HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: VEROTIKA (2019) **

I’ve been a huge Misfits fan for what seems like forever, so I was excited to learn front man Glenn Danzig was making an anthology horror movie based on his own comic book line.  His music has always been infused with his love for old horror films, so I was anxious to see how he would fare as a horror director.  As far as musicians-turned-directors, he has a long way to go before he can touch Rob Zombie, but I can honestly say, there is enough inspired lunacy here to make me interested to see what he does next.

Porn star Kayden Kross stars as our host, Morella, who in the opening scene, gouges a woman’s eyes out.  She then introduces herself to the camera and we go right into the first story.

“The Albino Spider of Dajette” (***) is about a pink-haired girl named Dajette (porn star Ashley Wisdom) who is distraught when her boyfriend leaves her.  In most movies, the boyfriend leaves because he wants to see other people.  In Danzig’s world, the boyfriend leaves because his girlfriend has eyeballs where her nipples should be.  That’s not even the weird part.  When her boobs start crying, the tears land on an albino spider, and it morphs into a six-armed man-spider who goes out and kills every time Dajette falls asleep. 

I tell you, when it comes to becoming a spider-man, getting bit by a radioactive spider is soooooo gauche next to being bathed in titty tears.

Most directors would take an idea like a woman with eyes for nipples and base an entire story around it.  For Danzig, it’s just the jumping off point.  You have to admire something so hilariously insane, even if the craftsmanship is a bit shoddy.

Then again, any time I want to criticize this segment for its stilted performances, awkward camerawork (I can’t tell if Danzig is trying to channel Jess Franco’s haphazard camera zooms on purpose), or slipshod editing, I remember it’s about a woman with eyes for nipples whose teat tears turn a spider into a half-human spider-man, and I think… gee… I haven’t seen THAT before, so ***.

The next story is the Eyes Without a Face-inspired “Change of Face” (**).  A masked stripper known as “The Mystery Girl” (Rachel Alig from Bikini Spring Break) goes around hacking off the faces of women and puts them on her dressing room wall.  It’s then up to a determined detective (The Karate Kid 3’s Sean Kanan) to end her reign of terror.

This segment isn’t nearly as wild as the previous tale, which puts it at a disadvantage.  It isn’t necessarily bad, per se, but it’s certainly a comedown.  Alig is pretty good though as the faceless stripper who wears skull-shaped pasties.  She’s definitely a much more credible lead than Wisdom was, that’s for sure.  I also had fun with Kanan’s performance as the comically gruff detective.  That doesn’t quite compensate for the fact that the story is slight, and the non-ending is rather frustrating.

The final tale, “Drukija:  Contessa of Blood” (**), is a reworking of the old Elizabeth Bathory legend as a vampire woman (Alice Haig) bathes in the blood of virgins to remain eternally young. 

This is one story that would’ve benefited from some tighter editing.  I mean there’s a scene where Drukija stares at herself in the mirror that just goes on forever.  That said, the scenes where Drukija slashes open virgin throats and bathes in their jugular spray are something else.  Too bad that this one, like “Change of Face” is completely devoid of an ending.

So, in short, this is an extremely hit or miss affair.  It’s particularly rough going after the first story.  However, if you ever wanted to see an albino man-spider trying to negotiate the price of Greek from a French prostitute, then Verotika is for you.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: OPEN WINDOWS (2014) * ½

Elijah Wood stars as a fan who gets cheated out of a chance to meet his favorite movie star, Sasha Grey.  While livestreaming her Comic Con panel, a hacker sneaks onto his laptop and offers him an opportunity to hack into her phone so he can spy on her.  He stupidly agrees, and winds up getting himself into one precarious situation after the other. 

Nacho (Colossal) Vigalondo’s Open Windows plays like a modern-day riff on not one but two Hitchcock classics.  Like Rope, it’s seemingly done in one take and the peeping tom stuff plays a lot like Rear Window (except our hero uses a lot of newfangled computer technology instead of a simple old pair of binoculars).  The movie it’s most like though is that terrible flick Unfriended as it all takes place on a computer screen.

It’s not a bad idea.  There’s enough here to fill out a short film, or if done well, a seventy-five-minute movie.  At a hundred minutes though, it runs out of steam way before it crosses the finish line.

The film especially gets tiresome once Wood leaves the confines of his hotel room.  At least those early scenes had a sense of claustrophobia about them.  Things really start to unravel once more and more people start popping onto Woods’ screen, offering him guidance, or possibly trying to trick him.  The constant zooming in and out from window to window quickly gets annoying too. 

Once it becomes a chase movie, the movie really starts to become implausible. The protracted finale also helps to further test the audience’s patience.  The string of plot twists that punctuate the third act would be laughable if it all weren’t so damned ludicrous.

Much of the suspense comes from Wood being so gullible and allowing a stranger complete access to his computer.  I guess that’s the film’s biggest lesson:  Sometimes, when you’re on the internet, and all you want to do is see Sasha Grey naked, you wind up getting hacked and end up with a bunch of unwanted spyware on your computer.  Hey, we’ve all been there before. 

AKA:  Black Hacker.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: RUNAWAY NIGHTMARE (1982) ½ *

Two shiftless lay about worm farmers pine for a little excitement.  They get more than they bargained for when they unearth a woman buried in a shallow grave.  Her friends, an all-woman cult of gunrunners, thieves, and killers (and possibly, one vampire) come looking for her and hold the pair of worm-wranglers hostage.  Eventually, the gals initiate our heroes into their gang, but only because they need someone to act as decoys while they steal a shipment of platinum (or is it plutonium?) from the Mob.

Runaway Nightmare is a real head-scratcher.  It’s a low budget, no-name, no-talent Bataan Death March of a movie that plods endlessly on without any rhyme, reason, or rhythm.  It takes a collection of interesting ideas and promptly does nothing with them.  At first, it seems like it’s going to be a Russ Meyer movie by way of Jeff Lieberman, but even the promising scenes of the all-girl cult members romping around fall flat. 

It’s also annoyingly amateurish.  I mean, I’m a fan of bad movies, but even I have my standards.  It’s full of poor line readings, incoherent editing, and gratuitous ADR.  It’s also the only flick I’ve ever seen in which multiple characters repeatedly overstate plot points and somehow it manages to make it that much more confusing.  It shouldn’t be confusing because nothing ever really happens, but there you go.  

The craftsmanship is so poor it isn’t even good for a cheap laugh.  Take for instance the scene in which two cult members have a duel.  One of the girls fires her gun, there’s a puff of smoke, and then one of the other characters has to relate to the audience that the gun was tampered with and she blew up.  Man, it’s bad.  That’s not even including the long, pointless dinner table scene that goes on forever.  Or the ending that plays like a Ted V. Mikels version of Kiss Me Deadly.

If the film had been jam-packed with nudity, it might’ve softened the blow.  However, whenever it looks like the girls are going to strip down and have a little fun, we only see them nude from the back or the side, which doesn’t help anyone.  Teasing the audience with nudity and then not delivering in an already piss-poor movie just makes it that much worse. 

The lesbian three-way shower scene has to go down in history as one of the most botched sex scenes of all time.  It’s one thing if their relations are obscured behind an opaque shower curtain so the audience doesn’t even get a hint of skin.  It’s another thing for the girls to exit the shower COMPLETELY DRY.  What in the actual fuck? 

In short, Runaway Nightmare is a runaway disaster. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: PSYCHED BY THE 4D WITCH (A TALE OF DEMONOLOGY) (1973) ***

 

I have seen some jaw-droppers before, but my jaw was permanently agape while watching this one.  It’s a no-budget, astral-projection-themed sex flick that will make you question your sanity at nearly every reel change.  You won’t believe your eyes.

Cindy (Margo) is a virgin college girl who has never experienced an orgasm.  She buys a book on sexual witchcraft and is able to contact the spirit of a witch named Abigail (Esoterica) who just so happens to be Cindy’s ancestor.  Abigail helps Cindy awaken her sexuality and teaches her to find men via astral projection.  That way, her mind can experience sex and her body can remain a virgin.  Once Cindy realizes she’s being used by Abigail as an instrument of revenge, she turns to a shrink for help, and he gives her a “flesh and blood orgasm”, the only thing that can defeat the evil witch. 

That’s pretty much the plot.  It might not sound like much to hear me tell it, but I can’t even begin to describe how that information is presented to the viewer without sounding like a lunatic.  Basically, it looks like a hodgepodge of softcore stag reels edited into someone’s 8 mm home movies with occasional shots of blurry lights and psychedelic images meant to represent “the astral realm”. 

Add to that the fact the narration is batshit insane.  First, the narration baton gets handed from a scholarly sounding narrator to Cindy.  During the scenes of Cindy contacting Abigail, it just sounds like Cindy is lowering her voice to sound like a witch.  Incredible.  Later on, the film switches focus entirely and concentrates on Cindy’s brother, who takes over the narrating duties for a while until Cindy comes back for the finale.

Not only that, but the dialogue contains some of the most hilarious zingers I have heard in some time.  Trust me, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard the term, “Salem Witch Bitch”.  My favorite line though was when Abigail tells Cindy, “Okay, let’s fantasy fuck now!” 

Weirdly, the first time someone says, “fantasy fuck”, it is uncensored.  However, whenever it is said again, the “fuck” is muted out.  Was director Victor Luminera (who sadly never made another movie) going for a PG-13 rating?  The world may never know.

No matter how shitty the whole thing looks and how incoherent some of the editing is, one thing is undeniably fantastic:  The theme song, “Beware of the 4-D Witch”.  Holy shit, this song fucking rocks.  You’ll instantly be tapping your toes to this little ditty.  It’s quite the earworm and is sure to stick in your brain long after the movie is over.  The rest of the music, which consists of library music, stolen bits from classical works like “Night on Bald Mountain”, and even some Pink Floyd, is all over the place, which suits the movie to a tee.

The editing is so jarring and inept during the sex scenes that you have to wonder if this was at one time a hardcore production that was edited down for general release.  If so, that lost version should be as sought after as London After Midnight.  We need a pristine copy of that, pronto.  Are you listening, Criterion Collection?

And I haven’t even gotten to the truly insane shit yet.  Like the scene where a woman pulls a snake out of her ass and masturbates with it.  Or when Abigail wants Cindy to bang the corpse of her friend.  Sure, the subplot about Abigail turning Cindy’s brother into a vampire (who sports silly looking overlong fangs) feels like an unfinished student film that was edited in there to get the movie up to feature length.  Sure, the long scenes of him walking around Chinatown were unnecessary.  Sure, we didn’t need not one but TWO scenes of ducks waddling around for no good reason.  However, if any of this made sense, you’d be profoundly disappointed. 

The astral projection effects are admittedly cool, if a bit overused.  The shots of dime store Halloween masks backlit by flashlights that loom ominously in front of the camera are the most effective.  Some of the psychedelic scenes are straight-up hysterical though.  I’m specifically thinking of the trip scene where upside down images are projected over somebody’s vacation footage.  If I had to guess, there was a mess-up at the film lab and the director just passed it off as a “freak-out”.

It’s enough to make anyone say what the (fantasy) fuck?

So, let me break down that *** rating for you.  In terms of “quality”, it’s a * movie through and through.  However, I have to give it **** because that theme song is killer.  I’d be tempted to split the difference and give it a ** ½ rating, but I must give it at least *** since I haven’t doubted my sanity this much while watching a movie since maybe Troll 2.  That, if you were unaware, is about the highest praise I can bestow on a film.

AKA:  Psyched by the 4-D Witch.

DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA (2020) **

I’ve always preferred David Byrne’s work with Talking Heads to his solo stuff, so I was probably already predisposed to be left cold by American Utopia.  However, when I saw him perform excerpts from this on Saturday Night Live, I was intrigued enough to check out the complete performance on HBO Max.  As it turns out, it’s basically the equivalent of a listening to an entire album that only has a handful of good songs. 

The concept of the show isn’t particularly novel as it is more or less a rehash of Stop Making Sense.  It begins with Byrne alone on stage and before long he is eventually joined by more and more (too many, in fact) musicians and dancers as the night progresses.  The choreography for each number becomes increasingly chaotic as the performers move around the stage like a high school drumline on ecstasy. 

The big problem is that many of the songs find Byrne wallowing in a lot of world music-infused numbers that just drone on and on.  The film also stops cold at a few junctures for heavy handed sermonizing (no surprise as it was directed by Spike Lee) which immediately deflate whatever momentum it had started to build up.  When Byrne plays the hits (you know, the Talking Heads stuff), the film comes to life.  It’s like a switch goes on and it becomes an entirely different movie.  (“Road to Nowhere” and “Burning Down the House” are the obvious highlights.)  Once he goes back to his incessant caterwauling, it lost me. 

There’s even a scene where Byrne hoots and wails in tribute to Dadaism.  He informs us the Dada movement was about making nonsense as a way to help us make sense of our lives.  If you ask me, Byrne should start making sense. 

AKA:  American Utopia.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: SPIRAL (1998) ½ *

I hated the American remake of The Ring so much that it took me nearly two decades to get around to watching the original.  I was surprised to find out that while it was no classic, it wasn’t half bad.  Because of that, I decided to take a chance on the sequel, Spiral.  Man, this one’s even worse than the American version!

Spiral is mostly notable for its odd release.  In Japan, the studio was banking on it to be a hit, so they released it simultaneously with the original.  I guess the thinking was you’d go see The Ring, and as soon as the credits rolled, you’d run across the hall of the theater and see this one.  Needless to say, it was a complete failure, and it was quickly forgotten about long before the American remake even came out.  It was also effectively written out of existence by the “official” sequel, The Ring 2, which completely ignored the events of this movie, and with good reason. 

It’s a shame too, because it has an OK hook.  Ando (Koichi Sato) performs an autopsy on the dead husband from the first movie.  Since they were old school friends, he decides to do some investigating into his pal’s death, and stumbles upon the cursed videotape.  Like a dumbass, he watches the tape, but unlike the previous victims, he winds up having a very different experience. 

In the first film, the rules were dumb and overly simple, but they were still rules.  This one bends over backwards to not only rewrite those rules, but to add in a bunch of gratuitous nonsense on top of the already shaky mythology.  All this does is severely bog down the second half of the movie.  I hate it when sequels overexplain the killer’s backstory, but this might be the most egregious case I’ve ever seen.  It involves DNA, cloning a dead son, and a stupid explanation that the deaths from the VHS tape are really caused by a virus.  What?  Also, it turns Sadako from a ghostly girl with messy hair into some sort of half-assed campy femme fatale?!?  The meta shit at the end is dumb too, and the “happy” ending is too much to take.  It also drags on forever.  

Whatever director Hideo Nakata did right in the first one is completely undone by new director Joji Iida, who promptly does an about face in terms of quality.  It’s like he saw what worked in the original and made a conscious decision to do the exact opposite.  The subsequent sequels wisely ignored this one and went back to the drawing board, hewing closer to the original film.  I’m such an idiot I’ll probably wind up watching them eventually. 

AKA:  Rasen.  AKA:  Ring:  The Spiral.  AKA:  Helix.  AKA:  Ring 4:  The Spiral. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: THE FIFTH FLOOR (1978) ** ½

From Howard Avedis, the director of Mortuary, comes this off the wall psychological thriller.  It’s sometimes frustratingly uneven, but the all-star cast keeps you watching.  If you’re a fan of Bo Hopkins (like me), you’ll definitely want to check it out as he delivers a top-drawer performance as the disgusting, rapey orderly who makes Diane Hull’s life a living Hell.

The opening sequence is a laugh riot.  Hull is distraught over breaking up with her boyfriend, so she goes to a disco to let off a little steam.  She winds up mistakenly taking a poisoned drink intended for another patron (you know how those vindictive bartenders are) that’s loaded with strychnine.  This leads to a hysterical scene where Hull gets on the dance floor and fights to remain conscious, all the while disco dancing as if her life depended on it (which, it kind of does).

The disco itself is a hoot.  It looks like a VFW that’s holding a charity disco night.  Even though there’s hardly anyone there, the club must be hopping enough to nab a disco queen like Pattie Brooks for the headliner. 

Anyway, since the toxicology report shows poison in her system, the cops think Hull tried to kill herself.  They stick her in a psych ward against her will where she must remain until the quacks there perform an evaluation.  Not only does she have to contend with the various nutjobs who are locked up alongside her, Hull must resist the advances of Hopkins, who sets his sights on worming his way into her pants by any means necessary. 

The Fifth Floor is a pretty good Woman Trying to Convince Everyone She’s Not Crazy movie.  It kind of straddles the line between horror flick and a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-style drama.  It’s all rather tame (although Hull does get a couple of solid nude scenes), so horror fans will probably be disappointed.  However, the cast is top notch, so at least it’s never boring.

Hull does a fine job in the lead role, but it’s Video Vacuum favorite Bo Hopkins who takes the acting honors as the sleazy orderly.  Remember all those movies where he played a sleazy sheriff?  Well, imagine that, but instead of wearing a cowboy hat, he wears a nurse’s smock. 

The supporting cast is stellar too.  Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund is a nut who dresses up like a doctor so he can examine the new patients.  Mel Ferrer is the unsympathetic doctor who neglects Hull.  Patti D’Arbanville is the pregnant patient who buddies up with Hull.  Sharon (It’s Alive) Farrell is Hull’s temperamental roommate.  We also have Earl (Terminator 2) Boen, Alice (“Large Marge” from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure) Nunn, Michael (The Hills Have Eyes) Berryman, and Tracey (Repo Man) Walter as the assorted featured patients.  Because of the cast’s efforts, The Fifth Floor is worth a look, even if the film itself never quite goes to the top floor.