TUBI CONTINUED… PARASITE LADY (2023) ***

I look forward to new Chris Alexander movies the way most cinephiles await the latest works of Werner Herzog, Claire Denis, or Wong Kar-Wai.  His films are often moody, dreamlike, and overly arty ASMR horror flicks.  Sure, some of them are pretty bad (like Space Vampire), but when they hit the sweet spot, they are often quite mesmerizing (like Necropolis:  Legion).  This one might be his best yet.  

Arrielle Edwards stars as a sexy vampire woman named Miranda.  Her daily routine is pretty simple:  She rises from her coffin, takes a shower, dons her best vampire attire, and then cruises amusement parks for fresh victims.  She’ll pick up a hot babe, lure her back to her hotel, rip her throat out, and then whisper, “I love you.”  The pattern repeats, one day flowing into the next, until she eventually falls for Catherine (Ali Chappell) and turns her into a vampire.  When Catherine asks what the vampire lifestyle is all about, Miranda answers, “We wait.  We walk.  We drink.  We go on.”  Predictably, their bliss doesn’t last very long.

Parasite Lady feels like a more assured remake of Space Vampire as it has the same barebones structure:  A vampire woman wanders trancelike through various landscapes.  However, it’s a lot more cohesive than Space Vampire.  It even has a point, which is something that couldn’t be said for Space Vampire.  

Imagine if Jean Rollin had directed Under the Skin.  That might give you an idea as to what Alexander is trying to achieve.  We’ve seen this sort of vampire-as-a-metaphor-for-existential-crisis thing before, but hey, when it works, it works.  Alexander makes his points succinctly and uses his abbreviated forty-two-minute running time expeditiously enough while still finding time for his highly personal artsy-fartsy digressions.

It helps that Edwards is great in the lead.  With her wide-eyed waxy demeanor, she reminded me of Vampira on more than one occasion, and she is nothing less than captivating when she’s on screen (which, fortunately for the audience, is quite often).  Frequent Alexander muse Chappell is also quite good in her brief, but memorable role.

TUBI CONTINUED… LILLITH (2019) *** ½

The Tubi algorithm keeps recommending movies to me about sexy succubae named Lilith (or in this case, “Lillith”), and I keep right on watching them.  This one is the best of the bunch so far.  

Jenna (Nell Kessler) and her friends take a college class on demonology.  When she catches her no-good boyfriend cheating on her, she decides to ask her witchy pal Emma (Robin Carolyn Parent) to help get back at the two-timing bastard.  Together, they summon a succubus named Lillith (Savannah Whitten) to seduce and torment him.  Naturally, things get out of hand in a hurry and Lillith kills him after doing the nasty.  When she sets her sights on fucking and killing more frat boys, it’s up to Jenna and her Wiccan besties to stop her.

Lillith is a surprising, funny, and fun time.  It’s always a little bit better than you expect, as it defies conventions at every turn.  The way co-writer/director Lee Esposito colors outside the lines of the usual horror cliches is also a real treat.  

At the heart of the film is a tour-de-force performance by Whitten as Lillith.  Instead of playing the succubus as a demonic sex machine, she opts to act like a catty goth chick, which is really inspired.  Not many actresses can remain charming, funny, and sexy during long dialogue scenes where they appear with dried dick blood on their face, but Whitten is definitely one of the best at the craft.  (“Blood and cum.  NOT a good combination!”)

Unlike most horror-comedies, Lillith scores high marks in the comedy department.  Heck, it manages to hit its marks during the dramatic scenes as we even grow to like the characters too.  When they are killed off, it gives the movie unexpected depth and weight.  It’s certainly head and shoulders above most low budget horror flicks that populate the backwaters of Tubi, that’s for damned sure.  

While Whitten is a hoot and a holler as Lillith, it’s Kessler who gets the best line of the movie when she says, “Okay, just to be clear:  You want to summon a sex demon to have sex with my ex-boyfriend, and then… what?  Give him demon crabs?” 

TUBI CONTINUED… THE THIRSTING (2007) ***

Tina Krause stars as a sexy nun with a dark past who works at an all-girl Catholic School.  When a team of Catholic schoolgirls head out into the woods for volleyball practice, Tina tags along and acts as their chaperone.  Since they are preparing their thesis on ancient demons, they decide to fool around with black magic and try to summon the evil Lilith.  (“Think about the grade we could get if we interview a demon!”)  After lights-out, the girls strip down and hold a black magic ritual in their cabin, but it doesn’t work.  Or so they think.  That evening, they are all haunted by sexy nightmares in which their darkest desires drive them to their doom.  Said fantasies involve cheating boyfriends, Catholic schoolgirls being paddled in the nun’s office, back-alley plastic surgery, getting accosted in a strip club, and becoming a dominatrix and accidentally banging your father.

This was the second film in a row I watched on Tubi that involved an evil woman named Lilith that starred Tina Krause.  Not that I’m complaining.  Krause is really good here too.  She looks equally sexy while fully clothed in her nun’s habit or while completely nude.  I especially liked the scenes where she fantasized about the girls while they were in the shower and when she was tempted by the succubus while praying naked.  Sure, the ending is a little abrupt and a tad anticlimactic, but it doesn’t derail the movie or anything.  I mean, whatever its flaws, I can’t complain about any flick that features an amazing topless Catholic schoolgirls black mass ritual sequence.

Just when you think it can’t get any weirder, MICKEY ROONEY shows up as a kindly old groundskeeper who dispenses wisdom to the girls in their time of need.  You might think it’s odd that he shows up in something like this, but it’s really not that strange considering his memorable turn in Silent Night, Deadly Night 5:  The Toy Maker.  Even though he isn’t given a whole lot to do, his very appearance just adds to the film’s anything-goes appeal.  

AKA:  Lilith.

TUBI CONTINUED… WITCHOUSE 3: DEMON FIRE (2001) ** ½

Annie (Tanya Dempsey) flees her abusive boyfriend and goes to stay with her girlfriends Stevie (Debbie Rochon) and Rose (Tina Krause) who are making a documentary on witches.  One night, they get drunk and decide to practice a little witchcraft for shits and giggles.  By doing so, they accidentally summon a witch named Lilith (Brinke Stevens) who appears from out of their shower and sets out to torment the three friends.  

The fact that this stars Rochon, Krause, and Stevens, three of the greatest B-Movie Scream Queens of all time, automatically makes Witchouse 3:  Demon Fire the best film in the trilogy.  It’s not great by any means, and it could’ve used a little bit more T & A (only Krause has nude scenes), but it’s head and shoulders better than its predecessors.  

Like Witchouse:  Blood Coven, this doesn’t really connect back to the original.  I guess they were going for a Witchcraft kind of thing by giving the series only a loose sense of continuity.  (The only real theme is that they all feature witches named Lilith.)  Although it was directed by Blood Coven’s J.R. Bookwalter, Demon Fire closely resembles a David DeCoteau movie as it’s about a bunch of hot babes in a house fighting the supernatural.  It only really starts to fall apart towards the end when Bookwalter tries to pull the rug out from under us with a totally unnecessary “surprise” twist in the third act.  It doesn’t exactly work and sort of negates some of the stuff we’ve previously seen.  

At least the ladies make it worth watching.  Krause is particularly entertaining when she’s off on her own, being goofy, muttering to herself, and singing into her toothbrush.  Stevens is a bit underutilized as the ghost witch, but she at least looks like she’s having fun chewing the scenery and hamming it up.  Rochon is awesome as always as the sassy documentarian who gets the best line of the movie when she tells Dempsey, “It looks like you fell down a flight of abusive boyfriends!”

AKA:  Demon Fire.

TUBI CONTINUED… WITCHOUSE: BLOOD COVEN (2000) *

J.R. Bookwalter took the directorial reigns from David DeCoteau for this limp sequel to producer Charles Band’s Witchouse.  

Unmarked graves are uncovered in the backyard of an abandoned mansion.  Since the place is the future site of the new mega-mall, that means the owners want the grounds investigated, pronto.  While examining a skull, the lead investigator accidentally cuts her finger and gets some bone dust in her wound.  Soon, she becomes a raging bitch to the members of her team, but they later discover she isn’t a bitch, but a witch.  Or at least she’s been possessed by one.  The same witch, in fact, that was killed in the mansion centuries ago.  She then sets out to turn the rest of her team into witches and plots her revenge.  

It's been a while since I saw the first Witchouse, so I’m a little fuzzy how all this connects back to the original.

The opening scene has a lot of Found Footage/Blair Witch-style hokum, but it’s not too bad.  From there, the film goes back and forth between the documentary crew filming interviews about the mansion and “real” scenes of them investigating the corpses.  Honestly, Bookwalter should’ve stuck to one format or the other.  The Found Footage stuff (while far from the worst I’ve seen) ultimately feels like padding and the interview sequences could’ve been snipped away without anyone missing them.  These scenes bloat the running time to ninety-eight minutes, which is about twenty minutes longer than it really needed to be.  

I did like the scene where the camera battery dies near the end, which forces Bookwalter to finish it like a “real” movie.  The make-up on the witches is kind of cool too.  (I dug their glowing eyes.)  However, these fleeting moments come a day late and a dollar short.  Of the cast, only Andrew Prine is memorable, playing a dual role.    

The climax is weak too, and the movie suffers from a weird look.  Many of the “real” scenes are slightly blurry and/or feel like the actors are speaking and moving at a slower rate than they should be.  It’s almost like you’re watching it at .75x speed.  Even if you watched it at twice that rate, it wouldn’t have ended fast enough for me.    

AKA:  Witchouse 2.  AKA:  Witchouse 2:  Blood Coven.

TUBI CONTINUED… INVASION OF THE EMPIRE OF THE APES (2021) *

Invasion of the Empire of the Apes begins shortly before Revolt of the Empire of the Apes concluded.  Our heroes flee Earth before it blows up in their rocket ship and blasts off into a black hole.  What’s weird is that the scenes from Revolt have been supplemented with redone special effects.  These new effects aren’t exactly “special”, but they are certainly better than what we got last time around.  Still, it’s kind of jarring to see, especially if you watched the films back-to-back like I did.  The mask for the villain is pretty good too (although I suspect all they did was turn one of the ape’s masks inside out), and there’s even a little T & A this time around.  That said, a slightly more polished turd is still a turd.  

The last of the ape men is beamed aboard a terraforming ship fifteen years after the events of Part 2.  The captain of the spacecraft asks him about his past, and he says, “I wish not to speak of it.”  INSTEAD, we get a ten-minute recap of the first two movies, much of which is shown in irritating Blurry-Vision.  A cult that worships apes as gods soon turn up to liberate him from the ship.  There’s also a mega-conglomerate that wants to exploit him.  Oh, and some aliens want to eat him.

Even with all that going on, Invasion of the Empire of the Apes still manages to be deadly dull.  

Without all the footage from the other movies, this probably would’ve clocked in at forty-five minutes or so.  At that length, it might’ve been somewhat bearable.  Whether you’ve already seen the recycled footage or not, either way you slice it, it’s a tough sit from start to finish.  The fun of the first flick was seeing Planet of the Apes being redone on a microbudget.  Unfortunately, this one strays so far from the original concept that the fun has essentially evaporated from the series.  

TUBI CONTINUED… REVOLT OF THE EMPIRE OF THE APES (2017) *

Revolt of the Empire of the Apes picks up where Empire of the Apes left off.  (And a little before.)  The apes have taken over Earth and made humans their slaves.  The last remaining faction of human freedom fighters gather for one final push to reclaim their planet.  Meanwhile, the evil ape emperor tries to reconnect with his half-human, half-ape, green-skinned son.  

The effects and make-up are slightly better than what we saw in Empire of the Apes, but that’s about the only improvement.  The editing is particularly whiplash-inducing.  There’s one scene where the apes are indoors talking to humans who are clearly outdoors, and the editing (unconvincingly) tries to convince us they are all in the same vicinity.  Dialogue scenes that should be comprised of simple two-shots of two actors in the same frame are instead assembled by the camera filming close-ups of each actor from an odd angle and then sloppily edited together.  This makes me think that none of the actors were ever present in the same place at the same time.  I’ve heard of making a movie piecemeal, but this is the pits.  

Revolt of the Empire of the Apes is a little over an hour long, but it feels much longer.  To make matters worse, the film is heavily made up of recycled footage from the first flick.  Also, much of the so-called revolution is just a bunch of scenes of people standing around in the woods and arguing with one another.  Meanwhile, the apes hang around their headquarters and bark orders at each other.  The subplot with the half-human, half-ape has a really weird payoff too.  

Empire of the Apes was cheap, sure.  At least it had spirit and offered a modicum of fun.  This one is just an incomprehensible bore.  To add insult to injury, the great Scream Queen Tina Krause is wasted in a nothing role.  

Revolting is right.