THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS (2017) **

The Girl with All the Gifts is another one of those horror movies where everyone whispers for long periods of time and you have to continuously turn up the volume on your TV until a character slams a door shut and it’s so loud you think it’s going to blow out your speakers.  I mean what’s up with the sound engineers on these movies?  They don’t put a microphone anywhere near the actors’ mouths, but they’ll crank up the levels on a simple door latch?  

Speaking of the actors’ mouths, it’s also one of those movies where many of the actors have thick British accents and it’s hard to tell what the hell they’re saying.  It’s one thing if the sound sucks so you can’t hear them.  It’s another when you can’t even understand what they’re saying when their dialogue is properly recorded.

It’s also one of those movies where zombies move like they’re running in the Boston Marathon.  I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of these fast zombies.  Can we please go back to the old Romero zombies that do the Pittsburgh Shuffle?  Or if you’re going to have fast zombies, can you at least make sure the movie itself isn’t paced as slow as a Romero zombie’s gait?

The plot has a wicked government scientist played by Glenn Close… yes… THAT Glenn Close.  What the fuck is she doing here?  I guess the rent ain’t gonna pay itself.  Anyway, she’s in an underground military installation performing experiments on zombie kids.  One zombie girl (the one with all the gifts), played by Sennia Nanua is noticeably more human than the others and carries the gene that could cure the zombie plague.  Wouldn’t you know it?  Just when Glenn’s about to perform the experiment, zombies attack the compound.  Glenn, Gemma Arterton (who teaches Zombie Sunday School), and Paddy Considine (soldier) go on the run and look for a new home.  They bring the Gift Girl along, but wisely fit her with a Hannibal Lecter mask to prevent anyone from getting bit.  

After a sluggish start, The Girl with All the Gifts reveals itself not to be a total wash.  I liked some of the gimmicks, like the soldiers wearing a zombie repellent that looks like hand sanitizer.  (It probably has the same effect as Axe Body Spray.)  I just wish the action wasn’t so shoddily filmed and the CGI headshots didn’t look like a game of zombie paintball.

There’s still a great deal of stupidity here.  Take for example the scene when the zombies stand perfectly still, and our heroes cautiously tiptoe around them.  What?  Or when the fungus that caused the virus turns the zombies into trees.  I guess they were trying for a different take on the zombie flick, but that’s not exactly the way to go about it.  

The third act is marginally interesting.  It’s here where the flick becomes sort of like a Lord of the Flies, but with zombies.  A great movie could’ve begun with this idea.  This one ends with it.  

AKA:  The Last Girl.  

A CLIMAX OF BLUE POWER (1975) ***

A cop named Eddie (I. William Quinn) busts a hooker (Starlyn Simone) and tells her he’ll save her a night in jail if she’ll fuck him in the back of his police cruiser.  She reluctantly agrees, but when he starts getting too rough with her, she resists.  Eddie pulls a gun on her and threatens to “put a bullet between her tits” if she refuses.  He then makes her strip down and roll around in the mud and masturbate during a torrential downpour.  

Here’s the kicker:  It turns out he’s not even a cop!  He’s a security guard who slightly modifies his uniform and car to make himself look like a police officer.  Eddie then abuses his power to force other women into sex.  When he learns a woman (Angela Carnon) has murdered her husband, he holds her prisoner in her home.  Eventually, she turns the tables on her captor.

Before Bad Lieutenant there was Eddie.  Seeing him recklessly abuse his power lends a definite taboo feel to this highly effective roughie.  There’s a little bit of a Taxi Driver vibe too as Eddie spends lots of his isolated existence spewing frustrated, hateful narration.  (Instead of going to a porn theater like Travis Bickle, he stays in and watches a stag loop at home.)  

Quinn is great as the sex-crazed cop.  He’s especially awesome in the wild scene where he dresses in drag to give his captive a bath.  The legendary Uschi Digard also pops up as a massage parlor girl, although, sadly, she doesn’t participate in any of the sex scenes.

Director Lee Frost, who made everything from nudie-cuties like House on Bare Mountain to drive-in fare like The Thing with Two Heads to hardcore roughies like this, handles the hard-edged sex scenes with vigor.   The various S & M sequences have a decided kick to them, and even the more “normal” scenes (like the three-way on a massage table) are hot too.  It definitely won’t be for all tastes, but for those who like their ‘70s porn with a mean streak, A Climax of Blue Power will be quite arresting.

AKA:  The Impersonator.  AKA:  The Passion of Blue Power.  AKA:  A Taste of Blue Power.  AKA:  Deviate in Blue.  

NURSIE (2005) *

C. Thomas Howell stars as a doctor who gets ran off the road on a dark and stormy night and wakes up in a strange nursing home.  A wacko nurse (Savannah Boucher) tries to take care of him and once he is well, she wants him to take care of old folks who live there too.  When he resists, the nurse drugs him, and holds him hostage in the home.  Howell soon learns the others are also being held against their will and together they stage a revolt.

Nursie is a muddled, boring, and forgettable mishmash of a Misery knockoff, a crazy redneck movie, and a ‘90s From Hell thriller.  Shot using digital cameras, it looks cheap and the single location only enhances that feeling.  It also doesn’t help that an old woman in a nurse uniform isn’t intimidating or scary in the least.  

Nursie also features a record number of scenes of a groggy C. Thomas Howell slowly trying to get out of bed.  I’m sorry, but it’s hard to feel sorry for his character when it takes him half the movie to make a legitimate escape attempt, especially when it’s painfully obvious that everyone around him is a total nut job.  He doesn’t give a bad performance exactly.  It’s just that he’s unable to do anything with the shitty script.

After a while (scratch that, almost immediately), you feel like you’re the one held prisoner by the old kook.  Nursie is agonizingly slow, and even when something does happen, there’s always some contrived plot device to send Howell back into bed.  The climax is woefully shitty too.  In fact, the whole thing would’ve been over ninety minutes sooner if he just knocked the old bat’s lights out once she started acting cuckoo.  

In short, this Nursie belongs in a bedpan.  

THINGS (1993) **

Things is a shot-on-video horror anthology.  What it lacks in budget, it makes up for with cool monsters and some decent gore.  It’s not completely successful (not by a long shot), but there’s some things to like about Things.  

In the “Wrap-Around” (**), a woman finds her husband’s mistress at a sleazy hotel room.  She pulls a gun on the girl and ties her to a chair (while topless).  She then proceeds to tell her two stories about ghoulish “things”.

The first tale is “The Box” (**).  A quartet of prostitutes buy an old theater and turn it into a den of inequity.  The evil mayor wants them gone and is more than willing to turn his evil face-biting slug monster loose on whoever gets in his way. 

The low budget, crummy videography, and amateurish acting has a certain charm.  The best thing about this segment is the slug creature that resides in the box.  It’s obvious that most of the budget went towards creating the monster, which is okay, I guess.  There’s a solid helping of gore and at least one decent jump scare to keep you interested.  Too bad the scenes where the surviving girls stalk around the theater looking for the monster are slowly paced, darkly lit, and go on far too long.  

“Thing in the Jar” (**) is the second story.  An abusive husband tells his wife, “There’s only three things you got to do:  Eat, Shit, and Fuck!”  Soon after, she begins having increasingly violent dreams about him killing and torturing her.  When she tells him about them, of course, the lout is completely unsympathetic.  Her instincts turn out to be correct and her hubby tries to do away with her for good.  He quickly discovers she won’t go away so easily.

There is some good camerawork and lighting in this segment.  Unfortunately, the sound really sucks.  (The sound effects of crickets almost drown out the dialogue in some scenes.)  While a couple of the hallucinations/dreams are funny (like when the wife sees eyeballs in her husband’s eggs), the domestic disturbance drama isn’t all that involving and the acting is rather wooden.  The monster isn’t quite as impressive as the slug from the previous story, but the villain’s comeuppance is appropriately gory.  

As far as shot-on-video horror anthologies go, Things isn’t nearly as bad as most.  There are one or two effective moments here, which is more than you can say for most of these flicks.  That’s far from making it a winner though. 

ROLLER GATOR (1996) ½ *

P.J. (Sandra Shuker) is walking on the beach when she hears a strange voice.  She follows it to a cave and finds a purple wisecracking baby alligator named… uh… Baby Gator.  Predictably, the owner of a nearby carnival (Joe Estevez) wants to exploit the alligator for his latest attraction.  It’s then up to P.J. to get the gator back to his swamp home.

Shot on video by director Donald G. (Hell Comes to Frogtown) Jackson, Roller Gator is a jaw-dropping shitshow of epic proportions.  It’s obvious Jackson was trying to capitalize on the Rollerblading craze in the ‘90s, a craze he had earlier exploited in films like Roller Blade.  This time, he adds a (not terrible) hand puppet into the mix.  Even worse, is that he tried to make it into a kid’s movie.  I’m not sure you could find a kid willing enough to make it through the first five minutes.  

Looking something like a cross between a locally produced commercial for an amusement park and your little sister’s home movie she based around a Land Before Time puppet she got from Pizza Hut, Roller Gator is a painful experience.  From the obvious jokes (“You need some Gatorade!  Get it?  GATOR-ade?”), to the shitty videography, and the incessant guitar music that threatens to drown out the dialogue at every turn (which might be a blessing), it’s a goddamn mess.  If you thought Roller Blade was bad, nothing could prepare you for this.  

Wait till you get to the “touching” scenes of P.J. bonding with Baby Gator.  If you think they’re terrible, wait till the annoying gator starts doing impressions.  If that doesn’t make you want to blow your brains out, the scenes where the gator raps will.  If that doesn’t do the trick, maybe the unending scenes of Estevez stumbling around the carnival with his nephew will put you over the edge.  

Shuker is the only worthwhile thing in the picture.  She actually seems like she’s having a conversation with a character and not just a cheap hand puppet.  She never acted in anything else, which may have been for the best.  The nightmare of starring in this probably put her off acting forever.

Oh, and did I mention we also have Conrad Brooks as a “swamp farmer”?  Yes, the same Conrad Brooks from all those Ed Wood flicks.  Say what you will about Ed Wood, he never made a movie as bad as Roller Gator.  

ROCK AND ROLL FANTASY (1994) *

Alex (April Lerman) is a bookworm sorority sister who has a crush on rock star named “Jamie Z.” (a male model known only as “Attila”).  His manager, Red (Mark Stulce) has had it with his temperamental behavior, and he sets out to kill Jamie to collect on his insurance policy.  After a near-fatal accident, Alex bring Jamie back to her sorority house and winds up inadvertently kidnapping him.  Eventually, he doesn’t seem to mind it so much and the two wind up falling in love.

Rock and Roll Fantasy was the first film by director David Michael Latt, who went on to found The Asylum.  It basically set the groundwork for their teenage comedies, not to mention the company itself.  Unlike their recent output, there’s no real T & A to help get you through the sluggish comedy scenes.  

The plot is belabored and slow moving, not to mentioned farfetched and stupid.  Whole scenes aimlessly play out without much of a payoff, and the stilted acting and dialogue do nothing to keep them moving.  Many of the gags are tired and/or just plain unfunny (like the one involving the “Indian” bartender).  The scenes of the kidnapped rock star forming a bond with his nerdy captor are a chore to sit through too.  The best scenes involve the gangster who’s trying to teach his son the tricks of the trade like “how to dig an unmarked grave”, but they are few and far between.    

Attila has the rock star look, but he definitely isn’t an actor.  Lerman isn’t much better.  Without a lead to care about, it’s hard to give a shit about any of this.  It’s even harder to swallow the fact that they fall in love.

AKA:  Sex Pot 2.  AKA:  Sorority House Party.

SKULLDUGGERY (1983) ½ *

In Medieval Times, a sorcerer takes control of a castle and places a curse on a royal family.  Flashforward to 1982 where a Dungeons and Dragons nerd starts to feel as if the line between the game and reality is beginning to blur.  He picks a warlock character in the game and later, while at a local talent show, causes a snake to kill an actress with his mind.  The more grandiose his visions become, and the more the bodies begin to pile up.  At a big costume party, he dons a variety of disguises as he offs victims.  Is he in control of his magic powers?  Or is someone else pulling the strings?  

There are parts of Skullduggery that might remind you of Evilspeak, Fade to Black, Terror Train, and Mazes and Monsters.  It’s a mishmash of stock horror scenes (like a trip to a fortune teller), slasher clichés (like the masked stalking sequences), and out and out weirdness.  I guess there was some potential here, but none of it ever gels in a meaningful way.  

The long magic acts and stage plays eat up a lot of time and the stuff involving the boardgame just sits there like a stone.  It’s one thing if the plot and/or filler scenes fall flat, but even the supposedly horrific stuff is a total bore.  The stalking scenes go on far too long, and the part where the killer dresses up in a variety of stupid costumes (like an Easter Bunny) are lame.  

All this is more confounding than anything.  Any one of these elements might’ve made for a good movie, but Skullduggery can’t make up its mind what it wants to be.  Instead, it just plays like a mind-numbing puree of clichés.  Since the connecting tissue is so weak, it all falls apart.  The various side jaunts (like the horny nurse) are perplexing and silly shit (like the random Liberace impersonator) is more stupid than fun.  The occasional attempts at intentional humor land with a thud and only make the fractured narrative seem even more incongruous.

Many of the kills make no sense.  For example, there’s a scene where the killer holds a woman’s face under scalding steam and then, seconds later, he’s just holding a skull in his hands.  Did the steam decapitate her too?  You’ll go crazy trying to make sense of this movie.  

There are only two things saving Skullduggery from a No Star rating.  One is the creepy jester puppet that occasionally pops up.  The second is the hilarious theme song that sounds like a disco version of a Ren Fest ballad.  That’s about as good as the movie ever gets, which is sad because it’s the first thing we hear!

AKA:  Blood Puzzle.  AKA:  Warlock.