SHE’S BACK (1989) *

Carrie Fisher was only six years removed from Return of the Jedi when she made She’s Back.  While Harrison Ford was working with Steven Spielberg on the set of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Fisher was starring in this painfully unfunny comedy ghost movie from the director of Robot Holocaust, Tim Kincaid and writer Buddy (Combat Shock) Giovinazzo.  Fisher’s history of drug and alcohol abuse is well-documented.  I’m not sure if she had hit bottom yet in regard to drugs and alcohol, but this is definitively the nadir of her acting career. 

Fisher and her hubby Robert (Death Wish 5:  The Face of Death) Joy move into a crime-ridden neighborhood.  The first night in their new home, they are immediately terrorized by punks who break in, rob the place, and kill Carrie.  She soon returns from the grave to convince her spineless husband to get revenge on the men who killed her. 

From then on, it becomes a comedy version of Death Wish, except starring a henpecked sitcom husband and a wisecracking ghost sidekick.  If you thought the scenes of Fisher in white make-up bickering with Joy were bad, wait till you see him and his idiot neighbor fighting back against the punks using makeshift homemade weapons.  The final confrontation with the punks is downright painful and even though there’s some OK gore, it’s just too dumb to even work.  (There’s a gun made from a sink that shoots coils that somehow drill through people’s skulls?!?)

Joy does what he can with the awful material and Fisher remains professional throughout, although neither of them come close to saving this mess.  What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on Fisher’s dressing room wall when she was making this.  I haven’t read Fisher’s memoir, Postcards from the Edge, but if there isn’t an entire chapter devoted to this movie, then what’s the point?

The comedy elements are woefully miscalculated.  Joy and Fisher are fine actors, but they visibly struggle trying to make the clunky premise work.  It doesn’t help that the movie looks like a cheap sitcom and the characters behave like they’re in a bizarre Off-Broadway play as they constantly shout at one another.  

She’s Back is an oddity to be sure, but not in a good way.  For die-hard fans of Fisher, it may work as a curiosity piece.  A morbid curiosity piece. 

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: SATAN’S LITTLE HELPER (2004) ** ½

Douglas (Alexander Brickel) is a young trick-or-treater obsessed with the titular video game where you rack up points by helping Satan kill as many people as possible.  On Halloween, he stumbles upon a masked killer he mistakes as Satan who lets him tag along while he stalks his victims.  The kid also has an icky crush on his hot sister Jenna (Katheryn Winnick), so he gets Satan to do away with her new boyfriend Alex (Stephen Graham).  Eventually, Jenna comes to realize her brother is in grave danger.

This was director Jeff (Squirm) Lieberman’s first film in sixteen years.  Like most of his movies, Satan’s Little Helper is uneven as hell.  It’s sometimes clever, sometimes forced, but it’s all mostly entertaining.  He gets a lot of mileage out of a thin premise and delivers one or two memorable sequences.  There are enough little moments along the way to warrant a moderate recommendation from me.

The game cast certainly helps.  Winnick is great as the hot sister.  I especially liked the scenes where she cozies up to the masked killer thinking it's her boyfriend.  Pulp Fiction’s Amanda Plummer is equally fine as her quirky mom.  Heck, even the kid isn’t too bad. 

At a hundred minutes, Satan’s Little Helper goes on a good fifteen minutes longer than it really needed to.  By the time the third act rolls around, it’s already started to recycle some of the gags, and of course, the characters are so stupid they fall into the same trap twice.  It all leads up to a frustrating non-ending, but when it works, it’s a solid little chiller.  All in all, it’s probably Lieberman’s best film.

AKA:  Satanic Halloween.  AKA:  Halloween Killer.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: BLOOD REUNION (2012) *

As a young girl, Janeth (April Hartman) found the dead body of her mother, Winona (Paula Marcenaro Solinger).  Unbeknownst to Janeth, her mother had been turned into a vampire.  Fifteen years later, Janeth returns home and accidentally frees Winona from her grave.  She then goes around tearing into people’s throats, and it’s eventually up to Janeth to stop her. 

Blood Reunion is your typical forgettable no-budget horror movie.  The amateurish acting is all over the place.  Some of the actors recite their dialogue in a stilted manner.  Some barely get through their lines without stumbling over their words.  Others chew the scenery (badly, I might add).  

The lighting is flat and drab, and the sound is less than optimal (it’s particularly bad during the outdoor scenes).  The plot moves slowly too.  Since there isn’t much to it, it makes the slow pace feel even slower.  The overly simplistic musical score is annoying and is far too intrusive for its own good.  The one scene of gratuitous nudity is about the only thing to pull you out of the mire and inspire you to keep going, even though you know good and well nothing is really ever going to happen.  

I’m going to admit.  After 27 days of nothing but horror movies, I think I might’ve hit my threshold with this one.  I’m not saying it’s the worst one I’ve sat through this month.  It’s just the dullest.  Is it November yet?

Two sequels followed, although I don’t think I can muster the enthusiasm to watch them.  

THE CORPSE GRINDERS 3 (2013) ½ *

You know you’re in trouble when you can’t even understand what the fuck the actors as saying in your movie.  The entire cast of The Corpse Grinders 3 speak with thick, unintelligible accents, saying their lines phonetically, and even then, failing miserably at that.  Are they Mexican?  Spanish?  French?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Then again, maybe it’s a blessing you can’t tell what they’re saying. 

The crazy thing is, it shouldn’t matter what they’re saying because this is a Corpse Grinders movie.  As long as people are being fed into cat food machines and the cats that eat the human flesh become feline killers, all should be well.  Even then, director Manolito Motosierra can’t deliver the goods.  The new corpse-grinding machine is cheap looking, poorly utilized, and it seemingly takes forever to get started. 

I know Corpse Grinders 1 and 2 director Ted V. Mikels made some shoddy movies in his time, but this one looks even shoddier if you can believe it.  Mikels only produced this sequel, and I’m surprised he kept his name on it.  I mean even Mikels never made a flick this bad.  Motosierra also loads the film with lots of painfully unfunny comedy.  I guess I could’ve forgiven that if the movie didn’t move at a snail’s pace and wasn’t filled with atrocious acting and incoherent dialogue.  

The only thing separating this and a No Stars review is the Gremlins-inspired scene where a killer cat winds up in a microwave.  I could handle the stupid cat puppet effects.  It’s when the movie switched over to shitty CGI cat attacks that I had to tap out.  There’s also a cat-man that is just too stupid for words. 

In short, The Corpse Grinders 3 is the Lost Ark of horror sequels.  It’s a movie so bad that if you look directly at it, it’ll melt your face off.  I’d rather eat cat food than watch this one again. 

TRILOGY OF TERROR 2 (1996) ** ½

Dan Curtis returned two decades later with this sequel to his classic horror anthology, Trilogy of Terror.  It’s kind of a downgrade in every department.  Instead of Karen Black appearing in each of the stories, we get Krull’s Lysette Anthony (who was also in Curtis’ short-lived Dark Shadows reboot from the ‘90s).  I’m not saying she’s bad or anything, it’s just that she doesn’t disappear into her characters the way Black did.  Also, whereas the first movie’s stories were a tight 24 minutes each, these tales clock in at an even half-hour.  That means the set-ups take a lot longer and pacing is often sluggish.  Still, as anthology sequels go, it’s surprisingly decent.  Heck, it even threatens to be fun on a few occasions.

In “The Graveyard Rats” (**), Anthony plays a cheating wife of a paralyzed millionaire.  Although he treats her cruelly, he somehow manages to keep her in his will.  Eventually, she and her new lover plot to kill him, not realizing the key to his fortune lies inside of his coffin. 

This tale takes a long time unfurling its premise.  Once it finally picks up a little steam, it’s undermined by some terrible rat effects that look like rubbery hand puppets.  Anthony’s fate is also predictable, and the whole conclusion is more than a tad underwhelming. 

“Bobby” (** ½) finds Anthony as a grieving mother who uses black magic to bring her dead son back to life.  At first, he seems normal and the two get along just fine.  Then again, anyone who saw Deathdream or Pet Sematary knows when your dead kid comes back to life, it usually doesn’t turn out so well. 

Bobby plays kind of like a variation on the first movie’s tale, Amelia as it’s essentially about a woman trapped in her home while a pint-sized murderous munchkin terrorizes her.  Despite the predictable nature of the story, it’s not entirely without merit.  Curtis delivers some atmospheric moments and gives us at least one genuine jump scare.  That said, like The Graveyard Rats, it goes on much too long.

“He Who Kills” (** ½) is the final tale.  While Bobby felt like a spiritual successor to Amelia, this is a direct sequel; picking up hours after the events of that story.  It starts with the crime scene where cops find Amelia (famously played by Karen Black in original) and her mother dead in her apartment, with the charred remains of the Zuni fetish doll not too far away.  They send it off to the crime lab where a forensics expert (Anthony) examines it, and before long, the doll comes to life and tries to make her his next victim. 

This is basically a remake of Amelia, just with a different prologue and a new location.  Curtis even goes so far as to copy many of the same shots from the original and recreates a few of that film’s most famous moments (like the briefcase scene).  Although I kind of wish there’d been a little bit more to it, it’s definitely watchable and moderately entertaining.  The tongue-in-cheek humor also helps.  (One character is seen reading a Dark Shadows comic book.)

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975) ***

In the mid-‘70s, there was no hotter name in TV horror than Dan Curtis.  After a string of successes that included Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker, and Dracula, he teamed up with frequent Twilight Zone scribe Richard Matheson and Logan’s Run novelist William F. Nolan for this trio of horrific tales.  As a fan of anthology horror movies, I’m almost ashamed to admit I’ve never seen this one.  Oh well, we all have blind spots.  It’s time to rectify that.

I’m also a big fan of Karen Black, which is another reason why I can’t believe I haven’t seen this sooner.  There may be only three stories, but Black gets to play FOUR different characters.  That’s a lot of Black for your buck.  

In “Julie” (****), Black plays a mousy professor.  A lothario student gets infatuated with her and continually pesters her to go on a date.  Finally, she acquiesces, and in return, he drugs and rapes her.  He also blackmails her into doing more unspeakable acts until she eventually plots her revenge. 

This sequence must’ve been quite shocking for primetime TV at the time.  Although nothing is ever shown, A LOT is implied, which also sort of makes it even more icky.  It’s (unfortunately) even more timely now than when it first aired, but that is kind of what makes it so powerful.  It’s anchored by a great performance by Black, her first of many in the film.  

Black gets to play both “Millicent and Therese” (**) in the next segment.  After the death of her father, the prudish Millicent suspects her sister Therese is responsible.  She eventually comes to believe Therese is a witch and takes to using her own black magic against her.

It’s fun seeing Black as two such disparate characters as she goes from playing spinster Millicent to the vivacious sexpot Therese.  That’s about where the fun stops I’m afraid.  Unlike the other tales in the anthology, this one is sluggishly paced.  There’s really not much of a payoff either and on top of that, the twist ending is predictable.  I did like seeing Police Academy’s George Gaynes as Black’s doctor though. 

“Amelia” (****) is the third and most famous story. She comes home to her apartment and finds a Zuni fetish doll waiting for her in the mail.  When its mystical chain is accidentally removed, the doll comes to life and stalks Amelia. 

Amelia is one of the most highly influential anthology horror stories of all time and has been ripped off many times in the past few decades.  It’s hard to imagine Child’s Play or Tales from the Hood without it.  It starts slow and features a long phone conversation that acts as an exposition dump to set up the “rules”.  Stick with it though because Curtis is just getting warmed up.  Once it starts kicking ass, it never lets up.  Curtis gets a lot of mileage out of just the one character and location, creating lots of tension and suspense, culminating in a memorable final shot.  All in all, it’s one of the greatest TV horror segments of all time. 

AKA:  Tales of Terror.  AKA:  Terror of the Doll.

TO ALL A GOODNIGHT (1980) **

To All a Goodnight is a Killer Santa Claus movie released the same year as Christmas Evil, but four years before the iconic Silent Night, Deadly Night.  It probably owes more to Black Christmas as the murderer is targeting college girls who are staying in their sorority house over Christmas break.  Like Prom Night (which was also released the same year) the killer’s ire stems from a prank gone wrong years earlier.  The reveal of the killer is almost identical to the one found in another 1980 slasher, but if I told you which one, it would immediately spoil it for you.

One novel touch:  The school is close to a private airstrip.  In most of these movies, the boys from the other school just climb in through the window.  In To All a Goodnight, they actually charter a private plane in and the girls go pick them up.  I can honestly say I hadn’t seen that one before.

Would it surprise you that two of the most memorable screen villains from the ‘70s were responsible for this?  David Hess, Krug from Last House on the Left directed it and none other than the Incredible Melting Man himself, Alex Rebar wrote the script.  You kind of wish they took better notes from Wes Craven and William Sachs though.  

To All a Goodnight is perfectly acceptable, especially for an early-era slasher.  The biggest problem is that the fucking thing is so dark looking, it’s hard to tell what’s going on during a lot of the nighttime scenes.  That’s probably due to the shitty print I saw, but still.  How dark was it?  Well, it’s so dark that I had to learn from IMDB that the guy who played the pilot was none other than porn star Harry Reems!  Yes, it’s so dark you can’t even tell he’s in the movie.

Another problem is that Hess doesn’t really know how to make the kills suspenseful.  He just shows someone opening a refrigerator/walking through the woods/getting boned and then the killer jumps into frame and stabs/slices/chops them up.  No build-up.  No tension.  It just happens.  Kudos on the shower scene though.

To All a Goodnight is also memorable for being the debut of Jennifer Runyon.  Her name might not be familiar to you, but I’m sure you’ll recognize her from the opening scene of Ghostbusters when Bill Murray tried to pick her up while testing her psychic powers.  Runyon was always one of my favorite actresses growing up, so it was especially fun seeing her playing the Final Girl in this.  She later married Roger Corman’s nephew, which only makes her cooler in my book.