The Bitter Wolf

5/9/2024

The Bitter Bite #1

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Dispatches from The Wolf Cave

Week 1: It's a Wonderful Slice (2024), The White Bishop, Creepy Crawly (2022), Mary Had a Little Lamb (2023)

I’m back! Sorry I was gone so long, but life doesn’t slow down for anyone. Especially not for me, who seems to be in very high demand these days from the waxing and waning of that gibbous thing in the sky.

Connie, what’s a “gibbous”? Some kind of cheese? I knew that thing was made of cheese!

Going back and forth between my wolf and human forms can be quite taxing. There’s the pulling and the itching and the stretching and, most disturbing of all, the popping! The Popping of The Teeth, as it's referred to in ancient werewolf lore: The teeth eject themselves and clatter to the floor, leaving my gums flapping in the wind wilder than gramma’s curtains in a windstorm.

(Actually, I never knew my granny, which makes it easier to eat yours when she ventures into my woods, muahaha.) Make way for the canines, you sorry excuse for a tooth!

I meant my real tooth, Connie; I’m not calling your grandmother a tooth.

By the way, speaking of taxing: Did you know that were-beings are taxed at a higher rate than normal citizens, and SINGLE were-beings are taxed even higher? Make it make sense!

Anywho, between brooding about the unfairness of life, attending to my cat dad duties, and dealing with a nasty bout of indigestion from a rotten possum, I’ve been slagging behind on my horror movie updates.

Consider this the first dispatch from my Wolf Cave! A regular roundup of movies I’ve watched recently that, for some reason, I think you should watch, too. They run the spectrum of low-budget to big studio productions. They’re stories from every decade and every subgenre I can get my beady little eyes on. I’ll look at new directors and horror titans. And I will try to keep my Critters obsession from spilling over too much.

It’s shorter this week because I talked so much, but I promise that next week will feature loads more movies.

So, let's sink what teeth we have left into our first selections. And don't forget to floss afterwards, you sickos!

IT'S A WONDERFUL SLICE (2024)
dir. Michael Moutsatsos starring Rick Ryan, Sandra E. Williams, Joshua Salaza Fallat, and Steven Natale

Three things: 1) I love X-mas horror. 2) I love anthologies. 3) If Michael Matsoutsos did it, and Phil Herman’s name is attached to the project, I’m going to watch it. That’s how I wound up with It’s a Wonderful Slice playing in the Wolf Cave. Multiple homicidal Santas run around the woods hacking away at their victims. Why, you ask? Their motivations differ, but some of them are angry about not being left milk and cookies for their X-mas services! Wouldn’t you be upset, too?

These are the same woods in which Krampus prowls around on all fours looking for prey! The same ones where stock footage wolves feast upon the slabs of an unfortunate victim of a pissed-off Santa. Elsewhere, an obsessed fan stalks a vacationing celebrity and a woman vents childhood frustration on a kidnapped Mall Santa. It’s Santas and holiday terror galore! This anthology from Michael Matsoutsos features five unique slices of horror that will satisfy fans of low-budget genre flicks. If you like this, you should check out Matsoutsos’ other work, especially his 2019 slasher The Butcher, in which he portrays a chef who goes crazy because of Mad Cow disease. Awesome!

Watch the trailer here!

THE WHITE BISHOP
By Brandon Perras-Sanchez and Aron Beauregard

Okay, it’s not a movie, and it’s true that I cannot read, but my court order specifies I must attempt to enhance my literacy at least once a year. Sigh. I mean, growl.

I guess I’ll trade out one annual hobby for another. Goodbye, Australian walkabout; hello The White Bishop, a new horror story from Brandon Perras-Sanchez and Aron Beauregard!

I watched Perras-Sanchez’s movie Saint Drogo a few months ago, and it left such an impression that I reimposed my hibernation just to compose myself! I loved that movie’s religious folk horror vibes, so I was pleased to see those themes emerge again in the plot description of his collaboration with Beauregard: “A skeleton crew of desperate men looks to capitalize on a handsome reward offered by an eerie outsider. But when they brave the harsh winter waters to transport an ominous crate, their food supply mysteriously spoils, forcing them to stray off course. After several weeks of dead winds, absent sunlight, and diminishing rations, the crew begins to question not only their faith, but each other.”

Sounds fantastic to me! Find The White Bishop here.

CREEPY CRAWLY (2022)
Dir. Chalit Krileadmongkon, Pakphum Wongjinda starring Chanya McClory, Mike Angelo, Benjamin Joseph Varney, Kulteera Yordchang

Last week it was body-snatching slugs, and this week it’s a body-snatching centipede monster. What’s with the body-snatching insects? Who cares! This Thai creature feature is very creepy, very crawly, and very relevant to our times.

It’s true COVID-19 horror: A group of travelers has to quarantine at a Bangkok hotel, and soon they realize it’s not just a deadly virus they have to worry about. Why not throw Edgar the Bug at them, too? But this sucker has Edgar beat in body count and in gross-out. It’s quite a ride!

MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB (2023)
Dir. Jason Arber starring May Kelly, Christine Ann Nyland, Mark Sears, Gaston Alexander

You know the story: Mary had a little lamb, and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go. That’s the basic premise here, too, except Mary’s lost the plot all alone in the woods, and instead of following her to school, her “little lamb” stomps around the grounds wielding an ax! A true crime podcast plans to get to the bottom of mysterious disappearances in Mary’s woods, but the lamb has other plans for the ragtag crew.

The tagline for this is ITS FLEECE WAS RED AS BLOOD, which fills me with such glee, I could burst out into nursery rhyme! There’s something about the way these horror riffs on fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and classic children’s stories remind us not to take everything so seriously that I find to be precisely what we need in these self-serious times!

There’s loads of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey alumni involved in this, including Danielle Scott, Lila Lasso, Gillian Broderick, and producer Scott Jeffrey. I particularly enjoyed seeing May Kelly again after enjoying her, and many others from this cast, in The Killing Tree (2022) and The Curse of Humpty Dumpty 2 (2022).

These movies are low-budget blasts; they’re consistently great, deadpan funny, and bluntly brutal. Any time one of these fairy tale massacres comes out, I am tuning in!

Whew. Well, that’s enough gushing about the humans for this week. How many more of these do I have to do? See you next time!

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5/6/2024

The 80s Reborn: The 2020s Slasher Boom

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Source: AfterDark Substack

by Jimmy O'Hara

All Hallows Eve is significant around the world for various historical, cultural, and pop-cultural reasons, but for horror fans, the hype also revolves around the equally emblematic slasher hit Halloween (1978).

Starring legendary, future Oscar-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis in her debut/breakout role, the small indie genre film perfected the slick storytelling of Black Christmas (1974) and combined it with the viscerally grunge gore of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) to cement the subgenre for over the next two decades; it propelled the slasher horror genre into the 1980s just in time for the encroaching reek of Reagan era satanic panic.

Forty years later, Halloween (2018) premiered at the back end of the 2010’s to resurrect the slasher genre from a depth of hell in which even Jason and Freddy wouldn’t find themselves lurking. Once more, the slasher lives on to see a new decade: The 2020’s– bigger, better, and scarier than ever before seen on screens.

Jason sycophants and Crystal Lake campers may be offended that Friday the 13th (1980) is not being credited as patient zero for the slasher BOOM that defined the 80s. Yet, despite premiering at the top of the decade, Friday the 13th would not have become the blockbuster series it continues to be (A24’s Camp Crystal Lake serialized adaptation drops later this year) if Carpenter’s hit hadn’t first succeeded in subverting horror fans, critics, and general audience perceptions alike two years prior.

Without Halloween, audiences would have never met Jason and his mother, Freddy and the dream warriors of Elm Street, or even Ghostface and his movie buffs DECADES later. Nearly three hundred (300!!!) American slashers were produced between 1980-1989 alone. Those kinds of numbers, and their continuous cultural impact, are hard to recreate. But the 2020’s dare to try, and it's all thanks to Carpenter's franchise.

Cut to 2018, Curtis is in a career resurgence…EXACTLY forty years after her debut in Halloween. It was the perfect time for a Halloween revival and, with the help of a changing world, evolving tastes, and the viewpoints of a new generation, the perfect time to breathe new life into the slasher! Since 2018, and even more since the 2020’s began, audiences have been treated to revivals of their favorite franchises including Scream, Friday the 13th, The Strangers. And movies like MaXXXIne, Fear Street, and Bodies Bodies Bodies are shining, fresh stars for a new, slasher-loving generation.

The slasher was first introduced during a conflicted era in American history; in the shadow of a war and political stagnation, social repressions manifested on the surface of mainstream consciousness revolving around gender and sexuality. It was similar to where we are now; in the wake of a global pandemic and rampant and rising conservatism, a new generation is reshaping the dialogue that will define America’s future (or else face a fate worse than a slasher victim). In this environment, it’s natural that the slasher be reworked as well.

An iconic, genre-defining, critically acclaimed, and period-reflecting slasher masterpiece like Halloween or Scream has yet to reveal itself in this new generation. It will though, sooner rather than later, because the 2020’s are THE first decade to watch for horror since the 1980s concluded.

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5/6/2024

Welcome to Friends of The Bitter Wolf!

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Art by Justin Addison

Friends of The Bitter Wolf

Greetings, pesky humans! It is I, B.P. Wolf, with some semi-embarrassing news to share.

During this year’s Wolf Moon, I may have gotten a bit carried away with the festivities. Connie forgot to deadbolt the door, so I escaped from my den and paid a visit to the local village. I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened, but in my state of ecstasy, it seems I was more anaconda than wolf that day.

Later, I burped up various assortments of teeth and bone, three full fingers, a throat piece (I don’t know what that’s called!), someone’s ponytail, and four or five separate wallets. Would you believe that between all of those wallets, I was only able to scrounge up enough change for a single McFlurry? And then the machine was broken. Criminal!

Anyway, this happened all the way back in January. I had just begun settling into another hibernation when the villagers came along and dragged me kicking and screaming out of my cave.

Pro-tip: Never black out and gobble down everyone’s credit cards and expect no repercussions from the sensitive humans. Their wheels of injustice might be slow, but in this case, they were steady, and now I’ve been sentenced by the Wolf People’s Court to make “regular contact with humankind.”

So, I decided to make you, my readers, suffer with me! Every month, I’ll present to you this court-ordered commentary written by some horror-loving human acquaintances.

I told them they can ramble on about whatever topics they think are important. I don’t care! I’m just doing my civic duty.

Without further ado, I'm pleased to introduce Jimmy O’Hara! Jimmy is a versatile queer artist who writes horror commentary over at his AfterDark blog. He also acts, writes screenplays, and is known around the world as the #1 aficionado of all things Scooby-Doo.

Okay, that last part might be an exaggeration.

He likes Scooby-Doo. But Jimmy, I ask you this: How can you promote that evil Mutt of Mystery? He consistently slurps up the last of the McFlurries!

Don’t believe me?

Do you have a better explanation for why those machines are always “broken”? There's no mystery to these machines. It’s Scoob!

Anway, let me shut up so Jimmy can tell you what he thinks about slasher movies, then and now.

Connie, leave that mouse alone and pay attention! Jimmy’s talking.

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The Bitter Bite #1

Dispatches from The Wolf Cave

Week 1: It's a Wonderful Slice (2024), The White Bishop, Creepy Crawly (2022), Mary Had a Little Lamb (2023)

IT'S A WONDERFUL SLICE (2024)
dir. Michael Moutsatsos starring Rick Ryan, Sandra E. Williams, Joshua Salaza Fallat, and Steven Natale

THE WHITE BISHOP
By Brandon Perras-Sanchez and Aron Beauregard

CREEPY CRAWLY (2022)
Dir. Chalit Krileadmongkon, Pakphum Wongjinda starring Chanya McClory, Mike Angelo, Benjamin Joseph Varney, Kulteera Yordchang

MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB (2023)
Dir. Jason Arber starring May Kelly, Christine Ann Nyland, Mark Sears, Gaston Alexander

The 80s Reborn: The 2020s Slasher Boom

Welcome to Friends of The Bitter Wolf!

About The Bitter Wolf

Archives

Categories

The Bitter Bite #1

Dispatches from The Wolf Cave

Week 1: It's a Wonderful Slice (2024), The White Bishop, Creepy Crawly (2022), Mary Had a Little Lamb (2023)

IT'S A WONDERFUL SLICE (2024)dir. Michael Moutsatsos starring Rick Ryan, Sandra E. Williams, Joshua Salaza Fallat, and Steven Natale

THE WHITE BISHOPBy Brandon Perras-Sanchez and Aron Beauregard

CREEPY CRAWLY (2022)Dir. Chalit Krileadmongkon, Pakphum Wongjinda starring Chanya McClory, Mike Angelo, Benjamin Joseph Varney, Kulteera Yordchang

MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB (2023)Dir. Jason Arber starring May Kelly, Christine Ann Nyland, Mark Sears, Gaston Alexander

The 80s Reborn: The 2020s Slasher Boom

Welcome to Friends of The Bitter Wolf!

About The Bitter Wolf

Archives

Categories

IT'S A WONDERFUL SLICE (2024)
dir. Michael Moutsatsos starring Rick Ryan, Sandra E. Williams, Joshua Salaza Fallat, and Steven Natale

THE WHITE BISHOP
By Brandon Perras-Sanchez and Aron Beauregard

CREEPY CRAWLY (2022)
Dir. Chalit Krileadmongkon, Pakphum Wongjinda starring Chanya McClory, Mike Angelo, Benjamin Joseph Varney, Kulteera Yordchang

MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB (2023)
Dir. Jason Arber starring May Kelly, Christine Ann Nyland, Mark Sears, Gaston Alexander