Well, the Brits come back for more short horror fun with Ghost Pit: Redemption of the Soul, slated to be the first of five installments, including two through four, and zero.

Jack, a retired Special Forces agent, takes his dog, a retired drug sniffer, out for a walk when he stumbles across a car wreck.  Afterward, he begins seeing horrible things and feeling terrible.  How much of the problems he has after the car crash are in his head…and how many of them are caused by the wreck itself?

And how many of them are caused by the greatest comic riot of a script ever?

Seriously, I laughed myself to tears at this one.  Unlikely scene changes, pointless plot elements, all of which combined to form a movie which desperately longed to be avant-garde but instead was pure avant-crap.

If you want to spend eight minutes laughing at the most horrendous wreck of a short horror film I’ve seen lately, you can find it below.  Otherwise, take the Screenhead Ten Scale’s advice and skip this one out of ten.

Sometimes I wonder why I subject myself to clearly amateurish short film that actually has to apologize for itself in its opening remarks.  But then, I remember it’s for a couple good reasons–one, you guys go looking for movies on YouTube and such and there’s no reason you shouldn’t know what you’re getting into and two, sometimes there’s a really good one.

Brotherly Revenge is, however, not one of them.  It falls under the first category, and you really should know what you’re letting yourself in for if you click this link.

What follows is the largely nonsensical story of a boy who killed his brother and now finds himself pursued relentlessly by his slain brother’s soul.

It was a good thing they explained this to me because otherwise I totally wouldn’t have had a clue.  Seriously, this movie is just perplexing.  And when they announce that they’ll have a sequel ready later, eventually, I found myself groaning inside.  As it turns out, this is the work of young kids with cameras, so I’m not going to be too nasty as this is likely their jumping-off point.

As such, the Screenhead Ten Scale exercises mercy and gives this one a three out of ten in the hopes that they’ll get their act together and do a good movie next time.

You know…I’ve seen a lot of goofy crap in my day, but pushing its way onto the list of all time goofiest crap ever just might be The Retarded Horror Movie, and once again, you may save your flames as that is a QUOTE.

And in this one, a young man left alone for the weekend discovers that he’s got a lot bigger problems than no friends and a really short attention span–he’s being stalked by a serial killer.

I have to admit that I spent a lot of time laughing during The Retarded Horror Movie, mostly because the kid who actually put this together slung a whole lot of jokes and weirdness into this little short film.

In fact, he may well have figured out at this early age how to make a great short film by not taking anything too seriously at any point and instead running wild with the funny.  He didn’t really have the time to do anything big with the plot, so why not dump all that time into dumb, funny stuff?  You’ll love the choreography of the “fight scene”, or at least I did, and “dumb funny stuff” explains roughly half the movie.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this one a six out of ten–it’s way too low-budget to do much better than that, but it’s still better than a lot of stuff out there.

Well, now that we’ve successfully killed off another year of Chiller / Halloween Horror Nights fare, we need a fresh round of short videos to start talking about. Thankfully, YouTube is an almost endless panoply of amateur filmmakers doing shorts like no tomorrow, so we can segue right into today’s model–The Black Pages.

Caitlin, while out bicycling, finds an old book in a creek bed.  Moments later, she also finds an abandoned house with the sound of a phone ringing coming from it.  The book, as it turns out, is a directory of the recently deceased.  But will Caitlin have the right number?  Or will she be disconnected prematurely?

It’s actually a pretty interesting little film.  Parts of it will be tough to handle because some of the voices sound vaguely similar, and the film is also dark in spots so it’s actually tough to tell who’s talking at some points, but if you stick with it, you’ll actually get a pretty interesting little package with a surprising ending.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, therefore, hands The Black Pages a seven out of ten for a mostly successful call with just a little static in the line.  This should be a nice little dose of creepy for you, especially if you don’t have much time to spend.

Okay, so we’ve now finished reviewing all the entries for the Halloween Horror Nights short film contest, and now we’re left with one critical question: who’s going to take it?

Now that I’ve seen them all, I feel at least somewhat qualified to answer, and though there were a great many good pieces in there–in fact, there were really only a couple that we’re that hot–I think you know where my nod has to go:  Fewdio’s Mockingbird.

Granted, The Nightmare actually was a wild moulange of creepy images, but the lack of a story killed it.  And Samaritan was actually pretty scary if a bit predictable.  And Lamaze of the Dead was a beautiful study in zombie movie fun but not a one of these could top the shock that Mockingbird presented.

That’s my pick for the top film of Halloween Horror Nights’ 2009 short film contest–it remains to be seen who’ll take the top prize home, but I know where my vote went.

Where’s your vote going?  Hit the comments section below and fill us in!

You wouldn’t think that a rotting banana could do a whole lot of damage to a person’s psyche, but the short horror film Bananas Are Real is going to try and do just that.

A young man home from an intense practice of likely sports finds a note from his mother.  The note warns him against eating the last banana as it has gone rotten (even though it really doesn’t look rotten).  But our young man is clearly hungry from his sporting pursuits and disregards his mother’s advice, eats the banana, and finds himself on the receiving end of an entire world of creepy.  How creepy?  Let’s just say bananas with hammers is just a start.

Bananas Are Real is actually a hilarious little short film that isn’t that scary but probably shouldn’t be interpreted as such either.  If you’ve wanted to laugh at a scary movie, then this is going to be one of your best bets, especially given that it’s only about three or so minutes long.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands this chuckle-laden short a six out of ten for the sheer giggle factor.

Well, folks, this is it–the last of the movies we can review for the Halloween Horror Fest 2009 short film contest.  We’ll be doing a full recap with our projected winner tomorrow, so stay tuned, but until then, on to the horrorshow!

We get a good look at just what stranger danger actually is in this one, and for one such stranger, he’s going to discover that the danger is a lot more unexpected than he figured it’d be.

I admit that I do like the makeup work in this one, and that the ending IS at least something of a surprise, but I really couldn’t get terribly scared by this.  This was probably one of those ideas that turn out to be a lot better suited to a feature-length movie than a short film, because it moved entirely too quickly for its own good.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this decent, if lacking in the scares department, short a solid six out of ten.  Just because it didn’t get a rise out of me doesn’t mean it won’t out of you, especially if you’re a newcomer to the horror game.

All right, folks–with just one movie left to cover that’s not courtesy of the boys at Fewdio, we’re down to the wire in terms of what we’ve got left, and tonight, we’re tackling Samaritan, part of the Halloween Horror Nights short film contest lineup.

This time, a man on his way home gets a whole lot more than he bargained for while changing a flat tire.  He thinks he may have found someone in trouble…but HE’S the one in trouble.

I have to admit, this is a downright creepy little package.  There was a great adrenaline rush there through most of this, and they don’t waste much time at all getting to the downright freaky.  I’m truly impressed by how good this turned out.  It’s a spectacular chunk of awesome, all right, and about the only thing bad you can say for it is that they don’t do a whole lot of explaining the things you’ll see.

What was that on the road?  What was that at his house?  Why is all this unpleasant stuff happening to HIM?  Plenty of things I would’ve liked to know, but thanks to the nature of short film, forget it.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this surprising blast of unexplained scary a respectable seven out of ten.  This could’ve made a really sweet feature-length title with some expositition.

And so our coverage of the 2009 Halloween Horror Nights short film contest continues on with The Nightmare, one  that got me scared from the word go as it couldn’t muster up any score higher than three out of five on YouTube.

And what we get here isn’t so much a movie as it is a music video only without the sound.  It’s really nothing more than a series of deranged images shot in jump cut fashion going from one weird thing to the next without anything resembling a coherent plotline or overarching narrative.

If Marilyn Manson ever shoots another video, then these are the guys he wants to call about it. Sadly, short film is really not on their list of qualifications.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this a three out of ten because it’s the right thing, just at the wrong place at the wrong time.  It’d be great if it were on MTV with Rob Zombie in the background, but for a short film contest?   No.

And so we go back to the parts of the Halloween Horror Nights short film contest that we actually haven’t covered yet to bring us Do No Harm.

And once again, I’m baffled by the plotline of a Halloween Horror Nights short.  As far as I can tell, a nurse, or possibly a patient, is having some serious post-op hallucination problems.

Look, I know there’s only so much you can do with three, four minutes of video, but surely “make a coherent plotline” isn’t irretrievably far down the list.  I mean, I had no idea what was going on here.  Why did I have no idea what was going on here?  That’s just not right.  I should KNOW what’s going on in a short film.  If a short fails on even that basic level of storytelling, then what’s the point?

The Screenhead Ten Scale, therefore, hands Do No Harm a big old basket of harm in the form of a two out of ten for being a creepy but confused mess.