A group of people survey an abandoned mine and stumble into a gooey, tentacled monster and it’s maybe not as awesome as that poster, but it’s still an enjoyable time.

This starts out really well and ends with a bang, but the middle drags a bit. Still, the whole cave setting is atmospheric and the stop-motion monster is delightful. The acting ranges from bad to abysmal and that just adds to the charm. I’m not excatly sure what the monster does to kill everyone. It looks kinda like it sucks them up and spits them out covered in its acid saliva so they just corrode? It doesn’t really matter because whatever it does, it looks pretty gross so I dug it.

Bananameter: 🍌 gooey 🍌

This is the most ambitious movie ever made in a California garage for $25,000. A Lovecraftian, slow cinema labyrinth that follows cave spelunkers as they encounter a Cthulhu-esque stop motion creature, this movie envelops you like a dreamy fog. From the handmade cave sets to the ominous synth score, THE STRANGENESS rewards patient viewers with a comforting, unearthly experience. Director Melanie Anne Phillips transitioned in the early 1990s and would go on to work with the International Foundation for Gender Education. In 1994, she founded the first online transgender support site. According to script writer Chris Huntley, the monster in THE STRANGENESS was intentionally designed to resemble a penis with a vagina for a face. This detail appears to represent a deeper meaning on Phillips’s behalf, and it makes me appreciate the movie—and her work—even more. (Joseph A. Ziemba)

A group of amateur spelunkers go on a greed-driven frenzy after an earthquake opens up a new vein in the abandoned Golden Spike mine, but the quake also brought something tentacled and slimy back into the land of the living... and it's HUNGRY!

This was surprisingly good! Incredible work by director Melanie Anne Phillips for creating a truly claustrophobic and unnerving setting despite the obvious low budget restraints. You really feel like theses folks are trapped a million miles below — swallowed alive by the infinite earth, as the dim lantern glow leads them deeper to their doom. The creature is done in stop motion and looks super gross, never too corny, and the FX work on the goopy, maggot-encrusted corpses it leaves behind are beyond disgusting. The slow-as-molasses pacing will put off most, but I thought it worked well at creating tension, and the payoff at the end was well worth the wait. A fun watch overall.

Fun little thing about a bunch of spelunkers trapped in a mine with a scary monster. Narratively unremarkable but atmospheric and crafted with a lot of DIY care. Gorgeously lit almost entirely by flashlight or road flare, and featuring both a chintzy Carpenter knockoff score and some delightful cheap stop-motion.

I loved the tentacled, vagina-faced stop motion monster but the majority of the runtime is people just wandering around a mine. Watching directly after The Boogens, a much better 80s mine monster movie, probably didn't help.

Lamps in the dark, flares coloring half-seen monsters red, shadows upon shadows, claustrophobic setting, this slow-built horror does with pockets of light and cramped space what most cinematographers / filmmakers / horror masters can't fathom. Tensions between our characters come naturally, even if not every performance does, and they another layer of horror to this skillfully crafted story. The main flaw is that, early on, we're hit with a lot of native mythology-set dressing that we don't need. Something horrible happened in a mine. No need to appropriate from an oppressed nation's culture (even if it's vaguely done). But once we move past that tired cliche and just get to the meat of it--exploring an abandoned mine, and also a monster--it becomes one of the finer horror gems I've stumbled upon.

Ulmer lite 80s low budget horror. It has one of my favorite setups: some doomed people trapped in a mine. There is a nicely designed monster around, but it feels like an almost manifestation of their desperation. Most of this is made of very dark lit scenes of the characters in the set while it plays around with light. This has no money to turn into the Alien/The Thing riff it sort of wants to be, but it has some cool small details and gross images, and it puts its minimum resources to very good uses. Some great no budget cinematography. Acting is barely existent, and every dramatic scene is wooden, but the characters desperation is allowed to resonate, and all their waste registers. Good ending and mood. Lots of clever touches by director Melanie Anne Phillips.

Day 2. Watch a horror film that takes place in a mine or cavern.

A group head into a mine shaft to give it the all clear. I must say they are a good mix of folk.

Well I'll be jiggered, I seen some tentacle attacks alah stop motion. There is little creature action but once seen its a joy. Bring me a pop vinyl of this golden nugget!!!

Where's that wind coming from? Straight from t pits from HELL! Reminds me of how I feel when a breeze hits me down the Subway.

The stop motion creature, red light in black darkness, and a group I want to see make it out alive. Now that's a rare gem.

First you take a cave/mine, then we add a freakin' cool monster (a stop-motion monster at that!!!), and then we jam a bunch of people into the cave and let the monster start to slaughter them in gooey ways (mostly off-screen, the remains are icky though). You also have a cool synth score. Sure the last half hour doesn't make a lot of sense, the movie is incredibly dark, and the acting is pretty damn bad but I don't care because I had a big smile on my face the whole way through. Especially the last 30 confusing minutes.

super creative slow burn nightmare, shot partially in a foil-covered garage, lit entirely by flashlights and headlamps, plus a spooky synth soundtrack and a surprisingly gross third act with a stop motion monster that would make giger blush. part home video hangout and part abstract experimental film, the type of thing one would expect to see in the early years of a director who went on to become a legend. it's very sad that she didn't!!