TUBI CONTINUED… THE VAMPIRE PROJECT (1995) ** ½

Four years before The Blair Witch Project was a massive box office hit, another Found Footage horror flick with the word “Project” in the title was released.  The good news is that the film only uses the Found Footage format sparingly as it alternates between what the cameras are capturing and what is happening to the characters in the “real” world as opposed to the “reel” world.  While it’s not great or anything, The Vampire Project is certainly a lot more fun than the glut of Found Footage flicks that followed in the wake of Blair Witch.  

A documentary film crew goes undercover with hidden cameras to do a story on illegal underground after hour nightclubs.  They get more than they bargained for when they capture footage of a vampire in action.  The director, Michelle (Kathleen Kelly), then decides to make like Anne Rice and sets out to interview herself a vampire.

The film has a dated ‘90s aesthetic that’s appealing to anyone who lived through the era.  The fashions, hairstyles, camera techniques, and filters make the whole thing look like a music video from the period.  I mean the vampire himself even resembles an alternative rocker.  All this makes for a slim, but notable source of amusement.  Too bad the vampire’s so wishy-washy that he never feels like a credible threat.

While the shaky-cam stuff wasn’t as prevalent as I initially feared, it’s not exactly effective either.  I’m tempted to say it would’ve worked much better without the whole Found Footage angle.  However, I will admit the sequence that plays like a tabloid TV news show a la America’s Most Wanted and/or A Current Affair is pretty spot-on.  

It's only forty-eight minutes long, which is also a bit of a relief.  Say what you will about The Vampire Project, but it knows when to quit, and that’s something that definitely can’t be said for most films working in the Found Footage milieu.  In fact, the short running time coupled with the tame level of violence makes me suspect that this might’ve been a TV pilot that didn’t get picked up.  

At any rate, this Project gets passing marks from me.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE LOVE STATUE (1965) **

Six years before he made the incredible one-two punch of I Drink Your Blood and Stigma, writer/director David E. Durston helmed this ho-hum mash-up of the skin flick and drug trip genres.  There isn’t much here that suggests the greatness to come however, as it’s pretty much your average, run-of-the-mill sexploitation flick.  It also doesn’t help that the sex scenes are all rather tame.  (We get a little bit of side boob, but that’s about it.)  I guess this would’ve been okay if the drug trip scenes were worth a damn, but even they are a big bust as the main special effect is the use of a fly eye lens and/or a blurry kaleidoscope filter on the camera.

Tyler (Peter Ratray) is a struggling artist who is stuck in a rut.  He feels stifled by his overbearing exotic dancer girlfriend, Lisa (Beti Seay) who treats him like garbage.  His friend Stan (Harvey J. Goldenberg) introduces him to a sexy Japanese club dancer named Mashiko (Hisako Tsukuba) who turns him onto LSD.  During his first trip, he imagines that a statute of a woman (Gigi Darlene from Bad Girls Go to Hell) comes to life and seduces him.  Once Tyler awakens from a three-day drug-induced stupor, he is shocked to learn Lisa has been murdered.  Did he kill her when he was trapped in an altered state?  Or is someone trying to frame him?  

The beatnik characters are all pretty loathsome and irritating.  Not even their silly slang-heavy dialogue can make it worthwhile.  The final confrontation is downright laughable too.  

Tsukuba is a real presence though, and her charisma makes The Love Statue at the very least, watchable.  She gave up acting shortly after starring in the movie and turned her sights to producing.  In fact, she went on to produce every single Piranha movie!  Seay is kinda hot too as the surly girlfriend, and Darlene is sexy as always, even if her talents are never fully utilized.

AKA:  The Love Drug.  AKA:  The Love Statue:  LSD Experience.  AKA:  The Stature.  

TUBI CONTINUED… FORTRESS OF THE DEAD (1965) ** ½

John Hackett stars as Frank, an American veteran who returns to the Philippines twenty years after being the lone survivor of a devastating military battle.  His buddy Joe (Conrad Parham) gives him a tour of the battlefield which has since become a national monument.  While Frank takes in the desolate scenery, he tries to reconcile his wartime trauma.  Once he forgives himself for not being able to save his fellow soldiers, he starts trying to live again.  Soon after, he meets a sexy fisherwoman (Anakorita) and takes her back to the site to show her around.  It's here where he begins to suspect something sinister is awaiting him on the island.  

Fortress of the Dead is a low key, bleak, and sporadically effective combination of WWII drama and ghost story.  While it mostly plays like an overlong episode of The Twilight Zone, it definitely has its moments, especially if you are a patient viewer.  Writer/director Ferde (The Day of the Wolves) Grofe Jr. gets a lot of mileage out of the war-torn locations as the hollowed-out structures and rusting military weaponry lends the film a unique sense of atmosphere.  It’s a slow burner to be sure, and nothing really supernatural happens until the closing minutes, but I must admit, I was relatively entertained throughout.

It's well-acted too, which certainly helps keep you invested when the plot is spinning its wheels.  Hackett, who resembles a mash-up of John Astin and Lee J. Cobb, doesn’t do anything showy in the lead role, but he hits his marks effectively, and gets the job done.  Anakorita also injects the movie with a lot of vivacious personality once her character enters the story.  She’s sexy and playful and looks terrific (especially in her wet T-shirt).  They have a lot of chemistry together, and their combined efforts help make the third act play a little better than expected.

AKA:  Soul of a Fortress.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE WITCH’S CURSE (1963) ** ½

After having a blast with Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules, I decided to give another Maciste adventure a try.  This one isn’t quite as “good” as that one, but I’ll be damned if there wasn’t some jaw-dropping, head-scratching, WTF shit going on here.  It ain’t any great shakes, but it’ll do in a pinch.  

Directed by Riccardo (The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock) Freda, the atmospheric opening owes a big debt to Black Sunday.  A witch is burned at the stake in 16th century Scotland, and with her dying breath, she places a curse on the town.  A hundred years goes by, and an ominous tree has now grown in the very spot where she was burned alive.  A descendent of the witch comes to town to spend her honeymoon, and when the locals learn of her heritage, they grab their pitchforks and set out to burn her at the stake too.  

Just when things seem at their bleakest, and there’s no hope in sight for the poor, innocent woman, out of nowhere comes… THE ITALIAN MUSCLEMAN MACISTE?  Yes!  He comes riding into the town square on horseback, leaps from his saddle, tosses guards around like ragdolls, bends her prison bars, and tries to rescue her.

This sequence is fucking nuts.  You’ll swear you accidentally changed the channel about twenty minutes into the movie.  It goes from Witchfinder General to Hercules Unchained in 0 to 60 flat.  It’s fucking ridiculous.  I loved it.  

Anyway, she’s put on trial for witchcraft, and the only way for Maciste to save her is to go to Hell… LITERALLY!  In the underworld, he fights lions, witnesses giant orgies, lifts heavy boulders, and brings down a burning gate.  Like most Hercules movies, there’s a hot babe who loves him and makes him have amnesia, so he’ll love her too.  Eventually, he looks into a pool and watches a clip show package from a bunch of other Hercules/Maciste movies, remembers who he is, and gets back down to business.  

The first half-hour or so had me thinking this was going to be a classic.  However, once Maciste goes to Hell, it becomes rather straightforward.  It checks all the usual peplum boxes, to be sure, and yet, it severely lacks the manic WTF energy of the early going.  Still, there’s enough cheesy moments here (like when Maciste singlehandedly fends off a cattle stampede using a log) to make it mostly worthwhile.

AKA:  Maciste in Hell.  AKA:  Maciste Fights for Survival.  

TUBI CONTINUED… FIRE MONSTERS AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1962) ***

It’s been a while since I’ve watched some good old fashioned Italian peplum.  So, when the Tubi algorithm recommended this one to me, I decided to dive right in.  This is one of those “Sons of Hercules” movies, which is just an informal banner that TV stations used back in the day when they wanted to show an obscure Italian muscleman movie.  Since most American couch potatoes had no idea who a character like “Maciste” was, the distributors redubbed him as the more badass sounding “Maxus” and added narration at the beginning explaining he was one of the many “Sons of Hercules”.  They did this to a lot of Togaploitation flicks in the ‘60s, and most of them suck, but I have to admit, I dug the hell out of this one.

Heck, Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules doesn’t even take place in ancient Greece.  It’s actually a prehistoric action flick as all the characters are more or less dumb cavemen.  At any rate, it’s still a lot of fun.  

Maxus is portrayed by Reg Lewis, who shouldn’t to be confused with Reg Park, who was also Maciste in Maciste in King Solomon’s Mines, and who actually played Hercules in Hercules and the Captive Women (among others).  That’s right, folks!  Not only is this a Fake Hercules movie, it stars a Fake Reg!  I love it.  

Anyway, Maxus saves a guy from a sea serpent.  Since he was the son of the leader of the “Sun Tribe”, they offer him a chance to rule their kingdom (or at least their cave).  Naturally, Maxus refuses and goes on his merry way.  When the warring “Moon Tribe” ransacks their village and kidnaps their womenfolk, the Sun Tribe seeks Maxus’ help to get them back.  

The monsters are awful.  Or awesome.  Depending on your point of view.  Either way, you’ll be laughing hysterically during the scenes where Maxus does battle with them.  The sea monster looks like a cross between the Loch Ness Monster and a Pound Puppy.  He actually looks kind of cute, and it’s a shame that Maxus tosses a spear in its eye, causing it to erupt in a geyser of blood.  Someone get Sarah McLachlan on the phone!  In fact, most of the monsters are just kind of standing around minding their own business and not really bothering anyone when Maxus just rushes in and kills them for no good reason.  Not a good look, Hercules… err… Maxus.  

Oh, and none of the monsters breathe fire as suggested by the title, which is kind of misleading.  Then again, Maxus isn’t really a “Son” of Hercules either.  So, there’s TWO lies in the title right there!  Did I mention I love this movie?

Despite the constant untruths suggested by the title, there is some good shit here.  Even if you go in expecting a typical toga fest, the cavemen battles are a lot of fun.  Plus, there’s still plenty of the typical schtick found in a Hercules flick (columns are toppled, heavy boulders are lifted, guys pile on our hero and he throws them through the air with a single shrug, etc.) to keep fans of Italian peplum satisfied.  My favorite part though was the chorus line of sexy cavewomen dancers who perform Vegas-style showgirl numbers while draped in fur pelts.  I mean, what more do you want from a movie?  

AKA:  Maciste vs. the Monsters.  AKA:  Colossus of the Stone Age.  AKA:  Land of the Monsters.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE ROTTEN APPLE (1963) *

Ben (Will Gregory) is on his way to San Francisco with his wife (Gaye Gordon) and baby in tow.  When his car breaks down on the highway, he leaves his wife and kid on the side of the road and heads to a junkyard looking for parts.  As soon as he arrives, the creepy owner Harry (Paul Leder) begins harassing him.  Soon after, Harry’s sleazy wife Sally (Rue McClanahan) starts sexually harassing him.  Harry eventually pushes Ben too far and thus begins a game of cat and mouse, culminating in a violent confrontation.

The only memorable part of this dull thriller is when Leder addresses the audience and says he only took the role because the studio insisted it had a basis in fact.  This is complete bullshit however since Leder himself co-wrote the script!  I have a feeling this was only added because he wanted to assure everyone that he isn’t really a disgusting, despicable creep like he plays in the movie.  (Either that, or they needed to pad the running time out to hit the eighty-minute mark.)  

Overwrought and overdramatic, the whole movie boils down to nothing more than a bunch of icky characters yelling at one another while sweating profusely.  The scenes with future Golden Girl McClanahan feel like a cheap version of a Tennessee Williams play as she breathlessly yammers on about how it only takes five minutes to do the nasty.  (The original title was Five Minutes to Love.)  Heck, even the “good” guys are rather unpleasant, which doesn’t exactly make for an enjoyable viewing experience.  

Scene after scene of people screaming their heads off at one another quickly grows tiresome.  The part where the junkie runs off at the mouth about God knows what seemingly goes on forever.  The only reason anyone would probably want to watch it is to see Rue in her prime playing a hooker.  I did enjoy seeing King (the “TORTURE!” guy from Teenagers from Outer Space) Moody (who also went on to play Ronald McDonald!) as Leder’s right-hand man though, and the groovy jazz soundtrack is decent.

Director John Hayes went on to do much better Grave of the Vampire.  He was dating McClanahan at the time and directed her in the only slightly less irritating Hollywood After Dark.  Leder went on to direct such classics as I Dismember Mama and A*P*E.  Despite their best efforts, this Apple is Rotten to the core.  

AKA:  It Only Takes Five Minutes.  AKA:  Five Minutes to Love.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE PLATINUM PUSSYCAT (1968) **

Dena (Sandy Roberts) is a sexy blonde who is framed for murder and becomes embroiled in international espionage.  A detective named Mike (Jeff Baker) reluctantly takes her case and pounds the pavement for answers.  When Dena is kidnapped by some gangsters, it’s up to Mike to rescue her.  

I know that’s kind of a barebones plot description, but you have to understand that about 75% of The Platinum Pussycat is just flat-out incoherent.  It’s one part detective story, one part spy caper, and one part skin flick.  There’s a lot going on in the story, but nothing ever really happens.  It’s all one big jumble, and it’s often difficult for the mind to catalogue just what is occurring on screen in any given scene.  

Like most ‘60s sexploitation cheapies, it has crisp black and white cinematography and out-of-synch sound.  While some of the dubbing is good for a laugh, the constant narration and voiceovers make things a lot more confusing than they needed to be.  (I could be wrong, but it sounded like one of the voices on the soundtrack was Coleman Francis.)  The whiplash-inducing editing is also frustrating and often prevents the viewer from understanding what should’ve otherwise been a straightforward scene.  

I was tempted to give this a lower rating, but there were a few noteworthy moments that kept this hovering around the Two Stars mark.  One is the random color sex scene that appears for no good reason about halfway through the movie involving a greasy guy getting it on with two hookers.  I also liked the scene where Baker gets the drop on the bad guys while wearing a wetsuit and shoots them with a speargun.  (I think this was part of the James Bond influence.)  However, these scenes are fleeting, as most of the running time is devoted to long stretches where nothing happens and short stretches where way too much happens.  

Even though much of it doesn’t make a lick of sense, there is a lot of skin here, so that’s always a good thing.  

The co-director was Edward L. Montoro.  He only directed one more movie (the Uschi Digard comedy, Getting into Heaven) before going on to create Film Ventures International.  He later took millions from the company and disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.  He’s such a legendary figure in the world of cult filmmaking, I’m surprised nobody’s made a movie about him yet.

AKA:  The Losers.  AKA:  The Pink Pussycat.  

TUBI CONTINUED… A FRENCH MAID IN SAN FRANCISCO (1981) ** ½

A French Maid in San Francisco is a very strange movie.  Or should I say it’s a very strange presentation of a movie.  It’s an edited hardcore sex flick, which is kind of surprising to find on Tubi.  But it gets weirder.  All the voices have been completely redubbed.  That might not sound weird, but it’s obvious that the soundtrack, music, and dialogue were replaced recently, and not at the time of production.  No one put much effort into it either, as the dubbing is worse than your average Kung Fu actioner.  Also, some dialogue scenes are repeated, and there are flashbacks to stuff we’ve just seen that add to the overall fever dream aesthetic.   

Julia Perrin stars as Julia, an eighteen-year-old French girl who comes to San Francisco and finds work with a maid service.  Her first client is an old dude who has over a hundred cats.  It seems weird from the start, but she heads for the hills when the old perv wants her to wear sexy lingerie.  Her next job is with a family that has a horny teenage daughter, who naturally seduces Julia.  Things get complicated when her mother’s lover (Herschel Savage) joins in on the fun.  Next up is a family with a grandpa who tells Civil War stories and waves the Dixie flag whenever he gets a blowjob.  Julia’s final client is a scientist (played by John Leslie) who falls in love with her, and eventually, they get married.

The movie already had an odd vibe to it as it is.  (There’s a picture of Father Guido Sarducci hanging in the employment office.)  The re-release fiddling just adds to the overall weirdness.  The funky fashions (Perrin wears what looks to be an astronaut suit when we first meet her) also lend themselves nicely to the strange mood.  I mean, I can’t say it’s “good”, but it’s certainly memorable and offbeat.  

Perrin has a sexy Christina Lindberg-type quality about her and carries the film rather well.  She also figures into the hottest scene in the movie when she makes out with her image in the mirror.  I can only imagine how this sequence played in its original version as it is pretty steamy in this edited form.  The scene where she masturbates and fantasizes that Leslie is yelling at her from a black void is less effective, however.  Leslie is as amusing as ever, but it’s Savage who gets the wildest line of the whole flick when he tells Perrin, “Don’t you know you can get cancer from making it with a lesbian?”

AKA:  She’ll Do Alright.  AKA:  Love Dreams.

TUBI CONTINUED… PARASITE LADY (2023) ***

I look forward to new Chris Alexander movies the way most cinephiles await the latest works of Werner Herzog, Claire Denis, or Wong Kar-Wai.  His films are often moody, dreamlike, and overly arty ASMR horror flicks.  Sure, some of them are pretty bad (like Space Vampire), but when they hit the sweet spot, they are often quite mesmerizing (like Necropolis:  Legion).  This one might be his best yet.  

Arrielle Edwards stars as a sexy vampire woman named Miranda.  Her daily routine is pretty simple:  She rises from her coffin, takes a shower, dons her best vampire attire, and then cruises amusement parks for fresh victims.  She’ll pick up a hot babe, lure her back to her hotel, rip her throat out, and then whisper, “I love you.”  The pattern repeats, one day flowing into the next, until she eventually falls for Catherine (Ali Chappell) and turns her into a vampire.  When Catherine asks what the vampire lifestyle is all about, Miranda answers, “We wait.  We walk.  We drink.  We go on.”  Predictably, their bliss doesn’t last very long.

Parasite Lady feels like a more assured remake of Space Vampire as it has the same barebones structure:  A vampire woman wanders trancelike through various landscapes.  However, it’s a lot more cohesive than Space Vampire.  It even has a point, which is something that couldn’t be said for Space Vampire.  

Imagine if Jean Rollin had directed Under the Skin.  That might give you an idea as to what Alexander is trying to achieve.  We’ve seen this sort of vampire-as-a-metaphor-for-existential-crisis thing before, but hey, when it works, it works.  Alexander makes his points succinctly and uses his abbreviated forty-two-minute running time expeditiously enough while still finding time for his highly personal artsy-fartsy digressions.

It helps that Edwards is great in the lead.  With her wide-eyed waxy demeanor, she reminded me of Vampira on more than one occasion, and she is nothing less than captivating when she’s on screen (which, fortunately for the audience, is quite often).  Frequent Alexander muse Chappell is also quite good in her brief, but memorable role.

TUBI CONTINUED… LILLITH (2019) *** ½

The Tubi algorithm keeps recommending movies to me about sexy succubae named Lilith (or in this case, “Lillith”), and I keep right on watching them.  This one is the best of the bunch so far.  

Jenna (Nell Kessler) and her friends take a college class on demonology.  When she catches her no-good boyfriend cheating on her, she decides to ask her witchy pal Emma (Robin Carolyn Parent) to help get back at the two-timing bastard.  Together, they summon a succubus named Lillith (Savannah Whitten) to seduce and torment him.  Naturally, things get out of hand in a hurry and Lillith kills him after doing the nasty.  When she sets her sights on fucking and killing more frat boys, it’s up to Jenna and her Wiccan besties to stop her.

Lillith is a surprising, funny, and fun time.  It’s always a little bit better than you expect, as it defies conventions at every turn.  The way co-writer/director Lee Esposito colors outside the lines of the usual horror cliches is also a real treat.  

At the heart of the film is a tour-de-force performance by Whitten as Lillith.  Instead of playing the succubus as a demonic sex machine, she opts to act like a catty goth chick, which is really inspired.  Not many actresses can remain charming, funny, and sexy during long dialogue scenes where they appear with dried dick blood on their face, but Whitten is definitely one of the best at the craft.  (“Blood and cum.  NOT a good combination!”)

Unlike most horror-comedies, Lillith scores high marks in the comedy department.  Heck, it manages to hit its marks during the dramatic scenes as we even grow to like the characters too.  When they are killed off, it gives the movie unexpected depth and weight.  It’s certainly head and shoulders above most low budget horror flicks that populate the backwaters of Tubi, that’s for damned sure.  

While Whitten is a hoot and a holler as Lillith, it’s Kessler who gets the best line of the movie when she says, “Okay, just to be clear:  You want to summon a sex demon to have sex with my ex-boyfriend, and then… what?  Give him demon crabs?” 

TUBI CONTINUED… THE THIRSTING (2007) ***

Tina Krause stars as a sexy nun with a dark past who works at an all-girl Catholic School.  When a team of Catholic schoolgirls head out into the woods for volleyball practice, Tina tags along and acts as their chaperone.  Since they are preparing their thesis on ancient demons, they decide to fool around with black magic and try to summon the evil Lilith.  (“Think about the grade we could get if we interview a demon!”)  After lights-out, the girls strip down and hold a black magic ritual in their cabin, but it doesn’t work.  Or so they think.  That evening, they are all haunted by sexy nightmares in which their darkest desires drive them to their doom.  Said fantasies involve cheating boyfriends, Catholic schoolgirls being paddled in the nun’s office, back-alley plastic surgery, getting accosted in a strip club, and becoming a dominatrix and accidentally banging your father.

This was the second film in a row I watched on Tubi that involved an evil woman named Lilith that starred Tina Krause.  Not that I’m complaining.  Krause is really good here too.  She looks equally sexy while fully clothed in her nun’s habit or while completely nude.  I especially liked the scenes where she fantasized about the girls while they were in the shower and when she was tempted by the succubus while praying naked.  Sure, the ending is a little abrupt and a tad anticlimactic, but it doesn’t derail the movie or anything.  I mean, whatever its flaws, I can’t complain about any flick that features an amazing topless Catholic schoolgirls black mass ritual sequence.

Just when you think it can’t get any weirder, MICKEY ROONEY shows up as a kindly old groundskeeper who dispenses wisdom to the girls in their time of need.  You might think it’s odd that he shows up in something like this, but it’s really not that strange considering his memorable turn in Silent Night, Deadly Night 5:  The Toy Maker.  Even though he isn’t given a whole lot to do, his very appearance just adds to the film’s anything-goes appeal.  

AKA:  Lilith.

TUBI CONTINUED… WITCHOUSE 3: DEMON FIRE (2001) ** ½

Annie (Tanya Dempsey) flees her abusive boyfriend and goes to stay with her girlfriends Stevie (Debbie Rochon) and Rose (Tina Krause) who are making a documentary on witches.  One night, they get drunk and decide to practice a little witchcraft for shits and giggles.  By doing so, they accidentally summon a witch named Lilith (Brinke Stevens) who appears from out of their shower and sets out to torment the three friends.  

The fact that this stars Rochon, Krause, and Stevens, three of the greatest B-Movie Scream Queens of all time, automatically makes Witchouse 3:  Demon Fire the best film in the trilogy.  It’s not great by any means, and it could’ve used a little bit more T & A (only Krause has nude scenes), but it’s head and shoulders better than its predecessors.  

Like Witchouse:  Blood Coven, this doesn’t really connect back to the original.  I guess they were going for a Witchcraft kind of thing by giving the series only a loose sense of continuity.  (The only real theme is that they all feature witches named Lilith.)  Although it was directed by Blood Coven’s J.R. Bookwalter, Demon Fire closely resembles a David DeCoteau movie as it’s about a bunch of hot babes in a house fighting the supernatural.  It only really starts to fall apart towards the end when Bookwalter tries to pull the rug out from under us with a totally unnecessary “surprise” twist in the third act.  It doesn’t exactly work and sort of negates some of the stuff we’ve previously seen.  

At least the ladies make it worth watching.  Krause is particularly entertaining when she’s off on her own, being goofy, muttering to herself, and singing into her toothbrush.  Stevens is a bit underutilized as the ghost witch, but she at least looks like she’s having fun chewing the scenery and hamming it up.  Rochon is awesome as always as the sassy documentarian who gets the best line of the movie when she tells Dempsey, “It looks like you fell down a flight of abusive boyfriends!”

AKA:  Demon Fire.

TUBI CONTINUED… WITCHOUSE: BLOOD COVEN (2000) *

J.R. Bookwalter took the directorial reigns from David DeCoteau for this limp sequel to producer Charles Band’s Witchouse.  

Unmarked graves are uncovered in the backyard of an abandoned mansion.  Since the place is the future site of the new mega-mall, that means the owners want the grounds investigated, pronto.  While examining a skull, the lead investigator accidentally cuts her finger and gets some bone dust in her wound.  Soon, she becomes a raging bitch to the members of her team, but they later discover she isn’t a bitch, but a witch.  Or at least she’s been possessed by one.  The same witch, in fact, that was killed in the mansion centuries ago.  She then sets out to turn the rest of her team into witches and plots her revenge.  

It's been a while since I saw the first Witchouse, so I’m a little fuzzy how all this connects back to the original.

The opening scene has a lot of Found Footage/Blair Witch-style hokum, but it’s not too bad.  From there, the film goes back and forth between the documentary crew filming interviews about the mansion and “real” scenes of them investigating the corpses.  Honestly, Bookwalter should’ve stuck to one format or the other.  The Found Footage stuff (while far from the worst I’ve seen) ultimately feels like padding and the interview sequences could’ve been snipped away without anyone missing them.  These scenes bloat the running time to ninety-eight minutes, which is about twenty minutes longer than it really needed to be.  

I did like the scene where the camera battery dies near the end, which forces Bookwalter to finish it like a “real” movie.  The make-up on the witches is kind of cool too.  (I dug their glowing eyes.)  However, these fleeting moments come a day late and a dollar short.  Of the cast, only Andrew Prine is memorable, playing a dual role.    

The climax is weak too, and the movie suffers from a weird look.  Many of the “real” scenes are slightly blurry and/or feel like the actors are speaking and moving at a slower rate than they should be.  It’s almost like you’re watching it at .75x speed.  Even if you watched it at twice that rate, it wouldn’t have ended fast enough for me.    

AKA:  Witchouse 2.  AKA:  Witchouse 2:  Blood Coven.

TUBI CONTINUED… INVASION OF THE EMPIRE OF THE APES (2021) *

Invasion of the Empire of the Apes begins shortly before Revolt of the Empire of the Apes concluded.  Our heroes flee Earth before it blows up in their rocket ship and blasts off into a black hole.  What’s weird is that the scenes from Revolt have been supplemented with redone special effects.  These new effects aren’t exactly “special”, but they are certainly better than what we got last time around.  Still, it’s kind of jarring to see, especially if you watched the films back-to-back like I did.  The mask for the villain is pretty good too (although I suspect all they did was turn one of the ape’s masks inside out), and there’s even a little T & A this time around.  That said, a slightly more polished turd is still a turd.  

The last of the ape men is beamed aboard a terraforming ship fifteen years after the events of Part 2.  The captain of the spacecraft asks him about his past, and he says, “I wish not to speak of it.”  INSTEAD, we get a ten-minute recap of the first two movies, much of which is shown in irritating Blurry-Vision.  A cult that worships apes as gods soon turn up to liberate him from the ship.  There’s also a mega-conglomerate that wants to exploit him.  Oh, and some aliens want to eat him.

Even with all that going on, Invasion of the Empire of the Apes still manages to be deadly dull.  

Without all the footage from the other movies, this probably would’ve clocked in at forty-five minutes or so.  At that length, it might’ve been somewhat bearable.  Whether you’ve already seen the recycled footage or not, either way you slice it, it’s a tough sit from start to finish.  The fun of the first flick was seeing Planet of the Apes being redone on a microbudget.  Unfortunately, this one strays so far from the original concept that the fun has essentially evaporated from the series.  

TUBI CONTINUED… REVOLT OF THE EMPIRE OF THE APES (2017) *

Revolt of the Empire of the Apes picks up where Empire of the Apes left off.  (And a little before.)  The apes have taken over Earth and made humans their slaves.  The last remaining faction of human freedom fighters gather for one final push to reclaim their planet.  Meanwhile, the evil ape emperor tries to reconnect with his half-human, half-ape, green-skinned son.  

The effects and make-up are slightly better than what we saw in Empire of the Apes, but that’s about the only improvement.  The editing is particularly whiplash-inducing.  There’s one scene where the apes are indoors talking to humans who are clearly outdoors, and the editing (unconvincingly) tries to convince us they are all in the same vicinity.  Dialogue scenes that should be comprised of simple two-shots of two actors in the same frame are instead assembled by the camera filming close-ups of each actor from an odd angle and then sloppily edited together.  This makes me think that none of the actors were ever present in the same place at the same time.  I’ve heard of making a movie piecemeal, but this is the pits.  

Revolt of the Empire of the Apes is a little over an hour long, but it feels much longer.  To make matters worse, the film is heavily made up of recycled footage from the first flick.  Also, much of the so-called revolution is just a bunch of scenes of people standing around in the woods and arguing with one another.  Meanwhile, the apes hang around their headquarters and bark orders at each other.  The subplot with the half-human, half-ape has a really weird payoff too.  

Empire of the Apes was cheap, sure.  At least it had spirit and offered a modicum of fun.  This one is just an incomprehensible bore.  To add insult to injury, the great Scream Queen Tina Krause is wasted in a nothing role.  

Revolting is right. 

TUBI CONTINUED… EMPIRE OF THE APES (2013) ** ½

I have to hand it to writer/director Mark Polonia.  He wanted to make a crossbreed of a futuristic Women in Prison flick and a Planet of the Apes rip-off and he went out and did it.  He didn’t care that he only had $20 in his pocket.  He went out and did it.  He didn’t care that the ape masks were so cheap that they made the troll masks in Troll 2 look like products of the Rick Baker Make-Up Academy.  He went out and did it.  He didn’t care that the special effects looked like something a kid could’ve made with Mario Paint.  He went out and did it.  He didn’t care that the sound was so bad that you couldn’t hear what the actors in the ape masks were saying.  He went out and did it.  He didn’t care that the sets looked like something out of a second graders’ school play.  He went out and did it.  He didn’t care that the spaceship props looked suspiciously like the space gun props that were simply repainted and repurposed.  He went out and did it.  He didn’t care that the production design of this film made the production design of his Amityville in Space look like Star Wars in comparison.  He went out and did it.  He didn’t care that the only good line of dialogue was when the leader of the apes targeted the human heroines for “an aggressive reproduction campaign”.  He went out and did it.  

I think the biggest takeaway from Empire of the Apes is that if Polonia can go out and do it, maybe you can too.  

So, we got * for technical filmmaking craft.  **** for sheer chutzpah for making a movie this ambitious with no technical filmmaking craft.  That comes in at about a ** ½ average.  Now, part of me wants to give it a lower rating because it’s all REALLY uneven, but I can’t completely dismiss any movie that ends with a woman giving birth to a half-human, half-ape potential savior of mankind, so there’s that. 

TUBI CONTINUED… HONEYMOON HORROR (2008) ** ½

Nick (Andy McGuinness) is horny, and his girlfriend Amy (Julia M. Morizawa) is frigid, which is a bad combination if you ask me.  Desperate to get her to lighten up in the bedroom, Nick books a vacation getaway to a sex resort.  However, every time tries to put the moves on her, Amy has disturbing visions and freaks out on him, which seriously kills the mood.  While they are working on their sexual incompatibilities, a crazed killer cavorts around the camp’s bungalows offing swingers and sex maniacs left and right.  Could it be the creepy caretaker who’s always hanging around and hoping for a threesome?  Or is there something even more sinister lurking in the woods?

The stuff with McGuinness and Morizawa working on their relationship is kind of a snooze.  Early on, there’s a scene where they are trying to have a serious conversation and I just couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying because they were playing an awesome spook show trailer compilation in the background, and I was more concerned what was going on with that than I was with their relationship drama.  I understand not everyone will have the same reaction I did, but this scene definitely made me want to pull out my old Monsters Crash the Pajama Party DVD. 

Fortunately, things perk up once the action switches to the swingers’ resort.  There’s a great scene where the killer cuts a dom’s dick off and shoves it down his bound submissive’s mouth.  I also enjoyed the odd sequence that plays like an S & M sitcom (complete with laugh track).  It was also good seeing W.A.V.E. starlet Tina Krause popping up late in the game as a horny camper who picks up McGuinness.  The movie kind of goes off the rails at the end with the reveal of the killer, but the short running time (fifty-five minutes) and bountiful T & A ultimately make it semi-recommended.  

Oh, and the original title was Blood and Sex Nightmare, which makes a lot more sense, seeing how the couple isn’t married and aren’t on their honeymoon.

AKA:  Blood and Sex Nightmare.

TUBI CONTINUED… BLOOD COVE 2: RETURN OF THE SKULL (2020) ** ½

After the massacre that occurred in the haunted house attraction, Blood Cove, a detective orders the place burned to the ground with the serial killer, The Skull still inside.  Somehow, he escapes and begins offing the townsfolk one by one.  The cops eventually catch up with him and toss him in jail, but it doesn’t take long for The Skull to break out and kill more people.

As he showed with the original, writer/director James Ian Mair once again proves he is more than adept at delivering suspense.  He gives us a couple of fine stalking scenes where The Skull subtly lurks in the background for a while before choosing his spot to pounce on his prey.  While the majority of the kill scenes are often rushed or weak (as is the case with the climax), the pitchforking/head stomping scene is pretty great.  Mair also pulls off some rather atmospheric shots, which is admirable considering the time and budget he was probably working with.  The opening sequence also pays homage to Halloween 4 (which is a nice touch) and the subplot about The Skull in jail reminded me a bit of Halloween 5.  

At the heart of the film though is a sweet teenage lesbian love story.  This stuff works because it seems like it is coming from a genuine place and the fact that there is a lot of chemistry between the performers, Autumn Reed and Erinn Swaby.  Because of that, Blood Cove 2:  Return of the Skull is a shade or two better than the original.  

Troma president Lloyd Kaufman is the only “name” star this time around.  He plays the comic relief mayor who is worried the murders will ruin his re-election chances.  While his inclusion kind of goes against the grain of the sweet love story plotline, he is pretty funny, nevertheless.  He also gets the best line when he says, “This is like something out of a Troma movie!”

TUBI CONTINUED… BLOOD COVE (2019) **

Joanie (Katie Harbridge) is a reporter with mental health issues who decides to get away from it all and goes on a vacation in a small town in the middle of nowhere.  Along the way, she stops to take pictures at a rundown haunted house attraction called “Blood Cove” where she is kidnapped by a killer in a skull mask known only as “The Skull”.  Her father (Deron Morgan) wants to know what’s being done about her disappearance, and together with a doubtful detective (Jeff Angel), they investigate the seemingly deserted attraction.  

Blood Cove may be a low budget horror flick, but it’s rather competent in most respects.  The characters have a little more personality than usual, and some of the suspense scenes are handled assuredly enough.  Things kick off with a decent opening sequence where The Skull torments a tied-up hostage, and the scene where the killer stalks Harbridge through the titular establishment works reasonably well.  The Skull himself cuts a memorable figure as his bony visage makes for an intimidating silver screen slasher.

Sadly, the pacing starts to drag once Harbridge disappears from the narrative.  The long scenes of Morgan wandering aimlessly around the swamp and yelling, “Joanie!” don’t help either, as they quickly become tiresome.  Although it sort of finds its footing once again late in the game, it’s pretty much undone by the weak kills and some fake looking effects.  (Like the pole through the head gag.)

Harbridge makes for a likeable heroine, and it’s a shame she’s kept off screen for so much of the second half.  George Stover is the only “name” star as the town crazy who knows there’s a killer lurking in the haunted house, but of course (say it with me) no one believes him.  It’s Tara Bixler though who steals the movie as the horny cop who makes it a priority to bang all the new police recruits.  

TUBI CONTINUED… MAD FOXES (1981) ****

Hal (Jose Gras) is a smug, sportscar-driving asshole who takes his (much) younger girlfriend out on the town to celebrate her eighteenth birthday.  When an altercation at a traffic light with some Nazi bikers turns deadly, they retaliate by beating up Hal and raping his girlfriend.  Hal then calls his Kung Fu buddy who owns a karate school and asks him for a favor:  Kick some Nazi biker ass!  Well, wouldn’t you know it?  The Nazi bikers retaliate (again) and toss a grenade into the dojo in the middle of a karate class!  From there, Hal and the bikers keep ping-ponging back and forth, meting out vengeance until just about everybody near and dear to him ends up dead.  

Mad Foxes is frickin’ awesome.  It’s got everything you could possibly want in a movie.  Sex, violence, fast cars, motorcycle gangs, Kung Fu, Nazis getting punched in the face, explosions, T & A…  You name it, Mad Foxes has it.  In between, there are plenty of jaw-dropping moments, head-scratching plot developments, and brain-melting scenes of violence.

Now, not a whole lot of this makes logical sense, but that’s a good thing since you never know where this crazy flick will go next.  I’ll admit, some of it is a little hard to stomach, and yet, you can’t deny a movie that just delivers awesome sequence after awesome sequence.  There’s a hilarious nightclub scene where the dancing runs the gamut from disco to ballroom.  The part where the members of the karate school interrupt the Nazi biker funeral and have an all-out brawl over the biker’s flaming corpse is just incredible.  The ending is fucking unbelievable too.  

Okay, so this is the part of the review where I state that the version on Tubi has been cut.  It is a good ten minutes shorter than the running time listed on IMDb, and that site’s Parents Guide also suggests that there is a lot more sex and gore not present in this version.  I’m not even sure how that’s possible as it’s already brimming with disgustingness.  I guess I’ll have to track down the uncut version at some point.  Even in a truncated form, Mad Foxes still kicks all kinds of ass.

AKA:  Stingray 2.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE LAST VAMPIRE ON EARTH (2010) *

If you can’t already tell by the thumbnail picture, this is one of the most obvious Twilight rip-offs ever made.  It also happens to be one of the worst.  It’s so bad it makes the official Twilight movies look like Dracula in comparison.

The Last Vampire on Earth tells a time-honored love story.  Pale boy meets pale girl.  Pale boy almost loses pale girl.  Pale boy wins back pale girl.  Pale girl invites him over to her family’s house for dinner.  Pale boy pukes up mama’s chicken because… he’s a vampire.  Pale girl is sick, and since her religion doesn’t allow her to receive blood transfusions, it means the only way she can be saved is if pale boy bites her and turns her into a vampire.  

Imagine if someone had $7 at their disposal, a cast of people without an acting bone in their body, lots of white face paint, and a desire to remake Twilight.  (There’s even a recreation of the “Say it… ‘vampire’” scene.)  That’s about what you get with The Last Vampire on Earth.  

This is a bad movie, to be sure.  I don’t want to oversell just how bad it is, but director Vitaliy Versace left the “Vignette” filter on throughout the whole damned running time.  I repeat:  HE LEFT THE VIGNETTE FILTER ON THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE DAMNED RUNNING TIME.  Every shot has a black circle around the frame, which is a sign of ineptitude the likes of which I have never seen.  It’s like when you play a prank on grandma and mess with the settings on her phone’s camera.

Also, everything is way too dark.  I know everyone is supposed to look pale and all, but the lighting is so bad in some scenes that everyone looks like a corpse.  Even the people who aren’t supposed to be vampires look like one of the undead.  

The acting is some of the worst I’ve ever experienced.  Every single line delivery sound like someone reading right off their script.  Sometimes, it sounds like the actors are pronouncing the dialogue phonetically, as if English was a fourth or fifth language.  

The biggest laugh in the movie comes during the scene where pale boy is playing ping pong with himself.  The ineptly edited jump cuts are supposed to represent his “super speed” as he runs back and forth between both ends of the table.  This has nothing though on the WTF jaw-dropper of a scene where pale girl reveals her big secret to pale boy.  I’m not sure what the fuck the filmmakers were thinking here, but it’s one of the most spectacularly bad taste moments I’ve sat through in recent memory.  That’s not exactly a recommendation, but if you’re a Bad Movie fan who thinks they’ve seen it all, The Last Vampire on Earth will likely test even the most die-hard Grade Z movie fan’s mettle.  

You’ve been warned.  

TUBI CONTINUED… SPLATTER BEACH (2007) ** ½

There have been reports of people being killed by sea monsters, and a fledgling journalist named Rupert (Dave Fife) sets to get to the bottom of the matter.  While his horny friends Rodney (Brice Kennedy) and Tonya (Erika Smith) are off boning at his parent’s beach house, Rupert is combing the beach looking for clues.  After dispatching the horndog couple, the monsters crash a rock concert on the beach.   

Directed by Mark and John Polonia, Splatter Beach is a hit-or-miss, sometimes fun, sometimes silly send-up of beach party movies and late-night creature features.  The animated opening credits sequence nicely sets the tone, which is kind of like a mix between Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Horror of Party Beach, and Humanoids from the Deep.  While much of this is wildly uneven, I did enjoy the monsters, who look like a seaweed-covered version of The Slime People.  The beach party scenes are less effective, but you can have fun with them, just for the fact that it’s obvious that many of the concertgoers are dancing against a greenscreen background of a beach.  

While the opening is fun, the second half suffers from a lot of padding.  Long scenes from The Creature from the Haunted Sea play out on TV, and there’s music video sequences that contain scenes of stuff we’ve previously seen.  Despite all this, it’s moderately fun and entertaining, although it falls short of being laugh-out-loud funny.  In fact, it might’ve eked by with *** if the finale hadn’t been so damned anticlimactic.  (It’s shown in a series of still photographs.)  

Although B-Movie Queen Misty Mundae is top billed, she’s not in it nearly as much as you would think.  She plays the crazy neighbor who knows all about the monsters, but of course, nobody believes her.  Misty brightens up the movie whenever she appears, and I wish we saw a lot more of her.  (If you catch my meaning.)  

TUBI CONTINUED… DIRTY SCOUNDRELS (2001) ***

Asuka (Mayu Asada) is a sexy pickpocket who operates on crowded Japanese subway trains.  Her methods are simple but effective:  She seductively rubs up against her targets to arouse them before slyly lifting their wallets.  When her wallet is stolen by another pickpocket, she is convinced her latest victim, Yuji (Yota Kawase) was the one who took her cash.  Since Yuji got pretty handsy with her on the subway, Asuka then blackmails him into becoming her partner in crime, saying she’ll go to the cops and ruin his good name if he doesn’t throw in with her.  Together, they begin stealing more wallets from unsuspecting commuters, and eventually, she convinces Yuji to commit more elaborate crimes.  Predictably, things threaten to fall apart once they start having feelings for one another.  

The early scenes of Asada slowly roping the poor straightlaced dope into a life of crime have a fun, Something Wild-type vibe to them.  The way he falls in love with her even though she is obviously using him for her own ends is kind of sweet too.  Naturally, he’s engaged, which complicates matters, but I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that everybody winds up getting what they want in the end.  

Although Dirty Scoundrels starts off kinda kinky with all the scenes of groping in public places, it soon settles down into a sorta square romantic crime comedy.  While predictable, it’s always engaging, and the performances by Asada and Kawase are rather charming.  Their courtship scenes are sweet, and even the gratuitous subplots (like Asada taking Kawase to meet her grandmother, who is also a pickpocket), manage to entertain.  It clocks in at a scant fifty-one minutes, so it does feel a bit rushed at times (especially towards the end).  However, the quirky characters and occasional steamy softcore scenes make it worthwhile.  

TUBI CONTINUED… MURDERBOT (2023) ***

The original title of this fun Jim Wynorski sci-fi/horror mash-up was Killbots.  I think it was originally intended to be a sequel/reboot of Wynorski’s Chopping Mall (which was also alternately titled Killbots), but the title was changed shortly before release.  I have to assume original Chopping Mall producer, Roger Corman denied Wynorski and producer Charles Band the rights to the title.  It’s not a big deal either way as there is very little connective tissue linking the two films (aside from a throwaway line of dialogue).  In fact, it shares more DNA with Tourist Trap (another Band production) than Corman’s Chopping Mall as it focuses on a group of teens trapped in a ghost town.

Wynorski’s long-time muse, Rocky DeMarco stars as the titular creation, a sexy cyborg who becomes self-aware and escapes the desert laboratory where she was created.  She plans to hook up with a computer server and take over the world using AI.  On her journey, she stumbles upon a one-horse town and kills the few remaining citizens.  Meanwhile, a van full of teens stops in town for gas and comes face to face with the robot menace.  

Murderbot reminded me a lot of the Terminator rip-offs of the mid-to-late ‘90s.  The shots of DeMarco’s Heads Up Display and her glowing red eyes would look right at home in a DTV Don “The Dragon” Wilson sci-fi/action flick.  Wynorski also lends the film a Spaghetti Western vibe as DeMarco often struts down the empty streets of the desolate ghost town like a lone gunfighter in a Sergio Corbucci movie.  Then of course, there are the uniquely Wynorski touches that are impossible to resist (such as the fact that all the scientists in the top-secret underground desert facility are sexy buxom women), and the inclusion of his regular supporting players (such as Becky LeBeau, Lisa London, and Lauren Parkinson) will make Wynorski fans rejoice.

Murderbot is only forty-four minutes long, which is good news when you’re trying to watch 365 movies on Tubi in 365 days like I am.  However, Wynorski die-hards will probably wish he was given a little more time to flesh things out.  (I would have particularly liked more scenes with the sexy scientists.)  The flipside of that is the film wastes no time getting down to business, and when it heats up, the action doesn’t stop.  

The kill scenes are solid too.  There’s a decapitation via car hood, exploding heads, and brain splattering, just to name a few.  Some of the characters are annoying (like the nerd who’s always playing the trumpet), but I did love the hilarious scene where the Gen Z teens can’t call for help because they have no idea how to use a payphone.  Little moments like this help make Murderbot a blast from start to finish. 

AKA:  Killbots.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE AMITYVILLE CURSE (1990) **

Okay, folks.  Here we are.  The last movie in our Amityville April series.  This is the fifth in the franchise, and the only one of the “official” entries I haven’t seen.  Because of that, I saved it for last.  I thought I may enjoy it more after watching so many of the no-budget unrelated Amityville rip-offs.  As it turned out, that wasn’t the case.  It’s not terrible or anything, but it’s awfully dull and slow moving.  If I’m being completely honest, it’s probably the weakest of the official Amityville films.

A group of friends pool their money together and buy a house in Amityville (not THE house, just A house) with the intent of fixing it up and flipping it for a profit.  As you can probably guess, this house is haunted too.  It seems a priest was murdered in a confessional booth twelve years earlier.  The booth was then stored in the house’s basement and voila!  The place is haunted AF.

Throughout the film we get a dog attack, a spider attack, and lame psychic visions.  Most of the boring home repair scenes play like This Old House though.  Oh, and one annoying guy films everything with his home movie camera, which set an unfortunate precedent for the series.  

Journeyman character actor Kim (The Last Boy Scout) Coates takes the acting honors as the nervous, bespectacled, chain-smoking guy who eventually snaps and starts killing his friends.  Casting him as a psycho in an Amityville sequel was a good idea, but unfortunately, he’s kept on a tight leash for most of the running time.  When he finally does get to strut his stuff, the movie does show signs of life.  The ending, where he winds up with a burnt Freddy Krueger face and chases a lady around the house who defends herself with a nail gun, is decent.  It’s just one of those too little, too late scenarios as the bulk of the film is just too plodding for its own good.  Cassandra Gava (the hot witch from Conan the Barbarian) is pretty good as Coates’ sexy wife.  However, the rest of the cast are comprised of irritating psychics, gossiping old biddies, and insufferable assholes.  

Well, now that I’ve finally waded through all the official Amityville movies and a LOT of the unofficial ones, here is how I stack them up:  

THE OFFICIAL AND UNOFFICIAL AMITYVILLE HORROR SERIES RANKING:  

1. Amityville:  The Awakening ***

2. The Amityville Horror (2005) ***

3. Amityville Witches ***

4. The Amityville Terror ***

5. Amityville 3-D ** ½ 

6. The Amityville Horror (1979) ** ½ 

7. Amityville Dollhouse ** ½ 

8. Amityville:  The Final Chapter ** ½ 

9. Amityville in Space ** ½ 

10. Amityville Toybox ** ½ 

11. Amityville Christmas Vacation ** ½ 

12. The Amityville Moon ** ½ 

13. Amityville 2:  The Possession **

14. Amityville Horror:  The Evil Escapes **

15. Amityville 1992:  It’s About Time **

16. Amityville Death House **

17. Amityville Exorcism **

18. The Amityville Asylum **

19. Amityville Cop **

20. The Amityville Harvest **

21. Amityville:  A New Generation **

22. Amityville Uprising **

23. The Amityville Curse **

24. The Amityville Haunting **

25. Ghosts of Amityville **

26. An Amityville Poltergeist **

27. Amityville Clownhouse * ½ 

28. Amityville in the Hood * ½ 

29. Amityville:  No Escape * ½ 

30. Amityville Scarecrow 2 *

31. Amityville Karen *

32. Amityville Theater *

33. Amityville Island ½ *

34. Amityville Hex ½ *

35. Mt. Misery Rd. ½ *

TUBI CONTINUED… GHOSTS OF AMITYVILLE (2022) **

Olivia (Junie Liv Thomasson) is a little girl who is still grieving the sudden loss of her mother.  Hoping for a fresh start, her father (Jonas Thomasson) moves them into a creepy new house in Amityville.  When he is unexpectedly called into work, he is forced to leave Olivia home alone. Before long, she begins seeing a creepy clown who pops up when he’s least expected and terrorizes her wherever she goes.  

Things kick off with a not-bad opening title sequence full of vintage creepy clown footage.  The first act, in which our pint-sized heroine is stalked by the supernatural clown killer, is rather decent too.  There is some genuine tension in these early scenes, and I give director JT Kris credit for adequately conveying the anxiety a child feels when left home alone.  Thomasson also does a fine job as the child in peril and carries the film about as far as anyone could’ve, given the circumstances.  

Unfortunately, once it is revealed that the first act has all been a (SPOILER) dream, it takes a lot of wind out of the movie’s sails.  To make matters worse, the script keeps playing the same “It’s All a Dream” card over and over again.  Every time it’s revealed that what we’ve just seen has been a dream… AGAIN, it just gets more and more tiresome.  Before long, the film becomes an endurance test of the audience’s patience.  (This also happens to be one of those fake Amityville flicks where everyone talks with the thickest brogues you ever heard.)  

Even at a relatively scant seventy-four minutes, it still feels bloated and overlong.  When the movie should be over, it isn’t.  When it finally does decide to end, it’s at the most arbitrary spot imaginable.  It’s a shame too because the first act could’ve been a solid self-contained short film.  Had the rest of the picture been as strong, Ghosts of Amityville had a ghost of a chance being worthwhile.  As it is, this ghost is rather busted.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE AMITYVILLE TERROR (2016) ***

The Amityville Terror is one of the best Amityville rip-offs of all time.  (I still think Amityville Witches is my favorite fake Amityville flick though.)  I’m not quite sure if it was “good, actually” or if it only looked like a minor masterpiece because I had just got done sitting through Amityville Hex and Mt. Misery Rd. back-to-back.  Whatever the case may be, it’s a surprisingly solid little chiller.  Heck, it’s even better than most of the “official” films in the Amityville franchise.

This is about as good of a fake Amityville movie as you could hope for.  It even feels like an official sequel since it takes place in the same house as Part 4.  It also helps that the characters are likeable and resemble actual human beings rather than standard cardboard cutout horror movie cliches.  

Todd (Kaiwi Lyman), his wife Jessica (Kim Nielsen), and their daughter Hailey (Nicole Tompkins) move in with his ex-junkie sister Shae (Amanda Barton) shortly after she buys a new house.  Once everyone is settled in, Shae starts having massive freak-outs, which makes Hailey suspect Auntie is back on the horse again.  Really, the house has possessed her, which explains her increasingly erratic behavior.  To make matters worse, the townsfolk are conspiring against the family because they know the only way to keep the evil at bay is to periodically “feed” the house new victims.  

The film continues the official Amityville series tradition of having an incest subplot (which goes all the way back to Part 2) as well as using ideas from some of the unofficial entries (like the town conspiracy subplot that is similar to Amityville Theater).  What elevates The Amityville Terror above the usual dreck is the concentration of strong female characters.  Barton has a great bathroom freakout scene and looks great while walking around in skimpy outfits and/or nude.  Tompkins is excellent too as the dirt bike-riding, crossbow-carrying rebellious teenager.  Tonya Kay is also a lot of fun as the sexy property manager who likes to come to the house unannounced while wearing a leather dominatrix get-up to collect the rent check.  In addition to have a memorable sex scene with a clueless busboy, she also gets the best line of the movie when she says, “It’s like Vegas, baby!  Never bet against the house!”  

TUBI CONTINUED… MT. MISERY RD. (2018) ½ *

Okay, so I know this is supposed to be “Amityville April” and all, so why am I watching a movie called “Mt. Misery Rd.”?  Well, it’s listed on Tubi (and on IMDb) as “Amityville:  Mt. Misery Rd.”, but the actual onscreen title is just “Mt. Misery Rd.”  Actually, there is no onscreen title.  The camera just lingers on a road sign that says “Mt. Misery Rd.” for what feels like an eternity.  

Boy, “Misery” is the word for it, let me tell you.

Let’s start off with the fact that it doesn’t even take place in Amityville.  While it does take place in Long Island, where Amityville is located, the action occurs on the titular road.  According to the “movie”, it’s “one of the most haunted roads in the world”.  

If you’re wondering why I put “movie” in quotation marks, it’s because to call this thing a movie is to use the very loosest definition of the word.  What it resembles most is someone’s vacation videos being passed off as a fake Amityville flick.  In fact, I think that’s exactly what happened.  

You see, the “movie” was directed by a husband-and-wife duo named Chuck and Karolina Morrongiello.  They also star as a married couple called Charlie and Buzi (pronounced “Bougie”).  All they do is film each other flying from Florida to Long Island so they can check out the supposedly haunted road.  People tell them to stay away from the road, and naturally, they don’t listen, and sub-sub-sub-Blair Witch shenanigans ensue.  

Many (wrong) people have called Ed Wood the worst director of all time.  That is because they have never witnessed a Chuck and Karolina Morrongiello picture.  Wood is positively Hitchcockian compared to this duo.  Let me just clue you in on how bad they are.  Okay, so we’ve seen countless boom mike shadows in movies before, right?  Well, Mt. Misery Rd. just might contain the first selfie stick shadow in screen history.  

Half of the time Charlie holds the camera and films Buzi.  Then, they switch.  I know they were working with a crew of one, but man, is this ever bad.  

Along the way, the duo manages to break every single rule in the director’s handbook.  Multiple jump cuts occur within a single dialogue scene.  Many scenes end with random zooms to nothing in particular.  The “Ken Burns” effect is left on for some of the dialogue scenes.  Actors constantly flub lines.  The list is endless.

Speaking of “acting” (again, notice the quotation marks), Karolina is some kind of thespian.  Her accent is so thick you can’t tell what the hell she says half the time.  She LOOKS great, but an actress she is not.

With the awkward love scenes and awful accents, Mt. Misery Rd. sometimes feels like the Found Footage version of The Room.  Then again, that would give it too much credit, as 99% of this is unwatchable dreck.  

However--that other 1% is one of the most phenomenally spectacular displays of WTF insanity in screen history.  In fact, it’s almost worth watching Mt. Misery Rd. just for this one sequence.  Or, if you’re… you know, smart, you can just fast-forward to the scene, watch it, and forget the rest.

Said scene takes place in a dive bar.  Charlie and Buzi belly up to the bar and then, from out of nowhere, she begins to shake her booty uncontrollably for like five minutes to a country song called “Shake Your Booty”, which only has like, three lyrics, which are “Shake”, “Your”, and “Booty”.  Folks, I have seen some shit and I have seen some shit.  That shit has nothing on this shit.  I almost want to give the “movie” Four Stars just for this sequence alone.  Then again, I may be having psychological repercussions from watching nothing but fake Amityville movies for an entire month, so I may be in desperate need of medical intervention.  Send help.  Or shake your booty.  Whichever comes first.

  

AKA:  Amityville:  Mt. Misery Rd.

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE HEX (2021) ½ *

Amityville Hex is kind of like the fake Amityville version of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.  Various YouTubers, podcasters, vloggers, and internet personalities receive a challenge to recite “The Amityville Hex”, a spell that supposedly dooms whoever speaks it out loud.  Naturally, these yutzes stare directly into the camera and read it.  Soon after, they begin having nightmares, start slowly losing their marbles, and then die and/or kill someone else.  

Honestly, they should’ve just called it The Amityville Tide Pod Challenge.  

If there’s anything I hate more than Found Footage horror movies, it’s Live-Streaming horror movies.  I know filmmakers had to be enterprising and creative during the pandemic when it came to making films with small-to-no cast and crews.  However, the recent uptick with these things is kind of alarming.  Can’t we just go back to making… you know… REAL horror flicks and not this kind of bullshit?

The biggest problem with Amityville Hex is that it’s one-hundred-and-eight minutes long.  Not even an official Amityville Horror sequel deserves to have a running time that long.  It’s one thing for Burt Young or Tony Roberts to be running around the Amityville house for close to two hours.  It’s another thing when that length of time is spent on a bunch of doofuses looking dumbly into their laptops and/or appearing on Zoom calls.  Not only that, but much of the first half is devoted to repetitive scenes of people staring into the camera and reciting the hex.  Once they finally do start dying off, it’s all incredibly weak and pathetic, and none of the demises are worth a damn.  Except maybe when poor old George Stover (who deserves better) gets killed by his own lawnmower.

Aside from Stover, the only other real names in the cast are Lloyd Kaufman and Ouija Nazi’s Veronica Ricci.  However, all they get to do is recite the hex as part of a montage near the end.  How you can waste an actress as vivacious as Ricci in such a stupefying fashion is anyone’s guess.    

The only good part is when a couple watch Spider Baby on TV and you can hear Lon Chaney, Jr. singing the theme song in the background.  That’s about the best thing I can say about it.  

EVIL DEAD RISE (2023) *

I guess it makes me an old fuddy duddy to say this, but here it goes.  Children, especially small children, have no place in an Evil Dead movie.  It’s one thing to abuse, beat, torment, vomit on, stab, and dismember Bruce Campbell.  It’s another thing when it happens to little kids.  

What makes it even worse is that it’s their own mother who torments them.  When her son plays a record containing transcripts from The Book of the Dead, it unleashes an evil spirit in their ramshackle apartment building.  The spirit soon possesses his mother, turning her into a cackling, depraved, demented Deadite.  Before long, she attacks her children and tries to make the evil spirits possess them too.  It’s then up to her no-good sister to protect the children and send the evil packing.

The pre-release buzz made a big deal that the filmmakers were taking Evil Dead out of the cabin and into an apartment building.  (The “Rise” of the title refers to not only the Evil Dead rising, but the location, a high-rise apartment.)  I guess it might’ve worked if the movie went into full-on Demons 2 mode, but most of the action takes place in a single apartment, with some occasional side trips to a hallway, a stairwell, the elevator, and the parking garage.  Heck, writer/director Lee Cronin makes such little use of the new surroundings that it makes you wonder why it just couldn’t have taken place at the cabin again.  I mean the wraparound scenes, which happen at a cabin in the woods, are the only sequences worth a damn in the entire thing, and only serve to remind you why it works best in that setting in the first place.  

Hell, it pains me to say this, but the gore isn’t even all that good.  We get a scalping and a scissors up the nose, but that is about it.  The much-ballyhooed cheese grater scene is a big bust.  Most of the pain is inflicted on the kids, which is just unpleasant.  If you want to see young teens eating glass and being butchered, then have at it.

It doesn’t help that none of the characters are compelling in the least.  Plus, all the callbacks to the previous movies fall flat on their face and are downright cringe-inducing.  Every.  Single.  One.  There are even moments that crib from The Shining, The Thing, and… uh… Fargo.  

The only touch I did like was that in addition to blood and bile, the possessed Deadites have now added jizz to the liquids they are prone to projectile-vomit.  One broad spewed so much seed you’ll swear she just got finished with a fifty-man bukkake session.  That’s not a ringing endorsement to be sure, but in a movie as massively disappointing as this, you’ve got to take what you can get.