Review: Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare (2025)

Looks like I am committed to the Poohniverse.

Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare follows Wendy Darling (Megan Placito) as she tries to find her brother Michael (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) after he is abducted by child killer Peter Pan (Martin Portlock).  Featuring a second appearance of Mary Darling (Teresa Banham reprising the role after her first appearance in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2), this is the first broadening of the Poohniverse (it released before Bambi: The Reckoning and features returning characters unlike that film).

This one took a little longer for me to get into than the other movies in the series. There's some brutality early on that isn't any more off-putting than anything else in this series.  Maybe it is the (to me) unnecessary grotesqueness that permeates the early going.  Peter Pan (as seen in the above poster) gets scarred during a prologue abduction, but it doesn't end there: Tinker Bell (Kit Green) and Hook (Charity Kase) also lean heavily into extreme makeup.

The first 30ish minutes are spent getting us to the main plot (Wendy searching for Michael), at which point the movies has to do some serious padding to not resolve in record time.  Weirdly, this is when the movie picks up a bit for me.  Even more weird, the scene that starts the padding but brings up the energy of the movie is one where Peter Pan kills a very large number of people (that I am keeping vague to avoid spoilers).

The stakes thus raised, Wendy continues her search, with an assist from her friend Tiger Lily (Olumide Olorunfemi) and Tiger Lily's brother Joey (Hardy Yusuf).  She ends up crashing with them when Mary blames Wendy for not noticing that Michael snuck off earlier when she was supposed to pick him up.  This doesn't end well for Tiger Lily or her family.

Which, an aside: There have not been a large number of black characters scattered throughout the Poohniverse, but almost every single one has died, usually quite violently.  The movies are pretty brutal across all kills, but maybe allow one of these characters to survive?  It's a very low bar to clear, but these movies haven't managed it so far.

We cut between Wendy's search and Michael's captivity which is where we get to meet Tinker Bell and guys, I don't know how to approach this.  Tinker Bell is a previous abductee of Peter's who wasn't 'sent to Neverland' (killed) because they were a 'fairy.'  They are trans and while I can appreciate the inclusion of a trans character, they way it is done is... messy.  Other people are better equipped to break down all the ways this is problematic than me, but trust that I'm not sure this is the best of representation.

The movie sprints towards the ending at this point, and I won't spoil how it all goes, but the ending, for me, was unsatisfying.  I get that part of it is a set up for Monster Assembled, but I still think it could have been better.

6 out of 10

Review: Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

In 1981, a made-for-TV movie was released called Dark Night of the Scarecrow, starring Charles Durning and Larry Drake, and creating the Evil/Killer Scarecrow subgenre of horror.  Yeah, believe or not, a scarecrow was not the centerpiece of a horror movie until the 80s, which seems crazy.

The plot: Bubba (Drake), is a developmentally disabled man who is friends with Marylee (Tonya Crowe),a child neighbor.  Otis (Durning) considers Bubba to be a blight on the town and is just looking for a reason to get rid of him.  When Marylee is attacked by a dog and saved by Bubba, he is instead blamed for the girl's death and Otis gets three others - Skeeter, Philby, and Harliss (Robert F. Lyons, Claude Earl Jones, and Lane Smith) - and takes vigilante justice against Bubba as he hides in a scarecrow.  Shortly thereafter, the group learns that not only is Marylee still alive, but she lives only because of Bubba's intervention.

A quick trial - and some perjury from Otis - sees the vigilantes get away with their murder (which, for anyone familiar with small town politics, reads as sadly realistic) and released without consequences.  However, all of the men start seeing a bullet-riddled scarecrow appear near their homes and bad things start happening...

First, I want to say, for a made-for-TV movie, this is amazingly effective.  It's genuinely creepy in parts, and despite a lack of gore, the implied violence is still harrowing.  Between this and the Salem's Lot miniseries, the late 70s/early 80s must have been a golden age for made-for-TV horror.

Secondly, this cast is absolutely phenomenal.  Not a weak performance in the bunch, with Durning a particular strong case for best in show as the vindictive and slimy (and possibly pedophilic?) Otis.  It's great to see the character actor - Oscar nominated for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and To Be or Not to Be - playing what amounts to the lead character.  Lane Smith is probably most well-known as the district attorney in My Cousin Vinny, and sister-of-Marlon Brando Jocelyn Brando plays Bubba's mother.  Not a single member of this A-list cast phones it in.

Honestly, this movie is so much better than several theatrically released films from the same - or even the following - years that it's kind of crazy the it was never in theaters.  It does atmosphere and tone so well!  Even the set design is better than I've seen in some modern films!

This movie was hard to find for the longest time, but now is available on DVD and Blu-ray and is also streaming at various sites so I'd highly recommend finding and watching it.

7.5 out of 10

Review: The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

I had a rough time with this movie.  I will freely admit that, because of my experience with Alzheimer's within my family, my reaction to this film probably varies from many others.  Especially since part of the plot of it deals with the exploitation of people suffering from the disease - possibly a lampshade of the same criticism that could be thrown at this film.

The Taking of Deborah Logan is a found footage movie where three students - Mia, Gavin, and Luis (Michelle Ang, Brett Gentile, and Jeremy DeCarlos) - want to create a documentary about Deborah Logan (Jill Larson) and her daughter Sarah (Anne Ramsay) as Deborah progresses further into Alzheimer's disease.  As they film the lives of the Logans, it becomes increasingly clear that something more than Alzheimer's is affecting Deborah.

There is merit in using the metaphor of possession (for that is what this film is about) as a way to approach how a family deals with a disease affecting someone within their unit.  It needs to approached carefully, and it needs to be clear in its message.  Think of The Babadook and how it uses its creature as a stand-in for grief and dealing with loss.  This method of storytelling can be affecting if done well, I'm just not sure the this film succeeds.

Early on, to convince the Logans to let the students film them, Mia mentions that she also had a family member who had Alzheimer's.  We shortly thereafter find out it is a lie meant to persuade the family once Deborah starts having second thoughts.  We also get early hints that Gavin and Luis aren't taking it very seriously as they are told repeatedly to stop randomly touching various items within the house.  The groundwork is there, but not really followed upon.

Part of that can be explained away as the plot of the film - the increasingly weird behaviors of Deborah that can only be explained as supernatural - takes over.  At one point Gavin leaves because of what he is seeing on camera (the movie makes the rare decision to have Mia be the skeptical one who ignores and tries to explain away the unexplainable events - this usually falls on a male character) and Luis attempts to place a cross to ward off what Deborah may or may not being seeing.

However, we never really address - other than a quick moment towards the end of the film - the underhanded way the students convinced the Logans to let them film.  There's growth from Mia regarding her behavior, but nothing that really works as an arc for her character.  It isn't necessarily a plot hole, but it is something that the plot should've included.  It makes one lean towards the movie exploiting the disease instead of using it as a metaphor.

I will say that the performances are good across the board.  In particular, Jill Larson and Anne Ramsay do a fantastic job of deterioration (in the case of the former) and the forced optimism/strain of dealing with a sick family member (in the case of the latter).  This movie does work most of the time based off the strength of this duo of performances.

Would I recommend this movie?  Probably?  It won't ever be my favorite - I doubt I would ever give this a second viewing without someone else wanting to watch it - but despite the shortcomings that I see, it is effective and creepy and has decent twists and turns throughout.  I just wish it had approached its subject matter in a better way.

6 out of 10

Review: Bambi: The Reckoning (2025)

So, I find myself in a situation.

When I wrote my review for Winne the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, I basically said that the Poohniverse looked stupid, and that it and the first Winnie the Pooh movie were terrible if enjoyable.  So what happens when one of these movies is actually... dare I say it... good?

That is the predicament I find myself in right now.  Bambi: The Reckoning, by all accounts, is a well-made, solid film.  The acting is good (even from the child actor!), the design for the evil Bambi is good, as is the CGI for him.  The plot makes sense, the kills are gruesome and well-done... How did they manage to make such a solid entry?  Was it because this is the fourth in the series (I have yet to see Peter Pan: Neverland Nightmare but this movie kind of made that a priority?) or did the decision to keep this short (the movie is 80 minutes long with credits) force them to cut any unnecessary tangents out of the film?

To give a brief summary of the film: We get a quick animation of Bambi's history - mother killed by poacher, Faline killed by a van that dumps toxic waste into the waters that Bambi eventually drinks from - then we are immediately into the film, which is basically Bambi Kills Everyone He Can.

There is a human plot: Xana (Roxanne McKee) and her son Benji (Tom Mulheron) are going to visit her husband Simon's (Alex Cooke) family, although Simon cancels his participation due to work obligations before the other two have left.  There are relationship problems between Xana and Simon - he is a distant father - but Xana is trying to hide it from Benji.

There is also a plot regarding some hunters who are obviously after Bambi, but leaves the how and why ambiguous for now.

First unexpected surprise: The two are attacked before they reach the extended family.  The stakes are present fairly early - no slow build - and while not especially gory, the death of the cab driver is still brutal.  While our main characters still make it to the family house, they are already hurt and bleeding before the real meat of the movie starts!

We do get a brief breather as we get to meet the extended family.  There's some sort of implied connection between Bambi and Mary (Nicola Wright), the dementia-riddled grandmother of Benji, but otherwise we get quick establishing of the characters (nothing too deep, but enough to separate them as distinct characters from one another) before Bambi attacks the house and sends the family running.

Second unexpected surprise: Bambi doesn't kill everyone in this movie.  Outside of the killer deer, four other characters get various other kills scattered throughout and all of them make sense within the context of the story.  I won't spoil who dies or who kills, but it was a great way to keep the action varied while still keeping the overarching threat of Bambi.

The family (what remains of it, this movie kills characters left and right) eventually meets up with the hunters and the reason the hunters know about Bambi is a fairly major plot reveal, but not delivered with any pomp: they say why they are after him and immediately move to try and kill him.

Third unexpected surprise: The human antagonists (for the hunters do fulfill that role) are actually threatening, both to the family and to Bambi.  There's always the worry in these types of movies that, if there are human antagonists, they are cartoonishly evil or make decisions that are incredibly stupid if any sort of thought it applied to them.  In this movie, they keep it simple and it works wonders as far as increasing their threat.

Overall, I really wasn't expecting anything from this movie other than dumb fun like the previous two movies I watched.  And that was a major mistake on my part!  This movie, judged on its own merits, is good!  It won't win any awards, but it's solid.  I'd even recommend it to people outside those interested in the Twisted Childhood Universe.  Which is not what I expected going into this.

7 out of 10

Review: Night of the Lepus (1972)

Fucking children...

Night of the Lepus primarily follows Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun), a rancher looking to get rid of the massive amount of rabbits on his land and married scientists Roy and Gerry Bennett (Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh), the two tasked with coming up with a solution other than poisoning to get rid of said rabbits.

The two scientist attempt to inject the rabbits with a serum that will cause birth defects (and thus reduce the rabbit population that way) but instead it makes the rabbits grow larger and more aggressive.  They then must destroy the rabbits to prevent any from making it into the wild, but wouldn't you know: their daughter Amanda (Melanie Fullerton) switches one of the injected rabbits with one of the control rabbits then convinces her parents to let her take one of the control rabbits home.

You see where this is going...

Soon enough, giant rabbits are terrorizing the countryside (thanks Amanda) and everyone must put their heads together to figure out a way to stop them.

It's a fairly standard eco-horror plot (though this dips a toe into SciFi a bit more than others of the same type, like Frogs), propped up by having well-known actors like Leigh, Calhoun, and Whitman as stars.  It was part of the 'Animals Run Amok' trend in the early 70s and is most notable for how the fact the 'monster' of the film was rabbits was hidden in both the posters and trailers.

The film utterly fails to make the rabbits scary.  Director William F. Claxton mostly had regular rabbits running on miniature sets and used slow motion to make them seem larger (this does not work at all) and then had people in rabbit suits for scenes where a rabbit needed to be up close 'attacking' someone (this looked even worse).  I appreciate the effort (1972 was not a good time to try to make a film with this plotline and have it even approach realistic special effects), but it was ultimately a failure.

The film does gain some charm from (despite?) the terrible effects.  Contemporaneous critics called the acting wooden, but I thought it was fine for the most part.  No one elevated the material in any way, but no one was terrible either.  The score is fairly nondescript, but after consecutive days of movies with jarring sound cues, that is almost welcome.  The movie is serviceable, which might be its biggest sin.

See, this movie has the makings of a true cult classic - ridiculous premise, terrible effects, sincere acting - but it never really rises up (or down, to be more honest) in such a way that it becomes campy.  Again, it is serviceable.  Other than the complete failure of the effects, it mostly succeeds in telling its story.  Maybe it would have been better had it not had established actors?  It never quite hits the level of truly terrible, which weirdly would had helped it.

But back to that child: Every death in this movie can be traced back to Amanda, and unless I missed something somewhere (very possible) she never even fesses up to switching out the test rabbit.  And this isn't a small death toll movie - an entire village is basically overtaken/eaten by the rabbits, and the National Guard has to be called in to handle the problem.  This is bullshit, and there should've been some sort of consequence!

Would I recommend this movie?  No, but mostly because of how forgettable it is, which is something a giant rabbit movie should never be.  But it isn't bad, and there are worse movies to watch.

5 out of 10

Review: Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre (2016)

Sometimes you come across a movie title and you just know that you have to watch it.  The name might not scream 'prestige' or even 'good' but dammit, it has a name you just cannot ignore.  It could be something like The Big Gay Musical or (to use a TV example) Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills: a name so ridiculous that it demands your viewing.  This is how I found myself watching Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre.

Now look, I did not go into this movie expecting cinema.  With a name like that, I expected something cheesy, moronic, exploitative, and funny.  It's about sharks attacking people in Arkansas!  And the people being attacked are inmates and guards at a women's prison!  How could this not be entertaining?

Easily, it turns out.

Now, I won't say the movie is entirely terrible (even though it is), but that title is selling a certain type of movie that it does not deliver.  All the more disappointing since it is directed by Jim Wynorski, whose previous credits include Slumber Party Massacre II, The Return of Swamp Thing, and The Bare Wench Wench Project 3: Nymphs of Mystery Mountain.  Hell, the film advertises that Traci Lords is in it!

It feels like the movie goes wrong pretty early into it.  After an opening that delivers exactly what I was expecting for this type of movie (two guys 'fracking' in a way that shows no one involved understood what fracking actually is), we get to the women's prison (that does not in any way look like a prison) and they leave it immediately.  It's in the title that you are at a women's prison!  And you leave it and never return!?

Despite that immediate flaw, the movie still shows promise: All of the inmates are incredibly hot women wearing white t-shirts and jean shorts (you know, your classic prison garb).  They go into the woods for... reasons? to work (doing the worst shoveling I have ever seen in my life, and I was a lazy teenager who had to dig an insane amount) (Don't ask, it's way more boring than you'd think).  There is an extended section of this part of all of the women pouring bottles of water on themselves.  At this point, I think the movie, aside from a horrible location change, is back on track.

Except it quickly loses it again:  The first inmate kill is incredibly basic (which, okay, don't blow your load early and whatnot) but despite ripped clothing and blood splattered everywhere, everyone agrees that she just ran off.

And guys, my expectations were low, but come the fuck on!  I don't expect this to be anything other than ridiculous, but don't make the characters so stupid that this is the conclusion they come to!  Again, the movie almost saves itself with one of the characters - still being stupid, she says a tree is bleeding - shows her 'blood' covered hand to the camera and it sits there just a bit too long before moving to the next part.

The remaining prisoners and guard (there was a 'prison break' involving the girlfriend of one of the inmates catching the guards off-guard and kidnapping them that leads to the second guard dying by shark) end up at a house where the guard and the Good Inmate team up to take back over the group (the movie being stupid in a good way again) and then they realize that sharks are around when another inmate gets killed by them.  This is also when we learn that the sharks can swim out of the water and into the ground.  Again, blessedly stupid according to expectations.

Two geologists stumble upon the group to drop exposition and provide a higher body count.  The group tries to escape the sharks and periodically lose a member here and there until only two (or are there more?) remain, having escaped.  I don't have to spoil who the survivors are, it's kinda obvious who it will be.

There are some fun moments scattered throughout, but why name the movie this and not lean into it?  I'm gay, I don't need to see naked women, but how did this movie not have a single naked breast in it?  There are 3 different types of exploitation movies being referenced in the title alone that would create the expectation of gratuitous nudity!  Again, I am not the target audience but even I feel a bit cheated out of this expectation.

You might noticed that I never credited Traci Lords to a role despite mentioning her at the beginning.  That is because her character, a police officer, does not interact with the main plot until the very end of the film.  She (and her partner) could be completely removed from the film without affecting a single thing.

I wanted this movie to be a good time.  And it occasionally was!  But it just didn't use its premise well enough to be anything other than a way to pass time.

3 out of 10

Review: Tentacles (1977)

It's always interesting reading the backstories for some movies as I watch them.  For instance, Tentacles, the 1977 killer giant octopus movie, was originally written as a more comedic take on the formula popularized by Jaws.  However, it was retooled and rewritten to be a more serious film.  Either version was an attempt to cash in on the Jaws craze, and I wonder if it might have been better to go in the comedic direction.

Set in Solana Beach, California, this film follows reporter Ned Turner (a slumming John Huston) as he tries to find the source of a series of attacks by an aquatic animal.  He gets help from diver Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins, trying really hard to make the material work), and butts heads with Mr. Whitehead (Henry Fonda, originally the lead before a heart attack forced him into this smaller role) the businessman responsible for antagonizing the giant octopus (Is this a spoiler?  Could it have been anyone else, really?).

We also have Tillie Turner (Shelley Winters), the sister of Ned providing a B-plot (her son is in a sailing race where all of the entrants get attacked) and Claude Akins as Sheriff Douglas Robards as a third person for many of the scenes.  And I mean that: there are several scenes where it is primarily two people talking and it seems that the Sheriff is there just to provide an additional voice to the conversation.

Because this was an Italian production, every other character in the film is played by an Italian actor.  Unfortunately, most of these actors have incredibly distracting voice dubs, and there is a noticeable difference in the sound quality of these actors vs the American cast.  And it is even worse when one of the Americans shares a scene with an Italian.  I'm not sure if it would have been better to try to get American extras or just let the accents stay with the current actors, but it makes for a weird viewing having the dubs mixed in.

This movie also has some very odd directorial choices.  Several scenes feature what amounts to a screenshot (nothing in the frame is moving for several seconds) before cutting to the same scene only with movement this time.  There are also random music queues scattered throughout that almost have rhyme and reason to them, but miss just enough (and in a few cases, they miss wildly) that most viewers will notice the odd musical choices.

The special effects are bad, but better than I would expect for a movie with as small a budget as this one had.  Which is damning with faint praise, but what else can I say about a movie that, in one scene, has a killer whale attack the octopus where the viewer can tell it is a toy whale being thrust at a normal-sized octopus?

I hate to pick at this movie - it's akin to kicking a wounded animal - but it is such a misguided production in so many ways that I struggle to find anything to praise.  Shelley Winters gives the movie more effort than it deserves yet still the performances doesn't work.  Bo Hopkins, as alluded to above, also tries to salvage something from the script but something, likely the direction, holds anything worthwhile at bay the entire time.

If I am going to praise the movie for one thing, it will be that it really does not hesitate to kill characters.  The very first kill is a baby, family members of the main characters die throughout. and the movie isn't afraid to kill anyone, which is something.  It just isn't enough to save this movie.

3.5 out of 10