Sometime in the 1990s, the unholy promise made by Near Dark was utterly fulfilled when Hollywood started to make purely American vampire flicks in the form of From Dusk Till Dawn, Blade and the underrated Vampires — or John Carpenter’s Vampires — that took the undead mythos and, with a bloody smirk, drove a stake right through them.

Future hatemonger James Woods (Videodrome) leads the cast as acerbic vampire slayer Jack Crow, employed by the Catholic Church to do what he does best: make brutally caustic one-liners while lighting creatures of the night up like a cheap firecracker throughout the scenic desert landscapes of the Southwest. It’s all in a day’s work for Jack and crew until, at a whore-filled party, the vampire master (Thomas Ian Griffith, xXx) shows up and slaughters most of the affiliated hunters, drunken prostitutes and even a priest or two in his search for a relic known as the Béziers Cross that will allow him to walk in the sunlight, apparently the dream of most bloodsuckers.

With the help of chubby sidekick Tony (Daniel Baldwin, Stealing Candy) and the novice Father Adam (Tim Guinee, Iron Man), they use pre-bitten hooker Katrina (Sheryl Lee, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me) and her mental link with the master to track him and his nest of vampires down; she’s usually in one form or another of undress while doing this, which was great in 1998.

Loosely based on the novel Vampire$ by John Steakley, this movie was released during a mostly hit-or-miss time in final act of Carpenter’s career, coming in like a bat out of hell after the (somewhat) highs of Escape from L.A. , about to careen downward with the (somewhat) lows of Ghosts of Mars. It makes sense, though, as Vampires lie dead in the middle: a decently watchable 108 minutes, but by no means a final masterpiece. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Though it’s been repackaged by Blumhouse for primarily horrific purposes, the story of Ma, I believe, is a pretty universal one for many (most?) teens; I mean, how many of us, at one point or another when growing up, hung out at a moderately weird older person’s house, doing things we probably weren’t really supposed to be doing?

I mean … surely I couldn’t have been the only one, right?

Irritating youth Maggie (Diana Silvers, Booksmart) moves with her understanding mother (Juliette Lewis, Natural Born Killers) to a small town in Ohio, mostly to get their feet back on the ground after an ugly divorce. While Mom now has to work overtime at the town’s casino delivering drinks to her high school nemesis, Maggie starts bumming around with other irritating teens down at the local rock pile. You know the type of kids, too: They mostly hang out in front of the liquor store, trying to get adults to buy them booze.

As a matter of fact, that’s exactly how they meet Sue Ann, or as she likes to be called, Ma (Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water). Pretty soon, Ma is hooking the kids up with plenty of liquor and drugs and a place to do it all in, all in an attempt to relive her, as we soon learn, miserable teenage years. Seems that, at the hands of the parents of these kids, she was taunted pretty bad, leading to a traumatic moment in a closet with a boy she really liked.

I guess you really can’t blame Ma all that much when she imprisons and tortures the teens or, in the case of one dude, intravenously feeds him dog’s blood. While very little of it makes sense, the lynchpin of the film is Academy Award winner Spencer, playing a wholly believable kook, mixing the pathos of pain and pathology of a psychotic to create a fully memorable character; too bad she’s trapped in a mostly mediocre movie.

As I was about halfway through the movie though, I started to think about the people I might have bullied in high school; I could definitely believe it if there’s one guy out there who is just plotting revenge on me, planning to do it through my child. Well, the joke’s on you, man, because I am a childless 41-year-old guy with no prospects for the future. Better luck next time. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

I have always had the wholly holy belief that a Christian-made found-footage film — especially in the realm of diabolical spiritual horror — would be an interesting and entertaining way to preach the message and mysteries of the Gospel … and then I actually saw one, in the form of the barely released movie The Lock In.

The opening crawl informs us that we are watching a home video that is meant only for the judgmental eyes of the board of elders at the First Baptist Church, which might seem like a creepy way to keep this footage under wraps and far from public view, but living in Oklahoma has taught me that it’s how many churches keep their dirty laundry hidden, be it cases of demon possession or, you know, accusations of child molestation.

A group of overly caffeinated teens are on the way to a lock-in at their local church, all hoping to “get crazy” and help a friend possibly kiss a girl. On their way there, however, they stop by an area dumpster and find an old porno magazine; now, as a committed dumpster diver during the first half of the ’90s, believe me, the last thing you want in your hands is trashed porn, with layer after layer of grimy, stuck-together pages, simply dripping with the devil’s country gravy.

Regardless, one of the teens sticks the paper bag-wrapped periodical (which we never see, natch) in a backpack; the guys head to the church where Youth Pastor Chris lays down the rules, including that the place is wired with night-vision cameras, as well as an internet nanny that will alert him by phone if anyone is watching adult videos. Good thing, I guess, the guys brought that magazine … or is it?

The magazine is quickly discovered by Pastor Chris; his solution is to burn it outside as quickly as possible. A few minutes later, however, the magazine is back, showing up again in the backpack. When they try to throw it away, a demonic growl is heard and a garbage can is thrown down the hall. Fearfully moving down the stairs, the teens find themselves in a dark and empty church, and then the forced horror truly begins.

Filled with bad teen actors doing even worse teen improv, most of the film is simply the teens running around the modern church, screaming at one another and, eventually, begging and pleading to Jesus for forgiveness, which, as a Christian film, is understandable. Sadly, my prayers to be interested and entertained when I was watching The Lock In went woefully unanswered, a lament I can fully admit to as a believer in and of speculative Christianity. —Louis Fowler

To celebrate high school graduation, four couples have concocted an utterly monstrous, mind-roasting plan: to spend the night in a furniture store. And not just any furniture store, but Fine Furniture downtown, whoa-ho! John (Sean Kanan, The Karate Kid Part III) even knows the ropes — because Dad owns the place — so it’s going to be totally bitchin’! On the agenda are beer, food and, of course, sex in the showroom beds.

Seeing the maze of mattresses and mannequins scattered across the joint’s multiple stories, Kim (Weekend Pass’ Annette Sinclair, a former Mrs. Bob Seger) suggests an epic, pre-dinner game of hide-and-go-seek. As the film’s title of Hide and Go Shriek confirms, that’s exactly what they do. The title also makes clear that some of the players aren’t going to live to see morning, because a killer is afoot.

The only movie ever directed by one Skip Schoolnik, the obscure Hide and Go Shriek arrived well after the ’80s slasher wave crested, but deserves wider awareness. That has zip to do with the acting, which is loud and bush-league, and everything to do with an ahead-of-its-time reveal I won’t spoil. Despite editing that saps any suspense, the film lands on the slasher genre’s comfort-food side. Giving it a big shove are the effects from Screaming Mad George (Beyond Re-Animator), with an elevator decapitation as a gruesome highlight, and the gratuitous nudity, including a rather hysterical sequence in which Judy (Donna Baltron, Bikini Squad) is so nervous about losing her virginity, yet launches into a striptease act so polished, her upper thighs have to smell like dirty dollar bills.

The idea of horny teens staying overnight in a department store had been done much better in 1986’s Chopping Mall, thanks to that Jim Wynorski pic’s satiric edge. By contrast, Shriek’s laughs are not intentional, what with these crazy kids’ $6 haircuts, Chinese fire drills and Bloom County T-shirts. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Nostalgia-amped superfans of Sid and Marty Krofft’s The Banana Splits Adventure Hour from the late 1960s and early ’70s — back when the phrase “Saturday morning” meant something — may be horrified to see what awaits under the innocuous title of The Banana Splits Movie: a honest-to-God slasher movie (and to complain about that is no better than the fanboys whining about girls being Ghostbusters). But in this ready-to-market age of IP revivals, reboots and reheats, it’s nice to see one that doesn’t just thumb its nose at the source material, but urinates on it, too.

In the direct-to-disc flick, the Krofft show exists (albeit under the name of Taft) in the real world of present. Speaking of present, it’s the birthday of young Harley (newcomer Finlay Wojtak-Hissong), a friendless boy who likes to wear butterfly wings while dancing along with his favorite show on TV, much to the dismay of his macho-asshole father (Steve Lund, TV’s Bitten). However, Mom (Dani Kind, TV’s Wynonna Earp) is so supportive that she’s scored the fam tickets to a live taping.

No one in the audience knows the episode being taped will be the last, as The Banana Splits has been axed — fresh news taken not so well by the animatronic foursome, thanks to a pre-curtain programming upgrade. Behind the scenes and at the post-show meet-and-greet, the Splits (Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorkel) take the frustration of unemployment out on everyone who deserves it, as dictated by slasher-movie rules, which director Danishka Esterhazy (Level 16) clearly delights in depicting — after all, it’s not every day you get to shoot a giant robot lion and dog respectively flambé a pushy parent’s face or saw an Instagram “influencer” in half.

But maybe it should be. Whatever possessed Warner Bros. to turn a beloved, kiddie-courting property into R-rated Grand Guignol … well, I’m for it. I’m guessing the runaway popularity of the Five Nights at Freddy’s video-game franchise among grade schoolers — now in high school with more rebellious taste — proved an unofficial factor. Yet from the start of the Krofft empire, the line between their creations and childrens’ therapy appointments has been drawn with the sharpest of washable markers, so it takes only one turn of the screw to reimagine the cute and cuddly as vile and violent. Essentially a two-location picture, The Banana Splits Movie looks flat and cheap, but self-parodic subversiveness and perversity work in its favor. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.