It’s been a while, dear friends. It’s been too long.
And while I probably should explain my absence, fill in the blanks… whatever, I’m not going to do that today. Today, I’m going to chat about Terrifier 3.

I’m 44 years old now, and I live in Sydney (which is in Australia, for those of you who vote for the orange man). One of my indulgent pleasures is going to the cinema on my own in the evening and watching a scary movie while eating some chocolates. Yes, my days of cocaine and dive bars are over. I have joined the ranks of regular society. Relegated? Perhaps. Promoted? Possibly.

So here I am, in Bondi Junction Event Cinema, chowing down on some sweets while I watch Art the Clown butcher people in various ways. There were two pricks talking throughout the movie, and I considered throwing a Jaffa or two at them, but being a respectable man now, I did not succumb to this violent urge. Plus, it’d probably earn me some sort of assault charge, and getting arrested for chucking a few spherical orange chocolates at some teenagers isn’t really something I aspire to. When the chainsaw buzzes, the blood splatters, and the victims scream, it drowns out the inane chatter of a couple of inconsiderate bastards.

The movie. Was it good? Well, if you like that kind of stuff, yes. I’m not a gorehound. I was having a conversation with a good friend about the Terrifier movies recently and what separates them from torture porn. Apart from the first movie, the Saw films did nothing for me, and their clones even less so. All those miserable noughties films with people suffering and then dying—I found them dull and pointless. So why are the Terrifier movies different? Well, there are two reasons: firstly, they are funny. Terrifier 3 has a bunch of gags with a bicycle horn. Art will reach into his bag, and you’re dreading what horrible instrument of death he’ll pull out, but every now and then, it’s a bicycle horn. In that respect, the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The second reason is that it harks back to that ’80s fun and simplicity. There’s a bad guy who cannot be killed and a bunch of mythology surrounding him. Like Nightmare On Elm Street 3, where we discover there are kids who can fight Freddy in their dreams. Great. That’s the shit I grew up on, not some sort of social lesson taught to spoiled kids, which was essentially the crux of the Saw movies (or at least it was by the time I stopped watching, which was about halfway through part 3).

But there are two other reasons I particularly liked Terrifier 3: it’s disruptive. Fuck all budget. No studio interference. Pure vision. Could it have done with an edit here and there? Probably. But who cares? In a world of endless superhero movies and bullshit cash grabs (Dial of Destiny, anyone?), it was refreshing to see something made from passion rather than target dollar value.

And, most satisfyingly, it’s made a laughingstock out of the recent incel spunkrag Joker movie. I watched the first one. Fuck me. It’s like it was made specifically for Andrew Tate’s Twitter follower list. I will not watch the sequel—and it seems not many people will, which is a good thing.

TL;DR: Terrifier 3 is great.

Anyway, I’m back now. I’ll blog more. I’m writing. There’s something in the works. And it’s really heartening to me that people have started reading Pills again. I’ve had many great reviews recently, and it’s climbing the Amazon charts, so that little piece of work I threw out into the world over seven years ago is finally growing some legs. Better late than never.

‘Til next time.