Joe Castro  



A special effects man specializing in gore who also directs low-budget, borderline-splatter horror movies. Reviewed until 2016.

Of Some Interest

Terror Toons 1 & 2    
Yes this is a terrible movie, but an entertaining bad movie nevertheless. A new type of cartoon is released from hell where toons (men wearing silly masks and costumes) can pass into the land of the living and dance and giggle while chopping up their victims with huge saws, scissors and axes. Teenagers play strip Ouija while the childish sister (a porn star with huge boobs) sits upstairs with her new cartoon and the carnage begins. Among other things, one girl get her spine yanked out and her body played with like a puppet, and another gets sawed in half. Campy, silly, bad, amusing. Followed by an inferior, not as entertaining sequel with a lot of the gore replaced by cartoons.

Terror Toons 3  
Fittingly, Herschell Gordon Lewis makes an appearance here as a narrator of gory tales who gets in trouble with his toon-possessed pig. Castro pushes the pedal to the metal for this sequel, going as extremely over-the-top as possible into complete toon-mayhem as the evil toon dimension takes over this world. Actors (both human and toon) from previous outings are revived, and everything instantly dives into chaos in a hospital as well as the rest of the world. The effects are a combination of mostly very cheap digital effects, some practical effects, animation, puppets and insanity. Everything is distorted and their shape and size keep changing like in a cartoon, nothing obeys the laws of physics, everyone turns into mutated human-toon-monster hybrids, their bodies exploding and distorting in extreme splattery effects that are very reminiscent of Necrostorm, except they are too cheap to be in the same league, and all of this with a gleefully violent toon giggling humor. There is not much plot, and it is more about the various insane segments of splattery mayhem, anything-goes fantasy, and random violence, and, obviously, actors act over-the-top while the scenery chews them. Once again, terrible and entertaining at the same time.

Worthless

Hazing, The (AKA Butchered)  
Sorority girls initiate new members by making them stay in a haunted house that looks like a warehouse turned into a fun-house. But it turns out there is a real killer on the loose. A cliched horror story done a million times before and one would expect some humor or new twist this time, but there's nothing of the kind, except for the initiation rite involving boobs, chocolate and cream. The gore is plentiful and varied, with many different nasty gashes, face carving, head smashing, disembowelment, etc. Castro shows off his special effects but forgets to make a proper movie.

Jackhammer Massacre  
A drug-addict who let his friend die, lets his life deteriorate until his arm gets mutilated and infected from the needles. While working at a garage, drug-pushers beat him up and inject him with a killer drug that only makes him strong, paranoid and insane. So he grabs a jack-hammer and goes on a nasty massacre-rampage as more and more people visit the garage. The gore is brief and not as entertaining as you would expect, the premise and good acting by the main character is wasted, and the rest of the cast act terribly.

Maniacal  
Slasher movie number 36590 with the exact same plot. Brother goes insane, kills family, years later comes back to finish the job. The acting is weak, the plot is dumb, and the only reason I list it here is because the gore quotient is just a little higher than usual, barely crossing the border from gory deaths to gorehounds' deaths with fake-looking head-crushes, neck slashes and disembowelments. I curse the day Scream made slasher movies hip again.

Summer of Massacre, The  
Famous for being entered into the Guinness World Records for most on-screen kills, or something similar, but, like most Guinness records, it only exists for the sake of the record and is quite silly and useless otherwise. It's an anthology of short movies, some of them are even plotless, and are only there to serve up another killer on a rampage. There's the wrapper about escaped convicts causing chaos and massacres, a 'story' about a jogger that is beaten to a pulp, who then gets up for no reason, and goes on a rampage for no reason, there's the one about 'Lump' a disabled hermaphrodite with a huge lump on his forehead who is thrown over the cliff by his sister and then comes back for revenge, there's a fat boogieman rapist monster, and finally, a campfire undead killer, all of which cannot be killed, and kill everyone that appears on screen within seconds. Grand total: 155 kills, each one done in a unique and usually very unrealistic method, including slashing, crushing, slicing, shoving various household objects into their face and brain, decapitating, carving, cutting in half, burning, melting...well you get the idea. Unfortunately for the gorehounds, this features extremely poor gore effects, some of them looking like an 80s computer game or Flash movies hand drawn by an internet teenager with no budget. To sum up: No interesting stories, no comedy, only male nudity, bad gore, and no horror because one badly done death scene after another is just tiring, not scary. Terrible and worthless.




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