HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: INVITATION TO HELL (1984) *** ½

Susan Lucci walks into traffic and gets ran over by a distracted limo driver.  Before he even realizes what he’s done, she pops up like Nosferatu, zaps him with electricity out of her finger, and fries him to a crisp.  That’s just the start of this absolutely nutty Made for TV horror flick directed by the legendary Wes Craven (the same year as A Nightmare on Elm Street).

Robert Urich (the same year as The Ice Pirates) stars as a computer tech whose new job finally allows him to move his family to the good part of town.  Lucci is the head of the local country club where people are just DYING to be a member.  Urich and his wife (Joanna Cassidy) eventually learn that joining a country club can be HELL.

Invitation to Hell is a very ‘80s meditation on the evils of upward mobility, keeping up with the joneses, and the permeating snobby country club mentality.  There’s also a little bit of the old Invaders from Mars influence in there too as once people go to the country club, they don’t come back quite the same.  The ending is fucking nuts too.  You won’t believe it.  It’s sort of similar in a way to the finale of Elm Street except with… hell, I won’t spoil it.  (The scenes of Urich working in his science lab are kind of reminiscent of the mad science-y stuff in Craven’s Deadly Friend too.)

While this won’t rank up there with Craven’s best, for a TV movie, it’s pretty badass.  It’s fast moving, and there’s never a wasted scene.  The silly premise could’ve been severely bungled in lesser hands, but Craven leans into the film’s weirder moments and indulges them, resulting in something much more memorable than your typical TV Movie of the Week.

Much of the credit goes to the cast, who play all of this very seriously.  Urich is fantastic.  I may be biased as I am a huge Ice Pirates fan, but he should’ve won an Emmy for keeping a straight face during the last ten minutes.  No matter how great he is, check out this supporting cast:  We have Soleil Moon Frye (the same year as Punky Brewster) and Barret Oliver (the same year as The Neverending Story) as his kids, Kevin McCarthy as his boss, Joe Regalbuto as his best friend, and bits by Craven regulars Michael Berryman and Nicholas Worth.  Add some top-notch cinematography by Dean (Halloween) Cundey and you have yourself one hell (no pun intended) of an entertaining flick. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: B.C. BUTCHER (2016) * ½

B.C. Butcher comes billed as the world’s first prehistoric slasher movie.  While it takes a while before it leans into the slasher elements, it does kick off with a juicy gut-munching scene.  The good news is it’s only 51 minutes long.  The bad news is it wears out its welcome almost immediately.  Hey, look on the bright side:  It’s only 51 minutes long.  I for one can’t imagine sitting through 90 minutes of this. 

Neandra (Leilani Fideler) is the leader of a tribe of sexy cavegirls who has the hots for a caveman named Rex (Kato Kaelin!!!).  She’s completely unaware that the tribeswomen are all secretly banging him on the side.  After Neandra kills a cavegirl for messing around with her man, a disfigured caveman takes revenge by killing off the women in the tribe one by one. 

B.C. Butcher was released by Troma, and while it’s pretty weak in just about every way, it’s definitely the kind of thing that’s in their wheelhouse.  It looks better than many of their films, but it’s just as insufferable as many of their failed horror-comedies.  The ladies in the cast do what they can, although I can’t help but imagine that this would’ve been a hundred times more tolerable if the cavegirls showed some skin.  We do get a cavegirl catfight set to faux-Benny Hill music though. 

If they couldn’t deliver on the skin, they could’ve at least doubled down on the gore and/or comedy.  With the exception of the opening gore scene, most of the kills are bloodless or (even worse) occur offscreen.  There’s only one real laugh in the whole thing too.  (When a tribe member announces she has to use the “little cavegirl’s room”.)  Heck, even some unintentional laughs would’ve been appreciated.

B.C. Butcher was directed by 17-year-old Kansas Bowling.  I can’t say the results are close to good, but I can say I was impressed by the fact she was able to assemble a cast that included Kato Kaelin (who flubs most of his lines), Kadeem Hardison (who narrates), and Rodney Bingenheimer (who introduces a caveman band who play instruments made of watermelons).  She was also somehow able to get the rights to play “Alley Oop” over the credits, so respect.  Because of that, I can’t completely dismiss it.

Bowling later went on to play one of the Manson girls in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: THE RETURN OF CHANDU (1934) ** ½

Bela Lugosi stars as a mesmerist named Chandu who is trying to save a princess (Maria Alba) from being kidnapped by an Egyptian cult who intend on sacrificing her.  Since it was re-edited from a serial, that means Chandu saves her about every twenty minutes or so before she is promptly recaptured by the bad guys.

Sure, The Return of Chandu is a bit repetitive in nature, but it gives you a nice opportunity to see Bela Lugosi doing everything you’d want to see Bela Lugosi do.  He sports a ring that turns him invisible.  (It’s kind of like his belt in The Phantom Creeps).  He hypnotizes people just like he did in Dracula.  (He even has a little spotlight over his eyes.)  The villains also use poisoned flowers to immobilize any woman who sniffs them, just like in The Corpse Vanishes.  Not only that, but you get to see Bela Lugosi playing a rare hero role, which is always nice.

The Return of Chandu was also riding high on the tails of The Mummy (and America’s fascination with Egypt, which was popular during the time).  There are even subplots about stolen mummies and reincarnation (which was also all the rage at the time).  The fact that many of the elements are familiar to Lugosi fans kind of makes this like a comfort movie as it often plays like a greatest hits collection of his other movies.

This feature was edited from the first four chapters of the serial, The Return of Chandu.   Because it wasn’t taken from an entire twelve-chapter serial, it flows together much more naturally than a lot of these things typically do.  The brisk sixty-minute running time also helps to keep the storyline moving, even if admittedly, there ain’t a whole lot of story to go around.

It was an early serial, so the last-minute escapes aren’t as daring or elaborate as some of the stuff you’d see in the ‘40s and ‘50s.  In one cliffhanger, Bela simply moves out of the way of a flying poisoned dart.  While it’s certainly creaky in places and more than a tad repetitive, The Return of Chandu should fit the bill for most indiscriminate Bela fans.

AKA:  The Return of Chandu the Magician.  AKA:  Chandu’s Return.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: EDGE OF THE AXE (1989) ** ½

Edge of the Axe is Spanish horror maestro Jose Ramon (Vampyres) Larraz’s take on an American slasher movie.  As is usually the case when foreigners try to make their film look as American as possible, Larraz falls just short of the mark.  It looks okay on a surface level, but there is something that feels off about the whole thing, which kind of adds to the fun.

A small town is beset by an axe murderer who goes around hacking up young women.  The suspects include a two-timing hot-tempered fumigator (Page Mosely), the town’s asshole sheriff (Fred Holliday), and the creepy church organist (Spanish horror legend Jack Taylor).  Naturally, it’s up to the computer geek drifter hero (Barton Faulks) to put the pieces together and solve the murders. 

The fact the film features a computer geek for a hero is notable.  In 1989, computers in slashers were still something of a novelty.  These scenes look so dated now that they give the movie an added cheese factor that most of its contemporaries lack.  I particularly loved the silly scenes where Faulks keeps in touch with his girlfriend through a crude form of instant messenger.  Every time they send a message to one another, it’s read aloud by a funny echo-y voice that I guess is supposed to be the computer “talking”.  I wonder if this is where AOL got the inspiration for the “You’ve Got Mail” dude.

Larraz does a fine job on the stalking scenes.  The opening sequence in a car wash is the most memorable.  Unfortunately, the axe-wielding maniac, who sports a cool white mask and black poncho, hates animals just as much as the humans.  There’s a grisly moment when the killer decapitates a pig and puts its head in someone’s bed.  (Godfather, eat your heart out!)  That scene delivers on shock value, but the part with the dead dog kind of crosses the line.

Overall, this is a solid, if unspectacular slasher.  Those looking to get a quick dose of stalking and slashing (or… in this case… chopping), will probably get their money’s worth.  Fans of Larraz will enjoy seeing his decidedly European style transposed into the very American milieu.  It probably needed one or two more showstopping sequences (I dug the severed head gag) to really put it over the top, but Edge of the Axe is just sharp enough for me to give it a marginal recommendation.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: AUTOPSY OF A GHOST (1968) * ½

When Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, and Cameron Mitchell go south of the border to make a Mexican horror comedy, you know you’re in for… well… something.  Things kick off with a truly impressive puppet show opening credits sequence.  Sadly, it’s all downhill from there.

Rathbone stars as a ghost named Canuto who has spent the last four hundred years living in a basement talking to his own wisecracking skeleton.  The devil (Carradine) appears and makes Canuto a bargain:  If he can make a woman fall in love with him to the point of sacrificing herself for love, he’ll let Canuto go to Heaven.  Things get complicated when an absentminded inventor (Mitchell) and his family move into the mansion.

Autopsy of a Ghost would’ve been okay if most of the movie revolved around Basil trying to break his curse.  Unfortunately, the bulk of the running time is devoted to the B plot of a wimpy bank teller who embezzled a bunch of money.  A lot of people are out to get the loot for themselves, which leads to a bunch of annoying bullshit that gets in the way of ghostly shenanigans. 

When the film focuses on the three gringo stars, it’s only slightly better.  The scenes of Basil (in his final role) acting alongside his talking skeleton aren’t bad.  (In fact, the effects are well done.)  There’s just not a lot for him to do the rest of the time.  Carradine (who filmed this in Mexico around the same time as much better The Vampires) hams it up as the Devil, but the material he’s given to work with is woefully unfunny.  It especially pains me to say I don’t like a movie in which Cameron Mitchell plays an inventor who creates a robot nanny, but here we are.

Honestly, what can you say about a movie when a puppet show is far and away the best part?

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: DEAD SNOW: RED VS DEAD (2014) **

This sequel to Dead Snow picks up immediately where the first one left off with our hero Martin (Vegar Hoel) fleeing the horde of Nazi Zombies from his winter cabin.  He gets picked up by the police, who think he’s the one responsible for massacring his friends, as they don’t cotton to his story that Nazi Zombies were the ones responsible.  Meanwhile, the Nazi Zombies begin gathering their forces and set out to finish the war they started decades ago.

Like its predecessor, Dead Snow:  Red vs Dead is all over the place.  Much of the intentional humor falls flat or is just plain unfunny.  However, when the film concentrates on zombie carnage, it’s pretty entertaining as there’s plenty of crushed heads, strewn guts, and mashed brains to go around.

Some of the additions to the zombie lore are equally hit and miss.  The idea that zombies can recruit new cadavers to their cause by simply touching their forehead is kind of odd.  Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned bite on the neck?  I did like the subplot where our hero receives an arm transplant from a zombie donor, which grants him zombified powers.  Imagine Evil Dead 2 if Ash and his possessed hand had a détente and that should give you an idea of what to expect. 

There’s some fun to be had here.  The best bits come mostly in the form of little throwaway moments (like the zombie doctor performing emergency surgery on soldiers during the final battle).  For the most part though, Dead Snow:  Red vs Dead is a bit overstuffed and overcrowded.  Take for instance the addition of Martin Starr as the leader of a trio of American zombie hunters.  He’s not bad or anything, it’s just that he and his Star Wars-obsessed cohorts feel like they came out of an entirely different movie.  Either that, or they were just shipped over to cater to the American market.  If writer/director Tommy Wirkola had whittled this thing down a bit (it clocks in at a whopping 100 minutes), it might’ve worked.  As it is, the unwieldy running time and abundance of unfunny gags prevent Red vs Dead from coming to life.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: MASSAGE PARLOR MURDERS! (1973) **

A nut is stalking the massage parlors of New York City and killing hookers in gruesome ways.  It’s up to detectives O’Mara (John Moser) and Rizotti (George Spencer) to solve the case and bring the killer to justice.  That is, if they can ever stop making time with hookers and seducing potential witnesses.

Massage Parlor Murders! is at its best during the (surprise, surprise) massage parlor vignettes.  The opening sequence in which a painfully shy customer nervously interacts with his masseuse is funny.  The scenes where the killer murders the working girls are pretty good too.  While they aren’t overly gory, they almost seem like a dime store version of an Italian giallo or something. 

The film really hits a wall during the detective scenes.  They just go on forever and bring the movie to a halt.  Even the oddball comedic touches that don’t exactly land (like the ballet scene) are still amusing next to the monotonous stuff with the detectives.  Other sequences are really drawn out (like the swinger pool party) or are completely botched (like the ending) which often makes the seventy-nine-minute running time feel much longer. 

Moser and Spencer are boring and forgettable in the leads, but the supporting cast offers some bright spots.  The Last House on the Left’s Sandra Peabody has a winning presence as a murder victim’s roommate who is romanced by Moser.  Basic Instinct’s George Dzundza (who also acted as the film’s assistant director) has a memorable turn as a murder suspect nicknamed “Mr. Creepy”.  We also have a cameo by the typically weird Brother (The ‘Burbs) Theodore as an occult expert who is consulted during the investigation.  Although their efforts aren’t enough to save the movie, they help make some of the dull detective scenes bearable.

Whenever the girls are using their hands and bodies to pleasure the customers, Massage Parlor Murders! works, but like most massage parlors, it’s all tease and no please (or so I’ve heard).

AKA:  Massage Parlor Hookers.