RETARD-O-TRON III (2013) ** ½

Here’s the third and as of this writing, final entry in the infamous mixtape series.  Whereas the first two collections had a certain structure, this one feels more like a hodgepodge.  The reoccurring bits aren’t nearly as entertaining this time out (like the cooking show scenes), and it all seems a bit tame compared to the previous installments.  At least there aren’t any Jackass style stunts and skateboarding accidents this time around. 

The most memorable bit revolves around some… shall we say… unorthodox karaoke.  It’s the Japanese clips that are probably the most fun.  They include a synchronized enema fountain, a naughty McDonald’s, a giant soda machine that dispenses topless girls, and a guide to dating that revolves around puking on your partner.  Other highlights showcase mixed wrestling, clips of awful R & B performers on public access TV, a montage of humongous breasts (some of which would make Mariko Morikawa look like a candidate for the Itty Bitty Titty Committee), spaghetti wrestling, a montage of Turkish rip-offs, and an interview with young rappers Kriss Kross.  Although this entry doesn’t have any movie trailers, there are plenty of film clips for connoisseurs of cinematic cheese like Bloodsport, Space Mutiny, The Outer Limits, Lou Ferrigno’s Hercules, Future Force, Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout, Mr. No Legs, Strike Commando, The Believer’s Heaven, Don’t Go in the House, Easy, TerrorVision, Loose Shoes, Winterbeast, Light Blast, and Rhinestone.  There are also plenty of other wacky excerpts I couldn’t identify including some pretty wild looking Kung Fu, Japanese, and Bollywood movies. 

I will say the porn clips aren’t quite as shocking this time out.  Either that or maybe I’m just becoming more jaded.  Either way, this is a noticeable step down from its predecessors, but there’s still enough here to keep the curious entertained.  Just be sure you know what you’re getting yourself into first. 

RETARD-O-TRON II (2008) ***

Here is another warped mix tape courtesy of the depraved minds at Cinema Sewer.  Like its predecessor, it’s vulgar, disgusting, and often very funny.  The viewer litmus test can be found in the very first segment, which is a compilation of XXX blowjob clips of girls gagging who all sound like Donald Duck squawking.  It’s the kind of thing where once you hear it, you can’t unhear it.  If you already kind of shook your head at that description, then there’s probably no reason to read further. 

The clips from cheesy movies were my favorite bits.  Some of the best moments include the hopelessly white bread rap battle scene from Teen Witch, the turkey monster from Blood Freak, and the giant sheep from Godmonster of Indian Flats.  We also see snippets from the likes of The Killer Shrews, Pieces, Cool as Ice, Robot Monster, Demons 2, From Hell It Came, Lady Terminator, The Calamari Wrestler, Zaat!, Naked Blood, The Giant Claw, The Story of Ricky, and Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot.  Trailers for Eat My Dust, Food of the Gods, Dead End Drive-In, Wonder Women, and Black Shampoo (“A woman entices!  A chainsaw slices!”) are also shown. 

Another fun running theme is the sections on failed TV pilots like The Man with the Power, Men of the Dragon, The Questor Tapes, ExoMan, Northstar, and Infiltrator.  One of the many highlights is a weird video of a naked Steve Vai fan offering herself up to the guitarist (which ends in a truly memorable way).  We are also treated to a bunch of oddball Japanese commercials, extreme wrestling matches, and Arnold Schwarzenegger clips (the funniest being his appearance on The Dating Game).

If you love compilations of weird B-movie shit and can stomach the sight of gonzo porn, you’ll probably dig it.  As with most of these kinds of things, your mileage may vary.  I for one could’ve done without the stuff with the graffiti artists, the Jackass wannabe clips, and the scenes of motorcycle and skateboarding tricks gone wrong.  The gross porn clips (which include women puking goldfish, jizz snorting, and disgusting bloopers) will probably be a dealbreaker for some, but this collection is just as fun, if not better than the first one. 

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMITYVILLE (2024) **

No budget maverick Mark Polonia delivers what I believe is the first Amityville western.  In a franchise filled with exponentially more lows than highs, delivering a first for the series is worth something at the very least.  (Then again, since Amityville is in New York I guess that technically makes it an “eastern”.)

It’s 1846 and a couple of bounty hunters (Ken Van Sant and Titus Himmelberger) are after a bank robber named Mathias Black (Noyes J. Lawton).  The trail leads to a small town called (what else?) Amityville, where the townsfolk seem all too eager to have their new arrivals leave as soon as possible.  Turns out they are all under the spell of an evil entity who lords over the town.  It’s then up to our rugged pair of lawmen to confront the entity and set the town free. 

The surprising thing about Once Upon a Time in Amityville is that Polonia handles the western stuff rather well.  I’ve seen so many low budget westerns that look laughably inauthentic when it comes to their western settings.  This one isn’t so bad considering the budget he was working with. 

The Amityville scenes well… let’s just say it all plays out like your typical Polonia joint.  That’s not a knock really, especially if you’re a fan of his work and/or already know what you’re getting into.  I did like how he tried to tie some of the elements back (forward?) to the original movie (like the windows, the glowing eyes, and the flies). 

There are some laughably bad moments along the way.  The reveal of the evil entity will have you in stitches as it looks more or less like a dime store Halloween decoration.  The way it is dispatched is equally amusing.  That’s not quite enough to garner a full-on recommendation (the laughs are pretty scarce up until then), but it’s enough to signal that this is a decent enough fake Amityville (not to mention Polonia) flick. 

THE LAST AMITYVILLE MOVIE (2023) **

The Last Amityville Movie?  Well, we can hope.

A horror YouTuber (writer/director Josh Spiegel) releases a video about the latest Amityville movie, Amityville Zoo.  While his family is out of town, he stays at home making content.  Shortly after someone anonymously sends him a doorknob from the Amityville Horror house, weird things start happening.  He soon finds out that the doorknob carries the Amityville curse and the only way to lift it is to… make an Amityville movie. 

After being pleasantly surprised by the meta spoof Amityville Ripper, I figured I’d give another Amityville movie a shot.  I wasn’t expecting that this too would take the meta approach.  The early scenes of our hero talking about Amityville rip-offs are amusing.  It’s just that once he finds himself in one, the fun quickly dissipates. 

The biggest debit is that much of the film is set in the found footage mold as the story is told through a series of YouTube videos, Zoom calls, and Ring doorbell footage.  It’s essentially Paranormal Activity but with less money and a smaller cast.  The main character isn’t annoying or anything, but he’s not strong enough of a personality to sustain an entire feature, especially when long stretches of the movie are devoted to him all by his lonesome doing long monologues into the camera.  It also doesn’t help that most of the movie revolves around him investigating strange noises.  An hour or so of this may have been tolerable.  At ninety-five minutes, it just feels like a slog. 

Unlike most haunted house movies, this one at least has a plausible reason why our main character doesn’t just leave the house.  (There’s another pandemic going on.)  I also found it amusing how the film’s lone bit of nudity winds up inadvertently getting censored.  However, fun bits like this are more of an exception than the rule.  The CGI deaths are pretty crappy, and the ending is weak too.  Still, as far as fake Amityville movies go, you could do so much worse. 

NEVER ON TUESDAY (1989) ***

Eddie (Peter Berg) and his nerdy pal Matt (Andy Lauer) travel cross country for California in search of bikini babes.  Along a desolate stretch of desert highway, they get into an accident with the sultry Tuesday (Claudia Christian) and become stranded on the side of the road.  As they sit and wait for help, they both try to score with her, even though she is clearly not interested in either of them (and is a lesbian to boot). 

Never on Tuesday was the first film by Adam (The Dark Backward) Rifkin.  Even though it was released by Paramount, it feels like the blueprint for a ‘90s independent comedy as it features minimal location work and a string of celebrity cameos.  (Many of whom went on to work with Rifkin again.)  The scenes of the three leads kind of volley back and forth between typical teen comedy banter and more introspective dialogue found in indie dramas.  It doesn’t always mesh, but the performances are great and it all rings true more often than not. 

At first, the fantasy scenes (which include the guys’ sexual daydreams about Tuesday and a random zombie attack) feel like padding.  Eventually, they reveal themselves to be a device where Rifkin can have his cake and eat it too.  He can objectify Christian through the lens of the horny teenage characters while simultaneously presenting her as the strong-willed independent woman she is.  One that the boys have no clue to decipher.  (These scenes also offer us an excuse to see Christian naked, although the one part where she’s surrounded by a troupe of ballerinas is a bit… odd.)

While Christian, Berg, and Lauer are great and all, it’s the supporting players that steal the show.  (Kindly stop reading if you don’t want the cameos spoiled.)  Nicolas Cage shows up as a passing motorist sporting surfer dude hair, a Big Bird nose, and a Tiny Tim voice.  It seems almost like a dry run for some of his more outlandish performances.  Too bad he’s only in it for about half a minute.  We also get Gilbert Gottfried as a traveling salesman, Charlie Sheen as a thief in a leather jacket and an Elvis voice, Judd Nelson as a crazed highway cop with a Hitler mustache, and Emilio Estevez and Cary Elwes (brother of the producer) as redneck tow truck drivers. 

THE 19TH ANNUAL VIDEO VACUUM AWARDS: AND THE NOMINEES ARE…

Well folks, it’s that time of year again.  Awards season.  Time to see who fed it and who ate it in the world of cinema.  So, without further ado, here are the nominees for The 19th Annual Video Vacuum Awards!

BEST MOVIE

Bugonia

Companion

Novocaine

Predator:  Badlands

Tron:  Ares

WORST MOVIE

Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare

Star Trek:  Section 31

The Toxic Avenger

War of the Worlds

Wolf Man

BEST DIRECTOR

Dan Berk and Robert Olsen for Novocaine

Drew Hancock for Companion

Yorgos Lanthimos for Bugonia

Joachim Ronning for Tron:  Ares

Dan Tractenberg for Predator:  Badlands

BEST ACTOR

Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another

Jesse Plemons for Bugonia

Jack Quaid in Companion

Jack Quaid in Novocaine

The Tapeworm in The Ugly Stepsister

BEST ACTRESS

Elle Fanning in Predator:  Badlands

Madeliene McGraw in Black Phone 2

Lea Myren in The Ugly Stepsister

Emma Stone in Bugonia

Sophie Thatcher in Companion

BEST ACTION MOVIE

Ballerina

Fight or Flight

Nobody 2

Novocaine

A Working Man

BEST COMEDY

Anaconda

Bugonia

Happy Gilmore 2

The Naked Gun

Spinal Tap 2:  The End Continues 

BEST HORROR MOVIE

Black Phone 2

Companion

Heart Eyes

The Monkey

The Ugly Stepsister

WORST HORROR MOVIE

Opus

Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare

Presence

The Toxic Avenger

Wolf Man

BEST REMAKE/REBOOT

Anaconda

Bugonia

The Fantastic Four:  First Steps 

The Naked Gun

Superman

BEST SCI-FI MOVIE

The Long Walk

Mickey 17 

Predator:  Badlands

The Running Man

Tron:  Ares

BEST SEQUEL

Ballerina

Black Phone 2

Nobody 2

Predator:  Badlands

Tron:  Ares

BEST STRAIGHT TO VIDEO/STREAMING MOVIE

Devo

Frankenstein

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

Havoc

The Women Eaters!

As is the custom, I’ll give it a week or two before I pick the winners.  Remember, it’s a thrill to be nominated!

BLACK PHONE 2 (2025) ****

Lots of films set in the ‘80s get many details of the era wrong.  In Black Phone 2, there’s a scene where a character talks about buying Duran Duran tickets and another where our hero stays up late to watch Night Flight on TV, all within the first five minutes of the movie.  I’d say the filmmakers nailed the ‘80s experience. 

Finn (Mason Thames) survived The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) and now he is trying to survive high school.  Meanwhile, his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) begins having psychic dreams of kids being murdered at a snowy wilderness camp.  Together, they go to the camp to investigate and learn that the dead Grabber is trying to get to Gwen in her dreams.  The only way to stop him is to find the bodies of the slain children and finally put their souls to rest. 

I was surprised how much I liked Black Phone 2.  In fact, I enjoyed it more than the first one.  Returning director Scott Derrickson does a cool technique of upping the film grain during the dream scenes, which kinda makes them feel less like a dream and more like a movie from the ‘80s.  Many times, the film feels like a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel set at Friday the 13th’s Camp Crystal Lake in the dead of winter.  Plus, there’s a cool visual nod to the ‘80s slasher Curtains tossed in there for good measure 

So many sequels are content to repeat the same notes that made their predecessors a hit, so it’s refreshing to see one that pushes the mythology forward into unexpected directions.  Sure, some of those directions feel like a pastiche of other horror classics, but it’s an entertaining and atmospheric pastiche.  This is easily one of the best and most inventive horror sequels I’ve seen in some time.  Also, some of the gore and make-up on the mutilated kids is downright gnarly. 

Hawke does a fantastic job once again, especially considering 1) He’s always seen wearing a mask and/or gruesome make-up and 2) He’s offscreen for much of the picture.  However, his presence is still felt even when he isn’t on screen.  He’s in the characters’ heads, casting a shadow over their psyche.  The other performances are equally fine.  Thames and McGraw are quite good too, and Demian Bichir does some nice work as the owner of the camp.