A New Breed Of Zombies Is Shambling In From Korea

Horror master Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) directs a new Korean zombie thriller starring Gianna Jun and Koo Kyo-hwan.

Professor Se-jeong (Jun) is thrust into a bloody nightmare when a rapidly mutating virus is released during a biotech conference causing authorities to seal the facility. Trapped inside with no escape, Se-jeong along with a small group of survivors must fight to stay alive while the infected undergo horrific transformations.

Colony (aka Gunche) is directed by Yeon Sang-ho, the man who brought us the epic Train to Busan, one of the definitive zombie flicks of the modern age.

This great-looking, two-hour long, new Korean-language zombie flick opens in American cinemas on August 28.

Most Definitely Not Milla Jovovich's Resident Evil

From the mind of visionary filmmaker Zach Cregger (Weapons, Barbarian) comes a thrilling - and terrifying - reinvention of the Resident Evil franchise.

In an all-new story, Resident Evil follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in an action-packed, non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.

Sleeping Beauty (2014)

Years before they became a byword for cheap, blockbuster cash-ins (i.e. mockbusters), the first movie I discovered by The Asylum was a fantasy film (simply called Dragon, I believe) in the discount aisle of Woolworths in Tonbridge (which shows just how long ago it was).

Since then I have remained firm in my belief that although they're not exactly known for quality productions, The Asylum is at its best when working in the fantasy genre.

That said, Sleeping Beauty isn't up to the pulpy, B-movie calibre of, say, an Arrowstorm film, but it still has its moments.

Directed by Casper Van Dien, who also appears as King David alongside his wife, Catherine Oxenberg as Queen Violet and his daughter Grace Van Dien as Princess Dawn aka Sleeping Beauty, the film is a liberal reworking of the fairy tale that starts in Disney territory then caroms off into its own little world.

To complete the family atmosphere on set, Maya Van Dien (daughter of both Casper Van Dien and Catherine Oxenberg) appears as a totally random addition to the story - a young girl called Newt (Aliens, much?) who has survived inside the enchanted castle and gives aid to Princess Dawn's rescuers.

Events initially unfold as they do in Disney's Sleeping Beauty cartoon, with the Three Good Fairies bestowing gifts upon the newborn Princess Dawn (although the guards' ill-fitting helmets and the treasure chests that look like cardboard boxes give away that this isn't the Disney version).

But then busty, yummy-mummy, evil witch queen Tambria (Olivia d'Abo) - whose invite got lost in the post - turns up and zaps Dawn with the familiar curse, then proceeds to blow up the good fairies.

In The Asylum's version, Dawn is raised alone in a castle tower, educated by her parents, and kept away from spinning wheel needles (several on-the-nose double entendres involving the word 'prick' got my hopes up this was going to be a wittily-scripted comedy; it's not), until just before her 16th birthday. And what do you know? She only gets tricked by Tambria into pricking her finger and falling asleep (taking the whole kingdom down with her).

A century passes and in a neighbouring kingdom, a servant called Barrow (Game Of Thrones' Finn Jones) discovers fragments of a map and a message leading to the cursed castle. Now, I'm not sure exactly who wrote this as Princess Dawn (as is suggested) is, of course, in a magical sleep.

I presumed it was actually an elaborate trap set out by Tambria - who has also been trapped inside the castle and unable to harm her slumbering nemesis - but this is never made clear.

Barrow's master is the obnoxious, privileged, bullying Tory-boy Prince Jayson (Edward Lewis French), who, learning of Barrow's discovery, decides to lead his coterie of yobbish mates on a jolly wheeze to rescue the treasure in Sleeping Beauty's castle and claim that kingdom for his own.

Again, it's never exactly clear how much this neighbouring territory knows about the curse on King David's land or the power of the wicked sorceress Tambria who now rules (kind of) there.

Given that it's just "over the mountain" from Jayson's realm, the general knowledge of the whole "asleep for a century" scenario seems rather vague.

Of course, Tambria isn't going to make things easy and throws a scaly pliosaur, a giant lizardman, a legion of shadowy wraiths and a never-ending army of zombies at the adventuring party that's coming for the treasure (and maybe the chance to snog a sleeping 115-year-old princess).

A particularly wonderful aspect about Jayson's loathsome cronies is, given that they are supposed to be trained fighters, just how cowardly they are. Their go-to tactic when confronted by any monster is "run away, run away".

The only one who shows the slightest bit of decency towards Barrow, and some backbone, is Gruner (Gil Kolirin) - who may be a commander or captain or something in Jayson's army, again it's not very clear.

The adventuring party gradually gets whittled down as they wander, seemingly aimlessly, around the same sections of castle and overgrown garden, until the final confrontation with Tambria.

By this time, Jayson has switched sides (or is he bluffing?), Newt has popped up and disappeared in a cloud of cryptic warnings several times, and Gruner and Barrow have bonded.

I'm not entirely sure who Sleeping Beauty is aimed at as there's some gore (Tambria pulling the head off of someone and dragging out their spine comes to mind) and an uncomfortable, rape-threat moment where a couple of brothers in Jayson's gang discover a magically sleeping servant woman in the castle kitchens. Thankfully Barrow steps in before that goes too far.

There's certainly an attempt at a Dungeons & Dragons vibe in the latter stages of this movie (torch-lit exploration, traps etc), but despite constant references to Barrow's map, there's never any real feeling that the adventurers are navigating a convincing, contiguous environment.

One minute they are stuck on one side of a lake, the next there's a bridge; they talk about going to certain places, but are next seen elsewhere.

This also isn't some hallucinogenic, dreamscape either, but simply a combination of poor directing, editing and scriptwriting.

The low-budget monsters aren't too bad though; the giant lizardman (despite being a cheap CGI creation) is quite interesting and the various undead have the added bonus that Tambria keeps resurrecting them every time they get nobbled.

As well as the many, many plot holes in the story (some of which I've alluded to above), more often than not the dialogue is delivered in quite mannered ways; now I'm not sure if this is director Van Dien trying to create a "fantasy Medieval" ambience but it doesn't really work.

Budgetary limitations abound in this version of Sleeping Beauty (there's no big dragon showdown at the end, for instance) - both in the effects and script - but it's an okay way to pass 90 minutes, if there isn't anything better on TV.

MUSICAL MONDAY: Deathstalker (Brendan McCreary, Chuck Cirino, Slash, and Bear McCreary)

The ’80s cult classic Deathstalker is back in an amped-up, reverential reboot, courtesy of writer-director Steven Kostanski (Frankie Freako, Psycho Goreman) and executive producer Slash (Guns N' Roses).

The film features a stellar, rousing, equally tributary title track from Emmy and BAFTA Award–winning composer Bear McCreary (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Walking Dead) and Slash.

Ator The Fighting Eagle (1982)

"During the childhood of mankind, while some colonies have only just discovered fire, others are already using technology, Inventor Akron discovers the 'radiating matter' which can be used to make earth a paradise or a hell. Soran, a strayed former pupil of Akron, steals his invention. Akron sends out his daughter to fetch the invincible Ator to fight Soran..."

-- so reads the descriptive blurb on the back of my DVD of Ator The Fighting Eagle. Only that's not the plot of Ator at all! But then the poster shown above is also rather misleading as Ator never uses a three-headed flail and his animal companion is a cute bear cub - not a sabretooth tiger!

This (unintentionally?) hilarious, cheesetastic film has Ator (Miles O'Keefe) on a mission to rescue his new bride, Sunya (Ritza Brown) - who he had believed was his sister until the moment his 'parents' gave their blessing to his wedding plans - from the Temple Of The Spider.

A mockbuster years before The Asylum made it an artform and released to cash in on the original Conan movie, Ator has a by-the-numbers, Joseph Campbell "hero's journey"/Star Wars storyline.

The titular protagonist even picks up an Obi-Wan-style mentor, Griba (Edmund Purdom), and a money-driven Han Solo-ish female rogue Roon (Sabrina Siani) along the way to help him blow up the Death Star... er... destroy The Temple Of The Spider.

It's all tied-in to a very long - and highly detailed - prophecy about how Ator's true father, the legendary Tauren, was doomed in his quest to defeat the Spider Cult and so the destiny has passed to his son, Ator.

The main problem is Ator is rather a rubbish hero - frequently bested in combat, gullible and, frankly, not the sharpest tool in the box - he is constantly being rescued by Roon and the cute bear cub.

The fights are joyously lacklustre, which only adds to the humour, and a couple of times Ator simply abandons Roon during a fight when his attention is distracted by something else.

He only appears to be able to beat people if he catches them by surprise - or has an incredibly powerful magic shield of zapping to hand!

Couple this with stilted and corny dialogue, some wonderfully WTF "monsters" (the walking dead that simply disappear, the blind warriors, the shadow demon, the shapechanging sorceress, the giant spider etc) and all the elements combine to make Ator The Fighting Eagle an incredibly entertaining - and amusing -  way to waste 90 minutes of your life.

That said, as Italian swords-and-sorcery films go, it's head and shoulders above Conquest, the scenery is surprisingly interesting - with strange statues dotted around the landscape - and some of the 'encounter' ideas aren't half-bad.

DEATHSTALKER WEEK: Deathstalker IV - Match Of Titans (1991)

Right from the opening monologue, Deathstalker IV: Match Of Titans sets itself up as a sequel to the original film (reinforcing this with frequent use of recycled clips from the earlier film and the return of Rick Hill, the first, and best, of the original Deathstalkers).

Although Rick is back as Stalker, the years have mellowed him since the hijinks of the first movie, and he appears to have mislaid The Sword Of Justice. Apparently, in the confusion of an earlier battle (actually a mixture of footage from Deathstalker I and III), he ended up with a friend's sword and the friend ended up with the Sword Of Justice. D'oh!

In the process of tracking his friend down, he stumbles across a couple of women being attacked by beastmen and although one of the women dies, her hotter sister - the Kim Cattrall-alike Dionara (Maria Ford) - survives.

The beastpeople of this realm look like ordinary folk but with lion/bear/pig masks (which, of course, is what they are) - but the implication is that these are their true - if unconvincing - faces.

Dionara explains that they were heading to the castle of the sorceress Kana (Michelle Moffett) to take part in a tournament of champions for an unspecified prize (it's never actually revealed why any of the "best warriors within 200 miles" are taking part in this event).

Lion-people, bear-people and pig-people, oh my!

Not only recycling footage (the man being dragged headfirst into a tree and the riotous party where the pig-man pulls someone's arm off both appear for the third time in the quadrilogy), Match Of Titans is a retread of familiar plot-ground from the first Deathstalker.

Unsurprisingly, Dionara eventually reveals herself to Deathstalker as a princess (as well as simply revealing herself) and the rightful ruler of the castle and kingdom that Kana has usurped.

It also comes as no surprise that Kana is using the tournament to eliminate all her potential competition (except, of course, all the other evil sorcerers!), by drugging them individually and then using her magic to transform them into unstoppable "stone zombies".

Written and directed this time by Howard R Cohen, Match Of Titans sees a return to the lasciviousness of the original - the castle comes complete with a lesbian romper room and magical CCTV for the use of Kana and her henchmen to ogle various bodies.

Conveniently, Stalker finds The Sword Of Justice hanging in the basement of Kana's castle - because apparently she has been "unable to unlock its magical power" - just in time for the inevitable showdown where the wicked sorceress gets her deserved comeuppance.

While Match Of Titans doesn't quite measure up to the 'superlative' standards set by the original Deathstalker movie, it's certainly better than the previous two, even if Rick Hill's Deathstalker is a slightly nicer guy here, exhibiting more of the cockiness from Deathstalker III and less of the brazen indifference from the original.

DEATHSTALKER WEEK: Deathstalker III - The Warriors From Hell (1989)

Third Deathstalker film in three days and third actor portraying the lead character, but at least we have the original scriptwriter back, so Deathstalker III: The Warriors From Hell should be up there with the first Deathstalker, right?

Sadly, wrong. Although a lot better than yesterday's Deathstalker II and thankfully the new lead, John Allen Nelson, can tell the difference between being cocky and being a dick, this is very pedestrian fare totally devoid of the gonzo insanity that made the first the classic that it is.

The DVD case even, amusingly, features stills of Rick Hill (the original Deathstalker) and Bernard Erhard (Munkar the wizard from the original movie), even though neither have anything to do with The Warriors From Hell (more's the pity).

Gifted with part of a magic crystal by a dying princess, Deathstalker learns that when the three parts are reunited they reveal the location of Erendor, a "lost city made of treasure" (no, I'm not exactly sure what is meant by that - and when we finally see the city at the end it just looks like an everyday, cod-Medieval town).

Complicating matters, the evil sorcerer Troxartes (Thom Christopher) has taken over the princesses' kingdom, The Southland, and is ruling it with his platonic mistress, Camisarde (Terri Treas). She wants to take their relationship to the next level, but the cool wizard has his eyes set on the dead princesses' twin sister, Carissa (Carla Herd), who he believes has part of the magic crystal that will pair up with his own fragment.

On his quest, Deathstalker is kinda helped by a beardy - but ultimately rather useless - wizard called Nicias (Aarón Hernán), who bears a disturbing likeness to Alan Moore and whose main magical ability appears to be a vanishing trick that involves him spinning round and round in his large fur coat.

Meanwhile, Troxartes has been using his own magic to resurrect warriors he claims he killed and then, for some reason, had buried in the castle crypt. Before you can cough "bullshit", Deathstalker is chatting with one of these faux-zombies about how he actually killed the warrior the first time.

Whiny Carissa swaps sides more often than Adric in Doctor Who and only, finally, decides that Deathstalker is on the side of right when she overhears Troxartes discussing her murder with Camisarde - who, it has to be added, appears to have a total, unexplained, change of heart by the time the credits roll and is last seen snuggling up to Nicias.

Deathstalker also finds time to hook up with valley-living, potato-eating, horse-raising, wild woman Marinda (Claudia Inchaurregui) who brings her bow skills to the party and ultimately has a "meaningful" death, which everyone soon forgets about.

The story gets a bit messy along the way, when a third fragment of the crystal appears out of the blue.

In the end everything boils down to a big brawl at Troxartes' castle with Deathstalker being backed-up by the zombie-warriors (after he frees their souls from bondage) and a bunch of villagers who, I thought, had nothing to do with anything, against the wizard's bucket-helmeted soldiers.

DEATHSTALKER WEEK: Deathstalker II - Duel Of The Titans (1987)

Having exploded at the end of the original movie, Deathstalker has regenerated into a younger man for Deathstalker II - Duel Of The Titans. Or it's a prequel. Or, most likely, no-one really cared.

One of the things that made the original Deathstalker so great was that it was played straight so the sequel's ham-fisted attempt to turn the franchise into an action-comedy, buddy movie was a serious step in the wrong direction.

Whereas before you were laughing because it was so awesomely bad that it was brilliant, here you find yourself groaning at the pathetic, laboured one-liners, squirming at the bad acting and virtually seething at the "humorous" anachronisms (e.g. the wrestling ring... and yes, there is still a car parked outside the barbarian camp).

To make matters worse, Deathstalker II even blatantly recycles a number of scenes from the original movie that don't add anything to story - and having only rewatched Deathstalker yesterday really stick out.

This time round Deathstalker (John Terlesky - with a permanent cheesy grin and finely coiffured hair) teams up with Reena The Seer (Monique Gabrielle) - whose inability to act convincingly is only saved by her willingness to disrobe - to save the kingdom from the evil sorcerer Jerak (John Lazar) and his hench-woman Sultana (yes, that really is her name), played by Tori Naples.

A swordsman as well as a sorcerer, Jerak - who with white hair and pink eyes would make a pretty decent Elric - has 'cloned' Reena (who is really Princess Evie) and has his puppet princess on the throne, only she needs to consume human flesh to stay corporeal (which is possibly the most interesting aspect of Neil Ruttenberg's dire script).

Along the way our dumb-ass heroes outwit a bunch of assassins, encounter a graveyard full of the least effective zombies in movie history, and team up with an army of busty Amazons led by the rather delicious Maria Socas (also known as Naja the Sorceress in The Warrior And The Sorceress).

Even though Stalker - who, let's be honest, is a total tool in this movie - appears to be using The Sword Of Justice and we see a pair of the pig-men (orcs?), as well as shots of the original, Deathstalker II really has no connection (bar the lead character's name) to the earlier classic of trash cinema.

Even the flesh and gore quota is markedly down in this half-hearted affair.

Let's hope things improve for tomorrow's Deathstalker III: The Warriors from Hell, which is where we enter unknown territory.

Admittedly I haven't seen Deathstalker II since I was at university and had blissfully blanked its awfulness from my mind (except for the car parked outside the Amazons' camp), but the final two 'official' movies in the original Deathstalker quadrilogy are totally unknown quantities.

"Our Future Death Is Hunting Us!"

A misfit group of unwitting high school students stumble upon a cursed object, an ancient Aztec Death Whistle. They discover that blowing the whistle and the terrifying sound it emits will summon their future deaths to hunt them down. As the body count rises, the friends investigate the origins of the deadly artifact in a desperate effort to stop the horrifying chain of events that they have set in motion.

Cursed magic items are like catnip to me when they crop up in horror movies like this, because of the possibility of 'translating' them into treasure items for Dungeons and Dragons-style roleplaying games..

Starring Logan's Dafne Keen and Shaun of The Dead's Nick Frost, Whistle has a great pedigree and is due in cinemas on February 6.

Black Friday! (2021)

It's the dreaded Black Friday at We Love Toys and the work force are not looking forward to the hordes of shoppers about to pour in, seeking those "once in a lifetime" bargains.

However, what makes matters worse this year is a meteor shower bringing an alien virus that turns the infected into hideous, angry, monsters seeking to both 'spread the love' and construct a 'nest' for each of the initial meteors to achieve their "final form".

Black Friday! is a fun blend of rage zombie horror, Lovecraftian alien invasion, kaiju action, The Blob, Clerks, and old Quatermass movies.

Leaning into its weird fiction inspirations not everything mentioned in the story is explained, adding to the occasionally unnerving strangeness of what the extra-terrestrial entities are up to and what their ultimate objective may be.

There's plenty of body horror in Black Friday!, with the practical make-up effects on the transformed infected being particularly striking as they evolve into piranha-toothed ghouls, oddly reminiscent of the beast in The Unnameable duology 

Written by Andy Greskoviak and directed by Casey Tebo, the 84-minute flick is a runaway train that doesn't hang around, getting to the meat of its set-up almost immediately and not wasting any time establishing deep backstories for the central characters (these are filled in during the unfolding chaos).

While the film is a satire of corporate America, it is  primarily an apocalyptic splatterfest romp that doesn't take itself at all seriously.

If you're looking for a "people trapped in a store during the end of the world" film, but aren't in the mood for the heart-breaking buzzkill of The Mist, then you could do worse than check out the more light-hearted Black Friday!

Bruce Campbell is in there as the store manager, playing a bigger role than I expected but still a supporting character, while the leads are Final Destination/Chucky's Devon Sawa, Super 8's Ryan Lee, and Pan's Labyrinth's Ivana Baquero, as three undervalued workers in the soulless toy store.

Other familiar faces that pop up include Michael Jai White, while Seth Green provides the voice of a malfunctioning animatronic bear (who might just be a parody of Ted).

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.

PROJECT 60: What Does The Future Hold?

As I race towards my sixtieth birthday next year, I can't help feeling that it's time I got my "collecting" hobbies under control before I end up on an episode of Hoarders or Rachel finds me buried under a collapsed pile of books, comics, and blu-rays!

I've already mentioned that my life-long love affair with roleplaying games is dwindling, thanks to the dawning realisation that I'm never going to run a "forever campaign" that comes close to my hopes and dreams.

I still want to keep playing, and won't - and can't - stop thinking about RPGs, but the constant need to be working on 'my next great roleplaying project' has definitely eased off. 

Picture, if you can, the amount of space I could create in our house if I sold off all the games (and supplements) that I own but which I'll never read or revisit.

That's going to take a lot of effort to do properly, but it might generate a decent sum of money to bulk up my ever-shrinking bank account.

On the other hand, I'm currently thinking of burying myself in Cubicle 7's Doctor Who RPG, just not with any expectation of running it (it's simply not a game I could imagine my group, The Tuesday Knights, taking to).

However, I quite fancy the idea of creating Whoniverse scenarios, settings, gadgets, aliens etc to share with the readers of this blog.

If I were to return to running a campaign, with any chance of it surviving more than three or four sessions, it would almost certainly embrace the simplicity of old school Dungeons & Dragons-style gaming. As I did many years ago with the Tuesday Knight's three-year Heroes & Other Worlds campaign.

Honestly, I'd just really love to run a hardcore dungeoncrawl at some point. Just not now.

For reasons of both space and finances, I also need to trim my comic book pull-list from its current 25 titles a month down to something more manageable.

Part of my problem has been that my osteoarthritis has made me feel so uncomfortable that concentrating on reading (and finding a good position to do so) has led to a four or five month backlog of unread comics.

Some, I fear, will have to remain unread if I ever want to get back up-to-date.

Going forward, I'm thinking of streamlining my reading to: DC's Superman (and family); Marvel's Fantastic Four; and Titan's Howardverse titles (Conan The Barbarian, Savage Sword, Solomon Kane etc)

There'll be a few odds and ends in there as well: such as Dynamite's "occasional" Fire and Ice.

I've also heard a rumour that the long-delayed Afterlife With Archie (the greatest unfinished zombie comic book saga of all time) might have finally - after a 10 year hiatus - clawed its way out of the grave to resume its run, but I'll only believe it once that new issue is in my hands.

Of course, on top of all this, there's still my monthly Judge Dredd Megazine subscription and odd runs of 2000AD (I'm still undecided on whether to wean myself off the latter or take out a subscription to sit parallel with my Megazine one).

So, that's still a lot of comics each month, but - as long as I can catch up - it feels like it'll be easier to keep on top of.

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.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Aquarium of The Dead (2021)

Aquarium of The Dead (which I only just discovered was a sequel to Zoombies) sees a batch of infected animal vaccinations turning a random selection of creatures at a sea-life centre (from star fish to a giant octopi, giant crabs to a single dolphin) into man-eating monsters. 

While the film looks half-decent, it is undermined by awful acting, a lame script, continuity errors, a surfeit of two-dimensional characters who add nothing to the mix, and just a shit-ton of stupid.

To give it its due, the film tries to add depth - particularly in the sub-plot of how the contaminated vaccines got into the creatures in the first place - but there's no rhyme nor reason to how this virus spreads and what affect it has on the creatures.

Even by Asylum standards, Aquarium of The Dead leaves a lot to be desired and this can be put down almost entirely to the script and editing.

Bad acting can be humorous, but an illogical, inconsistent narrative - that doesn't so much as come to a climax as it just stops - is pretty inexcusable when it could have been pared down to something far simpler.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Zoombies (2016)

When a strange virus quickly spreads through a safari park and turns all the zoo animals undead, those left in the park must stop the creatures before they escape and zombify the whole city.

While it's doubtful this will spawn a franchise like Sharknado (that's a special kind of lightning you can't catch in a bottle twice), The Asylum's Zoombies had the potential, on paper, to be another cult classic.

The Eden Wildlife Park is about reopen after a major upgrade, to turn it into a family-friendly visitor attraction, when several capuchin monkeys are brought to the veterinary unit, exhibiting signs of an unknown virus.

Attempts to find out what's wrong with one of them results in its death and then immediate return to life as a zombie-monkey, which promptly kills the vets and infects its kin.

The monkeys escape, and soon all the animals in the zoo are turning into vicious undead monsters, as the few staff on duty - and a coachload of new interns - struggle to prevent the infection from spreading outside the park.

I appreciated the fact that there's no hanging around with Zoombies. It opens with a television advert for the park, and then the infected monkey shows up and all hell breaks loose. And all that's even before the opening credits.

The film is part Zoo (the TV series where the animals of world turn on mankind), with a dash of Jurassic Park, all mixed in with horror movie-standard zombies (even though, for a change, these can't spread their zombie infection to humans).

Unfortunately as the virus spreads and more, and larger, animals become infected, the story becomes increasing preposterous and ill thought out, the acting takes a hit, and the special effects deteriorate (particularly memorable examples being the fuzzy-edged CGI elephants and the least convincing zip line experience in cinema history).

Elements that would be seen as foreshadowing in a regular film - such as the bond zoo owner Dr. Ellen Rogers' (Kim Nielsen) young daughter, Thea (La La Nestor) has with the gorilla Kifo (played by Ivan Djurovic in a great ape suit), or lead character Lizzy's (Ione Butler) backstory about why she got into working as a security guard - turned out to have no bearing on the plot of Zoombies.

For the first half-hour or so, I had high hopes. This movie was never going to win any awards, but the core idea was intriguing, the set-up was good, and even the majority of zombie creatures were pretty decent (and I didn't even mind that Kifo was obviously a bloke in a furry suit).

Sadly, as the film progressed, I kind of got the impression that all the effort had gone into front-loading the story and no one had really thought out a convincing ending.

There are moments when Zoombies hits that "so bad it's good" sweet spot, but disappointingly not as many as I was hoping for from the previews (see above).

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Amusement Park (1973)

George A Romero's "lost" movie, 1973's The Amusement Park is a bit of an odd fish.

It was the only work-for-hire movie the father of modern zombie cinema made, commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania "as an educational film about elder abuse", but shelved soon after completion.

A print was discovered of this believed-to-be-lost film in 2017, restored, and was made available to view on Shudder.

Directed and edited by George A Romero, from a script by Wally Cook, The Amusement Park primarily features volunteer actors, or people who were actually involved in elderly care at the time.

In an interview, Romero's wife Suzanne Desrocher-Romero is quoted as saying:

"They [did] use it initially, but I suspect that they thought it was a little edgier than they would have liked."

Clocking in at just under an hour, the main story is bookended by stage actor Lincoln Maazel (who portrays the main character in the film) addressing the audience on how poorly the elderly generation are treated and how we should all change our attitudes to be more accommodating.

The story commences with a jovial Maazel entering an anonymous white room with a single door out.

There's another old man in there, looking the worse for wear, and groaning.

Maazel tries to engage him in conversation, but the battered man simply tells him there's nothing out there and not to go through the door.

Opening the door, Maazel - who also plays the key role of Tateh Cuda in Romero's 1978 vampire film Martin - sees a busy fun fair and steps through.

What follows is a metaphorical bombardment of this old man, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, as he stumbles - increasingly deliriously - through a cavalcade of on-the-nose - but often still rather clever - allegories about old age. 

For instance, pensioners are seen queueing up to hawk their valuables in exchange for tickets to the fun fair rides; there's an eye test before you're allowed to drive one of the dodgems (bumper cars) and if you hit someone police and insurance company reps show up; when Maazel tries to be kind to some children he gets heckled as a "degenerate"; a young couple visit a fortune teller and see a terrifying vision of their future in a rundown flat, penniless, and unable to get the medicine they require etc

When Maazel tries to help fellow elderly punters at the fair, the younger - more numerous - visitors don't pay him any attention.

At one point he is hustled into an attraction ominously called Boot Hill, which turns out to be a grim physiotherapy centre.

A "freak show" just features old people, and when Maazel goes to leave, the crowd proclaim that "one is escaping" and chase after him.

There's a moment when Maazel is set upon by a trio of bikers.

Another scene has him being pickpocketed by a sleazy con-artist.

Even when it seems like he might have found some solace reading The Three Little Pigs to a picnicking girl her mother soon packs up and takes the girl away, leaving Maazel almost in tears.

Finally, the ground down and broken Maazel stumbles back into the white room, now the battered version of himself as his earlier self enters the room again, fresh and full of optimism.

Stylistically, I feel The Amusement Park owes a lot to 1962's Carnival of Souls, with elements of Stanley Kubrick's 1971 A Clockwork Orange,.

You can also see echoes of The Amusement Park in LQ Jones's 1975 adaptation of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog.

It's obvious from the get-go why the film's commissioners decided not to go with this peculiar oddity as their Public Service Announcement of choice.

It falls into the same broad category as the notoriously disquieting British public information films of the same era, but is considerably longer - and more surreal - than those tended to be. 

While The Amusement Park does get across its point about the systemic mistreatment and general abandonment of the elderly, it does it in a way that is more likely to turn off a general audience rather than inspire them to take positive action. 

Not because of its more shocking and dark content, but because of its art house approach of disjointed sounds and imagery.

As an amateur cinéaste, I found The Amusement Park an interesting watch (primarily because of who directed it), but I can't say it educated or inspired me about elderly care in any manner.

Additional research c/o Wikipedia.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Zombeavers (2014)

A trio of spunky college girls head into the wilderness for a weekend of girltime in an isolated, lakeside cabin - but their plans are disrupted, first by the arrival of their horny boyfriends and then by an invasion of flesh-eating, zombie beavers.

Yes, Zombeavers is as daft as it sounds and it knows it. It takes its crass premise and runs with it, resulting in a near-perfect blend of teen comedy and OTT gore-horror.

Directed by Jordan Rubin from a script co-written by himself and Jon & Al Kaplan, the humour is base (come on, they're talking about beavers nearly non-stop, what did you expect?), there's some sex and skin, gruesome beaver-related injuries, a genuine sense of spam-in-a-cabin jeopardy, decent performances from the central cast, surprising twists and delightfully low-budget special effect monsters.

The killer beavers appear to be a combination of puppets and animatronics, but it doesn't matter because the levity and general joie de vivre that clearly went into making this movie carries you through.

From the deadpan humour of the opening scene to the Sinatra-esque theme over the final credits and the wonderful, post-credits, tease of a possible sequel idea (that is so obvious when you think of it I'm surprised no one hasn't already made this movie), Zombeavers just continually knocks it out the park.

Demonstrating that he knows my tastes so well, Paul got me this DVD for my birthday back in 2014 and we watched it that very day when he popped down to hand over my presents (my birthday wasn't for another week-and-a-half, but we weren't going to pass up a chance to see a film called Zombeavers) and we were both genuinely surprised by how good it was.

Originally, I think we'd both thought from the trailers that it would fall into "so bad, it's good" category, but it's actually really well-made, a helluva lotta fun and rather clever. It is genuinely one of the best all-round low-budget, horror films I'd seen that year.

One thing that struck us, in particular, was its subtle subversion of the horror movie staple of the "Final Girl" - a character you can normally pick out within the first five or ten minutes of horror movie.

Paul even said he might have to pick up a copy for himself

And please, please, please Mr Rubin, make ZomBEES as soon as soon as humanly possible - you've got a guaranteed sale here!

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Trailer Park Of Terror (2008)

Trying to escape her trailer trash life, Norma (Nichole Hiltz) has got herself a townie boyfriend, only the local bullies accidentally kill him and so Norma storms off, strikes a deal with The Devil (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Stephen King's Randall Flagg aka The Walkin' Dude aka The Man In Black), returns to the trailer park, kills everyone and burns down the park with herself in it.

Twenty years later a minibus of juvenile delinquents, returning from Bible camp with their chaperone, Pastor Lewis (Matthew Del Negro) crashes in a rain storm and they seek shelter in the seemingly abandoned trailer park.

However, they are greeted by Norma, who offers to put them up for the night and that's when they discover they are in the Trailer Park Of Terror (bwahahahahaha!)

This 90-minute horror starts off promisingly enough, but once the ghost-zombies start to arrive it degenerates into a very by-the-numbers gorefest - with the "final girl" telegraphed from the moment she appears, as the only one of the young reprobates with any degree of personality and charm.

A strange brew, borrowing elements from sources as diverse as splatterpunk and Nightmare On Elm Street (several of the kiddies are offed in ways appropriate to their single character-defining quirks), things further spin out of control with musical numbers (courtesy of an annoying zombie with a guitar - a gimmick that grows old very fast) and a strange demolition derby climax!

By letting the story initially unfold chronologically, thus letting us see the inciting incident that creates the supernatural horror (facts usually discovered in the course of horror film, rather than at the start), I thought Trailer Park Of Terror was going to put a new spin on this kind of "teenagers trapped in the middle of nowhere by flesh-eating monsters" movie.

Sadly it doesn't and even the half-hearted attempt at a twist ending is fumbled. Apparently the movie was based on a comic book series and clearly this ending was a stab at leaving the door open for a sequel.

SHOW ME: The Mummy (2017)

Who's The Mummy? Sofia Boutella as Ahmanet
Mummy's Love? Tom Cruise as Nick Morton
Where? Iraq, England, Egypt (in flashbacks)
How Long? 110 minutes

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I can't tell you how much I wanted to like this, to stand resolute in the face of the complete critical condemnation the latest iteration of The Mummy disappeared under upon its cinematic release.

But it really is that bad. It's a mess of unnecessarily repetitive exposition; over-the-top special effects sequences that are there only for inclusion in the trailers, serving no plot purpose whatsoever; a surfeit of bland characters; and a story of jumbled random encounters that made me think the writing team had simply transcribed a 13-year-old's Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

Tom Cruise is the nominal protagonist, Nick Morton, an amoral and opportunistic treasure hunter who uses his military career as a smoke-screen to loot valuable artefacts from war zones. Yeah, a real stand-up guy we can all instantly emphasise with!

I think we're supposed to like him purely based on the fact he's played by Tom Cruise. Sadly, that isn't enough.

Using a map stolen from British archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), a character so one-dimensional she almost doesn't exist, Nick and his buddy Sergeant Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) stumble upon an unusual ancient Egyptian burial site in Iraq.

The sarcophagus of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) is retrieved and loaded onto a cargo plane. En route to London, Chris is possessed by evil spirits and killed, returning as a ghost that only Nick can see in a Griffin Dunne in American Werewolf In London sort of deal.

The plane suffers the mother of all bird strikes and crashes in the English countryside.

Nick miraculously survives the experience without a scratch. It seems he has been "cursed" by Ahmanet to be her "Chosen One".

There's a chase sequence involving Nick and Jenny in an ambulance, escaping Ahmanet and her newly-raised zombie followers.

This ends with Ahmanet being captured and our "heroes" being whisked off to London to meet Jenny's boss, Dr Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) of the Prodigium, a super-secret monster-hunting organisation located under the Natural History Museum.

The Prodigium want to dissect and study Ahmanet, but before they can she escapes and wreaks havoc on London, trying to recover a crucial gem hidden in a knight's tomb, recently unearthed by the Crossrail excavations.

Ahmanet needs the gem to complete a ritual that involves sacrificing her Chosen One (ie Nick) with a magical dagger that will then summon the Ancient Egyptian god Set.

Nick, however, comes up with a cunning plan to thwart Ahmanet's schemes... by doing exactly what she wants!

The Mummy is all over the place. There are traces of a good idea in there, but somewhere along the development process it clearly got away from the film-makers and took on a monstrous life of its own.

There's a definite whiff of the pulp genre's freewheeling disregard for logic in service of a rollickin' story here, but that style's bravura exuberance is replaced with generic corporate clichés.

A sterling example of film-making by committee, the fingerprints of the suits and money-men are all over The Mummy, leaving the unavoidable sensation that an eye-catching trailer was made first - to sell the concept to the general public - and then a film was assembled around that.

Outside of the unengaging leads, you have an antagonist with seemingly god-like powers, able to do pretty much whatever she wants - when it suits the plot - while conversely seeming impotent when it serves the plot.

For instance, one minute she's having to create zombie followers one at a time, by killing people and giving them a "kiss of life", and the next she can raise a horde out of thin air with just a wave of her hand.

There's so much material crammed in this 110 minute movie, clearly with the aim of laying the groundwork for Universal's proposed Dark Universe 'shared world' of monster movies, that even though the time flys by surprisingly quickly you can't help seeing large chunks that could easily have been left on the cutting room floor.

Russell Crowe is wasted as Dr Jekyll, whose outburst as Mr Hyde is - like so much here - pointless and Tom Cruise just phones it in, playing Tom Cruise at his least engaging. His performance is about as far away from his charming best as imaginable.

More an action-adventure funfair ride than a horror movie, the true horror of The Mummy is that anyone involved in releasing this into the wild ever thought it was a competent, coherent, movie in the first place.

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.