In Brad Sykes’ Scream Queen, real-life VHS scream queen Linnea Quigley plays the fictitious scream queen Malicia Tombs. On the set of her latest opus, she argues with her co-stars, director and crew members before leaving in a huff. Tragically, Malicia’s car crashes and explodes, killing her.  

The director, Eric Orloff (Jarrod Robbins, Sykes’ Zombie Chronicles), remains haunted by the events of his unfinished picture. One day, via an invite to a mansion, he’s offered $10,000 to complete it. Despite the place being located at 101 Killington Street, he shows up at the designated time, only to find a reunion of sorts of his ill-fated production’s cast and crew. They’ve been gathered for an evening of revenge in Malicia’s name — call it Six Little Indians with zero second takes. “Cut” means “cut.” 

Let’s acknowledge the obvious: Shooting on VHS presents several inherent and inescapable challenges, such as wind overpowering the camera’s microphone or night scenes looking especially ugly. The more SOVs you expose yourself to, the easier it is to forgive those limitations. Here, doing so leaves you with terrific fun. Your one true complaint may be the absence of nudity from the chesty Nicole West (Ted V. Mikels’ Dimension in Fear) in her animal-print underwear sex scene. I’m with you.

Building his slasher with a meta setup, Camp Blood creator Sykes gives the shot-on-video world its Scream. At the risk of oversell, it’s clear from the outset Sykes poured his all into the project, where others would half-ass it. His opening shot is Altman-style audacious for any format, running a couple of minutes as the camera moves from person to person, introducing viewers to each character and requiring every performer to be on their toes. 

Similarly, the prolific Quigley (Murder Weapon) is asked not simply to show up, but act. Don’t worry, kiddos, because your beloved kill scenes remain in full supply. Serving as host for the proceedings is a dwarf (Kurt Levee) — a nice Gothic touch, even if the guy is wearing a quasi-Christmas sweater. That’s just one element making Scream Queen the most wonderful kind of SOV horror. —Rod Lott

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Strangely, Pig Killer follows the superior Squealer as the second film released in as many months to tell the twisted tale of Canada’s felonious farmer, Robert Pickton — not exactly one of your A-list serial killers. Here, he’s played by Jake Busey (The Predator), whose hobby is murdering prostitutes and feeding their parts to his pet pig, Balthazar, most assuredly not named after the cinema of Robert Bresson. 

As the first sex worker dispatched and destroyed, Bai Ling (Southland Tales) does the “me so horny” bit from Full Metal Jacket and wears panties emblazoned with “ALL YOU CAN EAT.” With one hand petting Balthazar, Pickton has sex with her dead body while imagining he’s boning his own mom (Ginger Lynn Allen, Vice Academy). Not for nothing is Pig Killer produced by Girls and Corpses magazine.

The rest of the pic depicts the attempts of troubled young woman Wendy (newcomer Kate Patel) to keep from becoming a victim of Pickton’s, not to mention a gun with dildo silencer, antifreeze-filled syringes and penises I hope — nay, pray — are prosthetic. 

It’s an ugly picture further hampered by writer/director Chad Ferrin’s questionable decision to often present such brutal proceedings with his tongue pressed hard against his cheek, giving the effect of reveling in the sicko circus of Pickton’s creation. Also at odds with the grim subject matter is near-constant, mostly upbeat rock music — some 35 songs in all, most by one G Tom Mac (aka Gerard McMahon of The Lost Boys’ “Cry Little Sister” fame) and sounding like the clatter you’d hear from a stage at a state fair, adjacent to the fried footlong corndog vendor.

Pig Killer marks the third film I’ve seen from director Ferrin, and I think it will be my last. The other two, Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! and Exorcism at 60,000 Feet, were odious enough, but at least they could lay claim to being spoofy. Based on the exploits of a real-life serial killer, Pig Killer has no such veil to hide its tastelessness behind. 

In one of the film’s final lines, from the back of a cop car, Pickton’s throat-cancerous comrade asks him about Wendy, “Did you ever get it in her pooper?” Did a 12-year-old boy write that? Or was he 13? Regardless, that’s the flavor of childishness running throughout two bloated hours; earlier, it plays an abusive sex scene for laughs. You can practically hear Ferrin giggling from behind the camera. Life is too short. —Rod Lott

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Like you, I’m always up for a good — or even a bad — holiday horror show, no matter the time of year. At 40 minutes total, though, The Twelve Slays of Christmas amounts to an extended commercial for Full Moon merch. And if there’s anything Charles Band loves more than tiny toys, it’s shilling them.

On their way to a winter carnival, three young women (Full Moon vets Cody Renee Cameron, Lauren Nicole Smith and Dare Taylor) experience car trouble in a snowstorm and seek refuge at the nearby Full Moon Manor, home to Ignatius (Tom Fitzpatrick, Insidious: Chapter 3), an old man who looks like Chris Elliott in Scary Movie 2. To pass the time, he reads to them from a Yuletide Tales of Terror book.

Presumably, the tome numbers a dozen chapters, each allowing this repurposed anthology to cut to clips of death from the Full Moon catalog. For example, from Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust, the titular cookie fucks a puppet, then chainsaws a puppeteer. From Subspecies, you get the hot-dog fingers of vampire Radu. From Evil Bong and Baby Oopsie to many Puppet Master sequels, the entries have zip to do with Dec. 25, unless your family traditions entail burning babies, puked leeches and sex with Nazi commanders.

Nothing against clip shows, but Ignatius’ “stories” are more montage than anything. It came upon a midnight clear that Twelve Slays is a lazy, shameless bid to move memorabilia outta Band’s storage unit. —Rod Lott

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Who knew the season’s best possession film released last month wouldn’t be The Exorcist: Believer? Probably everyone who’s familiar with David Gordon Green. Still, between Talk to Me from earlier this year and now Demián Rugna’s When Evil Lurks, the subgenre still has plenty to give — and take, considering all the pets and kids that meet their end in this Spanish-language ride through hell.

Life moves slow for brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez) and Jimi (Demián Salomón, Rugna’s Terrified) in their quiet farming community. That is, until the dismembered corpse of a state-appointed exorcist (aka a “cleaner”) winds up on the border of their property. With their neighbor (Luis Ziembrowski), the siblings investigate a nearby home, only to find an old acquaintance afflicted with a demonic possession under the care of his family. The trio resolve to drive the “rotten” hundreds of kilometers away and dump his body into field. Problem solved … until the demonic influence spreads throughout the town, kick-starting a shitstorm of homicide and suicide.

The film hemorrhages chaos and desperation. Dread creeps in the first act. One untimely goat possession later, and the pace hits a nonstop sprint. Rodríguez almost single-handedly carries this feeling, as if he’s been dragged through an abyss, simultaneously frantic and hopeless. Once the protagonist’s children join the mix, the unending violence strikes a different tone. Even as the film starts to lose itself in the second half, the stakes only climb.

The possessions themselves take an especially sadistic turn. You won’t find demonic voices or fiery visions of doom, but cold-hearted deception, self-harm and good ol’ fashioned cannibalism. The film carefully lays out logic for how possessions spread, like through animals and by gunpowder. Thankfully, Rugna refrains from clearly answering what the rotten looks like. It lures us into thinking the plight can be understood, only to quickly pull the rug out from under us with a rabid dog or a schoolhouse of manipulative children.

This disarray carries most of the film, but fuels its biggest weakness, too. Pedro’s knee-jerk response in the climax — to take advice from a possessed kid — makes little sense in retrospect. At least, it doesn’t without the appropriate build. Despite fleshing out the disaster in spades, Rugna doesn’t rein it in enough to earn an otherwise emotional conclusion. Yes, the film is bleak, but stoking what little hope it has just a little more could’ve made what should be a gut-wrenching finale also poignant and memorable.

When Evil Lurks is far from perfect, but its intensity, breakneck pace and unflinching brutality make it a great companion to high-octane gorefests like Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan and Jung Bum-shik’s Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. Check it out — and don’t let your bulldog lick the rambling man’s jeans. —Daniel Bokemper

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Few slasher villains bear weaker origin stories than Mark, the killer of Hollowgate: As a child, he was nearly drowned by his alcoholic dad for lackluster apple-bobbling skills at a Halloween party.

Ten years later, to say the adult Mark (Addison Randall, Hard Vice) is an antisocial creep is an understatement, what with all his killing a girl for refusing a date and exploding a bully with flaming panties. Rather than lock Mark up, our exemplary justice system releases him to the care of his wealthy grandmother at her Hollowgate estate.

The next 10/31, en route to a party, two young couples stop for “submarine sandwiches” and a $9 sparkle wig. In exchange for the latter, which they can’t afford, the four agree to deliver 12 costumes to Hollowgate. See, Mark’s throwing a shindig of his own; all he needs are attendees, because being freshly murdered, Grandma can’t make it.

With this, one-time writer/director Ray Dizazzo gives his flick’s felon a good-enough gimmick: As the college-aged kids attempt to penetrate the mansion’s electrified perimeter for escape, Mark dons a different costume — soldier, cowboy, doctor and, um, fancy fox hunter — for each individual kill. (One involves a farm combine so slow-moving, of course the Dumb Hot Girl stands in front of it, ensuring doom.) Adopting the proper accent and (occasionally racist) vocabulary with every change, Mark’s a regular Pistachio Disguisey!

In his first of almost two dozen collaborations with PM Entertainment producers Richard Pepin and Joseph Merhi, Randall delivers an off-his-meds performance that’s a tour de force of, well, something. I know this much: I love his commitment. He tears into the material like an unneutered puppy to any stuffed toy concealing a squeaker.

Nearly matching his intensity is Richard Dry, 25% of the beleaguered victim pool. Resembling third runner-up in a Lewis Skolnick lookalike contest, Dry boasts a voice in the David Schwimmer octave (minus the timing) as he plays agitation and hysteria like a Juilliard monologue (minus the practice).

Hollowgate deserves status as a Halloween perennial specifically because of its shoddiness and a beguiling, complete misread of human behavior. For those who paid attention, Mark gets to use only four rented costumes, leaving eight others untouched. Legacy sequel, Mr. Dizazzo? A man can dream of things other than those submarine sandwiches. —Rod Lott

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