THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #14: NIGHT OF THE WITCHES (1970) ** ½

(Streamed via Drive-In Classics)

A conman dressed as a preacher (Keith Larsen, who also co-wrote and directed) on the run from the authorities goes to a small island inhabited entirely by witches.  Their leader is the sultry Cassandra (Kathryn Loder from The Big Doll House), who has a pretty sweet deal going on as she lives in a castle full of hot women who perform rituals that require them to execute intricately choreographed dance moves while wielding samurai swords.  The preacher sets his sights on fleecing the women for all their worth, but he soon learns they have other plans for him.

Night of the Witches starts off with a great, surprising, and funny scene where the phony baloney preacher threatens a woman’s soul with damnation for fornicating on the beach.  He then conveniently gets rid of her boyfriend before worming his way into her pants.  Every time he rants and raves about Jesus, a hilarious sound effect of a choir chanting, “AMEN!” is dubbed into the action.  (Remember the “Randolph Scott” chorus from Blazing Saddles?  It’s kind of like that.)  That’s your first tip-off this won’t be your average run-of-the-mill horror flick.  

The movie works in fits and starts, but it’s pretty amusing and memorable, even if the seventy-four-minute running time sometimes feels much longer.  Some of the subplots bog things down a bit, like when Cassandra and her minions off a Sydney Greenstreet impersonator in a witchy ceremony.  The humor is a little uneven too.  While Larsen’s antics are funny, the supporting comic relief characters and fast-motion scenes are lame and ill-fitting.  

Since this was the late ‘60s/early ‘70s after all, there’s a lot of astrology-inspired horse hockey involved as the witches refer to the men by their zodiac signs.  Loder, who has a sexy Barbara Steele quality about her, makes all the stuff with the witches work.  Whenever she and Larsen are on screen, it’s fun.  Too bad there’s a boring third-wheel romantic lead who kind of mucks thing up about halfway through.

Overall, Night of the Witches is just weird enough to be memorable.  It’s not necessarily weird enough to be good, however.  It didn’t exactly cast a spell over me, but I enjoyed myself most of the time.

THE CLASS REUNION (1972) * ½

Marsha Jordan, Rene Bond, Sandy Carey, and a bunch of others gather at a hotel for their class reunion.  (“The Class of ‘69”.)  One guy invites everyone back to his room to watch old footage of them partying it up and having sex in their old college days.  (It’s just footage from College Girls and is only meant to pad out the running time.  Plus, it’s tinted red for some reason.)  The classmates get so turned on watching the movie that they decide to have an impromptu orgy right then and there.  Afterwards, the friends pair off for more fun.

Directed by A.C. Stephen, and co-written by Ed Wood, The Class Reunion is seriously lacking the hallmarks you’d expect from the duo.  Sure, we do get the obligatory scene that goes from day to night and back again (courtesy of some random footage of a hippie peace protest), and a couple of boom mike shadows, but that’s about it.  The most memorable thing about it is how progressive it is as it contains a love scene between two gay characters (both of whom are portrayed as over the top stereotypes).  I guess it earns points for inclusiveness, but the fact remains, it’s still not very good.  (I can only imagine the audience reactions this scene caused among the raincoat crowd back in ’72.)

I’m a fan of Stephen and Wood’s adult features, but even this one was kind of a test of my patience.  For starters, the sex scenes are filmed in a sloppy manner.  The camera is usually placed too far away from the action and/or zooms around listlessly.  Many scenes also suffer from awkward framing and indifferent editing.  The biggest miscalculation was having the lovely Bond sit and watch from the sidelines instead of participating during the big orgy scene.  At least she gets a decent scene where she seduces her married girlfriend, which is about as tantalizing as the film gets, which is to say… not very.

The film has a disjointed feel as stuff just sort of happens at random.  Maybe it was just me, but it felt like the orgy scene belonged at the end of the movie and not the beginning.  I know I shouldn’t be thinking so hard about this as Stephen and Wood were only using the (very) thin premise as an excuse to show some skin.  That wouldn’t matter if the sex scenes were any good, or if the filmmaking was up to their usual WTF standards.  In the end, The Class Reunion isn’t a worthy reunion between Stephen and Wood.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #13: ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES (2008) **

(Streamed via Fawesome)

Since so many movies from the ‘50s and ‘60s have lapsed into the public domain, virtually anybody can remake them without paying for the rights.  Because of that, I’m surprised many fledgling low budget horror directors don’t take advantage of the opportunity to remake a film with a recognizable title and release it.  You’re almost guaranteed that some sucker (like me) will stumble upon it and watch it.  

The great thing about remaking an old (I say “old” and not “classic”) horror movie like Attack of the Giant Leeches is that you can update it to fit the modern times.  And by “update”, I mean you can put things in your film that just wouldn’t fly during the time of the original’s release.  For example, this version of Attack of the Giant Leeches contains a slow-motion water gun fight between sexy girls wearing cutoff shorts and bikini tops AND a part where a guy gets bitten on the dick by a giant leech… all BEFORE the title card appears on screen.  If you can’t already tell, writer/director Brett (Raiders of the Lost Shark) Kelly knows how to get things started off on the right foot.  

From there, the film follows the basic outline of the original.  A sleazy restaurant owner (Jody Hauke) is constantly bickering with his much-younger, hot-to-trot wife (Shawna McSheffrey).  Meanwhile, giant leeches are in the swamp killing off wildlife before setting their sights on humans.  A young game warden (Mark Courneyea) is baffled by the sudden appearance of corpses drained of all their blood, and because he didn’t see the first part of the movie (or the 1959 original), he doesn’t know that the leeches are the ones responsible.  

Speaking of leeches, the rubbery leeches are OK, I guess.  They look more like tentacles than the creatures from the first movie, which for me was a bit of a miscalculation.  I for one kind of miss the monsters from the original that looked like stuntmen wearing trash bags.  At least Kelly resisted the temptation to make the creatures CGI.

I have to give it to Kelly.  The stuff that hews closest to the original movie is pretty dull and talky.  (Just like the original.)  However, whenever he’s doing his own thing (the aforementioned bikini girls getting into water gun fights), it’s not too shabby.   I imagine if he added some gratuitous sex and gore into the mix, it would’ve been even better as this version is just about as chaste and bloodless as the original.  Ultimately, Attack of the Giant Leeches isn’t all that great, but at least it doesn’t completely suck. 

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #12: DOLLMAN VS. THE DEMONIC TOYS (1993) **

(Streamed via Dark Matter TV)

Before we got Freddy vs. Jason, there was… uh… Dollman vs. the Demonic Toys!  

The Demonic Toys are resurrected by the blood of a bum and it’s up to detective Judith Gray (Tracy Scoggins) to stop them.  Meanwhile, the pint-sized cop Brick Bardo AKA:  Dollman (Tim Thomerson) is busy romancing Nurse Ginger (Melissa Behr), a woman who was shrunk down to his size by aliens (as previously seen in Bad Channels).  After some initial grumbling, Judith finally convinces Dollman to help her bust the demonic toys once and for all and send them back to Hell.

As with the original Dollman, Thomerson’s gruff performance is the best thing about the movie.  He gets some good hardboiled narration, and his world-weariness is amusing, even if it doesn’t translate into actual laughs.  Scoggins is good too as the sexy cop who speaks with a sultry, raspy voice.  Full Moon staple Phil Fondacaro is also around as a security guard who is forced to do the Toys’ bidding.

While the Dollman stuff is mostly adequate, the scenes that revolve around the Demonic Toys are downright painful at times.  It doesn’t help that the foulmouthed “Baby Oopsie-Daisy” (voiced by Frank Welker, Fred from Scooby-Doo) is annoying as Hell and the prolonged sequence where he tries to rape Ginger is unpleasant.

Written by former Tarantino associate Craig Hamman (who would later go on to make Boogie Boy), Dollman vs. the Demonic Toys isn’t good, exactly, but it’s only an hour long, so at least it’s short.  Thank God for small miracles.  (No pun intended.)  Heck, it’s even shorter if you don’t count the long opening title sequence and all the flashbacks to Demonic Toys, Dollman, and Bad Channels.  In fact, there’s only a half-hour or so of new footage altogether.  Although it’s cheap and crass, I can at least say this for director Charles Band:  He was doing multi-franchise crossovers long before Marvel made it popular.  

AKA:  Dollman vs. Demonic Toys.

INDECENT DESIRES (1968) ***

A slack-jawed loser named Zeb (Michael Alaimo) finds a Kewpie doll in a trash can and brings it home.  He cleans it up, makes a little shrine for it, and he soon learns it possesses a voodoo doll-like quality.  Whenever he fondles the doll, the sexy Ann (Sharon Kent) feels it.  Zeb fantasizes about making love to her, and when he realizes he can’t have her, he takes to inflicting pain on the doll.

Indecent Desires is a nutty black and white skin flick full of whiplash-inducing editing, overwrought music cues, random shots of people’s feet, poorly dubbed dialogue, and awkward telephone conversations.  That could mean only one thing:  It’s a Doris Wishman movie!

As far as Doris Wishman films go, it’s pretty good.  It offers a nice balance of your typical softcore action with enough touches of S & M (albeit in semi-supernatural form) to appease the raincoat crowds of the roughie market.  The plot is silly to be sure, but it’s a solid hook for this sort of thing.  It’s also just novel enough to make it a mini-classic.  It certainly helps that Wishman’s pacing is brisk as she swiftly gets you from one scene of Kent undressing to the next.  

Kent (who was also in Wishman’s Too Much Too Often!) is a real presence, always looking sexy in her skimpy outfits and while undressing down to nothing.  Dramatically, she does a fine job of conveying her character’s bewilderment at having phantom orgasms.  Jackie Richards, who plays Ann’s sultry brunette gal pal Babs, is great too.  She looks hot while doing nude ballet exercises and has a memorable scene where she gets so worked up looking at herself nude in the mirror that she has to make out with her reflection.  Richards also participates in a brief foot fetish scene, which allows Wishman to combine her two passions, shots of feet and softcore sex into one sequence!

In short, Indecent Desires is highly desirable for Doris Wishman fans!

AKA:  Indecent Desire.

SLEAZY RIDER (1972) ***

An asshole sheriff (writer/director Roger Gentry) pulls over a biker gang and hassles them.  When one of the biker mamas gives him lip, he gives her a thorough cavity search to teach her some manners.  He runs them out of town, and they stop in the woods for some grubby biker sex.  Once they figure out where the sheriff’s house is, the gang pay him a visit and set out to get a little payback by making his wife and daughter participate in a nasty biker orgy.  

Sleazy Rider is only an hour long, and it’s just as grubby, grimy, and sleazy as the title implies.  The centerpiece scene is the biker initiation of a teenage girl who is made to strip (“Lemme see your cunt!”) and grovel before one of the biker mamas sits on her face and says, “Stick out your tongue, honey!  Here it comes!”  Naturally, this gets the gang all worked up and things quickly escalate into an all-out biker orgy.  The second orgy at the sheriff’s house is lengthier and features more participants isn’t as much fun due to the rapey aspects, but it’s perfectly scummy for the sort of exploitation flick.  We also get a graphic masturbation scene where the sheriff’s daughter pleasures herself on the toilet.  It's also fun seeing Grizzly Adams himself Dan Haggerty (who was actually in Easy Rider as an extra) as one of the bikers (named “Hag”).  Unfortunately, we never get to see how grizzly his adams is as he doesn’t stick around for the first biker orgy and only watches the second.  

I knew this was going to live up to its name when I saw Gentry’s name in the credits.  He’s the madman who also directed The Invitation AKA:  Invitation to Ruin.  This one is a little bit better than that trash classic, mostly because of the biker movie motif and cliches.  

The biggest drawback is the non-ending.  It feels like it’s building up to a big action climax before cutting to a title card stating that the gang were eventually arrested.  Despite the absence of a proper finale, Sleazy Rider is still one of the best biker roughies of the ‘70s.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #11: HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021) *

(Streamed via Peacock)

I was not a fan of the 2018 Halloween reboot.  That said, I am always up for some more Michael Myers stalk n’ slash.  I was not opposed to this immediate sequel.  (This is by my count the third second Halloween movie.)  I mean, there was nowhere left to go but up.  Right?  Right?  Shit.

Say what you will about Halloween ’18 (and I have said plenty, but the short of it is, it sucked), but at least it had a committed performance by Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode.  This one finds her in the hospital healing from her wounds from Michael’s rampage on Halloween night.  (This is by my count the third time Laurie has been admitted to the hospital after being attacked by Michael on Halloween night.)  In the first Halloween 2, she was sidelined in the hospital for two thirds of the movie.  Here, she spends even more time in the hospital bed.  She must have the same agent who got Eric Stoltz his role in Anaconda as she sleeps through half the movie.  Even when she’s awake, she doesn’t do anything meaningful.  Heck, she and Mikey Boy don’t even share any scenes together!  What a fucking rip-off.  In fact, she had more to do in Halloween:  Resurrection, if you can believe it.

Where is Busta Rhymes when you need him?

David Gordon Green is a good director.  It’s just hard to see what he sees in the Halloween franchise.  Aside from the opening firefighter smackdown, there is not much to recommend here.  The kills are brutal, but feel more like they came out of a Rob Zombie Halloween, and you know, I have to say Rob did it better.  

You know you’re in trouble from the opening scene that takes place in 1978 where a young cop has a run-in with Myers.  I’m not opposed to flashbacks showing new characters reacting to the events of the first movie.  What I am opposed to is them continuing to have flashbacks throughout the entire running time that offer no insight to the matter at hand.  

From there, we flashforward to the present for a long ass open mic night scene that features a bunch of ventriloquist shit before Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) hops onstage to commemorate the victims and survivors of the original massacre.  You can say a lot about Haddonfield in the years after Myers’ initial rampage, but it has a thriving open mic night community.  Tommy then receives word that Myers is still on the loose and whips together a mob to take him down themselves.  (Shades of the posse in part 4.)  

At its heart, Halloween is about good vs. evil.  The best moments in the series spring out of Laurie fending off Michael’s attacks, vanquishing evil until the next time October 31st rolls around.  This one denies us that confrontation.  Laurie and Michael never share a scene together, which is pretty bogus if you ask me.

In fact, Halloween Kills is like Rocky 2… if Rocky had spent the whole movie in the hospital while someone else fought Apollo Creed and the guy in the bed next to him had flashbacks to fighting Apollo Creed.

The way Green tries to hammer home the Trump parallels is laughable.  Tommy’s “Evil Dies Tonight” mantra, which is repeated back by his seething followers is clearly a riff on “Make America Great Again”, and the way he leads the mob into storming the hospital is not unlike the seditionists who stormed the Capitol on 1/6.  I’m sure the fact he is portrayed as an angry, bald, white dude was purposeful too.  

Half the movie is this shit, and the other half of the movie is Myers crushing skulls and stabbing people.  At one-hundred-and-five minutes, it’s way overlong too, and the constant cutting back and forth between the plotlines results in little if any forward momentum.  The flashbacks to the original night of terror as seen through the sheriff’s eyes (Will Patton, who has even less to do than Curtis) is also completely useless and could’ve been excised entirely.  When the two plots finally converge, the finale is rushed and unsatisfying.  I know they made this and Halloween Ends as a two-picture deal, if any movie ever suffered from “middle chapter syndrome”, it’s this one.  Maybe that’s because they forgot to put an actual movie in there.  

This is the second time I have been tricked by Green and company.  Maybe Halloween Ends will be the treat.  More than likely, it’ll be another razor blade hiding inside a cinematic apple.