The Apology, Tusk, Mondo Cane, Friday the 13th, Beast of the Yellow Night, and There’s Something wrong with the Children
Discover more from Horror Bulletin
The Apology, Tusk, Mondo Cane, Friday the 13th, Beast of the Yellow Night, and There’s Something wrong with the Children
Weekly Horror Bulletin Newsletter 213
We’ve got our usual lineup of four movies and a short film this week— This time, we’ll start out with “The Apology,” a sort of leftover Christmas season film, then we’ll stretch WAY back to a time when “Friday the 13th” was brand-new. We’ll then take a look at the ridiculous “Tusk” and the new “There’s Something Wrong with the Children.” Good stuff!
As a bonus this week, we’ll look at future plagues:
• “Beast of the Yellow Night” (1971)
• “Mondo Cane” (1962)
Four years ago this week...
Four YEARS AGO this week, on episode 7, we looked at “Ravenous” (1999) and “Ravenous / AKA Les Affames” (2017). Listen to that old episode here: https://www.horrorguys.com/hg007/.
Don’t forget that all past episodes of the show are available at
https://horrorbulletin.libsyn.com/
Seventeenth Issue of Horror Bulletin now available
The newest issue of Horror Bulletin Monthly, our monthly compilation of all our reviews, is out now. This includes all the bonus content and is available as both a print book and an eBook. If you don’t have time to read the website or email, here’s one more option for you!
• Buy from Horror Guys Shop
Check out all our books!
The Horror Guys Guide to:
• The Horror Films of Vincent Price
• Universal Studios' Shock! Theater
Creepy Fiction:
Here. We. Go!
Mondo Cane (1962)
• AKA “A Dog’s Life”
• Directed by Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti. Franco Porsperi
• Written by Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti
• Stars Stefano Sibaldi, Rossano Brazzi, Yves Klein
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is a documentary with footage of real people and events, not a scripted movie with a story. It hops all over the world showing different cultures and people, some civilized and some not so much. The horror mostly comes from lots of animal deaths, some bloody flagellation, human bones, cadavers, and insect eating - not that scary, but sometimes hard to watch.
Synopsis
A man drags his dog by the leash as credits roll. There are many dogs inside a huge cage that they walk past. “All the scenes you will see in this film are true and are taken only from life. If often they are shocking, it is because there are many shocking things in this world. Besides, the duty of the chronicler is not to sweeten the truth but to report it objectively.”
In southern Italy, there’s a ceremony to unveil a statue of the famous deceased actor, Rudolph Valentino. There are many wanna-be future stars in attendance. Rossano Brazzi is his successor, and we see what became of him– a swarm of fans tear his clothes off.
Meanwhile, in the jungle of New Guinea, women are happy and frolic on the beach. When they capture a man, they drag him into the woods and have their way with him. It’s almost the same behavior.
We cut to a scene with bikini-clad girls teasing sailors on a warship. We cut a woman in New Guinea who is forced to suckle a pig to save it. We are told that many of the men there have eaten human flesh. Now, they’re ready for a violent feast where hundreds of pigs will be killed and devoured in a few hours. We watch pigs being slaughtered rather brutally. The children inflate the intestines and use them as balls to play with.
We watch the dogs eat the scraps of pig that are left over. We then cut to a dog cemetery in Pasadena as we see a little dog-coffin lowered into a deep grave. There are headstones and tombs all for pets. We then cut to Taipei, where people butcher and eat dogs.
We move to a place that colors baby chicks in dye and then put them in an oven to dry off, to be sold as Easter novelties. For each hundred chicks here, at least seventy meet up with unpleasant ends. This takes us to geese that are forced-overfed to make foie gras. In Japan, they feed cows with beer and massage them to make specialized expensive steaks.
We then compare women in New Guinea and America. How they get fat and how they lose it. Then we cut to New York and restaurants that serve rare animals such as ants, beetles, rattlesnake, muskrat, and so forth. We watch people eating ants and worms with a fork. In Singapore, we watch people wrangling, skinning, and eating snakes.
We switch to watching a man beating himself bloody with glass-filled stones on Good Friday in Italy. It looks pretty awful– and unsanitary. In Australia, there’s a woman’s lifeguarding ceremony. We then move to the bikini islands and the sad effects of nuclear bomb testing. This shifts us to shark hunters in south seas islands hunting for shark fins for Chinese clients.
We cut to Rome, where children polish dead men’s skulls before going into a decorative collection of bones. We shift to people getting drunk in a bar, which is followed by a bunch of people just walking funny.
We watch a bunch of Japanese men getting washed and massaged; then we see dead men in China getting similar treatments in preparation for burial.
We then move on to a junkyard, where old cars are crushed and destroyed in huge machines. This leads us to Czechoslovakia, where women paint themselves blue for artistic reasons.
Next, in Hawaii, we see young girls welcoming old white men getting off airplanes for photo opportunities. There are many shots of elderly women hula dancing. This is contrasted to a soldier who dresses as a woman for their national holiday before beheading some bulls. We then watch men fighting bulls, and the bulls fight back.
Back in New Guinea, we meet “the last caveman,” who lives in a cave and has never seen metal. Not far away, native tribesmen attend a Catholic church; they’re recent converts. Then we look into some “cargo cults,” who worship bamboo airplanes that come from paradise.
Commentary
It starts out right away with lighthearted music, colorful dancing, and a documentary voice over. There are lots of scenes juxtaposing one thing in uncivilized, savage lands next to the same basic idea in a “more civilized” place. It needs a disclaimer, “Hundreds of animals died in the making of this picture.” Still, unlike the gratuitous animal-murder from something like “Cannibal Holocaust,” this really is more of a documentary where they simply record real things.
This was considered to be super shocking in the 60s, and it still has some parts that are uncomfortable to watch, but there are so many worse films out there. I’ve no doubt some of the things the film shows us have been stopped or simply have become obsolete, but some of it still goes on.
There’s no real plot or continuing throughline; it’s just one segment after another of weirdness. It’s got surprisingly good editing, the narration is often funny, and the soundtrack is quite good as well. This film launched an entire genre of “Mondo” films and death-exploitation, but this original film is really pretty interesting.
Beast of the Yellow Night (1971)
• Directed by Eddie Romero
• Written by Eddie Romero
• Stars John Ashley, Mary Charlotte Wilcox, Eddie Garcia
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes
• Watch it:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The premise is interesting and there’s some monster action. But too much of it is long and drawn out. It seemed much longer than it actually was. Clunky editing didn’t help. It’s watchable, but not great.
Synopsis
In a small town in southeast Asia in 1946, soldiers search the jungle. A family has been murdered. Was it a wild animal? A woman runs through the woods, and one of the soldiers shoots her.
Elsewhere, a man staggers through the jungle with blood on his clothes, and then he eats some poison fruit. “Run Langdon, run if you can,” he hears. The unseen voice calls him a rapist, murderer, thief, and traitor. “You can’t kill me like a wild animal, I’m a human being.”
“Would you serve me loyally for the rest of your life?” asks the voice. Langdon should be dead, but he isn’t. The talking snake turns into a man who continues to taunt him. The man says his friend was just shot, but he has her meat in the basket. “Eat, my boy, eat” Satan commands. Langdon eats the woman’s remains. Credits roll.
Time passes, and we resume in a city in the same country, last month. There’s a funeral that breaks up, and Satan is there gloating. It’s Langdon’s funeral, and the two have a conversation. “I think you’ll find this new situation quite interesting. I think I will too,” Satan suggests.
Phillip Rogers has died. Mrs. Julia Rogers wants to see his face, but he was mangled beyond recognition. Satan has placed Langdon inside the dead man to reanimate his body. When Langdon/Phillip Rogers sits up, Earl and Julia are surprised and order the bandages cut off his face. The doctor sees Langdon’s face and has a heart attack.
Julia finds that the “new” Phillip is much more attentive and nicer than the old one. They make love. Phil talks to his brother Earl about business and about Julia. He throws out the board of directors and asks Earl if he wants Julia. He’s actually willing to give his wife to Earl.
Satan comes to Phil and talks about people that Langdon has inhabited before. He regrets letting Langdon come back with his own face. Langdon’s job is to awaken the latent evil in the people with whom he comes into contact. Satan wants him to become “a pure moral force.”
Julia tells Phil that Earl was there earlier and wants to know what’s going on. Phil accuses Julia of cheating on him several months ago.
Phil tries to go into a church but instead changes into a monster and kills a man. He looks like a hairy, green, werewolf. He jumps in front of a train, and it knocks the beast right out of him– he’s Phil again.
Inspector Santos comes to the victim’s autopsy and wants to know what kind of weapon removes a man’s heart. Meanwhile, Earl suggests to Julia that maybe Phil needs psychiatric help.
Julia, on the other hand, is re-falling in love with her husband, “the new” Phil. They start having sex, and he turns into the monster again halfway through, kicking her out of the room before he transforms.
He bends the bars on the windows and gets outside before killing a prostitute. This time, there are witnesses and a chase. He kills several other people. He hides in a factory with an old blind man who offers him soup.
The police start a house-to-house search. Earl contacts the police about Phil, who is missing. The police think there may be a connection.
Phil turns human again, and he has a conversation with the old blind man. They argue about souls, and the old man seems to know things that he shouldn’t. Phil goes home to find the police and Julia waiting for him. The police inspector recognizes him as Joseph Langdon, but Langdon has been dead for twenty-four years.
There’s an angry mob outside the police station, and one of them stabs Phil. Phil refuses treatment, saying he’s OK. He isn’t actually hurt at all, being under Satan’s power. Julia wants to leave the country. The police talk about the history of the evil man Langdon, whom they killed many years ago.
Earl conspires with the police to do a stakeout around Phil’s house. If anything happens tonight, they’ll be there. Inside, Phil and Julia get it going again, until once again, he changes. This time, she sees what he becomes and screams.
The police surround monster-Phil, but he fights them off. They shoot him repeatedly, but that doesn’t stop him. He makes his way back to the blind man’s place, but the blind man’s son is injured.
Earl visits Julia in the hospital, and they hold hands.
Phil and the blind man hide in the tall grass as soldiers come after them. It’s hard to run through a jungle with a blind man, but they try. The police call for Langdon’s surrender and then use flame throwers on the grass.
Langdon tries to surrender, but the soldiers shoot the old man. The monster resurfaces and fights the many soldiers. The old man, not quite dead yet, calls for Langdon, who calms down. The inspector shoots Langdon, who finally falls down and turns human again.
Satan gives a little speech, and the movie ends abruptly.
Commentary
This was filmed in the Philippines, and it’s very Asian-looking, although all the main characters are Americans. The monster looks pretty good, but it’s a bit of a stretch calling it a werewolf, although the transformation is similar. It’s more like an Asian version of the old “Incredible Hulk” TV show.
Much of the non-monstrous bits feels like a melodramatic foreign soap opera. The editing is weird, and I often felt as if I were missing something with the story. It’s only 83 minutes long, but it feels much, much longer. It’s quite a slog.
The Apology (2022)
• Directed by Alison Locke
• Written by Alison Locke
• Stars Anna Gunn, Linus Roache, Janeane Garofalo
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was some very fine work done by only three actors. A lot of the horror comes from it being an awful series of events that are totally realistic. Painful to watch, but in a good way.
Synopsis
It’s a cold and snowy evening out in the woods. Darlene and Gretchen argue about cake for Christmas. It’s Darlene’s first time hosting Christmas in twenty years. It’s also the twentieth anniversary of Sally’s disappearance. Gretchen goes home to her house right across the street.
Darlene watches a video interview about Sally’s disappearance, and it’s clear that she’s not over it all yet. Darlene pours a drink– and credits roll.
There’s a knock at the door. It’s Darlene’s brother-in-law Jack; his car ran off the road a mile down the road. His visit was supposed to be a surprise; it’s been nineteen years since they’ve seen each other. He says he has a lot to make up for. She offers to let him spend the night and find a motel tomorrow.
They talk about old times. Apparently, Jack was cheating on Darlene’s sister Julie– with Darlene. He bailed on them all. The power goes out briefly– they’re having thundersnow. Jack asks what Darlene needs to “feel whole again” after the whole thing with Sally, but she says nothing, really. It’s been twenty years, after all. At the very least, she would want to know every single detail about what really happened.
She says she should have been there for Sally, but she was drunk at the time. She’s a recovering alcoholic, and she’s been having trouble with that recently.
Jack says he has to tell her something. Then he puts all the knives in the kitchen away. “Your car didn’t break down, did it? Nobody knows you’re here,” she asks. He wants to sit down and talk, and he brought zip ties in case she’s uncooperative. “You deserve to know the truth.”
He admits he killed Sally. He begins his story…
He saw Sally walking home from high school and picked her up in his truck. Sally had found her mother, Darlene, drunk, and was worried about her. He couldn’t help himself and started kissing her.
Darlene throws hot tea in Jack’s face and runs into the bathroom but can’t get the window open. He swears he didn’t come there to hurt her, and he just wants to tell his story. She puts a safety razor in her pocket and opens the door. He sees the razor and shows her his gun.
They go back to the kitchen and sit down for more of his story. Sally was sixteen, and she started screaming. He panicked and broke her neck accidentally while trying to keep her quiet. He shows her Sally’s French book to prove his story. He’s kept it all these years.
He says it was an accident, and if he’d told anyone, it would have ruined his life. He says Darlene is at least halfway responsible for being drunk all the time.
The power goes out, Darlene jumps on Jack in the dark, and she gets his gun. She leads him down into the basement. She zip-ties him to a chair with his own zip-ties.
She asks Jack where her daughter is buried, and he won’t say. She gives a long speech about what her life has been like all these years.
Then she decides to enact her “revenge fantasy. “She punches him a few times and then leaves him in the basement in the dark, which he doesn’t like. Darlene shoots Jack, sorta-kinda by accident, and Gretchen hears the shot outside.
Then she figures out that he wants her to kill him. At this point, he breaks out of the chair ties and grabs his gun back. He stalks her through the house, but his leg has been shot, so he’s slow. “Don’t make me kill you too,” he whines.
She knocks him out again and tries to tie him to the bed. Gretchen rushes in and helps. Darlene brings her up to speed on the evening. There’s a struggle, and Darlene knocks Jack down the stairs with a hockey stick.
Gretchen wants to call the police, but Darlene says that Jack hasn’t told her the whole story, and she wants to get the rest of the truth out of him first.
Jack wakes up, now secure with no possible escape, and Darlene says she wants the real story. He gives a lot more detail of the encounter with Sally, but the story still doesn’t sound quite right to Darlene. He says he buried her right there in that spot by the lake. Darlene confronts Jack about discrepancies in the story. He spills all and admits he raped her.
He apologizes for raping and killing Sally and for lying to Darlene for all these years. She points the gun, and it’s obvious he wants her to shoot him. She shows him that she recorded his confession.
Commentary
It’s a messed-up situation, but it all seems believable. The acting is good, and everyone’s motives are clear. It all unfolds naturally, and although there aren’t a lot of surprises, it’s never clear how it’s going to end.
About the time Darlene accuses Jack of wanting to be punished, we started to wonder if he really killed Sally or if there was something else going on. We got our answer in the end, but it was a real possibility.
There are only three characters, and all the action takes place inside a house, so this had to have been a fairly low-budget film, but it’s all really well done.
Friday the 13th (1980)
• Directed by Sean S. Cunningham
• Written by Victor Miller, Ron Kurz
• Stars Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It seemed strange revisiting the classic where it all began after all these years. Both Horror Guys saw this when it came out, and at least once or twice since then, but it’s been a while. It still holds up. The pacing is good, the direction is skillful. The acting is okay, and the character development is a little weak, but it’s forgivable.
Synopsis
We begin at Camp Crystal Lake in 1958. There is a point-of-view shot of someone walking through a cabin full of sleeping people. A couple of the counselors sneak out to the barn and start kissing. We see the POV camera going upstairs to the barn loft where the couple is having sex. The teens are both brutally murdered. Credits roll.
In the present, Annie, carrying her backpack, walks into the town of Crystal Lake looking for the camp. She goes into a diner and asks; a man offers to drive her there. Ralph the harbinger says the place has a death curse and that she’s never coming back. The other people in the diner ask if they’re reopening the camp, and Annie says they are.
The driver asks Annie if she knows what happened, and he fills her in: “Camp Crystal Lake is jinxed.” Two kids were murdered in 1958; one more drowned in 1957. There have been fires since. The new owner, Steve Christy, has spent a fortune getting the place ready to reopen. He eventually drops her near camp.
Marcie, Jack, and Ned arrive at the camp as well. Alice is already there, and Boss Steve puts them all to work right away. Someone we don’t see picks up Annie and drives her the rest of the way to camp. Except they drive right past the camp entrance and keep on going. Annie jumps out of the car and runs through the woods with the killer in pursuit. Annie winds up dead in the woods with her throat cut.
All the counselors go swimming and Ned drowns; no- it’s just a ruse to get mouth-to-mouth from one of the girls. Annie finds a snake in her cabin, and the group practically destroys the cabin in the hunt for the thing. They finally kill it with a machete.
Officer Dorf, a motorcycle cop comes by to warn them about Crazy Ralph, who’s on a bender. Alice soon finds Ralph hiding in the pantry, and he goes on about the curse again. “God sent me. I got ta warn ya. You’re doomed to stay!”
Later, Jack and Marcie start making out, and Ned looks on with jealousy as he goes off to do his own thing. It starts storming, so Jack and Marcie go into a cabin to continue what they were doing. They don’t see Ned’s bloody body on the upper bunk. Jack dies from an arrow through the throat, and Marcie gets the ax.
Brenda, Bill, and Annie, meanwhile, start to play “Strip Monopoly.”
Steve is stuck in town at the diner talking to Sandy, the waitress there. He finally leaves and drives back to camp. He breaks down, and Sgt. Tierney gives him a ride. Tierney complains about the higher crime rate when it’s Friday the 13th or the full moon. Tierney gets an emergency call and lets Steve out to walk the rest of the way.
Brenda remembers she left her cabin windows open and runs out into the rain without her clothes. She narrowly avoids being killed in the shower house, but eventually makes it back to her cabin. She hears someone crying, “Help me” and goes outside to search in the woods in the storm. She winds up on the archery range and becomes an easy target.
Annie and Bill hear Brenda’s scream, and they both go to check it out. They find a bloody ax, but no body. They break into the office to call the police, but the phones are out– we see the lines have been cut.
Steve finally arrives at the camp sign, and he sees someone he knows; someone who kills him.
The power goes off at the camp, and Bill lights a lantern. He goes to check on the generator while Alice sleeps on the couch. She wakes up and eventually goes looking for Bill. She finds him, stuck to the generator building’s door with more arrows.
Alice screams and runs through the woods. She goes into a cabin and barricades the door (she piles a bunch of stuff in front of a door that opens outwards).
She looks out the window and sees Steve’s car drive up. She runs outside, and finds that it’s not Steve, it’s Mrs. Voorhees, an old friend of Steve’s family. Alice tells her all about what happened, but Mrs. Voorhees says she’ll take care of everything.
The two of them go back into the cabin and find Brenda’s body. “What monster could have done this?” the woman asks. “Steve should never have opened this place after all that trouble.” She then talks about how the young boy, Jason, drowned in 1957, because the counselors were making love elsewhere.
We learn that Mrs. Voorhees was Jason’s mother, and today is his birthday. She admits that she killed everyone to make them pay for what happened to little Jason.
Alice whacks the crazy woman and runs out, stumbling across several more bodies on the way. We then see just how crazy Mrs. Voorhees is as she talks to herself using his voice. Not once, not twice, but three times does Alice knock the woman out and run away without finishing her off. There is more running, hunting, and chasing.
Alice smacks the lunatic woman with a frying pan and runs out to the boat docks. Mrs. Voorhees catches up yet again, and there’s another fight, but this time, Alice grabs a machete and hacks the woman’s head right off.
In shock, Alice climbs into a canoe and goes off into the lake to calm down. When she wakes up in the morning, half-rotted Jason jumps up and grabs her…
NO! She wakes up in the hospital and talks to the police. She asks if Jason is dead too. Sgt. Tierney says that didn’t happen, so he doesn’t believe much of her story. “Then he’s still there,” Alice says.
Commentary
“Jack” was one of Kevin Bacon’s earliest major film appearances.
We get the iconic “chee-chee-chee-ha-ha-ha” sound just a minute or two into the story, so it wastes no time. There’s not really much character development here, but at least we can tell all the characters apart before they die.
The end, of course, reveals the killer to be Mrs. Voorhees. She killed the counselors in 1958 and was probably the one who started the fires that were mentioned. The name “Jason” doesn’t even come up until her explanation at the end. And Jason being the killer only comes in the sequels.
I like the pacing here. It never slows down for too much chit-chat, and people start dying right away. It’s no wonder they barely waited a year to make a sequel.
Short Film: Givertaker (2023)
• Directed by Paul Gandersman
• Written by Peter S. Hall
• Stars Sarah Nell Kessler, Laura Jessica Perrin, Heather Caiti Ward
• Run Time: 10:22
• Watch it:
Synopsis
A woman prepares a “very special offering” and reads the spell from her book. She opens a mystical doorway to a dark place; she wants revenge on those who have caused her pain. Heather and Becca, the two bad girls, come in, and the main girl says the dark hole in the wall is “a wishing well. A real one.” She demonstrates how it works; you need to make offerings to the “Givertaker.”
What could go wrong?
Commentary
Sometimes it’s not good to hear the truth. Also, be careful what you wish for.
This one is well acted, well written, with good pacing, special effects, and music. It looks good and has a simple, self-contained story that tells us everything we need to know.
Tusk (2014)
• Directed by Kevin Smith
• Written by Kevin Smith
• Stars Justin Long, Michael Parks, Genesis Rodriguez, Haley Joel Osment
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 42 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Full of absurdity and craziness and loads of body horror, this is a fun watch. The cast, direction, and special effects are all top-notch. It’s a good one.
Synopsis
Wallace and Teddy do a podcast. They talk about a video where a guy cuts his own leg off. Wallace is going to Canada to interview the “Kill Bill Kid” for next week’s show. The show is called the “Not-See Party.” Credits roll.
As Wallace crosses the border to Canada, he gets a lesson about what it means to be Canadian. When he gets to the “Kill Bill Kid’s” house, there’s a funeral going on; the guy has died. Bad timing! He goes to a bar and reads a flier about an old man with weird stories to tell. Maybe this trip wasn’t a total waste of time; Wallace goes there to interview the guy, whose name is Howard Howe.
Wallace drives several hours out into the country and comes to a huge house. He meets up with wheelchair-bound Howard, who has a very nice place full of interesting stuff. Howard says he has had many adventures, but he has no idea what a podcaster is. Wallace says that Howard’s tea is exceptional. Howard talks about meeting Ernest Hemingway during D-Day.
They talk about the various artifacts on Howard’s wall. One of them is the penis bone of a walrus. Howard tells a story about how he met a walrus when he was lost at sea. He called the Walrus “Mr. Tusk.” Howard lived with Mr. Tusk for six months, and they had a beautiful friendship. Wallace passes out; the tea was drugged. Howard says, “It’ll be alright, Mr. Tusk.”
We flash back to Wallace having sex with Ally, his girlfriend. She thinks Wallace making fun of the “Kill Bill Kid” is exploitative. She says Wallace has changed, but Wallace makes light of it.
Wallace wakes up in a wheelchair as Howard polishes the penis bone. Howard says that Wallace was bitten by a brown recluse spider. He says a doctor came and gave Wallace a spinal injection, which is why Wallace can’t move much. The doctor also removed one of Wallace’s legs and took all the phones away. It’s really obvious that Howard is lying about the whole thing.
Hours pass, and Wallace says he can’t move his arms. Howard says that’s probably the morphine at work. Wallace thinks that Howard is lying, and then Howard gets out of his wheelchair and smacks him in the face. Howard says that he’s been constructing a walrus suit that he plans to put on Wallace, but Wallace must act the part.
We cut to Ally, who complains about Wallace. She hates him, but she hates herself more for letting him do things to her. She knows he cheats on her. We see that she’s telling all this to Teddy just before they sleep together. We then flashback to Wallace talking about cheating to Teddy, who doesn’t approve.
Wallace wakes up and hears his phone ringing. He calls Ally back, but she has her phone on “silent mode.” He leaves a message for her on voicemail, Teddy’s too. “I don’t want to die in Canada.”
Howard comes and states “Your life as you know it is over. You will be a walrus, or you’ll be nothing at all.”
In the morning, Ally and Teddy get Wallace’s messages. Meanwhile, we see Howard telling another story of his childhood as he stitches up Wallace, and it’s a bloody mess. He’s taken Wallace’s other leg and stitched his arms to his side. Wallace is looking a bit more like a Walrus now.
Teddy and Ally go to Canada and start tracing Wallace’s footsteps. They team up with Guy Lapointe, a detective in search of a serial killer named Howard Howe. He’s killed 23 people so far. He has found many bodies that look “like a crucified T-Rex. And the mouth and teeth have been… disturbed.” We get a flashback to when Lapointe actually met Howard.
Wallace wakes up and, oh my. He’s a walrus now, in a zoo-like enclosure with tusks and all. He soon learns that he’s not Howard’s first attempt at this- there’s another “walrus” body at the bottom of his pool. A bit later, Howard feeds Wallace a raw mackerel.
We see that a starving Howard ate the original Mr. Tusk an hour before he was rescued from the island, which he still regrets. Howard continues to bring out the walrus in Wallace.
Lapointe, Ally, and Teddy find Wallace’s car, so they know they’re close.
Howard gets into a walrus suit and wants to fight with Mr. Tusk. Teddy and Ally hear the roars and break in. “Either you go full walrus or die!” insists Howard. Wallace/Mr. Tusk uses his tusks to kill the crazy man.
Ally and Teddy find Wallace, but he can’t talk, only roar. Lapointe comes in with his gun…
One year later, Teddy and Ally go to an exotic animal zoo. They go to Wallace’s enclosure. They bring him a fish, which he eats somewhat reluctantly as he sheds some tears.
Commentary
Michael Parks, as Howard, is awesomely crazy. Justin Long plays the same weasley character he usually plays, which is perfect here. Johnny Depp– well, he’s unique. All the Canadian humor is “aboot” perfect as well– Canada is a weird and terrifying land full of lunatics, obviously.
The costume/makeup on the walrus is really cool, but it’s just the entire ridiculous situation that makes this great.
There’s Something Wrong with the Children (2023)
• Directed by Roxanne Benjamin
• Written by T. J. Cimfil, David White
• Stars Amanda Crew, Zach Gilford, Briella Guiza, David Mattle
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A group of friends on a weekend cabin trip begin to suspect something supernatural is at play when the kids behave strangely after disappearing into the woods overnight. There's Something Wrong with the Children is the latest horror film from Blumhouse Productions. Available to buy or rent on digital now. This film is not rated.
We enjoyed this one. It’s creepy and unsettling without everything being clearly explained, which worked just fine. It builds steadily, with things just getting worse and worse.
Synopsis
We watch two children, Lucy and Spencer, playing tag as the credits roll. Adults Ellie, Thomas, Ben, and Margo are all on vacation together with Thomas and Ellie’s kids. There’s a thunderstorm, and the two families split up for the evening to their own neighboring cabins.
The next morning, they all go hiking and Ben gets them off the trail into the woods. They soon come across a huge, abandoned building, and they all decide to explore. Suddenly, the kids are gone, and the adults hear a scream. The kids found a nest full of dead birds. Then they all come across a big deep hole in the ground. Lucy and Spencer call it “The place that shines” and both start pointing at it. Spencer tries to jump in, but Thomas stops him. They all go back outside.
When they get back to their cabins, both kids take a nap, which is unusual. Elle tells Margo all about the four-way she and Thomas had with some friends that didn’t go terribly well. Ben and Thomas talk about why Ben doesn’t want kids yet.
Ben and Margot volunteer to take the kids for the night so that Thomas and Elle can have some sexy time, but the kids start acting weird before going to bed. Finally left alone, Ben and Margot talk about having children themselves. They don’t really finish the conversation because she gets too high. We see that he takes medication, so you know where that’s going.
The next morning, Margot goes in to wake up the kids, and they’re gone, along with their shoes. Ben goes back down that path looking for them. He goes back into the weird old building and finds them there standing over that pit again. The two kids jump into the bottomless pit. Back at the cabin, Margo reports that the kids are there. What?
Everyone is happy except Ben, who knows what he saw in the building. He did see that, didn’t he? He talks to the kids, but they seem to communicate with each other with clicks and sounds, like insects. Both kids have nosebleeds and act creepy around Ben.
Ben tells Margot what he saw. “I don’t think that’s them out there anymore,” he says. She doesn’t believe him. She reminds him of his episodes that he takes medication for. “This isn’t that” he insists and then goes in to take his lithium.
The two kids start tormenting Ben, because they know that he knows. Ben states that the kids are trying to kill Thomas, and he looks like a crazy person in the process. He tells everything that he saw to the kids’ parents, and they tell him to shut up. Elle and Thomas blame the other couple for not being parental material, which launches a big fight. Margot actually slaps Elle in the face.
Everyone goes back to their own cabins, and the kids sneak in to talk to Ben. they argue, and there’s a choking incident with Spencer, who apparently dies. Lucy blames Ben and soon everyone else does as well.
Ben sticks to his story and tells Margo about it again. He thinks something took their place and their bodies will be at the bottom of that pit. The two of them go back to the pit, but the kids’ bodies aren’t there. He starts making crazy excuses, and Margot really thinks it’s in his head now. She leaves him there and walks back to the cabin.
Margot runs into Lucy on the way back, and Lucy wants to show her something in the woods. Thomas interrupts, and she wants to show him something in the woods now. Margot goes inside, but both Elle and Spencer’s body are gone. She starts to freak out because no one is around.
Then Margot finds Elle, who bleeds to death right in front of her. Margot sees Spencer, walking around as if he hadn’t been dead for hours. Margot sees the shadow of a giant bug outside– no, that's just Lucy, who wants to play a game again.
Margot runs outside and there’s a park ranger out there. “It’s the fucking children” Margot insists. The ranger goes inside the house to check things out. Something grabs her from behind, and there is much screaming.
Margot gets in the car, but soon spots Ben outside and goes after him. For some reason, he doesn’t want to leave anymore. He talks about the shining thing in the pit; he’s seen it. He wants all of them to be together as a real family now. Ben is not Ben anymore.
Ben attacks Margot, and she chops him with a machete. She runs outside, and the children get her. They drag her back to the pit. First the kids throw in the park ranger, then Elle, then they come for Margot, who’s awake and playing dead. Instead, Margot pushes them both over the edge. \
Margot walks back to the cabin and runs into Ben again. Thomas comes out of nowhere and tackles Ben as Margot speeds away. Before long, she sees Ben, Spencer, and Lucy standing in the road. She aims the car right at the trio, speeds up and screams as she plows right into them all…
Commentary
Other people’s kids are just weird, right? Almost as bad as parents.
The chittering between the kids, the repeated shots of the bug-zapper, and Spencer talking about “Dead bugs” make it clear that the entities are somehow insect-related, but it’s never clear exactly how.
The cinematography and soundtrack are especially noteworthy. The acting is fine, the kids aren’t bad actors, but it’s a fairly by-the-numbers evil-children storyline with a side-helping of a guy on drugs who may or may not be hallucinating.
We were entertained overall.
Newsletter Contact Info:
Stay tuned for more regular and bonus reviews next week!
• Email: email@horrorguys.com
• Book Store: https://brianschell.com/collection/horrorguys
• The web: http://www.horrorguys.com
• Subscribe by email:
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/horrormovieguys
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/HorrorMovieGuys
