THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: THE FREAKMAKER (1974) ***

I saw The Freakmaker on television as a kid (under its original title, The Mutations) and it freaked me out.  Usually when I do The 31 Days of Horror-Ween, I’m looking for weird or obscure movies I’ve never seen before.  However, when it was suggested to me under the “Customers Also Watched” recommendation heading, it brought back a flood of memories.  I’m glad I watched it again because it makes for a solid slice of rainy-day fun.

The opening is just a work of mad genius.  The time-lapse photography of plants growing, giving way to shots of carnivorous plants eating insects, accompanied by creepy narration by Donald Pleasence makes it feel like a mash-up of Hammer’s House of Horrors and Nova.  The film fitfully flirts with fulfilling the promise of this sequence throughout its running time and when it does, it’s enough to put a smile on any horror lover’s face.

It was directed by legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff, so you know it looks like a million bucks.  Yes, the man who gave The Red Shoes that otherworldly aura lends that same look and feel to the scene where Donald Pleasence feeds a bunny rabbit to a Venus Fly Trap.  I’m here to tell you, it’s a thing of beauty.  (Oh, and did you know Cardiff was also the cinematographer for Rambo:  First Blood:  Part 2?  This guy can do it all!)

Anyway, Pleasence stars as a college professor who spends most of his time in his botanical lab trying to create half-man half-plant mutants.  Whenever he fails, he just sends the botched experiments to the local freakshow.  Dr. Who’s Tom Baker is his deformed assistant who abducts comely college coeds for Donald’s experiments.  When he turns one of his students into a freak, it prompts her friends to coming looking for her.

So, what we have here is a mix of Freaks, Frankenstein, and Little Shop of Horrors.  In fact, the movie blatantly rips off whole scenes from Freaks (even the “One of Us” scene).  It’s enough to make you wonder how no one got sued.  (Even though the movie rips off Freaks, I think there’s a moment at the end that David Cronenberg ripped off when he made The Fly.)

Admittedly, it all fits together incongruously as The Freakmaker often feels like two movies spliced together.  Then again, it kind of fits the theme of the movie.  For me, the mad scientist plot worked slightly better than the freakshow scenes, but your mileage may vary.  I mean the big reveal of Pleasence’s creation (as well as his subsequent comeuppance) is just all kinds of lurid fun.  I especially liked the scene where Baker (whose character is stricken with acromegaly) goes to a prostitute just to have her tell him she loves him.  Little touches like these give added dimension to the movie and makes it feel like something more than your average horror show.  

AKA:  The Mutations.  AKA:  Dr. of Evil.  

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: DISCONNECTED (1984) **

Disconnected comes to us from director Gorman Bechard, the man behind such films as Psychos in Love, Galactic Gigolo, and Cemetery High.  It’s kind of rough, but you can sort of see what he was going for.  There are plenty worse Hitchcock-inspired, no-budget, first-time features out there, that’s for sure.

Alicia (Frances Raines) just broke up with her boyfriend.  There’s a slasher going around killing young women and it doesn’t even dawn on her that the creepy guy who keeps asking her out might be the killer.  Meanwhile, Alicia is plagued with telephone calls.  This isn’t just your average obscene caller either.  When she picks up the phone, it emits a screeching, piercing sound into her ear, effectively driving her bananas.

Does the slasher story and the telephone subplot ever come together?  Not really.  True to its title, Disconnected never clicks.  In fact, it’s all over the place.  There are scenes that have polish and pizzazz (like the opening credits sequence that utilizes rapid-fire editing) that are almost immediately followed by long, drawn-out scenes that seemingly go nowhere (like the scene where a terrible band is shown playing a number nearly in its entirety), making for a frustrating and uneven experience.  Most of it is kind of rough, but there are a few good moments along the way that make it almost worthwhile.  (The Argento-ish use of color during an atmospheric nightmare sequence is pretty inventive.)  Other sequences are baffling incompetent.  (One scene has a giant lens flare that basically whites out the entire frame.  It’s enough to make J.J. Abrams envious.) 

The quality whiplashes back and forth so much that it often feels like it was the work of two entirely different crews.  Perhaps Bechard started off with a short film and then expanded on it later.  If that was the case, I could be charitable.  However, having the big climax with the killer happen OFFSCREEN is just fucking frustrating as an audience member.  At least Disconnected has some of the best ‘80s wood paneling I’ve seen in a movie.  So, it has that going for it.

The fact that a lot of the movie takes place inside an old mom and pop video store where Alicia works is enough for me to kind of give it a pass.  When you get bored (and trust me, it will happen) you can amuse yourself by spotting the videos on the shelf.  I found Halloween 2, Exorcist 2, The Amityville Horror, and Mother’s Day, among others. 

Raines does a fine job in the lead.  She also plays her twin sister admirably enough.  The scene where she and her sister have a conversation is edited a bit crudely, but Raines equips herself nicely all things considered.  Also, the Galactic Gigolo himself, Carmine Capobianco appears as cop in a Hawaiian shirt.  It’s nice to see him popping up, even if his interview segments feel more like padding than anything.  Oh, and apparently Jon Brion (who did the music for a few Paul Thomas Anderson movies) is in the band in the opening scenes. 

I almost gave Disconnected ** ½ just because when it works, it works.  Unfortunately, it goes on about fifteen minutes too long.  The finale is nothing more than a series of montages that lead up to a puzzling black-and-white still frame collage, capped off by a shitty non-ending.  Up until then, it had the same quirky charm that hallmark most of Bechard’s work.  If you’re a fan of his films, by all means check it out.  Others may want to hang up.

AKA:  Telephone Killer.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: SHE DEMONS (1958) **

She Demons was the first film from director Richard E. Cunha.  It’s pretty rough in spots and doesn’t have the wacky charm of his later work.  It lacks the endearing silliness of Missile to the Moon and the flat-out fun of Frankenstein’s Daughter.  However, there are faint glimpses of what the man was capable of, and for that, it’s (almost) worth watching.

A quartet of castaways wash up on an uncharted island.  After getting their bearings, they head off looking for the legendary creatures that supposedly inhabit the island.  They soon discover the place is crawling with Nazis.  Their leader is performing experiments on the native girls, turning them into hideous she demons in an effort to keep his ugly wife beautiful.  Naturally, it’s up to our heroes to thwart the Nazis’ devious plans.

She Demons starts off just fine, but it gets awfully talky in the middle section of the film.  Although you have to wait around quite a while for something to happen, the dance routines of sexy ‘50s babes wearing loincloths and bone necklaces gyrating wildly around a fire pit are amusing.  The big reveal of the doctor’s wife’s face is effective too.  The final escape sequence isn’t bad either, especially when you consider Cunha had to stage an eruption of lava using little to no money.  It also contains a bit more blood than you’d typically see at the time.  

If anything, She Demons is memorable for its inclusion of minority actors as half of our heroes are non-white; a rarity in a ‘50s horror flick. While the African American character (Charles Opunui) is kind of cliched and superstitious (not to mention the fact that he’s the first to die), the Asian sidekick is quite funny.  He’s portrayed by Victor Sen Yung, a veteran of many Charlie Chan movies.  He easily gives best performance of the film, stealing every scene he’s in from the dull romantic leads.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: AEROBI-CIDE (1987) ** ½

Amazon Prime has this listed as Killer Workout, but Aerobi-cide is the actual on-screen title.  Both names are equally funny.  I can’t blame the filmmakers for being unable to choose between them.  They were probably like, “Screw it, let’s use both of them!”  Maybe if they ever make a sequel it can be called Gym-crazy-um.  Or Kill-lates.  Or Yoga-nna Die.

Rhonda (Marica Karr) had a twin sister who died in a horrific tanning bed accident.  Now, people are getting murdered at the gym by a killer using an oversized safety pin.  Predictably, the place is loaded with hotheaded musclebound suspects. 

Aerobi-cide begins with a great opening credits theme that sound like a workout remix of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme.  Along the way, director David A. Prior gives us numerous cheesy ‘80s aerobicizing scenes featuring big-haired women crammed into Spandex bobbing up and down to heavy drum machine-driven tunes. Yes, in case you’re wondering, there are tons of close-ups of gyrating buttocks.  

The horror elements work up to a point.  The opening tanning bed murder is great, and there’s a Psycho-inspired shower death and a memorable false scare involving a locker.  Some scenes have a cool red tint to them, resembling a ‘70s giallo, but most of it looks like your typical slasher movie mixed with an ‘80s workout video.  The killer’s weapon (the giant safety pin) is… different?  I can honestly say I’ve never seen that before. 

Too bad the constant fistfights between the two hotheaded lunkhead gym rat suspects eat up a lot of screen time.  These scenes are more of a throwback to Prior’s low-budget actioners and don’t really fit in with the rest of the movie.  (Same goes for the big chase scene/shootout at a construction site.)  Still, they’re just weird enough to make it memorable. 

Aerobi-cide is good for a few laughs and works as lightweight trashy fun for much of its running time.  It does have a tendency to plod on in the second half, making the 85-minute running time feel much longer.  (There are two or three false endings too many.)  It’s uneven to be sure, but the highs are appropriately cheesy enough to make it marginally recommended. 

AKA:  Killer Workout.  AKA:  Aerobic Killer.  AKA:  Aerobicide.  

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: A GHOST STORY (2017) **

You know, we’re only a week into The 31 Days of Horror-Ween and I decided I needed a little break.  After all the vampire clowns, horny bigfoots, and psychic Spocks I’ve been dealing with, I thought it would be nice to change things up and watch something a little classy.  I thought maybe a ghost movie starring an Oscar winner would be just the thing to wash out the taste of such cheap movies like Varan the Unbelievable and Gallery of Horror.  I was wrong.  The monster in Varan was a guy in a rubber suit.  The vampires in Gallery of Horror just had plastic fangs.  The ghost in this critically-acclaimed film was… are you ready for this?  Just a dude in a sheet.  Casey Affleck in a sheet, but still.  I kinda knew A Ghost Story wasn’t really horror, but I thought at least it would be good.  Nope. 

It mostly plays like a Terrance Malick soap opera.  A couple sits around talking, then there’s a random shot of the stars.  Then the couple mumbles for a bit.  There are shots of stuff that happen in real time, like someone hauling garbage to the curb.  Other shots of people remaining perfectly still feel even longer.  In fact, more than a few times I thought the streaming went out or my TV froze because no one was moving for so long. 

Anyway, Affleck dies.  He comes back as a ghost wearing a white sheet with holes cut out.  I’m not lying when I say he looks almost exactly like Charlie Brown on It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  He comes back from the afterlife to watch over his wife (Rooney Mara), but all he gets to see is her doing mundane shit like washing her hands, doing chores, or stuffing her face.

You know, I kind of figured the afterlife would be like that. 

Mostly this is a movie about someone watching someone else.  Marvel as Affleck watches Mara go to work.  Thrill as he stares at her staring out the window.  The action highlight is when Affleck watches Mara eat a pie.  I don’t mean just a slice either.  I mean a whole pie.  I’m not making this up.

At least when Michael Myers wore a sheet, he stabbed someone. 

Not to worry, there is some mildly horrific stuff about halfway through.  It’s not really effective, but at least here the movie starts showing signs of a pulse.  As the movie goes on, it eventually becomes clear what director David (Pete’s Dragon) Lowery is trying to do, and quite honestly, it’s not a bad idea.  It’s just that the minimalistic approach is a bit too minimalistic for its own good.

What isn’t minimalistic is the scene where a bunch of squatters go in Affleck’s house and throw a party.  There, a random drunk dude endlessly pontificates a lot of nonsense about the meaning of life.  You know you’re in trouble when you have to rely on a random drunk dude to hammer home the message of the movie.  Honestly, I think we would’ve got the idea without his explanation anyway, so for a film so minimalistic, the monologue feels more like a gratuitous exposition dump than anything.

Quite honestly, A Ghost Story does get better as it goes along.  It’s kind of fun just to see Affleck trying to emote from under a bedsheet.  However, it never really grabs you.  Something tells me reading an oral history of The Pie Scene would be more entertaining than watching the actual movie.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: BAFFLED! (1973) **

Mr. Spock stars as a race car driver who has bizarre visions in the middle of a race, causing him to crash.  Susan Hampshire is a reporter specializing in psychic phenomenon who thinks his visions are of a murder yet to take place.  Together, they travel to England, piece together the clues from Spock’s brain, and try to prevent the murder before it can occur. 

The chintzy opening credits contain footage of what we’re about to see.  This isn’t a play on Spock’s psychic premonitions, but rather a dead giveaway this isn’t really a movie, but a failed TV pilot.  Despite the okay set-up and premise, like most ‘70s TV movies, there’s a lot of filler in the middle section that needlessly drags things out and get in the way of the fun.

Some of you may wonder why I included Baffled! as part of The 31 Days of Horror-Ween as it’s a watered-down TV movie.  Trust me, there’s enough genre clichés here for it to qualify.  There’s an elaborate murder plot, psychic battles, and a cult that may or may not be draining victims of their youth to keep their members eternally young.

The real reason I watched it was to see Mr. Spock badly miscast as a cavalier race car driver with psychic powers.  Yes, the horror elements are not what you would call overt, but how could I turn down an opportunity to see:   

1)    Mr. Spock drive a race car courtesy of some hilariously bad rear-screen projection. 

2)    Mr. Spock locked in a psychic battle of wills with a little girl. 

3)    Mr. Spock doing the old Austin Powers “That’s not your mother, it’s a man, baby!” routine.

4)    Mr. Spock having trippy psychic visions that make him look like he’s going through pon farr on LSD. 

5)    Mr. Spock telling someone, “Don’t be so emotional!”

The chemistry and banter between Spock and the prim and proper Hampshire is agreeable, if slight.  Their characters are really nothing more than a thin variation on the typical though durable Mismatched Detectives trope commonly found on TV.  Baffled! isn’t bad exactly, but it’s easy to see why it wasn’t picked up as a series. 

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: GALLERY OF HORROR (1967) **

I have a soft spot in my heart for anthology horror films, so of course I had to see at least one of them during The 31 Days of Horror-Ween.  When you consider the fact that it stars two of my favorite horror icons, Lon Chaney, Jr. and John Carradine, it was hard to keep me away from Gallery of Horror.  Even the fact the film was directed by legendary hack David L. (The Wizard of Mars) Hewitt couldn’t discourage me.  After all, Hewitt’s The Mighty Gorga is one of my favorite shitty monster movies, so why not take a chance on it?  As it turns out, it’s not bad.  It has all the cheapness that hallmarks Hewitt’s cut-rate productions for sure, but it’s all fairly watchable. 

Carradine is your host for the Wraparound (**) segments.  He stands in front of a cheap castle backdrop going on and on about curses and vampires and shit.  As much as I love Carradine, the movie didn’t really need these segments.  They’re mostly boring, longwinded, and go on forever.

The Witch’s Clock (**) is the first tale.  A couple buys an old mansion and find an antique clock in the basement.  Once they get it working again, an old caretaker (Carradine) shows up on their doorstep.  They offer him a job, but soon learn he has a hidden centuries-long agenda.

The tale starts off well enough, but the ending is abrupt and unsatisfying.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t so rushed.  Heck, it might’ve even benefitted from more fleshing out.  The (mostly) one location setting doesn’t help matters any as the majority of the story feels cramped and stagey.  

In King Vampire (**), London is plagued by a series of ghastly murders.  Everyone believes it to be the work of a vampire, but the inspector on the case is convinced a human madman is to blame.  After mob justice results in the death of an innocent man, the “King” vampire finally reveals itself.

This story is supposed to take place in Victorian England, but the budget was way too small to pull off the effect.  Instead, most of the outdoor scenes are bathed in darkness to disguise the fact the budget couldn’t afford elaborate sets.  (Sometimes it’s just a bunch of people standing around a single old-timey lamppost.)  These scenes are just bad enough to be good for a laugh, and the English accents are flat-out terrible, which increases the hilarity.  Like the other stories, it unfortunately suffers from a weak twist ending.

The Monster Raid (***) is by far the best segment.  A scientist is too busy with his experiments to notice his wife is cheating on him with his assistant.  They plan to run away together, but first they must get rid of the good doctor.  The assistant sabotages the experiment, kills the doctor, and plans to steal his discovery. Little does he realize the experiment has given his mentor the power to rise from the grave and get revenge. 

The Monster Raid is similar in some ways to Roger Corman’s Poe movies and their use of garish colors.  It kicks off with a genuinely atmospheric moment when the scientist awakens from his tomb and has a number of fun moments along the way.  Not only did Hewitt manage to inject some chills into this entry, he also did a much better job with the period detail than in the previous stories.  There are countryside vistas, a horse-drawn carriage, and even some fine period costumes.  Heck, the cheap lab set is kind of cool.  I also liked the flashback structure, and the sinister narration is well done. However, as with the other tales, the resolution is too rushed to be truly satisfying. 

In Spark of Life (**), a doctor (Chaney) tells a pair of med students about the experiments of Dr. Frankenstein.  To test his theory, they try an experiment on a corpse and it winds up working all too well.  Unfortunately, they really should’ve checked to see just who they were reanimating before they started their experiment. 

This story is pretty standard and unremarkable.  It kind of plays like a half-assed variation of Re-Animator, minus the over the top gore.  Although the twist ending is predictable, Hewitt executes it decently enough.  The best thing about it is Chaney’s cantankerous performance.  You won’t believe him as a brilliant scientist for a second, but that’s part of the fun. 

Count Dracula (**) is the final tale.  Jonathan Harker comes to Dracula’s castle to close a business deal.  Their meeting is interrupted when an angry mob of villagers chase a woman in white claiming she’s a vampire.  Harker joins in on the hunt and we soon realize he has an ulterior motive for coming to the castle.

At first, it all seems like a Cliffs Notes version of the Bram Stoker classic before becoming something more akin to a Paul Naschy movie.  The period detail is better than King Vampire, and the graveyard set and fog-shrouded crypt are nicely done given the low budget.  Too bad Mitch Evans’ terrible performance as Dracula (not to mention the silly ending) pretty much sinks it.

The best parts are the animated scene transitions.  Within each segment there are cool page-turning effects which give the film a living comic book feel.   (These effects were later put to better use in Creepshow.)  I also dug the blood splatters and the bat transformations that were done courtesy of animation.  These little touches can’t save the movie, but they do give Gallery of Horror a certain charm.  

AKA:  Gallery of Horrors.  AKA:  Return from the Past.  AKA:  King Vampire.  AKA:  The Bloodsuckers.  AKA:  Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horrors.  AKA:  The Witch’s Clock.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1983) ****

When I was compiling a list of movies to watch this month, I sort of figured the majority of them would be bad.  Heck, I was kind of counting on it.  Let me tell you, I was completely floored by just how awesome Night of the Demon was.  It is one of the grimiest, grossest, grindhouse-iest movies ever made.  Not only that, it is far and away the greatest Bigfoot flick of all time.  

A professor (Michael Cutt) wakes up in a hospital with bandages on his face.  Everyone wants to know what happened to him, so he relates a series of flashbacks.  First off, some inconsequential guy gets his arm ripped off by Bigfoot.  I don’t know if that was something the professor actually witnessed or just some cool-ass shit to kick off the title sequence, but that was some pretty groovy gory goodness.  

During the title sequence, you’ve got to listen to a lot of flute-led smooth jazz while a bunch of dull white people that look like they stepped out of a JC Penney catalogue walk around endlessly.  Then, the plot begins.  The professor watches recovered home movie footage that convinces him Bigfoot is in his woods.  One of his classmates tells a story about a couple banging in the woods being attacked by Bigfoot.  (If you’re keeping score, this is a flashback inside of a flashback, which makes it even better… and there will be many more to follow.)

This sequence is incredible.  Bigfoot interrupts the couple while they’re getting it on inside their van.  The heavily-bosomed woman watches, mouth agape as what’s left of her lover’s bloody body slides down the windshield while she repeatedly screams, “Oh!  Oh!  Oooh!  Oh!” before dying of fright.  This is truly some funny shit.

The professor then takes his students into the woods looking for Bigfoot.  When Bigfoot steals their boat and leaves them stranded, they go looking for help in the form of the mute “Crazy Wanda” (Melanie Graham) who lives in the woods.  She’s mute on account of the fact the Bigfoot raped her and when she had Bigfoot Jr., her Christian father killed it at birth, so the enraged Wanda burned him alive.  Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t talk much neither after all that.  Now, Bigfoot occasionally leaves her trinkets he finds in the woods (possibly lifted from his victims), which I guess makes it kind of like a warped version of Bigfoot alimony.

You know how most Bigfoot movies he’s portrayed as a missing link type thing?  In this one, he’s basically a furry Jason Vorhees.  That description is quite accurate when you consider he kills someone while they’re in their sleeping bag.  This sleeping bag death puts the one in Friday the 13^th Part 7 to shame.  

The gore in this thing is off the chain.  Bigfoot uses an axe on a lumberjack, makes two Girl Scouts stab themselves to death, and there's gut-ripping and eyeball-popping too.  It’s the scene where Bigfoot rips a guy’s dick off that is the real showstopper.  

In short, Night of the Demon is the movie The Legend of Boggy Creek should’ve been.  They actually have a lot in common.  Both contain scenes of the local yokels being interviewed about the legend of the monster.  It even shares the same flashback-heavy structure Boggy Creek had.  However, unlike Boggy Creek, it’s got lots of T & A and gore.  That is to say it’s the greatest Bigfoot movie ever made.  

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE (1962) * ½

Myron Healy stars as an American military man stationed on a Japanese island.  His assignment is to pump a bunch of chemicals into the sea to help the locals refine their drinking water.  Of course, in doing so, Healy’s experiments wind up awakening a giant prehistoric monster. 

So, what’s so unbelievable about Varan?  Plenty!  Let’s start with the incredibly shoddy way the whole thing was put together.  Like the original Godzilla, Varan the Unbelievable is a Toho monster movie directed by Ishiro Honda that was taken by an American studio (in this case, Crown International) who added Americanized scenes of American actors and integrated them with the original plot.  What is shocking about Varan the Unbelievable is how little of the original is left.  Most of the focus is on Healy’s various problems than anything.

What’s more, the footage doesn’t even match!  The lighting, camerawork, and locations are so different that it quickly becomes painfully obvious it was the work of two entirely different crews (from two entirely different nations, no less).  Yes, this process is nothing new, but wait till you see just how carelessly it was cobbled together.  A child could easily tell it’s two different movies stitched together in slapdash fashion.  (Sometimes the original footage appears and disappears so rapidly it almost seems subliminal.)

What else is unbelievable?  How about the fact that they don’t even call him Varan!  They call him “Obake”!  I guess Obake the Unbelievable just didn’t have the same ring to it.

Want to know something else that’s unbelievable?  The print.  It’s one of the worse pan-and-scan crop jobs I’ve ever seen.  Actually, it isn’t even fair to call it “pan-and-scan” because it doesn’t even pan and scan.  Instead, it hops back and forth; sometimes several times within the same shot.  It’s jarring to say the least. 

Another thing unbelievable about Varan is that it takes a half hour before he even shows up.  Till then it’s a LOT of stuff of Myron Healy hanging out on an island.  We’re talking Dullsville here. 

On the plus side, Varan himself is really cool.  He’s the only thing in the movie worth a damn.  He kind of looks like Godzilla, but with a spikier back.  Most of the time, he stomps on two legs, but sometimes he crawls around on all fours like a dog.  Too bad he spends much of his time on an island, so there’s no real buildings for him to smash.  Instead, he causes rockslides and steps on Jeeps.  (You have to wait until the last fifteen minutes to finally see him work over Japan.) 

Apparently, in the original Japanese version Varan flew.  Us stupid Americans unwisely cut it out.  I mean, let’s face it.  Even if the flying effects were bad, at least it would’ve been something different to separate him from the rest of the pack.  At least the ending is interesting because the Japanese are unable to kill the monster, just wound it enough so it goes back into the sea.  I kind of liked that.  Kaiju détente.  However, it would take Varan six years to show up on screens again when he cameoed in Destroy All Monsters.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: THE NIGHT WATCHMEN (2017) **

Blimpo (Gary Peebles) is a beloved clown from Baltimore who dies in a freak circus fire in Bulgaria.  When his body is shipped home, it mistakenly gets dropped off at an office building where it must be kept overnight.  Blimpo soon awakens from his coffin as a vampire and begins biting his victims and turning them into bloodthirsty bloodsuckers.  Naturally, the only ones who can stop the vampire plague from spreading are the ragtag group of security guards that work in the building. 

The first thing you notice (or I noticed) about this low budget, locally shot horror movie is the presence of James Remar who plays the nerdy, sexually harassing office manager.  It’s really weird seeing him playing such an oddball character.  I’m more used to seeing him being the badass.  He must’ve taken this role (and the co-producer credit) in an effort to try something new.  The only other “names” in the cast are Scream Queen Tiffany Shepis and Rain Pryor (Richard’s daughter), both of whom don’t stick around very long.

The Night Watchmen offers an agreeable mix of over the top gore and crude humor.  The humor, it must be said, is hit-and-miss and the gore gets awfully repetitive as most of the kills revolve around people getting their throats torn out.  (There is a clever scene where a broken plunger is used as a makeshift stake though.)  Even though the film is about vampires, it’s structured more like a zombie movie.  That’s not really a criticism.  Just a fact.

One thing I can say for it is that director Mitchell Altieri (one half of the “Butcher Brothers”) gets the show on the road rather swiftly.  It’s just that the film spins its wheels a bit too much in the second and third acts to be totally successful.  By then, the movie feels a lot longer than the 79 minute-running-time suggests.  Still, as a former Marylander, I appreciated the jabs made at Baltimore’s expense, so it was hard to completely hate it.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: ROCKULA (1990) *

Luca Bercovici is mostly known as an actor, but he’s probably best remembered in this household for directing Ghoulies.  He had to wait six years to make his follow-up feature, a vampire-rock n’ roll-comedy-musical called Rockula.  He should’ve waited longer.

Dean Cameron stars as Ralph, a 400 year-old-virgin who still lives at home with his domineering mother (Toni Basil).  He’s cursed to perpetually look for the reincarnation of his lost love (Tawny Fere) and save her from a menacing pirate (Thomas Dolby).  Every time he’s tried to rescue her, something’s gone wrong, causing him to be stuck in a centuries-long dry spell.  When Ralph meets his true love in the present day, he freaks out and lies to her, saying he’s in a rock n’ roll band.  To woo her away from the pirate once and for all, he makes the band a reality, christening himself “Rockula”.

If you can’t already tell by that description, there’s a LOT going on here, but nothing ever really happens.  The endless exposition dump in the early going pretty much stops the movie on a dime and it never recovers.  On top of that, the movie adds a bunch of new, needless, and odd “rules” to the traditionally accepted vampire lore that just don’t work at all.  (Like Dolby’s quest for an “emerald peg leg” and Cameron’s ability to communicate with his mirror image, who has a life of his own.) 

If Rockula was nothing more than a collection of lame comedic vampire shenanigans, it would be one thing.  Add in a bunch of terrible musical sequences and you have a recipe for disaster.  The music is too new to work as nostalgia and it isn’t cheesy enough to be camp.  It’s just plain bad.  I mean would it surprise you that Cameron sings a song called “Rapula” that contains the lyric, “He’s the DJ, I’m the vampire”?  Not only is the music bad, but the staging and choreography is awful too.  The only passable dance sequence belongs to Basil, who (no surprise here) did her own choreography.  (Who could blame her?)

I loved Cameron in Summer School and Ski School, but in those films, he was playing characters that had a bit of an edge.  Stuck with such a wishy-washy nerdy character, he’s just kind of there in this film.  I will say he’s slightly more successful as his mirror reflection than as his Rockula persona.  (The scene where he sings a song dressed like Elvis is particularly dire.)

Bercovici manages to waste a talented cast of musicians too.  I’m not sure if it’s because they’re musicians and not really actors, but even their music isn’t even very good here.  I mean what the Hell is Bo Diddley doing in this?  At least give him something worthwhile to do.  Dolby’s particularly annoying as the villain.  It’s probably not entirely his fault considering the material he was given.  (There’s a scene where he does a local commercial for a funeral home that offers a rotisserie coffin “to keep you turning over in your grave!”)  Only Susan Tyrrell manages to make an impression as one of Rockula’s band members.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL

Well, folks.  October’s finally here.  It’s the month when us movie bloggers drop what we’re doing and only watch, write, and tweet all things horror for the next thirty-one days.  Of course, not EVERYTHING I’ll be reviewing will be horror related (I mean there’s no way I’m going to wait till November to see Joker), but it will definitely be about 95% pure horror.

For more than a decade, I have been doing The 31 Days of Horror-Ween in October as a celebration of my favorite genre.  Every year has had at least some sort of vague theme that ties all the films together.  This year’s theme is Prime Evil in which I’ll be watching and reviewing thirty-one horror movies from my Amazon Prime watchlist.  There won’t be an overreaching theme to the films themselves.  I’m just watching thirty-one horror movies that have been hanging out at the bottom of my queue ever since I added them a few years ago.  

Hopefully, we’ll make some fun discoveries along the way.  Most likely, the majority of them will suck, probably due to the fact that I just added them to my watchlist indiscriminately.  I mean, I’m just a sucker for the “Customers Also Watched” recommendation list.  I usually can’t add just one movie and be done with it.  I typically add two or three (or four).  

So, let’s buckle up and do this thing.  Thirty-one days of (almost) nothing but (probably) crappy horror movies starting… now.  I hope you’ll have as much fun reading about my movie-watching exploits as I had writing about them.

PRIME EVIL: CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT (1972) ***

The beauty of the sheer amount of shit on Amazon Prime is that the most innocuous looking movies turn out to be loaded with full-fledged lunacy.  Case in point is Crimes of the Black Cat.  I probably would’ve never even heard of this flick if it wasn’t for Amazon Prime.  It just popped up under the “Customers Also Watched” heading.  On a whim, I decided to watch it because, what the hell, right?  I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting this.

Anthony Steffan stars as a blind piano player who overhears a conversation in a crowded bar.  He thinks they’re talking about a murder plot but can’t be sure because of the racket coming from the juke box.  People around him start dying and he comes to suspect a mysterious woman in a white cloak is responsible for it all.

Crimes of the Black Cat would make a great double feature with The Cat O’ Nine Tails.  Both films are Italian giallos with blind protagonists and contain the word “Cat” in the title.  It has a clever set-up, an outrageous hook (the murders are mostly performed by a cat with poisoned claws), and a healthy amount of gratuitous T & A.  The finale might be my favorite part.  It starts off at an eleven on the crazy meter and then escalates wildly from there, only to finish off at one of the most perplexing freeze frame endings of all time.  Said another way, it’s awesome.  

There’s also a good mix of tongue-in-cheek humor and unintentional laughs.  The scene where our blind hero accidentally stumbles upon a corpse is amusing and the silly plot twists will ensure you’ll be grinning like the cat who ate the canary.  The hilarious cat attacks will have you in stitches.  (It looks like a PA took a plastic cat with glowing eyes and hurled it repeatedly at the camera.)  We also get an occasional scene that the distributor forgot to dub into English.  Since one of those scenes involves a topless model yelling at her photographer, I’ll let it slide.

The gore is pretty good for the time.  There are throat slashings, a decapitated cat, and a gnarly Psycho-inspired shower scene where a woman’s boob is slashed apart by a straight razor.  The make-up in the finale is also quite well done.

It’s almost a given that Crimes of the Black Cat is uneven as hell.  Luckily, there’s enough jaw-dropping insanity here to help you get over the lulls.  Even if you find yourself getting restless, hang in there because the last five minutes is an absolute riot.

AKA:  Crimes.  AKA:  Seven Shawls of Yellow Silk.  

You can watch Crimes of the Black Cat for free on Amazon Prime here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MRWY1WN?ref_=imdbref_tt_wbr_piv&tag=imdbtag_tt_wbr_piv-20 

PRIME EVIL: LAST HOUSE ON MASSACRE STREET (1973) *** ½

Barbara (Robin Strasser) is madly in love with David (Arthur Roberts).  Her rich father (John Beal) doesn’t want her to marry David, but she does so against his wishes.  On their wedding day, Barbara catches David in the arms of his ex-girlfriend (Iva Jean Saraceni).  She stabs him with a pair of scissors, destroys the wedding cake, and takes off.  Barbara’s father insists David not divorce her (you know, that whole “for better or for worse” thing), but after her disappearance he grows restless.  He shacks up with his old girlfriend and soon, the two begin receiving threatening phone calls and having weird dreams where the cackling bride endlessly torments them. 

The first twenty minutes of Last House on Massacre Street (which, let’s face it, is one of the coolest titles ever) would make a great contained short film.  It stands on its own as a nifty piece of exploitation filmmaking with a potent set-up and an even better punchline.  What’s surprising is that director Jean-Marie Pelisse (who unfortunately never made another movie) deftly maintains the same level of atmosphere throughout.  Most directors would run out of gas after the spectacular first act.  Pelisse is somehow able to keep the suspense brewing while the film spins off into wilder, weirder directions.

The third act contains a twist that veers into the realm of the supernatural.  Now, a lot of films wouldn’t have been able to survive this sort of sudden turn.  Incredibly enough, this one defies the odds and manages to get even better as it goes along.  Last House on Massacre Street is the rare flick that actually lives up to its junky exploitation title.  It’s an eerie and effective little chiller I won’t soon forget, and one that deserves to be better known. 

AKA:  The Bride.  AKA:  The House That Cried Murder.  AKA:  No Way Out.  AKA:  Scream.  

You can find Last House on Massacre Street streaming on Prime for free here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C353T8K?ref_=imdbref_tt_wbr_piv&tag=imdbtag_tt_wbr_piv-20 

PRIME EVIL: CLASSIC HORROR TRAILERS (2007) **

(By the way, this is the thumbnail picture on Amazon Prime for this compilation, but the movie doesn’t even have a trailer for Frankenstein, which should give you an idea of the quality of this flick.)

You all know me.  You know movie trailer compilations are my kryptonite.  I’m especially susceptible to compilations of horror movie trailers.  When I stumbled upon this compilation on Amazon Prime, I knew I had to get my trailer on.  Now, I don’t ordinarily mind compilations that cross over various genres, particularly if they’re of the grindhouse and/or exploitation variety.  It’s just that… well… Classic Horror Trailers is one of the most confounding compilations I’ve ever seen.

It all starts out just fine and dandy with trailers for such classics as Tales of Terror, The Revenge of Frankenstein, The Unearthly, The Cyclops, Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, From Hell It Came, She Demons, The Bride and the Beast, The Cosmic Man, The Fiendish Ghouls, and The Raven.  Then, about twenty minutes in, there’s a trailer for… Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night?!?  What the what?  

Okay, maybe the editor fell asleep at the wheel and one of his art house buddies slipped it in.  I mean, I guess you could consider it a cult movie.  It’s certainly far from a “Classic Horror” flick though.

After that, it’s back to business.  There’s Queen of Outer Space (sure, it’s Sci-Fi, but there’s giant spiders in it, so I’ll allow it), Carnival of Souls, Tarantula, Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, The Mole People, and… High Plains Drifter?!?  I mean, I guess it could be considered a horror movie if you believe Clint Eastwood’s character is a ghost (which is possible because of the movie’s ambiguity), but still…

Okay, so after that brief detour into Clint Eastwood territory, we get back on track with trailers for The Masque of the Red Death, The Village of the Damned, Macabre, Dr. Cadman’s Secret (AKA:  The Black Sleep), Black Sunday… wait, didn’t we already see a trailer for Black Sunday?  Yup.  I’m not really complaining because who wouldn’t want to pass up an opportunity to see the sultry Barbara Steele, but it reinforces my theory that the editor had a case of narcolepsy when he was cobbling this together.

That’s followed by trailers for Caltiki the Immortal Monster, Frankenstein 1970, Black Pit of Dr. M, Monstrosity (AKA:  The Atomic Brain), Daughter of Horror (“Not one word is spoken on screen!”), Blood Man of the Devil (AKA:  House of the Black Death), The Vampire Lovers, and The House on Haunted Hill.  We also get a second trailer for The House on Haunted Hill, which plays up the “Emergo” gimmick.  Unfortunately, it’s also around this time where the audio gets out of synch and the actor’s dialogue rarely matches their lips, which gets quite annoying.

Trailers for Diary of a Madman, Flower Drum Song… FLOWER DRUM SONG?!?, My Name is Nobody… MY NAME IS NOBODY?!?, Privilege… PRIVILEGE?!? I’ve got to stop and go lay down to get my head straight.

Okay, I’m back.  What’s next?  Mondo Balordo (a Mondo movie narrated by Boris Karloff… Okay, I’ll guess I can accept that), The Last Wagon (a western with Richard Widmark), Taras Bulba (a Cossack action flick with Yul Brynner), The Projected Man (another Sci-Fi flick, but certainly closer to the theme of the compilation than Flower Drum Song), Long John Silver (WTF), and The Big Gundown (a western with Lee Van Cleef).  Seriously, why wasn’t this called Classic Horror Trailers with a Bunch of Western Trailers and Other Shit Thrown in?  Or, even better, just cut out all the trailers that weren’t remotely horror related?  And would it have been too much to ask for to have the audio synched up correctly?  Jeez. 

Things wrap up with trailers for Colossus:  The Forbin Project, Hammer’s version of The Mummy, The Brain Machine, Money, Women, and Guns (another western, but at least Lon Chaney, Jr. is in it), The Haunted Palace, A Bucket of Blood, 13 Ghosts, Man of a Thousand Faces, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Dementia 13, The Hanging Tree (a western with Gary Cooper), The Curse of the Faceless Man, Marnie, and The Tingler.  

If the compilation ended at about the hour mark, this would’ve probably have been a *** or *** ½ movie because some of the trailers are really quite cool.  I particularly liked seeing trailers for familiar movies under their alternate titles.  Too bad the inexplicable use of non-horror trailers in the second hour, coupled with the out-of-synch audio eventually did a number on my brain and drove me batty.  

PRIME EVIL: THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES (1976) ** ½

Two rich sisters named Kitty and Eveline live in a mansion where a spooky painting of a woman in a red cloak foretells their ominous fate.  Decades later, friends of the now-grown Kitty (played by Barbara Bouchet) are picked off one by one by a killer dressed as the woman in the painting.  It’s only a matter of time before she becomes the killer’s next target.  Even though the police are hard at work on the case, Kitty is withholding an incriminating secret that could bust the investigation wide open.

The central murder mystery is ho-hum, and the stalking scenes suffer from a few repetitive kills.  (The only memorable death involves someone being impaled on a gate.)  In fact, the film’s subplots are a lot more interesting than the murder investigation itself.  The legend of the woman in red, along with the revelation of Barbara’s big secret (not to mention her involvement with a junkie blackmailer) are sure to keep you engaged when the rest of the movie is spinning its wheels.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times is an uneven, sometimes frustrating giallo, but it’s buoyed by a great performance by Bouchet.  She’s given plenty of scenes that allow her to descend into wild-eyed theatrics and she looks positively stunning during her freak-outs.  While most of the film is patchy, the final reel in which Bouchet is locked in a slowly flooding room teeming with rats is stellar.  (She also gets a handful of sultry nude scenes too.)  Sybil Danning also shows up briefly, but you’ll wish her part was bigger.

AKA:  Horror House.  AKA:  Blood Feast.  AKA:  Feast of Flesh.  AKA:  The Corpse Which Didn’t Want to Die.  AKA:  The Lady in Red Kills Seven Times.

You can watch the film for free on Amazon Prime:  HERE

PRIME EVIL: HOOKER WITH A HACKSAW (2017) * ½

Donald Farmer is one of the reigning kings of no-budget horror. He’s been in the game for over thirty years now.  Judging from Hooker with a Hacksaw, I’m not exactly sure how much he’s learned since the days of Vampire Cop.

Kirsten (Kasper Meltedhair, who also co-wrote the movie with Farmer) is a hooker who is so desperate, she’ll have sex with a psycho john’s dead mother for drugs.  Another john forces her to appear in a snuff movie, but she’s able to get free and turns the tables on her captors, killing them with a hacksaw.  She then goes out on the street, trusty hacksaw in hand, killing abusive assholes and parasitic pushers.

Hooker with a Hacksaw is one of those movies where the budget was so low, you’ll swear the special effects were bought at the Spirt of Halloween clearance rack the day after Halloween.  I mean the dead mother is nothing more than a plastic skeleton.  In fact, there’s a long scene in the movie where Meltedhair is seen wandering endlessly down the aisles of a Spirit of Halloween store, which confirms my suspicion that’s where the plastic skeleton corpse was purchased from.  Not only that, but the shots of her trying on mask after mask also helps to pad out the running time.

I give Meltedhair credit for ripping guys’ guts out and doing sexually suggestive stuff with their intestines and still managing to look sexy while doing so.  This scene is so good that it’s repeated over the end credits to further pad the running time.  At seventy minutes, it’s still way too long though, even when the last ten minutes are nothing more than credits.  Still, the instestine scene, along with Meltedhair’s game performance is enough to keep this from being a One Star deal.

Linnea Quigley has a cameo, briefly appearing on television. 

Hooker with a Hacksaw is available on Amazon Prime for free HERE