TERRIFIER 3 (2024) *** ½

There’s “over the top” and then there’s “through the roof”.  Terrifier 3 is a case of the latter.  There is more blood and guts in this sequel than most horror flicks have in their entire franchise.  I have a feeling that somewhere Herschell Gordon Lewis is smiling. 

Terrifier 3 earns extra points for being a Christmas horror flick, something the world can always use more of.  It manages to give us all the things we crave in a Christmas slasher (namely a killer in a Santa suit chopping up people with an axe), but with fresh new nuances (like the killer making “blood angels”) to make it feel fresh. 

If you recall, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) got decapitated at the end of Terrifier 2.  To put it delicately… he got better.  Now, he’s back with his horribly disfigured girlfriend Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) in tow, and he’s looking to finish off The Final Girl, Sierra (Lauren LaVera) once and for all. 

Terrifier 3 is for my money, the best installment yet.  It dials back the fairy tale weirdness of the second flick while still adding enough touches of it as to not turn off die-hard fans.  The running time is thankfully shorter than 2 and while it still clocks in at a hefty two hours, it certainly isn’t boring and there is no shortage of the red stuff to go around. 

Speaking of which, some of the kills must be seen to be believed.  I will go on record by saying that the chainsaw up the ass scene will go down as an all-timer.  Sure, some of the gore scenes flirt with tastelessness (like when Victoria masturbates with a shard of broken glass), but if you’re still watching this series after the grisly second entry, then you probably already know what you’re getting yourself into. 

Thornton delivers yet another fun performance as Art.  He’s basically a mix of Pennywise, Freddy Krueger, and Charlie Chaplin. Some of his reaction shots are priceless this time around.  LaVera once again makes for a formidable adversary for him, although her nerdy brother (Elliott Fullam) kind of gets the short end of the stick in this one.  The supporting cast, which includes everyone from Clint Howard to Tom Savini to Jason Patric, is fun too. 

Your mileage may vary of course, but Terrifier 3 got this old Grinch into the holiday spirit. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BANDH DARWAZA (1990) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

A woman desperate for a child, sneaks off to the sinister “Black Mountain” to get knocked up by the Dracula-like “Master”.  When she finally gives birth to a daughter, the Master demands she join him on Black Mountain.  Naturally, she refuses to give up her baby and he has her killed.  Her grieving hubby then comes to get revenge, but with his dying breath, the Master places a curse on his daughter.  Years later, she falls madly in love with a man who rejects her advances.  Soon, she finds herself pulled to Black Mountain where the witches there promise to grant her powers in exchange for her soul.  With the help of a magic book, she bewitches her intended love.  His friends then team up to break the spell and stop the Master and his evil witches at the Black Mountain. 

If all that seems like a lot of plot… well… it kind of is.  However, the film moves at a fast pace and is never boring.  Since it’s a Bollywood movie, it has a few musical numbers, but honestly there weren’t nearly as many as I was expecting.  They aren’t intrusive to the plot and are moderately entertaining for the most part.  In fact, it just adds to the bizarre “anything goes” vibe. 

Like most Bollywood flicks, it’s long (almost two and a half hours), but there’s enough weird and/or cool and/or goofy shit here to keep just about any genre film lover entertained.  There’s Aerobicizing, annoying comic relief, dorky grown ass men wearing Michael Jackson Thriller jackets, some interesting camerawork, a scary bat idol with glowing red eyes, and random Kung Fu fights.  It also blatantly steals music from Friday the 13th (and Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein), which ups the overall kitsch factor. 

The first half is full of witches and spells and assorted weirdness.  By the end of the film, things switch over to a more traditional Dracula type of deal with the red-eyed Master seducing and biting women on the neck.  Sure, a lot of this is wildly uneven, but it’s still plenty of fun, and the scene where he flies through a car windshield and bites the driver is legit.  

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1962) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on October 25th, 2007)

After his daughter’s face is terribly disfigured in a car crash, a slightly crazed doctor (Pierre Brasseur) works frantically in his lab to perfect a face transplant. His assistant (Alida Valli from Suspiria) lures girls back to the lab where they are anesthetized and become unwilling facial donors. Meanwhile his timid daughter (Edith Scob), who wears a creepy featureless mask, becomes increasingly loony, especially after the latest botched surgery.

This atmospheric and stylish film, directed by Georges Franju benefits from some truly unsettling operation scenes where victims' faces are scalpeled off with impeccable precision. They must have really been something to see back in the '60s and pack quite a punch today. Unfortunately for the most part though, the film can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be an arty French movie or a balls-out horror movie. Even though most of the movie is stuck in this bizarre state of genre limbo, it’s still worth a look just for those nasty operation scenes alone. The stiff pacing and art house sensibilities don’t do it any favors either.

The performances are a mixed bag as Brasseur doesn’t make much of an impression as either a concerned father or a mad scientist. Valli fares much better and brings a touch of sensitivity to her otherwise underwritten role, but it’s Scob who really steals the movie. With her majestic, hopelessly sad eyes peering through her expressionless mask, her touching performance elevates the movie and gives it a much-needed shot of pathos.

Some people will be turned off by the subtitles and the slack pacing, but others will want to check it out for the botched facial surgeries and Scob’s memorable performance. Besides it’s not every day that you can say you saw a French mad doctor movie, is it?

AKA: House of Dr. Rasanoff. AKA: Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus.

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.