Jo Bob Briggs, himself, would endorse this.

I haven't seen a comedy-horror like this since The Final Girls and that one didn't even contain 10% the humor of this. I laughed so hard, I thought this would never turn to horror...and I was right.

Sure, this is gory as all Hades and there were maybe a handful of sincere and effective jump scares, but this is pure comedy with a ton of horror nostalgia that you really have to be in the know to appreciate 90% of this film. Luckily...I'm the target audience.

Also, funny, I truly thought this was going to be an extremely low-budget comedy-horror with the biggest emphasis on the humor and not special effects. Or they'd be all CGI - really bad, cheap CGI and I'd still like it for the laughs. NOPE. When the first scene involving gore needed to be shown, they went 100%. I was THOROUGHLY impressed with the amount of practical effects and how extremely convincing they were. This would rival any huge budgeted Hollywood movie. Besides, Hollywood WOULD skimp as they always do and just use terrible CGI to save bucks. These masters DID NOT SKIMP. NOT ONE BIT.

The story's kinda hard to explain, but this is an anthology of horror shorts surrounding not one, but two wrap-arounds. I pretty much loved every one of the stories, probably the video store and other "I'm in a movie!" wraparound the best. Weakest, but still good was the feminist one. Not that I'm against girl power feminism, it was marketed as such, literally. And even then, that one wasn't that bad.

I truly laughed so hard, the comedy was non-stop, one joke after another. I don't even think my favorite comedy of all time, Airplane!, had this many jokes. And just like the aforementioned The Final Girls, I wanted to buy this immediately on Blu Ray. I did for that other movie, but sadly, this isn't available anywhere for purchase! Huh! It's available on Shudder. Just, I'm not one to rewatch movies over and over too soon. I like it to sit awhile in my memory like a fine wine.

But, I might have to see this again very soon. It was fantastic.

***

Final thoughts: ALSO helps, the men in this movie, probably 75%, are all incredibly gorgeous. Everyone was a fine actor, male and female, so they didn't just hire these guys/gals on looks. But, damn, I don't think I've seen any anthology in my life with this many talented and hunky men.

The production is more or less an anthology connected by Chad's (Jeremy King) VHS rental shop. The stories are spoofs on what appear to be both specific horror films and generic ones. The initial" Halloween" spoof is easily recognized, others are more difficult unless pointed out. I would recommend a look at IMDB movie trivia section prior to watching. There is really no such thing as a plot spoiler for the film. Black man dies first, final girl is a virgin. Jason never dies. I really expected clowns and zombies but they did not appear.

Fun film.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity. or zero breasts as Joe Bob Briggs might say.

The last Family Video in our area closed this year. Both of the spaces have been filled with new stores, as if someone you love had been replaced by someone you never want to meet.

I try not to dwell on it, but honestly, life hasn't gotten better once we lost video stores.

That's why the Scarecrow Challenge is so important to me. It's a chance to celebrate physical media, as well as genre films, in all their wonder and glory. 2020's Scare Package may have been a movie that I caught on the Shudder streaming service, but it feels like it was made by people who know more than a little about the feeling of having a stack of rented movies on top of your VCR and a cold beer in your hand.

Written and directed by Aaron B. Koontz, Courtney Andujar, Hillary Andujar, Anthony Cousins, Emily Hagins, Chris McInroy, Noah Segan and Baron Vaughn, it revolves around Rad Chad's Horror Emporium, a store stacked with horror tropes that we expect and that subvert those expectations. This framing sequence allows the employees and the video tapes of the store to tell several stories, along with bringing Chad into the orbit of the Devil's Lake Impaler (Dustin Rhodes!) and even Joe Bob Briggs.

Here are some of the other stories.

"Cold Open" tells the story of a man named Mike Myers, who yearns to be the main character in the many movies he walks into. Instead, he is the one that moves the characters through their stories. Pay attention to Mike, as he makes another appearance.

"One Time in the Woods" takes the slasher trope and body horror and goes wild, with more gore than in twenty modern films.

"M.I.S.T.E.R. (Men In Serious Turmoil Establishing Rights)" is about werewolves and the occult and men's help groups, while "Girls Night Out Of Body" concerns sugar skull lollipops and "The Night He Came Back Again! Part IV: The Final Kill" is concerned with the multiple ways that slashers are dispatched and yet come back, again and again, ruining lives.

Finally, "So Much to Do" features plenty to do all amidst the worries of having one's favorite show get spoiled.

While not every segment hits perfectly, many of them do, making one remember the feeling of getting to the third or fourth video in a stack of weekend movies, knowing that you still have a few more hours left in a Saturday night, an entire Sunday to sleep in and plenty time to watch the rest before they're due back at the store.

If you live near a video store, take advantage of it! You never know when the things you love will go away.