Pay semi-close attention, class, to bee-obsessed Aster’s speech toward the start of Royal Jelly. The lead character’s presentation on the honeybee — particularly its strict caste system and post-coital genital ripping — isn’t just there for filler, no matter how bored the high schooler’s classmates look. Writer/director Sean Riley (Fighting Belle) practically highlights and underlines where his sophomore film will go from here — unfortunately not as quickly as you will like. (For a teen-transformation movie that properly uses horror as a metaphor for puberty, you want Ginger Snaps.)

Played by relative newcomer Elizabeth McCoy with appropriately paste-white skin, the Carrie-level outcast is stuck in a stereotypical Cinderella household, where her evil stepmother (Fiona McQuinn, Hallowed Be They Name) takes all the noodles and her snooty half-sister (debuting Raylen Ladner) makes her scrub menstrual blood from the bedsheets.

Weirdo substitute teacher Tressa (Sherry Lattanzi) shows an unhealthy interest in her; Aster gladly soaks up the attention, despite the elder’s habit for wearing sunglasses indoors. Tressa takes the misunderstood misfit to egg the houses of the mean girls, who respond in kind by busting Aster’s beehive. That’s not a euphemism; she literally tends to one in her yard.

That said, Royal Jelly is no modern-day version of The Wasp Woman, nor another update of The Fly. After the setup, when Aster flees to Tressa’s farm and meets her son (Lucas T. Matchett), it becomes a turgid, soap-bubble drama made all the rougher by performances both amateurish and at tonal odds with one another. Lattanzi embraces the camp, whether she realizes it or not, while her young charges play scenes as if Twilight leapt to a series on The CW. This marks the first feature credit for many of its cast members.

Normally, I don’t reveal details about a film’s ending, but I must here: Aster sprouts wings, like the kind little girls wear around the playroom. I had to laugh — certainly the reaction Riley neither intended nor wanted. —Rod Lott

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One dark night, sometime in the early ’80s, I remember watching a film with HBO with my father, like I usually did almost every night when he got off work as a policeman. With its scenes of a downright creepy mausoleum, electric-eyed corpses and toothbrush-chewing schoolgirls in oblivious danger, this was seemingly a one-and-done airing, never to be viewed again, the title lost to the reanimated corpses of my mind.

It has haunted me forever, with searches at every video store I ever worked, coming up typically with only Mortuary, released the next year, but sadly, not the rotting videotape I was looking for. Recently, One Dark Night turned up in my mailbox, a movie I put on one afternoon for some background noise.

As it continued on behind me, a rush of putrid prepubescent memories came flooding back, as the puzzle of flesh and bones began to come together to form a horrid whole picture: One Dark Night was the movie I had visions of long in the back of my mind for almost 40 years; now I had it in my Blu-ray player, feasting on the insides for all eternity, or at least the next 90 minutes.

Starring a very cute Meg Tilly as good girl Julie, she’s looking to join a group of trashy girls, one of whom is played by E.G. Daily and another is constantly chewing on a toothbrush throughout the flick — it’s all coming together! They tell Tilly that for her initiation, she has to pull an all-nighter at the local mausoleum, which isn’t all that bad.

Well, normally it wouldn’t be all that bad, but earlier that day, renowned evil psychic Raymar — who was found dead in a room next to a pile of dead teenagers — was laid to temporary rest there. I say that because, as discovered by his daughter (and her hubby Adam West!), he was trying to harness his mental abilities through death and, good for him, it works.

For the teens, however, it’s not so great, as you can probably assume.

Directed by Tom McLoughlin (the highly entertaining Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives), One Dark Night is an entertaining piece of ’80s trash that still works, especially with the corpse-filled finale managing to deliver a shrill scare up my spine all these years later, betraying its low-budget roots to give us a cold slab of ancient horror that absolutely lives up to the demonic memories it bred.

Now, that I know what flick it is and have seen it as an adult, I can finally lay One Dark Night to rest in the annals of my mind under six feet of broken images and numerous tries. —Louis Fowler

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Hey, everybody! The carnival’s in town! The carnival’s in town! And Death Screams takes place in the supposedly idyllic American small town where that kind of thing is Earth-Shattering News. Shot in North Carolina, it’s the rare slasher with no discernible lead and in which the killer has no discernible gimmick. To complete a hat trick of sorts, it’s also the only slice-and-dicer to be directed by a member of the Ozzie and Harriet Nelson family, early sitcom titans. While brother Rick zigged his way into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, David clearly zagged.

This hicksploitation horror’s biggest crime is being instantly forgettable. More screen time is given to quilt-selling than story setup. Had Nelson given any character half as many traits as the number of times someone mentions having to work tomorrow (three), we might relate to one of them. As is, they’re as fleshed-out as the fair’s “Junk Shop” booth, which literally has just a toaster. Having more presence than the appliance are H.O.T.S. honey Susan Kiger, who’s inappropriately wooed by the coach (Martin Tucker, Rockin’ Road Trip), and Jennifer Chase (1983’s Balboa) as the one ride that doesn’t leave town when the carnival does.

Amid all the toothpick activity of the sheriff (Earl Owensby Studios regular William T. Hicks, A Day of Judgment) and talk of mince pies are recurring cutaways to two teenagers floating the river like bobbed apples: the ones who were offed in the prologue for having hormones. By the time all the young people ditch the bonfire for an ill-advised trip to the graveyard, a guy named Diddle (John Kohler, Ownensby’s Dogs of Hell) excuses himself to “make heh-heh,” which is a first for my ears.

Aimless and ambling, Death Screams may not be painful, but it’s heh-heh all the same. —Rod Lott

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As residents of states in Tornado Alley know, the singular experience of hunkering down in the bathroom with your family as storm sirens wail can be frightening. It certainly is for the four-person fam of We Need to Do Something, but their sheer terror does not translate to the viewer, try as though director Sean King O’Grady might by adding a rather wily rattlesnake, disembodied voices and, well, other things.

Thick with tension among family members but not dread, the film traps the clan in the room for the duration, as a wind-transplanted tree blocks the one doorway out — effectively bringing the haunted house to them. Stress-reduced to knocking back Listerine, the father (The Innkeepers’ Pat Healy, who elevates everything he’s in) is ineffectual, which his may-as-well-be-estranged wife (Eyes Wide Shut’s Vinessa Shaw, ditto) does not let go unnoticed.

Her main concern is the safety of their children, little Bobby (John James Cronin, TV’s NOS4A2) and teen Melissa (Sierra McCormick, The Vast of Night), whose flashbacks of life outside these four walls are the only thing keeping the movie from a single-setting classification.

More often than not, We Need to Do Something’s title doubles as an audience demand. Indeed, not enough happens in 97 minutes to wring a winner, especially since it seems built for a half-hour TV episode; indeed, Max Booth III adapted it from his own novella. Similarly structured to 10 Cloverfield Lane, but without as much imagination or suspense, the film does climax with one hell of an image that wouldn’t be out of place in the better Elm Street sequels. —Rod Lott

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Over the years, I have had so many opportunities to view Dead & Buried. Sadly, something I thought would view even better took precedence and, typically, wasn’t even that good. But now, after viewing it, I feel like a jerk because Dead & Buried is good. Really good.

In the coastal village of Potters Bluff, the seafaring community has a weird way of welcoming visitors: by burning them alive. While that would hurt most places — how did the tourism bureau cover this shit up? — more and more visitors visit and more and more are horribly manhandled, mangled and murdered by the fisherman and their lone blonde seductress.

It’s a crime that has local sheriff (James Farentino, The Final Countdown) increasingly puzzled, as his attractive wife (Melody Anderson, Flash Gordon) goes about her business, teaching witchcraft to her interested middle-schoolers. It seems almost no one cares about this death and destruction — and those who do, like the area’s kindly mortician (Jack Albertson, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory), find themselves either strictly murdered or fraudulently useless.

Even weirder still, the bodies of the deceased are soon brought back to life and join the murderous rampage. What is going on here, guys?

Written by Alien’s Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett (although O’Bannon later disowned it completely) and directed by Poltergeist III’s Gary A. Sherman, Dead & Buried is one of those blissful horror films from the early ’80s that manages to continually toy with the audience, switching between subtle mystery and graphic horror to — as the corpses are stripped to the bone and re-animated — ghoulish cinema.

With its shocker ending offering no rhyme or reason — just a black screen followed by credits — if I had seen this as a kid, I would still be gushing about it today. Instead, I’m gushing about it now. —Louis Fowler

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