Entry Forty: Metamorphosis: the Alien Factor (1990)

Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor (1990)

Dir: Glenn Takakjian

"It came from another world..."




I just did one 1990 film called Metamorphosis, so I figured fuck it, let's get 'em both out of the way (this one's a little better...AND it has a subtitle!).  So head on down to the Basement of Sleaze, wipe the alien goo off that chair and prepare to witness Metamorphosis: the Alien Factor!


In an austere lab that looks like the facility from the end of They Live (or a location from any number of Cronenberg films), a security guard goes to investigate a malfunction pressure door and is messily killed by rubbery monster that looks like a leftover from John Carpenter's version of The Thing.  Next, we cut to the poor man's home, where we learn that Security Dad was a widower struggling to raise two headstrong daughters: uptight twentysomething Sherry (sexy Debbie Harry lookalike Tara Leigh) and rebellious teenager Kim (Troma regular Diana Flaherty).  Makes you feel a bit bad about thrilling to the poor guy getting his skin melted off, doesn't it?  While the two girls worry about their missing father, we cut back to the lab, where sinister, overwhelmingly British lab overseer Dr. Viallini (Marcus Powell, The Elephant Man) tries to cover up the "accident."  In flashback, it's revealed that the creature glimpsed at the beginning was once brilliant scientist Dr. Michael Foster (George Colucci, Goodfellas), who was experimenting with government-supplied DNA of extraterrestrial origin.  Michael's lab is with an array of wondrously grotesque creatures, including an enormous Venus fly trap and mutated frogs and rabbits (the effects are great, especially considering the film's low budget).  After being bitten by the frog-creature and infected with the alien DNA, Michael begins to mutate, despite the best efforts of his lover/lab assistant Nancy (Katherine Romaine) and friend/colleague Elliott (Allen Rickman, A Serious Man, TV's Boardwalk Empire, not to be confused with Alan Rickman of Die Hard) to curb the change.  Michael's body begins birthing smaller creatures with wasp-like stingers, Gremlins-style.  In the present, Sherry breaks into the lab with her improbably-nerdy boyfriend, Brian (Patrick Barnes, who makes Skippy from Family Ties look like Don Juan) to discover the whereabouts of her missing father, along with stowaway Kim.  When our heroic trio is separated, Brian is captured by Viallini's security forces, the girls encounter Michael, who has fully mutated into an 8 foot-tall fleshy monster that kinda looks like a diseased penis and scrotum with legs.  After Michael messily dispatches Elliott, Nancy and Dr. Foster (the victim of a great decapitation), the girls find themselves trapped in the locked-down lab with the murderous monster, but find some unlikely help in the form of the (fantastically named) Tony Gigante as Dr. Foster's amazingly grumpy, extraordinarily badass security enforcer.  Can this mismatched trio find a way to halt mutant Michael's rampage and escape the lab?   

I really enjoyed this one; it's a gem from the long-gone direct-to-video age (It was released by Trimark Pictures, of Solo and Leprechaun fame...remember them?).  The effects (by a slew of artists who would go on to work on Begotten, Face/Off, Tron: Legacy and Dogma) are top-notch, and includes extensive, top-notch stop-motion work. Takakjian's direction is fast-paced, visceral and never lingers long enough to allow the viewer to question the inherent stupidity of the plot (why wasn't Michael working in a controlled environment? Why didn't he immediately amputate his infected hand? Why did his corporate masters not execute him immediately?).  For genre fans, there are plenty of in-jokes and references to other films. The performances are mostly solid, with standout honors going to Romaine (who, sadly, never did much more film work) and Rickman, who enlivens every scene by absent-mindedly slapping his knee in background scenes or enthusiastically looking into a ViewMaster while delivering expository dialogue.  Leigh, however, is terrible.  Metamorphosis: the Alien Factor was filmed in 1987 and was intended intended as a sequel to Return of the Aliens: the Deadly Spawn, but after years of post-production and a legal battle over distribution, it was released to video with no mention of it's connection to the previous film.  Check this one out! 
    

Entry Thirty-Nine: Metamorphosis (1990)

Metamorphosis (1990)

Dir: George Eastman

"Witness the change!"


Wow...This one has been a LONG time coming.  Let me take you back to the year of our lord, 1990, when ten year-old Michael James Harmon haunted the horror sections of various and sundry mom-and-pop video stores.  On one particular trip (made via bicycle with my cousin Terry, to a video store in Eden Prairie which is now an Oasis Market), I discovered the videocassette of this film, which featured a 3-D severed head that lit up and screamed at you when you pressed a button on the box (I wasn't yet world-weary enough to know that the flashier the packaging, the shittier the movie).  I was intrigued enough to look the film up in my oft-consulted copy of Mick Martin and Marsha Porter's Video Movie Guide, which gave the film a zero-star review, but informed me that it was about a scientist who turns himself into a dinosaur.  To my ten year-old self, this was perhaps the most fantastic movie idea of all time (and as a 34 year-old man, I'll be honest-the concept of a man turning into a dinosaur is fucking RAD!).  For a couple weeks, I was obsessed with the idea of this movie; I begged my ma to make the drive to rent it for me, to no avail (it wasn't available at our local store, and we would need to open a new account at the store in Terry's neighborhood in order to bring it home).  In absence of the film itself, I wrote my own illustrated story about it (I believe the mutated dinosaur-man fought another, similar creature).  As I was a kid with a limited attention span, I eventually forgot about it and moved onto something else.  Fast-forward 24 years, and an internet article on gimicky VHS packaging brought this all flooding back.  A quick internet search revealed that the film had been released on DVD in one of those shitty 50-film packs, and I immediately purchased that bad boy and dragged it down into the Basement of Sleaze...

Peter Houseman (Gene LeBrock-who looks like Tom Cruise's older, taller brother) is a university scientist doing research into using reptile chromosomes to combat the human aging process, because bullshit movie science (reptiles...don't age?)!  He develops a serum that shows positive results but, because this is a horror film, the university cuts his funding and, in desperation, he tries the serum on himself by injecting it straight into his eye.  The serum gives him a renewed sense of vigor (which he demonstrates during a soft-jazz-scored deep-dicking session with his university overseer girlfriend, Sally), but it also drastically augments the dickhead portion of his brain, as he intentionally trips a polio-stricken colleague, beats the shit out of a bar full of people (including Black Emanuelle herself, Laura Gemser, who also served as this film's costume designer) and, most drastically, murders an amorous student by drowning her in a bathroom sink.  Peter begins rapidly aging (he kinda looks like Dan Aykroyd in Nothing But Trouble), before transitioning into a lizard-man, who walks the city streets incognito in a fedora and trenchcoat (like Marvel Comics' Thing and Daredevil!).  And yes, in the end, Peter transforms into a (very unconvincing) Tyrannosaurus Rex and is blown away by a S.W.A.T. team.

This Italian flick is often criticized as a ripoff of Cronenberg's remake of The Fly, but it reminds me more of an uncredited remake of The Alligator People (1959), with labratory and transformation scenes inspired by the 1977 TV-movie version of The Incredible Hulk.  Writer/Director Eastman is better known as the actor who played the hulking, scary-looking titular character in the Anthropophagus movies, as well as heavies in a myriad of Italian post-nuke movies.  What a disappointment; my 4th grade stories were much better than this movie.    +          

Entry Thirty-Eight: Maniac Cop (1988)

Maniac Cop (1988)

Dir: William Lustig

"You have the right to remain silent...forever."

This one's a real winner, folks; a dream-team of 80's NYC genre creators (writer Larry (It's Alive, Q, The Stuff) Cohen, producer James (The Exterminator, Shakedown) Glickenhaus and director William (Maniac, Vigilante) Lustig) working with an UNBELIEVABLE cast: Tom "Night of the Creeps" Atkins, Bruce "Evil Dead" Campbell, Richard "Shaft" Roundtree, William "Conan the Barbarian" Smith, Laurene "I, the Jury" Landon and Robert "Samurai Cop" Z'Dar to produce a lean, mean action thriller!

When his estranged wife is found murdered in a hotel room rented under his name, beat cop Jack Forrest (Campbell) is arrested for the crime, along with a series of brutal murders that witnesses have claimed were committed by a police officer.  The only ones who believe Forrest to be innocent are his lover, vice officer Theresa Malloy (Landon) and hard-drinking, depressed Detective McCrae (Atkins).  Doing some off-the-books investigating, McCrae discovers that the real killer is Matt Cordell, a hero cop who was set up and sent to prison by the NYPD Commissioner (Roundtree) and a shady Captain (Smith).  Severely disfigured and brain-damaged during an attack by inmates, Cordell has escaped and is looking for revenge, but his damaged mind has him unable to distinguish ordinary, law-abiding citizens from those he wishes to punish.  When Cordell assaults the precinct in which Forrest is being held, McCrae is thrown to his death and Forrest and Malloy must go on the run, hoping to stop Cordell before their fellow officers catch them.  The whole thing concludes during a slam-bang chase set during the NYPD's St Patrick's Day Parade, which leads to a dock showdown.

This is a GREAT 80's action/horror film, with only some inconsistencies in Cohen's script (Why, exactly, did the higher-ups conspire to send Cordell to prison?  And why does brain damage make him invulnerable?) keeping it from being a genuine classic.  Look for director Sam Raimi (the Evil Dead and Spider-Man trilogies) as a parade performer.  Followed by the (even better) Maniac Cop 2 and the (regrettable) Maniac Cop 3.  As an aside, I got to sit next to Atkins for an entire weekend while manning a booth at Crypticon last year; he's a genuinely nice guy with a lot of great stories!

   



 

Entry Thirty-Seven: Forced Entry (1973)

Forced Entry (1973)

Dir: Shaun Costello

"He was trained to kill...and kill...and kill...and kill."

I took a bit of a break, but now Fuck Flick February continues!  This one is a bit rougher than the last, but please join me as I throw on my best glare-reducing yellow shades, pour an extra-stiff cocktail and journey down into the Basement of Sleaze to spend a little time with the infamous 'Nam vet rape-porn XXX flick Forced Entry.

After a pretty pretentious introduction that includes a newspaper clipping describing "Vietnam disorder" and a quote from an Air Force psychologist describing the need for Vietnam veterans to "find an enemy...ANY enemy," we're introduced to porno legend Harry Reems (Deep Throat) as our nameless antagonist-I'ma call him Joe, since he works at "Joe's Friendly Service" station and my friend Joe acquired this film for me (how's that for a legacy, J.C.?).  After Joe pumps gas for a buxom young woman, he follows her home and, after climbing her fire escape, watches her fuck her boyfriend, who kinda looks like David Cross with hair.  After they finish, Joe goes downstairs and, in the movie's best scene (and a genuinely great acting moment by Reems), admires his reflection in the mirror, his facial expression going from dour to lighthearted, before sticking his chewing gum upon it and imagining himself back in 'Nam, complete with combat helmet.  He then breaks into the woman's apartment and forces her to blow him while images of Vietnamese children and explosions flash across the screen(!), promising to kill her quick if she does a good job.  After she finishes blowing him, Joe slits her throat (a VERY unconvincing makeup effect).  After going back to work, Joe encounters a cute woman who asks him for directions, and...JESUS CHRIST, MORE 'NAM FOOTAGE!  This time, we see children laughing, singing and dancing in a village juxtaposed with what appear to be random explosions.  Joe follows "direction woman" home and forces her to go down on him at gunpoint, while he laughs at the prospect of anally violating her...Oh yeah, he makes her lick his balls, too, and says "Take it easy with those teeth, lady; you bite me, I'll put a bullet through your head!"  Joe is unsatisfied with the eventual anal experience ("You got my prick all full of shit!"), and somehow kills "direction woman" by cutting her shoulder.  Later, Joe fills up the van of a lesbian couple (in another genuinely effective shot, Joe's "Nam vision" is superimposed upon the van's backdoor windows while they laugh together) and follows them home but, when they invite him to join their tryst, he suddenly goes into full-on  flashback mode, revisiting both his recent crimes and his experiences in 'Nam before shooting himself in the head.

Y'know, I don't really know what to say about Forced Entry.  Yeah, it's basic concept is offensive (it manages to exploit both woman and veterans), yet it's so goddamn pretentious that it's tough to take seriously (the "'Nam footage" flashbacks that interrupt every "intense scene" are so obvious and ham-fisted that it's hard not to laugh at them).  This film does have a deserved legacy, however; it inspired Scorsese's Taxi Driver and predates the "Nam-vetsploitation" genre (My Friends Need Killing, First Blood).  It was shot on 16mm, which only enhances it's scuzzy atmosphere.  If you've read this, you don't really need to see it.

Entry Thirty-Six: Liquid Sky (1982)

Liquid Sky (1982)

Dir: Slava Tsukerman

"The craziest science fiction movie ever..."

Okay, after only one movie, I need a break from hardcore.  But I'm sick and I can't sleep due to a rattling cough, so I'm heading back to the Basement of Sleaze and hoping that shooting up a little Liquid Sky will make me feel better...

Androgynous Anne Carlisle (Crocodile Dundee, Larry Cohen's Perfect Strangers) plays both bisexual, new-wave fashion model Margaret and gay junkie model Jimmy (who has a great, '80s Bowie look).  Margaret lives with her irritating, volatile performance-artist girlfriend Adrian (Paula E. Sheppard, Alice, Sweet Alice), who deals the titular drug.  A tiny flying saucer lands on Margaret and Adrian's windowsill, piloted by aliens who are addicted to a pheromone released by human beings during orgasm.  While a German scientist who's been tracking the aliens (the awesomely-named Otto von Wernherr, also in Perfect Strangers) arrives in NYC on the trail of the aliens, Margaret fucks her ex, who ends up dead with a crystal shard in his skull (the aliens' "harvesting" of the pheromone results in the death of the victim).  After she's raped by one of Adrian's junkie customers (who dies in a similar manner to her ex), Margaret gleans some notion of what's going on, and both Jimmy and Adrian die after having sex with Margaret during a photo shoot.  In the movie's best scene, a vengeful Margaret dons glow-in-the-dark makeup and picks up a guy who'd tried to rape her earlier.  She brings him back to her place and seduces him, ensuring his demise.  When von Wernherr shows up to capture the aliens, Margaret kills him and, as the diminutive E.T.s prepare to depart, shoots herself up with heroin (which produces the same endorphin as orgasm) and disappears.

This was (deservedly) a big underground hit on its initial release.  It has a great, garish 80's new-wave look, stunning makeup, bold optical effects (the aliens' "heat vision" beat the similar effect in Predator by 5 years) and an eerie, synth-drone soundtrack.  Carlisle is great in her dual-role.  As of this writing, Tsukerman and Carlisle are planning a sequel.  Also, I just bought the novelization of this flick from Amazon for a quarter...THAT'S the power of the internet!

Entry Thirty-Five: Nightdreams (1981)

Nightdreams (1981)

Dir: F.X. Pope

A pair of scientists (including Andy Nichols, who was great as Max Melodramatic in Cafe Flesh) monitor a woman (Dorothy LeMay, a long-time adult actress whose sole "legit" credit is as an extra in Rutger Hauer's Blind Fury!) who is hooked up to an EKG machine as she masturbates.  She has a vision of a scary-as-fuck clown,  who pops out of a giant-sized jack-in-the-box and proceeds to eat her out.  She blows another clown while eerie lights flash red and blue and yet another clown laughs in the corner.  In a scene that will shatter any ideas you have of the world as being a good and just place, clown #1 stops eating her out and BEGINS FUCKING HER WITH HIS NOSE  (and yes, this is a XXX movie, so there ARE graphic penetration shots).  After our nasally-violated heroine cums all over the place, we cut back to the astounded scientists: "Her husband said she never had an orgasm!"  LeMay then admires her own ass in a mirror ("Such delicious cheeks!  And that perfect little asshole...sweet as a rose!")...and she starts beating off again.  She then imagines herself as a cowgirl having a lesbian tryst around a campfire ("Look at the bush on her!  I bet she's real wet underneath!  April showers bring May flowers!"), set to a cover of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," by future hitmakers Wall of Voodoo ("Mexican Radio").  These cowgirls, of course, are packing some serious heat in the form of giant, veiny dildos concealed in six-gun holsters. Next, in a scene that David Lean had to cut from Lawrence of Arabia, LeMay imagines herself in a tent in the desert with a bunch of Arabic dudes, one of whom she blows while another fucks her with a hookah (just kidding about the Lean thing)!  In the next scene (and I can't believe I'm about to write this), she begins giving a handy to a shifty, Peter Lorre-type in an alley when his penis comes to life and turns into a fetus while he makes noises not unlike those of E.T....

Y'know what?  I'm done with the play-by-play; I'm not gonna tell you any more.  I won't mention the Cream-of-Wheat mascot coming alive to receive a blowjob, or LeMay descending into hell to be eaten out by a demon (in a scene that looks A LOT like Ridley Scott's smoke-enshrouded visions of hell from Legend).  At this point, you've decided whether or not you want to see this movie (and, if you've made the correct decision, you're already searching your favorite torrent website).  This movie is GREAT and it's one of the last holdouts before XXX cinema became a completely shitty, shot on video affair.  With it's alternating garish and drab color scheme, juxtaposed high-class makeup and wardrobe with seedy locales and electronic music, the film plays like a new-wave fever dream.  It features gay and interracial couplings that still would have been considered "edgy" in 1981.  Director Pope is better known as Francis Delia, and would go on to direct music videos for the Plimsouls ("A Million Miles Away") and "Weird" Al Yankovic ("I Lost On Jeopardy")!  Co-screenwriters Rinse Dream and Herbert W. Day (AKA Jerry Stahl, who would go on to work on Twin Peaks and CSI and...um...Alf) returned the next year with the even-better Cafe Flesh.  For a bit of fun, try to imagine how the usual dolphin-flogging crowd might've reacted to this film during it's initial (pre-widespread VHS) release: they'd settle in nicely during the initial masturbation scene, get a good rhythm going on, then get to the clown scene and..."OH MY GOD!!!"   Anyway, check it out!     

Entry Thirty-Four: Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings (1994)

Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings (1994)

Dir: Jeff Burr

"They couldn't leave dead enough alone."

I know; I know.  This was supposed to be Fuck Flick February, and I WILL get to it (it might bleed into March), but I got a really great deal on the SOTA Toys Pumpkinhead 18" action figure, it arrived in the mail tonight and, since I'd watched the (superior) original fairly recently, I felt like popping in this unlikely sequel...

After a 50's-set prologue in which some J.D. kids who call themselves the Red Wings murder a backwoods feral child, we're introduced to small-town sheriff Andrew Robinson (Dirty Harry, Hellraiser) who has taken up this posting after a stint with the NYPD.  He's estranged from his daughter, Ami Dolenz (Can't Buy Me Love).  Roger Clinton (Bill's younger brother!) plays Mayor Bubba, who, immediately after introducing himself to Robinson, says something to the effect of "Jeez...Your daughter sure is pretty; hope something doesn't happen to her in this new town!"  This guy's the mayor?  What a prick...Dolenz meets up with and befriends some of the local teenagers, including Soleil Moon Frye (TV's Punky Brewster) as a hot goth chick, while Robinson gets acquainted with town doctor Gloria Hendry (Across 110th Street, Black Caesar, Hell Up In Harlem, Black Belt Jones...What a filmography!).  While on a joyride, Dolenz and her new friends run down an old woman, whom love interest J. Trevor Edmond (Lord of Illusions, Higher Learning) recognizes as a local witch.  After they journey to her home, the surprisingly mobile witch appears and places a curse on all of them.  Soon, the demon Pumpkinhead arises and begins killing off locals, while the now-hospitalized witch laments "He's arisen...it's happening again (ummm...Didn't you place the curse?)."  Linnea Quigley shows up just to bear her tits and be slaughtered (true story; Quigley's nude scene in this film inspired one of 14 year-old Michael James Harmon's earliest masturbatory experiences; does that make me a late bloomer?).  Anyway, it turns out (to no-one's surprise), that this iteration of Pumpkinhead is the spirit of the feral boy murdered in the beginning, and the older folks he's been slaughtering are the "Red Wings" kids from the opening sequence.  At the point of death, the witch reveals to Robinson that the feral child murdered in the opening was the son of Pumpkinhead (Pumpkinhead was previously portrayed as a demon who only arose to seek vengeance on the wronged and not as a creature capable of reproduction but...okay; the toy I have has anatomically-correct junk sculpted on it, so maybe he's capable of entering the bone-zone, though it makes no sense from a plot standpoint).  In the end, Edmond becomes the creature's main target and, after skewering Moon Frye, it decapitates him and sets it's sights on Dolenz.  Robinson tries to reason with the creature, but it gets blown away by a posse.

I love Stan Winston's Pumpkinhead (and I will cover it here, probably a year or two down the line); it's a genuinely scarey, atmospheric southern-gothic horror film with a GREAT monster and a fine lead performance by the great Lance Henriksen.  It's one of the unsung gems of the 1980's horror scene.  That said, from a story perspective, it's a one-and-done affair that doesn't leave room for a sequel, and it was not a hit.  Unsurpringly, then, this film started life as an unrelated horror screenplay called Blood Wings that LIVE Entertainment (who had acquired the Pumpkinhead license) picked and had re-written to cash in on those mad Pumpkinhead dollars (sarcasm-though to be fair, the original picture DID become a minor hit on video).  Director Burr (the undervalued Leatherface) does what he can, but only seems to be engaged during the kill scenes (which are effective).  The KNB effects are serviceable, but pale in comparison to the Winston originals.  The young actors are terrible, but Robinson and Hendry are at least watchable.  Not really worth a look; if you're a fan of the original, this is only going to bum you out.  This was accompanied by a (surprise hit) CD-ROM game (remember those?) and followed by two more, made for the Sci-Fi Channel sequels, which were even shittier.    

Entry Thirty-Three: Tanya's Island (1980)

Tanya's Island (1980)

Dir: Alfred Sole

"If you loved 'Emmanuelle' you'll go ape with D.D. Winters on...Tanya's Island!"

I had promised a few of you that February would be "Fuck Flick February," in which I'd write about some classic XXX features, but since I've misplaced my DVD copy of intended first entry Cafe Flesh, I'll ease you into the realm of erotic cinema with this blast of 80's softcore weirdness...

Tanya (D.D. Winters; more on her later) is a model who lives with her abusive artist boyfriend, called (snicker) "Lobo (Richard Sargent, The Stepfather, who exposes his dick during much of the film)."  After an argument, the subservient Tanya ("I only want to please you, Lobo!") notices smoke, white light and what appears to be the sounds of Lobo beating off emanating from beneath a closed door.  When she opens it, she discovers a room full of candles.  This is just the pre-credits sequence, folks, and after said credits (which feature tits-and-bush bearing Winters superimposed in 360-degree rotation over the names of the crew), we find Tanya and Lobo now living on a deserted island.  While Lobo spends his time painting, Tanya becomes aware of the presence of another on the island, and soon encounters a simian with striking blue eyes (whom she nicknames "Blue").  After Lobo discovers his pet pig decapitated, he spots Tanya frolicking with Blue and, in a jealous rage, attempts to rape her ("What was it like with him in the cave? Do you wish my body was covered with hair?!").  Eventually, Lobo traps Tanya in a cage and descends into savagery, while the "savage" Blue is forced to shift into the role of savior, assaulting Lobo's compound with dozens of cocoanuts.  After the battle, Tanya decides she's had enough from men of either species, and the indignant Blue rapes her.  All is well, though, as Tanya wakes up screaming; this has all been a nightmare brought on by a late-night viewing of Mighty Joe Young.      

When I covered director Sole's Alice, Sweet Alice, I lamented that he hadn't directed anything else of note; I completely overlooked this little gem, which was a major flop on release, but I like it.  It's early scenes are artful and surreal (the use of smoke and piercing light reminds me of Nicholas Roeg and precedes Blade Runner and Legend-era Ridley Scott), and the later island scenes have an appropriately naturalistic, documentary-style feel to them.  The (intentional) humor actually works (a rarity in films of this type).  I mentioned that I'd get back to Winters earlier; she's better known as Vanity (Action Jackson, The Last Dragon), future (at the time) Prince protege and lead singer of Vanity 6.  She's naked (a lot) for the first and only time in this film.  "Blue" was created by the effects dream team of Rick Baker, Rob Bottin and Steve Johnson, all of whom were on the cusp of doing bigger things (An American Werewolf in London, The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China, respectively).