Posts

Posted on

Brain Dead, A Day of Judgement, Humanoids from the Deep

Blue Monkey – 1987, Canada, 96m. Director: William Fruet.

Brain Dead – 1990, US, 84m. Director: Adam Simon.

A Day of Judgement – 1981, US, 93m. Director: Charles Reynolds.

Humanoids from the Deep – 1980, US, 80m. Director: Barbara Peeters.

BLUE MONKEY (1987) (AKA: Insect) An infection caused by a plant originating from a volcanic island in Micronesia causes its host to barf up a parasitic organism. The doctors at the local hospital—which is also the location of an experimental computer that can produce lasers, I think—are baffled, especially when the parasite metamorphoses into a weird bug. Luckily, one of the doctors knows an entomologist. This proves a feeble attempt at help when the bug is accidentally exposed to a growth hormone and transforms into a ginormous grasshopper, subsequently going on a killing spree by tearing the patients and staff asunder. Fortunately for the rest of the potential bug chow, straight-laced detective Steve Railsback is on site and ready to Serve and Protect, especially after the city enforces a building quarantine. Convenience is something the script of Blue Monkey has in strides. What it doesn’t have are interesting characters, intelligence, suspense, or convincing special FX, most of which are hidden within bad lighting. As for the title, it’s a reference to a recurring dream mentioned by a child. Sneeze and you’ll miss that plot point entirely. C– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

BRAIN DEAD (1990) Neurosurgeon Martin (Bill Pullman) is asked by college friend Reston (Bill Paxton) to study the brain of schizophrenic murderer Halsey (Bud Cort), who resides at mental institution, Lakeside, owned by Reston’s employer. Before his mind snapped and he killed his family, Halsey came up with some kind of formula that would’ve made the company millions. He destroyed his work but Reston believes the information still resides in Halsey’s brain, which is where Martin comes into play—to do selective brain exploration. Reality begins to blur when Martin wakes up as a patient at Lakeside, bringing into question whether he’s insane or part of some diabolical corporate plan. More cerebral thriller than anything else, Brain Dead is an interesting film, but it’s also a frustrating one. The fine line of Reality vs. Dreams isn’t quite as refined here as in other movies dealing with the subject—Lost Highway (1997), for example. But the film manages to overcome most of its obstacles thanks to a tight pace and strong acting by Pullman and Cort. It’s nothing special, but you’ll never be bored. B– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

A DAY OF JUDGEMENT (1981) Southern-based independent filmmaker Earl Owensby made a name for himself in the seventies by producing, writing, directing, and acting in several low-budget movies primarily made in his hometown of Shelby, North Carolina. The majority of Owensby’s films were action and exploitation titles, but by the eighties Owensby dipped his toe into the world of horror, starting with Wolfman in 1979 and ending with Rottweiler 3-D in 1983. In between came A Day of Judgement, a well-intended but meandering horror-melodrama. The advent of the swinging 1920s in a small Southern town turns the once God-fearing residents into unrepentant sinners. The departure of the disillusioned town priest is met with the arrival of a mysterious, scythe-wielding figure who gives the narcissistic residents a taste of their own medicine—after an old battleaxe poisons her neighbor’s dog, she’s pulled into her precious flowerbed by disembodied hands and down to the fiery pits of Hell. More naughty townsfolk are eventually collected into the Grim Reaper’s grip and dragged to Purgatory, where they repent and are given a second chance in the form of the tiresome “It Was Only a Dream” plot twist. A Day of Judgement wallows in its soap opera subplots to the point where I was starting to look at the clock. However, the film gets some credit for trying something different during the height of the slasher heyday, with the filmmakers placing an emphasis on character over splatter—although there is an impressive on-camera decapitation for the gore enthusiasts. According to Stephen Thrower (author of the terrific Nightmare U.S.A.: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents), the film failed to secure theatrical distribution and was release direct to video. It’s easy to see why. C (Currently unavailable.)

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP (1980) A small fishing community is besieged by a horde of aquatic creatures, which descend upon the town during its summer festivities. The deaths of several beach-goers interrupts the otherwise mundane interactions of the locals, including a racial spat between a group of bumpkins lead by Vic Morrow and a Native American fisherman. The watery beasts eventually move from murder to rape, impregnating their female victims to insure the continuation of their kind. It’s a colorful conglomeration of underwater horror titles like Creature from the Black Lagoon and Jaws, with added nudity and gore. The participation of a woman director (Barbara Peeters) gives the film an edgier vibe, but most of the splatter and T&A was shot by an uncredited Jimmy Murakami. The climactic attack on a beachfront night carnival is both funny and gruesome, and features impressive make-up FX courtesy of Rob Bottin. Great fun! B+ (Currently streaming Prime, Shudder, and Tubi.)

Posted on

Astro-Zombies, Mind Killer, Phantom of the Mall

The Astro-Zombies – 1968, US, 93m. Director: Ted V. Mikels.

Mind Killer – 1987, US, 86m. Director: Michael Krueger.

Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge – 1989, US, 91m. Director: Richard Friedman.

Zombie Nightmare – 1987, Canada, 83m. Director: Jack Bravman.

THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES (1968) Former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Wendell Corey, slums it in this rip-off of every Ed Wood movie from the fifties. Corey plays a G-Man looking for mad scientist John Carradine, who’s concocted a plan to create a race of superhuman beings—just like Bela Lugosi in Bride of the Monster—via “astro science” (i.e. assembling body parts from the recently dead to build Frankenstein-like zombies). Carradine’s creations ultimately get the best of him and go on a massacre. Plastic special effects abound. The gory action is intermixed with scenes involving a spy ring and the CIA, most likely due to the recent release of the James Bond film You Only Live Twice. With its plethora of polyester suits, beehive hairstyles, and knee-high boots, The Astro-Zombies will most likely cure anybody inflicted with nostalgia for the sixties. D (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

MIND KILLER (1987) Nebbish librarian Warren (Joe McDonald), who has no luck in meeting Ms. Right, stumbles upon a manuscript that promises the power of mind control. Despite being told by his coworker that the author was mysteriously murdered, Warren becomes obsessed with the document and turns into a regular Buddy Love. His newfound abilities spin out of control (in a squeamish scene, a coworker has his fingers sliced by a rogue paper cutter) and manifest into a small, sack-like creature that slowly bursts out of his body. Mind Killer borrows ideas from H.P. Lovecraft within the context of a low-budget direct-to-video movie, but there’s a good deal of care that went into the production. The acting and direction are solid, the make-up effects inventive, and the writing witty. The script’s funniest moment is when Warren’s roommate, in response to someone wondering how to get into politics, suggests, “Make bad movies. Third-rate actors have great success in politics.” Sadly, director Michael Krueger passed away a few years after the film was released. By no means a masterpiece, Mind Killer is harmless trash done well. B (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC’S REVENGE (1989) Fire-scarred Eric (Derek Rydall), the victim of sleazy land developers who a year earlier torched his house (and his face), haunts the air ducts of Midwood Mall, seeking justice against his oppressors. Eric’s arsenal of weapons includes fan blades that turn a security guard’s face into meat pie, a forklift that squashes another guard against an electrical box and causes the poor guy’s eyeballs to pop out, and a cobra(!) that’s filtered into the mall’s plumbing and conveniently slithers out of an occupied toilet, promptly chomping a man’s tallywacker. All of this comes blind to the mall’s bigwigs—including the Beauty Queen mayor, played effortlessly by Morgan Fairchild—none of whom seem the slightest bit worried when bodies start to pile up. They’re saving face over the mall’s dishonest origins, and the writers of this movie are saving face over the screenplay’s slow descent into the tried and true slasher formula. But for Phantom of the Mall, none of the half-baked ideas work. The film never sticks to its Gaston Leroux-inspired satirical elements, or the more serious splatter/body count flick it really wants to be. The movie has several humorous moments, including the spectacular demise of Fairchild, and the mall setting is a nice tongue-in-cheek element—but when Pauly Shore ends up being the funniest character in a movie, you might wanna reconsider. Co-writer Robert King became a prevalent television writer, known mostly for The Good Wife. C+ (Currently streaming on Shudder.)

ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE (1987) With better directing, acting, writing, and production accoutrements, Zombie Nightmare could have been a decent little film. Unfortunately it doesn’t have any of those and is mostly the pits. Young Tony Washington is witness to his father’s death at the hands of a pair of racist greasers. Years later, the now musclebound Tony (Thor frontman Jon Mikl Thor) becomes the victim of a hit-and-run, courtesy of a douchebag (future Hollywood director/producer Shawn Levy) and his cretinous friends. Tony’s mother seeks help from a voodoo witch doctor, who turns Tony into a ghoul-faced zombie hellbent on some much-deserved family justice. The rest of the movie revolves around the unimaginative—and bloodless—kills at the hands of the zombified Tony, all accompanied by the heavy metal rock soundtrack of Motörhead, Girlschool, and (naturally) Thor. Batman himself, Adam West, gets top billing, but his participation is limited. Wise choice, Adam. D (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

Posted on

Boardinghouse, The Body Shop, Don’t Look in the Basement, and The Severed Arm

Boardinghouse – 1982, US, 97m. Director: John Wintergate.

The Body Shop – 1972, US, 82m. Director: J.G. Patterson Jr.

Don’t Look in the Basement – 1973, US, 90m. Director: S.F. Brownrigg.

The Severed Arm – 1973, US, 91m. Director: Tom Alderman.

BOARDINGHOUSE (1982) Several bizarre deaths inside the infamous Hoffman homestead triggers a series of cold cases. Ten years later, a gold chain-wearing flake (Hawk Adly, a.k.a. director John Wintergate) buys the dwelling and turns it into a boarding house for Playboy model types. When Adly isn’t sleeping with his roommates he’s busy practicing transcendental meditation (and telekinesis!) in a pair of leopard print bikini briefs. But soon, unexplained accidents begin happening around the house. An ice pick levitates on its own and skewers one of the housemates in the hand. Another hallucinates blood dripping down the walls before she’s turned into some sort of cat creature. The boyfriend of one of the boarders is electrocuted in the bathtub and his body dragged off by a gloved individual who’s never seen again. There’s also a disabled Vietnam vet peeping through the windows, supplying the movie with even more gratuitous T&A shots and reminding the viewer of what the real objective of Boardinghouse is. Unfortunately, not even the frequent nudity will help those who choose to suffer through this interminable mess which, as of this writing, has inexplicably gained a cult following. Go figure. F (Currently not streaming.)

THE BODY SHOP (1972) (AKA: Doctor Gore) The sudden death of his wife turns Dr. Brandon, surgeon extraordinaire, into a modern day Dr. Frankenstein. The prominent doc (J.G. Patterson Jr.) murders young women and chops the bodies into pieces for spare parts so he can build the perfect mate. All of this bloodshed is aided by Brandon’s hunchback assistant (Roy Mehaffrey), who in the movie’s funniest scene is unable to put a lab coat on over his hump. “You have your own problems, don’t you?” answers the doctor. Another highlight features a victim waking up in the middle of having her hand amputated—she’s subsequently stabbed to death on the operating table. This is clearly a comedy. Not included in the severed limb jamboree is the obligatory search for a brain, but judging from Dr. Brandon’s tastes in pin-up bimbos he’s not interested in their minds. Considering the amount of kitsch found in The Body Shop, it’s not hard to believe Patterson Jr. stemmed from the world of Herschell Gordon Lewis, the cinematic inspiration behind this ceaselessly bizarre gore job filmed in North Carolina. C (Not currently streaming.)

DON’T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT (1973) (AKA: The Forgotten) Following a series of murders committed by two patients, Nurse Rosie Holotik is hired at a remote psychiatric institute. The deaths are brushed off by new head doctor Annabelle Weenick, who warns Holotik about the dangers of working in such a place. Holotik is undisturbed by these warnings and goes about her job like a professional. That is until a patient has her tongue cut out and the phone lines are sabotaged. A telephone repair man is sent to the clinic but ends up getting sexually assaulted by a strung-out nympho; he’s later found killed. The film then rips off the much better Asylum by revealing that Weenick is not actually a doctor but a patient, which “explains” her many nefarious deeds throughout the course of this extremely dull and predictable movie, which was shot on a shoestring outside of Waco, Texas. C– (Currently streaming on Prime.)

THE SEVERED ARM (1973) A spelunking accident spells disaster for six friends trapped in a cave. When starvation sets in, they make the decision to resort to cannibalism and forcibly cut off a friend’s arm for food. The armless victim (Ray Dannis) gets revenge after the party is rescued by hacking off the arm of one of the six (John Crawford). Two of the friends, one of whom is a cop, do their own investigation and, in a tasteless scene, manipulate Dannis’s daughter (Deborah Walley) into feeling sorry for Crawford’s poor health—despite the fact she went through the same turmoil with her father years earlier. But they don’t care because the majority of the characters in The Severed Arm are soulless jerks with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. So why should viewers care about anything that happens in this lifeless exercise in mundane storytelling? They shouldn’t. Talky and trite. D (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

Posted on

The Dead Walk! A Short Guide to Zombie Movies—Part 2

BURIAL GROUND (1981) (AKA: The Nights of Terror, Zombi 3) A professor doing research on Etruscan black magic releases a horde of zombies that descend on a nearby country estate. In a scene very reminiscent of Fulci’s Zombie, one of the maggot-infested corpses reaches out of the ground and attacks a couple having sex in a graveyard . More people in the midst of sexual escapades are interrupted by the zombies—until one of the cast tries destroying them with a gun but ends up getting eviscerated. The remaining survivors lock themselves in the house but underestimate the intelligence of the living dead, which use axes and scythes to smash their way in. The professor eventually turns up as a zombie and makes lunch out of one of the humans by ripping the guy’s guts out and eating them. The last of the breathing characters seek help at a neighboring monastery only to find the place crawling with the hungry undead—Karin Well has her nipple bitten off in the film’s most memorable scene. Burial Ground is an incredibly idiotic but nicely atmospheric entry in the Italian zombie sweepstakes that makes no pretenses for being anything other than a full-throttle splatter epic. B (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

DAWN OF THE MUMMY (1981) The last ten minutes of this movie are fast-paced and exciting. It’s too bad the rest of the film is a waste of time. In Ancient Egypt, a high priestess places a curse on the tomb of a powerful pharaoh. In modern times, a group of fashion photographers and models on a magazine shoot run into a tomb raider (George Peck) whose discovery of the cursed burial chamber has brought the pharaoh and his servants back from the dead as bloodthirsty zombies. These bandaged stiffs are pretty lively for 5,000-year-olds, and they go about tearing people to pieces and gorging on the leftovers. There’s a sequence where the mummies crawl out of their sandy graves in the sun-bleached desert that gives the film some much-needed visual imagery. Why it takes over an hour for the majority of the gory action to materialize is a question the writers of this Dawn of the Dead cash-in never answer. I’m assuming it’s to pad out the endless 92 minutes of this clinker. C– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) A weaponized toxic gas created by the military—and secreted away in canisters in the basement of a medical supply warehouse—is accidentally released by a couple of meatheads. The gas reanimates the place’s medical cadavers and eventually seeps into the nearby cemetery, turning the corpses into an army of hungry zombies. The characters in this movie discuss how to kill a zombie, directly referencing George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and the idea of destroying its brain. But unlike your typical walking dead, the zombies here can’t be put down by demolishing the brain—or by any other means. This proves bad news for a group of punk rock teens partying at an abandoned graveyard just as its rotting residents decide to do a little partying of their own. Abandoning the rules created by Romero (and subsequently used in every zombie movie), Return of the Living Dead‘s fresh take on the subgenre not only makes for an exciting film but creates an idea that eventually seeps into the zombie pop culture lexicon: the brain-eating ghoul. Smart, funny, and scary, Return of the Living Dead is in many ways the definitive zombie movie of the eighties. Sorry, George. Followed by sequels. A– (Currently streaming on Pluto TV and Tubi.)

ZOMBIE LAKE (1981) A woman skinny dipping in a French country lake is attacked by a green-faced zombie that emerges from below the water. This scene is supposed to evoke the fear we felt at the beginning of Jaws when a helpless swimmer is terrorized by the shark. Judging from the amount of close-ups of the woman swimming nude from below, the only thing you’ll feel is that director Jean Rollin mistook this production for a softcore porno. Another green zombie arises from the lake and kills a passerby. All of this is happening because, ten years earlier, German soldiers were massacred during WWII by the locals, and their bodies dumped in the lake. This places the majority of the present-day action in 1955, yet the fashions and cars are straight out of the seventies. We’re offered even more gratuitous T&A in the form of a women’s basketball team stripping nude and going for a swim before being submerged by zombies. The townsfolk have enough and band together to lure the walking dead into a burning mill. Technical goofs include a zombie chomping a woman’s neck but producing no wound, the image of a crew member in a mirror, a soldier’s jackboots are removed before being drowned but he returns later with a new set of shoes, and another solider is shot in the head but the action is out of sync with the sound of gunfire. The underwater sequences were obviously filmed in a pool dressed in seaweed. Julian de Laserna stepped in to direct additional scenes, resulting in the credit “A.J. Lazer.” Zombie Lake is often called the worst zombie movie of all time. You can’t argue with reason. D (Currently unavailable.)

Posted on

Backwoods, Bloody Birthday, The Headless Eyes

Backwoods – 1988, US, 86m. Director: Dean Crow.

Bloody Birthday – 1981, US, 84m. Director: Ed Hunt.

The Headless Eyes – 1971, US, 80m. Director: Kent Bateman.

Hellhole – 1985, US, 95m. Director: Pierre De Moro.

BACKWOODS (1988) (AKA: Geek) A couple on a weekend excursion in the Kentucky wilderness are alarmed by the amount of chicken heads that litter their campground. That’s because the decapitated animal parts are the work of a drooling redneck named William (Jack O’Hara) who, after consuming raw chicken, enjoys terrorizing city folk. William is the son of a Jed Clampett-like old coot (Dick Kreusser) who swears the boy is harmless, but viewers who’ve seen Deliverance know better. Things grow complicated for the couple when an act of self-defense causes Kreusser to succumb to a heart attack, sending William on a revenge-fueled killing spree. Fortunately, Final Girl Karen (Christine Noonan) is smart and, shedding her bookworm compassion, transforms into a survivalist badass and performs some revenge of her own. Despite being amateurish, silly, and utterly predictable, Backwoods is a hoot. B (Not currently streaming.)

BLOODY BIRTHDAY (1981) Bloody Birthday sounds like a typical teen body count movie—but the twist is the victims are done in by a trio of ten-year-olds born during an eclipse. Without explanation the children begin killing indiscriminately throughout their quiet suburban neighborhood. The first to go are a young couple having sex in the cemetery; the man has his head bashed in and the woman is strangled with a jump rope. The next day, the kids plan to get rid of their stern teacher because she assigns them homework the week of their birthday party. The local cops are baffled by the crimes, but smartypants teen Lori Lethin’s expertise in astrology helps her deduce that the three children were born without the capacity to emote sympathy. It doesn’t come to the surprise of the viewer when Lethin and her younger brother find themselves trapped in a house with the murderous trio in a suspenseful climax. In fact, the only thing that derails this deranged gem is its lackluster ending that, in the tradition of every other eighties horror film, leaves the door open for a sequel. B+ (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

THE HEADLESS EYES (1971) Arthur Malcolm (Bo Brundin) is a struggling, and largely untalented, artist living in New York City. Desperate to pay his rent, Arthur tries to rob a woman but gets his eye gouged out in return. The act of violence fuels both his artistic expression and his rage as Arthur starts slicing people up and (naturally) removing their eyeballs—which he uses to adorn his homemade sculptures (there’s even an “eye” mobile hanging from his ceiling). Unlike Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle, or to a lesser degree, Frank Zito in Maniac, we never get a sense of what made Arthur such a bumbling psychotic. The viewer can only assume the failed robbery turned him into the sniveling wimp the film presents him as. In that sense, The Headless Eyes fails miserably. What the movie does offer is a gritty time capsule of early seventies guerrilla filmmaking done by people who weren’t completely lacking in talent. Crude but effective gore and a genuine sense of despair help—but only so much. This is one that requires a certain taste. C (Currently not streaming.)

HELLHOLE (1985) Recurring B.J. and the Bear guest Judy Landers stars in this far-fetched but enjoyable bit of celluloid trash that often resembles a softcore porn film. College student Susan (Landers) witnesses the murder of her mother by a Joe Spinell lookalike and subsequently falls out a window. Suffering from amnesia, Susan is sent to a clinic for the mentally ill, where the majority of the female patients participate in nude catfights before being sent to “Hellhole,” an adjacent building run by the fiendish Dr. Fletcher (Mary Woronov). Fletcher is immorally experimenting with some sort of chemical lobotomy, the recipe for which has yet to be perfected. Her “test subjects” end up dead—or as deranged psychopaths she keeps locked up in a sub-basement prison. Susan stumbles upon Fletcher’s haphazard scheme and becomes the doc’s next target. While Landers is empty but likable, Woronov steals the show as the evil Dr. Fletcher, an egomaniacal closet case who drools over the half-naked women in her care—shortly after killing a patient, Fletcher plants a postmortem kiss. If anything, Hellhole is sleazy eye-candy for the eighties exploitation lover. B– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

Posted on

The Dead Walk! A Short Guide to Zombie Movies

For a review of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead please click here!

DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) George Romero’s concluding entry in his original Living Dead trilogy (1968-85) might lack the excitement of both Night and Dawn of the Dead, but the unfairly maligned Day of the Dead is actually a solid film filled with inventive storytelling and some truly knock-your-socks-off FX. The living dead now outnumber humans 40,000 to 1. A group of survivors made up of doctors and military personnel have turned an underground missile silo into a laboratory where they can experiment on the undead and figure out a way to coexist. The scientists are led by the maniacal Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty), whose knife-happy dissection of the zombies grants him the nickname “Frankenstein.” The soldiers are commanded by the hot-headed Rhodes (Joe Pilato), who believes the only good zombie is a permanently dead one. Romero was forced to scale down his script when the film’s budget was cut in half, resulting in a chapter that feels incomplete. Despite its budgetary restrictions, Day of the Dead is an intelligent and intense movie featuring good acting—Sherman Howard’s Bub is a zombie for the ages—and some of Tom Savini’s most complex and realistic make-up work. Much better than Romero’s later and much-praised Land of the Dead. B+ (Currently streaming on Hulu, Peacock, and Shudder.)

OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (1982) (AKA: Oasis of the Living Dead) Third Reich soldiers come back from the dead to protect their Nazi gold in this lousy French/Spanish Romero/Fulci clone. The movie uses the same template as previous zombie films: a group of people stranded in an exotic locate is pursued by hordes of the living dead. The difference with a production like Oasis of the Zombies is the inclusion of nondescript characters not worth giving a damn about. The characters in question are imbecilic treasure-seekers looking for lost gold in North Africa. Their arrival revives the decomposing corpses of German soldiers who take their sweet time killing the dolts. Those hoping for a gore-soaked zombie apocalypse will be sorely disappointed in director Jesús Franco’s handling of the material—too many uninteresting subplots take center stage, with the majority of the zombie action is saved for the last ten minutes. Even Francophiles will most likely give this one a wide berth. Absolute dreck—this makes Zombie Lake (1981) seem good by comparison. F (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

SHOCK WAVES (1977) A group of tourists on a boat cruise are rammed by a ghost freighter and seek shelter at a nearby island. Unfortunately, the place is overlorded by a former Nazi commander (Peter Cushing) who’s been living on the island since the war with a squad of undying SS super-soldiers experimentally designed to adapt to their environment—in this case it’s water, which makes the perfect hiding spot for the zombies to attack their prey. The first of the short-lived “Nazi Zombies” subschool of Night of the Living Dead-influenced films, Shock Waves utilizes its claustrophobic atmosphere by offering a story with more suspense than violence; a rarity within a subculture of movies usually made with the sole purpose of delivering extreme bloodletting. Cushing is on hand to provide backstory but only appears in a few scenes, while the lovely Brooke Adams (The Dead Zone) makes an appealing and smart damsel in distress. This film was later ripped off as Zombie Lake, which according to numerous horror and zombie film scholars is one of the worst zombie movies of all time. How’s that for accolades? Director Ken Wiederhorn would go on to make another zombie movie (to lesser results) with Return of the Living Dead II. B (Currently streaming on Peacock and Prime.)

RAIDERS OF THE LIVING DEAD (1986) 1986 might be the date with which this movie is stamped but it was obviously filmed years earlier. A terrorist sporting Converse Chucks and a Sherpa jean jacket (severely dating this film in the process) tries to sabotage a nuclear power plant but ends up electrocuting himself and dying. A would-be journalist (Robert Deveau), investigating an abandoned farm where a mass grave was discovered, stumbles upon zombies controlled by a fiendish doctor (Leonard Corman). A Christmas Story‘s Scott Schwartz plays a suburban teen who transforms a LaserDisc player into a ray gun, which becomes a handy bully- and zombie-repellent. Boris Karloff’s costar in The Mummy, Zita Johann, is a local historian who informs Deveau about the unsavory activities happening at the nearby prison involving Corman. This cheap hodgepodge of half-baked ideas and seemingly unrelated subplots has the feel of having been stitched together from the remains of two unfinished movies. The title is supposed to evoke the excitement of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Night of the Living Dead, but in reality Raiders of the Living Dead has more in common with a dead body: it’s stiff and lifeless. A real bore, with Schwartz giving a singularly terrible performance as the kid hero. D– (Currently not streaming.)

ZOMBIE (1979) (AKA: Zombi 2, Zombie Flesh Eaters) A New York harbor patrolman is murdered by someone with a bad case of dermatitis. Local journalist Peter (Ian McCulloch) investigates and, along with a woman named Ann (Tisa Farrow), travels to an Antillean island called Matul, the last known whereabouts of Ann’s scientist father—who might have ties to the crime. They find the place crawling with voodoo-spawned zombies, which give new meaning to the term “chowing down” as they devour anything in their path—even sharks aren’t immune to the zombie mayhem. Along with a couple of vacationers, Peter and Ann search for her father’s colleague (Richard Johnson) but instead stumble upon his eviscerated wife being eaten by the living dead. In a bad move, Peter and Ann stop in a cemetery for some afternoon delight but are put out when a Spanish conquistador emerges from his musty grave and tears apart their friends—despite its advanced age, the zombie still drips goo and other bodily fluids. More people are chomped and turned into zombies during the apocalyptic ending, but it’s too late as the walking dead have already invaded civilization. This Italian splatter epic is essentially ripping off Dawn of the Dead—it was promoted in Italy as a sequel to Romero’s film, there known as Zombi—but in recent years has secured respect and admiration from critics as a genuine work of atmospheric horror, and deservedly so. Lucio Fulci’s direction is slick and the pacing quick, leaving very little time for the viewer to recover from one gory extreme before the next strikes. Fulci followed the success of this with several more zombie-infused bloodbaths before making a legitimate (and ill conceived) sequel in 1988. B+ (Currently streaming on AMC+, Shudder via Prime.)

Stay tuned for Part 2 of The Dead Walk!

Posted on

Empire of the Ants, Night of the Demon, Prison

Empire of the Ants – 1977, US 89m. Director: Bert I. Gordon.

Mardi Gras Massacre – 1978, US, 95m. Director: Jack Weis.

Night of the Demon – 1980, US, 96m. Director: James C. Wasson.

Prison – 1987, US, 100m. Director: Renny Harlin.

EMPIRE OF THE ANTS (1977) A group of people on an island property tour conducted by a crooked land development company run smack into mutated ants, made oversized by a leaking canister of toxic waste. After the ants feast on a perspective buyer and his wife, they destroy the tour boat, trapping the remaining characters on the island. Unfortunately for the survivors, the island is home to a small town overlorded by the evil sugar refinery responsible for the chemical leak. Do I smell an anti-big business message here? Actually, this is one of many sci-fi-horror films to use revenge-seeking insects/sharks/birds/fill-in-the-blank to propel its story of humans striving for ecological co-existence within a man-made disastrous environment. But unlike Hitchcock’s The Birds, in which the animals win and the characters must learn to live (and respect) their new surroundings, the people in Empire of the Ants exist within the confines of a Bert I. Gordon movie and must fight to the death. It’s all a bunch of cheap but enjoyable malarkey made in the same mold as Mr. B.I.G.’s Food of the Gods. B (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

MARDI GRAS MASSACRE (1978) Shades of Blood Feast flow through this cheap splatter flick shot in New Orleans. The murder of a prostitute—her heart was removed—causes a stir within the nearby police precinct. Straight-laced detective Curt Dawson believes the killing has ritualistic overtones and more women will turn up slaughtered. Dawson gets involved with a hooker (Gwen Arment) who was an eyewitness to the victim’s interaction with the suspect, but ultimately drops the ball when another woman is slain while Dawson and Arment are screwing. But the viewer already knows the killer (Bill Metzo) is sacrificing his victims to some sort of Aztec god and the hearts are being used as a sacrificial offering. Metzo’s territorial imperative is eventually overcome—and he’s plunged into a river and drowns. Plodding and dull. D (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980) Bigfoot is running amok in Southern California and tearing people to pieces (while fornicating with others) in this enjoyably salacious splatterfest. A camper gets his arm ripped off in the opening credits, the blood pooling in a large footprint left by the beast. The love-making of a couple is interrupted when Bigfoot drags the man off into the woods as his hapless girlfriend watches in horror. The creature plays helicopter with a man in a sleeping bag and impales the poor schlub on a tree trunk. An anthropologist (Michael Cutt) takes several students into the forest to capture evidence of the hairy man-beast and discovers a backwoods cult of Bigfoot-worshippers. The gore was added later by the film’s producer, including the scene where a motorcyclist gets his cock torn off—a realistic detail that got the movie banned in the UK. This is director James C. Wasson’s only feature film credit, which he followed by making several gay porn movies under the aliases Jim/Clinton West—explaining Night of the Demon‘s unusual amount of exposed male buttocks. B (Currently not streaming.)

PRISON (1987) Irwin Yablans, the producer of Halloween, came up with the story for this jailhouse supernatural slasher filmed in Wyoming. Prison overcrowding leads the state to reopen the once-closed Wyoming State Penitentiary. This doesn’t sit well with a bleeding heart liberal board member (Chelsea Fields), who’s more concerned with prison reform, or with prison warden Lane Smith, who’s been haunted by nightmares ever since witnessing the execution of an innocent man at the penitentiary back in ’64. The warden has every right to feel uncomfortable, especially when a malignant presence begins massacring several of the inmates and guards, using all manner of creativity to turn victims into meat pies. Has the spirit of the wrongly executed prisoner returned for vengeance? The first and best of the prison-set horror films of the late eighties, Prison‘s story is aided by a good cast, interesting characters, and some wild special effects—many showcased during the explosive finale. This was given a limited theatrical release, but eventually found a much-deserved audience on videocassette. B (Currently not streaming.)

Posted on

Cat O’Nine Tails, Revenge of the Dead, Spider Labyrinth

The Cat O’Nine Tails – 1971, Italy, 112m. Director: Dario Argento.

Frankenstein ’80 – 1972, Italy, 85m. Director: Mario Mancini.

Revenge of the Dead – 1983, Italy, 89m. Director: Pupi Avati.

The Spider Labyrinth – 1988, Italy, 87m. Director: Gianfranco Giagni.

THE CAT O’ NINE TAILS (1971) A break-in at a genetics research facility doing experiments on criminal behavior might have something to do with a blackmail scheme overheard by a blind man (Karl Malden). When the blackmailer is tossed under a train, Malden seeks the help of a journalist (James Franciscus) to investigate the crime. More murders ensue, with anyone who’s connected to the blackmailer ending up on the wrong end of the killer’s blade. Not as sharply plotted as director Dario Argento’s debut film, Bird with the Crystal Plumage, this is still an effective story filled with the filmmaker’s visual flair and some suspense—including a scene where Franciscus’s girlfriend plays with a full glass of milk, unaware it’s poisoned. The movie runs too long and is often plodding, building to a lackluster conclusion that in more ways than one is a warm-up to the better executed climax of Deep Red (1975). C+ (Currently streaming on Plex and Tubi.)

FRANKENSTEIN ’80 (1972) The highly regarded Dr. Schwartz (Roberto Fizz) invents a serum (naturally called the Schwartz Serum), which prevents the body from rejecting organs during transplants. Unfortunately for Dr. Schwartz, his miracle serum is stolen by the fiendish Dr. Frankenstein (Gordon Mitchell), whose sense of self-importance is just as high as his disregard for his colleagues. Dr. Frankenstein uses the serum to create a monster called Mosaico (Xiro Papas)—once you see its face you’ll understand. Mosaico has a penchant for prostitutes (something the nearby town seems to be rife with), and after having sex with one he strangles her to stifle her screams of terror. More women turn up mangled, but the police are on the case. Will they put an end to Mosaico? Do you really care? Lots of T&A and crude gore effects abound in this Italian monstrosity. Funniest scene: Mosiaco using a beef bone to bash in the brains of a butcher. Director Mario Mancini was once a camera operator for Mario Bava. Judging from Frankenstein ’80, Mancini learned nothing. D (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

REVENGE OF THE DEAD (1983) (AKA: Zeder) In 1956, a young psychic girl is used to find the grave of a man named Paolo Zeder, a pseudoscientist who was researching the theory of “K-zones,” hidden spaces where time doesn’t exist and the dead can come back to life. Years later, a writer named Stefano (Gabriele Lavia) is given a used electric typewriter as a gift and discovers on the ribbon Zeder’s written account of his search for K-zones. Stefano believes this would make a great subject for his next book. He investigates, only to end up getting involved in the cover-up of a disgraced priest whose obsession with Zeder’s work possibly led him to the location of a K-zone. The title sounds like a typical Italian zombie gut-muncher, but Revenge of the Dead is more of a supernatural chiller. The plot never truly makes sense, but this is an eerie film with a foreboding atmosphere (especially during the first and last acts) and some imaginative imagery—including a scene where the floorboards above a makeshift grave pulsate. Subtle but effective. B (Currently not available.)

THE SPIDER LABYRINTH (1988) American professor Whitmore (Roland Wybenga) is sent to Budapest by a research company to locate a man named Roth, who had been working on an important project before he stopped communication. Whitmore meets the usual assortment of bizarre locals who warn him of impending doom, but it’s too late, as Roth is found hanging by a cobweb-strewn noose in his study. Later, a chambermaid who tried to help Whitmore is fatally knifed in the head by a woman with sharp teeth and in serious need of a hairbrush. After more murders, Whitmore is told by a hermit about an ancient cult of supernatural beings that worships a spider-like creature living within the city’s sewers. This conglomeration of Argento-like visual flare and giallo-inspired mayhem has a good pace but Wybenga is a bore and the plot is too convoluted to muster much excitement over. The silly “shock” ending will most likely leave viewers with a case of the giggles. C (Currently not streaming.)

Posted on

Classic ’80s: Poltergeist I-III

POLTERGEIST (1982) The Freeling family are living a blissful existence until their California tract home is invaded by malevolent spirits, turning their American dream into a nightmare. In a clever twist, the ghosts use the family’s television sets to enter the world of the living, snatching their youngest child, Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke), and releasing a hideous barrage of incidents involving monstrous tree demons, spectral hell hounds, and a devilish clown doll. The desperate parents (JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson) enlist the help of a parapsychologist (Beatrice Straight) and her team of paranormal investigators, forming a template for the modern haunted house movie that would be replicated for decades to come. The relatively simple premise is elevated thanks to elegant direction by Tobe Hooper—no doubt under the close supervision of producer Steven Spielberg—and the use of fantastic special effects, many of which still pack a wallop. But Poltergeist‘s real strength lies in its characters, all of whom are sympathetic and grounded in reality, making the horror that’s happening to them all the more suspenseful. An excellent cast gives it their all, but it’s Zelda Rubinstein who steals the show in a memorable turn as psychic Tangina. “This house is clean.” A (Currently not streaming.)

POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE (1986) Many fans find this sequel to Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist disappointing. I don’t. Yes, it lacks the original’s story structure and characterization, but Poltergeist II: The Other Side is extremely well made and has plenty to offer. The year after the events in the first film has displaced the Freeling family—their house was sucked into another dimension—and they’ve taken up residence with Diane’s (JoBeth Williams) psychic mother (Geraldine Fitzgerald). The peace and quiet of life anew is interrupted by the arrival of a malicious entity known as Reverend Kane (Julian Beck), a 19th century doomsday preacher who killed his followers by burying them alive in an underground cavern. As shown in the opening credits, Kane’s skeletal remains still reside in the cave, which is located directly under the Freeling’s old swimming pool. Since Zelda Rubinstein’s participation as Tangina is sparse, the Freelings place their trust in Native American medicine man Taylor (Will Sampson), who teaches Steve Freeling (Craig T. Nelson) how to protect his family from Kane’s onslaught of ghostly activity—the most impressive being a grotesque semi-humanoid creature regurgitated by Steve (initially designed by H.R. Giger). The writers throw logic out the window by having every female member of the Freeling family being clairvoyant (a slick way of delivering plot exposition), and creating a ridiculously contrived climax taking place on the “other side.” Yet Poltergeist II is a lot of fun and manages to overcome most of its problems thanks to good acting, faithful character arcs, and some powerhouse special FX sequences that rival anything in the first movie. B (Currently streaming on Cinemax via Prime.)

POLTERGEIST III (1988) After battling otherworldly creatures twice before, little Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O’Rourke) is once again stricken with a bad case of ghostitis. Now attending a school for gifted children in Chicago while living with relatives, Carol Anne is pulled into another ghostly nightmare by Reverend Kane—who’s inexplicably returned after having been banished to Hell at the end of Poltergeist II. Kane (Nathan Davis) can enter our world through the use of mirrors and reflective surfaces, which conveniently cover the walls of Carol Anne’s new home in a posh high-rise managed by her Aunt Pat (Nancy Allen) and Uncle Bruce (Tom Skerritt). In a repeat of the first film, Carol Anne is snatched by Kane and taken to the spirit dimension—where Pat and Bruce must go in order to save the young girl. Kane also abducts Carol Anne’s cousin (Lara Flynn Boyle), who returns from the other side as a murderous demon that gives Carol Anne’s disbelieving psychiatrist (Richard Fire) a taste of his own medicine. Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) senses danger but has less to do here than she did in the previous movies. Kane continues to step up his game by creating the world’s first Demonic Car Crash Derby in the building’s underground parking garage in a scene that’s both ridiculous and spectacular. Pat keeps referring to Carol Anne as a “little brat” and losing sympathy votes with the viewer, while Joe Renzetti’s themeless keyboard musical score makes one miss Jerry Goldsmith’s memorable orchestral work from the original. But I’m carping. Poltergeist III is actually a fairly entertaining film filled with inventive and complex FX work. One of the smartest moments in any of the three movies happens here when Tangina realizes she’s just as capable as Carol Anne of giving Kane what he seeks. The makeup effects were supervised by Dick Smith. B– (Currently streaming on Cinemax via Prime.)

Posted on

Cat People, Nightmare, and Tales from the Quadead Zone

Cat People – 1982, US, 118m. Director: Paul Schrader.

Nightmare – 1981, Italy/US, 98m. Director: Romano Scavolini.

Tales from the Quadead Zone – 1987, US, 62m. Director: Chester N. Turner.

CAT PEOPLE (1982) Virginal Irena, orphaned as a child, travels to New Orleans to meet her brother Paul. Irena is immediately put off by his strange behavior and the unnatural way in which he touches her. That’s because Irena is played by Nastassja Kinski, one of cinema’s great beauties, and Paul is played by Malcolm McDowell, whose frightening performance in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange pegged the actor as the go-to psychopath for years. A prostitute is nearly mauled to death by a black leopard, which—after being captured and caged at the local zoo—rips off the arm of an employee. Through this bloodshed, Irena learns the leopard is actually Paul—and she, like her brother, belongs to an ancient race of incestuous people who transform into felines when sexually aroused. This bit of news spells doom for Irena’s budding romance with zoologist Oliver (John Heard), who hopes to bed the woman before movie’s end—and to supply moviegoers with titillating scenes of Kinski in various stages of undress. Cat People is by no means a mindless exploitation vehicle, but a thoughtful reimagining of Jacques Tourneur’s classic 1942 scare show. As with the original, the on-screen violence is played down in favor of suspense, although there are a couple of brutal deaths. The screenplay (by Alan Ormsby) drops the ball by offering a needlessly detailed historical account of the cat people, turning the mystery into a bunch of malarkey. Good, nonetheless. B (Not currently streaming.)

NIGHTMARE (1981) (AKA: Nightmares in a Damaged Brain) Schizophrenic psychopath George Tatum (Baird Stafford) suffers from lurid and violent night terrors but is released from an institution after being declared cured. George subsequently goes to a Times Square peep show and is triggered by the sight of sexualized women because, as a boy, he saw his parents having sadomasochistic sex. George ditches his court-appointed psychiatric meeting, steals a car, and drives to Florida with the intention of murdering his high-strung ex-wife (Sharon Smith) and children. When he isn’t graphically slicing people up, he’s sniveling on the phone to his shrink. In a completely unbelievable scene, the police try to bully George’s nine-year-old son (C.J. Cooke) into admitting his involvement in the brutal death of a woman George himself killed hours earlier. Why the cops or George’s doctors (who’ve been frantically looking for him since his disappearance) don’t connect the dots is just one of many glaring plot holes in the scattershot screenplay. But Nightmare wasn’t made with logic in mind. Director Romano Scavolini focuses mostly on George leering at his soon-to-be victims and the gory aftermaths, which are gruesome and convincing. Tom Savini admitted to having been a consultant on the film but is credited on-screen as Special Effects Director. How’s that for false advertising? Ugly and dumb, but entertaining in a sleazy train wreck way. Perhaps the only slasher movie in existence to reference Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up. B– (Not currently streaming.)

TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE (1987) A woman (Shirley L. Jones) entertains her invisible ghost child by reading two bizarre stories from a book called “Tales from the Quadead Zone.” The first tale centers on an impoverished religious family that solves its hunger issues by eliminating family members with a rifle. In the sophomore segment, a bitter man (Keefe L. Turner) steals his brother’s dead body and humiliates the corpse by dressing it in a clown costume. This is followed by an endless monologue in which Turner expresses his childhood woes of playing second fiddle to his sibling, with predictably gruesome results. The movie circles back to Jones, who’s forced to kill her abusive husband after he pitches a fit over her obsession with their deceased child. At times it’s difficult to tell what’s going on because most of the dialogue is inaudible. That’s not unusual with shot-on-video films, but it’s especially bad in Tales from the Quadead Zone. Other examples of poor production quality are the muddy picture (the movie was shot on a camcorder), sloppy editing, and dollar store special effects. The worst part of this mess is the closing credits, which tells viewers, “Tales from the Quadead Zone will return!” Luckily, audiences were spared this promise. Because of its ultra-rare availability on physical media, the film has become a collector’s item within the VHS circuit. D– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)