It’s time for one more crawl through the bowels of Netflix InstantWatch, this time looking for horror movies. These are the tiny movies stuck between the bigger films like bits of corn in their teeth, waiting for you to pick them out and gobble them up. You can check out more installments of Netflix Streaming Safari, but for now here’s what you might have missed. Every single one of these films has no pride, no dignity, and no pretensions. Each one is its very own special freak show.
Blood Games (1990) – the best rape-revenge movie ever made about a woman’s softball team. One of the few slasher-iffic horror movies directed by a woman (Tanya Rosenberg, in this case, who never made another film) it opens with a women’s softball team invited to a hick town to play the locals for some unknown reason. They mop up the field with the dudes, and that turns out to be a terrible idea because these guys are the original sore losers. Before they know it their team bus has been attacked and they’re being hunted down one by one. Crammed with nudity, teeming with crossbow murders, and sporting a high badass babe to dumb hillbilly ratio, it also features some bizarre, very long, slow motion sequences of gang rape and slaughter – sometimes both at the same time. An underseen exploitation oddity. (Watch it!)
The Baby (1973) – one of the weirdest horror thrillers ever made, you will believe a grown man can poop his diaper by the time you’re done with this. I mean, just watch that trailer and try to resist hitting “Play” on this winner. A social worker looks in on her latest case: a grown man who is kept living like a baby – both mentally and physically – by his two sisters and overbearing mother. They’ve turned his playpen into a living hell! Directed by Ted Post and given the jarring feel of a TV movie, this lurid, so-wrong flick finds all those queasy places where children, sexuality, and murder cross over and then it does the frug on them. Over-the-top in all the right ways, it’s like a Lifetime Movie directed by John Waters and if there’s one must-see gem on this list, it’s THE BABY. (Watch it!)
Blue Sunshine (1978) – just some folks hanging out, having a good time in a cabin in the woods. Nothing wrong with that until Billy Crystal’s brother, Richard, rips off his wig to reveal his bald head, then stuffs a girl in the fireplace and goes after everyone else with an axe. Turns out, some bad acid went around in the 60′s and one of the guys who dealt it is now a politician running for higher office. It’s up to softcore porn baron, Zalman King, playing the good guy, to expose his crimes and unravel this conspiracy of baldies. Death in a discotheque and some uneasy attack sequences stud this movie that’s basically a hippie version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. (Watch it!)
Amok Train (1989) – one of the last of the great, unhinged Eurohorror movies, this shot-in-Yugoslavia head-scratcher is weird, makes no sense, and is often as stupid as a bag of hammers but it’s never boring. Bo Svenson (Inglorious Bastards, Delta Force, Walking Tall 2) plays a professor who takes his California students to the Balkans for a study session. First stop: the secret ritual of a pagan cult. The kids flee onto a train (!?!) which becomes possessed (?!!!?!?!?) and then a whole carload of gloopy, gory, inventive special effects gets dumped all over everyone’s face. Imagine a Euro-fever dream version of the typical “teens in trouble” horror movie and you’re in the right ballpark. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it goes down great with a six-pack. (Watch it!)
