Wanna see an oddball anthology of holiday horror filled with twists and bursting with creativity? Then you better watch out and queue up A Christmas Horror Story instead, because All the Creatures Were Stirring is frustratingly average. Making that all the more disappointing is how roaringly strong the start is. Set in a dreary-looking office at a depressing-looking office Christmas party, the first story offers a Belko Experiment-esque twist on the dreaded game of Dirty Santa, but with booby-trapped presents that play for keeps. Why haven’t any of the Saw sequels thought of this?

Unfortunately, the fire dies down from there, worsening with each passing, welcome-worn segment, from reindeer death games and demonic recruiting to yet another tired take on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, this one centered around a character so insufferable (played by Jonathan Kite of TV’s 2 Broke Girls) that the bit is off-putting. The movie goes sci-fi in its conclusion with a UFO encounter notable only for featuring the name value of Hustlers’ Constance Wu. Elsewhere, you’ll find more amiable talents strewn about, including Jocelin Donahue (The House of the Devil), Chase Williamson (John Dies at the End), Brea Grant (Beyond the Gates) and Joe Dante regular Archie Hahn (Amazon Women on the Moon).

All five tales come wrapped in the guise of an experimental theater production on Christmas Eve, as witnessed by two people on a date. There’s a couple behind All the Creatures Were Stirring, too: shorts-helming spouses Rebekah and David Ian McKendry, making their full-length feature as writers and directors. You can’t regift what they got you. —Rod Lott

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Wisconsin filmmaker Bill Rebane’s movies have dealt with all manner of terrifying creatures, from giant spiders to Tiny Tim. Chronologically between them stands Bigfoot, in The Capture of Bigfoot. In the first line, the local redneck hunter Hank (Rebane regular William Dexter, The Demons of Ludlow) says, “We’ve only got one problem now.” Unfortunately for the viewer, that problem is the film itself, a lumbering snore of cryptozoological claptrap that reeks more foul than any sasquatch chassis.

Thanks to Hank being a dumbass, Bigfoot (Janus Raudkivi) is on the loose and looking for his child (Randolph Rebane). The local sawmill owner (Sixpack Annie’s Richard Kennedy), essentially the Carl Denham of this story, thinks there’s big money to be made in exhibiting Bigfoot to the public. The local game warden (Stafford Morgan, The Witch Who Came from the Sea) thinks Bigfoot should be left alone. The local sheriff (Wally Flaherty, The Devonsville Terror) thinks everyone want to hear his Humphrey Bogart impression.

You’ll think Bigfoot looks more like a yeti (or a grown-up Monchhichi), what with its all-white fur, and sounds like Wolfman Jack impersonating Dracula. The beast sure keeps busy, chucking snowmobiles and tearing apart skiers, but more of the movie is given to townspeople talking about it, arguing over it, looking for it or pointing at prints of it in the snow and shouting, “Them ain’t human!”

At the midpoint, Rebane offers what promises to be his pic’s pièce de résistance: a lengthy disco party suddenly interrupted by Bigfoot, who demolishes every dancer limb by limb. Only Bigfoot never shows up, so we get a lengthy disco party just for the sake of a lengthy disco party, I guess. If you manage to make it that far, marvel at the clothes and wonder where they found such fashions. Then wonder no more as the closing credits inform you: “Wardrobe and outfittings: K-Mart.” —Rod Lott

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Welcome to Pleasant Hill Hospital, a sanitarium. Location: out of the way. Atmosphere: cozy. Visiting hours: NEVER.

In other words, welcome to Asylum of Satan, from writer/director William Girdler, who would make Three on a Meathook that same year before moving on to Abby, Grizzly and an untimely death at age 30. This, his first film, proves he had a lot to learn, like not to open a horror movie with a country theme, especially one belted by your third lead.

Cute Lucina Martin (Carla Borelli, O.C. and Stiggs) wakes up in Pleasant Hill with zero memory. No worries, the Ruth Buzzi-esque nurse tells her, because she’s under the good care of Dr. Specter (Girdler regular Charles Kissinger). Lucina’s fiancé, Chris (one-timer Nick Jolley, the aforementioned shit-kickin’ vocalist), suspects she’s been kidnapped and involves the authorities.

Turns out, Chris’ gut — and he does have one, packed into high-waisted checkered pants — is right. Dr. Specter isn’t exactly on the up-and-up; in fact, as a police lieutenant (Louis Bandy, 1983’s The Act) tells Chris, “He was picked up several times for devil worshipping.” Specter is also known in “the journals” for his vague work in “pain experiments,” which we see play out as he locks “The Cripple” (per the credits, played by Scalpel’s Mimi Honce) in a purposely drafty room full of bugs, and gives “Blind Girl” (Meathook cheesecake Sherry Steiner) a secret swimming partner by dropping a venomous snake into the pool.

As all medical dramas do, the film climaxes with a satanic ritual in the basement, as minions shrouded in folded dinner-napkin robes watch as Specter summons ol’ Scratch … who looks to be sculpted from SpaghettiOs. Shot on the cheap in little more than one location, Asylum of Satan tells a simple story with a Don’t Look in the Basement quality … minus the quality. —Rod Lott

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Frank Langella is a lusty Dracula and he wants to suck your … blood?

While the scenes of hellish lovemaking in this 1979 retread by John Badham, especially when scored with the appropriately lush music of John Williams, are a thing of blood-drenched beauty, it’s too bad the rest of the film is a Gothic snooze that’ll have you poking your heart with stakes just to stay awake.

With all the swagger of a 500-year-old demon in a hot discotheque, the bare-chested Dracula makes his way to merry ole England, exsanguinating a boatful of hardened seamen along the way. Never one to go soft, as soon as he makes it to shore, he begins his reign of erectile terror, preying upon the fair lasses of London, including a romp with Mina Van Helsing (Jan Howard) and Lucy Seward (Kate Nelligan).

However, when the legendary vampire hunter (and aged boner-killer) Professor Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier) discovers what’s going on, he launches an all-out attack on Drac and his ladies of the night, putting an end to the vampire’s libidinous cooze-cruise through Britannia, in a sun-drenched immolation that is the film’s masterful nonmasturbatory moment.

As Dracula, Langella truly is in his swarthy element, portraying the ancient Vlad as a demonic dude that just want his ding-a-ling dunked a few times, which I can understand. Few films have ever truly prodded the erotic beast that is Bram Stoker’s strokable creation, and in Dracula, it’s exploited to its most rigid climax.

But, sadly, every scene that is not focused on Dracula and his conquests are, for the most part, a dreaded bore that make me sensually massage the fast-forward button, that blessed love child of the night who makes viewing tepid movies a true contingency of purely copulative horror. —Louis Fowler

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According to Wikipedia, Niccolò Paganini was a brilliant violinist — a stringed virtuoso who shocked the early 1800s with his nimble wrist and indelible skill. Also, in the case of the film Paganini Horror, he apparently sold his soul to Satan, a deal that results in terrible horror flicks usurping your name a few decades later.

A trio of somewhat hard-rocking chicks are looking for that “hot” sound that will take them to the top of the charts; they believe they’re going to find it by using a lost composition by the very late Paganini, sold to their producer by a badly dubbed Donald Pleasence. They’re wrong, of course.

As Pleasence goes to a tower and throws the money he made off the deal to all of Italy, the gang decides to record in Paganini’s old estate, where a small girl recently threw a radio in the bathtub where her mom was lounging. While I hope she got sent to timeout for that, concurrently a metal-faced killer is stalking the band as they try to record a “fantastic video clip” in the style of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

Gleefully, when the producer (or is he the video’s director?) discovers a room with a comically large hourglass in it, the film goes right into a most bloody scherzo, defying description as the remaining rockers run around the mansion, cashing in a one-way ticket to hell, complete with a wholly nonsensical ending I hoped Pleasence earned an easy-enough paycheck for.

With a couple of decent power ballads, some powerful jump-scares and, of course, the participation of Daria Nicolodi, Paganini Horror is a trashy little film, one that for years I thought starred Klaus Kinski; turns out that’s Kinski Paganini, a film even Werner Herzog thought was “unfilmable,” so I really want to watch it more than this. —Louis Fowler

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