Slay Bells Ring: Day of the B Movies!

As we come upon the holiday season, you’ll find more and more viewing recommendations that promote all the joy and cheer of the most important commercial holiday of the year. These range from Hallmark romances and old, creepy stop-motion specials to sentimental children’s comedies and highly debated action films. After all, who wants the dark side of human nature when celebrating the happiest time of the year?

Thankfully, I’m here to recommend another heaping pile of B movies for exactly that crowd! Four more tarnished examples of trash cinema await you, curated to give you the most enjoyable experience this holiday season. With the exception of one, they all offer some kind of winter horror, and not a single film on this list is boring.

So, light up your house, grab some snacks and cookies, and settle into the couch for a long and homey movie marathon. This one won’t leave you disappointed.

Mosquito (1995)

Quite a few of you are, no doubt, double-checking the title and side-eyeing this pick. A movie about killer, giant mosquitoes attacking a nature reserve? A summery-looking nature reserve, at that? “Isn’t this time of year when bugs go to die?” you might ask.

Depending on your location, you might be right. However, here in good old South Florida, the bugs unfortunately never die, not even in winter. Nor is Christmas always a guaranteed wintery holiday for many parts of the world (Australia, most famously). In fact, both locals and visiting tourists in the Southern United States take advantage of less frosty winters to camp during this time of year.

Most importantly, though, Mosquito is one hell of a fun B movie. Out of all the films in this list, this throwback creature feature feels the most well-made, with competent directing, okay acting, and genuinely good puppet work with its giant bugs. Frankly, it’s a way better film than it deserves to be. The plot never drags. Our characters tend to make smarter decisions. The gore and kills from our skeeter friends delight the eye.

Nor does the movie ever forget what it is. Mosquito markets itself as a simple creature feature, and that’s exactly what it sets out to be. It’s in no way high art, but that doesn’t mean the filmmakers ever stopped trying to make a fun movie.

Gunnar Hansen, old Leatherface himself, plays Earl, a camo-wearing, backwoods criminal. Hansen’s role could have been a meaningless cameo, but the film chooses to make him an important character in our band of heroes.

Even if Mosquito will never be a traditional holiday watch, I suggest giving it a go this year. Especially if, like me, you’re stuck in the bug zone this Christmas.

Avalanche Sharks (2014)

No, your eyes do not deceive you. For our next B movie pick this holiday season, we turn to a more traditional winter climate and an even more ridiculous premise.

Avalanche Sharks, a Canadian made-for-tv movie, came out in 2014 after Sharknado. Set in a ski resort during Spring Break, the film tells the story of an ancient Native American myth of vengeful snow sharks. When an employee of the ski resort damages the totems keeping these snow sharks at bay, the creatures return and begin massacring some truly dumb skiers.

Clearly banking on Sharknado‘s popularity, the filmmakers sought to create a “so bad it’s good” movie on purpose. Beautiful women prance in the snow with full cleavage or even just bikinis. The writing makes little sense. Most of our cast features intolerable assholes showcasing mediocre performances. Huge clichés abound, such as our heroic vacationing marine, a Jaws mayor, a “crazy” harbinger of doom, and a sleazy ski patrolman. The only real question is, does Avalanche Sharks actually succeed as a fun bad movie?

In my view, it mostly does. This success largely depends on the filmmakers giving the audience what it wants: snow shark kills. To give credit where credit is due, the movie never, ever lets us forget how silly it is. A snow shark goes for the kill every ten minutes in this film, and it’s never wasted. The CGI of the monsters happens to be exceedingly terrible (a given considering its budget). However, the monster design is at least visually interesting, with entertaining kills jampacked through the movie’s runtime.

If Avalanche Sharks has one weakness, it’s our hero, Wade. The script wants him to play a traditional role as a Marine who wants to stop the threat. However, he’s largely a douche. From calling his brother’s friend the r slur to being arrogant and carrying little, he’s just intolerable. Hell, he even elbows his wife in the face when she attempts to stop him from getting into a fistfight. Alexander Mendeluk never really shows any awareness of these faults in his performance, trying to play him as a straight man. As a result, you largely spend most of his scenes wishing the shark would get him.

Nevertheless, Avalanche Sharks is a perfect film to watch with a group. If you’re planning on a cozy holiday party with friends and are in the mood for a film to make fun of, this one’s a great pick. Undoubtedly, none of you will ever forget the year you watched the movie where sharks swam in snow and chomped skiers in half.

Ice Spiders (2007)

In watching these movies for the article, I quickly discovered there were way more ski resort B movies than I anticipated. How often can you make a film about a ski resort being attacked by some mystical or mutated monster?

Thankfully, these movies are at least highly entertaining. Or, at the very least, Ice Spiders (2007) happens to be highly entertaining.

Released in 2007 on the Syfy (then Sci-Fi) Channel, Ice Spiders once again takes place in a ski resort. We follow Dash Dashiell, played by Patrick Muldoon, a former professional skier, and Iraq War vet. With his thick California accent and skills at shredding, his job as a ski instructor gets interrupted when mutated giant spiders immune to the cold escape a government research facility on the same mountain. Now Dash, a ski team hoping to make the Olympics, and Dr. April Sommers, played by Vanessa Williams, must figure out how to stop these creatures.

Unlike Avalanche Sharks, Ice Spiders feels more sincere. You get the feeling that, even with its budget, the filmmakers wanted to make a good movie. Do they succeed? Largely, no. The acting is largely subpar, the graphics are terrible, and the plot’s ridiculous. However, you can see the passion, and you can tell they’re really trying.

For example, Patrick Muldoon knows he’s playing an arrogant piece of shit and largely leans into it. David Millbern, playing the evil Professor Marks, does not deliver a good performance, but he’s certainly trying to chew the scenery. To give additional credit to the writers, the characters largely react realistically to the threat of giant monsters attacking. They hunker down, barricade the doors, look for food, try the radio when phones go down, and attempt to commandeer a ride. That’s a true rarity for these kinds of films: smart decision-making in the face of danger.

The spiders themselves also happen to be pretty entertaining. The CGI, largely a victim of a tv budget for the 2000s, is truly terrible. However, this does not stop our filmmakers from packing this movie with glorious spider kills. Arachnids leap through the air, chomp down, and spin giant webs. Sure, they look faker than a PS2 cutscene, but that’s just part of the fun. We even get several moments where the camera displays “Spider Vision” as the monsters hunt their prey.

Yet perhaps the strangest part of this film isn’t the premise. Instead, I think the strangest part is that the filmmakers try to actually say something meaningful. Namely, Ice Spiders actually delivers commentary on the cost of collateral, the dangers of security at all costs, and the consequences of the Iraq War. The giant mutant spiders in this film derive from a project to create bulletproof armor for soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both Dash and Professor Marks happen to be war vets. As a villain, Professor Marks’ motivation is to keep the monsters alive to continue to serve his country.

These themes aren’t necessarily done well, but they’re there. In a field of cinema that largely doesn’t bother to deal with the ramifications of its storytelling, Ice Spiders‘ themes feel refreshing. However, it doesn’t have to be read that way. For most audiences, Ice Spiders remains a fun film to roast either privately or with friends.

Winterbeast (1991)

Every cinephile out there eventually encounters a film so mindboggling and so terrible that the experience changes them forever. Movies such as Troll 2, The Room, Birdemic, and more tend to make these lists. These films never make the correct decision in their execution. You can only sit there and watch like a bystander catching the beginning of a massive car wreck.

Winterbeast (1991) is my car wreck of a film. Not one filmmaking decision makes sense here. The actors perform so badly that you have to wonder if the director just picked them up from a Home Depot parking lot. Their performances consist of monotone script readings with very little emotion, with just one exception. Bob Harlow plays the mountain lodge owner in a truly hammy performance. He knows exactly what kind of movie he’s in and gives the performance it really deserves. Every minute with him is a delight in a film largely populated by automatons.

Nor is acting the only problem here. The audio and visual quality show visible deterioration in every scene. The set design looks genuinely insane. The crew could not fit one more Native American knick-knack on the walls, tables, books, or backgrounds. At one point, when opening a box full of “Indian treasures,” a literal dildo is displayed.

If you’re asking what the movie is about, there’s very little there. The plot concerning a Native American curse largely exists just for the sake of pushing out as many monsters as they can. As for the graphics and creature effects, here’s just a taste of one of those creatures making their move.

Despite all this, I fell in love with Winterbeast. Much like fans of other “so bad, it’s good” movies; I find that Winterbeast retains a homey charm. Nobody in this film has the slightest idea how to make a real movie, which makes it such a rewarding experience. No other film will ever give me an experience quite like this one. For that reason, I highly recommend catching this film on Shudder. If you’re anything like me, Winterbeast will quickly become a yearly bad movie watch for the season.

And there you have it: four more lovely candidates to display all the joy B movie watching can provide. But this doesn’t have to be the end of your journey. Much like the A-list of horror cinema, many B movies are still out there waiting to be rediscovered. Sure, most of them tend to be unredeemable trash. However, as these articles have proven, there are plenty of hidden treasures stranded in the garbage.

In creating this series myself, my own love and appreciation for these movies gained a new fervor. I hope these articles have given you a new appreciation for trashier art. And if not, at least you’ve gained a few weird experiences to share with other movie lovers.