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)

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! ​

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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.

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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!

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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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