NITEMARE THEATRE’S LATE NIGHT CHILL-O-RAMA HORROR SHOW VOL. 1 (1996) ***

Here’s another Something Weird horror trailer compilation that will fit the bill for any fan of old school horror and schlock on a dark and stormy night.  It might not be one of their best, but it moves at a zippy pace as the trailers come fast and furious.  For variety’s sake, there are a couple of vintage interviews with Bela Lugosi, and a behind the scenes featurette on the making of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (which prominently features the luscious Caroline Munroe in an array of revealing outfits).  

Things kick off with a great run of ‘50s favorites (including the AIP trilogy of I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, and Blood of Dracula) before segueing into ads for condensed Saturday afternoon cliffhangers (like Captain Mephisto and the Transformation Machine, Cyclotrode X, and The Claw Monster).  From then on, the bulk of the trailers are from the ‘70s.  We get lots of films starring Christopher Lee (I, Monster, The Castle of Fu Manchu, and The Wicker Man), Peter Cushing (And Now the Screaming Starts, The Creeping Flesh, and Horror Express), and Robert Quarry (The Return of Count Yorga, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, and The Deathmaster).  Finally, the show wraps up with a handful of more trailers from the ‘50s (Invisible Invaders, The 27th Day, and The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow).   

Some of the best trailers are for werewolf pictures like The Beast Must Die, Werewolves on Wheels and Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror.  Other highlights include ads for The Fly (in which Vincent Price stops the projector because things are getting too scary), The Last Days of Man on Earth, and UFO.  Although I wish some of the trailers had been a little bit more on the racier side (especially considering the healthy amount of previews from the ‘70s), there’s plenty of good stuff here to make this another winner from Something Weird.

The complete trailer line-up is as follows:  Blood of the Vampire, The Cyclops, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Blood of Dracula, The Brain from Planet Arous, The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, The Fly, Giant from the Unknown, The Return of Dracula, Bela Lugosi interview, Intimate Interviews: Bela Lugosi, Captain Mephisto and the Transformation Machine (AKA:  Manhunt of Mystery Island), Cyclotrode X (AKA:  The Crimson Ghost), The Claw Monsters (AKA:  Panther Girl of the Kongo), D-Day on Mars (AKA:  The Purple Monster Strikes), Prehistoric Women, The Screaming Skull, And Now the Screaming Starts!, Scream Blacula Scream, The Beast Must Die, The Last Days of Man on Earth (AKA:  The Final Programme), Death Race 2000, Mansion of the Doomed, Werewolves on Wheels, The Return of Count Yorga, The Velvet Vampire, Murders in the Rue Morgue, I, Monster, Frankenstein's Bloody Terror, The Creeping Flesh, The Castle of Fu Manchu, Son of the Blob (AKA:  Beware! The Blob), Blacula, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Horror Express, The Vault of Horror, The Deathmaster, UFO, Theatre of Blood, a featurette of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The Wicker Man, Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Equinox, Logan's Run, The Land That Time Forgot, Silent Night, Evil Night (AKA:  Black Christmas), Strait-Jacket, Invisible Invaders, The 27th Day, Burn, Witch, Burn!, The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, and The Innocents.

TUBI CONTINUED… PARANORMAL WHACKTIVITY (2018) **

Michael (William Patrick Riley) and Kasey (Sasha Formoso) are a couple who move into a haunted house.  He’s a nerd and she’s hot, so naturally, she still hasn’t let him have sex with her yet.  That leaves Michael no other choice but to jerk off into his sock on a nightly basis.  He eventually decides to make a sex tape to chronicle their first time on film, but when a paranormal force begins to satisfy Kasey at night, he switches gears and tries to catch the ghost on tape.

I guess you have to hand it to the filmmakers for not taking the easy way out.  It would’ve been a lot cheaper and quicker to film Paranormal Whacktivity in the same Found Footage style of Paranormal Activity.  Instead, it’s a little bit more ambitious as it’s more of a mockumentary about the making of a haunted sex tape than just a random assortment of green-tinted shaky-cam sequences.  I’m not saying it works or anything, but I was at least grateful I didn’t have to sit through ninety minutes of sight gags and tomfoolery through the lens of grainy security footage and/or shaky-cam bullshit.

Let’s face it.  Most of this is dumb.  The sexual humor is hit and miss and the movie spoofs (of everything from Brokeback Mountain to The Hangover to even… Avatar?) fall flat.  Then again, what did you expect from a title like Paranormal Whacktivity?  

However, there are a few laughs here, which is more than I can say about a lot of these low budget sub-sub-Scary Movie spoofs.  (I liked the fact that the documentary film crew Michael hires comes complete with a bunch of grouchy Teamsters.)  The best character is a psychic played by Damitri Crayton, who is less of a Ghostbuster and more of an Ernie Hudson impersonator.  Even the director, Roger Roth seems to know when the movie is starting to run out of gas, so he appears on screen to call for more gratuitous T & A.  When you’ve watched as many bad spoofs as I have, you appreciate little moments like that.

TUBI CONTINUED… STRIPPED NAKED (2009) **

Cassie (Sarah Allen) is a stripper with an asshole for a boyfriend (Jon Cor).  One night, they have a fight in his truck, and he leaves her stranded on the side of the road.  While roaming around looking for a ride, Cassie witnesses a drug deal gone wrong and winds up in possession of a duffel bag full of money and meth.  She has visions of making a clean break and heading off to Paris, but things become complicated when the rightful owners (Read:  Drug dealers) come looking for the money.  

Stripped Naked sure knows how to lure you in with a catchy title, but the whole thing is all tease and no please.  It thinks it’s A Simple Plan, but with Strippers, but there’s an overlying lack of urgency (not to mention skin) that makes all the double-crossing less than compelling.  The script is one-note and predictable, and the “twist” ending is more confounding than anything.   

The cast do what they can with such middling material.  Allen isn’t bad in the lead, but we never quite buy her switch from desperate stripper to cold, calculating murderer.  The only name in the cast is Linden (Mortal Kombat) Ashby who is kinda amusing as the drunk owner of the strip club.  Whenever he’s on screen, the film has a sleazy vibe that is sorely lacking elsewhere in the picture.

And that’s the biggest problem:  For a movie called Stripped Naked, there is precious little stripping here.  Not that a film needs nudity solely to be successful.  It’s just that you kind of expect it when the title in question is called Stripped Naked.  As it is, the only skin we get comes courtesy of a couple of strippers in the background.  I mean, they could’ve at the very least put the Allen on the pole.  

Maybe the title is supposed to be one of those metaphorical deals.  You know, like Cassie isn’t literally stripped naked.  It’s her morals that have stripped naked.  That might’ve been the case, but all I know is the flick would’ve been a heck of a lot better if she shed her clothes AND her morals.

AKA:  Body Killer.  

JANUA-RAY: COUNT AL-KUM (1971) * ½

Count Dracula’s nephew, Count Al-Kum (Jerry Delony from Invitation to Ruin and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks) is awakened from his coffin and interviewed.  He tells two offscreen reporters about his attempts (and failures) to pick up women.  They then give him a book called “1001 Ways to Seduce Women” and he goes out and looks for more babes.  Time and again, he fails miserably to woo the ladies and is forced to watch as his Uncle Dracula repeatedly cockblocks him with trollop after trollop.   

This is another one of Ray Dennis Steckler’s vampire pornos.  Even though it’s only forty-nine minutes long, it’s still something of a chore to watch.  That’s mostly because of Steckler’s slipshod handling of the sex scenes.  He basically sits the camera across the room from the action and only occasionally zooms in for a close-up.  The one time he does manage a decent close-up, the lighting is so poor that it’s hard to tell what’s going on.  He also overdoes it on the kaleidoscope effects, which do nothing to enhance the sex scenes.  At least Dracula doesn’t have a problem getting hard, which is more than I can say for most of the male leads in these Steckler pornos.

Delony is amusing as the titular vampire, but he isn’t exactly funny as the lines he’s been given wouldn’t cut it at an open mic amateur night.  The scenes of Al-Kum stalking potential victims (sometimes in broad daylight) play almost like a silent movie routine, although they fail to garner any laughs.  The only genuinely laugh-out-loud scene occurs when Dracula bangs a chick outdoors and puts his cape down on the ground, so they don’t get dirty when they screw.  

As far as Steckler’s signature touches, he does give us quite a few nice scenic shots of the Las Vegas Strip (where actors and unaware extras look directly at the camera).  Like The Mad Love Life of a Red Hot Vampire, this is another vampire themed XXX film from Steckler, although it can’t even clear the admittedly low bar that movie set.  And the only members of Steckler’s Stock Player Company this time around seems to be Delony, who later appeared in Steckler’s Dr. Cock Luv.  

AKA:  Count All-Cum.  AKA:  Count Alcom.  AKA:  Count Alkum.  AKA:  The Horny Vampire.  

TUBI CONTINUED… SHOCK CINEMA VOLUME 4: MAKEUP EFFECTS BEHIND THE SCENES (1991) ** ½

Brinke Stevens once again produced and narrates this fourth installment in the Shock Cinema video magazine series devoted to the world of low budget filmmaking.  Since it focuses on the same crop of movies that were featured in Volume 3, there’s little here in the way of variety.  Still, it’s a solid look at the ingenuity that goes into low budget productions and should be a treat for fans of old school special effects and make-up.  

Most of the running time is devoted to behind-the-scenes footage of Murder Weapon and Robot Ninja.  The Murder Weapon sequences are the best as we get to see how the special effects (including a head crushing, throat slashing, face blasting, and a heart ripping) were created.  The coolest segment is a fast-motion scene of burn make-up being applied to Linnea Quigley.  The segment on Robot Ninja is the longest and focuses on fight choreography just as much as it does special effects.  Unfortunately, the segments on Skinned Alive and Ghoul School seem to be tossed in there just to pad things out.  Both these sequences are little more than a “greatest hits” package of gore scenes with very little behind the scenes footage.  If these scenes had been excised and the film only focused on the first two movies, it probably would’ve skated by with ***.  

Even then, Shock Cinema Volume 4:  Makeup Effects and Behind the Scenes ultimately suffers from a repetitive set-up.  First, we are shown a select scene from the movie before we see how the effect was done, and finally the scene is shown once again.  Because of that, it isn’t quite as much fun as the other volumes in the series.  However, the fact that it contains so much quality behind the scenes footage for such low budget productions in and of itself is heartening.  

TUBI CONTINUED... SIDESHOW (2000) ** ½

As someone who enjoyed the Fred Olen Ray/Charles Band production of Piranha Women, I thought I would check out their first collaboration, Sideshow.  It’s closer to Band’s sensibilities than Ray’s, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  While it’s not quite up to the level of Piranha Women, it’s a decent way to spend seventy-five minutes.

Five friends go to the carnival.  Most of them are there to gawk at the sideshow freaks.  Naturally, they overstay their welcome and eventually become part of the show.  

Sideshow has kind of a Funhouse Meets Ghoulies 2 vibe about it.  The opening scene in which Ray virtually remakes the finale of Tod Browning’s Freaks is a lot of fun, and the first act or so holds promise.  Things start to slide downhill once the characters are turned into freaks though.  The idea that they are transformed into sideshow attractions because they make wishes that backfire on them is kind of lame and feels like something out of a Wishmaster movie.  (One girl wants a perfect body and winds up having no face, another girl never wants to be touched and is transformed into a living doll under glass, etc.)  The complete non-ending doesn’t help matters either.  

The special effects for the freaks were designed by Gabe (Leprechaun) Bartalos.  They are rather inventive and certainly help keep you watching once the movie begins spinning its wheels.   A face-ripping freak, a conjoined twin, and a “Bug Boy” are among the highlights.  

Although the freak gimmicks make it feel more like a Full Moon movie than a Ray picture, Fred still manages to inject some of his touches in there.  That’s really just a fancy way of saying there’s some gratuitous T & A.  His usual cast of characters, such as Brinke Stevens (who plays a sexy fortune teller), Peter Spellos, Richard Gabai, and Ross Hagen make welcome appearances too.  It’s Full Moon mainstay Phil Fondacaro who steals the (side)show as the ringmaster of the freaks.  

TUBI CONTINUED… ZOMBI VIII: URBAN DECAY (2021) * ½

It’s been a long time since we’ve had an unrelated sequel to Lucio Fulci’s Zombi.  In fact, I think this might be the first unrelated sequel to Zombi that’s (supposed to be) related to Zombi!  As far as these things go, you can do worse, but not much.

Hannah (Jennifer Nangle from Amityville Karen) does one of those 23 and Me deals and finds her long-lost father (Noel Scott Jason) is living on an island in the Caribbean.  You know, that island where there was that mysterious outbreak that the government covered up forty years ago?  Anyway, she and her friends go down to the island only to discover her father has been infected with some sort of virus.  They get him back home (“We barely got through security with him!”) and naturally, they discover the virus he’s carrying is a zombie virus.  It doesn’t take long for him to bite someone, which eventually leads to a global zombie plague.  

Even though Zombi VIII:  Urban Decay is only fifty-seven minutes long, there is a shit ton of padding to be found.  The opening and closing credits sequences go on forever, there are annoying YouTube videos and news reports that act as exposition, and lots of screen time is taken up by characters walking through the jungle and/or taking pictures.  (The shots of animals look like vacation footage from a zoo.)  We also have a long scene where a character watches Night of the Living Dead on TV and the camera just lingers on it for minutes at a time.  I guess this is supposed to be an in-joke since Zombi was a sequel/rip-off to Dawn of the Dead, but there was no reason to show whole scenes from the movie.  

Like most Shot-on-Video productions, the sound is really bad.  There’s a long car ride where the sound of the engine drowns out nearly all the dialogue, and it’s hard to hear the actors during the outdoor scenes too.  The videography is also rather poor as the screen periodically flashes red for no apparent reason.  (It may have been an encoding error, I’m not sure.)  

It's not all bad though.  The music, which is a homage to the score from the original Zombi is quite good.  I also enjoyed the Return of the Living Dead-inspired scene where Samantha McCullough gets high and does a striptease just before a zombie attack.  We also get a variation on the original’s iconic splinter-to-the-eye scene, although it feels kind of rushed.  The complete non-ending is rather infuriating though and probably cost the flick at least a ½ *.

AKA:  Zombie Flesh Eaters 5.