Video Junkie Strikes Back from Beyond the Grave

Listomania!: Thomas' January 2012 Viewings

2012-02-08T17:18:00.000-08:00

Oh crap, it's over a week into the new month and I'm already slackin'! I'll follow Will's less-is-more lead and give you four meatier reviews. Didn't we start out with ten? Next month we should be down to two.

THE STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR (1940): An ambitious investigative journalist, Mike Ward (John McGuire), helps send a down-on-his-luck drifter (Elisha Cook Jr) to the chair for the murder of a diner owner. Never mind that there isn't a shred of evidence and never mind that Ward is furthering his career by writing up the story in unobjective prose. Gradually Ward starts suspecting that he sent an innocent man to the chair and a stranger with a white scarf (Peter Lorre) is the actual killer. Often cited as the first film-noir, this low-rent B title was shot on the quick by RKO, due to the fact that they had Lorre on contract for another two days (stories like that just warm the cockles of my cynical heart). Clearly writer Frank Partos (who was nominated for an Oscar for the 1951 thriller HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL) was aiming for a scathing condemnation of shoddy, unethical journalism and an unreliable justice system. Some of it works, some of it doesn't and most of its faults are due to the quickie production. Writer-turned-director Boris Ingster goes hog-wild with surrealist and expressionist influences during the impressive nightmare sequence, but McGuire's over-the-top scenery-chewing in every single scene really lets this one down. Worth seeing for noir and Lorre fans, but there is a reason this has been hard to get a hold of for so many decades.

TERMINATOR WOMAN (1993): Picture it. Videostore. 1990s. Jean-Claude Van Damme as far as the eye can see. Oh hey, there's a mess of Billy Blanks movies and Cynthia Rothrock for days... Yep, it's all about kickboxing flicks. Be it cyborgs (thank you Albert), secret tournaments, or a cop whose deadly weapons are not just his hands, but his feet too, you get some sort of martial arts that, right or wrong, was usually packaged as kickboxing. Karen Sheperd (not to be confused with Congresswoman Karen Shepherd) has always had a place in our martial arts shrine due to her amazing karate skills that were put to good use in great movies such as the Yuen Biao, Cynthia Rothrock classic ABOVE THE LAW (1986). Why she never broke out like Rothrock is a mystery. Amazing fighting skills plus knock-out looks? That should have translated to a series of ever-worsening DTV action flicks. Baffling, right? I think maybe this movie solves the mystery.

Two cops with a love/hate history that dates back to Jay (Jerry Trimble) having his pride handed to him by Julie (Karen Shepard) in a karate match (don't all great relationships start that way?) are grudgingly teamed up on an assignment to escort a drug-ring witness back to South Africa to pin-point a cache of gold.

Qissi's idea of showcasing Karen's killer kicks

En route, our two karate kops are attacked by the drug lord Alex (Michel Qissi). Alex manages to easily kidnap Julie (what does that say about Jay?), while trying to grab the witness and the gold for himself. Michel Qissi got his start in the filmworld by being Van Damme's training buddy from the old country. After working on Van Damme's movies, he finally has a chance to direct and co-star in his very own rock-bottom actioner. Too bad he doesn't have a freakin' clue how to direct a fight scene, because we didn't show up for the dialogue. Well, yeah, actually we kinda did do that, but hilarious dialogue is worthless without a good, four-limbed butt-whuppin'. It isn't so much that there are not enough action scenes, it's that they are really short, two punch affairs that are heavily edited to imply the fight instead of showing it to you. Instead of the intense choreography and wide shots of an old Jackie Chan or Corey Yuen, we get the choppy patchwork of a Jason Statham movie. No shakey-cam, though. Points in Qissi's favor there. Trimble gets a chance to shine, well, glimmer, maybe, but Karen Sheperd is sadly wasted here, though her under-cover uniform includes a black-spangly busier that is nothing short of arresting... Yeah, yeah, stop groaning.

HUMONGOUS (1982): Seems like this off-shoot of the backwoods/deformed killer subgenre struck a chord in a lot of people, not just me, as it has developed a bit of a following over the past few years. Opening with a surprisingly brutal sequence (particularly in its uncut form) in which a party on a remote island is disrupted when a drunken rape turns into a bloodbath when the victims dogs attack the rapist and literally tear him to shreds. Flash forward 40 years and a group of teens (of course!) are taking a boating trip that would take them past the site of the rape, the legendary Dog Island. After rescuing a man lost at sea (who delivers the obligatory warning), they run aground in the shallow reefs and are forced to investigate the creepy island and learn its dark secret. Back in the day this movie scared the livin' crap out of me, and it seems I was not alone on this one. Unlike so many of the similar films that would follow, it didn't have ethnically diverse teens who are all fun-lovin' kids desperately trying to connect with it's audience in a way that only people who are completely out of touch try to be. These kids have some serious issues and there is no token black guy to provide embarrassing comic relief. Director Paul Lynch (who had some success with a little film called PROM NIGHT in 1980) actually makes the most of his meager budget to provide a creepy atmosphere of isolation with minimal music and foley work. The characters mention that the island is too quiet, and it is. No chirping birds or sounds of life. Saves money and adds atmosphere! The ending sequences that take place in almost total darkness are very effective with snatches of light showing you just what you need to see to allow the creature to seem more horrifying than it no doubt would fully lit as today's test audiences would demand. It may not be quite as terrifying as it was back in the day, but there's a lot to like about this creepy little bastard.

DANGEROUS COPS (1987): The Japanese get a cut of the cheeseball '80s cop-comedy with this slick and incomprehensibly Japanese outing that even with subtitles, I can't figure out if it's a subversive satire or to be taken at face value as a "straight" action-comedy.
There are those that like to see homoerotic metaphors around every corner (someone once made the claim that the tag-line for John Carpenter's THE THING was homoerotic). I guess in some ways the buddy/cop movies of the '80s are easy targets for that sort of this sort of thought and it was up to the Japanese to take it one step further.

The first feature film based on an incredibly popular TV show, we have two, sharp-dressing, loose-cannon cops, Taka-yama (Hiroshi Tachi) and Oshita (Kyôhei Shibata), who have no luck with the ladies or the bad guys or their hot-tempered chief. After tearing up the city on a wild car chase, they find themselves investigating the murder of a scientist at a cancer-research lab. Apparently someone has stolen their research and now our cops must track down the villain. But they sure aren't going to make it easy on themselves.

Nobody does blackface like the Asians

I wonder who helped finance the film?

It doesn't take very long to get a lead and after another chase, the duo is confronted with a hostage situation and end up returning to the police station handcuffed together. This is where thing get weird. Instead of walking into the station, they tango into the station, complete with a rose in teeth and... a big dip complete with a big kiss. Ummmm... what the fuck am I watching? After this debacle they are quickly bounced around on various demeaning assignments, such as "masher" detail in which they must hang out in public restrooms, and yes before you ask, this includes a scene with a shocked and outraged matronly woman. Yep, that man-in-a-woman's-bathroom gag translates into any language. One bit involves them being on "hobo" detail, in which Oshita dresses up as a rastafari "hobo" and carries around a boombox. Nothing is funnier than being homeless! All the while they continue to try and chase down leads on the big case. Yeah, yeah, I hear you saying "what about all that homo stuff you were talking about?" Ok fine, when Taka is all depressed because the villain isn't falling for their plan, Oshita puts on a little one-man, song and dance number on a stage just for him. No, really. During a tense moment Taka is seen stroking the bowed head of the young rookie officer. Plus there is tons of other bits here and there that are just things that straight men would not do. Errr... not that there's anything wrong with that!

To be fair there are some fun moments in the film and some of the throwaway jokes are actually pretty funny. There's moments such as when Oshita, in his bright, black and yellow patterned shirt goes to a high-class bar in which the dress-code requires a tie. He is given a loaner, which is a red tie, and the pregnant pause and look on his face before pointing out that the tie would clash with his shirt is well played. So is the bit where Oshita goes to buy groceries for the safehouse where they are holding an accessory to the crime and ensures that he picks out the perfect white wine for dinner. Funny, but, hmmmmm... See what I mean?

The movie moves at a breakneck pace trying to cram in an entire season's worth of gags, action and pointless sub-plots in addition to laying on the '80s kistch with a trowel. While some stuff doesn't translate at all (a Japanese character printed on a fan is changed to a presumably bad word with a single piece of tape), director Yasuharu Hasebe throws enough stuff at the wall to ensure that something sticks and does it with oodles of hyper-stylized '80s sensibility.

Listomania!: William's Jumping January 2012 Viewings

2012-02-01T17:57:00.000-08:00

Urgent telegram from VJ Headquarters reads: “Oh crap! –stop- It’s the 1st. –stop-.” Damn, how did February sneak up on us like this? Well, it did and somehow January flew away. Probably the plethora of movies I watched helped it in doing that as I took in 32 movies during the 31 days in the first month of the year. That broke down to 25 DVD viewings, 4 streaming movies, 3 VHS movies and 0 theatrical screenings (a first). One of my New Year’s Movie Resolutions has been to watch more stuff I haven’t seen before instead of revisits. It is a conscious attempt to whittle down that ever growing collection of films on the dreaded “to be watched” list (hard with Tom shipping me tons of glorious DVD-Rs). I guess I’m off to a good start as 27 of the 32 screenings were features I had never seen before. Below are a five of the new titles that stuck with me the most, for better or worse.

SH! THE OCTOPUS (1937) - Detectives Kelly (Hugh Herbert) and Dempsey (Allen Jenkins) inadvertently find themselves on the trail of criminal The Octopus when they rescue Vesta Vernoff (Marcia Ralston) in the middle of a rain storm. The trio end up at a lighthouse and are soon joined by 5 other folks drawn to this location. One of them The Octopus, who is hoping to get the formula to some sort of death ray. Oh, and there is also a real octopus that is snatching folks at random. I got the Warner Bros. Mystery set recently on my friend Marty's recommendation with the explicit instructions to watch this feature first because it is really out there and that is no lie. Running just under an hour, this is essentially a slapstick comedy to showcase Herbert's comedic talents, but there is so much oddball stuff going on here. You have a Captain Hook, who has a hook hand (naturally) and a fear of clocks; two loony cops who shoot at everything; an underdeveloped romance; inadvertent drug addiction; deep sea diving; and even an octopus that switches off lights with its tentacles. Believe it or not, it all makes sense in the end. One of the best things was a character transformation done via old school in-camera trickery that comes off incredibly well. You can check it out here (obviously don’t click if you don’t want film spoilers):

ANGEL OF DESTRUCTION (1994) - Singer/stripper Delilah (Jessica Mark) is stalked by a creepy ex-mercenary (Jimmy Broome), who likes to leave severed fingers in her dressing room. Justifiably spooked, she hires private eye Brit Alwood (Charlie Spradling) for protection but that ends rather quickly when the psycho shows up in Brit's office minutes after the hiring and kills her. So it is up to Jo Alwood (Maria Ford), Brit's stepsister, to take on the job and stop this killer. Not only that, but she has to deal with sleazy mafia type and former adversary Sonny Luso (Bob McFarland), Delilah's funder who is upset she is too racy and wants her to be more "like Peggy Lee" (what!?!).

I can't believe how long this B-movie masterpiece has eluded me. I don't want to oversell it, but this is about as perfect an exploitation film as you can get with director Charles Philip Moore (DEMON WIND) cramming in everything he could. Essentially a riff on 1992's popular THE BODYGUARD (and a remake of Moore's earlier BLACKBELT [1992], a BODYGUARD rip-off with Don "The Dragon" Wilson that went into production when news of Costner's vehicle hit and beat it to release by 6 months), the film ups the violence and nudity to insane levels. If a fight isn't happening on screen, most likely one of Delilah's nudity filled shows is. Moore reaches the pinnacle during a nighttime assassination attempt where Ford thwarts the goons with her kickboxing skills while clad only in a g-string. You read that right – naked kickboxing! It is the type of thing you would expect from a HK production (ESCAPE FROM BROTHEL did it in 1992), but not readily seen in US stuff. The bloody shootouts (done in not-so-glorious slo-mo) also echo the HK style at the time. The production tried to get the Philippines to stand in for Hawaii but it doesn't work.

VICE RAID (1960) - Syndicate crime boss Malone (Brad Dexter) wants to get do-gooder vice cop Whitey Brandon (Richard Coogan) out of his hair so he sets up a rather intricate plot of framing him. Malone gets "model" Carol Hudson (Mamie Van Doren) to come into town and falsely claim that Brandon tried to extort her during a bust. Thankfully, the department is prone to believing the testimony of floozies over their most decorated cop and Brandon is fired. So he sets out to get his revenge and receives an unlikely ally in Carol after her teenage sister is raped by one of Malone's hoods. This was actually my first Van Doren film and I rather enjoyed it. She is definitely a looker and you can bet the soundtrack fills with swooning jazz when she enters the picture. She is also pretty decent as an actress. Also of note is Juli Reding, who has one scene early on as a "model" who is more than proud to show her magazine work to Brandon ("Close it up or you might catch cold.") Coogan, looking a bit like Robert Stack, is good in the lead, if a little stiff. Director Edward L. Cahn definitely won't be accused of doing anything inventive during the proceedings, although there is a nice dummy fall during the final shootout. It is currently streaming on Netflix.

THE POSSESSION OF NURSE SHERRI (1978) – Hard to believe we’ve been blogging for almost 2 years on bad movies and this is our first Al Adamson mention. Al gives us his take of THE EXORCIST. A cult leader has a heart attack in the desert while performing a ritual to raise a follower from the dead and subsequently dies on the operating table at a local hospital. No big deal, he'll just turn into a glowing green blob and possess Nurse Sherri (Jill Jacobson) to get revenge on the doctors who he feels killed him. This is bad news for Sherri's lovelife as her boyfriend Peter (Geoffrey Land) was one of the docs. Peter notices the changes in Sherri and it seems only a blinded former NFL player with knowledge of voodoo (!) who is a patient can offer the way for two nurses (Marilyn Joi and Mary Kay Pass) to help release Sheri from this transcendental terror. If you are familiar with Adamson's work, you'll know what to expect here as this has lots of static shots that go on too long and flat acting. There is also one of the funniest and most random car chases when a drunken follower confronts Peter – who is oddly not intrigued by this man's story, despite knowing his girl is now possessed – in a parking garage. They then burst out onto the city streets and end up in the desert within minutes. The poor follower survives having the roof of his car ripped off and leaps out just before it drives off a cliff and explodes (the film’s highlight). The Shock-o-rama DVD offers an alternate version of the film title simply NURSE SHERRI and it is actually really interesting. It removes all of the drunken follower bits (including the car chase) from the POSSESSION version and replaces them with nude scenes.

BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS (1970) – It is even harder to believe that this is our first Andy Milligan mention on the blog. Maybe we are still somewhat sane? Here awful auteur Andy attempts to do the story of Sweeney Todd...with a budget of $50. Ooof! The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (John Miranda) lets you know his business right away as he cuts a man's throat in the first three minutes (he pulls a towel over the victim's face and the guy reacts as if he is being pulled back, despite his attacker letting go at one point). Sweeney pockets the valuables and the rest goes into the meat pies of Mrs. Lovett (Jane Hilary). Things get complicated when good girl shop worker Johanna (Annabella Wood) wonders where her boyfriend disappeared to.

Good God! Only Andy Milligan could drag down the exploitation material found in the Todd story. You know what the other adaptations of that Penny Dreadful were missing? How about looooong scenes of people talking and talking and talking. To be fair, there is about a minute of pretty good stuff in here, mostly coming from some meat cleaver attacks. Milligan recreates the 19th century about as well as I can waltz and I'm pretty sure one scene has a shot of a modern era heater in the back and light switches. Miranda's Sweeney looks like a cross between Abraham Lincoln and Bowzer from Sha Na Na, but he is, surprisingly, a decent actor. The rest of the cast is there, local theater English accents and all (believe it or not, he actually shot in England). Look for "fortnight" to be said twice within the first ten minutes. This was only my second Milligan feature (I lost my Milligan virginity to the similar THE GHASTLY ONES) and I’m not sure if I want to go back for more.

The Legacy of Lovecraft: THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS (2011)

2012-01-28T13:41:00.000-08:00

Over the past decade H.P. Lovecraft has had a resurgence of popularity not seen since the ‘80s. To many of us, he never went out of style, but with the reduced cost in digital production, it has suddenly become a popular subject for low-budget filmmaking. It also should be pointed out that no studio is going to want to produce a film in which things cannot be named and there is stuff that is not meant to be known. Hollywood films are all about names and explanations. Everything has to have a backstory. If you have aliens, Hollywood studios demand to know where they come from, why they hate humans and what they had for breakfast. Another thing Hollywood hates is atmosphere. Every scene needs to be lit up like a K-Mart in September. No shadows, but plenty of flood fills because we need to see the thread-count on Freddy Krueger’s latest woolen knit sweater, or the TV-weened kids in the test screenings will complain.

Most of the love for H.P. has come in the form of short films of varying quality. Some, such as Brian Moore’s excellent COOL AIR (1998), are stripped-to-the-bone adaptations that overcome their extreme budgetary limitations with deft handling of the material. Some miss the other-worldly portal entirely and some, or rather one, nails it so perfectly that it leaves you in awe. Not just the adaptation of the story, but the framework and the details make THE CALL OF CTHULHU (2005) one of the best, if not the best H.P. Lovecraft short film to date. So now what? Well the founders of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society and creators of CALL, Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, decided to spend the next six years letting the accolades roll in, watching Gilligan re-runs and only rolling off the sofa to hoist another poor-man’s champagne out of the fridge, right? Heeeeeeell no! In that long six years Branney and Leman spent three years (yes, three years) just hammering out a script for their first feature-length film, THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS! Yeah, sure, Hollywood is full of stories about development hell where the studio bigwigs are sold on some high-concept motion picture event and then spend the next decade paying 20 other schlubs to re-write it. Of course after going through the script-grinder for years, when the execs finally fire-up the ol’ green light, you end of up with a nails-on-a-chalkboard endurance test like INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (2008). Here, Branney and Leman actually made the script a finely tuned instrument that resonates Lovecraft like Dr. Pretorious’ infernal machine.

During the very real Vermont floods of 1927, farmers begin reporting sightings of strange winged, crab-like creatures. The controversy in the newspapers sparks debate among the academics and the student body of the prestigious Arkham University in nearby Massachusetts. One of such person is Professor Albert Wilmath (Matt Foyer and period toupee), a folklorist who maintains, what he believes to be, a firm grasp on reality. After being involved in a literal debate with real life writer Charles Fort (Andrew Lehman under some very impressive make-up), Wilmath is contacted by the son of a Vermont farmer Henry Akeley (Barry Lynch), who has been trying to convince Wilmath to come out to Vermont to see his farm and possibly the creatures that surround it on a nightly basis. After some photographic evidence and continued chiding from Fort, Wilmath sucks it up and heads out to the wilds of Vermont to meet with Akeley and disprove him for the charlatan that he, of course, is. Things go horribly wrong. Yes, that’s it. That's all I’m going to reveal about the plot. There’s a lot more, but I really don’t want to spoil any of it. Let’s just say that the Mi-Go are featured prominently, but have been re-envisioned with a surprising twist that may not be totally Lovecraftian, but certainly is fitting for the period and pretty damn nifty.

I’ve often said that when bringing Lovecraft to the screen, some elaboration is probably a good idea. Obviously this depends on the direction you go. You can take Lovecraft to the streets of modern Los Angeles, add a handful of staggeringly bad acting and even worse CG effects and end up with something utterly laughable like THE CHILL (2007), or you can tweak the story, add subplots and flesh it out into something that stays true to Lovecraft to a point, but makes for a great cinematic experience, such as THE COLOUR FROM THE DARK (2008), or… you can have your fungi and eat it too. Branney and Leman have managed to add subplots and an entire third act to the story that not only add depth and structure to the story, but actually retain the spirit of Lovecraft, with some caveats. Lovecraft would have never written the biplane scene, nor the “emotional attachment” bit with the little girl, Hannah Masterson (Autumn Wendel), but paths they end up taking ring true in spite of that. Any of these minor inconsistencies are easily overlooked, however, due to the sure-footed production and high level of craftsmanship.

The brilliant concept behind CALL was to make the film in the style of the era it was written in. So here, they have decided to continue that philosophy and make this in the style of what they claim to be an early ‘30s film. I don’t know about early ‘30s, specifically, it feels more like a mash-up of ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s, but that’s just being pedantic. It is easily the most successful period-style genre film since YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) and DEAD MEN DON’T WEAR PLAID (1982), and those were both comedies. The level of painstaking detail in virtually every scene is nothing short of amazing. Even more amazing is the filmmakers accounts of even more grueling tedious work that is completely transparent when viewing the film. A simple sequence in which Wilmath simply waits to meet Akeley's son who has come to meet him on a period-correct train was in fact an ordeal to film, simply because the train ran on its own schedule and Branney and Leman didn’t want to use CGI or work around the sequence. They could have the easy way out and shot a close-up of Wilmath sitting at the station and used sound effects or voice over to convey that there is a train. That's what The Asylum would have done. Actually they would have shot the train leaving the station and left in all the tourists in modern attire. Actually, they pretty much did do that. But not our HPLS guys! It would be too easy, and it would look cheap in the final film. To paraphrase the late Mr. Kennedy, they don’t do it because it’s easy, they do it because it’s hard. I love these guys!

That said there is CGI this time around, but it is due to the lack of budget to do everything in camera. Branney and Leman originally wanted to do the creature effects in stop-motion miniature, which would have been incredible, but it became obvious that it was going to be far too labor intensive and thus far too costly and decided to go with CG. But not just CG. CG that looks like stop-motion! How cool is that? In spite of the CG here and there, a large amount of effects are physical, including real smoke! Yeah, I know it seems like a simple thing. Bring in a smoke machine, get a couple of guys to wave some fans and you’re in business, right? For some reason, low-budget and digital shot films in particular, simply refuse to do this. Need some atmospheric fog or smoke? Call up the guy with Video Toaster! It never fails to do exactly the opposite of the intention. It looks cheap and tacky and detracts from the scene. Here we have real smoke and a single light-source – in the same shot! Man, I almost cried. Seriously, that’s all it really takes to thrill me. If ISHTAR had been shot in black and white with a smoke machine and a single light source it would be my favorite movie of all time. And maybe with some split focus shots and oblique angles and… ok, well, you get my point.

Sheer, mind-liquefying insanity

Speaking of things that just aren't done anymore; the brilliant opening scene, inspired by THE LADY VANISHES (1938), in which the camera pans down from the credits, past a matte-painting and into an intensely detailed miniature, is really the kind of thing we just don’t see in cinema at all these days, much less in a low-budgeted independent feature. The sweeping score by Troy Sterling Nies also adds an element of richness and class that would have otherwise been absent, making the whole film feel like a genuine studio release from the past. Additionally, special effects maestros Dave Snyder (make-up effects) and Fred Manchento (miniatures/models) turn in some seriously stunning work that rival anything put out by a major studio. Manchento’s massive Round Mountain miniature set with aproximately 1000-2000 hand-made trees and an internally lit, forced perspective cave tunnel is nothing short of awe-inspiring. The same can be said for Snyder’s re-creation of Lynch’s face and hands. I seriously doubt the majors would have even considered taking the time to make such detailed prosthetic works and would have gone straight to the CG department.

Pop Quiz: Alton or Matt?

Before I start getting pelted with rotten vegetables for gushing like a fanboy, let me see if I can find something to grumble about. In CALL OF CTHULHU, Branney and Leman made the movie look like an old film. They processed the image to give it a slightly over-exposed white glow that that are indicative of films from the silent era. Also the image had scratches and imperfections that really brought that feeling home. Out of the dozens upon dozens of fantastic details that are present in WHISPERER, that is the one that is obvious by its omission. Everything else is so dead on, that the crisp, clean image and audio pull you away from suspending the belief that this is a lost horror-noir classic. Also, you could kibbitz that some of the acting is a bit stagey. Expressions are bigger than they need to be and a little over dramatic at times. However, these are stage actors who are acting like they are in a period film and films of the '30s did tend to have a stage-like quality due to the actors and the fact that cameras were literally immobile during scenes with sound due to the heavy baffling of the cameras. Oh, and while Matt Foyer does a fine job as Wilmath, but I kept waiting to give me some quirky cooking tips. Honestly, he really could kidnap Alton Brown and take over his life.

Great talent or nice hair? You can't have both.

It’s amazing and a real shame that a film of this quality has to go out self-published, but then again, I suspect that there is no studio on earth that would let this movie be what it is. So many concessions would have to be made that it would be a completely different film in the end. That is what makes this film more than the sum of its parts. WHISPERER is without question one of the best indy productions to come along since… well, since THE CALL OF CTHULHU and in all seriousness, I can't think of a single digital movie that is more ambitious or as genuinely entertaining. What will HPLS' next project be? There have been some mutterings about the oft-attempted story The Shadow Over Innsmouth, but nothing has been announced as of yet. One thing is for certain, the digital feature bar has been raised. I would love to see more people rise to this challenge and make digital features that do the hard work and show a… ahem… love for the craft. Oh, “boo” yourself.

The "Never Got Made" Files #71: Tales about TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE

2012-01-24T09:57:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, hiding behind the badly Photoshopped DVD cover to the left is one of the most anticipated sword and sorcery follow ups of all-time. Finally seeing release this week in the United States via Lionsgate DVD, TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE is the long-awaited follow up to THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER (1982), director Albert Pyun’s first and most successful theatrical release. Waiting 30 years between films is bad enough for fans, but the end result was equally disappointing (read our full original review here). What isn’t known are the years of on-and-off starts/stops and behind-the-scenes developments the filmmakers dealt with. Thankfully, director Pyun has been kind enough (especially after our review) to give us the back story on the continuation and share some tales about the making of TALES.

THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER was one of the great, entertaining films from the “class of 1982,” an era where horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films were at a creative peak. Having been turned down by most major and minor studios in Hollywood over a period of years, Pyun and his co-writers Tom Karnowski and John Stuckmeyer finally caught a break when they took their script and storyboards to producer Brandon Chase the day before EXCALIBUR (1981) opened. Chase, fresh off the box office success of ALLIGATOR (1980), saw potential in the project and the film was into production within eight weeks of their initial meeting.

Chase knew he was taking a risk on a first time filmmaker, but it paid off handsomely when SWORD opened just over a year later. Riding the wave of fantasy popularity spawned by Dungeons & Dragons, SWORD was released theatrically by the independent distributor Group 1 on April 23, 1982 on 223 screens. Despite being on a fraction of screens occupied by most top ten films at the time (for comparison, the raunchy comedy classic PORKY’S was on 1,474 screens), SWORD debuted in fifth place with a hefty per screen average of $7,720 (over two thousand dollars higher than the next closest average). The film was an unbridled success and it jumped to the no. 2 position when it expanded to 660 screens the next weekend. In total, the film spent four months in top 20 at the box office, ending with a final domestic box office take of $39,103,425. Adjusted for inflation (1982’s ticket price average of $2.94 vs. 2012’s average of $7.94), the film grossed over $106 million in today’s box office dollars. Not bad for a film with a neophyte director and a budget in the range of $3-4 million.

Two-page Variety ad circa May 1982

touting SWORD's box office success (click to enlarge):

Naturally, like any film that turns such an enormous profit, the producers were more than happy to announce plans for a sequel. Hell, they didn’t even need to as the filmmakers took care of that for them. In the tradition of 007 films ending their credits with “James Bond will return in…” text teases, SWORD promised more with an onscreen end credit that read: “Watch for Talon’s Next Adventure TALES OF THE ANCIENT EMPIRE coming soon.”

THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER

end credits tease:

Sales agent Walter Manley wasted little time on the project and announced in a May 1982 Variety issue that his company would begin taking presales at Cannes. He claimed a script was finished and the production ready to roll. Manley peppered his words with bold talk of shooting in Germany with a budget of $12,000,000 for a Christmas 1983 release.

Additionally, an announcement of the sequel project was also placed in Box Office magazine in May 1982.

While the distributor was high on pimping the project, producer Chase had a bit more standoffish approach. Speaking to Fangoria around the same time, he took a decidedly more cautious stance, waiting to see how the market would handle the upcoming glut of sword and sorcery pictures.

In the end, Chase was right as public interest fell under the weight of beefy guys with names like ATOR and DEATHSTALKER. It’s always the Italians, right? Chase’s prescient thoughts were all the more confirmed when CONAN THE DESTROYER (1984) lived up to its moniker by killing the once hard-hitting genre with bad comedy and a PG rating. A year later you couldn’t pay people to step into a theater to see RED SONJA (1985), co-starring the genre’s poster boy Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, except for Video Junkie head Tom, he was front and center.

On Albert Pyun’s end, things never really took off on the sequel in the early 80s. “I don't think there was a serious attempt to make sequel,” Pyun reveals. Regardless, the director did work on an early rough draft of the sequel script around that time. “I had written a sequel called THE SERPENT’S ORB,” he says. “It dealt with the kingdom they were riding off to save at the end of SWORD. But it was much larger in scale with dragon creatures unleashed by a sorceress as the main villains. Much of the movie was set in caves.”

In all fairness, Pyun also soon found himself to be a very busy man as he embarked upon the kind of directing career that would send shivers down Terrence Malick’s spine. Following SWORD’s debut, Pyun worked seemingly non-stop over a period of nearly two decades (1983-2001) as he directed an astonishing 35 feature films (with 5 films alone released in 1996!). Pyun found himself all over the map both literally and figuratively as the shooting locations were as disparate as the film’s quality. This globetrotting period found Pyun working for companies from Cannon to Empire to Miramax. When asked if he ever thought of bringing the SWORD sequel property to these studios, he had a surprising answer. “No, I was really done with fantasy as I just came off two other difficult fantasy shoots – RADIOACTIVE DREAMS (1985) and VICIOUS LIPS (1986),” he explains. “I wanted to make contemporary set movies. I was exhausted building entire worlds from scratch.”

Interestingly, an attempt to resurrect the production came via Walter Manley in the mid-1990s. Manley had spent most of the 1980s running Manley Productions, Inc. (MPI) before finding himself in legal trouble in 1993 for failure to pay $300,000 to the producers of HARD ROCK NIGHTMARE (you can read more about this fascinating story in this Variety article). Come 1995 he had christened a new company, Palisades Communications, and offering the SWORD sequel among his preproduction projects at Cannes that year (listed as “Brandon Chase’s THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER PART II). Also take note of his offering of Meir Zarchi’s unmade I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE sequel (complete with an amusing spelling error) and MPI’s perpetually announced MANIAC II (6 years after MANIAC Joe Spinell had passed away).

On Pyun’s end, he never really thought about the sequel again until the 21st century had appeared. “I did try to get a loose sequel going with Elie Samaha and Franchise Pictures in 2002,” he states. “The script was written for Dolph Lundrgren and called CITY OF BLOOD. It was really the genesis of TALES as it introduced vampires into the mix.”

The only memorable thing about
REDLINE (2007)

It wasn’t until 2007 that Pyun started taking the idea of a follow up seriously. According to his blog, he studied what the genre had offered in the ensuing 25 years and felt his return could be done. In August 2007 he announced to Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) that a follow up would begin production in Tunisia in October. Initially, Pyun was hoping to adapt a sci-fi script called SWEATING BULLETS by his LEFT FOR DEAD screenwriter Chad Leslie. “Chad's script was very clever and set in the distant future. A sort of BLADE RUNNER / BRAZIL type world,” he explains. “The premise was how people who had money but were dying or diseased or crippled could buy another body and have their own thoughts and soul put into the new body. It was a mystery thriller set with that concept. It translated easily into a historical sword and sorcery epic.”

Pyun briefly worked with producer Mario Kassar on trying to get TALES made via Chicago Pictures. The script got positive reaction and they had several meetings. Unfortunately, that outfit died a quick death thanks to REDLINE (2007), a forgetable street racing disaster probably best known now for lead Eddie Griffin accidentally wrecking a $1.5 million dollar Ferrari Enzo during a charity race practice run to promote the film.

Feeling that Leslie’s script might be too expensive to produce, Pyun had his producer Cynthia Curnan work out his ideas in late 2007. The title saw a slight modification as it went from TALES OF THE ANCIENT EMPIRE to TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE. Satisfied with the resulting script, Pyun quickly ramped up production in the first half of 2008. Plans initially included head back down to Argentina (where Pyun had shot LEFT FOR DEAD) and preproduction began. Slowly over the next few months Pyun saw his production changing (24 shooting days whittled down to 11 days). When other production expenses began balloon their budget of $450,000, Pyun and company decided to pull the plug on the May 2008 filming start date down in Argentina.

So preproduction began all over again with the producers now aimed for a fall 2008 start date. Various actors (Christopher Lambert, Yancy Butler, Leah Cairns) were announced via AICN in July 2008 as being part of the cast, but they never made it into the film. Adding to the confusion, the IMDb listed Val Kilmer as a cast member although he was never in the film. Ultimately, it was money and budget issues that kept these folks from coming on board. “Leah was in Canada and we couldn't afford to bring her to LA,” Pyuns discloses. “With Christopher and Yancy we couldn't agree on a fee. Again, we were so strapped budget-wise and the fact that the funding for the budget never fully materialized hurt those areas.” The money woes even hurt the return of SWORD star Lee Horsley as Talon. “We couldn't afford him for more than a day so we had to create [his role] so it could be done in a day,” Pyun states.

Cameras finally started rolling in December 2008 with a cast that included Kevin Sorbo, Whitney Albe, Melissa Ordway, Victoria Maurette, Ralf Moeller, and Matthew Willig. Treating the time between films as real-time, TALES tells the story of Princess Tanis (Ordway) convincing her half-siblings – Aedan (Kevin Sorbo), Malia (Sarah Ann Schultz), and Rajan (Janelle Giumarra) – to combat vampire sorceress Xia (Albe) before she can take over the kingdom of Abelar. So much for the further adventures of Talon, eh? Pyun edited the film throughout 2009 and into 2010. Early efforts to release the film on April 23, 2010 (28 years to the day of the original’s release) via Pyun’s direct-to-DVD distribution fell through, as did a planned Comic Con screening. The first public screening finally came in July 2010 at the Fright Night Film Festival. In the fall of 2010, the film was released in Thailand on DVD. This was an licensed release, but not Pyun’s final cut. “It was attempt by the original producer to raise cash,” Pyun says bluntly.

Pyun promised fans this wasn’t his final version and, indeed, in 2011 he began shooting new footage. In January 2011, Cazzy Golomb shots scene as a narrator in an effort to streamline the film’s confusing plotline. Later, in May 2011, Pyun gathered a collection of actors for his past production in order to expand the film’s running time. Further shooting took place in the deserts of Nevada in August 2011. “In the year in between we added Michael Pare', Victoria Maurette, Sasha Mitchell, Norbert Weisser and Jessica Delgado,” he reveals of a four day shoot. “Actually it was really part of the RED MOON shoot and we just assigned the footage for use on TALES to promote RED MOON.”

So what in the world is RED MOON? It is actually the sequel to TALES teased in that film's cliffhanger. “The RED MOON script is great and we are going to complete it this spring. I think it will make up for TALES creatively,” says Pyun, quite aware of the fan backlash on TALES. “Yes, but I expect a backlash on all my films. So I'm armored and prepared for the lynch mob,” says the prolific director. “I am resigned that my style of filmmaking is not likely to appeal to a large audience.”

Believe it or not, the TALES journey doesn’t end there. The large audience mentioned above will still not be seeing Pyun’s final cut as apparently Lionsgate has modified the film even more for their DVD release. Exactly what has been changed is a mystery even to the film’s director as even Pyun has not seen their version. “Very disappointing” is the quick and simple way he can describe it. “It’s very upsetting to me that they would make the changes and with me not involved. Just to gain 4 minutes of screen time. It really hurts the film which isn't strong enough to withstand that change,” says Pyun with some frankness about his final product. TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE is out now on DVD.

Totally TV: THE MILLION DOLLAR RIPOFF (1976)

2012-01-20T10:11:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about Netflix streaming is they have a bunch of TV movies on there. Particularly interesting are TV movies from the 1970s like this little crime caper. A serious vehicle for funnyman Freddie Prinze, star of NBC’s popular CHICO AND THE MAN, this originally aired for the network on Wednesday, September 22, 1976 as the "NBC Movie of the Week." Sadly, just a few months after the debut Prinze would be dead.

Electronics whiz and ex-con Alvin “Muff” Kovak (Prinze) plans a heist on the Chicago Transit Authority. Muff, really? Fired from the CTA for making bootleg signal boxes, Kovak figures he has enough insider knowledge that he can steal lots of money from the subway collection centers on pickup day. Muff assembles a team of four beauties to help him pull this off. There is Helen (Linda Scruggs), Lil (Christine Bedford), Jessie (a pre-GROWING PAIN Joanna Kerns) and Kitty (Brook Mills), Muff’s love interest. Because, honestly, when you are planning something so complex, you definitely want four ladies who look like they should be dancing in the disco helping you out. They get around their good looks because one of them is a make up expert and designs some intricate make ups to disguise them and make them look like old men. The end result is definitely creepy, coming off as a cross between horror movie monsters and that creepy short guy with the high pitch voice that everyone has met at some point in their lifetime. Yeah, you know the one. Here are some examples:

Hot chick in disguise or Teller?

Hot chick in disguise or Senator Joe Lieberman?

Prinze in disguise or Eddie Muprhy

in VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN?

Hot chick in disguise or horror movie granny?

Joanna Kerns in disguise or Kramer?

Anyway, Muff is one smart cookie and he bugs the office of Lt. Fogherty (Allen Garfield) in order to hear the daily numerical passwords of the pick up drivers. His plan is to intercept them by a few minutes and have one of his ladies in disguise present the code number to get the bag first. This should nab them $500,000 in three different locations for a cool million and a half dollars. Wait a second – I thought this was the million dollar rip-off, not the million and a half dollar rip-off? Anyway, all seems to be going according to plan until Luback (James Sloyan), an old underworld associate of Muff’s, shows up and demands 50% of the action. This is bad news because not only will Muff not be getting the full amount of money, but it means he has a rat in his bevy of beauties who tipped Luback off to their crime. Can Muff pull off the perfect heist, while outsmarting his enemies and uncovering the mole? I’ll bet you he can, in 73 minutes no less!

Drawing inspiration from THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974), this TV movie originally began its life as a screenplay by actors William Devane and John Pleshette (no doubt with themselves in the lead roles). It was eventually adapted into a TV movie teleplay by Andrew Peter Martin, who had previously given audiences the TV horror classic BAD RONALD (1974). The entire scenario can easily be seen as a big heist film, but it looks like NBC wanted to go the glorious eye candy route where a guy leads some foxy females instead. Interestingly, just two hours after this premiered at 8pm, a little show called CHARLIE’S ANGELS premiered on ABC at 10pm. *cue eerie music*

One of the things that really benefit this TV production is the location shooting in Chicago. New York usually gets the most play when it comes to 1970s urban films, so it is nice to see the Windy City get its due. There are lots of downtown shots, office layouts and, obviously, tons of railway/yard locations. If it was shot today, they would do it all location work via greenscreen and the offices would have TV screens every two feet. Most interesting to me are the garish subway station entrances that are painted with such an ugly color, looking like the kind of orange you get when you mix your mustard and ketchup (mutchup?) together.

Of course, the most interesting thing about this film is it is Prinze’s lone feature. A stand up comedian since his teens, Prinze burst into stardom after being featured on Jack Paar’s show and THE TONIGHT SHOW in 1973. Just under a year later he was the lead on the aforementioned CHICO sitcom. Sadly, the quick ascent to stardom affected Prinze adversely and he quickly fell into the drug lifestyle. Despite the birth of his son (future star Freddie Prinze, Jr.) in early 1976, Prinze continued to struggle with depression and drug abuse. It is shocking to believe, but he was only 22-years-old when he appeared in this film. Just four months after this aired, Prinze took his own life by committing suicide. It is a real shame as this film showed he was more than capable at carrying a film and that he didn’t need to rely solely on his natural comedic abilities. Had he lived, Prinze could have, at best, easily essayed supporting roles in the action flicks coming out at the time. At worst, he would have done fine in one of the AIRPORT movies. Hollywood is a land of sad stories of unreached potential and Prinze’s story might be one of the worst.

Article around the time of

airing (click to enlarge):

The XXX-Factor: BAD PENNY (1978)

2012-01-17T13:13:00.000-08:00

I don't know how he does it. Don't ask me, I don't know. Chuck Vincent somehow takes terrible acting, awful joke writing, unfocused script-writing and generally shoddy production values and makes it not only watchable, but really damned entertaining. The cynics among you, I'm sure, are rolling your eyes and mumbling something about the copious amounts of nekkidity having something to do with it. Yeah, sure, that could almost be called a recurring theme for Chuck, but I'm actually going to rebut that. Crazy, I know, but hear me out. I could line up screenings of WOMB RAIDER (2003), LUST IN THE MUMMY'S TOMB (2002) or BARE WENCH PROJECT (2000) and collectively get way more skin, but still get far less entertainment for your hard-earned dollar. Matter of fact there is such a deficit of entertainment value, I believe the directors owe us, the viewing public, some of their hard-earned dollars for ruining an admittedly small portion of our lives (yes, even you Jim). Chuck just knows how to deliver. He may not be the head chef of Le Cirque, but he ain't the fry cook at Burger King either. Case in point, BAD PENNY.

After getting a kick out of Radley Metzger's much maligned and surprisingly straightforward adaptation of THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1978), fellow VJ cohort Will, pointed out that Chuck Vincent had made his own adaptation and it was now on DVD. Awesome! Will it live up to my fevered expectations? Well, yes and no... but mostly yes.

This scene could really use some plants...

The film doesn't waste a second diving into the plot and starts with the obligatory reading of the will. Eccentric Uncle Hickey has finally shuffled off this mortal coil and is going to leave the entirety of his fortune to a single family member, because, as he says, they are all a bunch of pussies. Hey, he was rich, he can say that kind of stuff, I guess. There is a bit of a catch though. The inheritance will belong to Penny (Samantha Fox), but only if she can solve a cryptic riddle on the mean streets of New York city, and if she can't... or if she dies, the inheritance will go to the conniving Aunt Celeste (Molly Malone). Aunt Celeste, complete with black mumu and turban, decides that the best plan of action is to bust out all Wile E. Coyote on Penny and do her in via trip-wires, bombs, tarantulas and other subtle plans that would never be deemed at all suspicious to any law enforcement agency. All of this silliness is actually set to The Blue Danube, which somehow makes it even sillier.

Penny, never one to be accused of being the brightest bulb in the pack, oblivious to her aunt's bumbling attempts at assassination, wanders around Manhattan in search of the answer to the riddle, "What is French, lights up at night and gives good crown?". Uncle Hickey stated in the will that Sidney would know the answer. Using Uncle's little black book, Penny, draped in the furs and pearls befitting of her class, shows that she really has none by sucking off the first guy (Robert Kerman) in Sidney's Bar who says he knows the answer. Of course, he's just telling her that to get some easy action. Penny, only slightly disappointed, sets out to find another Sidney, ending up at a factory, a fetish oriented sex club, a penthouse of a rock band (in a french maid outfit, no less), all with happy endings for everyone, except poor Penny. Until she realizes that her boyfriend's middle name is Sidney! Cue the muted horns.

See: Exotic Locations!

Starting out with firm footing in the right direction for a porno-spoof, Vincent seems to get a little absent minded and opts for a jazz-riff, free-form version of the tale. Indicative of an era when New York had a great deal of mystique overseas, a lot of time is spent stealing travelogue footage of the streets of the Big Apple as Penny blissfully wanders about in search of more Sidneys. Not that it's boring at all, '70s NY is always cool, and we get some of Vincent's trademark cartoonish deviant sex (the guy in flippers and snorkel with a girl in a wading pool is a classic example), but part of me wishes screenwriter Billy S. Schaeffer (who would later go on to be Vincent's script supervisor in the '80s) had stayed a little more on track with the story as he and Vincent seem to be earnestly making the effort to make a legit movie. Just with hard-core sex scenes. A shocker, I know.

Nice balloons

Like much '70s porn, the actors really seem to be enjoying what they are doing, something that's hard to come by these days (ermm, so to speak), and is another strong point in it's favor. It's got plenty of Vincent's strange touches, such as the scene in which Penny ends up at the penthouse of a rock band, The Sindey's. The Teutonic butler forces her to wear a french maid outfit and suck off all of the band members while he dumps huge sacks of junk food on the dinner table. It's almost like an homage to Italian cinema's notorious obsession with eating scenes, just drawing the parallel between food and sex a little closer. In the end, it's a fun little jaunt, but part of me wishes that it had been an R-rated affair so that would have had the opportunity to be a little more fleshed out in the story area. Then again, porn fans may wish it had less story and more sex. Either way, Vincent works his craft and delivers entertainment out of nothing but a handfull of bad actors, stolen locations and the film it's shot on. Genius, I says.

Deadly Farce: TOP COP (1990)

2012-01-13T08:46:00.000-08:00

TOP COP is the kind of film where you type the title into the IMDb and the search results display 12 different titles before giving you the exact match. “Are you sure you weren’t looking for TOP GUN, COP OUT, TOP DOG, BEVERLY HILLS COP or HOT SHOTS,” asks the IMDb search intuitively. Nope, I’m the dumbass who really wanted TOP COP, a regional 1980s action flick that just barely made the decade’s deadline. The film was picked up by Crown International Pictures but I’m not aware of it having a VHS release and it can currently be found on BCI’s MAXIMUM ACTION 8 movie collection. Now I don’t wan to read too much into things, but this bad boy might be a company killer. Founded in 1959, Crown International Pictures distributed over a hundred pictures. After they picked up TOP COP, their acquisitions basically dried up. After the film was released in the aforementioned DVD set, Navarre Corporation closed down BCI Home Entertainment. Is it all a coincidence or a display of the deadly power of TOP COP’s toxicity?

This is the city: Hot Springs, Arkansas. Present day. I work here. I'm a top cop. Our hero is Vic Malone (Stephen P. Sides) and you know he is a brave man because the opening scene has him busting a child pornography ring in a warehouse solo during the middle of filming. These are apparently the high end child pornographers as they have a large crew and a director who yells, “Cut! Alight, everybody, take five.” HA! Malone blows them all away and saves the young girl. When the cops arrive, Malone’s partner is pissed. Not because of his reckless ways, but because he didn’t bring him along. You know such acts of rebelliousness can only lead one place – in front of your angry black police Captain (unconvincingly portrayed by a young guy who looks like Gary Coleman with whitened hair). But the Captain ain’t mad at ya, he just wants to give Malone and Porter their plane tickets so they can fly to Washington, D.C. to testify to the grand jury against Arkansas drug kingpin Johnny Costello (Len Schlientz). Oh, yeah, your plane leaves in an hour. Jeez, you’d think they might be aware of such big plans and not have them sprung on them. Anyway, our top cops arrive in D.C. and, in keeping with D.C. tradition, are the victims of an attempted robbery in the airport bathroom within minutes of their arrival. Malone kills both men (probably just for their fashion crimes; see pic above) and you know such further acts of rebelliousness can only lead one place – in front of another angry black police Captain! Of course, the Captain ain’t mad at ya and just wants them to keep their nose clean while in his jurisdiction. Damn, this dude has already killed nearly 10 people and no one cares. He is truly a top cop.

Anyway, Malone and Porter make it to their hotel and, wouldn’t you know it, Costello and his men are staying there too. Our heroes spot Costello trying to have his way with Helen (Tiffany Dossey) and Debbie (Christine Kiefer), two innocent real estate agents, and they scare him off when Malone whips out a hand grenade. Damn, what a top cop. Naturally, they hit it off with the ladies, who are amused at his hand grenade lighter. While exchanging pleasantries, a Costello henchman shows up and gives Helen a hand written note from the drug kingpin saying he “always gets what he wants.” What is this, the sixth grade? Soon our two new couples are sight seeing in D.C. and splitting off to their respective suites where Malone oddly gets it on with Helen. Bad news as the next day Frank is found dead in his hotel room, shot between the eyes. The Captain tells Malone it must be the work of the Avenger and, sure enough, this hired killer open fires on them. Damn, this mystery person is a top cop killer. Inexplicably, the charges are dropped against Costello – Malone hasn’t even testified and apparently they don’t find it odd one of the key witnesses was killed the night before – and Malone is shipped back to Arkansas, despite his vow to find the killer. Of course, the Avenger might just follow him to finish the job.

Since Malone is fresh out of partners, the Captain assigns him a new one in James Evans (Christopher Dennis) and, get this, top cop doesn’t want or like his new partner. No way! Begrudgingly Malone takes him along and they go to find out about a big cocaine deal. For some odd reason the person who knows exactly when and where it is all going down is a wino on skid row (essayed by a dirt road with three cinema hobos on it). Our top cop duo busts the guys (sans back up, ‘natch) and capture Costello’s younger brother, Anthony (Todd Tongen), during the shootout. Hoping to bail out his brother, Costello arrives at the police station and he just happens to have Helen on his arm. Damn, player does really get what he wants. Anyway, he tells the TV mob that he is just a simple businessman and this is police harassment. Naturally, this sets up the stage for our top cop to end this feud and do what he does best – kill people! With Anthony under his arm and Helen held hostage by Costello, the stage is set for a huge showdown in a junkyard.

Oh man, where do I begin with TOP COP? I often wonder how and why these kinds of films get made. Obviously trying to emulate the popular titles in the cop genre (from DIRTY HARRY [1971] to LETHAL WEAPON [1987]), you have to wonder why they bothered as they have neither the talent or resources to match their predecessors. Perhaps director Mark L. Maness and his family just had some money they wanted to throw away and they found donating to charity too damn magnanimous. I mean, I seriously hope they didn’t read the script by Helen P. Pollins (also a producer) and think, “This is going to be the one to launch us into the big time.” The screenplay is filled with cliché after cliché, so much so that you might think this was a spoof but without the laughs. It is a shame as the production at least looks nice. They had all the ingredients to make a cake, but opted to put zero icing on it. Even if the filmmakers had a decent script, they completely failed when it comes to the acting. Len Schlientz as lead villain Costello isn’t the slightest bit scary looking and looks more like a creep who would be giddy outbidding you on eBay in disco record auctions. Of course, special notice should be given to Stephen P. Sides as the titular top cop. While he does give a commendable physical performance (he was also the stunt coordinator), Sides has serious trouble in the acting department and seems to deliver all of his dialogue as if he is trying to make the words shatter his (rather large) teeth. Imagine your friend who always does a really bad Clint Eastwood performance (you know the one) and that is how he comes across. Looking like a cross between Hank Williams, Jr. and Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Sides is about as wrong as you can get for a 1980s style vigilante cop. As it stands, TOP COP is no HOLLYWOOD COP or SAMURAI COP and for that I am truly saddened.

How to best view TOP COP:

On the Celluloid Chopping Block: SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1974)

2012-01-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about having a network of fellow Video Junkies is you can usually get your fix pretty quick. Last month I reviewed the underappreciated Christmas slasher SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1974) and mentioned the pitch black Paragon VHS transfer and the online chatter that the print of the film in the Chilling Classics horror set looked far better. Almost as quickly as I posted it, fellow movie buff (and amazing people locator) Bill Picard hooked me up with a copy of that print. Sure enough, the quality is a million times better. Now, keep in mind this is still a scratchy print and not the optimum release, but at least you could make out the important details in stuff like this.

Paragon VHS Chilling Classics DVD

And, of course, my favorite bit is where Mr. Towman (John Carradine) is killed. The Paragon tape was nothing but a swarm of black with the occasional white blip. Here, you can actually see Jeffrey Butler looking at the body and there is even a visible tiny waterfall in the background (it is still pretty dark in the DVD print).

Also, the less dark print gives more details in stuff like when Tess is killed and audiences get a quick glimpse at her severed hand on the floor. With the print not as dark, you can see the blood on the stump. Important stuff, I tell ya!

Even more exciting than a watchable print is the fact that the Chilling Classics version actually runs longer than the Paragon version (1 hour, 24 minutes and 57 seconds for the Chilling Classics versus 1 hour, 22 minutes and 34 seconds for the Paragon tape). Discussions found online chalk it up an edited ax killing (not true; both versions are identical) to a difference in NTSC vs. PAL transfers (possible, but not entirely). What I did find when comparing the Chilling Classics DVD version to the Paragon VHS version was that the better looking print also had three extra scenes in it.

The first and longest extra scene occurs after lawyer John Carter meets with the town folk about selling the house. In the Chilling Classics print, there is a 50 second segment of him and his paramour driving back to the house. Interestingly, this drive back to the house repeats two shots (passing a “no trespassing” sign and going over a bridge) from their first drive to the house earlier in the film. They arrive and John gets out of the car. The film cuts away to the inside to the killer rushing out of a room in the house, establishing they were already in the house watching them when the couple arrived. John then gets his girlfriend out of her side and she walks up to the house to unlock the door. The Paragon version starts with her already at the door.

The couple arrives:

John gets out of the car:

Killer's POV as they run through the house:

John helps his girlfriend out:

She walks to the door to unlock it:

The second extra scene involves the sheriff heading out the Butler house after receiving the creepy phone call. We get a POV shot of the car driving down a dirt road (very rough looking even in this print). The sheriff tells the dispatcher, “Sheriff to 301. I'm heading west on route 5 to Butler house. You'll hear from me.” The film then cuts to a shot of the killer with a shovel in the cemetery putting dirt on the ground. We then cut back to the driving POV and the sheriff sees the killer’s lantern and says, “What the hell? What is that light out there?” We get another shot of the dirt being tended to by the killer. We then get a shot of the sheriff’s lights illuminating the cemetery’s wooden fence and then a shot of the car’s headlights as he pulls up (looking like something out of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS due to the darkness of the scene). The Paragon tape features none of the aforementioned bits and begins with a shot of the killer’s feet as they run away (from the same shot as the earlier digging shots) and then the cop car pulling into frame. This 33 second bit is important as it establishes exactly why the sheriff stopped at the cemetery on his way to the house.

Driving down the road:

Killer throwing dirt on buried bodies:

Sheriff sees the killer's light:

Sheriff's car illuminates the cemetery fence:

Sheriff pulls up to the cemetery (or UFO sighting):

The last extra bit I noticed occurred after the killer has called Diane (Mary Woronov). Both versions have the killer shutting the police car trunk with the body inside and then shutting off the squawking CB radio (this scene itself creates an interesting continuity error as how did the killer call Diane if they were still at the graveyard). The Chilling Classics version then has a tiny 12 second bit of the killer returning to the house. It is just one shot of the killer bringing the lantern past and inside the front door (established earlier with a shot of the killer closing that door after killing the dog). This tiny scene is nothing major, but still interesting in showing the killer’s return.

In total, these three new scenes account for 1 minute and 35 seconds of new material. With a difference of 2 minutes and 23 seconds between the Chilling Classics DVD and Paragon VHS, I’m not sure what accounts for the other 48 seconds, although it is entirely possible that it is a transfer issue. I’ve compared them both and the three scenes mentioned above appear to be the only differences I can find. These definitely aren’t cuts due to censorship and just the result of different print being transferred for both releases. And, yes, to answer your question, I truly have no life.

The Gweilo Dojo: GANG JUSTICE (1991)

2012-01-08T09:45:00.000-08:00

Director Richard Park (aka Woo-sang Park) has been one of our favorite discoveries in the past couple of years here at Video Junkie. While he apparently began his action filmmaking career in the 1970s in South Korea, it wasn’t until Park came to the United States in the 1980s that he really hit his stride. Starting with NINJA TURF (1985), Park traveled the U.S. like a circus, rolling into random towns to make movies and (most likely) exploit the generosity of the Korean community. TURF found him in Los Angeles; he ran all the way across the country to Florida to make MIAMI CONNECTION (1987); and somehow after that he found himself in Wisconsin (!) to make this hilarious “gang” film.

Asian high school student Paul (Joon Kim) is constantly being harassed by thug Billy (Johnathan Gorman) and his cohort Johnny (Shannon Gross). You can tell Billy really hates Paul because he calls him “chink” all the time. In order to squash the various beefs that come up, Paul must fight guys of Billy’s choice in amateur combat bouts in a cold warehouse (“You know where the old, vacant building is?”). Cornered by his only friend Charlie (Ho Sik Pak), Paul always seems to win though and this really pisses Billy off. Also, Billy’s chick Judy thinks Paul is hot stuff after seeing his kung fu moves. Of course, none of this can settle the internal inferno in Paul’s life as he has to deal with his drunken father who yells at him in Korean (with no subtitles!). Apparently what dad says is pretty harsh because it causes Paul to hop trains and ride around in this cold, barren town. You know you are real bastard when your son forgoes sitting in his nice warm room for the blistering Wisconsin winter wasteland.

Somehow Paul actually had a destination when he hopped on a train in the ghetto and he ends up in the more affluent suburbs. He stands looking forlorn outside a house where a Korean woman lives with a rich(er) dude (Erik Estrada). You can tell Estrada’s character is rich by his wild 80s sweaters he sports in each scene (I suspect these are from his personal wardrobe). Suddenly, bully Billy shows up on his motorcycle. Jeez, he have bully E.S.P. or something? He warns Paul, “When you least expect it, expect it!” And then the dramatic bomb drops – Billy heads into the aforementioned house. Oh damn, Billy is Erik Estrada's son and the Korean woman is Paul’s mom. Now it all makes sense – Billy harbors some deep anger at his dad for re-marrying and takes it out on his stepbrother. Of course, Paul’s world is about to open up when he meets Jenny (Angel Dashek). Looking a bit like Lady Gaga, this young high school hottie takes an interest in our young Korean stud, even if he is the brooding type who kicks people's faces in.

Of course, Paul always attracts drama and Jenny’s dad (Ken Bowman, formerly of the Green Bay Packers, with his real wife playing his wife) just happens to be the Governor. So when Jenny brings home an Asian kid, her parents are aghast and we get this amazing dialogue exchange.

Jenny’s dad: “What do you think my constituents would think if they knew that my daughter was dating some Oriental kid?”
Jenny: “But dad, not only are your constituents Caucasian, they’re niggers and hisp…”
Jenny’s dad (cutting her off): “Still, there are more Caucasians than any others.”

*insert record scratch* WHAT!?! First off, do we really have a politician in the 1990s acting like his voters are from the 1940s? Second, did the daughter really use the N-word in order to make her point? Even more hilarious is her delivery. I mean, I get what the screenwriter was trying to prove, but Dashek just puts the word out there with no emotion or emphasis at all. So it ends up dropping your jaw when you hear it. Anyway, all this drama weighs heavily on Paul. So much so that he wanders the city streets at night alone, works at a gas station (where Billy shows up wearing a mocking Asian Coolie hat), shows up randomly while Charlie is playing his flute and then walks past a liquor store just as his father is receiving a beat down for trying to steal a bottle of liquor. Like Estrada said to Paul’s mom (she isn't really given a proper name) earlier – “He’s an Oriental boy having to grow up and adjust in a predominantly white society.” Livin' in a lonely woooooorld, he took the midnight train going anywhere!

So you like all that gang justice on display? Behind the misleading GANG JUSTICE re-titling is probably one of the wackiest race dramas I’ve ever seen. Park makes no bones about it being a tough life for Asians in America and, as Tom said after watching it, “I love how it totally embodies the classic Asian racist view of the world everybody else is a racist stereotype, except them and hot chicks.” Literally the only nice white character is Jenny. Well, I take that back. Two white cops show up and somehow know to arrest Billy right away during a warehouse fight. Shouldn’t Park have had them immediately grab the Asian guy and throw him in jail? There is even a great part where Paul goes off on his mom for abandoning their family and marrying “a rich, white man.” What kind of distorted worldview does one have where they see Erik Estrada as white? And poor Estrada – he was willing to work in anything at the time this came out, but the filmmakers don’t even have the decency to give his character a name. Same goes for the Governor, who is merely billed as Jenny’s dad. Ha! Although I’m sure if they were given names it would be something like Archibald P. McManis or Logan Maxwell Bradley, Esquire, respectively. You know – real white devil sounding names.

Confused racial politics aside, this continues Park’s fine efforts of establishing him as a true bad film auteur as you can totally tell the film was made by him. Sure, you don’t get a black guy crying about his father like NINJA TURF or MIAMI CONNECTION (will white kid Billy crying about his mother suffice), but we do get the same level of wooden line delivery from most of the players. Also, we get the standard line screw up this time when Billy’s stepmom welcomes him home from being bailed out. Hoping for a fresh start, she says, “I’ll cook you some chicken for you.” Ha! I also love that she thinks a chicken dish will smooth over the fact that he kidnapped a girl. This is, of course, when the characters speak English. Just like Park’s AMERICAN CHINATOWN (1996) we get extended portions all in Korean with no subtitles where people give out plot points. Since this is a drama, the fights definitely aren’t on the level of his earlier films either and that does diminish the fun factor. And, of course, we get the ridiculous depiction of American gang tough guys which Asian filmmakers always seem to get so wrong. For example, Billy is attempting rape in one scene and a few scenes later holed up in his room crying and hugging his cat.

Even funnier are the budget DVD labels trying to push it as a Latino gang film, complete with a still of Estrada from TRACKDOWN (1976) from the 1970s on the front. This actually got several releases on DVD and you can also find it under the original, head scratching title LOOK AT ME AMERICA. That DVD promises Troy Donahue in the film but he is nowhere to be seen. Seriously, I don’t want to read too much into stuff, but when I opened the used DVD I bought of this, there was a live cockroach inside. Really! Finer symbolism for such a misguided film cannot be obtained.

How to best view GANG JUSTICE:

Listomania!: De Rigueur Recap 2011

2012-01-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

Man, and it came to pass, I was sore ashamed. My list doesn’t quite measure up to my usual intake. I blame my job and my wife and kids. Oh wait… I don’t have a wife and kids. Dammit. I blame Bethesda Softworks. I was a productive writer once, until I took an arrow in the knee.

My viewing total was 177 movies this year. So, yeah, I pretty much suck. Unlike Will, I have been all-over the revisits this year. While a majority of the movies were new, I revisited lots of movies that I hadn’t seen since they originally hit video back in the ‘80s. From crap that didn’t really get better with age like BERSERKER (1987) to stuff that has become even more gobsmacking, like SHE (1983).

The theater was definitely not my refuge this year. I went from seeing everything that even flirted with a B-movie premise to the all time low of one. Yep, one solitary, single film actually dragged me into the theater. A sad, sad state of affairs...

Video Junkie Moment of the Year:

I have to agree with Will’s pick. Seeing the "never got made" blog series on the IMDb's Hit List was definitely this year’s highlight and it’ll be a tough one to beat in 2012. Not even our exhaustive coverage of CONAN knock-offs, Clonin’ the Barbarian, topped this.

Video Junkie "What were we thinking" Moment of the Year:

Our desperate attempt to do justice to all of the noteworthy (for one reason or another) sword n’ sorcery flicks that attempted to cash in on the mountain of gold pillaged by CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982). We finally reached a burn-out point before finishing up, but hey, that can only mean one thing… Sequel! Crom help us.

First film seen in 2011:

CHANDLER (1971): Also one of the year’s big disappointments for me personally, as you’d think a movie starring Warren Oates a noir-era gumshoe drawing inspiration from Ramond Chandler would be nothing short of awesome. Sadly, this incomprehensible mess was apparently the fault of then MGM studio chief James T. Aubrey, who was so displeased with the allegedly convoluted story-line of director Paul Magwood’s finished film, that he personally drastically re-edited the film and inserted deleted scenes in place of removed content, in the process bringing down the running time of a mere 85 minutes. I’m not sure if Aubrey was completely insane or just shockingly inept, but the film, as it stands now, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I challenge anyone to sit through the film and give me a detailed plot synopsis at the end.

Last film seen in 2011:

DEADLY INTRUDER (1985): This is one that I always passed up in the video store. Back in ’85, the poster art with the silhouette just didn’t do it for me. Hell, you can forgive me for passing on it, since in that same year, you had RE-ANIMATOR, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, EVILD DEAD 2 and dozens of other classics beating down your door, demanding attention. To be honest, it can’t compare with those classics, but on its own, isolated from its context, it is well worth the watch. Farting dogs, lazy cops, dogshit coffee, the lamest dinner party ever, the lamest department store ever, the biggest red herring ever and a nice little twist at the end that you will probably see coming a mile off, but will forgive because it shows that they were really trying.

Best Re-Visit in 2011:

SKY PIRATES (1986) blew me away… the second time. Back in the day I was completely underwhelmed by this Aussie adventure yarn. In hindsight I’d say it was because it lacked RAIDERS’ grit and viscera. I mean, can you seriously have a WWII-era adventure without fascist cranial combustion? I think not. There are better movies that I revisited this year (MAN ON THE ROOF being one), but revisiting this in widescreen completely changed my opinion of the film. A masterpiece? Not so much. Tons of fun? Hell yeah. This was actually a tie with BEASTMASTER (1982). Yeah, I know, I know, everybody loves the first one, but I didn't dig it the first time around. I was so very wrong.

Biggest disappointment in 2011:

THE VALDEMAR INHERITANCE (2010)and THE VALDEMAR INHERITANCE II (2011). One movie, two parts, a whole mess of disappointment.

Oldest film seen in 2011:

THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN (1966): Beware of the old Simmons place, indeed! Arguably one of Don Knotts’ best movies, this chestnut was one that amused my family (I’ll let you guess why) when I was a kid. Remember when they ran movies on TV instead of infomercials? This used to be one of KTLA’s favorites, but I hadn’t seen it in 30 years, easy. Knotts plays a printing press operator for the local paper who desperately wants to be an investigative journalist (clearly made before the days where journalists were the people you see on Fox and Friends). After witnessing a murder in front of The Old Simmons Place… well, witnessing an almost murder… well, more like a loud accident, events lead up to his investigation of the haunting of the aforementioned house and quite possibly, a real “moider”.

Films seen in theaters: 1 (one *tenth* of Will’s all-time low)

Best and Worst Film Seen Theatrically:

Damn, Ric Mayall looks great for his age!

TRON: LEGACY (2011) wins and loses by default. Man, those Recognizers look (and sound) uh-maaaaaazing! Too bad they are only in the movie for a few seconds. Too bad director Joseph Kosinski and the four credited writers don’t really bother to make much use of the incredible groundwork of a full-realized world complete with countless references to then-cutting edge computer programming, and instead use the, admittedly impressive, light-cycles as a climactic action scene to a laborious, breathy, neon-lit cyber soap opera. In addition to a tedious script cheesy characters (which Tekkan sequel is Zues from?), and the obligatory STAR WARS dogfight sequence, we are given some really bland performances as well. Granted Bruce Boxleitner has never been an award-winning actor, but Garrett Hedlund? Headlining the most anticipated sequel in modern memory? Really? Well, I guess we should be grateful it wasn’t Shia LaBeouf. The best thing to come out of T:L was the release of the original on blu-ray… oh, and this video:

Most movies watched in one month:

August: 25

Least movies watched in one month:

April: 7 (ouch!)

My favorite movies viewed in 2011:

-HARD KNUCKLE (1987): The CITIZEN CANE of dystopian-future movies.

-DEAD MOUTAINEER’S HOTEL (1979): Stylish, atmospheric and fascinating future-noir.

-THE NINJA STRIKES BACK (1982): Just when I thought it could get no better than Bruce Le and Dick Randall’s CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER (1980) along came Bruce Le and Dick Randall’s THE NINJA STRIKES BACK! Priceless trash that left me speechless in awe.

-MIAMI CONNECTION (1987): Starting off with a gory ninja attack on a mob drug deal, and careening straight through to an amazingly silly, upbeat finale that sports old age make-up that would make a middle school production of Blithe Spirit look professional, this movie is an absolute masterpiece of fromage from the amazing Richard Park.

Worst films that I saw for the first time in 2011:

RESIDENT EVIL AFTERLIFE (2010): Granted, not the greatest series of films by any standard, but this redefines the adjective “sucks”. Boring, uneventful, been-done, terribly written and not much in the way of zombies, this film decides that the best way to take the series after Russell Mulcahey’s marginally entertaining third entry, is to stick a few people in a room and let them fucking argue for the next 90 minutes. Yes, a monster (from Resident Evil 5) does barge in at one point, and is quickly dispatched in the longest slow-motion action scene in the history of cinema. In a movie starved for action sequences, it really says something when you finally introduce some action and have the ability to make said action boring.
For my money, the only way to go for an R:E movie is actually the CG animated feature, RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION (2008). Crazy, I know, but it's actually surprisingly good.

Listomania!: Another Year in the Life of a Video Junkie

2012-01-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

Yet another year down, so it means we'll throw up our highly anticipated (by us) year end "best and worst" lists. My viewing total was 308 movies this year, down from last year's total of 362. So, yeah, I was slacking big time. I'd love to say it was quality over quantity, but we all know that would be a total lie. I did try to make up for the slower volume by trying to cram in as much new stuff as possible. Well, new to me. Of the 308 movies viewed, only 65 of them were revisits.

Theatrical viewings keep dipping further and further with my new all-time low of 10 set this year. To be honest, had our local theater not had $5 Tuesday matinees during the summer, it probably would have been even less. And two of my viewings (DYLAN DOG and CREATURE) were merely self sacrifice missions for the internet when I found out that they had bombed so badly (with CREATURE setting a new record in terms of box office lows). I'd go on and on about the sad state of affairs of Hollywood cinema (no joke, before SUPER 8 every trailer was for a sequel or book/comic/toy adaptation), but I'm sure you already know the deal.

First film seen in 2011: YOU’RE GONNA MISS ME (2005)
Last film seen in 2011: NEW YEAR’S EVIL (1980)
Films seen in theaters: 10 (my new all-time low after 11 last year)
IMAX viewings: 1 (TRON: LEGACY)
Double features in theaters: 0
Oldest film seen: THE UNKNOWN (1927)

Video Junkie Moment of the Year:
Had to be seeing the "never got made" blog series on the IMDb's Hit List. A kind mystery reader named "vertigo" submitted us and - someway, somehow - they found it worthy of sharing with the masses. Not only did it bring thousands of readers our way, but it lit a fire under my ass to do even more detailed research. We've got some even more amazing things lined up for 2012.

Video Junkie "What were we thinking" Moment of the Year:

Probably our impromptu dive into the sci-fi world of Italian cheap-o director Alfonso Brescia.

Best film seen theatrically: CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (2011) -- I actually think it is one of the best comic movies I've seen in years. It is hard to champion a film that cost $140 million as an underdog, but I really think this flick had the deck stacked against it. I mean, who wants to see a movie that properly sets up a story and takes its time establishing the character before the superhero finally shows up on screen? I do, damn it! And, thankfully, that is what we got with this. So many great details and references (and I only know Captain America lore in passing). Plus, that reference toward RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was a hoot. Director Johnston does a great job at laying out the drama and the action. And, thankfully, the screenwriters kept it very simple, but with enough good pathos for the audience. I love a comic book movie (and PG-13 movie) that takes risks and actually has people die. The editing during the musical montage was great too. The cast is great too and Hugo Weaving really steals the show as the Red Skull. Easily the best thing I've seen this year in the theater.

Worst film seen theatrically: SUPER 8 (2011) -- Yeah, I saw DYLAN DOG and CREATURE in the theater, but actually thought this was worse. This movie was just awful, awful, awful. Actually, I feel it isn't even right to call it a movie as it is literally scenes from every Spielberg movie from his peak period. I was leaning over to my friend every three minutes saying, "Okay, this is from JAWS...this is from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS...this is from RAIDERS...this is from E.T." He probably wanted to punch my annoying ass. We're not talking homages here, we are talking full scene lifts with only the slightest tweaking. No wonder Spielberg produced it, he probably read the script and was like, "Damn, this is good stuff." We have it all: the JAWS town hall meeting (I fully expected Quint to show up and interrupt); the sheriff inundated with townsfolk telling him their problems as he rushes from place to place (no parade?); the evacuation from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (sans canaries); and on and on and on. Even worse, Abrams seems to have lifted even the soundscapes of those earlier films (the gas station scene in particular). Even the minutia isn't safe. Let's put it this way - there is a family dinner scene where one of the unruly younger siblings is bashing some toys in the background just like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. This is basically the movie version of sampling. Moviedom wept.

Biggest surprise in 2011: RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011) -- I seriously thought all my online movie buddies were pulling my leg when they said this was good. The trailers looked terrible and didn't sell me on the film at all. How could such a good movie be hiding behind such a banal trailer? I do find James Franco a bit of a weird guy, but he was never bothersome in this movie. And the effects and ape performances are astonishing. Loved the little nods toward the original POTA and I think they set up a sequel (well, remake) perfectly. Of course, the jaw dropped is the performance by Andy Serkis as Caesar. Seriously, it is groundbreaking and paving the way for when one might see someone who was never even onscreen get nominated for an acting award. While I may be giving it a bit more praise for what it is not (namely, a jerky Michael Bay action picture or terrible Tim Burton remake), I do think this had more thought put into it than your average Hollywood blockbuster.

Biggest disappointment in 2011: ASSASSINATION GAMES (2011) -- Scott Adkins makes the list again after last year's NINJA disappointment. To be fair, he isn't the lead star in this second co-teaming with Jean Claude Van Damme, but it does disappoint compared to his masterpieces. Especially following the incredibly entertaining UNDISPUTED III (2010).

Theatrical viewings:
-TRON: LEGACY
-TRUE GRIT
-DYLAN DOG: DEAD OF NIGHT
-X-MEN: FIRST CLASS
-SUPER 8
-CAPTAIN AMERICA
-RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
-CREATURE
-THE THING
-HUGO

Most in one month:
October: 33
Least in one month:
August: 20

From the 1920s: 1
1930s: 11
1940s: 18
1950s: 4
1960s: 4
1970s: 55
1980s: 98
1990s: 65
2000–2010: 30
2011: 21

Films watched more than once:
-BLOOD SHACK (1971) - twice

Directors most watched (individual films):
-Fred Olen Ray (8)
-Andy Sidaris (6)
-Charles Band (4)
-Jeff Burr (4)

Best films that I saw for the first time in 2011:

-THE TWO ESCOBARS (2010)

-INSIDE JOB (2010)

-CHIMERA (1991; UK mini-series cut down to 90 minutes as MONKEY BOY here)

-I WAKE UP SCREAMING (1941)

-DON’T PLAY WITH FIRE (1980)

-THE LATHE OF HEAVEN (1980)

-COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970)

-RED WHITE & BLUE (2010)

-MONEY MOVERS (1978)

-DEAD MOUTAINEER’S HOTEL (1979)

-SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939)

-THE BLACK CAT (1934)

-THE BODY SNATCHER (1945)

Worst films that I saw for the first time in 2011:

-THE LAST LOVECRAFT (2009)

-EVIL SPIRITS (1990)

-SAVAGE VENGEANCE (1993; aka I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2)

-CRYSTAL FORCE II: DARK ANGEL (1994)

-LITTLE LOST SEA SERPENT (1995)

-UP YOUR LADDER (1979)

-CARNIVAL MAGIC (1981)

-DEADTIME STORIES vol. 2 (2010)

-THE HOWLING: REBORN (2011)

-BRAIN ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE (2004)

Best “the kind of cinema I live for” I saw for the first time in 2011:

-HARD TICKET TO HAWAII (1987)

-THE SATAN KILLER (1993)

-THE LOST EMPIRE (1985)

-SAKURA KILLERS (1987)

-MIAMI CONNECTION (1987)

Buns and Ammo: SAVAGE BEACH (1989)

2011-12-28T20:00:00.000-08:00

Andy Sidaris is back! Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton) are back! Buns! Ammo! Old Japanese warriors! Wait, what?

After busting some cocaine dealers (who smuggle their stock in pineapples), our busty federal agent duo find themselves delivering a medical serum to an island for Shane Abilene (Michael J. Shane). Yes, another Abilene! Anyway, a storm causes the plane to mess up and they get way off course before landing on a deserted island. They get company quick though when TWO groups show up to locate some lost Japanese gold. You have one group led by Martinez (Rodrigo Obregón, back as yet another different villain) with his two helpers, Andreas (John Aprea, who just got blow’d up in PICASSO TRIGGER) and Bruce (Bruce Penhall, who was also a different character in PICASSO TRIGGER). Confused? Good, now I’m not alone. The other group is led by Anjelica (Teri Weigel) and you know she means business because Al Leong is among her flunkies. But what no one counted on was some some stranded Japanese World War II vet still living on the island. Yes, HELL IN THE PACIFIC with boobs!

We...must...save...the...children!

Not sure why, but I enjoyed this much more than previous entry PICASSO TRIGGER (1988). Maybe because it was a bit more focused in the plot department, even though it is convoluted as hell? My mind was also reeling as this was my first "wait, who is this guy again" experience with director Andy Sidaris' roving band of players as he threw tons of cast members from the previous entry into this, but as brand new characters among the Playboy Playmates. Sidaris really upped the ante here though as he also cast a Playboy and Penthouse vet in Teri Weigel. This was before she bared all and humped head first into the porn world. Sidaris also capitalized on the Asian influence and cast James Lew and the ubiquitous Al Leong is supporting roles (rumor has it casting Leong as an Asian baddie was a union rule). The film’s end is the best as it features one of the funniest explanations and flashbacks from the Japanese warrior (who has terrible age make up) as he recognizes Taryn as the daughter of the American WWII soldier he killed on the island…by her eyes! Naturally, the film is packed with nudity and Sidaris should get credit for what I believe is the world's most gratuitous mid-flight airplane changing scene (“Let’s get out of these wet clothes.”). One thing that might shock Sidaris fans is the last 30 minutes is completely devoid of nudity. Sadly, this marked the end of the road for Carlton in Sidaris-land as she moved on to bigger things like SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE III (1990) and GHOULIES III: GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE (1991). I'm genuinely sad to see the team of Donna and Taryn break up, but I'll be brave and keep a stiff upper lip with this uncertain future.

I'm guessing they aren't the Fashion Police:

Okay, meeting time:

Easy with that hi-tech computer stuff, guys!

Teri Weigel shows off her...

OMG, look at that lamp!

As my mom always said:

"Never, ever accept room service from Al Leong."

There must be a fetish site for this stuff, right?

Donna & Tayrn using their survival skills:

Must be some kind of Japanese fetish:

Who the hell is the dumbass who coordinated these outfits?

Okay, never mind, all is forgiven on the outfits:

Now I know there is a fetish site for this:

My God, it's full of stars!

Donna delivers the buns and ammo!

The Magic Sword that makes your eyes wonky:

WORST. OLD. AGE. MAKE-UP. EVER!

Sidaris aiming for that "buff Asian male" demographic:

Heinous for the Holidays: SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1974)

2011-12-24T09:25:00.000-08:00

With it being Christmas Eve and Santa’s arrival imminent, we figured it would be fitting to write up a holiday horror. Amazingly, Christmas appears to be the holiday that has spawned the most number of horror films. Perhaps my earliest Xmas horror memory (and I’m sure it was for most folks my age) was the “And All Through the House” segment from the original TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972). The 80s gave us a plethora of slasher Santas with SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT series, CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980) and DON’T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS (1984). And, of course, there was GREMLINS (1984), which perfectly captured the holiday and horror atmospheres. Overseas we had Alex de la Iglesia give us THE DAY OF THE BEAST (1995), where a priest and a metal head must stop Satan from return on Christmas. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum are titles like the rancid ELVES (1989), which features Dan Haggerty as a store Santa trying to stop a guy from creating Nazi elves, and PUPPET MASTER VS. DEMONIC TOYS (2004), which has Corey Feldman in the lead (‘nuff said). So if you are looking for some Christmas chillers, the field is far and wide.

One of my favorite holiday discoveries has been SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (not to be confused with the aforementioned SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT films). Having owned but never watched the Paragon VHS cassette for years, I surprised myself by watching it on this cold, gray winter day eight years ago. Even more surprising was that hiding behind the generic title is an atmospheric horror thriller with a great twist. And not only is SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT a great horror film, but it is one that appears to have been cheated by the historians of horror cinema.

The film opens with Diane Adams (Mary Woronov) walking on the Butler estate and telling a bit of the home’s history via voiceover. In 1950, Wilfred Butler was found burned to death on Christmas Eve in what was later deemed an accident at his palatial estate in the small town of East Willard, Massachusetts. One of the conditions of his will is that his house be left to his only surviving family member, child grandson Jeffrey, with the stipulation that the premises never be changed to reflect the house’s “inhumanity and cruelty” to the world. Gee, Grandpa sounds like a real upbeat guy. Twenty years later, lawyer John Carter (Patrick O’Neal) arrives in East Willard with instructions from the now adult Jeffrey (James Patterson) to sell the house for him. Several residents of East Willard take an unusual interest in the house and offer to buy it. But before the sale can be finalized, an escaped lunatic arrives in East Willard and begins calling the interested parties, saying they are Marianne Butler, Jeffrey’s long dead mother. As the mystery unfolds, the prominent folks are dispatching one by one.

The biggest asset to SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT is the film’s set-up. It packs a big punch in the end and actually left me guessing throughout the film. A few of the red herrings are a bit too obvious but they worked well enough. One of director Theodore Gershuny’s biggest strengths is the subtle number of hints regarding the film’s big twist in the finale. If one pays close attention, there are several tip-offs as to what is really going on in the odd town of East Willard. It is refreshing to see a horror film where you are continually assessing the information as the mystery unfolds. And it is one of those great experiences where, armed with the plot twist information, a second viewing is just as much fun to watch. If the film does have any problems, it is that it opens with Woronov’s character telling her story, so you know she is going to survive whatever action you see in the flashbacks.

Director Gershuny, probably best known for SUGAR COOKIES (1973), knows how to build an atmospheric horror film. The wintry locations, especially the imposing house, are used to full effect and he gets great performances (particularly from Woronov, his wife at the time) from his leads. There are also some great character touches, like John Carradine’s character always ringing a bell instead of talking (this little bit of business even factors into the plot twist). The picture has some great cinematography and the visual highlight is an extended flashback that chronicles what happened at the estate in the 1930s. The sepia toned look and use of wide-angle lens makes the entire scene very creepy. One complaint that pops up in reviews I have seen is the dark night shots. Truthfully, I think this has more to do with bad transfers rather than poor craftsmanship. In fact, my Paragon tape looks so awful that you can barely tell what is happening at points. Sadly, the film has never gotten a proper DVD release (I hear the one in the Chilling Classics set looks decent) and, since the market is flooded with public domain copies, I doubt we will ever see one.

Actual screenshot:

Gershuny also uses an effective point-of-view (POV) for the killer that echoes the style of Bob Clark’s Yuletide themed BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) from a few years later. A lot of people credit Clark’s film as the earliest prototype of the slasher genre. But Gershuny’s film predates Clark’s by almost 2 years. According to various reports it was shelved for several years. This fact is further substantiated by the fact that lead Patterson actually passed away in August of 1972. So the film was completed well before the early 1974 filming date for Clark’s film. Given the killer POV shots, scary phone calls the killer makes and high number of murders; one has to wonder if Clark saw this film before making his own. This is not to diminish the power of BLACK CHRISTMAS (it is still an excellent film), but just to question the general belief that BLACK CHRISTMAS begat HALLOWEEN and the subsequent North American slasher genre was born. As it stands, SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT is a great Christmas horror film, a more than pleasant surprise for this holiday season.

Deadly Farce: LIBERTY & BASH (1989)

2011-12-22T22:36:00.000-08:00

When it comes to '80s low-rent urban cop/vigilante movies, I'll admit it, I have no shame. I may be hesitant to admit that I actually enjoyed the 1988 excuse to pay Lee Major's mortgage, KEATON'S COP (also with Abe Vigoda, Don Rickles, and Art LaFleur!), but I will say I've done some serious barrel scraping in my day. Even with a lifetime of experience, nothing has prepared me for LIBERTY & BASH.

Somehow I missed this one back in the day. Maybe it was there and I never noticed it due to O’Keefe-Fatigue Syndrome. You know what I mean. Back in the ‘80s Miles O’Keefe was all over the low-rent Euro scene in more ATOR movies than you could count, a couple of action movies and even took a turn as, of all things, Count Dracula in Anthony Hickox’s first, and in retrospect, best film WAXWORK (1988). Maybe it was just the crushing deluge of tedious and formulaic flicks that finally degenerated into insipid self-parody such as COP AND A HALF (1993). Burt, my brotha, how could you? Ok, we better keep moving or I'm going to deeply digress into that quagmire of suffering and torment.

Miles O’Keef is Liberty, a Los Angeles social worker (yes, you read that right), who tries to keep the lamest gangsters you’ve ever seen off the dope and off the streets. One of his pet projects is a Korean gang-banger named Juan Ton (say it out loud) who is such a cracker-ass, he makes Buster Poindexter look like 50 Cent.

Kinda makes you think it has it's heart in the
right place, doesn't it?

His live-in girlfriend Sarah (Mitzi Kapture) also works in his dinky skid-row offices, leading to the main plot. But first we’re going to sucker you into thinking this movie is headed in a different direction! Liberty’s sketchy past as a mercenary for hire catches up with him when one of his soldier buddies, Jerry (Richard Eden) from the Angola mission (we don't even get any flashbacks to this) has gotten himself into a mess with the local mob. It’s not very clear, but it seems Jerry was double crossed when making a drop. Something about a severed undercover narc’s head, some missing cash and a black van that guns down some cops leaving Jerry holding the bag as it were. Jerry is having all sorts of personal and relationship issues and is looking after his kids with his sister, who works as a stripper. Ummm... what court granted custody of two children to an ex-mercenary with a rap-sheet and a drug problem? This is never adequately explained. Matter of fact, so little is explained that it will take you the entirety of the film’s 92 minute running time to figure out who is related to who and what in the Sam Hell is going on around here! Not that there is all that much of a plot anyway and no, you don't get to see the stripper do any stripping.

Jesse finally reaches out to Liberty whose relationship with his needy girlfriend has progressed. When a couple of goons come around and put the hurt on Jesse, Liberty manages to show up just in time to watch him die. Now it’s on sucka! Oh, wait. No, sorry, no it’s not. Liberty must have more relationship discussions with his girlfriend first. The only thing that makes these conversations remotely attention-holding is the fact that O’Keefe sounds like he’s doing a really bad Elvis impersonation and that even though he’s supposed to be this bleeding heart counselor, he really is a total prick to everyone around him.

From here on out (at the 50 minute mark and not a single action sequence), it’s Liberty talking to his friend Bash (Ferrigno), who runs a gymnasium that he uses to toughen up Liberty’s gangbangers (think about that for a moment)...

... or is talking to his girlfriend who finally tells him that she’s pregnant. Oh fuck. It’s the ‘80s. A pregnant girlfriend can only mean one thing… yes, we need to have a frank discussion about the subject of abortion. No, really. Forget about the mob, forget about the cops, forget about the cry-baby gangbangers who need to be taught how to be macho, let’s spend the rest of the movie discussing the Right to Life. Oh, and don’t misunderstand, this is no thoughtful contemplation of the pros and cons of a serious and deeply personal matter. Nope, this weighs in on the issues with all of the contemplative gravity of George Michael’s “Choose Life” t-shirt. Not that George Michael would ever have to worry about that, in any case.

Seriously, what I endured should never be inflicted upon another living soul, or dead one for that matter. First off, if you look closely at the poster it tells you everything you need to know. Painstakingly created in photoshop over a laborious span of several minutes, it is desperately trying to tell you that it’s a classic buddy action flick (it is not), that O’Keefe and Ferrigno are hip-to-hip in a firearm frenzy (they are not), and that it, hopefully, will strike a chord with viewers who desperately wanted a sequel to TANGO & CASH (it did not).

Truth be told, I feel really bad about laughing at Lou Ferrigno’s delivery of tough, wannabe R. Lee Ermy dialogue. I mean, the man is deaf, he can’t help it, but they are the very few entertaining moments in the film. This movie blunders about so badly, they even do a car chase about an hour into the movie, but botch that entirely by cutting to two different cars driving along the street, that for all we know could have been shot at completely different times without any shooting permits! As if that wasn't criminal enough, director Myrl A. Schreibman (who was actually responsible for a few bad movies that were good, including Marilyn Chamber's ANGEL OF H.E.A.T.), seems to be completely confused by the trappings of the genre. Myrl, buddy, why is it that strip clubs are featured in every single cop movie? Because it effectively taps the emotional perspective of the main characters who's profession exposes them to the cold underbelly of the lowest moments in life? Ummm... no. It's an excuse to show hot topless chicks in g-strings without needing to rationalize it in the plot! Yes, that's right, Mr. Schreibman is the only director in the history of cinema (that I'm aware of) who decides that he does not want to have any nudity during the completely gratuitous strip club scenes. Maybe Mr. Schreibman was sleeping during Gratuitous Nudity 101 while pursuing his Masters in Fine Arts at UCLA.

It actually feels like the script was originally a straightforward action flick that was drastically re-written to turn the main plot about Liberty, Jesse and the mob into a sub-plot taking a back seat to the main thrust of the film: relationships, which are good and abortion, which is bad. If you don’t mind a bit of a spoiler, I’ll prove this point by showing you the final showdown. This is literally the biggest action sequence in the movie. I shit you not.

Obscure Oddities: HOWARD GOLDBERG'S APPLE PIE (1976)

2011-12-21T09:06:00.000-08:00

I recently got a Blu-ray player with Wi-Fi capability (welcome to 2009!) and decided to join the land of the streaming Netflixers. Like any good Video Junkie, I decided to make a list of the more obscure titles to check out. After all, why watch something readily available on VHS or DVD, when you could be watching something like MILLION DOLLAR RIP OFF (1976), a made-for-TV crime movie starring Freddie Prinze, Sr.? One title I stumbled upon was something called HOWARD GOLDBERG’S APPLE PIE. The plot info on the TV was pretty vague, offering even less than the Netflix website. Something about a gangster relaying the story of how he kidnapped himself to get his father to pay up. Oh, and the father is played by legendary stand up "tragediest" Brother Theodore. Okay, NYC, 1970s, gangsters, and Brother Theodore? I am so there. So, at precisely midnight, I pressed “play” and soon found myself hypnotized by a film that practically defines “cult” filmmaking.

APPLE PIE unfolds in basically three sections. It opens with gangster Jacques “the Ace” Blinbaum (Tony Azito, sporting an incredibly fake beard) arriving at a hotel with his entourage (that includes future David Letterman regular Calvert DeForest). They retire to his suite, where DeForest challenges a burly looking gangster to a game of Clue. This was my first clue that something was not right here. Anyway, Jacques holds the attention of his group by quoting poet William Cowper and telling them the story of his first con when he was 17-years-old. We then get a flashback of the still bearded Jacques faking his own kidnapping to get his father (Brother Theodore) to pay a ransom of $250,000. The plan goes off without a hitch except for dad forgetting to pick up his “kidnapped” son, leaving Jacques to walk home in the dark. He is greeted at the front door of the mansion by his dad, who says, “The proper way to boil water is to warm it first.” It gets weirder after this, folks. End part one.

The next section picks up with Jacques ripping off his beard and wig. He talks to his friend Richard on the phone for 5 minutes in what appears to be a random stream of consciousness. He then decides the only recourse is to kill his parents, which entails him putting on a tight fitting black jumpsuit and mask. He calls a limo to his apartment and goes to the family mansion, but not before spray painting “Cool Karl” on the side of the limo (sharp-eyed viewers will also notice this graffiti was also on a gas station phone booth earlier). Anyway, he gets to the house and sneaks in to murder his sleeping folks. Just before Jacques is about to pounce, his dad gets up and screams, “Look at the mouse! It tries to be a rat.” The lights then flip on to reveal they are all on stage in the middle of a theater in front of a huge audience that begins laughing at Jacques. He rushes out of the theater in embarrassment and spends the next 10 minutes wandering NYC locations in his black jumpsuit. This sequence ends with him meeting some futuristic dressed folks on a rooftop. They claim to be artists and, after Jacques claims to be one too, one woman shows him she can make her face disappear. Jacques then steps away and disappears in a flash. End part two.

The film’s final section has Jacques cruising along some country back roads in his red Porsche. At a stoplight a girls pulls up next to him and she has “if you can beat me, you can eat me” written on the side of her car. They race, but we never know who the winner is. The next scene has the duo dressed all fancy as they head to an equally fancy restaurant to eat. As their dinner progresses, they begin splattering food all over each other. Well, except for the beans because, as Jacques tells the waiter, “These beans clash. They are unfit to stain my clothing.” Following their hands on dinner, Jacques and his new conquest head out onto the street and pass some black kids rhythmically banging on a white station wagon. This causes Jacques to start busting a move and soon everyone (including a priest and some hookers) walking by is doing a pre-FAME (1980), 15 minute choreographed dance in the streets (to a jam written by Daryl Hall and John Oates, according to the end credits). Okay, who slipped something in my eggnog? End part three and so culminates the “home-baked” film debut of Howard Goldberg.

True confession – I don’t do drugs. But I certainly felt like I was on them last night while watching this movie. Where the hell did this slice of APPLE PIE come from? Did I die in my sleep and this is my death dream? And why is it not on cult films lists? From the opening minutes, you could tell something is a bit off on the film and it just became more and more bizarre over its short 76 minute running time. It says something about how strange this film is when I can say Brother Theodore gives one of the more restrained performances. As it became weirder and weirder, I became more mesmerized by the film. A lot of the success rests on the shoulders of lead Tony Azito. Azito – who sounds exactly like Sascha Baron Cohen and was a Broadway dancer and performer – is a lanky and rubbery man who is onscreen in nearly every shot. I sense a lot of the performance was improvised by him and he certainly has a knack for the outlandish, but funny. Sadly, he passed away in the mid-90s.

One of the initial reasons I even jumped on this was to see some 70s era New York City location shots and this definitely delivers. You gets plenty of locations and even a nighttime jaunt to 42nd Street (some films playing include THE CHINSE GODFATHER, THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and DIRTY MARY, CRAZY LARRY). If you dig that kind of retro stuff, this is definitely worth seeing as director Howard Goldberg effectively captures a lot of the city. If I had to guess, I’d say Goldberg got the money from his folks to make this flick (one scene has Brother Theodore reading a Goldberg Realtors sign over and over). Anyway, I’m not sure mom and dad were pleased that their son ended up emulating Robert Downey, Sr. more than Martin Scorsese. But the folks should be proud as the end result is one of the most unique films I’ve seen all year. (Itself probably the end result of lots of drugs or creativity, I’m not sure which.) Goldberg is an artist after all (according to his IMDb bio, written by…Howard Goldberg!) and he has definitely created a one-of-a-kind movie. He has only directed one other film (EDEN [1996]) and his only other film credit is co-writing Tobe Hooper’s SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION (1990). Yes, the man has truly lived.

Here’s a snippet of the end dance number that some kind soul uploaded to Youtube:

Bruceploitation: THE GODFATHER SQUAD (1974)

2011-12-17T13:59:00.000-08:00

True story: there used to be this cool cat named Keith who ran a site about Bruceploitation, the subgenre that emerged following the untimely death of Bruce Lee. Keith’s site had it all – it was painstakingly thorough in covering the various actors who gave into the art of imitating, had tons of reviews and, best of all, it was witty. You can see the barebones version of that site here. He had the world at his fingertips but refused to strike while the iron is hot. What happened to poor Keef is too horrible for your ears, so we won’t release the details. Let's just say it was a fate far worse than any mortal man should suffer. However, we will say that like Bruce Lee himself, when his reign ended, the imitator Bruceploitation websites took over and now hog the spotlight that he once shone so brightly. *sobs*

Okay, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Bruce Lee imitators. One of the more fun aspects of this subgenre were the films that dared to be a little different. Several such as THE NINJA STRIKES BACK and CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER took their show on the road and filmed at various locations across Europe. These fanciful co-productions not only got their Lee clones to more exotic locales, but they also offered supporting roles to some the actors populating European projects. So it was like the best of both worlds for Eurocult geeks like us here at Video Junkie. THE GODFATHER SQUAD (aka LITTLE GODFATHER) is one of those films that transport the kung fu hero to 1970s Italy. How could it not rule?

The action kicks off right away as we see two Interpol officers killed in England and France (both essayed by stock static shots probably off a postcard and then generic streets). A third assassination attempt involving a German Sheppard suicide dog is foiled in Hong Kong by movie star Wang Liu (Bruce Leung). No, your eyes are not deceiving you and I did say German Sheppard suicide dog and here is the hilarious video proof as evidence (I’m 99% certain the dog growls are being done by a human).

So any movie that starts off with a German Sheppard suicide dog bomb is okay in my book. Turns out all of these killings are being done by the Karo family, a tight knit group of killers who have been hired by drug dealer Mr. Michael. They are indeed a family as we have Karo and his legit son Kenny alongside adopted sons Duke (Gordon Mitchell) and Sakata (Yasuaki Kurata). Yes, Gordon Mitchell is playing someone’s son.

Anyway, these guys are miffed that Wang Liu interfered with their contract and tell Mr. Michael they refuse payment until the contract is fulfilled. This means they must kill Wang Liu. Wait, what? Shouldn’t they be concerned with killing their original target? I guess not. So they come up with the ingenious plan of hiring Wang Liu to come to Rome to shoot a movie and then they will kill him there. Makes perfect sense, right? Well, I guess it would make sense to a hitman who decides to adopt two grown men to be his sons. So Wang arrives in Rome with his super annoying little brother (Meng Hoi) in tow. The killers’ plans are foiled right away when Wang decides to stay with his older brother instead of going to the location. No problem, we’ll kill him at his bro’s house. Well, that gets all messed up when Wang Liu and his little bro take big brother up on his offer to let them sleep in his bedroom. D’oh! Greetings dear dead older brother.

Obviously this bums Wang out, but not enough to stop him and his little bro from checking out the Roman Coliseum. There a tourist couple asks them to take their picture and Wang doesn’t catch on when they keep asking him to step back further and further with their camera. Thankfully, hottie Ivy shows up and gets him to launch the killer Kodak into the air before it explodes. Turns out she is from the film company and works in their insurance division. She takes Wang to the hospital for a check up and – wouldn’t you know it – the doctor tries to kill him too. So Ivy gets him and his brother on the first plane out of town, but Wang ditches his flight because he senses trouble. Sure enough, he saves Ivy from some stereotypical Italian gangsters just minutes later. Man, he really wants to make this film or is really dumb.

After beating up two Russian buffoons on the film set, Wang gets a call from Kenny, who tells him to meet him in St. Peter’s Square and he will reveal who killed his brother. Now here is where the filmmakers show their balls as they have both men wading through a crowd of folks checking out Pope Paul VI as he gives a speech. Yes, a cameo by the freakin’ Pope (which he probably never knew about). That is classic. His Holiness should have felt honored to been in the presence of Bruce Leung. Have you seen his kicks? Godly! Anyway, they have a chase through town and Wang eventually catches the none-too-sly Kenny and demands to know who killed his brother. When Kenny reveals he did it, Wang kills him with a few blows to the head. Naturally, this pisses off Karo but also leads to a great scene of him eulogizing his son at the dinner table. “When he was ten years old, he killed two negro kids,” he remembers fondly. Every dad’s dream…if the dad happens to be a psychotic hitman. From this point on, the film plays out with Duke, Sakata and Karo all trying to snuff out Wang (and even offering him a job at one point).

While not as zany as CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER (topless tennis!) or THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (also with Bruce Leung), THE GODFATHER SQUAD has enough oddity for the non-discerning kung fu film fan. Modern film fans might know lead Bruce Leung (aka Leung Siu-Lung) best as The Beast, the bald, villainous toad hitman from Stephen Chow’s KUNG FU HUSTLE (2004). But he has been around since the early 1970s and got a nice slice of Bruceploitation on his resume, despite not really looking like the man. Leung’s martial arts skills are off the hook and he really should have been in better movies. Also highly skilled is the ubiquitous Japanese star Kurata. Their showdown (which goes from Rome’s streets to a snowy hillside) is the film’s action highlight. Also good is the brawl with Gordon Mitchell that takes place all over an abandoned factory (with a great bit where Mitchell finds a machine gun at the top of a water tower; did he leave it up there knowing their pursuit would end there?). Previously released on DVD by various labels as LITTLE GODFATHER, the new Code Red DVD of THE GODFATHER SQUAD is worth picking up if you want to see the film in its proper widescreen aspect ratio.

Buns and Ammo: PICASSO TRIGGER (1988)

2011-12-14T17:28:00.000-08:00

I hope you didn't think we had abandoned our "Buns and Ammo" overview of the world of Andy Sidaris. This is third in his beach, bullets and babes chronicles where he somehow believes the C.I.A. is inhabited by a bevy of beauties. Naturally, his casting sessions probably involved nothing more than flipping through some Playboy issues as lots of 80s Bunnies get nekkid to on and off screen oglers.

Crimelord and businessman Salazar (John Aprea) aka Picasso Trigger is assassinated after donating a painting of a Picasso Trigger fish to a Paris museum. Somehow this is related to events stateside with Texan L.G. Abilene calling in the services of his nephew Travis (Steve Bond). Yes, we are officially on our third Abilene sibling, who is also a detective with bad aim. Travis assembles a team that includes HARD TICKET TO HAWAII holdovers Donna (Dona Speir), Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), Jade (Harold Diamond), Edy (Cynthia Brimhall) and Pattycakes (Patty Duffek), who now works a Vegas show with Kym (Kym Malin). Along with new acquisition Pantera (Roberta Vasquez), the team plans to take out the remaining members of an organized crime family because...uh...they are going to do something terrible on Monday. Who am I again?

As you can guess from my synopsis, this is a totally confusing mess that sees the opening 15 minutes jump from Paris to Texas to California to Hawaii. I kept trying to remind myself of what was going on, but then I remembered that I didn't really know. There is even a group meeting an hour in that is supposed to explain what is going down but it left me even more confused. Even worse, this is where Sidaris started using actors from the two earlier films in different roles. Black muscle man John Brown is now a good guy and Richard LePore - looking like a Charles Nelson Reilly clone - is now a weapons expert. Well, I don't know about expert as one of his devices is a boomerang with a bomb on it. Think about that for a second. Thankfully Sidaris isn't confused when it comes to delivering in the exploitation department. Once again, there are massive helpings of nudity and explosions every ten minutes or so. Nothing is as outlandish as HARD TICKET's skater or frisbee deaths, but I was definitely never bored. Perhaps the highlight is leg crutch that doubles as a rocket launcher (see below). It also doesn't take much brainpower to realize who the main villain is since the film is named after the guy and he is "assassinated" in the first 5 minutes. Hmmm, who will the big surprise villain reveal be? As always, pictures are better to essay the highs and lows of a Sidaris flick. Enjoy!

Old C.I.A. agents on the left,

their replacements on the right. Yay progress!

Donna & Tayrn, back in business!

Is he superglued to the wall?

Meeting of the minds:

WOAH! Check out that awesome painting!

There's a new sheriff in town, boys.

"This is where I do my best thinking."

"Uh, so where is the whey protein?"

"We were told you had a phone problem." (real line)

Patty Duffek, Playboy Playmate May 1984:

Kym Malin, Playboy Playmate May 1982:

"You made a big mistake, sucka!" (real line)

"Don't even blink!" (real line)

Who wears short shorts?

The horrifying realization you're getting

blow'd up by a crutch rocket launcher:

Listomania!: Thomas' November 2011 Viewings

2011-12-08T14:29:00.000-08:00

ATTACK THE BLOCK (2011): Ummmm, so our heroes are teenage thugs who mug innocent girls and deal drugs, all played for laughs? This suckered me in with the marketing campaign that proudly announced its tenuous relationship with SHAWN OF THE DEAD, and I guess some folks found the foul-mouthed, nihilistic, ghetto delinquents to warm the cockles of their hearts, but I’ll be damned if I could find a single likable thing about them. CG alien shadow beasts crash land on Earth and a group of pint-size gangstas decide that they are gonna “kill the motherfuckers!” That’s pretty much the long and the short of it. Personally I was hoping that the aliens would kill them off one by one, but no, that is so ‘80s. In our new age of enlightenment, the xenophobic future cons escape from the police and the aliens at every turn. I don’t really want to get on a high-horse and say that this is irresponsible filmmaking, but it does glamorize the thug life. “Hey kids, get your buddies and have fun assaulting young girls at knifepoint! It’s fun and funny!” Even with that aside, the film has nothing to offer other than a very weak attempt to remake CRITTERS (1984) in an urban setting.

THE SQUEEZE (1977): "Fuck Andy Williams". It still blows my mind that there are so many films out there with name casts and prolific directors that somehow get lost in the shuffle and never see a proper video release. I mean, seriously, there isn't a day that goes by in my life where I am not thinking about and scrounging for movies from the '70s. Don't get me wrong, I love movies from the '60s and '80s too, but the '70s were both technically proficient and yet they still hadn't become the cynical, soulless, corporate product like the films we see today. Risks were taken, conventions ignored.
A washed-up, alcoholic, ex-Scotland Yard detective Jim Naboth (Stacey Keach) who finds a renewed sense of purpose when a brutal mob kidnaps his ex-wife (Carol White) and daughter, not to mention forces him to strip naked and dumps him in front of a local church. This film is loaded with moments that would never be done the same today and features characters that behave in a realistic way. The mob kidnappers don’t sit around and talk about pop culture, instead they decide to force the mother of their victim to do one a strip-tease before being raped. It’s un-sexy and unpleasant and she is powerless to stop it. In this day and age, the scene would be completely different. It would be a sexy strip with the woman using her femininity to gain power over her captors and she would definitely turn the tables on them at some point with a big macho (yeah, I said it) revenge moment. The always-great Edward Fox plays the new husband who is absolutely useless, Stephen Boyd is the over-confidant mob boss, David Hemmings is the respectable-looking leader of the gang, and Freddie Starr plays a klepto who seems to be quite fond of ol’ sonny Jim.

THE ETRUSCAN MASK (2007): This film answers the question on everyone’s lips; “what happened to Ted Nicolau?” Oh and you will be so glad to find out the answer to that. Actually the movie starts out great with an old farmer selling an ancient Etruscan demon-warrior mask to an antiquities collector. After the sale is complete, the farmer retreats to his woodshed where we find the maggot-filled remains of his tortured victims. He then blows his brains out with a shotgun. Cut to a few short years later and a group of college kids (yeah, see, I said “starts out great”), while working for the smallest newspaper ever, stumble across a rich recluse and his witch-like wife who have their home adorned with satanic imagery with the mask as the centerpiece. This causes weird hallucinations and general creepiness until the end when we find out that the mask actually possesses people with a demon who uhhhh… kills people and stuff.

Full Moon veteran Nicolau has never really been a master of his craft, but I’m always going to give an independent, Italian-produced effort a fair shake. Unfortunately here he manages to take a great set-up and blow it in every way conceivable. After the first five minutes, there is literally no horror to be found for the next hour. It’s about the super-duchey kids and a lot of plot exposition that leads to some bad CGI and the most fumbling attempt at a slasher set-up that I’ve ever seen. For this one scene Nicolau decides to do the slasher thing. The mask is worn and the demon stalks a pair of kids (one being Nicolau’s irritating, hipster son) who are about to get it on. Yes, the ol’ Voorhees syndrome is in effect, but the kids don’t even get their clothes off before the knife comes out (so demons must resort to kitchen tools to get the job done?) and even then, after a slow stalk, the actual killing happens off screen. In a later scene he does bring the grue, only to completely obscure a well-crafted latex disemboweling effect with CG blood spray that looks like it was created on someone’s laptop. I’m surprised the effects guy didn’t throttle Ted after that. Come to think of it. Has anyone seen him lately?
Even worse, the female lead, Majlinda Agaj, who was clearly cast solely for her wondrous set of attributes, has a line in the beginning of the film where she says “I’ll keep my clothes on, thank you!” True to her word, she does just that, even in the laughably lame “love” scene. On the plus side, Nicolau turns in a technically accomplished effort for a (did I mention this?) digital video production, with tons of camera set-ups and crane shots. Only to be felled by acting so amatuerish it would make HG Lewis wince, one hour of dullsville and some embarrassingly bad CG effects. Maybe not as bad as THE CHILL, but bad.
How bad is the acting, you ask? Only a video clip will do it justice:

Oh Ted, what are we going to do with you? I give you an “A” for effort and a “D” for execution. The only reasons you didn’t get an “F” was because the opening scene hooked me in and THE DUNGEONMASTER (1982) is always welcome in my home.

NINETEEN RED ROSES (1974): Interesting and obscure Danish police thriller that actually managed to get a US release back in the day. A killer (who we are introduced to in the first scene) is selecting victims who are seemingly unconnected. The police on the case have to piece together the dates, locations and try to figure out a motive. Ok, I don’t think I could be any more vague about it, but I’m trying to go spoiler-free here. While it is dated and feels like a wannabe Martin Beck thriller, it has its moments. Like the Swedish police thrillers, it goes in for a lot of gritty procedural work, while at the same time trying to draw a little influence from Italian giallos. Neither is totally successful, but it still manages to hold your attention.

BECK - BAIT BOY (1997): First in a series of 26 top-notch Swedish TV movies based on the Martin Beck novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Imagine CSI without the Hollywood. No trendy emo haircuts, realistic characters and some real nasty grit, thanks to Sjöwall and Wahlöö. Unlike US TV shows, these telefilms pull no punches. While a show like CSI may tackle the same subject there would be plenty of mincing around the nastier elements. Here we are introduced to Martin Beck, a Stockholm homicide detective who's small squad is in charge of solving the ugliest of Sweden’s crimes. While worrying about his daughter trying to rent a black-market flat (the legalities of housing in the over-populated Stockholm area are insanely complex), Martin Beck finds himself thrust upon a rash of murders of young teen boys. In addition to shockingly graphic and unsettling content (bloody killings and descriptions of a boy vomiting up semen before his murder), this telefilm sports great production values and doesn’t go overboard into over-the-top silliness and soap-opera relationships that CSI gets up to.

ROBBERY (1967): Solid, straightforward account of the infamous 1963 "Great Train Robbery" in which a coordinated group of 15 criminals from different mobs robbed a postal train of £2.6 million (about $65 million today). Peter Yates could be accused of flat direction here, but I like to think that he's letting the great cast (Stanley Baker, Barry Foster, Frank Finlay, James Booth, George Sewell and others) play out a great story that needs little embellishment. Watching this really puts Ronnie Biggs into perspective. He's become famous for this heist, but really had almost nothing to do with it other than help the team find a train operator who couldn't drive the train after all! A little dry in spots, but good stuff in spite of it.

VIDEO NASTIES – MORAL PANIC, CENSORSHIP & VIDEO TAPE (2010): The central part of the amazing 3 DVD set titled THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO THE VIDEO NASTIES, this is surprisingly nicely done. Jake West and Marc Morris have made a career out of making featurettes for DVDs in London, and truth be told, this is nothing more than 3 discs of extras, the main feature being a moment in history. Tracing the evolution of the video rental business from its primitive beginnings in which you had almost literally a guy in a closet renting uncensored videos, through the hysteria over films that were believed to be real snuff movies, to the actual banning of films that were barely even questionable on a thematic level, this documentary is fascinating whether you remember those days or not. One of the best things about the documentary is that West and Morris avoid (for the most part) the pitfalls that plague so many other featurette producers (*cough* Code Red *cough*), such as the heavy reliance on obnoxious, alleged “expert / fans” or worse, Eli Roth. West and Morris amazingly get the real players to talk candidly about what happened from journalists, professors and filmmakers, right through to the MP who authored the bill, an arch bishop, a film censor and a former Scotland Yard head, and many, many more. In addition to the interviews for the documentary, West and Morris unearth a plethora of archival clips to add additional insight and give a true feeling for the hysteria of the day. It’s amazing in this day and age how some of these people feel that what they did was completely justified, such as incarcerating the proprietor of a video shop for a longer sentence than a murderer and arresting people for renting THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS. Come to think of it, I've seen the film and that might be justified after all. Amazingly some of these witch-hunters are still adamant that they were cracking down on a real snuff film epidemic and saving the children from becoming killers and rapists. Amazing stuff that is well worth hunting down, particularly if you are the kind of person that reads blogs about trashy movies and gets that Damned song stuck in your head for days at a time.

The Lovecraft Legacy: SHADOW OF THE UNNAMABLE (2011)

2011-12-05T07:59:00.001-08:00

So apparently I am a bit of a "blog whore" as I took up with another blog to do a review of the H.P. Lovecraft adaptation SHADOW OF THE UNNAMABLE. Not to be confused with the 80s THE UNNAMABLE flicks, this is a sixteen minute short film out of Germany that set about to faithfully adapt Lovecraft's 1925 short story. Does debuting director-producer-writer Sascha Renninger succeed or fail? Head on over to my mistress at the Unfilmable blog to check out my review of SHADOW OF THE UNNAMABLE and find out.

Listomania!: Will's November Universal THE MUMMY marathon

2011-12-03T08:03:00.001-08:00

Growing up as a kid, I caught most of the Universal horror classics (DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE MUMMY, THE WOLF MAN, and all the CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON flicks) but missed a lot of the sequels. In October, I decided to fill in quite a few of the gaps and watched all of the films in the FRANKENSTEIN series. In November I decided to start filling in the holes on another classic monster series. I saw Universal's THE MUMMY (1932) as a kid, but never really got into it. Mostly because the title creature in the form I best knew him (from countless horror film books) was only in one scene at the opening. As an adult, I appreciate it more (mostly for Karloff's performance) but still think it has some really bad pacing issues. Regardless, I never went further in the exploits of Universal's bandaged baddie until last month.

THE MUMMY'S HAND (1940) - Down-on-his-luck archaeologist Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and his annoying sidekick Babe Jenson (Wallace Ford) find a vase for sale in an Egyptian market that they believe has clues to location of the tomb of Princess Ananka. They take it to Dr. Petrie (Charles Trowbridge) of the Cairo Museum who agrees, but his colleague Andoheb (George Zucco) deems it a fake. Of course, Andoheb is doing this because he is also moonlighting as the new high priest of Karnak, whose job it is to protect this sacred burial ground. Not to be deterred, Banning convinces a Brooklyn magician (!), Solvani (Cecil Kellaway), to finance his trip. They find the tomb rather easily and discover the mummified body of Kharis (Tom Tyler), who was buried alive for trying to resurrect Ananka. Andoheb arrives on the scene and, using magical tana leaves, resurrects the mummy to kill everyone.

More of a semi-remake than a sequel, this new decade's mummy movie is pretty rough stuff. The film's worst problem is that the title creature doesn't appear until the 43 minute mark. Not good for a film that runs 67 minutes. Also, that mummy-less time is filled with some reaaaaally bad comedy, from Brooklynite Babe to the embarrassing Solvani (there is an actual bit where the tries to locate his contract and pulls everything from oversize cards to mountains of scarfs from his pockets). Coming from westerns, Tyler is a good mummy and I like the effect of his eyes being blacked out. One interesting thing is they use footage from the THE MUMMY to tell the history, but edit in Tyler in for Karloff.

THE MUMMY'S TOMB (1942) - 30 years have passed since the events of THE MUMMY'S HAND (so this is set in 1970?). Andoheb (Zucco again) survived the events of the first film and now places Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey) in charge of getting revenge on the members of the Banning expedition (what did he do in the 30 years between?). Bey travels to Banning's home of Mapleton, Massachusetts with Kharis (now Lon Chaney, Jr.) in tow and takes a job as a cemetery caretaker. This gives him the perfect cover to send out the mummy to get revenge. It does so rather quickly as Banning (Foran again) is dispatched of by the 20 minute mark. Babe (Ford again; although is character's last name is inexplicably changed to Hanson) comes into to console his friend's son, John Banning (John Hubbard), but he gets offed too. Bey is a revenge master, but then gets sidetracked by Isobel (Elyse Knox), John's fiance. Beautiful white women - foiling madmen for ages! So he uses Kharis one more time to kidnap this hottie, which finally causes John to spring into action.

I watched this one right after THE MUMMY'S HAND and was glad I did because it is a direct sequel. Well, a 30 years later sequel. I prefer this one to its predecessor because it dispenses with the comedy and gets right down to the mummy mayhem. Running just 60 minutes (with 9 minutes of it being summary footage from HAND), it hits the ground running and rarely stops. Poor Chaney went from spending hours being made unrecognizable in THE WOLF MAN (1940) to spending hours being made unrecognizable in this. I really like Jack Pierce's design in this one with the attention to the previous film's mummy demise (he is slightly darkened from being burnt and missing an eye). The end is actually a great set up as the mummy once again attacks the huge Banning home and the villagers set fire to the place (during the town rally, the sheriff even says, "Pass out the clubs and torches!”).

THE MUMMY'S GHOST (1944) - Taking place a few years after the events of THE MUMMY'S TOMB, this has Yousef Bey (a young John Carradine) becoming the Egyptian high priest heir who is now charged with bringing Kharis the mummy (Lon Chaney, Jr. again) back to Egypt. He travels to Mapleton, Massachusetts to revive and retrieve the creature. Local college kids Tom Hervey (Robert Lowery, as a college "kid" in his 30s) and Amina (Ramsay Ames) soon find themselves targets as Amina just happens to be Princess Ananka reincarnated. Of course, the villain again finds his plans sidetracked by a certain weakness for the opposite sex. What is with these guys getting weak kneed at first glance of a woman?

Third in this MUMMY reboot series, it seems like Universal's only demands were "give us a mummy movie and make sure it runs 60 minutes." I do like that they continued on the chronology of the small town besieged by the mummy menace (newspaper headlines scream of the monster's return). The filmmakers do cheat a bit as they never explain how the mummy survived being burnt to a crisp as he appears just as before (no joke, his first scene is just him walking out of the woods looking no worse for wear). Carradine gives his all to the performance, but Chaney seems a bit stiffer than usual. The film’s best attribute is a major downer of an ending. I kept looking at the counter and wondering how they were going to wrap up everything in a happy ending so quickly. Turns out they didn’t and I’m grateful for that. This is one of the bleakest endings in any monster movie. One other memorable (and amusing) scene had the mummy roughing up a museum security guard. When I watched this, I immediately thought that wasn’t supposed to happen. Afterward, I read in Universal Horrors that indeed that Chaney got a bit carried away and cracked the glass that no only gave his co-star a headache, but gave Chaney a sliced arm. Here’s the clip:

THE MUMMY'S CURSE (1944) - Arriving just 5 months after THE MUMMY'S GHOST, this was the final Universal entry in the Kharis mummy series. Set 25 years after the events of GHOST (we’re in the late 1990s now!), this has the drainage of a swamp spooking the local workers due to their fear of the mummy legend (there is no explanation as to why primary location Massachusetts is suddenly Louisiana; even odder is the foreman has a picture of the mill from the climax of the last film behind his desk). Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore) and Dr. Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe) arrive to look for the mummy during the excavation and, of course, the Egyptian of the pair has ulterior motives. Also rising from the swamp is Amina/Princess Ananka (Virginia Christine), who is rejuvenated by the suns rays but is still the object of Kharis' (Lon Chaney, Jr. one last time) affection. For once, the Egyptian is impervious to a woman’s charms and…oh, what’s this…his henchman is digging her. Oh jeez.

With the series as tattered as the mummy’s bandages, it is fitting this is the last one in the series. The plots seem pretty unchanged for these last three sequels (mummy chases people), so I can understand why Universal buried the mummy after this one. Despite the unmentioned extreme location change, the screenwriters surprisingly didn't include any voodoo stuff in the proceedings. The film also features a really embarrassing "yes massa" character, which I found surprising since the other entries avoiding anything like this. It is too bad we never got to see him throw down in one of their monster rallies. This entry does feature one of the best sequences in the series though when Ananka rises from her muddy grave. It is really a haunting scene that poor mud-covered Christine, who is quite stunning, managed to get in one take.

So with the mummy series officially put to rest, this month I will focus on THE INVISIBLE MAN series. I mean, if I can see him.

Clonin' the Barbarian: CONAN THE BARBARIAN (2011)

2011-12-01T15:37:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I can hear you. “What were you thinking?” My only defense is that Marcus Nispel did make one underappreciated sword film in 2007 and I figured he might be able to bring some of that here. It was like he was Clint Eastwood and I was Albert Popwell, and as he is putting this film in the can, I said “I gots ta know.” And when I found out, I had the same reaction.

I’m not even going to get into comparing two CONANs. Comparing the 1982 CONAN to the 2011 CONAN, is like comparing 1983 Ozzy Osbourne to 2003 Ozzy Osbourne. Suffice to say, that nasty sinking feeling in your gut that you got when the first pics of Jason Momoa came out was right. An insipid pretty-boy saddled with one of the most uninspired scripts since INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.

How crap is the script, you ask? Well, Conan falls in love and shows his romantic side… do I need to continue? Both the lousy casting of every single actor on the set, and a script that is so banal and trite that it is stunning that it got a green light, even in Hollywood, this clunker is a chore to sit through. Even Morgan Freeman can’t seem to muster any enthusiasm as his narration is about as spirited as a reading from a 5^th grade history text. Sure, there’s plenty of bloody swordfights, but there is nothing interesting about them. Nispel had some very creative set-pieces for his carnage in PATHFINDER (2007), but here, it’s mostly straightforward hack n’ slash. Ironically the three credited writers actually lift elements from PATHFINDER to prop up their lack of imagination. For instance there is a lengthy prologue with our hero as a child who grabs a sword and manages to dislodge a section of the face of the villain’s right-hand man. Which film am I talking about? Yep, both!

Conan: King of Douches

A famous critic once said that a James Bond movie is only as good as its villain. This actually applies to a lot of genre movies, in particular the fantasy film. PATHFINDER had Clancy Brown as a bloodthirsty, genocidal Viking leader, bent on conquering and enslaving a new land. Nothing fancy, but easily his best turn since The Kurgan. Here we have Stephen Lang as a would be conqueror searching for a mask that will turn him into a god, but, as it turns out, a god who is easily defeated by falling off a bridge. Yeah, sorry about the spoiler, but that is how it goes down. Does Conan savagely decapitate him in front of his followers? Nope. Is he drawn and quartered by angry villagers? Nope. He falls off a bridge. I’m not much for theology, but I’m pretty sure gods have the power to maintain their balance, no matter how challenging the situation. Matter of fact this movie seems to think that falling from heights is the worst fate that could befall (no pun intended) a person. Conan fights magic sand dudes that come up from the sand, attack and fall back into the sand. Yet, when they are knocked off some scaffolding in a sequence that seems to be lifted straight out of a Jackie Chan movie, they fall down and are destroyed. The sorceress also dies from a fall and Conan's love interest is threatened with one! I can only surmise that the writers were all severely acrophobic.

Yeah, I just spoiled the hell out of it. Sorry, but you should really thank me for it. I just saved you 113 minutes of your life that on your deathbed you will desperately want back. I can't believe this got made and released while the vastly superior Robert E. Howard adaptation SOLOMON KANE (2009) still languishes in purgatory. The impenetrable wisdom of Hollywood I guess.

The XXX-Factor: Sybil Danning in Playboy, August 1983

2011-11-29T07:41:00.001-08:00

One of the great things about Blogspot are the "traffic sources" stats on what search items brings readers to our blog. Running a close third behind Boyka (Scott Adkins' buff villain-turned-hero in the UNDISPUTED sequels) and Linda Blair (a certain OUI pictorial pops up) is 80s action/b-movie cult queen Sybil Danning. It is almost like sex sells or something. Danning is definitely a favorite around these parts and, like most folks, we got introduced to her through her Sybil Danning's Adventure Videos. She was like the Elvira of the action scene, introducing some great (and not-so-great) movies with terrible puns and incredible skimpy outfits. We were in love. As if a hot lady and z-grade action weren't enough, Danning also had her own acting career and the Austria-born actress had no qualms getting nude. Hell, she even refined the art of being nude without being nude.

Anyway, long story short, we obviously weren't the only ones smitten with Miss Danning's charms and we're doing this post to satiate all of the like minded folks typed "Sybil Danning + nude + Playboy" into Google every five minutes. Below is her spread for Hugh Hefner's seminal nudie mag that appeared in August 1983. And for you Tom types out there, we've also included the text from the article about her. It begins with her kicking out her boyfriend (yay!) and then talking about some of her films (she even bags on Lou Ferrigno). Fans of "never got made" stuff will be interested in reading about BLACK DIAMOND, her planned female James Bond film. It never got before cameras, although a comic book of it did get released. Behold the power of Danning (click to enlarge, but try not to break your computer screen)!

Strung Out on Slashers: BERSERKER (1987)

2011-11-23T14:23:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of the year again. The weather gets crisp, the leaves are falling and our sofas get even more comfortable. The smell of fir trees and roasted meats; exotic spices and fresh-baked sweets makes our thoughts turn to a subject that is near and dear to our hearts here at VJHQ… yes, it’s time to stoke the Yule logs, whip up a hot beverage and settle in for some really bad slasher movies.

Back in the day when this hit video the box copy did its job and sucked me in with promises of a Viking warrior on a blood-soaked rampage, cutting swath through the scum of the western world… pot-smoking promiscuous teens. Holy shit! This could be the greatest movie ever! Or not.

Opening with a prologue set (as we are informed by a title card) in the 10^th century, the front of a Viking longship hits a fog shrouded beach and after a long pause to observe clouds of mist float past the camera, what appears to be a reject from a Man-o-War cover-band audition, in a wolf mask, jumps off the boat. Cut to what we presume is present day (did the title guy fall asleep already?) and a couple, clearly eligible for the silverhair discount at Denny’s, are savagely attacked by what appears to be a bear. You can’t really tell as it is all POV shots with the paw from a cheap bear costume gently wiped across the faces of the victims leaving a smear of blood. Hey, it could get better, right?

Yes, in case you are keeping track, that was two prologues. We finally arrive at the main plot; a group of unsurprisingly obnoxious teens (surprisingly not ethnically diverse), loaded down with beer and pot and books (!), head up to an old camping ground with some of the shittiest cabins you can imagine. When one of the plot conveniences revolves around the renters of one of the cabins not actually staying in the cabin, but preferring to sleep in their tent, it is actually really easy to accept. The camp grounds are run by one “Pappy” Nyquist (George “Buck” Flower in a rare non-transient role), an Amish-bearded old salt with a Swedish accent. Pappy is cousin to the local Sherriff (trash movie veteran John Goff), and spends most of his free time reading books about Viking mythology. One of the tomes is actually the same as the one that the nerd teen, Larry (Rodney Montague, no really), is reading aloud on the trip up to the cabin. The book tells the history of the Viking berserkers, who were cannibals, kept on chains and in cages, and outfitted in wolf skins and wolf masks that they would use to tear up their victims. After the berserkers died it is said that their spirit remains on this earth and will possess its descendants. It is believed that the Vikings landed on US shores and this very patch of woodlands is where their ancestors still live to this day…
Ok, ok, we get it already! Someone’s gonna git possessed by a berserker and shit’s gonna go down! Awesome, bring it!

Or, maybe we’ll just wander around in the woods, hang out in the cabin and bitch, piss and moan about every goddamn thing under the everlovin’ sun. Mostly though, it’s just the obnoxious tool Josh (Greg Dawson) who tells his heart-wrenching tale of how his dad was an asshole who was obsessed with his job, left his mom, but when they came up to the cabin he was, like, totally cool n’ stuff. It’s no surprise that he is the only dude flying solo on this camping trip, as his eloquent mastery of the sublime art of humor is demonstrated frequently. When Larry brings books on the camping trip, Josh leans over to Larry’s girlfriend, Kathy (Valerie Sheldon), and says “does he read to you while you hump? What are ya gonna do? Teach Smokey the Bear to read?” He also tells the group about how the woods are dangerous as a little girl was found “all tore up” in a river. The authorities decided that it was due to the rocks in the river, in spite of the recent bear warning. Oh yeah, that’s great, thanks for bringing us up here Josh!

Naturally all this is a set-up for the impending attacks, but first we need to hit some of the important highlights from the ‘80s Slasher Movie Checklist. The highlight of this pawful of clichés grueling montage with the “teens” goofing off to an awe-inspiringly cheesy rock tune “Cool Dude”. Since words cannot do this justice, here’s the video:

And yes, we ticked off another one on the list, the skinny dipping scene in which the writer-director Jeff Richard decides he is a rebel filmmaker who is going to buck the system by having the girl start to take off her clothes and then decide not to. Hmmmmm… Let’s see, Jeff doesn’t want to see boobs, but does want to see two men greased up and stripped to the waist grappling and rolling around on the ground. Uhhh, Jeff? Is there something you would like to share with the group?

Mauled...

...Mauling

When we finally hit number 14 on Kasey Kasem’s top ‘80s Slasher Hits (which as we all know is the girl going off to go pee while camping at night), the perpetually giggling Mike (Joseph Alan Johnson) and Shelly (Beth Toussaint) go look for our pee-girl, Kristi, and decide to just have sex in the woods. I was a teenager once, I can totally see that. Apparently Mike and Shelly, in spite of having the quietest sex ever, are completely oblivious to Kristi’s screams, as she is mauled by what appears to be a bear. So now at the hour plus mark, we get to the attacks, but is it a possessed kin of a Viking warrior, or is it a bear?! Ummmm, yeah, what? We get the big Viking set-up and now Richard is desperately trying to make us think that a killer bear is stalking the woods.

Even after giving us the first prologue and our exciting premise of possession, Richard spends a lot of time trying to suggest that it’s a bear who is running around the woods attacking people and that there is in fact no berserker as the title would suggest! Nope, it’s a bear and we are going to move forward with that until the end in which… surprise! It actually is a berserker! Gosh, I bet they won’t see that coming, what a surprise that will be! Jeff, come here so I can smack you. At this point we discover that the bear was actually chasing the berserker who runs in out of nowhere and bum-rushes the bear like he’s some buffed out Leslie Nielson. Our epic throwdown between berserker and bear turns into a trainer and a bear playing cut with the berserker wrasslin' a dude in a Spencer's Halloween costume. Even better, as soon as the bear starts to get the upper... uhh, paw, our berserker tucks his tail between his legs and runs off into the forest howling for his momma!

Best cabin... EVAR!!

Twenty years later I am sucked in (again) by the premise and the promise of a Viking berserker bustin’ all Jason Voorhees on some nitwit campers and twenty years later I get to feel the same disappointment all over again. That is not to say that there aren’t any points of interest along the way. Josh is totally obsessed with staying at the same cabin that he stayed at while growing up. He makes a big deal about it, damn near throws down with ol' Pappy when he can't get it and generally will not shut the fuck up about it. Once they get there, you can see why... Mike, once he stops giggling, is a runaway freight train of social incompetence. When he hops on an ATV to go get the sheriff, he tells a terrified Kathy that she has to stay at the cabin. Why? Because “I can drive faster with less weight!” Hoooboy, Mike, I’d rather take my chances with the berserker!

As long as your expectations are very, very low and your pain threshold is very, very high, you might get out of this one alive. All others beware, unless you are a "Cool Dude".

Cheap Plug Dept.: I Dig Your Blog

2011-11-20T08:43:00.001-08:00

We interrupt this blogging for a special announcement...

The kind Dr. AC, M.D. (Medical Deviant) of HORROR 101 has bestowed an "I Dig Your Blog" award upon us and we can't thank him enough. If you don't know this medical marvel's work, head on over and check out his blog with some great reviews in his Fool's Views section. The Doc will forever have our admiration (poor guy) for having watched 115 movies in October alone!

There are some rules to the award though. Wait a sec, he's making us work? Grrrrr. Okay, here we go:

1) Gratefully accept this award. (Done)
2) Link to the person you received it from. (Done)
3) Post 3 interesting facts about yourself. (See below)
4) Pass this award around to at least 5 blogs you dig. (See below)
5) Notify said 5 bloggers (Done)

Damn, interesting facts about ourselves? Well, since there are two of us here, you lucky readers will get 6 interesting facts.

Interesting facts about Tom:

1. Believes that if god truly existed, bacon would grow on trees.
2. Studied film, journalism and culinary arts and then discovered that nobody would pay for reviews of movies about food.
3. Is the one man who has bought a copy of Penthouse just for the articles.

Interesting facts about Will:

1. Despite being a film addict, has never seen THE GODFATHER.
2. The first R-rated movie he saw in the theater was ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.
3. Once found a copy of Penthouse on the street and wondered who tore all the articles out.

Okay, 5 blogs that we dig:

1. By John Charles - While new to blogspot, Mr. Charles has been a internet presence for over a decade with his (now defunct) Hong Kong Digital. He bravely stepped back into blogging this past year and we are always excited to see what he is reviewing next.

2. The Dead Next Door: A Field Guide to Regional Horror Films - Jeez, could they have come up with a title to appeal to me more? Always throwing up trailers for some of the best from this sub-genre. And they will forever be champs for find a LIFE story on a teen Tobe Hooper making FRANKENSTEIN.

3. The Horn Section - I found Hal Horn's blog via his posts on Mobius and he runs a great "why the hell isn't this on DVD yet" film series. Great fun reads that covers a wide range from Burt Reynold's PATERNITY to DARKTOWN STRUTTERS.

4. Fist of B-List - Any blog that has the dad from NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER screaming in their banner is amazing by my standards. Covering the direct-to-video action market, you'll get hilarious reviews covering everything from Gary Daniels to Sean Donahue.

5. Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot - MCKEE!!! Most folks will know Marty McKee for his Mobian God status. He also runs this blog where he covers everything from old published reviews for stuff like 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS (poor guy) to new reviews of stuff like Charles Napier's THE NIGHT STALKER (lucky guy).We won't hold the fact that he saw SCREAM 4 against him.

So check all them bad boys out as they have the VJ seal of approval!

The Gweilo Dojo: MIAMI CONNECTION (1987)

2011-11-17T09:04:00.001-08:00

If you grew up in the US in the 1980s, escaping exposure to the television series MIAMI VICE was pretty damn hard. The adventures of Crocket (Don Johnson) and Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) set standards – for better or worse – in both the entertainment and lay person fashion industry. People were showing up to work with 5 day stubble on purpose after, no doubt, spending a weekend jamming to Jan Hammer’s MIAMI VICE theme in the clubs. While too young to fully indulge in the MIAMI VICE inspired nightlife, I am eternally grateful to the show for inspiring the team behind the glorious NINJA TURF (1985) to make the equally glorious MIAMI CONNECTION (1987). It is the kind of cinema we live for here at Video Junkie – a film full of some many laughable “holeeeeey shit!” moments that it easily secured a spot on our “best film EVER” lists.

MIAMI CONNECTION opens with a big cocaine deal going down that is interrupted by some ninjas who ride around on loud motorcycles. Hmmmm, I don’t think they know how ninjas are supposed to act. Anyway, ninja leader Yashito (Si Y Jo) takes his haul to a club to sell to epically bearded Jeff (William Eagle, if that is your real name). Jeff, however, gets perturbed when Dragon Sound – the club’s house band offering “the new dimension in rock and roll” – takes the stage. Seems his sister Jane (Kathy Collier) has joined the band and, oh lordy, she kisses band member John (Vincent Hirsh) on stage, which makes Jeff angry and uneasy. Think about that for a second. A guy who is in a club to conduct a major cocaine deal is pissed his sister is in a band and kissing a guy. That about sums up the craziness on display here in MIAMI CONNECTION.

Jane and John meet up on the campus of the University of Central Florida while she is in her computer class. Here is another classic bit that had me rolling – the computer teacher asks the class to applaud the University’s computer team for coming in fourth place in an international programming contest. What? Do these filmmakers know they control the product onscreen? What is to prevent them from putting the University in first place? Talk about aiming low. Anyway, our lovebirds walk around the campus and Jane tells John about her overprotective brother who hangs around with shady people. Oh damn, guess who just rolled up in his red convertible with a whole group of shady looking people? Jeff decks John while Jane watches helplessly (that sounds like a nurse rhyme). The boys from Dragon Sound show up to offer their boy some support and, when they drive away, John says, “If Jane wasn’t there I would have kicked his ass.” Yeah, sure, pal.

Meanwhile, the band that Dragon Sound apparently replaced is pissed and shows up at the club to demand their jobs back. Not a good move as the club owner apparently knows martial arts too and beats down the group. The causes the scorned singer to contact Jeff about getting rid of Dragon Sound, a task the begrudged brother is more than up for. After this is where one of my favorite bits of the film happens. Jim (Maurice Smith, who may or may not be the MMA and kickboxing legend) tells Mark (Y.K. Kim) and his other band mates that he has been looking for his father. Here’s how it breaks to them in the movie. Keep in mind this is the very first time the film ever mentions all five of the band members are orphans.

So can you see why – as McDonald’s would say – we’re loving it? And the Oscar goes too...Maurice Smith!

Of course, abandonment issues are the least of Dragon Sound’s worries now as they are confronted by the other band with a gang of thugs in the middle of the street. Mark tries to soothe the scene by saying, “Listen to me. I don’t want any trouble. I get the job from agent. Don’t bother us.” That goes over real well (perhaps they didn’t understand Mark’s thiiiiick accent?) and soon a huge brawl breaks out over the streets. Naturally, since Dragon Sound are also Tae Kwon Do experts (did I forget to mention that?), they whoop everyone’s ass and Jeff is forced to resort to kidnapping. His gang snatches Tom (Angelo Janotti) from Dragon Sound (rule #1 in music industry kidnappings: always go for the John Oates look-a-like). This results in a showdown at an abandoned warehouse, which culminates in gang leader Jeff being killed. For some reason Jane doesn’t seem to care much, but Yashito takes this shit real personal when he hears his “brother” (what?) has been killed. He and his ninjas suit up to get rid of Dragon Sound once and for all. The ninjas confront them in broad daylight and their timing couldn’t have been worse as they were just driving Jim to the airport to meet his long-lost father. Someone will have to pay.

In case you are wondering how Jim took the news of finding his father, here you go:

His last exclamation of “Oh my God” is exactly how I sounded when I finished this movie for the first time. Hell that is how I sounded after the first 10 minutes, which had me quickly sending Tom an email saying, “Watch this film ASAP!” Hiding behind the completely mystifying, postcard looking box art (see above) is the type of film we live for – completely wrongheaded in every way, yet vastly entertaining as a result of that. How can you not die laughing at bits like geeky Yashito hanging out with some all too real bikers while a song called “Tough Guy” blasts on the soundtrack? I honestly had a real tough time deciding which clips to upload as nearly every scene is hilarious. And the dialogue is nearly every scene is priceless. For example, check out the two cops who show up too late to break up a brawl at a train yard.

Cop #1: Where did everybody go?

Cop #2: I don’t know.

Cop #1: Looks like another gang.

Cop #2: Ah, we need to get these gangs out of central Florida anyway.

Cop #1: That’s true.

Cop #2: Let’s get out of here.

You also have to love the completely random shifts in tone. Like Park’s NINJA TURF and AMERICAN CHINATOWN, things can go from jokey to serious and vice versa in a split second. There is a great bit where a ninja underling tells Yashito about the final attack. His response is to cut off the head of bearer of bad news and then laugh maniacally. And I love the dudes they find to be in the gangs in these films. We get all shapes and sizes, from the rotund to the rail thin Kid Rock look-a-like. Their depiction of US gangs is so bad that I’d almost thought this was a Hong Kong film. Oh damn, did I forget to mention that Dragon Sound plays several songs? They pepper such hits as “Friends” (lyrics: "Friends through eternity, loyalty, honesty/We'll stay together through thick or thin/Friends forever, we’ll be together/We're on top because we plan to win.") with an on stage display of bad martial arts.

So MIAMI CONNECTION is pretty much a blast from start to finish of its 83 minute running time. It is a shame that Park only made a few of these movies. Seriously, if I had the $250 million dollar budget of a TRANSFORMERS film, I’d spend $249 million on a time machine just so I could go back to the 1980s and give director Richard Park a million dollars to make a couple more action movies. Oh, and I’d totally go to the club with my stubble and neon t-shirt under a white sport coat to scope on the 80s chicks.

The "Never Got Made" Files #70: PSYCHO II: THE RETURN OF NORMAN BATES (1981)

2011-11-11T07:57:00.001-08:00

It goes without saying that Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960) needs no introduction. Not only is it one of the cinema’s most well-known horror films, it is also one of the most culturally significant films of all-time. Films students still study the effective editing execution displayed in the legendary shower scene some 50 years after the fact. And mention that you plan to stay at the Bates Motel with mother and chances are 9 out of 10 people will know what you are talking about. In 1992 it was the second horror film (behind James Whales’ FRANKENSTEIN [1931] in 1991) to be deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the U.S. Library of Congress when it was placed in the National Film Registry.

In addition to worldwide success both in the public consciousness and at the box office, PSYCHO is unique in that it is one of the few films in history to receive a direct sequel 20 plus years later, resulting in a brand new and successful horror franchise. The sequel PSYCHO II debuted almost 23 years to the day after the original film and proved to be a box office success. Subsequent sequel films (PSYCHO III hitting theaters in July 1986 and PSYCHO IV: THE BEGINNING debuting on cable in November 1990), sequel novels (Psycho II and Psycho House, both by original author Robert Bloch), a television pilot BATES MOTEL (1987) and the ill-advised 1998 remake by Gus Van Sant proved the undying popularity of Norman Bates. Lost in the PSYCHO history, however, is an earlier sequel attempt existed before all of those. Before Bloch or Universal dreamt up the further adventures of America’s favorite madman, two enterprising screenwriters came up with the idea first.

In the world of PSYCHO trivia, PSYCHO II: THE RETURN OF NORMAN BATES is a ghost that barely exists. Outside of a one-page article in Cinefantastique and a mention in Starburst (obviously culling their info from the former), mentions of the project in the genre press are as hard to find as one of Norman’s victims at the bottom of the swamp. It was the original Cinefantastique article by Kyle Counts published in early 1982 that piqued my interest. As written by Counts, the project – then simply titled THE RETURN OF NORMAN – came off as nothing but a knock off attempt by a couple of Hollywood neophytes to cash-in on Universal’s impending sequel. The reality, however, couldn’t be further from the truth. Using the magic of the internet, I was able to contact co-writer Michael January (thank goodness for unique names) about the project. Gracious beyond all means, Mr. January took time to go through his files and give me his end of how he tried to reopen the Bates Motel for business.

In the late 1970s, new-to-Hollywood Michael January met Gary Travis at a party. “Gary was a contract player for 20th Century Fox (when they had such things) seen on the DANIEL BOONE TV series,” January explains via e-mail. “He had turned independent producer-director by the time I met him and had made 3 smallish independent films. Rather lost to posterity, but one starring Jeffrey Hunter, and another with Alan Hale Jr.” Both men hit it off when it came to discussing movies, namely Alfred Hitchcock and their favorite film of his, NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959). The duo soon began collaborating on screenplays to some success. “The first screenplay I wrote with Gary had come in 3rd in a horror movie script contest, which was a very new idea then, and had gotten very good reaction for some industry folk and some investor interest,” January reveals. “Our second script, also a horror piece, a killer in a sorority house story was optioned by an independent company.”

The cinematic inspiration would soon be in the news as Alfred Hitchcock passed away in April 1980 at the age of 80. It was around this time that Travis began to wonder why no one had done a sequel to PSYCHO, one of the most successful horror films on record. “I agreed to write a sequel script to PSYCHO with Gary,” January discloses, “with the thought we had pretty much had one place to take it, live or die.” With the horror market in another boom period thanks to films like John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978) and the recently released FRIDAY THE 13th (1980), the screenwriting duo set out to update the world on the further exploits of Norman Bates. Their initial story for the sequel was registered with the Writer’s Guild of America in August 1980 and the first draft of the screenplay was registered a few months later in October 1980.

Like the eventual sequel that Universal produced, the screenwriters wisely chose to treat the decades since the original as “real time” in their follow-up. “There is a fire at the mental institution and Norman Bates is presumed dead, his remains are identified by teeth,” January reveals of their sequel. (Interestingly, Bloch would use a similar plot device in his unrelated Psycho II novel a few years later.) “Lila Crane buys the motel to exorcize her demons and refurbishes it,” he continues, “But people who come to stay, some drawn by its notorious history, begin to disappear. Actually, Norman has escaped and taken up residence in a hidden cave behind fruit cellar beneath the old house where he’s re-taken up his taxidermy hobby.” Also interesting is that the script – like the eventual PSYCHO II – introduced Lila Crane’s daughter having a pivotal role in the proceedings. And Travis and January had some clever casting concepts for their sequel. “We intended for Jamie Lee Curtis [real life daughter to original PSYCHO victim Janet Leigh] to play Vera Miles’ daughter who comes to visit from college and meets Norman, mistaking him for the man her mother told her she’s has been seeing.” And the character Lila would be seeing would be a psychologist, a new role written for Martin Balsam, PSYCHO’s ill-fated private eye.

With script in hand, Travis and January went about to drum up interest in the sequel. Their first plan of attack was to attract the original PSYCHO players. “Vera Miles was in town doing a play,” January says. “I went and approached her. She was very nice and I gave her the script. She got back to us that she liked it very much and agreed to do it. She was pretty much the main character.” A similar process occurred where they got the script to New York-based Martin Balsam, who was in town shooting a film, and he also agreed to do the film. Of course, the biggest casting coup would have to come in grabbing the interest of the titular character. “We knew that Anthony Perkins was interested in directing,” January divulges. “We got the script to him and suggested he could direct it.” The appeal of getting behind the camera (something Perkins would eventually do on PSYCHO III) indeed seized the actor’s interest and he too attached himself to the project.

With an appealing film package in their grasp, Travis and January set about setting up production via their Picture Striking Company. “With three stars agreeing to do the film, we also attached a major line producer, C.O. “Doc” Erickson (CHINATOWN, BLADE RUNNER),” January recalls. “I’ll mention those names because they’re in the press article. We had a top Hollywood entertainment attorney submit the project to a production executive at Universal. Now, here’s where it gets interesting.” Indeed, after a fast-and-furious period of courting stars, the team presented their film proposal to Universal in the fall of 1980. After that – silence.

Six months later, the team finally heard back from Universal Feature-Production Vice-President Verna Fields, who moved the film up the production chain, indicating the company would be interested in taking another trip to the shower. Hollywood then did what Hollywood does best – it clogged the production path with endless discussions between agents and executives that dragged on for months. “From some of the letters I have, the discussions with our agent and the studio were bogged down,” January tells of the negotiation process. “Tony Perkins called Gary wanting to know what was happening. Gary was frustrated and began to think of trying to take the project elsewhere and asked Mr. Perkins how he would feel about that. Apparently he was ‘delighted,’ having had unhappy dealings Universal’s ‘Black Tower of Torture’ on other occasions.” Meanwhile, blurbs about the PSYCHO sequel with its all-star reunion cast appeared in entertainment columns on both coasts in August 1981.

New York Post & LA Times blurbs

on PSYCHO sequel circa 1981 (click to enlarge):

"Is this my agent?"

Eventually, that is what the writers chose to do as they explored the option of taking the project to another studio in the fall of 1981. “Paramount seemed a prospect because of [Erickson’s] strong relationship there,” January reveals. “20th Century-Fox expressed an interest in picking up the project for distribution. But neither would step up with money for a turnaround or rights acquisition.” And there was the issue of using a well-known studio character property outside the confines of the studio. “Now, is where THE RETURN OF NORMAN comes in,” January explains of their attempt to reframe the screenplay outside of the PSYCHO world. “This had been going on for almost a year. With Universal stalling and only straight distribution from another studio on the table, options were growing thin. There were some independent financing sources interested and Gary believed we could make the movie independently - or maybe press Universal into a deal by threatening to do so. No longer the copyright trademark character ‘Norman Bates,’ but a generic ‘Norman’ serial killer with our story plot. I was dubious. Getting a studio level budget and making a distribution deal with another studio with a generic haunted motel movie even with Anthony Perkins was not very likely.”

Cinefantastique follow-up
on the project's demise

While activity on the RETURN OF NORMAN (alternately called RETURN OF THE PSYCHO) project picked up in the summer of 1982, the financing never came through. However, the biggest blow to the project was Universal announcing their PSYCHO II project with Perkins now signed to play the lead. And while the Cinefantastique piece implies (mostly via quotes from Robert Bloch) that the screenwriters were in trouble with Universal’s legal department, the only real difficulty came from using some images synonymous with PSYCHO. “I think we did eventually did get a formal ‘cease and desist’ letter from the Universal legal department in regards to a RETURN OF THE PSYCHO press release with some ‘borrowed’ art work,” January recalls, “but by this time, the match was pretty much played.”

Ultimately, the project was abandoned with January and Travis going on to other screenwriting projects and then January going out on his own as a solo screenwriter. While not the most comforting outcome, both men did receive confirmation that their initial idea of a PSYCHO sequel was a valid endeavor as the eventual Universal sequel was a success. It is a lesson and story heard often in Hollywood and January hopes to write a book about the harrowing tale of execs, agents and studio deals that would drive anyone mad. And, after all, we all go a little bit mad sometimes, right?

Satanic Panic: THE INCUBUS (1982)

2011-11-09T17:12:00.000-08:00

There are some movies that I can watch now and think "damn, I actually liked that back in the day" or "damn, this is great, I can't believe I didn't like this back in the day", but every now and then a movie comes along that makes us say "holy shit! I can't believe I watched that back in the day and never batted an eyelash!" INCUBUS was a staple of the early days of HBO and home video and I had seen it plenty of times, but twenty years later, good christ this movie is fucking twisted! If Steinem didn't keel over from COUNTRY CUTIES, this would definitely do it.

A small New England town suddenly finds themselves in the middle of a rash of brutal rape-murders. The victims are mostly young girls, one of whom is attacked while taking care of business in the ladies room, and all of them are violated by such a large phallus that it rips them apart and leaves massive amounts of semen in the victim (no, seriously, that is the plot). John Cassavetes, apparently weary of winning awards, plays a local surgeon, Dr. Sam Cordell, who helps the police investigate the murders and worries about his teenage daughter... with whom he has relationship so awkward that it seems like he married a much younger woman until later in the movie when it is made clear. Awkward as in the opening scene where his daughter Jenny (Erin Flannery) leaves the bathroom door open and steps out of the shower, buck nekkid, and he must take a moment to compose himself. What the hell? There are other weird scenes which are definitely not father-daughter relationship stuff, and perhaps this was originally intended to be a red-herring to make the audience think that perhaps he is the rapist. Perhaps.

You see, the composition of the shot implies the distance between father and daughter and
the previously obscured realization of Cordell's daughter blossoming into womanhood.
ummmm... anyone buyin' that?

Complications arise when Jenny's boyfriend Tim (Duncan McIntosh), starts freaking out, claiming to have dreams about the murdered girls concurrent with their brutal demises. Of course, being a learned man of science, Dr. Cordell jumps right on this and damn near busts out the torches and the pitchforks himself, while the villagers think him a bit nutty and go about their business. Yes, for some reason, in spite of a string of brutal murders of innocent women in a small town, as from a few people, for some reason the town doesn't seem terribly bothered by it. The local library/torture museum (I didn't stutter, you heard me) still stays open late, providing a perfect opportunity for an attack, as does the strangest rock gig I've ever seen. For some reason one of the attacks is cross-cut with a rather flamboyant performance of the band Samson, who old-school rockers will recognize as Bruce Dickinson's pre-Iron Maiden outfit. I never had the chance to see Samson play a club gig, but I'm pretty damn sure they didn't do laser-light performance art complete with a dry-humping couple in front of what appears to be a high-school auditorium of slightly bored pubescent teens! What the hell? This leads me to wonder just who they were trying to market this film to. Graphic sexual violence that makes even leathery trash movie veterans like me a bit uncomfortable, a cast that appeals to guys in tweed jackets, and a band aimed at '80s teenagers. I suspect even the producers had no idea where they were going with this.

Attempting to be a slasher flick, a supernatural horror outing and a gritty crime drama outing all rolled into a far slicker-than-it-has-any-right-to-be package, the rapes are violent and bloody and are followed by graphic discussions of how the victims had their uteri torn apart and were filled with an extraordinary amount of red semen. In addition to this, once great director John Hough, who gave us classics like DIRTY MARY AND CRAZY LARRY (1974) and LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (1973) (and went on to help Clive Turner clog video stores everywhere with HOWLING IV: THE ORIGINAL NIGHTMARE), shows a genuinely creepy obsession with vaginal bloodletting. Hough has either has got a gallon of blood in the crotch area of the tape outline at the crime scene, or he’s zooming into bleeding crotches that are pumping blood everywhere. Even Jess Franco would draw the line there. Based on Ray Russell's 1976 novel of the same name, the lead character was changed from an anthropologist turned supernatural investigator (Indiana Bones?), but for the most part the core of the story is still the same. A rampaging demon with a huge dick attacking young girls. Ray must have been working through some relationship issues at this point in his life.

There are so many bizarre things in this movie, but one of my favorites is Cassavettes insisting on delivering serious, graphic dialogue with a weird Mona-Lisa-esque smile. Not to mention the scenes in which he tries to question a surviving victim in the hospital and repeatedly calls her “tough guy” in a really creepy, patronizing sort of way. And then there is the ending... phew! They definitely don't make 'em like this anymore.

Cinemasochism: BRAIN ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE (2004)

2011-11-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

Popular opinion casts Ed Wood’s sci-fi non-epic PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) as the worst movie ever made, but it is actually far from it. Sure, the film is inept and hokey, but it also has an endearing quality to it. Plus, Vampira is hot. I could whip out 50 movies in a second that I’ve seen that are worse than it. And first on the tip of my tongue would be a film that tries to forge a close kinship with PLAN 9. Behold BRAIN ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE (2004), a shot-on-video unofficial sequel to cinema’s most recognized turkey. Not only does it attempt to be a 45-years-too-late follow-up, but the filmmakers managed to snag one of the co-stars of the original PLAN 9 to be star in this pseudo-sequel. Yup, my good buddy Conrad Brooks is in this. Even though my doctor told me to space out my Brooks viewings to once every six months, I’m breaking the rules and jumping on this cinematic grenade.

BRAIN ROBBERS opens with Detective Gustavo Perez in a hospital bed and telling a woman his wild story. He rambles on about lizard-men Illuminati from the Dog Star Sirius before settling into our main story that takes place in Hillsborough, Florida. A group of men out fishing spot a UFO and decide the best thing to do is contact Officer Jamey (Brooks) about it because he has some history with extraterrestrials. This really shakes up Jamey’s world as he is living with his daughter and granddaughter and the highlight of his day is having kids leave flaming bags of dog crap on his porch. Jamey and the men return to the area where they saw the UFO and they discover a black circle burnt into the ground and a small cylinder in the middle of it. Naturally, they bag this strange piece of machinery in order to take it to some scientist friends for examination.

We then meet Evelyn (Lara Stewart) and her goth twin sister Lilith (Stewart again). Evelyn goes to visit a professor about her tarot card term paper, but all they get is the teacher telling Lilith about the mythical origin of her name. Meanwhile, Jamey and Ted (Raymond Couto) take the strange cylinder to a neurosurgeon friend, who analyzes it in his Sheldrich Morphogenic Matrix Scanner. Hey, is that a STAR TREK joke? Anyway, they find out that inside the container are brains. Jamey then takes it down to the police department, but the cop he takes it to isn’t interested in it. While at the station, Jamey sees Domino (Jose Ortega), a guy who was busted for smoking a joint. With some smooth talking (that we never hear), Jamey gets him released. Once outside, they part ways but not before they meet Officer Mary (Raye Ramsey), an old flame of Domino’s. She asks if he is still seeing Lilith (alright, things are connecting) and he is. Lilith and Evelyn return to Evelyn’s home where her drunken husband Russo Romero (Duran Anderson) gets so fed up that he goes to his job as a gravedigger in the cemetery.

Kirstie Alley as Morphia?

Are you still with me? Okay, we finally meet some aliens that are living in an abandoned house. They are led by Morphia (Alex Michaels; yes, a dude in drag), who orders her top man-in-black Criswell (Joseph Miller) to get the cylinder back. This proves troublesome as Criswell and an underling visit Ted, but it just breaks down into a shouting match with old man Criswell threatening to “blow his fuckin’ balls off.” Okay, now Lilith has pissed Domino off because she won’t go to a concert with him and instead decides to hang out in the cemetery with two stoner friends (one of whom is named Butt Wipe). This is the wrong move as they are abducted by the aliens and Lilith is transformed into a zombie via a hallucinogenic serpentine ritual (do what?). Upset at her underlings’ failings, Morphia decides to take matters into her own hands. She seduces/kills Ted and also turns him into a zombie. Then she visits Jamey by pretending to be “an FBI agent from the X-Files.” She finds the cylinder under the couch and splits. Fade out, the end. Oh damn, that is just the end of disc 1? That’s right, this sumbitch runs 210 minutes. I’m in so much trouble.

Sometimes it just writes itself

Disc 2 opens with a redneck family getting attacked and turned into zombies. Obviously Domino is worried his goth girlfriend hasn’t come home and he recruits her sister Evelyn to go looking for her. They look where everyone looks for a missing person – by going to an office building that has a Virgin Mary reflection in its glass (true life story from Clearwater, Florida) and then hitting a carnival at Chaos Park where the tarot reader Evelyn’s professor mentioned is at. Naturally the psychic has bad news for them and then we get a random scene of Lobster Boy (real life Lobster Boy Grady Stiles) attacking some woman. Damn it, my fingers hurt. Anyway, Det. Perez finally enters the picture as he is outside Domino’s place looking for drug connections (after all, he was busted smoking a joint). Domino and the detective are both hypnotized by the men in black and Domino is taken back to a torture chamber in the house. Also there is Butt Wipe, who Domino recognizes by his voice, and Morphia enters to torture them. This results in my favorite exchange of the movie.

Butt Wipe: Why can’t I see?

Morphia: Because you don’t have any eyes.

Butt Wipe: Don’t have any eyes?

Morphia: No.

Butt Wipe (pauses): Why?

It is here that Morphia spells out the film's tenuous PLAN 9 connection. Seems the invaders back in the 1950s were her grandparents and she wants to not only continue their mission, but also get even with Officer Jamey. Oh yeah, Officer Jamey, remember him? He teams up with Officer Mary and they battle a bunch of zombies in the park. Morphia tries to seduce Domino, but Lilith snaps out of it because ain’t nobody touching her man, girlfriend. Domino escapes and meets Evelyn in the woods, but she has become a zombie because she was killed by Ted. Domino finally reunites with Officers Jamey and Mary and they look up into the sky to cheer the bombers (cue stock footage) attacking the UFO. This lively trio then celebrates by going to a hotel and sipping drinks by the pool. Our story ends with two fat kids dumping buckets of water on Conrad Brooks’ head. Back in “real time,” Det. Perez has wrapped up his story and the audience sees the interviewer is Lilith. *cue “dah, dah, dahhhhh” music* He is then taken to the loony bin in the world’s longest dragging down the hallway sequence every put on film, er, video.

WHITE BALANCE!!!

Normally I’m not a fan of reviews that just summarize the movie’s plot but, damn it, I’ve got to show something for the three and a half hours I spent watching this (over four hours if you include the “making of” stuff). And, honestly, there isn’t much else going on in this labor of misguided love. Director Garland Hewlett spent ten years (!) making this bomb and, no joke, the film’s opening logo for his Subatomic Productions reads, “No, we don’t make bombs!” Are you serious? You’re just making this too easy for me. You make bombs bigger than Timothy McVeigh and friends. Hewlett bypasses such industry standards as sound, set design, camera work and lighting. Screw that, we spent all our money on Conrad Brooks. I guess I should always be wary of movies that tell me I need to adjust my brainwaves before viewing. No doubt Hewlett would hide behind that claim that the overall badness was intentional, like hero Ed Wood, Jr. (to whom the film is dedicated), but I’m calling BS on that one.

And even if true, at least Wood had the common courtesy to get us in and out in 80 minutes. This miniseries of pain is three and a half hours long. This thing is so bad that at times it became strangely hypnotic to me. Take this scene where Criswell visits Ted (who I’m pretty sure is legit drunk in this clip):

That kid from your nightmares!

That Criswell guy actually cracks me up and it is sad to note that the film opening with a dedication in his memory. Even funnier than a cursing grandpa are the film’s incredible continuity gaffes. No joke, Domino goes from having long hair in the police station to short hair outside of it. And there is a bit where Lara Stewart is obviously several months pregnant, which inexplicably leads to both characters she is playing being pregnant in a few scenes but no one mentions it. Again, I suspect director Hewlett probably says these errors are intentional in keeping with the terrible Ed Wood tradition, but I wouldn’t believe him as far as I could throw Conrad Brooks. And speaking of Connie, I know I give him a hard time for his films, but he is actually the best actor on display here. I’d also say Stewart gives a commendable performance since she had to essay two completely different roles. She also supplies the film’s lone nudity. Well, if you don’t count the number of times Brooks is topless.

Good nudity :-)

Bad nudity :-(

I will admit there is one legit moment where I laughed out loud (intentionally) during this cavalcade of cinematic cheese. When the woman is being attacked by Lobster Boy, she runs to a house and pleads for help. A woman inside leaps up off the couch and yells out the window, “Go away! Don’t bother us, we’re watching The Simpsons.” D’oh! While I never want to disparage indie filmmakers, this is some seriously rough stuff here. I think it may have even cracked the top ten worst films I’ve ever seen. But can I really hold it against Hewlett when one of the extras on the DVD is his 9 minute discourse on the positive effects of psychedelics helping one free themselves from the confines of our media masters? I suspected there were some brain dead folks behind the camera and that proves it. There were some brain robbers loose in Florida alright and I think they stole a bit from me after watching this.

Listomania!: Thomas' October 2011 Viewings

2011-11-03T13:55:00.000-07:00

FELONY (1995): Pheewwwww! Bad by even our humble standards, but not for a lack of casting. A truly amazing cast in a truly braindead DTV actioner. A group of rogue CIA agents are caught on tape shooting down a dozen DEA agents during a drug bust and now everyone is after that tape. Directed by David A. Prior and stars (*deep breath*) Jeffrey Combs, David Warner, Lance Henriksen, Ashley Lawrence, Joe Don Baker, Leo Rossi and Charles Napier! This is probably the best part of the movie which has to be THE most implausible escape from a bunch of badguys EVER committed to celluloid. Well, temporary escape anyway. The driver looks like one of the hitmen from 15 minutes earlier in the film, so conceivably, he could have been shot because he was recognized and the escape was just happy happenstance. The only problem is… the shooter never encountered that hitman before and even worse, the hitman was already killed by Joe Don Baker that same 15 minutes earlier! Some hilariously braindead moments aren't enough to make up for the lack of everything else, including (sadly) stuntwork. The lack of financing (and maybe the cast's combined wages) meant that the one stunt included is simply stock footage and even worse, the cast is somewhat misused as well. Why did someone think it was a good idea to have David Warner play Lance Henriksen's monosylabic, gum-chewing henchman? I'm pretty sure that is the source of the film's title.

MAN FROM MAJORCA (1984): Bo Widerberg's second police thriller following the classic MAN ON THE ROOF (1976) and it is quite the corker. Loosely based on a story ripped from the headlines and written by someone who was close to the scandal, the film starts with the robbery of a Stockholm post office, evolves into murder and suspicions of corruption at a high level. In addition to all of the normal elements of a taught thriller crafted abnormally well, we get some great character moments with the two detectives, including a sudden decision to only eat Swedish food. Based on Leif G.W. Persson's novel of the same name, this will either infuriate you or captivate you, as Widerberg presents the story almost as a slice of life and doesn't go out of his way to really explain anything to the audience. The viewer is left to puzzle over all the clues while following the detectives and even in the end you will probably have to watch the film again to figure it all out. Gritty and realistic without resorting to cheap tricks, such as excessive hand-held camerawork, I’m saddened by the fact that Widerberg didn’t make a trilogy of police films.

THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1978): Smut-free Radley Metzger! Who would have thunk it? Opinions are deeply divided on this fourth film version of the 1922 play by John Willard. Yes, some of the cast deliver their lines as if they are in their first high-school play, but when do you ever have Honor Blackman, Olivia Hussey and Wilfrid Hyde-White in the same movie? A group of estranged family members meet for a will reading at an eccentric relative's mansion. The will reading is unusual, not only for the fact that the deceased reads the will himself, via film and synched wax recordings, but for the fact that the benefactor will change the next morning, if the heir proves to be mentally unsound or stops living. During a violent thunderstorm a doctor (Edward Fox) from the local asylum stops in to warn them that a psychotic killer who thinks he is a cat is on the loose and could visit this very house! Of course, he does. Wouldn't be much of a movie if he didn't, would it? The film feels a bit stagey, and that may be intentionally so, but while I usually find that sort of thing off-putting, here I rather enjoyed it for some reason. The dialogue (of which there is a lot) moves along at a brisk pace and there are plenty of effective moments. For what it's worth, I thought it was a lot of fun and a perfect antidote to some of brutally braindead stuff I suffered through in October... though you'd never know it from this trailer:

GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM (1988): Slick, twisted thriller that separates itself from the standard '80s Cinemax fodder by being stylish, well acted and Australian. A school-teacher (John Waters in another well-controlled performance) mourning the death of his wife, begins to suspect that she may not actually be dead and that their mutual friends with benefits might be trying to hide him from her, causing his grief to turn to homicidal rage. A crime reporter (Colin Friels) stumbles across the mileu after borrowing some stolen money from a crime scene, while a detective (Bruno Lawrence) tries to figure it all out. There's a lot more to it than that, but telling would ruin the fun. Bits of the plot are uncovered slowly as a the story progresses, but it moves at a fast pace and like many Aussie thrillers allows the audience to piece things together. Drawing inspiration from Italian giallos, the film injects style, atmosphere and characters whose motives and agendas shift as the plot rolls out. Great stuff that would never be made the same way in Hollywood.

HAMMERSMITH IS OUT (1972): Amazing, even in it's cut form, that this ever got made at all. The power of Liz n' Dick, I guess. Peter Ustinov's notorious and notoriously obscure retooling of the "Faust" legend into a black comedy with of the era social satire. Small-minded slob Billy Breedlove (Beau Bridges) does the one thing everybody in the asylum tells him never to do, he listens to Hammersmith (Richard Burton, flawlessly cast). Hammersmith is an inmate who promises anyone who will listen that if they get him out, he will make them "rich and strong, strong and rich". Breedlove, not being the brightest bulb in the pack, sets him free and with an equally deficient waitress (Elizabeth Taylor) they set off to achieve Billy's dreams of richness and strength, without realizing that Hammersmith is a homicidal psychopath with his own agenda. That description doesn't even scratch the surface of the bizarre, twisted insanity that is this film. One great scene has the now wealthy Breedlove's poolside while Hammersmith, in ridiculously giant chef toque, is roasting "baby pigs" with a subtle malicious glee that only an accomplished actor like Burton could pull off.

Independently financed and distributed by John Cornelius Crean, a Fleetwood trailer mogul who decided he wanted to get into the motion picture business, it was critically well received, but a financial flop. Crean only released one other film (the 1971 Bill Cosby drama MAN AND BOY) before folding his tent. Originally released with a 120 minute running time, in spite of the good notices, it was undoubtedly considered too damn strange for the general public and was subsequently cut down to 117 minutes and finally edited to the 108 minute version that can be found on long out of print VHS tapes. According to those who recall seeing the full version in theaters at the time, the deleted footage was some even more bizarre comedy bits, and it seems that those deletions may be permanently lost. There was a rumor that the original pre-cert UK VHS release had a longer cut of the film, but after years of hunting and finally shelling out a fair chunk of change, I can tell you that is definitely not true. Even so, if you like Ustinov's cracked sense of humor, or just enjoy movies that would never be made the same way these days, this is well worth tracking down. It will make you rich and strong... strong and rich...

SHERLOCK - Season 1 (2010): Both gratingly hipsterish and occasionally clever, this BBC updating of classic stories and all new ones manages to be a roller-coaster of cringing youth pandering and occasional moments of quality entertainment. On the plus side, you have Stephen Moffat & Mark Gatiss' years of experience and abilities to craft plots and snappy dialogue, on the other hand you have these two talented men shovelling on the obligatory youth market crap including constant use of cellphones, laptops and that new fangled thing called "blogging" (whatever that is). Not to mention the rampant (and apparently successful) attempts at appealing to the gay demographic (I'd recommend not Googling this show lest you see a lot of fan art depicting things you really don't want to see - unless you're into that sort of thing, not that there is anything wrong with that). The acting is relatively decent, I actually kind of like Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes, and Martin Freeman is fine as Watson, though it's hard to shake his "Office" persona. Then there is Moriarity, who with a master-stroke of self-aggrandizing idiocy is played by Mr. Gattis himself who flamboyantly camps it up to levels that would make Lady Gaga blush.

Worst. Acting. EVER.

Director Paul McGuigan (responsible for 2006s LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN, if anyone remembers that mess), desperately tries, like all of the other modern filmmaking fourtysomethings, to suck up to the skinny-jeans crowd with rapid edits, slick visuals and text graphics across the screen instead of cutting to a shot of a note or (groan) another freakin' text message. There is some good stuff to be found, like Moffat's penchant for fast-paced, punchy patter, but the constant jokes about Holmes and Watson's questionable ummmm... "orientation" (thank you Mr. Gatiss) and obsession with cell-phones makes this series reek of the desperation of men desperate to retain their youth(market). There is potential for greatness here, and I have no qualms with doing a modern day adaptation, more with the fact that Holmes uses his cell phone more than his brain to solve crimes. That would be like a world-class surgeon checking Web MD before every operation. Some of this is tolerable, but the first episode in particular is total overkill. And speaking of overkill, seriously Gattis needs to be banned from ever appearing on television or film after this ludicrously self-indulgent, over-the-top, cartoon-inspired performance. Dude, this is not a claymation comedy, that behavior is not ok and yes, you are gayer than Christmas (not that there's anything wrong with that).

FROSTBITEN (2010): I'm not sure whether this is proof that the entire planet is in a creative cinematic slump, or just that distributors won't take a chance on anything other than the most obvious wannabe Hollywood films. The opening scene, set during WWII, features a squad of German soldiers taking refuge in a recently abandoned, snowed in cottage. In the middle of the night they realize that if the cottage is snowed in, how did the residents get out? A creepy, atmospheric segment that could have been the springboard for a fantastic film. ...and isn't. All the elements for a great little vampire flick are handed to us and after the set-up it's your standard teens-in-highschool flick that would be right at home in the US (which is probably why it got distribution here). Add a bunch of sit-com set-ups, (how funny is it if you are turning into a vampire and have to meet your girlfriend's parents for the first time? Ummm... not very) and teen comedy and you have a very banal outing punctuated a few glimpses of potential. What little vampire stuff there is, is either stuff we've seen a million times before (teens with big fangs and glowing contacts growling and snarling like they are pretending to be wild animals on a Mutual of Omaha series), or we've seen it a million times before and it's badly done (cheap CGI, yes!). As we all know, turning into a vampire means animals will talk to you and apparently your enjoyment of this film depends solely on how funny you think foul-mouthed talking dogs are. Damn, that pre-credit sequence was good, though, and this trailer sure makes it look promising, doesn't it?

THE RETURN OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST DETECTIVE (1976): Surprisingly well made TV outing that pretty much rips-off the George C. Scott vehicle THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS (1971). Larry Hagman is Sherman Holmes, a bumbling motorcycle cop who spends more time reading Doyle than catching crooks. After his motorcycle falls on his head, he suddenly believes himself to be Sherlock Holmes and enlists the help of Joan "Doc" Watson (Jenny O'Hara) to help him solve a series of murders. Feather-weight, in tone and budget, it still is still a lot of fun with Hagman turning in a fine performance and even Sid Haig popping up at the end.

COUNTRY CUTIES BARNYARD BASH (1989): We had this at the video store I worked at back in the day and when we got this in, for some reason, the owner decided it should go in the "Special Interest" section along with the 20 or so Jane Fonda work-out videos that we had. Hey, it's got girls who look kinda like they are dressed for some sort of aerobic activity, right? Shot on the cheap in Ft. Lauderdale (of course!), this is basically a series of Southern-inspired team competitions between girls with teased hair and skimpy blue or pink outfits that frequently have trouble covering up the goodies. Sporting an introduction by a talking horse, a biker announcer, some mulleted refs that essentially do nothing more than stand around with (understandably) goofy grins, and a token black girl for those redneck "plantation" fantasies (err, did I just go there?). The "games" include catching a greased pig, sack races, mud-wrestling, tug-o-war and a variety of other dignified events that would be sure to give Gloria Steinem a myoclonic seizure. Think white trash "American Gladiators" without the budget and with lots of jiggling nekkidity. Tasteless and gratuitous in every conceivable way, this even includes an intermission where some of the girls play country songs topless with the live band that is on hand for no apparent reason. Total moronic trash. God, I wish they had made a sequel.

Halloween Havoc: Dueling HALLOWEEN porn parodies

2011-10-31T14:18:00.000-07:00

Normally we wouldn’t do another porn review so close to the last one (check out our recent review of A WET DREAM ON ELM STREET) because we don’t want to seem like super pervs. Trust us, we are just regular pervs. But then a situation came up that we couldn’t pass up. It was a once in a lifetime moment like seeing Halley’s Comet or hearing a Kardashian say something eloquent. You rarely get the chance, so you need to take it when it comes around. So when we discovered the adult entertainment industry had done not one but two spoofs of John Carpenter’s classic slasher HALLOWEEN (1978), we had to spring into action. Two HALLOWEEN reviews on Halloween – we’re legit loco here at Video Junkie.

VS.

Hollywood has a long history of releasing dueling projects. Who can forget the DANTE’S PEAK vs. VOLCANO or MISSION TO MARS vs. RED PLANET battles? Hell, debuting on TV this fall are two series dealing with fairy tale characters living in modern times (GRIMM and ONCE UPON A TIME). The porn industry is no different. It never met a project it didn’t like and then try to beat it (pun most definitely intended) to death. With porn parodies all the rage now, it is only a matter of time before slasher classic HALLOWEEN got the spoof treatment. Zero Tolerance struck first with the OFFICIAL HALLOWEEN PARODY, which was released on June 23, 2011. Not to be outdone, just over two months later, Smash Pictures released the HALLOWEEN XXX PORN PARODY on August 30, 2011. Showing some good taste, both projects – hereafter referred to as Zero’s HALLOWEEN and Smash’s HALLOWEEN – sought to emulate Carpenter’s trendsetter and not Rob Zombie’s remake abortion. So who would win this sexual spoof skirmish?

THE BATTLE:

Okay, when it comes to the battle of the opening credits, Smash Pictures (on the right) clearly wins. They get points for not only their font, but the pumpkin placement.

Naturally, both films begin with a prologue where young Michael witnesses his sister making out. Shape-heads have always wondered what went on when Judith Myers went upstairs with her minute-man boyfriend. Here both films hypothesize that she may have been having – gasp – sexual relations (Zero’s features Lexi Swallow & Dane Cross while Smash’s features Raven Alexis & Seth Gamble). Post-sex, the boyfriend splits and Michael gets about his business of throwing on a mask and stabbing his sister. Zero’s HALLOWEEN gets bonus points for having the sister yell, “Michael, what are you doing in here? I’m trying to get off.”

It is then 15 years later and both films introduce their Dr. Sam Loomis characters. Zero’s HALLOWEEN has James Bartholet, previously seen in SAW: A HARDCORE PARODY, in the role while Smash’s HALLOWEEN has British Marcus London in the role. Neither actor resembles Donald Pleasance, which is something we should all be thankful for. Both films have the grown Michael Myers escape, although Smash’s HALLOWEEN is far more successful in that they actually mirror the events of the Carpenter film by filming outside, but make sure to have a sex scene between Loomis and the nurse first.

We now get the introduction of the Laurie character in each film. Zero Tolerance hired Chanel Preston for the role while Smash Pictures went with Lily LaBeau. In the battle of the Lauries, I’d have to go with LaBeau as she kind of resembles the 1970s Jamie Lee Curtis and – another gasp – this production actually tries to make her look like Laurie (by carrying books and wearing long socks). They both drop a key off at the spooky Myers house and we get a clear winner regarding production when it comes to that location.

Each film then offers the bit where Loomis bitches out his fellow doc. The Zero HALLOWEEN goes a step further by having Loomis do his “Michael is evil” routine (“His scrotum reeks of the particular odor of murder!”) before receiving a blowjob from nurse Nicky (Carina Roman), who then has a full sex scene with the other doc (Mark Wood). Damn it all to hell, my eyes had just recovered from seeing the Bartholet sex scene in the SAW parody. Both films then have the scene where Laurie meets up with her friends. Zero Tolerance gives us superhot Dana DeArmond as the sassy Annie (originally played by Nancy Loomis) and sexpot Lexi Belle as Lynda (originally played by P.J. Soles), while Smash gives us cute Andy San Dimas as Annie and sexpot Lexi Belle as Lynda. Wait…WHAT? Oh man, my head is going to ‘splode – the same actress playing the same role in two different porn spoofs? Well, far be it from me to complain about more Lexi Belle sex scenes in the world. It should be noted that the Zero version really screws up the character intros, while the Smash version frames the scene almost exactly like the original. And, not surprising, both scenes have the girls trying to convince virginal Laurie to try a threesome.

The Smash version really steps up its copycat business after this by featuring bits of Laurie bumping into the sheriff, Laurie getting a phone call while seeing Michael outside, Loomis visiting the cemetery with the missing headstone and a bonus scene of Annie getting it on with her boyfriend Paul (Bill Bailey) while Michael watches from outside (perv!). The Zero Tolerance version bypasses all of these bits. Both versions then have Loomis and the sheriff visiting the Myers house.

The Halloween night festivities then get underway and Michael sets about to slash these sexy starlets. Smash’s HALLOWEEN version has Annie talking dirty to her boyfriend before going out and getting killed in the car. Zero’s HALLOWEEN goes a step further and, after removing all of her clothes due to getting butter on them, Annie gets it on with Michael, thinking it is her boyfriend. Hey, I don’t remember this scene in the original! So, yes, the world finally gets to see Michael Myers having graphic sex. If it floats your boat, that is William Shatner - the original face of the Michael mask - having sex too.

Both films show what Laurie is doing this whole time and one pulls it off better than the other. Zero’s HALLOWEEN has her reading a book while Smash’s HALLOWEEN has her masturbating while watching a movie. Ha! Lexi Belle then shows up at Annie’s house to get it on with her boyfriend Bob (Kris Slater in Zero’s HALLOWEEN; Jessy Jones in Smash’s HALLOWEEN). Post-coital, Bob goes down to get a beer and is met in the kitchen by Michael. We then get the famous ghost outfit bit and I get a serious sense of déjà vu. Once again, one production pulls it off just a little bit better than the other. I’ll let you be the judge.

As all HALLOWEEN fanatics know, this sets up for the final chase between Laurie and her brother Michael. Smash’s HALLOWEEN ups the creep factor before the pursuit by having Laurie think it is Paul under the ghost sheet and getting it on with him. Ah, suggested incest, classy. Zero’s HALLOWEEN really struggles in the finale as they just have Laurie walk around a house and get scared by Michael in a few rooms. Smash’s HALLOWEEN knocks it out of the park, recreating the final showdown almost shot-for-shot with lots of the iconic bits in there. Of course, Dr. Loomis shows up to save the day. Once again, Smash’s HALLOWEEN triumphs with Michael actually taking a fall over the balcony. Zero’s HALLOWEEN has him fall next to a bed. D’oh!

Smash’s HALLOWEEN wraps things up there, while Zero’s keeps going with an extra scene with the sheriff (Anthony Rosano) getting it on with Laurie. In the twist ending, she whips out a large butcher knife from under the bed post-cumshot. Jeez, if I had a dime for every time an ex did that to me.

THE VERDICT:

Damn, I used to joke about what a loser I was for summarizing porn plots. What does that about me when I decided to write nearly a thousand words comparing two porn plots? Let me put a positive spin on this for my sanity – out of the 7 billion people in this world, I was probably the only one who spent yesterday watching two HALLOWEEN porns back-to-back. At least I hope I was. So who wins in the epic battle between HALLOWEEN porn spoofs? Both films, actually, as they each have their own positives. Zero Tolerence’s was the first to hit the market and its best attribute is that it actually delivers in the parody department. Director Gary Orona previously did the FRIDAY THE 13th XXX spoof and this is similar in that it follows the source material very closely but ups the perversion and comedy levels. Also, Dana DeArmond is actually really funny as Annie. It is well shot for the most part too. Smash Picture’s HALLOWEEN, however, is way better when it comes to the technical aspects. Director Jim Powers has been in the skin trade a long time and he has created the more professional of the two productions. Not only that, but he really copies John Carpenter’s film well. I’d wager a lot of time was spent studying that horror classic as plenty of similar shots pop up. Look at this:

On the downside, they might follow the film too close. No joke, the parody factor is nil and characters say the exact same dialogue as the Carpenter film. I don’t doubt they just printed out the original’s script and wrote “insert sex scene here” every 8 pages or so. You know, like Rob Zombie did for his remake, except he wrote “insert rednecks here” instead.

In the end, I’d love to create a Frankenstein’s monster of a HALLOWEEN XXX spoof film that grabs a little from both films. I’d take the comedic script from Zero Tolerance and the production values from Smash Pictures. Bartholet from Zero’s HALLOWEEN would be Dr. Loomis, but we’ll give him London’s British accent from Smash’s HALLOWEEN. We definitely need to grab the Myers house from the Zero Tolerance version, but the Michael Myers from the Smash Pictures version. For the leading ladies, we’ll snatch Lily LaBeau as Laurie, Dana DeArmond as Annie and, naturally, Lexi Belle as Lynda. Oh man, did I just do the porn equivalent of fantasy football? Mom would be so proud.

Halloween Havoc: DRACULA LIVE FROM TRANSYLVANIA (1989)

2011-10-31T00:28:00.000-07:00

Like millions of Americans in the ‘70s and ‘80s, my family spent precious hours of our lives every year watching the most inane tripe American television had to offer. They were called “Holiday Specials”. I’m sure it sounded like a good idea when they were invented. “Hey, let’s have some one-shot seasonal programming with some of our biggest stars telling jokes, singing, dancing, and participating in lethal blood-sports!” Ok, so that last one was mine. I can't tell you how desperately I wanted to see Bob Hope slam a steel sphere in Shari Lewis’ face ala-ROLLERBALL. But I digress.

For some reason holiday specials managed to draw in millions of viewers with no-budget productions of hastily-written, cringe-inducing scripts, usually shot on a soundstage in Burbank, frequently live in order to pull in the cynical crowd (me), who were hoping that someone will flub their lines. As if that would make the agony of canned scripts and shameless mugging worthwhile.

In 1989 the two-bit upstart Fox decided they were going to produce their own Halloween special! Rebelling against the status quo, they decided they would (wisely) ditch the song and dance stuff and (unwisely) take their cue from WGN’s notorious “Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault” (1986). I can hear the discussion: “A two hour special shot live in Transylvania, hosted by… hmmmm… Bela Logosi! No, wait, he’s dead. Klaus Kinski! No, too much insurance. We need someone who is linked to the character, easy to manage and is a total man-whore. George Hamilton!” Seriously, I cannot imagine how he could have read the script without blushing? Of course, he may have and we just don’t know because of his perpetual bronze glow. Even Geraldo Rivera would have turned his shrub-adorned nostrils up at this.

Boldly announced with more gravitas than a Presidential inauguration, the first ten minutes shows that the script is thinner than Kate Moss on a hunger strike. Says the announcer:

“We will… Walk where the real Dracula walked! Meet men and women who have followed in his blood-sucking footsteps! Open coffins closed for centuries… LIVE!”

Wait, Dracula’s feet sucked blood?

Cut to a stage director who looks and sounds exactly like a female version of Latka from “Taxi”, George Hamilton is nowhere to be found! George has apparently gotten very lost on his way from the make-up trailer to Solomon’s Tower and ended up in the local pub. Was this written for Oliver Reed? Of course, the locals ice over as soon as Hamilton mentions his destination and warn him not to go there, while Geoge makes awkward references to his (at that point) 10 year-old success in LOVE AT FIRST BITE. After taking a coach to the set and pretending to flub his lines and be nervous about the fact that they are live, the announcer comes back to let us know that he wasn’t finished telling us what we would see tonight!

“We will… Meet Vlad the Impaler – the real life Dracula. Torturer, sadist and murderer of over 100,000 men, women and children, but to many people he is still a national hero. We’ll walk the original English cobblestones where Bram Stoker brought Dracula to life and discover one of the most valuble manuscripts in all of literature, hidden for years in an ordinary Pennsylvania barn! We’ll go back in time, 500 years and hear the chilling tale of Elizabeth Bathory, the fiendish countess who sacrificed 650 virgins for the sole purpose of bathing in their blood!” And the announcer doesn’t stop there. “Noreen Dresser is an American folklorist with a mission; to find out why Dracula has become a national obsession.” Plus we get to learn about a modern vampire sighting in an English cemetery with “scores of witnesses” who “authorities believe… were telling the truth!”

To be fair, the narrator doesn’t lie, they do cover all of that, uhhhh… “fascinating” ground. Much of it is Hamilton camping it up while talking to alleged “experts”, one of whom, Romanian scholar and diplomat Radu Florescu, claims to be a direct descendant of Vlad Tepes. A sample of the insightful exchange about Vlad Tepes while walking up a flight of stairs:

Florescu: “Many artists came to paint him. They painted him here.”
Hamilton: “They painted his body?”
Florescu: “No. They painted him fully clothed.”

After Florescu rambles on about the beauty of the Carpathians, Hamilton looks straight in the camera and says “frankly, when I’m planning my next vacation, I doubt Transylvania will the be at the top of my list.” It definitely won’t be by the end of this special because I’m pretty sure after another hour of grossly insulting Romania, you might end up in a reenactment of Vlad’s favorite pastime.

As you would expect from Fox Television, ol’ Gorge does his best to shed his glamorous image and be the ugliest American possible. During one segment he is invited to dinner, which he demurs sneering “I’ve never been a fan of stewed goat”. George, if you only had a fucking clue in that pretty little head of yours. Stewed goat is delicious. Like lamb, except without the gaminess. During a staged “Point / Counterpoint” style discussion of whether Vlad was a Romanian hero or a bloodthirsty dictator, Hamilton sits down to a meal based on Harker’s Hungarian meals in Stoker’s novel. When I was a teenager reading the novel, all of the descriptions of the exotic food really stuck with me and to this day Chicken Paprikash is one of my favorite things to make at home. Of course George looks at the table with distain and after a forkful of Robber Steak, makes disgusted faces and is on the verge of spitting out his food and when told that it was Jonathan Harker’s last meal, Hamilton quips “I can see why now”. Can someone from craft services please get Mr. Hamilton some real food, like a Big Mac?

Weird Al?

Another wonderful bit of gruel is a taped segment with Noreen Dresser, an author who is alleged to be on a “mission: to find out why Daracula has become a national obsession”. Oh, this should be good. According to Ms. Dresser, 27% of those polled believe vampires are real! What a shocking statistic! Unbelievable, in this day and age. Yeah, but if you pay attention, you’ll discover that the pollees were a small group of students from her local highschool! Well at least there is some credible research behind her theories. Noreen also goes on to blame vampire TV shows like “The Munsters” (yes, you read that right) and states that the vampire is “almost a classic Halloween figure”. Uhhh, Noreen, can you explain to me how it is not a classic Halloween icon? My favorite bit of insight is her discussion of why women like Dracula. According to statistics, women complain of a lack of foreplay in their lives and vampires “are all foreplay”. She goes on to say “vampires take women with elegance and style… it’s never a violent act.” Presumably aside from the whole laceration of the main artery and subsequent death from the resulting bloodloss. No, not violent at all.

We also get to meet Bernard Davies, the chairman of The Dracula Society and the stiffest cue-card reader in TV history. Davies blathers on, mostly feeding Hamilton set-ups for his badly written and badly delivered one liners.
Davies: “for it’s time, ‘Dracula’ was the ultimate in horror.”
Hamilton: “except he wore a cape, not a hockey mask.”
Oh jeeeeeezus, make it stop! Davies also provides voice-over narration for a taped reenactment of Bram Stoker’s manuscript for “The Un-Dead” being discovered by some Amish in a barn. Still more lifeless segments include a voice-over talking about Elizabeth Bathory while showing clips from Hammer’s COUNTESS DRACULA (1971). Better still we start getting some allegedy true incidents, such as one at London’s Highgate Cemetery, where a vampire was said to be found. Basically the story is that an investigator of rumors found a fresher than expected corpse in an unaccounted for coffin in a tomb and wrote a hyperbole filled account of it. The investigators embellishments included the corpses eyes glowing red, that it had blood on it’s teeth and that the tomb was walled up with cement mixed with garlic. To which Hamilton quips “cement mixed with garlic? Sounds like the pizza I had last night! Ha!” Even worse, when it is revealed that it is believed that the vampire still walks the cemetery because the investigator didn’t drive a stake through the corpse’s heart, Davies says “no stake, you see.” To which Hamilton comes back with “mis-stake!!” Are you feeling my pain yet? I know you are.

As if all that wasn’t enough, we get more of Noreen who claims to have investigated and infiltrated and discovered that vampires live amongst us! Yes, the people we meet every day could be vampires! Apparently Noreen has something against airline hostesses, as she singles them out as prime suspects. This goes against the grain of popular mythology, as I always thought they were supposed to be lawyers. Anyway, Noreen not only claims to have befriended some real life vampires, but interviews these losers who claim (under anonymity) to be a vampire and a “donor”. The girl, Pam, likes to stab people’s fingers with needles and suck the blood off of them. What? Seriously? That’s it? Apparently it’s enough to send ol’ George into a tizzy, running off to get stakes and garlic and call his agent to get him out.

When he’s not patronizing the educated and stroking the crack-pots, George runs around crying about the lousy job: “Easy gig, my agent said. Be over before you know it, he said, I wonder what he’s got lined up for me next? …Live from Cherenobyl, is the reactor really cooled off? George Hamilton finds out live!”

As gruelingly painful as it is to watch, there is one interesting thing. The producers lend an air of respectability to laughable, half-baked theories passed off as fact, and portray Romanians as simpletons and peasants and mocking their beliefs, country and food with sniggering arrogance. This foreshadows the same brand of xenophobia and disinformation that Fox has now made their trademark on their “news” shows. Other than that, you’ll be hard pressed to find anything funny, interesting or cool.

Halloween Havoc: THE LAST FRANKENSTEIN (1991)

2011-10-27T16:29:00.000-07:00

The Japanese have always had a sort of disconnect with western mythology. It’s understandable, but for the most part the classic monsters of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Jewel of the Seven Stars and European legends of lycanthropes, are treated as amusing fodder for children and icons of comedy. On occasion they are handled with grave seriousness with great results (Michio Yamamoto’s excellent DRACULA series from the ‘70s). More often than not, it’s a goofy, cheesy mess that appeals strictly to the Japanese and uber-nerdy J-Fans.

Suicide has always been a popular Japanese pastime and, since they were never invaded by the Spanish and forced to worship Christ at sword-point, they consider it nothing to be ashamed of. Matter of fact, it’s a noble way to go. In present day a new theology has sprung up called Shino-Kiyo and the white-faced leader professes that suicide is the way to take control of your life and everyone must embrace the right to kill themselves. During a demonstration, an over excited TV reporter asks passersby what they think about suicide. A teenage girl responds, “it seems really popular, but I don’t want to try it”.

Caught up in this is an anatomy professor, Sarusawa (Akira Emoto) whose wife committed suicide five years earlier and whose teenage daughter, Mai (Aya Otabe), developed psychic powers soon after. During a meeting (in which one professor smacks himself on the head with a paddle while laughing uproariously), the university professors decide that this suicide epidemic is actually a virus that attacks the brain and takes 3-5 years to incubate. During the discussion of the virus, Sarusawa speaks up:

Sarusawa: “It is possible that I am already infected with this disease.”
(pregnant pause while other professors stare)
Angry professor: “Don’t bring personal problems to this meeting!”
Sarusawa: “Sorry.”

The dean of the university (who keeps live chickens on his desk) enlists Sarusawa to go seek out rogue scientist Dr. Aleo (Yoshio Harada), who is supposed to be looking into the problem. As it turns out, Aleo could care less about the virus and in fact wants the human race to die off so that his “supermen” can re-populate the planet. His new race is going to be created from two re-animated corpses. How is he going to re-animate them? Lightning and electrodes? Too old fashioned! A glowing green serum injected into the brainstem? It’s been done! Nope, his master stroke to rule the world depends on kidnapping Mai to have her use her psychic powers to bring them back to life. So, wait… this self-acclaimed genius isn’t actually going to do anything? He’s just going to use someone else’s psychic power? Not really all that much of a scientist, is he?

Once the superman and his bride are up and re-animated, Aleo demands that they have sex, immediately! This, of course, doesn’t work and leads to the next hour of the movie, in which Aleo tries to get the two to have sex (one way is to force them to watch porn), Sarusawa preaches the need to teach them love, everyone is sexually frustrated, eventually goes mad and... well, you can see where this is heading. There are other diversions as well. For some reason the cultists are locked in a room of Aleo's house. There's a wacky, cartoon-style boxing match between Sarusawa and Aleo's hunchbacked assistant Harou (Naomasa Musaka). There's the preserved baby that Aleo is so fond of. The superman is obsessed with the sea and in long, long, sequences contemplates the sea and howls at it. One of the episodes (chapters?) is an interview with the superman in which he gives slow, cryptic answers to the cryptic questions of an off screen interviewer. One of the better moments has the bride reading an anatomy book and being sexually aroused by the illustrated cross-section of the male intestinal tract and genitalia.

Based on the play of the same name, writer-director Takeshi Kawamura tells the already disjointed story in multiple segments, each headed by a title card, giving the film a more episodic feel that it would have already had. There are fragments of bizarre inspiration, such as a bit where Mai goes into a comatose state and the doctor informs Sarusawa that it is because she forgot how to use her brain. In this state she levitates a cream-colored coffee cup out of a window and drops it to the ground, shattering it. This coincides with a woman in a cream-colored suit plummeting to her death, drawing a visual metaphor to the smashed cup and the smashed corpse. There is one other sequence that alludes to Mai being the cause of the suicides, but nothing else comes of this and the idea is simply dropped like so many others. Another interesting sequence has Aleo and Harou going into the city to kidnap Mai out of the hospital. Everyone in the city is frozen in time while Aleo and Harou walk through the streets and the hospital. This shows how effective Kawamura can be at creating a surreal atmosphere when he wants to, but unfortunately he chooses to diffuse that cool dream-like state with intentional camp by having Harou ham it up, pulling faces and badly trying to disguise himself as a nurse.

I like to think I am pretty open to experimental filmmaking. I really enjoy and seek out films that are desperately bizarre and surreal. Andrzej Zulawski’s POSSESSION (1981) is a mind-liquefyingly strange movie that manages to be a work of genius using the same techniques. Characters display extremes of emotion, a deliberate absence of music to heighten the unnerving scenes, long takes with minimal dialogue, out of the ordinary events go unexplained, picturesque visual imagery is held a little too long, etc. Here the problem is probably due more to my culture than anything else. The strangeness in THE LAST FRANKENSTEIN is quintessentially Japanese, which is fine until you send in the clowns. The Japanese, due to centuries of cultural demands for appropriate public behavior, embrace comedy that involves extreme reactions, extreme facial expressions, social faux pas and lots and lots of screaming. Oh, and slapstick comedy is always popular. Is there anything funnier than hunchback getting kicked in the nuts? Oh and yes, for the record, I do realize the Italians famously beat them to the…erm… punch (kick?) in Umberto Lenzi’s ROME ARMED TO THE TEETH (1976), but that was just one ill-advised moment out of a solid film and this is one lame gag out of a movie filled with as many lame gags as interesting concepts. For instance, Aleo’s wife is a mentally retarded cripple who loudly slurps soup at the dinner table (yes, this is played for laughs). More hilarity ensues when a fly lands on her forehead and Aleo swats it with a riding crop, causing her to pull a face and scream loudly for what is seconds, but seems like minutes. Funny stuff right? Or how about the hunchback (with a two foot-tall hump) who cackles maniacally screams things like “buenos noches” and gets into a pro-wrestling style fight with the “superman”?

The wacky comedy is pretty much the nail in the coffin for this one, for me anyway. Someone like Kiyoshi Kurosawa could have taken that same script, stripped the comedy out of it and turned it into a brilliant piece of hauntingly surreal cinema. Instead we have a scatter-gun approach that throws out a mess of sophisticated ideas, interspersed with unsophisticated comedy that sort of rambles along until it hits a wall. This is the first, last and only (so far) film from Takeshi Kawamura and while I can’t say I’d be interested in watching the film again, if he made something else, I’d probably have to check it out. In spite of the folks you see ranting about this being the second coming, that, I'm afraid, is about as much of a recommendation as it is going to get out of me.

Halloween Havoc: A WET DREAM ON ELM STREET (2011)

2011-10-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

It wouldn’t be our annual Halloween Havoc celebration if we didn’t have a porn review thrown in. Last year’s SAW: A PORN PARODY review became one of our most read reviews (shocker!). Actually, I should probably say it was our most viewed review since I don't think anyone was actually reading the text. Anyway, it proved to us that the old adage of “sex sells” is true and we’re always looking to lower our standards. Uh, I mean, give the public what it wants. With porn parodies all the rage now, you knew it was only a matter of time before cinema’s favorite razor-glove wielding serial killer, Freddy Kruger, would get his own send up. After all, nothing says sexy quite like a burnt guy boning babes.

A WET DREAM ON ELM STREET opens with – surprise – a sex scene. A young couple (Jennifer White and Chris Johnson) are in bed and get it on for 20 minutes. Post-sex, the girl rolls over to complement her partner and discovers Freddy (Anthony Rosano) in her bed. No joke, we then get one of the most intentionally funny lines I’ve ever heard in a porno. Looking at the burnt man laying next to her, the girl gets excited and exclaims, “Oh my God! You’re Edward James Olmos. I can’t believe it. I’m such a huge fan.” That actually got me to laugh out loud, while questioning the history of screenwriting in porn. Freddy is pissed for never being mistaken for a burnt Brad Pitt while the girl seems to take a liking to his glove that sports four silver vibrators. And we are off!

The main “plot” then kicks off as we cut to a 2 year high school reunion (on a classroom set that I may or may not have seen before). The attendance is pretty low as only three girls – Betty (Sophie Dee), Kami (Gracie Glam) and Denise (Charley Chase) – have shown up. The reason for the poor turnout, as their teacher (Tommy Pistol) relays, is that most of the students were in smile-cracking Pleasure Comas due to “constant rubbing of their genitalia.” Seems it was all the work of dream demon Freddy, a former shyster sex toy salesman. The kids’ parents turned on him because of his high-priced, low-quality products (“He sold me a Fleshlight. It was actually a flashlight,” says the teacher) and this resulted in a lynching in which Freddy was burned from the waist up (ha!) and had vibrators melted to his hand. So, just don’t fall asleep and you won’t have to deal with the sleep sex stalker.

At home, Betty figures she has a surefire way to stay awake – good ol’ porn on her iPad. She starts to watch the classic DEAD MAN FUCKING, but is shocked to see Freddy is playing the title character. He gets it on with a female prison guard (Giselle Leon), resulting in something your brain wishes it never saw - Freddy Kruger fucking! This scene also offers us one of the film’s more clever exchanges.

Guard: Hi, Jason.
Freddy: It’s fuckin’ Freddy!
Guard: Whatever.

Scared that Freddy is invading their dreams, the girls return to the classroom (MY GOD this production budget) where their teacher says if they think hard enough, they will find Freddy’s weakness. He then produces a 4-vibrator glove he got from a dream that Freddy was in (“It wasn’t gay”) and says they can use this to thwart the Fredster. How? By having Kami do a solo scene with the glove on, of course! This backfires as she fucks herself into a Pleasure Coma. Betty decides to head home, while Denise figures it is best to stay alone (“If I learned anything from horror movies, it’s that the psychotic fictional horror villain never goes for the hot girl in a room that’s dark when she’s all alone and most vulnerable.”). After hearing moans coming from her text book, Denise opens it to find she is having sex inside it. Uh oh, she’s asleep and soon finds herself dreaming of getting it on with the teacher (“Do you wanna bang?” he asks) in the film’s fourth sex scene.

Okay, with two girls pleasured into unconsciousness, I guess this leaves Betty as the film’s heroine. Angered due to her lack of sleep, she purposely goes to the land of slumber in order to combat Freddy (“I can’t take this anymore. I need some fuckin’ sleep. Freddy, I’m coming for you.”). Naturally, the nightmare nookie-man shows up and they proceed to get it on. After another hot-n-heavy session, Freddy tries to snag his latest victim, but this Betty is a smart one. At some point during their sex session, she took the batteries out of Freddy’s vibrators and squashed his pulsating powers. Tada! She wakes up safe and sound on her couch, but find outs that she indeed did have a wet dream on Elm Street after checking her panties. The end.

Wes Craven is actually not dead yet (well, maybe artistically), but I’d advise him to start spinning in circles now because he will be doing it eternally in his grave with an X-rated take on his iconic A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984). Actually, the man should feel honored that the porn industry actually gave him the distinction of giving a damn when it came to sodomizing his most famous film. Producers of porn spoofs are always looking for a cheap way out by only delivering a clever title, but this Tom Byron Production actually strives for something better. Canadian (Ooooooh, Canada) Lee Roy Meyers appears to be the go-to guy when it comes to porn parodies and he proved his devotion to his craft earlier this year with a live-action XXX THE SIMPSONS parody with people actually painted yellow. So it should come as no surprise that this production actually went through the trouble of having a real Freddy facsimile. The make-up is actually pretty good and wisely draws upon classic Freddy and not that ill-advised ELM STREET remake. Yes, I really just wrote a sentence commending a porn production on the aesthetic choices of their latex effects. I do, however, have to deduct points for not including a play on the classic Freddy rhyme song. C’mon, I thought of “one, two, Freddy’s cumming on you” in two seconds here.

Also surprising is a fairly game cast. Now I know they are all DTF, but some of the performances are bordering on good. Tommy Pistol is actually really funny as the know-it-all teacher and his funny delivery almost made me forget about his poor choices when it came to tattoos…almost. The girls are also all fine in their roles and, of course, they’re hot. Out of all the girls, I’d say Giselle Leon had the best scene as there is just something about her that is hot. Naturally, the star of the show is Anthony Rosano as the wet dream maniac and he delivers when it comes to a Robert Englund imitation (the make up, hat and sweater obviously help). Porn scholars would be angered if I didn’t mention that this is actually the second porn film to sport this title as the original A WET DREAM ON ELM STREET came out on video in 1988. While I’m not sure if this counts as an actual remake (a porn first?), I’m sure they are both similar in that they included a Freddy-esque character and lots of nekkid folks. As it stands, the 2011 ELM STREET might just be the best horror porn parody to date.