One of the horror anthologies that popped up in the wake of HBO’s success with Tales from the Crypt, After Midnight emerged from the unreliable talents of Jim and Ken Wheat, sibling scribes of The Fly II, The Birds II and one of those made-for-TV Ewok movies. As you’d expect, this is equally lackluster, but worth a look for omnibus nuts.

A college psych class headed by a freaky professor (Ramy Zada, Two Evil Eyes) provides the framework, as he has students tell each other stories of fear. First up is a couple stranded on an out-of-the-way road; for help, they go to a spooky old house. Second is a pointless tale of four high school girls out for a night on the town, only to end up menaced by a greasy gas station attendant and his ferocious dogs (which end up tearing Tracy Wells, the sister from TV’s Mr. Belvedere, to pieces).

Marg Helgenberger (TV’s CSI) stars in the final story, of a late-night answering service employee on crutches who’s receiving threatening calls from a psycho (Righteous Kill’s Alan Rosenberg, who became her husband). As is clearly evident, the Wheats don’t know how to end any of these stories, although the first one offers a bit of gore to compensate.

After Midnight isn’t terrible, but — wait, yeah, it is, but for some reason, I’ve seen it a few times and wouldn’t mind it again. —Rod Lott

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After a couple of comedic entries, the killer-doll franchise returns to its horror roots with Curse of Chucky, the sixth of the series. Voiced by Brad Dourif, Chucky mysteriously is shipped to the home of a tortured painter (Chantal Quesnelle, Bruiser) who takes care of her paraplegic, 20-something daughter, Nica (Fiona Dourif, who’s Brad’s daughter, but good enough to avoid charges of nepotism).

Chucky quickly does away with the mother, which prompts an influx of family members for her funeral … and, unbeknownst to them, theirs. Nica’s vampish sister, Barb (Danielle Bisutti, Insidious: Chapter 2), wants to sell the house and send Nica to assisted living, so you know she’s not surviving. Barb’s precocious daughter (newcomer Summer Howell), however, is another story. The kid does great with lines like, “Chucky says life’s a bitch and then you die like a stuck pig.”

Directed by series creator Don Mancini, Curse of Chucky boasts a nice tie or two to the 1988 original, Child’s Play, bringing the 25-year saga full-circle. Brad Dourif even gets to appear in human form for the first time since the start, in flashbacks that make him look less like serial killer Charles Lee Ray and more like The Room mastermind Tommy Wiseau.

Mancini’s decision to avoid humor almost entirely pays off, again making Chucky an object of fright, not funnies. Several sequences are calculated to make the most of audiences’ fears of dolls that move, much less kill, and despite the occasional overflourishing camera movement, they click with a gory goodness. If only Mancini knew how to bring the thing to a close; Curse is stuffed with about four endings, and to top it off, there’s another awaiting at the close of the credits. —Rod Lott

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Yes, they really made a horror movie in the 70s about giant man-eating bunny rabbits. And yes, they called it Night of the Lepus, which was just another blatant attempt by Hollywood to use a dead language (lepus means hare in Latin) to make something cute and lovable seem dangerous and scary. How could something so absurd be any good?

The simple answer: It couldn’t. The fun, instead, comes from pondering how the fuck the filmmakers responsible were able to ignore this simple fact and make the movie anyway.

Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh play a “young” couple of scientific researchers who have been asked to find a way to slow down the breeding cycle of the local rabbit population, which has grown vast enough to devastate much of the county’s farmland. Inevitably, their research fucks up the ecology and allows the rabbits to grow to the size of Volkswagens and much mayhem ensues until the adorable monsters are finally vanquished — at least, for the moment …

Lepus has a decent cast, but its members are hobbled by the script’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that its plot is more appropriate for a spoof than a serious horror film. The ludicrous effects are achieved by filming regular-sized rabbits on miniature sets and — in some shots — by a guy in a hilariously freeze-frameable Easter Bunny suit. Director William F. Claxton tries to make up for this with some gore, but all that does is remind you how ridiculous the whole concept is in the first place. —Allan Mott

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Originally shown in 3-D, the “old dark house” thriller The Maze should be called The Castle, or The Castle with a Maze, if they wished to be more specific. Directed by William Cameron Menzies (Invaders from Mars), it follows bachelor Gerald MacTeam (Richard Carlson, Creature from the Black Lagoon) called away to his ancestors’ Craven Castle for reasons most mysterious, just as he is about to be married.

When Gerald sends a letter to his fiancée, Kitty (soap star Veronica Hurst), to break their engagement, she gets suspicious, packs her bags and her aunt (Katherine Emery, Isle of the Dead), and heads off to said Scottish castle uninvited. There, the staff is notoriously tight-lipped; the ladies are locked in their rooms at night; and strange noises emanate from the hallway.

On the grounds stands an elaborate, visually pleasing maze, but don’t expect it to play much of a part in the story outside of the “shocking” climax, in which we learn the lord of the castle is really a 200-year-old giant frog. Yes, the revelation is quite outta nowhere.

The film’s sets are something to behold, but The Maze treads its territory fairly slowly. Seeing it in 3-D may have given it an extra kick, but it would hardly explain the amphibious twist; the plague of frogs at the end of Magnolia made more sense. —Rod Lott

You can’t really blame Frogs’ producers for their blatant deception. I mean, there are frogs in Frogs, but they alone aren’t the only animals who turn against the various unlikable characters who inhabit the story. In reality, the film more accurately should have been called Traditionally Harmless Animals Which Suddenly Decide to Attack People Because of Pollution, which I will concede would have been a lot harder to market.

The people in question are a bunch of rich assholes who live under the thumb of patriarch Jason Crockett (Ray Milland, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes) and who have gathered together on his private island to celebrate his latest birthday. You know Crockett is a bad guy because:
a) he’s rich, and
b) is in a wheelchair, so it’s only natural that he has no problem keeping the bugs away from his estate with a very eco-unfriendly pesticide.

It’s only a matter of time before the local animal population (which admittedly includes a lot of frogs) calls “Bullshit!” on this and starts attacking everyone, including the studly, tree-hugging photographer played by Sam Elliott (Tombstone), whose lack of a mustache is eerily discomfiting.

Frogs manages to avoid being as ridiculous as that same year’s Night of the Lepus, but that’s not a good thing. While watching giant bunny rabbits stalking Janet Leigh is just stupid enough to hold your attention, the same can’t be said for people being hunted by normal-sized fauna. Despite the goofy promise inherent in its concept and infamous poster, Frogs is just plain dull. —Allan Mott

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