They Will Kill You (2026)

They Will Kill You (2026) stars Zazie Beetz as Asia Reeves, a young woman who takes a job as a maid in a satanic hotel on purpose. But why? Reasons! My wife and I enjoyed They Will Kill You because it's a freakin' fun ride; though for me, I would've enjoyed it considerably more back when I still liked Quentin Tarantino. This feels a lot like Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), which is the only work of QT's that I still revisit ever. 

The action choreography is top notch (though a little video game-y in parts) and the synth-heavy score by Carlos Rafael Rivera is quite good. It's great to see Heather Graham and Patricia Arquette in action, even though Arquette's Irish accent is a little dodgy. I live in Florida, so you know I'm an expert on Irish dialects. So all-in-all, They Will Kill You is worth a look and besides, who doesn't love a US-South African-Canadian co-production from a Russian director!?

Just A Look: The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015)

 

 

 

 

 

Just A Look: Luz (2018)

 

Just A Look: Satan's Blood (1978)

H!TITDS Episode #58 - The Devil's Rain

My good pal Nafa returns to the show for some more Shatner-talkin' as we explore the Faberge TV magic of The Devil's Rain. This movie is nuts, there's not much to it, and it is infinitely crazier than it thinks it is. Can a movie think? Anyway, listen to the new episode RIGHT HERE or check out old episodes with Nafa (like Impulse or The Devil's Rejects) in the SHOW ARCHIVE.

H!TITDS #55 - Satan's Blood

Why does that Satanic bird sing? Jeffrey and I find out once and for all. This movie is crazy and our discussion is crazy. This probably isn't the episode you play for your parents.

Listen here.

Check out the archives of the show here.

The Lords of Salem

My friend Nafa called me on Saturday and gave me a one word review of this film.

He said: "Kinetic."

I really don't know what to say about The Lords of Salem other than I highly recommend it because I don't want to spoil ANYTHING. Horror fans, if it's playing in your city, check it the fuck out. I think missing this one on the big screen would be a big mistake. Yesterday morning, at the theater, Rob Zombie raped my senses for 101 minutes and I left wanting more. I have been a Rob Zombie fan since Halloween II bashed my face in back in '09 and I had high hopes for this film. This film is a cross between Dario Argento's Inferno, Juan López Moctezuma's Alucarda, The Sentinel (1977), and a Windows 95 screensaver.

This film feels like a companion piece to Ti West's The House of the Devil but it goes way, way out of its way to get under your skin. One thing that Rob Zombie does is try too hard and I appreciate that. Everyone should do that. My best friend Scott once brewed a pot of coffee using caffeinated water instead of normal water. God knows that turned out well. I also noticed a big visual reference to Fulci and some dream logic that would have made The Godfather of Gore and Argento scratch their heads.

I wanted something that wasn't a remake and I got it. I wanted something that wasn't "found footage" and I got it. I wanted something smart, crazy, over-the-top, nauseatingly sexy, and blasphemous. Okay, maybe blasphemy wasn't really that high on my list but I sure as shit got more than I knew what to do with. Like I was saying, RZ always tries too hard and he bends over backwards to offend (as the directors of many a possession/Satanic-themed horror tale have done in the past) devout sensibilities. If you're easily offended by the site of Sheri Moon Zombie's butt then avoid this at all costs.

(This is where it happened.)

It is still hard for me to believe that "select cities" meant Tampa and it also meant, my theater: AMC Veterans 24 out on Anderson Road. It was an overcast and muggy day (unlike the above photo) and it was nice to sit in the cool darkness with Rob Zombie's feverish brain. Hopefully, The Lords of Salem will go nationwide so my homey Brad can go see it. Veterans 24 is an interesting theater. It has the feel of the theaters of my youth but also has the impossible danger of being in the flight path of Tampa International Airport which is disturbingly nearby. Yikes. Thanks to the Final Destination movies, I have some terrible scenarios in my head every time I watch a film there.

Guest Post: Norman J. Warrenthon

Let's face it. Brad rules. Here is one of the many reasons



Somehow I had never watched a film by British horror director Norman J. Warren. I had it in my head that his films were cheap and honestly not that good. Being a fella that enjoys a good theme and a good moviethon, Elizabeth and I decided to give him a shot. Here's a shocker: I was wrong. Minor (not much) spoilers ahead.

Satan's Slave 1976

Warren had made a couple of successful sex comedies and when time came to make a third he decided that he didn't want to be known as a sexploitation director. So he spent several years putting together financing for his debut horror film Satan's Slave (A.K.A. Evil Heritage, I like the title Satan's Slave much better.) Armed with a script from Pete Walker mainstay David McGillivray (writer of House Of Whipcord, The Confessional, and Schizo) and starring Michael Gough, Satan's Slave is a charming little film. In fact that is one of the things that several of Warren's films have going for them: charm. I've mentioned before that if you had a British horror coin in the 70's (sans Hammer and Amicus) with Pete Walker on one side Warren would be on the other. Where Pete's films are maybe a little more professional in the budget department Warren compensates with ingenuity and enthusiasm. The story here, of a young woman named Catherine who may be the reincarnation of a ancient witch who goes to stay with her possibly head of a Satanic cult uncle, who may be trying to fully revive said ancient witch in her body, is nothing new. But it is all carried out quite nicely in widescreen with great practical gore effects, a restrained performance from Gough, and a very nice set piece in the form of a country estate. The gore scenes are nicely paced with the rest of the film so that when they appear they really pop. I watched this from one of Mill Creek's trusty public domain horror packs and it is is in widescreen. There is a new DVD coming from Scorpion Releasing with extra features that is supposed to be uncut for the first time ever. As we will see later with Terror, Scorpion does a fantastic job with their releases so I will definitely be picking up Satan's Slave from them.

See Richard's review here.

Prey 1978

Next Warren had a chance to utilize a professional, top notch film crew that was in between productions, provided that he worked very quickly. So in 10 days he filmed Prey (Alien Prey in the U.S.) Prey is the story of an alien that lands on Earth, kills a pair of young lovers, takes the form of the man and infiltrates the lives of a lesbian couple that live nearby. Usually when a film is written as they go you can tell it but this isn't the case with Prey as nothing seems out of sync or like it doesn't belong. Starring Barry Stokes (of the excellent Spanish giallo/proto slasher The Corruption Of Chris Miller) as the alien and Sally Falkner (Vampyres) and Glory Annen (Felicity, the erotic film not the t.v. Show) as the lesbians. It is really quite fitting that Sally Falkner was also in Vampyres because to me, Prey plays out very much like a Larraz film from this period. Sex, danger, and death in a British country manor and in places, it is reminiscent of Larraz' fantastic film Symptoms. You know, plus an alien werewolf.

Listen to Hello! This Is The Doomed Show's episode of Symptoms here

Terror 1978

After Prey, Warren saw Suspiria. And unlike the rest of us he did something about it. The story goes that Warren and his cohorts made a list of some of their favorite scenes/situations from horror films and turned that list over to David McGillivray to make a script of it. Meanwhile Warren and his director of photography Les Young set about to make it with Suspiria in mind. And we know what that means. Gore, interesting camera setups and gel lighting! ( And for those less charitable folks a script that exists primarily to get us from set piece to set piece.) The film begins with a flashback to a witch putting a curse on those who are burning her at the stake. Except it's not a flashback at all it's a film that has just been finished and we are watching it at the wrap party. The director James (John Nolan) and his cousin Ann (Carolyn Courage) soon find out that the curse is very real as folks start dropping in brutal ways. There are some nice stalking scenes, a sweet little “girl's car strands her at a deserted cottage in the rain sequence with Chewbacca,' a film studio attacking a man and killing him in a very Argentoesque manner. In fact according to the documentary on the new Scorpion Releasing disc, Warren says that he got word that Argento himself saw the film, enjoyed it, and took an idea or two for Tenebre. High praise indeed. Terror hit me in all the right places. It even has Chewbacca.

See Richard's review on Terror here

And listen to our podcast episode on Terror here.

Inseminoid 1981

The long and short of it is that Inseminoid (A.K.A. Horror Planet) is Warren's Alien ripoff. It's low budget and it shows but there is really no pretense here. A group of archaeologists run into some trouble when one of their own is impregnated with an alien baby, goes insane, and starts murdering everyone. There is a good performance from Judy Geeson (A Candle For The Devil, Hammer's Fear In The Night) as the crazy pregnant person killing everyone, an okay performance from Stephanie Beacham (who after appearing in films from Hammer, Amicus, and Pete Walker, may have just been completing the set) and everyone else is okay to bad. Bad being Jennifer Ashley's performance as the leader of the archaeologists. She has some spectacularly bad line readings. This film out of the bunch seems to be a less personal than the rest. I mean, I enjoyed it despite it's flaws (mostly budgetary I think) with it's Alienish plot and perhaps a dash of Cronenberg's body horror thrown in but it didn't grab me like the other ones.

Bloody New Year 1987

Here we are at Mr. Warren's last full length horror film and folks it is a doozy. A group of kids get into it with some thugs at a carnival and escape in a boat only to crash land on a haunted island. And that's all I'm saying in regards to the plot. What I will say is that the special effects are crazy inventive for a low budget horror film. One in particular, which I won't spoil, is breathtaking. Once again despite the low budget, you get the feeling that Norman J. Warren loves film and filmmaking. In fact I thought of Paul Naschy while watching them because you get a sense that Warren was excited to be making films as a fan of the genre. That may be a stretch but it is the way it came across to me. It is a shame that his career ended here for the most part because Bloody New Year is a little gem of a mid 80's horror film. Think of a camp slasher mixed with The Shining and you have a starting point. Good stuff.

As usual Elizabeth and I ranked them:

Elizabeth

1. Terror

2. Bloody New Year

3. Prey

4. Satan's Slave

5. Inseminoid

Brad

1. Terror

2. Bloody New Year

3. Satan's Slave

4. Inseminoid

5. Prey

Note on my list: Satan's Slave easily had the 2nd spot on my list til we got to Bloody New Year. It edged it out. And Inseminoid, despite my non glowing mention above, barely edged out Prey because of Judy Geeson's very intense performance.

-Brad Hogue

Daughters of Satan

Daughters of Satan
Directed by Hollingsworth Morse
Released: 1972
Starring Tom Selleck, Barra Grant, Tani Guthrie, Paraluman, Vic Silayan, Vic Diaz
Running Time: 90 minutes



James (played by Tom Selleck) is an art dealer living in the Philippines with his wife Chris (Barra Grant). One day, he sees a painting of three witches being burned at the stake and at the center of the painting is a woman who looks an awful lot like Chris. Instead of packing his bags and relocating to Hong Kong or something, James decides to buy the painting which has a strange effect on his wife. Pretty soon, all manner of supernatural and witchy shit starts happening. Like there’s a big Rottweiler named Nicodemis who shows up and starts giving James some trouble. And there’s that evil maid they can’t get rid of and some Satanists and a gang of bandits and whatever.



As you probably already guessed, Daughters of Satan is kind of like a really bad and obvious episode of Night Gallery stretched out for an hour and a half. Veteran television director Hollingsworth Morse (great name!) did not pull out all the stops for this feature film. It looks like just another TV movie. The only surprise here is a rather sweaty, naked, and spirited torture sequence at the beginning of the film. Don’t let that fool you, there’s only a little more trash stashed around the rest of this flick. I mean, this was made in the Philippines so you can be sure there will be more cheapness and more WTF hilarity later but there isn’t much atmosphere to accentuate these things.



Tom Selleck is Tom Selleck. The guy is just rad and he’s pretty good in this film. I’m sure he screens Daughters of Satan for his friends every weekend because he’s just so proud of it. Barra Grant is pretty much agony to watch in this film. I wasn’t sure why she was in the movie until her top came off and then I was like ohhhhh, I get it. Tani Guthrie (of The Thirsty Dead) plays Kitty the whip-wielding witch with a lot of gusto but even her energy doesn’t save the day. One character I really liked was the creepy mortician played by Paquito Salcedo. There’s a scene where he seems (just seems) like he’s about to have his way with a pretty young corpse before James interrupts (or possibly cockblocks) him. I guess it’s okay. She’s not going anywhere.



Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the awkward, cheesy vibe and the moments of harsh lighting vs. garish décor of Daughters of Satan but this doesn’t compensate for all the dumb and the dull. This movie is more sleepy than dreamy and the bland execution wins out over all the positives. I don’t know if anyone back in ’72 was the least bit surprised by the ending of this one but I’m sure audiences got a kick out of OOO WEE OOO moments in the film’s music score. I know I did. Some of you 70s movie freaks out there might get some enjoyment out of Daughters of Satan but it’s nothing more than an average time waster.



Quotes

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve got a mind full of meringue.”

Jigoku

Jigoku
AKA Hell,The Sinners of Hell
Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa
Released: 1960
Starring Shigeru Amachi, Utako Mitsuya, Yochi Numata, Hiroshi Hayashi, Jun Otomo
Running Time: 101 minutes
Country of Origin: Japan

[There are some minor spoilers in this review that I don't believe will affect your enjoyment of this film. Honestly, I’d rather you go into this one completely blind and experience it for yourself. But hey, I’m a blogger! I got kids to feed? Wait. Who do I work for? Could it be… SATAN!??!! It’s not Satan. Satan isn’t this cruel.]



Shiro Shimizu (played by Shigeru Amachi) has got some real problems. While hanging out with his “friend” Tamura (Yoichi Numata) one night, he takes part in the hit and run of a gangster. This gangster’s mother (Kiyoko Tsuji) witnesses the crime and vows her revenge on both Tamura and Shiro (even though he wasn’t driving) with the aid of her son’s girlfriend Yoko (Akiko Ono). As if this weren’t bad enough, Shiro’s fiancée Yokiko (Utako Mitsuya) is killed in a taxi accident the night she was going to tell him something very important. While falling into Yoko and the gangster’s mom’s trap and shunned by his future in-laws, Shiro gets a letter from home that his mother is dying.



While his mother (played by Kimi Tokudaiji) lay dying in a cheap and corrupt rest home, Shiro’s father (Hiroshi Hayashi) is living in the next room with his mistress. Shiro meets Sachiko (Akiko Ono again), a girl who reminds him an awful lot of his dead fiancée and who he immediately has a crush on. She lives at the rest home with her drunken artist father who sells his paintings of hell to get by. Tamura shows up in town to cause more trouble for Shiro as does Yoko and the gangster’s mom. Someone serves some bad fish at the rest home’s tenth anniversary (plus there’s a bottle of poison sake going around) and next thing you know, pretty much every single character we’ve met up to this point goes straight to freakin’ hell.



But wait, there’s more! Now in hell, Shiro discovers some disturbing revelations about his family and is forced to face all of his earthly sins. Oh and Enma, the king of hell, is going to get his money’s worth torturing him for all eternity. In the underworld, Yoko reveals to Shiro that she was going to tell him she was pregnant the night she died and that their unborn child is trapped somewhere in hell. Our whiny miserable “hero” decides to get his shit together and go rescue their child so that she won’t suffer along with all the lost souls who totally deserve to be there. But will this young man’s will be enough to challenge the will of the king of hell? Wait, why is Sachiko in hell? She’s a nice girl? Oh man, why is there a river of pus and excrement? That’s just nasty! These questions and many more are answered in Jigoku!



What’s the most fun you could ever have going to hell? With legendary wacko director Nobuo Nakagawa’s 1960 film, Jigoku, you silly! The cacophonous and sensual opening credit sequence alone is enough to make this one of the strangest film about H-E-double hockey sticks. Jigoku is as much about the tortures of hell as it is about guilt and what spectacular failures human beings are. There’s also melodrama so overwrought and irony so ironic it’s almost too ironic for me to even be talking about it. Either way, I bet you haven’t seen anything quite like this before.



I’ve rarely enjoyed a movie that was this hard to sit through. Its two sections, the earthly plane and the world of hell, are both filled with agony and misery. The second half just has more screaming. The feeling of dread is excruciating as everything just keeps spinning out of control. Lives are wrecked and people just keep making stupid ass choices that land their butts on the griddle. The tortures awaiting them, though cheesily staged, are brutal. There’s a demon whose job it is to smash yer dang teeth in. Hey, it’s a living! The compositions by cinematographer Mamoru Morita are striking and the film’s wild score by the prolific Michiaki Watanbe is simply mind-blowing.



All of the actors are totally devoted to this piece of insanity. You know you’ve got an excellent cast when the viewer is willing to die and go to hell with them. And it takes a great actor to make an unpleasant character into a fascinating portrait and that is just what Shigeru Amachi does with Shiro. The funniest aspect of this character is how he is a magnet for women. Yukiko, Yoko, Sachiko, and even his father’s mistress, all go for this friggin’ guy.



However, for me, the shining star of Jigoku is Yoichi Numata (of Ringu). I think it was around the second time that Tamura materialized out of thin air that I realized this character had a little more up his sleeve than just a sleazy prankster. It is quite clear that this roguish gentleman is a catalyst for a sin, a mad soul from hell on an unholy mission, a total dickweed trying to make everyone suffer as much as he, etc. Numata’s performance is wildly over-the-top, spastic, and totally perfect.



Is Jigoku a classic film? Oh yeah. Is it also shrill as hell (really, duder, like "hell"?) and a little (read as: a lot) exasperating during some of its running time? Mm-hm. It’s a fairly obvious art movie that is trying to hide behind its tawdry tapestry of misery and horror. I urge you to watch this film as soon as you can but I must warn you: You will go to hell and your screams of perpetual torment will go unnoticed in the chaotic din of eternity. Bring your friends! Jigoku is a great date movie as well. But you're not getting laid after it's over.



More screenshots