HELP ME… I’M POSSESSED! (1976) ****

A doctor runs an insane asylum where he keeps a lot of women in cages and occasionally lets his hunchback assistant whip them.  His wife comes to stay with him in his mansion and is rightfully freaked out by the loonies running about.  When townsfolk start being found murdered in the nearby woods, a sheriff comes to investigate.  Gee… do you think the doctor’s crazy sister could be the cause of all this?

Help Me… I’m Possessed! would make a great double bill with Bloodsucking Freaks.  I’m not saying that because there’s an awesome scene involving a guillotine either.  It’s not quite as explicit as that flick, but it has the same anything-goes lunacy.  In some ways, it’s so reminiscent of a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie with touches of Ed Wood along the way.  Heck, there are some moments that might remind you of Manos, the Hands of Fate.

What I’m trying to say is that this is a great fucking bad movie.

The dungeon sets are cheap looking, but I wouldn’t want them to look any other way.  They’re absolutely perfect.  The scenes of women in their underwear being strung up while crazed lunatics rattle their cages will sear themselves into your brain long after you watch it. 

The POV stalking shots are a thing of beauty too.  An unseen killer slowly creeps up on unsuspecting (and sometimes suspecting) victims.  All they can do is just raise their hands and allow the red tentacled monster (or whatever the Hell it is) kill them while being splattered with the most ‘70s looking blood you’ve ever seen.

The low budget craftsmanship (or lack thereof) is endearing.  The dated costumes, groovy music, stilted acting, and awful wigs are guaranteed to put a smile on any bad movie lovers’ faces.  The surprise is, the monster effects are startlingly effective.  The writhing tentacles are similar in many ways to Rob Bottin’s effects in John Carpenter’s The Thing, even if they do resemble sentient Red Vines.

Also, no one gets possessed, says, “Help me”, or says, “Help me… I’m possessed!”, which somehow makes it all even better.

AKA:  The Possessed.

A GRIL NAMED IRON PHOENIX (1973) **

I've never known a gril named Iron Phoenix, but I did have a grill named George Foreman once.  I know, I know, the title should be A Girl Named Iron Phoenix, but I'm a stickler for calling a movie by what it says in the title credits, even if it is misspelled.  Unfortunately, the misspelled title is the most memorable thing about it.

Dock workers have been dying on the job while the company collects on the insurance money.  Iron Phoenix is sent in to investigate and uncovers a dastardly plot by the local Mob.  The big-time gangster behind it all then sends in The Four Tigers to silence her once and for all.

Things get off to a groovy start with lots of funky music, bad dubbing, and a handful of energetic fight scenes.  We also get a funny moment when Iron Phoenix catches a thief who uses chopsticks to steal money from people’s wallets.  However, once she follows him back to his “master” (a homeless Kung Fu beggar), the movie starts to fall apart.  

Look, if you’re going to call your film A Gril Named Iron Phoenix, make sure it’s going to be about the girl named Iron Phoenix.  Don’t all of a sudden make it a buddy comedy about a homeless Kung Fu master and his annoying pupil.  Let your feisty and likeable heroine fight her own battles instead of the painfully unfunny comic relief.  Don’t keep her on the sidelines watching the action.  Allow her to participate.  Even if Iron Phoenix’s role wasn’t marginalized, I’m not sure it would’ve saved the movie.  One thing is for sure, the short running time (77 minutes) doesn’t hurt.

AKA:  A Girl Named Iron Phoenix.  AKA:  A Girl Called Iron Phoenix.

DAY OF THE DEAD: BLOODLINE (2018) **

This Day of the Dead isn’t really a sequel to Day of the Dead 2:  Contagium.  Nor is it a sequel to the 2008 Day of the Dead remake.  It almost plays like another remake of George A. Romero’s original Day of the Dead, with a few weird additions.  I’ve seen plenty of terrible DTV zombie movies in my time and as far as they go, you can do a whole lot worse.  It’s certainly better than Contagium or the 2008 remake.

The world is overrun by “rotters” (zombies).  Zoe (Sophie Skelton) is a scientist living in a military compound along with some soldiers and other assorted survivors.  While out on a supply run, she stumbles upon a rotter named Max (Jonathon Schaech), who used to stalk her when he was still human.  He follows the soldiers and sneaks into the compound to see Zoe (once a stalker, always a stalker).  Zoe captures him, chains him up, and performs experiments on him in hopes of creating a rotter vaccine.

The character of Max is sort of a variation on Bub from the original Day of the Dead.  Having him infatuated with the heroine makes this just different enough to prevent it from becoming yet another run-of-the-mill zombie movie.  (There’s a scene where Zoe lets him lick her in exchange for a blood sample.)  I’m not saying this ever comes close to being “good”.  Let’s face it.  This was never going to live up to the original, but it separates itself from Romero’s universe in enough ways to justify its existence.  Sure, there’s still all the scenes of soldiers collecting zombie specimens, the asshole in charge causing trouble with the heroine’s research (although no one could’ve been as big of an asshole as Joe Pilato’s Captain Rhodes), and the large-scale zombie breakout at the end you’d expect from a Day remake.  If you wanted to see those beats recreated yet again, you’re in luck.

The opening scene of the outbreak is kind of fun.  (Students partying in a morgue store their booze in the freezers where they keep the bodies.)  The zombie attacks are fairly bloody (there’s a lot of arterial spray) and the Hateful Eight inspired blood puking scene was appropriately juicy.  The early scenes in the compound, while inferior to the original, are at least tolerable.  Once Schaech gets loose and the zombies start attacking, the whole thing begins to slowly circle the drain.  From then on, it becomes one interchangeable scene of zombies biting humans after the other.  It gets repetitive quickly and the gore is too brief to really put it over the top.

I will say I’ve enjoyed seeing Schaech’s transformation from potential leading man in That Thing You Do to DTV vet.  He stars in stuff like this every chance he gets, and he almost always looks like he’s having fun doing it.  His very appearance in crap like this usually guarantees I’ll watch it at some point.

DID BABY $HOOT HER $UGARDADDY? (1972) ** ½

A mobster is killed for a million dollars, but the money goes missing.  A detective is out to recover the loot and goes to pay a visit to the widow, who winds up being a nympho.  Her daughter, Baby catches them getting romantic and takes photos of them in the bath tub.  When his captain sees the pictures, he has him thrown off the case.   After Baby and her mother are murdered, the detective goes on the trail of the killer, a sexy stripper who works in a Mob-owned night club.

Did Baby $hoot Her $ugardaddy? is an uneven, but mostly agreeable ‘70s skin flick.  The strip club scenes are the best part.  There’s a memorable dance where a woman in a black trench coat brandishes a toy shotgun, but my favorite number was when a dancer wearing a motorcycle helmet shone a flashlight into the audience for some inexplicable reason.  Although you’ve got to wait a long time to get to the T & A, the short running time and snappy pace keeps things popping right along.  

The scenes with the detective are decent enough.  The actors aren’t quite strong enough to pull off their roles, but whenever our hero’s getting tangled up with Baby and her sex-crazed mother, it works.  (The reveal of the blue-faced corpse is effective too.)  While the ending is pretty much a bust, the dated ‘70s fashions and music go a long way to keeping Did Baby $hoot Her $ugardaddy? afloat till then.  Fans of ‘70s kitsch will love the song, “Baby’s Got a Fever” that plays over one of the stripteases.  That ditty alone is almost worth the price of admission.  

FRIEND REQUEST (2017) *

You know that one weirdo girl in a hoodie who always sits alone in the cafeteria?  You know how you get that feeling that maybe you should befriend her because society tells you that’s the nice thing to do?  Well, Friend Request is about the best argument for NOT doing that.

To add insult to injury, this gal has zero friends on (this movie’s fake, unauthorized, pleased-don’t-sue-us-Zuckerberg version of) Facebook.  That’s even worse than having no friends in real life because everyone on the golldurn internet can see what a loser you are.  Of course, if you take the bait and friend her on Fakebook, chances are she’s going to be a social media stalker.

In Friend Request, she’s not only a weirdo girl in a hoodie and a social media stalker, but she’s a witch too!  If you even think of unfriending her on Fakebook, she’s liable to hang herself, film it, and put it all over your social media to make you look like a complete asshole.  Then, she’ll probably use her witchcraft to make wasps kill off all your friends.

It’s like she’s unfriending you… LITERALLY!

Hopefully, that summation is enough so that you don’t even need to see Friend Request.  However, if you do take it upon yourself to see it, make sure you have a high tolerance for these lame “the internet is a scary place” movies.  I sure as shit don’t, and it was a chore to get through.

As horribly rotten as most of it is, I have to say that the performers were decent.  It’s just that they couldn’t elevate the shoddy material.  It’s better than Unfriended, that’s for sure, but that’s not saying much.

BURIED ALIVE (1990) **

A psycho in a Ronald Reagan mask likes to stalk scantily clad runaways from a school for wayward girls.  He wraps them in a straitjacket before walling them up behind a brick wall.  A new teacher (Karen Witter) comes to the school and almost immediately starts having weird visions.  She thinks she sees John Carradine coming out of the walls (and toilets), but no one, not even the head shrink at the school (Robert Vaughn) believes her.  More girls disappear, and she soon fears she’ll be next.

Produced by Harry Allan Towers and directed by Gerard (Edge of Sanity) Kikoine, this uneven (and very loose) Edgar Allan Poe adaption at least has the benefit of an awesome cast.  In addition to Robert Vaughn and John Carradine, we have Donald Pleasence (with a bad German accent and even worse wig) as a creepy teacher, Ginger Lynn (as the school’s resident bad girl), Nia Long, William Butler, and Arnold Vosloo.  Although all the plot developments are predictable, their efforts are enough to keep you watching.

Kikoine gives us a handful of effective freak-out scenes that feel like they came out of an Elm Street sequel.  (The breathing wall effect is pretty cool.)  The rest of the movie is something of a disappointment, especially considering how warped Kikoine’s Edge of Sanity was.  The kills aren’t all that graphic and are a letdown for the most part, but I did like the scene where one of the girls uses a mixer as a makeshift curling iron.  (Naturally, it ends badly.)  There’s also a decent shower initiation scene, although the nudity is rather fleeting.  Kikoine films it all in an atmospheric manner, giving us plenty of odd camera angles along the way.  Too bad much of the second act is plodding and the final reel is mostly a washout.

AKA:  Lost Girls.

FOUR DIMENSIONS OF GRETA (1973) ** ½

Pete (Frightmare) Walker already had a couple of softcore sex comedies under his belt before he made this, the first British 3-D movie.  A journalist named Hans (Tristan Rogers) is looking for a German au pair named Greta (Leena Skoog) on the streets of London.  He interviews four people, all of whom relate flashbacks of their encounters with Greta.  Each flashback is shown in 3-D (don’t worry, there’s a trippy red and blue visual cue so you know when to put on your glasses), contain lots of nudity, and are easily the best parts.  

In the first flashback, a former roommate reveals how Greta forced her to work like Cinderella while she participated in orgies.  In the second, Greta performs a sexy dance number behind a fluttering air curtain.  The third has her playing house with a soccer player (Robin Askwith).  They drink wine, she feeds him fruit, and then they hop in bed.  The final flashback finds Greta getting it on in a massage parlor with her boss.

Here’s a rundown on the 3-D effects:

·         3-D Bra
·         3-D Panties
·         3-D Feet
·         3-D Cigarette Holder
·         3-D Cigarette Holder (again)
·         3-D Feet (again)
·         3-D Punching Bag
·         3-D Wine Glasses (multiple)
·         3-D Grapes (multiple)
·         3-D Bananas (multiple)
·         3-D Robin Askwith
·         3-D Leena Skoog
·         3-D Whiskey Glass
·         3-D Broken Bottle
·         3-D Robin Askwith (again)

The effects themselves are a bit of a mixed bag.  The best effects are the ones where things come out of the foreground.  The effect of Greta riding back and forth on a swing really pops and the scene where she slowly comes forward blowing kisses at the audience is a showstopper.  The rest of the 3-D, especially the depth-of-field stuff, looks blurry and/or flat, but Walker does more with the gimmick than most directors.

Let’s make no mistake here, this is a gimmick movie.  Without the 3-D, Four Dimensions of Greta would’ve been completely forgettable.  The 3-D is just good enough to make it worthwhile.  It’s not as funny and fun as something like The Stewardesses, but it’s not bad, all things considered.

For a sex comedy, it’s not exactly funny, but there are a few chuckles to be had, most revolving around Robin Askwith.  (“Being with her was like getting a ball down the center!”)  As Greta, Skoog is a real find.  Admittedly, she’s not much of an actress.  She is incredibly sexy though and perks up the movie whenever she’s on screen.

It all kind of falls apart after the last 3-D sequence as the final act runs on a bit too long.  Still, there’s enough nudity to go around to keep you from getting bored.  As far as Pete Walker movies go, it’s probably the best one I’ve seen.

Walker’s next picture, The Flesh and Blood Show, also utilized the 3-D gimmick, but not nearly as well.

Rogers gets the best line of the movie when he says, “This is just like a cheap British sex movie!”

AKA:  Three Dimensions of Greta.