LET’S GET PHYSICAL: CAPULINA VS. THE MUMMIES (THE TERROR OF GUANAJUATO) (1973) *

FORMAT:  DVD

Capulina was a painfully unfunny, but wildly popular Mexican comedian who starred in several comedies south of the border.  There’s really no reason to see any of his movies unless they have monsters and/or El Santo in them.  Even then, they still aren’t any good.  In fact, this one is fucking terrible. 

(You know you’re in trouble when the filmmakers can’t even decide on a title, so they just slap two of them onto a title card.)

This time out, the bumbling Capulina is working as a taxi driver.  He takes a flustered fare out to the middle of nowhere to visit his uncle, who just so happens to be a mad scientist with a lab full of mummies.  The scientist takes a shine to Capulina and hires him to be his new assistant.  Naturally, chaos ensues when he succeeds in bringing the mummies back to life. 

The alleged comedy sequences include fast-motion chase scenes, talking skeletons, and people falling into swimming pools.  None of it is funny, and Capulina’s constant mugging begins grating on the nerves from the very first scene.  The long subplot where Capulina and company mistake a criminal for a mummy goes nowhere too.  There are also oddly placed episode titles throughout, which makes me think this might’ve originally been meant for television. 

The mummies are cool though.  They’re not the Hollywood variety with bandages and shit.  Rather they are barely preserved skeletons with brownish dry skin thinly pulled over their bulging skulls.  Too bad once they are brought to life they just look like an unkempt gardener. 

This is the part of the review where I tell you my copy didn’t come with English subtitles.  That means if there had been some hilarious wordplay and banter, I probably missed it.  (Chances are, there wasn’t.)  Hell, the flick could’ve been littered with funny repartee I did understand, and I’d still be stuck suffering through Capulina’s painful slapstick shenanigans.  His unfunny schtick doesn’t need any translation and is unfunny in any language. 

Director Alfredo Zacarias went on to direct the camp classic disaster movie, The Bees. 

AKA:  Capulina vs. the Mummies.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DO YOU WANNA KNOW A SECRET? (2001) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Do You Wanna Know a Secret? comes to us from Mainline Releasing, a company mostly known for their Skinamax movies.  (The house in the film is featured in many of their erotic thrillers.)  It was co-written and produced by none other than Del Tenney, the man who gave the world the immortal classic The Horror of Party Beach.  It also stars Grease’s Jeff Conaway as a detective and Joseph Lawrence AKA:  Joey Lawrence from Blossom as the leading man.  Whoa!

Despite having all that going for it, it still winds up sucking.

A hot blonde’s boyfriend is murdered, and the killer is never caught.  One year later, she and her friends go down to Florida for Spring Break.  It seems the killer has followed them down south.  He also loves to scrawl notes that say, “Do You Wanna Know a Secret?” for the friends to find before he offs them.

This early ‘00s slasher has way too many false scares, fake-out dream scenes, and offscreen kills to be worth a damn.  Nothing happens for the longest time before most of the cast gets wiped out in short order.  The murders themselves are mostly bloodless and forgettable (when they do happen on-screen that is).  And for a movie from Mainline Releasing, it features no skin whatsoever, which is especially disappointing. 

Things take a particularly yawning-inducing turn in the finale.  That’s when all the standard cliches (longwinded explanation by the killer, victims propped up around in a circle, the killer jumping up just when you think he’s dead, etc.) are trotted out.  You’ve seen this shit played out a hundred times before and done much better.  I guess the makers of Do You Wanna Know a Secret? didn’t know the secret to making a good slasher. 

Look fast for Greg Cipes, the voice of Beast Boy from Teen Titans as “Taco Boy”. 

AKA:  Dark Summer.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BYLETH: THE DEMON OF INCEST (1972) ***

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

A young Duke named Lionello (Mark Damon) returns home to find out his sister Barbara (Claudia Gravy) has gotten married.  That pisses the Duke off to no end because he’s got the hots for his sister.  To make matters worse, he can’t make it with any other woman, which gives him a creepy reputation in the village.  When a killer in a black cloak goes around stabbing naked women in the throat with a three-pronged knife, Lionello quickly becomes a person of interest.  But is the killer human, or is it a supernatural creature driven by lust and revenge?

Byleth:  The Demon of Incest is a solid little slice of Eurosleaze.  Despite the lurid title, the film is handled with a surprising amount of restraint.  Not to worry, there’s still plenty of gratuitous T & A and healthy doses sex and violence to go around.  It’s just that it’s not nearly as icky as it could’ve been, considering the subject matter.  In fact, the final incestual coupling is handled rather… dare I say… tastefully.  Too bad the ultimate confrontation with the demon is so anticlimactic. 

Mark Damon is typically a bland leading man, and that mostly describes him here.  However, the characters he usually plays are cut-and-dry bland characters.  In Byleth:  The Demon of Incest, he’s cast as what at the outset seems like your average Mark Damon role.  Since he’s sort of a tweaked freak masquerading as a bland character, it works in Damon’s favor.  He doesn’t exactly hit it out of the park or anything, but his stilted blandness is creepier than if he chewed the scenery and tried to be scary.  The lovely Gravy is quite good too as the object of his affection, and the many ladies in the cast are equally alluring, especially the sultry Silviana Pompili, who plays Damon’s new doomed girlfriend. 

AKA:  Byleth.  

SALEM’S LOT (2024) **

When it came to adapting Stephen King to the small screen, Tobe Hooper’s mini-series of Salem’s Lot provided the blueprint.  The 2004 remake is one of those deals where I only saw the first episode and for one reason or another, I never got around to finishing the rest of the mini-series, so I can’t speak to how that one was.  Now, here comes the third version of the tale, directed by Gary Dauberman, who wrote the new It movies. 

For a while, it looked like this was going to be one of those Batgirl deals as Warner Bros. let it sit on the shelf forever.  Now that it’s finally on Max, I have to say it looks perfectly at home on the small screen.  That’s a nice way of saying, “I would’ve been pissed if I paid $15 to see this in the theater.” 

The plot is basically the same.  A writer named Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman, son of Bill) returns to his small hometown in Maine.  Almost instantly, the place is plagued by a rash of deaths and disappearances.  It’s only a matter of time till he learns that the place is crawling with vampires. 

This version of Salem’s Lot isn’t awful.  It just feels like a skimpy first draft.  Everything comes way too easy for the characters.  When figuring out the mystery, they immediately jump to the right conclusions.  Not only that, but everyone believes the characters when they tell them vampires are real.  To make matters worse, the vamps roll over fairly easily.  I’m sure the slapdash plot was mostly due to condensing of the book into a feature length movie, but it leaves it feeling dramatically dead. 

The performances are a mix of bland (leading man Pullman) to flat-out terrible (Pilou Asbaek as the vampire’s familiar, Straker).  Only Alfre Woodard brings a hint of fun as the smalltown doctor who takes no shit. 

Most of the scenes suffer from comparison to the original, or the book for that matter.  The ending earns points for taking place at a drive-in, but it goes on a bit too long.  Ultimately, there’s just not a whole lot to like about this Lot. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SORORITY SLAUGHTER 2 (1996) ** ½

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

With his dying breath, the psycho killer Hugo (Sal Longo) tells his bride Kim (Tina Krause) the secret of immortality.  Seems all she’s got to do is make three sacrifices to the god Radu and not only will she live forever, but she’ll have eternal beauty as well.  She then plans to sacrifice three sorority sisters during their initiation.  Eventually, other followers of Radu help her in her quest. 

You know, the original Sorority Slaughter was a cheap shot on video W.A.V.E. movie, but at least it felt like someone attempting to make a “real” film with a limited budget.  This one is basically an assemblage of scenes of sorority girls being bound, hazed, paddled, and sacrificed.  Essentially, it’s a bondage video with horror elements.  So, you know, it’s your typical W.A.V.E. picture. 

I kind of admire the film’s purity and rigidness when it comes to finding a formula and sticking with it.  However, at one-hundred-and-seven minutes, it’s a good forty-seven minutes too long.  (At least this one has a lot of T & A.)  Still, there’s a mixture of legitimately effective bits (the invisible monster attacks are surprisingly well done, given the budget) as well as some unintentionally hilarious moments (like Krause confessing to her boyfriend where she’s been the last three years) to keep you entertained. 

The usual cast of W.A.V.E. stock players make the patchy parts go down smoother.  Director Gary Whitson is pretty funny while stumbling over his lines as a detective on the case.  Krause is once again fun to watch and gets a lengthy sex scene.  Debbie D. is likewise engaging and has a long topless scene.  Laura Giglio is also amusing to watch during her extended paddling scene. 

It’s Deana Demko who gets the best line of the movie when she tells Debbie D.:  “You never sleep with a professor for a B.  It’s an A or nothing!”

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SORORITY GIRL MURDERER! (2012) ***

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

Seventeen years ago, three sorority sisters murdered a creepy neighbor after a prank went horribly wrong.  Now, a masked killer is on the loose killing the girls who got away Scot free. 

The first twenty minutes or so is a condensed version of Sorority Slaughter.  This isn’t a bad thing since Sorority Slaughter was plagued with too much padding to begin with.  It actually plays a lot better if I’m being completely honest.  Plus, the recycled footage hits all the highlights (like Tina Krause showering, Tina Krause having sex, and the iconic car wash/water fight sequence), so it’s hard to complain.  Also, this version runs a brisk fifty-four minutes, a good thirty-three minutes shorter than the original, which is appreciated. 

Sorority Girl Murderer! is kind of weird though.  That’s mostly because it’s a sequel to the first half of Sorority Slaughter.  It totally forgets that the creepy neighbor survived and exacted revenge on the girls by ripping their guts out.  (It also ignores Sorority Slaughter 2 completely.)  That film played like a shot on video version of Blood Feast.  This is more like a chloroform and bondage shot-on-video remake of I Know What You Did Last Summer.  So, you know, it’s a typical W.A.V.E. movie. 

The newly shot scenes feature a few new actresses, some of whom stare directly at the camera.  Since nearly all of them get naked for bondage scenes, I say it kind of added to the experience.  It’s also fun seeing the original W.A.V.E. starlets reprising their roles seventeen years later.  In that respect, it’s almost like a shot-on-video bondage version of Boyhood. 

As great as much of the film is, nothing can prepare you for the CGI sandworm attack.  I know that’s a big spoiler as this is probably the last movie you would expect to see a CGI sandworm attack.  Even though you now know about it, it’s still safe to say, nothing can prepare you for it.  It's certainly more fun than anything found in those new Dune movies.  Denis Villeneuve, eat your heart out. 

THE NAKED MONSTER (2005) **

The Naked Monster is a loving tribute to ‘50s monster movies made by fans for fans.  In the ‘50s, monsters attacked the world.  For years after, they have been silent.  Now, a new threat, a three-eyed green monster rises out of the sea to attack California.  A small-town sheriff and a government agent recruit the old timer Army captain (Kenneth Tobey) that fought the monsters back in the golden era to help bring down the beast. 

The Naked Monster uses a lot of stock footage from many B-movie favorites like The Thing from Another World, Revenge of the Creature, and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.  Even better, the stars of those old films like Tobey, John Agar, and Lori Nelson return playing essentially the same characters (slightly tweaked of course, to avoid a lawsuit).  Their efforts aren’t quite enough to make it worthwhile, but it’s nice to see them all again.

Production began way back in 1988, but it wasn’t finished until sixteen years later.  Because of that, it feels more than a little patchy.  Most of the time, it plays like someone’s home movie.  Since it was made by Ted Newsom, he was able to coax Brinke Stevens, Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer, and Forrest J. Ackerman to be in it.  Some of their footage was shot silently, and Newsom employs a great cost-cutting technique for one scene with Quigley where she and her boyfriend use sign language.  That’s one way to avoid paying for dubbing. 

Much of the intentional humor is unfunny and plays like a poor man’s version of a Zucker-Abrahms-Zucker parody.  Sadly, a little of this goes a long way.  It’s fun for a half-hour or so, but the charm wears off soon after.  It might’ve been bearable if the running time was only an hour.  However, at eighty-eight minutes, it’s sometimes a chore to sit through, mostly because it shoots its wad so early. 

At least its heart is in the right place.  Even though it never quite works, there are still fun moments like seeing Paul Marco from Plan 9 from Outer Space playing Kelton the cop again.  Stevens and Quigley have nude scenes too, which helps, and the scene where the monster fights Godzilla is pretty funny.