TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: DEMON DOLL FROM HELL (2023) *

A woman buys a creepy looking vintage baby doll.  She goes off to a continuing education seminar and her boyfriend Alec (writer/director Alec Balas) is left home in their apartment with the ugly doll.  Before long, it starts showing up in odd places and is even heard crying in the middle of the night.  Is the doll really possessed or is the guy just going crazy?

Balas tries for the minimalistic A24 approach.  He gives us many long scenes where nothing happens, but the camera lingers on that nothing for so long that it makes you think something’s going to happen.  Most of the time though, it doesn’t.   There’s even the typical accompanying swelling music on the soundtrack that gives you a Pavlovian response to make you anticipate a jump scare, and then… nothing.  Such scenes include our hero loading a dishwasher, cleaning out the lint trap of his dryer, and making his bed.  Whatever possessed Balas to make a movie that focuses half the running time on him doing household chores?  I get it.  I don’t like chores as much as the next guy.  However, that doesn’t necessarily make it the basis for a horror flick.  Seeing someone fritter their day away with menial tasks is not my idea of “horror cinema”, you know what I mean?

Demon Doll from Hell is also disappointingly low on your typical killer doll movie cliches.  In fact, the doll is pretty much forgotten about in the second half when a specter wearing a black cloak and Michael Jackson mask does much of the heavy lifting.  Why make a movie called Demon Doll from Hell if the doll doesn’t do anything demonic or hellacious?  

According to IMDb, the budget was only $100.  One thing I can say for Demon Doll from Hell is that it certainly looks more expensive than that.  Not much more expensive than that, but still. 

THE MOVIE ORGY (1968) ***

The Movie Orgy is a five-hour onslaught (some versions run shorter, others, longer) of B-movies, old commercials, and outdated (even at the time it was made) Americana and propaganda.  It was directed, edited, and compiled by Joe (Gremlins) Dante and got him enough notice to get him a job cutting trailers for Roger Corman.  It’s like an early version of a fan-made horror mixtape.  It’s often crude and some of the editing is a bit choppy.  It’s definitely overlong, but fascinating all the same. 

It opens with a hodgepodge of movie stills, film clips, and scenes from cartoons. We then get several condensed versions (sort of like one of those old Castle Films 8mm home movies) of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Giant Gila Monster, College Confidential, Beginning of the End, and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.  The best of the mini features are the snippets from Speed Crazy where criminal Brett Halsey lashes out at anyone who “crowds” him.  

These sequences are occasionally interrupted by vintage commercials, newsreel clips, and scenes from old TV shows.  Other bits include low budget Biblical films, industrial shorts, Ann-Margret selling savings bonds to help the Vietnam war effort, Abbott and Costello doing their Susquehanna Hat Company routine, an old timey military filmstrip on women’s hygiene (which shows women how to pop blisters, explains their period, and talks about menopause), and Nixon’s “Checkers” speech.  I guess the best way to describe it is channel surfing with a short attention span. 

As much fun as a lot of this is, I can’t imagine being able to get through this in one sitting.  I watched it in twenty-to-thirty-minute increments over several weeks just before bed, and it did the trick nicely.  Even then, it was kind of a long haul, but the final montage of giant movie monsters from King Kong to The Giant Claw to The Amazing Colossal Man destroying cities is totally worth the wait. 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: DEATH TOILET 3: DOODY CALLS (2020) **

Nam vet Brett (once again played by Mike Hartfield) is now an international man of mystery who goes hopping around the globe and executing possessed crappers at will.  (Even though they all look like the same toilet in the same bathroom.)  He returns home to learn the original possessed potty has been removed from his brother’s house and relocated to a church.  In order to stop the killer John once and for all, he’ll have to resurrect his dead priest pal Father Dingleberry (Isaac Golub). 

The toilet has gotten a nice upgrade this time around as it now has the ability to completely dismember its victims.  Instead of just taking their balls, it can cut off hands, feet, and heads.  Brett also uses a funny possessed toilet locator that beeps whenever he’s close to a killer commode.  Speaking of which, the clever(ish) script also comes up with some amusing alliterative slang for the terrible toilet this time around, which makes it all semi-worthwhile.  (My favorite was “Porcelain Poltergeist”.) 

All that doesn’t necessarily make Death Toilet 3:  Doody Calls “good”, but it’s certainly an improvement over the last movie.  Heck there were even a few moments where I have to admit, I chuckled to myself.  (Like when the ghost of the priest shows up dragging a trail of toilet paper behind him.).  That almost makes up for the long, annoying Nam flashback scenes filled with nauseating first person POV shots.  It doesn’t quite excuse the irritating music score that drones on and on.  Or the needless slow motion or the repeated dialogue scenes.  Or the flashbacks to the other movies that are only there to pad things out (which is odd, since at fifty-two minutes it’s the shortest of the series so far).  The zombie priest’s constant babbling gets a bit grating after a while, and the finale goes on too long as well.  Despite that laundry list of complaints, it’s not overly crappy.

AKA:  Death Toilet 3:  Call of Doody.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: DEATH TOILET NUMBER 2 (2019) *

I kinda liked Death Toilet (at least probably more than I should’ve) but unfortunately, the title is the best thing about this shitty (no pun intended) sequel. 

Years after he successfully sued the toilet company for selling him a possessed toilet, Nam vet Brett (Mike Hartsfield) is traveling the globe on the stock car circuit.  Still haunted by the evil John, he asks his friend Father Dingleberry (Isaac Golub) to help him be rid of the Satanic shitter once and for all. 

The big gimmick for this one is the onscreen fart counter so you can see just how much screen time is devoted to people farting.  It’s also a good way to gauge how much of your life you’re wasting while watching this mess. 

The first one was amusing and got a lot more mileage from the premise than I expected.  Death Toilet Number 2 gave me just about what I expected.  Maybe even a little less.  It’s also heavily padded with flashbacks to the first movie, needless race car footage, and scenes from an old military filmstrip hosted by James Arness.  There’s also a purposefully cheesy light rock theme song that doesn’t manage to elicit any laughs.

Even though it’s set years after the first movie, Brett still has a fresh bloody bandage on his neck from where he was cut by the toilet in the original.  Why is it still bloody?  Is he still picking at the scab?  (Sadly, we never get any confirmation if he still has his balls or not seeing how he got them cut off by the Death Toilet at the end of the first flick.)  

I guess you could say the highlight of all this comes during the toilet paper attack.  Or when Father Dingleberry calls the toilet a “mother flusher”.  Either way, Death Toilet Number 2 belongs in the shitter.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: DEATH TOILET (2018) ** ½

This is the second film for this column with the words “Death” and “Toilet” in the title.  The first, naturally was Amityville Death Toilet.  Coincidentally, this one comes to us from Evan Jacobs, the director of Amityville Death Toilet.  In fact, there are no less than SIX movies in the Death Toilet series.  (Seven, I guess if you count the Amityville one as canon.)  You know, to be successful in this industry, you have to find your niche and stick with it.  I guess Jacobs’ niche is death and toilets.

Brett (Mike Hartsfield) returns home from Vietnam (somehow sporting a Van Halen shirt) to find his brother has died under mysterious circumstances.  On top of that, he has to deal with his toilet making weird moaning noises at all hours of the day.   He eventually calls a plumber who can’t find anything wrong with it, despite it having “bad vibes.”  (“I’m a plumber! I’m not a priest!”)  When that fails, he calls a priest (Isaac Golub) to perform an exorcism on his toilet. 

The film benefits from a solid opening scene where the toilet cuts a guy’s balls off while he’s taking a shit.  There’s also a funny scene where Hartsfield interrogates the toilet at gunpoint, and it talks in a series of farts.  The best bit though is the montage where he goes through the phone book calling up churches and getting quotes on toilet exorcisms. 

Sure, some of this is crude both in terms of humor and filmmaking.  There are a lot of jump cuts, and the martial arts training montage goes on way too long.  However, when it hits the sweet spot between absurd and stupid, it kinda works.  It’s certainly funnier than I expected, especially considering most of the movie is just one guy acting alongside a toilet.  (And the fact that Amityville Death Toilet was such a… pardon the pun… turd.)  The priest’s final words during the exorcism are good for a laugh too. 

Say what you will about it, but I think it’s kinda hilarious that a fifty-four-minute movie has an intermission. I can honestly say I’ve never seen that before.  While it isn’t great by any means, at least Death Toilet didn’t stink up the joint.

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: BIG F*CKING SNAKE (2023) * ½

A giant snake is seen attacking Los Angeles.  We then flashback to see how it all got started.  It seems a swarm of snakes got into a batch of contaminated chemicals, turned crazy, and went on a rampage killing a bunch of folks.  A team of small-town cops and scientists then must band together to try to stop them. 

Big F*cking Snake (that’s the actual onscreen title as it’s list as “Big Freakin’ Snake" just about everywhere else) is sort of like a Dustin Ferguson version of a SyFy Channel “When Animals Attack” movie.  And you know what?  The results aren’t terrible for the first half-hour or so.  The flick is only forty-six minutes long, and he manages to pack a lot of kill scenes into that timeframe, not to mention a ton of herpetologist jokes.  (“You study STDs?”)

Too bad the whole thing just sort of fizzles out in the end and the titular snake is barely glimpsed.  Instead of an actual climax, Ferguson gives us a long montage of snakes in their natural environment, which looks like it was taken from a YouTube nature documentary.  Not the best way to end a movie in my estimation. 

As for the CGI snake?  I’ve seen worse.  Size-wise, it certainly lives up to the title.  It’s just a shame we don’t see much of it. 

The cast is decent, even if they are a bit underutilized.  The highlight comes when Brinke Stevens gets attacked by a bunch of rubber snakes in her bathtub.  We also have Mel Novak (looking like he’s using orange bronzer two shades darker than Trump’s) as the crooked commissioner trying to keep a lid on the snakes.  The Queen of Tubi horror, Miss Dawna Lee Heising and Shawn C. Phillips also pop up as attendees of a Fourth of July fireworks display that is crashed by the snakes. 

AKA:  Big Freakin’ Snake.

THANKSGIVING (2023) ****

I’ve been waiting for Thanksgiving for a long time.  Sixteen years, to be exact.  In fact, do you realize the wait between Grindhouse and Thanksgiving was longer than the wait between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace?  That’s sort of mind-boggling.  Let me tell ya folks, it was worth the wait.  Director Eli Roth has given horror fans something to be thankful for. 

After a Black Friday sale at a big box store ends in tragedy, a small New England town tries to move on.  One year later, a guy dresses up in a pilgrim outfit and begins offing the people he blames for instigating the riot.  Before long, he sets up a table for his victims and serves them revenge on a silver platter. 

Thanksgiving is a well-oiled slasher full of gory set pieces and finely crafted suspense sequences.  The kills include someone cut in half, decapitations, head twisting, a trampoline death, corn cob holders to the ears, death by table saw, bludgeoning, and a woman cooked alive like a giant turkey.  It’s the opening carnage-fueled Walmart massacre that’s most effective though.  (It almost plays like the Saving Private Ryan version of a slasher movie).  I especially liked the way Roth stacks the deck with obnoxious characters so that when it comes time for the axe to come down on them, you can’t wait till they get their just desserts. 

Despite the gory goodness Roth serves up, I kind of missed the down and dirty aesthetic that hallmarked the trailer in Grindhouse.  I guess it’s not much of a complaint, but the movie just looks too slick at times, and feels more like a post-Scream slasher than the early ‘80s one depicted in the trailer.  (Also, some of the best moments from the old trailer are toned down and/or missing here, sadly.)  I mean, as good as it is (and don’t get me wrong, this is certainly a crowd-pleaser), I don’t think it would crack my Top 3 Grindhouse universe movies or my Top 5 Roth films.  That just goes to show how good the man’s body of work is.  The King don’t miss. 

That’s where my bellyaching ends.  Thanksgiving is a lot of fun.  I saw it with a bunch of friends, and we all had a blast.  You don’t get a chance to see a gory holiday-themed slasher on the big screen very often, so we have to support them every chance we get.  Fortunately, the flick is doing decent enough business, which makes me hopeful that we’ll hear Rob Zombie announce a feature-length version of his Grindhouse trailer, Werewolf Women of the SS any day now.