THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: DUDE BRO PARTY MASSACRE 3 (2015) **

Well, the last film in our 31 Movies of Horror-Ween celebration, Thankskilling 3 didn’t have a Part 2, so what better way to follow it up than with a movie that doesn’t have a Part 2 or a Part 1.  Of course, I’m talking about Dude Bro Party Massacre 3.  Remember how Thankskilling 3 claimed that all copies of Part 2 were destroyed?  This one claims to be the only copy of Part 3 in existence.  It’s the next logical extension of the Grindhouse rip-off.  Instead of being a sleazy movie being shown in a fleabag theater in the ‘70s, it’s a flick someone taped off television in the ‘80s (complete with fake commercial breaks).

The best part is the flashbacks highlighting what happened in the last two entries, which gives us scene after scene of unrelenting gore and several clever moments.  Once the actual movie takes over, it becomes increasingly uneven as it goes along.  That said, that opening montage alone is almost worth the price of admission.

A killer known as “Motherface” kills a frat boy named Brock (Alec Owen), the star of the last two installments.  His twin brother Brent (also Owen) pledges at his brother’s fraternity and tags along to a bros-only weekend in the woods.  Naturally, Motherface shows up to pick the dudes off one by one.

The hit-to-miss ratio gets more sporadic the more the movie wears on, with the pendulum of quality swinging wildly from annoying to genuinely amusing.  Some of the kills are funny (like when a guy is about to get sick and Motherface cuts his throat, so puke comes out of the wound instead of blood), but the film is less and less successful the further it gets away from the slasher parody concept.  The stuff with the pair of idiot cops isn’t very funny either and takes up way too much screen time.  No matter how uneven the gags are, it’s hard to hate any movie that borrows from both Die Hard 2 and Amazon Women on the Moon, not to mention features cameos by Nina Hartley AND Larry King.  

RETRO NIGHTMARES DOUBLE FEATURE: SWEET SIXTEEN & THE CONVENT

Well, last week’s Bloody Disgusting’s Retro Nightmares double feature of Amityville sequels was canceled, which sent me into a deep week-long depression.  Luckily for me, their screening of Sweet Sixteen and The Convent didn’t suffer the same fate.  As I learned from their showing of The House on Sorority Row, you should never turn down an opportunity to see a slasher from 1983 on the big screen, especially one that stars Bo (Time Served) Hopkins!

SWEET SIXTEEN  (1983)  ** ½ 

Sweet Sixteen has an incredible cast for this kind of thing.  In addition to Hopkins, who plays (what else?) a sheriff, we have Dana Kimmell, who played one of the greatest Final Girls in screen history the year before in Friday the 13^th Part 3-D as his mystery-solving daughter, as well as Steve (“Andy… You… GOONIE!”) Antin as her tagalong brother.  There’s also Patrick (The Howling) Macnee as an archeologist, Video Vacuum favorite Michael (Halloween 4) Pataki as the sleazy town elder, Don (Licence to Kill) Stroud as a racist redneck, Don (Halloween 5) Shanks as a Native American, and Susan (The Manitou) Strasberg in a part so small that she must figure into the twist ending because why else would they give Susan Strasberg such a seemingly small throwaway part if they weren’t going to somehow give her a doozy of a scene in the last five minutes?

The movie really belongs to Aleisa Shirley who is excellent (and gets naked a lot) as Melissa, the girl who’s sixteenth birthday is just around the corner.  It seems that every boy she flirts with winds up stabbed to death.  When she casts suspicion onto some of the local Native Americans, it stirs up a lot of bad blood within the town. 

Despite the great cast, they’re all sort of wasted.  There’s also a lot of plot stuff that gets set up that never has a proper payoff.  I mean why hype Kimmell’s character up as the amateur sleuth if all you’re going to allow her to do in the finale is run around and scream her head off?  Speaking of which, the final scene requires a ton of last-minute exposition, most of which is overexplained to the point where it starts to get annoying. 

I guess there was an okay mystery movie lurking somewhere within the confines of Sweet Sixteen, but the producers decided to retool it to fit within the slasher formula.  The subplot about racism towards the Native American population is noble I guess.  However, the Native’s involvement is more of a strung-along red herring than an earnest attempt at racial harmony.

Still, the cast makes up for a lot (though not all) of the film’s shortcomings.  I mean, how am I not going to see a movie in which Bo Hopkins plays a sheriff?

 

Oh, what's this?  Just me and Bo Hopkins!

Kimmell gets the best line of the movie when she tells Antin, “You heard what dad said!  There’s a killer on the loose!  I don’t want to be turned into cole slaw!” 

THE CONVENT  (2000)  ***  

Throughout much of The Convent, you can hear director Mike Mendez screaming, “Hey, look at me!  I’m the next Sam Raimi!”  You can certainly do that if you have the chops to pull it off.  Done the wrong way, The Convent could’ve been an embarrassing Troma horror-comedy.  Mendez however has a knack for combining gross-out humor, badass action, and over the top gore and making it a damn good time. 

A crazy orphan named Christine (Oakley Stevenson) apparently kicked down the doors to the titular nunnery and killed several nuns.  Forty years later, some college kids break into the convent as part of a Rush Week prank.  Little do they know some half-assed amateur devil worshippers want to revive the undead nuns.  Once the nuns possess the teenagers, they set out to hold a virgin sacrifice to bring about the Antichrist.  It’s then up to the lone survivor (Joanna Canton) to enlist the help of the now-grown Christine (Adrienne Barbeau) to send the nuns back to Hell.   

The plot is a little on the funky side.  Sometimes it feels like it’s making up the “rules” as it goes along.  Other times, it feels like there might’ve been a reel is missing.  The ending is also rushed, abrupt, and very cheap looking.  (It looks like they ran out of money.)  However, it’s hard not to love a movie in which Adrienne Barbeau rides a motorcycle like The Terminator and blows away zombie demon nuns.

The Convent doesn’t always work and is crude in places, but the gusto Mendez puts into the film is admirable and the results are often a lot of fun.  I mean it’s hard not to like any movie that starts with nuns being beaten with a baseball bat, set on fire, and then shotgunned to death. The make-up is reminiscent of Night of the Demons, but with Day-Glo effects and the slimy gore effects, though inconsistent, will leave you with a big stupid grin on your face.  

Barbeau is a lot of fun as the ass-kicking Christine.  It’s a shame she doesn’t show up until the last act.  It’s also fun seeing Coolio and Bill Moseley being teamed together as cops who confiscate “marijuana substance” from the teens.  It’s Megahn Perry though who gives the best performance as the sexy goth virgin who knows all about the convent’s sordid history.

PRIME EVIL: AENIGMA (1988) *** ½

Lucio Fulci is one of my favorite directors of all time.  I mean I have a Lucio Fulci T-shirt.  I can’t say the same for Alfred Hitchcock.

Because of that, I’ll watch anything Fulci directed, no matter how bad it is, and trust me, he made some pretty bad ones in his time.  For every Zombie, there’s a Manhattan Baby.  Luckily for me, Aenigma contains some of the most bonkers imagery Fulci ever put on film.  He made it just after The Devil’s Honey, and if you thought your jaw dropped on that one, wait till you check this out.

Aenigma plays like a cross between Carrie and Patrick.  A prank goes wrong at a girls’ college, leaving a student brain dead and in a coma.  Soon after, the perpetrators of the prank begin dying off in increasingly bizarre ways.  Every time someone dies, the girl’s brainwaves spike.  She also takes to possessing the new girl in school and using her as an instrument of revenge.

I’ll concede that some of the kills are stupid (like when a statue comes to life).  For the most part though, they’re flat-out amazing (like the cannibalism sex dream).  Fulci (who also has a cameo as a cop) goes for an over the top Argento vibe for these scenes and while some may argue that none of it makes sense, there is a sort of Elm Street-style logic to it all (like when a girl keeps running from room to room and finds the same decapitated body).  

Whatever faults the film may or may not have, you have to admit, it’s centerpiece sequence packs a wallop.  The snail attack scene has to be seen to be believed.  What makes it great was that the actress really was covered head to toe in slimy slithering snails to accomplish the scene, which to me is an impressive feat.  Seriously, fuck CGI.  For my money, this sequence (which begins with a single snail hanging ominously from a Rocky 3 poster) ranks right up there with the spider scene in The Beyond.  

Am I being a little to generous showering praise upon Aenigma?  Maybe.  Did I have a blast with it from start to finish?  You bet.  It may not be perfect, but it’s hard not to love any movie that contains a scene in which a poster of Tom Cruise portends the appearance of an evil spirit. 

AKA:  Enigma.  

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!