The Screaming Skull (USA, 1958)

Not the best slice of cinematic ham to be found on the public domain shelf, at least not in the bleached and savagely cut PD versions generally found online and on cheap DVDs.

Loosely based, if uncredited, on a short and forgotten horror story, also titled The Screaming Skull (1908),* by the now generally forgotten American-Italian author Francis Marion Crawford (2 Aug 1854 – 9 Apr 1909), the script came from the American Samoan playwright John Alexander Kneubuhl (2 Jul 1920 – 20 Feb 1992),** whose time in Hollywood was spent mostly writing for TV — he created, for example, the character of Dr. Miguelito Loveless for the series The Wild Wild West (1965-69) and wrote five of the ten episodes the good doctor appeared in. Kneubuhl's narrative in The Screaming Skull also makes free use of plot points cribbed from Gaslight (1944 / trailer) and Rebecca (1940 / trailer), both of which are indefinitely better films that also had/have noticeably larger budgets and better acting.

* Crawford's short has been adapted again since: in 1973, it was adapted as a not very scary, shot-on-video, ABC TV movie by Gloria Monty (12 Aug 1921 – 29 Mar 2006) for the forgotten five-film series The Classic Ghosts (new trailer), originally broadcast within the scope of ABC's late-night Wide World of Mystery (1973-76) slot. 

** Among Kneubuhl's rare filmscripts, his mostly notable projects for a wasted life readers, aside from The Screaming Skull, would be The True Story of Lynn Stuart (1958 / full film) and the exceptionally cheesy and cheery Two on a Guillotine (1965 / full film). 

Trailer to

The Screaming Skull (1958):

Actor Alex Nicol* (20 Jan 1916 – 29 Jul 2001), who felt that his thespian career was stalling a bit when he shot this film, made his directorial debut with The Screaming Skull. An independent, low-budget production, the B&W flick was eventually released by API on double bills, usually with Earth vs. the Spider (1958 / trailer) or, as below at the Majestic in Abilene, Planet Texas, with Terror from the Year 5,000 (1958 / trailer).

 

The Casper cartoon that was screened above,

Fright from Wrong (1956):

Nicol is also present in the film as the slightly simpleminded and unevenly convincing gardener, Mickey. Although his character might seem to be the unhealthily loyal servant ala Judith Anderson's Mrs Danvers (see: Hitchcock's Rebecca), his loyally ultimately plays out in a more positive direction.

* Nicol, looking slightly unfamiliar with his longer, lanky hair, tended to play manly men and did a lot of trash in his days. His only other directorial project we ever found interesting is the "incompetent to perfunctory" Point of Terror (1971 / trailer), with Dyanne "Ilsa" Thorne. Nicol himself is found in Paul Hunt's The Clones (1976 / trailer), Paul Leder's hilarious Ape (1976 / trailer), the obscure The Night God Screamed (1971 / full film), Roger Corman's great Bloody Mama (1970 / trailer), and 5 Branded Women (1960 / full movie), among other fun stuff.

Although set in a mansion in the US of A — a long-gone structure on the former Huntington Hartford Estate — the movie is redolent of the gothic horrors of Italy in which a woman in a flowing white nightgown wanders around a huge, deserted structure endangered by some mysterious non-corporal or corporal threat. But, as The Screaming Skull is a bit older than the golden age of Italo gothic horror, the violence is less graphic, there is no blood, the effects are even cheesier, the lead woman far less ethereal, and the film on a whole lot less enthralling.

The plot is simple, if not familiar: recently widowed Eric Whitlock (John Hudson [24 Jan 1919 – 8 Apr 1996] of Hue and Cry [1947] and Mohawk [1956, with Allison Hayes]) brings his newly wed "impressionable" wife, Jenni Whitlock (Peggy Webber of Orson Welles's Macbeth [1948 / trailer], Hitchcock's The Wrong Man [1956 / trailer], and The Space Children [1958 / trailer]) home to the estate that he inherited when his previous wife passed away. Is the ghost of Eric's first wife out to do the new wife harm? Or is Jenni, who once spent time in an asylum, once again losing her marbles? Or could there be another, more prosaic reason behind the reappearing screaming skull and the thumps in the night?

Actually, the moment one of the tertiary characters lets it drop that loving hubby Eric, who drives a mid-50s Mercedes-Benz 300SL gullwing, only inherited his wife's house and not her money, and that former asylum-patient Jenni is independently wealthy, the viewer has few doubts about what's going on, "real" ghost or not. But then, perhaps one should take into consideration that Eric's dead wife has more reasons to be angry at Eric than at Jenni...

At roughly 88 minutes in length, The Screaming Skull doesn't overstay its welcome – but, oddly, it nevertheless does drag a bit. Of the small cast of five, only two — Russ Conway (25 Apr 1913 – 12 Jan 2009), as the staid and calm Rev. Edward Snow, and Tony Johnson (whose only other film appearance is in the intriguing Crime & Punishment USA [1959 / scene]), as his wife Mrs. Snow — actually convince as their characters. Hudson is okay as Eric, but he is also playing a relatively bland '50s husband and thus hardly stands out; nor, for that matter, does Nicol as the long-time gardener, whom Nicol plays as a generically mental deficient. As for Peggy Webber, who was three months pregnant when she filmed the role, she truly fills her white bra and nightgown admirably but is downright terrible as the one-note nervous snowflake Jenni. True, the characters are all stereotypes, but even the worst one-note character can be intriguing or likable if the acting is done well — which it isn't in The Screaming Skull. 

The Screaming Skull —

the full, colorized film:

Visually, there seems to be a few nice dolly shots in the movie — the cinematographer was B-movie staple Floyd Crosby (12 Dec 1899 – 30 Sept 1985), who actually began his career as the cameraman on F.W. Murnau's Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931 / full film) — but unluckily the PD version of the movie we watched was so bleached that any technical finesse or moody lighting was basically reduced to visual atonality. Thus, it is perhaps unjust to criticize the weak atmosphere and lack of dread the movie displays, but, unless you happen to find a restored version somewhere — is there one? — you ain't gonna get anything else. (We haven't watched the colorized version above so, who knows, maybe you get more in that one.)

In any event, The Screaming Skull is far from a forgotten or underappreciated film of note. Not essential viewing, but fun enough for a rainy day.

Two trivial points of note: 

1. The Screaming Skull does open with a notable, if obviously time-stretching scene that is good for a good giggle, in which a coffin is shown and a voiceover explains that the film is so scary that all viewers are insured for a paid burial should they die of fright. A card in the coffin reads: "Reserved for You."

2. The gravestone of Eric's wife features a version of the famous death mask of L'Inconnue de la Seine, or the Unknown Woman of the Seine. The death mask was taken from the body of an unknown dead woman fished from the Seine in the late 1880s, and the mask went on to become, for decades, the in-thing to have hanging on your wall if you were hip. You can still easily get a copy of it today (on e-bay for example).

High Heat (USA, 2022)

On the opening night of their new high-class restaurant, the hidden secrets of their respective past lives catch up with the loving couple, Ray (Don Johnson of The Harrad Experiment [1973 / trailer]) and Ana (Olga Kurylenko). The mafia hones in on Ray to collect a million-dollar debt, while Ana, a former KGB agent who has left her past behind and wants nothing more than to be a successful cook with her own restaurant, is not at all happy with the mob's decision to burn the place down for the insurance money. Revelations and marital strife play out amidst a continually growing bodycount as first Ana, and then Ray, work to save their restaurant, their marriage, and their lives.

Trailer to

High Heat:

High Heat screams tax deduction D-2-DVD, but it also features a usable basic storyline, a game cast, lots of black humor and action, and is well-stocked with quirky details. High points of the latter include the scenes involving the military hit squad that mob boss Dom (Dallas Page of Gallowwalkers [2012]) calls in to help wipe Ana out — hell, almost any scene related to wiping Ana out is fun to watch — and all scenes involving Ana's former best friend, fellow KGB killer Mimi (Kaitlin Doubleday of The Tomb [2009 / trailer]), whom Ana, out of desperation, calls for help, but who shows up with her family — her somewhat estranged hitman hubby (Chris Diamantopoulos of Man Vs. [2015 / trailer]) and two unnerving daughters — as much to assist as to possibly finally get revenge for being dumped by Ana.

For its high points, however, High Heat feels oddly lackadaisical and unfocused, not to mention a bit disjointed and underdeveloped, and it never truly manages to find its rhythm. It is also somewhat hampered by the lack of chemistry between the movie's real star, 43-year-old Olga Kurylenko (of Seven Psychopaths [2012 / trailer], Centurion [2010 / trailer] and so much more), and the movie's hired big name with a short shoot, 73-year-old Don Johnson (of The Hot Spot [1990 / trailer], Machete [2010 / trailer] and so much more). When it comes to the directorial eye, Zach Golden, in his follow-up project to his The Escape of Prisoner 64 (2018 / trailer), never completely drops the ball and even manages to throw an occasional curveball — we loved the out-of-the-blue semi-homage to the twins of Kubrick's over-rated The Shining (1980 / trailer) — but in the end his game remains more professional than inspired.

Written with the obvious desire of achieving a Tarantinoesque amalgamation of multi-violence, quirky characters and situations, catchy dialogue, and black humor, High Heat manages all five/six things at various times in various combinations, but never sustains any long enough to be either a truly successful emulation or noteworthy but individualistic homage. That said, it makes for easy viewing and never leaves you bored or overly aggravated. Still, we are hard placed to say with conviction that we enjoyed High Heat because it is an enjoyable film, or if we enjoyed it because we wanted to enjoy it. The excellent and oddly retro opening credit sequence was so much fun that it bought a lot of good will from us, but by the end of the movie, the stitches holding the narrative together seemed rather weak and frayed.

That said, we were never bored and were happy to watch High Heat until the end. Ultimately, High Heat may not be as good as it should be, but it is better than it could be. It is 1.5 hours of passable if forgettable contemporary entertainment and, as such, fulfills its duty as an evening movie.

The Beast of Yucca Flats (USA, 1961)

Trailer to

The Beast of Yucca Flats:

Supposedly a.k.a. Girl Madness and The Atomic Monster. Shot on weekends over the year of 1959 and not released until 1961, The Beast of Yucca Flats, an infamous movie as there ever can be, was the second production credit of the bad-film producer Anthony Cardoza (26 May 1930 – 7 Dec 2015), who the year previously had sunk his money (supposedly, and believably, to no returns) in his first production project, Ed Wood's Night of The Ghouls (1959 / a trailer / full film).* It was through that project that Cardoza came to know Tor Johnson (19 Oct 1903 – 12 May 1971), so when some guy named Coleman Francis (24 Jan 1919 — 15 Jan 1973) called up "out of the blue" looking to get in contact with Tor for his self-scripted directorial debut — initially scripted as The Violent Sun but released as The Beast of Yucca Flats — a three-film working relationship resulted between Cardoza and Francis.

* "I met Ed through a kid I knew in Connecticut, a guy who had moved out here [to Los Angeles] and was putting himself through college. He had a job as a Fuller Brush man, and that's how he met Ed. [...] They needed money [for the movie that became Night of the Ghouls with Tor Johnson], so I came up with some money from a house that I'd sold in Connecticut. I gave Ed all of my money, invested it in this movie — and I never got my money back. But I said, 'This isn't gonna throw me' and I 'put myself through school,' learning the business from scratch [...]. I learned everything — music and writing, how to edit music, how to edit film, everything. [B Monster]"

"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"

 

To give credit where credit is due, the opening scene of The Beast of Yucca Flats is no-budget-film gold, the type of offbeat but sleazy and thrifty pre-grindhouse violence that offers a lot of promise. Set to the sound of a loudly ticking clock, we see a topless woman (an uncredited Mary Torres a.k.a. Lanell Cado) finishing up after her shower. Wrapped in a towel, she wanders from her cheap bathroom to her equally cheap-looking bedroom — and is promptly strangled to death and, in all likelihood, sexually abused as a corpse. The scene has an obvious tacked-on-afterwards feeling, as if added as an afterthought: not only is the unseen-but-for-his-hands murderer definitely not Tor Johnson,* the titular "Beast of Yucca Flats", but there is no way the scene could fit into the actual narrative timeline of the movie as it progresses thenceforth.

* Some allege that the hands are those of director Coleman Francis. Not according to Cardoza, however, who claimed that the hands belong to Tor Johnson's double and that the scene was added just because "Coley liked nudity. That's it! [...] She was an Italian girl from New York. I saw her that one time there, and that was it. She was choked by a guy who doubled for Tor Johnson. [...] That scene was shot in an apartment in Van Nuys. [B Monster]" Cardoza's memory is a bit faulty: he met her again later, in 1961, when he and Francis made their last film together, Red Zone Cuba (full movie), in which she had a larger and credited role, and which was released five years after it was made, in 1966.

 

"Nothing bothers some people, not even flying saucers."

Trailers from Hell on

The Beast of Yucca Flats:

Not that it really matters, for the rest of the movie is a senseless train wreck that defies description and truly earns its reputation as one of the worst films ever made. Some have claimed that the movie, which was Tor Johnsons's last headlining appearance, killed Tor's career, as his only other film appearance thereafter is an uncredited quickie in The Monkees film, Head (1968 / The Porpoise Song). What truly ended Johnsons' career is arguable, but he looks less threatening and monstrous in The Beast of Yucca Flats than unhealthy and overweight. Watching him topple and stumble around, sometimes with the assistance of a stick, with toilet-tissue scars* poorly plastered onto his face, one is alternately overtaken by the urge to guffaw and by a deep sense of shame and sorrow for the man — but then, it isn't exactly like he sank into bad films; he was always in bad films, so he knew what he was doing.

* "Larry Aten (14 Jun 1931 – 27 Sept 2001), who played the sheriff [was the makeup artist]. The 'scars' were toilet tissue that we wrinkled up and then pasted onto Tor. Then powder was put on, to make it look like he was really burned from the atomic blast. That atomic blast was, of course, the real thing — stock footage. [Cardoza at B-Monster]" Larry Aten, rightly so, never made another movie, either as actor or makeup artist.

"One hundred ten degrees in the shade... and no shade."

 

At a mere 53 minutes in length, The Beast of Yucca Flats is an unbearably long movie when watched alone. Not only is any scene that could have been conveyed in five seconds extended to what feels like five minutes, but the time in between every such scene is also padded with any padding possible, not to mention an inordinate amount of driving scenes of cars going and coming and parking and pulling away and driving and driving and driving. (The best car of the movie is undoubtedly the white 1960 Valiant V-200 driven by the incompetent KGB hitmen played by Cardoza and John Morrison [of Unhinged (1982 / full movie) and The Adventure of Mark Twain (1985 / trailer)].)

"Boys from the city not yet caught by the whirlwind of progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs."

The Beast of Yucca Flats is very much a movie which, like Ron Ormand's The Mesa of Lost Women (1953), is best watched a group and with a lot of beer, so that the communal experience of absolute abysmality can be enjoyed and jeered as a the social occasion it is best meant to be. And much like Ormand's earlier, equally inept filmic train wreck, The Beast of Yucca Flats is one of those movies that becomes a more-enjoyable experience in your memory after the actual experience of watching it is over with.

"Families on vacation go east, west, north and south."

According to Cardoza, the total budget of The Beats of Yucca Flats was around $34,000, which would be about $364,650 today (2025). By the look of the movie, which was filmed without sound and had its often non-sequitur and always inane and repetitive narration added afterwards — much like how every car is shown driving three or more times, many a statement in the narration is repeated two or more times — Cardoza either substantially over-estimated the money spent on the project or someone siphoned off a lot of dough. The plot involves a defecting Russian scientist (Tor Johnson) who is chased onto the Yucca Flats A-bomb testing ground by two incompetent KGB agents. The radioactivity inexplicably mutates the once respected and peaceful scientist* into a murderous monster with a taste for buxom women and prepubescent lads, though he never actually manages to get the latter.

* Coincidence? A year later, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced a mild-mannered scientist who gets changed into a violent beast when exposed on a bombing range to the radioactivity of a test bombing in the Marvel comic book The Incredible Hulk #1 (dated May 1962). Lee always insisted that the inspiration for the character came from the classic novels Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but the timing (not to mention the narrative in the comic book) is pretty auspicious to a possible tertiary inspiration...

 

"Touch a button, things happen. A scientist becomes a beast."

And so the now beastified man wanders around the desert, pursued by two extremely incompetent law officials, Joe Dobson (Larry Aten) and Jim Archer (Bing Stafford), the type of men too stupid to realize a woman (Aten's then wife Linda Bielema) is dead — which leads, as they carry her off the mountain, to a truly immortal line of overdubbed dialogue, "Well, doctors can't help her. Maybe angels, but not doctors" — and that truly think shooting at the first man you see in the desert is a viable way of keeping society safe. The man Dobson shoots at, and apparently kills, but who is back up and unharmed in the next scene, is Hank Radcliffe (Douglas Mellor [10 Jun 1929 – 13 Oct 2004] of the Christian film Fanny Crosby [1984 / trailer]), the city father of the two city boys that get lost in the desert and almost become Beast fodder. For much of the movie, one thinks that Hank's city-wife Lois (director Francis's ex-wife Barbara Francis [9 May 1920 – 11 Jan 2012]), who spends a lot of time standing around alone at the side of the road, will become a victim of the Beast, but regretfully she never does.

 

"A man runs, someone shoots at him."

 

Speaking of women who never become beast fodder, take a look at the slatternly looking woman (Marcia Knight of [2 Feb 1924 – 17 Jan 1980] of Stanley [1972 / trailer]) so prominent on the poster and at the side of all the movie lobby cards. The wife (?) of Dobson, she is seen in The Beast of Yucca Flats for a few short scenes which, like the opening murder, were probably added subsequently. She serves no real purpose other than to pad the time by glaring and showing cleavage and leg, which she does so memorably that one finds it a shame that she never shows up again.* (The movie actually has a very low body count, if you get down to it.)

* Over a good decade later, however, William Shatner does the dirty to her in one of the movies he would prefer to forget having made, Impulse [1974 / trailer].) According to Shatner: "I've forgotten why I was in it. I probably needed the money. It was a very bad time for me. I hope they burn it."

"Twenty hours without rest and still no enemy. In the blistering desert heat, Jim and Joe plan their next attack. Find the Beast and kill him. Kill, or be killed. Man's inhumanity to man."

 

We draw attention to both those female characters to point out that The Beast of Yucca Flats displays more than just an amplitude of no talent, it is also padded with some missed opportunities: women who should be victims, aren't. Instead, the surreally circular and directionless narrative features gunmen that let opponents reload, cars that drive in circles, a man runs and runs and runs and runs, a lawman skydives for no real reason, a narration that appears to follow the William Burroughs cut-up method of writing, and actors that give bad acting a bad name.

The Beast of Yucca Flats is truly a filmic disaster of undeniable excess, a movie that fails in any way to project, in any way, shape or form, an iota of cinematic talent. (Well, except for the sleazy opening murder which, while ultimately unconvincing, does have its cinematic effectiveness.) One finds it hard to believe that the obviously untalented auteur director Coleman Francis (24 Jan 1919 – 15 Jan 1973) went on to write and direct two further filmic fuckups, The Skydivers (1963 / trailer) and Red Zone Cuba (1961, released 1966 / full movie), both produced by Cardoza, before his directorial career crashed and burned, never to be revived.*

* Coleman Francis (above, not from the movie), was an actor prior to and subsequent to his doomed attempts at direction. He can be found in, among other fine films, Ray Dennis Steckler's Body Fever (1969 / full movie) and both Russ Meyer's Motorpyscho! (1965 / trailer, with Haji) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970, see the Babes of Yesteryear series at the lower right of this page). In the last, he's seen a few seconds as a "rotund drunk", which he had pretty much become by then. His end, as told by Anthony Cordoza, is typically tragic and either mundane or mysterious, depending on how you look at it: "Coleman Francis' body was found in the back of a station wagon at the Vine Street Ranch Market. [...] There was a plastic bag over his head and a tube going into his mouth or around his throat. I don't know if he committed suicide, or ... I have no idea. Never looked it up because we were on the outs at the time. [B-Monster]"

The Beast of Yucca Flats — watch it at your own peril. That said, masochism can be fun under the right circumstances...

The full film with boobies —

Beast of Yucca Flats:

Holidays (USA, 2016)

(Spoilers.) Fans of horror anthology films are going to enjoy this one! Foregoing the typical wrap-around story as a basis for the narration of diverse tales — see, for example, Dark Stories to Survive the Night (2021), Terror Tract (2000), The House (2022), The Monster Club (1980), Troublesome Nights 5 (1999) or Night Train to Terror (1985) — Holidays instead simply gathers together different short interludes respectively set on a different holiday, all written and directed by a different person (or persons). When one film ends, a pleasantly illustrated page in a book flips to the next holiday and the next short film commences.

In total, the movie tackles eight holidays: Valentine's Day, written & directed by Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer (of Starry Eyes [2014 / trailer] and the Pet Sematary remake [2019 / trailer]); St Patrick's Day, written & directed by Gary Shore (of the massively disappointing Dracula Untold [2014 / trailer] — really, brownface in 2014? — and The Haunting of Queen Mary [2023 / trailer]); Easter, written & directed by Nicholas McCarthy (of The Pact [2012 / trailer] and At the Devil's Door [2014 / trailer]); Mother's Day, written & directed by Sarah Adina Smith (of Goodbye World [2013 / trailer] and Buster's Mal Heart [2017 / trailer]; Father's Day, written & directed by Anthony Scott Burns (of Our House [2018 / trailer]); Halloween, written & directed by Kevin Smith (of Dogma [1999 / trailer], Red State [2011 / trailer], Tusk [2014 / trailer] and more); Christmas, written & directed by Scott Stewart (of Priest [2011 / trailer] and Dark Skies [2013 / trailer]), and New Year's Eve, written by Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer, but directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer (of Daniel Isn't Real [2019 / trailer] and Some Kind of Hate [2015 / trailer]). 

Trailer to

Holidays:

Among the flaws of most anthology films is that the quality of the various tales is often extremely variable, and the general speed at which the interludes are told often results in rushed narratives. Holidays manages to shine in that the direction of all segments is universally strong and fluid, and most of the narratives, despite the rush in which they are told and the often overly conscious desire for an O. Henry (or, if you prefer, EC Comics) twist at the end, are decent to excellent. In regards to the narratives, most are more snapshots of horror than fully resolved stories. As for the filmwork itself, in general, the various vignettes display a good eye for visuals and carry a decent punch on one level or another, so even the weakest episodes — for us, Christmas and Father's Day, as both had a whiff of over-familiarity to them — are at least watchable and not aggravating. 

The short and sweet Valentine's Day sees a mobbed school-loser named Maxine (Madelein Coghlan of The Free Fall [2021 / trailer]), in her desire for giving the perfect Valentine's gift to her obvious crush, the heart-troubled Coach Rockwell (Rick Peters of Night of the Demons 2 [1994 / trailer]), taking revenge upon her biggest bully, Heidi (Savannah Kennick of Do Not Reply [2019 / trailer]). The slightly uneven tone keeps the whole narrative a little off-kilter, but also helps make the final shot all the more effective. If we have a quibble, it would only be that it is hard to believe that the [male] school PE coach, in our contemporary world, whether out of just sympathy or any other reason, would take the risk of giving only one young [female] student a Valentine's Day card. (The day and age when that would be seen as an innocent action are long gone.) 

St Patrick's Day is perhaps the most fully developed narrative of the eight; strange, dryly humorous and disturbing, it tells of a childless teacher named Elizabeth (Ruth Bradley of Grabbers [2012]) who is given the "gift" of her greatest desire by student, a creepy little girl named Grainne (an excellent Isolt McCaffrey of The Cured [2017 / trailer]). Ruth Bradley does a nuanced job as a woman whose desire to have a child precludes the termination of even a snake baby, and it has a great vomiting scene, not to mention some off-kilter dialogue, but its resolution is slightly undone by the fake-looking offspring.

Easter is definitely the most extreme of the tales, a short that is less a full narrative than an exercise in Christian-based grotesquery. Peppered with barely perceivable asides (notice how the mother follows her nightly prayers by tickling her fancy?), we see a young girl whose Doubting-Thomas inability to coalesce the Christian (Jesus' alleged resurrection) with the pagan (the Easter Bunny) results in the appearance of a magical Easter Egg whence comes an Easter Jesus Bunny that, among other things, births fluffy little chicks through its stigmata. At times scary, at times simply crass, the short filmic interludes veers towards the extreme and satisfies less by it narrative than by its memorable and disturbing scenes. 

Mother's Day, like St Patrick's Day, is of the pregnancy-horror school. A serially aborting woman (Sophie Traub of Tenderness [2019 / trailer]) who gets pregnant every time she has sex, no matter what precautions she takes — that alone is already a horror story — seeks emotional support, if not a solution, at a women's weekend getaway. Unluckily, the group of women proves to be a coven of witches, and her fertility is a "gateway". After a drug-induced orgy during which she impregnated by Montezuma (played by the hot, muscular, and occasionally hirsute gay porn actor Jared Degado* — below, not from the film — but voiced by the likely not hot, muscular, or occasionally hirsute Manuel Bermudez), she is kept drugged and hostage as something gestates within her... An episode that may possibly to speak to women more than most men, perhaps because everything in the short is so much closer to the bone for them. 

* Although he still looks as if he swallows more steroids than sperm, Jared Michael Delgado, a [former?] "beefy bottom" also known as Vince Ferelli, born Jared Tarquini (1983-03-10), doesn't seem to have ever done a hardcore flick with a "real" plot, but he can easily be found in diverse steamy scenes and compilations. He briefly co-headed an independent horror movie production house, Muscle Wolf Productions, which wanted to specialize in (non-hardcore) muscular and bloody trash (see: Psycho Street [2011 / trailer]), but the firm seems to have died early. He can still found in commercials, in our dreams, and films like VooDoo (2017, with Lavelle Roby) and Ugly Sweater Party (2018 / trailer). 

Jared Michael Delgado in

Dinner with the Dwyers:

For us, Father's Day was the weakest entry in the series, as it barrels relatively straight to an obvious conclusion. A woman, Carol (Scream Queen Jocelin Donahue of The Burrowers [2008], House of the Devil [2009 / trailer] and so much more), receives the unexpected gift of a tape recorder from her long-missing father and, following his instructions as recorded, heads for a what might be called a father-daughter reunion. Predictable, but visually tight, it is less a total failure than frustratingly banal. 

Halloween is a Halloween tale only by dint of being set on the day; otherwise the narrative of the short, which will probably hit men closer to home than women, is arguably better suited for Labor Day. One might view the short as a "feminism at play" film, providing you share the half-baked Andrew Tate view of feminism (i.e., that the only thing feminists want to do is cut off men's balls). The singular male of the tale, a shaggy misogynist named Ian (Harley Morenstein of Dead Rising: Watchtower [2015 / trailer]) who runs a web-cam babe business, abuses his three web-cam girls once too often, thus incurring an employee uprising involving an electrical dildo, superglue, and his anus. Well-acted and shot, it is not a disservice to the anthology.

Christmas has nice touches and a good cast, and Seth Green (of Ticks [1993 / trailer] and Idle Hands [1999]) does a convincing job as a Joe Schmoe who puts the right present for his son ahead of helping someone in need. The segment is less horror than a science fiction-tinged thriller. Next to St Patrick's Day, it is the most fully encapsulated story, but it is also oddly ordinary and predictable and, ultimately, unsatisfying. 

New Year's Eve ends the anthology collection on a strong note: simple and direct, it is both blackly comic and suspenseful. In short, an extremely repulsive serial killer (Andrew Bowen of DeCoteau's Pit and the Pendulum [2009 / trailer], The Conjurer [2008 / trailer] and Big Bad Wolf [2006 / trailer]) miscalculates when he goes on a New Year's Eve date with his next intended victim, an internet hookup (Lorenza Izzo of The Green Inferno [2013 / trailer] and Aftershock [2012 / trailer]). 

Not only fans of anthology horror movies will find Holidays an entertaining foray into short horror. Never boring, Holidays doesn't pull any punches and never leaves you feeling bored. Even where a given story might be lacking, the direction and acting is on the ball, as all the entries are well made by people who obviously care for the craft of filmmaking, if not at least their project. Well worth watching. 

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