By all rights, I should be good and pissed about 30 Days of Night: Dark Days. The direct-to-DVD sequel is based on one of my favorite graphic novels ever, but takes my favorite character from that book and makes him barely more than a disposable catalyst to get the plot moving. In Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith’s printed version, the vampire Dane changes the way we — and Stella, the main character — see the bloodsuckers in the 30 Days of Night world. He’s also the third member of a deliciously morbid love triangle that includes Stella and her dead undead husband.

In director Ben Ketai’s version (although, to be fair, Niles co-wrote the script), Dane simply introduces Stella to a bunch of other vampire hunters and then disappears to let the humans have all the fun. And fun they have, which is why I can’t get angry about it.

Well, they don’t have fun. Not with all the bleeding and dying and smashing friends’ heads in with cement blocks that goes on. But it was gory, gruesome fun for me. And even though the movie takes other, huge liberties with the original story (simplifying some things; completely changing others, like what the vampires are up to), Niles and Ketai came up with a story that, allowed to stand by itself, holds together in an entertaining way.

The film isn’t as visually inventive as David Slade’s 30 Days of Night, but Ketai and his crew have obviously thought about some of the same things that Slade wrestled with, like how to make the movie look like Templesmith’s unique artistic style. They did a nice job of coming up with their own solutions, while also using enough of Slade’s techniques to tie the two movies together visually. —Michael May

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Honestly, I’m cool with direct-to-video horror sequels. What they lack in big-name stars, they make up for in gore. See Wrong Turn 3, 30 Days of Night: Dark Days and, now, Mirrors 2.

Looking like Dexter‘s little brother, Nick Stahl plays Max, still grieving over the car-crash death of his fiancé. His dad (William Katt) hires him to be the night watchman of his soon-to-open upscale department store. He’ll be replacing the one whose mirror image happily chewed broken glass, causing his own face and mouth to be cut up.

And so it goes that upper management get killed as they watch their mirror images do gruesome things, such as slicing their own tendons. The best death scene comes when Christy Romano (formerly Disney’s squeaky-clean Kim Possible) meets a really bloody death in the shower after soaping up her new, ugly fake boobs.

While the first half plays like Final Destination in the creative deaths department, the second finds Max and second-half love interest Emmanuelle Vaugiér attempting to solve the riddle behind these gruesome shenanigans. Maybe it makes more sense if you’ve seen the first Mirrors; I haven’t. As director, DTV vet Victor García (Return to House on Haunted Hill) brings visual class to these proceedings, yielding a satisfying fright flick, even if it’s completely void of frights (Katt’s middle-age ponytail notwithstanding). —Rod Lott

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When I was a child, Terror Train freaked me out. Today, I realize there’s nothing scary about it, outside of a creepy Groucho Marx mask, an overabundance of disco tunes, and hairdos as misbegotten as the truly awful dialogue. Still, the movie’s enjoyable enough as a partially derailed example of the ’70s’ slasher craze.

Basically Halloween on a train, but with the menacing suspense left behind at the station, this choo-choo chiller details what happens (bad things!) when a bunch of asshole college seniors embark on a coke-and-booze-fueled train trip, complete with David Copperfield doing a magic show. They all wear Halloween costumes, even though it’s New Year’s Eve.

Smart, they’re not. Especially because that nerdy pledge they humiliated with a mean prank four years ago is all aboard for revenge. They made him think he was gonna make it with Jamie Lee Curtis, but had a corpse waiting instead. So he dons mask after mask and goes bonkers with a big ol’ knife.

In an unrated cut, Terror Train might have real bite. As is, it’s more of a curiosity than ticket-punching winner. Jamie Lee doesn’t even get much to do, but the third-act sequence with her in a conductor’s cage is the only set piece that approaches real fright. It leaves big questions in terms of plot holes and logic, plus the burning “Will they cast Criss Angel for the inevitable remake?” —Rod Lott

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There’s a point midway through Neighbor where, after sucking for a long time, it convinces you it’s about to not only stop sucking, but might actually justify the previous sucking that took place. Then it yells, “Psych!” and starts sucking all over again, and continues on sucking until the credits finally roll.

The film follows a nameless maniac who is able to invade the homes of strangers and torture them to death, because she looks like America Olivo (Bitch Slap) and doesn’t fit the whole psychotic serial killer stereotype. After we see her torture and kill a bunch of people we don’t know (including John Waters regular Mink Stole), she moves on to a bunch of characters we do know, but still care very little about. After she has tortured and killed them, we find out someone else has been arrested for her crimes, and she’s free to go on her hot-chick homicidal ways.

The generous fool in me wants to believe writer/director Robert Angelo Masciantonio was going for an American Psycho-esque satire here, but without that film’s pedigree and deliberate stylization, Neighbor adds up to little more than a series of increasingly violent acts perpetrated on the human body, climaxing with a scene where Olivo (whose performance is the film’s sole highlight) inserts and breaks a glass tube in her main victim’s (obviously rubber) penis.

As graphic as this moment is, it lacks the authenticity required to be genuinely frightening, which is ultimately the problem with the entire movie: It never earns the disgust it tries so hard to invoke. —Allan Mott

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Made-for-TV movies didn’t always suck. In the 1970s and very early ’80s, they were downright awesome. Just look at Duel, Gargoyles, Killdozer, Dead of Night and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark — solid, well-oiled genre flicks one and all. But the best of these spookshows was Frank De Felitta’s Dark Night of the Scarecrow (sorry, folks, but Trilogy of Terror is only one-third good).

Charles Durning headlines as Otis, a sweaty, pumpkin-assed small-town postman who’s also a closet alcoholic, big-time bigot and all-around loser. When the mentally handicapped Bubba Ritter (Larry Drake) carries the torn-up, near-lifeless body of a little girl to her mother, Otis and pals assume the worst and grab their guns.

Bubba’s mom hides him in the scarecrow on their farm field, but the vigilante mob finds him and shoots him dead. And for nothing: Bubba saved the little girl’s life; ’twas a vicious dog to blame for her bloodiness. D’oh! Just desserts arrive as a scarecrow comes a-knockin’ for vengeance, one by one. You might say they get the short end of the straw. (Insert rimshot here.)

So much of this movie has haunted me since I saw its CBS Saturday prime-time premiere at the age of 10. Nearly three decades later, it still holds up — sadly, so does the small-mindedness of its characters — as a creepy, effective slasher film, minus the slashing. You won’t miss it; this is a well-told story that gets its thrills the old-fashioned way: It earns them. This is a true horror treasure. —Rod Lott

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