Alien Apocalypse (2005) – Josh Becker.

'You like wood so much, eat this!!!!'

When astronauts Dr. Ivan Hood (Bruce Campbell) and Lt. Kelly Lanaman (Renee O'Connor) return after a cryogenically-enhanced 40 year long mission, any hopes for much needed RNR is royally fubar'd by the grim reality of an alien takeover. Needless to say, both of our intrepid space trekkers are militantly bummed, press-ganged into slave labour camps, Dr. Ivan and the plucky Lt. Lanaman attempt to rabble rouse the enslaved humans to take up arms against their alien oppressors. Alien Apocalypse remains very much on the good side of goofy, a fun, retro Sci-fi romp, the 70s version would have perhaps featured Doug McClure, but I kinda prefer the signature studly wise-Assery of Horror's most heroically handsome head-knocker, the beautifully bestubbled scourge of these ornery insectoid malefactors.

The playful ironical tone is engagingly maintained throughout, with Campbell delivering a typically out-sized performance as 'The Great Healer', wholly credible as the courageous bug slayer, bloodily earning the moniker of 'The Great Exterminator'. It's been a minute since I last enjoyed a bona fide throwback, bug-eyed B-Movie monster mash, psychotronically replete with gruesomely head-chomping, green-goo spurting, eco-unfriendly aliens. I almost can't believe I'm about to say this, but the CGI'd creatures are kinda okay, I think the director having the enslaved humans sporting hellaciously fake beards/fright-wigs actually made the aliens look pretty sweet in comparison! In conclusion, as expected, Bruce Campbell rocks like vintage Girlschool, but I'm still in two minds about the purloined 'Im Spartacus!' business, and from the look on Bruce's boatrace, I think he had his doubts too!

 Watchers II (1990) – Thierry Notz.

'I told you to stay out of the basement!!!!!'

AWOL marine Paul (Marc Singer) meets (almost) cutely with supremely gifted canine Einstein, unaware that they are being hunted by a grossly deformed mutant anthropoid assassin, compelled to destroy the dog and kill any who befriend it. I'm not a super-fan of the Corey Haim/Michael Ironside original, but I still appreciate it, and by casting the iconic Beastmaster in its explosive sequel, with its genetically enhanced beasts feels entirely appropriate, factor in Tracy Scoggins, the lovely Irene Miracle, and you have an eminently watchable treat. Dynamic 90s DTV Sci-splatter Watchers II begins kinetically, rigorously maintaining momentum until its no less zesty climax. While unabashedly midnight movie fare, Thierry Notz's high-voltaged Sci-actioner frequently exemplifies all that is truly compelling about thrillingly bloody, slam bang, Sci-fi/horror pulp!

The horror movie sequels that prove successful are usually those that ultimately replay the strengths of the original, and Watchers II presents the far from ubiquitous example of a sequel proving to be demonstratively more entertaining than the original. It is certainly no surprise that Watchers II's credibility comes from the engaging screen chemistry between Tracy Scoggins, a buff Marc Singer, and Einstein, the adorably precocious Golden retriever. For me, Watchers II boisterously ticked all the right boxes, likeable, sympathetic heroes, muscular, bullet-blasted action, gnarly monster, a whip-crack pace, and a brusingly violent, yet demonstrably pathos-adjacent finale. If there proved to be a spankingly remastered Blu-ray edition of Watchers 1 & 2, I'd be all over it like shill reviews on Trust Pilot.

 Shakma (1990) – Hugh Parks/Tom Logan.

'Shakma is one severely sanguineous simian!'

'When mega-dosed beasts go bonkers!' has a proven track record in B-Horror/schlock, with Link, Monkey Shines, Dogs, and Killing Birds' being personal faves. I would have given Shakma a shot based solely on the innate prettiness of stars Amanda Wyss and Christopher Atkins, with icon Roddy McDowell making it a no-brainer. During an elaborate evening's live-action role-playing game, an activity teens enjoyed pre-memes, synthetic drugs, and sleazy dating aps, Sam's (Christopher Atkins) baboon goes ballistic, reacting super-murderously to a procedure by Professor Sorensen (Roddy McDowell). According to the text baboons are the most brutal primate next to man, thereby suggesting the protagonists have nothing to worry about, since the odds must surely be in their favour as earth's most destructive predator?

Happily, Shakma ignores its own rationale, and let's the bellicose baboon go absolutely monkey ape nuts! If Shakma were made today, it would, perhaps, be an Asylum dirge, starring Eric Roberts as the game master, with a CGI'd travesty as Shakma, which makes the 90s Shakma objectively more cherishable. In my psychotronically distorted mind, I'll always make room for batso B-horror baboon! Even as a wee one, I always thought Baboon's looked pretty bad-ass, sorry, red ass, and Shakma boisterously provides some old school monkey magic! I can readily see why Shakma has maintained a fanbase over the years, as I had a blast rewatching this feral, awesomely teed off primate tear up the joint! It might simply be wishful thinking, but I'm sure that Shakma momentarily had a simian stiffy? In conclusion, Shakma remains a fun time-killer, but I can't help think Sam's exceedingly bloody ordeal might set him up for a serious case of PTSD?

 Alison's Birthday (1981) – Ian Coughlin.

'It can't hurt you, everybody does it!'

Reluctantly coming home to celebrate her 19^th birthday, Alison (Joanne Samuel) is drawn into the malefic machinations of a Celtic devil cult in Aussie occult horror gem Alison's Birthday. I think it's fair to say that horror films produced down under have a singular kink that separates them from the mainstream, Thirst, and Body Melt provide excellent examples of Australian's unique take on horror cinema, with Ian Coughlin's Folk Horror creeper, arguably one of its more neglected antipodean classics. The arcane blarney of The Occult has ably provided enough nightmare fuel to power many great, and not so great fright-flicks, with Coughlin's eerie pagan shocker being one of the more memorable examples of suburbanised deviltry. While the text is of the common or garden variety pulp, the cast's performances, and atmospheric soundtrack are especially fine, with Alison providing for a sweetly sympathetic protagonist, and I still have a penchant for vintage, sinisterly Stone-Henged chillers. Alison's Birthday often has a TV movie-of-the-week aesthetic, but it remains hugely entertaining, especially with its white bread coven of dotty celebrants, looking spiffy in their natty ritualistic robes of obeisance. While Alison's Birthday is not one of your expressly lurid, sexy Satan shag-fests, it nonetheless provides a suitably macabre, Dennis Wheatley'd climax.

 Brotherhood of Blood (2007) – Peter Scheerer/Michael Roesch.

'we're vampire hunters, not fucking accountants!'

Vampire Hunters undertake a deadly mission to extract a fallen colleague from a terrifying nest of monstrous bloodsuckers in tasty vampire romp Brotherhood of Blood. I have no shame in admitting that I watched this solely due to the presence of genre maestros Sid Haig and Ken Foree, my reasoning, while obviously flawed, is that the combined charismatic heft of Haig & Foree would, at the very least, make it a serviceable oner! That being said, I do quite often judge a book by its cover, my flawed methodology often leads me into the murkier depths of B-Movie waters! Oh! I forgot, one of the vamp hunters is Jason Connery, an actor I've come to admire following his underappreciated reading of Macbeth. Tough cookie vamp slayer Carrie Rieger's (Victoria Pratt) statement that 'You can't trust a vampire!' rings a little false, as you always know a Vampire craves your blood for restorative num-nums, whereas regular folk are known for being untrustworthy, as y'all can't ever truly know what they're about. In Brotherhood of Blood's favour Victoria provides a scintillatingly sinewy vampire slayer, considerably more buff than Buffy, and Foree has the sizeable talent and outsized dentistry to chew up the rather frail looking scenery, which he does with winning gusto! While Brotherhood of Blood is a wee bit studio bound, with very few exterior shots, the enigma of evil vampire despot Vlad Kossei, and Mr. Foree's estimable acting chops maintained my interest until its bullet-blasted climax.

 Grind (2025) – Mark Cantu.

Beleaguered employees, and organisers of a low-fi'd Grindhouse festival suddenly find themselves in a desperate battle for survival against a somewhat implausible, celluloid-inspired cosmic despot in spotty, retro horror spoof-a-rama Grind. This zeitgeisty B-movie trash compactor indelicately regurgitates musty Drive-in tropes and laboured badinage with ever diminishing results. Grind's episodic nature soon becomes wearing, while the retrograded parodies are zestily amusing, they unfortunately provide a stark contrast to the shrill, low wattage Lovecraftian shenanigans in the cinema. There are vestiges of interest for midnight movie fans, the savoury snippets of Subway Samurai, and preternaturally masculine super cop 'McQueen' are palpably choice, plus Grind may be the first contemporary horror that borrows heavily from Popcorn's demon-possessed film-within-a-film 'POSSESSOR'. Grind fizzled out pretty rapidly, the proliferation of digital FX, and the inexcusably hokey invocation of Lovecraft proved numbing.

There was potential here, but it was stymied by disposable dialogue, prototypical characters, WAY too many layers of conspicuously digitised post-production gimmickry, and a frustratingly fake-@ss looking cosmic monster! If voiced by Obituary's vocalist, and designed by a young protégé of Screaming Mad George, who knows? There were too many poor creative choices, and much of Grind is busily shot using generic Found Footage shaky-cam, which wasn't a good look. A clunky, uninviting hodgepodge of cosmic horror clichés and admittedly superior Grindhouse pastiches, sadly, does not a complete B-film make. In conclusion, I kinda just wish I'd binged on Andy Sidaris and watched In The Mouth of Madness for the zillionth time. At the film's conclusion, I wanted to jump through my own portal and alight in a time when every 2nd genre flick didn't have some schmingus wearing an eyepatch!

 Seekers (2016) – Michael Effenberger.

Seek and ye shall find (footage!).

Four film-making buddies, along with cameraman Martin plan to capture their 'Geocaching' escapades in a documentary, hoping to locate all the 'caches' hidden deep within remote locations in doable Teutonic Found Footage Horror Seekers. The intrepid German Geocachers vanish without trace, their fates digitally documented on twitchy-cam. At this point the genre should be hereby known as Familiar Footage, especially since director Effenberger adheres so dogmatically to the expected schematic norms. I maintain a fondness for German-speaking Indie horror, and the said Found Footage is only ever as credible as the spooksome quality of fear footage captured herein. In Seekers favour, the youthful protagonists prove affable enough, and I greatly enjoy films that feature train journeys, and the vast magisterial splendour of the forest ably provides for an appealing, naturally atmospheric backdrop. The shock tropes do take a wee while to percolate, but the director's winning choice of location proves to be a suitably eerie canvas to frantically unleash his formalised terror tactics. For me, Seekers is a watchable Found Footage oner, but my positive take may, perhaps, not mirror the general consensus.