by the way) is him figuring out where the Beautiful Ladies Of Oil Wrestling live or hang out or whatever this town house looking place is supposed to be-because he isn't done rampaging over what Ruth did to him yet. Oh no-there's more women to kill and more brutality to be had. I'm not going to go into supreme detail here zits and zombies if you've never seen this piece, but pretty much the rest of the last 30-something minutes comprises of Sam tying up said Beautiful Ladies and performing nasty things on them like cutting out the fetus of the pregnant woman's unborn baby and tossing it in the corner of her room or literally tearing one of their arms off as they stare at Ruth's head or him burying a claw hammer into the chest of one of them after he gets them into the bathtub. This film really does ramp up in the third act very quickly and by the time it's over the way the bathroom looks in this place is pretty much reminiscent of the cover art of a Cannibal Corpse album or something. If you're on the prowl for an S.O.V. from the late 80's that is sort of like the try-hard younger brother of Truth Or Dare?: A Critical Madness, you've found it. Just don't tell anyone that I told you to watch it. Actually, yeah, do that. Maybe I'll get more traffic here on my website if you do.  

 

Sick For Toys

 

Sick For Toys is a holiday/Christmas themed horror flick which consists of the characters Roy, Jason, Kate, Emelia and Edward. There are others that fill in some persona gaps too, but these five are the main hams in the oven. I really didn't know what I was going to receive as a gift from Sick For Toys when I decided that that was what I was going to watch this morning for a review-and to be honest, I was hoping it was going to be some kind of horror comedy type of flick because that's really what I was in the mood for this morning. I'll look harder next time. This film is basically the opposite of that and has no joy for the holiday spirit at all. This truly was being sick for toys, and it's a slow burn. The pace here was actually done really well as far as I was concerned and never felt like I was rushing to get to the endgame from it being a slog. I thought that the delivery of everything that took place in this flick felt right and the way it was supposed to happen, and as demented as a pair of siblings Emelia and Edward are, what they were involved in and their psychosis never swayed or made me feel like I was being drug (heh) through the mud. Our baseline for Sick For Toys is this-we have our main jock/jackass/narcissist in Jason who already has a girlfriend, but thinks like every other one of these kinds of assholes and tries to eat his pussy and have some on the side too. We only get to imagine this happening through our imaginations because of some later exposition, but he ends up being Emelia's newest "toy" because he ran into her at the local pharmacy and they started talking. One thing led another, and boom-his ass is drugged, tied up and starved in the siblings' basement for Emelia to play with. Which basically just means that she lays with him on the floor with his arms around her for a period of time and she rapes him while he lays there and isn't able to do anything to stop her. I guess karma's name for Jason is Emelia. While that business is happening, we get to focus on Roy who is Jason's best friend (and has a thing for his girlfriend Kate) and after a couple of crappy dates, meets up with her to talk to her about Jason being missing for a few days. She sort of just dismisses it because he said he was going to go on some "off the grid" trip or some nonsense. Roy ends up meeting Emelia because he found her number on a napkin and calls her a few times. They end up having a coffee date and she eventually ropes him into coming over to her and Edward's house. Even after she tells him everything about their parents dying and how they have been living in their house for decades now, Roy likes Emelia a lot and goes over there anyway. Things start getting really fucking weird while they are having Christmas dinner, and of course-I'm sure you guessed it by now-Edward put some shit into Roy's soup. I don't know if he roofied it or put acid in there or LSD or what, but you can slowly start experiencing with Roy that their voices keep going higher and lower, he keeps looking at the ham while Edward cuts it and it gets bigger and smaller. Everything is distorted to a degree, and then Emelia sort of guides Roy into the garage where Jason is to start doing the same shit to him that she's been doing to Jason the last few days. But even in the state that he's in, Roy starts figuring out who's in the room with him and finds his phone and everything and then Edward stabs his ass. This is when things start getting really gory and really messy. I won't go any further in case after all of that you'd want to watch Sick For Toys, but I will say this-ultimately, it's not a great film. There are a lot of great elements that make it a whole package, but this flick is the very definition of a purgatory film. I already know that I will never revisit this one ever again, and if you do ever track down Sick For Toys to give it a shot, you'll probably feel the same. I'm just going to say zits and zombies that if you're that sick for a toy, you could do a lot better-but you could also do much worse. I hope that you get a lot of cool toys and that you never become sick. Have a great Christmas. 

The Chill Factor

 

To finish off this frozen duology, I decided to dive into another snow themed slasher from yesteryear titled The Chill Factor. When I was starting to reach the edge of not wanting to collect physical copies of horror films anymore, this was one of the last ones I was interested in purchasing considering that Arrow Video had put this into print on blu-ray, it looked like a cool addition (pun intended) to hang out amongst the rest of what I had already accumulated at that point. In the same vain as being a fan of more obscure sub-genres of horror such as SOV and spa/workout horror and heavy metal horror, I also really like this less traversed hallway in the corridors of terror-snow or winter centered fright films. I don't what it is-maybe it's the whole aesthetic of everything being isolated because of the massive amounts of snow everywhere, or just the bitter cold you can feel coming off the screen as our main characters fumble around while getting annihilated, but there's something special hidden in the DNA here for me whenever I sit down to watch an entry in this arm that not a lot of horror fans seem to gravitate towards. When it comes to The Chill Factor in particular, there isn't anything that special about it as an individual film-but once it's sitting amongst it's peers like Iced, Shredder, Dead Snow and anything else in this ilk-it's a pretty solid and fun entry to jab your icicle into. If you want a basic breakdown, it's pretty much a mix of The Evil Dead, The Exorcist and, well-Iced. Yeah. So pretty much what takes place in The Chill Factor is that a group of friends are really into motorized sledding to the point where that's their only mode of transportation to get anywhere. They end up at some local bar in the middle of iced-over nowhere, and right when the film starts we are presented with some racist redneck bullshit that hates one of our main guys' fiancée's because she's black and he's white. Really, who even gives a shit about that. But I guess back in 1993 it was still a thing to hate people with different colored skin. I'm pretty much on the same level with remembering all the characters names as I was when I was watching Iced, so all I'm going to do is be as generic as possible to get the story across. Or come up with my own names. After the black girl fiancée gets made fun of for a second just because she has a darker skin pigment, her male fiancée comes around, says some shit to this dumbass about how he was just drafted to the Minnesota Vikings, and proceeds to dispose of the loser quickly. They all sit down to have some beers because it's another one of the guys' birthday in the group, and the main woman that runs the place starts telling them about Black Friar Lake. It's sad when I remember the name of the lake more than the names of the main characters. The birthday boy and Tom (I only remember his name because of certain events that I'll get to soon) decide after a lot of drinking that it's a good idea to race across this frozen over Black Friar Lake to see who's sled is faster. Of course, the race ends up being a disaster because Tom goes flying head first into a tree and the birthday boy just falls off his at some point. Minnesota Viking and one of the ladies in the group find some abandoned religious camp ground that's all boarded up, and break into it for warmth and to try and get some medical help for Tommy Boy. One by one they become unalived in various ways-especially after they find this ridiculous, oversized, hand-made Ouija board with what looks like a human eyeball in the middle of it where the spinner is anchored. They do a shitty séance, a dark spirit that was trapped there takes over Tommy's body, he miraculously heals, has sex with all but one or two of the girls in the group (the black girl is dead by this point) and it turns from a fun, half anxiety filled urgency for Tommy's health into a possession based Exorcist type deal with a finale that I honestly wasn't fully expecting. I'm going to ramp it up zits and zombies and say that I think that if you even remotely have any interest in frost layered terror, give The Chill Factor a shot. It doesn't matter if you bought a new designer winter jacket or a motorized sled or any of that crap-it only matters if you know how to have fun and are in the mood for winterized devil worship and seeing a black woman's head being brutalized by a ceiling fan. That happens here. Factor in some chills-before winter is over.