LET’S GET PHYSICAL: TITANIC 2000: VAMPIRE OF THE TITANIC (1999) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Tammy Parks is in desperate search of her lesbian vampire queen.  (Hey, aren’t we all?)  Meanwhile, some investors decide to create another Titanic and learning nothing from history (or the James Cameron movie), cut corners every chance they get.  (This being a Seduction Cinema movie, everyone pronounces it “TITantic”.)  Little do they know Tammy has snuck her coffin aboard the ship for its maiden voyage.  TITanic passenger Tina Krause is unhappy in her love life and meets Tammy on the ship.  Naturally, they are destined to be together, but will the sinking ship ruin their chance at bliss? 

TITanic 2000:  Vampire of the TITanic is more or less the ultimate Seduction Cinema movie as it features many of their in-house starlets and directors appearing in small roles.  Unfortunately, “ultimate” doesn’t necessarily translate into “best”.   I can understand trying to parody what was then the biggest movie of all time, but adding lesbian vampires to the mix was a… choice.  I’m not complaining mind you.  More movies should have lesbian vampires in them if you ask me.  It’s just lesbian vampires and a Titanic spoof go together like oil and water. 

The scenes that poke fun at Titanic aren’t exactly clever or funny.  In fact, the comedy that has nothing to do with Titanic (or lesbian vampires) is often excruciating and elicit more groans than laughs.  At least it has more boobs than that James Cameron flick. 

The greenscreen and CGI effects are pretty lousy.  I mean, the boat itself looks like something out of the “Money for Nothing” music video.  You probably won’t care though, mostly because of all the boobs. 

Tammy really steals the movie.  She also has a great scene where she emerges from her coffin to perform a sexy striptease.  Tina looks fantastic too and has plenty of opportunities to disrobe (including a spoof of the nude painting scene from Titanic).  Misty Mundae has a cameo as a guitar player, but sadly she doesn’t get naked, which is a bigger bummer than any Titanic-related tragedy.

AKA:  TITanic 2000.  AKA:  Scary Sexy Disaster Movie.  AKA:  TITanic Double-D.  AKA:  Vampire of the TITanic. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: NIGHTBLADE (2016) **

FORMAT:  DVD

Andy (Scott Tepperman) is a cop who gets kicked off the force after he assaults the man who murdered his family.  His fuck-up childhood friend Nicky (Jim O’Rear) offers him a chance to start anew, so they open a strip club together.  Things go great for a while until a psycho in a hoodie starts cutting up the dancers who work at the club.  It’s then up to the budding business partners to find the killer before he sets his sights on the sexy Jade (Betsy Rue).

My Bloody Valentine 3-D’s Betsy Rue, Diff’rent Strokes’ Todd Bridges, and perennial tough guy Robert Lasardo are the only real stars of this low budget thriller.  Written and directed by Tepperman and O’Rear, this is a fairly straightforward stripper whodunit.  It’s the kind of thing that Roger Corman used to make in the ‘90s.  Except that it looks way cheaper.  And the ending sucks. 

The big problem is that the flick spends too much time on the cop’s backstory.  They should’ve just cut the first fifteen minutes and got right to the stripping.  While there is a decent amount of nudity on display, unfortunately, Rue only has one brief sex scene.  She gives what is easily the best performance of the film and it’s a shame she is stuck making movies like this because she should’ve become a household name after her work in My Bloody Valentine 3-D.  (Although she is a household name in the Lovell household.)

The writing/directing/acting duo of Tepperman and O’Rear don’t have much in the way of screen presence or chemistry.  That really stings because they’re in nearly every scene.  Still, kudos to O’Rear for somehow managing to convince Rue to have a sex scene with him.  It’s proof that anything is possible in Hollywood.  I wonder if Betsy would star in a movie with me… 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: WHEN DEATH CALLS (2012) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

When Death Calls is a spotty, but amusing horror anthology punctuated with a healthy doses of T & A.  Suzi Lorraine stars in the wraparound scenes (***) as a radio hostess who tells scary stories over the airwaves on Halloween night.  During the show, a serial killer calls in with a few stories of his own.  Sooner or later, it seems like everyone has a scary story to tell. 

The first story (**) is about a cheating husband who won’t let his side piece leave.  The second involves a woman who slowly realizes her boyfriend is a killer (**).  That’s followed by a tale about a woman babysitting her fiancé’s dog that just so happens to have an insatiable appetite (***).  The final story (***) is the longest.  It’s about a man who murders his wife to please his mistress. Problems arise when she absolutely refuses to die.  Tina Krause also appears in the opening scene (***) as a sexy teacher who gets menacing phone calls before being stabbed to death. 

Essentially, the stuff with Suzi Lorriane’s DJ character is just a loose framework to showcase scenes of women disrobing before being killed.  Frankly, I have no problem with that.  The best scenes are Krause’s bit, the story about the dog (although it runs on too long), and the scene with the wife who can’t die.  (The part with the cable guy who hooks them up with the “Judd Nelson Channel” is pretty funny too.)

Most horror anthologies contain stories that have a twist.  The ones in When Death Calls are so loosey goosey that they could hardly be called twists, but they all at least take a turn near the end.  The dream-within-a-dream scenes add to the running time, but for the most part, it moves at a brisk pace. 

The best part (aside from the T & A, of course) is seeing framed posters of Lady Terminator, Dracula Blows His Cool, and The Groove Tube on the walls of one of the houses. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: CRITTERS ATTACK! (2019) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

They say necessity is the mother of invention.  I guess it goes without saying that an unnecessary Critters sequel made twenty-seven years after the last one isn’t going to be inventive.  Then again, it doesn’t need to be.  You don’t need to reinvent the wheel with something like this.  (Or reinvent the giant Critter ball as is the case here.)  You just need to make it fun.  Surprisingly enough, that’s exactly what Critters Attack! is:  Fun. 

The Krites, the deadly porcupine bowling ball aliens, land back on Earth and begin incubating their young inside of their victims.  Also touching down is their albino alien queen who gets picked up by a sushi delivery driver and some brats she’s babysitting.  Together, they must protect the queen and stop the rampaging Critters from destroying the town. 

It was refreshing to see just how old school this was as the Critters are still just hand puppets.  In fact, they may look a little cheaper than they did in the ‘80s, but that’s part of the appeal.  It’s also a lot gorier than I was expecting (it’s the first entry to be rated R), even though it really didn’t need to be.  Then again, why would I ever complain about gore in a horror movie?  (The shower attack scene is especially memorable.)

The B plotline with Dee Wallace returning (although her character has a different name, apparently to avoid a lawsuit) as the space gun-packing mama who tracks the Krites down is more fan service than a fleshed-out plot development.  (It still works better than the Laurie Strode stuff in the new Halloween movies.)  I also missed the face-melting alien bounty hunters of the original films.  Still, this was a lot more fun than I was expecting.  Overall, Critters Attack! is an unnecessary, but highly entertaining addition to the franchise. 

Mike Mendez, director of the minor cult classic The Convent, was the editor (and he also edited Slotherhouse, which I didn’t realize till I looked at his IMDb page).

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE HANGING JUDGE (1991) ***

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

Lorraine has horrible nightmares of a judge sentencing women to hang in a dilapidated barn.  She and her boyfriend, along with a ghost-hunting couple, decide to get to the bottom of the dreams by investigating the barn.  After about two minutes of looking around, they forget about ghost hunting, get drunk, and start canoodling.  After the friends find Lorraine hanging in the barn, they try their best to move on with their lives.  But will the evil spirits let them? 

The Hanging Judge was a custom-made W.A.V.E. movie.  That means the script was written by a fan who sent it into W.A.V.E. and Gary Whitson directed it for them.  Since it doesn’t follow any known screenwriting rules, it means it’s hard to know what to expect next.  It starts out as a surprisingly effective ghost story before turning into a standard bondage W.A.V.E. flick.  That’s just a fancy way of saying it’s got a little something for everybody.  Also, the production values are a hair above a snuff film.  That is to say, I rather enjoyed it.  It’s only about forty-five minutes long, but the dream scene is repeated which pads things out a bit, although not too much. 

Like The Pinelands Murders!, The Hanging Judge was a bonus feature on the Dead North Blu-Ray.  It makes sense since this flick also features Clancy McCauley getting hogtied in a tent as a major plot point.  Unlike either Dead North or The Pinelands Murders!, it actually has some legitimate atmosphere and a few memorable moments.  It’s also less than half the length of either of those two films, which makes for a breezy viewing.  Sure, the twist ending doesn’t exactly stick the landing, but for a bondage movie parading around as a horror flick (or is that the other way around?), it works better than you might expect. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE PINELANDS MURDERS! (2012) * ½

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

Michael Mann.  Alfred Hitchcock.  John Woo.  Gary Whitson.  What do these directors have in common?  They all remade one of their own films.  In the case of The Pinelands Murders!,  it’s a remake of Whitson’s Dead North. 

Remaking Dead North wasn’t the worst idea in the world as it was one of Whitson’s weakest efforts.  The problem is he basically uses the same exact script.  Even worse, the amateurish actors in this version aren’t even up to snuff with the original cast. 

The plot is identical.  A group of friends go out into the woods on a camping trip.  Before long, they are picked off one by one by a killer. 

The good news is that this clocks in twelve minutes shorter than the original.  The bad news is that it’s still ninety-eight minutes long.  That’s still about thirty-eight minutes longer than the movie really needed to be.  At least the characters head out to the campsite faster than they did in the first movie.  And by that, I mean they get to the woods a half-hour into the running time instead of forty-five minutes. 

The Pinelands Murders! was included as a special bonus feature on the Dead North Blu-Ray.  Watching them back-to-back as I did gives you a palpable sense of déjà vu.  The dialogue and staging of many scenes are identical to that of Dead North.  Watching them side by side it’s obvious that Whitson didn’t even try to improve upon the material, but merely recycle it. 

That said, there is one additional twist near the end, but it seems unnecessary.  That is, unless you want a “happy” ending from something like this.  Another addition here that is not present in the original is the impromptu water fight accompanied by a goofy sitcom soundtrack.  This might actually be the best part of the movie.  If only there were more oddball flourishes like this.  After this inspired bit of silliness, this remake of Dead North heads due south real fast. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DEAD NORTH (1991) * ½

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

A trio of couples go hiking in the woods.  Since nearly everyone in the friend group is banging someone else, their respective partner has a motive for murder.  Once everybody finally gets into the forest and makes camp, a killer with a bag over his head stalks the group and picks them off one by one. 

Dead North is an early W.A.V.E. movie, and it’s obvious that director/star Gary Whitson hadn’t quite stumbled upon the winning formula that makes W.A.V.E. pictures so much fun.  For one, it’s close to two hours long.  If you’re going to give us a horror flick with an inflated running time, it better be some Terrifier 3/Smile 2 level shit.  

This dull shot-on-video flick just takes forever to get going.  The early scenes involve the couples making plans to go camping and then making plans to make plans to go camping.  (You know, to firm up the plans they just planned out.)  Then, before they go camping, there are long scenes of people telling each other how much they can’t wait to go camping.  Meanwhile, I’m over here like GO CAMPING ALREADY!  I’m not saying Dead North would’ve been a classic had Whitson jettisoned all this unnecessary filler, but it would’ve saved us all forty-five minutes of our lives.  Oh, and if you want to see someone put up a tent in real time, this is your movie. 

Yes, there are some bondage, electrocution, and murder scenes, and they are OK, I guess.  (It’s mostly a variety of stabbing and axing.)  It’s just a shame you had to wait eighty minutes to get to them.  All this might’ve been bearable if the movie was an hour long.  At twice that length, it’s often a chore to sit through.  (The gratuitous final scene that overexplains the twist ending is especially grating.)