Oops! All Horror - Day 7 - The Vault of Horror (1973)

Content warning: blood, dismemberment 

Five men find themselves on the sub-basement floor of a building with no way to call the elevator back.  To pass the time, they each share a recurring nightmare they have.

This anthology is based on stories that mostly appeared in the Tales from the Crypt magazine, in case they feel familiar.  It is also absolutely packed to the rafters with British talent, with Tom Baker, Denholm Elliott, Glynis Johns, and Terry-Thomas.  Normally, these kinds of movies have one, maybe two decent segments but all of these are pretty on par with each other, if not particularly outstanding.  It works more as a curiosity piece at this point.  Fortunately, the whole thing is streaming on YouTube.  My personal favorite is **SPOILERS FOLLOW** the guy who was just so annoying that he was condemned to relive his own murder for all eternity.  Like, everyone else was out for money or revenge and this guy was just a pedantic shit.  **END SPOILER**  Give it a shot for some vintage thrills.

Oops! All Horror - Day 6 - Dolly Dearest (1991)

 Content warning: blood, dismemberment, dolls

The Wade family has sold all their things, left L.A., and taken possession of a doll factory in Mexico so Elliot (Sam Bottoms) can pursue his dream of creating handmade dolls.  Except the real estate agent neglected to mention the hazardous, outdated equipment or the open archeological dig site next door.  Soon, daughter Jessica (Candy Hutson) begins acting strangely towards the Catholic housekeeper (Lupe Ontiveros) and grows increasingly inseparable from Dolly, one of the factory's leftover dolls.  Dr. Karl Resnick (Rip Torn) is at the dig site investigating a Mayan splinter cult called the Sanzia, who worshiped a Devil Child, but the myths couldn't possibly be true.  Could they???

This is some old-school, classic killer doll shit and it was downright refreshing.  No meta-anything, no social commentary, just some passive racial bias, and an inanimate item that is trying to kill your whole family.  Yes, it's very clearly a Child's Play rip-off but who cares?  It's super fun and dumb!  There's a 10-year-old who dresses like a middle-aged accountant!  Fake cult lore!  Surprisingly good emotive doll faces! Clueless parents!  Denise Crosby looking gorgeous!  Explosions!  

The whole thing is available on YouTube for free.  Throw it on and have a blast.

Oops! All Horror - Day 5 - Bloody Tennis (2026)

 I'm not having particularly good luck trying to find stuff on my TBW list.  I'm trying to knock out older entries but twice now I have started a movie and realized it wasn't the right one, just named the same.  Tried to watch Thy Kingdom Come from 2008 but found Thy Kingdom Come from 2018 instead.  Which is only a horror movie if you're afraid of poverty.  It was at least short, clocking in at 42 minutes of Javier Bardem dressed as a priest and interviewing trailer park residents in Missouri.  Unfocused, documentary-style misery porn that feels very sleazy because of the fake priest angle.  Almost like they shot a bunch of interviews that were meant to be part of a larger narrative around the priest as a character, then ran out of money and just presented what they had.

So then I was looking for Stage Fright (2018) and clicked on Stage Fright (2017) because sometimes release dates vary.  Nope.  The 2017 version is a Lifetime Movie Network Original and it's basically a retread of The Phantom of the Opera.  I made it about 20 minutes and quit, thinking that it had to be the worst movie I'd ever seen.

People, I was wrong.  The worst movie I've ever seen was the one I picked after that, when I was just desperate to watch anything I could finish.  It's called Tropical Parasite (2026) and it is The Room levels of bad.  We're talking pasty-skinned writer/director/"star" clearly using filmmaking as an excuse to write off his vacation in the Philippines while coercing young, local women to take their tops off "for the movie."  There's almost no actual dialogue, just a voiceover that wants to be noir but lands firmly in the fedora-tipping "m'lady" cesspit.  The plot is nonsense and hinges on an AI-generated naked "sea nymph" that can only be freed from a (topless) sea witch's curse by a "true gentleman" and that sound you just heard was every woman in the world's vagina making the Windows shutdown noise.  You're probably thinking, "wow, Lucy, I'm so glad you watched this whole thing so I wouldn't have to," and no.  I made it TWENTY MINUTES and I will never recover from this.

Anyway, here's a review for Bloody Tennis.    Content warning: blood, animal death (cat), leeches

Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) wins a spot at an exclusive tennis camp but soon discovers that competition has deadly consequences.

This is Suspiria meets Raw with sports.  The performances from a host of ingenues are solid, especially Lily Taieb and Tracy Gotoas.  Hope those ladies get a career boost.  The script is pretty sparse and there's no great surprises but it's still a decent enough gorefest for those who like a little competition to work up an appetite.  

It's currently streaming on Shudder.  

Oops! All Horror - Day 4 - The Witches (2020)

  Content warning:  mice/rats

A young boy (Jahzir Bruno) is taken in by his grandmother (Octavia Spencer) after his parents are killed in a car accident.  In the grocery store, a strange woman (Josette Simon) offers him candy but he is frightened and runs back to his Grandma.  Grandma tells him that there are evil creatures called witches that want to destroy children and once you are targeted, they will keep trying.  Realizing this means they are in danger, she takes the boy to a fancy hotel to hide out, not realizing that the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) is holding a convention there to disseminate a new potion that will turn children into mice so they will be exterminated.  The boy and Grandma must find a way to stop this evil plot before it's too late.

There was a lot of backlash about this when it came out and it flopped pretty hard, but it's not that bad.  Spencer is always solid and Hathaway seems like she's having a ball as the villain.  The costumes are fantastic and the soundtrack is good, if not revelatory.  The CGI is a little dodgy but good enough for a kids' movie.  Really, my only complaint is that they filed every conceivable edge off this story.  It's so sanitized, not only is there no sense that the children are ever actually in danger, the boy (who is never named in this adaptation) makes a comment about how as a mouse, he'll live just as long as his grandmother so they can die together and he'll never have to experience loss again.  The 1990 version by contrast seems shockingly harsh and much, much darker.  

This is probably another of Warner Bros. trying to cut their losses, but it is nowhere to be found on streaming channels.  If you have small children and you want something more silly than scary, you're going to have to find an alternate source, yar, matey.  

Oops! All Horror -Day 3- Primal Darkness (2026)

  Content warning:  blood, dead animal (elk), dismemberment

An online outdoorsman (Dillon Brown) is looking for content to finish out the second season of his show by hunting a possible maneater mountain lion in the Nevada back-country.  He finds a cell phone belonging to one of a missing pair of anthropologists and switches focus from hunting to search-and-rescue, but finds more than he expected.

This is going to be spoiler-y by nature so stop now if you have any interest in seeing this movie, which you shouldn't because it sucks, stop now.  It's filled with shaky cam, boring pointless rambling, stilted dialogue, and flashing lights.  Also, I am actually begging writer/director/"star" Dillon Brown to learn the difference between a red light filter, which is used to preserve night vision in low-light, and infrared, which can't be seen by the naked eye.  

I was actually searching for a movie called The Burning Moon and couldn't find it so I just picked the first movie from the horror category on LookMovie.to.  I was going to veto based on the poster (a different one than the one here) because it looked vaguely racist, but then I read the synopsis and thought "oh, it's a Bigfoot movie."  I haven't done one of those and I love a good cryptid story, but it's not a Bigfoot movie.  It's way dumber.  **SPOILERS FOLLOW**  It's a Neanderthal movie.  As in, somehow in 2026 an actual prehistoric man is killing and eating people in an abandoned mineshaft in Nevada.  Zero explanation given for how this came to be.  Is this like an Encino Man kind of situation where he was frozen or petrified and came back to life?  Or more old-school Land of the Lost?  Either way, extremely stupid.  And worse yet, I have reviewed Neanderthal horror so it's not even novel.  **END SPOILERS** 

Oops! All Horror 2026 - Day 2 - Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)

  Content warning:  blood, dismemberment

Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) is an up-and-coming filmmaker hired to reboot an 80s slasher franchise called Camp Miasma.  She is granted an interview by the film's original Final Girl, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), now a recluse living in the same abandoned summer camp where the movie was filmed.  Ostensibly, Kris is there to discuss Billy returning for a cameo, but the longer she spends with Billy, the more infatuated she becomes.

This is a very sweet romance but ironically, it's too in its head to really succeed as a horror movie.  It wants to be meta and manages to be arch, instead.  There are some great themes to unpack and I think it's director Jane Schoenbrun's most accessible movie, but it didn't work as well for me as I Saw the TV Glow.  Still, this will be a lot of people's favorite movie this year and I'm thrilled by that.

Gillian Anderson is absolutely incredible.  I'm also watching the final season of Hannibal (which I'm hoping to finish in time to review for the month.  TV shows are hard.) and it's great to see the amount of range she has in these side-by-side projects.  I'm not familiar with Einbinder but her line delivery is excellent on the few spoken jokes.  (A lot of the humor is visual, playing with the slasher tropes.)  There are also cameos from Dylan Baker, Patrick Fischler, and Kevin McDonald.  Jack Haven plays the Camp Miasma killer, Little Death, although they are mostly hidden behind a boxy ceiling vent headpiece.

It wasn't for me, but if you get a chance track this one down.  It's finishing up a theater run and should be available VOD for rent or on your favorite VPN-friendly site, but I would encourage you to actually put money towards this as a rental when it's not $20.

Oops! All Horror 2026 - Day 1 - The Conjuring 4: Last Rites (2025)

  We're starting this month with an ending!  Content warning:  blood, suicide (hanging), vomit

In 1964, Ed (Orion Smith) and Lorraine Warren (Madison Lawlor) consult on a case where an antique store dealer is being haunted.  Lorraine traces the energy to a mirror but goes into labor before they can exorcise it.  The mirror changes hands, eventually ending up in West Pittson, Pennsylvania, where it is gifted to Heather Smurl (Kila Lord Cassidy) for her confirmation in 1986.  The Smurls begin experiencing paranormal events, which eventually come to the attention of Judy Warren (Mia Tomlinson).  Her parents (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) are retired from ghost hunting due to Ed's heart condition, but Judy convinces them to help the Smurls.

Honestly, I'm not here for the story, which is basically a retread of the original movie.  I'm here to close out the book on The Conjuring, a series I have followed through highs and lows.  If The Devil Made Me Do It was a love story, Last Rites is a passing of the torch.  

Production-wise, it maintains the quality level for effects that I've come to expect.  Farmiga and Wilson are great, if a little let down by the material.  There's a really sweet collection of cameos from the other installments at the end and the soundtrack is good.  It's streaming on HBO Max.