THE EMPTY MAN (2020) * ½

A mountain climber in Bhutan falls into a cavern where he is possessed by a spirit that erupts from an ugly skeletal altar.  His buddies rescue him and bring him to an abandoned cabin and… it doesn’t end well.  Flashforward a few years.  An ex-cop (James Badge Dale) is looking into the mysterious suicide of a family friend.  Could her death and the reaper-like specter be connected?

The pre-title sequence clocks in at a whopping twenty minutes and probably could’ve been its own effective, self-contained short film as it plays like a marriage between The Thing and Evil Dead.  From there, the movie turns into a mash-up of Candyman and The Ring with a group of teens blowing into a bottle and calling upon the titular ghost before dying an untimely death three days later.  This section of the flick is a bit of a comedown from the opening, but it isn’t bad.  

Unfortunately, once Dale becomes the sole focus, things go in the toilet PDQ.  This section of the film is slow moving, meandering, confusing, and dull.  It also takes up the bulk of the running time, which is a whopping one-hundred-and-thirty-seven minutes, which is not the optimal length for something like this.  Heck, this would’ve probably still been a mess at eighty-seven minutes, but at the very least, it would’ve been fifty fucking minutes shorter.

Dale is not a bad actor, but he is given zilch to work with here.  The rest of the cast are bland and unmemorable too.  Heck, you know you’re in trouble when your movie features Stephen Root as an aloof cult leader and he barely even registers.  

The Empty Man (which was based on a comic book I’ve never heard of) was directed by David Prior, who as far as I can tell is NOT David A. Prior, who made Sledge Hammer.  As bad as Sledge Hammer was, it was certainly better than this crap.  You know a movie is bad when you start wishing David A. Prior had directed it.  

I can’t completely write it off because the first half-hour or so works.  The problem is after that, you’re still left with almost two hours’ worth of crap to sit through.  

REMINISCENCE (2021) ***

Reminiscence is chockful of several genre cliches that have been fashioned together Frankenstein style.  First and foremost, it’s an old timey detective story complete with hardboiled narration, a tough-talking Girl Friday, and a missing dame plotline.  It’s also a pre-apocalypse movie where the world is on the verge of going to shit, but people still go about their business as if nothing’s happening.  It’s also a pseudo-Virtual Reality flick as people hop into sensory deprivation tanks and relive old memories.  

The central premise is interesting enough as the characters would all rather live in the past than face a present that includes rising tides that leave the city of Miami a virtual wading pool.  They choose to relive memories through virtual reality than face the reality in front of them.  Sure, it may be a tad on the nose, but it works.

Like many genre mash-ups, Reminiscence is a bit goofy.  I mean are we supposed to believe that in the future people are still gonna dress like they’re in the ‘40s and frequent jazz clubs where sultry singers perform musical numbers?  That kind of unabashed earnestness and commitment to the bit helps keep the film afloat even when the plot is spinning its wheels.  

A good cast helps too.  Hugh Jackman is great as the obsessed hero looking for his long-lost love, who may also be a pawn in an elaborate political scheme.  Thandiwe Newton is a lot of fun as Jackman’s feisty partner, who is more adept at handling herself in a shootout than he is.  Rebecca Ferguson is a bit bland as Jackman’s mystery lady, but that suits her character, who predictably is more than what she appears to be.  

After a fun, breezy set-up (complete with a neat first act twist to boot), things sort of dawdle in the middle section.  Just as Jackman chases his lost love, the movie chases its own tail.  Thankfully, the climax is satisfying.  Without spoiling anything, I will say it’s equal parts downbeat and bittersweet as it gives its characters closure while simultaneously allowing them to perpetually go back on their bullshit.

In short, Reminiscence is a flick worth remembering.  

THE NIGHT GOD SCREAMED (1971) **

Jeanne Crain comes home to find her preacher husband (Alex Nicol from The Screaming Skull) has been crucified by some religious fanatics.  She testifies in court and the nuts are put behind bars.  While babysitting one night, she begins receiving threatening phone calls, and eventually, she and a quartet of kids (children of the judge who sentenced the Jesus freaks) are plagued by attacks from a hooded figure bent on revenge.

The Night God Screamed is novel in that the killers aren’t Satanists but Jesus freaks.  It’s a clever enough twist to make it memorable, but the execution isn’t strong enough to make it worth watching.  The opening scenes of the gonzo cult leader butting heads with Nicol are well done.  However, the ensuing courtroom drama is kind of lethargic and takes some of the wind out of the movie’s sails.  

The film switches gears in the second half when it becomes a home invasion thriller.  The skull the killers leave hanging as a warning to Crain is pretty cool looking, but it’s kind of all downhill from there.  The constant bickering between Crain and the bratty teens she’s protecting quickly grows tiresome, and the cat and mouse suspense scenes are drawn out and lack punch.  The twist ending is OK.  However, it's less successful when it tries to toss in yet another twist in there at the last second.  It just doesn’t quite work as it feels rushed, sloppy, and unfinished.   

Of course, this was trading in on the Manson hysteria.  Director Lee (The Manhandlers) Madden’s direction is much too staid to make for a crackling thriller.  I dug the ‘70s vibe and all, but the pacing is much too slow and the highlights too few to make it worth a look.  I guess we can give it points for doing the whole Babysitter in Peril thing before Halloween made it a cliché.  

The Night God Yawned was more like it.

AKA:  Scream.

WITCH FROM NEPAL (1986) ***

(Programming Note:  I fell behind posting reviews this summer.  I’m still a month or so behind, but eventually I will get to reviewing the 31 Movies of Horror-Ween goodness that I usually churn out this time of year.  This year the theme will be The Roku Horror Picture Show, where I will be showcasing a movie found on the many channels I have discovered on my Roku player.  Until then, I still have to play catch-up.  Fortunately, as I always do, I plan to extend the Halloween festivities into November with the traditional Halloween Hangover, a series of reviews that I just couldn’t cram into one month.  The good news is many of the backlogged reviews are for horror flicks, so if you are looking for horror, there should be plenty of it until Horror-Ween belatedly kicks into gear.)

Chow Yun-Fat (the same year as A Better Tomorrow) stars as an artist who takes a trip to Nepal with his girlfriend.  They go on a guided tour, and Chow breaks his leg when he falls from an elephant.  While in the hospital, a mysterious woman heals his wounds, and later, he helps her escape from the authorities who want to deport her.  She then teaches him how to do magic, and pretty soon, he’s making coffee with his mind.  Eventually, they fall in love, but trouble brews when her jealous ex, a mystical shaman, arrives on the scene to break up the happy couple.  

If you’re a fan of Chow Yun-Fat, you’re probably going to be disappointed that he doesn’t get into a bunch of slow-motion gun battles with the witch.  Sadly, that is not the case, but there are a handful of nutty moments here that make it watchable.  Chief among them:  The scene where the villain rips a dog in half using telekinesis!  

The scene where the witch fixes Chow’s leg is great too.  Instead of using splints or casts, she merely pushes him off a ten-story balcony, flies down to meet him halfway, touches him sensuously, and voila!  He lands on the ground with a completely healed leg!  

Witch from Nepal has a choppy feel to it as scenes kind of peter out and/or end abruptly before moving along to the next sequence.  The stuff with Chow and the witch feels like a fish out of water romantic comedy in the vein of Splash, which runs against the grain of the horror elements.  On the action side of things, the acrobatic swordfights are decent, although there really aren’t too many of them.  

With its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach, it goes without saying that Witch from Nepal is going to be more than a little uneven.  However, it’s almost always entertaining and the highlights (there’s an excellent zombie attack) more than outweigh the weaker portions of the film.  Chow’s climactic showdown with the bone-wielding baddie who howls like a wildcat in heat managed to make me think of Highlander, Superman 2, and Evil Dead all at the same time, which is quite a feat, and ultimately, that’s recommendation enough to watch it right there.

DEATH RIDER IN THE HOUSE OF VAMPIRES (2021) ****

Imagine if Jess Franco made a spaghetti western for Troma and that gives you an idea what Glenn Danzig’s Death Rider in the House of Vampires is all about.

I knew Death Rider in the House of Vampires was going to be something special from the very first scene in which Death Rider (Devon Sawa) rides his horse through the desert alongside a topless companion (porn star Tasha Reign) while the theme song (sung by… who else?  Glenn Danzig!) blared, “Death Ride rides… a-lone!”  The lyric, of course, makes no sense because Death Rider is NOT alone.  He’s got a topless chick with him!  

As you can probably tell, Death Rider in the House of Vampires is destined to become a classic based on that first scene alone.

Death Rider may not ride alone, but he sure rides.  And rides.  And rides.  And rides.  Danzig establishes this fact for minutes on end while the soundtrack goes on and on.  And he continues to ride until the title sequence (an homage to spaghetti westerns) kicks in and… there is no music!  Odd.  Most directors would’ve put the music over the credits and left the riding scene silent.  Glenn Danzig is not most directors.  This is just another example of how he breaks with all forms of traditional cinema and blazes his own cinematic path.  

Let’s, for instance, talk about his use of zooms.  As we all know, Jess Franco is the master of the pointless zoom.  Danzig doubles down and matches the master zoom for zoom.  Danzig’s zooms have the same rambling, unfocused, listless, gratuitous quality as Franco’s.  Experienced directors could try a thousand times to replicate the look and feel of a Franco zoom, and somehow fail miserably, coming off looking like a father with a new camcorder who just figured out how the zoom buttons works.  Somehow, Glenn cracked the code.  

Not only that, but Danzig also managed to achieve the same kind of beautiful looking shots and majestic use of color Franco is known for.  Then, like Jess, it’s back to long zooms, awkwardly staged dialogue scenes, and romantic interludes that look like they came out of a porno.  The change in quality from scene to scene could give a viewer whiplash.

Yes, just like Jess Franco.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Franco was Danzig’s inspiration after all.  I mean Danzig spent all those years with The Misfits singing songs based on B movies like Horror Hotel, Return of the Fly, and Astro Zombies.  If Astro Zombies is where Danzig set his cinematic bar, then he exceeded his grasp with Death Rider in the House of Vampires.  

Danzig’s previous film, Verotika was a mess, but it was a fitfully fun mess that contained glimpses of a true mad genius at work.  It pleases me to no end to report that Death Rider in the House of Vampires confirms my suspicions and Danzig makes good on that promise.  And then some.

You might be tempted to call Death Rider in the House of Vampires a “bad movie”, but this is one of those films that is beyond good or bad.  This is art.  Like Ed Wood before him, Glenn Danzig is blissfully unaware of his shortcomings as a director, and yet, he plunges fervently forward, putting his unique vision on the screen in bold, brazen fashion.  

I think the reason why I never did anything creative in a professional setting is because I continually doubt myself during the creative process.  A little voice always seems to pop up inside my head and question me relentlessly, repeatedly asking, “Is this any good?”  This form of self-criticism cripples an artist from achieving any sort of forward momentum when it comes to creating a work of fiction.  Danzig has no voice in his head.  He just goes for it, guns blazing, and you have to respect that and his vision.  Of course, it’s easy to respect a vision that includes:

• Minutes-long close-ups of a woman’s ass as she rides through the desert.  

• Insert shots of people on horseback that look like they were filmed on one of those kid’s horse rides they have in front of K-Mart where you put in a quarter, and it rocks back and forth.  

• Scenes of vampires biting their victims’ throats and then letting blood spurt everywhere, EXCEPT in their mouths.  (Pardon me if I’m wrong, but aren’t vampires supposed to DRINK the blood?)   

Danzig also assembled an amazing cast.  We have Julian (Warlock) Sands as the main vampiric villain who mostly sits on a throne looking puzzled.  Many times, you wonder if his character is busy contemplating something or if Sands is just waiting to for Danzig to call cut.  Shots are held so long that it becomes almost a game of chicken.  Who will flinch first?  The actor, the director, or the audience?  Fellow director Eli Roth is quite good as a gunslinger named “Drac Cassidy”.  (The characters all have names that are a hodgepodge of western heroes and vampires.)  Kim Director is a revelation as a busty bloodsucking bordello babe.  If they ever made an Elvira biopic, she’d be a shoo-in.  Danny Trejo is also in there too, because this is exactly the kind of movie Danny Trejo would be in.

It’s also fun seeing Danzig in front of the camera as well.  He’s pretty intimidating as the badass “Bad Bathory”.  Remember in the ‘90s when they were hyping him to be Wolverine in the X-Men movie?  Well, in his brief screen time here, you get a sense he might’ve been spot-on casting after all.  

I can honestly say Death Rider in the House of Vampires has the potential to be the next Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I can envision midnight screenings of this thing with audience members dressed as the characters and shouting dialogue at the screen and singing along with the theme song.  If not Rocky Horror, then definitely Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Either way, Danzig has given fans of out-there cinema a real treat.  See it with as many people as possible.  You won’t regret it.

RAPSITTIE STREET KIDS: BELIEVE IN SANTA (2002) NO STARS

I am proud to say that my daughter inherited my love of bad movies.  Throughout the pandemic, we have watched many episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 together, and it has been fun seeing her experience so many cheesy classics for the first time.  Little did I know, she has been looking for other grade Z flicks for us to enjoy.  When she brought Rapsittie Street Kids:  Believe in Santa to my attention, I was ashamed to say I had never even heard of it.  When we watched it together, we both agreed it was one of the worst pieces of cinematic crap we’ve ever seen.  

This is truly one of those proud parent moments. 

The student has surpassed the master.  

The legend surrounding this Christmas special is much more entertaining than the special itself.  It appeared only once on the old WB network before resurfacing on the internet in recent years, becoming something of a cult item.  It contains some of the worst CGI animation I have ever seen.  It was made in 2002, but the animation looks worse than the Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” music video that came out almost twenty years earlier.  I know computer animation wasn’t as sophisticated then as it is today, but there’s no excuse for it to look like a Nintendo 64 video game.

The legend goes that the director “didn’t know” the animation was that bad until he watched it at home on television like everybody else.  I don’t know if I buy that story, but it’s more believable than the actual plot.  That is also supposed to explain why the grandmother character speaks in complete gibberish as the audio file was severely corrupted and nobody bothered it fix it.  (The only intelligible word she says is “Christmas”, which in itself is something of a Christmas miracle.) 

The plot involves a bully who receives a ratty teddy bear as Christmas present from a kid who speaks solely in rap verses.  She is at first annoyed by the gift and throws it in the garbage.  When she learns it was a present from the kid’s dead mother (“before she went to the angels”), the bratty chick then embarks on a quest to retrieve the bear.

Fortunately, all this clocks in at forty minutes, but it feels like an eternity.  It’s an affront to the eyes, ears, and brain.  As someone who has suffered through plenty of bad movies in his time, I have to admit, this is one of the worst.  I couldn’t be prouder of my daughter.  

The most amazing thing about Rapsittie (Get it?  Like “Rhapsody”, except it is like “Rap City”, except they just fucked up the spelling?) Street Kids:  Believe in Santa is that it sports a solid cast of vocal talent.  We have Bart Simpson herself, Nancy Cartwright, The Ice Cream Man himself, Clint Howard, none other than The Little Mermaid, Jodi Benson, and MARK FUCKIN’ HAMILL!  Apparently, Hamill has no memory of recording his lines for this thing.  Again, I don’t know if I buy that part of the legend.  Instead, I’d like to think he used some sort of Jedi Mind Trick on himself to make him forget he was even in this thing.     

WITCHOUSE (1999) **

David DeCoteau directed this cheap Charles Band production.  It feels like a Full Moon riff on Night of the Demons, without the over-the-top gore, nudity, or fun.  Heck, with a few trims it could’ve easily been a PG-13 flick.

A group of friends are invited to party at a spooky mansion by their goth friend Elizabeth (Ashley McKinney Taylor).  Almost immediately, she has them join hands for a séance, which is never a good sign.  Little do the friends know, Elizabeth intends on resurrecting Lilith (Ariauna Albright), a powerful witch who was burned at the stake during the Salem witch hunt.  The friends also happen to be descendants of the men who burned Lilith at the stake, and it doesn’t take long for her to take her revenge.

DeCoteau really overdoes it on the lightning crashes and thunder sound effects as they are often way too loud and sometimes threaten to drown out the dialogue.  We get it, Dave.  It’s a dark and stormy night.  You don’t have to hammer it home.

I don’t know if I wound up watching an edited version (which is sadly, an all-too common experience on some streaming services) or what, but every time there is a sex scene it is awkwardly edited so you can’t see any nudity.  Even worse is the part where one of the sexy houseguests announces she’s going to take a shower and then they cut away to something else.  I’m not saying some gratuitous T & A could’ve salvaged this ho-hum affair, but it certainly couldn’t have hurt.  The kills are all relatively bloodless too, although we do get one pretty good head-ripping decapitation.  It also doesn’t help that all the characters are grating shrews and/or douchebag bros.  

On the plus side, it doesn’t waste any time getting to the point.  The seventy-two-minute running time also helps, and DeCoteau keeps the pace running at an acceptable clip.  That doesn’t make it recommended, but it does save Witchouse from being condemned.  

Two sequels followed.