Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island—Movie Review

by Zakary McGaha

2019 has been, and will continue to be, a pretty good year for horror movies. Like always, installments in already-established franchises are stealing most of the conversation, but there have been some notable new releases as well. So much so that it’s difficult to stay on top of things.

Today’s review, however, is about a sequel in a franchise that will never die; a franchise that adult horror fans the world over love, despite it being for kids; a franchise that has won the hearts of countless generations past and countless generations to come: Scooby-Doo! My love for this franchise is intense. My childhood bedroom was decked out with Scooby bed sheets, Scooby curtains…and I even had a pair of Scooby-Doo underwear.

This franchise, it seems, is never NOT doing well for itself. There have been so many separate animated TV series, standalone animated films, related-to-each-other-but-still-standalone animated films, live-action/star-studded films, low-budget/made-for-tv live-action films, made-for-tv-animated films…oh shit, I just had a nosebleed. Anyway, there’s been a lot of stuff, and I haven’t even mentioned the gist of everything!

There really isn’t an overarching timeline for Scooby-Doo, though there are some links that run through certain things. I think of the franchise as a multiverse in which certain parallels stay the same, and some don’t. For instance: different shows and movies that can’t possibly exist in the same universe make references to the same Mystery Inc. cases. Another example: one purported prequel, as well as its sequel, supposedly take place before the live-action movie, yet, technology and culture-wise, clearly take place after. Yeah, go figure.

I find all these things fascinating. The Scoob-tific universe is a fun one to get lost in. If you ask different people which show or movie is their favorite, you’re likely to get different answers. In fact, I’ve found the standard response you’d expect of, “The original; duh,” doesn’t apply here. There are simply too many great incarnations/timelines, and, given that the franchise is so old, people of different generations likely grew up watching different incarnations.

I was born in 1998, and, consequently, have always been partial to the first string of four direct-to-video animated movies that started in 1998 with Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. Of course, there have been WAAAAAY more than four direct-to-video animated Scoob movies, but the first four that kicked the trend off were direct sequels to one another in the sense that they were made by the same animation studio with the same voice-cast/art direction/etc.

The movies that would follow would change as the franchise as a whole changed…as in, their art styles began mimicking whichever new tv-show was running on the networks…which, in turn, left the first four movies…Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost, Scoooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders, and Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase…alone on their own, proverbial island. (NOTE: despite being the first direct-to-video animated Scoob, movie, Zombie Island was pre-dated by three made-for-tv animated movies in the 80s and another one in the 90s).

Despite these four, original direct-to-video animated movies being on their own island, references to them are made throughout many other movies (and maybe even one of the shows, if my memory serves). My sentiments of absolutely adoring these four movies and putting them on a pedestal above the other incarnations are echoed quite frequently. The main thing people like about them is that, in contrast with most other Scoob stories, the monsters and whatnot in these movies were real. Plus, the animation was striking.

These movies were realistic, bad-ass, and, strangely, sort of gritty and emotional. Overall, though, they were creative and fun, and didn’t follow the simple formula to a tee; their stories played around way more, while still staying recognizable.

With the current trend in horror franchises being sequels that ignore other sequels, and, instead, act as “the real” sequels to the original films, it seemed inevitable that Scooby and the gang would drop what they were doing and return to Zombie Island.

Fuck the current trend in horror franchises.

Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island may be the most pointless sequel I’ve ever seen. It’s surprising that it doesn’t even try to add onto the narrative set forth in the original.

Spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t seen these films and are interested, I suggest you go watch them…

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Anyway, the original Zombie Island is notorious for its all-out, awesome ending. Not only were there real-life zombies and pirate-ghosts on Moonscar Island…there were also werecats. Naturally, Scooby and the gang managed to barely escape the werecats, which in turn brought about the furry fiends’ expiration considering that they couldn’t steal the gang’s souls before the moonlight ran out or something. The death of the werecats resulted in the freeing of the zombies’ souls, because the zombies only served as a warning to hapless people wandering onto the island.

The ending didn’t leave a single thing unexplained. Every “i” was dotted and every “t” was crossed.

Flash-forward twenty-one years, as well as several shows and tons of movies…most of which took place in their own universes…and we find that, for some reason, fucking Velma doesn’t think the business on Moonscar Island is finished. Something “doesn’t sit right with her” or whatever…and she even blogged about it. Yeah, I know: desperate.

The gang doesn’t wind back up on the island because of Velma’s uneasiness, however. They wind up there because Shaggy won vacation-tickets off a television show; said vacation destination happens to be Moonscar Island, which has been turned into a resort. Yeah, I know: desperate.

From there, stupidity and bad humor ensues. It turns out the whole thing is an elaborate setup because some nutty movie-director read Velma’s blog and thought it’d be a good idea to film a “real-life” movie, wherein actors dressed up as zombies terrorize the Mystery Inc. gang. Yeah, I know: desperate.

And that’s not all: there are also more werecats! However, these werecats aren’t real. They’re just copycats…heh-heh…who apparently also read her blog, and they’re conveniently looking for the pirate treasure during the time Mystery Inc. is there. Yeah, I know: desperate.

The one thing I feared going into the movie was that, since the “case” was being reopened, it was going to turn out that the supernatural aspects of the first Zombie Island had been fake all along. Luckily, that didn’t happen, and that’s about the only positive thing I can say for the movie.

In addition to the copycat boogies running around the resort, there is an actual werecat running around trying to get at the gang, but this aspect is never explained. In fact, you’re supposed to believe said werecat was one of the fake ones, even though it looked 100% different and performed inhuman feats, such as ripping the top off a car.

The big reveal at the end happens when they remove the masks of the fake werecats and realize that the other one…again, the one that looked 100% different and performed inhuman feats of aggression…had been real all along. Yeah, I know: desperate.

My main gripe about all this is that NOTHING NEW HAPPENS. I would’ve been fine if we learned something more about the werecats. I would’ve been more than fine if it turned out there were other werecats who had been planning revenge all these years. Instead, we got several fake werecats and fake zombies, which was, I guess, supposed to make us think that the supernatural aspects of the original had been fake as well, but then we get reassured that what we already knew was right all along because there’s another, real werecat still alive. Like…the overall plot ends up exactly where it was before (except for one new werecat that doesn’t do much)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a nutshell, Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island isn’t a sequel. Instead, it’s another movie that happens to take place in the same setting. Scoob and the gang go back to the island of the original movie, do some stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with the original movie’s plot, find out there’s another werecat at the very end, and then leave.

It’d be like if they made a movie called Tommy Jarvis: Return to Crystal Lake, wherein Tommy returns to Crystal Lake, gets tickled by a bunch of rodeo clowns, and then sees Jason in his rearview mirror as he’s driving back home whilst laughing due to said clown-tickling.

This movie was fucking pointless. It also had Elvira in it. Yeah, I know: desperate.

2/5 stars.

September 17, 2019 by Silent Motorist Media

Zebra Summer Item #4: Bloody Valentine by Stephen George

Book Review by Zakary McGaha

In Zebra Summer, Zakary McGaha (author of Locker Arms and Soothing the Savage Swamp Beast), chronicles a very specific portion of his summer reading-schedule: horror novels published by Zebra Books.

Whew…I took a little break from reading Zebra books. I’m glad I did. I read some awesome things like Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, The Pumpkin House by Chad Brown and The Manse by Lisa Cantrell, amongst others. Life is too short to just read bad books because you’re writing a series on a blog site for fun.

However, I ended up feeling like the time was right to get back to my old commitment, and a friend of mine had let me borrow some books, several of which were Zebra novels, so I decided to go for it.

Boy, did I regret it.

Stephen George is, by all accounts (even mine), a fine writer. His Zebra novel, Bloody Valentine, has so many good ingredients, but, for whatever reason, **cough cough Zebra overlords cough cough** wound up less than readable.

The novel’s main flaw is that it presents itself as a sort of bad ass whodunnit/slasher with supernatural undertones, but it’s apparent from very early on EXACTLY who did it! Now, to be fair, not every little detail about the supernatural slasher is known, but yes, the identity of the killer is clear.

To explain this flaw, I’ll need to explain the plot. Basically, a group of college kids participated in an experiment spearheaded by the FBI back when the profiling of serial killers was in its infancy. The experiment involved creating a false murderer from scratch in order to explain his motives and, thus, understand real serial killers. Soon afterward, real people start dying, and all of the deaths fit the fictional killer’s modus operandi.

It is then revealed that your first guess is actually the right one: yes, the college kids somehow willed this killer into being, and now he’s on the loose. Granted, there is a slight twist in this near the end, but this basic premise is the right one. In fact, early on the killer is shown in “ghost” form or something, so there’s no guessing…

…which leads one to wonder why every character is trying to figure out who the killer is throughout the whole novel. Like, one minute everyone’s accepting the reality of the situation, then there’s denial, then there’s a supernatural occurrence, then “Oh, no! We were just imagining things,” then there’s another supernatural occurrence, and so on and so forth.

Throughout the bulk of the novel, the characters are running around in circles while in the dark whilst ignoring the glowing answer icon that’s screaming, “I’m here! I’m here!” Even when they finish second guessing themselves and accept that they’re dealing with something science can’t explain, which happens pretty late in the novel, they don’t do anything different. They run around in the same circles.

This novel went from awesome to flat-out boring QUICK. And the boringness stretched itself out til the very end.

The writing was awesome, and the characters themselves were interesting and well-drawn, but the boredom factor got in the way of everything. Literally everything the characters did was pointless, repetitive, and just flat-out stupid. At the very end, the main character actually does something useful, which leads one to wonder: why did Stephen George have all the characters do nothing important throughout the majority of the novel?

Let’s elaborate on this aspect: think of Bloody Valentine’s plot as a long hallway. At the very end of said hallway is the right door, which represents the obvious outcome (meaning that it has a bulls eye painted on it), but before said door there are countless other doors that lead to nowhere (and that much is posted on each door like an eviction notice). Well, instead of going to the door with the bulls eye, Stephen George opens every door along the way and fucks around for…oh, about the length of a 413-page novel, before finally getting to the right one.

I normally don’t like being harsh on books, and I’m sure Stephen George is a fine writer; his atmosphere, character development and all-around writing style are actually ABOVE typical Zebra standards, in my opinion…but the pointless fluff that filled the bulk of this 413-page novel simply made it way less than enjoyable.

2/5 stars.

What the hell my ratings mean: 1 star = I didn’t enjoy it, and I’m fairly certain I can objectively say the book sucks ass. 2 stars = I didn’t enjoy it at all, but I can’t , in good conscience, say it was an objectively bad book (in other words, I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone else loved it). 3 stars = a book I enjoyed quite a bit, but it had several flaws that made me unable to honestly say it was a great book. 4 stars = a great book without any serious flaws. 5 stars = made my soul feel tingly and changed my worldview (usually reserved for classics like Siddhartha and The Magic Mountain).

July 22, 2019 by Silent Motorist Media

“Attack in LA” is a Nihilistic Skullfuck That Everyone Needs to See

by Bob Freville

Inspired by John’s Colter’s Run, Attack in LA (formerly Parasites) is a harsh take on class war, culture shock, homelessness and blind hatred. Written and directed by our friend Chad Ferrin (the filmmaker behind Breaking Glass Pictures’ legendary cult horror epic Someone’s Knocking at the Door and the man at the helm of the forthcoming splatter comedy Exorcism at 60,000 Feet), ‘AiLA’ tells the story of three privileged friends who find themselves stranded on Skid Row after their luxury car gets a flat tire.

Of course, the plot is far more complex than all that; once you get past the amateurish and inaccurate cover art that suggests a triumphant uprising of the proletariat via assault rifles, you find yourself in an immersive picture where you are running right alongside the film’s terrified protagonist.

To say that Attack in LA is gritty would not be a fair description since critics hurl that word around so much that it’s lost all meaning. A better summation would be to say that Attack in LA looks and feels like a swim through a kiddie pool full of someone else’s sick…and that kiddie pool is brimming with syringes, spiked boards and piss.

The story follows Marshal Colter (newcomer Sean Samuels) as he and his pals are subject to a forcible search and seizure by a cadre of cruddy street people who live in the tunnels of Downtown Los Angeles.

Although it’s unlikely, we get the impression early on that Marshal and his friends might get off with little more than a protracted scare from these hobos and some soiled pairs of undies…if they could just keep their elitist opinions to themselves. Naturally, that’s not what happens.

I won’t spoil the details, but suffice it to say that things go sideways fast after their corpulent Frat boy friend Scottie (Sebastian Fernandez) runs off at the mouth and gets that mouth filled with more than he could have anticipated.

I’ve long loved flicks that explore the crazy shit that can happen when the average worker drones are asleep. Whether we’re talkin’ about Scorsese’s sublime and surreal After Hours, Joe Carnahan’s retro throwback Stretch or the 1993 urban crime thriller Judgment Night, the most exciting stories almost always occur after the sun goes into hiding.

Such is the case with Attack in LA, a sort of Judgment Night reboot that’s a more overt meditation on the caste system and racial politics. This might be Ferrin’s most fully realized picture and, certainly, his only film with a clear message—Be careful holding yourself in higher regards than others because you might end up in their position.

On a fundamental level, this movie is a classic story of a war waged between Good and Evil, except in this case “good” is an entitled, well-educated young black man and “evil” is an addle-brained old war veteran ironically named Wilco. The curmudgeonly vagrant is played with grimy vigor by the chameleon-like character actor Robert Miano (Donnie Brasco, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine).

This pic is as ugly and nihilistic as most of its director’s canon, but it may also be his most beautifully shot and well-executed. That it was relegated to Amazon Prime without any proper fanfare is a crime worse than anything committed in its brief running time.

What we see as the film progresses is the sheer prevalence of abuse that people in the so-called underclass take and the “lows” that the privileged are willing to stoop to when they are put under pressure for the first time.

Ferrin’s choice to feature extensive full frontal male nudity was something I would have automatically applauded as someone who recognizes that the film industry has been both exploitative and hypocritical when it comes to gratuitous female nudity for far too long, but I applaud it here because I think he had a deeper reason for doing so.

So far as I can tell, Ferrin is saying that it doesn’t matter if you have a big, swinging dick…even if you’re packing a fucking war club between your legs there will always be someone out there ready to cut you down to size.

From a purely narrative standpoint, the filmmakers definitely owe a debt to John Carpenter’s cult actioner Assault on Precinct 13, but the gravity with which each kill is depicted owes more to Jean-François Richet’s 2005 remake of the same.

None of this is to say that Attack in LA is unoriginal; the picture’s unflinching treatment of the subject matter is something that is rarely seen in film today and in Ferrin’s hands it is presented with stark clarity. While the cinematography can be as dizzying as running for your life the picture is as sobering as brass knuckles to a drunken head.

The soundtrack is fire from the synth score to the incredibly subtle but totally on the nose cover songs (“House of the Rising Sun,” et al.) all the way down to the third act’s haunting originals.

What ‘Attack’ shows us more than anything is the importance of acceptance. Were it not for one unnecessary and badly timed comment the three boys central to the film’s first act would likely be okay. Nothing inflames more than ignorance. The sequence in which our protagonist is mistaken for a homeless person and is subject to a paint balling attack by millennial vloggers is painfully reminiscent of the Bum Wars craze.

The racism of Attack is nothing new, of course, but it seems particularly striking in 2019. Without getting at all political on the subject, I can say with some semblance of authority that the reason behind that racism is clear—the self-appointed messiah of these mole people is a man who was all too happy to be lord and personal savior to his fellow hobos. Once they questioned his instincts they became what they always really were in his eyes—“bitches,” “cunts,” “gooks,” “Taco eaters,” etc.

‘Attack’ has the ending that Get Out should have had, the kind of ending that doesn’t satisfy but pisses people off. And that’s saying something in an age where everyone plays it safe.

July 16, 2019October 28, 2021 by Silent Motorist Media

If Desire is Scarcely More Than a Spark: An Interview with Danger Slater, “Impossible James”

By Gordon B. White

Silent Motorist Media: First and foremost, tell us about Impossible James. What is this novel about and what kind of people should read it?

Danger Slater: It’s about death and birth and families and corporate greed and love and a whole bunch of other really weird horrible things. A terminally ill man impregnates himself his with his own clone, setting off a series of events that may or may not be the cause of an unstoppable existential apocalypse. Anyone should read it because I wrote it and I am awesome.

SMM: What was the genesis of the novel? Because its tendrils touch on so many different themes—parenthood, the struggle to create, existential despair, climate change, near-terminal stage capitalism, gooey and gross body horror—which of these was the seed? Looking back on it, you can trace the growth of it into the Impossible James we have today?

DS: I just thought it’d be funny to write a book about a guy who gives birth to his own clone. Like, how would that even work? What are the personal and philosophical implications of that? From there, I figured out the themes of the book and different characters, and built out a few plot points that seemed interesting to get too, including the ending, and I slowly started building up from there. The son character and narrative style came into play as the story fleshed itself out.

SMM: Is there a passage you could offer us to whet the appetite of those readers who haven’t yet acquired the book? One that maybe captures the james ne sais quoi of the book?

DS: There’s a sentence several people have quoted so far, and it goes like this: “If desire itself is scarcely more than a spark, what’s an arsonist to do when everything is already burning around them?”

SMM: There’s a fascinating fatalism to this book (it is, in fact, subtitled “ a book about death”). The novel kicks off when James Watson Sr. receives a fatal diagnosis of a black spot on the brain: it’s a malignancy that’s sure to kill him…in just a couple of decades, give or take. This confrontation with his mortality is enough to drive him on to quit his job, clone himself, find a partner, and set out to change the world. None of which ultimately makes him happy, however. If a reader were to approach Impossible James as a cautionary tale, what is it warning us about? Is it cautioning us towards anything?

DS: As a cautionary tale, I’m not too sure, because the book deals a lot with the unavoidable nature of who we are as human beings, and it’s hard to caution someone against something that’s inevitable. I suppose its more about acceptance, and trying to find meaning and fulfillment in things that aren’t going to last.

SMM: Impossible James presents us with two warring impulses or, perhaps, strategies for confronting the absurdity of modern existence: Hyper-expansion and hyper-constriction. Maybe ironically, however, the final form is both impossibly tiny and impossibly huge. Is this a tension you see in the world around us? Is this something you’ve looked to tackle in your recent works?

DS: That is EXACTLY what I was going for so thanks for pointing it out! There are these pictures on the internet of like brain neurons and they look identical to clouds of swirling galaxies in space. The separation between the big impersonal things (the universe) and the tiny hyper-personal things (your own thoughts) is not as wide as it seems and may even loop back in on itself if extrapolated far enough. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s certainly a fascinating prism in which to view life.

SMM: In your 2018 novel He Digs a Hole, you employed an unnamed narrator who broke the fourth wall in fairly meta-dramatic ways to express authorial angst. Here you again employ a style which directly addresses the audience, but the narrator is a specific character — James Watson Jr. — so it feels more “grounded” in the story. What is your interest in using this kind of narrative style? What accounts for the differences between the two, particularly the more traditional sort of use of it in Impossible James? Are there any other authors who employ these sort of aesthetic flourishes that you admire?

DS: Oh I really liked the 4^th wall breaks in He Digs a Hole, but when I started this book I was trying to think of a way to weave it more organically into the story, so to have a character in the book (who isn’t the main character) narrating the story of the main character directly to YOU the reader, I could employ whatever perspective and narrative techniques I wanted. Kurt Vonnegut used to do this all the time with his books, from inserting himself as the author, to his proxy character Kilgore Trout, so that’s kinda one of my favorite examples of an artist doing it.

SMM: Astute readers of your previous novel, He Digs A Hole, might recognize a few familiar elements here, particularly with regards to Sycamore Lane. The neighborhood where James Sr. lives is also home to Harrison and Tabitha Moss, the protagonists of HDAH, and features cameos from them, as well as neighbors Brad and Jen Flatly.

I was fascinated to see these characters again, and was wondering how you view their use. Do He Digs a Hole and Impossible James take place in the same universe? Or perhaps parallel dimensions? Or is it more like American Horror Story, where the same actors play different roles every season? What sort of advantages or disadvantges does working with these repeated elements present?

DS: Haha. YES, thank you for noticing that too! I just liked the setting of that book and when I was thinking of where to have Impossible James take place, I figured why not put it on the same street? There are lots of crossover characters, but there is no continuity between the two books, so they function more like Easter eggs without the events in any book prior affecting the others. The characters aren’t even necessarily the same, personality-wise. So yeah, I guess it would be like parallel versions of the neighborhood, but I wasn’t thinking of it in those terms. In fact, in my next manuscript I’ve finished I do it again, not set on the same street, but there are callbacks to Sycamore Lane and even a reference to my book Puppet Skin. It’s just fun for loyal readers.

SMM: Finally, what’s next on the Danger-scope? While we’re interested in hearing what you’re working on next, what are you going to be working on next next? What are the projects that are still fever dreams and nebulous nightmares?

DS: So the next book is about a group of five unwilling astronauts who were sent to the moon in 1906 and get trapped there for the next 900 years. I’m calling it ‘Moonfellows’ right now, but that might change, of course. That book is actually finished, but there are no plans for its release anytime soon. What I want to write after that is a book in which someone starts mobilizing all the people in their neighborhood to work together to build an impossibly huge tower to get past the sky so they can climb into heaven and confront God. I haven’t started working on that one yet, but it’s coming together slowly in my head.

Danger Slater is the Wonderland award winning writer of I Will Rot Without You as well as other works of Bizarro and horror fiction. You can follow him on Twitter, where he’ll be making bad jokes all day: @Danger_Slater

Gordon B. White has lived in North Carolina, New York, and the Pacific Northwest. He is a 2017 graduate of the Clarion West Writing Workshop, and his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as Pseudopod, Daily Science Fiction, Tales to Terrify, and the Bram Stoker Award® winning anthology Borderlands 6. Gordon also contributes reviews and interviews to various other outlets including Nightmare, Lightspeed, and Hellnotes. You can find him online at http://www.gordonbwhite.com.

July 6, 2019 by Silent Motorist Media

‘Cynthia’ is a Surprisingly Touching Horror-Comedy

“Cynthia” (2018) DVD Review

by Bob Freville

Those of us who were alive during the latter half of the 20^th century can remember a time when babies were the focus of a wave of excellent and, oftentimes, atrocious horror movies. 1974’s It’s Alive!, 1982’s Basket Case and the respective follow-ups to each of those titles introduced us to the perils of postpartum aggression and fetal abomination long before antinatalism penetrated pop culture.

Like Larry Cohen and Frank Henenlotter before them, writer/producer Robert Rhine and co-directors Devon Downs & Kenny Gage mine parenthood and pregnancy for satire. One would think that Cynthia‘s indie budget and the relative inexperience of the above the line creative team would result in a sub-par rip-off of the aforementioned films. Instead, they make it work to their advantage by going their own way.

This is not another tired bad seed movie of the kind that Hollywood keeps churning out. Rather it is a raucous dark comedy with heart that masquerades as an exploitation horror movie. Sure, an ancillary character is disemboweled mid-coitus and yes, a stark naked victim thinks nothing of attempting to escape from her predator with her tits out and her underwear hanging off…in a professional setting.

But Cynthia is much more than some bloody B-movie, it is a well-written and well-acted tragedy of sorts, a picture which spends more time on the human condition than it does on creature effects or bloodshed.

Halloween‘s Scout Taylor-Compton and Masters of Sex’s Kyle Jones are a young couple who have been struggling for some time to get preggers. After repeated fertility treatments fail, they are shocked to find that their very last shot took. They are going to have a baby at long last…but their baby has some odd company in the womb.

Their unborn child’s companion is eager to greet the world and it’ll stop at nothing to be with its new family. What follows is something quite different than what most viewers will be expecting.

The film is at its best when it’s lampooning the idiotic and selfish reasons why certain people want to have children. It also deftly explores the frustratingly clinical approach many couples take in order to bear fruit, so to speak.

The best scenes in Cynthia have little to do with what most die hard horror fans would consider the hallmarks of the genre. Robert Rhine hands in a script brimming with memorable dialogue, brilliant transitions and likable characters…even when they are being absolute shits.

What pic manages to illustrate is just how easily humans can disregard each others’ feelings when it comes to satiating their own desires and needs. Nowhere is this more clear than in the way the filmmakers make us empathize with the flick’s negligent father-to-be.

Earlier I mentioned antinatalism, but it bears mentioning again since Cynthia may be the first of the mutant baby movies to properly elucidate the suffering of the child who didn’t ask to be born. When Taylor-Compton’s Robin goes looking for her missing infant daughter in an air vent and discovers her with the hideously deformed Cynthia, her mutated offspring lets out a guttural whimper that effectively conveys the agony and yearning which are our birthright as humans.

If genre fans need added incentive to see Cynthia they can count on the always game Bill motherfuckin’ Moseley (Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, House of 1,000 Corpses) for a bizarre cross-dressing cameo and Moseley’s Devil’s Rejects co-star Sid Haig as a sleazy cop to rival most of the grotty punks he played in the Seventies.

Check this picture out today if you like genre films that have more on their mind than gore and one-dimensional throwaway victims. If I was prone to giving things a rating, this one would easily earn four bloody diapers.

You can watch Cynthia now on DVD and Prime Streaming.

July 5, 2019 by Silent Motorist Media