Skip to main content

The Chill Factor (1989) / The Falling (1986)

 




The first flick in my double feature was a late 80’s supernatural horror tale about an evil spirit that terrorizes a group of friends.










The story begins being narrated by the main character, now much older, recounting the events of an incident that took the lives of her friends. Jeannie, her fiancé Tom, his sister and her boyfriend, and another married couple are on a winter snowmobiling vacation. After getting drunk, Tom and his sister’s boyfriend, Chris, make a bet on who can win a race. They all go up to a remote location called Black Friar Lake for the race. Tom ends up badly injured after his snowmobile crashes, and since they’re so far out from civilization, they decide to shack up in an abandoned camp lodge. One friend named Ron decides to ride into town to get help, while the group waits and cares for Tom. They find a strange, ouija-like board called the Devil’s Eye and start to play with it. This causes them to unknowingly unleash evil spirits of a Satanic cult that once held rituals there, and one by one, they begin to get stalked.














The movie takes a little time for the supernatural shenanigans to kick in, but once they do, it’s an enjoyable cheese fest. The bad acting, especially by the lead actress, is what keeps you from taking any of it too seriously, turning what could have been a potentially creepy premise into corny schlock. Some of the cheesy lines in the script don’t help, either. There’s some decent blood and gore, and the climax ends with another snowmobile race, with the heroine desperately trying to escape her demon possessed fiancé. If you’re a fan of those fun 80’s b-movies, then this will be right up your alley. I streamed it on YouTube, though it’s also available on Tubi.













The next one, also an 80’s horror sci-fi tale, had a lot of good elements, but the script and cast kinda ruined it.





A space station launched into orbit by NASA in 1973 crashes back into Earth, in a small Spanish town called Duarte, bringing back alien microbes that were found on the moon. 3 youths, Michael, Samantha and Damon, are vacationing in the area in their RV. They soon find themselves attacked by alien infected citizens, and eventually partner up with a scientist who knows about the outbreak, and assist him in finding an antidote for the infection and to escape the town.
















The movie has some really good gore effects, with pulsating flesh exploding and releasing alien creatures from the infected hosts’ bodies. Most of these scenes are top notch, which is a shame, because the rest of the movie is too goofy that it ruins any potential suspense. Had the script chose to take itself more seriously, and leaned into the paranoia that the alien infection caused, it could have been a minor classic reminiscent of Carpenter’s The Thing. Instead, we get too many silly scenes of the youths acting goofy, giving the movie a more light-hearted, comedic tone. Any sense of danger is ruined by their cheesy reactions. The script has them say too many foolish things and get into idiotic situations that jar harshly with any horror elements. I found the characters simply annoying, and not in a fun, so-bad-it’s-good b-movie way. Interesting premise, bad execution.















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Titanic Creations Yongary 1967

This figure was released in late December, and I got it about 2 days before the New Year, so I'm counting it as a 2025 release. It is the Titanic Creations version of the Korean kaiju Yongary, Monster From The Deep. The film was released in 1967 as a Godzilla ripoff, with several ideas copied from the Gamera series, such as his tusks, his ability to fire a stream of flames from his mouth, and even firing a laser beam from his horn, similar to the slicing one used by Gyaos. The film is pretty goofy, but Yongary, like most of those Asian monsters, was pretty cool (to me, at least), so I was psyched that someone finally made a figure of this lesser known kaiju. When Titanic Creations put it up for pre-order, they announced a series of tiers, where they would add accessories when a certain number of orders were met. Enough fans ordered him, so that Yongary ended up with a shit ton of stuff, making him absolutely worth the price. In addition to the kaiju, you get a flame breath effect, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

S.H. MonsterArts Godzilla Evolved Version (2024)

Early last week, this figure was delivered. It is the Evolved Godzilla from the film Godzilla vs. Kong: The New Empire, from S.H. MonsterArts. I admit, I haven’t bothered to watch the movie. When I first saw the trailer (about a month after having watched Godzilla Minus One and still being on a high from it), the trailer for The New Empire dropped, and I thought it looked stupid as fuck, especially this bad CGI scene of Godzilla and Kong running towards the camera like superheroes. The rest of it looked like Planet of the Apes, so I chose to pass. However, I do think Godzilla’s new evolved look is pretty cool, so when S.H. MonsterArts announced his figure, I went ahead and preordered it. And now, Pinkzilla is finally here. Godzilla Evolved has a sleeker, leaner body, with a bigger head and pink dorsal spines. His tail ends in pink spikes, like an ankylosaurus. The figure turned out looking great, with the spines painted but also translucent, really standing out from the rest of his bod...
Post a Comment
Read more

RICSAN Custom Toys The Unbelievable (Varan)

For the last few months, I had been seeing photos and YouTube reviews of custom Godzilla kaiju from someone known as RICSAN Customs. He’s a guy in Mexico who makes 3rd party customs of articulated figures that no other company is making. Due to licensing issues, he gives them different names, such as The Dream Ogre and The Infant (Gabara and Minilla), Monster from Odo Island (pre-mutated Godzilla Minus One), Sō Shingeki Serpent (Manda), etc. This one is called The Unbelievable, and is basically the Toho monster from the film Varan (aka Varan the Unbelievable from the English dub). His figures are made of resin and use thick string articulation instead of ball joints (similar to Meego figures). So they are articulated and posable, you just need to be aware that they’ll move differently from standard ball joint figures, so practice a bit more care when handling them. Ok, let’s get the one negative out of the way. He packs his figures in styrofoam, and since that stuff can be sticky, my V...
Post a Comment
Read more