TUBI CONTINUED… CALL ME EMANUELLE (2022) * ½

Here’s another crappy Fake Emmanuelle movie from the makers of The Awakening of Emanuelle.  This time, Shoko Rice, who had a small role as Lilly in the first movie, stars as “Emmy”.  That’s right.  Emmy.  Not Emanuelle.  If The Awakening of Emanuelle was the world’s first fake Fake Emmanuelle movie, this has got to be the world’s first fake Fake Fake Emmanuelle movie.  (To be fair, she does say, “Call me Emanuelle”, but it’s at the very last second of the movie, which is a rip-off if you ask me.)

Remember in The Awakening of Emanuelle how Emanuelle had a bunch of mind-numbing narration?  Well, in this one they eschew the narration for an opening scene where Rice delivers a longwinded monologue directly into her mirror.  When her husband (Chris Spinelli, playing a different character than he did in the first movie) catches her spouting off about God knows what, he asks out loud what the audience has been silently wondering, “Are you high?”  

Anyway, Emmy looks into her husband’s phone, and finds evidence her man has been cheating.  She drops him like a bad habit and shacks up with a dorky bartender (Shane Ryan-Reid).  Since he’s a religious nerd, he isn’t ready when she introduces blindfolds and rope bondage into their sex life.  Naturally, it all ends in heartbreak.

Call Me Emanuelle is less linear than Awakening, which makes it a little more frustrating.  However, it does have a bunch of multi-colored S & M fantasies/dreams/flashbacks (one set to an electronic remix of “Happy Birthday to You”?!?), so it has that going for it.  Too bad, like its predecessor, there’s no actual nudity.  

Emmy’s relationship with the bartender holds promise.  At first, it feels like it’s leading up to be sort of a reverse 50 Shades of Grey situation.  Unfortunately, the dude is so cluelessly inept that the bondage scenes (which are short and tame) never build up any steam.

Emmy’s boss gets the best line of the movie when he tells her to “Stroke the teat of possibility!”

And so ends the first month of my daily Tubi watching project.  So far, I have watched 31 movies in 31 days.  One month down.  Eleven more to go.  

At the start of the month, I had 365 movies in my Tubi watchlist.  At the end of the month, I have 441.  How can that be, you ask?  Well, because I keep adding more and more stupid shit to my watchlist, that’s why.  What other weird, dumb, or just plain bad movies does February have in store?  

TUBI CONTINUED… THE AWAKENING OF EMANUELLE (2021) *

When Tubi recommended this to me I was ecstatic.  The fact that they were still making Fake Emmanuelle movies this deep into the 21st century warmed the cockles of my heart.  The fact that it was a little over an hour was also enticing.  However, it’s pretty much a trainwreck from the word go.  

Emanuelle (Nicole D’Angelo, who also co-directed) is an out of work fashion model who comes crawling back to her asshole photographer boyfriend (Chris Spinelli).  It doesn’t take long for him to fall back into his pattern of abuse and Emanuelle is left with no choice but to stab him with a pair of scissors.  She then gravitates to another photographer (Lynn Ellison).  This one a creepy dude who likes to videotape his models before he photographs them.  Needless to say, Emanuelle is not one of stabile relationships.

I have seen a lot of Fake Emmanuelle movies in my time, but this might be the silver screen’s first fake Fake Emmanuelle movie.  Despite the fact that Emanuelle is a fashion model, goes on photo shoots, takes showers, and has sex many times, she is never once shown in the nude.  What the hell kind of shit is this Fake Emmanuelle movie trying to pull?

I love the fact that there are new Fake Emmanuelle movies being made.  In fact, everybody with a video camera and a hot actress at their disposal should be making Fake Emmanuelle movies.  There should be as many of these things as there are “Amityville” movies.  While I’m happy The Awakening of Emanuelle exists, it’s just not good.  Like at all.    

Turning Emanuelle into a serial killer/fashion model wasn’t the worst idea in the world, but the movie never fully commits to the premise.  The worst part is all of Emanuelle’s mind-numbingly bad, pseudo-intellectual, amateurishly existential narration.  It’s like they’re trying to make Emanuelle out to be more than a pretty face, but they make her sound even dumber as her narration feels like she’s just repeating stuff she heard on an ASMR YouTube video.

D'Angelo isn’t bad in the lead role.  It’s not her fault she has to deliver so much bad narration.  I’d even venture to guess that the narration would’ve been tolerable had she gotten naked like the Fake Emmanuelles that preceded her.  The best moment comes from Jim Wynorski regular Lisa London as a former model-turned-CEO who has a nice monologue about aging.  Too bad that kind of gravitas is missing elsewhere in the picture.

JANUA-RAY: ONE MORE TIME (2009) **

After Summer Fun, the next film on Severin’s Ray Dennis Steckler box set was Reading, PA, a four-part, four-hour (FOUR) shot-on-video documentary (cough, cough, home movie) in which Ray took his video camera, tooled around his hometown and attended his high school reunion.  Sigh.  Friends, I love Ray as much as the rest of you.  However, I just did not have the fortitude to sit through it.  Maybe there will come a day when I revisit it.  That day ain’t here yet.  

So, let’s just move right on to the final film in the Steckler collection, which also happens to be the final film in his filmography, One More Time.  I had never heard of this one before, but as it turns out, it’s a shot-on-video sequel to his magnum opus, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  As far as forty-five years later shot-on-video sequels to horror-musical cult classics go, I’m sure there are worse ones out there.

Steckler returns as Jerry, now an old man who spends his days wandering around the Santa Cruz pier while a narrator pontificates about God knows what.  When he does sleep, he dreams of footage of The Incredibly Strange Creatures.  He goes to his shrink and tells him about his dreams, but he isn’t a big help.  Jerry then goes to the amusement park in his dreams and visits a fortune teller who is amassing her own army of zombies.

It's nice to see Steckler, wearing a hoodie just like he did all those years ago, playing Jerry once again.  As a fan of The Incredibly Strange Creatures, it was a treat to see that some of the locations from the original are still standing (like the rollercoaster).  However, most of the new footage amounts to Steckler wandering around and/or setting up scenes from the first movie.  If you hang in there, you’ll be treated to a fun meta ending (it was probably the only way for it all to make sense anyway).  I won’t spoil the twist, but I think it ends Steckler’s filmography on an appropriate note.  The final results may be a tad underwhelming, but I’m glad he was able to dip his toe into the world of The Incredibly Strange Creatures one last time before his death.

In keeping with the meta spirit of the film, there are a lot of instances of Steckler’s shameless self-promotion.  Steckler wears a Reading, Pennsylvania hat (as well as a Steckler Films hat), Johnny Legend sings the theme song from Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (and “The South’s Gonna Rise Again” from Two Thousand Maniacs), a cover of “The World’s Greatest Sinner” (in which Steckler served as a cinematographer) is heard, people are seen wearing Incredibly Strange Creatures T-shirts, and the film ends in Steckler’s video store, Mascot Video.  There are also plenty of Steckler signatures on hand, including, lots of narration, recycled footage (in addition to The Incredibly Strange Creatures, scenes from The Las Vegas Serial Killer are used), scenic shots of Las Vegas, and the pizza motif from The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher crops up again.

Well, now that I have finished all the Steckler films on the box set (except for Reading, PA), here is my official Ray Dennis Steckler ranking: 

1) Rat Pfink a Boo Boo

2) The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies

3) The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher

4) Nazi Brothel

5) The Sexorcist’s Devil

6) Wild Guitar

7) Body Fever

8) The Thrill Killers

9) The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire

10) The Lemon Grove Kids

11) Red Heat

12) One More Time

13) Face of Evil

14) The Las Vegas Serial Killer

15) Count Al-Kum

16) The Strange Sex Life of Hitler’s Nazis

17) Dr. Cock-Luv

18) Sinthia:  The Devil’s Doll

19) Summer Fun

20) Slashed…

21) Blood Shack (The Chooper cut)

22) Blood Shack (Director’s cut)

Join me next month when we will take a month-long dive into the wild, weird world of Jess Franco for a column called Franco February!  See you then!

TUBI CONTINUED… BLOOD LAKE (1987) *

A bunch of the most annoying chuckleheads you ever saw in a no-budget shot-on-video horror movie go on vacation to their summer home by the lake.  There, they talk (and talk and talk) about sex, drink beer, smoke pot, and waterski.  Little do they know there’s a killer in a big-brimmed hat lurking around the lake with a hunting knife looking to make mincemeat out of them.  

I watched Blood Lake right after Ray Dennis Steckler’s Summer Fun, and it almost feels like a slasher remake of that film.  Both were shot using crummy camcorders on a low budget at a lakeside resort.  (There are instances in both pictures where you could swear the directors are trying to pass off home movies of someone’s vacation as a scene for their movie.)  This one had actual dialogue, but the sound and acting was so poor it made me wish I was watching a silent movie instead.

It doesn’t help that all the characters are raging buttholes.  They almost seem like they came out of a live-action version of Beavis and Butt-Head.  Minus the laughs, of course.  The constant use of waterskiing as padding is also a bit much and the hair metal song that accompanies these sequences (“Feelin’ Free”) gets annoying quickly.  

None of this would matter if there had been some gore or nudity to take the sting out of it.  There is a little blood, although not enough to live up to its title.  Besides, the nighttime scenes are so dark that you can hardly make out the blood anyway, and the red-tinted POV killer stalking sequences are irritating as well.  All the sexual innuendo involving a couple of preteens is a little creepy too.  To make matters worse, just when the movie should be over, it continues on uselessly for another ten minutes.

In short, all involved should go jump in a lake.  

JANUA-RAY: SUMMER FUN (1997) *

Summer Fun is Ray Dennis Steckler’s tribute to silent movies of yesteryear.  Nobody was making silent movies in the ‘90s.  Heck, even when Ray made his silent films in the ‘70s, it was out of necessity because he couldn’t afford sound.  Now, in 1997, he’s shooting on video and STILL chooses to make a silent movie.  I guess you have to give it to Ray for continuing to blaze his own distinct path.  

Not only is it a throwback to the silent movies of yore, but it’s a reminder of the films Steckler used to make early in his career.  The music and dance scenes look like they came out of Wild Guitar.  That doesn’t change the fact that this is one of his all-time worst.  

Dirty Barry is a sleazy Vegas real estate mogul who wants to buy Uncle Charlie’s camp.  When he refuses, Dirty Barry sends his goons out to kidnap his niece, Zoe (played by Ray’s daughter, Bailey Steckler).  Meanwhile, the camp’s annual Olympic games are taking place, which eats up most of the screen time.

Part of the fun of watching a silent movie comedy is the black and white photography and the sped-up antics of the stars.  Watching a silent movie shot in the ‘90s on a grainy camcorder is an odd experience to say the least.  It’s as if Steckler is replicating a silent movie without any of its charms.  For example, instead of traditional silent movie cards, Ray uses crappy computer-generated text that looks like it was made on a Tandy.  The music is often terrible and sounds like it was stolen from TV newscast.  

Steckler obviously shot this with friends and family and limited resources.  It must’ve been nice for him to get back to his Lemon Grove Kids-style roots.  That doesn’t mean it’s a rewarding viewing experience.  It’s almost like watching an hour-long campground commercial on public access television.  In short, Summer Fun is no fun at all.

This is the first time we’ve seen some of Steckler’s Shameless Self-Promotion in a while.  The “bad” Olympic team is named “The Strange Creatures” and they wear The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies T-shirts.  I kind of wish I had one of those.  As far as Steckler’s directorial signatures go, we have musical numbers, scenic shots of the Vegas Strip, long driving scenes, and a dash of Batman influence (the villain’s henchmen are referred to as “the undynamic duo”).  Steckler Stock Players are limited to Herb Robins (who hadn’t appeared in a Steckler film since Sinthia:  The Devil’s Doll) as Uncle Charlie and his daughter, Bailey, who later turned up in Steckler’s final film, One More Time.

AKA:  Summer of Fun.

JANUA-RAY: SLASHED… (2003) *

Slashed… is the second of Ray Dennis Steckler’s cut-and-paste mini-features (okay, shorts) that were self-distributed by Steckler as a “Lost Films Production” in 2003 (but shot much earlier).

As far as the “plot” goes?  It’s just a bunch of scenes from Red Heat shown in no particular order.  When that gets dull, Steckler tosses in scenes from Las Vegas Serial Killer in there to liven things up.  (At least he used that film’s best scene, the extended burlesque number.)  All this reminded me of those old Castle Films 8mm condensed versions of old horror movies you could order off the back of Famous Monsters.

Face of Evil was a cobbled together mess, but at least it had enough new footage to semi-warrant calling it a “new” movie.  As far as Slashed… goes, I think there may (MAY) have been about a minute of new footage of Lovie Goldmine (and that’s being generous).  I will say the music fits the action here a bit better than it did in Face of Evil.  

I guess if you don’t have eighty minutes to spend watching Red Heat, you could just watch this half-hour Reader’s Digest version (minus all the hardcore action).  I mean if you’re going to do that, you might as well watch Face of Evil.  It’s only a few minutes longer and it’s a lot more coherent.  

As far as Steckler’s signatures, it’s about the same as Red Heat and Face of Evil.  It was shot silently, there’s lots of footage of the Vegas Strip, and Steckler shamelessly reuses scenes from his older films.  Steckler Stock Players are basically the same actors who appeared in both Red Heat and Las Vegas Serial Killer; namely:  Pierre Agostino, Chuck Alford, and Lovie Goldmine.    

JANUA-RAY: FACE OF EVIL (2003) **

I didn’t realize that Severin’s Ray Dennis Steckler box set had two of his (never finished?) cobbled together short films, Face of Evil and Slashed… hiding in the Bonus Features section.  I wasn’t going to review them initially because they’re only a half-hour long, so they aren't really a feature-length movie.  I eventually changed my mind due to the fact that so many of his pornos were only in the forty-to-fifty-minute range and I counted them as “real” movies.  (Never mind that I just watched Scream of the Blind Dead, which was only thirty-nine minutes long.)  After all, the purpose of this month-long salute to Steckler was to be as much of a completist as I possibly could (which is why I subjected myself to both Blood Shack AND The Chooper).  So, why the Hell not?

A greasy guy (Will Long) drives around LA and watches Carolyn Brandt water her lawn.  Meanwhile, long scenes from Steckler’s Red Heat play out and the editing (unconvincingly) tries to make it look like Long is peeping in on the characters from the film.  He then goes off and strangles a few women until, in true Steckler fashion, his fate is sealed in the most inane way imaginable.

Face of Evil was presented under the “Lost Films Productions” banner, which I think means Steckler released a handful of copies of it on video.  The quality is like fourth generation video, which makes everything grungy, almost like a snuff movie, which is a positive.  It’s all shot silently, and the music, which sounds alternately like incidental music from a porno, a New Age meditation CD, and a sitcom, never once fits the action, which is amusing.  

Apparently, Steckler started filming scenes of Long for a movie, but when he unexpectedly died, Ray was stuck with about ten minutes of footage he had no real use for.  Ever the thriftster, he cobbled it together with some (non-porno) scenes from his XXX flicks Red Heat and Sex Rink.  If you’ve seen Red Heat (or Sex Rink, I suppose), there’s really no reason to watch this as much of the best footage comes from that flick.  However, if you’re a big Steckler nerd and you have a half-hour to kill, there are worse ways to spend your time.  

There are a few Steckler signatures to speak of.  It was shot silently, there’s plenty of scenes of Hollywood, the completely random ending, and of course, the strangling women motif.  Of Steckler’s Stock Players, we have Long from Nazi Brothel (among others), and of course, Carolyn Brandt.  Lovie Goldmine and numerous others who are visible in the footage from Red Heat and Sex Rink also appear.  

TUBI CONTINUED… CRASH AND BURN (1990) * ½

I must not have gotten enough of people saying, “Crash and burn!” while watching Robot Jox, so I decided to check out this sort of sequel/sort of spin-off.  Thankfully, that phrase isn’t repeated nearly as often this time around as it refers to a computer virus.  

Tyson (Paul Ganus) is a motorcycle-riding rebel who drives through the wasteland and hunkers down at an old TV station to wait out a “thermal storm”.  The other inhabitants are an old newscaster (Ralph Waite), his camerawoman granddaughter (Megan Ward), a teacher (Eva LaRue), a Rush Limbaugh dude (Jack McGee), two hookers (Elizabeth Maclellan and Katharine Armstrong), and Bill Moseley.  During the night, the old dude is murdered, and the group eventually figure out one of them is a “synthoid” robot killer.  (“One of us ain’t one of us!”)

Crash and Burn is a bait-and-switch bore.  It was sold as a giant robot movie, but it’s more of a post-nuke murder mystery.  Or more accurately, a people walking around dark hallways, boiler rooms, and basements movie.  And a dull one at that.  There are also scenes that rip-off The Thing (there’s a blood test to see who’s human) and the Terminator (unstoppable robot killer).  

Once Moseley goes crazy (I would put a spoiler warning here, but c’mon, you knew the robot was going to be Bill Moseley) and starts killing everybody, the movie comes to life.  Too bad you have to wait until the last half-hour for the big reveal.  Even if Bill is only doing a thin imitation of his beloved Chop Top character (he even has an exposed metal plate in his head at one point), he’s still kind of fun to watch.  (“That’s all folks!”)  Till then, it’s a tough slog.

Oh, and if you came to the party expecting some giant robot action, you’re in the wrong place.  It takes about seventy-five minutes for Ward to get it online.  Once it finally wakes up, it doesn’t do a whole lot before it crashes and burns.    

AKA:  Synthoid 2030.  AKA:  Robot Jox 2:  Crash and Burn.  

JANUA-RAY: RED HEAT (1976) **

Our “director” Cindy Lou Sutters (the voice of Carolyn Brandt) tells us all about her latest porn starlet discovery, Mary (Lovie Goldmine), whom she christens “Red Heat” on account of her fiery crimson locks.  When Mary finds out her boyfriend (Pierre Agostino) is cheating on her, she goes crazy and stabs him to death in the shower.  Mary then goes out and kills more people, effectively leaving her director in the lurch.  Desperate, Cindy must go and find other starlets in order to complete production.  Meanwhile, a mugger on a motorcycle goes around holding people up and stealing their wallets.  It’s only a matter of time before the two of them meet.

Red Heat almost feels like director Ray Dennis Steckler’s trial run for The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher as both films have divergent plot lines and lots of sex and stabbings.    (Although I guess it would be more accurate to say The Las Vegas Serial Killer because of the setting and the mugger character.)  Like many of his other pornos, it’s not very sexy (to be fair, it's far from his worst) and features a lot of blowjob scenes.  Some of the dubbed dialogue during the sex is good for a laugh (“That’s enough kissing!  Let’s see some tit!”), but the dubbed moaning and sucking sounds are wildly overdone.

There might’ve been enough material here to make a decent movie, but the fact is there’s just way too much padding gumming up the works.  The endless shots of people wandering around Las Vegas, random waterskiing scenes, and porn inserts that have nothing to do with the plot get to be a bit much after a while.  Steckler also manages to further stretch out the running time by filming the cum shots in slow motion, one of which is set to the familiar tune of “The Hell Raisers”, the theme song from Doris Wishman’s Another Day, Another Man.  (In fact, a lot of the movie resembles one of Wishman’s XXX films.)

Steckler’s directorial signatures are abundantly clear.  We get lots of footage of the Las Vegas Strip, constant narration due to the fact the film was shot silently, plenty of stabbing scenes, and a multitude of long blowjobs.  Of the usual company of Steckler Stock Players, there’s the usual cronies like Carolyn Brandt and Pierre Agostino.  Most everyone else in the cast (according to IMDb) were also in Steckler’s Perverted Passion.

AKA:  Nancy.

TUBI CONTINUED… ROBOT JOX (1990) ** ½

Robot Jox is basically Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots:  The Movie.  In the post-nuke future, the remaining nations of the world settle their conflicts by putting two dudes in giant robots and letting them duke it out.  “Robojox” Gary (Alien Nation:  The Series) Graham (the movie would’ve been called Robojox, but MGM threatened to sue because it sounded too much like Robocop) walks away from the giant robot fighting circuit when his mech accidentally kills a bunch of spectators.  The government wants to replace him with a test tube baby pilot (Anne-Marie Johnson) who is viewed as the future of the sport.  Naturally, she can’t handle the pressure, so Gary has to hop into to cockpit and fight the Russian baddie (Paul Koslo) to the finish.

Robot Jox was directed by the great Stuart Gordon, but if you go in expecting another Re-Animator you are going to be severely disappointed.  (Re-Animator star Jeffrey Combs also appears as one of the fans in the stands.)  At $10 million, this was Empire’s biggest budgeted film.  However, Gordon probably needed double that to fully achieve his vision.  The stop-motion special effects and robot battles are pretty good.  It’s just that there aren’t all that many of them.  Most of the running time is dedicated to dull espionage drama and predictable sports movie cliches.  

Although I liked Gordon’s other forays into science fiction (Fortress and Space Truckers) better, this one isn’t too shabby.  Even when things bog down, there’s still plenty to enjoy.  I liked that in Gordon’s future, everyone wore face masks when they leave their house.  The scene where the Jox use a dual gender locker room also predates Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers by several years.  And the fact that the test tube babies were called “Tubies” made me smile since I’ve been watching Tubi non-stop since the new year.  

Oh, and if you take a shot of your favorite alcoholic beverage every time a character says, “Crash and burn!”, you’ll be ready to check into a psych ward before the end credits roll.  That motto was also the title of the spin-off.  Robot Wars was the real “sequel”.  Sort of.

JANUA-RAY: THE SEXORCIST’S DEVIL (1974) ** ½

After watching so many cheap Ray Dennis Steckler porno flicks, the first thing you notice about this one is that it at least looks like a real movie.  The camerawork is much better and the acting (especially by Steckler’s wife, Carolyn Brandt) is certainly an upgrade from the likes of Count Al-Kum and Dr. Cock-Luv.  That doesn’t exactly make it “good”, but it is one of the best Steckler pornos that I have seen.  

Brandt plays a reporter named Janice who is doing a story on a professor of the occult (Kelly Guthrie).  When he reads a cursed parchment, it awakens a Satanist named Volta (Doug Darush, who kind of looks like Adam Driver).  He seduces Janice’s roommate, a hooker named Diane (Lilly Lamarr) and soon, he takes possession of her soul.  Volta then commands her to “bring more souls to Satan”, which is just a fancy way of saying, “Stab a bunch of people”.  Eventually, the professor (who has spent most of the movie sitting in his office staring at the wall and yelling, “EVIL!  EVIL!”) arrives on the scene to perform a sexorcism (driving away a spirit who has sexually possessed someone).  

Although most of the dialogue comes in the form of narration, what spoken dialogue we do get is pretty great.  Such lines as, “SEXORCISM?  What the fuck is that?” and “Bite it!  Chew it!  Suck it!  You can’t hurt me!” had me chuckling.  The sex scenes are slightly better than most of Steckler’s previous porn work, although there’s a heavy concentration on blow job scenes.  The lack of variety also doesn’t help as Lamarr is the lone female sex performer, but I must admit, the Satanist angle works better in a porno than say, vampires or Nazis.  That doesn’t hide the fact that none of this comes close to being titillating for a second.  

Steckler does a better job when it comes to the horror scenes.  The murder sequences are quite bloody, and he even delivers a not-bad homage to the shower scene in Psycho.  The exorcism… excuse me… SEXORCISM finale is also rather memorable.  

There aren’t many of Steckler’s director signatures this time around.  The constant narration calls to mind a lot of his later-era films such as The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (I have to wonder if Steckler borrowed the idea from his pal Coleman Francis’ Beast of Yucca Flats) and the stabbing scenes are kind of similar to the ones found in The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  Steckler’s stock players are rather plentiful though, and include Brandt (of course), Guthrie (who later appeared in Steckler’s Sex Rink), and Darush (who previously had a role in Ray’s Devil’s Little Acre).    

AKA:  Undressed to Kill.  AKA:  Sexorcist Devil.  AKA:  The Sexorcist.

TUBI CONTINUED… OOGA BOOGA (2013) **

In circumstances too contrived to reveal, the soul of a young African American med student (Wade F. Wilson) is transferred into the body of a racist looking African tribal doll.  The doll then teams up with his former girlfriend (Ciarra Carter) to get revenge on the crooks, cops, and politicians responsible for his demise.  

Director Charles Band must’ve seen Black Devil Doll from Hell and tried to remake it in the typical Full Moon/Puppet Master style.  The end results aren’t nearly as memorably offensive as that cult item.  Although it never quite crosses into full-blown offensiveness, the whole thing is tonally out of whack.  The oddest scene comes when Carter takes a shower after being gang raped.  What does the doll do?  Jerk off while watching her suds up.  

I’m not sure how they roped Stacy Keach into this mess.  He plays the crooked judge who secretly runs meth on the street.  He chews the scenery gamely, but it looks like he filmed all his scenes in one day as he spends all his screen time behind a desk in his office.  I did enjoy seeing Karen Black here though, although her presence is more of a wink to her role in Trilogy of Terror than anything else.  It’s buxom porn star Siri who makes the most memorable impression as a topless party girl.  

I’ve seen so many sixty-minute Full Moon movies lately that one that runs eighty-six minutes feels like a five-part mini-series in comparison.  After watching this one, I appreciate those short and sweet features a lot more.  Since Ooga Booga is rife with too many subplots and extraneous characters (the drunk kids’ show host being the most egregious), it often feels a lot longer than it actually is.  It also features less doll attacks than you might want/expect from a Full Moon flick.  It’s watchable, sure, but it never quite lives up to its potential. 

TUBI CONTINUED… SCREAM OF THE BLIND DEAD (2021) **

Scream of the Blind Dead is Full Moon’s reboot of Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead series.  As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with the OTHER Blind Dead reboot, 2020’s Curse of the Blind Dead.  As a die-hard Blind Dead fan, all I can say is the more the merrier (or scarier).  

We begin with a cool scene where a woman is chased through a field by an undead Templar knight and killed.  Then, the focus switches to a woman who seems to be in a daze when she steps off the train.  She wanders around for a little while before she stumbles into a church where she plays the organ, masturbates, and falls asleep.  When she awakes, she too is menaced by the Templar knight.  

I’ve seen some short Full Moon movies over the course of this column.  This is the shortest one yet.  It’s only thirty-nine minutes long.  I know what you’re asking:  If it’s so short, does it really count as a movie?  Well, if you’re like me and you’re trying to watch 365 movies on Tubi in 365 days, then the answer is a resounding, “Hell yeah.”

Scream of the Blind Dead FEELS like a short.  It’s often experimental, dreamlike, and surreal.  Some sequences look like something out of a silent movie.  Some of the extreme lighting resembles a giallo.  The resurrection of the zombie knight would right look at home in a heavy metal music video.  Most viewers will probably be confounded by it.  Speaking as a fan of the original series, I’m not sure I liked it, but I know at the very least I didn’t not like it.  

There’s a lot of stuff here that will please fans of de Ossorio’s original series.  There are slow-motion attack scenes (in fact, if it wasn’t for all the slow motion, the movie would probably be twenty-five minutes instead of thirty-nine), a gory heart-ripping, and suspense sequences where the heroine must remain perfectly quiet so the Blind Dead (who hunt by sound) won’t find her.  Unfortunately, there are no slow-motion horse riding scenes, which is a bit of a bummer.  Also, the budget was so low they could only afford ONE Templar knight instead of a whole platoon of them.  If only writer/director Chris (Necropolis:  Legion) Alexander gave us a third act (or at least another twenty minutes or so of footage), this might have felt like an honest to goodness continuation of the Blind Dead legacy.  As it is, it just feels like a slightly more expensive fan film.

JANUA-RAY: DR. COCK-LUV (1973) * ½

Three American women are kidnapped by Germans and taken to a Nazi experiment camp ran by the crazy Dr. Cock-Luv (Jerry Delony).  He hooks up the first woman to a “vibration machine”, and when that fails, he orders an SS soldier to bang her.  The next woman is threatened with a cattle prod before another officer has his way with her.  The final captive is oiled up by Nazis with a Spanish Fly ointment before yet another solider plows her.  Eventually, the camp is liberated by American G.I.’s who only have one thing on their mind.

The alternate title for Ray Dennis Steckler’s Dr. Cock-Luv was Nazi Sex Experiments.  If that puts you off, you should know that the movie is neither graphic enough to live up to that title, nor does it have the humor of Steckler’s Nazi Brothel to compensate for its overall lack of titillation.  As it is, it’s just a dull, unpleasant slog.  Heck, it’s not even up to the low standards of Steckler’s The Strange Sex Life of Hitler’s Nazis.  

The sex scenes are short, repetitive, and not very sexy.  The constant German marching band music on the soundtrack doesn’t exactly help either.  The only scene that shows any sign of passion is the lesbian pairing where two of the American prisoners use a double-edged dildo on each other.  Too bad the rest of the movie was sorely lacking this kind of heat.  

Delony overacts to the hilt, but he isn’t given any funny lines or memorable shtick to deliver.  (He was probably ad-libbing the whole time anyway.)  Other actors flub their lines and look at the camera.  At least Steckler sprang for some sets this time.  (They’re cheap, but they’re a lot better than the ones found in his other Nazi pornos.)

As far as Steckler signatures go, this is yet another Nazi porno movie.  (I guess when you find your niche, you’ve got to really stick with it.)  It also features some kaleidoscope effects during the sex scenes, just like Count Al-Kum.  Delony is the only member of Steckler’s Stock Players, having previously co-starred in Count Al-Kum.  The absence of Carolyn Brandt’s Nazi Buster is definitely felt this time around.

AKA:  Nazi Sex Experiments.  AKA:  Sex Slaves of the SS.  AKA:  Slave Girls of the SS.  

TUBI CONTINUED… DON’T LET HER IN (2021) ***

Don’t Let Her In is like a mash-up of Single White Female, Rosemary’s Baby, and your average Witchcraft sequel.  Amber (Kelly Curran) and Ben (Cole Pendery) get more than they bargained for when they accept Serena (Lorin Doctor) into their apartment as their new roommate.  At first all her New Agey crystals, knickknacks, and chanting seem cute, but before long, she reveals herself to be a witch that turns into a demon while having sex.  Eventually, Amber discovers she’s pregnant and predictably, Serena has sinister plans for the unborn baby.  

Written and directed with great efficiency by Ted (Subspecies) Nicolaou, Don’t Let Her In is only an hour long and moves right along like gangbusters.  He has a slick, workmanlike style that isn’t obtrusive to the narrative.  The script may be a tad predictable (not to mention derivative), but it hits all its marks, and the plot has no fat on it whatsoever.  That means we don’t have to suffer through any useless subplots, superfluous scenes, or extraneous characters.  When you strip a horror/thriller of that kind of baggage, you’ll be surprised just how well it works without all that excess nonsense to bog things down.  Although the ending is unceremoniously abrupt (and feels like a set-up for a sequel), it’s a relatively minor quibble in the long run.  

The casting certainly helps to mask any flaws the story may have.  Doctor (who kind of looks like Morena Baccarin’s evil twin) is an enchanting (no pun intended) presence as slinky, witchy roommate from Hell.  She’s just as much fun to watch when she’s talking in tongues and writhing out incantations as she is seducing the hapless couple.  Curran (who resembles a mash-up of Elizabeth Banks and Drew Barrymore) is a perfect foil for Doctor as her innocent beauty and overall wholesomeness makes for an ideal leading lady.  

In short, let Don’t Let Her In into your Tubi watchlist.  

TUBI CONTINUED… HALLOWEEN PUSSY TRAP KILL! KILL! (2017) **

Halloween Pussy Trap Kill!  Kill! is kind of like Killer Barbys Meets Saw.  An all-girl punk rock band is on their way to their next gig on Halloween night.  They stop at a gas station in the middle of nowhere owned by a creepy grease monkey named Dale (Richard Grieco).  He knocks them out cold and tosses them into his underground lair where an unseen “Mastermind” (voiced by Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine) pits them against one another in deadly games full of heavily moralistic do-or-die situations.  The booby traps and games include a gas that makes their worst fears come to life, acid in the sprinkler system, and forcing them to decide the fate of another group of people trapped in the lair.  

The traps and do-or-die scenarios are rather generic, but director Jared (After School Special) Cohn handles the execution about as well as you could expect.  The problem is the band members are thinly sketched and have interchangeable personalities.  They all look hot though and wear an assortment of sexy punk rock outfits, so that does help take some of the sting out of it.

There was a kernel of a good idea here, but even at a relatively scant eighty-two minutes, Halloween Pussy Trap Kill!  Kill! feels heavily padded.  Although the scenes of greedy trick-or-treaters coming to the door and getting killed by the Mastermind’s twisted wife are kind of funny, they feel like they came out of an entirely different movie.  The opening sequence featuring soldiers being captured in the Middle East also feel more like a way to pad out the running time than actual important backstory.  

Halloween Pussy Trap Kill!  Kill! may be a little on the uneven side, it still remains the best Saw rip-off starring Richard Grieco and Dave Mustaine you’re likely ever to find, so that is worth something at least.  

TUBI CONTINUED… THE NIGHT BEFORE (1988) **

The Night Before is one of those movies that was in constant rotation on cable back in the early ‘90s.  Although I caught bits and pieces of it here and there during that time, I never actually sat down and watched it all the way through.  Thanks to Tubi, I can play catch-up and plug one of my Keanu Reeves’ blind spots. 

Keanu plays a dorky teenager who wakes up in an alley with no recollection of how he got there.  He soon remembers that he and his date (Lori Loughlin) got lost on the way to the prom and wound up on the wrong side of the tracks.  One thing led to another, he got slipped a Mickey, and accidentally sold her off to a pimp named Tito.  Now, it’s up to Keanu to get her back.  

The Night Before has an OK premise for an ‘80s comedy, although some of it hasn’t aged very well.  (Ha, ha!  Sex trafficking is funny!)  It wasn’t quite as funny as I remembered it, but to be fair, the parts I remembered were weighted towards the third act.  It’s the first act that is the big problem, as it’s mostly a bunch of scenes of Reeves stumbling around and trying to remember what happened to Loughlin.  The flashback structure is really awkward and some of the ADR is painfully obvious.  Once Reeves sets out on his quest to get her back, things improve, but not enough to make it worthwhile.  

Reeves does what he can.  It’s just that his exasperated nerd character is a little bit out of his wheelhouse.  Loughlin fares better as the bitchy rich snob who lost a bet and had go on a date with him.

The Night Before was directed by Thom Eberhardt, who also made Night of the Comet, a personal favorite.  Like that flick, there are a lot of scenes of characters wandering around deserted city streets.  Unfortunately, The Night Before is sorely missing the sense of fun that made that film a classic.  

TUBI CONTINUED… THE BEAST INSIDE HER (1996) ** ½

They don’t make too many werewolf-themed Skinamax movies.  The only ones I can think of are Meridian and Tomb of the Werewolf.  Knowing that they are such a precious commodity, you have to watch these things when you can, even if the results are usually uneven.  Such is the case with The Beast Inside Her.  

Tara (Jenna Bodner) is an American who returns to her ancestral estate in Wales after the death of her father.  One night, she finds a naked girl in the wine cellar who curses her with a low-grade strain of lycanthropy.  Soon after, Tara begins developing superhuman reflexes and an insatiable appetite (both for food and for sex).  Slowly but surely, she gives into her newfound animal instincts.  

The Beast Inside Her is an odd, but not entirely engaging amalgam of traditional gothic horror flick and ‘90s erotic thriller.  While there are some atmospheric moments to be found (like the impromptu photo shoot in a cave), the film never truly embraces its horror elements, which will probably leave most horror fans a bit unsatisfied.  Luckily, the generous helping of Skinamax scenes and gratuitous nudity helps to alleviate the boredom during some of the clunkier passages.

Despite its many shortcomings, the movie has what has to be one of the most jaw-droppingly weird werewolf curse scenes in horror history.  In most werewolf flicks, the werewolf bites you and you become a werewolf.  End of story.  Here, when Bodner encounters the naked wolf girl, a giant ball of light shoots out of her, chases Jenna around her wine cellar, rips off all her clothes, and enters her.  You don’t see shit like that every day, that’s for sure.

The subplot about Bodner’s childhood friends trying to fleece her of her family fortune kind of feels padded out.  The complete non-ending/set-up for a sequel is rather underwhelming too.  Another problem is the fact that Bodner never becomes wolfy enough to label this as an out-and-out werewolf flick.  Her eyes turn black, she sprouts fangs, and runs around on all fours, but that’s about it.  (The werewolf scenes mostly seem inspired by Mike Nichols’ Wolf.)    

On the plus side, Bodner is quite good, especially during her many nude and sex scenes.  She’s equally fine when she begins embracing her newfound animalistic powers.  If only the movie truly embraced its animal nature, The Beast Inside Her could’ve been a howling good time.

AKA:  Huntress:  Spirit of the Night.  AKA:  Spirit of the Night.  

NITEMARE THEATRE’S LATE NIGHT CHILL-O-RAMA HORROR SHOW VOL. 1 (1996) ***

Here’s another Something Weird horror trailer compilation that will fit the bill for any fan of old school horror and schlock on a dark and stormy night.  It might not be one of their best, but it moves at a zippy pace as the trailers come fast and furious.  For variety’s sake, there are a couple of vintage interviews with Bela Lugosi, and a behind the scenes featurette on the making of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (which prominently features the luscious Caroline Munroe in an array of revealing outfits).  

Things kick off with a great run of ‘50s favorites (including the AIP trilogy of I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, and Blood of Dracula) before segueing into ads for condensed Saturday afternoon cliffhangers (like Captain Mephisto and the Transformation Machine, Cyclotrode X, and The Claw Monster).  From then on, the bulk of the trailers are from the ‘70s.  We get lots of films starring Christopher Lee (I, Monster, The Castle of Fu Manchu, and The Wicker Man), Peter Cushing (And Now the Screaming Starts, The Creeping Flesh, and Horror Express), and Robert Quarry (The Return of Count Yorga, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, and The Deathmaster).  Finally, the show wraps up with a handful of more trailers from the ‘50s (Invisible Invaders, The 27th Day, and The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow).   

Some of the best trailers are for werewolf pictures like The Beast Must Die, Werewolves on Wheels and Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror.  Other highlights include ads for The Fly (in which Vincent Price stops the projector because things are getting too scary), The Last Days of Man on Earth, and UFO.  Although I wish some of the trailers had been a little bit more on the racier side (especially considering the healthy amount of previews from the ‘70s), there’s plenty of good stuff here to make this another winner from Something Weird.

The complete trailer line-up is as follows:  Blood of the Vampire, The Cyclops, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Blood of Dracula, The Brain from Planet Arous, The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, The Fly, Giant from the Unknown, The Return of Dracula, Bela Lugosi interview, Intimate Interviews: Bela Lugosi, Captain Mephisto and the Transformation Machine (AKA:  Manhunt of Mystery Island), Cyclotrode X (AKA:  The Crimson Ghost), The Claw Monsters (AKA:  Panther Girl of the Kongo), D-Day on Mars (AKA:  The Purple Monster Strikes), Prehistoric Women, The Screaming Skull, And Now the Screaming Starts!, Scream Blacula Scream, The Beast Must Die, The Last Days of Man on Earth (AKA:  The Final Programme), Death Race 2000, Mansion of the Doomed, Werewolves on Wheels, The Return of Count Yorga, The Velvet Vampire, Murders in the Rue Morgue, I, Monster, Frankenstein's Bloody Terror, The Creeping Flesh, The Castle of Fu Manchu, Son of the Blob (AKA:  Beware! The Blob), Blacula, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Horror Express, The Vault of Horror, The Deathmaster, UFO, Theatre of Blood, a featurette of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The Wicker Man, Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Equinox, Logan's Run, The Land That Time Forgot, Silent Night, Evil Night (AKA:  Black Christmas), Strait-Jacket, Invisible Invaders, The 27th Day, Burn, Witch, Burn!, The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, and The Innocents.

TUBI CONTINUED… PARANORMAL WHACKTIVITY (2018) **

Michael (William Patrick Riley) and Kasey (Sasha Formoso) are a couple who move into a haunted house.  He’s a nerd and she’s hot, so naturally, she still hasn’t let him have sex with her yet.  That leaves Michael no other choice but to jerk off into his sock on a nightly basis.  He eventually decides to make a sex tape to chronicle their first time on film, but when a paranormal force begins to satisfy Kasey at night, he switches gears and tries to catch the ghost on tape.

I guess you have to hand it to the filmmakers for not taking the easy way out.  It would’ve been a lot cheaper and quicker to film Paranormal Whacktivity in the same Found Footage style of Paranormal Activity.  Instead, it’s a little bit more ambitious as it’s more of a mockumentary about the making of a haunted sex tape than just a random assortment of green-tinted shaky-cam sequences.  I’m not saying it works or anything, but I was at least grateful I didn’t have to sit through ninety minutes of sight gags and tomfoolery through the lens of grainy security footage and/or shaky-cam bullshit.

Let’s face it.  Most of this is dumb.  The sexual humor is hit and miss and the movie spoofs (of everything from Brokeback Mountain to The Hangover to even… Avatar?) fall flat.  Then again, what did you expect from a title like Paranormal Whacktivity?  

However, there are a few laughs here, which is more than I can say about a lot of these low budget sub-sub-Scary Movie spoofs.  (I liked the fact that the documentary film crew Michael hires comes complete with a bunch of grouchy Teamsters.)  The best character is a psychic played by Damitri Crayton, who is less of a Ghostbuster and more of an Ernie Hudson impersonator.  Even the director, Roger Roth seems to know when the movie is starting to run out of gas, so he appears on screen to call for more gratuitous T & A.  When you’ve watched as many bad spoofs as I have, you appreciate little moments like that.

TUBI CONTINUED… STRIPPED NAKED (2009) **

Cassie (Sarah Allen) is a stripper with an asshole for a boyfriend (Jon Cor).  One night, they have a fight in his truck, and he leaves her stranded on the side of the road.  While roaming around looking for a ride, Cassie witnesses a drug deal gone wrong and winds up in possession of a duffel bag full of money and meth.  She has visions of making a clean break and heading off to Paris, but things become complicated when the rightful owners (Read:  Drug dealers) come looking for the money.  

Stripped Naked sure knows how to lure you in with a catchy title, but the whole thing is all tease and no please.  It thinks it’s A Simple Plan, but with Strippers, but there’s an overlying lack of urgency (not to mention skin) that makes all the double-crossing less than compelling.  The script is one-note and predictable, and the “twist” ending is more confounding than anything.   

The cast do what they can with such middling material.  Allen isn’t bad in the lead, but we never quite buy her switch from desperate stripper to cold, calculating murderer.  The only name in the cast is Linden (Mortal Kombat) Ashby who is kinda amusing as the drunk owner of the strip club.  Whenever he’s on screen, the film has a sleazy vibe that is sorely lacking elsewhere in the picture.

And that’s the biggest problem:  For a movie called Stripped Naked, there is precious little stripping here.  Not that a film needs nudity solely to be successful.  It’s just that you kind of expect it when the title in question is called Stripped Naked.  As it is, the only skin we get comes courtesy of a couple of strippers in the background.  I mean, they could’ve at the very least put the Allen on the pole.  

Maybe the title is supposed to be one of those metaphorical deals.  You know, like Cassie isn’t literally stripped naked.  It’s her morals that have stripped naked.  That might’ve been the case, but all I know is the flick would’ve been a heck of a lot better if she shed her clothes AND her morals.

AKA:  Body Killer.  

JANUA-RAY: COUNT AL-KUM (1971) * ½

Count Dracula’s nephew, Count Al-Kum (Jerry Delony from Invitation to Ruin and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks) is awakened from his coffin and interviewed.  He tells two offscreen reporters about his attempts (and failures) to pick up women.  They then give him a book called “1001 Ways to Seduce Women” and he goes out and looks for more babes.  Time and again, he fails miserably to woo the ladies and is forced to watch as his Uncle Dracula repeatedly cockblocks him with trollop after trollop.   

This is another one of Ray Dennis Steckler’s vampire pornos.  Even though it’s only forty-nine minutes long, it’s still something of a chore to watch.  That’s mostly because of Steckler’s slipshod handling of the sex scenes.  He basically sits the camera across the room from the action and only occasionally zooms in for a close-up.  The one time he does manage a decent close-up, the lighting is so poor that it’s hard to tell what’s going on.  He also overdoes it on the kaleidoscope effects, which do nothing to enhance the sex scenes.  At least Dracula doesn’t have a problem getting hard, which is more than I can say for most of the male leads in these Steckler pornos.

Delony is amusing as the titular vampire, but he isn’t exactly funny as the lines he’s been given wouldn’t cut it at an open mic amateur night.  The scenes of Al-Kum stalking potential victims (sometimes in broad daylight) play almost like a silent movie routine, although they fail to garner any laughs.  The only genuinely laugh-out-loud scene occurs when Dracula bangs a chick outdoors and puts his cape down on the ground, so they don’t get dirty when they screw.  

As far as Steckler’s signature touches, he does give us quite a few nice scenic shots of the Las Vegas Strip (where actors and unaware extras look directly at the camera).  Like The Mad Love Life of a Red Hot Vampire, this is another vampire themed XXX film from Steckler, although it can’t even clear the admittedly low bar that movie set.  And the only members of Steckler’s Stock Player Company this time around seems to be Delony, who later appeared in Steckler’s Dr. Cock Luv.  

AKA:  Count All-Cum.  AKA:  Count Alcom.  AKA:  Count Alkum.  AKA:  The Horny Vampire.  

TUBI CONTINUED… SHOCK CINEMA VOLUME 4: MAKEUP EFFECTS BEHIND THE SCENES (1991) ** ½

Brinke Stevens once again produced and narrates this fourth installment in the Shock Cinema video magazine series devoted to the world of low budget filmmaking.  Since it focuses on the same crop of movies that were featured in Volume 3, there’s little here in the way of variety.  Still, it’s a solid look at the ingenuity that goes into low budget productions and should be a treat for fans of old school special effects and make-up.  

Most of the running time is devoted to behind-the-scenes footage of Murder Weapon and Robot Ninja.  The Murder Weapon sequences are the best as we get to see how the special effects (including a head crushing, throat slashing, face blasting, and a heart ripping) were created.  The coolest segment is a fast-motion scene of burn make-up being applied to Linnea Quigley.  The segment on Robot Ninja is the longest and focuses on fight choreography just as much as it does special effects.  Unfortunately, the segments on Skinned Alive and Ghoul School seem to be tossed in there just to pad things out.  Both these sequences are little more than a “greatest hits” package of gore scenes with very little behind the scenes footage.  If these scenes had been excised and the film only focused on the first two movies, it probably would’ve skated by with ***.  

Even then, Shock Cinema Volume 4:  Makeup Effects and Behind the Scenes ultimately suffers from a repetitive set-up.  First, we are shown a select scene from the movie before we see how the effect was done, and finally the scene is shown once again.  Because of that, it isn’t quite as much fun as the other volumes in the series.  However, the fact that it contains so much quality behind the scenes footage for such low budget productions in and of itself is heartening.  

TUBI CONTINUED... SIDESHOW (2000) ** ½

As someone who enjoyed the Fred Olen Ray/Charles Band production of Piranha Women, I thought I would check out their first collaboration, Sideshow.  It’s closer to Band’s sensibilities than Ray’s, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  While it’s not quite up to the level of Piranha Women, it’s a decent way to spend seventy-five minutes.

Five friends go to the carnival.  Most of them are there to gawk at the sideshow freaks.  Naturally, they overstay their welcome and eventually become part of the show.  

Sideshow has kind of a Funhouse Meets Ghoulies 2 vibe about it.  The opening scene in which Ray virtually remakes the finale of Tod Browning’s Freaks is a lot of fun, and the first act or so holds promise.  Things start to slide downhill once the characters are turned into freaks though.  The idea that they are transformed into sideshow attractions because they make wishes that backfire on them is kind of lame and feels like something out of a Wishmaster movie.  (One girl wants a perfect body and winds up having no face, another girl never wants to be touched and is transformed into a living doll under glass, etc.)  The complete non-ending doesn’t help matters either.  

The special effects for the freaks were designed by Gabe (Leprechaun) Bartalos.  They are rather inventive and certainly help keep you watching once the movie begins spinning its wheels.   A face-ripping freak, a conjoined twin, and a “Bug Boy” are among the highlights.  

Although the freak gimmicks make it feel more like a Full Moon movie than a Ray picture, Fred still manages to inject some of his touches in there.  That’s really just a fancy way of saying there’s some gratuitous T & A.  His usual cast of characters, such as Brinke Stevens (who plays a sexy fortune teller), Peter Spellos, Richard Gabai, and Ross Hagen make welcome appearances too.  It’s Full Moon mainstay Phil Fondacaro who steals the (side)show as the ringmaster of the freaks.  

TUBI CONTINUED… ZOMBI VIII: URBAN DECAY (2021) * ½

It’s been a long time since we’ve had an unrelated sequel to Lucio Fulci’s Zombi.  In fact, I think this might be the first unrelated sequel to Zombi that’s (supposed to be) related to Zombi!  As far as these things go, you can do worse, but not much.

Hannah (Jennifer Nangle from Amityville Karen) does one of those 23 and Me deals and finds her long-lost father (Noel Scott Jason) is living on an island in the Caribbean.  You know, that island where there was that mysterious outbreak that the government covered up forty years ago?  Anyway, she and her friends go down to the island only to discover her father has been infected with some sort of virus.  They get him back home (“We barely got through security with him!”) and naturally, they discover the virus he’s carrying is a zombie virus.  It doesn’t take long for him to bite someone, which eventually leads to a global zombie plague.  

Even though Zombi VIII:  Urban Decay is only fifty-seven minutes long, there is a shit ton of padding to be found.  The opening and closing credits sequences go on forever, there are annoying YouTube videos and news reports that act as exposition, and lots of screen time is taken up by characters walking through the jungle and/or taking pictures.  (The shots of animals look like vacation footage from a zoo.)  We also have a long scene where a character watches Night of the Living Dead on TV and the camera just lingers on it for minutes at a time.  I guess this is supposed to be an in-joke since Zombi was a sequel/rip-off to Dawn of the Dead, but there was no reason to show whole scenes from the movie.  

Like most Shot-on-Video productions, the sound is really bad.  There’s a long car ride where the sound of the engine drowns out nearly all the dialogue, and it’s hard to hear the actors during the outdoor scenes too.  The videography is also rather poor as the screen periodically flashes red for no apparent reason.  (It may have been an encoding error, I’m not sure.)  

It's not all bad though.  The music, which is a homage to the score from the original Zombi is quite good.  I also enjoyed the Return of the Living Dead-inspired scene where Samantha McCullough gets high and does a striptease just before a zombie attack.  We also get a variation on the original’s iconic splinter-to-the-eye scene, although it feels kind of rushed.  The complete non-ending is rather infuriating though and probably cost the flick at least a ½ *.

AKA:  Zombie Flesh Eaters 5.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE DOLL HOUSE (2004) ** ½

Three weeks into the new year and I’m already starting to fall behind on my watch-one-movie-on-Tubi-a-day-for-an-entire-year project.  It’s times like these I am grateful that Tubi has a bunch of these Japanese erotic thrillers that clock in under one hour.  Tubi’s plot synopsis for this one described it as “an erotic retelling of The Grudge”.  That’s not exactly the worst way to spend forty-six minutes, I guess.  

A doctor and his new bride move into their dream home.  They find a creepy doll in the house, and right away the doc starts having a weird obsession with it.  Pretty soon, people start dying in the house, and anyone with half a brain could ascertain the doll is responsible.  

I know that plot description doesn’t make it sound like an erotic retelling of The Grudge.  However, the doll is possessed by one of those creepy Japanese girls on a bad hair day that are the hallmark of these J-Horror flicks.  Also, the ghost attacks with her hair, and her scraggily locks turn up in odd places to portend her next attack.  So, basically, it’s The Grudge with a little bit of the killer doll genre thrown in there for good measure.

As far as the “erotic” scenes go, they aren’t bad.  In fact, when the ghost girl attacks someone, it’s usually a hooker or a naked chick, which at the very least makes it a lot more tolerable than many of the “official” entries in the franchise.  The attack sequences aren’t too shabby either.  I particularly liked the way the ghost is deliberately shown out of focus, which certainly makes it look cooler than the CGI-ed ghost gals found in the American remakes of The Grudge.  

On the downside, this is another one of those edited erotic flicks that populate so much of Tubi.  I already knew going in that’s how it was going to be.  (The forty-six-minute running time was the dead giveaway.)  Like many of these films, the sex scenes are cropped and/or abruptly edited so you can’t see any nudity.  Fortunately, the shower and ghost attack scenes appear to be uncut.  Despite having some obvious edits along the way, The Doll House is briskly paced and moderately effective, so it’s hard to hold a grudge against it.

AKA:  The Dollhouse.  AKA:  Mansion of the Senses:  Wife’s Ascension.  

TUBI CONTINUED… THE NECRO FILES (1997) ****

Detectives Manners (Steve Sheppard) and Sloane (Gary Browning) kill a serial killer named Logan (Isaac Cooper) who murdered and raped over “two hundred women”.  Nine months later, some Satanists sacrifice Logan’s illegitimate baby over his grave and bring him back to life.  You may think a scene where a baby is sacrificed is in poor taste, and it would be if director Matt Jaissle didn’t use such an obvious baby doll.  By not hiding the fact they are using a dime store doll, this scene achieves a kind of weird, blissful, surreal aura. 

But you haven’t seen anything yet.  To complete the incantation, one of the Satanists has to pee on Logan’s grave.  That successfully brings him back to life, and the first thing he does once he is resurrected is rip the guy’s dick off and stab someone with it.  Now, we’ve seen a lot of movies where a guy gets stabbed IN the dick.  I think The Necro Files is the first movie in history where someone gets stabbed WITH a dick.  

Anyway, two of the Satanists survive the attack.  They feel bad about bringing Logan back to life, especially now that he is a zombie, he eats his victims after raping and killing them.  They attempt to reverse the spell, and in doing so they… ah shit, man.  I won’t spoil it for you.  That scene made me laugh harder than anything in recent memory.  The scene where the zombie rapist finds true love is pretty damned funny too. 

I will say that the final confrontation between the cops and the zombie isn’t quite as good as the stuff that preceded it.  That’s okay.  When the first hour of your Shot-on-Video horror movie is this riotously gross and hilarious, I can forgive a finale that’s only “pretty decent”.  

The Necro Files has many legitimately great moments blended together with scenes of Ed Woodian levels of WTF weirdness.  Even with its low budget and Shot-on-Video aesthetic, it manages to impress with some inventive camerawork and editing, while simultaneously reveling in its bad taste, no-budget grunginess.  It’s a special movie and one of the best SOV horror flicks ever made.  

It also contains some of the best bad acting I’ve ever seen.  Especially by Browning, who is the standout among the cast.  His hateful monologues, slurred delivery, and awkward phrasing is a bad movie fan’s dream come true.  I had a big stupid grin on my face every time he was on screen.  Also, be on the lookout for porn star Dru Barrymore (the only “star” in the film) as a victim in a tent.

JANUA-RAY: THE STRANGE SEX LIFE OF HITLER’S NAZIS (1971) * ½

The Strange Sex Life of Hitler’s Nazis is Ray Dennis Steckler’s limp sequel to his sporadically amusing Nazi Brothel.  It begins with a bunch of recycled footage from that film, then the “plot” begins.  Hitler shows up at the brothel demanding the capture of American secret agent, Jane Bond (Carolyn Brandt), who is now dubbed, “The Nazi Buster”.  Meanwhile, orgies and various sex acts occur at the brothel.  Eventually, Jane’s sidekick is captured, and she has to bust some Nazis to save her trusted compatriot. 

The streak of sly, sardonic, subversive humor that was so prevalent in Nazi Brothel is sorely missing this time out.  There’s less of a “sticking it to the Nazis” vibe here (although Hitler is portrayed as a whiny nincompoop) as it’s more of a straight-up skin flick.  The problem with that is, yet again, the sex scenes aren’t sexy in the least.  

The orgy scenes are the biggest problem.  Steckler seems to just let the camera hang back while all the action goes on.  Because of that, it’s hard to tell who’s doing what to whom, especially since all the participants have the same sallow skin tone.  The sex scenes featuring three or four partners are only slightly better, but they’re nothing close to approximating “erotic”.  There are one or two odd moments (like a hooker powdering a Nazi’s butt), although not enough to make it as much fun as the first one. 

While the film is kind of a letdown next to Nazi Brothel, there are plenty of Ray Dennis Steckler’s signatures to be seen.  As with that flick, the title sequence is written on a chalkboard, and the actors have trouble maintaining their erections.  The Batman influence is once again present as this time Jane Bond has a younger crimefighting sidekick a la Rat Pfink a Boo Boo.  The movie also ends with a woman with bad teeth biting a guy’s dick, which makes it similar to The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire.  And as with many of Steckler’s productions, it climaxes with an elongated chase scene.  As far as Steckler’s Stock Players go, this has virtually the same cast from Nazi Brothel, most notably Carolyn Brandt (who sadly, doesn’t show up until the last four minutes).  

AKA:  Love Life of Hitler’s Nazis.