HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: GHOSTHOUSE (1989) **

A little girl named Henrietta (Kristen Fougerousse) kills her pet on her birthday.  Dad tries to punish her and gets an axe in the brain for his trouble.  Then a mirror shatters in her mom’s face before she’s stabbed in the throat.  

Okay, movie, you’ve got my attention.

Twenty years later, a guy starts picking up weird messages on his ham radio.  Okay, when you bring ham radios into the plot, you’re gonna lose me, movie.  Anyway, he tracks down the signal, which naturally, is coming from the house where the little girl Henrietta murdered her parents.

Director Umberto (Nightmare City) Lenzi gets a lot of mileage from the scenes of Henrietta hanging out with her creepy clown doll.  The clown attack scenes are reminiscent of the ones in Poltergeist.  If it was nothing more than a ghost girl with her killer clown, it might’ve worked.  However, he tosses in a lot of other subplots (killer caretakers and zombies among them) that gum up the works.  Lenzi tries for an anything goes approach.  While anything goes, nothing really sticks.

One upshot to having a lot of unnecessary subplots and side characters:  Some bastard comes to an untimely end every ten minutes or so.  I can’t say you’ll miss them or anything, but at least Lenzi keeps the pace moving.  

This was billed in some areas as Evil Dead 3.  The only connection though is someone named Henrietta killing people in a cellar.  That, and an exploding lightbulb I suppose.

A hitchhiker gets the best line of the movie when he says, “Hitching’s okay, it’s the hiking part that sucks!”

AKA:  Evil Dead 3.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: TBK: TOOLBOX MURDERS 2 (2015) *

The Toolbox Killer (Christopher Doyle) captures a woman (Chauntel Lewis) and holds her captive in a dank basement where he makes her watch other victims being tortured and mutilated.  Slowly, she begins losing her sanity as she doubts she’ll ever escape her predicament.  Will the cop (Sleepwalkers’ Brian Krause) investigating the disappearances get to her in time?

The awful, shaky camerawork, seizure-inducing editing, and useless titles marking the passing of time (which are accompanied by annoying screeching on the soundtrack) is a recipe for disaster.  There’s plenty of gore here (leg hacking, a guy cut in half, heart ripping, etc.), however thanks to the amateurish way the death scenes are filmed, it looks phony.  I mean, Lewis, is a real-life amputee.  You’d think the scene where her hand is cut off would look more convincing given that fact.   

All of this is generally unpleasant and repetitive.  It also goes on for what feels like forever until the frustrating non-ending comes along to further piss you off.  I did like the scene where the Toolbox Killer hands Lewis some popcorn to eat while she watches him torment another victim.

Oh, and did I mention Bruce Dern is in this?!?  What the hell is he doing here?  I mean he filmed this the same year he was nominated for an Oscar for Nebraska!!!  WTF?!?

AKA:  Coffin Baby.  AKA:  Toolbox Murders 2.  AKA:  Coffin Baby:  The Toolbox Killer is Back.

THE GODFATHER’S DAUGHTER MAFIA BLUES (1991) **

A Chinese gangster takes a shine to a street-smart kid because they both served in the same army regiment.  He gives him the job of bodyguard for his headstrong daughter.  When she learns her father is being muscled out of his business by an upstart Japanese rival, she and her bodyguard set out to take him down.

The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues starts off well enough.  The scene where our hero gets into a barroom brawl because his buddy insults a nightclub singer has a couple of laughs.  (“She's raping my ears!”)  The back and forth between them and the gangster nightclub owner is pretty funny too.  At one point, the gangster’s men poison their fish, and our heroes set out to avenge them.  I mean, when’s the last time you saw a movie about people going on a Death Wish because of some fish?  (Does that make it a Fish Wish?) 

Once our hero takes his post as the Godfather’s daughter’s bodyguard, it all goes downhill.  It doesn’t help that the daughter grates on the nerves almost instantly.  Most of the fights and shootouts are weighted towards the end, and when we finally get around to them, they're nothing write home about.  If only the filmmakers had kept the playful tone of the early scenes, this might’ve been a winner.

AKA:  The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues.

TWO FEMALE SPIES WITH FLOWERED PANTIES (1980) **

Lina Romay and Nadine Pascal star as strippers who are busted and turned into spies by the government.  Meanwhile, a couple kidnaps a girl and holds her hostage.  They repeatedly rape her, hypnotize her, and sell her into white slavery.  It’s then up to the strippers-turned-spies to rescue her.

Jess Franco’s Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties is a lighthearted, cheap, and fitfully amusing exploitation item.  While it’s not always successful, there’s always a lot of skin on display.  The opening sequence in which our two heroines are forced to do an impromptu striptease to prove their credentials is pretty funny.  

Not all the humor works though.  The scene where Pascal “rapes” a gay guy is played for laughs, but is more bizarre than anything.  For every amusing bit of business, there’s a dull sequence or two where Franco basically lets the pacing up and die.

Ultimately, the indifferent pacing in the second half squanders any potential the first half contained.  Franco never finds a consistent rhythm or tone, which further hampers things.  Even when he’s piling on the sleaze, there are sequences that flounder.  Take for instance the long striptease scene that just has the strippers slowly rocking back and forth while looking completely spaced out.  It goes on forever and isn’t very sexy at all.  

Fans of Franco and Romay probably won’t be deterred.  Romay is naked enough that it will more than likely get a pass from most of her ardent admirers.  For newcomers, there are plenty other of their collaborations you could waste your time with.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: PLAY MOTEL (1979) ***

A wealthy man frequents the titular establishment that caters to couples seeking kinky sex.  He is then blackmailed with photos of himself and a beautiful blonde in some compromising positions.  When both the blonde AND his nagging wife wind up dead, he becomes the top suspect.  A cop then hires an out-of-work actor and his sexy girlfriend to investigate the hotel and hopefully draw out the real blackmailers.  

Play Motel is filled with wall-to-wall sleaziness.  There are plenty of S & M scenes (I especially liked the scene where a guy dressed up like a devil and poked a woman dressed like a nun with a pitchfork) and frequent nude model shoots.  The hilarious folk-rock theme song, which sounds suspiciously like “Like a Rolling Stone” doesn’t fit the action at all and is good for a few giggles.  That of course, means it’s awesome.  The awful dubbing provides a handful of laughs as well.

The plot gets in the way of the fun as the film enters the final reel.  It’s here where the movie actually has to deal with all the varied plot threads and loose ends that have piled up while it was busy tossing out endless sleazy scenes.  It manages to tie them up in a satisfying manner too.  It’s just that the movie isn’t nearly as much fun when everyone’s clothes are on.

NOON SUNDAY (1970) *

Noon Sunday was the first movie filmed in Guam.  I'm sure they're all proud of that.  While the exteriors are certainly picturesque, most of the claustrophobic interiors look like they were shot in someone's aunt’s house.

It’s also notable for starring Mark Lenard, who of course, is most famous for playing Spock’s dad on Star Trek.  How many movies can boast that?  Sadly, the film’s location and its star are the only two reasons to watch it and those are awfully thin reasons to begin with.

Lenard plays a government agent working in the Pacific.  His mission is to stop a rocket launch that could spell doom for most of the free world.  I can’t guarantee you’ll care or anything.

Noon Sunday is a boring and slow-moving actioner that skimps on the action.  What action we do get is mostly weighted towards the end.  It is pretty bloody in some places, but that doesn't make it, you know, good.  There is one brief topless lovemaking scene, but the flick really needed more exploitation elements if it was to be memorable or successful.

A lot of the problem has to do with Lenard.  He is a dullard of the highest order and does little to infuse his character with any machismo or charisma.  Heck, he showed more emotion when he was playing a Vulcan.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: JIGSAW (2017) **

Every horror franchise has that one “Final Chapter” installment that is immediately followed by a sequel that undoes all of that and continues the series full-steam ahead.  I’m not sure why they waited seven years to make another Saw movie after The Final Chapter.  I’m not even sure why they bothered to call it Jigsaw either.  I guess all horror franchises need to bring the killer’s name into the title at some point.

Do you really need to know the plot?  It’s just more of the same.  Why they waited this long to tell this particular story is beyond me as it’s almost indistinguishable from the last couple of installments.  Die-hard fans of the saga will undoubtedly dig it, but it left me kind of cold.  If you’ve seen one Saw, you’ve pretty much seen them all.  It contains all the booby-traps, self-mutilations, and hacked-off legs you’ve come to expect by now. By now though, there really isn’t much of a point to all the Jigsawing shenanigans. 

In fact, throughout most of the movie, I was clocking this at about a * ½ rating, which would put it close to the bottom of the barrel as far as the series is concerned.  Luckily, it climaxed with an insane bit of disgustingness when a guy’s face is lasered off in sections so that it unfolds into a squirming mass of what looks like a cross between octopus tentacles and an Outback blooming onion.  For that bravura scene alone, it’s getting **.  Other than that, I think it’s safe to let Jigsaw and the Saw series rest in peace for a while.