Category: Blog of Damien S. Riley

This interesting director’s name is Jim Cummings (“Thunder Road”). He’s a new director with a lot of energy. Unfortunately I hated his portrayal of the Sheriff. He’s slight and seems to lash out uncontrollably for no reason. I attribute that to a writer/actor/director taking on too much. But that doesn’t stop the cult praise. I see big scores for this film all over, even on Letterboxd which impresses me since so many of respectable amateur film critics (and pro too) live there. I think the first real werewolf movie I saw was “Silver Bullet” written by Stephen King. That movie will always rock in my memory. Gary Busey was the goofy uncle and the werewolf is one of the scariest anyone could have assembled in a film.

People in their teens and twenties might find it hard to believe that there were werewolf movies prior to “Twilight.” Probably the most outlandish of which is “An American Werewolf in London.”

If you’re a horror fan who hasn’t seen it yet, you should. Let me take a birdwalk here for a few words about Silver Bullet. It’s comedic irony in a horror film like no other film. “Silver Bullet” is another werewolf film that has been lost on a new generation. I was 10 in 1980 and watched whatever I could of Stephen king movies all through the decade. “Silver Bullet” is horror with an Americana feel to it. King created a solid story here that has stood the test of time for me. Watching it 30 years later, I still hid my eyes a few times, remember terrified sleepovers of my youth in front of the tv.

The plot is fairly simple but that works well for the film. A werewolf brings terror down on a smalltown American city. The protagonist is Marty, a paralyzed boy confined to a wheelchair. The other two main characters beside Marty are his sister and uncle. They don’t believe what he is telling them about the horror he sees. Along the way you get smalltown diners, 80’s decorated homes, picnics, and scary legends coming to life before your eyes. All people around my age must remember the motorcycle wheelchair. Yes, that was something to behold! Most all of King’s movies have somewhat of a sing song vibe to them, “The Shining” being an exception. I remember reading “The Stand” and “Firestarter” in high school and there were pages devoted to oldies tunes. King has a talent for making singsong wholesome images terrifying. Silver Bullet follows right along in that style of his.

A character worth noting is Marty’s uncle, played by the indefatigable Gary Busey. He is pure fun to watch on screen. When I see him in movies like this or “the Buddy Holly Story” I can’t help but wonder if the character was written just for him. He has an attitude in real life that shows through in most of his characters. When facing a werewolf, you definitely want Busey with you. In the interest of preventing spoilers I won’t go into too much plot detail. Suffice it to say, “Silver Bullet” is a well-crafted movie adapted from an amazing story by an established and world famous horror writer. It reminds me of the 80’s in its purity and innocence. Even though it is a bit singsong at times with its focus on an American town, it pulls no punches for being a frightening movie including clever effects. Every time I watch it I see something more. The werewolf movie genre may have evolved since the 80’s but we can always travel back and get a glimpse of what it was with “Silver Bullet.”

But this is no “Silver Bullet,” to be fair, it doesn’t try to be your typical werewolf film. It struggles to keep verisimilitude which is a necessary element for scares. I yelled at the TV “There is a wolf or what?” Let me just say I was disappointed with the films response. I think there is a cult favorite rising here for multiple reasons, all complimentary to Cummings. Still, the editing is piss poor, the choices for cuts and scene setups is horrendous. While I liked the sharp canines,

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Synopsis: “Archons” (2020) is the story of falling-from-grace rock group, Sled Dog, half a decade after the release of their hit single, Backfire. After a chance encounter with rock-legend and life-long idol, Emerson Gilmore, Eric is willing to take one more chance at success, the way Emerson Gilmore did it back in the 70s—out in the Canadian mountains with a guitar and a bag of psychedelic drugs. An FYI: the blood-shed has a great top ten post on drug horror flicks! I like them all! Check it out. In this post and podcast, I review 2 movies, one is my recommendation for your Halloween primary scare!

My written review of “Archons” is on horrornews.net

Review: If you’re a rock band seeking a veto writer’s block, don’t stay out in the terrifying forest and take Indian drugs, stay home and do regular acid. We forget how scary Native Americans can be in horror stories, with all the trips they took on peyote etc. Someone took advantage of that in this film and it works well. The backdrop is a camping trip. The players are 3 beautiful women and a rock band seeking pharmaceutical inspiration for its next album. Both camping and rock music are familiar tropes for horror. Here they work together in a similar and fun way. I didn’t think I would like this film as much as I did. it’s not for everybody though. If you like movies where the cast are on a psychedelic trip, you’ll enjoy this horror. For a low budget film, it delivers the scares. I give a 10/10 to visuals and cinematography. It’s a hammock saying, come and sit awhile.

After the 3 bikini clad babes have a little dialog with the vacationing rocker, we are introduced to an endearing actress: Parmiss Sehat (April “May”). I recall her role on Keifer Sutherland’s “Designated Survivor.” Her eyes are entrancing and she plays a hopeless fan exceedingly well. The bronze blond rocker is played by Josh Collins. He’s been in “The 100,” “Supernatural,” and a few other roles. Needless to say, this is not a no-namer film. The fan follows the band on their canoeing drug trip and as you can probably imagine, the films descends quickly in chaos and horror. Oh and don’t forget the supernatural aspects of the “Indian Drug.”

The guitarist (Rob Raco/”Supernatral”) acquires drugs before the trip and they are supposedly drugs the Indians’ use to do their religious ceremonies. Of course it’s a little too strong and they “see” things. Hallucination movies can be great. They are meant to emulate a drug trip so you will like it more if you’ve been on one. First, Priss’ character has something explode in her head. From there all manner of camping horror mayhem breaks loose. This isn’t acid, we find out, it’s something much more potent and other worldly. as the makeshift creatures appeared, I found myself wondering if they were really people disguised by the drug. it wasn’t too clear but I let myself believe it and really enjoyed the thrills! The best low budget creature I’ve seen was in “The Village” and thus I learned you don’t need cgi for deep, dark creepy!

The creatures look like paper mache costumes but they still are jarring. I was reminded by the low budget things that this isn’t a blockbuster. At the same time, any horror fan who’s been on a trip with friends will recoil in delight at these humble drug horrors. The line between fantasy and reality gets blurred. As is sometimes the case in druggie movies, the hallucination is revealed to be an actual person whom they don’t mean to kill. I suspected that here but they left it open. Camping movies that get this sub genre very right are “Backcountry” and “The Blair Witch Project.

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Synopsis: An attractive young women enters the world of a serial killer by having sex with him and being strangled. She lives and her story intertwines with many other lonely characters in this self-professed horror film that revolves around sexual choking and homicide.

Review: Watching a horror movie that looks homemade is fine but the impact has to be there. It may be possible to understand why people asphyxiate themselves during sex: because it awakens endorphin glands before you pass out. I’m no expert but watching “Choke” (2020) I caught a glimpse of perhaps why, and I myself up to that point had never realized it before. As we follow truly lonely souls: a cop, a serial killer and a few other minor chokers. Imagine if you went on a date with a choker killer. When would you expect them to take their hands off your neck? Just like practicing partners of this deviancy, would it be when you passed out? Death and bliss are a fine line we find. This review appeared first at my real writing job 😉 horrornews.net

Choke may be interesting to fans of this sexual choking fetish. I found myself on the other side and hoping to understand the appeal. That never happened. Jeanie (Sarah Brine) meets up with an older man on a train and has sex with him. This is quite fast but I welcomed the excitement in the plot since it took quite a while to do anything stimulating for a horror fan. Even when we see the choking, it looks canned and over coached. Obviously camera angles help but I began to wonder if I was watching an indoctrination film to choking during sex. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t aroused in the slightest. I honestly wonder who would like this movie. I didn’t see it as horror and it was a little too in-your-face to be a thriller/drama.

But Jeanie gets sucked in all the way. She becomes accustomed (addicted?) to this sex move. Perhaps she might tell us that once you’ve tried it, you can never go back. I know this is in a subculture out there but people please, be real, who wants to be choked during a pleasurable encounter? There is something like a lolita storyline here but above that is the practice, the hedonistic practice of choking during sex.

Hatanaka is a good director here. Unfortunately the subject matter is so difficult to draw near to or to push away. It isn’t clear what he wants to tell us so in my mind, he missed the whole point of a horror movie. For example, instead of causing my skin to crawl when the serial killer kills, he visited unbridled annoyance on me by having the choking partners fake evil laugh for 10 minutes. This isn’t why I watch horror movies. There were times it seemed the director was absent, maybe he choked on a cigarette on his break? Just wondering.

You will not find blood and gore here. Instead you’ll see a director’s case study of trial and error of portraying this deviancy onscreen. I am not a huge fan of pure blood and gore but I do enjoy creepy themes and atmosphere. This did not successfully develop either. Someone had told me the beginning looked like a high school level film term project. It does but they failed to mention it never really changes.

In conclusion, I’d say that due to an overemphasis of staged choking, this film fails for me. Anytime you name a film after something so chilling as choking, you must tastefully introduce it and then add it to the storyline in a way that yes repulses but keeps the viewer interested and more informed about it as the movie proceeds to its conclusion. I didn’t feel that here. It was a handful of unhappy people addicted to asphyxiation during sex.

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I know many of you horror fans out there like superhero films. Maybe this film was aimed at you because I don’t particularly like them and this was all but a lost mess on me. Listen to this episode in your podcast player of choice. The written version appeared first at HorrorNews.net

Tropes of superhero films appear a safe bet in this movie market. “Xmen” franchises always make hundreds of millions of dollars but films like it are beset with production costs that literally no one ever imagine. In that way, “Transference” is a bit refreshing in that it is a low budget film trying to achieve in the ranks of Amazon’s “The Boys.” Are you being assaulted hourly with ads like I am when I tune to Amazon Prime? But “Transference” is currently streaming on tubi not Amazon and the comparison of networks is a metaphor if not almost an allegory.Joshua (Jeremy Ninaber) is the tacit caretaker for his sister Emma (Melissa Joy Boerger) since their father died in a car accident. She has enormous metal psychic powers. At one point, her mind shows itself powerful enough to cause a horde of people to slit their wrists all at the same time. This sounds amazing I know but the way the parts like this are connected and misapplied, the film ends up being all over the place and extremely hard to follow. A friend of mine told me it was like doing brain surgery trying to understand the plot. Another said it had no plot. It does feel like 3-4 scripts were joined together hodgepodge. For that reason, I was turned off by this film.

You might compare Joshua to Wolverine in that he’s highly violent and powerful. What’s more, the knuckle fights don’t affect him physically at all. Picture Captain America in his street clothes attempting to take no prisoners in a street fight. Now imagine no humor to go along with that. Since I’m not much into street fighting either, it came up fairly empty for me. This film would have been better served by being a spoof. That wouldn’t require much of the cgi in superhero movies either.

The knuckle fights at night, while highly improbable and hard to accept as real, keep his sister in the hospital. By that I mean, brother earns the hospital fees through street fighting. You can see elements like this making a superhero film a bit hard to access. This isn’t horror. If the continual barrage of images and plot line made me uncomfortable, I would praise it as horror. Unfortunately, it makes the error of traveling down the road of superhero movies. It could have chosen to be a spoof, which would be better. I should also mention that the street fights are very poorly choreographed which can’t usually be blamed on a 200,000 dollar budget.

Can we look at one feature of this film I did/do like and am happy to share? As is conventional for my reviews, I have to give props to the multi-tasking director/writer/actor of this film: Matthew Ninaber. This was an ambitious task and I always want to recognize the directors who “do it all” to achieve their vision. The budget and plot issues aside, I can see how fans of the sub-genre will enjoy this film. If you agree or disagree with me about aspects of the film, I invite you to kindly start a discussion with me and others in the comments. I welcome all points of view and sometimes comments make me a better reviewer/podcaster.

A comic book masquerading in genre to be a horror is hard enough to pull off in the marketing. Even the film itself lacks the stuff of greatness. I will obviously reserve judgement for you comic book peripheral horror fans but as a straight up horror, you could miss this one.

As a parting thought, let me give you some recommendations of films th…

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The opening scene shows us a Victorian home and zooms ever so gradually in on a wood carved antique front door. There is a truly insidious sound effect, sinister in its low bass rumble. We enter the house in a series of stills as the rumbling continues. Awesome impact. 

This is an effective way to create atmosphere in a horror movie. Also an effective part of the intro is the typeset or overlay of the credits. I’m seeing this a lot in the last decade. On a macro level, most people have seen Tarantino’s movie set in California Western times. It has those sort of overlays. It creates verisimilitude in this film and I was taken back to the days when things were simpler and scares were possible from atmosphere without jump scares. Has anyone else out there relished the spooky feelings they’ve had over a horror movie?I hope that’s what you come here to Riley on Film for because I am forsaking all others for a good long while. Atmospheric Horror is the name of my horror reviewing game! This film is knee deep in that category. In this review I plan to take you through the parts that create the most atmosphere. I hope you enjoy.

We see our presumed heroine in the kitchen first cooking. Her looks are pleasant. She’s wearing a white ruffly dress that doesn’t reveal much. She turn her head though and seems quite attractive as a brunette, farm beauty type of woman. The actress’ name is Anna Ishida. She has very little listed in IMDB. It appears she is all by herself wandering aimlessly around. I don’t mean this is a sexist way but it would be nice if all she is going to do is walk around that we might see her figure. Movies are appealing to the visual right? Just saying, sorry if that offends anyone. Nonetheless, I am convinced she is quite beautiful in my imagination as well as onscreen.

Dressing up in the mirror sort of shows she has large breasts. LOL. Sorry again. This part is a bit dull. I’m not sure what the point of this drawn out scene is. Would be a first for me though. People like my wife and otters get pots way before me, probably because I have a low patience threshold. The kitchen table is highly visual and pleasing. It has that country kitchen look to it and it adds to the suspension of disbelief that this was made in 2012 and not 1812. 

A voice begins to speak to her, Emily. She talks to Emily like a parent or doctor. She even sings Emily a bedtime song before asking her to repeat the phrase “I am a Ghost” over and over. At this point the voice is attempting to remind Emily she is a ghost. The voice is a medium hired by the owners of the house to rid the ghost (Emily) from the house. It’s a bit of a “Groundhog Day” scenario. When Emily leaves the room she loses all memory of what the medium is trying to do with her. It repeats.

I find it highly clever what the director is doing here. H.P. Mendoza has given us a ghost film from the perspective of the ghost. Instead of waiting to be suddenly spooked, the story gives us an extended creepy feeling without the need for jumps or gore. While it wasn’t exactly the mood I was hoping for, meaning it was too timid, in a mild way it created atmospheric horror.It was thick with it though. I think this director is quite good for that.

My conclusion is this film is a 5/10 Boring but it will score higher for fans of this actress and director. I Was immediately interested in the lead but I didn’t get to see her figure much. It was powerful when she repeated “I am a ghost.” Wish I could recommend it more highly. It does deliver a certain degree of atmospheric horror but loses the mystique as it progresses.

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This is a gore lover’s delight. For everyone else, well not so delightful. Listen to my 10 min review of this splatter gore fest called “Little Necro Red.”

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A geeky vlogger who supposedly is well known fakes haunted happenings on his show for more likes and pays the price for it.

https://youtu.be/F7Ps3sdY-Uk

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My guest is Kira Comerford ( @kirac_98 on Twitter ) of the up and coming site “Cinematique.” Watch for it! We were co-hosts and friends for a couple years on a podcast called “Talking Stars” along with Darren Lucas. Kira credits me as a factor of her interest in horror. I love having positive influence on young ladies 😉 These are two horror films we picked because they are similar in theme and genre. Both take place onscreen in a social platform: one is Zoom, the other Skype. I hope you enjoy the hour long discussion! Please feel free to interact with us! She is on Twitter. You can also interact in the comments here. We will respond.

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I have my movie podcasting friend Vern on this episode. You can reach him and find links to all his work atTwitter at @cinema_recall

These are two great movies with Mermaids in them. There is some nudity in them, but I got over the trauma quickly so I could enjoy it (LOL). What did you think?

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Luz and House on Haunted Hill are the films. My guest is Hermione Flavia and we chose a film each to review. It was great once again to have her on the show. She was a guest on my old podcast Talking Stars as well as this podcast. You can follow her on Instagram. Hope you enjoy the show.

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