Film Review: THE GOOD THINGS DEVILS DO

Original Title of Article: “Vampires Hand Delivered to Your Door in THE GOOD THINGS DEVILS DO!”

Originally Published by ScreamFix

Demonic vampires are the scariest thing this Halloween in writer/director Jess Novisgaard’s The Good Things Devils Do (2020).  Small time crook Richard and daughter Mouse (Bill Oberst Jr. and Mary Katherine O’Donnell, respectfully) have been hired to do a small and simple job on Halloween night which includes breaking into the house of school teacher Professor Melvin (David Rucker III) and his wife and step-daughter (Linnea Quigley and Kelley Wilson Robinson, respectfully) and stealing an undisclosed amount of money contained within.  What should have been an easy breaking in and stealing job turns into a nightmare when a package Prof Melvin ordered for Halloween turns out to be a coffin with the corpse of a vampire.  When Melvin’s wife Louise mistakenly removes a table leg from the bones of the corpse the vampire-demon Masquerade (Veronika Stoykova) is resurrected and all hell is about to break loose.

 

Masquerade is a not a demon-vampire to mess with as she can control people with but a look causing Melvin and Richard to no longer trust their loved ones.  If the two men want to survive the night, they are going to have to put aside their differences and find a way to work together in order to destroy the vampire before she kills everyone.

 

Now, I am not really a fan of the vampire genre but I will pretty much watch anything with Linnea Quigley and Kane Hodder in it.  Hodder plays a hench man (sans makeup!) who does some really bad things.  I’ve also been catching more films with Oberst who is an indie film staple.  None of them disappoint as the film allows them all to get really nasty.  The film has some amazing makeup effects, and these are some undead and bloody vampires with some gory kills that will appease horror fans.  What I enjoyed the most was the fact that despite there was some typical vampire lore in the film, there was enough deviation from that to make the vampire Masquerade interesting especially in regards to how she controls people and uses them against one another.

 

The Story borrows its influences most directly from Joe Hill’s novel Heart-Shaped Box with the Melvin ordering a box containing a real vampire skeleton off the Internet but from there it becomes a gruesome and macabre film in which Richard will do anything to save his daughter Mouse and Melvin will do anything to save his wife Louise (the 40 year old stepdaughter still living at home he has less fondness for).  If there is a weak spot in the film, it is the way in which it tries too hard to be funny at times especially in terms of the stepdaughter Caroline, who is a 40-year-old dunce.

 

The film looks great and cinematographer James Suttles makes every shot look good and vibrant with color (I get the impression that someone is a little influenced by Dario Argento and his films).  This sets the film apart from other similar films as does the music by Neil Lee Griffin which perfectly helps set up the atmosphere.  Kudos to the cast and behind the scenes talent for helping to create a world that sells the film!

 

I must also say something about the great job with the makeup and special makeup effects of Faith Tramp and John Lauterbach, respectfully, which help achieve everything that the film needs to entertain and appease horror fans…even the ones who don’t really care for the vampire genre. 

 

Film Review: INCARNATE (2016)

I’ve never been much of a fan of director Brad Peyton’s films which includes Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010), Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012), and San Andreas (2015), so I’m not surprised that I didn’t really care for his film INCARNATE (2016) which has an interesting premise.  Dr. Ember (Aaron Eckhart) has a unique ability which is he can go into dreams and mind possessed people to help exorcise demons.  This is a great idea on how to modernize the exorcist film through science instead of religion and faith.

Ember is brought in by a colleague Camilla (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who believes a young boy Cameron (David Mazouz) is possessed by a demon.  Ember is a haunted man who with each demon he exorcises he gets weaker and weaker, but he takes on Cameron’s case when it’s clear that the demon possessing him is a demon he’s confronted before.  Ember will sacrifice whatever he has to in order to confront the demon one final time no matter the cost.

Peyton does a great job setting up the film’s key set pieces, but they all feel rushed like an action film (something all his other films have key to) and lack the nuance or suspense of a horror film.  One wonders why he decided to tackle a horror film in the first place.  Eckart does an amazing job (as usual) and does the best he can with the material but there is no denying that the tone and pacing of the film is that of an action film which weakens the most horrific elements making this a merely adequate film and nothing all that special.

Film Review: NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2 (1994)

The demon Angela is back and this time she has her sights set on reuniting with her sister Melissa in Night of the Demons 2 (1994).  Amelia Kinkade returns as the demon Angela who sets her sights on the students of St. Rita’s High School who think that the legend of Hull House is nothing but a legend but they will soon learn otherwise. 

Melissa (Merle Kennedy) is bullied at school and called Mouse by her fellow students.  She’s had a hard life especially considering that everyone knows she’s related to Angela but think that everything associated with Hull House is just a myth.   Things for Melissa are even more complicated as Father Bob (Rod McCary) disbelieves the legends and the only one that seems to understand her is Sister Gloria (Jennifer Rhodes).  When a group of her classmates trick her into leaving the school grounds to go to Hull House, Melissa finds herself having to confront her past and her older sister who has nefarious plans in store for her.  When Angela finds a way to leave her prison at Hull House she brings her brood on demons to St. Rita’s where there will be no stopping her from spreading her demonic influence.

Although it is very predictable, the fun of this film is in the fact that it’s a very campy and entertaining demon film with a flare in its direction by Brian Trenchard-Smith, who also is behind Dead End Drive-In (1986), Leprechaun 3 (1995), Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996) and Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (2001), to name a few.  He’s spent his whole career behind low budget sci-fi and horror films.

Film Review: DEMONWARP (1988)

The ‘80s were an amazing type for the horror genre as there was no one particular subgenre that dominated any other.  Between the slasher films, the mutated monster films, and the psychological film there was also room for the occasional alien horror film of which Demonwarp (1988) can partially be included.  The film starts off with a Priest witnessing a space craft crash land.  It’s not until years later that the ramifications are truly felt. 

Bill Crafton (George Kennedy) and his daughter are enjoying a nice day in their cabin (that they rented) in the middle of the woods when they are attacked by a Bigfoot Monster which knocks him unconscious and abducts her.   Crafton then vows to find and kill the monster at any cost.  Several months later Jack Bergman (David Michael O’Neil) and his friends go to this same cabin which is uncle owns to search for his uncle who has been missing for almost a year.  It seems that there have been many disappearances in these woods of which Jack and his friends quickly realize when the Bigfoot Monster appears abducting one of his friends and killing another.  Not only that but this monster has also torn apart their car and stolen particular items from the house; it appears that this monster is intelligent.  Now Jack and his surviving friends must find a way out of the woods before the monster comes back but there are more strange things going on in these woods than just a Bigfoot monster as they encounter dead bodies and bones and victims of the monster now turned into zombies.

Kennedy was a major fixture in horror films in the ‘80s with Death Ship (1980), Just Before Dawn (1981), Wacko (1982), Creepshow 2 (1987), Uninvited (1988) and The Terror Within (1989), to name a few.  He was a big influence for my love of ‘80s horror films but he is given little to do in this film.  The best thing about Kennedy is that he always brings his “A” game whereas much of the rest of the cast is pretty much throwaway especially since they don’t do much for most of the running time of the film.  It’s your typical ‘80s horror film where people get killed one-by-one and a few extra people are thrown in to add more victims.  By the time the film actually gets to presenting more of the obscure ideas of the third act it may too much too late.  Regardless, it’s still an interesting little oddity of the ‘80s that reminds us just how crazy that decade in horror really was.

Film Review: THE DEAD OF NIGHT (2004)

In the horror film The Dead of Night (2004) a mental patient escapes from a hospital and kills everyone thinking they are possessed by some type of demon that likes to reveal itself during the night.  He escapes into a nearby cemetery where a group of teenagers are cruelly initiating several “geeks” by bounding their hands and throwing them into an open grave.  Soon, the teenagers discover that the cemetery may be the latest site for the demons that possess each of the teenagers one by one. 

The teenagers don’t know who to trust as during the day their friends are normal but at night they turn into hideous demons that want to possess them and their only hope is in the escaped mental patient who knows more then he’s letting on about what is happening.  Time is running out as one by one each person is possessed and the demons don’t plan on stopping just with the teenagers but have bigger plans.

This sounds like a film that might actually be decent but sadly it is not.  Hampered by meager production values and a repetitive screenplay that renders all the characters as two-dimensional caricatures this film is made even more inept by the horrible demon masks and special FX.  If made in the ‘80s or ‘90s I could probably forgive some of this but this is a film of ‘00s and this film is just bad.  This is a highly forgettable film.