PRIME EVIL: HELLITOSIS: THE LEGEND OF STANKMOUTH (2017) **

 

Rival realtors bring prospective home buyers to a spacious house in the middle of the desert that reeks of shit.  During the walk-through, a massive dust storm kicks up and everyone becomes reluctantly stranded in the house.  With nothing to do, they start drinking heavily and one by one they are picked off by a killer with a butthole for a mouth.

Hellitosis:  The Legend of Stankmouth is a cheap, gross, and dumb horror-comedy that goes for easy laughs, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t successful.  There are some genuinely funny moments along the way.  You just have to get through a fair amount of crap (both literally and figuratively) to get to it.  As far as movies about killers with a shithole for a mouth go, I’d say this one delivers just about what you’d expect. 

The horror elements are rather clunky.  The problem is that the killer, Stankmouth, who runs around wearing soiled underwear smeared with shit, isn’t exactly funny, scary, or memorable.  He kills people using predictable toilet-based methods like suffocating them with a shit-covered plunger and shoving a toilet brush down their throat.  Also, the scenes of the victims having their guts ripped out quickly get repetitive.

The humor works more often than not though.  It’s definitely in the vein of a Troma movie, just not with the same kind of consistency.  Speaking of Troma, Lloyd Kaufman appears briefly as the homeless guy who finds baby Stankmouth in a dumpster.  It’s Michael Boris who gets the best line of the film when he gets a whiff of the shit-stained house and says, “It smells like a fart threw up in here, then the throw-up took a dump!”

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: THANKSKILLING 3 (2012) *

The first thing we see in Thankskilling 3 is boobs in space.  I thought right then and there I was in for a good time.  I was wrong.

The Thankskilling series skipped over Part 2 and went straight to 3, which happens to be the best joke of the movie.  This one plays with the conceit that Thankskilling 2 was so bad that the studio burned every copy.  When the star of the movie, the evil wisecracking killer turkey, finds out the movie was destroyed, he goes nuts and sets out to get revenge.  A puppet named Yomi comes into possession of the only copy of Part 2 in existence and the killer turkey comes after her.

Now, I know they said that Part 2 was so bad they burned all the copies.  However, it couldn’t have been much worse than this one.  There were times while I was watching it that I was wishing it got destroyed in a fire too.

Thankskilling was hit-and-miss, but it was only an hour long and knew when to quit.  Part 3 is 99 minutes, and trust me, you’ll feel each and every excruciating minute.  The long, painful scenes of the puppets cursing become exhausting almost immediately.  Meet the Feebles this is not.  You also have to put up with scenes of puppet sex, rap videos, and animated segments.  All of this is crudely cobbled together, and very rarely ever scores laughs.

The puppets, it must be said, are well done.  They’re a lot more intricate and articulate than the ones found in the original, but that also means they lack that film’s scrappy charm.  There’s a talking garbage pile, a foulmouthed rapping granny, and a worm that lives inside a robot (don’t ask).  The killer turkey is still the most entertaining.  I liked the part where he killed someone and quipped, “He quit life cold turkey!”  It just goes to show that the simplest jokes in the movie are often the best.

There are some moments that work.  I liked the scene that cleverly cribs from Evil Dead 2.  The part where some characters momentarily get sucked into a Thankskilling video game is also pretty great.  However, there’s barely enough quality moments here to fill a fake trailer, let alone an actual full-length movie.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: STALKED BY MY DOCTOR: PATIENT’S REVENGE (2018) *** ½

I don’t like the term “guilty pleasure”.  I feel like if something gives you pleasure, you shouldn’t feel guilty.  Even though I love a good blood n’ guts movie as much as the next guy, I do find myself occasionally getting sucked into one of those cheesy thrillers on Lifetime.  Stalked by My Doctor was one of the best of its kind, mostly because of the gonzo performance by Eric Roberts.  This third entry is easily the best in the series and offers some of the most jaw-dropping WTF moments I’ve seen all year.  

The sleazy Dr. Beck (Eric Roberts) was found not guilty of kidnapping a former patient, Sophie (Brianna Chomer) and is now living in Phoenix working as a professor at a medical school.  Sophie is still having nightmares about being attacked by Beck and she decides the only recourse is to follow him to the university and make his life a living hell.  Eventually, she gets him fired, but he doesn’t seem to mind too much because he’s busy spending time getting close to one of his students, Melissa (Anna Marie Dobbins), who also has some obvious daddy issues.  Just when he’s seemingly ready for a new happy life, Sophie turns the tables on Beck and attacks him.  The cops don’t want to help him since they think Beck should already be in jail for his crimes, so it’s up to Melissa to help him stop Sophie’s reign of terror.

The second Stalked by My Doctor movie was pretty good, but it suffered from an uneven tone.  This one just goes for broke, embracing the typical Lifetime Movie clichés while simultaneously forging its own weird path.  It also firmly embraces the weirdness of the Roberts mystique, allowing him to go gleefully over the top, playing not one, but two suitably out-there roles.  Some of the best moments in the movie come when the out-of-control Roberts argues with his other “sane” self, who sits in the corner wearing a Hawaiian shirt while drinking a Pina Colada.

If you told me that Stalked by My Doctor:  Patient’s Revenge was going to be the best movie I’ve seen so far for The 31 Movies of Horror-Ween, I probably would’ve believed you given my love for all things Eric Roberts.  If you told me it was going to be the best movie in the Stalked by My Doctor franchise, I might’ve agreed with you, seeing how I have a soft spot in my heart for any and all Part 3’s.  However, if you have told me Stalked by My Doctor:  Patient’s Revenge was going to give me the best single moment of any movie I’ve seen all year, I would’ve called you batshit crazy.  Friends, you are not batshit crazy.  Stalked by My Doctor:  Patient’s Revenge has the best scene of any movie this year.  Forget about Thanos turning everyone into dust in Infinity War.  Wipe your mind of the pop culture Braveheart battle in Ready Player One.  Eradicate the memory of seeing Han meeting Chewie for the first time in Solo.  We have a new numero uno.  We have Eric Roberts and Anna Marie Dobbins performing a La La Land-inspired song and dance number.  Just when I think I’ve seen it all, I haven’t.

Yes, the third act gets a little predictable.  Yes, the final twist is a bit contrived, overly elaborate, and hard to swallow.  Still, how can you not love a movie that gives you:  

and

PRIME EVIL: TRICK OR TREATS (1982) **

Carrie Snodgress has her rich husband (Peter Jason) sent to the loony bin.  Several years later, she attends a costume party on Halloween with her new husband (David Carradine) and hires Jacqueline Giroux to watch her bratty kid (Chris Graver, son of Gary, who also directed).  Throughout the night, the kid terrorizes Giroux by playing practical jokes on her non-stop.  Things get especially hairy for Giroux when Jason escapes from the booby hatch and begins making menacing phone calls.  

Trick or Treats has a promising concept, but the repetitive nature of the kid’s endless stream of practical jokes really started to test my patience after a while.  Your enjoyment of the film may rely solely on your willingness to get jerked around for over an hour as the kid plays prank after prank on Giroux.  I guess this wouldn’t have mattered so much if there was actually a little horror sprinkled throughout the flick.  As it is, you’ve got to wait till the last ten minutes or so to get any treats.   Even then, the so-called “treats” are predictably doled out and the body count is pitifully low.  You’ll be able to spot the last-second twist ending from a mile away, but Gary Graver’s handling of the finale is awkward.  Things end so abruptly that it almost feels like there might’ve been an alternate ending that was cut out, and Graver had nothing to replace it with.

There admittedly isn’t much of a movie here.  The whole thing could’ve played out as a short film and it would’ve worked much better.  Even though Trick or Treats is heavily padded, there are one or two funny asides (like the scene where two women edit a cheesy horror movie and the part when a live newscast is taken over by mental patients) that keep it from completely running out of gas.  

At least the cast is good.  Jason does a fine job as the whack-a-doodle, who sometimes dresses in drag.  Giroux makes for a fetching heroine, and Carradine seems to be having fun as the drunk husband of Snodgress.  Speaking of Snodgress, the whole movie was filmed in her house, so the production must’ve saved a fortune on her accommodations.

AKA:  Don’t Prank the Babysitter!

VENOM (2018) ****

As a nerd for all things Spider-Man, I’ve been looking forward to this spin-off ever since it was first announced.  The casting of Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom got my fanboy pulse racing, as did the fact that Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer would be directing.  Not only that, but they were aiming for a no-holds-barred Venom movie complete with an R rating.  Once it was revealed weeks before release that the film would in fact have a PG-13 rating, my heart sank a bit.  

I think my lowered expectations may have helped considerably.  Or perhaps it was the fact that the previews didn’t really do the film justice.  Whatever reason, I wound up loving Venom.  It is simply the most fun I’ve had at the movies all year.

The secret to the film’s success is Hardy.  He throws himself into the role with a Brando-like intensity that just sucks you into the character’s world.  Hardy starts his performance at eleven and cranks it somewhere up to thirteen by the time everything’s said and done.  He gives Brock a twitchy, broody vibe, one that only becomes accelerated once he’s overtaken by Venom.  In fact, the film makes you wish Universal’s Dark Universe hadn’t bit the dust because Hardy would’ve made a helluva Wolf Man as he plays a person afflicted with the tortures of the damned with humor, heart and a memorably crazy zeal.

There’s a slight change from what we know of Brock in the comics (and from Spider-Man 3).  Here, he’s an investigative journalist who loses his job when he presses Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), the Elon Muskian owner of a high-tech company about his unethical practices during an interview.  Eddie winds up getting fired for that stunt, but when he learns that Drake is using homeless people for his experiments with alien symbiotes, he decides to sneak into the lab to get a scoop.  Naturally, Eddie winds up getting attached to the alien symbiote Venom in more ways than one.

My daughter, who is eight years old and a far more astute critic than I, stated that the film was, in her words, “Like Little Shop of Horrors, but if Seymour and Audrey II were the same person”.  That pretty much hits the nail on the hammer.  There were also moments that reminded me of Splash, All of Me, Aliens, and The Thing.  There’s even an action set piece that manages to combine elements from Bullitt and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5.  What I’m trying to say folks, is that this movie is awesome.

One thing the previews don’t tell you is just how funny Venom is.  I guess I should’ve known with Fleischer at the helm, but this is almost on par with Deadpool as far as hilarity in a superhero picture goes.  As with Zombieland, Fleischer nails the tone perfectly.  It’s a rollercoaster from start to finish with tons of laughs, moments of jaw-dropping insanity, and badass fight scenes.  I especially loved it when Hardy is at the mercy of the symbiote and inadvertently mops the floor with various cops, security guards, and SWAT team members, mostly while apologizing profusely.  Heck, Hardy gets most of his laughs while muttering to himself as bewildered passersby look on.

I know in the comics he’s driven by revenge, but I liked the fact that Venom is kind of a loser in his own world.  Making Venom seem like a plausible underdog is a heady task, but Hardy and Fleischer are up for the job.  Because both Venom and Eddie have something to lose, it makes their bond meaningful, and when they finally decide to team up, it leads to some truly memorable moments.  

One question though:  Is Venom using Eddie for his own purposes, or do they have a genuine bond?  That’s one of the more intriguing aspects of the movie as it moves forward.

There’s enough superhero action here to satisfy the demands of the genre, along with a few moments of squeamish body horror, but it’s more of a thrill ride than the horror movie it was teased to have been.  I know it got cut down from an R rating to get a PG-13, and while some of the action cuts away at the last second, there’s enough face-biting, head-devouring action here to keep this fan happy.  Quite honestly, it didn’t really need a Deadpool level of ultraviolence to be effective.  In terms of “scariness”, it’s about on par with a Jurassic Park movie, which is fine by me.

On top of everything else, it has what is probably the best post-credits sequence of any of the Marvel movies, so be sure you stay put for that.

Overall, I can’t quite say if Venom is better than Spider-Man 3 (a movie I will defend to my dying day), but it’s certainly a lot more fun than Spider-Man 2, that’s for sure.

2018 Comic Book Scorecard:

Venom: ****
Ant-Man and the Wasp: ****
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies: ****
Avengers:  Infinity War: *** ½
Black Panther: *** ½ ,
Deadpool 2: *** ½
Accident Man: ** ½

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: THE NUN (2018) **

So, I had no desire of seeing The Nun as part of The 31 Movies of Horror-Ween.  Even the horror sequel completist in me was happy enough to include two Conjuring sequels in this month’s movie watching list and move on.  My intention was to watch Amityville:  The Evil Escapes and Amityville 1992:  It’s About Time and make them part of The 31 Movies of Horror-Ween festivities.  I hadn’t seen either movie and since they were set to play at my local theater as part of Bloody Disgusting’s “Retro Nightmares” series, I thought that would be a perfect way to experience them for the first time.  

I mean, who wouldn’t want to see a cheap direct-to-TV Amityville sequel playing on a double feature with a cheap direct-to-video Amityville sequel on the big screen?  

Apparently, I was the only one. 

Due to lack of interest, the showings were pulled from the theater the day of the screening with no fanfare on the company’s website.  So, stuck at the movies with a Regal gift card burning a hole in my wallet, I decided to see The Nun instead.

Now before I get to my review, I just want to point out that I attended the Retro Nightmares screening of The House on Sorority Row the week before, but I never got around to reviewing it.  I reviewed the film more than a decade ago on my old site and I was less than kind to it.  Most of my complaints revolved around it being “too dark”.  Well, that review was of a VHS copy viewed on a small TV.  This time, seeing it on the big screen, I was able to appreciate it a lot more.  I still don’t think it quite works, but in a sea of ‘80s interchangeable slashers, it’s just weird enough to keep its own identity.

Also, the print was a lot lighter, so I could actually tell what the hell was going on most of the time.  I did like that they did very little to remaster the film.  it’s chockful of grain and looks probably just as it did when it was first released in ’83.  So, now instead of giving it a * ½ rating, I’d say it’s closer to a ** ½ flick.

The fact that The House on Sorority Row went over so well with the crowd made me hopeful for the Amityville screening.  Unfortunately, that never happened.  The management did assure me that the third and final Retro Nightmares screening of Sweet Sixteen and The Convent is still a go, so I hope to catch those next week.

Okay, so onto The Nun.  The Vatican sends a miracle hunter/priest (Demian Bichir) to Romania to investigate the suicide of a nun.  He brings along a young nun in training (Taissa Farmiga, sister of Vera, who also appears briefly in the Conjuring-heavy wraparound segments) because of her knack for having holy visions.  After arriving at the church, they soon run afoul of evil spirits, creepy graveyards, and of course the killer ghost nun (Bonnie Aarons) herself.

The Nun is overstuffed with too much backstory (like Bichir’s past as an exorcist) and too many visions and nightmare sequences that heavily pad the running time, which can only mean one thing:  It’s just like all the other movies in the Conjuniverse.  This is one of those cases where the filmmakers made a spin-off to something without realizing that they pretty much told you everything you already needed to know about the character in the last one.  Because of that, there’s really nowhere for the flick to go, and it quickly becomes a rapid succession of jump scare after jump scare.

Also, how many scenes of people slowly creeping up on a nun in the shadows can one movie take?  Six?  Maybe seven?  Let’s say eight.  Well, this one probably has double that. 

There are a couple laughable moments here which keeps it from being a total letdown.  I especially dug the scene where Bichir is mysteriously buried alive in a graveyard and he takes it all in stride.  You know, it's just like another day at the office for him.

Bichir and Farmiga are both quite good, despite the hokey surroundings.  They help to anchor the movie and keep it from devolving into an overlong gothic music video.  Director Corin Hardy does show a nice eye for setting up atmosphere and the production design is excellent, but there’s barely enough quality moments here to fill a short film, let alone a full-fledged spin-off.

PRIME EVIL: BLOODBEAT (1983) * ½

Ted (James Fitzsimmons) brings his girlfriend Sarah (Claudia Peyton) home for Christmas to meet his family.  Soon after, his mother (Helen Benton) is having odd psychic premonitions and painting ominous pictures.  One night, Sarah finds an old sword and before long, a glowing samurai ghost is knocking people off left and right. 

I’m always on the lookout for a Christmas themed horror movie, but something tells me I won’t be re-watching Bloodbeat come December.  Imagine if Bill Rebane remade The House Where Evil Dwells and that might give you an idea of what we’re dealing with.  There’s an occasional odd scene that’s good for a laugh, like when Benton has a psychic argument with her daughter.  (“Don’t you dare come into my mind!”)  My favorite scene though was when Peyton was making love and orgasmed every time the samurai killed someone.

Speaking of the samurai, he is one of those heavy breather types who sound like Darth Vader.  His glowing sword sort of looks like a poor man’s version of a lightsaber too.  Heck, even the ending plays like a Jedi power battle with lots of people throwing their hands in the air and acting like they’re concentrating REALLY HARD to defeat the demented samurai ghost.

The low budget and hokey low-tech effects are one thing, but the amateurish acting pretty much sinks it.  The negative vision photography also gets annoying, especially when it’s used in such a random fashion.  Still, this is the only movie I can think of in which a can of Tab attacks someone.  So, I guess that’s fairly original.

The most amusing aspect of Bloodbeat has nothing to do with the movie itself, but more with how the film is set up on Amazon Prime.  Sometimes, I have to turn the sound down when I watch a movie, especially when everyone in my household has gone to bed.  Prime’s closed-captioning for Bloodbeat is priceless.  The audio cues are funnier than anything in the flick itself.  A few of the samurai attacks are accompanied by a weird sound and the subtitle, “mystical boinging” appears at the bottom of the screen.  If that technical term isn’t good for a laugh, I don’t know what is.