In the annals of Clive Barker cinematic adaptations, The Midnight Meat Train is a redheaded stepchild, often put to the side and ignored. And it’s a damned shame; while it never achieves the classic status of Hellraiser, Meat Train has a lot going on beneath its engine.

Barker’s never been a “buxom co-ed battles hockey-masked lunatic” sort of writer. Instead, his tales revel in thematic subtext: Hellraiser concerns itself with the BDSM subculture; Candyman, the importance of folk tales to society; Nightbreed, a classism/racism allegory; Lord of Illusions, the fragility of reality. Even the horrid Rawhead Rex contemplates the nurturing qualities of mothers vs. the stereotypical aggressive male. So, too, Meat Train is less a “serial killer run amok” gorefest and more about the mythological heart of New York City, a heart that requires much blood to continue pumping.

But don’t fret, gorehounds; you won’t be left wanting.

Bradley Cooper (The Hangover trilogy) goes gritty as Leon, a photographer trying to capture the true black heart of NYC. He becomes obsessed with the nocturnal wanderings of Mahogany, a strange, silent behemoth played by former UK footballer Vinnie Jones (The Condemned). Following the mute leviathan into the subways, Leon discovers exactly where most of the city’s missing persons end up; in an abandoned subway station, slaughtered by Mahogany to be prepared and fed to what appears to be relatives of The Descent’s cave dwellers.

The performances surpass those of more standard horror fare. Cooper goes darker than his current status as Hollywood golden boy will ever allow again; Jones proves that, like fellow hulk Arnold Schwarzenegger, he’s far more effective when he doesn’t open his mouth; and the eternally underutilized Leslie Bibb (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby) brings nice heft and grit to her role as Leon’s concerned fiancé. The spectacularly bloody proceedings (boy howdy, are they bloody) are unsettlingly orchestrated by director Ryûhei Kitamura (Versus), although an overuse of CGI bloodletting takes a viewer out of the story once too often. And if the ultimate ending doesn’t resonate quite like that of the eponymous Barker short story (one of the finest horror tales of the 20th century), there are moments of true dread scattered throughout.

And, yes, plenty of practical gore. Sure, the characters’ actions stretch disbelief to the breaking point, but it’s all presented with a heady seriousness, with nary an audience-friendly wink to be found. It’s unsteady on its feet, but I’ll take The Midnight Meat Train over the “safe” horror of Ouija or As Above, So Below any day. —Corey Redekop

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Right away, as in mere seconds, the genius-titled Nude for Satan delivers on the “nude,” with a woman fleeing something at night. We’re not made to wait too long for the “Satan” part of the equation, either, assuming Ol’ Scratch is that guy who won’t cut out the cackling and has the blacked-out tooth — a safe bet, wouldn’t you agree? (As for “for,” well, let’s just give this slice of Italian cheesecake the benefit of the doubt.)

How does one get au naturel for the Antichrist in the first place? Per writer/director Luigi Batzella (The Devil’s Wedding Night), the first step is to be like Dr. William Benson (Stelio Candelli, Demons) and assist a confused beauty like Susan (Rita Calderoni, Delirium), who’s just been injured an auto accident. Then you seek help at the nearest spooky castle, preferably inhabited by Beelzebub (James Harris of Jess Franco’s Kiss Me Killer) because the pieces naturally fall into place from there.

Inside the Gothic estate, time is suspended, which means Susan and the doc meet alternate-reality versions of themselves. That’s just for starters, as other strange stuff happens, from seeing painted images on canvas move to falling down a hole and into a room-sized spiderweb. The latter happens to Susan; upon landing with a bounce, her life-affirming right breast pops free and hangs out carefree for the remainder of the 82-minute wonder of softcore surrealism.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, so back to that web: Susan nearly becomes a midnight snack for a giant spider, so poorly made it would not be out-of-place in a small-town church spookhouse. The arachnid has somewhere between 10 and 12 legs, and looks like a dog turd rolled in hair. It also emits sound effects that merge space transmissions and sirens. Basically, it makes the robotic spider from a similar scene in 1965’s Bloody Pit of Horror look good.

Batzella’s work makes about as much sense as Batzella’s last name; he’s like a vo-tech Mario Bava, which equates this project to junior-college performance art, complete with dime-store fireworks, but tell me you don’t want to see that! Research tells me the Dutch added hardcore inserts to push Nude for Satan in full-on porn, but given the extra limbs the spider got, I shudder to think at what the humans might acquire in their triple-X translation. —Rod Lott

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If it’s Tuesday, it must be a new straight-to-video horror film starring Robert Englund. In this case, it’s Fear Clinic, born from the short-lived web series of the same name, in which the former Freddy Krueger traded Nightmares for phobias.

Englund reprises his role as Dr. Andover, renegade brain researcher and inventor of a coffin-like machine that animates one’s fears into vivid hallucinations, in hopes of curing his patients of that which frightens them to the point of crippling. This being a horror movie, the contraption doesn’t work as planned. This being from the same creative team as the 2009 series — namely, director/co-writer Robert Hall, the man behind the effective throwback ChromeSkull slashers — it arrives as a missed opportunity and a major disappointment. What worked in episodic bursts does not gel as one shared story, which concerns the struggling survivors of a tragic diner shooting that left several dead, including one child.

In shedding the serial nature of its source material, Fear Clinic the feature loses its base appeal. While it’s not required viewers have the show under their belt before watching the movie, this project does serve as a direct continuation. Yet it doesn’t even follow its own internal logic, so fans may be as lost as newcomers as to just what the hell is going on. I was, and I happily devoured those episodes as they premiered five years prior.

Budgetary issues are apparent, and may be somewhat to blame for the script not being up to snuff. I am assuming that a poor showing in crowdsource funding are why once-attached Kane Hodder and Danielle Harris are no-shows in reviving their series characters; in their place is Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor — not exactly a fair trade. Casting issues aside, one can’t help but notice how fake the CGI spiders look: so pitiful, the intended scare effect is anything but. Speaking of the arac war, a special effect Hall is able to pull off seems swiped from the Venom portions of Spider-Man 3. Oh, what a tangled web … —Rod Lott

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What at first appears to be a baffling creative choice in the 2014 version of The Town That Dreaded Sundown rapidly reveals itself to be among its greatest assets: In the world of this remake, the original 1976 film exists. Obscure compared to most of what Hollywood revives and reboots these days, that source material is referenced throughout as the authorities and various townspeople discuss it; many even watch it.

While this film is fictional, the crime spree it depicts has real-life basis: In 1946, a serial killer dubbed The Phantom of Texarkana (among other catchy names) had the border regions of the Lone Star State and the Natural State gripped in a state of shock. His five murders went unsolved and became cemented in cinematic immortality for the ’76 Sundown, a cheap but effective (and profitable) project for hick-pic director Charles B. Pierce (The Legend of Boggy Creek) that wades in docudrama and horror thriller without fully committing to either. The remake has no such identity crisis, pushing all its chips to the corner of the felt marked “slasher.”

In its meta take, the Texarkana residents commemorating the murders’ 65th anniversary are panicked when a copycat killer — potato-sack headgear and all — begins offing good-looking youngsters who dare give in to their hard-R impulses. Our parentless Final Girl (Addison Timlin, Odd Thomas) survives and investigates.

By acknowledging not just the true-crime element, but Pierce’s real-life film, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (the Sundance-anointed Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (2013’s Carrie remake) are allowed to have their devil’s-food cake and eat it, too; technically, they’re not recreating Sundown’s kills with contemporary gore galore (near-iconic death-by-trombone scene included) — they’re commenting on them, right?

There is no correct answer. Love or loathe the execution (pun not intended), there is no denying it’s different. Gomez-Rejon calls the shots with considerable style; they pop with gorgeous color. He also ably captures the heavy humidity of the region’s sticky summer nights. If only all horror remakes could convey half as much. —Rod Lott

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In adapting its same-named board game to the big screen with Ouija, toymaker Hasbro has taken an interesting marketing approach: Those Ouija boards we sell? They will fucking kill you!

After her BFF jacks around with the satanic tool and then promptly — and fatally — hangs herself with Christmas lights, the mousy Laine (Olivia Cooke, The Quiet Ones) gets the bright idea to gather their friends and contact the dearly departed via the Ouija; malevolent spirits awaken.

If watching people play Ouija sounds dull, that’s because it is. Scenes of such mark countless horror films — Witchboard and Paranormal Activity, just off the top of my head — but here, first-time director Stiles White (screenwriter of 2005’s equally blah Boogeyman) has made a feature full of them. Too bad dialogue like “Are you pushing it?” and “Wasn’t me, I swear!” carries neither the stakes nor the suspense as when Rosemary Woodhouse dug out the Scrabble tiles.

With a PG-13 rating that suggests how little it tries, Ouija is a thoroughly unimaginative entry in the Dead Teenager subgenre. To call its characters one-note is not just too kind, but one level too many; they’re underdeveloped to the point of barely being introduced. Each exists solely for the purpose of receiving the message “HI FRIEND” from one step beyond. (The supernatural force doing the writing goes to so much trouble to deliver the greeting, you’d think it’d at least make the effort to include the needed comma between the two words.)

Ultimately, the only unsettling sight of Ouija is having to sit through two scenes of women flossing their teeth. Ick! If the spirit moves you to watch this one, point your internal planchette toward “NO.” —Rod Lott

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