Category: Uncategorized

Die Sister, Die! – 1978, US, 81m. Director: Randall Hood.

Evil Spawn – 1987, US, 70m. Director: Kenneth J. Hall.

Pin – 1988, Canada/US, 103m. Director: Sandor Stern.

DIE SISTER, DIE! (1978) Tired of living under the thumb of his begrudging sister Amanda (Edith Atwater), Edward Price (Jack Ging) arranges to have her bumped off. Edward expects to inherent the family manor once big sis is out of the picture and hires an ex-nurse (Antoinette Bower) with a history of deceased husbands to aid Amanda in suicide. When Amanda isn’t having nightmares about a murder that may or may not have happened in the house, she’s slowly figuring out big bro’s scheme. Die Sister, Die! strives for surprises and delivers a few, especially in a Hitchcockian scene where Edward uses a confessional box to listen to Amanda’s secrets. There are a couple of interesting plot twists, but as a whole the movie fails to muster an emotional response. Too many cold characters gum up the works—although the gears weren’t well-oiled to begin with. Director Randall Hood died before the movie was released. C+ (Currently streaming on Plex.)

EVIL SPAWN (1987) An aging starlet (Bobbie Bresee) desperate for a comeback takes an experimental youth serum made from space microbes. The process reinvigorates her beauty but slowly transforms her into an enraged bug monster. Like the Hulk, Bresee’s inner demon comes out whenever she feels threatened or angry—which, according to the pitiful script, is all the time. After being rejected for a role, Bresee tears her PA’s throat open and tosses their naked body into a swimming pool. She turns her agent’s face into a pile of oozing lumps with her insect-like stingers, and later impales her cheating boyfriend before being shot down by the cops. But the most insulting part of this incessantly amateur movie is the Sunset Boulevard-like narration supplied by a needless third-rate character. John Carradine’s two-minute scene was apparently filmed by Fred Olen Ray as stock footage for future projects. Evil Spawn‘s credited director, Kenneth J. Hall, is best known for the spoof Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout, a comparatively better viewing experience. D– (Not available.)

PIN (1988) Leon and Ursula are emotionally damaged siblings who live with their germaphobic mother and anal retentive father (Terry O’Quinn), a medical doctor who uses a life-size anatomy doll named Pin as a teaching tool for his children. Leon’s attachment to Pin becomes unhealthy, especially after he witnesses his father’s nurse having sex with the doll. The sudden deaths of his parents breaks Leon (David Hewlett) completely. After he and Ursula inherit the family manor, he dresses Pin in his father’s clothes and uses the doll to act out his growing psychopathic tendencies. Leon eventually turns into Norman Bates and the bodies start dropping. But unlike Psycho, this movie is never convincing in its portrayal of mental illness. Leon fails to feel like a real character worth caring for (made worse by an overblown performance by Hewlett), and the screenplay spends too much time on insipid melodrama more appropriate for an after school special. O’Quinn is wasted. C– (Not currently streaming.)

Berserker – 1987, US, 86m. Director: Jefferson Richard.

Nail Gun Massacre – 1985, US, 85m. Director: Bill Leslie, Terry Lofton.

Revenge – 1986, US, 100m. Director: Christopher Lewis.

BERSERKER (1987) Campers venturing into Utah wilderness are murdered by the vengeful spirit of a tenth century Viking warrior in this by-the-numbers slasher. An obnoxious group of teenagers (all of whom look old enough to have teens of their own) renting a cabin in infamous Rainbow Valley are hunted and dispatched by the bloodthirsty specter, which dresses in bear skins and uses animal claws to fillet its victims for a food source. We know this because one of the dimwitted characters bores his friends (and the viewer) by reading from a book on historical Nordic cannibalism. This is followed by an equally dull scene where two old timers endlessly talk over a game of chess. In short, if you’re looking for a movie with energy, Berserker is not for you. The characters are dullards you’ll want to see splattered across the screen. Unfortunately the movie never delivers on that front, instead settling on someone off camera squirting fake blood at the actors’ faces. A bonafide turkey. D (Currently unavailable.)

NAIL GUN MASSACRE (1985) A woman is gang-raped by a group of scumbag construction workers in the opening scene. Moments later, one of the scumbags is killed by someone in a blacked out helmet, wielding a pneumatic nail gun. And that’s pretty much the plot of Nail Gun Massacre, a sleazy but fairly enjoyable low budget splatter flick shot in Texas. The next offender in the group is ambushed while peeing in the woods—he’s nail-gunned in the balls while his friend has his hand chainsawed off before receiving a round of nails to the neck. A traveling handyman and his girlfriend are slaughtered while having sex against a tree in a completely pointless but titillating moment. A construction foreman is surprised after the killer jumps out of his swimming pool and guns him down commando-style, his body falling onto a burning gas grill in the movie’s funniest scene. Much of Nail Gun Massacre is done tongue-in-cheek, lending a little more credence to the film’s excessive body count and T&A (there’s a fair amount of male nudity to balance out the equation). For those who found The Toolbox Murders to be up their alley. B– (Currently not streaming.)

REVENGE (1986) More people are butchered by the dog-worshipping cult members of Caninus in this sequel to Blood Cult (1985). The first to go is a prying reporter doing a story on the murders from the first movie—she’s sliced up the middle with a steel blade. The next to get bumped off is a farmer who’s hatcheted in the head, followed by a bird watcher whose leg is chopped off after stepping in a bear trap. The squared-jawed sibling (John Wayne’s son, Patrick) of one of the victims from Part 1 investigates his brother’s death, leading to more killings—a hot tub decapitation is the film’s bloodiest set piece—and a conspiracy involving a big shot senator (John Carradine). Who is getting revenge for what is never made clear, although one can expect a certain amount of inconsistency in low-budget splatter movie-making. But what’s more troubling is the fact Revenge is sparse with the red stuff, the main ingredient that made Blood Cult such a video rental success back in the day. Much like the bulk of director-writer Christopher Lewis’s features, Revenge has its share of characterization and story structure, making it all the more disappointing with an ending so ludicrously overblown one wonders if it was all just a joke on the filmmaker’s part. Carradine reads from cue cards and Wayne Jr. mugs for the camera. C (Currently not streaming.)

Alucarda – 1977, Mexico, 78m. Director: Juan López Moctezuma.

The Awakening – 1980, UK, 100m. Director: Mike Newell.

The Boneyard – 1991, US, 98m. Director: James Cummins.

Shocker – 1989, US, 109m. Director: Wes Craven.

ALUCARDA (1977) (AKA: Sisters of Satan) In 1865, young Justine (Susana Kimini) is sent to live in a convent where she meets another orphan, Alucarda (Tina Romero), whose obsession with death leads them to a nearby crypt and the opening of Alucarda’s mother’s coffin. The act bewitches both girls into reciting a Satanic prayer and invoking a demonic power that possesses them. Justine and Alucarda confess their love for each other, perform blood rituals, and participate in gypsy orgies. A priest (David Silva) decides to rid the evil from the two girls by carrying out a torturous exorcism, which backfires and results in a nun being immolated and decapitated. Alucarda features enough nudity, violence, and visual imagery to fill two movies, making its scant 78 minutes feel all the more fresh and exciting. In fact, Alucarda succeeds where so many European exploitation/Exorcist-inspired movies failed simply because the makers were thoughtful enough to write a script. Avoid the heavily censored version currently on YouTube. B (Currently unavailable.)

THE AWAKENING (1980) The pregnant wife of high-strung archeologist Charlton Heston slips into a coma while accompanying her husband on a dig in Egypt. Heston’s work priorities send him back into the field, where he discovers the lost tomb of Egyptian queen Kara, whose sarcophagus is opened at the exact moment his wife gives birth to a baby girl. A series of bizarre deaths in the wake of the tomb’s opening plagues Heston and his daughter (Stephanie Zimbalist) who, come her eighteenth birthday, realizes she’s the reincarnation of the evil Egyptian pharaoh. In the tradition of The Omen, those closest to Heston meet creatively gruesome ends at the hands of the spectral Kara—including Heston’s second wife, who plunges through the ceiling of a greenhouse and is impaled on a shard of glass. But unlike The Omen, The Awakening is too sedate to get excited over. None of the characters are worth caring about, and their interactions often feel melodramatic and silly; a subplot in which everyone equates Heston’s interest in Kara to an obsession grows increasingly tired. The feature film directorial debut of Mike Newell, before he went on to make real horror movies like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. C (Currently unavailable.)

THE BONEYARD (1991) Homicide detective Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson) enlists the help of distraught psychic Alley Oats (Deborah Rose) to help solve a case involving the remains of three unidentified kids who were abducted and force fed dead flesh by a mortician before he killed himself. Unfortunately for our protagonists, the young victims are reanimated as ghoulish zombies and turn the local corner’s office (dubbed “the boneyard”) into a buffet of glistening innards as they feast on the staff during the quiet graveyard shift. The makers of this film have obviously seen Return of the Living Dead and Dead Heat. It turns out the mortician was descended from a family cursed by an ancient Chinese warlock—and the victims aren’t children but some sort of mummified demonic creatures. I think. The plot is convoluted and makes little sense, but that doesn’t matter because this movie is all about style, and luckily The Boneyard is swimming in it. Director/writer James Cummins never allows the gory action to overwhelm the story, but instead places the well-written characters at center stage and creates a few suspenseful set pieces. A highlight is Phyllis Diller’s pampered poodle being turned into an unstoppable ten-foot tall monster. Slight but inventive fun. B– (Currently streaming on Prime.)

SHOCKER (1989) A small town is torn apart by a series of vicious murders committed by a ranting television repairman named Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi). Pinker’s identity is exposed by teen Jonathan Parker (Peter Berg) after the high schooler has a dream in which Pinker slaughters his family—an act that materializes in reality and ultimately sends Pinker to the electric chair. But the unstoppable Horace comes from the Freddy Krueger generation and soon returns from the grave via black magic, subsequently body-jumping into Parker’s friends in order to enact bloody revenge. With a lack of substantial clues, and a string of bodies connected to his son, Parker’s dumbbell cop father (Michael Murphy) places the teen under arrest, and sets the third act in the tried-and-true Hitchcockian mold of the innocent-man-on-the-run. There’s some interesting ideas floating around here, but Shocker is too disjointed and silly to be truly effective, made worse by an unconvincing performance by Pileggi as Horace. He’s a good actor (proven on nine season of The X-Files), but here comes off as a cut-and-paste Krueger wannabe; a precursor, perhaps, to De Niro’s Kruegeresque performance in Cape Fear (1991). Director Wes Craven infuses the story with several inventive set pieces, although one can’t help but compare Shocker with the majority of the Elm Street sequels and admit with full confidence that Freddy did it better. Sorry, Wes. C– (Currently unavailable.)

Beyond the Living Dead – 1973, Italy/Spain, 97m. Director: José Luis Merino.

The Black Room – 1982, US, 82m. Director: Elly Kenner, Norman Thaddeus Vane.

The Other Hell – 1981, Italy, 87m. Director: Bruno Mattei.

Simon, King of the Witches – 1971, US, 99m. Director: Bruce Kessler.

BEYOND THE LIVING DEAD (1973) (AKA: The Hanging Woman) A man (Stelvio Rosi) arrives at a mountainside village to collect an inheritance, only to bump into the corpse of the Countess to whom he’s the sole heir. The woman’s death sets off a chain reaction of events, including a graphic autopsy, a police inquiry, and family turmoil when its revealed Rosi has inherited the Countess’s entire estate. The Countess’s brother (Gérard Tichy) is experimenting in bringing the dead back to life, and his daughter dabbles in black magic. The cops peg a half-witted gravedigger (Paul Naschy) for the Countess’s murder when they discover nefarious items in his quarters, but he turns out to be a red herring in the form of a necrophiliac—he’s later served some undead justice when he’s entombed alive in a mausoleum. Those looking for a Romero-like zombie bloodbath in this slow-moving European production are better off looking elsewhere. Talky and stiffly acted. C– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

THE BLACK ROOM (1982) Unfulfilled by the lack of sex at home, married father Larry (Jimmy Stathis) rents a room in the Hollywood Hills to use for afternoon delight. The room, decked out in black curtains and candles, looks like a set leftover from a porno, and it’s just perfect for Larry’s bevy of L.A. beauties. What Larry doesn’t know is the owners of the house are a pair of Satanic, voyeuristic siblings (Cassandra Gava and Stephen Knight) who kidnap his sex partners and drain their blood in a transfusion for Knight, who suffers from a rare blood disorder. The Black Room might lack structure but it’s an interesting take on the vampire theme, and its AIDS metaphor is perhaps more obvious now than back in 1982. Character takes precedent over gore and the writing is smart enough to not allow Larry to become a macho jerk who saves the day, but a flawed individual who gets a taste of his own medicine when his wife (Clara Perryman) starts using the black room for her own needs. Whether feminism was on the screenwriter’s mind or not, The Black Room ends up being a thoughtful, albeit exploitative, little doozy. B (Currently unavailable.)

THE OTHER HELL (1981) A knife-happy nun dissects a fellow sister in an underground laboratory and removes her victim’s uterus. In the adjacent convent, a Bible erupts in flames and stigmata appears on a nun before she convulses and dies. A freethinking priest (Carlo De Mejo), who dismisses Satan, is sent to investigate and discovers a history of diabolical happenings within the convent. All of this is the product of black magic conjured by a demented Abbess (Franca Stoppi) who years earlier gave birth to a deformed child—the product of an unholy union with the Devil. More incomprehensible, exploitative nonsense made in Italy by unimaginative individuals who’ve seen The Exorcist. The sight of a priest’s charred head in a tabernacle is the only original moment in an otherwise disparagingly witless movie. F (Currently available on YouTube.)

SIMON, KING OF THE WITCHES (1971) Simon (Andrew Prine) is an inauspicious warlock who lives in a storm drain. After being taken in by the police for vagrancy, Simon makes friends with a male prostitute (George Paulsin), who later introduces him to Hercules Van Sant (Gerald York), a decadent bigwig who hires Simon to show off his magical skills at parties. Hercules’s entourage doesn’t take Simon seriously, and after they berate the man and his profession, Simon seeks revenge—starting with a pompous party guest who writes Simon a bad check. Simon meets Sarah (Ultra Violet—one of Andy Warhol’s superstars), a self-proclaimed Queen of the Witches, who holds Satanic black masses in her candlelit lair and who Simon denounces as a charlatan. Simon’s newfound celebrity gains him his own small following, and with the strengthening of his powers crosses over to the dark realm—queue the flashy, acid trip-like montage that represents Simon’s ascension into another plane of existence. Prine is charismatic, but his character is too cold to care about; much like Simon, the film itself is empty and doesn’t offer the viewer any moments of razzle-dazzle. A missed opportunity. C (Currently streaming on Tubi.)