31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 21: QUEEN OF THE DAMNED (2002)

Akasha (Aliyah), the titular queen of the damned, on the loose after millennia.

This adaptation of the third novel in Anne Rice's genre-redefining VAMPIRE CHRONICLES is widely and not unfairly lambasted as squandering the source novel's rich material, as it alters and/or dumbs down what was my favorite in the series after the superlative INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. Seriously, the novel is a superb and highly entertaining sequel with multiple subplots and a legion of fascinating characters, some introduced in this novel and who return in subsequent installments and spinoff series, so there was no way to cram so much into a film with a run time of less than two hours, so a lot was sacrificed, and I do mean a lot. The end result is pretty much just a hollow shell of Rice's story that I have to admit I did not hate. Having loved the book and also being fully cognizant of everything that was excised for the screen, I was entertained by seeing familiar characters, but at the end I was saddened to think of what it could have been if it had been split up into two or three films to tell the fully fleshed-out tale. It also didn't help that the second book in the series — and also arguably the most wildly popular entry — THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, was never adapted. That's a problem, because that book retcons the events of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE and sets up everything going forward. In other words, with this film it's like being dropped into a detail-rich serial that's already in progress and we missed the important second chapter. And, perhaps most egregiously for longtime fans of the books, the film goes out of its way to pull a massive "no homo" when it comes to Lestat and his romantic entanglements. One of the key selling points of the novels is their in-your-face homoerotic content, and there is no trace whatsoever of that here. Anyway, here's more or less what you get with the film:

                                                     The vampire Lestat (Stuart Townsend).

 Lestat (Stuart Townsend), the self-absorbed vampire hero of the chronicles, rises from a long slumber, awakened by the intriguing sounds of 20th Century rock music, installs himself as the front man for the band that awakened him, and re-crafts their content to reveal the ancient secrets of the vampire species in song. In short order, Lestat and his band have taken the world by storm, and when. they announce a massive outdoor concert, vampires from all over the world plan on converging there with plans to assassinate Lestat foremost in their minds. Vampires thrive on humans not believing they are real, so Lestat flaunting what he is on an international scale simply cannot be allowed. Meanwhile, Lestat is being pursued by a fascinated member of an international society of observers of the supernatural, but what is her agenda? And let us not forget that at one point Lestat finds himself in the tomb/throne room of Akasha (Aliyah) and Enkil, an ancient Egyptian queen and king who have existed as living, unmoving statues for millennia, and Akasha is awakened by Lestat's violin playing in the throne room. The pair were the world's first vampires, and their very involved back story is pretty much completely ignored, along with the stories of some other important characters in the novel, and more's the pity, but once revived, Akasha seeks Lestat with a mind to make him her new king. Everything comes to a head at the big concert and much mayhem ensues. By the end, Lestat has gained godlike levels of vampiric power, after which he wanders off with the paranormal observer, who is now a newly-minted vampire.

                                                                           "NO HOMO!!!"

When it comes to adaptations of Anne Rice's works, I greatly enjoyed the film of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, even with the odd casting choice of Tom Cruise as Lestat, but I must say that I prefer Stuart Townsend as Lestat. He looks pretty much like I pictured the character when reading him, and his look and performance in the part didn't take me out of the movie like Tom Cruise did. (I got used to Cruise in the role, but Townsend is better.) 

Like I said, I did not hate it and I was entertained, but so much was lost in translation to the screen, including a sub-plot involving a young vampire named baby Jenks, and a detailed and utterly savage origin of vampirism, an explanation I never knew I wanted, but what the novel gave me in that department was riveting and memorable, and its loss is a goddamned shame. If anything, sitting through the movie makes me want to dig out my first edition hardcover of the novel (I bought and read it when it first came out) and reread it. I urge you to do likewise.

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 20: THE HYPNOTIC EYE (1960)

Desmond (Jacques Bergerac) commands the audience to look into the hypnotic eye.

A string of eleven horrifying self-mutilations by women is investigated by Detective Sergeant (Joe Patridge) and his psychiatrist buddy Dr. Philip Hecht (Guy Prescott), with the meager clues pointing toward Desmond (Jacques Bergerac), a stage hypnotist. Using his girlfriend Marcia (Marcia Henderson) as bait, the detective soon unravels the mystery with the trail taking some very dark turns indeed, inclduing a very much hypnotized Marcia falling into the clutches of the hypnotist, but is Desmond the true mastermind behind the mutilations? And if not, then who is, and what is their twisted motivation?

Released the same year as PSYCHO and PEEPING TOM, THE HYPNOTIC EYE is a more humble, less impactful shocker, but it's still pretty dark and sick for its era. I first heard of it somewhere around 1986, when I saw the bad movie documentary IT CAME FROM HOLLYWOOD (1982) late one night on cable, when its intriguing trailer was included among a slew of clips from notable examples of terrible cinema, and I only just got around to finally seeing it for myself. It was worth the wait.

The film opens with a hypnotized woman returning home from a Desmond performance, drenching her hair in a flammable substance thinking it's shampoo, and setting her head on fire with the burner on her apartment's stove. 

The film's horrifying opening shock.

The film opens abruptly with this, and when I realized what was about to happen, I let out a spontaneous "HOLY SHIT!!!" The effect is rather cheesy, but it's shocking nonetheless, and it must have been quite a jolt for audiences sixty-five years ago. And though we are told of mutilations involving a woman drinking lye, one obliviously washing her face with pure sulfuric acid, another stuffing her face into the spinning blades of a fan (thinking it was some kind of face massager), one slashing up her face with a straight razor while believing it was a makeup pen, and yet another who gouged out her eyes, we thankfully do not witness those dire events, as they likely would have been too much for the 1960 audience, plus to say nothing of the censors.

Clocking in at a brisk 79 minutes, THE HYPNOTIC EYE has little fat on it — the lone bit of filler is a performance by Desmond during the final act, but it serves the climax — gets right to the point, the plot moves at a lively pace, and it concludes in a satisfying manner without wearing out its welcome. Now largely forgotten, especially in the wake of its two game-changing contemporaries, THE HYPNOTIC EYE is worthy of rediscovery, and its sleazier aspects would make it a good double-feature with THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE (1958).  

                                                       Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 19: BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (2024)

                                                                        Here we go again.

There's really not much to say about BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, a legacy sequel that came nearly forty years too late. It's not the debacle that GHOSTBUSTERS II was, but its efficacy depends on how much one loved the first BEETLEJUICE and how nostalgic one is for it. The new film brings back Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, and of course Michael Keaton, and finds Rydar's Delia Deetz now a famous TV ghost investigator (remember, she has the ability to see and interact with the dead) who's involved with an irritating producer who's pressuring her into marriage, while she weathers a dysfunctional relationship with a daughter (Jenna Ortega) who hates her. And along with all of that, Delia is haunted by images of Betelgeuse, visions that point to the spirit's return, but what does he want? And what's up with the new boy that Delia's daughter just met?

 BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is not bad by any yardstick, but it's a tedious case of "been there, done that," with only a flashback to Beetlegeuse's origin as a grave robber during the Black Plague being a standout. He was married to a luscious woman named Delores (Monica Bellucci) who revealed herself to be a soul-sucking entity who poisons her husband as part of a ritual that will grant her more power and immortality, but Betelgeuse had enough time to dismember her before his death, placing her severed components into several crates, where they remained separate and alive for centuries. But now Delores is back, having pieced herself together with a staple gun, and she's got her sights set on her spectral hubby.

The return of Delores (Monica Bellucci).

If you're a franchise completist, you can definitely do worse, but in the end BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE registers as little more than a passable way to kill 105 minutes. It's far from Tim Burton's worst effort, but it's definitely a nostalgia-fueled shameless cash grab. You'll probably forget it a day or two after sitting through it.

 Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 18: TAMARA (2005)

High school drama collides head-on with teen witchery.

A weird, unattractive high school girl named Tamara Riley (Jenna Dewan) incurs the ire of some vicious jocks by exposing their football team's use of performance enhancing drugs, so the jocks engineer a revenge prank that goes horribly wrong, killing Tamara in the process. The bullies bury their victim, but they soon find out that her perceived "witchy" affectations were in fact the real deal, and a love spell she had cast earlier resurrects her as the acme of jailbait hotness and grants her the ability to read minds with a touch and also make her victims love her and obey her every command. 

 

Tamara (Jenna Dewan): back from the grave, hot and homicidal. 

The revived Tamara has two things on her mind: vengeance against her tormentors/killers, and enchanting the teacher she has majorly damp panties for, only he's happily married, so his wife has to go...

The resurrected Tamara's hunt begins.

Basically a CARRIE knockoff with outright witchcraft in lieu of telekinesis, TAMARA is a pretty derivative affair, but it moves briskly and is quite entertaining. It's nothing you haven't seen before, but it features some very creative magickal revenge. The two lead jocks are as vicious as any found in the works of Stephen King, only with serial drugging and raping of girls added to their roster of heinous acts, so our teen witch's plan for them is especially satisfying.

When a witch countermands "no homo." 

As lesser efforts go, this one's not bad at all, and is definitely worth checking out. It would make for a good co-feature with THE CRAFT, only with gore and real nastiness for added seasoning.

             Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 17: THE SUBSTANCE (2024)

                                 Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore). What a drag it is getting old.

Long-running TV aerobic star Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is aging out, her looks being deemed as too old by her smarmy showrunner (Dennis Quaid), so when she is booted from her show, a search for a new, younger, sexier host begins. After being examined during a checkup, a handsome young nurse hands Elizabeth a piece of paper with a phone number on it, noting "It changed my life." The desperate Elizabeth calls the mysterious voice and a mysterious voice on the other end requests her mailing address and once it is received, the voice hangs up. She soon receives a flash drive containing a promotional video for "The Substance," a chemical means by which the user will physically divide into two bodies — the original and a new, younger iteration — with the original body laying dormant for seven days while the new body, containing all of the original's memories, roams free. There are a number of rules that must be strictly adhered to if one opts to use the Substance, and the terse communication of the customer help line only provides the most minimal of information. At first reluctant to use the stuff, Elizabeth finally relents and goes to pick up her first regular shipment of the chemical, plus the equipment for administering it, as well as assorted nutrient supplements for the dormant original body, and a kit for stitching up the huge, gaping wound on the original body's back after the new self is birthed like a crab molting its shell. 

When Elizabeth injects the Substance, she ends up naked and comatose on the bathroom floor of her luxury apartment while the younger, almost inhumanly beautiful and sexy new her emerges. Taking the singular moniker of "Sue" (Margaret Qualley), she auditions to be her own replacement on the aerobics show that launched her to wealth and fame, and in no time Sue has taken the popular zeitgeist by storm with her hyper-sexualized workout routines. 

 Sue (Margaret Qualley) takes the nation by storm.

But in tales of this nature there's always a catch, and it's only a matter of time before things rapidly spiral into a maelstrom of gruesome, gory, and occasionally stomach-churning body horror (which I would love to show you, but you should really experience it for yourself).

Okay… 

I enjoyed most of THE SUBSTANCE. Everyone and their parakeet recommended THE SUBSTANCE to me up and down for months, and when I finally saw it I was entertained, but I found its examination of female insecurity over the inevitability of aging and loss of youthful sexy "oomph" to be overlong for the story it has to tell and perhaps intentionally cartoonishly ridiculous in its lampooning of the "male gaze." The film is a jet black satire, replete with the nudity of its female leads, but the scenes of that involving the body switching and resulting nakedness are strictly in service of the story and make organic sense, rather than being mere gratuitous titillation. The gratuitousness comes in the form of. the hilariously over-the-top aerobics show starring Sue, with much gyration and crotch-thrusting straight into the camera as she is flanked by a cadre of similarly toned eye candy mirroring her moves. As for the inevitable body horror, it's well-executed and a lot of it is done practically, which can be quite visceral and squirm-inducing, but it all goes off the rail and gets downright ridiculous during the third act. When it comes to movie examining women willing to do anything to maintain their youth, I’ll take the B movies THE LEECH WOMAN and THE WASP WOMAN over THE SUBSTANCE. They’re shorter and they got right to the point. Also, the ending evokes BLACK SWAN's disastrous final ballet. Was I meant to find the climactic reveal as hilarious as I did, rather than simply grotesque?

The film includes many nods to the stylistic touches of John Carpenter, Stanley Kubrick. Ken Russell, and, inevitably, the legendary body horror of David Cronenberg, but while fun for sharp-eyed cinephiles, such flourishes add nothing to the final work and only serve to remind viewers of superior films. But don;t get me wrong. I was very entertained by THE SUBSTANCE and found it to feel like an extended episode of either THE TWILIGHT ZONE or BLACK MIRROR. My only major gripe with it is its needless overlength, so keep that in mind if you opt to check it out.

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 16: THE TOXIC AVENGER (2025)

A new Toxic Avenger for a new millennium. 

THE TOXIC AVENGER, the 1986 cult classic, got a 2025 reboot, and I have to ask who this film was made for. Although slickly crafted, it won't lure back fans of the original, as it possesses none of the fun, charm, over the top performances, ultra-violent gore (okay, a mild smattering of that), and just general sleazy bad taste that made the 1986 version a must-see. 

An example of the film's meager gruesomeness. Too little to scratch the itch of any serious gorehound.

This latest iteration of the tale of a put-upon janitor becoming a mutated super-violent superhero is a played-straight jet black comedy, but it is greatly watered-down from its '80's progenitor, so much so that if not for its occasional explosions of gore, it would play like a slightly edgy sitcom with an underlying would-be heartwarming them of a stepdad's love for his semi-estranged stepson. 

Peter Dinklage begins his mutation/power-up.

I've certainly seen worse movies, and I will gladly sit through anything featuring Peter Dinklage — Yes, I endured TIPTOES — but this was a huge nothing burger that I would have been pissed about if I had done the traveling and shelling out of twenty bucks to see it at one of the few remotely-located theaters that played it during its theatrical run. The original is a million times more fun, low budget, rough edges, and all.

 Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 15: THIRT (1979)

Finally, a bloody good vampire movie that I had never heard of.

Kate Davis (Chantel Contouri) is believed to be a descendant of Countess Elizabeth Bathory (look her up), which catches the interest of the Brotherhood, who kidnap her and subject her to endless conditioning with drugs and psychological programming. 

                                                                             Our heroine.

The Brotherhood is an international cabal of 20th Century vampires who have eschewed the usual lore of their dark species, save for the fangs, the eternal youth, inhuman strength, and the consumption of blood, because, after all, they are not the product of some medieval peasant's imagination. Kate is taken to the Farm, a Kubrickesque compound that serves as both a living and care space in which human "donors" are kept drugged into accepting docility, as well as massive blood processing and distribution plant that resembles industrial dairy farming and relies on the regular bleeding of the donors. 

 

"Donors": drugged into total docility and drained. 

With all of this in mind, a horrified Kate refuses to join the Brotherhood, and from there problems spiral. But why do they want Kate in particular? How does involving her further their mysterious global agenda?

I had never heard of this film until a few days ago, and its concept intrigued me enough to check it out. Its distinctly modern take on vampires and how they might adjust to the 20th Century was not at all what I expected from one of the most over-saturated horror genres, and what I got gets my vote as the hidden gem among this year's 31 DAYS OF HORROR entries. 

THIRST is an Australian film that made me think of what Hammer might have come up with if they made more films set in modern times, and also if they had a really solid scripter for this particular yarn. Watching Kate's descent into manipulated and hallucinogen-induced madness while fighting vampiric urges is fascinating stuff, and THIRST would have worked just as well as a medical thriller sans the undead suckface angle. And while central character Kate is well-portrayed by Chantel Contouri, two other cast members stand out due to their familiarity. David Hemmings, perhaps best known to us geeks as the revolutionary Dildano in BARBARELLA (1968), plays Dr. Fraser, a high-ranking member of the Brotherhood who opposes the harsh conditioning methods used on Kate. The other notable is Henry Silva, who's been in more stuff than I can name, as Dr. Gauss, anohter of the Brotherhood, and if you ask me he gets the most memorable scene in the entire film. (No, I will not spoil if for you, but you will know it when you see it.)

 

Somehow both leisurely-paced and nail-bitingly tense as Kate battles for her sanity and humanity, THIRST is a must-see for those who are sick of conventional and predictable vampire tales. Now one of my Top 10 vampire films, though I admit it slow pace and embracing of its cerebral nature over outright gore may not be for all tastes. Nonetheless, I urge you to see this one. 

 Poster from the theatrical release.