Horrorfest 2025: Rumpelstiltskin

Rumpelstiltskin
Written by Mark Jones and Joe Ruby
Directed by Mark Jones
Starring Kim Johnston Ulrich, Tommy Blaze, Allyce Beasley and Max Grodénchik
USA, 1995

RUMPELSTILTSKIN tells a somewhat bastardized version of the famous fairy tale, as a hunchbacked imp (Max Grodénchik) with magical powers and a penchant for stealing babies is frozen in a statue by angry villagers in the 1400s only to be sold at an antique store and unfrozen in “present day” (1995) Los Angeles!

He sets his sights on the baby of a grieving widow (Kim Johnston Ulrich) who is recovering from the recent loss of her cop husband in a botched carjacking. Much time is spent on this set up but it has little bearing on the rest of the movie. It’s that kind of movie.

Anyway, Rumpelstiltskin feels entitled to her baby even though he didn’t really make any deals with her or spin any straw into gold, or anything like that, and so the movie becomes one long chase scene after another. Along the way, the widow hooks up with gross-out/shock-jock TV personality (Tommy Blaze) who reluctantly helps her out. This guy’s so un-funny he becomes funny, which I guess is also a good way to describe the rest of this movie.

The best thing in it, aside from the big explosions, is the central villain performance by Max Grodénchik, aided along by his makeup and costume. This has been a theme of Horrorfest this year: every FRONT ROOM has a Kathryn Hunter, every WISHMASTER has an Andrew Divoff and every BLOOD FOR DRACULA has an Udo Kier.

Speaking of Horrorfest, that’s it for this year! 31 horror movies in the 31 days of October. Happy Halloween!

 

Horrorfest 2025: Shelby Oaks

Shelby Oaks
Written and directed by Chris Stuckmann
Starring Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III, Keith David, Robin Bartlett and Michael Beach
USA, 2025

Though I’ve seen his name around, I’m not very familiar with internet film critic Christ Stuckmann’s work on a firsthand basis. I was interested to find out, though, he has a big enough following from his YouTube videos to be able to write and direct a feature length movie with a nationwide release. So, I figured it was worth watching if only for that.

Unfortunately, that’s about all it has going for it.

The story unfolds first as mockumentary, then as straightforward narrative, telling the tale of a group of YouTube personalities who hosted a paranormal investigation channel only to suddenly disappear. Three of their bodies are found, but one is still missing and her sister is dedicated to finding her. Sort of incidentally, a film crew is making a doc about all of this, which we see part of at the start, but that framing device is abandoned early on.

I’m not sure why it’s there, other than to give us an excuse to peer deeply into grainy images trying to see ghostly figures. But, there’s any number of ways that could be achieved without the doc subplot, so I’m still left scratching my head.

Anyway, things go downhill once this framing device is abandoned and the sister (Camille Sullivan) goes on her search. Of course I won’t tell you what she finds except to say to the movie’s credit she does actually find something, which is more than can be said of some of these types of movies. Whether or not that something is worth the watch is up to you, I guess (it’s not).

I won’t repeat that saying about why critics can’t make art, because I hate it, but I will say I was surprised to see unforced errors that caused unintentional laughs. Just as an example, near the beginning of the movie there’s an unexpected suicide and blood splatters on our heroine. We cut away to some other stuff, then cut to later that night and she’s STILL sitting there with blood on her face. Even if she’s traumatized, you’d think an EMT or her husband would have wiped her face off. So, that’s already funny, then the husband goes, “You okay?” Which is hilarious to ask your wife who has been covered in suicide blood for, like, half a day. And she goes, “Yeah,” and then he just gets up and leaves the room. It’s as if an alien wrote it. Or maybe it was…. AI?!?!??!?!?!

For its modest budget, this movie looks good. So if the problems are in the script, maybe Chris Stuckmann has a career ahead of him directing stuff he DIDN’T write?

Horrorfest 2025: Frankenstein (2025)

Frankenstein (2025)
Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro
Based on the novel by Mary Shelley
Starring Oscar Isaac, Jaco Elordi, Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz
USA, 2025

I was pretty excited for this most recent adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN, the much-adapted o.g. of sci-fi horror about the man who dared to create life and the tragic consequences that followed. Not only do I love the story, I (usually) love Guillermo del Toro – especially when he’s doing his horror thing. Plus, Mia Goth, Oscar Isaac and Christoph Waltz are all recent faves of mine. I’m jealous del Toro beat me to casting Waltz in a monster movie, but glad he didn’t give him his rightful role: Van Helsing.

Instead, Waltz plays a character concocted just for this movie, who finances Frankenstein’s (Oscar Isaac) experiments for secretive, personal reasons. He’s also this movie’s Elizabeth’s (Mia Goth) father. He’s quickly dispatched, however, and it was one of many added details that had me wondering what the point was.

In this way del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN is sort of like Peter Jackson’s KING KONG, and not just because they’re both chubby nerds with beards. It seems a lesson took from successfully adapting LORD OF THE RINGS was that no detail is small enough to go unexplored, so he filled KING KONG with so much world-building he started to bury the point of the movie. Del Toro’s not that bad, here, but you get the feeling his fleshing out all these details and filling in little cracks with stuff that doesn’t even really need to be there to get right down to the point.

This is most evident in scenes dealing with Frankenstein’s childhood, in which Mia Goth doubles as his mom, oddly enough. I guess del Toro’s going Oedipal here but there’s enough going on in FRANKENSTEIN without the need for that. Meanwhile, when we follow the creature’s (Jacob Elrodi) narrative, it sort of gets rushed through, which is strange, for a two-and-a-half hour movie.

As with most del Toro productions, the movie is beautiful to look at. The images are striking. Everything’s operatic and over-the-top, which suits FRANKENSTEIN, I think. The performances are all good, including Elrodi, who has the hardest job here. How do you pull off Mary Shelley’s version of the creature? Boris Karloff didn’t have to and made the role his own. Robert DeNiro tried and failed. How can modern audiences take an emo monster seriously? Elrodi comes the closest I’ve seen of anyone of getting it right.

What of the other characterizations? The only other major one featured is Frankenstein himself, played by Oscar Isaac, who is great, but the mad doctor might be just a little too mad a little too soon. Let’s see the stuff that goes on throughout the movie push him over the edge, instead of him starting out already over it. That would have been nice.

I’m complaining a lot, but it’s still a fairly solid movie. Just not the movie I was hoping for.

 

Horrorfest 2025: Bone Tomahawk

Bone Tomahawk
Written and directed by S. Craig Zahler
Starring Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Lili Simmons, Richard Jenkins, Evan Jonigkeit, Kathryn Morris, Sid Haig, David Arquette and Fred Melamed
USA, 2015

The horror western BONE TOMAHAWK has been on my list for years and it keeps getting bumped because I keep seeing it’s slightly over two hours long and also get grossed out about the cannibalism. But, I’ve finally gotten around to it, and I’m glad I have, because it reminded me that I like westerns, so it doesn’t matter if they’re over two hours long and have cannibals in them.

Kurt Russell leads a well-cast posse (Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox and Richard Jenkins) on a quest to follow the trail of a group of cannibals who have kidnapped one of the parties’ wife (Lili Simmons). After a brief horror interlude starring David Arquette and Sid Haig, the bulk of the movie is made up of this journey and an examination of the relationship dynamics between these guys. Who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s going to change, who isn’t. One of them starts out injured, so it also becomes a bit of a survival story as he pushes himself to continue.

I guess it’s a testament to the perceived unmarketability of westerns that this otherwise straightforward Hollywood crowd pleaser should take the form of a low budget indie production. It didn’t make waves when it came out, because no one saw it, but time has been kind, and now it regularly pops up on best-of lists, which makes me happy.

 

Horrorfest 2025: Nightbitch

Nightbitch
Written and directed by Marielle Heller
Based on the novel by Rachel Yoder
Starring Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Snowden, Emmett Snowden, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland and Jessica Harper
USA, 2024

New mother Amy Adams deals with post-partum depression by transforming into a werewolf. Or does she? Who knows? Etc.

After THE FRONT ROOM and THE WOMAN IN THE YARD, I’d about had it with pissed off moms, but NIGHTBITCH is interesting in the way that it clearly articulates all of the Adams’ character’s conflicted feelings about her new position in life as a mother while also showing that she can still be a good mother at the same time. She never takes it out on her kid. Which is nice.

She does take it out on others, though, as she tries to figure out how to reconcile the perceived death of her former life as an artist and her new life as a stay-at-home mom. This is exacerbated by the fact that her husband (Scoot McNairy) travels for work, so it’s not just that he’s gone all day, he’s gone for days at a time.

In some ways Adams’ complaints are stuff I feel like I can indentify with and I’m not even a mom. Like, I also get annoyed by other people’s children. I also sometimes get sad I spend all day devoting my life to something other than my dreams. I also would not want to be friends with other moms just cuz I’m a mom.

About the wolf stuff – it’s supposed to be allegorical or metaphorical, and it is interesting how it underlines the fact that we need to be reminded sometimes that we’re all just animals, but it’s also sort of ancillary to everything else. It’s supposed to be the movie’s thesis statement, but like a few other movies this month, it left me wondering what the movie might have been like without it? Would it be better? Worse? I dunno. At least it’s an interesting point of view, I guess.

Also, you should probably know that you would not consider this a horror movie, so if you’re concerned about that, don’t bother watching it.

Extra points for a great title, though.

Horrorfest 2025: Return of the Fly

Return of the Fly
Written and directed by Edward Bernds
Based on the short story by George Langelaan
Starring Vincent Price and Brett Halsey
USA, 1959

It has taken me 16 years but I have finally followed up my Horrorfest viewing of THE FLY with its sequel, RETURN OF THE FLY. To be honest, all these years, I thought I’d already seen it and written about. Turns out I was wrong! So that makes two Vincent Price movies this year. I’m not complaining.

Brett Halsey stars as the now-grown son of the scientist in the original movie, and I must congratulate the filmmakers for refraining from calling this thing SON OF THE FLY. He’s also a scientist, hell bent on recreating and perfecting his father’s teleportation experiments, with the reluctant help of his uncle (Vincent Price, reprising his role from the first movie).

There’s an industrial espionage subplot, but the real point of this flick is to get straight to the fly action casual viewers may have complained the first one lacked. The first movie uses a lot of restraint, positioning itself as a mystery, limiting how much you see The Fly, focusing more on the horror of the situation than The Fly as a monster. It’s also in beautiful color and widescreen. This sequel is scaled down in budget, black and white, and focuses on The Fly as a monster going on a killing spree, once our main character makes the same blunder in his experiments that his father did.

So, the flick pales in comparison to the original, but it does benefit from Vincent Price’s presence in the way that I guess any movie would and if you’re looking for scenes of a man with a fly’s head killing people, you’ll be satisfied.

 

Horrorfest 2025: First Man into Space

First Man into Space
Written by Wyott Ordung, John Croydon and Charles F. Vetter
Directed by Robert Day
Starring Marshall Thompson, Marla Landi, Bill Edwards and Robert Ayres
USA, 1959

This clumsily titled slice of sci-fi horror follows the misadventures of an astronaut who returns from space as a monster on a killing spree. Only his square-jawed military brother can hunt him down and stop him.

My little synopsis above is more tongue in cheek than this movie is, by a lot. The unique thing about this paranoid 50s thriller is how deadly serious it is. All the space stuff up front seems plausible, and the solution in the end manages to be bother science-based, while also involving an emotional sacrifice and some character growth. You could accuse this short flick of being a little dry and a little slow, but you can’t accuse it of not being the real thing.