Entry Twenty: Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Dir: Paul W.S. Anderson

"Whoever wins, we lose."

Dark Horse Comics had real "chocolate and peanut butter" moment when, in 1990, they decided to combine their Aliens and Predator licenses into a comic book miniseries event.  The series was an instant hit; a no-brainer for fanboys that went on to spawn more comics, novels, several video games and a toy line.  A film seemed like a given, but Fox was reluctant after Predator 2 and Alien3 under-performed at the box office.  When New Line's Freddy vs. Jason proved to be a surprise hit in the fall of 2003, Fox finally decided to jump on the bandwagon.  However, instead of doing it right (an A-budget film that would bring the Predators in to the futuristic Alien universe), the studio gave the project to schlocky auteur Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil), who promised to have the low(ish)-budget film in theatres within a year.  You can practically FEEL everyone involved not giving a fuck with every scene.

When one of his geo-mapping satellites discovers a mysterious temple deep beneath the ice of Antarctica, terminally-ill industrialist Charles Weyland (the great Lance Henriksen, who looks pretty bored here) assembles a team of tired stereotypes (tough hot chick, tough butch chick, sinister corporate British guy, macho guy who goes to pieces when the shit hits the fan, sensitive, male-model-looking archaeologist, wide-eyed scientist who guarantees his early death by showing off pictures of his cute kids to everybody) to explore it and claim it in the name of Weyland, giving him one final, great legacy.  Once there, the team discovers that the pyramid is actually an ancient training ground for the Predators, who use human beings to breed Aliens for hunting purposes.  The humans are killed off one-by-one, until only Tough Hot Chick Lex (Sanaa Lathan, Blade) is left to take on the alien queen with the final surviving Predator.

This movie is really stupid.  It shits all over the mythologies of both franchises: the contemporary-Earth setting is problematic from an Alien standpoint, for if Weyland-Yutani knew of the existence of the aliens because of this encounter, why didn't they focus their future resources on digging beneath the arctic, rather than sending the Nostromo off to check a suspicious signal on an out-of-the-way planetoid.  The aliens have always been shown to take several hours (maybe even more than a day) to gestate and emerge from their host bodies, yet in this film face-hugged victims are birthing creatures in a matter of minutes.  Due to budgetary constraints, effects company ADI was forced to re-use and modify alien suits and designs from Alien Resurrection, which were designed to be extra-fleshy looking due to plot elements unique to that film and make no sense here.  From a Predator standpoint, the predators had, in the previous films, been shown to be proud hunters who only attack armed targets.  Here, they kill the shit out of everybody, including a crippled guy and a sick old man.  Also from the previous films, we're told that the predators choose hot, steamy climates to conduct their hunts...THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING IN THE ARCTIC?  The newly-designed predators in this film look like 'roided-out fucking linebackers and move like the Michelin Man.  Did I mention yet that this movie is fucking PG-13?  If you're expecting any graphic chest-bursting, spine-ripping or corpse-skinning (and why wouldn't you be, in a movie that combines Alien and Predator?), look elsewhere.

If this film has one saving grace, it's ADI's redesigned alien queen.  They use a nice mix of practical and CG effects to bring her to life, I just wish it had been in a better movie.  If you can divorce this canonically from it's source material and take it as it's own thing, I suppose you might get a few chuckles out of the (unintentionally funny) fight scenes (a few beers wouldn't hurt).  This is certainly the spiritual successor to Universal's classic monster mash-ups Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and House of Dracula.  Those movies signaled the END of the Universal Monsters era, and this film (and it's even shittier, rushed, "strike-while-the-iron's lukewarm sequel) marks the end of the once-dignified Alien franchise (alien-less sort-of-prequel Prometheus doesn't really count, though at least it wiped this shitpile from continuity).

At least they got the tagline right.    

Entry Nineteen: Vicious Lips (1986)

Vicious Lips (1986)

Dir: Albert Pyun

"They're lost and loose in outer space."

Rock n' Roll space babes (what more do you need?)!!!

Small-time band manager/big-time loser Matty Asher has a problem: he has one day to get his all-girl new wave band, the Vicious Lips, across the galaxy to play the Electric Dream nightclub before all-powerful booking agent Maxine has him killed (or worse, ruins his career).  When Lips lead vocalist Ace Solo suddenly dies, Max recruits high school talent show contestant Judy Jetson (copyright infringement?) to become the new Ace.  As they make their way across the starstream to the Dream, Matty and the Lips are forced to deal with in-fighting, bad space drugs, asteroids, a desert "passion" planet, zombies, vampiric aliens and an escaped Venusian serial killer.

Writer/director Pyun (The Sword and the Sorcerer, Cyborg, the 1990 Captain America), treats the entire film as if he's directing an 80-minute Thomas Dolby video; quick cuts and green lighting abound.  He makes the most of his (barely existent) budget, dressing up obvious sound stages with lots of Shop-Vac tubes and exposed air ducts.  Homages/ripoffs of then-recent sci-fi films abound; characters are named "Solo" and "Lucas" and some Giger-inspired alien corridors appear.  An alien warthog/elephant/human hybrid is a visual effects highlight.  The performers are all stock Empire pictures players, but take to their roles enthusiastically.  Best of all, the new wave soundtrack is pretty great (the Lips can wail; they remind me quite a bit of the undervalued Scandal).  "Lunar Madness" in particular kicks ass!  Take note: this movie played the three-titted space hooker gag four years before Total Recall.

Entry Eighteen: Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Dir: Charles E. Sellier, Jr.

"You've made it through Halloween, now try and survive Christmas."

Silent Night, Deadly Night is neither the first nor the best of the "killer Santa" sub-sub-genre, but it's surely the most widely-known.  Because they were bored with railing against drug users and metalheads that week, the moms of America decided to organize a protest against this film, a movement that gained national media attention and resulted in Siskel and Ebert publicly shaming the filmmakers on their television show and the movie getting removed from theatres.  That just resulted in it becoming an even bigger hit on home video!  

Young, oddly-lipsticked boy Billy takes a Christmas Eve trip with his parents to visit his grandfather in a mental hospital.  The demented old coot warns Billy that Santa Claus doesn't just bring presents to the good children, he severely punishes the naughty.  Later that night, Billy witnesses a criminal in a Santa suit shoot his dad and slit his mom's throat.  At this point, you'd be forgiven for expecting Billy to grow up and become Batman, but instead he gets shipped off to an orphanage and, when he comes of age, a kindly nun gets him a job stocking shelves at a toy store (why the clearly adult Billy is still living at the orphanage is never explained...but the kindly nun is somewhat young and attractive...maybe Billy's hitting that?).  Billy excels at his new job, and develops a crush on cute co-worker Pamela, but as Christmas approaches, he begins to grow irritable and short with his co-workers, and "naughty" behavior gives him flashbacks to his parents' murder.  Forced to fill-in as Santa on Christmas Eve, Billy snaps and begins offing his less-than-well-behaved co-workers in various novel ways: his supervisor get strangled by a strand of Christmas tree lights, Pamela get disemboweled with a box cutter, the drunken store owner get his brain bashed in with a hammer, the secretary get an arrow through her sternum.  After Billy escapes into the suburbs, Linnea Quigley shows up, gets topless and ends up impaled an the horns of a mounted elk head.  In the movie's best kill scene, a kid who'd stolen a sled gets decapitated going downhill!  In another great scene, cops after Billy shoot the wrong Santa to death in front of a bunch of kids!  In the end, Billy returns home to the orphanage and is blown away by the cops.  He dies in the arms of the kindly nun.

This is a pretty minor slasher that would have faded into total obscurity if not for the fervor and panic surrounding it's original release.  The performances are all pretty indifferent, director Sellier makes no attempt at creating atmosphere or suspense and the whole thing just feels perfunctory.  On the plus side, the gore effects are slightly better than average, as is the score by Perry Botkin.  The best thing about the whole movie, however, is all the toy porn in the toy store that Billy works at: rows and rows of vintage Star Wars, G.I. Joe and Masters of the Universe toys in beautiful original boxes!  I paused the move several times just to check out the shelves.  Anyway, merry fucking Christmas!

Entry Sixteen: The Funhouse (1981)

The Funhouse (1981)

Dir: Tobe Hooper

"Pay to get in, pray to get out."

Hey folks, I'm taking a break from holiday movies with this entry, but I promise I'll get to one more yuletide gem before the year is out.  In between his indie smash The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre and hitting the absolute mainstream and ruining his career with a massive coke habit, Tobe Hooper directed The Funhouse, his first major studio release.

Four teenagers; Amy (Elizabeth Berridge, Amadeus), Buzz (Cooper Huckabee, Django Unchained), Liz (Largo Woodruff, Bill On His Own) and Richie (Miles Chapin, Howard the Duck), decide to spend the night in the funhouse of a traveling carnival.  While getting ready to engage in some serious deep-dicking, the quartet are interrupted by a noise and witness Zelda the fortune-teller (who they pissed off earlier) accepting money for a handjob by a drooling freak in a Frankenstein's monster mask.  Zelda's too effective at her job, however, and this masked maniac throttles her to death when her magic mitts cause him to cum too quickly.  This man-beast is the mutated son of the carnival's barker (Kevin Conway, Jennifer Eight, TV's Oz), who discovers our trespassing teens spying on the murder when Richie fumbles his lighter.  At his father's request, the albino mutant begins to slaughter the teens in various ways (Richie gets hanged AND gets an axe through the head, the comely Liz gets disemboweled while trying to seduce the freak).  Buzz kills the barker with a sword, but ends up impaled upon the same blade.  In the end, Liz is forced to do battle with the mutant amidst the industrial machinery operating the funhouse behind the scenes.

The Funhouse is very much a transitional film for Hooper; it features the unusual camerawork of his indie days, but is set to a bombastic orchestral score (by John Beal, who had worked with Olivia Newton-John and The Captain and Tennille!); it's shot on low-grade film stock, yet features recognizable actors.  On the plus side, Hooper manages to recapture much of the grime and grit of Texas Chainsaw; on the negative side, his teenage heroes are pretty vapid and beg nothing but indifference.  Having attended a county fair late-night in rural southern Florida, I can tell you that Hooper damn well nails the atmosphere here.  Keep your eyes peeled for William Findlay (The Phantom of the Paradise) in a brief role as the magician.  I like Hooper a lot, and I'll recommend this one.  He made some great flicks (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Poltergeist, Lifeforce), and I really wish he hadn't just given up (see anything he's made in the past 20 years).

Entry Fifteen: You Better Watch Out (1980)

You Better Watch Out (1980-AKA Christmas Evil, Terror In Toyland)

Dir: Lewis Jackson

"Better watch out...Better not cry...Or you may DIE!"


In 1947, two boys, younger Phillip and older Harry, witness Santa Claus arriving down their chimney.  While Phillip is convinced it's their father in disguise, Harry truly believes.  Later, unable to sleep, Harry creeps downstairs and witnesses "Santa Claus" making time with his mother.  Enraged, Harry smashes his treasured snow globe and uses a shard of glass to slice his hand.

Years later, pathetic, middle-aged Harry (Brandon Maggert, Dressed to Kill) lives in an apartment full of Santa memorabilia and spends his free time creepily spying upon the neighborhood children, of whom he's compiled "naughty" and "nice" lists.  This poor schlub works as the line manager at a toy factory and is scorned by his more successful younger brother (Jeffrey DeMunn, Dale from TV's The Walking Dead).  Harry grows increasingly frustrated by his callous co-workers and corporate bosses, none of whom understand the "true" meaning of Christmas.  After a particularly rough Christmas party, during which he discovers that his company is lying about charitable donations, Harry snaps.  Donning a Santa suit and glued-on beard and tooling around in a van with a sleigh and reindeer painted on the side, he doles out gifts to good children, coal to naughty ones, and kills the ever-loving shit out of his scumbag CEO, a co-worker who claimed to hate Christmas and a trio of yuppies who mock his holiday spirit.  After being saved by children from vigilantes, Harry has a final confrontation with Phillip and is chased through the streets by citizens bearing FUCKING TORCHES until his van...and I can't fucking believe I'm writing this...LIFTS OFF INTO THE SKY, and Harry is transformed into the TRUE Santa Claus.

Holy shit.  This film is fairly difficult to wrap my brain around.  For the first 45 minutes, it comes off as a vaguely pedophilic Taxi Driver riff, then segues into a slasher flick before veering into outright fantasy.  I WILL admit that, looking back to my own childhood and remembering how badly I wanted to believe in Santa Claus, I can buy that an unbalanced adult could carry that need for belief into adulthood and be willing to kill to preserve it.  It's also refreshing to watch a film that endorses/reinforces the "Christmas spirit" in a totally secular manner (if you still think of Christmas as a Christian holiday, you're fucking kidding yourself).  A few notes: Brandon Maggart is GREAT as Harry, the sound design was done by the late Sally Menke, who edited all of Tarrantino's films through Inglorious Basterds, and John Waters has proclaimed this to be his favorite Christmas movie of all time...

Entry Fourteen: Black Christmas (1974)

Black Christmas (1974)

Dir: Bob Clark

"If this movie doesn't make your skin crawl...IT'S ON TOO TIGHT!"

The late Bob Clark had an interesting cinematic career; not only did he direct this film and future Basement of Sleaze entrants Shock Waves, Deathdream and Porky's, he was also responsible for A Christmas Story (yes, the one that TBS plays on continuous loop through December) and, um...Baby Geniuses.  Next time you're family forces you to watch little Ralphie worry about receiving a Red Ryder BB Gun for the umpteenth time, remember that the same director made this holiday movie, in which an obscene phone caller talks about Margot Kidder's "fat cunt" and implores her to "suck my juicy cock."

It's Christmas break at the sorority house, and the sisters are dealing with obscene phone calls by "the moaner." while also trying to cope with their own, individual issues.  Chain-smoking, hard-drinking leader Barb (Kidder, The Amittyville Horror, Superman I-III) is having family problems, new pledge Jess (Olivia Hussey, Romeo and Juliet, Turkey Shoot) is pregnant and wants an abortion against the wishes of her musician boyfriend, Peter (Keir Dullea, 2001: A Space Odyssey) and Clare (Lynn Griffin, Strange Brew) is a rotting corpse, having been suffocated with plastic wrap by an unseen assailant and hidden away in her room.  While the missing Clare is searched for by her father and sorority sisters, police Lieutenant Fuller (motherfucking John Saxon) searches for a missing 13 year-old girl.  When evidence is discovered that links the two cases, Saxon orders a wire tap placed on the sorority house, leading to a tense scene in which it's discovered that the obscene phone calls are, of course, coming from within the sorority house.  Eventually, Barb, Jess and Phyl (Andrea Martin from SCTV) are stalked through the house and dispatched one-by-one by the mysterious killer.

Black Christmas is often credited as the first true "slasher" movie, and while it does introduce some of the soon-to-be-cliche hallmarks of that genre (young, female victims, POV stalking scenes, a "final girl") and was certainly a big influence on John  Carpenter's Halloween, Clark's stylish use of shadow and light and the jarring, violent setpiece murders remind me more of the giallo thrillers of Dario Argento.  This movie also introduced the now-tired "the caller is inside the house!" five years before the far more famous When a Stranger Calls.  The whole cast is good, but Kidder and Dullea are standouts as the bitchy sorority queen and volatile, artsy boyfriend, respectively.  The "twist" ending (which I won't spoil) is totally out-of-left-field.  This is a good one, folks; pop it in instead of watching White Christmas for the umpteenth time again this year.

Entry Thirteen: Nekromantic (1988)

Nekromantic (1988)

Dir: Jorg Buttgereit

"Death is just the beginning..."

Somewhere, I promised I'd close off "sexy movie November" here in the Basement of Sleaze with something extra-special, and here it is:  the German necrophilia fuckfest Nekromantic!

After the title card "Warning: some of this film may be seen as 'grossly' offensive and should not be shown to minors!!!" and a close-up shot of a woman pissing in a field, we're introduced to Rob (Bernd Daktari Lorenz, who went on to become a German porno writer/director and helped out with the music and effects on this film), who works cleaning up corpses on and around the autobahn.  Quiet, creepy Rob is new to the job, disliked by his seasoned co-workers and enjoys taking body parts home from work (which include a fetus; all lovingly detailed in a montage).  His girlfriend Betty (Beatrice Manowski, from Wenders' Wings of Desire (!)) gets naked a lot and bathes in bloody water while singing and wearing sunglasses.  Eventually, Rob brings home an entire rotting corpse and affixes a dildo fashioned from a wooden bedpost to it (complete with condom!), which Betty fucks while he caresses and kisses it.  In a slo-mo scene, Betty makes the corpse give her head after reading erotic literature to it (fuck me; I can't believe I just typed that!).  When Rob loses his job, bitchy Betty calls him a wimp and leaves to find a rich man who can supply her with corpses.  Rob kills a cat, writhes around in its guts and attends a porno movie, where he sits next to a dude who bears more than a passing resemblance to Bill Nye, the Science Guy.  He tries to sleep with a prostitute in a graveyard, but murders her and goes to the bone-zone with her corpse, instead.  In the end, Rob takes his own life by plunging a knife into his guts, graphically ejaculating while doing so...The movie then closes with mondo footage of a (real) rabbit being killed and skinned.

I know you're all masturbating right now, so I'll not interrupt with any closing remarks.  Happy Thanksgiving, folks!

Entry Twelve: Vampire Hookers (1978)

Vampire Hookers (1978)

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago

"Warm blood isn't all they suck!"

First of all, I have to admit to having a soft spot for this shitty movie, but only because I saw it for the first time at an Atomic Shock midnight screening hosted by LEGENDARY Minneapolis horror host Rock N' Roll Ray.  Ray always put on a GREAT show; it's a good memory, and I miss those days.  But enough waxing nostalgic; on with the (shit) show!

The movie begins with a very old, bored and drunk-looking John Carradine quoting Shakespeare's "The Tempest.  We are then introduced to studly Tom and goofball sidekick Terry (the late Trey Wilson, of Raising Arizona and...um...Twins), two American sailors on leave in the Philippines.  Out cruising for strange, these lusty seamen run afoul of our titular trio of voluptuous vamps and their undead master, Richmond Reed (Carradine), as well as his wannabe vampire/confirmed special-needs person assistant, Pavo (Vic Diaz).  These lascivious "ladies of the night" usually ply their trade in order to bring fresh blood back to Reed, but this time fall prey to Tom and his incredible deep-dicking skills long enough for Terry and badass (and fantastically mustached) cabby Julio to save the day...OR DO THEY?!

I can't deny that this movie is a piece of shit; the dialogue consists mostly of "hilarious" double-entendres ("The music in here is blowing my eardrums!" "It's not my eardrums I want blown!"; "Coffins are for being laid to rest, not for being laid."), Pavo not being able to sleep because he keeps farting in his coffin is exemplary of its sense of humor, the performances (except for Wilson, who seems to be having a blast) are anemic and the nudity is too brief and infrequent for the bishop-bopping crowd.  On the plus side, it's silly and inoffensive, Karen Stride is a fetching (but wooden) lead vampiress and, at 79 minutes, it goes by quickly.

Before I go, you need to know that the FUCKING BEST part of this film is its TASTY pseudo-rockabilly end theme song!!!  Yes, I've got a CD copy and it makes the regular rotation here in the basement!  Check out part of it below (I can't find a link to a decent complete version):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0mcAL8oBk8     

Entry Eleven: La sorella di Ursula (The Sister of Ursula) (1978)

La sorella di Ursula (The Sister of Ursula) (1978)

Dir: Enzo Milioni

Dour, man-hating Ursula (Barbara Magnolfi, Suspiria) and understanding Dagmar (Stefania D'Amario, Zombie) are young Austrian sisters on holiday in Italy after the death of their estranged father.  Women begin turning up dead at the hotel their staying at, and psychic Ursula, who has visions of the murders, is convinced she's the next victim.  Sleazy club rat Filippo (Fulci regular Marc Porel) is the prime suspect.

When it comes down to basics, this late-period giallo is a (particularly nasty) softcore skinflick masquerading as a psycho-thriller.  There are lots of borderline-explicit (and totally superfluous to the plot) sex scenes and D'Amario has a full-frontal scene three minutes into the movie.  The film has an obvious obsession with genital-fondling and endless hairy bush shots (an instant **** review from my friend, Mr. Cyteles).  The killer uses a razor-sharp dildo to dispatch his victims, which surely inspired a similar scene in 1995's Se7en.  Unbelievably angst-ridden Ursula has some hilariously melodramatic lines (in an early scene, she asks a Christ statue "Where are your eyes?  Did we gouge them out, or did you remove them, so as not to see us fall into the abyss?")!  Director Milioni lacks the talent to keep the proceedings suspenseful, relying instead on the copious amounts of naked female flesh and always-atmospheric Roman locations to hold the viewers interest.  As a side note, Magnolfi and Porel were married in real life until the latter's death from heroin-related complications in 1983; he plays a heroin addict in this film.

Entry Ten: The Sinful Dwarf (1973)

The Sinful Dwarf (1973)

Dir: Vidal Raski

Torben (he only NEEDS one name, like Prince) IS Olaf, the sinful dwarf!  Steel yourselves for this one, folks!  Our lascivious little person gives precisely zero fucks about anything other than making them Benjamins, which he does by kidnapping young women, hooking them on smack and making them turn tricks to get their fix!  We first meet Olaf as he walks down the street with his cane (which he needs not because of any physical disability, but because he's a motherfucking pimp).  When he comes upon a lonely young woman (whose clearly old enough to know better), he distracts her with a wind-up plush dog, brains her and drags her back to his sex lair, which he runs with his down-on-her-luck former actress mother, Lila (Clara Keller), out of their boarding house!  Cue opening credits, set to montage of wind-up plush animals walking against a black screen...

After the credits, we're introduced to our protagonists, Mary and Peter, who are desperately looking for a place to live.  Peter is an out of work writer who can't afford the ten pounds a night charged by most normal boarding houses, so they end up at Olaf and his mother's (they only charge six!).  Mary is immediately put off by Olaf and his scarred old mum, but Peter is insistent and they take a room.  This leads to an explicit scene of celebratory fucking, which consists mostly of shadowy close-up shots of asses (Peter's thrusting, Mary's pale and goosebump-ridden), which Olaf spies upon through a hole in the wall.  This scene is immediately cut to a shot of a boy playing with his dog, OBVIOUSLY symbolizing orgasm.  Lila and Olaf keep their girls chained up in a room right next to the one they're renting out, and Mary is concerned about all the noises she hears at night (unbeknownst to her, "Johns" coming in and out). Lila and Olaf decide that they want the too-inquisitive Mary for their harem, so they trick Peter into accepting a phoney job for their drug-runner that will take him out of the country.  Mary is lured into the "dungeon" by a toy train (yes, really), gets drugged-up and hallucinates that Peter shows up and fucks one of the other girls (gratuitous blowjob and doggystyle shots follow), and then gets cane-raped by the pint-sized pervert.  In the end, Peter arrives to rescue Mary with the cops, who decide to give him free reign with a pistol (standard police procedure) and allow him to blow away Lila.  Olaf spitefully clubs one of the girls to death before committing suicide by jumping out the window.

Jesus fuck, I haven't even mentioned Lila's drag performance scene, the endless bush shots, the interminable scenes of Lila and Olaf palling around with the former's old actress pal (played by Gerda Madsen, of the excellent Haxen), the bearded drug dealer who refers to himself as "Santa Claus," Olaf whipping the shit out of a trick who's using too much smack or the gratuitous topless scenes featuring upper middle-aged Keller.  This is grade-AAA sleaze, folks; you can practically SMELL the jizzum-encrusted raincoats on the print.  I wish I could've seen this in a theatre.  I can't, however, recommend that you watch this movie; let reading this entry be enough.

Entry Nine: The Final Terror (1983)

The Final Terror (1983)

Dir: Andrew Davis

"Without knowing, they have awakened an unknown force.  Can anyone survive?"

Councilors Mike (Mark Metcalf, Seinfeld's "Maestro") and Melanie (Cindy Harrell) take a group of JD kid screw-ups into an isolated area of the woods on an Outward Bound-type adventure.  Being responsible adults, Mike and Mel slip off to fuck in a waterfall and are slaughtered by an unseen assailant.  The kids (including Adrian "Bachelor Party" Zmed, Rachel "The Thorn Birds" Ward and Daryl Hannah) must use only their (limited) wits and whatever nature provides to defend against this menace, which seems to simply disappear into the woods.  Is it crazy, irritating camp maintenance man Eggar (a very young, very thin Joe Pantoliano)?  Is it an escapee from the local asylum?  Is it (as the ludicrous marketing campaign insinuated) some sort of alien being?  The kids build Rambo-style traps using the local flora, perpetual screw-up Zorich (John Friedrich, who's really good but retired from acting after this) takes some strange mushrooms and freaks out and the whole thing ends with a body count much lower than you'd expect.

This fun mash-up of First Blood, Deliverance, and the slasher movies popular at the time is the directorial debut of Andrew Davis (who went on to helm Code of Silence, motherfucking Under Siege and The Fugitive), and he does a nice job of moving things along at a quick pace.  His use of close-frame shots and 1:78 aspect ratio give the film a REALLY claustrophobic feel, even though the whole thing is set outdoors.  The title is generic and terrible and tells you absolutely nothing about the film, and the ad campaign heavily implied that an alien life form was stalking the kids (spoiler alert: it isn't, and aliens are never once mentioned in the film).  This movie was obviously an inspiration for Predator, as the killer wears a ghillie suit that allows it to blend into the forest and the kids make use of carved stakes and a log trap in the final confrontation.

Entry Eight: Graduation Day (1981)

Graduation Day (1981)

Dir: Herb Freed

"Graduating from high school has never been so deadly..."

After the mysterious death of high school track star Laura Ramstead, a killer in fencing gear begins bumping off her track teammates graduation day.  Is it her angry older sister Emily, recently returned from a Navy assignment to Guam?  Is it her sleazy stepdad, Ron, whose in-line to collect a bunch of cash from her insurance policy (who the fuck takes a policy out on their kids?  Is that even possible?  I'm not going to bother with the research)?  Is it disgraced, asshole coach Christopher George?  Nope, it's her ultra-intense boyfriend, Kevin, who lives with his invalid mother in a decrepit mansion and keeps Laura's corpse in a chair.

 This is (script-wise), a pretty standard addition to the post-Friday the 13th slasher canon, but Freed's music-video style direction (lots of jump-cuts and montages) gives it a look that's unique among it's peers.  The soundtrack features some kickass rock tunes by Felony and most of the actors actually look like high school kids.  Scream Queen Linnea Quigley makes an early appearance and has a topless scene.  It's also worth pointing out that every adult in the film is angry, obnoxious and spews hateful dialogue.  Even the cop in charge of the investigation shirks his duties because he hates schools and kids!  For the fashion-minded, one of the early scenes features a dude wearing an ascot!  Overall, not a bad waste of time.

Entry Seven: The Driller Killer (1979)

The Driller Killer (1979)

Dir: Abel Ferrera

"There are those who kill violently!"

Reno (director Ferrera, going by the pseudonym Jimmie Laine), is a guilty, (lapsed?) Catholic starving artist struggling to make ends meet.  He's squandered most of his cash paying for his (divorced) girlfriend's abortion and is having difficulty completing his latest "masterpiece (a variation of the classical Grecian minotaur using the American buffalo), the sale of which would give him enough money to get his affairs in order.  Meanwhile, a (terrible) punk rock band moves in to the apartment below him, making sleep impossible, and his girlfriend begins having an affair with their female roommate (resulting in a gratuitous, mutual tit-washing shower scene).  After a sleepless night filled with bloody hallucinations, Reno purchases a "porto-pack" power source for his electric drill and begins bloodily murdering skid-row whinos, whose freedom from responsibility he envies and doesn't understand.

 Ferrera's film is a reactionary, violent hetero-male response to changing sexual mores during the seventies (Reno's girlfriend's lesbian affair is spurned on by her attraction to the androgynous leader of the punk band; the derelicts Reno murders represent an "old way" of life he is trying to reject; lead astray by the conventions of his "faith," Reno murders a priest) but, taken at face value with a willingness to ignore it's pretensions, it's also a helluva lotta fun, with some EXCEPTIONAL shot-on-location photography in mid-70s New York (my personal wonderland; if I had access to a time machine, it's the first time/place I'd go), and the stark, no-frills photography enhances the scuzzy atmosphere. This DIY-wonder was the first (legit-he had previously made the porno Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy) film for director Ferrera, who would go on to make the FUCKING FANTASTIC Ms. 45, then (briefly) become famous during the late-80s and 90s for directing episodes of the television series Police Story and Miami Vice, as well as the features King of New York, Bad Lieutenant, The Funeral and Fear City (with Billy Dee!), before fading back into (relative) obscurity.

As an aside, Ferrera made an early short film called Not Guilty: For Keith Richards in 1977, about Keith's heroin trial.  It's never been commercially available, but I need to see it and it probably ought to snuggle up next to Cocksucker Blues on my Stones bootleg shelf.  If you have any leads, please contact me.

Entry Six: Jennifer (1978)

Jennifer (AKA Jennifer, the Snake Goddess-1978)

Dir: Brice Mack

" She walks in terror, stilled with fright. A trail of fear, to fill the night!"

Jennifer Baylor (Lisa Pelikan) is a poor girl on scholarship to a prestigious all-girls collegiate academy.  She manages to raise the ire of Sandra (Amy Johnston), leader of the "cool girl" clique (whose father, of course, is a senator who's contributed thousands of dollars to the school).  After Sandra orchestrates several hurtful and humiliating events (including and egged locker, an attempted drowning, nude photos and the lynching of her pet cat), Jennifer calls upon her innate psychic power over snakes, gifted to her by her religious-zealot father (Jeff Corey) to exact violent revenge!

This is a film I first discovered thanks to its regular rotation on the late-night circuit of my local channels in the late 80s/early 90s...Good fuck, do I miss those days!  I'll get this out of the way first: yes, this is an obvious cash-in on DePalma's adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie (1976), but I actually like Jennifer better.  Not only does it lack the (sometimes uncomfortable) soft-core voyeurism of DePalma's picture, it also creates a world populated by a more relateable heroine and more three-dimensional villains.  While Sissy Spacek's Carrie White was never anything more than pitiable, Pelikan's Jennifer is likeable, resourceful and level-headed; you actually want to see her triumph over her oppressors and go on to live a normal life.  When "bad girl" Jane (MN native Louise Hoven) decides to dissent against Sandra's increasingly-brutal actions against Jennifer, Sandra has her boyfriend rape Jane in an elevator as a warning.  The long-distance phone call that Jane makes to her mother directly after, during which her mother refuses to believe her daughter's claims and asks her to not bother her again, is the most heartbreaking scene in the film.  It's a bold move for a film of this sort to portray (even one of) it's villains as just as damaged and pitiable as it's victim.

I should also point out that this film features a FUCKING FANTASTIC disco scene!  The fashions alone made me extremely envious: shiny jackets! Big-collared shirts!  Red-tinted sunglasses!  Righteous vests!  I wish my closet looked like this!   

Entry Five: Night Eyes (1982)

Night Eyes (AKA Deadly Eyes-1982)

Dir: Robert Clouse1

"Tonight, they will rise from the darkness beneath the city...To feed!"

It's actually kind of refreshing to watch a horror film in which the heroes are middle-aged and most of the victims elderly...

A batch of foodstuffs enhanced with illegal chemicals is ordered destroyed by Canadian health officials.  Before it's destruction, the material is fed upon by sewer rats, mutating them into dog-sized killers.  Engineer/high school teacher Sam Groom (the prototype for TV's Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs) and Health Department agent Sara Botsford fall in love while investigating the deadly vermin.  In a soap opera-y subplot, cheerleader Lisa Langlois (from the FUCKING AWESOME Class of 1984) attempts to seduce Groom.  The mutant rats (dogs wearing obvious costumes) attack a revival screening of Game of Death during the Bruce Lee/Kareem Abdul-Jabar fight.  The climax aboard a newly-opened subway train leaves things open for a sequel that never happened.  It's an okay waste of time, but Cronenberg was doing much more interesting things in the Canadian horror arena at the time.

Entry Four: The Baby (1973)

The Baby (1973)

Dir: Ted Post

"Nothing in this nursery rhymes."

I've consciously had the "kid gloves" on for my first few entries of this blog.  I'm aware that most of the (very few) people reading this are friends and family who may not have built up the...tolerance that I have to the dingier corners of the cinematic wasteland.  I had actually intended this to be the first entry of the blog, but decided to hold back.  Well, fuck it; the gloves are off.

Ann (Anjanette Comer) is a young social worker recovering from the recent death of her husband in an automobile accident.  She decides to seek distraction and bring new meaning to her life by throwing herself into her latest case, a baby suffering under abusive guardians.  If you think this sounds like some Lifetime movie-of-the-week bullshit, I'll reveal to you that "baby" is a fully-grown, twentysomething man kept in a state of arrested development by his abusive mother and sisters as some sort of revenge against his deadbeat father.  "Baby" sleeps in an oversized crib, drink from a bottle, cries and mewls like an infant and wears a man-sized nappy.  Past social workers who have tried to interfere have a bad habit of mysteriously disappearing.  In one of two jaw-dropping scenes that will have you doubting your own sanity, a nubile babysitter tries to ward off baby's cries by allowing him to SUCCKLE ON HER EXPOSED TIT, her face contorting into expressions of ecstasy and revulsion.  At this point, my brain contorted into itself and I couldn't decide whether to vigorously masturbate or shit myself.  I should also point out that my wife had been asleep on the couch when I started to watch the movie and woke up in the middle of this scene...SUBLIME!  When the sitter is discovered by the returning mother and sisters, she's rewarded by having the shit beaten out of her before dismissal.  Ann's attempts at rehabilitating baby and removing him from this toxic environment are met with legal action, veiled threats and, ultimately, physical violence, which leads to a showdown in which she is forced to dispose of these sickos with some graphic throat-slashings.  This leads to the mind-blowing final scene, in which Ann rescues baby and brings him home, not for his own betterment, but as a playmate for her husband; not dead, but reduced to adult-baby state himself due to head injuries suffered in his car accident and living in his own grown-up playpen.

HOLY.  FUCK.  This is the "strange seventies" at it's absolute best and comes with my HIGHEST possible recommendation.  Unbelievably, director Post had already directed Clint Eastwood's Hang 'Em High and the big-budget sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes and directed Eastwood again in Magnum Force the year this came out!

Entry Three: Bloody Birthday (1981)

Bloody Birthday (1981)

Dir: Ed Hunt

"The nightmare begins with the kids next door."

This is a fun, twisted entry in the "evil kid" subgenre.  During a lunar eclipse, three women go into labor unexpectedly.  Nearly ten years later, we're introduced to their progeny Debbie (Elizabeth Hoy, The Blues Brothers-"How much for the little girl?!"), Curtis (Billy Jaye, TV's Parker Lewis Can't Lose) and Steven (Andy Freeman, Cujo) as they're charging admission to peep on Debbie's comely teenage sister, Beverly (Julie Brown, Earth Girls are Easy and the voice of Zatanna on Batman: the Animated Series) and strangling two teenagers fucking in a graveyard with a jump rope.  Turns out the lunar eclipse fucked with the zodiac, causing these kids to be born without consciences.  When Debbie's Sheriff father investigates the graveyard slayings, they beat him to death with baseball bats.  A bitchy teacher gets blown away with a revolver and the suspicious Beverly gets an arrow through the eye.  Only neighbor kid Timmy (K.C. Martel, E.T.) and his teenage sister, Joyce (Lori Lethen, The Day After) know the truth about this terrible trio, and they must survive a siege by these pint-sized psychos in Debbie's bullet-proof home.  The resourceful Timmy and Joyce survive and manage to get Curtis and Andy dragged away to the mental ward, but Debbie escapes with her overprotective mother, killing a trucker on the way out of town just for the fuck of it.

This is one of my favorite entries in it's subgenre; the kids are all good and Ed Hunt's documentary-like direction and Stephen Posey's bright, cheerful cinematography help underscore the horrific action.  Billy and Joyce are genuinely likeable heroes.  The gore is minimal, but there's a solid smattering of T&A.  "Guest star" Jose Ferrer appears in two brief scenes as a Doctor.  Recommended!

Entry Two: Amityville 3-D (1983)

Amityville 3-D (1983)
Dir: Richard Fleischer

"WARNING: In this movie, you are the victim!"

Arriving at the tail end of the early 80's (short-lived) 3-D revival, this third entry in the Amityville series possesses neither the atmosphere of the first nor the sleazy subject matter and gooey transformation effects of Amityville 2: The Possession.

Professional skeptic Tony Roberts (looking fantastic but at least six years out of date with his white jheri curl and propensity for fur-collared long coats) purchases the cursed mansion, much to the objection of his superstitious ex-wife (Tess Harper).  Soon, his assistant (Candy Clark, much better than this material deserves) is burned alive and his teenage daughter (future Full House star Lori Laughlin) drowns in the pond out back.  Eventually, the evil that guards the portal to hell in the basement manifests itself as a fire-breathing, rubbery special effect that looks like a cross between a piece of shit and a frog and melts supernatural investigator Robert Joy's face off.

The 3-D effects are typically intrusive (especially in a 2-D presentation); actors thrust lighters toward the screen while investigating dark rooms, rubbery flies flit about and shattered glass zooms at you on barely-concealed wires.  De Laurentiis contract director Fleischer (Conan the Destroyer)'s direction is strictly workmanlike.  With only a PG rating, it's a watered-down waste of time.  The always irritating Meg Ryan has small, early role if you're into that sort of thing.  At least they chose an appropriate tagline.

Entry One: Gothic (1986)

Gothic (1986)
Dir: Ken Russell

"Conjure up your deepest, darkest fear...Now call that fear to life."

Ken Russell's an acquired taste, and I've found myself more intrigued by his campy, bombastic, depraved films as I've grown older.  This is his (very loose) interpretation of the story of the famous gathering at Lord Byron's manor that would lead Mary Shelley to write "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus."

On June 16th, 1816, Percy Shelley (Julian Sands), along with his mistress Mary Godwin (Natasha Richardson) and her half-sister, Claire Clairmont (Myriam Cyr), calls upon his friend Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne), in exile in his manor outside Geneva and being attended by his physician/biographer, John Polidori (Timothy Spall).  Trapped inside by a storm and under the influence of laudanum, the five begin to experience hallucinations while they swap ghost stories.  By the next morning, Mary's experience will leave her with the inspiration for her most famous work.

Gothic is (believe it or not) one of Russell's more restrained works of the 80s, but he still manages to squeeze in most of his major obsessions: neon lights, gratuitous nudity, anti-Catholic imagery, canted camera angles and extreme close-ups.  After the fifteen minute mark, the movie becomes one long hallucination, giving Russell plenty of opportunity to pile on the sleaze: the five engage in various gay-and-straight sex acts, puddles of jizzum appear on the floor, an imp emerges from a painting to menace Richardson, Cyr is ravaged by a sentient suit of armor with a giant metal phallus, a stillborn baby is given a baptism, Sands is alternately buried and burned alive, Cyr's nipples turn into blinking eyeballs and, after a vampiric tryst with Byrne, Spall, as the guilty, Catholic Polidori, rips the crucifix from his wall and recreates the stigmata on his own hands with a rusty nail.  

In the hands of a subtler director, this might be arresting material, but Russell begins the film with the histrionics cranked to 11 and only goes up from there, making it impossible to take any of this seriously (the intrusive, totally anachronistic score by Thomas Dolby only adds to the lunacy).  The cast members are all thoroughly unhinged, but special notice goes to the normally stoic Byrne as Byron, who goes totally off the rails and plays the character like a preening, devious, manipulative rock star.    

Hey everybody; welcome to the basement; push aside that stack of Shock Cinema mags, watch out for rats and bodily fluid stains and make yourselves at home!  This is the debut entry of my new, (hopefully) weekly blog in which I will share with you, dear reader, my love of trashy cinema. 

As a bit of background, my obsession with the underbelly of cinema probably began when I read the first edition of Kim Newman's seminal Nightmare Movies in fifth grade.  I was enthralled by the lurid descriptions of gut-munching, chainsaw-mutilating and crucifix-masturbating.  I started seeking out these movies at every dingy mom-and-pop video store I could get a lift to, I'd tape them off of late-night television (USA Up All Night!) and I'd seek out bootleg videos at comic conventions and record shows.  Eventually, I discovered two essential magazines, Michael Weldon's late, lamented Psychotronic Video and Steven Puchalski's still-going-strong Shock Cinema and was introduced to even more obscure oddities.

This is not meant to be an ongoing work of scholarly criticism; I don't have the time or desire for it to be such.  I'll try to keep the entries short, including a brief summary of the film, my thoughts on/reaction to it and possibly throw some little tidbits of trivia at you.  I'ma try to keep the tone conversational and funny, as I don't want you to be bored out of your minds.  Also, so that we're perfectly clear, this is my fucking blog; I MAKE THE RULES!  I'm going to try to stick to b-movies, but if I get a wild hair up my ass to write an entry on The Empire Strikes Back, I'm damn well gonna do so.  I'm going to try to cover a wide variety of genres, from spaghetti westerns and post-nuke movies to porn parodies and obscure 80s teen comedies.  I'll look at films from undeniably shitty directors (Jess Franco, the Findlays, Doris Wishman), respected masters (Cronenberg, Lynch, Argento) and underrated geniuses who never quite got their due (Larry Cohen, Ruggero Deodato, Frank Henenlotter). 

So I hope you'll take this trip with me.  I'll be your guide through post-nuke America, the Amazon jungle, American cities that look suspiciously Canadian, the bloody old west, pre-Giuliani Times Square and the far-flung reaches of space.  You'll witness torture, dismemberment, cannibalism, adult infants, animal attacks, rubber-suited monsters, breast mutilation (that's for you, Ben!), penis eating, all-girl rock bands, frat pranks gone awry, prehistoric beasts, satanic rituals, epic car chases, creative uses for power tools and SO much more!  You'll meet cowboys, zombies, cannibals, inbred families, serial killers, cultists, punks, demons, aliens, robots and maybe even David Hasselfhoff.

Grab a stiff drink and turn down the lights...It's showtime!