LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DR. CALIGARI (1989) * ½

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on April 14th, 2013)

Stephen Saydian (AKA: Rinse Dream) tried to bring his trademark weirdness to the mainstream with this pretty terrible in-name-only remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Imagine trying to watch one of Saydian’s hardcore movies without the hardcore footage and that should give you an idea of what to expect; which sadly isn’t much.

Laura Albert stars as Mrs. Van Houten. She gets sent to an insane asylum ran by Dr. Caligari (Madeleine Reynal, from Space Mutiny) to “rediscover her passion”. Caligari determines she has a “disease of the libido” and uses a series of unorthodox treatments to turn her into a sex maniac.

Since Albert plays a character named “Mrs. Van Houten” it’s safe to assume that Saydian was more interested in making a “legitimate” remake of Nightdreams rather than doing a new version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The flick is filled with all the trademark scenes of women spouting pseudo-hipster gibberish directly to the camera (Sample dialogue: “I want his boy-thing! I’ll twist it like a rubber band until it snaps!”), bizarre imagery (in one scene Albert fellates a giant tongue), and random weirdness (a chick sports a pair of freaky droopy boobs) you’d expect from Saydian. But without the hardcore sex scenes tying everything together, Dr. Caligari is pretty much a chore to sit through.

A lot of the movie tried my patience. I found much of it to be a bunch of weirdness for weirdness’ sake (like the scarecrow scene). That doesn’t mean the flick didn’t have its moments. For one, I dug the fact that Caligari’s office looked like Lucy’s five cent shrink stand from Peanuts. There was also a visually impressive scene where Albert spread her legs and masturbated in front of a TV playing a flicking tongue. Too bad most of the scenes are downright irritating (like the electrocution scenes) and the sets look something out of a high school play.

THE HORRIBLE SEXY VAMPIRE (1971) **

You won’t fucking believe the opening scene of The Horrible Sexy Vampire.  A dude gets strangled in the shower by the Invisible Man, without the benefit of special effects, mind you.  Imagine a tubby middle-aged dude reenacting the shower scene in Psycho all by himself, and that’s what we’re talking about.  It’s fucking hilarious.  Alas, it’s all downhill from there, unfortunately. 

Oh, and turns out the Invisible Man is actually the vampire of the title, but It’s hard to tell how horrible or sexy he is when he’s fucking invisible. 

In fact, I think this is the first movie I’ve seen where a vampire is invisible.  I have a suspicion they only gave him that power because the actor didn’t show up to the set that day.  Since the filmmakers still had to film the scene, they fucking made his character invisible just so they could get some film in the can.  I’d like to think that at least.   Oh, and (SPOILER ALERT):  When the vampire finally shows up in the flesh, he’s neither horrible nor sexy.  (He looks like someone’s grandpa.) 

Oh, and remember when I mentioned Psycho before?  Well, like that classic, the main character gets killed off early on and then the movie has to start over with a new set of characters.  I don’t mean to tell tales out of school, but Hitchcock did it better. 

Anyway, the new character is the latest descendant of the vampire who comes to stay at his ancestral mansion.  Intrigued by the skeletons in his family’s closet (along with the literal ones in the basement), not to mention the recent murders at the residence, he enlists the help of the new detective on the case to get to the bottom of the mystery. 

Oh, and did I mention the vampire is called Count Winniger?  But because he’s German it’s pronounced “Count Vinegar”!  No wonder the whole movie leaves a sour taste in your mouth.  At least the gratuitous scenes of random women disrobing give the whole thing a reason to exist. 

During his investigation a policeman says, “Explaining is stupid.  Why should I bother?”  I have a feeling the screenwriters asked themselves the same thing. 

AKA:  The Vampire of the Highway.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DEMONS 2 (1986) *** ½

FORMAT:  4K UHD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on December 19th, 2007)

Director Lamberto (Macabre) Bava and producer Dario (Suspiria) Argento collaborate once again for this highly entertaining sequel to their cult hit Demons. Basically, if you’ve seen the first movie, you’ve seen this one. The only difference is that instead of demons coming out of a movie screen and killing a bunch of people in a theater, this time demons come out of a television set and kill a bunch of people in an apartment complex. The rules are still the same: Whenever the demons scratch or bite someone they become a possessed demon too. During the course of the movie the demons crash a birthday party, attack some muscle-bound chuckleheads at the gym, and chase the hero up an elevator shaft. In the end, a couple of uninfected people band together in the parking garage and the movie turns into a human demolition derby.

Bava fills the film with a lot of atmospheric moments, namely the scenes when the infected humans/demons are running down the hallway with lights shooting out of their eyes. Other scenes that will give you the heebie-jeebies include the scene where the demon is resurrected with blood and the part when a demon slowly forces his way out of the television set.

Bava also piles on the carnage with panache. There’s some groin grabbing, umbrella impaling, extreme manicuring, an Alien inspired chest bursting scene and of course, plenty of the requisite fingernail slashings we’ve come to expect in a Demons movie. Bava also gives us a couple twists on the demon lore by throwing in a freaky demon dog and a ferocious demon kid (obviously a midget in a suit, but who gives a flip) too.

As with the first movie, Demons 2 sometimes stumbles whenever it shifts its sights away from epicenter of the bloodletting and focuses on a couple meaningless peripheral characters who are OUTSIDE of the building. Whenever Bava does this, he loses a lot of momentum and whatever claustrophobic tension he’s created dissipates. Luckily, it doesn’t take him long to get the suspense crackling once again. There’s also an inexplicable subplot involving a rubbery looking pint-sized demon who looks like a fugitive from a Ghoulies sequel that attacks a pregnant woman. I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but it doesn’t jibe with the usual Demons mythos and the monster is about as scary as one of the creatures from Troll.

Despite its faults, Demons 2 is still a lot of fun and a worthy successor to the first film. A very young Asia Argento (daughter of Dario) has a small role as a little girl who gets to watch her parents become demonized.

A dumb bimbo in the film-within-a-film gets the movie’s best line: “I want to immortalize this moment!”

QUICK THOUGHTS:

Pound for pound, this is one of the strongest horror sequels of the ‘80s.  It gives the audience what they want from a sequel to Demons while only tweaking things slightly.  The apartment setting was an inspired choice of scenery as it allows the carnage to play out on a broader scale than the original.  (Even if I do miss the intimacy of the movie theater from the first one.)  After all these years, the shot of the demon face coming out of the TV remains one of the most iconic of the ‘80s. 

4K UHD NOTES:

This is another great transfer by the folks at Synapse.  The darks run deep, and the brighter colors pop, especially during the blue-hued birthday massacre scene.  The slimy green faces of the demons look awesome in 4K too, as does the scene where the demons, eyes glowing in the darkness, descend a winding staircase.  In fact, the transfer is so good that you can clearly see the marionette stings holding up the little demon puppet during the scene where it attacks the pregnant chick now! 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DEMONS (1985) ****

FORMAT:  4K UHD

(Note:  Demons is one of my favorite Italian horror movies of all time.  I’m actually a little stunned to learn I haven’t reviewed it before.  Because of that, I will dispense with the usual “Quick Thoughts” portion of the Let’s Get Physical reviews that I normally do and just review it straight up. I’ll still include the typical “4K UHD Notes” at the end of the review though.)

Lamberto Bava got his start assisting his old man Mario Bava, the king of Italian horror.  If you’ve got to learn from someone, learn from the best.  He made his bones directing solid horror flicks like Macabre and A Blade in the Dark, but he really took things to the next level with Demons.  Working alongside producer and co-writer Dario Argento (whose influence is definitely felt, although this is mostly a Bava jam), Bava was clearly influenced from American horror films like Evil Dead, but he still managed to up the ante considerably.  The result is not only one of the best Italian horror flicks of the ‘80s, but of all time. 

College student Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) is invited to a movie premiere by a creepy dude in a metal mask (future director Michele Soavi).  She and a bunch of other folk head on over to an old movie house to see the film, which turns out to be a horror movie.  Before long, the terror spills off the screen and into the audience as patrons turn into razor-toothed demons.  It’s then up to Cheryl and a dude named George (Urbano Barberini from Outlaw) to survive the night. 

The ooey gooey special effects are a lot of fun.  The demon transformations are essentially a cross between traditional zombies and the Deadites in the Evil Dead.  The rubbery special effects are a hoot too and the air bladder induced bile spewing infected bite marks are a real thing of beauty.  The gore is equally great, and includes throat ripping, eye gouging, and scalping.  

Bava does such a good job at ratcheting up the tension and springing the monsters loose on the audience that it always felt disheartening when he switches gears mid-movie to a bunch of punks outside the theater who are driving around town and listening to Billy idol.  This threatens to take the wind out of the movie’s sails and diminishes the suspense and feeling of claustrophobia he’s built up.  (I did like that they snort coke from out of a Coke can though.)  That in no way ruins the overall fun of the film, but it does interrupt its flow a little bit. 

Luckily, once the punks sneak into the theater, the carnage is truly inspired.  The absolutely apocalyptic ending is really something too and I dug Barberini’s transformation from clueless dolt to motorcycle-riding, samurai sword-wielding, grappling gun-shooting hero.  (You’ve heard of Chekov’s gun?  This movie has Bava’s motorcycle!  Any motorcycle introduced in the first act must be driven around a movie theater and used to kill demons in the third.)  Also, the iconic score by Claudio Simonetti from Goblin is truly one of his best and gives Goblin’s score from Suspiria a run for its money. 

4K UHD NOTES:

The 4K restoration by Synapse is a nice blend of preserving the way it looked in the ‘80s while making the resolution and picture quality sharper than ever.  The colors are nice and rich, and the nighttime and darker scenes look great.  The special effects look particularly icky and the various transformation scenes look a bit rubberier now thanks to the high resolution.  That in no way takes away from their awesomeness.  The money shot where the demons, eyes all aglow, emerge from the theater pit, looks especially top notch in 4K.  The disc also includes three versions of the film, the original Italian, an international English version, and the American theatrical cut.  The commentaries (especially the one by Kat Ellinger and Heather Drain) are worth checking out as well. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: HAUNTING FEAR (1991) ****

FORMAT:  VHS

Loosely based on The Premature Burial, Haunting Fear is writer/director Fred Olen Ray’s love letter to Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe movies. 

Brinke Stevens stars as a woman who can’t sleep because she keeps having waking nightmares about being buried alive.  Jay Richardson is her philandering husband who owes a bunch of money and wants to bump her off.  He schemes with his lover (Delia Sheppard) to drive her insane to cash in on her inheritance, but things go sour.  Fast. 

Picked up by Troma (of all people) and distributed on home video by Rhino, Haunting Fear has to go down as one of Ray’s best.  In fact, I’m not sure why it took me this long to check it out.  In addition to Corman and Poe, Rays seems to take inspiration from A Nightmare on Elm Street for the dream sequences.  (Fortunately, only one of the dream-within-a-dream scenes threatens to test the audience’s patience.)  There’s plenty of gruesome stuff here too, like a cool oozing skull, a Fulci-influenced knife through the head and out the mouth, and a decapitated head.  The score by Chuck (Not of This Earth) Cirino is excellent too. 

Brinke is terrific in this (this is supposedly her favorite performance, and it’s easy to see why), especially when she’s flipped her lid.  She also has some fine bathtub and nude scenes.  Sheppard has some hot sex scenes too.  (“Nobody fucks you like I do!”)  Fans of Ray’s work will no doubt enjoy seeing his regular cast of supporting players like Richardson (who’s great as always), Robert Quarry (as a loan shark), Michael Berryman (as a creepy morgue attendant), and Hoke Howell (Brinke’s dead father) popping up.  Karen Black is second-billed as a hypnotist but doesn’t show up until the movie is halfway over.  Jan-Michael Vincent is top-billed, but he spends most of the movie in his car and looks pretty out of it a lot of the time.  

Much of the same cast appeared in Ray’s Teenage Exorcist. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SERIAL KILLER IN TRAINING! (2023) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

Laura Giglio and Stacie Kaye go out camping in the woods.  Their holiday is ruined when a killer in a black mask (Jason Pollack) sneaks up on them, knocks them out with chloroform, and ties them up with duct tape.  Before he can kill them, his father, who is none other than “The Necktie Strangler” himself (director Gary Whitson under his usual GW Lawrence non de plume) shows up and chastises him for being so sloppy.  Luckily, the killer is dumber than a bag of hammers, so the girls are able to easily escape.  However, he follows them home where he makes them play a game that neither of them may survive. 

Serial Killer in Training! is one of the latest offerings from W.A.V.E. Productions and it’s refreshing just how unrefreshing it is.  Here we are in 2024, and Whitson is still making them the same way he did back in the ‘90s.  Sure, the digital cinematography looks much better now than it did in the old videotape days, but it’s still all wonderfully amateurish.  (There are flubbed lines and jump cuts aplenty.)  Sure, it may lack the kick of some of Whitson’s best stuff, but in terms of plot (which is a fancy way of saying “nonstop chloroforming and bondage”), it gives you everything you could more or less ask for from a W.A.V.E. movie. 

Plus, it’s only thirty-five minutes long.  There is zero fat on this thing, and it moves like a freight train.  It’s like watching a regular movie, but with the boring parts cut out.  Or maybe a regular movie played at 2x speed, except everybody doesn’t run around like Charlie Chaplin and talk like an overcaffeinated auctioneer.  The highlight comes during a surprisingly effective scene where the killer throws darts at his victims.  It also helps that Giglio (who has always been one of my favorite W.A.V.E. actresses) and Kaye are both game for anything. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: PSYCHO SISTERS (1998) *** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Four years after making Psycho Sisters for W.A.V.E. Productions, writer/director Peter Jacelone took the concept to Seduction Cinema’s Michael L. Raso and remade it under his Shock-O-Rama banner.  It has a higher budget, better production values, and a more polished style.  It is also reminiscent in some ways of Evil Dead 2 as the first film’s narrative is streamlined into the first act before the plot spins off in its own directions. 

The story is essentially the same.  Theresa Lynn and J.J. North are sisters who are released from a psychiatric hospital after witnessing the brutal rape and murder of their sister.  They then deal with their trauma the only way they know how:  Killing men and cutting off their penises.  New plot wrinkles involve a nosy tabloid reporter/dominatrix, a run-in with a gang of bikers, and North defying her sister and trying to have a “normal” life with her new boyfriend. 

Jacelone learned a lot in the four years between films.  He attacks the material with a lot of confidence and some of the swings in tone work surprisingly well.  The humorous bits are often very funny too.  (Like the scenes with the tabloid reporter.)  On the downside it runs on a bit too long and has maybe too many supporting characters.  There’s also probably not as much gore and nudity as I was expecting, but there’s at least one over the top kill scene. 

The reason it works so well is no doubt due to the chemistry between the two leads.   North in particular is great as the bubbly psycho sister and Lynn has many fine moments as the no-nonsense member of the duo.  It’s also fun seeing W.A.V.E. starlets Tina Krause and Deana Demko popping up in a cameo. 

Sadly, this was North’s final movie before quitting the movie business.  I don’t know where she got to but all I can say is that J.J., if you’re reading this:  Come back!  We miss you!