Every Family Has Demons - Some More Literal Than Others

Evil Dead Burn unleashes the franchise’s most savage and terrifying ride to date, blazing onto big screens with an all-new chapter of carnage and demonic mayhem.

After the loss of her husband, a woman seeks solace with her in-laws in their secluded family home.

As one by one they are transformed into Deadites—turning the gathering into a family reunion from hell—she comes to discover that the vows she took in life... live on even in death.

Evil Dead Burn in cinemas July 10, directed by Sébastien Vaniček, and featuring Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Errol Shand, Maude Davey, George Pullar, Greta Van Den Brink.

I Love That Deadites Are Getting This New Lease of Unlife

Evil Dead Burn unleashes the franchise’s most savage and terrifying ride to date, blazing onto big screens with an all-new chapter of carnage and demonic mayhem.

After the loss of her husband, a woman seeks solace with her in-laws in their secluded family home. As one by one they are transformed into Deadites — turning the gathering into a family reunion from hell — she comes to discover that the vows she took in life... live on even in death.

Directed by Sébastien Vaniček, and starring Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Errol Shand, Maude Davey, George Pullar, and Greta Van Den Brink, Evil Dead Burn will be in theaters July 10.

Still Looking More Evil Dead Than Mummy, But...

While the trailers are still making Lee Cronin's The Mummy look more Evil Dead than Mummy, that doesn't mean I'm not rather excited for the possibilities of what this film has to offer.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy is poised to unwrap itself in British cinemas from April 17.

DEATHSTALKER WEEK: Deathstalker (2025)

Warrior and scavenger Deathstalker (Daniel Bernhardt) is pulled into the "machinations of the gods" when he steals a magical amulet from a dying prince on a battlefield.

Teaming up with goblin-dwarf wizard Doodad (Laurie Field, voiced by Patton Oswald) and thief Brisbayne (Christina Orjalo), this trio of rogues have to first undo the curse on Deathstalker that has bound the amulet to him.

Then they have to find an (impractical) four-bladed magical sword and thwart the apocalyptic plans of the evil sorcerer Nekromemnon (Nicholas Rice), his right-hand goon, the undead Jotak (Paul Lazenby) and their legions of monstrous Dreadite soldiers.

Written and directed by Psycho Goreman's Steven Kostanski (who was born three years after the original Deathstalker was released) Deathstalker (2025) is a loving tribute to vintage, low-budget, swords-and-sorcery flicks.

It is set in a land awash with Hawk The Slayer mist, and our heroes fight their way through a never-ending onslaught of Power Rangers (and Psycho Goreman) style rubber-suit monsters and Evil Dead-style stop-motion creations.

And, yes, the infamous porcine-faced humanoid makes a return appearance, although he's had a bit of a glow-up since the original movies. You may call him a pig-man, but to me he's a Gygaxian orc.

The ultimate weapon that Stalker is seeking - as I suspected the other day - is even an on-the-nose homage to Alert Pyun's The Sword and The Sorcerer.

In fact, the only thing that really differentiates this from the earlier Deathstalker movies is the total absence of sleaze. There's no nudity (gratuitous or otherwise), not even a hint of sexual tension between Stalker and Brisbayne. Instead, they are treated as <shudder> equals!

And, you know what, I didn't miss it. Deathstalker's linear plot is a blood-spattered, non-stop riot of over-the-top cartoonish violence, interspersed with some witty dialogue, subtle foreshadowing, and a cavalcade of rubbery monsters that could easily have just rolled out of an old school Dungeons & Dragons adventure.

You may recognise him as Kirill from John Wick or Agent Johnson from The Matrix Reloaded, but Daniel Bernhardt, who has a definite air of Jon Hamm in his mien, is superb as the titular antihero and the door is definitely left wide open at the end for sequels.

I, for one, would welcome further adventures with Bernhardt reprising the role.

The only nit I would pick with Kostanski's script - and this is as much personal taste as anything - is giving Deathstalker a backstory that necessitates him having a "pre-Deathstalker" name.

Honestly, this is completely unnecessary as the name could have been excised from the script and it would have read just as well if he was a "man with no name" type.

The film was part-funded by Kickstarter in 2024, but (for reasons) as there were no Blu-Rays (or even DVDs) on offer as incentives I just chipped in at the lowest level to get my name in the credits... because I'm easily pleased.

This did mean I had to import the Blu-Ray off my own back this week - thanks to eBay.

I know there are going to be those who moan about what's missing from the traditional Deathstalker formula (even though, surprisingly having now seen the film, it is front-and-centre in the comic book spin-off released by Vault Comics in the wake of the Kickstarter).

However, if anything, 2025's Deathstalker proves you can still make outrageous, trashy, dark fantasy sword-and-sorcery movies in this day and age that cater to audiences both old and new.

My "thank you" in the credits: best $10 I've ever invested in a Kickstarter 😉

What A Great Time To Be A Deadite

Dig that funky retro logo for Evil Dead Wrath

After the sheer brilliance of Evil Dead Rise (let's be honest, there's never been a bad Evil Dead movie), not one but two continuations of the saga are being worked on.

Evil Dead Burn is now due out this July 22 and now it's been announced that work has begun on Evil Dead Wrath, written and directed by Francis Galluppi.

Nothing is known about the plots of either of these new additions to the franchise, although there are rumours that Bruce Campbell may return as the iconic Ashley J. 'Ash'  Williams in Wrath.

Production has begun this week - in Auckland, New Zealand - on Evil Dead Wrath. The occasion was marked by the release of the movie's striking, retro logo (pictured above).

Are You My Mummy?

The young daughter of a journalist disappears into the desert without a trace -  eight years later, the broken family is shocked when she is returned to them, as what should be a joyful reunion turns into a living nightmare.

I wasn't sure about this iteration of The Mummy until I saw that trailer and got major Evil Dead vibes from it.

Lee Cronin, of course, directed the marvellous Evil Dead Rise, so that's not really surprising.

Archie's Battle With The Army of Darkness Continues

Main cover art by Francisco Francavilla

Following on from February's launch of the delirious crossover we never knew we wanted, but now can't live without, Archie X Army of Darkness issue two drops in March.

Written by the great Erik Burnham, with interior art by Bill Galvan, sees the Evil Dead's Ash Williams stuck in wholesome Riverdale with a horde of deadites accidentally summoned by none other than Archie Andrews himself.

IT'S A DEADITE PARTY!

Reggie's lake house soiree was supposed to be the social event of the season, but now it may prove to be the town of Riverdale's swan song! Following Archie Andrews's unwitting awakening of the Army of Darkness, chaos - in the form of an undead horde - has descended upon the shore.

With slavering evil literally at their doorstep, the gang has only one hope of making it out alive - the Savior of S-Mart, one Ashley J. Williams. Unluckily for them, the Chosen One's car currently has four flat tires!

The issue comes with a variety of variant covers, as shown here, along with a selection of black and white variants and art-only alternates (without the text).

Variant cover by Bill Galvan

Variant cover by Laura Braga

Variant cover by Craig Cermak

Variant cover by Stuart Sayger

Archie Gets Groovy Facing The Army of Darkness

Robert Hack cover art for Archie X The Army of Darkness,
from Dynamite and Archie Comics

Clearly February is the month for crazy comic book crossovers. Following the exciting announcement of the Fantastic Four landing on The Planet of The Apes, it's now come to my attention that a certain Ash Williams (of Evil Dead/Army of Darkness fame) is paying a visit to Riverdale - to save Archie and his crew from a soul-sucking horde of zombie deadites!

There’s a certain man – name’s Ash, you may have heard of him – who is doomed to battle against the forces of evil, over and over again, whether he likes it or not. No matter where he goes, the cycle of violence always repeats itself – until the day that he arrives in the picturesque town of Riverdale.

This supernaturally wholesome community seems to break the curse that has plagued Ash ever since he first encountered its otherworldly evil all those years ago. Or rather, the curse was broken – until an over-curious teenager named Archie finds a copy of the Necronomicon Ex Mortis and reads a portion of it aloud, summoning the horrifying Deadites once again!

Now Ash and the good townsfolk of Riverdale must hold back the undead hordes long enough for Archie to undo what he’s unwittingly done. Otherwise, an Army of Darkness will roll over Riverdale and destroy everything and everyone in its path – and that’s just not going to happen on Ashley J. Williams’s watch!

Fresh-faced author Erik Burnham (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters) joins wide-eyed artist Bill Galvan (Archie, Guardians of the Galaxy) for a long night’s journey into mayhem with Archie X Army of Darkness #1!

Burnham's run on Ghostbusters was superb, so I have high hopes for this melding of two very different humorous franchises when the first issue arrives in stores in February.

Featuring clean-cut covers from Galvan, Robert Hack, Laura Braga, Craig Cermak, and Stuart Sayger , this premier issue also boasts a special Premium Mystery Blind Bag that contains three limited editions of the issue selected randomly from a range of variant covers exclusive to this offering – including two original covers by Galvan and Francesco Francavilla, as well as multiple line art variants and coloured blanks. Please Note: The number of Blind Bags is limited, and allocations may occur.

Darkman (1990)

Gruff action star and hardman Liam Neeson stars in Sam Raimi's Darkman as Peyton Westlake, an up-and-coming scientist on the verge of creating 3D printable replacement skin.

Unfortunately, Peyton's lab - with him in it - gets trashed and torched by a gang of mobsters looking for an incriminating memorandum that his attorney girlfriend, Julie Hastings (Frances McDormand), has acquired.

Presumed dead, Peyton's body is fished out the river and given an experimental treatment, administered by - of all people - a surprise, and uncredited, cameo appearance by the lovely Jenny Agutter.

This grants the disfigured scientist increased strength and makes him immune to pain, but also means he's prone to fits of berserk anger.

Waking up, Peyton breaks free and returns to the ruins of his lab, where he somehow salvages enough equipment to resume his experiments in replacement skin growth.

With his new abilities, he begins to exact his revenge on the mobsters, who are led by the iconic figure of the late Larry Drake as Robert G Durant.

Durant happens to work for Julie's boss, Louis Strack Jr. (Colin Friels), a corrupt property developer looking to transform the city into his own vision of the 'city of tomorrow'.

Peyton's lab-made skin can only last 99 minutes in sunlight, but he realises that as well as helping to rebuild his own face, he can now impersonate anyone he chooses... as long as he has enough photographs of them to build up a 3D image in his computer.

Before he plunged headfirst into the world of superhero movies with his classic Spider-Man trilogy in the early 2000s, Sam Raimi tested the waters in 1990 with Darkman, his inspired horror spin on the pulp antihero, The Shadow.

However, Darkman also blends in elements of classic, tragic creations from the black-and-white era of creature features, such as The Invisible Man, The Phantom of The Opera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Frankenstein's monster.

There's even sprinklings of The Incredible Hulk in the mix, with the stylised sequences of the scientist's raging anger and then his sad farewell to Julie at the end when he finally adopts the moniker of Darkman, merging into the crowd wearing the face of Bruce Campbell (another great cameo in a film loaded with them).

Based on Raimi's own story, with a script he helped co-write with Chuck Pfarrer, Ivan Raimi (Sam's brother), Daniel Goldin, and Joshua Goldin, director Sam Raimi created a visually-striking 'superhero' in Darkman, who operates intelligently from the shadows, resorting only to violence in the action-packed grand finale of the 96-minute movie.

While not quite as inventive - or gonzo - as his game-changing Evil Dead movies, Darkman still manages to capture Raimi's delightfully twisted sense of humour.

The "experimental treatment" Peyton receives as a near-dead John Doe is a bit random and never really explained (or revisited), but then again once you accept the weird science of Peyton's DIY replacement skin you know you're in for a wild, pulpy ride where things don't have to make 100 per cent sense to be fun and entertaining.

Two direct-to-video sequels came out in the mid-90s - Darkman II: The Return of Durant and Darkman III: Die Darkman Die - although it will surprise no one that Neeson didn't return as the titular hero, being replaced by The Mummy's Arnold Vosloo, and Sam Raimi took a producing role, leaving the directing to TV director Bradford May.

I will, of course, now be tracking them down (there's a Blu-Ray box set on Amazon with the full trilogy).

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell (1995)

Trapped inside a haunted house, a body builder must survive a blood soaked night of insanity to save himself and his friends from a demonic ghost that is hell-bent on revenge.

Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell aka The Japanese Evil Dead wears its love of Sam Raimi's original movies proudly on its sleeve and makes no bones about "homaging" styles, shots, and even classic lines from Evil Dead and Evil Dead II.

Writer/director/star Shinichi Fukazawa's 1995 subtitled horror barely lasts over an hour and while it starts slowly, the extended final act is simply a gonzo sequence of man-versus-indestructible demon that fans of Raimi's early work will really appreciate.

The basic plot wallows joyfully in its grainy, direct-to-video, amateur constraints following the titular bodybuilder opening up a creepy, rundown, old house in the city - which his father owned decades ago - to try and woo back his ex-girlfriend, a photojournalist looking for a "ghost story".

They've brought with them a psychic, who promptly gets possessed by the angry spirit of a murdered woman and can only be stopped by the complete dismemberment and destruction of their corpse.

The ghost uses the psychic's abilities to boost her own and trap the bodybuilder and journalist in the house, like a supernatural escape room where their only chance at freedom depends on the total eradication of the paranormal presence. 

There are moments - particularly when animated body parts combine - that reminded me of that other old school, darkly funny, Grand Guignol splatter classic, Re-Animator.

Stop-motion special effects bring a touch of Jan Švankmajer to the proceedings, while also feeling very Japanese, and the body builder's climactic discovery of his 'inner power' was reminiscent of both the TV iteration of The Incredible Hulk and Grant Morrison and Richard Case's Flex Mentallo in Morrison's seminal run on the Doom Patrol comics.

A shockingly fun, cheap and cheerful, short film, what Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell lacks in originality it makes up for in its passion for the material, accepting its budgetary and technical limitations and embracing them with great aplomb.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Horror! The Horror! The Horror!

These days I'm a sucker for horror movies, with a particular weakness for monster movies.

While my passion for the genre began with a teenage viewing of the original 1978 Dawn Of The Dead, one of my favourite franchises remains the Nightmare On Elm Street movies.

I can still clearly remember the buzz the first one generated around school when it came out in 1984.

I was 17 at the time and not as into horror movies as I am now, but the "word on the street" was - in those pre-internet, pre-DVD dark ages - that it was the "most terrifying movie anyone had ever seen ever!"

Of course, when I eventually got to see it on VHS it was quite tame; still brilliant, thrilling and gory, but nowhere near as horrific as my teenage mind had imagined, fuelled by the hyperbole of fellow teenagers who'd claimed to have seen it... and just made it through to the credits by the skin of their tough guy teeth.

Even at the time some of the mood-setting special effects seemed quite primitive, these days they look positively archaic.

I seem to recall that the first horror film my parents let me stay up to watch on television was The Omen II. That scared the crap out of me and gave me nightmares for days - but now that also seems quite tame to my cynical forty-something brain.

I guess at the time it was some 'reverse psychology' parenting to stop me pestering them to be allowed to stay up and watch 'grown-up' movies.

It must have worked because I don't recall any horror movie encounters until the height of the heady days of the tabloid-led 'video nasties' scare (in the early '80s), when it was de rigueur to go round each others' houses and dare each other to watch the latest piece of nasty that someone had acquired on video tape.

I didn't make it through either The Evil Dead or Texas Chain Saw Massacre - which is ironic as the latter would, decades later, form the backbone of my university dissertation, and both movies rate among my top horror flicks these days.

It wasn't until one of these illicit gatherings when a gang of us were watching George Romero's Dawn Of The Dead that I had my 'Road To Damascus' moment and realised I was actually rather enjoying this movie and would like to see more of the same.

But that's not to say I've become so hardened and blasé to horror that nothing has a lasting impact on me.

Here's a quick rundown of the top three horror movies that still give me the heebeejeebies:

• The Exorcist

• The Blair Witch Project

• The Amazing Mr Blunden

No real shocks with the first two. I know The Blair Witch Project doesn't do it for everyone, but it digs at me on a psychological level for some reason - I guess it's something about being lost in the woods with an unseen antagonist, and the cinema-vérité style, with the handheld camera, just makes it all the more real.

It's that level of 'truth' that also makes The Exorcist so unnerving to me. Later horror films have generally taken a lighter touch, and even been more action orientated, but The Exorcist unfolds like docudrama and, to this day, as with Blair Witch, I can't watch it without the lights on!

The final entry in this trio of terror is an unlikely one that is obviously very personal.

My gran took me to see The Amazing Mr Blunden at the town centre cinema in Tunbridge Wells when I was six - and it scarred me for life.

To be honest I can't remember much of the specifics of the film, just that it involved a ghost and a large house fire. It wasn't the ghost that got to me, it was the house fire.

To this day, I haven't watched the film again because something about it just flicked a switch in my little, six-year-old brain.

And I have no plans to... even though it appears to actually be a U-certificate kids' film and not the hideous torture porn my addled brain recalls being 'forced' to sit through Clockwork Orange style with my eyelids pinned back.

Sweet Revenge (2025)

Sweet Revenge, officially released today on YouTube, is the first live-action appearance - now all the legal wrangling has, hopefully, been ironed out - of the 'new' Jason Voorhees (the unstoppable killer from the Friday The 13th franchise).

Much brouhaha was made of the fact that this 13-minute short is sponsored by a cider company, but, to be honest, the product placement is minimal and subtle. Had I not read about it before hand, I wouldn't have noticed the label on the bottle Ally Ioannides carries around for a minute or so.

It so happens that Ioannides is probably the best thing about this "vignette", her Eve morphing into an interesting twist on the classic Final Girl trope.

Otherwise, Sweet Revenge pretty much retreads classic Friday The 13th territory in a very condensed format.

My good friend Justin 'Pun' Isaac put it best in his review: "...it boiled down the classic slasher formula and just cut out the filler".

Eve and her fiancé Kyle (Toussaint Morrison), and a couple of friends, appear to have AirBnB-ed a holiday cottage from pervy Harold (Chris Carlson), unaware that it's on the site of the former Camp Crystal Lake... the primary hunting ground of the supernatural slasher Jason Voorhees (Schuyler White).

As everyone is settling in, Eve takes a canoe out on the lake in broad daylight - only to be dragged under the water, seemingly by Jason. Inexplicably when she surfaces it's now night time, and Jason has started butchering people.

Why didn't Jason kill Eve when he dragged her under the water? Just how long did she hold her breath? Perhaps Eve did die and is now a deadite zombie? Who knows? 

While I have no issue with Jason's hockey mask design (which seems to be a hot button topic in the online community), the first thing that struck me when the masked killer appeared was how thin and scrawny he appeared. Stuntman Schuyler White is no Kane Hodder, that's for sure.

Written and directed by Wrong Turn's Mike P Nelson, there's a smattering of gore in Sweet Revenge, although the bulk of the kills occur off screen, and a healthy amount of 'strong language' for something thought to be a drinks' advertisement.

With minimal time to fit in an expansive story, Eve is the only character that changes and develops, which makes me hope that she has some future role to play in the resurrected franchise.

However, what, if anything, this short film has to do with the grander Jason mythology going forward, I can't even imagine. Will we see Eve again in an upcoming movie? And if so will it replay her origin story as well?

• Sweet Revenge can be viewed here on YouTube.

Nightmares Become "Reality" In Traumatika

This is not a movie you see, this is a movie you survive! Only in theaters September 12.

Mikey's night terrors become reality when his mother begins showing signs of demonic possession. What he's about to experience will haunt him for the rest of his life and claim countless lives across generations.

I'm definitely getting an Evil Dead Rise vibe from this trailer, but that's not a bad thing.

Jennifer's Body (2009)

Remember that visceral feel of tingly excitement you felt the first time you watched the original Nightmare on Elm Street or Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II?

Prepare to feel it again (although maybe not for quite so long).

Jennifer's Body isn't quite in those leagues but is still a meaty, thrilling, monster-stalking-teens horror flick... that just happens to star two of the hottest stars in Hollywood at that time: Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried.

The story opens with Needy (Seyfriend) in a mental institution then flashes back to explain how she got there.

Needy and Jennifer (Fox) are BFFs, friends since childhood, in a small town called Devil's Kettle - named for a nearby waterfall and its freaky sinkhole (a wonderful detail that makes for a great red herring).

Head cheerleader Jennifer is a typical gorgeous, ditzy teen, always thinking about boys, while Needy is a more normal, average, homely girl with a pleasant boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons) - until the girls go to the community's one, out-of-town, bar to see a visiting big city band play.

A fire breaks out at the dive, killing several people, and in the confusion Jennifer leaves with the band... only to show up hours later at Needy's home, looking like death... and spewing up disgusting, tarry bile over the lino.

Jennifer is no longer the girl that Needy grew up with, but a flesh-eating demon (possibly a succubus) after the band tried to sacrifice her to Satan to ensure they had a successful career.

Unfortunately the ceremony required a virgin and that's one thing Jennifer wasn't!

And to maintain her good looks, Jennifer now needs to feed...

Writer Diablo Cody clearly has an ear for teen banter and there's a lot of a very dark humour at work here that, with the overall Buffy The Vampire Slayer vibe of the piece, made it compelling viewing in my book.

About two-thirds the way through, my sixth sense started trying to tell me that there was "something else" going on here and while some of the clues suggested a Fight Club-style twist might be on the cards; ultimately I was quite relieved to be proved wrong.

What seems odd though is there are several rather hurried segues between scenes that, upon further exploration of the DVD, are covered in the "deleted scenes" (particularly from Chip and Needy's tussle with Jennifer in the abandoned swimming pool to Needy's attack on Jen in her bedroom).

As it stands the movie is only just over an hour-and-half long and it could easily have absorbed a lot of these cut moments back into its flow.

There's also a couple of sequences of heavy info dumping when (a) Jennifer is recounting what happened to her when she went away with the band and (b) when Needy is researching what has happened to Jennifer.

I realise both, and especially the latter, are slightly tongue-in-cheek - as highlighted by Chip's comment: "Our library has an occult section?", but it isn't quite as subtle as maybe Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kusama were hoping.

Perhaps I was paying too much attention - because I was enjoying it so - but some of the more mysterious aspects of the story, like the wild animals flocking round Jennifer when she is about to kill someone and Needy's almost physic connection with, and vivid daydreams about, the demon are thrown out there but never really fully explored or explained.

Ultimately, Jennifer's Body is a flawed masterpiece. It could have been a horror movie of legendary status because it's heaving with good ideas, but somewhere along the line those ideas got either partially diluted or exorcised completely.

Its failure at the box office wasn't helped by some dreadful miss-selling and the complicit, lazy media who accepted the PR spin that this was some Megan Fox vehicle in an American Pie (with lashings of blood) style vein.

It's so much more than that, but unfortunately the movie's strange idiosyncrasies meant it wasn't strong enough to overcome the crass publicity campaign that 20th Century Fox had attached to it.

It would be nice to think there's a more complete "director's cut" lurking out there somewhere that more closely resembles the writer and director's original vision for this movie, but I fear that's an empty dream.

Nevertheless, Jennifer's Body is still a fine piece of gore-splattered, Buffy-style entertainment that's over too quickly and certainly leaves you with a desire to revisit Devil's Kettle sometime soon.

Jason Goes to Hell - The Final Friday (1993)

Okay, time for some brief personal backstory: the only reason I started this Friday the 13th challenge was an incentive to get to Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday.

I wanted to watch them in order, to see if there was any foreshadowing for some of the moments I knew were coming in this entry in the franchise, even though it was one I definitely knew I'd never seen before.

Although it's not available via Sky Cinema or through streaming, Paul had bought me the DVD over a year ago - but I hadn't gotten around to watching it until now.

And, I have to say, I loved it. Primarily for the way it ties in not just to Nightmare On Elm Street (with Freddy's claw grabbing the mask right at the end), but also with the Evil Dead mythology.

I'd known about that link for ages (hence my keenness to see this chapter in Jason's story) but hadn't expected it to be so overt.

I thought it might be a shot of the Necronomicon (which also gives it some Lovecraft flavouring as well) in the background, or some such fleeting Easter Egg. but it's front and centre, when Steven Freeman (John D. LeMay) is exploring the Voorhees home and flicks through the ancient tome:

Completely ignoring Jason's fate at the end of Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason Goes To Hell opens with the FBI setting a trap for the supernatural serial killer in the woods near Crystal Lake, resulting in him being blown to kingdom come.

The pieces of Jason's body are taken to a morgue, where his still beating heart mesmerises the coroner (Deadwood's Richard Gant), sending him off on a murderous rampage.

Meanwhile, Crystal Lake is celebrating the lifting of its 20 year "death curse", with Joey B's Diner offering Jason-themed meals.

But tough guy bounty hunter Creighton Duke (The X-Files' Steven Williams) is having none of this, because he knows that Jason can only be finally killed by destroying his heart, and only someone of the Voorhees bloodline has the power to do that.

Jason's supernatural - Deadite - power is burning up his host body, so he needs to transfer the parasite within him to other bodies on his journey to find someone of his bloodline - not only are they the only ones that can kill him, they are also the only bodies that he is able to transform into his natural form (the zombie slasher we know and love from the later films in the franchise).

Hapless doof  Steven Freeman ends up getting framed for one of Jason's murders, but soon discovers - through a meeting with Duke - who Jason is really targeting and why.

He busts out of jail and sets off to track down the body-hopping killer.

On one hand, Jason Goes To Hell is quite unlike earlier entries in the Friday the 13th series, but it's a real hardcore '80s gonzo trio that extrapolates on the supernatural elements that were woven in Jason Lives and The New Blood, so we already know he's operating in a world where these things are possible.

Jason Goes To Hell is also full of definitive details about the franchise: such as the killer being born of Elias and Pamela Voorhees in 1946, he supposedly drowned when he was 11, he's responsible (prior to this movie) for 83 confirmed kills (and many more unconfirmed), the existence of the Voorhees home (which, surprisingly, we've never seen before) etc

So, as someone who sees movies like this through the eyes of a gamer and comic book reader, I'm totally grokking all these stats, and attempting to headcanon them into my own vision of Jason's mythology (which now embraces Freddy and Ash, of course!).

Child's Play (2019)

Single-mum Karen Barclay (Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza) works on the returns desk of ZedMart in Chicago, and brings home a faulty Buddi doll as an early birthday present for her deaf son Andy (Gabriel Bateman).

The Buddi doll is a robotic companion for children, capable of adapting to their owners, syncing with smart technology etc

Only this Buddi, which says it's name is Chucky (voiced by the legend that is Mark Hamill), has issues.

Once it has bonded with Andy, declaring him his new "bets friend", he becomes psychotically protective, taking punitive measures against anyone, or anything, that it feels has slighted Andy.

Written by Tyler Burton Smith and directed by Lars Klevberg, Child's Play is a brilliant, clever, reworking of the original Child's Play from 1988.

Voodoo possession has been replaced by the vengeance of a pissed engineer in a Vietnamese sweat shop/toy factory, and 2019's Child's Play has great fun with the modern penchant for "smart homes", integrated devices etc

Its resemblance to the original is purely superficial, and that's a great thing because this Child's Play is very much its own thing.

Andy even acquires his own, rather Stranger Things-like, gang of amusing and entertaining young friends, who both help and hinder him in his growing troubles with the overly possessive android (perhaps letting Chucky watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 wasn't the best call?).

As bodies start to drop in the neighbourhood, local police detective Mike Norris (Atlanta's Brian Tyree Henry), whose mum, Doreen (Carlease Burke) lives down the hall from Mike and Karen, gets involved.

Matters come to a head at a midnight launch for the Buddi 2 doll at ZedMart, when Mike thinks he has his culprit.

The climax of the movie is a gruesomely over-the-top splash of Grand Guignol, that skirts Saw-sensibilities to lean more into Evil Dead II (but without any supernatural involvement).

A heady blend of suspense, excitement, creative kills, dark humour and a top-notch cast, Child's Play is one of the strongest new mainstream horror flicks I've seen in ages.

While I love the whole voodoo shtick of the original Child's Play franchise, I think rooting the new movie firmly in the realm of modern technology was a stroke of genius.

Not only is there a tongue-in-cheek lesson here about society's rapid embrace of inter-connected technology, but the pathos Mark Hamill brings to Chucky makes the killer doll almost sympathetic.

He's just responding to societal stimuli to do what he thinks is right to look after his "best friend".

But he doesn't know any better. To paraphrase Brian Conley: "It's just a doll!"

Galaxy Of Terror (1981)

Recommended to me by my good mate Paul, Galaxy Of Terror is a slightly bonkers, early '80s Alien-wannabe, produced by the legendary Roger Corman and resplendent in that "they're making this up as they go along" feeling that he always brings to his movies.

In an alien galaxy, there is a world ruled by a glowing-headed dictator known as The Master (a very natty special effect, it must be said, and a character that has nothing to do with Doctor Who), who hand picks a miss-matched team of astronauts to embark on a rescue mission to the desolate planet Morganthus - where an earlier ship has crashed.

The rescue team boasts a host of well-known performers: Erin Moran (Joanie from Joanie Loves Chachi and Happy Days), Robert Englund (Nightmare On Elm Street, V etc,) David Lynch-stalwart Grace Zabriskie, horror-movie veteran Sid Haig and familiar TV faces Ray Walston and Bernard Behrens.

Throw in some rubbery monsters and an unpleasant assault by a giant rape-maggot that ranks with the original Evil Dead's animated tree as just plain wrong, and it's no wonder this has become a cult classic.

To be fair it quite quickly shakes off its Alien aspirations as it heads more into pseudo-psychological territory somewhere between Shakespeare and Space 1999.

For a low-budget schlockfest, Galaxy Of Terror has some very impressive visuals: as well as the storm-lashed surface of Morganthus we are treated to the sci-fi/Dungeons & Dragons delights of the massive, maze-like interior of a pyramidal structure the adventurers have to explore to turn off the energy beam that caused them to crash-land as well.

And if that isn't enough of an incentive to track this B-movie treasure down (as long as you can stomach the giant maggot scene and a squirm-worthy moment involving a shard of crystal sliding under someone's skin) there's the added bonus that the film is only 81 minutes long.

Glorious (2022)

After breaking up with his seemingly perfect girlfriend, a broken-hearted man, Wes (True Blood's Ryan Kwanten) is driving across country and realises he needs to stop before tiredness causes him to have an accident.

Pulling into a remote woodland, roadside, rest stop, he rages, drinks, destroys mementos from his past, and eventually finds himself locked inside the isolated bathroom.

Just to make his problems worse, there's a voice coming from the other toilet stall that claims to be an elder demigod, Ghat (voiced by JK Simmons), who needs a favour from Wes to prevent his father, an all-powerful cosmic creator god, from annihilating mankind.

Despite moments of broad dark comedy, Glorious is an incredibly tight piece of cosmic horror, tapping into Lovecraftian tropes by way of Michael Shea.

Penned by Joshua Hull, David Ian McKendry, and Todd Rigney, and directed by Rebekah McKendry, who has also directed the Elevator Game, Glorious is a delightfully grotty, unnerving, creepy horror that plays with expectations and makes great use of its limited cast and single main location.

The film is very self-contained and claustrophobic, for the most part a two-hander between Kwanten and Simmons' voice, with occasional appearances from the memory of Wes's girlfriend, Brenda (Sylvia Grace Crim), that could almost be a stage play if not for the moments of over the top special effects and gore.

It's certainly one of the best attempts I've seen to modernise the spirit of Lovecraft, putting it on a par with The Void, mixed with elements of Color Out Of Space and Evil Dead, and within touching distance of John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness.

The pared-to-the-bone presentation means you can't really discuss much about the plot of Glorious without lurching headlong into verboten spoiler territory, but if you've read many of my reviews and think our tastes might gel then you'll probably love Glorious as much as I did.

Breadcrumbs leading to personal revelations about Wes are sown throughout the script, so you need to pay attention not just to what is being said, but the context.

While some of the sexual allusions might not have sat well with old starchy-pants Howard Phillips Lovecraft I reckon he would have liked the story of Glorious anyway for its combination of grim horror and wit.

I can understand why some might be underwhelmed, or even disappointed, by the ending but for me it was narratively and emotionally perfect, emulating the bleak spirit of many Lovecraftian horror tales.

Hellboy - The Crooked Man (2024)

It's the late 1950s and, following a train accident, Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and rookie Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense researcher Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph aka Agatha from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) find themselves stranded in the Appalachian Mountains.

They soon become entangled in the life of Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White), an ex-soldier and former resident of the area who has returned to try and undo a pact he made with a demon when he was a child.

Initially, they accompany Tom to visit his former childhood sweetheart, Cora Fisher (Hannah Margetson), who has since become a witch.

Tom explains to the BRPD agents that he had been seduced by a witch called Effie Colb (Leah McNamara) who had taight how to create a lucky totem and urged him to summon a local demonic ghost-entity called The Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale).

Cora returns to her home, telling Tom and the agents that she is being persued by other witches... and it tunrs out that they are being led by Effie, who looks exactly as she did when Tom met her all those years earlier.

She is riding a white horse that turns out to be Tom's transformed father (Anton Trendafilov), who promptly dies when Effie is scared away by Hellboy.

Tom wants to take his father to the nearby church, to be buried in consecreated ground.

However, on the way they are attacked by a demonic snake that kills Cora and injects Hellboy with its toxin, causing him to have hallucinatory visions of his mother, Sara (Carola Colombo), herself a witch.

At the church, the group - meeting the blind Reverend Watts (Joseph Marcell aka the legendary Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air) are besieged by The Crooked Man and his coterie of witches.

Through some clever magic, our heroes manage to repel the supernatural attackers.

Hellboy and Tom then chase after The Crooked Man to the abandoned mansion that was once his home, while Jo and The Reverend head into the old mines that crisscross the mountain, believing that that is the source of The Crooked Man's power.

Working from a screenplay co-written by Mike Mignola (the creator of Hellboy) and Christopher Golden, his frequent collaborator, director and co-writer Brian Taylor serves up a Hellboy movie unlike any that have come before.

I have to confess that, for all my decades as a comic book reader, I might have only read a handful of single Hellboy issues and they've never really hooked me as Guillermo del Toro's early 2000's pulpy Hellboy duology did.

But, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, an adaptation of a 2008 Hellboy mini-series of the same name by Mike Mignola, steps away from the superheroic blockbuster nature of the del Toro era and leans, instead, heavily into Hellboy's horror roots. 

It's of a smaller scale, and more focused on its single driving narrative, than we might be used to - cinematically-speaking - from movies involving Hellboy and his compadres in the BPRD.

But have no doubt, Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a phenomenal down-and-dirty work of  mesmerising, disorientating weird Appalachian folk magic that has more in common with the works of HP Lovecraft (who gets namechecked) and atmospheric films like The Blair Witch Project, Night of The Demon, The VVitch, and Evil Dead.

If you know my taste in horror then you can see why I loved The Crooked Man.

The verisimilitude of the world created is second to none, relying mainly on practical effects, and proving you don't need a honking big Hollywood budget to produce memorable horror movies.

While this is very much its own thing - officially unconnected to del Toro's wonderful flicks and whatever the dickens that 2019 mess was - I could see an argument for Jack Kesy's charismatic Hellboy being a younger version of Ron Perlman's take on the character.

I can also see why The Crooked Man might not be for everyone, but given that this was co-written by the character's creator, I have to believe that this is the closest iteration of Hellboy to the source material.

Alien: Romulus (2024)

Locked into a seemingly inescapable Weyland-Yutani contract on a bleak mining colony in deep space, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her lovable "brother" Andy/ND-255 the android (David Jonsson), a font of dad jokes, team up with some friendly rapscallions to loot a derelict space ship that has just drifted into orbit.

However, upon docking with the craft, they discover it's not a ship, but a hastily abandoned space station. The group hopes to scavenge the cryo-pods so they can put themselves into suspended animation for the nine year flight to another colony.

However, the pods aren't fully fuelled up, so they have to venture further into the station... where they accidentally awaken a legion of facehuggers that were napping there.

Unsurprisingly, chaos ensues.

Matters aren't improved when the young pickers find the only surviving member of the station's crew is the remnants of a droid called Rook.

Rook is the same model synthetic as Ian Holm's Ash from the original Alien... and just as trustworthy.

Slightly wonky CGI has been used to replicate the late Ian Holm's face which makes Rook look more like a Gerry Anderson Thunderbird than anything else.

I get that this was supposed to be a shorthand and an Easter Egg, but ultimately it comes over as a rather uncomfortable design choice.

Written and directed by Fede Álvarez (who gave us the superb Evil Dead remake in 2013), Alien: Romulus makes no attempt to conceal what it is and this is one of its major strengths, for instance there is no need to explain xenomorphs to its audience or hide the fact that Andy is an android.

The film's biggest flaw, however, is its continual blurring of the line between respecting the franchise's lore and replaying its greatest hits (Andy's quoting of one of Ripley's best-known lines was particularly egregious).

While it builds nicely on what has gone before (managing to tie its story, surprisingly, into key elements from Prometheus), the constant need for the script (co-written by Álvarez with Rodo Sayagues) chokes on a surfeit of heavy-handed homages to earlier Alien movies.

And the thing is, it doesn't need them: there's clearly a cracking slasher in space horror film here, with its cast of teenage chum ready to feed the unstoppable, acid-blooded, monsters haunting the floating house.

It is potentially, as Joe Bob Briggs would call it, a perfect "spam in a cabin" movie.

Important elements are nicely foreshadowed and the central performances from the young cast are wholly believable (and appropriate for a sci-fi spin on the slasher genre), this could have been another classic in the well-loved franchise.

And it is a fun movie, but it's let down purely by film's teeth-grindingly awkward urge to scream: "you know that bit you liked in that other Alien film, well here it is in our film!"