Based on the late-1960s manga by Kazuo Umezu, Cat Eyed Boy is about a cat-eyed boy. (Let’s just call him “CEB” to make things easy and not spend all our hyphens in one review.) Resembling what I’d imagine the McDonald’s Hamburglar to spawn — but with short pants, tube socks and cleft lip — he lives in the rafters of an empty home in a village outside Tokyo.

As the shot-on-video movie opens, a family moves in and CEB slowly reveals his presence to the brother and sister. The precocious brother is cured of his asthma when CEB power-hocks a loogie straight from his sinuses into the back of the kid’s throat. The teenage sister’s hair-hidden, half-face birthmark peels off when CEB licks it with vigor and without consent. Lest you think this is all about his magic saliva, you’re wrong; CEB also urinates on the boy’s bullies.

Director Noboro Iguchi, he of such Japanese nonsense as Mutant Girls Squad and Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead, works in a story — kinda sorta — with the village terrorized by a trench-coated, bandage-wrapped Darkman-looking motherfucker and a bumpy meatball monster that’s a dead ringer for a type 2 on the Bristol stool scale.

Luckily, CEB’s spit bores holes … so I guess the movie is all about his magic saliva. Expectorate or no, Cat Eyed Boy is a missed opportunity. Umezu’s original stories — including “The Meatball Monster,” which this adapts — are a blast of gateway horror; what they aren’t, weirdo premise and all, is goofy comedy dependent on gross-out humor. That makes Iguchi the wrong type to faithfully bring CEB to the screen. Other than replicating the main character’s design, this translation doesn’t work. If it were on film, it might better sell the facade. However, the utter flatness and cheapness of video only heightens the fakery, making the entire thing look like a joke.

As of this typing, Cat Eyed Boy has no legitimate American release, but you can watch it on YouTube below. While no English subtitles exist, they’re not what you’d call necessary. —Rod Lott

Contrary to popular belief, the worst type of movie isn’t a bad one; it’s a bad one that’s not any fun.

Enter Rhys Frake-Waterfield, one of the “talents” behind Spider in the Attic, Firenado, Dinosaur Hotel and other extremely lazy assembly-line flicks, many of which seem to take place on the same piece of property in rural England. The man deserves credit for seizing the day: Jan. 1, 2022, to be exact, when A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh legally entered the public domain, meaning now anyone can make a Pooh film (or TV show or book, etc.), free of fear of copyright infringement. Frake-Waterfield’s literal million-dollar idea was to turn the silly old bear from kiddie icon to serial killer.

Unfortunately, the imagination stopped there. The piss-poor outcome, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, appears to be written and directed by someone who has never seen a feature film. While that’s clearly not the case, Frake-Waterfield struggles (although that implies effort) with the concepts of pacing, plot, frame composition and other elements of storytelling, visual or otherwise. Its poster boasts the tagline, “This ain’t no bedtime story,” because it hasn’t a story at all. Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers are the stuff of Charles Dickens next to this.

A hastily animated prologue in charcoal sketch posits the idea of Pooh, Piglet and friends becoming crazed once young Christopher Robin leaves the 100 Acre Wood for university. Suddenly short of food, they even eat Eeyore.

The second prologue finds Christopher (Nikolai Leon of Frake-Waterfield’s The Killing Tree) returning to introduce his fiancée (Paula Coiz, Tooth Fairy: Queen of Pain) to his animal buddies. Despite many minutes of her sensing danger and pleading they GTFO, they don’t, so he gets to watch her be slaughtered by Pooh (Craig David Dowsett of Frake-Waterfield’s The Area 51 Incident) and Piglet (Chris Cordell, Werewolf Cabal) — now hulking man-creatures in rubber masks because just go with it, I guess.

Prologues now over, we meet Maria (Maria Taylor of the Frake-Waterfield-produced Mega Lightning) and her four friends, none of whose names I caught, not that you need. They’re girl-tripping at a rented cottage, so they, too, can help reduce the world’s population in less than 90 minutes. The most vapid (UK model Natasha Tosini) is yanked from a hot tub to be squished under a Pooh-driven car. Gore looks like cartoon strawberry jelly, because the entire movie is underlit.

Between its kills are enough padding to generously stuff the fluff of the pillows of every orphanage, hospital and hostel within a 100-mile range. I get the curiosity factor; I, too, succumbed. But I implore you: Stick with the trailer. Life’s too short. So short I’ll tell you how the movie ends: Pooh repeatedly stabs Maria in the head; fade to credits; everyone is the audience is agog, like, “What? That’s the finish? Is a scene missing?”

One would expect the thing to keep going to an actual denouement. Instead, Frake-Waterfield will keep going, returning to the honeypot with Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, Bambi: The Reckoning and assuredly several more until the ROI is DOA. It’s not unlike the brief flurry of classic literature/modern horror mash-ups that followed Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 viral-smash novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies until the craze ran itself dry, except the film adaptation is watchable.

Look, when you cover genre film for as long as I have (three decades plus, professionally), you often end up “taking one for the team.” However, Blood and Honey is a different sort of beast. Upon buying two tickets at the AMC Theatres kiosk and seeing the total exceed $30, it’s the only time I started to question my life’s choices. Oh, bother. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon, if you absolutely have to.

In merging horror with racial politics, Florida-based filmmaker David Liz seems to draw inspiration from Jordan Peele’s Get Out. After all, Liz’s The Welder is about a Latina woman and her Black boyfriend in fear of a white man who can’t get over the death of his Black wife. The movie affixes these labels, not I, then presses hard to make their corners don’t peel. Subtlety is not found in The Welder’s toolbox.

Eliza (Camila Rodríguez) and Roe (Roe Dunkley) play the respective girlfriend and boyfriend. With her PTSD growing more intense, he books them a much-needed weekend ranch getaway: ATVs! Horseback riding! Godforsaken science projects!

The ranch owner, Dr. Godwin (Vincent De Paul, Rottentail) screams “sinister” upon greeting his guests. Despite enough red flags to cover a used-car lot on inventory-clearance month, Eliza and Roe stay.

Dr. Godwin’s on a personal mission to “cure the blight of racial hate” vis-à-vis an experiment that’s downright Frankensteinian. While I won’t disclose the deets, viewers will see Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic Vitruvian Man drawing with one slight change: He wears a welder’s mask. It’s not meant to elicit the giggles it did.

So obvious it’s oblivious, The Welder is 90% a drag. No amount of poetic slow-motion scenes with music swelling can convince otherwise. Liz’s film is deeply hindered by poor acting from almost everyone in a cast numbering precious few. As the female lead, Rodríguez’s groggy performance proves contagious to her audience; as her male counterpart, Dunkley displays more energy, perhaps attempting to distract from consistently demeaning dialogue, e.g., “We gotta hella recharge these phones.” He at least appears to be aware of something the movie does not: its own ludicrousness. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Teen brothers (newcomers Carter and Brady O’Donnell) escape their abusive, alcoholic father (Mick Thyer) and bike through the wilderness of Northwest Pennsylvania. They’re in search of their mom (Trina Campbell), who left them for a satanic cult into pig heads, fireside rituals and human sacrifice via sharp, wooden stakes.

Although adult in themes, The Long Dark Trail is structured not unlike a YA adventure novel, presented in eight short chapters bearing a one-word tease of a title (e.g., “Absconded,” “Lake,” “Salvation”). Our two protagonists are likable, yet deliver their lines rather flatly, void of personality.

However, the true star is nature, which co-directors Kevin Ignatius (My Best Friend’s Famous) and Nick Psinakis (who plays the cult leader) treat more than a mere backdrop. It bears the brunt of establishing and building a pervading sense of doom. Despite all the portents, a satisfactory payoff isn’t found at the end of the map. At least one can appreciate the elements that are first-rate — namely, Ignatius’ score and Mitchell Kome’s cinematography. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

After a woman is fatally shotgunned in her sleep, her belongings are dumped into a curbside cardboard box marked “Free to a Good Home.” Kameron and Scott Hale’s Free to a Bad Home follows a possessed ring plucked from said trashed stash as it moves from person to person to person, telling three stories in total.

Amy (Miranda Nieman) is given the ring in marriage, as the jewelry is surreptitiously swiped by her beau, even after watching her recoil by feeling “bitten” by trying on a necklace from the box. This intriguing-enough setup leads to undue padding and an anticlimactic conclusion.

Next, a burglar (Jake C. Young) finds the ring after silently exploring a targeted house for 10 minutes, flashlight in hand. Eventually, the ring is taken by his sister, Julia (Olivia Dennis), who heads to a costume party with three friends — cue an eight-minute drive, complete with eyedropper drugs. Once there, the ladies wander for eight more minutes before running across anything resembling a story point. That gives way to a lengthy monologue and more confusion than the scene’s neon-dream lighting can mitigate.

The cursed-object concept has been done before, none as ineffectually as Free to a Bad Home. As the previous two paragraphs hammered home, nearly nothing happens in the segment, individually or in total. Although the Hales found a credible method for threading one central character to the next, none is developed enough to merit focus. Each story seems to have been built with a clear beginning and desired ending, but little attention paid to plot the all-important middle. In concocting the passed-property gimmick, the Hales gave themselves a fuse they never get around to ignite. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.