THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #3: DEADLY INSTINCTS (1997) **

(Streamed via The Archive)

A meteor crash lands at a small college.  Aboard the meteor are two passengers:  One, a slimy Giger-inspired extraterrestrial monster.  The other, a scarred (but still sexy) space babe (Kadamba Simmons) who dresses like a fetish model in a cheap bondage video.  When a professor (Todd Jensen) and his teacher’s pet, Louise (Samantha Womack) are attacked by the creature, they call the cops, who of course, don’t believe their story.  Meanwhile, the alien puts a bunch of coeds in a trance and leads them down into his lair down in the sewer where it turns them into mind-controlled zombies.  It’s then up to the professor and his arm candy to head into the sewer to save humanity.

Deadly Instincts is sort of a loose remake of Tim Kincaid’s Breeders.  (It was even released in some markets with that title.)  Unfortunately, it never comes close to matching that classic’s knack for sheer trashiness.  While it occasionally flirts with Skinamax territory (like the lengthy girls’ locker room scene), it often comes up short when the chips are down.  By suggesting more than it delivers (something the original Breeders can’t be accused of), it’s ultimately a letdown.  The elongated sequence where a bunch of dimwitted cops go into the sewer to hunt the monster also gets in the way of the fun as it seemingly goes on forever and offers very little in the way of gore or suspense.  

The cast is just meh.  Although Simmons looks hot, she is given very little to do.  Womack on the other hand is given too much to do as her transformation from sexpot coed to mind-controlled zombie to Ripley-inspired gun-toting badass is laughable.  Jensen makes for a dull and forgettable leading man.  

The inept CGI meteor special effects in the opening scenes had me fearing the worst as they resemble a screen saver for Windows 98.  Thankfully, the monster suit isn’t too bad, although it’s a bit clunky.  The gooey slop he covers his lady friends in is kinda gross too.  In the end, the derivative beastie is the most memorable thing about the movie.  

AKA:  Breeders.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #2: CITY OF BLOOD (1987) **

(Streamed via B-Movie TV)

I have fond memories of seeing the video box for City of Blood at our local mom and pop video store back in the ‘80s.  Despite the memorable image of the screaming skull superimposed over the skyline of the city, I somehow never wound up renting it.  That might be for the best because if I watched it as a ten-year-old, I may have written it off as “boring”.  As an adult, I still think it’s pretty dull, but I can at the very least appreciate the fact that it was trying to do something a little different.

A medical examiner (Joe Stewardson) is investigating a rash of grisly prostitute murders in South Africa.  The culprit seems to be the ghost of a two-thousand-year-old witch doctor who is using the ladies of the night as human sacrifices.  Another decidedly less supernatural possibility:  Corrupt officials are using the killings to cover up murders committed by the local dirty cops.

Say what you will about City of Blood, but it has more on its mind than just your average slasher.  There’s a layer of local subtext here that I’m sure went over American audiences’ heads.  The fact the hero is an old guilt-ridden white man is supposed to be symbolic of the South African people’s changing feelings of apartheid.  Although that aspect might not quite seem apparent to some Yanks, at least it gives it a unique identity that helps separate it from the glut of late ‘80s slashers that populated video store shelves.  

Director Darrell Roodt gives the film an odd atmosphere that keeps things interesting from a visual standpoint, even when the pacing drags.  The occasional moody moment works as standalone set pieces.  One such scene finds our hero waking up screaming from a nightmare.  He then recounts his dream to his wife, and when the camera later pulls back, we see she was just a figment of his imagination.  

Unfortunately, the movie bogs down when the plot veers away from the hooker murders and begins focusing on politics.  Because of that, it feels like a bit of a bait and switch.  Those expecting a horror movie will probably be let down, but then again, the scene where the old fogey Stewardson goes to bed with a hooker a third his age is pretty terrifying.  

Roodt went on to have a wildly varied career directing a little bit of everything including Hollywood fare (Father Hood), politically minded movies (Cry the Beloved Country), DTV action (Witness to a Kill), and eventually SYFY sequels (Lake Placid:  Legacy).  

BOIN-N-G (1963) **

William R. Johnson and William Kerwin star as two aspiring porn producers (based on Herschell Gordon Lewis and David. F. Friedman, the director and producer of the film) who walk out of a skin flick (Lewis and Friedman’s The Adventures of Lucky Pierre) thinking they could do it better.  Together they decide to quit their jobs, strike out on their own, and make a nudie movie (Nature’s Nudniks).  They soon learn making an adults-only feature is tougher than it looks.  

The comedy is pretty inane, as is usually the case with these sorts of things.  Kerwin and Johnson ham it up way too much and their antics fail to generate any laughs.  What’s worse, their silent movie-style mugging gets in the way of the nudity.  Lewis also overdoes it with the comedic musical score that overscores the already unfunny material.  I admire the fact that Lewis and Friedman were poking fun at themselves, but ultimately, they’re probably the only ones who found any of the behind-the-scenes humor funny.  It doesn’t help that many of the sequences end on a predictable note.  (There’s no film in the camera, the lens cap is still on, etc.)    

The nudie scenes are OK.  They’re mostly your typical cheesecake stuff.  The models sunbathe, slowly undress for the camera, rub their butt cheeks so they make squeaky balloon noises, that sort of thing.  None of it is exactly titillating since it’s all sandwiched between the meta scenes of the frantic filmmakers trying to capture the action for the camera.  However, once the film gains a little momentum about halfway through, the nudity becomes more plentiful, which at the very least makes it watchable.  The only real standout in the cast is Christina Castel, who plays Audrey, the starlet who gets naked at the drop of a hat.  Whenever she’s on screen going au natural, Boin-n-g might make you schwing. 

AKA:  Untamed Women in Nature in the Raw.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #1: OUT OF THE DARKNESS (1978) **

(Streamed via American Horrors)

Donald Pleasence stars as a famous big game hunter on the prowl for a deadly panther.  When the badass cat wounds him during the hunt, he puts a bounty on the beast’s hide.  Some local hunters trap it and deliver it to Pleasence’s private island so he can finally hunt it mano y mano.  Problems arise when his daughters Nancy Kwan and Jennifer Rhodes come to the island to visit him with sleazy tour guide Ross Hagen (who also produced) in tow.  

Basically, it’s The Most Dangerous Game, but with a panther.

Director Lee (The Night God Screamed) Madden kind of goes overboard when it comes to the slow-motion shots of the panther tracking Pleasence.  Of course, if he didn’t put every other hunting scene in slow-motion, the eighty-three-minute film would’ve only been an hour or so long.  (The attack scenes that occur later in the picture also suffer from too much slow-mo.)  Some of the POV shots of the cat’s perspective are good for a laugh, especially when the wild-eyed Pleasence is wallowing in fright.  

There are a few off-kilter moments that keep Out of the Darkness from fizzling out completely.  My favorite bits were the scenes of Pleasence staring down the caged cat and trying to intimidate it while delivering a crazed internal monologue.  The scenes of Pleasence playing mind games with the cat are amusing, but the whole thing hits a brick wall whenever the action switches over to his daughters having sisterly bonding time.  I’m a big Ross Hagen fan, so for me, his unique energy made the love triangle stuff between him and the two sisters bearable.  Even then, his moments pale in comparison to the oddball shit with Pleasence.  If the filmmakers had dropped the extraneous characters in favor of more scenes with Donald and the panther, it might’ve worked.

As it is, Out of the Darkness doesn’t have enough of a body count to work as a When Animal Attack movie.  It’s also too weird to succeed as a straight-up hunting expedition drama.  I guess it’s just odd enough to function as a metaphor for man vs. animal, but even then, that’s kind of a reach.  Still, it’s almost worth a look just for Pleasence’s hammy turn.  

AKA:  Night Creature.  AKA:  Devil’s Beast. 

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: THE ROKU HORROR PICTURE SHOW

I’ve been running behind on posting reviews all summer and have just now gotten around to getting my proverbial ducks in a row just in time for Halloween.  As all my long-time readers know, I reserve the month of October to showcase (mostly) nothing but reviews of horror movies.  Most years, I have a theme, usually revolving around horror franchises, bargain bin DVDs, or stuff I’ve had in my Amazon Prime queue that I never got around to watching.  Last year for Christmas, I got a Roku player, and have spent the last ten months finding lots of weird, wild, and sometimes just plain awesome channels.  Since I love my Roku player so much, I have decided to make this year’s theme The Roku Horror Picture Show and highlight various Roku channels I enjoy.  

So, for this column, I will review thirty-one different horror movies from thirty-one different Roku channels.  Each review will have a little note stating which channel I found the movie on.  My hope is that not only will readers discover new or weird horror movies they might have missed, they will also be introduced to some pretty cool Roku channels as well.  

Since I'm already behind schedule, and there's no way I can do the typical 31 "Days" of Horror-Ween, I will instead review The 31 "Movies" of Horror-Ween.  It will still be the same amount of reviews, just not posted on a daily basis.  However, there will definitely be 31 of them.  They just might not be posted until November (or even December).

So, without further delay (I’ve already delayed this column long enough), let’s kick things off!

C.I.A. 2: TARGET: ALEXA (1994) ** ½

I remember very little about C.I.A. Code Name:  Alexa other than it starred Lorenzo Lamas, his wife Kathleen Kinmont, and… uh… O.J. Simpson.  Fortunately for us, the Juice didn’t return for this second installment of the two-picture franchise.  Some more good news:  In addition to starring in this flick, Lamas also directed!  (It was a family affair all around as Kinmont co-wrote the story.)  

Terrorists are out to steal nuclear codes and hold the world at ransom.  Naturally, the only man who can stop them is Graver (Lamas).  Well, he also needs a woman to stop them too, so he turns to his former flame Alexa (Kinmont) to help take them down.  Little does Graver know the terrorist leader Kluge (John Savage) is also Alexa’s baby daddy, which could mean trouble for both sides.  Things get complicated when a rival terrorist faction led by Straker (John Saint Ryan) steals the chip necessary to launch the nukes and Graver must make an uneasy alliance with Kluge to save the world.  

I’ve seen many reviews kind of dis C.I.A. 2:  Target Alexa, or at the very least rank it lower than the original.  I don’t know what movie they saw.  The one I saw features Lorenzo Lamas killing a man with a forklift in the first ten minutes.  That scene alone puts it slightly above the first one in my book.    

Kinmont is quite credible in her action sequences.  She gets the requisite scene where she foils a convenient store robbery, as well as a decent fight where she takes on all of Savage’s henchman.  Too bad her one-on-one brawl with the musclebound Lori Fetrick (AKA:  “Ice” from American Gladiators) gets cut short.

Lamas doesn’t do a bad job directing the action, although some moments just flat-out do not work.  (Like his last-minute escape via hang glider.)  There’s also a love scene between Kinmont and Savage, which I’m sure was awkward for Lorenzo to direct.   (Making things even more awkward was the fact that his producer, Richard Pepin was also the director of photography.)  This was the only feature Lorenzo directed (he also helmed several episodes of his TV show, Renegade), which is a shame because he showed a glimmer of promise behind the camera.

Lamas and Kinmont are fun to watch together and some of their banter is good for a laugh.  The funniest thing though is the fact that Lamas’ long flowing hair is usually more elegantly styled than hers.  John Savage is pretty good slumming as the villain too.  We also get bits from Magnum P.I.’s Larry Manetti (who plays a slimy lawyer) and Branscombe Richard (as a party guest). 

One distinctly Lamas directorial touch:  The long scene that showcases his real-life helicopter pilot skills.  Sadly, Lorenzo has given up acting in action movies to fly helicopters full time.  All I can say is, come back Lorenzo, we miss you. 

AKA:  C.I.A. Codename:  Viper.  AKA:  C.I.A. 2:  Code Name:  Alexa.

THE HANGING WOMAN (1974) ***

Serge (Stelvio Rosi) is returning home to his ancestral castle.  He takes a shortcut through a cemetery where he finds a dead woman hanging by her neck.  The police investigate and seem to think it was murder.  The main suspect is Igor (Paul Naschy), the creepy gravedigger who is also a necrophile.  Meanwhile, Serge tries to get settled in to his new digs, but the place is kind of crowded.  There’s a horny countess (Maria Pia Conte) who performs voodoo rituals, a professor (Gerard Tichy) who conducts bizarre experiments in the castle basement, and his saucy daughter (Dyanik Zurakowska) who has the hots for Serge.  

The Hanging Woman contains a lot of plot elements that are blended together to create a sort of potpourri of Spanish gothic horror.  None of it ever quite gels, but it's never really boring either.  Just let your brain go on autopilot and appreciate the cliches that keep cropping up.  Said cliches include but are not limited to:  The reading of a dead relative’s will, a drawing room mystery (complete with a longwinded explanation from the killer in the end), long walks through the corridors of a spooky castle, trippy freak-out scenes, seances, and of course, the mad hunchback.  Heck, it even manages to turn into an all-out zombie flick by the end.  Despite the fact that it plays more like a laundry list of cliches in search of a movie, it’s still quite entertaining.  There are a couple of strong shocks to be had as well.  There’s a brief, but gory autopsy scene, a nifty decapitation, and the sequence involving the discovery of the titular character is especially well done.  

Despite what you might think, Naschy is not the star this time around.  He’s mostly lurking on the corners of the story, playing peeping Tom on the women and being a red herring.  Nevertheless, he’s in fine form as usual.  It’s Maria Pia Conte who steals the movie though as the nymphomaniac countess who gets naked at the drop of a hat and even plays kinky sex games with Igor.  Sultry and sexy, Conte commands the screen.  Rosi, who sort of looks like a budget version of David Warner, makes for a fine hero too, and Zurakowska is also memorable as the “good girl” who still manages to get naked.  

AKA:  Bracula:  The Terror of the Living Dead.  AKA:  Beyond the Living Dead.  AKA:  Dracula:  The Terror of the Living Dead.  AKA:  Beyond the Living Dead.  AKA:  Orgy of the Living Dead.  AKA:  Return of the Zombies.  AKA:  Zombie 3:  Return of the Living Dead.  

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE: DÉJÀ VU (2019) **

After forty years, Camille Keaton and director Meir Zarchi return for the first official sequel to the original I Spit on Your Grave.  

Remember that film’s famous tagline?  “This Woman Has Just Cut, Chopped, Broken, and Burned Five Men Beyond Recognition… But No Jury in America Would Ever Convict Her!”  Apparently, no jury did convict her because Jennifer Hills (Keaton) wrote a book about her experience in the first movie and goes on call-in radio shows to not only recount her ordeal, but get the audience up to speed on the plot of the original.  Her daughter, Christy (Jamie Bernadette) is “the most famous and highest-paid model in the world”.  After a mother-daughter brunch they are kidnapped by the relatives of Jennifer’s assailants from the first movie, and well… uh… déjà vu.

I don’t know who thought this had to be two-and-a-half hours long.  The original was always a little long to begin with, but at least the payoff justified the elongated running time.  With two heroines, Zarchi splits the difference and the constant cutting back from mother and daughter fighting their separate battles only adds to the running time.  I’m pretty sure a lot of this could’ve been cut down considerably, but I think Zarchi was working under the assumption that allowing the attacks play out in (nearly) real time would be more effective.  (He was only about half right.)  

I don’t know if Zarchi was trying to soften the blow or say something about equal opportunity by making the ringleader of the rapists be a woman this time around.  She also wears the same wardrobe her husband wore in the first movie, which is kind of weird.  In fact, the more the movie tries to remind you of the original, the worse this one seems.  The occasional flashbacks only highlight how powerful that film was, and how this belated attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle fails.

Although the movie itself is really uneven, I have to give Camille Keaton credit.  Everyone applauds Sylvester Stallone for continuing to be an action star in his seventies.  At seventy-two, Keaton deserves the same kind of praise.  She’s tough and resilient and even though bad things happen to her, she refuses to play the victim.  When she turns the tables on her captors, she once again carries the spark that made the original so iconic.  Although that spark only shows itself briefly in the film, it still manages to make a statement.  Hollywood usually relegates actresses of Keaton’s age to grandmother roles.  Zarchi is smart enough to show that septuagenarian badass women can still kick ass, even if the picture they are in might not be up to snuff.

The rapists’ comeuppance sequences are solid.  While they are nowhere near as savage as the ones found in the original, they are moderately effective on their own terms.  It’s just a shame you have to wait so long to get to them.

As you can imagine the torch is eventually passed from mother to daughter about halfway through.  Bernadette handles herself capably enough, although she suffers from comparison to Keaton.  I can’t help but think this would’ve turned out better if they had split it into two movies; one that focused on the mother, and the other centered around the daughter.  As it is, it just crams too much into one flick.   

I Spit on Your Grave:  Déjà Vu, while a big disappointment, is not exactly a bad film.  I think Zarchi could’ve hammered out a decent flick if he was a little more judicious with his editing.  Although he does give us a couple of strong moments, that last half-hour is especially longwinded and gratuitous (predictable twist included).  

Oh, and I know Zarchi is not one for subtlety, but did we really need the scene where someone spits on a grave LITERALLY?  Multiple times?  Probably not.

TAINTLIGHT (2009) ** ½

Taintlight is writer/director Chris Seaver’s spoof of Twilight.  If you’ve seen Seaver’s Terror at Blood Fart Lake, you might already know what you’re in for.  Anyone unfamiliar with Seaver’s brand of juvenile humor will probably hate it, but I thought it was better than any of the actual Twilight movies it’s spoofing.

It helps that Meredith Host does a mean Kristen Stewart impression as the new girl in school, “Stella”.  This fact is made especially evident when she has funny dialogue like, “I’m going to my room so I can look out the window and brood awkwardly!” to recite.  Even when the punchlines don’t land, she is still fun to watch thanks to her deadpan demeanor and spot-on impression.  Kurt Indovina, who plays the glittery vampire, “Edgar Mullens” isn’t nearly as impressive, but that’s perfectly okay when Host is so damned funny.  

Taintlight is kind of amusing when it’s mocking its intended target.  The scenes where Seaver uses low-fi ingenuity to spoof the big budget original are often rather clever.  For example, the scene that pokes fun at the big moment where Edward saves Bella from being hit by a car is just flat-out funny.  The over-the-top close-ups of Edgar and Stella looking longingly at each other are good for a laugh too.  (I also liked the way Seaver was able to mimic Twilight’s bluish hues on a nearly nonexistent budget.)  However, it’s noticeably less successful when it devolves into Seaver’s typical over the top humor.  

At least the vampires in this one suck blood and have fangs, which is more than you can say for Twilight.  Heck, there’s more blood spilled in this flick than the entire Twilight franchise, so that’s a plus.  Another bonus:  It’s only an hour long.  Even with that kind of abbreviated running time, it still manages to feel overlong, but at least Seaver knew when to throw in the towel, an instinct many his SOV contemporaries often lack.

In short, Taintlight is one of Seaver’s best efforts, mostly because he has clear blueprint to work from.  By doing a riff on Twilight, he can use that film’s storyline to hang his trademark brand of humor on.  Is mocking Twilight akin to shooting fish in a barrel?  Sure, but Seaver hits more than he misses, which is more than I can say for a lot of his movies.  Although it pretty much falls apart in the third act, the finale does feature the screen’s first vampire death by Frisbee, so that’s worth something.

PET SHOP (1995) *

A pair of aliens arrive on Earth disguised as cowboys and take over a small pet shop in the middle of the Arizona desert.  Terry (Friday the 13th Part 7:  The New Blood) Kiser is the patriarch of a dysfunctional family who are in the Witness Protection Program who move to town in order to hide from the Mob.  When his daughter (Leigh Ann Orsi) drops by the pet store, the aliens give her a dog that also happens to be an alien in disguise.  More kids get extraterrestrial pets, but they soon realize the cowboy aliens intend to kidnap the town’s children and sell them as pets in a galaxy far, far away.  

Pet Shop is a dumb kid’s movie from Charles Band’s Moonbeam Entertainment.  As such, I shouldn’t be so hard on it, but it is just plain bad.  It’s full of odd elements that never gel together, crappy effects, and irritating performances.  The whole Witness Protection subplot is especially incongruous.  I mean who thought combining E.T., Explorers, and the ending of Goodfellas was a good idea?

The aliens are mostly annoying and more than a little cheap looking.  The dog looks like a deranged Muppet, the rabbit resembles a broken Furby, and the turtle looks like one of those Land Before Time hand puppets they used to sell at Pizza Hut with some minor alterations.  The only animal that remotely looks decent is the lizard, which has some surprisingly well-done animatronics for its face and neck.  They must’ve blown the effects budget on that guy, because everything else looks like crap.   The “human” aliens are pretty pathetic as they have a cyclops eyeball hidden under their cowboy hat that shoots freeze rays.

The kids are all rather annoying, and the adults don’t fare much better.  I know this is a kid’s movie, but everyone plays things way too broadly for it to be remotely funny.  The only semi-clever part is the broken sign on the pet shop that is missing its “P” so it reads, “ET Shop”.  That’s about as funny as the movie ever gets.

SCARED TO DEATH (1981) **

William Malone made his directorial debut with this sporadically successful mix of Alien and Halloween.  A bunch of sexy women are being murdered by a slimy monster called “Syngenor” (Synthesized Genetic Organism).  When the police are helpless to stop the killings, they turn to a former cop-turned crime novelist (John Stinson) to help track down the monster.

In addition to directing, Malone also co-wrote, co-produced, and created the monster.  He’d later go on to make Creature (another Alien clone) and the House on Haunted Hill remake.  He gives us all the stalking peeping tom POV shots of women getting dressed and terrorized in their cars that you’ve come to expect from a slasher flick.  Just to keep things interesting, he tosses in a memorable scene where the creature stalks some roller skaters.  

The slimy monster was obviously inspired by H.R. Giger’s Alien design (it even has a mouth inside of its mouth).  Heck, you can probably say that about any monster from an ‘80s movie.  At least this one looks better than most Alien rip-offs.  You can tell Malone really liked the design too because he shows the monster a lot, skipping with all the “you’ve got to keep the monster in the shadows for the first two acts” shenanigans that most directors try to pull.  On the other hand, a lot of scenes are way too dark, which kind of takes some of the fun out of it (although that might’ve been more the fault of the print than Malone’s).

If Malone concentrated solely on blending together aspects of Alien and Halloween, it might’ve worked.  (Although the attack scenes where the camera violently shakes in Syngenor’s face get repetitive.)  However, the stuff with the writer’s love life really bogs things down.  These scenes play out like a romantic comedy that isn’t romantic or funny.  The detective scenes are halfhearted as well and feel like a half-assed TV pilot or something.  

It doesn’t help that Stinson is stiff as a board in the lead.  A big miscalculation on the script’s part was sidelining the likeable heroine (Diana Davidson) about halfway through.  I guess Malone was going for the Janet Leigh in Psycho thing, but the brainy scientist (Toni Jannotta) who takes on the heroine role in her stead is pretty annoying.   

Ten years later, a quasi-sequel, Syngenor was released without Malone’s involvement.

AKA:  Scared to Death:  Syngenor.  AKA:  The Aberdeen Experiment.

HOCUS POCUS (1993) **

I’m not entirely sure how Hocus Pocus has garnered a cult following in recent years as it’s mostly a dumb kids movie with only a few worthwhile moments sprinkled about to keep it from being totally forgettable.  I guess if you were seven years old in the ‘90s and saw this on video, it might’ve been an OK gateway into horror.  For anyone else, it’s kind of hard to sit through, unless you’re a die-hard Bette Midler fan, that is.

The new kid in school (Omri Katz) doesn’t give a shit about local legends and warnings, so he goes into the town’s haunted house, lights a forbidden candle, and brings about the return of a trio of witches (Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimi) who were hung for kidnapping children during the Salem Witch Trials.  They then set out to suck out all the souls of the kids, in town starting with our hero’s little sister (Thora Birch).  He then teams up with a talking cat and the most popular girl in school (Ladybugs’ Vinessa Shaw) to stop the witches and save his sister.

Hocus Pocus is a dumb kids movie, which is fine.  I am not the target audience for this sort of thing.  I’m just saying a dumb kids movie would’ve been infinitely more tolerable if it wasn’t for the constant mugging of the three witches, all of whom are pretty annoying.  Bette hams it up to almost embarrassing levels.  Kajimy and Parker are basically just there to repeat each other’s lines or finish each other’s sentences, which gets on your nerves in a hurry.  It also doesn’t help that Bette sings a terrible rendition of “I Put a Spell on You” (it must’ve been a contractual obligation) and Parker does half a number while casting a spell.  

There is, however, one legitimately weird and creepy scene when the talking cat gets ran over and flattened by a car.  Since it’s immortal, its bones break back into place and he comes back to life.  Another memorable part is the running gag when they keep referring to Katz as a “virgin”, not something you’d expect in a Disney movie.  

Sleepwalkers’ Mick Garris co-wrote and co-produced, which maybe explains why some of this threatens to work at times, but for the most part, Hocus Pocus is kinda bogus. 

CRY MACHO (2021) **

Cry Macho begins on a puzzling note.  An old rodeo hero (Clint Eastwood) far past his prime arrives to his job late and is chewed out by his boss (Dwight Yoakum), who promptly fires him.  This scene is longwinded, awkward, and filled with exposition.  Then, we see a newspaper clipping of Clint riding broncs in his glory days that miraculously comes to life and becomes old newsreel footage.  But never mind that, because here comes another scene that takes place one year later (later than the first scene and not the scene with the newspaper) where Yoakum breaks into Clint’s house and offers him money to go down to Mexico and kidnap his long-lost son (Eduardo Minett).  

Which begs the question:  Why did we need the opening scene of Clint being chewed out by his boss in the first place?  Why couldn’t we just cut right to the scene where he hires him to go to Mexico?  Couldn’t they just add some extra dialogue bits if they wanted to make it clear he fired Clint the year before?  Then again, the last thing this movie needs is more exposition.  I mean the first fifteen minutes is nothing more than Clint listening to other people describe the plot.  Shouldn’t Clint the director be SHOWING us all this and not telling us?  The film was based on a book unread by me, but in a book, you can get away with pages and pages where characters tell other characters about stuff that happened a long time ago that is pertinent to the plot.  It’s a little different in a movie.  

Things improve slightly once Clint and the kid hit the road, but not much.  It’s still a little patchy, but at least there’s more connective tissue in between scenes than there was in the early going.  That still doesn’t excuse the odd fade-outs that wind up fading back into the same scene.

Look, nobody does it (or more accurately, did it) better than Clint.  He is still one of my all-time heroes.  I don’t want to sound ageist or anything, but man, I think he should’ve hung it up with The Mule.  That was a great flick with Clint playing an age-appropriate role.  Here, we’re asked to believe the ninety-one-year-old Clint is maybe in his… sixties (?) and it still seems like a stretch.  The all-too obvious way the camera tries to hide Clint’s gaunt figure in silhouette, from behind, and from afar just compounds the fact.   

I’ve believed a lot of shit in movies over the years.  Believing a ninety-one-year-old man can punch out a guy three times younger than him is a bit much.  Or seeing him (or more accurately, his stunt double) riding a bucking bronco.  One thing I did believe that happened during the movie:  Clint getting Montezuma’s Revenge from drinking Mexican water.  

Then there are the random ass scenes that are supposed to pass for character development.  Like in the middle of one of the film’s many driving scenes, Clint suddenly blurts out, “You’re kind of growing on me, kid!”  Again, he’s telling us, and not showing us how they’re bonding as the compliment is completely unearned.  When you get to be ninety-one, I guess telling us is about all you can do.

At its heart, Cry Macho is a road movie.  After the awkward set-up, the film gets better once Clint and the kid head out on the road, and they slowly begin to appreciate each other’s company.  (It’s kind of a thematic retread of Gran Torino.)  I guess they were going for an offbeat feel because the kid only agrees to go with him as long as he can bring his pet rooster, a fighting cock named Macho, along for the ride.  Eventually, the crusty Clint learns to accept Macho too.  

Reportedly, Clint only shot six hours a day, and often using the first take.  That might explain why some of the early scenes feels closer to Ed Wood than Clint Eastwood.  However, as the film goes along, you can sort of see what he was going for if you squint hard enough.  Since Clint is a master at squinting, that probably explains why it made sense to him and not the audience.

PSYCHO GOREMAN (2021) ** ½

Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) is a bossy little girl who finds an evil extraterrestrial warlord buried in her backyard and names him Psycho Goreman (Matthew Ninaber).  Thanks to a magic amulet, she can control his every move, which comes in handy when she needs an extra player for dodgeball.  Once the P.G.’s dreaded nemesis Templar Pandora (Anna Tierney) learns of his location, she goes to Earth to stop him once and for all.

Psycho Goreman has a decent premise, but its Amblin Meets Troma schtick is spread a little thin over the film’s ninety-five-minute running time.  While there are a couple of laugh-out-loud moments to be had, I can’t help but think that this would’ve made for a better faux-Grindhouse trailer than an actual full-length movie (or at the most, a half-hour short).  You could pull off a tonally out-of-whack idea like this off in a three-minute trailer and not have to worry about it.  When you have Psycho Goreman killing innocents while his young sidekick acts like a brat, it’s sometimes hard to take.  

The special effects are spotty, but I think that was intentional.  The Psycho Goreman himself is a cool amalgam of Syngenor and Wishmaster.  The other aliens are cheesy looking for the most part.  Many would not have cut it on an episode of Power Rangers.  They aren’t bad per se, and possibly could’ve looked more effective (and dare I say realistic) if director Steven (The Void) Kostanski didn’t film them with bright lighting while holding the camera on them for so long.  

It’s a tricky thing to make a readymade cult item like this.  Compare this to something like Death Rider in the House of Vampires.  With that film, Glenn Danzig believes everything on screen is pure cinema, which is what makes it so damn fun to watch.  Kostanski on the other hand seems to be clapping himself on the back for coming up with such a zany premise.  That layer of detachment kind of keeps Psycho Goreman from really clicking.  I will say that as far as these kinds of things go, you can do a lot worse (as was the case with Kostanski’s insufferable Manborg).  I have to admit, when it works, it’s kind of fun.  

THE BIZARRE ONES (1968) **

A babe who looks zonked out on drugs hops in her car and heads to a swinger party.  Along the way, she picks up a hitchhiker who says, “I don’t have to rape my women—They come to me!”  Naturally, he insists they bone, so she ties him up using a handcuff rig in her car (who needs AAA when you have BDSM?) and blows him.  Leaving him tied up, she goes to the party where more people are tied up and used for the pleasure of others.  Things take a turn for the worse when the party moves to a nearby river where everything comes to a tragic end.  

Directed by Henri Pachard (who’d later go on to make a slew of hardcore flicks), The Bizarre Ones has a decidedly Warholesque feel to it.  And by that, I don’t mean that it’s arty.  I mean that it features crummy black and white photography and long static shots where nothing much happens.  

There is a heavy concentration on S & M, but like the title implies; some of this shit is so bizarre it’s hard to know if anyone (including the actors and/or characters) are getting anything out of it.  Consider the scene involving a clunky portable sex machine.  It takes forever for the guys to set it up (outdoors), and once they put the woman in there, it offers so little payoff, that you have to wonder if it was all worth it.  Maybe that was Pachard’s intent after all.  He wanted to show you just how involved being a bizarre one was.  He wanted the audience to know if you’re gonna take a woman out into the woods and put her into a portable sex machine, you have to deal with wrangling extension cords and laboriously setting up equipment before you even think about coaxing her into the machine.  He wanted to show us that being a bizarre one is not nearly as glamourous as we seem to think.

Other allegedly kinky goings-on:  A girl is tied up and force-fed black rope licorice.  Another is strapped to the luggage rack of a car and taken for a ride.  (So THAT’S what Samsonite feels like!)  The film also contains the first use of a hammock as bondage paraphernalia, so it has that going for it.

One plus is that it features a lot of outdoor bondage, which is something of a novelty in these pictures.  So, if that’s your thing, you might dig it. Unfortunately, the poorly dubbed dialogue is laughable, and the droning sitar-heavy soundtrack will surely have you nodding off in no time.   

SPACE RAIDERS (1983) **

Roger Corman produced many films that reused the sets, special effects, and score from Battle Beyond the Stars.  This one was the first.  Not only is it a Star Wars knockoff, it’s one of those early ‘80s movies that had the word “Raiders” in title to cash in on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

A little boy (David Mendenhall, the kid from Over the Top) stows away aboard the spaceship of a band of space pirates.  He proves himself to be useful to the crew and they eventually take a shine to him.  Trouble brews when “The Company” sends a robot ship after them to blast them out of the stars.

The band of space pirates is comprised of an OK band of riff raff.  Vince Edwards is the leader of the gang whose only memorable trait is that he drinks beer (thank God there’s still beer in the future) while piloting his ship in the midst of a space dogfight.  Thom (Hawk from Buck Rogers) Christopher fares better as the alien with psychic powers.  Luca Bercovici is the generic space cowboy of the group.

Space Raiders was directed by Howard Cohen, the man who gave us Saturday the 14th.  It’s all rather harmless, forgettable, intermittently entertaining Saturday afternoon drivel.  Even if it seems overly familiar and more than a tad cheesy (the lizard guy is well done, even though the characters pronounce his name about six different ways), it moves at a steady clip, which is appreciated.  It also manages to have more heart than most of these things, thanks to Mendenhall’s performance.    

Sure, we’ve seen Star Wars rip-offs with alien cantina scenes, space battles, and long establishing shots of slow-moving spacecraft, but this is the only one I can think of that features Dick Miller as a sleazy used spaceship dealer, so that at the very least is worth something.

AKA:  Star Child.

WHEELMAN (2017) ***

Frank Grillo stars as a getaway driver who gets a call from an unknown number telling him to ditch his crew during a job and take off with the money.  As it turns out, it’s only the beginning of a double (or perhaps triple) cross.  Soon, people are on the lookout for his car, and he’s wanted by both the cops and the crooks.  In order to stay ahead of the bad guys and stay alive, he’ll have to think fast and (of course) do a lot of fancy driving.

Produced by Joe Carnahan, Wheelman is a blast from start to finish.  What makes it a change of pace from the typical crime thriller is the fact that it takes place almost exclusively inside of Grillo’s car.  Aside from a few establishing shots from the rearview mirror or of the tires’ POV, the camera rarely leaves the vehicle.  Writer/director Jeremy Rush does a good job ratcheting up the suspense and raising the stakes for Grillo’s character.  What’s maybe even more impressive is the fact that the film maintains a sense of claustrophobia while still feeling cinematic.  We’ve seen so many car chases in movies nowadays that when we see one entirely from behind the wheel of one of the cars, it feels like a breath of fresh air.

This is a perfect… ahem… vehicle for Grillo.  He gives a no-nonsense and commanding performance, a real feat considering you only see him from the shoulders up for most of the running time.  Very few actors could make a movie work using so little, but Grillo pulls it off effectively and assuredly.

At its heart, Wheelman is a gimmick movie, but it’s a pretty good gimmick.  It keeps up the gimmick for a long time too, breaking form only briefly near the end.  It was here where I feared it was going to become a more traditional picture, but luckily (SPOILER) the Wheelman was just changing cars!  From there, it resumes the automobile-bound framework and continues to kick ass. 

If it does have a fault, it’s that Wheelman (pardon the pun) never quite goes into fourth gear.  Despite that, it remains a solidly entertaining flick throughout.  If you still haven’t seen it, put the pedal to the metal and check it out.

MALIGNANT (2021) ** ½

Malignant is James Wan’s return to the horror genre after making Aquaman.  Previously, Wan made movies like Saw and Dead Silence with his co-writer and star Leigh Whannell, who has since moved on to direct the likes of Upgrade and The Invisible Man.  Malignant just might be proof that Whannell was the brains of the outfit because this one is a fucking mess.  

That said, I’m not sure Whannell could’ve concocted such a humdinger of an ending.  Whatever its faults are early on, the last twenty minutes or so of Malignant offer up some nutty goodness.  It kind of comes as a day late and a dollar short, but if and when they make Malignant 2, I’ll be first in line.

Annabelle Wallis stars as a grieving woman who just lost her baby.  As she tries to move forward, we learn that the doctors who cared for her as a kid are being brutally murdered.  Could it be her childhood imaginary friend seeking revenge?  Or could it be something even grosser?

Malignant has a bunch of cool ideas, but no singular vision to tie everything together.  It cribs bits from The Dark Half, Poltergeist 2, Basket Case and a few others.  Overall, it just feels like an overlong, overcomplicated mishmash.  None of it is particularly scary either.  Wan does his best to replicate the look and feel of a Dario Argento movie during the scenes where Wallis and the killer are psychically linked (Wallis is practically in Daria Nicolodi cosplay the whole movie), although he is only successful about half the time.  Ultimately, the excessive CGI that morphs the two settings into one during these sequences are cheesy, and hamper what little atmosphere Wan had managed to build up.

Also, what’s the deal with horror flicks being stretched out to absurd lengths nowadays?  The Empty Man was 137 minutes.  In the Earth was 106.  This is a whopping 111.  Can’t filmmakers just give us a 90-minute movie anymore?  Or would that mean it wouldn’t be “elevated” because it doesn’t have a bloated running time?  

Seriously, the first ninety minutes or so of Malignant are a slog.  It really could’ve been trimmed down, and no one would’ve noticed or cared.  However, that last act is a work of demented genius.  I just wish there was more of that kooky glee present elsewhere in the film.

THE RAVAGER (1970) **

Joe (Pierre Agostino from The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher) is a soldier who gets separated from his unit in Vietnam and witnesses a woman being brutalized and raped.  He then returns home a disturbed individual and sets out to blow up couples necking in secluded areas.  Eventually, Joe takes to only blowing up the dude after sex so he can have his woman all to himself.  When he accidentally blows up a woman and her young son, the cops double their efforts to apprehend him.  

The Ravager is kind of like Taxi Driver if the guy was bald, didn’t drive a taxi, and didn’t write longwinded journal entries.  Agostino, with his Michael Berryman haircut and creepy demeanor, makes Nosferatu look like a Chippendales dancer in comparison.  Because of that, he makes for a pretty good psycho.

Unfortunately, some of the sex scenes are chopped all to hell, which probably means this was a hardcore (or at the very least X-rated) flick at some point before being butchered.  The sex scenes do get longer (and somewhat) better as the movie goes along, though.  One highlight is the scene where the lesbian couple frolics in the desert.  They get a pretty good tryst on a boat, which is followed by an effective scene where Joe ties one of them up and burns her alive.  This sequence is the exception rather than the rule.  Another scene where Joe is “reduced to being an ordinary peeping tom” was probably footage from another movie used to pad out the running time.  (Another tip-off:  It’s also the best scene in the movie.)

Ultimately, Joe spends more time in his room fiddling with his bombs than spying on couples and blowing them sky high.  Also a problem:  Most of the time, we see more of Joe’s reaction shots to the sex than the sex itself.  Also, I’m not sure why it’s called The Ravager.  “The Blower-Upper” would’ve been more accurate.

Director Charles Nizet later made the excellent Help Me… I’m Possessed.   

IN THE EARTH (2021) **

In the Earth is the new slow-burn horror flick from Ben (High-Rise) Wheatley.  How much of a slow burn is it?  Well, I fell asleep twice before the second act.  Luckily, things do pick up as the film progresses, but it’s kind of rough going there for a while.  

A scientist (Joel Fry) is looking for a cure to a virus that has caused a global pandemic.  A helpful forest ranger (Ellora Torchia) guides him through the woods to make sure he gets to base camp okay.  On their journey, they are waylaid by a crazy man (Reece Shearsmith) who likes to drug, mutilate, and torture them.  Worst of all, he makes them pose for weird photoshoots in the middle of the woods.

Since we are still in the midst of a global pandemic, it kind of irks me that many filmmakers have taken to making horror movies about a global pandemic.  I’m not one of those “Too Soon!” guys or anything, but could we at least wait a bit to take stock of the situation before we exploit it to make a buck?  Luckily, Wheatley doesn’t dwell on that aspect of the story for too long.  

He also gives us a pretty good sequence involving an axe and a certain appendage that manages to be simultaneously unnerving, suspenseful, and quite funny.  It’s a shame the damn-near insufferable first act didn’t have that same energy.  Unfortunately, moments like this are the exception rather than the rule as the final act proves to be yet another sluggish affair, culminating in an artsy-fartsy Kubrick-inspired ending that doesn’t really add much to the overall story.

Fry is amusing to watch, especially when he is being threatened by the Shearsmith.  The way he tries to remain calm and civilized through the hellish medical treatment that is inflicted upon him offers a solid laugh or two.  Moments like these prevent In the Earth from being a total washout, but Wheatley’s overly deliberate pacing makes it something of an endurance test to get to them.

THE EMPTY MAN (2020) * ½

A mountain climber in Bhutan falls into a cavern where he is possessed by a spirit that erupts from an ugly skeletal altar.  His buddies rescue him and bring him to an abandoned cabin and… it doesn’t end well.  Flashforward a few years.  An ex-cop (James Badge Dale) is looking into the mysterious suicide of a family friend.  Could her death and the reaper-like specter be connected?

The pre-title sequence clocks in at a whopping twenty minutes and probably could’ve been its own effective, self-contained short film as it plays like a marriage between The Thing and Evil Dead.  From there, the movie turns into a mash-up of Candyman and The Ring with a group of teens blowing into a bottle and calling upon the titular ghost before dying an untimely death three days later.  This section of the flick is a bit of a comedown from the opening, but it isn’t bad.  

Unfortunately, once Dale becomes the sole focus, things go in the toilet PDQ.  This section of the film is slow moving, meandering, confusing, and dull.  It also takes up the bulk of the running time, which is a whopping one-hundred-and-thirty-seven minutes, which is not the optimal length for something like this.  Heck, this would’ve probably still been a mess at eighty-seven minutes, but at the very least, it would’ve been fifty fucking minutes shorter.

Dale is not a bad actor, but he is given zilch to work with here.  The rest of the cast are bland and unmemorable too.  Heck, you know you’re in trouble when your movie features Stephen Root as an aloof cult leader and he barely even registers.  

The Empty Man (which was based on a comic book I’ve never heard of) was directed by David Prior, who as far as I can tell is NOT David A. Prior, who made Sledge Hammer.  As bad as Sledge Hammer was, it was certainly better than this crap.  You know a movie is bad when you start wishing David A. Prior had directed it.  

I can’t completely write it off because the first half-hour or so works.  The problem is after that, you’re still left with almost two hours’ worth of crap to sit through.  

REMINISCENCE (2021) ***

Reminiscence is chockful of several genre cliches that have been fashioned together Frankenstein style.  First and foremost, it’s an old timey detective story complete with hardboiled narration, a tough-talking Girl Friday, and a missing dame plotline.  It’s also a pre-apocalypse movie where the world is on the verge of going to shit, but people still go about their business as if nothing’s happening.  It’s also a pseudo-Virtual Reality flick as people hop into sensory deprivation tanks and relive old memories.  

The central premise is interesting enough as the characters would all rather live in the past than face a present that includes rising tides that leave the city of Miami a virtual wading pool.  They choose to relive memories through virtual reality than face the reality in front of them.  Sure, it may be a tad on the nose, but it works.

Like many genre mash-ups, Reminiscence is a bit goofy.  I mean are we supposed to believe that in the future people are still gonna dress like they’re in the ‘40s and frequent jazz clubs where sultry singers perform musical numbers?  That kind of unabashed earnestness and commitment to the bit helps keep the film afloat even when the plot is spinning its wheels.  

A good cast helps too.  Hugh Jackman is great as the obsessed hero looking for his long-lost love, who may also be a pawn in an elaborate political scheme.  Thandiwe Newton is a lot of fun as Jackman’s feisty partner, who is more adept at handling herself in a shootout than he is.  Rebecca Ferguson is a bit bland as Jackman’s mystery lady, but that suits her character, who predictably is more than what she appears to be.  

After a fun, breezy set-up (complete with a neat first act twist to boot), things sort of dawdle in the middle section.  Just as Jackman chases his lost love, the movie chases its own tail.  Thankfully, the climax is satisfying.  Without spoiling anything, I will say it’s equal parts downbeat and bittersweet as it gives its characters closure while simultaneously allowing them to perpetually go back on their bullshit.

In short, Reminiscence is a flick worth remembering.  

THE NIGHT GOD SCREAMED (1971) **

Jeanne Crain comes home to find her preacher husband (Alex Nicol from The Screaming Skull) has been crucified by some religious fanatics.  She testifies in court and the nuts are put behind bars.  While babysitting one night, she begins receiving threatening phone calls, and eventually, she and a quartet of kids (children of the judge who sentenced the Jesus freaks) are plagued by attacks from a hooded figure bent on revenge.

The Night God Screamed is novel in that the killers aren’t Satanists but Jesus freaks.  It’s a clever enough twist to make it memorable, but the execution isn’t strong enough to make it worth watching.  The opening scenes of the gonzo cult leader butting heads with Nicol are well done.  However, the ensuing courtroom drama is kind of lethargic and takes some of the wind out of the movie’s sails.  

The film switches gears in the second half when it becomes a home invasion thriller.  The skull the killers leave hanging as a warning to Crain is pretty cool looking, but it’s kind of all downhill from there.  The constant bickering between Crain and the bratty teens she’s protecting quickly grows tiresome, and the cat and mouse suspense scenes are drawn out and lack punch.  The twist ending is OK.  However, it's less successful when it tries to toss in yet another twist in there at the last second.  It just doesn’t quite work as it feels rushed, sloppy, and unfinished.   

Of course, this was trading in on the Manson hysteria.  Director Lee (The Manhandlers) Madden’s direction is much too staid to make for a crackling thriller.  I dug the ‘70s vibe and all, but the pacing is much too slow and the highlights too few to make it worth a look.  I guess we can give it points for doing the whole Babysitter in Peril thing before Halloween made it a cliché.  

The Night God Yawned was more like it.

AKA:  Scream.

WITCH FROM NEPAL (1986) ***

(Programming Note:  I fell behind posting reviews this summer.  I’m still a month or so behind, but eventually I will get to reviewing the 31 Movies of Horror-Ween goodness that I usually churn out this time of year.  This year the theme will be The Roku Horror Picture Show, where I will be showcasing a movie found on the many channels I have discovered on my Roku player.  Until then, I still have to play catch-up.  Fortunately, as I always do, I plan to extend the Halloween festivities into November with the traditional Halloween Hangover, a series of reviews that I just couldn’t cram into one month.  The good news is many of the backlogged reviews are for horror flicks, so if you are looking for horror, there should be plenty of it until Horror-Ween belatedly kicks into gear.)

Chow Yun-Fat (the same year as A Better Tomorrow) stars as an artist who takes a trip to Nepal with his girlfriend.  They go on a guided tour, and Chow breaks his leg when he falls from an elephant.  While in the hospital, a mysterious woman heals his wounds, and later, he helps her escape from the authorities who want to deport her.  She then teaches him how to do magic, and pretty soon, he’s making coffee with his mind.  Eventually, they fall in love, but trouble brews when her jealous ex, a mystical shaman, arrives on the scene to break up the happy couple.  

If you’re a fan of Chow Yun-Fat, you’re probably going to be disappointed that he doesn’t get into a bunch of slow-motion gun battles with the witch.  Sadly, that is not the case, but there are a handful of nutty moments here that make it watchable.  Chief among them:  The scene where the villain rips a dog in half using telekinesis!  

The scene where the witch fixes Chow’s leg is great too.  Instead of using splints or casts, she merely pushes him off a ten-story balcony, flies down to meet him halfway, touches him sensuously, and voila!  He lands on the ground with a completely healed leg!  

Witch from Nepal has a choppy feel to it as scenes kind of peter out and/or end abruptly before moving along to the next sequence.  The stuff with Chow and the witch feels like a fish out of water romantic comedy in the vein of Splash, which runs against the grain of the horror elements.  On the action side of things, the acrobatic swordfights are decent, although there really aren’t too many of them.  

With its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach, it goes without saying that Witch from Nepal is going to be more than a little uneven.  However, it’s almost always entertaining and the highlights (there’s an excellent zombie attack) more than outweigh the weaker portions of the film.  Chow’s climactic showdown with the bone-wielding baddie who howls like a wildcat in heat managed to make me think of Highlander, Superman 2, and Evil Dead all at the same time, which is quite a feat, and ultimately, that’s recommendation enough to watch it right there.

DEATH RIDER IN THE HOUSE OF VAMPIRES (2021) ****

Imagine if Jess Franco made a spaghetti western for Troma and that gives you an idea what Glenn Danzig’s Death Rider in the House of Vampires is all about.

I knew Death Rider in the House of Vampires was going to be something special from the very first scene in which Death Rider (Devon Sawa) rides his horse through the desert alongside a topless companion (porn star Tasha Reign) while the theme song (sung by… who else?  Glenn Danzig!) blared, “Death Ride rides… a-lone!”  The lyric, of course, makes no sense because Death Rider is NOT alone.  He’s got a topless chick with him!  

As you can probably tell, Death Rider in the House of Vampires is destined to become a classic based on that first scene alone.

Death Rider may not ride alone, but he sure rides.  And rides.  And rides.  And rides.  Danzig establishes this fact for minutes on end while the soundtrack goes on and on.  And he continues to ride until the title sequence (an homage to spaghetti westerns) kicks in and… there is no music!  Odd.  Most directors would’ve put the music over the credits and left the riding scene silent.  Glenn Danzig is not most directors.  This is just another example of how he breaks with all forms of traditional cinema and blazes his own cinematic path.  

Let’s, for instance, talk about his use of zooms.  As we all know, Jess Franco is the master of the pointless zoom.  Danzig doubles down and matches the master zoom for zoom.  Danzig’s zooms have the same rambling, unfocused, listless, gratuitous quality as Franco’s.  Experienced directors could try a thousand times to replicate the look and feel of a Franco zoom, and somehow fail miserably, coming off looking like a father with a new camcorder who just figured out how the zoom buttons works.  Somehow, Glenn cracked the code.  

Not only that, but Danzig also managed to achieve the same kind of beautiful looking shots and majestic use of color Franco is known for.  Then, like Jess, it’s back to long zooms, awkwardly staged dialogue scenes, and romantic interludes that look like they came out of a porno.  The change in quality from scene to scene could give a viewer whiplash.

Yes, just like Jess Franco.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Franco was Danzig’s inspiration after all.  I mean Danzig spent all those years with The Misfits singing songs based on B movies like Horror Hotel, Return of the Fly, and Astro Zombies.  If Astro Zombies is where Danzig set his cinematic bar, then he exceeded his grasp with Death Rider in the House of Vampires.  

Danzig’s previous film, Verotika was a mess, but it was a fitfully fun mess that contained glimpses of a true mad genius at work.  It pleases me to no end to report that Death Rider in the House of Vampires confirms my suspicions and Danzig makes good on that promise.  And then some.

You might be tempted to call Death Rider in the House of Vampires a “bad movie”, but this is one of those films that is beyond good or bad.  This is art.  Like Ed Wood before him, Glenn Danzig is blissfully unaware of his shortcomings as a director, and yet, he plunges fervently forward, putting his unique vision on the screen in bold, brazen fashion.  

I think the reason why I never did anything creative in a professional setting is because I continually doubt myself during the creative process.  A little voice always seems to pop up inside my head and question me relentlessly, repeatedly asking, “Is this any good?”  This form of self-criticism cripples an artist from achieving any sort of forward momentum when it comes to creating a work of fiction.  Danzig has no voice in his head.  He just goes for it, guns blazing, and you have to respect that and his vision.  Of course, it’s easy to respect a vision that includes:

• Minutes-long close-ups of a woman’s ass as she rides through the desert.  

• Insert shots of people on horseback that look like they were filmed on one of those kid’s horse rides they have in front of K-Mart where you put in a quarter, and it rocks back and forth.  

• Scenes of vampires biting their victims’ throats and then letting blood spurt everywhere, EXCEPT in their mouths.  (Pardon me if I’m wrong, but aren’t vampires supposed to DRINK the blood?)   

Danzig also assembled an amazing cast.  We have Julian (Warlock) Sands as the main vampiric villain who mostly sits on a throne looking puzzled.  Many times, you wonder if his character is busy contemplating something or if Sands is just waiting to for Danzig to call cut.  Shots are held so long that it becomes almost a game of chicken.  Who will flinch first?  The actor, the director, or the audience?  Fellow director Eli Roth is quite good as a gunslinger named “Drac Cassidy”.  (The characters all have names that are a hodgepodge of western heroes and vampires.)  Kim Director is a revelation as a busty bloodsucking bordello babe.  If they ever made an Elvira biopic, she’d be a shoo-in.  Danny Trejo is also in there too, because this is exactly the kind of movie Danny Trejo would be in.

It’s also fun seeing Danzig in front of the camera as well.  He’s pretty intimidating as the badass “Bad Bathory”.  Remember in the ‘90s when they were hyping him to be Wolverine in the X-Men movie?  Well, in his brief screen time here, you get a sense he might’ve been spot-on casting after all.  

I can honestly say Death Rider in the House of Vampires has the potential to be the next Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I can envision midnight screenings of this thing with audience members dressed as the characters and shouting dialogue at the screen and singing along with the theme song.  If not Rocky Horror, then definitely Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Either way, Danzig has given fans of out-there cinema a real treat.  See it with as many people as possible.  You won’t regret it.

RAPSITTIE STREET KIDS: BELIEVE IN SANTA (2002) NO STARS

I am proud to say that my daughter inherited my love of bad movies.  Throughout the pandemic, we have watched many episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 together, and it has been fun seeing her experience so many cheesy classics for the first time.  Little did I know, she has been looking for other grade Z flicks for us to enjoy.  When she brought Rapsittie Street Kids:  Believe in Santa to my attention, I was ashamed to say I had never even heard of it.  When we watched it together, we both agreed it was one of the worst pieces of cinematic crap we’ve ever seen.  

This is truly one of those proud parent moments. 

The student has surpassed the master.  

The legend surrounding this Christmas special is much more entertaining than the special itself.  It appeared only once on the old WB network before resurfacing on the internet in recent years, becoming something of a cult item.  It contains some of the worst CGI animation I have ever seen.  It was made in 2002, but the animation looks worse than the Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” music video that came out almost twenty years earlier.  I know computer animation wasn’t as sophisticated then as it is today, but there’s no excuse for it to look like a Nintendo 64 video game.

The legend goes that the director “didn’t know” the animation was that bad until he watched it at home on television like everybody else.  I don’t know if I buy that story, but it’s more believable than the actual plot.  That is also supposed to explain why the grandmother character speaks in complete gibberish as the audio file was severely corrupted and nobody bothered it fix it.  (The only intelligible word she says is “Christmas”, which in itself is something of a Christmas miracle.) 

The plot involves a bully who receives a ratty teddy bear as Christmas present from a kid who speaks solely in rap verses.  She is at first annoyed by the gift and throws it in the garbage.  When she learns it was a present from the kid’s dead mother (“before she went to the angels”), the bratty chick then embarks on a quest to retrieve the bear.

Fortunately, all this clocks in at forty minutes, but it feels like an eternity.  It’s an affront to the eyes, ears, and brain.  As someone who has suffered through plenty of bad movies in his time, I have to admit, this is one of the worst.  I couldn’t be prouder of my daughter.  

The most amazing thing about Rapsittie (Get it?  Like “Rhapsody”, except it is like “Rap City”, except they just fucked up the spelling?) Street Kids:  Believe in Santa is that it sports a solid cast of vocal talent.  We have Bart Simpson herself, Nancy Cartwright, The Ice Cream Man himself, Clint Howard, none other than The Little Mermaid, Jodi Benson, and MARK FUCKIN’ HAMILL!  Apparently, Hamill has no memory of recording his lines for this thing.  Again, I don’t know if I buy that part of the legend.  Instead, I’d like to think he used some sort of Jedi Mind Trick on himself to make him forget he was even in this thing.     

WITCHOUSE (1999) **

David DeCoteau directed this cheap Charles Band production.  It feels like a Full Moon riff on Night of the Demons, without the over-the-top gore, nudity, or fun.  Heck, with a few trims it could’ve easily been a PG-13 flick.

A group of friends are invited to party at a spooky mansion by their goth friend Elizabeth (Ashley McKinney Taylor).  Almost immediately, she has them join hands for a séance, which is never a good sign.  Little do the friends know, Elizabeth intends on resurrecting Lilith (Ariauna Albright), a powerful witch who was burned at the stake during the Salem witch hunt.  The friends also happen to be descendants of the men who burned Lilith at the stake, and it doesn’t take long for her to take her revenge.

DeCoteau really overdoes it on the lightning crashes and thunder sound effects as they are often way too loud and sometimes threaten to drown out the dialogue.  We get it, Dave.  It’s a dark and stormy night.  You don’t have to hammer it home.

I don’t know if I wound up watching an edited version (which is sadly, an all-too common experience on some streaming services) or what, but every time there is a sex scene it is awkwardly edited so you can’t see any nudity.  Even worse is the part where one of the sexy houseguests announces she’s going to take a shower and then they cut away to something else.  I’m not saying some gratuitous T & A could’ve salvaged this ho-hum affair, but it certainly couldn’t have hurt.  The kills are all relatively bloodless too, although we do get one pretty good head-ripping decapitation.  It also doesn’t help that all the characters are grating shrews and/or douchebag bros.  

On the plus side, it doesn’t waste any time getting to the point.  The seventy-two-minute running time also helps, and DeCoteau keeps the pace running at an acceptable clip.  That doesn’t make it recommended, but it does save Witchouse from being condemned.  

Two sequels followed.  

BODY FEVER (1969) **

Ray Dennis Steckler stars as a down on his luck private eye who’s hiding out from finance companies coming to collect on his many debts.  He gets a job from some shady customers to find a cat burglar (Steckler’s real-life wife and frequent leading lady, Carolyn Brandt) who ripped off a sweaty underworld boss (Bernard Fein).  Once Steckler finally tracks her down, she offers to cut him in for half of the stolen loot.  

Body Fever resembles a “real” movie, which is more than I can say for many other Steckler joints.  However, that ramshackle homemade quality is usually the most endearing aspect of his films.  As it is, it’s a relatively straightforward, albeit completely forgettable throwback to the detective genre of the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Steckler must’ve thought his performance was noteworthy because he is billed under his real name and not his usual “Cash Flagg” pseudonym.  He is sorely miscast as a hardboiled private detective, but his goofy aloofness at the very least makes the cliched detective sequences watchable.  Al Adamson regular Gary Kent also appears as a tough guy, as does Coleman Francis, who has a bit part.  (Legend has it, he was added to the cast after production wrapped when Steckler found Francis lying drunk and broke in the gutter.)  

If anything, Body Fever is proof that Steckler could produce a competently put-together movie.  It’s just that without a Z grade premise or title (as was the case with The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies), it’s all rather forgettable.  The occasional glimpse of nudity portends Steckler’s eventual career turn into porn.  It definitely needed more than a few quick snippets of skin to elevate it into something recommended, but as far as Steckler’s films go, you can do a whole lot worse.

AKA:  Super Cool.  AKA:  Deadlocked.  AKA:  The Last Original B Movie.