From ’80s slashers to modern streaming nightmares, discover what to stream and what to skip this spooky season.
Slashers Old and New: Blood Hook/Night of the Reaper
The 1980s were arguably the Golden Era of cheesy B-horror movies. There was so much good stuff to come out of the decade. Many of these straight-to-video offerings became cult classics and shaped the future horror community. By the time the 1990s rolled around, it seemed like there was nothing new to add.
Blood Hook from 1986 is a great example.
Slashers were still all the rage, and this movie includes many familiar tropes. But its killer is completely unique. The villain is a fisherman. Not a guy wearing a mask and carrying a hook. A straight-up fisher with a hook, line, and sinker. And yes, he does reel in his victims.
We were impressed with the trailer for Night of the Reaper. We were not quite sure what the movie was about, but it had an aesthetic that appealed to us. It looked like a throwback to 80s slashers, which is exactly how it starts. It is one of the best openings we have seen all year.
Unfortunately, everything goes off the rails from there.
The story goes in odd directions, working with two different plots. This ends up watering both down and makes for a very tedious watch. It feels like two separate movies were forced together. It all culminates in a twisty ending that is nonsensical and frustrating to watch.
Deadly Games: Your Host/Until Dawn
Your Host has one of those guilty pleasure premises that is impossible to resist. Four friends go to sleep (not by choice) and wake up to find themselves chained to a wall. A mysterious person stands in front of them and lets them know they are about to play a game for their lives.
What follows is a series of deadly challenges in which it becomes clear there can only be one winner.
There is not much more to it than that. It gets gory, eyes get stabbed, people die. And then after about an hour of this, Your Host decides it is time to deliver a message. And it is not just any old statement. They tackle one of the biggies.
It is one of the clumsiest and most confusing things we have seen this year.
Until Dawn is an awesome video game. It is scary, engaging, and most importantly, fun. We have been interested in seeing the adaptation. And unlike a lot of other gamers, we were not turned away from the fact it tells an original story. If anything, that makes it even more attractive.
When we say “original story”, we do not mean it does things never done before. As a matter of fact, one of the things Until Dawn does is play with familiar horror tropes. It is a mixed bag that does a lot more right than wrong. Great kills, but not the best writing, for example.
The end result is a flawed movie that is a lot of fun.
Women in Peril: Werewolf in a Women’s Prison/Drop
We have some some crazy things on our humble little podcast. There have been plenty of films that have given zero fucks about who they offend and what lines they cross. But we have never seen anything like 2006’s Werewolf in a Women’s Prison. For those thinking the title is a metaphor for a much deeper story, you will be disappointed. This is very much a case of what you see is what you get.
And what you see is a lot of naked women. How much? For the first time, it was enough for one of us to say it was too much. Not on any moral grounds; it was just more bare breasts than a person wants to see in one movie.
Between all the bare flesh, there are some awesome kills, questionable music choices, a werewolf that is simultaneously cool and awful looking, and Patton Oswalt’s wife.
It has been a rough year for Blumhouse. It once seemed like they could release anything and people would go see it. This year has been one box office failure after another, including this week’s feature presentation, Drop.
The premise is a neat one. A woman on a blind date starts receiving mysterious air drops that command her to do horrible things or in son will die. The execution, not so much.
It is a message movie that makes its message unimportant, a character study that leaves you not caring about its main character, and a thriller that is not so thrilling. There are some odd directorial choices, with some that are really good. But the ones that do not land make the movie look cheap.
The ending brings closure, but is not satisfying.
ABOUT THIS PODCAST:
Every week AIPT Movie Editor Nathaniel Muir and his cinema partner in crime Blake Heath discuss indie and genre movies you have have never heard of, the ones you cannot hear enough about, and the ones you never want to hear about again.
Episode 370: Mid year recap
Time moves more quickly now than it ever has. It was not that long ago that we were talking about a new show executive produced by the Duffer brothers. About a month later, it is one and done. As someone once reminded us, we are just two guys who watch movies. Production budgets and domestic grosses are only a passing interest to us. Still, there are some things that catch our attention. Were we right to say that Michael would get to $1 billion? And what does the future hold for Obsession?
There was a major change to our humble little podcast this year. We decided it would be in our best interests to be a little more focused. To that end, we went to just covering one movie each show. Despite this, we still managed to cover twenty-three movies over seventeen episodes. And twenty of them were released in 2026.
So, what do we have to talk about? And will we get as worked up as we did last week? The horrors of high school, zombies, musicals, buff nuns, and grindhouse adjacent fun. It may not all have been good, but everything left some sort of impression on us.
Adventures in Movies! is a part of the Morbidly Beautiful Podcast Network. Morbidly Beautiful is your one stop shop for all your horror needs. From the latest news and reviews to interviews and old favorites, it can be found at Morbidly Beautiful.
Adventures in Movies! is hosted by Nathaniel and Blake. You can find Nathaniel on Instagram at nathaninpoortaste. Blake can be found on Twitter @foureyedhorror and on Instagram at foureyedhorror. You can reach us personally or on Twitter @AdventuresinMo1.
Music in the background from https://www.FesliyanStudios.com
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Adventures in Movies! is hosted by Nathaniel and Blake. You can find Nathaniel on Instagram at nathaninpoortaste. Blake can be found on Twitter @foureyedhorror and on Instagram at foureyedhorror.
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