House of Ghosts (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Saint Euphoria Pictures

Runtime: 77 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: Rich socialites have a tradition of throwing exclusive dinner parties. This time, while stuck inside during a massive 'snowstorm of the century', they've booked a spiritual medium who promises to open a portal to the great beyond. Can the group survive the night or will ignoring the medium's warning be the last thing they ever do?

Review: House of Ghosts is the 7th movie in the line-up of movies by Christopher R. Mihm, the maestro of new old, good bad movies from what's been dubbed by fans as the Mihmiverse. This micro-budget series also includes such greats as The Monster of Phantom Lake, It Came From Another World!, Cave Women on Mars, Terror From Beneath The Earth, Destination: Outer Space, and Attack of the Moon Zombies, all taking place in the same universe but mostly stand-alone from one another other then recurring side characters and the occasional throw-back to a previous movie. All are done in black and white and as a nifty love-filled throwback to the classic 1950s Drive-In B-Movies of old, so if that kind of stuff is your thing than you really can't go wrong with a Christopher R. Mihm film.

I couldn't sleep last night so I decided to throw on the next Mihmiverse movie, during which I realized it switched over across the midnight mark while in the middle of watching, making House of Ghosts the first movie I officially watched for Halloween 2013 and those circumstances could not have been more fitting. So this review is my Halloween treat to all my readers! Also, this movie totally failed as a cure for not being able to sleep... and as for exactly why, just continue reading!

To start, this entry in the Mihmiverse was done in the style of a classic William Castle horror movie (the original House on Haunted Hill, the original 13 Ghosts, The Tingler, ect), and it also came complete with Alfred Hitchcock-style intro opening with Christopher R. Mihm himself introducing the film in front of a total white background, and in a hilariously campy, yet oddly enthralling, way gave a great foreboding warning to the viewer that what they are about to witness is unnatural. He even offers a bit of a cheesy gimmick item as is par for the case of a William Castle movie. And as if that stuff didn't already set the tone right out of the gate, this intro also had some great creepy subliminal messaging going on during it, which actually continued at various strategically-timed moments throughout the movie for optimum uneasiness.

For this movie, our main cast of quirky characters are all fancy, proper, rich, snobby socialites that have gathered together for a dinner party when they decide to have a bit of fun with contacting spirits on 'the other side' when they get trapped in for the night due to a massive snowstorm outside. Right off the bat, Christopher R. Mihm has set the tone perfectly for this movie as I love horror movies that take place during snowstorms. Snow in general seems to always add an extra level of atmosphere and tension to a horror movie and I'm not really sure why. Even in not-so-good ones it manages to raise the atmosphere up a couple notches, especially if the snow is currently falling in said scene (I'm still waiting for a Friday the 13th movie set at Crystal Lake during the winter – I think that would be pretty damn awesome to see). Atmosphere aside, it was also a great and simple excuse to keep everyone stuck in the house all night, unable to leave during the terrifying events that end up taking place (and the one person who does try it anyway ends up freezing to death out there). I also really loved that once the experiment to open the portal to the Beyond 'failed' (or so they thought, anyway) and everyone starts going their own ways in the house, that's when the mysterious unexplainable events start happening and it kind of turned into a nice Scooby-Doo style mystery of people going missing (or eventually outright dying), and the characters having to band together and figure out if one of the missing people was really behind the events, trying to scare everyone for some sure-to-be-explained evil reason, or is it really supernatural forces that had been let loose? I'm not going to say which one it was, but it certainly had be guessing, second-guessing, and even third-guessing myself right up to the very end.

The entire package here really was genuinely creepy and unnerving at times, and that totally separates this from all the previous Mihmiverse movies that came before, which were mostly all played up for laughs (not to worry though, as there are still a few hilarious moments sprinkled throughout). I'm not really sure if it was due to the fact that I was watching this after the midnight hour when everything seems extra-creepy anyway, or if it was because of the subliminal messaging that kept popping up, or if it was actually just that good at being creepy, or a combination of all those things, but whatever the case was it worked. Despite being able to, at all times, see the purposeful cheapness of the effects (The living skeleton is clearly plastic, the excellently-crafted demon skull is clearly a rubber latex mask, the killer spider horde is clearly rubber spiders on strings) yet the scenes which deal with each of those things (and other creepy goodies I have not yet mentioned) still manage to get your heart racing and leave you about this close to clutching the armrest of your couch. I know all the Mihmiverse movies are made with families kept in mind, and that a lot of people are sharing these movies with their kids, but I honestly would recommend watching this one yourself first to see if your younger kids can handle it. I only give that recommendation because I'm a long-time horror vet and even I was fairly spooked and on-edge for parts of this movie, and found myself damn near in a panic attack come the zombie-infested climax. The fact that this is a B-Movie, on a micro-budget, that's purposefully-campy and cheesy aside...Christopher R. Mihm (and all involved for that matter) did one hell of a great job with the spooky atmosphere with this one, making this the perfect movie for me to be watching as the clocks moved us into the witching hour and having it officially be Halloween.

Oh, and in true William Castle style, there's a nice twist ending as well, which I kind of suspected there would be and spent parts of the movie trying to figure out exactly what it would be, but I'm glad to report that it's totally not something you'll easily be able to see coming and it certainly took me by surprise.

This entry is no different than the previous Mihmiverse movies in that it is filled with tons of familiar actors of the Mihmiverse, however they're all playing brand new characters this go-around. Sadly the one sour point I have with this movie is that none of these new characters were really likeable much, or memorable. That's not a knock against the actors as they all played the rolls perfectly, and I understand the entire point of these characters are that they're rich snobs and by extension unrelatable and unlikable, but I really could have done with something in their character traits to latch onto and find likeable (Mike Cook's character started to get there by the end). As it stands, I was actually looking forward to seeing every single one of these characters get taken out, and unfortunately none of them will really stick out in my memory quite like the majority of previous characters in this universe have.

What I did like with these characters though, were despite being new characters they still had some nice connections to previous characters of the series: The very original movie, The Monster of Phantom Lake, got a really great throw-back in that one of the characters here is actually the mother of the crazy hermit from that movie that ended up becoming the title monster, and you just know that with such a connection in a movie dealing with ghosts and the afterlife that the Algae Monster itself would thus be making a nice little cameo appearance. Michael Kaiser (the man under pretty much every monster suit in this series) also popped in for a cameo as either a relative of his cop character from Terror From Beneath The Earth, or as that exact character. Admittedly, I don't remember his character's name from that movie so I'm a bit fuzzy there as to which one it is, but either way I enjoyed the connection to that movie. Finally, there was a briefcase held by a character that I can't really go into any detail of without going into a bit of spoiler territory, but if you pay close attention there's a great connection with that briefcase to the previous movie, Attack of the Moon Zombies (even with just that little bit, I fear I gave away a bit too much). So despite all the characters being new to the series, and I doubt we'll ever see most (if any) again, there are still some strong connections tying this entry in with the other movies of the series.

As is expected with by this point with all movies in the Mihmiverse, this self-produced DVD is stacked right up with tons of excellent bonus content. There's a Blooper Reel that is admittedly a bit shorter than most of the other ones but is still laugh-out-loud hilarious (seriously, by this point I almost look forward to the side-splittingly funny outtakes almost more then I do the movie itself because they're always a great treat to watch directly after the movie), a pretty funny Alternate Ending that fans of Attack of the Moon Zombies like me are sure to love but I'm personally glad they didn't go that route as it would have ruined the flow of the atmospheric mood that the movie had set so perfectly, a trailer for the movie in addition to trailers for some previous movies in the Mihmiverse, a Photo Gallery of tons of Behind-the-Scenes photos, an introduction to the film by Horror Host Dr. Ivan Cryptosis, a Featurette on the actual real house that they filmed this movie in which was owned by recurring Mihmiverse actress Sid Korpi and her husband, and the usual informative full length Audio Commentaries, one by just Christopher R. Mihm by himself and a second one where he's joined by costume designer and SFX artist Mitch Gonzales and Behind the Scenes extraordinaire Cherie “Rhuby” Gallinati who anyone that listens to the Mihmiverse Bonfire Podcast will instantly recognize the voice of.

I honestly can't think of a more fitting movie to have broken in Halloween 2013 with, nor of a more perfect tribute to William Castle. Even as a long-time horror vet, House of Ghosts had me near full-on having a panic attack by the end and I wouldn't ask it to be any other way! The more serious spooktacular nature of this entry makes it quite unique from all previous Mihmiverse movies, and I think it just might fit in perfectly as the newest entry of my Annual Halloween movie Line-Up each year.

Seeing as how most of the advertising for these movies come from simple word of mouth from the fans, than if you do check his stuff out and enjoy it please help get the word out there on these movies and hopefully we can snag in a few other fans that may not even realize these exist. You can order these on DVD (and even BluRay for this movie and the following one!) over at his official site which is filled with all sorts of other goodies as well (including a monthly newsletter in addition to a very laid back, yet fun and informative, podcast). Hell, there's even an excellent deal on right now – Buy Three Movies, Get One Free, which seeing as how there's currently eight of these titles, if you do that twice then that is the perfect way to catch up with all of them and in the end save some dough – that's how I did it.

Suffice to say, this movie did absolutely nothing to cure my sleep troubles last night, and it pretty much had me on edge to the point where I ended up just staying awake until the sun came up - Happy Halloween everyone!

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Skinwalker Ranch (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: DeepStudios

Runtime: 80 mins

Format: Itunes

Plot: A scientific research team investigates and documents the supernatural phenomena surrounding the disappearance of a cattle rancher's 10 year-old son. Inspired by true events that shocked the paranormal community around the world.

Review: I always say in my reviews how much I love the Found Footage genre, in theory (I enjoy the concept immensely, but of course there are always some major stinkers like with every sub-genre). What I haven’t talked about though, but those who know me in real life already know quite well, is that I'm also obsessed with alien abduction and UFO movies (and the whole real-life phenomenon in general, really). There have been some great ones in my time – Fire in the Sky, Incident in Lake County, Dark Skies, and SyFy's 20 hour mini-series Taken are but a few examples of my favorites, however there have also been some major crap out there – The 4th Kind, The Forgotten, and Communion to name a few (I know that last one is a controversial opinion, but while I loved the book, I found the movie boring as shit).

Skinwalker Ranch is a real-life location I'm quite familiar with via my own researching and readings, but it's also been showcased on plenty of popular paranormal TV shows as well, so anybody who is even remotely interested in this topic probably already knows all about it, but for those who don't it's a cattle ranch and accompanying large property in Utah that seems to be the epicenter of just about every kind of supernatural activity you can think of: Ghosts and spirits, werewolves, Sasquatch, aliens and UFOs, chupacabras – you name it, this place has history with it, and a lot of it is not just word of mouth but there has been quite a lot of documented evidence for some of these things as well. I actually had no idea a movie was being made based around this location and it's weird events until last week, and I still had no idea it was due out this soon until I started seeing it listed on Itunes and other VOD services this morning, so since I love the topic and since Halloween is tomorrow, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity for a Halloween-themed night of watching what seemed to be a creepy found footage movie in Skinwalker Ranch and then posting up a review of it as a Halloween treat to all my readers!

Within the first several minutes I was surprised to see so many recognizable faces in this movie. Most of them are names you probably wouldn't know to hear them, but their faces you would automatically recognize, mostly as recurring guest spots from various TV shows. The one that stood out to me the most though was the inclusion of Erin Cahill, who I know best from the classic Time Force season of Power Rangers (one of the better seasons), as the Pink Ranger and leader of that season's team. Sadly, this kind of casting actually works against the movie. Being a Found Footage movie, it's entire gimmick rests on giving you the illusion that it's actual footage from a real event, played up even more by the unneeded opening text scrawl that explains how, where, and why this 'lost' footage was found. That entire illusion is totally undone by filling your cast with familiar faces that you can pinpoint from any number of popular TV shows and bit parts in famous movies. It also hurts that, Erin Cahill aside, the acting is surprisingly atrocious and comes across exactly as that – ACTING. Right off the bat, these two aspects completely take you out of the moment of pretty much any given scene and ruin the illusion that the movie sets out to attempt by being a Found Footage flick.

Unfortunately, even if those two aspects had been done right, the movie still wouldn't have been very good. Another 'Golden Rule' of Found Footage movies that Skinwalker Ranch not only breaks but utterly destroys, is that there's absolutely no subtlety, escalation or build-up to any of what happens here. By 15 minutes in they just dump you into the thick of the attempted-creepiness with no build-up or warning whatsoever, and thus it looses so much of its impact. And that seems to just be a hint of how this movie would continue to conduct itself during its entire runtime. There's a reason you wait all movie to see the shark in Jaws or the raptors in Jurassic Park. There's a reason that Paranormal Activity waits so long to actually start showing you some paranormal activity and then when it finally does, it's only little bits here and there, until it slowly builds up to an all-out assault on the senses for a total nerve-wracking final fifteen minutes. This movie has none of that build-up, it just drops you into the thick of it early-on and then kind of stays on that level for the next hour and a bit, without escalating the scares at all; This movie did not get the chance to be nearly as effective as it wanted to be or should have been by deciding to skip that slow build.

Another perfect example of this is during one scene you see a fully-formed ghostly figure of a boy walk by one of the cameras, with no heart-pounding build-up or subtlety about it whatsoever. In a Paranormal Activity movie you'd probably get a door slowly creaking open on its own in the background behind the character that they don't notice, and a slight shadow flicker that you may or may not have seen. Here, it's just: BAM, in your face full-bodied apparition Ghost Boy walking by the camera with no subtlety to be found. Now repeat that kind of approach for pretty much every 'scare' in the movie.

There are a few small aspects I enjoyed though, that I wish had been used in a better movie instead of wasted in this one. The research team that is the focus of the movie, I enjoyed the fact that it was made up of people from totally different professions and backgrounds, i.e. not just some ghost-hunting paranormal research group, but experts in their own various fields of study that come together to help figure out what's going on. In addition to that I also loved the inclusion of parts of this taking place during a thunder storm. It's only a small thing, but it goes a long way to adding an extra layer of atmosphere, and it's something that, oddly enough, is rarely incorporated by Found Footage movies, which considering how easy of a mood-setter thunderstorms are, you'd think they would be the go-to atmosphere device for cheap Found Footage flicks. There's also a short portion of the movie that centers around a werewolf-like beast creature, and I love me some werewolf action so suffice to say I enjoyed that part a bit (but even then, that portion was undone by the terrible cheap-looking cave system that was very obviously a quickly-made movie set and didn't look like real cave walls in any manner), and I am glad that it came back and played a part in the climax action.

Other then those things...um...well I suppose the movie, on a whole, looked nice in terms of visual style and came across very polished (I'm sure it'll really pop nicely on BluRay) and it also did a good job of keeping the motion sickness effect in check, so if that kind of thing normally bothers you than you should be fine for that with this one for the most part.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

I've seen a lot of my peers over the last day or so praising Skinwalker Ranch up and down the wazoo, and personally I just don't understand it at all. In my eyes it's nowhere near deserving of the praise I'm seeing everywhere for it, especially when these very same people have bashed Paranormal Activity and countless other Found Footage movies that I personally think are done way better than this.

If you want a Found Footage movie that actually works hard at trying to take you out of the proper mood that it needs you in, this is the one you should check out. Otherwise, I highly recommend you give Skinwalker Ranch a skip. If you want a creepy and atmospheric Found Footage movie that will actually have your nerves doing loop-de-loops, just shoot me a message and I can recommend a good few titles that are all way better than this giant heap of a disappointment.

2/10  rooms in the Psych Ward

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Ghost Shark (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Active Entertainment

Runtime: 84 mins

Format: T.V.

Plot: When reckless rednecks on a fishing trip kill a great white shark, its spirit comes back for revenge, and soon turns its sights on the nearby town of Smallport, where this 'ghost shark' can now hunt wherever there's water - both in the sea as well as on land.

Review: To say that shark movies are a very tired and overdone corner of the B-Movie market would be one of the biggest understatements in the history of mankind. On the surface, Ghost Shark may seem like a new and unique entry in that overcrowded corner, and while that is true to an extent for reasons I'll get to later, when you dig deeper into it, it really isn't a whole lot different from any number of the other low budget shark-themed B-Movies.

Stripping away the whole supernatural angle and taking Ghost Shark to its basics, we've seen this movie before, dozens upon dozens of times. A large killer man-eating shark wanders into a town that is not quite accustomed to such things, on the eve of some big town-wide celebrations, and those that know about the danger (in this case it is a group of cardboard cookie cutter teens that we get in almost all of these movies, with the exact same diverse personalities as in all of these) are running around town like crazy people, being ignored and threatened to remain quiet by the town officials such as the Sheriff, Mayor, ect for fear of causing a panic during one of their popular times of year, and ultimately the teens have to take matters into their own hands if they want to save their town. Seriously, if you've seen one of these shark movies you've literally seen them all.

However, I'd also be lying if I said that the supernatural spin they add to it didn't make me forget about all that, at least for portions of the movie, and didn't result in a decently fun ride. The one main area where this movie sets itself slightly above the pack are the really fun and unique death scenes, which could not have been accomplished had it not been for the fact that the killer animal here is indeed the evil vengeful spirit of a shark as opposed to a flesh and blood creature, and with that comes a whole new set of rules for it – it can move about in any water in the area, not just the ocean. And by any water I mean things such as circling around someone in a bathtub (in a scene that slightly reminded me of a similar scene from the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie), its fin coming up from a paved street where water sprinklers are set, appearing on a slip-and-slide while someone races down it, having an all-you-can-eat buffet of sexy young girls in bikinis at a car wash, being drank through a coffee cup only to rip the person apart from the inside, launching out of a toilet, and even capable of gliding through the sky during a thunderous rainstorm. And that's only a portion of some of the shark attack scenes offered by this movie! With a new attack scene seemingly every few minutes, this movie is full of cheer-worthy cheesy moments of spectral shark goodness and it goes a long way, like I said above, to making you forget just how mundane and paint-by-numbers the actual plot and characters really are. 

The movie also benefits from the fact that the effects seem quite above-average for such an affair as this. With the shark being a simple see-through spirit, I expected the level of detail on that thing to be next to zilch, yet to my surprise, the level of detail (in addition to the quality itself) was some of the best I've ever seen in a made-for-TV B-Movie, beating out (by far) the level of detail on most low budget CGI physical sharks from any other SyFy Channel Original. In addition to that, the bright glistening blue glow and accompanying sound effect of when the shark was around (an almost whistling kind of noise) were both excellent touches that weren’t exactly needed, but I'm really glad they were included.

The one thing I wasn't glad was included though, was the character of the crazy old man that everyone is nervous around but who seems to have all the answers to everything going on in the movie. Seeing as how the Scooby-Doo gang of teens went to the museum and spoke with a local historian (in addition to some other things in the movie), they pretty much found out most of what they needed to know on their own anyway, and mostly all this character did was reiterate stuff that both we as the audience, in addition to the characters, either already knew or would be finding out on their own again shortly after anyway. He also came with a pointless subplot of longing for his dead wife who still roams around the area as a ghost. It leads nowhere at all, adds nothing more to the movie, and if anything it just took time and momentum away from the main meat of the movie. In my opinion, neither him nor his subplot was needed at all. 

Crazy old man subplot aside though, while Ghost Shark retreads overly-familiar ground with the same basic cardboard cut-out characters, it manages to do so in a unique and fresh way that allows you to forget, at least temporarily, that you've seen this exact movie a dozen times before, while adding an extra layer of fun small touches that is not required or often seen in these types of movies, but is very much appreciated when it isdone. 

As far as fun, cheesy, stay-in-and-watch-on-a-rainy-Saturday-night made for SyFy Channel B-Movies go, you can do a hell of a lot worse then Ghost Shark. 

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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