DAUGHTER OF DEATH (1983) ***

Director Paul Nicholas made this the same year he directed the immortal Chained Heat.  Hey, when you’re hot, you’re hot.  Like that film, it features the sexy Sybil Danning.  In fact, both movies would make a good double feature, even if they are as different as night and day.

Dr. Wilding (Tony Franciosa) has a precocious daughter named Julie (Isabelle Mejias) who loves freaking people out with her pet snake.  Instead of being interested in boys, she’d rather be out hunting with her daddy.  When she witnesses her mother raped and killed by an intruder, Julie doesn’t lift a finger to help her because she thinks this will be her chance to be with her daddy forever.  However, daddy moves his mistress (Danning) in almost immediately, which sets Julie down the path of revenge.

Nicholas gives us several sequences that play with our expectations and/or just plain gross us out.  The scene where Julie witnesses her mother’s death is truly shocking, mostly because it’s our first inkling of how twisted Julie (and the movie) can be.  The part where she plays a game of hide and seek with her new stepbrother and locks him in an empty refrigerator is genuinely suspenseful too, and the scene where Julie catches her father in bed with her stepmother and imagines it's her he's making love to is appropriately icky. 

Danning is great as the likeable stepmother who becomes the de facto Final Girl in the end.  Not only does she deliver a strong performance, she also gets a terrific topless scene.  Franciosa does a fine job as well as Julie’s clueless father.  Mejias makes for a good psycho too.  A Killer Kid movie is only as good as its Killer Kid and Mejias is a memorable one.

For an hour or so, Nicholas creates a gonzo anything-goes atmosphere that puts you on the edge of your seat.  Once Julie tracks down the rapist who killed her mother and hires him to knock off her stepmother, things start to get a bit farfetched.  The final reel is so entertaining that it makes up for some of the lapses in the third act.

Nicholas didn’t do a whole lot after ’83.  He only directed three movies after that sterling year, his last being Luckytown in 2000.  All I’ve got to say is come back, Paul.  We miss you.

AKA:  Julie Darling.  AKA:  Bad Blood.  AKA:  Julie.

ANGELS REVENGE (1979) *

A concerned teacher (Jacqulin Cole) is upset that her students are dying from drugs.  She then gets the help of a singer, a cop, a karate expert, a stuntwoman, and even one of her students to form an all-woman army to blow up a drug compound.  This causes Mr. Big (Peter Lawford) to get real upset and he sends out his goons to stop them once and for all.

Angels Revenge was of course riding on the coattails of Charlie’s Angels.  It’s actually closer to something like The Dirty Dozen, but, you know, with women.  If director Greydon (The Forbidden Dance) Clark upped the sex and violent quotient, it could’ve been a decent slice of exploitation filmmaking.  Instead, he goes for laughs, and the results are often embarrassing.  I mean whenever the ladies hit someone, it makes a stupid cartoony noise like “Boing-ing-ing” or “BONK”!  If you ever saw Clark’s Joysticks, you know that comedy just isn’t his forte.

I liked that Clark tried to at least make a multicultural group of women who empower themselves and don’t rely on their looks to get what they want.  However, the clumsy way he handles it winds up making it feel a bit racist and sexist.  Oh well.

You can keep yourself somewhat amused by counting all the guest stars.  There’s Arthur Godfrey (playing himself), Pat Buttram, and not one, but two refugees from Gilligan’s Island, Alan Hale, Jr. and Jim Backus.  It’s sort of sad seeing the great Jack Palance in this though.  He’s mostly just there to be Peter Lawford’s whipping boy, which is odd because it looks like Jack could snap him in two at any moment.  

Palance and Clark teamed up again the next year for Without Warning.

AKA:  Angels’ Brigade.  AKA:  Seven from Heaven.

GIRLS TOWN (1959) *** ½

Mamie Van Doren stars as a saucy vixen named Silver who likes to live wild and free.  She is wrongly accused of murder and gets railroaded because of her bad reputation.  Silver is then sent to the Girls Town reform school where the nuns try to set her straight.  

There’s a lot to like about Girls Town.  It’s like a Women in Prison movie crossed with a juvenile delinquent flick.  It’s also a terrific vehicle for Mamie Van Doren.  She gives one of her best performances as the tough and feisty Silver.  She also gets to sing the excellent title tune.  It’s guaranteed to get stuck in your head days after you watch it.

Speaking of singing, the cast is mostly populated with popular crooners, songbirds, and heartthrobs of the day.  I mean where else are you going to get to see Mel Torme play a sadistic villainous creep?  We also have Dick Contino, Ray Anthony (who was married to Van Doren at the time), and Cathy Crosby in the cast.  The Platters even show up to do a number or two.  

The best though is Paul Anka, who plays (what else?) a teen heartthrob.   He’s unfortunate enough to have a delusional stalker who escapes from Girls Town and thinks they’re supposed to be married!  Paul tries to be nice and eggs her on, which I’m sure won’t cause more psychological damage down the road, will it?

There’s, more!  What other movie do you know of that features Robert Mitchum, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin…’s sons?  

Best of all, we have Gloria (The Leech Woman) Talbott as the bitchy inmate who is prepared to make life a living Hell for Van Doren.  Their scenes together are some of the best in the entire movie.  Maggie Hayes also gives a fine performance as the kindly sister who tries to show Van Doren the light.

Girls Town isn’t exactly a classic, but it is a lot of fun.  If you’re a fan of juvenile delinquent/’50s sexpot movies, you’re bound to enjoy it.  It’s certainly one of Mamie’s best.

AKA:  The Innocent and the Damned.

BEFORE I WAKE (2018) *** ½

There are so many ways Before I Wake could’ve gone wrong.  If it goes too far one way, it becomes a depressing Lifetime Movie.  If it goes too far in the other direction, it’s a goddamn Disney flick.  Thanks to the stellar performances, the heartfelt script, and the deft direction by Mike (Oculus) Flanagan, it’s a startlingly good chiller.

Kate Bosworth and Thomas Jane are a couple mourning the loss of their son.  They hope becoming foster parents for Jacob Tremblay will make them start to feel like a family again.  It seems like every time Tremblay gets a new set of parents, they disappear, die, or go crazy.  It doesn’t take them very long to see the kid has some amazing gifts.  However, they soon discover his talent has a dark side.

I’m trying to be as vague as possible here.  The less you know going in, the better.  What could’ve been a ho-hum Twilight Zone episode turns into an absorbing horror flick.  Don’t let the fact that it’s PG-13 stop you from seeing this.  While it doesn’t rely on gore or scares, there is some disturbing elements at play here.  I mean, how far would you go to bring your son back to life?  

Creepy Kid horror movies are tricky things to pull off.  Grieving couple horror is even trickier.  Flanagan manages to make both subgenres (along with a little Freddy Krueger dream imagery) work as a cohesive whole.  He starts things off enchanting and whimsical, then turns on the terror fast. 

The movie is hampered by a weak villain though.  The boogeyman that haunts the family is yet another one of those boring CGI Slenderman type of deals.  Other than that, this is a satisfying and yes, scary flick.  

That’s a minor quibble in an otherwise sterling film.  With Before I Wake, Flanagan once again shows he is one of the most impressive directors working in the field today, horror or otherwise.  I can’t wait to see what he’s got up his sleeve next.

AKA:  Somnia.

BUSHWICK (2017) *

Brittany Snow returns home to Bushwick to introduce her boyfriend to her folks.  They don’t think it’s strange that the subway is completely desolate until they see a man on fire running around.  They soon learn that the city is overrun by guys in tactical gear gunning citizens down.  Brittany’s boyfriend doesn’t last long, and she is left to fend for herself until she teams up with a janitor (Dave Bautista) who agrees to help escort her to her grandma’s house.

Dave Bautista is probably the greatest wrestler-turned-actor since “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.  Even when Piper starred in a turkey, it was usually still worth watching just because of his screen presence.  I don’t know if Bautista is quite there yet.  Bushwick (which was co-written by Stake Land 2’s Nick Damici) is not a good movie.  In fact, it’s a rather terrible one, but Bautista’s very appearance kept me awake even during its draggier sections.

Bushwick has an OK gimmick in that it is told in real time and done in one long continuous take.  The seams in the editing are painfully obvious to spot (especially whenever the camera enters a darkened hallway), which immediately takes you out of the “You Are There” aspect the directors (Cary Murnion and Johnathan Milott) were trying to create, so I’m not even sure why they bothered.  Some prolonged sequences feel like a video game while others go for an Asylum version of Children of Men or something.  None of them are suspenseful or foreboding.

The bad guys aren’t all that threatening either.  They’re just a bunch of dudes in black helmets and Kevlar vests.  They probably should’ve gotten a refund on those vests since they all can be killed rather easily, usually by one shot from a handgun, fired from a long way away.

Once we find out what’s going on, the movie begins really starts spinning its wheels.  Although the reveal is novel, it makes the danger seem, I don’t know, lackluster.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but it winds up being like a racist version of Red Dawn or something.  It was scarier when we didn’t know what was happening.

The last act is dire.  It’s as if the filmmakers forgot how to end a movie and just decided to throw their hands up in the air and walk away.  This sort of downbeat ending has been done better in the past, most notably in Night of the Living Dead.  The filmmakers were obviously going for a shocking type of ending, but they fail miserably.  They might’ve been able to get a rise out of their audience if we identified with the characters or cared about their plight.  As it is, we’re just glad the fucking thing is over.

AKA:  Bushwick:  The Last Man Standing.  

FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION: JAILHOUSE 41 (1972) ****

Female Prisoner Scorpion:  Jailhouse 41 is a sequel to Female Prisoner #701:  Scorpion.  It is crazier, wilder, and more stylish in just about every way.  Parts of it are unique, beautiful, and dreamlike.  Others look like they came out of a horror movie.  Some scenes will remind you of De Palma, others of Cocteau.  Even without the artsy stuff, it would’ve been a damned fine exploitation picture.  With it, Jailhouse 41 is a goddamn work of art.  

If you needed a refresher on who Prisoner Scorpion (Meiko Kaji) is, the opening scene sets the table perfectly.  It is simply one of the greatest badass introductions of all time.  We first see her on the floor of a dungeon, hogtied in chains.  Nonplussed at her situation, Scorpion continues to try to dig her way out using a spoon gritted in between her teeth.  You don’t see that level of determination in your heroine every day.

Kaji gives one of the most incredible badass performances I’ve seen in a long time.  She’s even better here than she was in the other films in the series.  What makes her performance so great is that she maybe says ten words throughout the entire movie.  I know Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson are tight-lipped in their films, but she makes them seem like Chatty Cathys in comparison.

Kaji does most of her acting in long, unblinking stares.  The slightest eye movement or subtle raise of an eyebrow speaks volumes.  Heck, some of the close-ups of her penetrating gazes are downright frightening.  The fact that she spends the first act confined, chained up, or imprisoned makes her acting that much more impressive.  It’s truly a performance for the books.

Director Shunya Ito drenches the movie in style.  There are some parts that look like a freeze frame, but in reality, the actors are obviously just standing still.  This makes it feel like a cartoon or a panel straight out of a comic book.  These sequences are heavily stylized, which helps to drive the emotion home.  Ito also gives us strange musical numbers, oddball asides, and theatrical interludes, all of which add to the overall experience.  While not all these touches work, the spell Ito casts is undeniable.  

In short, Female Prisoner Scorpion:  Jailhouse 41 is an unforgettable experience that will be enjoyed by fans of the Women in Prison genre and arthouse lovers alike.

AKA:  Female Convict Scorpion:  Jailhouse 41.  AKA:  Scorpion:  Female Prisoner Cage #41.

STAKE LAND 2 (2016) ***

After vampires slaughter his family, Martin (Connor Paolo) goes into the stake land looking for Mister (Nick Damici), the man who trained him to be a vampire slayer.  Martin finds him fighting in gladiatorial battles against other humans for sport.  Together, they’re able to escape their prison and try to bring down the lady vampire responsible for killing Martin’s family.

Stake Land 2 is a movie that is leaps and bounds better than the original.  Although many of the nighttime scenes are so dark that it’s hard to make out some of the action, that minor quibble aside, this is a sequel that surpasses the original in just about every way.  Directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen must’ve known the vampires in Stake Land were pretty lame because we don’t see a whole lot of them this go-around.  Most of the time, our heroes have to deal with other humans who prove to be just as disgusting and violent as the vampires.  The filmmakers also embrace the post-apocalyptic feel of the movie by cribbing wholesale from other warrior-of-the-wasteland films.  In addition to the half-assed Thunderdome, we also get a feral kid who is lulled by a music box, just like in Road Warrior.  

Berk and Olsen do a particularly great job in the opening scene.  Paolo’s backstory gradually goes from being a fanciful bedtime story to a horrific campfire tale.  It’s these emotional notes that were largely absent from the first movie.

Speaking of emotional, Steven (The Blues Brothers) Williams gives one hell of a performance as a vet-turned-doctor.  His heartfelt final scene really sneaks up on you and is filled with some of the best acting he ever did.  Damici is equally great, giving another one of his patented tough guy performances.  He’s rapidly becoming one of my favorite character actors of the new millennium and I hope he winds up slaying vampires in Part 3 very soon.  

AKA:  The Stakelander.  AKA:  Stake Land 2:  The Stakelander.  AKA:  Vampire Nation:  Badlands.

Craving more horror reviews?  Want to know my thoughts on the original Stake Land?  Well, I just wrote a new book chockful of them.  The Bloody Book of Horror contains over 150 reviews you won’t find anywhere else.  You can get your copy through Amazon here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1542566622/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520113366&sr=8-1&keywords=mitch+lovell