TRAVELLER (1997) ***

I come for a long line of gypsies, so Traveller gives me a taste of what it might’ve been like for me had I stuck with the old family tradition.  The story revolves around modern-day gypsies played by Bill Paxton and Mark Wahlberg who go around from town to town grifting and conning good folk out of their hard-earned money.  There’s a saying that goes, “Money won is sweeter than money earned.”  Well, money swindled is sweeter than both of them put together.

Wahlberg is a wet-behind-the-ears gypsy whose father left the fold to marry an outsider.  When his father passes away, Wahlberg returns home to regain his place in the family.  The head of the clan (Luke Askew, later in Paxton’s Frailty) doesn’t want any part of him, but Paxton vouches for him and agrees to take him out on the road and teach him the grifting ropes.  

Famed cinematographer-turned-first-time director Jack Green does a fine job doling out the details of the gypsies’ lifestyle.  He takes his time letting us get to know the ins-and-outs of the small-time swindles and long-term cons.  He’s also smart enough to know when to let us in on the deal and when to pull the wool over our eyes.

There’s also an interesting dynamic going on between the two leads.  While Wahlberg grows into his role with surprisingly adeptness, Paxton finds himself falling into a “normal” relationship with a bartender (Julianna Margulies), a former mark.  He develops a crush and a conscience and even goes so far to give her the money back.  

The film maybe gets a little too ugly and violent near the end.  I guess if you go around ripping off people, it’s bound to come back and bite you eventually.  However, the conclusion is a little too abrupt to really work.  Other than that misstep down around the home stretch, Traveller remains an absorbing, wonderfully acted indie drama.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: SHAOLIN VS. EVIL DEAD (2004) ** ½

Gordon Lui stars as Brother White, a priest bringing a load of zombies to their final resting place.  Along the way, he and his two young helpers, Sun and Fire run smack into a mess of zombies.  The only way to stop them is to trap the zombies’ essence inside of “spirit eggs”.  During the battle, Fire accidentally swallows one of the eggs, which causes some unforeseen problems.

Shaolin vs. Evil Dead starts off with a fun Kung Fu battle inside a haunted restaurant.  The zombies all appear to be normal customers unless you say a spell to reveal their true nature.  It’s a neat bit of Hong Kong horror, but from there, the film gets increasingly spotty as it goes along.

The movie is at its best when it focuses on the evil dead and not shaolin.  The fights are okay, but they sometimes use too much slow motion.  The romantic subplot will get on your nerves too and a lot of the comic relief shit is annoying.  The stuff with Gordon’s headstrong brother is particularly drab and the scene where he creates a “Virgin Army” isn’t nearly as cool as it sounds.  (It’s a bunch of little kids and not a lot of hot girls.)  The “Phantom Chess” sequence in which the kids turn into bad CGI animals is really weak as well.

The zombies are pretty cool though and their make-up is similar to something out of a Fulci film.  The hopping zombies are fun too and the scenes where Lui frantically tries to keep them in check by slapping prayer notes on their foreheads are good for a laugh.  The WTF factor gets kicked up to 11 once Fire eats the spirit egg and shits out a full-grown child covered in shaving cream who follows him around and calls him “mama”.  I can honestly say I haven’t seen that before.

Too bad it all ends so abruptly so you can’t tell what the hell just happened.  Then again, there’s footage from the sequel during the credits to assure you it will all make sense eventually.  Maybe.  All I know is that if the sequel can’t top the child-shitting-out-another-child scene, then why even bother?

ANONYMOUS DEATH THREAT (1975) **

As with most of the El Santo movies I watch, Anonymous Death Threat did not come with the benefit of subtitles.  I think the plot was simple enough to follow though.  Random citizens receive anonymous death threats just before they are murdered in broad daylight.  The detectives on the case are puzzled, so they call on El Santo to help.  After nearly being killed in the ring, he does some investigating and finds out it’s all the work of Nazis!

Anonymous Death Threat isn’t as much fun as the majority of El Santo’s output, mostly because he doesn’t fight any monsters.  I guess you can argue that the Nazis were the worst monsters of all.  I won’t dispute that claim, but the truth of the matter is, El Santo movies work best when he’s fighting stuntmen covered in fake hair, vampire capes, or paper Mache make-up.  While it is cool to see everyone’s favorite Mexican wrestler duking it out with goose-stepping Gestapo agents, you have to wait until the film is halfway over before they’re even revealed as the villains.  Until then, it’s kind of a slog.

The early scenes are the slowest.  In fact, you have to wait a while before El Santo is even introduced in this one.  The long stretches featuring his sidekick Pablo and his girlfriend are particularly dull.  At least Sasha Montenegro makes a memorable impression as the raven-haired beauty in league with the Nazis.

Although El Santo’s scenes are far and away the best in the movie, they lack the punch of his best work.  The action sequences are few and far between (and mostly take place in cramped quarters like janitor’s closets and dark hallways) and there are only two wrestling matches in the film.  The highlight of course, is his match with El Nazi, who has swastikas on his boots.  Naturally, an assassin tries to kill El Santo with a sniper rifle and accidentally kills his opponent instead.  (Just like in Santo vs. the Strangler.)  

AKA:  Santo in Anonymous Death Threat.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: DEATH HOUSE (2018) *

Death House features every star that’s been on the horror convention circuit for the past millennium.  We have Kane Hodder, Bill Moseley, Adrienne Barbeau, Debbie Rochon, Gunnar Hansen (who also gets a story credit), Dee Wallace, Camille Keaton, Barbara Crampton, Sid Haig, Tony Todd, and Michael Berryman, just to name a few.  Just because of that, you’d think it would be worth watching.  No such luck. 

Two government agents take a tour of a high-tech underground prison nicknamed “Death House”.  A combination of gas and virtual reality keep the prisoners in a catatonic state, and the worst-of-the-worst villains, “The Five Evils” are kept on the bottom floor.  Predictably, a power outage causes all the prisoners to escape, and the two agents have to fight their way to safety.  

Sounds like it can’t miss, but it’s an abomination in just about every way you can imagine.

Death House was billed as “The Expendables of Horror”, but it’s really anything but.  Talk about a shitty use of talent.  The titans of terror rarely appear on screen together and when they do, it’s fleeting.  Most of the cast are only around for precious few seconds of screen time or are virtually unrecognizable.  Many appear in what looks to be unrelated footage that was probably filmed on a smoke break during a convention appearance and dropped half-assed into the finished product.  It’s almost as if the director took a green screen to every convention he went to in order to get more stars into the movie.  Speaking of green screen, Death House features some of the worst green screen effects I’ve seen.  The virtual reality stuff is particularly annoying.  

The only effective sequence comes when our heroes stumble upon a room full of skinless prisoners.  They don’t want to escape though.  The LIKE it down there.  This scene would’ve made for its own interesting short film.  Too bad it’s sandwiched inside an otherwise nearly unwatchable mishmash.

Most of Death House is too dark to see.  Most of the time, that’s a blessing.  It also takes forever before we finally get to see the Five Evils in action.  Even then, all they do is stand around and gab for ten minutes or so. Who knew supreme evil’s superpower was talking people to death? 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: GHOST WRITER (1989) **

Audrey Landers stars as an entertainment journalist who is unhappy turning out fluff pieces.  When her apartment is being renovated, she moves into a secluded beach house where a beautiful movie star (Judy Landers) died under mysterious circumstances.  Judy’s ghost now haunts the house, leaving typewritten notes to prove her existence.  (GET IT?  GHOST WRITER?)  After she reveals herself, Audrey thinks it’s the perfect opportunity to jumpstart her career by landing an interview with a ghost.  Naturally, the politician (Anthony Franciosa) responsible for Judy’s death wants to silence them both.

If you don’t remember who the Landers sisters are, I can barely one-up you.  I do remember them, but only for their appearances on game shows like Match Game and the $25,000 Pyramid back when I was a kid.  Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you without looking at IMDb why the hell they were even famous in the first place.  However, they were famous enough to land the starring roles in a Kenneth J. Hall movie!

The first thing you should probably know about Ghost Writer is than unlike Hall’s Evil Spawn and Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout, it’s strictly PG stuff.  Because of that, there’s no nudity, and the jokes are thoroughly lame.  That said, it’s not exactly a chore to sit through, thanks to the supporting cast that includes David (Charlie’s Angels) Doyle, Jeff (Taxi) Conaway, Joey (Amazon Women on the Moon) Travolta, John (The Goonies) Matuszak,  Dick (Gremlins) Miller, Kenneth (The Thing from Another World) Tobey, and the one and only (okay, two and only) Barbarian Brothers!

Audrey is a capable leading lady, but Judy handily steals every scene she’s in as the Marilyn-inspired starlet.  She has a memorable bit where she becomes visible to perform a striptease in a nightclub.  Again, since it’s PG, nothing is shown (which is odd when you consider it’s produced by David DeCoteau).  

It’s not really a horror movie, but there is a pretty cool finale set in a wax museum where Judy becomes part of the displays and freaks out Tony.  She takes the form of a vampire, the Bride of Frankenstein, and most inspired of all, Regan from The Exorcist.  Although it’s allegedly a comedy, there’s no real laughs to be had.  Still, if you ever wanted to see Jeff Conaway fight The Barbarian Brothers, here’s your chance. 

You have to actually feel sorry for poor Conaway.  One decade, you’re working alongside John Travolta in Grease.  The next, you’re starring alongside Joey Travolta in this. 

DOLEMITE IS MY NAME (2019) ****

When I was sixteen, I used to frequent the now sadly, gone Downtown Video.  It was unlike many video stores in the area as it carried mostly “new” movies.  That meant if you were looking for anything before 1986, you were sadly out of luck.  Luck changed one day in 1994 when mysteriously, out of nowhere there were six new “older” movies sitting on the top shelf.  They were, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Friday Foster, Dolemite, The Human Tornado, and Petey Wheatstraw:  The Devil’s Son-in-Law.  My friend and I rented Dolemite, mostly because it had the funniest cover.  We took it home that Friday evening not expecting a whole lot.  All I’ll say is that for roughly the next few months, Dolemite was our go-to Friday night pick.

Up till that point, my Blaxploitation education began with Shaft and ended with Superfly.  Rudy Ray Moore’s films Dolemite, The Human Tornado, and Petey Wheatstraw (along with the trio of previously mentioned Pam Grier movies) opened my eyes to a whole new world.  Pretty soon, I was going all over town renting all the Fred Williamson movies I could find, rescuing all the Jim Kelly films I could from the “For Sale” bins, and taping Jim Brown flicks off late-night cable.  For a sixteen-year-old white boy from small-town America, I quickly became a student of Blaxploitation cinema.

I only mention my past because Craig Brewer’s excellent Dolemite is My Name brought a sweeping swell of emotions to me I wasn’t fully prepared for.  It came to us from the screenwriters of Ed Wood, so I was just expecting Ed Wood… but with Dolemite.  What I got was an inspirational underdog story about the American dream.  A fable about the importance of perseverance.  A tale about artists’ stopping at nothing until they see their vision to its fruition.  Of course, it helps when that vision includes an all-girl army of Kung Fu killers.

I’ve always felt a connection to the character, not only because watching the film always takes me back to the good old video store days, but because of just how badass he is.  It didn’t matter that the fight choreography was subpar or if some of the actors flubbed their lines or if there were boom mics bouncing in and out at the top of the frame.  Moore’s conviction to the character shone through all the film’s shortcomings.  In fact, I would argue that the shortcomings married with the electricity of Moore’s performance made for a special brand of movie magic that none have been able to replicate.  

I guess what I mean by all this is that… well… There’s a scene in the movie where Rudy (brilliantly portrayed by Eddie Murphy) is unsure if the movie will ever be shone.  And if it is, whether or not more than five people will show up.  Even his own financiers tell him it will only play in “black movie houses”.  I am here to tell everyone that not only did these films find a wide (and white) audience, but they were appreciated for their entertainment value.  I can only hope that after anyone who watches Dolemite is My Name on Netflix will immediately go out and watch the movies that inspired the film.  Anything to keep the work of the legendary Rudy Ray Moore alive and well is fine and dandy by me.

The film captures that “It Takes a Village” approach to low budget filmmaking so well.  Everyone around Rudy knows they’re not making high art, but they pitch in the best they can, partly because of how well he sells himself, but also because what he puts on screen is fucking hilarious.  We see him hustling and hawking, anything he can do to get the movie made, and having doors repeatedly slammed in his face along the way.  However, Moore persists and does everything in his power to put his dream project on the screen for generations to see.  

I’m trying to avoid plot details of the film.  It’s best if you just let the movie do its thing and work its magic on you.  I think you’ll be surprised just how much it strikes a chord with audiences.  There was a moment when Moore is down and out, working in a record store that was only supposed to be a day job that winds up being a career that hit close to home.  There’s also a standout moment outside a movie theater playing The Front Page that got me full-on choked up. 

It’s a testament to Murphy’s performance that these human moments in between the raps, snaps, and pimp hats tug at your heart so well.  He’s never been better.  After far too many decades playing it safe in kid’s movies, I can honestly say the Eddie we all know and love is back.  Scratch that.  This is a whole new Eddie.  He doesn’t mimic Moore’s vocal stylings, but he does disappear into the character enough where you forget you’re watching Eddie Murphy.  He embodies Moore’s swagger and is ferociously funny.  I bet you’ve forgotten how wonderful it was to hear him say the word “fuck”.

The ensemble cast is aces too.  Keegan-Michael Key is great as the screenwriter who goes from wanting to make a serious picture to getting caught up in Moore’s vision.  Wesley Snipes kicks so much ass as D’Urville Martin, who plays Moore’s nemesis onscreen and off.  Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, and Tituss Burress make quite the team as Moore’s entourage.  I will also say that Da’Vine Joy Randolph just may be a contender for Best Supporting Actress as her performance as Lady Reed will stick with you for a long time after you watch it.

Dolemite is My Name brought so much joy to this Moore fan’s heart that I can forgive them for including clips of The Human Tornado in with the original film.  I mean for a Rudy Ray Moore snob like me, it kind of bugs me because it’s not historically accurate.  However, who am I to pass up an opportunity to see Eddie Murphy recreate the famous “BITCH!  ARE YOU FOR REAAAALLLLL?!” moment?

In short, this is one of the best movies of the year.  

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: SHOCK TREATMENT (1964) **

Roddy McDowall is a gardener for an old rich widow.  One day, he snaps and cuts off her head with his gardening shears, but not before burning up his employer’s money.  Or did he?  Stuart Whitman is an actor who gets hired to infiltrate the insane asylum where McDowall’s been institutionalized and find what’s left of the money.  The only problem:  McDowell’s crazy shrink wants to get her hands on the loot too.

Shock Treatment has a durable premise.  It’s just that the execution is lacking.  There doesn’t seem to be much urgency to the proceedings and the whole thing just seems too… respectable to really kick into gear.  The ending features at least one semi-gruesome death, but the film needed more of these juicy moments to come to life.

Part of the problem is the casting.  Whitman is just too handsome and mild-mannered to pass himself off as crazy.  He’s a solid leading man and I’ve enjoyed his work in many films.  He’s just all wrong for the role.  

Speaking of being wrong for the role, let’s talk about the film’s biggest problem.  I’ve refrained from stating the identity of McDowall’s doctor, not because it’s a spoiler, but because you just won’t believe the mad doctor is played by… LAUREN BACALL?!?!  I mean she’s one of Hollywood’s finest actresses, but playing a conniving shrink who willingly gives sane people shock treatments and LSD is far removed from her wheelhouse.  Nobody played a femme fatale like Bacall.  As a mad doctor, she’s ludicrously miscast.  

Still, whatever energy the film has comes from McDowall.  His understated performance gives his character a tinge of sympathy, but he’s still fun to watch whenever he occasionally goes off the rails.  Timothy Carey makes an impression in a bit part, and it’s a shame he wasn’t given more to do.

Director Denis Sanders went on to direct Invasion of the Bee Girls.