HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: DEATH WALKS AT MIDNIGHT (1972) **

Director Luciano Ercoli re-teamed with most of the same cast for this spiritual sequel to Death Walks on High Heels.  Everyone is playing different characters than last time, but the plot is thematically similar.  Like Death Walks on High Heels, it’s way too long and things get needlessly convoluted by the end.  I will say this for Death Walks at Midnight:  It has a much better hook and gives a lot more screen time to its leading lady, Susan Scott.  

Scott stars as a model who agrees to take a new experimental psychedelic drug so her boyfriend (Simon Andreau) can write about the effects for a tabloid.  During her drug trip, she sees a woman being brutally killed by a man with a spiked iron glove.  Naturally, no one believes her until the killer comes after her. 

The opening scene packs a wallop.  It’s almost like something out of a Dario Argento movie.  Things quickly bog down from there though.  The scenes of Scott playing Nancy Drew aren't very involving either.  As with Death Walks on High Heels, there are so many red herrings and plot twists in the final act that it gets to be a bit much.  However, I’ll give this one the slight edge, just for the harsh iron glove slayings. 

AKA:  Cry Out in Terror.  AKA:  Death Caresses at Midnight.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS (1971) **

A stripper (Susan Scott) receives threatening phone calls from a killer with a robot voice.  He thinks she has some diamonds her late jewel thief father stole, and he claims he’ll kill her if she doesn’t fork them over.  She doesn’t take him seriously until he breaks into her room and accosts her with a straight razor.  Thinking her drunkard boyfriend (Simon Andreau) is the killer, she pops off to London with an adoring fan, a rich married doctor (Frank Wolff), to escape his clutches. 

There’s a plot twist halfway through that's worthy of a Hitchcock movie.  I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it for you.  I will say that as a consequence, the alluring Susan Scott gets less and less screen time.  Without her slinky presence, Death Walks on High Heels loses a lot of its drive.  

Taken on its own merits, the first act is a solid little piece of exploitation filmmaking.  It’s in the second act that the film loses its way, big time.  It’s here where it stops being a slightly trashy thriller and becomes a dull police procedural.  During the finale, director Luciano Ercoli piles on twist after twist, almost to the point where you’ll gladly take any conclusion as long as it makes the movie end.   All the endless twists wind up doing is jerking the audience around, which is a shame considering how well-executed the first half-hour was. 

AKA:  Death Stalks on High Heels.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: ANTIBIRTH (2016) * ½

Natasha Lyonne gets wasted at a party and winds up pregnant.  She isn’t fazed by it though and continues boozing and drugging it up.  Eventually, she realizes this is no ordinary pregnancy as the new life inside her slowly starts to take over her body. 

I wanted to see this mainly for the cast alone.  It’s been a while since Lyonne has had a role she could really sink her teeth into.  I mean who wouldn’t want to see her and Chloe Sevigny teamed together for a monster baby movie?  As a bonus, we have the one and only Meg Tilly on hand playing a mystery lady who shadows Lyonne.  I can’t remember the last time I saw her in a film and it’s good to have her back on the screen where she belongs.   

Unfortunately, the movie is borderline unwatchable.  How can you take such likeable performers and then give them unlikeable, loathsome characters to portray?  It quickly becomes tiresome watching them sitting around, getting high, and watching TV.  Sad thing is, most of the running time is devoted to this. 

Once we finally get to the horrific scenes, things improve slightly.  The gore effects are well done, and the blister-popping scene alone is enough to ensure it won’t get a One Star rating.  The birthing sequence, when it finally rears its ugly head (and I mean that quite literally), is appropriately icky.  However, the final moments of the film plunge deeper and deeper into excess, culminating in WTF note that will leave your alternately shaking and scratching your head. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: NIGHTMARES (1980) ** ½

A kid gets fed up watching her mom fool around with her boyfriend while driving.  She tries to make them stop and inadvertently causes an accident.  Twenty years later, she tries out for a play and wins the lead.  As opening night approaches, people start being murdered by a black-gloved killer with shards of broken glass. 

Nightmares is an Australian Ozploitation movie that has many similarities to American slashers and Italian gialli.  Since the slasher film was still in its infancy (it was released the same year as Friday the 13^th), I’d have to say that the giallo thrillers were more than likely its main inspiration.  (A killer wearing black gloves is a staple of gialli.)  Still, the scenes of horny people being sliced up after humping, and the POV shots of the stalking killer would feel right at home in an American slasher. 

These scenes are done effectively for the most part.  It’s the stuff in between the stalking that’s a little on the dull side.  There are a couple of subplots that bog things down too (like the critic that tries to seduce an actor in exchange for a favorable review).  Considering the running time is only 79 minutes, the pacing should’ve been much tighter. 

The ending is also predictable.  It’s obvious from the get-go who’s doing the killing and why.  I’m not even sure why they tried to make it a mystery.  It might’ve worked better if they didn’t try to hide the killer’s identity.  I mean why not?  The audience has already guessed who it is anyway. 

AKA:  Stage Fright.  AKA:  Nightmares on the Street.

THAT’S SEXPLOITATION! (2013) *** ½

Frank (Frankenhooker) Henenlotter and David F. Friedman are your hosts for an eye-opening tour of a half-century’s worth of smut.  All facets of vintage erotica are discussed at length.  There are segments on arcade loops, drug scare films, sex hygiene movies, nudist camp pictures, peep shows, VD army training films, nudie-cuties, roughies, psychedelia, and gay and lesbian films.  Each segment is loaded with fascinating clips representing each genre and they all look great in stunning HD. 

Henenlotter (who also directed) also discusses “white coaters”, which was basically a legal hardcore movie filmed under the guise of marital education.  This eventually opened the door for the rise of porn, which to Henenlotter, says signaled the end of the line for sexploitation pictures.  Once you got to see sex in XXX, there was no longer anything left to exploit. 

Both men are fascinating to listen to.  Friedman has a mind like a steel trap and can recall with great clarity minute details from decades-old films.  Henenlotter’s enthusiasm is infectious.  Ever the historian, he chose some terrific clips to emphasize his points.  (I especially liked the side-by-side comparisons of the “Hot” versions of some of the movies.)   

Sure, at over two hours, That’s Sexploitation! runs a little on the long side.  Honestly, there’s probably enough information here to fit two movies.  Besides, seeing so many clips from such a vast library of filth alone is worth the price of admission.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: PREVENGE (2017) ** ½

Tone is a tricky thing when you’re making a horror comedy, especially one with this sort of premise.  Not only does it involve a pregnant woman (Alice Lowe), but her evil fetus as well.  The unborn baby urges her to kill the people responsible for the death of her husband, but we’re never sure if the killer fetus is real or a figment of Lowe’s imagination until the very end.  This aspect runs against the grain of its humorous intentions.  If played completely serious, this could’ve been absolutely horrifying.  Instead of trying to put the screws to the audience, it goes for cheap laughs and mixes in some sloppy gore, just because, I suppose. 

I’ll be the first to admit that there are some laughs here, but the filmmakers never hit a consistent tone.  Sometimes the punchlines are so dry that they fail to elicit much of a response.  Other times, it goes so over the top that it resembles a Troma movie.   

It doesn’t help that the film falls into a predictable rut (Lowe finds a target, talks to them a bit, then stabs them with a butcher knife) almost right from the get-go.  Also, many of the deaths are interchangeable, except for the scene where Lowe tries to kill a kickboxing woman.  Lowe’s fearless performance helps to anchor things whenever it threatens to go off the rails.  Maybe next time she’ll star in a movie worthy of her talents.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: VIDEO NASTIES: DRACONIAN DAYS (2014) ***

Jake West’s sequel to his Video Nasties documentary focuses on the rise of former filmmaker James Ferman as the head censor at the British Board of Film Censorship.  The way Ferman got other conservatives to rally alongside him was admittedly ingenious:  He showed them a greatest hits collection of all the goriest bits from all the nasties.  Even the most die-hard gorehound would’ve been a little queasy watching that.  

West also gets into how the tabloids used the video nasties as a scapegoat to real-life tragedies.  A mass shooting is blamed on Rambo and Child’s Play 3 is blamed for the tragic Bulger murder.  Thinking something as tame as Child’s Play 3 could drive someone to murder is laughable now, but when you think of the media frenzy that surrounded the case, it’s easy to see why people were so hysterical. 

When politicians call for tighter restrictions on videos, it is Ferman who champions to prevent them from further censorship.  Later, he gets ousted when he tries to legalize pornography.  Even though this guy wanted to hack all the good stuff out of countless genre classics, he winds up being a decent guy after all. 

While Draconian Days covers a lot of the same territory as David Gregory’s Ban the Sadist Videos did, there are a couple of pleasant deviations.  The segment on horror fanzines is great and probably deserves its own documentary at some point.  In the end, it runs on a bit too long for its own good.  With some tighter editing, West could’ve condensed all the material into one feature.  If you've seen the first one, you probably owe it to yourself to watch this one too.