Horror Fight!: Between Rounds

Hello again, Fright Fans, and welcome back to Horror Fight!: Between Rounds. Your mid-fight breather where the Spooky Bois regroup, swap cinematic blows, and gear you up for the next main event. I’m MeZ, your loyal corner man in the Horror Fight arena, taping your gloves, icing your cuts and loading up your watchlist with deadly precision.

In this issue, we have Pat sharing some recent watches, Corey telling us about his latest obsession, MeZ tackling his watchlist, a preview of The Blairs and a Transmission from the Super Secret Cool Kids Cinema Klub.

Quick note: We use neon borders to help differentiate which spooky boi is talking. Pink=MeZ. Green=Corey. Blue=Pat.

Perhaps the Canon-est Canon movie to ever Canon. Powerfully dumb, but flawless too. Come see Sly alongside the guy from HELLRAISER, and also Shawnee Smith’s dad in THE BLOB remake, Brigitte Nielsen’s wig, Poppy from SEINFELD, the lady who was on that one episode of ROSEANNE where she owned a bookstore Darlene hung out in (don’t act like you don’t remember, it was a Christmas episode just like, SURPRISE! COBRA is a Christmas movie.)

THE INCREDIBLES is good. I had never seen it, so I took the kids to Nitehawk, and everybody enjoyed themselves. Every action set piece had more stakes and was more thrilling than anything in a Marvel movie, but I’m a hater. Good voice cast. R.I.P. Elizabeth Peña. Yeah. All told, incredibly fine.

I was too old for this when it was released, so I never saw it, but I took my son to see it on the eve of his own snow day, and it was charming enough. Refreshingly analog. Gratuitous fart sounds. A murderous, yellow-teethed Chris Elliott. Iggy Pop as an ice skating rink DJ who hates loud music. Schuyler Fisk! Yeah, it’s not good, but it’s good.

The filmmaking in SORCERER remains otherworldly. I don’t even know how Friedkin pulled any of it off, to be quite honest. The tension is top-notch, and even the sequences that surround the big set pieces are fully immersive. Tangerine Dream! Fatalism at its very best.

If you thought no one could do wooden line readings quite like Steven Seagal may I introduce you to DMX? Not to speak ill of the dead as DMX has charisma to spare as a rapper, but there’s a reason his acting resume didn’t balloon post EXIT WOUNDS. Having said that, this movie rules. It’s ACAB adjacent, which is pretty progressive for the time period. The script is awful, but in a charming “I can’t believe they hired Tom Arnold to do one impossibly convenient exposition dump” kind of way. Action is good. Set pieces, NICE! Yeah, it’s stupid and I’d watch ten of them if they would have made ‘em. HOWEVER I’m docking a full half star for the awful Tom Arnold/Anthony Anderson improv run that is so abysmal it threatened to tank the entire move.

This was all an accident. This past Valentine’s Day, I prepared a delicious dinner of mussels and lobster tails to enjoy with my beautiful wife, whom I love more than anything. She suggested we watch a fun movie, “like a ’90s action sort of thing.” I suggested UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY, fully expecting her to roll her eyes at best and flat-out ignore me at worst. Imagine my surprise when she agreed!

I have a long history with Seagal movies, most notably US2:DT. I estimate I’ve seen it at least 30 times, the lion’s share of which came in 2003, when I watched it every night for a fortnight in college. Why did I do this? Bong hits, most likely.  Bong hits, and the great Morris Chestnut.

I’d already had a long-standing relationship with Seagal movies by the time I reached my early twenties. I loved shitty action movies as a kid (COMMANDO, DELTA FORCE, et al.), and no one made shittier action movies than shitty Steven Seagal. Something about that Valentine’s Day watch rekindled my love affair.

I had a handful of the classics on physical media, so I tore through those in quick succession, but that wasn’t enough. I dove deeper: Tubi, eBay, four-movie sets for $3. Now, frankly, I’m afraid. I can’t stop.

Steven Seagal is a piece of shit. That’s bad. But the fact that he’s such a terrible person comes with the small consolation of guilt-free derision when it comes to him being fat, lazy, and terrible at his job.  Sometimes you feel bad for laughing at an actor, or a movie trying its best.  You can freely laugh at Seagal because in addition to being a piece of shit, he's not trying at all.  He's just there to be there.

If you go down the rabbit hole of the post-2000 direct-to-video garbage fest that makes up two-thirds of his oeuvre, you’ll reach a point where the movies aren’t just cheap and terribly written, but he doesn’t even stand up for some of them. Many “fight scenes” are just close-ups of his big, stupid face intercut with someone else’s hands punching guys. He’s so bad at acting that he gets ADR’d out of movies almost entirely because he’s too lazy to show up and rerecord his mumbled dialogue.

Seagal films often transcend whatever “so bad it’s good” means. They are beyond bad; therefore, they’re great. They are anti-art. They are a constant insult to the viewer. They are an affront to good taste, bad taste, and all tastes in between. Do not watch Seagal movies. Watch all Seagal movies. Here are a few standouts:

I was a huge Seagal guy back in the day. I loved that shit. I skipped this one, I didn't want any buddy comedy in my Seaagal shit, I wanted that straight Seagal dope. Maaaaan was I stupid. This is a whole ass Seagal movie. It's so fucking stupid, but old school Seagal stupid. It's very far removed from the bombast of the big time action star Seagal, and more in tune with OUT FOR JUSTICE Seagal. This movie is terrible, I love it. We get crucifixions and edible deer penis gags. There's a scene in which Seagal goes to meet Brian Cox, BRIAN COX! in a restaurant, and he just ends up kicking all sorts of guys asses as Brian Cox finishes his meal and is like, "well that's what happens! What a cad!"

Textbook zero star five star movie.

Can you believe we once lived in a world in which this movie was released to theaters, was the number one movie of the week, and went on to make $80,000,000? EXIT WOUNDS is Seagal's swansong; simultaneously a comeback and the end of his "legitimate" career as an action star, as he went straight to video after this and never came back. 

Dumb as dirt, poorly written and acted, but hot damn, what a picture!

The first thirty minutes of this movie are incredibly eventful. Seagal records a bunch of criminals doing crime, afterwards he stops to buy some champagne on the way home and ends up fucking up a bunch of guys who try to Rob the liquor store. When he gets home and starts making passionate love to his wife, goons break in and murder her, his small child, and leave him for dead. He wakes up seven years later with an absurd coma beard (goatee?) and sets to getting revenge. 

This is Seagal at the height of his powers, I'm not going to say it is a good performance, because Seagal is incapable of that, but it works here, a few good line reads for actual laughs.

Seagal comes back to his hometown, and goes to see his old friend Keith David, the coach of the high school football team. During their visit, Jamaican guys get a high school girl to try some crack; this is too much for Seagal to bear. The movie lets us know that not all Jamaican guys are drug dealing murderous sociopaths, but this particular bunch of them, man, they are some bad dudes. 

Watching all these Seagal movies in succession made me realize that he is essentially a slasher villain, and the bad guys are the teenagers. Every pre UNDER SIEGE Seagal movie is the same exact movie, and they're all terrible, and they're all the best movie ever.

Seagal walks slowly around a hospital and hits zombies with his sword, and sometimes he kicks them.

A credit alerts the viewer that this is an “Anthony Hickox flick.” Naturally, an auteur with such confidence and élan deserves a little research, and I was surprised to find that Mr. Hickox has directed a few other movies I enjoy: HELLRAISER III and WAXWORK. I was optimistic about this one.

We see Seagal during the opening credits in what feels like a title card for a sitcom. We see him about ten minutes later, after being freed from prison. He speaks in what can only be described as a Cajun accent, when he is not dubbed, that is. Sometimes when he speaks it is an entirely different voice.

We learn that Seagal and his entire team were imprisoned for ignoring orders to destroy a submarine in order to prevent what a commanding officer calls “another 9/11, except at sea.” Seagal and his team have been freed to take down a scientist who is also a terrorist, and who uses his mind control technology for evil.

This is a confounding, stupid movie that is pretty good if compared to much of Seagal’s direct to video garbage. It is not too boring, it does not look like total dogshit outside of the terrible editing, and there are some decent machine gun fights. A bunch of stuff explodes. Bad movie, decent Seagal movie.

Have you ever been scrolling on social media and felt like the memes were calling you out? Highlighting your never-ending watchlist of movies you swore you’d get to, but somehow never do. Titles that have been sitting there for years, quietly judging you.

Welcome to Watchlist of the Damned. A semi-regular feature where I finally descend into the depths of my absurdly long queue and start watching the films I’ve been avoiding, postponing, or “saving for the right mood.” No more excuses. No more comfort rewatches. Just overdue horror and the consequences of my own procrastination.

Last year, I watched 579 movies but only 33 of them came from my watchlist. I’m notorious for hearing about a movie and immediately running home to watch it that same night, while films I’ve meant to see for over a decade continue to collect digital dust.

This year, I’ve made it a mission to actually use my watchlist. So far in 2026, I’ve already added 78 movies — more than I added in all of 2025 (74) — and I’ve watched 14 of them.

Let’s dive into some of the movies I’ve finally pulled from the Watchlist of the Damned.

This has been on my watchlist forever. Mostly because it wasn't easy to find. But when I saw it was on Amazon, I had to finally check it out. It wasn’t exactly what I thought it was going, the monster is cute not scary, to be but still highly enjoyable.

This is like watching a Skeletor horror movie. It’s just a skeleton dude riding around on a horse killing people. Not great but kinda fun.

Man, I love the 70s. This movie is about hobos trying to ride a train. That's the whole movie. Can a hobo make it to the end of the line with a crazy Ernest Borgnine trying to kill them. It’s wonderful!

“A family finds that the refrigerator in their kitchen is a gateway to Hell, and they must battle a witch.”

What a premise! Sadly it's not great.

Celebrating all the movies that made it to the top of a Horror Fight! list in 2025 (not counting Franchise Fights. We’ll be crowning Best Movie, Best Actor and Best Director. Here are the movies that are eligible.

The Blairs are next week! I’m particularly excited about this one because we’re planning to present the show in an awards show-style format. I’m not entirely sure what that entails, but I’ve been working on a monologue and opening song (think Billy Crystal as Oscars host). We’ll start the show with the Best Actor award, then transition to a regular episode for the Best Movie category. Before we crown the Best Movie winner, we’ll also award Best Director. This is going to be fun!

YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS TRANSMISSION BECAUSE YOU HAVE DEMONSTRATED A TOLERANCE FOR STRANGE CINEMA.

BUGS BUGS BUGS

"NEW MEANING TO ANTS IN MY PANTS"

FEATURE I: ANTFARM DICKHOLE 2011

FEATURE II: WASPZILLA 2024

TRANSMISSIONS ARE OPEN FOR 72 HOURS. 

DOWNLOAD THE MOVIES ASAP.

DO NOT SHARE THE LINK.

REPLY TO EMAIL IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO THE LIST.