TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: CAMP BLOOD 4 (2016) ½ *

Dustin (Cocaine Cougar) Ferguson takes the reins from Mark Polonia for the fourth (or fifth, depending on if you count Within the Woods) entry in the Camp Blood franchise.  In pure Ferguson fashion, he pads out the film with flashback scenes from Camp Blood:  First Slaughter, a long opening credits sequence, gratuitous newsbreak footage, pointless walking scenes, gratuitous montages, dance sequences, irritating slow motion scenes, and multiple scenes of women applying their makeup.  In fact, this might be the first movie in history that doesn’t start till its halfway over. 

I never thought anyone could make me wistful for the cinematic prowess of Mark Polonia, but I guess Dustin Ferguson is that kind of guy. 

A group of friends on their way to a rock concert stop off at Camp Blood for a little R and R.  They instead wind up getting S and S.  (Stalked and Slashed.)

The flashbacks to Camp Blood:  First Slaughter take up roughly half the running time.  This might not have been a bad thing if I had never seen First Slaughter, but since I basically watched these two flicks back-to-back, it became repetitious and irritating in a hurry.  It also just goes to show how much better Polonia was at staging the murder scenes than Ferguson.  It’s especially obvious when you can compare the two almost simultaneously within the same flick.  Ferguson also gives us a lot of nighttime scenes that are hard to see, which also amps up the irritation factor.  

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it ends with an annoying cliffhanger for Part 5.  I mean, when you sit through a bad movie (or two halves of two bad movies as is the case here), you expect at least some kind of resolution.  Oh well, at least I didn’t have to wait long to find out what happened as I watched Part 5 soon after… 

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: CAMP BLOOD: FIRST SLAUGHTER (2014) **

I figured I would round out the Tubi-Ween Hangover column by giving the Camp Blood movies a whirl.  The first two aren’t on Tubi, so I started with the third one.  The Camp Blood series is unique in that the numbering is all screwed up.  This is actually the second Part 3 in the series as it supposedly retcons the original Part 3, Within the Woods, which is also absent from the streaming service.  (There’s also apparently two Part 6’s, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.)  This entry was written and directed by Mark Polonia, no stranger to the Tubi Continued… column, so you might already know what to expect. 

A killer in a clown mask is beheaded by a psycho in a red mask who sets about murdering campers unfortunate enough to be camping at Camp Blood.  Meanwhile, a group of college students head into the woods to debunk the urban legend of the clown killer and are promptly slaughtered.  Once their footage from their fateful trip is found, it is shown to the masses on television. 

The stalking scenes are a serviceable imitation of the standard set down by John Carpenter all those years ago in Halloween.  The film does have one neat concept that I’m surprised hasn’t been tried in the genre before.  The killer tapes a camera to his head so that all his POV shots look like actual POV shots from a horror movie.  That at the very least breaks up the monotony of the typical handheld Found Footage camerawork. 

Fortunately, the Found Footage stuff only takes up about half the film, and since it’s edited together from different sources it almost sort of feels cinematic.  The practical gore effects are surprisingly strong too.  We get decapitations, a machete to the face, a machete to the throat, a machete to the back, and a machete to the head.  There’s also an axe to the chest, too.  It’s just a shame that the CGI touch-ups and blood splatters look so shoddy.  The gore doesn’t quite save Camp Blood:  First Slaughter, but it does make it more tolerable than countless similar slashers out there. 

AKA:  Camp Blood 3.  AKA:  Camp Blood III 3-D.  

TUBI-WEEN HANGOVER: DEMONIC TOYS: JACK ATTACK (2023) **

I’ve never really been a Demonic Toys fan.  The recent Baby Oopsie spin-off was pretty good though.  Because of that, I was hoping Demonic Toys:  Jack Attack would be about on par with that one, but it’s only intermittently amusing.  Overall, it’s closer in terms of quality to the Baby Oopsie sequels.

Lily (Sophia Castellanos) watches in horror as her foster mother is killed by the evil Jack in the box, Jack Attack.  The shock of the attack leaves Lily without the ability to speak.  She is then shuffled off to relatives of her deceased foster mother who live on a farm in the middle of nowhere.  Before long, a mysterious crate arrives containing the murderous Jack Attack who sets out to munch and crunch the family members one by one. 

Perhaps sensing that a sole Jack in the box that resembles a Killer Klowns from Outer Space hand puppet from Spirit Halloween wasn’t enough to carry an entire movie (even one that’s only fifty-nine minutes long), the filmmakers have given Jack an ugly clown sidekick to aid him in his massacre.  The carnage the duo creates is decent, all things considered.  There’s flesh ripping, head lopping, eyeball ripping, death by woodchipper, and a scene where Jack burrows into the chest of a victim.  It also features a scene where someone gets an anvil dropped on their head.  The last time I saw that was in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, so you’ve got to admire that. 

Unfortunately, the foster family drama is largely uninvolving.  The performances by Mabel Thomas (who plays a concerned CPS worker) and Castellanos are better than the film probably deserves, but writer/director William Butler doesn’t give them anything worthwhile to do.  He does a fair job connecting this to his previous Baby Oopsie series as the devilish doll baby is shown on a TV news report.  That suggests to me that he’s angling for an MCU team-up (although I guess “reunion” is a better word) down the road. 

Presumably inspired by The Criterion Collection, Charles Band has taken to numbering all his Full Moon movies.  (This one is number 386.)  If you’re a fan of his films and are making a checklist of these things, the best thing I can say is that you can cross this one off your list after you watch it.  I can’t say you’ll remember it a week or so afterwards though. 

AKA:  Jack Attack.

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.