TUBI CONTINUED… 42ND STREET MEMORIES: THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICA’S MOST NOTORIOUS STREET (2015) ***

Here’s a fun, breezy, if a bit lightweight documentary on everyone’s favorite movie sleaze pit, New York’s 42nd Street.  Director Calum Waddell takes us on a trip down memory lane as we learn the origins of the street and its early days as a legitimate theater center.  Slowly over time, it gives way to a movie lover’s paradise, cram-packed with theater after theater playing all kinds of goodness from action to exploitation to Kung Fu to sex flicks.  

Sure, it was disgusting.  Sure, it was a cesspool.  Sure, it was crime-ridden.  But let’s face it:  ALL of New York was a disgusting, crime-ridden cesspool at the time.

Many directors (Joe Dante, Frank Henenlotter, William Lustig, etc.), distributors (Samuel M. Sherman, Lloyd Kaufman, Terry Levene, etc.), and starlets (Veronica Hart, Debbie Rochon, Lynn Lowery, etc.) are interviewed.  They all give not only information about the history of the street, but also reminisce about the old theaters and the countless movies they played.  Levene has many of the best anecdotes, including how he hired out a flatbed truck full of actors dressed up as medical professionals to drum up publicity for Doctor Butcher, M.D.

Since so much archival footage of the street has been lost to time, what better way to show 42nd Street in all its glory than by using clips from the movies that were filmed on location there?  What makes it even better is the fact that many of these movies (Nightmare, The Exterminator, Massage Parlor Murders, etc.) were just as scuzzy as the street itself!  These clips are so good that you almost wish they delved more into the movies that played there as well.  

Eventually, Mayor Guliani and Disney came in and cleaned everything up, wiping away the grindhouses of the past and replacing them with a more tourist-friendly destination.  Luckily for movie fans, the grindhouse spirit still lives on through home video releases (which kind of was responsible for ushering in 42nd Street’s demise).  Nowadays, you can watch an exploitation flick in the comfort of your own home and not have to worry about bums peeing on you from the balcony, but it’s just not the same.  

TUBI CONTINUED… SKI WOLF (2008) **

Ski Wolf is writer/director Chris (Filthy McNasty) Seaver’s mash-up of Ski School and Teen Wolf.  It’s the sort of combination you might come up with late at night while you’re either high as a kite or drunk as a skunk.  Unfortunately, you might have to be a little of both to fully enjoy this one.  

Scott (Casey Bowker) goes to his uncle’s ski resort for one last vacation before it gets sold to a rich asshole preppie named Ralston Zabka (Troma vet Trent Haaga).  After Scott is bitten by a werewolf on the slopes, he transforms into the trash-talking Ski Wolf.  He gains newfound popularity on the mountain, but eventually decides to be himself when it comes time to race Ralston for ownership of the resort.  

Although the concept certainly had potential, it often feels like Seaver is holding back with this one.  His films are usually filled to the gills with offensive jokes and crude humor, but it all feels relatively subdued this time around.  (Either that or I’m just becoming increasingly numb to Seaver’s antics after watching four of his flicks in the past four days.)  While this slightly watered-down approach worked for Wet Heat, Ski Wolf could’ve used a bit more raunch to it, especially given the fact that it’s a send-up of ‘80s teen sex comedies and sports movies.   It doesn’t exactly help that Bowker plays Ski Wolf as a sort of half-assed version of Teen Ape.  

That said, the film still has its moments.  There is one funny group sex film that seems to be trying to one-up the orgy sequence from Zoolander.  It’s also fun seeing how Seaver turns the typical sports movie cliches on their ear in the finale.  Seaver’s work is usually hit and miss to begin with, but up until that scene, Ski Wolf was a lot more miss than hit.  At least the voluptuous porn star Alix Lakehurst steals every scene she’s in as a massively mammaried snow bunny named Fantasia Snow. 

MILLIGAN MARCH: LEGACY OF BLOOD (1978) * ½

You know, I thought I had seen this one already, but as it turns out, I was thinking of the OTHER Legacy of Blood, which starred John Carradine and Faith Domergue.  I can’t really blame myself for the confusion since both films are about family members gathering in an old house for the reading of a will.  This feeling of déjà vu was only heightened once I discovered (about fifteen minutes in) that this was, in fact, writer/director Andy Milligan’s loose remake of his own movie, The Ghastly Ones.  

Three sisters receive word they must convene at their former hometown for the reading of their late father’s will.  It states they must stay at their old mansion on an isolated island with their husbands for three days before they can receive their inheritance.  The servants resent the siblings being there, and their simpleminded brother, Carl (Chris Broderick) is extremely agitated by their sudden appearance.  Eventually, the family members begin being bumped off by an unseen killer.

I’m not against Milligan remaking The Ghastly Ones, especially as it is one of the lesser films in his repertoire, and there was definitely room for improvement.  However, he does a big disservice to the audience by taking an inordinate amount of time to get the ball rolling.  Say what you will about The Ghastly Ones, but at least it came right out of the gate with a gore scene.  This one makes you wait until the last ten minutes of the movie to make with the guts and gore (not counting the mauling of the poor bunny rabbit).  Til then, you’ve got to sit through a lot of painfully dull dialogue scenes filled with amateurish acting.  

To be fair, it is a slight improvement on the original (although that wasn’t exactly hard to do).  Once people start dropping like flies, Milligan does pepper the film with a modicum of atmosphere.  The Dutch angles and quirky lighting are moderately effective during these sequences.  The gore (when it finally happens) is pretty good too.  One guy gets his guts sawed out, there’s a decapitation, a pitchforking, a hand hacking, and (the funniest) an accidental meat cleaver to the head.  Unfortunately, it’s just a case of too little, too late for it to really come together.

Also included on the Blu-ray is the alternate TV/video cut, called Legacy of Horror.  Again, I’m not a total masochist, so I didn’t sit and watch the whole thing.  However, it did look as though it had been stripped of all the gore (the only reason for it to exist in the first place).  It also ran six minutes longer, which means there are even more dull dialogue scenes than the original cut (probably added in to fill a television time slot).  

Milligan Motifs:  This is yet another costume drama/period piece/horror movie filmed on Staten Island.  Since it is a remake of The Ghastly Ones, the idea of a family with a fractured history and the reading of a will is once again trotted out.  Also, a guy gets nailed to the wall and skewered with a pitchfork.  

Milligan Stock Players:  Other than Milligan himself, who appears in a cameo as a mailman, I didn’t spot any of his usual cast of characters.    

AKA:  Legacy of Horror.

TUBI CONTINUED… WET HEAT (2007) ***

Teen Ape (Casey Bowker) is promised a pardon if he can save “The President of Show Business” (also Bowker, who kind of looks like Obama).  It seems the Douche of Bonejack Heights (Billy Garberina) is holding the President hostage for one million pesos and is coercing him into making a movie about his exploits.  It’s then up to Teen Ape and his team of mercenaries to sneak into Bonejack Heights and rescue the President.  

Of all the Teen Ape films from writer/director Chris Seaver, this might be the best one I’ve seen.  Some of Seaver’s typical offensive humor seems to have been toned down a bit in this one.  In fact, it almost feels like he was out to make a “real” movie this time.  As a result, the jokes are funnier than your average Teen Ape flick, although your mileage may vary, of course.  (Who knows?  For some viewers this might be their least favorite since it is one of Seaver’s least gratuitous outings.)  If anything, it’s proof that he is capable of making a good (well, “good” may be a little bit of a stretch… “entertaining” is more accurate) film when he’s firing on all cylinders.  Seaver also does a surprisingly good job on all the action sequences, given the obvious budgetary restrictions.  His staging of the various shootouts and fight scenes put many homegrown shot-on-video productions to shame.  

No matter what you might think of Seaver’s brand of juvenile humor, you’ve got to admire any movie that can rip-off To Catch a Predator and Escape from New York all before the opening credits.  There are also references of everything from Meatballs 4 to Ski School (which I coincidentally just reviewed) to Total Recall to Terminator 3 to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Sure, it has trouble sustaining its comic momentum in a consistent manner throughout the entire running time, but when Wet Heat hits the sweet spot between exploitation parody and trashy shot-on-video fun, it’s a damned good time.

TUBI CONTINUED… TEENAPE GOES TO CAMP (2007) **

Camp counselor Heather (Meredith Host) calls in a favor and asks Teen Ape (Casey Bowker) to work at a summer camp.  Naturally, he refuses, until she tells him there’s going to be a lot of “barely legal trim” there.  He soon learns that he’s been lured to the camp under false pretenses and that Heather and all the other camp counselors are actually big game hunters who want to hunt Teen Ape Most Dangerous Game-style.  It’s then up to Teen Ape to stay alive and turn the tables on his pursuers.  

Writer/director Chris Seaver takes his intermittently amusing creation, Teen Ape and plugs him into not one, but two dependable cliched scenarios, with predictable, and occasionally funny results.  Since things turn on a dime halfway through, it’s almost like you’re getting two Teen Ape movies for the price of one.  (Some would say that’s still too high a price to pay.)  I will say I kind of wished he made an entire movie about one plot or the other.  Splitting the difference kind of makes the whole thing feel rushed, and you get the feeling that Seaver kind of missed the opportunity to milk both plots for all they’re worth (especially the Most Dangerous Game scenes).

Like most of Seaver’s films, all this is little more than an excuse for sexist jokes, grossout humor, and shot on video shenanigans.  If you can wade through some of the cringeworthy jokes, amateurish performances (although Host is really good as the redhaired villainess), and random pop culture references (everything from Total Recall to Werewolf… uh… the Joe Estevez one), there are a couple of good lines sprinkled about here and there, which helps to make for a mostly bearable experience.  My favorite moment was when the movie star of the group got cast in a buddy comedy set during the Holocaust called Dude Where’s Mein Kampf?    

TUBI CONTINUED… FILTHY MCNASTIER (2002) **

Lori (Brie Jones) is a flat-chested girl who is jealous that all her friends have big boobs.  She turns to her goth Satanist neighbor for help, and he performs a black magic ritual to make her stacked.  The ritual is a success and Lori intends to show off her new rack at an upcoming house party.  Her dreams are shattered when the evil demon Phil (Tim Ekkebus) and his vampire pal Razor (Jesse Green) crash the party looking to score with oblivious babes.  

Writer/director Chris (Mulva:  Zombie Ass Kicker) Seaver’s sequel to Filthy McNasty is about on par with the original.  It’s more of a loose remake/retread of the first one, but that probably won’t matter to anyone who willingly watches it.  The good news is that the forty-seven-minute running time whizzes right on by, and there are a handful of jokes that are laugh out loud funny.  I think my favorite bit was when Razor lamented that Steve Perry got kicked out of Journey.  

However, for every joke that lands, there’s about five or six that are groan-inducing or just plain offensive.  If you’ve seen a Seaver joint before, you probably already know what to expect.  As far as his filmography goes, I’d say this is about middle of the road.  If you’re a newbie to the Seaver fold, Filthy McNastier won’t convert you, that’s for damned sure, but it’s far from his most contemptable cinematic offering.  

It also helps that the film is anchored by a likeable performance by Jones as the gal who desperately wants a big rack.  She’s funny and charming, even when she’s forced to say some of Seaver’s outlandish dialogue.  According to IMDb, this is her one and only film role, which is a shame.  If she can survive a Chris Seaver movie with her dignity intact, she could do just about anything as far as I’m concerned.  

AKA:  Filthy McNastier:  Maximum Dousche.  

TUBI CONTINUED… SKI SCHOOL (1991) ** ½

Once again, I had the pleasure of being a guest on Matt Poirier’s Direct to Video Connoisseur Podcast.  On this episode, we discussed the 1991 skiing comedy, Ski School.  Since the film was available on Tubi, I decided to do sort of a cross-promotion and make it a part of my regular Tubi Continued… column.  You can listen to our in-depth discussion here:  DTVC Podcast 121, "Ski School" by DTVC Podcast (spotify.com)

The “plot” is about the rivalry between the rich preppies and the drunken slobs who compete on the slopes at a posh ski resort.  The preps resent the party animals and try to get them kicked off the mountain.  Predictably, it all comes to a head during the big skiing competition where the losing team must leave the resort for good.  

Ski School is reminder of the time when Police Academy’s popularity was on the decline.  It seemed like there were a lot of imitators with the words “Academy” (Vice Academy, Mortuary Academy) or “School” (Bikini Traffic School, Stewardess School) in the title.  However, the title is misleading because it really isn’t a “school” (although the characters refer to it as such a handful of times) as no one gives or receives skiing lessons at any point during the movie.  (I think the only reason “School” is in the title is to remind that stars Dean Cameron and Patrick Labyorteaux were also in Summer School.) 

Actually, the film is closer to the tone and feel of something like Animal House or Caddyshack as it uses the same Slobs vs. Snobs formula.  (There’s even an indoor snowball fight reminiscent of the food fight scene in Animal House.)  In fact, the whole premise was done a lot better a few years earlier in Hot Dog… The Movie.  

It's also a sports movie, rife with all the sports movie cliches you’ve come to expect from an early ‘90s comedy.  This is the least interesting aspect of the film.  Not only is it predictable, but there are only so many shots of skiers flying through the air and flipping around in slow motion you can take before you start to mentally tap out.  

The better part of the movie is all the stuff with the slobs playing pranks on the snobs and the occasional T & A.  (Darlene Vogel, Charlie Spradling, and Ava Fabian provide the eye candy.)  Even these scenes aren’t particularly great or anything (there’s a potentially funny scene about the lambada that goes nowhere), but they get the job done if you’re an undemanding fan of the genre.  I think director Damien Lee was more comfortable helming action flicks like Abraxus, Guardian of the Universe, Moving Target, and When the Bullet Hits the Bone than he was with a comedy like this, which may be the reason some of the jokes fall flat.

I’m a big fan of Cameron.  He gave one of my all-time favorite performances in Summer School as “Chainsaw” and is criminally underrated for his work in Men at Work.  He kind of underplays his party animal character a bit (I think he probably didn’t want to get typecast as Chainsaw, so he went the other way with it), but is still funny, even if his best joke was stolen from Groucho Marx.  (Cameron later appeared in a classic episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where he essentially played the same character in a virtual remake/sequel to this film.)

In a way, Ski School is kind of review proof.  If you caught this at 11:45 in the ‘90s as a teen back when it was in constant rotation on cable just to see a few boobs and have a few dumb laughs, it will more than certainly fit the bill as this was the exact sort of stuff that made having cable worthwhile back in the day.  If you didn’t watch cable in that era at that time slot, then you probably aren’t the intended audience for something like this.  

TUBI CONTINUED… CARNAGE FOR THE DESTROYER (2005) *

A group of obnoxious friends gather together to set up their annual haunted house attraction.  While showing off his knowledge of Greek history, an idiot metalhead recites an incantation and accidentally awakens “Apollyon” the Destroyer.  The gruesome Greek god then proceeds to chase the friends around an abandoned bowling alley where he makes mincemeat out of them with his trusty sledgehammer.  

All that sounds well and good until you realize this is a Chris Seaver movie.  If this material was played with a straight face (or even with a little tongue in cheek humor), it might’ve worked.  However, there’s only so much of Seaver’s offensive humor, racist jokes, and annoying characters you can take before it all spins off the rails.  The amateurish performances coupled with the foulmouthed humor is particularly hard to take in the early going.  

Luckily, things improve slightly once the hulking “Destroyer” shows up and starts offing the characters one by one.  The gore is OK too as there are plenty of ripped out guts, severed heads, and ripped out guts being used to sever heads to go around.  Despite the gore in the last reel, I was a little surprised by Seaver’s restraint in the finale.  I mean, the characters are stuck in a bowling alley.  There are a couple of severed heads lying around.  Are you telling me that the Destroyer couldn’t have at least bowled one of the heads down a lane and scored a strike?  Talk about missed opportunities.  

Some of Seaver’s cinematic offerings are fun.  I probably enjoy Terror at Blood Fart Lake and Moist Fury more than most sane people.  This is definitely one of his weakest outings, which pains me to say because the Destroyer character is ripe with possibilities.  Maybe one day he can remake it, cut back on some of the offensive humor, and up the gore, and Seaver will have himself a real gem on his hands.

TUBI CONTINUED… HEAD CHEERLEADER DEAD CHEERLEADER (2000) ** ½

The night before the big high school football game, a cheerleader’s head is found on the football field hanging from the uprights.  The killer then begins making threatening phone calls to the head cheerleader, Heather (Tasha Biering), who as a precaution stays home under lock and key.  Meanwhile, the murderer goes around hacking up more cheerleaders with his trusty axe.  

Head Cheerleader Dead Cheerleader begins with an angry phone message from an outraged parent who thinks the movie will give cheerleading a bad name.  I believe this might be a cinema first.  I don’t think the caller was really justified (it’s a Troma level horror movie), but it’s a fun way to kick things off.  

As with most Troma wannabes, a lot of the humor is kind of lame, and many of the characters are annoying (the pair of drunk caretakers are particularly obnoxious).  Even though the film clocks in at a relatively scant seventy-eight minutes, writer/director Jeff Miller allows things to drag at several junctures.  Heather receives one too many surprise visits from obvious red herrings during the second act that cause the pacing to stall.  The movie also features what has to be the longest Talking Killer scene in history.  

Still, even with those quibbles, Head Cheerleader Dead Cheerleader is kinda fun.  Scream was an obvious influence here as there are many scenes where our Final Girl gets threatening phone calls, and characters make a lot of pop culture references.  (In one of the film’s best scenes, a trio of hotties play a game of “Strip Trivia”.)  The gore is good too.  The highlight comes when Debbie Rochon gets her boob hacked off by an axe.  I kind of wish she was in it more, but it’s hard to complain when she is given a death scene of this caliber.  

In short, Head Cheerleader Dead Cheerleader may not be great, but it has enough rah-rah to make it mostly enjoyable.

RANA: QUEEN OF THE AMAZON (1994) ** ½

Rana:  Queen of the Amazon is sort of like the W.A.V.E. Productions version of Sheena.  It’s broken up into three different parts, which kind of makes it feel like an updated Shot on Video version of an old Saturday morning serial.  It’s technically inept, but it has a great theme song, moves at an agreeable pace, and offers up a reasonable amount of fun.  

The first chapter is “The Jungle Woman Versus the Nazis” (** ½).  Alexandria (Dawn Murphy) is a government agent hunting the evil Nazi, Dr. Ilsa von Todd (Tina Krause) who is planning to create a race of zombie soldiers in the Amazon jungle.  She stumbles upon a sexy jungle woman named Rana (Pamela Sutch) who helps her bring the doc to justice.  

This section features a couple of the W.A.V.E. hallmarks that fans have grown to love, mainly:  Hot chicks Kung Fuing each other, catfights, bondage, some whipping, and a long (ten-minute) strangulation scene.  The highlight is an extended sequence of Tina Krause getting dressed.  Although it doesn’t show any nudity, it’s still rather steamy.  Any actress can be sexy when she’s taking off her clothes, but if you can find one who’s just as sexy putting on her clothes as she is taking them off, then you have a true B-Movie Queen on your hands.  Tina is one such talent.  

The next chapter is “The Jungle Woman and the Flowers of Death” (** ½).  Ilsa escapes from justice and returns to the jungle to complete her work.  Alexandria follows in hot pursuit and becomes poisoned in the process.  Rana goes off into the jungle to find an antidote when she is cornered by Ilsa, who has found another jungle woman, Teela (Laura Giglio) to be her new henchwoman.  

That’s mostly what happens in this chapter, but the real plot description for W.A.V.E. fans will be:  Women trapped in quicksand (a seven-minute sequence that’s more about the actress being wet and struggling than anything), catfights, Kung Fu, strangulation, and bondage.  This chapter is probably the weakest of the three, but Giglio is a lot of fun as the wild-eyed evil native gal.  

The final chapter is “The Jungle Woman and the Fangs of Death” (***).  Rana tells the story of how she came to live in the jungle.  Meanwhile, Ilsa captures some government agents and sicks her giant snake on them.  

This chapter is less about filling in Rana’s backstory and more about bondage, whipping, struggling, catfights, Kung Fu, and strangulation.  All of that is well and good, but the thing that makes this sequence so memorable is the hilarious snake puppet.  It looks like a refugee from Mr. Rogers or something.  

Although the snake steals the show, some of director Gary Whitson’s other low-fi DIY techniques gets in the way of the fun.  The outdoor scenes have poor sound (it’s supposed to take place in the ‘40s, but you can hear the sound of a modern plane flying by overhead in one scene) and the overdone jungle sound effects often obscure the dialogue.  The zombies are kind of weak too (they look like The Crow-era Sting with a bad case of eczema).  That said, if you want to see Pamela Sutch running around in a loincloth for 100 minutes while Tina Krause keeps hot babes in bondage, then Rana:  Queen of the Amazon will pass the time nicely.

MILLIGAN MARCH: GURU THE MAD MONK (1970) *

Guru (Neal Flanagan) is a corrupt priest who is willing to do stuff like save your condemned girlfriend’s life if the price is right.  Sometimes, that price may be stealing cadavers or securing blood for a vampire woman.  You know how it is.  However, Guru is slowly going mad, and his condition is made worse when the Church replaces him with a younger priest.

Guru the Mad Monk starts off with an avalanche of exposition and it never quite recovers.  Although it’s only fifty-six minutes long, it might’ve actually benefitted from some more fleshing out.  I mean, you remember the old show biz motto:  Show us, not tell us?  Well, when you’re working with budgets as low as Andy Milligan did, all you can afford to do is tell us.  Even with all the plot-heavy verbal diarrhea the characters spout, it's still hard for the audience to get their bearings.  It also doesn’t help that the narrative is quite choppy, and Milligan rushes from scene to scene so quickly that you’re often in catch-up mode.  And while the movie may be less than an hour long, it feels much longer thanks to the community theater level acting, high school drama costumes, and awful dialogue.  

It also features some of the worst gore effects of Milligan’s career (which is a bold statement if there ever was one).  The eyeball poking scene is some grade school level shit and the scene where a prisoner’s hands are hacked off might go down in cinema history as the worst special effect of all time.  To make matters worse, the gore scenes are all too brief.  It’s almost like Milligan forgot to put them in there and then just tossed a couple crappy effects in at the last minute.  (If you blink, you’ll miss a really shitty decapitation.)

Flanagan is just awful in the lead.  If Guru really was deranged as the title suggests, we might’ve been in business.  However, we just never buy him as a Looney Tune.  The scene where he talks to himself and his evil personality in the mirror feels more like a filmed rehearsal than something that any director in their right mind would put into their finished product.  

When I originally reviewed this back in ’07, I gave it No Stars.  Nowadays, I’m not as harsh as I used to be, although I still say Milligan’s The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here is still one of the worst pieces of shit ever made.  I wouldn’t put this on the same level as that crapfest as it’s not nearly as reprehensible (no animals are tortured this time out, thankfully), but it’s still one of Milligan’s worst, which is REALLY saying something.  

Milligan Motifs:  This was another one of Milligan’s no-budget costume dramas parading as a horror movie.  It’s also the second Milligan movie in a row with a typo in the opening credits (“Sreenplay”).  We also have a villain with a hunchback assistant, characters who have thick modern New York accents in 19th century Europe, and someone gets nailed to a wall.  

Milligan Stock Company:  Flanagan was in a bunch of Milligan flicks from The Ghastly Ones on up to Torture Dungeon and Gerald Jacuzzo, who plays the new priest, was also in Torture Dungeon and The Man with 2 Heads.

Here's a reprint of my original review of the film, which was first posted on August 18th, 2007:

GURU THE MAD MONK  (1970)  NO STARS

You know you’re in trouble when the opening credit for “Sreenplay” is spelled wrong!  

Guru (Neil Flanagan) is a priest in the mythical land of Mortavia who executes criminals for the “mother church” and sells the bodies to a medical school.  His son Carl (Paul Lieber) falls in love with Nadja (Judith Israel), a young criminal and begs his father to spare her.  He agrees but only if his son collects blood for his vampire mistress!  (How a vampire could live in a church is anybody’s guess.)  When his superiors replace Guru with another priest, he kills to keep his place in the church.  Guru also has a hunchback assistant named Igor (Jack Spenser) who also falls in love with Nadja.  In the end, Guru gets his comeuppance when he’s hung in the church’s bell tower.  I’ve seen a lot of terrible movies in my time but this is one of the worst.  

It’s only 56 minutes, but it seems like a 12 hour mini-series.  The inept gore scenes include eyes being poked out with sticks (they’re obviously ping pong balls) and a pretty lame crucifixion.  All the characters have heavy Noo Yawk accents and the budget, costumes, sets and acting would be dwarfed next to any grade school drama production.  Director Andy Milligan also did Bloodthirsty Butchers the same year.  

AKA:  Garu the Mad Monk.

TUBI CONTINUED… OUANGA (1936) ***

Klili (Fredi Washington) is a light-skinned voodoo priestess who is in love with a white plantation owner named Adam (Philip Brandon).  He spurns her advances and gets engaged to a white woman, which throws Klili into a fit of jealous rage.  She then uses her voodoo expertise to put a curse on Adam’s fiancée.  When that fails, she takes to raising a zombie army (OK, two guys) from the dead to do her bidding.  

Ouanga is an interesting early voodoo thriller.  Sure, there are aspects about it that are a little creaky, but it at least tries to deal with the complications that come with an interracial romance.  (Adam says he wants to be with her, but there’s a “barrier” between them.)  The film is at its best when Klili is wrestling with her place in the world.  Once she realizes that no matter how light her skin is, she’ll always be seen as “black” by the whites on the island, she finally accepts her heritage and goes out for revenge.  This sequence is really terrific, and you’ll cheer when Klili snaps, “I’ll show him what a black girl can do!”

While Ouanga pales in comparison next to something like White Zombie (mostly because it lacks the presence of a master of horror like Bela Lugosi), it is nevertheless an excellent vehicle for Washington.  With her piercing stare and devilish charm, she makes for a strong lead, and it’s easy to side with her once she finally goes out for revenge.  She is so hypnotic in the scenes where she looks directly into the camera while performing her voodoo incantations that you’ll swear she’s casting a spell on you!

The other cast members don’t come close to matching her intensity.  Brandon is especially wishy-washy in the lead.  He’s so white bread that it’s hard to tell just what Klili sees in him.  It is fun seeing Sheldon Leonard in an early role in light-skin face as the plantation overseer who is in love with Klili.  

The horror elements are a little surprising too.  The scene where Klili raises the zombies is really cool, and just might be the first instance of zombies coming out of their grave in film history.  The scenes of them slowly stumbling in the dark are pretty effective as well.  

The behind the scenes drama surrounding the film might make for its own terrific horror movie.  Apparently, the filmmakers originally went to Haiti to film the movie in order to capture an authentic feel.  The local witch doctor became enraged when they tried to film a voodoo ceremony and put a curse on them.  They then went to Jamaica to finish the picture, and two crew members mysteriously wound up dead!  COINCIDENCE??? 

AKA:  Love Wanga.  AKA:  Drums of the Jungle.

MILLIGAN MARCH: THE MAN WITH 2 HEADS (1972) ** ½

Not to be confused with 1972’s The Thing with Two Heads or 1971’s The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (or even 1983’s The Man with Two Brains), The Man with 2 Heads is actually Andy Milligan’s take on the old story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  After making movies about vampires, Sweeney Todd, and werewolves, it was only natural that Milligan would set his sights on Robert Louis Stevenson’s (although they misspell his name as “Stephenson” in the opening credits) classic tale of horror.  He even throws a bit of Frankenstein imagery in there as this Dr. Jekyll (played by Dennis DeMarne) opens up a corpse's skull and pokes around in their brain.  

Dr. Jekyll has performed a procedure that allows him to isolate the evil in someone’s brain.  The old guard of physicians scoff at his ideas, and to prove them all wrong, he tries his new formula on himself.  Naturally, it turns him into the evil Mr. Hyde… err… “Danny Blood”.

The acting is surprisingly strong for a Milligan movie, which makes the dialogue scenes seem downright Oscar-worthy next to something like The Ghastly Ones or The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here.  I’m not exactly saying they are great or anything, but it was nice to see some actual talent on screen for a change.  DeMarne is quite good as the straightlaced Jekyll and has fun chewing the scenery as Danny Blood.  The make-up and transformations for Blood are subtle, but effective.  He basically just has big eyebags and bushy eyebrows, but DeMarne plays the role with intensity.  Gay Feld (in curiously her only role) is excellent as Jekyll’s long-suffering fiancée and Julia Stratton (in her second and final role) is equally memorable as the comely barmaid, April.  

Yes, there are still sluggish passages in between the gore (which is limited to a couple of decapitations and a brain surgery scene).  Yes, the movie goes on about fifteen minutes longer than it really needed.  Yes, there’s probably too many supporting characters.  However, the highlights more than outshine the draggy sections.  The sequence in which Blood smacks April around and forces her to bark like a dog packs an unexpected punch, and it ranks as some of the most effective work Milligan has done.  If anything, The Man with 2 Heads shows what Milligan could do with a strong cast and a sturdy script.

As far as Milligan’s motifs go, this was the final film he made in England.  Like many of his movies, it’s a 19th century costume drama/gore flick with lots of canned library music.  The Milligan stock players include the reliable Berwick Kaler, Gerald Jacuzzo from Torture Dungeon, and William Barrel (from numerous Milligan productions) appearing in this one.  

AKA:  The Man with Two Faces.

 

TUBI CONTINUED… DOLL KILLER 3: AUDRA’S REVENGE (2023) **

Okay, so remember in yesterday’s review of Doll Killer 2 when I said it was padded with lots of scenes from the first movie, but since I hadn’t seen the original, it wasn’t a big deal?  Well, Part 3 is padded with scenes from Part 2, which is kind of a big deal since I just saw Part 2 yesterday, and I didn’t exactly need to see them again.  The weird thing is, Part 2 was fifty-one minutes long and this one is only forty-four.  You’d think writer/director Dustin Ferguson would’ve just combined the two pictures into one ninety-five-minute movie, but no.  Then again, if he did that, I wouldn’t be sitting here reviewing Doll Killer 3:  Audra’s Revenge. 

Oh, and remember how I said in yesterday’s review of Doll Killer 2 that if you’re expecting a movie about a killer doll you’re going to be disappointed as it’s about a killer who leaves dolls on the bodies of his victims?  Well, there IS a killer doll in this one named Audra.  However, she’s only in it for like a minute and the special effect basically boils down to a crew member throwing a doll at an actress from just offscreen.  So, if you go in expecting a killer doll flick, you’re still probably going to be disappointed, even though there is actually a killer doll this time out. 

Doll Killer 3:  Audra’s Revenge is kind of like 300:  Rise of an Empire as it is sort of a “sidequel.”  That is to say that the film is happening at more or less the same time as the events from the last movie.  While Stephanie (Breana Mitchell) is off on her date, the psycho in the clown mask stalks and kills more people before setting his sights on some grown-ass adults having a slumber party.  Eventually, he tries to finish Stephanie off as she recovers from her wounds at a nearby hospital. 

The first seven minutes or so are devoted to opening credits and scenes from the first film.  If you also count the end credits and occasional cutaways to scenes from Part 2 that are sprinkled throughout, there’s probably only about a half-hour’s worth of new footage here.  In all fairness, the new scenes aren’t bad.  I liked the sequence where the killer stalks a New Age practitioner (co-writer Traci Burr) who screams, “I should’ve studied Scientology!” as she’s being chased.  Ferguson once again delivers a few arty shots, and ends things with a solid Halloween 2 homage with a final showdown in a hospital.  (Although why anyone would leave a hacksaw on a patient’s bedside table is beyond me.)  Unfortunately, Lisa (Darling Nikki) London, the best actress in the film, is unceremoniously killed off. 

If you took the best parts from 2 and 3 and added them together in a blender (with maybe a little bit more gore and T & A), you might have yourself the making of one good slasher.  As it stands, you’re stuck with two hit-and-miss horror flicks.  At least they’re short.

AKA:  Doll Killer 3.

MILLIGAN MARCH: THE RATS ARE COMING-THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE (1972) NO STARS

You’ve got to hand it to Andy Milligan.  He has a way with a title.  The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here is one of the greatest titles in cinema history.  Unfortunately, it also happens to be one of the worst movies of all time.  

The story goes Milligan originally planned to make a straight werewolf picture called The Curse of the Full Moon.  The producers got a bit nervous that werewolves on their own wouldn’t sell tickets, so they made Andy add some new scenes of rats to cash in on the killer rat craze that had been spearheaded by Willard and Ben.  That legend (two of the rats are even called Willard and Ben, just to show how crassly it all was) is much better than the movie itself, although the incongruous way that the rats are pasted into the narrative at the very least is enough to make this mess memorable.  Sadly, it’s mostly memorable for all the wrong reasons.  

Diana Mooney (Jackie Skarvellis) brings her husband Gerald (Ian Innes) home to meet her family.  Naturally, the family is full of nutcases (her crazy brother is kept in a room full of chickens) and is keeping a terrible secret from him.  FINALLY (in the last reel), it is revealed they are werewolves.

There’s only about one minute of plot stretched out to ninety minutes.  Until the predictable finale rolls around, you have to stomach lots of dull scenes of mindless exposition, bickering sisters harping on at each other, and family members alluding to their big secret.  I’m of the mind that a movie can be anything except boring.  This one can’t even clear that low bar.  This one of those films where you watch it and think you’re an hour in and you check the timer on the remote and only five minutes have gone by.  

The new rat scenes are ill-fitting at best and downright despicable at worst.  Why anyone would go to a shop and buy rats that bit the shopkeeper’s arm and half his face off is beyond me, but at least it gives you a chance to get out of the castle and take a breather from all the mind-numbingly awful family squabbling.  However, the cruel scenes of a mouse being stabbed and nailed are unpleasant and meanspirited.  I mean, I don’t even like mice and it’s fucking hard to watch.  I rarely hand out No Stars reviews anymore, unless the film is a detriment to the human race or at least the moviegoing public.  I’d give it Negative Stars if I could.  

In fact, the rats show up way before the werewolves do, which is weird.  Because of that, it should’ve been called The Werewolves are Coming-The Rats are Here.  Of course, that would’ve made too much damned sense.  

Like most of Milligan’s movies, this is a boring costume drama parading as a horror flick.  It also happens to be even more technically inept as usual.  The piercing music often drowns out the dialogue (which might be a good thing) and none of the costumes or locations look or feel authentic.  The muddled accents coupled with the muffled sound and overbearing soundtrack makes a lot of the dialogue unintelligible and the constant onslaught of dull family drama is enough to put you in a coma ten minutes in.  At all times, it feels like you’re watching a filmed community theater production or something.  

Milligan’s other movies were bad, but they at least had a gore scene every now and then to liven things up a little.  This one doesn’t even have that (unless you could the geek show scenes of animal cruelty).  Without them, there’s no real excuse for this piece of shit to exist.  

The good folks at Severin, who released The Dungeon of Andy Milligan box set, also added Milligan’s original version of the film, The Curse of the Full Moon as a co-feature on the Blu-ray.  It’s missing titles, but it’s essentially the same movie, minus the producer mandated rat scenes.  I only skimmed through this cut (I’m not a total masochist), and I have no intention of ever really sitting down and watching it, but I’m glad Severin preserved it for posterity’s sake, especially given the fact that so many of Milligan’s earlier efforts are lost to time.

Milligan scholars can amuse themselves by spotting some of the motifs that permeate his work.  Most of his movies are either filmed in Staten Island or England.  This one was filmed in both places.  Like many of his films, it’s another period piece costume drama with high school production values.  It’s about the family strife surrounding the continuing of their bloodline, which is a theme we’ve seen throughout his pictures.  Also, the overuse of canned library music is pure Milligan.  

Milligan usual suspects round-up:  Hope Stansbury was later in Blood, Jackie Skarvellis was also in The Body Beneath, Berwick Kaler was in many Milligan features, and Milligan himself (who has two roles) was in a lot of his own films too.  

AKA:  The Curse of the Full Moon.  

Here’s a reprint of my first review of the film, which was originally posted on July 17th, 2007:  

THE RATS ARE COMING-THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE  (1972)  NO STARS

God awful tale of the Mooney family, who are cursed to become werewolves during the full moon.  (MOONEYS!  GET IT?)  In one scene, one of the weird sisters buys a rat from a scarred rat catcher (writer/director Andy Milligan) and even names them Willard and Ben!  Milligan shot this as a straight werewolf movie but added the rat scenes later to cash in on Willard’s success.  Let’s forget the bad acting and terrible make-up and the fact that the werewolves don’t show up until the 80-minute mark of this 90-minute movie.  The thing that really makes this reprehensible is the scene where a real mouse is tortured, cut up and nailed to the ground.  Not only is this the worst werewolf movie ever made, it’s also the worst killer rat movie ever made.  Lucky theater patrons in ’72 were given a free rat when they saw this.  The ads proclaimed:  “Win a free rat for your mother in law!”  

TUBI CONTINUED… DOLL KILLER 2 (2021) **

Doll Killer 2 is the movie that asks the question, “Would YOU allow yourself to be admitted to a psychiatric facility ran by Mel Novak and Scott Schwartz?”  I know I wouldn’t.  I don’t think any judge in their right mind would send me there either.  No wonder poor Stephanie (Breana Mitchell) is so screwed up.

You see, she had to watch as her friends were murdered by a psycho in a clown mask on Halloween night.  She then spent the next fifteen years in a psych ward under the care of Novak and Schwartz before eventually being sent home on Independence Day.  Of course, that just so happens to be the same day the killer escapes from the nuthouse.  It doesn’t take long for him to put on his mask, grab a knife, and set out to finish what he started all those years ago.  

You know, I never saw the first Doll Killer, but hey, when has that ever stopped me from checking out something that has the number “2” in it?  Actually, I wanted to watch Part 3 (which is also on Tubi) based on the thumbnail artwork alone, but I figured I might as well at least try to get some backstory before I take the plunge.  (The original Doll Killer is unfortunately nowhere to be found on Tubi.)  

If you go into the movie expecting a killer doll, you might be disappointed.  This guy is a Doll Killer.  As in, he leaves dolls next to the bodies of his victims.  I guess it all boils down to semantics, but if you’re watching this hoping to see some Puppet Master-type shenanigans, you can forget it.

Doll Killer 2 is actually an old-fashioned Halloween-inspired slasher.  Made on a super low budget, it’s a little bit different than the norm as the killer isn’t a silent hulking murderer.  He speaks a few times throughout the movie, which at the very least shows writer/director Dustin (Zombi VIII:  Urban Decay) Ferguson was coloring a bit outside the genre lines here.  Speaking of colors, the killer has a cool mask.  It kind of looks like a Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera mask that’s been given a Day-Glo clown make-up makeover.  

No one will mistake Doll Killer 2 for high art, but it gets the job done in an efficient enough manner.  Ferguson even finds time to thrown in a couple of arty shots along the way.  It’s only fifty-one minutes long, so it moves at a reasonable pace.  If I saw the first one, I might’ve been pissed that a lot of the running time is devoted to flashbacks from the first movie, dreams, and dreams of flashbacks from the first movie.  Since I haven’t seen it, I wasn’t too bothered by all the (presumably) recycled footage or anything.  I could’ve done without the long amusement park scene though.  It could’ve stood to have a little more gore too.  Some gratuitous gore or even a little nudity would’ve easily bumped this up to a ** ½ rating.  

Doll Killer 2 is not a great slasher by any means.  However, as far as the microbudget ones go, you can do way worse.  I’m all geared up for Part 3.  

EATEN ALIVE! A TASTEFUL REVENGE (1999) ****

Okay, so when I watched Mail Order Murder, the W.A.V.E. Productions documentary, this was one of the titles that really stuck out.  The short clips that were shown don’t quite do it justice.  This is one of the nuttiest fucking movies I’ve seen in a long time.  I think I may be hooked on W.A.V.E.

Stacey (Debbie D) gives it all for her company, but is still passed over for a promotion by her bitchy boss (Barbara Joyce).  To make matters worse, the job goes to Stacey’s ROOMMATE (Tina Krause) just because she’s prettier than her!  The nerve.  What’s a gal to do?  If you answered, “Grab a shrinking gun, shrink her enemies down to size, and then eat them”, then this is the movie for you.  

I’ve never been one for drugs, but this movie left me high as a kite.  Director Gary Whitson gets maximum laughs from the hilarious concept and the acting and shrinking scenes have to be seen to be disbelieved.  Some of the greenscreen “special” effects will have you rolling in the floor with laughter.  

If you’re not familiar with W.A.V.E. Productions, they basically allowed fans to write in to them with a list of their fetishes and they would incorporate them into their next no-budget horror movie.  I don’t know who had a fetish for shrinking hot naked women and then eating them, but God bless them and keep them for all eternity.  I’m not sure if I too have the fetish now, but I kind of already want to see it again.  One thing’s for sure, it’s one of the most insane films I’ve seen in a long time.  

The movie is only about thirty-five minutes long, which is about all the running time this insane premise could stand.  It’s almost like they shrunk the movie down to size too.  That is a good thing, though.  When you strip down something like this down to its barest essentials, it makes the weird-ass sequences seem even weirder.  

Speaking of being stripped down and bare, there’s a lot of nudity here, which also helps make it an unadulterated classic.  There’s a sequence where Debbie D and Sunny try on swimsuits for like ten straight minutes that is cinema at its purest.  Heck, I’m not even gonna talk about the scenes that take place INSIDE Debbie’s stomach where the shrunken girls are digested on something that looks like a Slip n’ Slide from Hell.

Even though it’s only thirty-five minutes long, Eaten Alive!  A Tasteful Revenge is still somehow packed with flashbacks, an overlong end credits sequence, AND post-credits bloopers.  I usually object to so much padding, but these scenes were so nice the first time that I didn’t mind seeing them twice, if only to double-check that I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing.  If you thought you’ve seen it all, by all means, check this sucker out.

MILLIGAN MARCH: BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS (1970) * ½

Bloodthirsty Butchers is writer/director Andy Milligan’s version of Sweeney Todd:  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  Todd (John Miranda) is in cahoots with baker Maggie Lovett (Jane Hilary).  He slices his customers’ throats in the barber shop, and she bakes the bodies into her famous meat pies.  Problems ensue when customers start finding human hair and boobies in their baked goods.  

With this film, Milligan continues his tradition of starting things off with a bang (in this case, a pretty good hand hacking scene) before immediately letting things get bogged down with a lot of boring soap opera melodrama.  You would think that Sweeney Todd would be a can’t miss proposition for Milligan, seeing as his horror films are often 19th century costume dramas with occasional dashes of gore.  Even though the story is tailormade for Milligan’s sensibilities, he is unable to make it work, thanks in no small part to the frequent dull, talky passages in between the murder set pieces.  Or put another way:  You get a little gore, but it’s mostly a bore.  

It’s been a while since I saw it last, but I forgot that it takes FOREVER before the body parts start turning up in the meat pies.  Heck, Miranda and Hilary don’t even share any scenes together until the last act.  Before that, it’s just a lot of love triangles, rectangles, and pentagons as the young romantic leads’ premarital woes and Todd and Lovett’s marital strife seem to take precedence over the whacking, hacking, and body stacking.  There are ultimately just too many side characters and subplots that gum up the works.  I know he was probably just trying to flesh out the characters (or more likely, pad out the running time), but the further Milligan strays from the central premise, the worse the movie gets. 

Notable Milligan motifs:  Like Nightbirds, Milligan shot the film in England.  As with The Body Beneath and Torture Dungeon, it’s essentially a 19th century costume drama with high school drama level costumes and acting that’s punctuated by occasional gore scenes.  Milligan’s overuse of library music and inexplicable shots of the camera looking straight up the actor’s noses also permeate the film.  As for his stock company players:  Miranda later turned up in The Weirdo and Surgikill, Berwick Kaler was previously seen in Nightbirds and The Body Beneath, and William Barrel also turned up in The Body Beneath.

AKA:  The Blood Butcher.  

Here’s my first stab at reviewing the film, which was originally posted on July 17th, 2007 on my old site.  As you can see, my feelings on the flick haven’t changed:  

BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS  (1970)  * ½

In 19th century London, Sweeney Todd (Happy Days’ John Miranda) cuts hair and throats and makes off with his customer’s valuables.  Meanwhile Ms. Maggie Lovett sells human meat pies to her clueless customers.  They fall in love and kill each other’s respective spouses.  Everyone else seems to be in love with everyone else’s spouses too, so the movie is basically a soap opera with high school drama class production values and costumes.  A couple of choice gore scenes (hands hacked off, a human breast in a meat pie, meat cleaver to the face) and Todd’s speech about “women’s happiness” saves this from being a total loss.  Director Andy (The Ghastly Ones) Milligan returned to the 19th century in The Rats are Coming!  The Werewolves are Here!

TUBI CONTINUED… LOVE AFTER DEATH (1968) ****

Here’s an incredible jaw-dropping horror comedy skin flick from Argentina.  If you haven’t seen it yet, what the fuck are you waiting for?  Guaranteed insanity awaits!

Mr. Montel (Guillermo de Cordova) is prone to cataleptic fits.  His scheming wife Sofia (Carmin O’Neal) and his doctor (Roberto Maurano) are secretly in love and conspire to bury him alive when his latest bout of catatonia hits.  It seems Sofia is still a virgin because her poor hubby is afraid of sex and she’s hoping the good doctor can give it to her.  

At the funeral, Montel wakes up in his own casket, but is unable to make anyone realize he’s still alive.  His silent pleas for release from his coffin go unanswered, and he is entombed in the local cemetery and left for dead by his sexpot would-be widow.  Little does she know Montel wakes up and is able to claw his way out of his grave to freedom.  After stumbling around the graveyard for a bit, he cleans himself up and sets out to get some action.  

First, he attempts to rape a woman by pushing her into an old lady’s apartment and tries to do the deed on the couch while the geezer granny looks on.  When Montel is unable to perform, he runs away in disgust, leaving the naked woman all hot and bothered.  She then tries to seduce the little old lady, who politely declines and muses, “If I was ten years younger!”  

If you can’t already tell, this movie is fucking phenomenal.  

Montel has other surprise encounters with a stripper and a pair of lesbians, before finally being able to make time with a random babe he picks up on the sidewalk.  Meanwhile, the cops question the doctor, and get close to figuring everything out.  That is, until the surprise twist ending.  You won’t fucking believe it.  

Man, you never know where this movie is going next.  The opening is played completely straight.  Think an Argentinean Poe adaptation.  Then, it turns into an Argentinean Doris Wishman flick as there’s lots of black and white roughie sex, hilariously unsynchronized sound, and random shots of feet.  Other scenes play like everything from a film noir to an all-out bedroom farce.

Everything from the cool camerawork to the atmospheric cinematography to the inspired use of library music (I had fun spotting several tracks that have appeared in many of the Andy Milligan movies I’ve been watching lately) is just spot on.  The bad dubbing helps to put it over the top and make it a delirious work or trashy art.  Sure, the climax may run on a little long, but that final twist is surely something.  

Trust me folks, you’re gonna love Love After Death.  

AKA:  Unsatisfied Love.

TUBI CONTINUED… DARLING NIKKI (2019) *

Nikki (Nicole D’Angelo) is a beautiful woman stuck in a boring marriage to her musician husband (James Duval).  Or is she the co-hostess of a cooking show?  Or is she a high-priced call girl?  Whatever she is, she gets bored of all that shit, and begins taking drugs until she occasionally starts to slip into a half-assed DTV version of Alice in Wonderland, further infuriating/confusing/confounding the viewer.  There’s a guy dressed like the White Rabbit, a Cheshire Cat wannabe, a hookah-smoking pimp, and Lisa London is the Mad Hatter.  

This movie is like the White Rabbit as it hops from place to place so much that you can never get your bearings.  Tubi describes the flick as such:  “A busy bachelorette with her hands full of romantic prospects plunges into a fantasy world that becomes indistinguishable from her secret life.”  It’s one thing for a character in a movie not to be able to distinguish fantasy from reality.  It’s another thing when the audience can’t either.  

The big problem is that director Gregory Hatanaka (who also made the equally awful The Awakening of Emanuelle with D’Angelo) makes the early scenes so chaotic that it’s hard to tell if Nikki has already gone off her rocker or not.  He should’ve at least grounded the early scenes in some semblance of mundane everyday reality to better disassociate it from the Alice in Wonderland shit.  Is the cooking show scenes part of the Lewis Carroll-inspired nonsense?  Is the hooking scenes (she never has sex, so I don’t know why they made it a big deal that she was a prostitute) part of the Wonderland sequences?  It’s almost impossible to tell.  Since nothing makes a lick of sense, it’s hard to care one way or the other about Nikki’s fantasies, or her reality for that matter.  Oh, and naming the movie after a Prince song does nothing to clarify any of the resounding plot questions posted above.  

TUBI CONTINUED… KITTY KILLS (2017) ***

After her parents’ brutal murder is left unsolved, Susie (Lina Maya) takes it upon herself to bring the killers to justice.  While trying to gather evidence, Susie is kidnapped, raped, and left for dead by the drug dealers responsible for her parents’ death.  On Halloween night, Susie returns from the brink of death, now calling herself “Pussy”, dressed in a sexy skintight catsuit (complete with cat ears and tail) and seeking vengeance.

Kitty Kills is a low budget affair, but it’s highly entertaining.  Writer/director Gabriel Black has a knack for economical storytelling (especially early on) and keeps things moving at a steady clip.  Most of these faux-comic book movies spend way too much time setting up the origin story.  This one breezes through the set-up and cuts right to the chase, which is appreciated.  Black makes good use of color-tinted scenes (green, purple, blue, etc.) to heighten the comic book atmosphere and does a solid job directing the various shootouts and fight scenes.

Despite the fact that it is essentially a Rape n’ Revenge picture, Kitty Kills isn’t as exploitative as you might think.  Most of the unpleasant stuff happens offscreen and Maya remains fully clothed throughout the movie.  It also earns points for allowing its heroine time to come to terms with not only the ramifications of vigilante justice, but her sexual assault as well; something you normally don’t expect to see in something like this.  Don’t worry though, there’s still plenty of good comeuppance scenes as drug dealers, bad guys, and henchmen die via axe, strangulation, cyanide hidden in cocaine, and (lots of) stabbing.      

The film also benefits from a strong central performance by Maya as Susie/Pussy.  She’s equally memorable during her psychotic episodes as she is dishing out vigilante justice.  The supporting roles are also much better than you might expect.  

In short, if you’re looking for a badass vigilante thriller, Kitty Kills is the cat’s meow.

AKA:  Pussy Kills.

TUBI CONTINUED… LADY OF THE DARK: GENESIS OF THE SERPENT VAMPIRE (2011) *

Boy, how’s that for a title, huh?  

When her husband goes away on business, housewife Eve (Melanie Denholme) is left home alone.  She spends much of her time frittering her day away, much to the audience’s chagrin.  While meditating in the garden, she gets bit by a snake.  After sucking the venom out, she celebrates by eating an apple.  You don’t have to be a biblical scholar to realize the shit will hit the proverbial fan soon after.  Eventually, Eve turns into a vampire and begins keeping a gimp in her basement to feed on.  

As its title suggests, Lady of the Dark:  Genesis of the Serpent Vampire is all over the place.  Some scenes feel like a low rent Playboy Video Centerfold of a scantily clad woman walking around her home and narrating about her daily routine.  Some scenes feel like a shaky-cam horror flick.  Some scenes feel like they came out of a film student’s short film.  Some scenes feel like an amateurish music video.  Some scenes look like a Skype call.  Some scenes look like a cheap bondage video.  None of it sticks.  

Mostly though, the flick is nothing more than long, irritating scenes where nothing much at all happens.  When something does happen, it’s little more than Denholme wandering around her house.  I mean, she looks hot and all, and the scenes where she gets naked and/or seductively exercises and does yoga help to alleviate the boredom… a little.  It’s just nothing to base an entire movie on.  I wouldn’t be against seeing her in something else, provided that it actually had, you know, a coherent plot.      

Lady of the Dark:  Genesis of the Serpent Vampire reminded me in a lot of ways of a Chris Alexander film.  It’s got a cast of (mostly) one actress who wanders around one location for most of the running time with a blank look on her face, oh and there’s some occasional nudity.  That, if you can’t tell, isn’t exactly a compliment.  However, I will say that this is probably the best biblically themed vampire movie starring one actress (and a gimp) that was filmed in someone’s mom’s house for $20 I’ve ever seen. 

SCREAM VI (2023) **

Scream VI continues the great horror movie sequel tradition of setting your sequel in New York City and then doing absolutely nothing with the concept of setting your sequel in New York City.  Like Friday the 13th Part VIII:  Jason Takes Manhattan, Ghostface doesn’t hack people up in The Empire State Building, stab victims at The Statue of Liberty, gut teenagers at Yankee Stadium, or splatter someone’s brains all over Broadway, which is bullshit if you ask me.  In fact, the only sequence that really feels like it’s set in New York, is the subway scene you’ve already seen in the trailers.  

I guess this wouldn’t matter if the film had a strong hook.  All the previous Scream movies skewered the concept of horror movies, sequels, remakes, and “requels”.  This one never decides what its intended target is.  When the movie nerd gives her big speech, she says the murderer could be following the pattern of Scream 2, or maybe sequels to requels (since this is basically the second film with the “Legacy” cast) or even franchises, but the killers never follow through with either pattern.  In fact, one of them even says, “Fuck the movies!” at one point, and you have to wonder if the filmmakers didn’t feel the same way as this is probably the most soulless (but not worst… that would be part 4) entry yet.  

The opening sequence is rather strong though and suggests an interesting concept the rest of the film never follows up on.  I don’t want to give too much away as it is the most worthwhile scene in the whole movie.  All I’ll say is that if the killers continued going after their own copycats, it could’ve been a neat meditation on the assorted rip-offs and cash-ins that litter the slasher genre.  Unfortunately, the movie never commits to this intriguing idea.  (This sequence, while having a clever twist, loses points however for being a criminal waste of Samara Weaving.)  

There was some pre-release talk about this being the goriest Scream yet, but I have no idea what they were going on about.  Other than a knife to the mouth scene, there’s a fair amount of blood, but nothing remotely gory.  Actually, this movie might set a record for how many times someone gets stabbed and DOESN’T die.  I mean, I think the body count is only about five or six because the kills are so fucking weak that they don’t even register as kills because the person survives.  All this wouldn’t matter if the suspense scenes (aside from the opening) weren't so watered down and routine.  I did like the killers’ shrine though, which looks like a Scream version of a Planet Hollywood.

The absence of Neve Campbell (who held out for more money and got shot down) is sorely felt here.  She wasn’t given much to do in the last one, but her presence at least made it feel like a legit Scream movie.  Courteney Cox is still around, although in a limited capacity, and (to make matters worse) she basically does the same shit she always does in these movies.  That is to say, write a book, get punched, and then grudgingly help out the rest of the cast solve the killers’ identities.  With Neve nowhere to be found and Courteney stuck with a reduced role, it’s up to “The Core Four” to shoulder much of the movie.  While the new cast members did an OK job in the previous Scream, the screenwriters do very little to make them memorable this time around.  You know it’s a desperate move when they bring Hayden Panettiere, the most forgettable character from the most forgettable Scream back.  (Yet another person who got stabbed and didn’t fucking die.) 

MILLIGAN MARCH: TORTURE DUNGEON (1970) * ½

Norman, the Duke or Norwich (Gerald Jacuzzo) is mad with power (and sexual energy).  He wants to become king, but there’s a matter of a couple of pesky relatives who are ahead of him in the line of succession.  Norman soon sets in motion a dastardly plan to kill anyone who stands in his way and take the throne by any means necessary.

One of FIVE films writer/director Andy Milligan made in 1970, Torture Dungeon is less a horror movie and more of a medieval melodrama.  As such, it has way too many characters (although I did like the dotty old “Marriage Counselor” and the one-eyed hag), unresolved subplots, and weird asides.  There’s an occasional gore scene (beheading, crucifixion, stake through the heart, stabbing, pitchforking, etc.) here and there, although they’re nowhere near as graphic as some of Milligan’s other pictures.  

The movie kicks off with a pretty good decapitation scene before things quickly get bogged down in a lot of soap opera plotting and Renaissance Fair theatrics.  If you can stomach all the palace intrigue shit, you’ll be treated to a head-spinning last minute plot twist/happy ending that is just plain ludicrous.  There are a few worthwhile moments here, such as the extremely awkward wedding night, and the screen’s only menage a trois involving a corrupt Duke, his chambermaid, and his trusty hunchback henchman/lover.  These sequences, taken on their own merits, are kind of fun, but they are no match for the dull dialogue scenes.

Oh, and if you go in expecting to see a lot of torture, forget it.  For a movie called Torture Dungeon, only about a minute or two actually takes place in the titular establishment.  Even then, there’s no actual torture, just a bunch of shots of dudes chained to the wall.  It’s kind of a rip-off if you ask me.  

While all of this is just short of being torturous, it’s definitely a bit of a chore to sit through.   

One thing you can say about Torture Dungeon is that it is an Andy Milligan movie through and through.  It was shot in Staten Island, has cheap gore effects, costumes that look like they came out of a high school play, overly theatrical acting, gay overtones (like The Ghastly Ones and Nightbirds), hunchback henchmen (The Ghastly Ones and The Body Beneath), incest (The Body Beneath), English characters that speak with a Noo Yawk accent,  characters nailed to a wall (The Body Beneath), stock library music, and a family's plot to breed to further perpetuate the bloodline (The Body Beneath).  Plus, the cast is comprised almost solely of Milligan regulars.  

Jacuzzo gets the best line in the movie when he says, “I’m not homosexual!  I’m not heterosexual!  I’m not asexual!  I’m trisexual!  I’ll try anything for pleasure!”

AKA:  Dungeon of Death.   

TUBI CONTINUED… NAUGHTY NEW ORLEANS (1954) ** ½

After a brief travelogue tour of New Orleans, the plot begins.  Burlesque dancer Julianne (herself) gets a surprise visit from her boyfriend, who has no idea she’s a stripper.  She tells him she has to “go to work” and says they’ll get together later in the evening.  While kicking around the city, he wanders into a Burlesque house where Julianne is the star attraction and he learns the hard way his girlfriend is “The Baby Doll of Bourbon Street”.

Of course, the “plot” is secondary (tertiary?  quaternary?) to the Burlesque acts.  If anything, Naughty New York exists to replicate the experience of going to a Burlesque show.  The mildly amusing host (“Pat Patrick”) does a stand-up act and announces the dancers, who take off most, but not all, of their clothes.  (Most of them wear panties under their panties and bras under their bras.)  Sometimes, a third-rate Abbott and Costello comedy duo come out for some lame sketches.  There’s also an African American tapdancing duo in there too.

Honestly, the real reason to see it is for the strippers.  There’s a French girl, a can-can number, and a Mexican spitfire, just to name a few.  The most memorable act is a tassel twirler who even has a tassel on her ass.  Julianne is the closer, and no wonder as she does the most energetic and feisty striptease.  

Naughty New Orleans is kind of review-proof in a way, especially if you know what you’re getting yourself into.  It contains 20% plot and 80% Burlesque show.  Anyone hoping for a different ratio of plot to Burlesque acts is going to be severely disappointed.  The brief running time (it’s just over an hour long) certainly helps too.  Sure, the comedy duo sketches are the weakest part (the train station sketch goes on far too long), and there isn’t any actual nudity to be found.  However, as an archeological relic of a bygone era, it’s relatively amusing.

MILLIGAN MARCH: NIGHTBIRDS (1970) ***

Dee (Julie Shaw) finds Dink (Berwick Kaler) puking in the gutter and buys him a cup of tea.  She’s attracted to Dink, and feels sorry for the guy, so she invites him to stay with her in her ramshackle flat.  Despite their mutual attraction, Dink shrinks away every time Dee tries to initiate sex.  Dink seems to be more into an old biddy named Mabel (Elaine Shore) who reminds him of his mother, which further puts a strain on his budding romance with Dee.  As time goes on, their relationship becomes more awkward and dysfunctional, and it ends with predictably tragic results.  

Nightbirds is a fascinating, stark, and realistic drama from writer/director Andy Milligan.  If you just know him from his cheesy horror movies, this will be a pleasant surprise.  It almost feels like a ‘60s skin flick directed by Ingmar Bergman.

The first portion of the film with Dee and Dink meeting and testing the sexual waters is riveting stuff.  Many scenes are awkward and painful to watch, but when you’re dealing with characters that have so much emotional baggage, it rings true, and almost unbearably so at times.  It becomes a little less effective once the peripheral characters are introduced, but whenever Milligan is exploring Dee and Dink’s gloriously messy relationship, it’s equal parts captivating and heartbreaking.  Ultimately, they are two pieces of different puzzles trying hopelessly to fit together.  

I’m only a few films into this box sex, but I feel confident in saying Nightbirds is one of Andy Milligan’s best.  Although it often feels stage bound due to the fact it mostly takes place in one apartment, the acting and staging feels much more natural than Milligan’s typical theatrics.  Both performers are excellent, especially Shaw (who unfortunately only appeared in a handful of films in her short career) whose character yearns for love but settles for companionship.  Kaler is also memorable as Dink, who often appears uncomfortable in his own skin, particularly when anything sexual is about to go down.  

Like The Body Beneath, this is one of the movies from Milligan’s England era.  It also features many cast members from that film including Felicity Sentence, Susan Heard, and Kaler.  And as with many Milligan pictures, it features a character that has a domineering mother.  (Milligan had one in real life.)