Old, Phantasm V: Ravager, Menopause, and On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Discovery
Old, Phantasm V: Ravager, Menopause, and On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Discovery
Horror Bulletin Week 143
News Item #1: November Movie Giveaway!
We have FIVE, count ‘em, FIVE copies of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old” to give away!
Find the details and how to enter at https://www.horrorguys.com/giveaway/
Follow the Twitter accounts, email us, or subscribe to the newsletter by November 22, and we’ll make our random selections then.
News Item #2: Email Newsletter w/BONUS reviews
We now have an all-new weekly email that contains all our reviews from the site, plus some bonus material. Over the coming week’s we’ll be beefing up the bonus material quite a lot— there’s just so much stuff to review!
Recent Bonus reviews include:
• Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
• Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)
• Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)
• Begotten (1991)
• Wolf (1994)
• Wolfcop (2014)
Read them now, for free, no spam. Then sign up for future issues:
News item #3: New Book- “The Horror Guys Guide to the Horror Films of Vincent Price”
We have a new book! The Horror Guys Guide to the Horror Films of Vincent Price is available now. It covers every single one of Price’s horror films and several other significant films that weren’t horror. There’s more than fifty films covered. Find it on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KQC59PR
Episode 143 Summary
This week, we’ll be watching some more scary stuff. We’ll watch four more horror films, including “On The Trail of Bigfoot: The Discovery” a new non-horror film from this year. “Phantasm: Ravager” from 2017, “On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Discovery” from 2021. Also, we’ll suffer through “Menopause” this year.
Check out our books!
The Horror Guys Guide to:
• The Horror Films of Vincent Price
• Universal Studios' Shock! Theater
Creepy Fiction:
Here. We. Go!
Old (2021)
• Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
• Written by M. Night Shyamalan, Pierre-Oscar Levy, Frederik Peeters
• Stars Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes
• Trailer:
Note that we’re giving away FIVE copies of the film. Check out November Movie Giveaway– “Old” (2021) for details
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
This is a good one to watch without even watching the trailer; going into this one as spoiler-free as possible would be the best experience as you try to figure out what’s going on. There’s a mysterious situation on an isolated beach, and two families must find a way out. It’s good!
Synopsis
SPOILERS! Watch the film first!
A family drives through the tropical jungle, on their way to the Anamika Resort. Guy and Prisca and their two children, Trent and Maddox, arrive at the fancy resort. Guy and Prisca are planning to tell the kids after the vacation that she’s got a serious illness and they’re splitting up as well. The kids make friends with Idlib, a little kid who says he has no friends. Idlib sends Trent a message using a secret alphabet, but he figures it out. The manager recommends a veryexclusive, secret private beach on the other side of the island.
Meanwhile, another couple is on an isolated beach somewhere. The woman takes her top off and heads for the water...
Back at the resort, Dr. Charles helps Patricia, who is having a seizure. Her husband is Jarin. Guy’s family and Dr. Charles’ family get in the bus (driven by M. Night Shyamalan) to the “off limits” nature preserve. The driver has brought a ton of food for them, which confuses the guests. The area is surrounded by high cliffs, but they find the beach without any problems after going through a narrow path in the cliffs to reach it.
They spot “Mid-Sized Sedan,” a famous rapper on the beach; he’s just sitting on the rocks doing nothing. We recognize that he was on the beach with the woman earlier. The kids find a bunch of stuff on the beach. Toys, cell phones, sunglasses, and other things. Trent notices that there are no fish, but then a dead body floats by. It’s the woman from earlier that was with Mid-Sized Sedan. Sedan explains that she swam way out by herself, but he won’t say anything more; he’s had a nosebleed for hours.
Agnes, the grandmother, is having chest pains. Charles says there’s no phone reception. Jarin and Patrica arrive from the resort, they’re late. Jarin tries to walk back to the road, but he passes out on the way. Agnes stops breathing, and Charles tries CPR. Jarin guesses the kids’ ages, but he’s off by about six years. Prisca doesn’t recognize her now-teenage children.
Charles and Sedan try to go back out the way they came in, and they both wake up back on the beach. Charles cuts Sedan, but the wound almost instantly heals. Then the dog dies. Sedan says he has a blood clotting disease, and his dead girlfriend had just been diagnosed with MS.
Prisca had a (possibly) benign tumor that suddenly has gotten a lot worse. Charles tries to cut it out, but the skin heals over instantly. They have to hold the cut open with their fingers and pull the tumor out. She’s all better now! The dead woman, however, has decomposed into a skeleton. They figure out that time is acting strangely on the beach. Each sixty minutes that pass is equal to two years of aging.
Trent and Kara come back from doing whatever they were doing, and Kara is suddenly much fatter. She’s pregnant, and will give birth in about twenty minutes. The baby is born and dies almost instantly. Charles keeps going on about movie trivia; he’s got early onset Alzheimer’s that is not so early-onset now. Charles stabs Sedan to death, and it’s so quick and thorough that the wounds don’t heal.
The group figures out that one person from each party had some kind of long-term illness. Someone invited them or tricked them all into coming here. Jarin tries to swim to another beach, but his corpse floats back soon after. Like in the passageway, he passed out after a few minutes. Kara tries to climb the rock wall but also passes out, falling to her death.
One by one, time starts catching up with each of them in more and more severe ways. Maddox finds a journal that mentions the strange minerals on this beach that are affecting them. Trent notices a camera way up on the mountain that is recording them.
Then things really start getting out of hand. Will any of them survive?
Commentary
Watching the people try to figure out the “rules” and “process” of the beach is very interesting.
The subtle aging makeup is really good. Charles' descent into mental illness is great. The grown-up kids seem awfully knowledgeable for six-year-olds, but it’s not so far-fetched considering how fast they grew up.
The conclusion, with the explanation given, makes a lot of sense. It’s brutal, and a little evil, but it makes a lot of sense. I don’t believe for a minute that an organization that useful would be shut down as quickly as is claimed here by the vacationing policeman. There’d have to be some government agency behind it all that would cover it up.
On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Discovery (2021)
• Directed by Seth Breedlove
• Written by Seth Breedlove
• Stars Seth Breedlove
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 17 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
Follow cryptid documentarian Seth Breedlove and his crew as they head to Washington State for an intensive, adventure-filled week searching for Sasquatch with the Olympic Project. It’s got great scenery, a couple of creepy stories told from eyewitness reports, and is overall really well done.
Synopsis
We start out with a man who took a photo of what he later decided must have been a Bigfoot. Credits roll.
Breedlove then narrates about why people still look for Bigfoot even though science denies that it exists. Why the Pacific Northwest? They speculate; maybe it’s the rainfall. Maybe it’s the climate. This is followed by several tales of long-ago encounters with Sasquatch.
The camera crew accompanies a group called the “Olympic Project,” which then heads to what is called “The Nest Site.” He talks to men with video recorders, still cameras, audio recorders, and other equipment on the journey. They each have their own encounter stories.
We then see video of the Nest Site, a large area that has twigs and sticks in a really big nest shape. There were six big nests. One local hunter and guide says they were identical to gorilla nests. Could it be a defensive arrangement? A nursery area? The film wraps up with unanswered questions.
Commentary
Brian’s note: I hadn’t actually told Kevin this was a documentary before we started; I just assumed he knew that. The film was almost over when he asked, “Is this a real documentary?” He literally thought this was going to be a “found footage”-style horror film that was just really dragging out the exposition. He kept waiting for a Bigfoot attack.
The majority of the footage and discussion revolves around the Nest, a group of several heavily mashed-down and interwoven sticks made into a sort of mattress. These were found by a local guide and hunter who still brings people to see these nests on a regular basis, just like he did with the camera crew. I can only assume he gets paid to do so. Just sayin’.
Whether you think there’s a Bigfoot out there or not, the film looks great. The scenery is wonderful; It’d be fun to go there and wander the woods even without finding anything, so maybe that’s one reason why they do it. There are a large number of interviews from local experts. Instead of hiring re-enactors for some of the stories, they have nice-looking animated sequences. Some of the stories are well-told and pretty creepy, so if you’re a Bigfoot believer or just a fan, this is worth watching.
November Movie Giveaway!
We have FIVE, count ‘em, FIVE copies of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old” to give away!
Here’s how this is going to work:
• One Copy to a random Twitter Follower of @HorrorMovieGuys
• One Copy to a random Twitter Follower of @HorrorBulletin
• One Copy to a random subscriber on our new newsletter:
• TWO Copies to listeners of the Horror Guys Podcast who follow the instructions discussed in the podcast released on Nov 12, 2021.
Follow the Twitter accounts, email us, or subscribe to the newsletter by November 22, and we’ll make our random selections then.
Note that the HorrorBulletin Twitter and Newsletter are both new for us and don’t have too many subscribers yet— these have the best odd of winning.
Lobster Girl and Other Tales (2021)
• Directed by James Neal
• Written by J. Morvay
• Stars Jim Mola, Amee Mola
• Run Time: 29 Minutes
• YouTube Link:
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
A sort of anthology of animated horror tales with various animation styles. The story of Lobster Girl is broken into three parts with other stories of varying quality interspersed. If you like weird fiction and creepy animation, this one may be for you!
Synopsis
Lobster Girl Part 1
Jake has had his hands transformed into claws so that he can be with the Lobster Girl. She said he would have to feel her pain before she would marry him.
Comments: It’s like a comic book turned into an animated movie, with both 2D and 3D effects. Very nice!
Godless
A man describes getting a girl pregnant back in the 50s. He doesn’t want it; she doesn’t want it. Abortions were illegal in those days, but there were ways. She’s well into her sixth month, but they convince the doctor to do the procedure anyway. The baby comes out alive; now what?
Comments: It uses a sort of rotoscope effect done over super-low resolution video, possibly from stock-footage. This sort of thing used to happen often in the 1950s, and it still happens from time to time now.
All Aboard
Comments: Very nice, very creepy black and white images, but no real story and very short. There should have been more to this.
666 House Street
A mother kills her demon-possessed children.
Comments: This was over before I realized it wasn’t part of “All Aboard.” It was fine, but having the title at the end was far more confusing than it should have been.
Lobster Girl, Part 2
A lobster-handed girl and formerly-abandoned child named Snow have some misadventures in an institution. A baby is produced who has miraculous powers…
Metamorphosex
A woman recounts a rape incident. Is it possible he was the only one who cared about her?
Comments: a collection of painting-style images.
Lobster Girl Part 3
Lobster Girl and Snow do battle. Jake, from the first part, waits on Lobster Girl’s arrival until he finds out he’s not Lobster Girl’s only suitor.
Phantasm: Ravager (2016)
• Directed by David Hartman
• Written by Don Coscarelli, David Hartman
• Stars A. Michael Baldwin, Reggie Bannister, Dawn Cody
• Run Time: 1 Hour 25 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
It was made eighteen years after the previous film. It’s just been too long. The characters are all just too old for this stuff. The story is a confusing mess of time and dimensional jumping. But at least it does have The Tall Man, so that’s cool.
Synopsis
Reggie walks out of the desert, his ice-cream battle suit obviously showing a lot of wear. He gives a quick recap of everything that has happened. Reggie explains that he’s the only one left, but he obviously hasn’t given up. Credits roll.
As Reg walks past a demolished house, a corpse inside wakes up. Back to walking down the road, a guy stops and agrees to drive Reggie to town for $50. It turns out it’s Reggie’s car, and he wastes no time in taking it back. A pair of steel balls fly down the road. One kills the guy, and the other goes after Reggie’s car. Reg locks one in his glove compartment and tries to outrun the other one.
Then Reggie wakes up in a wheelchair in a nursing home. He’s being pushed by Mike. He looks really old now. Reg doesn’t know why he’s here, but Mike explains they found him wandering in the desert “like Moses.” Mike explains that Reggie has dementia.
Reggie tells the story again. Reg is in the desert looking for a sphere and the Tall Man. He picks up a girl on the side of the road. She’s Dawn, and she needs a ride. He stays the night at her place, and she seems nice, but that never works for poor Reg. They finally get to sleep, and we see the Tall Man and a silver sentinel outside.
Reggie wakes up in the hospital, and the Tall Man is the patient in the bed next to him. Only he’s not, he’s Jebediah Morningside. The two have a conversation; Jeb says they brought them both here to die. “You’ll never be safe.”
Reg wakes up back at Dawn’s house. He goes upstairs to find a ball drilling into Dawn’s head. Reggie runs out to the car and loads up every weapon in existence into his bag. He runs into Demeter, Dawn’s farmhand, who doesn’t speak English. The two men battle spheres in the barn.
Back in the present, Mike and Reg talk about the possibilities that one could be in two dimensions at once. This world is fine, but maybe Reggie has been traveling to another dimension with the Tall Man.
Back in the past, Reggie sees a huge silver sphere in the sky. He also finds a portal. Suddenly, he’s back with Mike in the wheelchair. Maybe he is shifting between realities. Mike suddenly isn’t there, but he does hear a familiar humming noise which leads him to another portal.
Both versions of Reggie go through the portal. The Tall Man is there. “Our paths cross again.” He has a plan to make everything better, but Reggie has to stay out of his way. Reggie can even have his family back.
Reggie finds himself in another mausoleum; there’s at least one dwarf running around too. He kills the dwarf eventually, but then finds himself on the Tall Man’s homeworld. Reggie demands Mike and Jody be returned, but the Tall Man won’t cooperate. “You're not even real; you’re my bad dream” says the Tall Man.
Reg is rescued by Jane, who looks exactly like Dawn and Chunk, a non-evil little person. Chunk soon saves Reg from an undead dwarf. Chunk takes him to see Mike. Mike explains that Reg has been on ice for the past decade. “Nothing is the same.”
They open a door, and Reg sees the Earth burning, with spheres, both large and small roaming the streets, killing humans wherever they find them. This is now the Tall Man’s world.
Back in the nursing home, Reg spots an old man with a walker. It’s the Tall Man, sort of. He’s slipping between worlds much faster now. Mike comes to see him, and now he’s having those strange dreams. We get flashbacks of giant spheres laser-blasting buildings and alien viruses being released on Earth. The world basically ended, but they’re stilltrying to fight the Tall Man.
The Tall Man exists in huge numbers, in more dimensions than they can imagine. He looks essentially invincible. There’s another battle or six, and they’re picked up by Jody in the muscle car.
Then we move to the hospital again, where Reggie dies. In the battleworld, however, he still fights on.
Commentary
Time has caught up with all of the cast. It was eighteen years between Phantasm 4 and 5. Reggie Bannister was 71 when this was filmed, and Angus Scrimm was 89 and died the year this was released. Let’s just say they both looked mighty natural in those hospital beds.
Still, it’s Reggie vs. the Tall Man, and we got to see all the actors for one final sendoff, which was nice. Unfortunately, that’s about all that I can say good about this one. The lower budget and super-ambitious plot means it relies heavily on CGI, which isn’t very good. All the time jumping is more disorienting for us than it was for Reggie.
It’s one film too far. I like the ideas presented here, but everyone was just too old, and nothing really looked right because of it. It was partly filmed in 2008 with Reggie fighting stuff, and then more in 2014 with old man Reg and Mike in the nursing home. It jumps all over time and space, and it’s pretty disjointed because of it. It does offer an ending that’s just way over the top, but at least it is an ending.
The after credit scene implies that there could be more, but I suspect there almost certainly won’t be.
Menopause (2021)
• Directed by Joshua Nelson
• Written by Joshua Nelson
• Stars Steve Andriolo, Jeff Clark Jr., Glenn Delgrosso
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
A eclipse-fueled, deranged, pseudo-feminist, anti-man murder spree. How could you go wrong with that? First, by alienating all the male viewers, and then by alienating all the women viewers.
Synopsis
A woman stabs someone excessively and is soon covered in blood. Afterward, she has ice cream. Credits roll.
A woman whines to her husband about not spending enough time together after 23 years. He always has something to do. He promises to work on that problem, but this weekend, he has an important softball game.
A guy wants to do something for his friend’s birthday. She wants to go to Disney. He wants some kind of Amish road trip.
A girl talks to her husband, but she’s drunk and has all sorts of problems. He has cancer, and she’s weak. This time, it’s good news.
Another couple argue. She wants to buy thousands of dollars of clothes every day, and he has issues with that. His ex-wife comes in demanding alimony.
Three women sit on a couch and talk about how the moon affects their periods. This is some kind of vague support group. Another woman comes in and starts talking about how she was abused. One of the women fantasizes about strangling the delivery man.
A girl who accidentally got pregnant goes home to her sister. The sister has fantasized about killing her Uber driver.
The strangle-fantasizer talks about an upcoming eclipse and the effect it’ll have on people. “Strange things happen, and they’re about to get stranger.” We have more discussion about the moon and the menstrual cycle.
Suddenly, all these women think they are pregnant, but most of them haven’t had sex in years. As time progresses, and the eclipse takes over, all these women get more and more violent, first in fantasies, then in the real world.
Commentary
If you’re not gay, and wondered why so many men are, watch this film, it’ll clear up the confusion.
The production values are quite good, the acting is decent for a film of this budget, but the story just has too many characters. There are a lot of characters, none of whom have names except for one guy named Rick. Instead of ten women (most of whom are coupled with men), it would have been much more bearable with four.
There’s a little bit of well-done gore toward the end, but considering the story, not as much as you might expect.
Still, I have to wonder who the intended audience is for this film. I can’t picture most male horror fans sitting through all the menstruation talk and shrill nagging of the first hour. I guess you could argue that it’s a feminist film, but I can’t imagine any woman identifying with any of these characters; none of them are sympathetic in any way. So, if I rule out all the men, and then I rule out all the women… Well, my cat didn’t hate it, but she slept through most of it.
Still, if you want to see a bunch of deranged women kill a bunch of guys, give it a shot.
And that’s our show. Thanks for joining us. Stop in during the week at our website, HorrorMovieGuys.com for news and horror updates, to comment on this podcast, or to contact us.
Get ready for next week, where we’ll be watching some more classics. We’ll watch four more horror films, including “Leatherface” from 2017, “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” from 1982, “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum” from 2017, and “Amityville Cop” from 2021.
Stay tuned!
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