The Puppetman, on Shudder

Michal isnot a normal, well-adjusted college student, but unlike the spoiled sociopathic millennials celebrating genocidal terrorism on Ivy League campuses, she has a good excuse. A demon used her father’s body to brutally murder her mother. Since then, the evil entity kept tabs on her, as viewers can see from the dead bodies that follow in her wake throughout Brandon Christensen’s The Puppetman, which premieres Friday on Shudder.

Michal went from foster care to college, so she will be staying in the dorms during break. So will her roommate Charlie, apparently because she has a weird obsession with Michal and her lurid family history. Unbeknownst to Michal, Charlie has video documented her frequent episodes of sleepwalking she never knew were happening. Charlie also binges true crime podcasts about her father, the so-called “Puppetman” in reference to the mysterious controlling power he blamed for making him kill Charlie’s mother.

Michal and Charlie will also be partying with three of their boring friends. At least that was the plan, until people start dying in freakishly unlikely suicides. Det. Al Rosen is out of his depth, but Ruby, the psychic who maybe isn’t a complete fraud after all, might have some insights.

The Puppetman might be Christensen’s best film yet (far better than Still/Born and more consistent than Z), thanks to some genuinely eerie séance sequences and the super-nasty spin it puts on demonic possession. Christensen takes viewers to some dark, twisted places, which is great.

Space Wars: Quest for the Deep Star

Of course, the original Star Wars films were far more fun than the recent stuff from Disney. The knock-offs were also better back then. It is always hard to stop watching the Roger Corman-produced “homages” like Battle Beyond the Stars and Space Raiders (with its suspiciously similar looking special effects). At its best moments, this movie is a little like those scruffy space operas, but only just a little. Still, a lot of stuff gets blasted in Garo Setian’s Space Wars: Quest for the Deep Star, which releases Tuesday on DVD.

In this far, far away galaxy, a dead person’s essence, their consciousness and soul, can be bottled up and reconstituted in an android, but only if you have enough money. Kip Corman (a hat-tip to the B-movie king?) did not have enough money to finish the job for his late (at least for now) wife. To pay for her android transfer, he and his daughter Taylor have taken on several dubious salvage jobs, earning the antagonism of the evil galactic dictator Elnora in the process.

The mother of all salvage jobs would be the Deep Star, a legendary space wreck lost somewhere in the universe. Corman was not even looking for it, when he and Taylor save Jackie, a quirky star-cartographer (who has probably been living alone in space too long), from the outlaw Dykstra, who wants her to chart his course to the Deep Star. Unfortunately, he captures Taylor, in return.

Frankly, the special effects were probably better in Roger Corman’s aforementioned movies (seriously, would he have re-used lackluster space battles?). However, there is something weirdly endearing about its eager over-ambitions. VOD mainstay Michael Pare plays it straight as Corman, never winking for the camera. Olivier Gruner makes an unusually tough villain as Dystra, but he must have been slightly embarrassed by the fight choreography, which mostly consists of everyone exchanging round house punches, like drunken cowboys. Plus, Anahit Setian is surprisingly endearing as the less-shticky-than-you-might-expect Jackie.

They Crawl Beneath

Bugs and worms tend to grow large out in the desert, like in It Came from the Desert or the Tremors series. At least that franchise had some humor to help the wacky premise go down easy and some survivalists, who were properly supplied for a siege. Unfortunately, the Barstow cop at the center of this film gets caught flat-footed in Dale Fabrigar’s They Crawl Beneath, which releases today on VOD and DVD.

Danny Moritz has been crashing with his slacker Uncle Bill, while he and his girlfriend Gwen Bishop have been fighting about everything and nothing. Inconveniently, old Bill did not have a proper jack, so when the mutant worms attack while they are working under a vintage muscle car, Bill gets crushed to death, leaving Moritz alone, precariously pinned underneath, and potentially at the mercy of the toxic worm-things.

Frustratingly, the film is stuck right there with Moritz, trapped under a car, in Uncle Bill’s garage, which is sealed up like a prison, for unlikely reasons. Of course, Moritz passes in and out of consciousness right when his colleagues from the force come to check on him. Indeed, nearly everything about Tricia Aurand’s screenplay will have viewers slapping their foreheads, especially when Moritz starts arguing with his mental projection of Uncle Bill. It might be time to temporarily retire this device, considering how effectively Panhandle and The Flight Attendant recently employed it.

It is too bad the narrative is manipulative to the point of annoying, because the practical creature effects are really cool. It shows a low budget creepy-crawler film get look professional. Sadly, the quality of writing is not much better than drive-in staples like Kingdom of Spiders.

The Resonator: Miskatonic U (Part 2)

Fictional Miskatonic University might be highly selective, but once you are in, it takes a lot to get kicked out. For instance, Crawford Tillinghast stole university resources, including plutonium, to conduct unsanctioned experiments that resulted in the death of one friend and the non-fatal impalement injury of his girlfriend Mara Esteban. However, Prof. Wallace is willing to paper-over the entire business if Tillinghast will give him access to his late father’s breakthrough. Of course, the older mad scientist’s motives are highly suspect in the second concluding installment of William Butler’s The Resonator: Miskatonic U, which premieres this Friday on Full Moon Features.

As was the case in Stuart Gordon’s classic From Beyond, the Resonator stimulates the pineal gland, allowing people in our dimension to see creatures from other dimensions. Unfortunately, if you can see them, they can see you—and that is extraordinarily dangerous. After the horror show of the previous episode’s test-drive, Tillinghast reluctantly agrees to shut down his Resonator experiments, until Prof. Wallace comes along to blackmail his old rival’s son into sharing the secrets of the Resonator with him, much to the alarm of the deceased Dr. Tillinghast’s disembodied spirit.

The Resonator is a pretty satisfying riff on Lovecraft and Gordon’s cult-favorite adaptations, but the first somewhat longer episode is probably better than the second, because it devotes more time to the character development and group dynamics of Tillinghast’s friends, particularly Esteban and the meatheaded Bear Johnson. Frankly, the second episode feels like it hurries to bring the story to a close. For what its worth, the ending does not make much sense, but that is not necessarily inappropriate for what it is.

The Resonator: Miskatonic U (Episode 1)

There is no better fictional school to study mad science than H.P. Lovecraft’s Miskatonic University. It also boasts an amazing occult archive, including a copy of the Necronomicon. It is the perfect place for the son of From Beyond anti-hero Crawford Tillinghast to study. Naturally, the son wants to complete his late father’s extra-dimensional work in William Butler’s The Resonator: Miskatonic U, a loose but still fairly faithful sequel to Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond, which debuts its first installment this Friday on Full Moon Features.

When Tillinghast fils discovered Pere’s notes, he just couldn’t resist constructing his own resonator. Of course, it worked only too well, leaving him with a friend’s body to dispose of. As a result, he had been keeping his bizarrely patient girlfriend Mara Esteban at arm’s length. However, he eventually relents and gives a demonstration of the Resonator to her and their friends, perhaps because of the aphrodisiac effects. Regardless, the entities it reveals from other dimensions remain just as evil and dangerous as they were in Gordon’s film.

Meanwhile, the Dean Wormer-like Prof. Wallace is snooping around Tillinghast’s internet activity, which is pretty damning. The first episode definitely leans into the mad science aspect of Miskatonic, enduringly represented by Dr. Herbert West, whose presence in promised in the later episode. However, the dark spirituality professed by Prof. McMichaels suggests there could very well be some metaphysical elder god business waiting in the wings too.

Reborn: Mothers & Daughters, Thunder & Lightning

The foundling discovering their true legacy is a triumphant staple of Victorian literature, but it will not work out that way for Tess Stern. For one thing, her mother did not voluntarily abandon her. B-movie actress Lena O’Neill was told her daughter was stillborn. Yet, somehow Stern survived and developed the scary power to control electricity in Julian Richards’ Reborn, which releases today on DVD.

Creepy morgue attendant Ken Stern discovered Tess was still living, even though O’Neill’s callous doctor had cast her aside like rubbish. He brought her home for his mother to raise—and for him to abuse. Somehow, he figured out her uncanny abilities and fashioned her with an inhibitor, but when she slips out, all heck breaks loose. It is a bit problematic screenwriter Michael Mahin makes such a scummy character hearing-impaired, but it provides a handy method for Tess to dispense payback.

Nearly twenty years later, O’Neill is still grieving the daughter she never properly mourned. Prompted by her shrink, she sets out to find her body for closure, only to discover the hospital cannot properly account for it. Meanwhile, Stern starts looking for her too. As their paths start to cross, Stern meets several people who have done wrong towards her mother, but she is much less forgiving. However, the method of their deaths rather baffles Det. Marc Fox, who is also a bit of a casual O’Neill fan.

The basic premise of Reborn is pretty standard stuff, but it is elevated by some nifty performances from genre veterans. Barbara Crampton is absolutely terrific as O’Neill, especially in scenes where we see her channeling her emotions into her craft. She also has some subtly turned chemistry with Michael Paré, who makes Fox a surprisingly thoughtful and mature figure, in what could be his best screen performance in years. As a cool bonus, Monte Markham brings commanding genre authority as O’Neill’s analyst, Dr. Hetch.

The Shelter: Make Yourself at Home

Thomas Jacobs is about to take a descent into Hell or an excursion into the Twilight Zone. Whether his host will be Dante or Rod Serling, he only has himself to blame. Nobody understands that better than the guilt-wracked Jacobs himself, except maybe the supernatural-cosmic forces at work in John Fallon’s The Shelter (trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles.

It turns out Thomas Wolfe was right about coming home. Jacob regrets it, even though few people still remember the disgraced former Lothario. After a pity hook-up with an old flame, he braces himself for a night on the streets. A kind-hearted bar-tender offers him a spot at the homeless shelter she volunteers at, but that isn’t his scene. Instead, Jacobs stumbles into a well-appointed but apparently abandoned townhouse—as if he had been drawn there by a mysterious force.

There is rotisserie chicken in the fridge and good whiskey in the liquor cabinet, but the chain holding his cross pendant won’t stay latched and his lighter just won’t light a cigarette once he crosses the threshold. More ominously, the house will not let him leave either.

At first, Fallon seems to be going for a foreboding horror movie vibe, but the third act spins out into trippy Jacob’s Ladder territory. It is a strange film, filled with intriguing bits of business, like the blank Bible that seems to be writing Jacob’s judgement, in Latin, but Fallon never really takes them full circle. Still, compared to all the middling horror films that come and go (you’re not still around are you, ClownTown?), you have to give him credit for trying something original.

Casting Michael Paré as Jacobs is also pretty inspired. It is hard not to think of The Shelter as Eddie and the Cruisers: The Final Chapter. Frankly, the Cruisers sequel would have been much more satisfying if it had opted for a similarly mystically spooky tack. On the dark side, oh yeah.

Paré is pretty impressively world-weary and self-loathing as Jacobs. It is nice to see he still has the chops after all those unfortunate Timothy Woodward Jr. bargain basement productions (we checked out after Checkmate). It is nearly a one-man show, but Lauren Thomas (a.k.a. Lauren Alexandra) makes a memorable-highlight reel impression as Josephine the voluntarist-barkeep.

It would be bizarrely fascinating to watch The Shelter with a strict Freudian and a committed Jungian. However, the sheer volume of loose ends and dangling metaphors will ultimately stymie any attempt at systemized analysis. Probably worth watching just to see how out there it gets, The Shelter opens today (11/4) in Los Angeles, at the Laemmle Ahrya Fine Arts.