Australian Horror, Crime, Thriller - Alexandra's Project - Wolf Creek 2

💎💎ALEXANDRA’S PROJECT💎💎-Alexandra’s Project is a 2003 Australian drama thriller written and directed by Rolf de Heer and starring Gray Sweet and Helen Buday. Upon returning home from work on his birthday, Steve (Gary Sweet), a middle-class husband and father of two, finds the house dark and his family not home. He notices a chair, his television set and a video tape obviously set out for his viewing. He turns the TV and VCR on and begins to watch a tape made for him by his wife, Alexandra (Helen Buday). The first clip shows his wife and children wishing him a happy birthday, but after the kids leave the room, Alexandra begins a striptease and it appears to be nothing more than a birthday gift. As it progresses, however, it becomes clear that the tape is designed to humiliate and torture Steve for marital problems that Alexandra has been stewing about for years. As part of her show, Alexandra feigns breast cancer, has sex with their neighbor and tells Steve that neither she nor their two children are ever coming home. A regular suburban family man comes home from work on his birthday to find a deserted house and a videotape waiting to be played… Steve is a man who has it all, a successful career, wonderful children, beautiful home and a loving wife. However, returning to his home after work on his birthday, he finds his house deserted and darkened with almost all the lightbulbs missing, all easy access outside cut off and a videotape waiting for him. Playing that tape, he watches a bizarre and grueling recording in which his wife explains her grievance with him, her reasons for disappearing with the children and her revenge for how he treated her in a way he would never forget.

💎💎THE SNOWTOWN MURDERS💎💎- Based on true events, 16-year-old Jamie falls in with his mother’s new boyfriend and his crowd of self-appointed neighborhood watchmen, a relationship that leads to a spree of torture and murder. Sixteen-year-old Jamie lives with his mother, Elizabeth and two younger brothers, Alex and Nicholas, in a housing trust home in Adelaide’s northern suburbs. Their home is but one of many sun-starved houses crammed together to cater for a disenfranchised society. Jamie longs for an escape from the violence and hopelessness that surrounds him and his salvation arrives in the form of John, a charismatic man who unexpectedly comes to his aid. As John spends more and more time with Jamie’s family, Elizabeth and her boys begin to experience a stability and sense of family that they have never known. John moves from the role of Jamie’s protector to that of a mentor, indoctrinating Jamie into his world, a world brimming with bigotry, righteousness and malice. Like a son mimicking his father, Jamie soon begins to take on some of John’s traits and beliefs as he spends more and more time with him and his select group of friends. The protection and guidance that John presents to Jamie is initially welcomed however as events occur around him, including the disappearance of several people, Jamie begins to harbor deep suspicions about John and his motivations. When the truth is finally revealed to Jamie his hopes of happiness are threatened by both his loyalty for and fear of, his father-figure John Bunting, Australia’s most notorious serial killer. This film is based on the horrific true story set in South Australia in the 90s and is about Jamie and his half brothers who live with their mother Elizabeth. Jamie is being molested by his half brother and a neighbor. They are friends with John Bunting, a guy who doesn’t like fat people, druggies or gay people and he doesn’t care if you know it. Jamie is easily lead on and John takes him under his wing. Jamie soon realizes that John is not a nice guy, he comes across nice when his mom and others are around but shows his true colors when he’s with Jamie. Slowly but surely Jamie’s friends and family start disappearing and then Jamie is put in a situation he can’t get out of. But is he as innocent as he thinks?

In the poor Adelaide suburb of Salisbury North, 16-year-old Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) lives with his distressed mother, Elizabeth Harvey (Louise Harris) and his brothers – including Troy (Anthony Groves), who rapes Jamie. One day, his mother’s boyfriend takes indecent photographs of the boys. When the police are reluctant to intervene, Elizabeth is contacted by Barry (Richard Green), a gay cross-dressing man who introduces her to John (Daniel Henshall). John, who despises paedophiles and homosexuals, continually harasses the boyfriend via means such as throwing kangaroo’s blood and body parts at his house until he moves away. John begins to assume the role of Jamie’s father figure. Barry tells John the names and addresses of paedophiles in the area and John creates a wall with pictures and details about each, including notes saying things like “I’m coming for you.”

💎💎WASTED ON THE YOUNG💎💎- When a high school party goes dangerously off the rails, one teenager finds that revenge is just a computer click away. Wasted on the Young is a 2011 Australian thriller film directed by Ben C. Lucas and starring Oliver Ackland, Adelaide Clemens and Alex Russell. Shot by cinematographer Dan Freene, it tells the story of a traumatic high school incident that sets off a fatal chain of events for two brothers. The film was shot in 2009 at an ultra modern mansion in City Beach and at Edith Cowan University’s Mount Lawley and Joondalup campuses. The film received $750,000 in ScreenWest funding through its West Coast Visions initiative, as well as funding from Screen Australia. Darren is a quiet, introverted teenager who attends a prestigious high school along with his popular and wealthy stepbrother Zack. A girl named Xandrie has a crush on him and decides to attend one of Zack’s elaborate house parties to spend more time with him. At the party, Xandrie meets Zack and he notices her interest in Darren. Xandrie fails to meet up with Darren and is intercepted by Zack’s friends Karen and Simone, who offer her a spiked drink. Xandrie is taken to the basement, where she passes out and is left alone with Zack and his friends, Brook and Jonathan. She wakes up at a beach and goes home after discovering she was raped. The next morning, Darren discovers Xandrie’s phone in the basement and is unable to find her at school. He meets up with Ella, Xandrie’s friend who was with her at the party, but got separated from her and doesn’t know where she is.

Darren gets no answer from Zack and instead follows Jonathan. He denies Darren an answer and is beaten up by him as a result. Darren tracks Xandrie’s home address and visits her, but she doesn’t answer her door. Xandrie eventually shows up at school and discovers her reputation is destroyed by false rumors surrounding her disappearance. Karenn threatens her, saying how the majority are more likely to believe their story than hers due to Zack’s wealth and reputation. Darren decides to find out what really happened to her and hacks into Jonathan’s laptop. He is sick to discover footage of Xandrie’s assault. At school, Darren finds Xandrie and tries to help her, but she refuses and tells him she passed out when it happened and has no concrete evidence. Zack pays Xandrie a visit and warns her about divulging the truth, as it could affect their chances of graduating. Xandrie and Darren soon reconcile, Brook convinces Zack that Darren knows the truth and might discredit them both. Zack has Brook corner him before beating him up. Bloodied, he is taken outside by Brook and Jonathan while Xandrie shows up with a gun, contemplating about killing Zack. He tells her that shooting him won’t change a thing – they will still believe his story more than hers. Despaired, Xandrie shoots herself instead. To secure his reputation, Zack soon throws another party. Filled with angst, Darren shows up at the party and makes Simone feel guilty about Xandrie’s suicide and convinces her to drug Zack’s drink. Darren also spreads the footage of Xandrie’s assault to everyone in the party through their phones. Brook finds out about this and confronts Darren, who hits him in the head with a bottle. The partygoers question Zack about the truth and he blames it on Brook and Jonathan, who overhear himself outside. Soon, the drug in his drink takes effect. He follows Darren (whom he sees as Xandrie) in the basement, where he passes out. He wakes up bound in one of two seats before a device Darren had engineered. Darren tells him that the partygoers will decide which one of them should die via their phones, as they are seen on the televisions around the house, placing a gun on the device, which will shoot one of them depending on the votes. He sits beside Zack in one of the seats and the gun later shoots. Darren is later shown swimming in a pool at some kind of facility. Zack (Alex Russell) a member of the cool clique and Darren (Oliver Ackland), a geeky kid are step brothers who occupy opposite ends of the school hierarchy. Bullied by the cool kids, Darren finds himself forced to act when his tormentors go too far by drugging and assaulting his best friend Xandrie (Adelaide Clemens). After being left for dead in the middle of nowhere, Xandrie suddenly makes a surprise return to school that sets off a chain reaction of events. What begins as the devastation and implosion of Xandrie’s world soon threatens to trigger the implosion of the whole social hierarchy as Zack tries to manipulate the facts of that night and Darren sets off to disillusion the masses that put Zack on his elitist pedestal in the first place.

💎💎WOLF CREEK 2💎💎- Wolf Creek 2 is a 2013 Australian horror film cowritten and directed by Greg McLean. The film is a sequel to the 2005 film Wolf Creek and stars John Jarratt, reprising his role as Mick Taylor. It was released on 30 August 2013 at the Venice Film Festival, then released in Australia on 20 February 2014. In North Western Australia, highway patrol officers Gary Bulmer and trainee Brian O’Connor are parked by an outback highway and are desperate to meet a quota for speeding tickets. Mick Taylor, a pig hunter, drives past going under the speed limit and they pull him over, claiming he’s going over the speed limit. After belittling and insulting Nick, the two officers give him a speeding ticket and an order to get rid of his truck. In retaliation, Mick promptly uses his hunting rifle to splatter O’Connor’s head as the officers drive away, causing the cruiser to crash in a gully. Despite Bulmer’s desperate pleas, Mick breaks his leg, stabs him in the back with a bowie knife and places the fatally wounded officer back in the car before dousing it with petrol and setting it alight. Mick departs, leaving Bulmer to die in the resulting explosion. A young German couple, Rutger (Phillipe Klaus) and Katarina, hitchhike from Sydney to Wolf Creek Crater and camp nearby. In the middle of the night, Mick is driving by and sees their tent in the distance. He offers them a lift to a caravan park so they do not get charged for camping in a national park. When Rutger insists on declining his offer, Mick loses his temper and stabs Rutger in the neck. He then ties down Katarina and prepares to rape her, but a wounded Rutger comes back and battles Mick. He is eventually overpowered and decapitated. Mick then informs Katarina that they’ll be spending “a fun couple of months together” before choking her until she falls unconscious. She later wakes up to see Mick cutting up Rutger’s body to feed to his dogs. She flees into the bush and Mick pursues her in his truck.

Paul Hammersmith (Ryan Corr), an English tourist, is driving along the highway and stops for Katarina standing in the road. He picks her up, but Mick relentlessly pursues them. He shoots at Paul, but accidentally kills Katarina instead when Paul ducks under the shot, much to Paul’s horror and Mick’s dismay. Paul then drives off, remorsefully leaving Katarina’s body in the sand and covering it with just a sleeping bag at daybreak. He then reaches a highway, but realizing he is off course and has low fuel, tries to flag down a truck in the distance. He soon realizes that Mick is driving the truck, having killed the original driver. After a long chase, Mick nudges Paul’s vehicle at a cliff side, sending it rolling down into a valley, then sends the truck hurtling down into Paul’s vehicle which explodes as he barely escapes. Paul treks across the outback for hours looking for help (unaware that Mick is slowly trailing him the entire time). Exhausted and dehydrated, Paul passes out near an outback cottage and is given food and shelter by elderly coupe Jack and Lil. They plan to take Paul to the nearest town after he has eaten but Mick finds the house, steals one of Jack’s guns and shoots Jack and Lil dead. Paul then flees again and Mick follows him on Jack’s horse. He catches Paul hiding in the grassland and knocks him out. Paul wakes up in Mick’s dungeon, zip-tied to a chair. Mick is furious at Paul for his role in Katarina’s death and prepares to torture him, but Paul pacifies him with his “English wit” by narrating bar jokes and leading Mick in drinking songs that he claims he learned at boarding school. Mick’s torture for Paul consists of a ten-question quiz about Australian culture and history, with a promise to free him if he answers five of them correctly. However, if Paul gets a question wrong, he loses a finger. Paul answers the first two questions and reveals that he is a history major. After he gets the next question ‘wrong,’ Mick (incensed by Paul’s knowledge) grinds off one of his fingers with a sander (the answer Paul provided was technically correct, Mick just had a different interpretation of it). During the next question, Paul tricks Mick into cutting his other hand free by deliberately answering incorrectly (and losing another finger), then grabs a nearby hammer and clubs Mick with it. He then flees through the tunnels, pursued by an injured Mick. Paul finds several decayed corpses of Mick’s victims and a severely emaciated woman (Jordan Cowan) woken by him begs to be freed. Eventually he finds an exit but notices a sheet on the ground directly in front of it. Lifting it up, he finds a Punji stick trap underneath and considers trying to jump over it. He hears someone come and hides in a corner, assuming that it is Mick coming to get him. When the person who approaches walks past the corner, Paul then knocks the person into the trap with the claw hammer, killing them. But when he looks down to see what he thinks is Mick’s corpse, he discovers it was just the woman he encountered earlier. Immediately afterwards, Mick finds and subdues Paul. After declaring himself “the winner” and lecturing how “It’s up to my kind to wipe your kind out”, Mick head-butts him unconscious. When he wakes up, Paul finds himself on a footpath in a small town far from Mick’s dungeon with no sign of him, dressed only in his underpants and with wounds across his body. He finds a note near him which reads “Loser”, and he soon discovered by the police. A series of title cards reveal that despite reporting Mick to the police, Paul was held as a suspect in various unsolved murderers in the Wolf Creek area. During the investigation, he suffered a complete mental breakdown and was deported back to the UK and placed in full-time care at Ashworth Hospital Merseyside. The film ends in a manner similar to the previous, with Mick walking off into the outback with his rifle.

The outback once more becomes a place of horror as another unwitting tourist becomes the prey for crazed, serial-killing pig hunter Mick Taylor.

Hanger

💎💎HANGER💎💎- Payback is a bitch of a whore! The deformed survivor of a botched coat hanger abortion returns to seek revenge against the pimp who murdered his mother and tore him out of the world in this grimy horror yarn from Gutterballs director Ryan Nicholson. Low-rent prostitute Rose (Debbie Rochon) was nine months pregnant when her pimp attempted to give her a back-alley abortion. Though the fetus, nicknamed Hanger, was thrown in the dumpster and left for dead, he somehow managed to survive. Now Hanger is all grown up and the streets are about to run red with the blood of society’s garbage. Hanger is a 2009 Canadian horror film directed by Ryan Nicholson and written by Nicholson with Patrick Coble. The film is banned in Australia and Germany.

Unable to bring in any more money for Leroy, her abusive pimp, the pregnant Rose tries to run away in the middle of the night but is caught by Leroy. Using a clothes hanger, Leroy performs an impromptu abortion on Rose, unintentionally killing her in the process. Leroy disposes of Rose’s baby in a dumpster, where its cries attract the attention of a homeless man, who raises the disfigured child as “Hanger”. On his eighteenth birthday, the vagrant sends Hanger off to live with John, his biological father, who the man earlier met at a junkyard. John informs Hanger that he has gotten him a job at the junkyard and that he will be working there and living with Russell, an acquaintance with Down Syndrome. As he drives away with Hanger, John runs over the homeless man (who was defecating in his tent) and joyously tells his long-lost son “Welcome to the rest of your life!” John gives Hanger a picture of Rose and picks up a prostitute for him to have sex with, but upon seeing Hanger’s mutilated face, the woman goes into hysterics, so John crushes her head in his truck door. While Hanger is watching pornography with Russell in their home, a Jehovah’s Witness visits and Hanger mauls and partially eats her while being cheered on by Russell. Later, John drops by and reveals to Hanger that he has a plan to get revenge on Leroy for what he did to Rose. On his way out, John is approached by Foxy White, Leroy’s girlfriend, who offers to help John kill Leroy. John turns down Foxy’s offer but says he will make Leroy suffer “a little extra” if Foxy watches over Hanger.

While Hanger is at work, John is captured by Leroy and a prostitute named Trashy, who disfigure him with a blow torch and a hanger. Foxy finds John and tries to release him, but Leroy walks in on this and shoots Foxy in the head. As that occurs, Russell and Hanger are drugged by Phil, a coworker, who rapes them while wearing a Santa suit; at one point, Phil inserts his penis into Hanger’s leaking colostomy. Russell and Hanger get their revenge on Phil at the junkyard, knocking him out and placing him under a pile of garbage. Russell goes home and drinks tea made from used tampons, but after getting a call from Hanger, Russell goes to the junkyard and finds Nicole (the owner’s daughter) unconscious in her office. Hanger having knocked her out with Phil’s drugs. Russell takes Nicole’s tampon and she is later found by Leroy, who rapes her while she is unconscious and threatens her into luring away Russell so Leroy can be alone with Hanger. Once he is in Nicole’s office, Russell is seemingly killed by Leroy, who chokes him with one of Nicole’s tampons. Outside, Hanger stomps Phil’s head in and is confronted by Leroy, but John (who was left for dead, but recovered and killed Trashy by shoving a douche up her nose) appears and calls Leroy out. Leroy and John fatally shoot each other and a distraught Hanger runs off with the hysterical Nicole.

A pregnant prostitute is forced to have a brutal abortion in a dark back alley, an act of sheer violence that will eventually lead to a bloody revenge. A horrifying tale of revenge that begins with a back-alley abortion and ends with a bloodbath so vicious that it brings a new meaning to ‘an eye for eye’. From pimps to dealers and hookers to junkies, this film dives headfirst into the depths of human depravity. Unfortunately, Rose, the unlucky prostitute, got herself pregnant and it is starting to show. In addition, more bad news awaits her, since Leroy, her pimp who is losing money, intends on putting an end to this pregnancy in order to send Rose back on the streets again and start making money for him. So, without further delay, Leroy will drag his pregnant prostitute to a dimly-lit, almost dark back alley to perform the most brutal abortion ever, but when poor Rose dies in the process, the pimp will ultimately discard the newborn in the dumpster nearby. But the nameless baby survives and 18 years later, he turns into a monstrous and deformed adult going by the name of “Hanger,” looking for his true father and the ruthless pimp Leroy to finally exact his long-awaited and definitely bloody revenge. Pulled into this world to take you out! A horrifying tale of revenge… beginning with a back-alley abortion and ending with a bloodbath so vicious that it brings a new meaning to “an eye for eye”. From pimps to dealers, from hookers and junkies… “Hanger” washes the filth away with their own blood, cleaning the streets and making way for the ultimate showdown of good vs. evil. Diving headfirst into the depths of human depravity, Plotdigger Films plans on turning the world of horror inside out and letting it all hang out to dry! (D-Man2010)

B Psychopath Movies

💎💎THE BUSINESS OF STRANGERS💎💎 – The Business of Strangers is a 2001 film that tells the story of an eventful night shared between a middle-aged businesswoman and her young assistant. The independent film was directed by Patrick Stettner; it stars Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles. Julie Styron (Channing) is a middle-aged businesswoman flying out of town to attend an important meeting. When her CEO contacts her and asks her to meet him for dinner afterward, she worries that her job may be in danger and engages the help of a headhunter named Nick Harris (Fred Weller) to look for a new position. Her mood worsens when her new assistant Paula Murphy (Stiles) is 45-minutse late to the meeting, which as a result goes badly. After its end, Julie fires Paula and they part ways. Later that evening, Julie is unexpectedly promoted to CEO of the company. After both their flights are delayed, Julie and Paula meet up by chance in a hotel bar. Julie apologizes for losing her temper earlier and buys Paula a drink. As they talk, Julie, who gave up having a family for her career, begins to question whether she made the right choice. The two of them visit the gym and the pool before returning to the bar. Nick joins them, explaining that his flight was also canceled. Paula rushes off to the bathroom and is followed by Julie, who wants to know what is wrong. Later, Paula informs her that Nick raped a friend of hers in Boston. Julie is shocked but eventually convinced and suggests they get revenge. Paula tells her to just forget about it. The two retire to Julie’s room and when Nick knocks on the door later on, Paula invites him in and then drugs hum. In order to keep him from realizing what they’ve done, the two women take him down into a restricted area of the hotel which is being renovated. Julie runs upstairs to get Nick’s briefcase and returns to find Paula stripping him. Paula explains that this way when he wakes up, he will hesitate to ask anyone what happened. Paula photographs them all with her Polaroid camera. Paula finds a magic marker and they write words on Nick’s chest and back like “pig” and “rapist.” They are nearly discovered by a security guard, but he leaves without seeing them. Paula eventually confesses to Julie that it was she who was raped, not her friend – which Julie had already guessed. They return to Julie’s room and sleep. The next morning, Julie finds the word “loser” written in marker on her own stomach and a few Polaroids on the bed of Paula sitting next to her own sleeping form. At the airport she meets up with Nick again. He reveals that he had never been to Boston, proving Paula’s rape story to be an elaborate lie.

Two businesswomen bond and reveal their inner natures while getting carried away on a revenge attack against an accused rapist. A dark thriller about a successful businesswoman and her young assistant who toy with a slow-witted businessman while stuck at an airport hotel. Two women on different ends of the spectrum of corporate power come together with explosive results in this drama. Julie Styron (Stockard Channing) is a successful executive with a major international corporation who is starting to feel the pressure of her position, she has few friends and no family to buffer her from the responsibilities of her work and she suspects that the company’s CEO is thinking about replacing her. Trying to get one step ahead, she meets with the slightly manipulative headhunter Nick Harris (Frederick Weller). Julie’s anxieties come to a head when she has to give a major out-of-town presentation without the help of her assistant Paula Murphy (Julia Stiles), who failed to show up on time. Furious, Julie gives Paula a severe dressing down before firing her, but then Julie is called into a meeting with Nick in which she gets some unexpected news – she’s going to be taking over his job. Eager to celebrate, Julie runs into Paula and tries to apologize for their earlier encounter by offering her a hotel room for the night and a few drinks. In time, Nick also turns up at the hotel and the women- upon running into him – realize that he is a mutual acquaintance. Later, Paula shares a secret with Julie – Nick raped one of her friends while they were in college and since then Paula has pondered taking revenge against him. Julie is eventually drawn into Paula’s plan when they encounter Nick later that evening. But there may be more to Paula than meets the eye. The Business of Strangers was the first feature from writer and director Patrick Stettner, the film was shown in competition at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

Julie Styron (Stockard Channing) thinks she is going to be fired, but instead discovers that she is being promoted. Trapped in an airport, the two women get to know each other. They flirt, they drink, they lie, personal flaws are revealed and exposed. But at the end of the night their relationship turns and becomes a complex battle of power, authority and wit.

💎💎BRUSSELS BY NIGHT💎💎- Brussels By Night is a Belgian drama film from 1983, directed by former Humo journalist Marc Didden. The low budget picture was financed partly by Herman Schueremans, organizer of the Flemish rock festival Rock Werchter. The film was named after a 1979 song by Raymond van het Groenewoud, who also wrote the soundtrack for the movie. Brussels by Night was important in Belgian film history because its bleak, grey atmosphere and stream of consciousness structure were a sharp contrast with the more conventional films the country produced up to then. Brussels 1983. Max, an assassin, is seriously depressed. He tries to commit suicide by sticking a gun in his mouth, but when the gun jams he cries nevertheless, We follow him as he travels through Brussels without any goal and provokes everyone he meets. His mood changes at the most unpredictable moments. Max meets two people, Alice, a bar keeper and Abdel, her customer of Moroccan descent, who both fancy her as their mistress. The climax of the story takes place on the Ronquieres inclined plane. This is the story of a man who travels to Brussels and meets some people with whom he spends a few days. When they all go on a day trip to the “slanting plane” of Ronquieres, all sorts of bottled up frustrations flare up.

The unstoppable mood shifts of Max (Francois Beukelaers), a truck driver who has just put a gun to his mouth and fired an empty chamber, are evil enough throughout the film to indicate that all is not going be well, if it ever was. After his “gunplay,” Max takes a train to Brussels where he joins up with a barmaid, a streetcar driver and an od friend and proceeds to change from a good buddy to a cold, derisive stranger with no visible mental stability. Max has vainly tried to dial a phone number throughout the film and it is only after he loses it completely that the story reveals where he was phoning all that time.

💎💎BRIGHTON ROCK (2010)💎💎 – Brighton Rock is a 2010 British crime film loosely based on Graham Greene’s 1938 novel of the same name. Rowan Joffe wrote the screenplay and directed the film, which stars Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Serkis, John Hurt, Sean Harris and Helen Mirren. The novel was previously made into a film in 1948 by the Boulting Brothers under the same title. Although the novel and original film are both set in the 1930s, the 21 Century adaptation is set during the Mods and Rockers era of the 1960s. In 1964, Pinkie Brown, the sociopathic enforcer of a Brighton gang, murders Fred Hale, who has himself killed by the gang leader, Kite. Brown befriends Rose, a young waitress who witnessed the gang’s activity, to keep an eye on her. She falls in love with him. To prevent her from being compelled to give evidence against him, he marries her. Ida, Rose’s employer and a friend of Hale’s, takes it upon herself to save the girl from the monster she has married. Charts the headlong fall of Pinkie (Sam Riley), a razor-wielding disadvantaged teenager with a religious death wish. An adaptation of Graham Greene’s classic novel about a small-town hood who marries a waitress who deduced that he killed a rival thug in order to keep her quiet. As his gang begins to doubt his abilities, the man becomes more desperate and violent. While Mods and Rockers fight on the Brighton beaches in 1964, Pinkie Brown (Sam Riley), member of Spicer’s (Phil Davis’) protection racket gang, aims to wipe out his boss and take over the town from rival mobster Colleoni (Andy Serkis). Prior to the murder of Fred, one of Colleoni’s men, naïve waitress Rose Wilson (Andrea Risenborough) had been on the pier and inadvertently photographed Fred. Pinkie feigns courtship and marries Rose to keep her quiet, but Ida (Dame Helen Mirren), Rose’s employer and a friend of Fred’s, has her suspicions and makes it her business to save Rose from Pinkie’s clutches.

Screenwriter Rowan Joffe makes his feature directorial debut with this adaptation of author Graham Greene’s 1939 novel about an ambitious British gangster who will stop at nothing in his quest for ultimate power. Britain,1964: Pinkie (Sam Riley) is well on his way to becoming one of the most powerful figures in the British underworld when naïve waitress Roes (Andrea Riseborough) links him to a brutal murder. In order to ensure that Rose remains silent about the crime, Pinkie seduces her and begins tracking her every move. John Hurt, Andy Serkis, Sean Harris and Oscar winner Helen Mirren costar. Screenwriter Rowan Joffe’s debut feature Brighton Rock embraces the classic elements of film noir and the British gangster film to tell the story of Pinkie, a desperate youth who is hell bent on clawing is way up through the ranks of organized crime. When a young and very innocent waitress, Rose, stumbles on evidence linking him to a revenge killing, he sets out to seduce her to secure her silence. The film stars up-and-coming British actors Sam Riley and Andrea Riseborough as the young couple. Veterans Helen Mirren and John Hurt costar as two friends who set out to save Rose from Pinkie’s deviant designs. Brighton Rock is based on the iconic 1939 Graham Greene novel of innocence and evil but the action has been updated to 1964 Britain, the year of the Mods and the Rockers were rioting across the South Coast. 

A Horror Films - Axe 'Em - Axe

AXE ‘EM (THE WEEKEND IT LIVES) – The film follows a group of teenagers on a weekend retreat at a remote cabin in the woods who become the targets of a crazed killer. A weekend retreat at a remote cabin the woods for a group of childhood pals turns into a terrifying fight for survival, as a former friend whose family was killed years earlier comes along looking for revenge.  

💎💎AXE💎💎 – Axe is a 1974 American independent horror film written and directed by Frederick R. Friedel and starring Leslie Lee. Its plot follows a trio of criminals who lodge at a rural farmhouse where a teenage girl resides with her disabled grandfather. After one of the men attempts to rape her, she enacts revenge. Originally titled Lisa, Lisa, the film is one of the famous “video nasties” that was banned in the United Kingdom in the early 1980s. Three criminals on a murder spree arrive at a farmhouse, where a girl is living with her paralyzed grandfather. A group of three criminals on the run from the law, go about terrorizing the local townsfolk of a small community, before descending on an isolated farm which is home to a young girl named Lisa and her paralyzed grandfather. After being sexually assaulted by two of the gangsters, she retaliates using an axe and a razor blade.

A group of three mobsters – Steele, Lomax and Billy – enter a hotel room and await Aubrey, a local man who owes them money. Aubrey arrives shortly after with his male lover and Lomax shoves a burning cigar down his throat before beating him to death. Aubrey’s lover leaps to his death from the 12^th-floor window. Afterward, Steele, Lomax and Billy drive through the countryside. Billy is remorseful for the crime they have perpetrated, while Steele and Lomax are indifferent. During a stop at a grocery store, Steele and Lomax relentlessly terrorize a female clerk, tearing off her blouse before firing a gun above her head and pouring Coca-Cola on her. The next day, the three men seek lodging at a remote farmhouse where an impassive young woman, Lisa, lives a solitary existence with her disabled grandfather. She is notably evasive toward the men but agrees to allow them to spend the night when they claim that Billy has fallen ill. When the police arrive searching for the men, Lomax and Steele threaten Lisa with a gun and she wards the officers away, assuring them she has not seen the criminals. At dinner, Lisa serves the three men a chicken she slaughtered that morning. While the men eat, Lisa attempts to cut herself in the upstairs bathroom, but is interrupted by Billy, who knocks on the door. In the middle of the night, Lomax attempts to rape Lisa while she sleeps, but she stops the assault by slashing his neck with a straight razor, killing him. She drags his body to the bathtub, where she dismembers it with a hatchet. She stuffs Lomax’s dismembered body parts into a steamer trunk. The following morning, Billy helps her carry the trunk into the attic, unaware of its contents. When he discovers blood dripping out of it, he opens the lid to find Lomax’s body inside. Lisa lies and claims that Steele killed him. Billy and Lisa go into the woods to talk about the incident away from Steele. Lisa calmly unveils a straight razor, but Billy takes it from her hand, presuming she was passing it over to him to arm himself against Steele. Upon returning to the house, Lisa makes Steele a sandwich in the kitchen. He comments on her physical beauty, to which she does not respond and this enrages him. Steele drags Lisa upstairs to the parlor where her grandfather is watching television and the two scuffle. She manages to grab a hatchet near the fireplace and kills him with it. When Billy returns, he finds Steele missing; Lisa claims he was gone when she returned. Lisa prepares tomato soup for Billy and her grandfather in the upstairs parlor. While eating the soup, Billy finds Steele’s ring inside his bowl. He watches in horror as Steele’s body dislodges from the chimney flue and tumbles out of the fireplace. Lisa pays no attention, quietly humming while feeding her grandfather. Billy flees in horror and runs outside where he is shot to death by police who have returned in search of the trio.

Released originally under the title Lisa, Lisa, this seedy murder-fest was later retitled during drive-in circulation then again for its video release in 1985 as The California Axe Massacre to capitalize on the hype of another new arrival to video, Tobe Hooper’s cult classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film itself (actually filmed in North Carolina, not California) has little in common with Hooper’s hit, the bloody revenge scenario is more reminiscent of Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left. It involves a gang of grimy fugitives who hole up in the rural abode of a pretty but unstable young woman (Leslie Lee) and proceed to abuse her and her grandfather. Of course, things get out of hand from there and the hoods kill the old fogey, which brings gory retribution as the sweet young thing brandishes the title implement. Painfully cheap-looking, this tawdry exploiter is too slow-moving to sustain the interest of chop-em-up fans who might be lured by the title.

S Slasher Films

SALVAGE – Claire Parker is going to die. At the hands of a sadistic and depraved killer, she will endure a terrifying, unimaginable brutal death – and it will all happen again. After being beaten, dragged, sliced and stabbed, Claire awakens at work – where it all began – untouched and unharmed. But the hellish ordeal is far from over. The madman is back and he’s ready for more blood… The film begins with Claire closing out her night shift at a store and is to be picked up by her boyfriend and driven home but instead someone else, who identifies himself as “Duke” is driving her boyfriend’s truck. After an unsettling ride home during which Duke makes increasingly overt sexual comments about her, Claire closes herself into the safety of her house, but Duke shows up at her door again, claiming she has dropped an earring. Claire refuses to let him in and he drops the earring on her front porch and apparently leaves. Claire spends several moments crouched in the doorway retrieving the earring, but upon successfully recapturing it and pulling the door closed, finds her back door has swung open. Duke has entered the house from the rear and proceeds to brutally murder Claire. Claire awakens at the convenience store again all seems well. She decides that she has had a bad dream. She begins to repeat her day, except this time her boyfriend does come to pick her up and she makes it home and to school. However, unsettling hints begin to appear. The sequence of events once again leads to a moment where Claire is being murdered and she again awakens in the convenience store. As each sequence leads towards her death, she hears from time to time people who she trusts talking just out of earshot about how she is “catching on”. Finally, she puts together the clues and realizes that not only has Duke been killed by the local police, but that she herself is missing and presumed dead, as is her boyfriend Jimmy. In the end, it is revealed that Duke Desmond’s soul has been occupying Claire’s physical body the entire time and he is in Hell reliving the brutal murder of Claire over and over again as eternal punishment. Just before the end credits, Claire again awakens in the convenient store.

April Fool's Day (2008)

APRIL FOOL’S DAY (2008) – This April Fool’s Day, put all jokes aside… Because you may be next. The new “April Fool’s” revolves around a party given by two rich siblings for their friend. Tragedy strikes when a friend falls over a balcony and dies. One year later, the teens responsible for the accident become the targets of a twisted killer who begins haunting them down one by one. Each April Fool’s Day, fabulously wealthy young Desiree Cartier hosts the most killer coming-out parties at her to-die-for southern mansion. And this social event is never complete without one of her patented pranks. But when this year’s joke turns deadly, Desiree, her brother Blaine and five of their friends all become the targets of a twisted killer who begins hunting them down one by one in this chilling tale of seduction, betrayal and revenge. When a teenage girl decides to invite her drama club to her isolated house for a killer weekend, nobody would have expected it to be taken so literally.

The beautiful people prove just as susceptible to death as their lower-class counterparts in this Butcher Brothers shocker about an upper-crust prank gone horribly awry. It’s been a full year since Milan Hastings was killed in an elaborate prank organized by elitist heiress Desiree Cartier and her scheming brother, Blaine and now the most popular kids in their social set are dropping like flies. No one is safe from the unseen killer who stalks their ranks, not aspiring actress Torrance, gay gossip columnist Charles, self-absorbed beauty queen Barbie, or her Republican fiancée, Peter – a promising political hopeful. As the body count begins to rise, Desiree suspects that aspiring filmmaker Ryan may be to blame given that he still carries a torch for his beloved Milan. But the reality is much more complicated than that. It would seem that someone out there knows the truth about Desiree’s nasty little prank on Milan and they’re willing to go to extraordinary lengths in order to elicit a confession from the scheming heiress. Desiree has been harboring a dark secret ever since that fateful night when Milan died and this April Fools Day the folks who have since suffered for her greed will finally get to watch as the girl who had it all gets her just deserts.

On April 1, 2007, Desiree Cartier is hosting a party at her mansion for her actress friend Torrance Caldwell. Present for a pre-festivities toast are Blaine Cartier, Desiree’s brother, who controls their joint inheritance (to Desiree’s dislike), U.S. Senate candidate Peter Welling, Peter’s “Miss Carolina” fiancée Barbie Reynolds and the quintet’s less wealthy videographer friend Ryan. With the party in full swing, Desiree’s social nemesis ad Ryan’s not-so-secret crush Milan Hastings, arrives. Also present is chihuahua-toting society reporter Charles. As another in her long string of April Fool’s pranks, Desiree suggests Blaine get Milan tipsy on champagne and seduce her in his bedroom upstairs. Desiree and several of the others hover by the cracked-open bedroom door, prepared to videotape the affair with the camera Desire lifted from Ryan. However, Milan has a seizure and falls off the balcony to her death. The group goes to court and Blaine loses control of the family’s fortune, which shifts to Desiree, but they are considered innocent and Milan’s death is considered a fatal prank.

One year later, Desiree, Blaine, Peter, Barbie, Torrance and Ryan receive anonymous invitations to meet on Milan’s grave at noon April 1, 2008, with the cryptic P.S. “I have proof.” Just after the entire sextet is back together, a messenger comes to the grave with a box containing a letter and a laptop computer. The letter says one of the six murdered Milan and if that person does not confess, all of them will be dead by midnight. As a show of intent, the computer has footage of Charles drowning in his pool. Everyone goes from the cemetery to the pool to confirm this mishap. Subsequently, an increasingly frantic Desiree sees one “suspect” after another “murdered” before her eyes (though the bodies keep disappearing). Barbie is electrocuted in a beauty pageant dressing room, Peter’s campaign truck runs him down in a parking garage, Ryan’s throat is slit in his humble apartment and returning home, Desiree and Blaine discover even their long-time butler Wilford has been butchered in the kitchen.

After a brie separation from her brother, Desiree finds him tied to a chair. Worse yet, gun-wielding Torrance soon has Desiree tied inches away in another chair. After some back and forth, Torrance fatally shooting Blaine in the chest, a chagrined Desiree finally admits it was she who spiked Milan’s fatal drink, while allowing brother Blane to become the “fall guy”. At this point Blaine cannot contain a chuckle and soon the whole crew of 2008 “victims” are surrounding a still-tied Desiree, telling her what a bitch she is and how they have conspired to prove it to her. Special effects people from Torrance’s Boogie Nights 2 set have equipped Blaine and the others with “squibs” and other cast members faked out Desiree by dressing as cops and “confirming” Ryan’s murder as she and her brother were fleeing the scene.

To illustrate her end of the charade involving a revolver shooting blanks, Torrance pulls the trigger once more. Unfortunately for Desiree, this time the cartridge in the chamber is real and the bullet blows off the top of her head. The next scene involves the same inquest-probate judge from a year earlier absolving Torrance of any guilt for Desiree’s death and confirming Blaine as sole heir of the family estate. The final scene shows Blaine driving off in what was Desiree’s red Mercedes, slowly building a smirk on his face.

A year after an April Fool’s Day prank which resulted in the death of one of their set, a group of friends find themselves targeted by someone who is out for revenge. In this debutant ball of the socialite Torrance Caldwell on April 1^st, 2007, the millionaire Desiree Cartier dilutes a powerful drug in the champagne of her acquaintance Milan Hastings and her brother Blaine Cartier, takes advantage of Milan. Desiree tapes the situation with a camcorder while her friends Torrance, Barbie and Peter Welling, Charles Lansford and Ryan snoop. However, Milan has a seizure and falls off the balcony immediately dying. The group goes to court, Blaine loses the control of the family’s fortune which shifts to Desiree, but they are considered innocent and the death of Milan is considered a fatal prank. One year later each one of them receives a letter mustering them up to Milan’s grave. While gathered in the cemetery, they receive a package telling that each one of them will die until the person responsible for the death of Milan owns up.

Charleston, South Carolina: Socialite Desiree “Des” Cartier is hosting a debutante party at her mansion on the evening of April 1, 2007, for her best friend and aspiring actress Torrance Caldwell. Present for a pre-festivities toast are Desiree’s brother Blaine Cartier, who controls their joint inheritance from their late parents (to Desiree’s dislike), U.S. Senate candidate Peter Welling Peter’s “Miss Carolina” fiancée Barbie and the quintet’s less wealthy videographer friend Ryan. With the party in full swing Desiree’s social nemesis and Ryan’s not-so-secret crush Milan Hastings arrives for her 21^st birthday which is on that very day. Also present is the chihuahua-toting society reporter Charles. As another in her long string of April Fool’s pranks, Desiree suggests Blaine get Milan tipsy on champagne and pork her in his bedroom upstairs. Desiree and several of the others hover by the cracked-open bedroom door, prepared to videotape the affair with the camera Desire lifted from Ryan. However, Milan’s drink was spiked with a “roofie” so she stumbles into the hallway in her lingerie and tumbles backwards over the railing to her death 20 feet below.

A few days later, an inquest-probation judge decides not to press criminal charges against Blaine and rules Milan’s death as an accident. But due to Blaine’s growing history of woman trouble, turns over control of the family’s fortune to Desiree (and she’s able to buy her annual red Mercedes, upon which Blaine had been hesitating before the household tragedy).

One year later, Desiree, Blaine, Barbie, Torrance and Ryan receive anonymous invitations to meet at Milan’s grave at noon, April 1^st, 2008, with the cryptic P.S. “I have proof.” Just after the entire sextet is back together, a messenger comes to the grave with a box containing a letter and a laptop computer. The letter says that one of the six murdered Milan and if that person does not confess, all of them will be dead by midnight. As a show of intent, the computer has footage of Charles drowning in his pool. Everyone leaves the cemetery and goes to the pool to confirm this mishap. Subsequently, an increasingly frantic Desiree sees one “suspect” after another “murdered” before her eyes (though the bodies keep disappearing). Barbie is electrocuted in a beauty pageant dressing room, Peter’s campaign truck runs him down in a parking garage, Ryan’s throat is slit in his humble apartment and returning home, Desiree and Blaine discover even their longtime butler Wilford has been butchered in the kitchen.

After a brief separation from her brother, Desiree finds him tied to a chair. Worse yet, the gun-wielding Torrance soon has Desiree tied up inches away in another chair. After some back and forth and Torrance fatally shooting Blaine in the chest, a chagrined Desiree finally admits it was SHE who spiked Milan’s fatal drink, while allowing her brother Blaine to become the “fall guy”. At this point, Blaine cannot contain a chuckle and soon the whole crew of 2008 “victims” are surrounding a still-tied Desiree, telling her what a bitch she is and how they have conspired to prove it to her. (Milan continues to be dead and buried, of course). Special effects people from Torrance’s movie Boogie Nights 2 set have equipped Blaine and the others with “squibs” and other cast members faked Desiree out by dressing up as cops and “confirming” Ryan’s murder as she and her brother were fleeing the scene,

To illustrate her end of the charade involving a revolver shooting blanks, Torrance pulls the trigger once more. Unfortunately for Desiree, this time the cartridge in the chamber is real and the bullet blows off the top of her head, killing her for real. The next scene involves the same inquest-probate judge from a year earlier absolving Torrance of any guilt for Desiree’s death and confirming Blaine as the sole heir of the family estate. The final scene shows Blaine driving off in what was Desiree’s red Mercedes, slowlu building a smirk on his face. (Implying to the viewers that he intentionally placed a live round in the gun knowing Torrance would “shoot” Desiree and thus with her gone, he now has all of the family wealth for himself.)

During closing credits, a snippet paralleling an earlier scene is inset next to the cast and crew listing, as Charles tells an entertainment show anchor how it feels to have his own TV show, largely thanks to the books he’s written on the two socialite killings.

AM2000 - April Fools's Day (1986)

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AM1200 (2008) – Get ready for the live feed. Haunted by recent events and on the run, a man finds himself the unwitting pawn of a possessed evangelical radio station and like his unfortunate predecessor must ask himself whether it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. AM1200 is a 2008 thriller film starring Eric Lange, John Billingsley and Ray Wise. It focuses on Sam Larson, an executive who is on the run after the suicide of his friend and co-conspirator in a scheme, Harry Jones. While driving along at night and trying to stay awake, Sam turns on his car radio to the A.M. band. Cocky investment analyst Sam Larson has a lot on his mind. After a financial scam goes horribly wrong, he hits the road in a desperate bid to outrun his guilt. A fragment of a radio broadcast that may or may not be a distress call lures him to an isolated transmitting station and into a terrifying mystery of murder, madness and the insatiable hunger of a power beyond his comprehension. After a little embezzlement by financial business person Sam Larson leads to the suicide of Sam’s boss – who rather ironically was also the person who put the whole idea into his employee’s head – Sam goes on the run, driving across the USA in the sort of blind flight across highways that has never ended too well in any film. At night, the broadcast of a religious nutcase radio station turns into a sort of emergency call, pleading for anyone hearing it to come to the station and help out with some sort of medical emergency. Sam’s not planning on answering the call but ends up at the radio station regardless. Inside the building, he finds the aftermath of a fight (though strangely no bodies) and a man, probably the DJ/Preacher handcuffed to a radiator. It is obvious that something terrible and deeply strange has happened there. A skillfully rendered thriller about a hotshot investment analyst who leaves town in a hurry after a financial scam goes terribly wrong. But the isolated highway leads him into an even more terrifying situation and madness and murder.

AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER 2 (2008) – Humiliation, rape, murder. You know the drill. Shane Ryan’s sequel to the disturbing Amateur Porn Star Killer is a brutal calling card to all those who were enraged by its predecessor (and there were many). Ryan is a force to be reckoned with and he’s not letting up any time soon. The victim here isn’t a young girl. This one doesn’t just go quietly either. She fights back. She knows she’s in trouble, but she mistakenly thinks she can get away. In other movies, she would escape and somber music would play as the credits creep up the screen. The audience would leave the theater satisfied that the bad guy got what he deserved. They would go home feeling safe. Ryan doesn’t let anyone have such notions. He shows things as they really are. This is what a killer would film. This is how it would look and if you didn’t know any better, you’d swear it was real. (And you still can’t be totally sure it’s not.) Amateur Porn Star Killer 2 is not a rehash of the first film. It’s a continuation, the next step in Ryan’s world of raw horror. It has transcended the label of exploitation cinema and now has its feet firmly planted in the wet ground of artistic snuff. Bothered yet? In a little over an hour you will be and you’ll hate Ryan for it. Ryan with the first APSK, eradicated the boundaries of acceptable cinema. With this film he’s taken over the territory and it’s doubtful any other director has the guts or skills to snatch the kingdom away from him. Prepare yourself. This is going to leave marks. – Doug Brunell A killer (Shane Ryan) posing as a porno director lures an unsuspecting beauty (Kai Lanette) to his dungeon of death. Amateur Porn Star Killer director Shane Ryan continues to shock and offend with this faux-snuff follow-up to his controversial 2007 debut. Brutality knows no bounds when a killer posing as porno director lures an unsuspecting beauty to his dungeon of death. But this actress isn’t about to go down without a fight and when she realizes she’s signed on for her final role she strikes back against her attacker with everything she’s got.

Amusement (2008) – Your torture, your pain, your fear, his amusement. While being interrogated by a police psychiatrist, the near-catatonic Tabitha tries to explain why she and two of her childhood friends are being hunted by a serial killer. The truth that’s dying to come out weaves together three tragic secrets from their past. Two of the girls’ boyfriends become unwitting targets in their deadly game. Three women. Three separate lives. Three unique versions of fear… which become a single journey into terror. Laura Breckenridge, Katheryn Winnick and Jessica Lucas star as three ordinary childhood friends now being stalked by a serial killer whose decade’s old hatred is about to become murderous in this terrifying thriller. Keir O’Donnell and Tad Hilgenbrink play their unwitting boyfriends drawn into their wide-awake nightmare. Three women fall prey to a killer who carries a childhood grudge against them.

Three lifelong friends, Tabitha. Shelby and Lisa are being stalked by a psychotic serial killer bearing a grudge linked into a seemingly innocent incident from the women’s school days. In the name of revenge, the deranged killer has invented the most brutal and sadistic games for his three victims to play. Can they possibly get out alive? When three females are brought together as part of a malevolent plan, their worst fears soon become a terrifying reality in a dark thriller from writer Jake Wade Wall and director John Simpson. A traumatized woman being questioned by a cop and a psychiatrist realizes that a clown, a hotel and a convoy could hold the secret of stopping a relentless serial killer before he strikes again. As children they were best friends, as adults Tabitha, Shelby and Lisa have wandered separate life paths. Now, inside a chilly prison chamber, three women and a group of other potential victims must fight for their lives or lie down and die for another’s amusement.

As retribution a psychopathic stalker known only as The Laugh attacks the now adult girls who picked on his sick childhood tendencies. Tabitha, Shelby and Lisa become the target of a madman with a serious adolescent grudge. The film opens with yearbook photos of three girls, Tabitha Wright, Shelby Leds and Lisa Swan. Each girl proves to have great potential, as their senior superlatives respectively describe them as “Most Likely to be Famous”, “Most Likely to Succeed” and “Most Likely to Shine.” As well as the girls, the prologue introduces photos of an unnamed boy and clippings of a psychological profile which describes him as “extremely dangerous.”

SHELBY – While on the highway, Shelby Leds and her boyfriend Rob Alerbe pull over for gas, joined by a semi-truck and a Jeep. At the gas station Shelby sees a frightened woman in the truck’s back window, though Rob does not see her and tells Shelby that the trucker said he was driving alone. On the road, the same woman jumps from the truck and lands on their car. The truck continues onward as Shelby, Rob and the driver of the Jeep stop to help the woman. Rob then drives after the truck to get its license plates but fails to catch up to him and returns only to discover the Jeep driver injured, with Shelby and the woman missing. The Jeep driver says the trucker took them and they take the Jeep to an old, isolated house. The Jeep driver goes alone to the front door, where he overhears the trucker talking on the phone, claiming he is the woman’s father and that he was taking her to a rehabilitation facility for a drug addiction. Meanwhile, in the Jeep, Rob discovers Shelby and the woman under a tarp in the backseat, bound and gagged. The Jeep driver kills the trucker when he goes out and then approaches the Jeep. Rob locks the door and tries to drive away, only to discover that the keys are missing. The Jeep driver then breaks open the window with his sledgehammer and kills Rob.

TABITHA – Elsewhere, Tabitha Wright is spending the night in her aunt’s house to babysit her cousins, Max and Danny. She finds out that their babysitter, June had already left, though she was supposed to wait for Tabitha to arrive before leaving. Later that evening, a man claiming to be June’s boyfriend, Owen, arrives looking for her since she missed cheerleading practice. He leaves when Tabitha tells him she does not know where June is. While exploring the house, Tabitha finds the guest bedroom decorated with clown toys and becomes particularly scared of a life-sized clown doll sitting on the rocking chair. She later talks with her aunt about the life-sized doll but is told that the family has no such doll. Tabitha and the boys are then attacked by the clown, who the boys insist is Owen. Tabitha helps the boys escape before hiding in the shed. Inside, she opens the closet and finds June’s corpse. The clown enters the room, his laughter similar to the Jeep driver’s.

LISA – Sometime earlier, Lisa Swan and her boyfriend Dan begin searching for their roommate Cat, who had disappeared during a party the night before. They go to an old hotel that Cat said she would be at. Lisa tries to get in, but the caretaker, a man whose face is covered by a face mask, refuses to let her in. She convinces Dan to pose as a heath inspector and look inside. After letting him in, the caretaker shows Dan a music player and encourages him to play it, claiming there is a surprise in the end. Dan does so and at the end of the song, a knife flies out of the speaker, stabbing him in the eye. Unable to get in contact with Dan, Lisa sneaks into the house and meets an apparently deaf man, who leads her to a room filled with beds that have dead bodies stuffed into the mattresses. Lisa finds Cat stuffed alive in one mattress, but as she attempts to free Cat, the deaf man attacks her, revealing himself to be the killer.

THE BRIAR HILLS CONNECTION – In a police interrogation room, Tabitha is revealed to be alive and in shock. When she does not answer the interrogator’s questions, he leaves her alone. Tabitha then reminisces about her childhood, where she, Shelby and Lisa were once all friends at Briar Hills Elementary School. After they were tasked to design miniature sets inside shoeboxes that can be viewed through peepholes, a male classmate – the unnamed boy from the prologue – demanded to see their work before showing it to Tabitha; it was of a rat chained up and its skin pulled back to reveal its organs. It becomes clear that the boy is insane. Tabitha is then interrogated by a therapist who asks her about Shelby and Lisa. When Tabitha says that they were all friends at Briar Hills Elementary, but have not seen each other for years, the therapist remembers a patient she once had who was from Briar Hills. Then, she comes to a realization and informs Tabitha that Lisa and Shelby are also here, before leaving to find a phone that works. Tabitha wanders out after her and discovers that she is not in a police station. She finds the therapist dead and sees the police interrogator, who was the killer all along, approaching. Tabitha flees to the basement, where she finds herself trapped between two glass walls. Beyond either side, she finds Shelby and Lisa, bound and gagged and their skin pulled back similar to the rat in the boy’s shoebox. The killer initially taunts them, but then reveals that the two are unharmed and that their opened skin is just a trick. Just as the man is about to kill Shelby, Tabitha pretends to laugh, prompting him to open the glass wall and approach her. Tabitha then stabs him in the beck with a scalpel she had grabbed and unties her friends. As they try to escape, Lisa and Shelby are killed, while Tabitha climbs a ladder that leads to a barn shed. She hides in a room with props used to kidnap the three women. The killer surprises her as he looks through a peephole and reveals that she is in the back of a truck, which is by the same old house where Rob died. After he drives a short distance, the struck stalls. Tabitha takes hold of a spiked weapon and when he returns to look through the peephole again, stabs him through the face, killing him. Tabitha restarts the truck and drives away, narrating about how she and her friends had laughed at the killer when they were young, thinking that he was a joke. After he was sent away, they had forgotten all about him, but he never forgot them. She then remarks that even though it was all over, she still cannot get his laugh out of her head.

AMY’S TORCH (2008) – Any keeps the monster under her bed away at night with her magic torch but one night the batteries run out. Amy is a little girl who struggles to sleep at night, because she knows there is a monster underneath her bed. Her mother shrugs it off as Amy’s imagination and the only defense little Amy has comes in the form of a flashlight. On one fateful night the batteries die and Amy is left screaming in the dark. Her mother decides to investigate and finds out Amy wasn’t just scared of her imagination. This short film directed by Gary Mellor and Ben Wilkinson plays out in true fairytale style. By using a narrator up until the point of climax they are able to enhance character building within a very short time and they focus on a plot that is very easy to relate to. It is obvious the budget was very limited, but the finished product doesn’t disappoint and the directors threw a nice little spin on an old story. In fact they proved that horror isn’t all about special effects. A good story, executed with skill, can also have great entertainment value.

ANAK (2008) – My blood anchor to all these. It all begins with Nita starting with a new life in a new place. With her is her cousin Kay. Nita is a pretty girl but she looks as if there is nothing in this world were left for her. Kay a successful model, dubbed as the most beautiful lady in Malaysia. She is at the peak of life and full of zest. It is in her new home that Nita starts to see things or rather a person, a young child around the age of 5.

ANGUS VALLEY FARMS 2 (2008) – A group of teens travel to a crumbling ghost town in search of the killer who murdered their friends, all the while remaining fatally unaware that they’re walking into a diabolical trap. Some teenagers travel to a ghost town in search of their friends’ killer, unaware that they are heading into a trap.

ANIMALS (2008) – Syd Jarrett is an unsuspecting, down-and-out man in a washed -up hick town who gets pulled into sub-culture of blood-hungry creatures. He encounters Vic, a renegade whose animal instincts are stronger than his human ones. As things begin to get even worse Jarrett realizes that his best chance for happiness and survival lies in his true love for Jane. A small-town guy experiences a startling transformation after falling for a seductive beauty with a bizarre secret. When Syd met Nora, it was lust at first sight. After hooking up however, Syd find himself fighting to suppress his animal instincts. When Nora’s ex-lover Vic shows up intent on winning her back, the stage is set for a bloody confrontation. Based on the novel by John Skipp and Craig Spector. An unsuspecting down-and-out man in a washed-up hick town has his life turned upside down when a drop-dead gorgeous stranger walks through the door at the local bar. In Reno, Vic and Nora form an unusual couple of predators between human and animals that feed off human blood and enjoy having sex. Nora decides to leave Vic and heads to Clayton Valley, where she meets the former football player Jarrett in the bar Jules’ Joint. Jarret was in college with a scholarship, but he had an accident that interrupted his promising career and he had returned to his hometown. His best friend Jules idolizes him and has many pictures and trophies of Jarrett exposed in his bar; the bartender Jane has a secret crush on him. Presently Jarrett has a problem with his chief Vaughn that persecutes him at work. Nora is harassed by Vaughn in the bar; but she refuses his invitation and goes to Jarrett’s house; she bites him while they have wild sex. Jarrett feels his senses more accurate but he does not understand what is happening to him. When Vic arrives in town seeking out Nora, Jarrett discovers that Vic is not human while Nora and his friends are jeopardized by the cruel creature.

ANTI-PERVERT MANUAL (2008) – The day will never be the same again… An officer worker obsessed with the supernatural visits an old parking lot and finds evidence of ghosts of perverts. Young office lady arrives in a remote parking lot and starts seeing weird, inexplicable sights (a man whose shadow has a life of its own, a mysterious scythe-bearing figure tolling a bell, a terrifying dream of her own burial). Things come to a head when a pervert of the region starts creeping towards her car – or is it something more sinister?

APOCALYPSE RISING (2008) – Sometimes the road to redemption takes you through Hell. Six students on spring break must stop a fallen angel from creating a race of Nephillium meant to defy God and destroy the Earth.

APRIL FOOL’S DAY (1986) – When Muffy St. John invited her college friends up to her parents’ secluded island home for the time of their lives, she just forgot to tell them it might be the last time of their lives. As soon as the kids arrive on the island, someone starts trimming the guest list… one murder at a time. And what starts out as a weekend of harmless “April Fool’s Day” pranks turns into a bloody battle for survival. It’s just what you’d expect from the producer who brought you ‘Body Parts” “Species” and “Friday the 13^th Parts III—IV. When a group of college students decides to spend spring break at the secluded island estate of their wealthy classmate Muffy St. John what starts out as a fun, hedonistic weekend turns into something more sinister. Muffy is very fond of practical jokes and sets up numerous gags throughout her mansion. But when friends begin going missing and turn up dead, they realize that they’re trapped in the isolated isle with a mysterious and brutal killer.

A group of college friends: Harvey, Nikki, Rob, Skip, Nan, Kit and Arch gather to celebrate Spring Break by spending the weekend at the island mansion of their friend Muffy St. John, on the weekend leading up to April Fools’ Day. The tone is set almost immediately with Muffy preparing details around the house and finds an old Jack-in-the-box she remembers (in flashback). Her friends, meanwhile, are joking around on the pier, then on the ferry to the island. But en route to the island, Buck, a local deckhand is seriously injured in a gruesome accident. Once on the island in the mansion, it turns out Muffy has set up a variety of little jokes from the simple (Whoopie Cushions, dribble glasses, etc.) to the more complex and disturbing (an audiotape of a baby crying in someone’s room, heroin paraphernalia in a guest’s wardrobe, etc.) Through it all, the friends in general try to relax. But then Skip goes missing, Kit catches a glimpse of what looks like a dead body. Next, Arch and Nan also go missing. During a search, Nikki falls into the island’s well and finds the severed heads of Skip and Arch and the dead body of Nan. Afterward, the remaining group discovers that the phones are dead and there is no way to get off the island until Monday. One after another people vanishing or being killed and their bodies being found. Kit and Rob put together some clues, realizing that everyone’s earlier assumption is wrong. The kinsman of the deckhand injured when they arrived is a red herring. Muffy, it turns out, has a violently insane twin sister, Buffy, who has escaped. In fact, the Muffy they have been around since the first night was Buffy pretending to be Muffy. They discover Muffy’s severed head in the basement.

Buffy chases them with a breaking knife and the couple are separated. Kit flees from Buffy into the living room – where she finds everyone else there, alive and calmly waiting for her. It was all a joke, or accurately, a dress rehearsal. It is revealed to the audience that the whole movie was never a slasher film from the start, but rather pretending to be one. Muffy hopes to turn the mansion into a resort offering a weekend of staged horror. She even had a friend who does special effects and makeup for Hollywood help. Each “victim” agreed to take part as things were explained to them. Everyone has a huge laugh and breaks out lots of bottles of champagne. Later that night, a half-drunk Muffy goes to her room. She finds a wrapped present on her bed. Grinning, she unwraps it. It is the Jack-in-the-Box. Savoring the surprise, she turns the handle slowly. When “Jack” finally pops out, Nan – the shy, bookish girl who knew Muffy from acting class, emerges from behind her and slits her throat with a razor. Muffy screams, but then realizes she is not really bleeding. She “got” her with a trick razor and stage blood. The film ends with the Jack-in-the-Box winking at the audience.

Nine college students staying at a friend’s remote island mansion begin to fall victim to an unseen murderer over the April Fool’s Day weekend. A group of nine college friends gather together at an island mansion belonging to heiress Muffy St. John to celebrate their final year of school. They soon discover that each has a hidden secret from their past which is revealed and soon after, they turn up dead. Yet are they really dead? Or is it just part of some very real and cruel April Fool’s jokes. The hostess Muffy is the only one who apparently knows what’s going on. But then again, is it really her doing the killing?

In the cellar of her house, Muffy St. John picks up a Jack-in-the-Box and thinks back to her 10^th birthday where she received it as a birthday gift (a tiny alien which jumped out and scared her, making the other party guests laugh). Meanwhile, a group of young college students wait at a dock to be picked up by a ferry and transported to Muffy’s island cottage for the weekend. They include Kit and her boyfriend Rob, Nikki, and her boyfriend Chaz and Arch whom are best friends. The rest of the group includes Nan, Hal ad Muffy’s cousin Skip. On the ferry, Skip and Arch play a game of “stretch” (throwing a switchblade and both trying to stretch for it), until an irritated Arch throws the blade and Skip and hits him in the stomach. Skip falls off into the water in which the ferry crewman Buck and Rob jump in only to see Skip with a trick knife-belt. Skip and Arch laugh at their April Fool’s Day joke which happens to be that very day. Buck stays in the water and tries to hook the ferry as it comes into the dock and the group argues. Buck is hit by the ferry. He jumps out of the water with a chopped face. Buck is taken away by the ferryman in a motorboat screaming “they did it!” A local policeman, Constable Porter, is angry at the kids for letting this prank get out of control and tells them to stay put on the island as he accompanies Buck to the local hospital.

Muffy takes the group up to her house where she shows them the living and dining room areas and shows them their quarters to spend the night. That evening, the group sits around the dinner table as Skip, still upset over what happened to Buck, stays outside and drinks. Muffy, with a smirk on her face, invites everyone for dinner as Nan sits on a Whoopie cushion and Arch leans back in a breakaway chair. They talk over what they will do after graduation in which Muffy tells them about her inheriting her father’s house and talks about turning it into a country inn. They drink to a toast as Muffy’s smirk gives away another gag she sets up as everyone spills champagne on themselves from the trick drippy glasses as Muffy laughs.

They retire to their rooms for the night as they encounter more gags left behind by Muffy, which includes a trick cigar that blows up when Hal lights it; spurting water faucets and trick lights that don’t turn off. Hal finds snipped newspaper articles about people dying in a fog and a fire, which he apparently was involved in some years back. Arch finds a drug paraphernalia in his bathroom cabinet which he is disturbed by over his past as a junkie. Nikki finds a studded collar with a chain in which her reaction gives away her interest in S&M and bondage. Nan comes out of the shower when she hears a baby cry and she finds a tape recorder playing in her drawer which makes her upset. Outside, a drunken Skip enters the boathouse near the dock where he is grabbed by someone. The next day, Kit and Rob find Muffy in the kitchen cooking breakfast with her hair astray and acting strange. The group enjoys hanging around the back yard, while Nan tries to chase down Muffy. Rob is still upset about his own discovery and in his and Kit’s bedroom where his counselor informed her that he was not serious enough to get into medical school. He and Kit go the boathouse to kiss when Kit sees Skip float by and the two of them run to tell the others. Chaz finds Skip’s broken and bloody trick switchblade, but no trace of Skip’s body. Arch suggests that it is Buck who has returned to seek his revenge for his being maimed the previous day.

Meanwhile, Nan catches up to Muffy and angrily tells her about finding the cassette tape joke and Muffy claims not to know what Nan is talking about. Nan tells Muffy that she had an abortion some year back and kept it quiet between them. In the woods, as Arch is running through the house, he gets caught in a trap when he is hung upside by a snare, while a snake is on the ground trying to bite him. An unseen person appears, kicks away the snake and stands over Arch who screams. On the same path a few minutes later, no one can find Arch. Rob tries to call the police on the house phone but is unable to get through. When the water faucets in the house turn off, Hal and Nikki go to the nearby well. Hal accidentally drops the bucket into the well and does not want to go down to retrieve it. Nikki climbs down into the well when a rung breaks making her fall into the water. As Hal climbs down to help her, Nikki finds the severed head of Arch, as well as Nan’s dead body in the well.

That evening back at the house, Constable Porter calls and says that he is at the hospital with Buck and tells them that he is coming to the island with an important thing to tell them and he will send a flare up at the dock when he arrives. Aware that there is a killer out there, the group goes around locking all the doors and windows of the house. In the study, Kit finds an old photograph of twins. Nikki says that Muffy has been acting strange all day and looks different from a pasty white face to her Catholic Girl School clothing as well as mentions the clodhopper “nurse shoes” that she is also wearing. Hal mentions that he heard Muffy and Nan arguing earlier about something in Nan’s room, referencing an abortion that Nan was rumored to have gotten. They talk about the things found in their rooms when Muffy enters and says that she is going to bed. Chaz and Mike go upstairs to their room as Rob heads up to the attic to keep an eye out for the Constable. Kit goes off with Rob, while Hal stays to watch the rooms downstairs.

As Nikki packs her bags to leave, Chaz tries to calm her down by putting on a leather mask. Annoyed, Nikki pushes him to the bed and leaves the room. Nikki returns to see Chaz lying still on her bed. He does not respond to her and when she moves his hands away from his crotch, she sees blood. She is approached by someone standing behind the door. In the attic, Rob tells Kit that one is to be left alone with Muffy for he does not trust her. They find a collection of dolls, apparently representing dead people and a red flare goes off in the distance outside. They run out of the attic and call to someone but cannot find the others. The two enter Nikki and Chaz’s room only to find a bloody room, but no bodies. Kit runs into Muffy’s room and finds Hal dead after being tied up and hung.

In a panic, Kit and Rob run outside and to the dock where they pull in a motorboat, but no one is on board. They find a letter on the boat addressed to Constable Porter which talks of “Miss St. John”, a dangerous mental patient who escaped several days ago from a clinic. Kit says it can’t be Muffy for she was with her at Vassar all that time. They try to start up the boat, to leave, but the keys are gone having been taken by Constable Porter who has gone off. Rob says that there is a spare set of keys to the boat in the house and the two of them return to find the house totally dark with all the doors and windows closed and the shades pulled down. They enter through a cellar window where they see a bloody trail and find Muffy’s clothes from the night before in the basement fireplace. Height measurements are found on one of the basement walls for “Muffy” and “Buffy”. Kit recalling the photo of the twins, says that it must be Muffy’s twin sister, Buffy who has been doing all the killing.

Kit and Rob see eyes looking at them from behind a painting and after putting it away, discover Muffy’s severed head. They run up to the kitchen to find the keys for the boat when Muffy/Buffy appears at the back door armed with a large butcher knife, trying to get inside. Buffy forces the door open and pushes Rob into a closet and locks it and goes after Kit, who runs into the dining room and tries to reason with the pasty-faced, wild-eyed Buffy who does not respond and terrorizes her with the butcher knife. Kit pushes Buffy back when she tries to stab her and runs into the adjacent living room to find all of the dead people, alive and well, sitting around the room. Buffy walks in and… pushes the fake blade of the butcher knife into her hand as she and everyone else looks up at Kit and yell… APRIL FOOLS!!!!!

Buck appears in the closet with Rob, pulls off his prosthetic injury and slaps it on Rob’s face and unlocks the closet door for him. Rob runs out and into the living room where everyone laughs some more. Kit and Rob are relieved, but not amused at this giant practical joke on them. Muffy thanks all of them for participating and helping out. She tells everyone about her idea about making the house into a country inn but having a special type of “whodunit weekend” where guests are to figure out a simulated mystery and she wanted a “rehearsal’. Once a person was “killed” they were let in on the joke, with Rob and Kit being the last ones left and the winners who figured it all out. Muffy explains that her twin sibling is actually her cousin Skip. Constable Porter is actually her wealthy uncle, and Buck is a makeup artist who constructed all the severed heads and fake bodies. Even the ferryman was in on the whole thing as well. Muffy apologizes for some of the more personal jokes and the group drinks from dozens of bottles of champagne that Muffy brings out and they all have a happy good time.

Later that night, a very inebriated Muffy returns to her bedroom for the night when she finds a package on her bed and upon opening it up finds a Jack-in-the-Box. As Muffy warily begins turning it to open, the Jack jumps out when sudden Nan jumps out behind the bed, grabs Muffy by the hair, gorily slices her throat and Muffy screams. Nan smiles and shows Muffy the fake knife with the fake blood spraying from it, as a final back-at-you joke. “April Fools” says Nan to Muffy, as the Jack-in-the-Box winks at the viewers.

April Fool’s Day just happens to be the birthday of rich college student Buffy, so she invites a group of friends from Vassar over to her family’s island getaway to spend the weekend partying. Though some practical-joke-shenanigans on the ferry over from the mainland lead to unexpected bloodshed and put a damper on the festivities, Buffy unleashes a flood of more benign pranks on her guests, setting a tone of giddy abandon. With plenty of randy guys and gals on hand and no parental supervision, it isn’t long before drunken escapades ensue. As the weekend progresses, however, guests begin to disappear mysteriously and before long Buffy and friends find themselves huddling in terror in their remote getaway. The next ferry isn’t due until Monday and the partygoers aren’t sure whether any of them will make it that long. The mostly Canadian cast of April Fool’s Day includes Leah King Pinsent, daughter of actor/director Gordon Pinsent and Amy Steel, a veteran of the second and fourth Friday the 13^th installments.

Review: Amid the glut of gory horror films that clogged the cable schedules and cineplexes in the wake of Halloween and Friday the 13^th, April Fool’s Day stands out as a fairly restrained exercise in the ‘80s teen-slasher genre. Low on gore and high on suspense, it uses the boy-who-cried-wolf scenario inherent in its premise to keep the audience guessing as to where the practical jokes end and the body count begins. With her Sheryl Lee-like features and facial expressions, Deborah Foreman makes an appealingly off-balance scream queen, while the rest of the young cast puts a nicely personal stamp on what could have been a collection of college-age stereotypes. It helps that Hollywood vet Danilo Bath (Beverly Hills Cop) laces the script’s sexual hijinks with actual character developed and a few decent plot twists. Some creepy music and a few freaky set pieces and a visceral edge to a workmanlike film that spends more time playing mind games than it does spilling blood. When all is said and done, though, April Fool’s Day has more roller-coaster thrills than most slasher flicks with five times the gore. Review by Brian J, Dillard