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Sixteen years after the misbegotten Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 retroactively decimated moviegoing America’s collective enthusiasm for 1999’s revolutionary and wildly influential The Blair Witch Project, Lionsgate finally sought to right the franchise ship with a long-overdue threequel bearing the plain-Jane, abbreviated title of Blair Witch.

Perhaps the wait was too long overdue, as the film proved unable to live up to the studio’s hopes. Whatever the reason, its being seen as a failure is a shame, because despite that unimaginative title, Blair Witch is a damn fine horror film that continues to surprise and subvert.

Believing that his older sister, Heather (the original film’s iconic snot-dripping female lead), still may be alive, young paramedic James (James Allen McCune, Snitch) dares to venture deep into Black Hills Forest where she disappeared. Among those accompanying him are his kinda-sorta-maybe girlfriend (Callie Hernandez, Machete Kills), who is shooting the excursion for her college documentary class. In a broad sense, you know where this is going, but the how is more of a question mark.

Continuing to work in tandem after successful at-bats with You’re Next and The Guest, director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett face having to meet the expectations of viewers who want to see a continuation of the story and further exploration into the mythology, but also something they haven’t seen before. To achieve that balance is precarious, yet somehow, Wingard and Barrett manage, starting with a way to utilize the found-footage conceit in a different manner.

That said, their style is not for everyone. Although perfectly accessible, it is too experimental and trope-tripping to be branded with certainty as mainstream-friendly; therefore, if their previous collaborations were not made from the recipes you desired, then Blair Witch is apt to not be the trilogy capper for which you’ve waited so long. It wasn’t what I had been anticipating; it was far better. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Edge of Sanity does not find Anthony Perkins at his sleaziest. That would be Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion, but if one discounts that 1984 film, then yes, holy crap, Edge of Sanity finds Anthony Perkins at his sleaziest. (Interestingly, both pictures contain scenes that sexualize nuns.)

Like virtually everything he did in the wake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, this Budapest-lensed, Victorian-set production of Harry Alan Towers (H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come) typecasts Perkins as a maniacally unhinged character. At least it’s one of popular culture’s most enduring: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde. Of course, Perkins begins the picture playing Dr. Jekyll, the buttoned-down but workaholic ego to Hyde’s rampaging id. The dual personality is gained through pure accident after synthesizing an anesthetic alternative to morphine in his lab; a coked-up monkey kicks over a vial of this into a pile of that, and the resulting cloud Jekyll inhales brings out the beast in him.

With a 19th-century bong ever at the ready for a moment’s-notice smoke, Hyde trolls the streets of London looking for whores to feel up and kill — expressly in that order, because even Hyde has his limits. Director Gérard Kikoïne (the following year’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptation Buried Alive, also for Towers), however, seems not to, even setting Perkins up to deliver a woefully anachronistic James Bond joke as Hyde introduces himself at a party of disrepute: “Hyde … Jack Hyde.” See, Edge merges Stevenson’s literary creation with another UK legend, this one not fictional: serial killer Jack the Ripper.

To honor due credit, Perkins simply could have rested and let his makeup do Hyde (or an emaciated version of MTV personality Kurt Loder) for him, but the man was a true professional, giving his all to a project he had to know was junk. Edge of Sanity is, after all, a strange case in itself — a fairly insane picture in which Hyde masturbates a prostitute with a cane, just because. Although not as enthusiastic as Perkins, the ravishing Glynis Barber (Invaders of the Lost Gold) matches him in talent, playing Jekyll’s all-too-understanding wife. You feel more for Barber than for her character. —Rod Lott

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One of the better entries in the Bigfootsploitation cycle — granted, that feat is not at all difficult — Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot takes the docudrama approach in following seven men on an Oregonian expedition to the Peckatoe River to hunt for the fabled monster.

Lead researcher Chuck Evans (George Lauris, director of Buffalo Rider) narrates the film and introduces his fellow travelers, including:
• shirtless Native American Techka Blackhawk (Joel Morello, clearly wearing a wig);
• a skeptical, big-city journalist (Lou Salerni), of whom Chuck tells us, “His negative attitude disturbs me”;
• Barney Snipe (Jim Bradford, From Nashville with Music), the curly-headed cook who looks like a truck-stop Ronald McDonald and executes a fine pratfall (“He’s a little clumsy. But his coffee isn’t bad.”);
• and an old coot (Ken Kenzle) and “his faithful mule, Ted.” The former, Chuck relays, is the only one who knows the way to Peckatoe … despite a scene mere moments before that shows Chuck and an anthropologist reviewing a wall-sized map with a point clearly marked as Peckatoe River.

As the gents mount horses and gallop through the forest, one-and-done director Ed Ragozzino throws in nature footage — Wolf vs. badger! Bear vs. raccoon! Bear vs. bear! — and, I presume, literally throws a mountain lion from an overpass to land on the horses below. (That shot is pretty funny; I watched it five times.) More famous are the Bigfoot-sighting stories the men tell one another at the campfire and on the trail, which Ragozzino cuts away to recreate; the most memorable finds a log cabin of miners under fire by rocks hurled by a family of Sasquatch.

After being a near feature-length tease, the film climaxes with a tree trunk-tossin’ finale that gives way to a tender Bigfoot ballad playing over the end credits. What an odd, chunky stew this Sasquatch is: a Sunn Classics fauxmentary mated with Disney nature shorts. For that reason, I can’t help but recommend it. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Tulsa, Oklahoma: birthplace of The Gap Band, porn star Stacy Valentine, 1921’s most incendiary race riot and, depending upon who you believe, the shot-on-video horror movie made expressly for home video. Following that trail blazed by Blood Cult were such Tulsa-lensed terrors as Revenge and The Ripper. As recently as the late aughts, T-Town was still at it, with the slasher known as The Stitcher. It’ll have you in stitches, whether you want it to or not.

Thanks to a freshly dead aunt, hot girl Brittany (Carmen Garrison) has inherited a luxurious lake house. Although she is not pleased the place is located in “hillbilly hell,” Brittany invites seven pals to make the trip for a par-tay weekend of bikinis and brewskis. Unfortunately, most of them show up! I say that because several of The Stitcher’s characters are exceedingly annoying, none more so than the obnoxious Digger (Justin Boyd), an obnoxious writer for the fictional (yet likely obnoxious) Blast Zone music magazine. He is the worst, because he is an obnoxious misogynist, because he is an obnoxious stoner with a bong seemingly glued to one hand, and because his name is Digger. Among all of Brit’s friends, he’s the one you cannot wait to see killed off, by that mysterious masked man for whom the movie is named.

The Stitcher is to this Blackstone Cove what Jason Voorhees is to Crystal Lake, the difference being that across the dozen or so Friday the 13th chapters in existence, not once to my knowledge does Jason leave behind a handful of buttons as a calling card. Limbs, heads and entrails, yes; sewing materials, nay. As the backstory explains, back when the textile-mill biz was boomin’ and The Stitcher was just a wee lad, he was abused in a rather unique manner: Ma would sew a button to his bare skin every time she felt he was a bad boy.

And if you think that’s outlandish, wait until you see how at least four local yokels are presented: with missing teeth! (While the whale-like feed store employee escapes this indignity, he is saddled with an arguably worse social ill: uncontrollable flatulence.) Writer/director Darla Enlow (Toe Tags) also fills a role among these Okie rurals, but you won’t catch her with blacked-out chompers or an overactive anus; instead, the blonde is running and bouncing in just tight shorts and a tighter bra while fleeing The Stitcher in the flick’s prologue. I’m willing to cut her some slack, because she has made a deliriously entertaining movie. It’s amateurishly acted (although there are exceptions, like Garrison and Laurel Williamson), but what do you expect for $70,000? As much as I desired to punch Digger, I wanted even more for The Stitcher to keep going past the point at which Enlow decided to stop. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Although now virtually extinct, the horror-movie host once was a staple of local TV up and down the UHF and VHF dials. Paying tribute to this nearly lost art — while mocking it — is Late Night Double Feature, a Canadian indie that shows us an episode of channel 13’s Dr. Nasty’s Cavalcade of Horror as it also takes us behind the scenes. As hosts, Dr. Nasty (Brian Scott Carleton, Bigfoot and the Burtons) and sexy sidekick Nurse Nasty (Jamie Elizabeth Sampson, Dead Rush) introduce two movies (actually short films, which we see in full): Dinner for Monsters and Slit.

Directed by Zombieworld contributor Zach Ramelan, Dinner follows a chef (Nick Smyth, 11 Blocks) to a private meal for six he’s been hired to prepare, only to discover his hosts’ choice of meat is a human corpse. Just when you think that the cannibalism “reveal” is the whole joke — and not a particularly novel one — Dinner leapfrogs genres in a burst of gonzo energy.

The inferior Slit, from Terror Telly helmer Torin Langen, also is an on-the-job tale, as Brad (Colin Price, Bed of the Dead) makes a house call to a crazed client (Caleigh Le Grand, Save Yourself). See, Brad is a professional cutter … and a freelance asshole.

Even bumpered by a mortgage commercial (deftly parodying the awfulness of locally produced ads, which attempt creativity without having any) and two fake trailers (for the just-as-it-sounds Night Clown and the backwoods creature feature Encephalopithecus), Late Night still has a full third to go. Director Navin Ramaswaran (Pete Winning and the Pirates: The Motion Picture) fills this by expounding on the previous bits and hints of off-camera chaos among members of the cast and crew. In short, Dr. Nasty comes by his stage name naturally, being a narcotized misogynist who takes advantage of cute interns, and his co-star is damn sick of it. In fact, after being physically tortured for real by the doc during one show segment, she reaches her breaking point and then flies right past it.

Unfortunately, Double Feature’s tonal shift is jarring, going from light and funny to grim and cheerless, and the film as a whole suffers for it. Adding more phony ads and coming attractions would aid tremendously in restoring the balance, especially since the flick does not present a whole-hog facade along the lines of the WNUF Halloween Special. The best course, however, would have been to pick a mood and stick with it, because the movies within the movie feel more like Ramaswaran and friends sandwiched in the shorts they could get, rather than build the shorts to suit the concept, which itself is killer and could withstand another go-round. As is, Sampson earns MVP status with her strong performance. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.