LET’S GET PHYSICAL: ONE BODY TOO MANY (1944) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 11th, 2008)

Insurance salesman Jack Haley (The Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz) goes to an eccentric millionaire’s house for the reading of his will on a dark and stormy night.  The squabbling relatives are all bound to the house until the old coot is interred into the family vault, even after a murderer starts bumping off the family members in hopes of getting his hands on the inheritance.  Bela Lugosi plays the creepy butler, and his Glen or Glenda co-star Lyle Talbot is one of the bickering relatives.

 

Yep, it’s yet another one of those Old Dark House comedy/murder/mystery/whodunit deals.  This premise had pretty much been thoroughly run into the ground by 1944, but if you’re a fan of the genre, you might groove to this otherwise creaky flick.  If you’re a Lugosi fan like me, you’ll be able to suck up most of the rampant clichés (the relatives get stranded because the bridge gets washed out in the storm, the murderer uses secret passageways to get around the house, dead bodies end up in peculiar places, etc.) and tolerate the unfunny comic relief (Haley is particularly grating) and just enjoy his performance.  He’s severely underutilized and his role is rather small, but to me, any movie he’s in is worth watching just to see Lugosi, especially when he says things like “There are too many rats in this house!”  Otherwise, it’s pretty tough going. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: MY MOM’S A WEREWOLF (1989) *

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on May 13th, 2011)

John Saxon stars as a pet shop owner who’s also a werewolf.  He seduces a lonely housewife and mother (Susan Blakely) and bites her on the toe; slowly but surely turning her into a werewolf.  Her daughter and her horror movie nerd best friend then try to help reverse her curse before she becomes a werewolf permanently.

 

My Mom’s a Werewolf was obviously trying to ride the coattails of the '80s horror-comedy craze of such films as Teen Wolf and My Best Friend’s a Vampire.  I actually dig this subgenre, partially for nostalgic reasons.  But even I don’t have enough love for the subgenre to enjoy this mess.

 

First off, the flick just isn’t funny.  I mean it’s pretty sad when your big comedic guns are Ruth Buzzi and Marcia Wallace.  And I know I use some pretty bad puns to write these reviews but the puns in this flick are awful.  (Sample dialogue:  “I want you to be my were-wife!”)  Ugh.  When a potentially funny gag comes around (like when Blakely franticly tries to shave her legs) they just keep hitting you over the head with it until it just gets annoying.

 

And the “horror” stuff is pathetic.  You have to seriously wonder if the people who made this movie ever saw a werewolf movie in their life.  I mean when’s the last time you saw a werewolf that DIDN’T change during a full moon?  And the final werewolf make-up is crappy as fuck.  They’re nothing more than a cheap Halloween mask with lots of fake hair.  It’s pretty sad.

 

There were some things I liked.  I liked John Saxon’s performance.  And the movie geek character who reads Famous Monsters, Fangoria, and Gorezone and has posters from other Crown International pictures like Galaxina and Prime Evil on her wall.  And of course, the ‘80s fashions were appropriately cheesy. 

 

Other than that, My Mom’s a Werewolf is a dog of a film.  Sure, that’s a bad pun.  It’s no worse than the puns in the movie though.

 

AKA:  My Mum’s a Werewolf.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE (1966) NO STARS

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 18th, 2007)

In the mid ‘60s, fertilizer entrepreneur and fledgling filmmaker Hal P. Warren made a bet with screenwriter Stirling Silliphant that he could make a horror movie with less than $20,000. His background in the fertilizer industry is evident because the result is one of the shittiest movies ever made. If it wasn’t for its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000, it would have faded away into obscurity, but thanks to MST3K, Manos now rivals Plan 9 from Outer Space as the best-known bad movie ever made. Like Plan 9, Manos is fascinating to watch for the sheer incompetence both in front of and behind the camera, but unlike Ed Wood’s masterpiece, it’s completely wretched. The only proper way to watch it is on MST3K with Joel and the ‘bots riffing, otherwise, you’ll probably able to stand about ten minutes of it before suffering some sort of breakdown.

Warren stars as Mike, who piles his family into the car and takes them on a vacation. They get lost and drive and drive and drive (the only movie that rivals this one for the largest amount of pointless driving scenes is The Brown Bunny) until they come to a remote lodge ran by the caretaker Torgo (John Reynolds). It would be a tremendous understatement to say that Torgo is one of the most insipid characters ever to grace the silver screen. He speaks in a jittery tone, and his body movements are equally twitchy, a fact compounded by his enormous knees. Mike wants to stay the night, but Torgo warns them that “The Master would not approve”. The Master (Tom Neyman) is collecting a harem filled with women in negligees and has his eye on Mike’s wife for his next bride. Torgo also wants her too and defies the Master and he scolds Torgo by burning his hand off. In the end the Master steals Mike’s woman (and young daughter) and turns him into the new reigning Torgo.

To say this movie is merely bad is being generous. The thesaurus doesn’t even begin to help you comprehend the awfulness that is Manos. The editing is atrocious, the dialogue was badly dubbed (by no more than three actors apparently), there’s visible crew members and film slates, and don’t even get me started on the acting. A pall of unpleasantness hung over this movie long after its release when THREE actors (including Torgo himself) committed suicide shortly after filming. They were the lucky ones.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960) ****

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on November 4th, 2009)

The Little Shop of Horrors is one of director Roger Corman’s finest hours.  After directing dozens of unintentionally hilarious movies like Attack of the Crab Monsters, this was his first intentionally funny horror film.  It also happens to be a searing indictment of the small-time businessman and the lengths he will go to in order to be successful.

 

Seymour Krelboin (Jonathan Haze) works for his overbearing boss Mushnik (Mel Welles) at his Skid Row flower shop where he pines for the pretty (but dumb as a bag of hammers) Audrey (Jackie Joseph).  Seymour creates a mutant Venus Fly Trap, which he names Audrey Jr. that drinks human blood to live.  The more Audrey Jr. grows, the busier the shop becomes, which makes Mushnik very happy.  As Audrey Jr. gets bigger, so does her appetite, and eventually Seymour takes to killing hobos and hookers in order to feed her.

 

The Little Shop of Horrors is famous for a lot of reasons.  First, it was shot in two days, which is pretty amazing.  Secondly, it kinda gained a second life after the 1986 musical remake.  Thirdly, it’s a public domain movie, so everybody’s probably seen it.  And perhaps the best reason is because it features Jack Nicholson in one of his greatest roles.  His performance as Wilbur Force, the masochistic dental patient has to be seen to be believed.  With his hair parted down the middle, he reads Pain Magazine and says shit like, “No Novocain!  It dulls the senses!”  He’s almost as nuts here as he was in The Shining.

 

This flick is chockfull of bizarre little bits and entertaining black humor.  The Dragnet style cops are hilarious and some of their banter will leave you in stitches.  The scenes of Seymour feeding Audrey Jr. disembodied hands and feet while the plant screams “FEEEEED MEEEEE!” are also pretty great.  And not only does the movie features a man-eating plant, but also a plant-eating man played by the always awesome Dick Miller.  (“I’ve got to get home; my wife’s making gardenias for dinner!”)  The Little Shop of Horrors is rife with weird touches like this that makes it so much fun.

 

Incredibly, Corman also managed to churn out Ski Troop Attack, Fall of the House of Usher, and Last Woman on Earth the same year.

 

Audrey Sr. gets the best line of the movie when she says, “I’m so hungry; I could eat a hearse!”

 

The Little Shop of Horrors is Number 3 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year for 1960 which places it just below The Magnificent Seven and right above Peeping Tom.

EVIL LAUGH (1986) ** ½

A group of friends retreat to an old house in the woods to fix the place up.  It seems it used to be an old foster home that closed under suspicious circumstances.  Unbeknownst to the houseguests, a killer with a maniacal laugh is lurking about the premises and is just waiting to butcher them in a variety of ways. 

Director Dominick Brascia knows his way around the slasher genre after being killed off in Friday the 13th Part V.  (Which cameos on a cover of Fangoria.)  Most of the fun comes from seeing Brascia sending up slasher movie conventions, long before Scream made it hip.  There’s also a funny montage of the cast cleaning the house as they dance and dust in unison to a cheesy ‘80s song.  There are also plenty of odd moments along the way, like when a friend hides inside a bed to scare two lovers, a weird dinner scene, and the part where a creepy real estate agent headbangs to “The William Tell Overture”.  

Some of the editing is a little wonky though, most notably when the cop shows up looking for a missing person.   Bits like this suggests there must’ve some half-assed reshoots.  Even these patchy moments kinda add to the scrappy charm.  Unfortunately, the hackneyed editing takes some of the pop out of the kills.  (Although I assume it was done to maintain an R rating.)  There's more blood than gore here, but some of the death scenes are kind of weak.  However, there is one head in the microwave gag that predates the Last House on the Left remake by twenty-three years, so that’s something at least. 

Future porn star Ashlyn Gere is the Final Girl in this one.  You’d never guess she’d go on to a career in porn from seeing here in this though as she wears a series of unflattering and frumpy outfits.  (She also used an obvious double for her eleventh-hour shower scene.)  Oh, and that’s Scott’s brother, Steven Baio in the lead.  (He also co-wrote and produced.) 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE (1943) ***

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on January 27th, 2010)

Muggs (Leo Gorcey), Glimpy (Huntz Hall), and rest of the East Side Kids try to spruce up an old house as a wedding gift to Glimpy’s sister (played by a before-she-was famous Ava Gardner).  The Kids accidentally go into the wrong house and are shocked to learn that it’s supposedly haunted.  Of course, we’ve seen enough Fake Ghosts in a Haunted House Movies to know otherwise.  As it turns out, a couple of no good spies (led by Bela Lugosi) are using the house as a hideout and churn out Nazi propaganda on a printing press in the basement.  The Kids try to put a stop to them and the usual hijinks and shenanigans ensue.

 

The first act of Ghosts on the Loose is heavily padded with lots of wedding preparation scenes.  There still is some good stuff sprinkled in there to keep you watching until the Kids get to the house though.  From then on, we get a stream of mostly funny (and sometimes stupid) one-liners and malapropisms to make any East Side Kids/Bowery Boys/Dead End Kids fan happy.

 

Ghosts on the Loose will never be mistaken for a comedy classic but director William “One-Shot” Beaudine keeps the gags coming at a steady clip.  Gorcey and Hall once again make for a good team and many of the lower tier Kids get a fair amount of screen time too.  I particularly liked the final gag in the movie when Hall comes down with a case of “German Measles”, which are essentially just little swastikas painted all over his face.

 

Naturally, if you’re an Old School Horror fan like me, you’re probably watching this flick just to see Bela Lugosi.  Even though he isn’t given a whole lot to do, Lugosi still is able to make the most of his screen time.  He also manages to be kinda funny too during the scene where he poses inside of a frame and pretends to be a painting.

 

Best exchange:  

Muggs:  What color are your eyes?

 

Dave:  Blue.

 

Muggs:  Well, if you don’t want them to be black, keep ‘em open!

 

Ghosts on the Loose is on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year 1943 at the Number 5 spot; which places it below Hit the Ice and above Batman:  The 1943 Serial.

 

AKA:  Ghosts in the Night.  AKA:  The East Side Kids Meet Bela Lugosi.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DEATHROW GAMESHOW (1987) ***

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 31st, 2011)

Director Mark (A Polish Vampire in Burbank) Pirro’s demented horror comedy is kind of like a Troma version of The Running Man (which was also released the same year) centered around Richard Dawson instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Chuck Toedan is the host of the hit game show Live or Die in which death row convicts have a chance to go free by competing in outlandish games.  Mostly though, they just wind up dying on the air.  During one show, Toedan unknowingly kills a Mafia don on live TV and the Mob comes after him.  When “the best hitman in the world” tries to kill Toedan, he has no choice but to make him a contestant on the show.

 

The first 20 minutes of this movie is priceless.  If the flick had kept up the same comic energy for the next hour or so, it would’ve been a classic.  The game show scenes and television commercials are great, but the movie gets extremely bogged down during the hitman subplot.  Basically, whenever the flick switches away from the game show studio, feel free to get up, grab a beer, make a sandwich or whatever because you won’t be missing much.

 

Despite the patchy nature of the film, there are a couple of really funny scenes.  I think my favorite moment was when they tie an electrode to a dude’s dick and have a hot gal (Debra Lamb) do a striptease in front of him.  If he gets a boner, he’ll be electrocuted.  After the dance, he survives but when the host places a hand on his bare shoulder, he gets a boner and is fried. 

 

Hey, did you hear that?  Do you know what that sound is?  It’s the sound of you adding this movie to your Netflix Queue.

 

Sure, it’s not great or anything but Deathrow Gameshow is funny enough, short enough (under 80 minutes), and ‘80s enough (the hairstyles alone are worthwhile) to give this a look-see.

 

AKA:  Death Game.