THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: TWICE DEAD (1988) **

Siblings Tom (The Brain) Breznahan and Jill (Night of the Creeps) Whitlow move into a house where an actor murdered his girlfriend before hanging himself in the ‘30s.  For some reason, a biker gang likes to hang around the place and enjoys tormenting the family.  After a lot of back and forth between the warring factions, the bikers invade the home and hold the teens hostage.  It’s then when the ghost of the dead actor comes after the home invaders.

Twice Dead is a weird mishmash of The New Kids, April Fool’s Day, and an Amityville sequel.  It borrows from a lot of different subgenres, seemingly at random and none of them ever gel.  Most of the scenes of the punk hooligans harassing the teens are tedious, although I did like the part where our heroes throw a coffin out the back of a speeding hearse and into the grill of their pursuers’ car. 

The gore includes a decapitated head spinning around on a record player, and deaths by a dumb waiter and a possessed motorcycle.  I guess it already spoiled things by saying the flick borrows from April Fool’s Day, which means many of the deaths are just elaborate hoaxes.  However, unlike that film, the people all eventually wind up getting killed for real, hence the title.

I’ve liked the two leads in other movies, but they’re kind of bland and forgettable here.  Same goes for supporting players Brooke Bundy and Todd Bridges, who aren’t given much to do.  The only one who makes much of an impression is Skinamax siren Charlie Spradling who gets the best death of the movie in which she gets to come and go at the same time, if you catch my drift.  Other than that winning moment, Twice Dead is barely worth watching once.

THE DEATHHEAD VIRGIN (1974) ½ *

Back in my early twenties, there used to be a place called Dawn’s Video that seemingly popped up out of nowhere in my hometown and didn’t really last very long compared to the other mom and pop video stores in the area.  They mostly had crap movies, but for a guy like me who practically lives for crap movies it was like a dream come true.  Unlike most video stores, they just kind of threw the empty, flattened-out boxes of the older releases and kept them in bins in the middle of the floor, so every time you went in there, it was like a scavenger hunt.  They also had a great deal:  Ten movies for ten days for ten dollars.  You couldn’t beat that.  Now because you’re getting ten movies, you often have to pad the last three or four movies out.  I mean for every Faces of Death, Death Race 2000, or Piranha there had to be more than a couple stinkers.  Let me tell you, folks.  The Deathhead Virgin was the granddaddy of all the Dawn’s Video stinkers.

During the 31 Days of Horror-Ween, I’ve been revisiting a few movies here and there.  I thought it might be fun to revisit a movie that I had once felt was the WORST MOVIE EVER when I first saw it and see how it holds up now.  At the time, I thought you couldn’t get any worse than The Deathhead Virgin.  Well, I’ve done a lot of living since then and have seen enough crappy movies in the past twenty years or so to know that’s no longer the case.  I now know there’s plenty worse movies out there than The Deathhead Virgin.  Not a lot mind you, but certainly plenty.

You know you’re in trouble in the first scene when one of my favorite unsung exploitation actors of all time, Vic Diaz shows up.  I don’t mean that in a disparaging way.  I mean I think of this guy as the Marlon Brando of the Philippines.  No, what is so distressing is the fact that the producers inexplicably dubbed his voice with another actor.  It’s a shame not only because he already had a distinct voice to begin with, but also because the guy they replaced his voice with sounds like a cut-rate Bela Lugosi impersonator. 

Jock Gaynor stars as a scuba diver who finds a skeleton (with a full head of hair, mind you) tied down spread eagle on a sunken ship.  He stupidly frees it, and it becomes a nude woman who wears only a mask that murders people.  His partner Larry Ward obtains a medallion found in the wreckage and the cursed trinket sometimes turns him into a killer too (usually just after he has a negative vision freak-out).

Director Norman Foster had a long and varied career.  He directed everything from Charlie Chan to Davy Crockett to the Green Hornet.  What he was doing in Manila directing what is essentially a vanity project for television star Gaynor masquerading as a horror film is anyone’s guess. 

The Deathhead Virgin is filled with long, boring, and hard-to-see underwater sequences.  If you think they’re bad though, just wait till you see the stuff that occurs on dry land.  The interminable dialogue scenes are dull and listless, and the cinematography is so dark and drab that the nighttime scenes look just as murky as the underwater sequences.  It all makes for a boring, confusing, slow-moving slog.

Speaking of slow-moving, the opening credits sequence is unnecessarily strung along for an entire fifteen minutes before the title even appears onscreen! 

The masked villainess is the only real memorable part.  While we’re on the subject of her memorable parts, they’re often indifferently lit, so it’s hard to see them.  Only the intermittent nudity keeps it from drifting into NO STARS territory.  I mean there’s a scene where Gaynor fights the nude killer underwater (talk about skin diving!), so it’s not completely without merit.

The big problem with The Deathhead Virgin is that just when you think it’s over, it isn’t.  The whole narrative winds up being a longwinded flashback.  Right when it feels like the movie should end, there’s still 25 minutes left, which is downright infuriating, mostly because it’s the slowest 25 minutes of your life (or the movie, take your pick).  If it had ended at the 70-minute mark, it might’ve skated by with ONE STAR, but unfortunately, it just keeps going. Of those last 25 minutes, you have to wait till the last 60 seconds for anything remotely horrific to happen.  Even then, it’s not even worth it.

I can’t say I enjoyed revisiting this one.  I don’t even know why I did.  (If only to reminisce about Dawn’s Video for a bit.)  If this review will prevent at least one person from watching The Deathhead Virgin, then at least my job here is done.

BEYOND THE SEVENTH DOOR (1987) *

Boris (Lazar Rockwood) is a thief fresh out of jail who gets a tip from his ex-girlfriend Wendy (Bonnie Beck) her wealthy employer has a stash of loot hidden in the basement of his castle.  They break into the place and are immediately locked in, thanks to the elaborate security system.  They soon find themselves faced with a life or death predicament as each room in the basement has a particular riddle that needs to be solved or else, they’ll die a horrible fate.  Working together, they solve the riddles, making their way room to room as they eventually reach the dreaded seventh door. 

I guess the nicest thing I can say about Beyond the Seventh Door is that it plays like the prototype of Saw.  Most of the movie is filled with scenes where an ominous voice comes through a speaker and gives the trapped characters clues on how to escape each booby-trapped room.  Beyond that (see what I did there), it sucks. 

I know it’s a low budget movie, but the whole thing is painfully cheap looking.  It looks like a bunch of people stumbled upon a boiler room and decided to make a whole movie around it.  It doesn’t help that it's incredibly boring, and the rooms are nothing more than low budget variations on shit you’d see in Indiana Jones movies.  (There’s a briefcase of cash substituted for the golden idol, a ceiling full of spikes being slowly lowered, and lettered floor tiles.) 

I guess there are some of you out there who will probably hail Lazar Rockwood as your new favorite bad actor as he resembles James Hong dressed as Rambo (or maybe Gollum cosplaying as Sonny Landham.)  His line readings are something else.  Imagine Tommy Wiseau imitating Bela Lugosi.  I can’t fault you for loving his performance.  It just needed to inhabit a better movie.  

Just when you think it can’t get worse, there’s a love scene between Rockwood and Beck.  That might not seem like a bad idea, but did they have to do it while the corpse of an old guy looks on?  Director B.D. Benedikt doesn’t show anything during the love scene, which is odd because in the scene before, he showed Beck use a screwdriver to remove a screw in one long, continuous take.  It’s like he’ll show unscrewing, but not actual screwing.  If that isn’t the tip-off that Beyond the Seventh Door sucks, I don't know what is.

THE PERFECTION (2019) ***

Charlotte (Allison Williams) is a former cello prodigy forced out of the limelight when her mother takes ill.  She returns to visit her mentor Anton (Steven Weber) after years apart and strikes up a relationship with his latest discovery Lizzie (Logan Browning).  There are immediate sparks between them, and a night of drinking and partying gives way to a romantic tryst between the two.  The next morning they go out sightseeing and embark on a traveling misadventure where… well... it’s just best left unsaid. 

To say anymore would be to ruin the fun.  Just know that it’s best knowing as little as possible when going into The Perfection.  All I’ll say is that after this and Get Out, if you find yourself secluded with Allison Williams… DON’T TRUST HER!

Director/co-writer Richard (The Linguini Incident) Shepard piles on twist after twist.  So much so, that it sometimes feels like you’re watching three different movies with the same characters.  The opening scenes seem like a twisted version of All About Eve, while the second act plays like a Cronenberg movie, before giving way to a warped variation on Grand Piano.  It all culminates in a perfectly fucked-up final shot.

Getting there requires patience.  It sometimes feels like you’re being jerked around a lot (and you are).  However, let the movie do its thing and you’ll be rewarded with a supremely satisfying ending, even if getting there is a bit of a bumpy ride at times.

Williams’ performance is the best thing about the movie.  She has a tricky role that requires her to seemingly play the innocent victim and the heartless tormentor simultaneously, and she pulls it off.  I also have to commend Weber for sustaining a deft Stanley Tucci impression for ninety minutes.

Ultimately, The Perfection is anything but; however, for fans of twisty thrillers and body horror, it should fit the bill nicely.

IN THE TALL GRASS (2019) *

I think Vincenzo Natali’s Splice is one of the great sick horror movies of the new millennium.  It seems like lately he’s been spending his time toiling away in television, which is unfortunate.  I thought this Stephen King adaptation (based on the novella he wrote with his son, Joe Hill) would be a return to form for Natali.  Boy was I wrong.  Not only is it a huge comedown from the likes of Splice, it’s one of the worst King movies I’ve ever seen (which is really saying something). 

A pregnant woman (Laysla De Oliveira) and her nerdy brother (Avery Whitted) are in the midst of a long car ride.  They stop off to the side of the road where they hear a child calling to them from a tall grassy field.  They go into the field looking for him and almost immediately get lost. 

As bad as most of the movie is, the opening sequence is sterling.  The siblings walk through the grass, following the voice.  They walk forward toward the sound of the boy’s voice, only to have it reappear behind them.  Natali builds up a nice sense of dread and even a fair amount of style, given all you can see is nothing but tall grass. 

It all feels like it’s building towards something and then… switches to a completely different character.  It’s frustrating to say the least, especially when it takes so long for him to get his ass into the grass too.  It’s also a miscalculation because it immediately takes us out of the feeling of isolation we felt inside the field. 

The opening scenes could’ve made a great episode of Tales from the Darkside.  After that, all the movie does is dick the audience around, jumping back and forth, and introducing new plot wrinkles that simultaneously overexplain what’s going on while making absolutely no sense.  It’s almost as if they’re trying to make the audience as lost as the characters. 

There’s a moment early on when In the Tall Grass goes from being the movie you THOUGHT it was going to be and becomes the movie that it IS that’s particularly soul-crushing.  From that moment on, it goes spectacularly off the rails and never looks back.  Not even Patrick Wilson’s nice guy malevolence can save it. 

It’s a shame too because the first 15 minutes draw you in so well.  Because of that, you sit through the next 85 minutes, hoping it will regain the greatness it started with.  Unfortunately, all you’re rewarded with is a meandering waste of time.  In fact, the scenes of people wandering around and getting lost in the grass are preferable to all the half-baked shit that happens later on.  All the shit with the meteor (or the “meteor shit” as Jordy Verrill would say), Wilson’s fanaticism, the time loops, and annoying kids just overcomplicate (not to mention just plain fuck up) what was a simple and effective premise. 

It’s a King adaption so I was going to watch it anyway.  Even as a King fan, this one hurts.  It makes Graveyard Shift look like Christine in comparison.  It’s on par with the worst Children of the Corn movie. 

I guess what I’m saying about In the Tall Grass is… get the Round-Up! 

BETWEEN WORLDS (2018) **

Joe (Nicolas Cage) is an out of work trucker who stops a guy from choking Julie (Franka Potente) in a truck stop bathroom.  Turns out, Julie has clairvoyance whenever she’s being strangled, and the guy was only helping her.  She then gets Joe to choke her so she can guide the spirit of her comatose daughter Billie (Penelope Mitchell) back into its body.  Afterwards, Joe and Julie strike up a relationship and he sticks around the house to help nurse Billie back to health.  Things take a turn for the bizarre when the spirit of Joe’s devious dead wife possesses Billie and begins manipulating him with her new, sexy, tight, teenage bod. 

The first thing you notice about Between Worlds is that it looks very cheap.  There’s no ambiance or atmosphere whatsoever.  I don’t think they had a lighting budget as every scene looks flat and uninteresting.  

It also has a painfully simple premise.  To make matters worse, it takes forever for the predictable twist to occur.  If you took the scenario out of the redneck trucker world and moved it to suburbia, the film would look at home on The Lifetime Network.

I’m afraid there’s not much here to recommend other than Cage’s performance.  But what a performance it is.  His twitchy white trash character is a worthy addition to his oeuvre of oddballs  Forgive the spoilers, but I’m afraid you won’t watch Between Worlds unless you know there’s a scene where he bangs Potente’s hot teenage daughter while reading aloud from a book called “Memories by Nicolas Cage”.  It’s a random off the charts meta gonzo touch that puts a little WTF into an otherwise ordinary DOA DTV flick. 

If you needed another reason to watch it, Mitchell is just as good as any.  She excels at playing the sexy possessed daughter.  She’s reminiscent of Samara Weaving or Margot Robbie and uninhibitedly gets into her seductress role.

Sure, the plot of Between Worlds is predictable as all get out.  However, those random Cagey moments are anything but.  Sure, you can probably guess what happens at the end of the movie.  I’m 100% sure you won’t guess HOW.  I don’t want to spoil any more than I already have.  Let’s just say you might not listen to “Leader of the Pack” the same way again.

Is Between Worlds a good movie?  No.  Is it worth watching solely for Cage’s antics?  Mostly. 

AKA:  To Hell.

ALISON’S BIRTHDAY (1981) **

Alison’s Birthday kicks off with a killer (literally) séance scene.  Three girls make their own makeshift Ouija board and ask a spirit some questions.   Then, one of the girls gets possessed, talks in a demon voice, and warns the sixteen-year-old Alison (Joanne Samuel, who played Mel Gibson’s ill-fated wife in Mad Max) to beware her nineteenth birthday.  Suddenly, a demonic gust of wind blows into the room, knocking over a bookshelf, and killing one of the girls.  All before the opening credits roll!

We then flash-forward to a few days before Alison’s nineteenth birthday.  She’s spent the past couple years living on her own, but she’s beckoned home to visit a sick relative.  She spends the week with her aunt and uncle, who seem cheery enough.  Still, something about them just doesn’t seem quite right.  Like why do they have a miniature version of Stonehenge in their backyard? 

Alison’s Birthday is a middling example of Ozploitation (Australian exploitation movie).  It’s tame and predictable, right down to the “twist” ending.  That opening sequence is a doozy though, so it’s still halfheartedly recommended.  It’s just that from there, it devolves into yet another tepid Don’t Drink the Tea movie.  

Oh, you’re familiar with the Don’t Drink the Tea subgenre, aren’t you?  Remember Rosemary’s Baby where the seemingly kind old people kept forcing drugged tea on the heroine to prepare her for an unspeakable ritual?  It’s the same deal here.

The movie especially slows down during her boyfriend’s search into Alison’s past.  This stretch of the film plays like an episode of Encyclopedia Brown or something, although it does have a great bit where he is chased by cultists and uses a pitchfork to pole vault over a fence.  The electronic synth score is moody and effective too, which keeps the all-too familiar happenings from feeling too stale.  I also liked the use of the title card that states Alison’s age, which results in an amusing payoff.  

These memorable moments are fleeting, however.  All in all, I’m not sure Alison’s Birthday is worth celebrating.  R.S.V.P. at your own risk.