With its real-life basis and meddling by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, The Haunted could be viewed as The Conjuring prequel you’ve never seen, albeit made for TV. In this case, Pennsylvania’s homely Smurl family.

Janet (Sally Kirkland, Two Evil Eyes) and Jack (Jeffrey DeMunn, The Mist) find their Catholic lives shattered by the presence of satanic specters in their quaint, gaudy home. What are these troublemaking apparitions? What do they want? And will they go away?

Actually, the biggest mystery here is what is Kirkland doing in a movie where she doesn’t ditch the blouse? She’s oft apt to tear the threads from her body as if her brassiere’s filled with chiggers. The only vice this comparably respectable film affords her is chain smoking.

The Smurls’ evil forces are harmless at first: yanking off sheets, shaking religious trinkets on the cabinet, touching Janet’s thigh in the middle of the night, trying to kill the youngest daughter with a light fixture. But then they grow mighty furious, levitating Janet 6 feet off the ground and hurling her from one wall to another. In The Haunted’s cheesiest moment, the spirits take the shape of a semi-voluptuous woman who tries to rape Jack as her face switches from cutie-pie to demon.

Calling in various men of God to perform an exorcism, the Smurls grow desperate enough to hire the Warrens (played by Diane Baker and Stephen Markle of, respectively, The Silence of the Lambs and 1985’s Invasion U.S.A.). This time, the ghosts manifest themselves as a couple of Amish chicks.

Laughably cheap-looking and apparently lensed in the dreariest sections of Canada by F/X director Robert Mandel, The Haunted strives for the sophisticated frights of Poltergeist, but isn’t nearly as frightening as Kirkland’s quick slide into erotic thriller-dom. Six years after Fox aired this, in an episode of the Showtime anthology series The Hunger, she merged the genres by Smurling a super-handsy ghost. —Rod Lott

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At what point did “massacre” start to denote self-aware slasher parodies and homages rather than slashers themselves? In this site’s lifetime, we’ve seen such instances as Camp Massacre, The Puppet Monster Massacre and even Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre. Lone Star-set sequels notwithstanding, the word’s heyday of chainsaws and meat cleavers is over; once you’ve hit Pillow Party Massacre, all power is lost.

Ironically, Pillow Party-er writer/director Calvin Morie McCarthy raises the point without fully realizing his movie is part of the problem. That’s not to say your 87 minutes will be wasted, but this Massacre could stand more clarity in its aims; often, it’s difficult to tell on which side McCarthy stands: silliness or slaughter. I’m voting the latter because while the film is full of gore, I laughed just once: “No, we grew up and developed real drug habits,” says Chynna Rae Shurts (Exorcism in Utero), refusing a spliff.

With the killer’s identity even more obvious than the title is alliterative, four female college students rent a lake house for a weekend in the woods. (Well, technically five girls, but the one who arrives first is stabbed through the eye immediately after a side-boob shower.) Two years have passed since they played a cruel prank on a high school classmate who then was institutionalized, and only the mean girls’ leader (Laura Welsh, Christmas Freak) feels any remorse.

Will that work in her favor when a patient breaks out of the nearby psychiatric hospital? Only the homicidal maniac in a black robe and Death Note-esque mask knows for sure!

None of Pillow Party Massacre is not by-the-numbers. Its slow stride needs some pep, but McCarthy succeeds where deliberate viewers most likely will want him to: pulling off the death scenes. Or maybe that’s second on their list after nudity. In case you’re curious, Pillow Party contains a pillow fight (although by happenstance), presented in a music-scored montage. Why, yes, fistfuls of down feathers do fall in slow motion — how’d you know? —Rod Lott

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As is de rigueur with the giallo, the title is meaningless. But The Scorpion with Two Tails is no giallo. It’s more like Jell-O, but if director Sergio Martino didn’t bother reading the recipe, so the result fails to cohere. It’s a mess that falls apart almost instantly.

Joan (Elvire Audray, Ironmaster) is plagued by nightmares of an ancient Etruscan cult killing its members in a cavern filled with dry ice. The cult members wear full masks seemingly donated by Dumb Donald from the Fat Albert cartoon. These visions might have something to do with her archeologist husband (John Saxon, Cannibal Apocalypse) studying ancient whatnot in an Etruscan cemetery at that very moment. If only he were killed while sharing this info with Joan on the phone, we would know for sure.

He is killed while sharing this info with Joan on the phone, not even 11 minutes into the movie. So she has no choice but to investigate what happened to him, what’s happening to her and what her wealthy asshole of a father (Van Johnson, Concorde Affair ’79) has to do, has to do with it.

Martino being Martino (Torso, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, American Rickshaw, et al.), more murders occur; the film has more neck-twisting than the average chiropractor’s weekly appointment book.

Reportedly, Two Tails is edited down from an eight-hour miniseries. I cannot fathom watching this at that length, because what’s here amounts to so little action and other items of interest. We get slithering snakes, phony bats and, memorably, Joan’s hands swarming with real maggots. To be honest, I got more anxiety from the sheer amount of tiny Styrofoam beads thrown about as Johnson frantically searches for a vase by tearing open crate after crate. Cleaning up said beads requires more effort than Scorpion’s script received. —Rod Lott

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Evil Dead Rise reminds us that when it comes to today’s popular horror flicks, fuck them kids.

Failing to follow up on 2013’s re-imagining before now was a cinematic sin. Directed by Lee Cronin (The Hole in the Ground), Rise is a welcome resurrection of the blood-soaked franchise. But a smooth 97-minute runtime, hilariously gory sequences and delightful new Deadites make this return well worth the decade-long wait.

After a few zoomers get scalped, dismembered and read some of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, the film rewinds a day prior to introduce Beth (Lily Sullivan, 2017’s Jungle). The career roadie takes a break from her band’s tour on account of her unexpected pregnancy. Meanwhile, Beth’s sister, Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland, Blood Vessel), struggles with an abrupt separation while raising three kids.

An awkward reunion at Ellie’s apartment is cut short by an earthquake. The high-rise complex’s parking lot splits open, revealing a vault of religious artifacts — including everyone’s favorite flesh-bound tome. Ellie’s son (Morgan Davies, TV’s The Girlfriend Experience) naturally opens the book. One vinyl recording of a curious priest reciting the magical words later, it’s off to the Deadite Derby.

As the first possessed, Ellie takes the lead as the most fucked-up Evil Dead villain yet. (Linda’s a close second; Evil Ash never stood a chance.) Sutherland’s performance is as mesmerizing as it is maniacal. Her zombified zingers are a welcome return to the series’ marquee campiness, even though 2013’s entry was still stellar without it. Murder Mommy takes the depravity a step further as she tortures and even tattoos her children.

Most of the sequences capture the franchise’s frenetic pace despite the new setting. In lieu of a fruit cellar, Ellie spends a chunk of the film stalking the hallway outside her apartment. The unit door’s peephole sets the stage for a vivid bloodbath that makes the most of the movie’s limited budget. Continually, Evil Dead Rise delivers frights that far outclass movies like It Chapter Two, which had over four times the financial backing.

It’s rare that this film stumbles. The final act is just a little too bloated with callbacks — a group recital of “dead by dawn” is more than enough. Perhaps more egregious is when it diffuses its own dread. A portion of the recording reiterating all of the ways one can’t kill a Deadite is almost immediately followed by several scenes of — you guessed it — doing all of the things that definitely don’t kill Deadites. Though Cronin was likely shooting for comedy with a heaping helping of despair, a slight swap of scenes could’ve given the terror that much more bite.

Ultimately, Evil Dead Rise delivers exactly what the franchise’s faithful could hope for. Those unfamiliar with the Book of the Dead will painfully laugh and piss themselves all the same. Even the most reluctant viewer will spend a weeks trying to get the phrase “titty-sucking parasites” out of their head.

Please excuse me — I gotta go call my mom. —Daniel Bokemper

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In a gator-infested swamp town (played by Australia), the main employer is a greedy oil corporation drilling on Native American-owned land. According to tribal legend, a swamp monster — a Man-Thing, if you will — comes to life for vengeance on the honkies. And hey, whaddaya know, the myth is true!

Played by 7-foot wrestler Conan Stevens, Man-Thing isn’t shown much until the film’s final quarter, when he’s revealed to look like an upside-down stalk of broccoli with glowing red eyes and ever-flowing tendrils. In the Marvel comic book on which this ecological terror tale is based, the character was more akin to DC’s Swamp Thing: a kindly creature with a human conscience. Here, he’s simply a peakaboo monster — window dressing for the sole purpose of bloodletting. More thought went into how to animate him than what to have him do. No wonder this one skipped theaters.

But Man-Thing’s biggest problem is it’s just a snore, mate. Director Brett Leonard (The Lawnmower Man) gives the flick a slick look, but the script by Hans Rodionoff (Deep Blue Sea 2) gives him so little to work with. This is ironic, considering Rodionoff turned in terrific work with Man-Thing: Whatever Knows Fear …, a then-recent comic miniseries that serves as this movie’s prequel (and its superior).

At one point, a wise, old Native America — you know he’s wise because he draws things with his finger in a pile of sugar — tells the sheriff (Matthew Le Nevez, 2005’s Feed), “Maybe he’s in the swamp. Maybe the swamp’s in him.” This totally reminded me of Wes Studi’s “until you learn to master your rage, your rage will become your master” aphorisms from Mystery Men. This fleeting realization gave me more pleasure than the giant-sized painful entirety of Man-Thing. —Rod Lott

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