SOMETIMES AUNT MARTHA DOES DREADFUL THINGS (1971) ***

Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things is an almost indescribable experience, but I’ll do my best to describe it.  You’d think with a title like that, it would be one of those “hag horror” films like Hush… Hush… Sweet Charlotte or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, but you’d be wrong.  It’s more of a gay crime melodrama.  Imagine if Andy Milligan made movies in sunny Miami instead of Staten Island.  That almost does it justice.  Almost. 

Paul (Abe Zwick in his first and last credited role) and Stanley (Wayne Crawford, making his debut) are lovers on the run from the law.  They flee Baltimore and hide out in Miami where Paul dresses up in drag and poses as Stanley’s Aunt Martha.  He also gets extremely agitated whenever Stanley threatens to blow their cover.  As “Aunt Martha”, he wigs out (no pun intended) whenever he catches Stanley making time with women and kills off his prospective lovers.  Tensions begin to boil over when a junkie pal named Hubert (Don Craig) shows up snooping around for the pair’s loot of stolen jewels. 

Very few people were making gay-themed exploitation flicks like this in the early ‘70s.  Heck, I don’t think anyone ever made them quite like this.  (Don’t worry.  There’s a decent amount of female T & A, murder, and gruesome shocks sprinkled about to appease every kind of exploitation fan, regardless of your sexual preference.)  It has an oddball kookiness about it that is hard to deny.  It’s certainly a one-of-a-kind experience, that’s for sure.  This was the first and only directorial effort by Tom Casey, who also wrote the incredible Flesh Feast.  Maybe Casey realized Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things was going to be one tough act to follow so he quit while he was ahead. 

Zwick and Crawford are memorable in the lead roles.  They have a screwy chemistry together and the scenes of them playing house have an off-kilter Odd Couple vibe to them.  Also, be on the lookout for none other than Brad F. (Blood Freak) Grinter and William (Blood Feast) Kerwin, who show up late in the film as detectives. 

AKA:  Damn You, Aunt Martha.  AKA:  Aunt Martha.

GOOD-BYE CRUEL WORLD (1982) *

When I was a kid, the video box for Good-Bye Cruel World scared the shit out of me.  I had no idea what it was about, but the image of a hand coming out of a toilet was enough to instill fear in little Mitchie.  Now that I finally have seen it, the only thing scary about it is how bad it is. 

Good-Bye Cruel World has an admittedly cool gimmick of being filmed in “Choice-A-Rama” where the audience can choose what happens next.  However, it’s all obviously rigged.  While initially amusing, these scenes wear out their welcome fast and eventually reveal their true purpose:  To pad out the running time.  The only good part is when Angelique Pettyjohn performs a striptease dressed as a nun.  Other than that, the gimmick gets old quick. 

Dick (Angel) Shawn is a news anchor who has an on-air breakdown.  He then decides to commit suicide, but before that, he sets out to make a documentary about his life.  Along the way, there are Kentucky Fried Movie-style commercial spoofs (Sledgehammer creator Alan Spencer appears as Norman Bates for “Psycho Soap”), fake movie trailers (An Officer and an Elephant Man), and news reports, most of which are painfully unfunny. 

Directed by David (C.H.U.D. 2:  Bud the C.H.U.D.) Irving, Amy Irving’s brother and Steven Spielberg’s former brother in-law (there’s an E.T. joke), it’s basically a mess from start to finish.  Whenever Shawn’s story threatens to gain any momentum, the Choice-A-Rama guy will pop up or the fake commercials intrude and take the wind out of the movie’s sails.  A funny film could’ve been made about suicide.  (Just watch Burt Reynolds’ The End.)  However, it just seems like all involved didn’t have enough confidence in the material and cheapened everything with all the useless fake commercials instead.  The ending is really stupid too, as it’s a total cop-out, which makes the whole enterprise even more infuriating. 

Co-starring Priscilla Pointer (the director’s mother), Chuck (Porky’s) Mitchell, and Darrell (Men at Work) Larsen as Shawn’s family. 

AKA:  S.L.U.R.P.  AKA:  Up the World.

STAR TREK: SECTION 31 (2025) **

Although I really enjoy the Star Trek movies, I don’t really keep up with the TV shows.  I’ve only seen about half of the original series, a handful of episodes of The Next Generation, some of Enterprise, and absolutely nada of Deep Space Nine.  In fact, since the advent of Paramount+, I hadn’t even bothered keeping up with the (too many) Trek shows they have been churning out.  Heck, I wasn’t even going to watch this new Trek movie, mostly because I really have no frame of reference.  All I knew is that it stars Michelle Yeoh who played the Captain on Discovery.  However, when the abysmal reviews started circling, it piqued my interest.  More than one person exclaimed it was “The worst thing ever to come out bearing the Star Trek name”.  Then, I got REAL interested. 

I always take the IMDb ratings with a grain of salt, but when I saw this had a 3.8, I knew I had to check it out.  For reference, the universally hated (although I like it) Star Trek V has a 5.5.  As a fan of bad movies, that sold me.  It was time to bold go where no Star Trek movie ever went before.  Straight to streaming. 

Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Yeoh) is hanging out on the edge of the galaxy.  Alok, a hardass from Section 31 (Omari Hardwick, looking like the Great Value version of Common) lures her back for one last mission.  Together, they have to steal a top-secret weapon.  Naturally, things go south, the weapon falls into the wrong hands, and it’s up to their team to get it back 

Basically, Section 31 is like the Star Trek version of Guardians of the Galaxy with its ragtag group of misfits pulling off a heist.  Sadly, none of the characters are memorable and most of them feel like slight rewrites of shit we’ve seen in Trek over the decades.  Right from the lazy set-up that feels like a mission debriefing in a video game, you know it’s going to be rough going.  It seems to be going for a hip kind of mood.  Like if you asked AI to imagine that Tarantino Star Trek movie that never got off the ground.  The music during Yeoh’s introduction sounds like a slight reworking of “Battle Without Honor or Humanity”, and the rewinding of past events and/or planned heists is obnoxious.  The useless camera zoom ins and outs during the action bits are annoying too and feel like something out of a bad ‘00s action flick. 

I knew I was in trouble when I saw Olatunde Osunsanmi as the director.  He’s the guy who made the crushingly bad fake UFO abduction movie, The Fourth Kind. If you’ve never seen that flick, consider yourself lucky.  This isn’t quite as bad, but it is easily the worst feature-length Trek flick. 

The performances are a mixed bag.  The only bright spot is Humberly Gonzalez, who plays the sexy, bald Deltan, but unfortunately, she doesn’t stick around for long.  As much as I wanted to like Yeoh in this, her character is frustrating as she seesaws from stereotypical Dragon Lady to miserable looking boss bitch.  As a fan of Yeoh, I have to say this isn’t the best use of her talents. 

Fortunately, after a rather dreadful half-hour, the film finds its footing and becomes, at the very least, watchable.  The best stretch is the second act when the group try to snuff out a mole who is sabotaging their mission.  These scenes are competently put together.  However, you know you’re in trouble when you’re fainting praising basic competency in a Star Trek movie. 

So yeah, the internet didn’t lie.  I don’t think I hated it as much as the fanboys did, but it certainly is the worst Star Trek movie by a fair margin.  Even the weakest of the theatrical films were still pretty good and felt like honest to God iterations of Star Trek.  Section 31 is quite removed from Gene Roddenberry’s original vision.  There’s no sense of wonder, exploration, and adventure.  Instead, it’s just a lot of cheap action, mindless quips, and incoherent plotting.  If you enough reading Firefly fan fiction, you’ll probably eat it up. 

WOLF MAN (2025) * ½

After royally fucking up The Invisible Man, I’m surprised Universal was dumb enough to let writer/director Leigh Whannell tackle another one of their beloved monster properties.  As with The Invisible Man, Whannell shows he would rather do his own riff on the classic monsters without really honoring what came before.  It’s like he feels carte blanche to make up his own shit while remaining confident that people will still see it based on the brand name alone.  However, in doing so, he just reinforces the obvious fact that he doesn’t have a clue as to what made the original monsters so special in the first place. 

Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) is a writer who brings his wife (Julia Garner) and kid (Matilda Firth) back to his family home in the backwoods of Oregon.  When he is wounded by a deranged animal man, Blake slowly becomes sick.  Eventually, he turns into a monster and comes after his family. 

I will say Wolf Man is a slight improvement over Whannell’s The Invisible Man redo, although that’s not saying a helluva lot.  Whannell does deliver at least one moderately suspenseful sequence (the car accident scene), but for the most part, he spends too much of the movie twiddling his thumbs when he should be delivering the goods.  I will say I liked the family’s name. 

Ultimately, it all just feels hackneyed and lame.  First of all, the Wolf Man design is terrible.  This might be the first Wolf Man in history who gets LESS hairy as he transforms.  In fact, he kind of looks like the elf from Elves.  I’m not kidding.  Where’s Jack Pierce and Rick Baker when you need them?

It also hurts the film that he transforms so slowly.  Not only does it rob us of a cool transformation scene, it gives Abbott nothing to work with.  He loses his ability to speak halfway through and his grunting and growling does little to help convey his predicament to the audience. 

Speaking of acting, the leads are rather bland and have zero chemistry.  In every scene it feels like they’re actors who just met and are performing a scene together for the first time as there is absolutely no connection between them.  It doesn’t help that the dialogue among the family members often sounds like something out of a group therapy session. 

The ending is the pits too.  Not only is it among the worst conclusions to a werewolf movie ever captured on film, it has to be one of the most anticlimactic endings in a major studio release in some time.  In short, this Wolf Man is nothing to howl about. 

LASH LA RUE: A MAN AND HIS MEMORIES: FRIENDSHIP LASTS FOREVER (1992) **

Back in the early days of westerns, famous cowboy star Lash La Rue was the “King of the Bullwhip” (long before Indiana Jones made it fashionable).  Since he also appeared in a handful of the Ormond family’s films, he was able to get Tim Ormond to direct this look back at his life and career. 

Let’s face it, this is a fluff piece/vanity project.  It’s also just this side of professional looking as it often resembles a public access TV show.  However, if you’re a fan of Lash or the Ormonds in general, it will go down a lot smoother.  I mean, what kind of a director but a longtime friend of the family would let La Rue read his poetry on camera?  It’s that level of oddness that makes this an Ormond joint through and through.  (Lash talks a little about God and stuff at the end, which also fits right in with the Ormond’s later religious pictures.)

Throughout the interview, Lash reminisces about Hollywood, his old sidekick Fuzzy St. John, learning how to use his trademark bullwhip, and his trusty horse, Diamond.  Of course, there are also plenty of clips from his movies.  (Mostly his westerns, but also some of his work for the Ormonds like Please Don’t Touch Me and A Tribute to Houdini.)  There’s also a look at his “video comics”, which are kind of ahead of their time.  Tim’s mother, June Carr Ormond is also interviewed and appears in clips from the La Rue oater, Son of Billy the Kid, which was written by her husband, Ron.  (She even has her own standalone interview segment near the end of the film where she talks about marrying Ron, making dinner for Bela Lugosi, and even some of her movies.)

It has not one, but two subtitles, A Man and His Memories and Friendship Lasts Forever.  A real documentarian would’ve probably picked one or the other.  Again, it’s oddball touches like that that has made wading through the Ormond family Blu Ray box set so much fun. 

AKA:  Lash La Rue:  A Man and His Memories.  AKA:  Lash La Rue:  Friendship Lasts Forever.  AKA:  Lash La Rue:  Friendship Lasts Forever Vol. 1.

A TRIBUTE TO HOUDINI (1987) **

Ron (The Monster and the Stripper) Ormond’s son, Tim directed this hour-long oddity which is more or less a fluff piece on magician John Calvert.  After a brief (and very ‘80s) title sequence, there’s a montage of images of Houdini.  Then Calvert shows up in a museum of magic performing escape artist tricks for two cops.  Later, he drives a speedboat and even flies a plane with his eyes duct taped shut. 

Halfway through, it switches gears and becomes a filmed performance of one of Calvert’s stage shows.  The best part is a Frankenstein-inspired gag where Calvert cuts a guy’s head off with a buzzsaw!  For the most part though, the tricks are kind of lame.  At least he has a bevy of beautiful magician assistants who are all easy on the eyes, which helps a bit. 

If you like dated magic acts, you may enjoy it.  The title is a bit misleading though as its focus is on Calvert and Houdini is mostly just mentioned in passing.  The film does suffer from a sharp drop in picture quality as it goes from being shot on film to shot on video for some sequences.  The filmed bits are more fun, even if they look phony and staged.  (The scene where he hypnotizes a cop looks like something out of a horror movie.)  You also have to sit through long archival footage of Calvert performing magic on the Red Skelton Show where he saws Red in half. 

While this may seem at first like an odd thing for Tim to make, it makes sense when you realize Ormond is merely continuing the family legacy of filming stage acts like Varieties on Parade and Forty Acre Feud.  Not to mention the family’s long-running interest in hypnotism, as seen in Please Don’t Touch Me.  Also, Calvert appeared in a couple of the Ormond’s films, so Tim was probably helping out a family pal when he agreed to direct this.  (Ormond family friend Lash La Rue also appears for a filmed segment.)

THE 18TH ANNUAL VIDEO VACUUM AWARDS: AND THE NOMINEES ARE…

Okay folks, I finally got caught up on watching (most) of the 2024 releases, so now I feel content on announcing the nominees for the 18th Annual Video Vacuum Awards.  This was a terrific year overall in terms of acting, horror, and action, so the competition is going to be as fierce as it’s ever been.  I plan to announce the winners sometime before that OTHER big awards ceremony happens.  Till then, here are your nominees for this year’s Video Vacuum Awards:

BEST MOVIE

The Beekeeper

The First Omen

Smile 2

Speak No Evil

The Substance

WORST MOVIE

In a Violent Nature

I Saw the TV Glow

The Killer

Longlegs

The Mouse Trap

BEST DIRECTOR

David Ayer for The Beekeeper

Coralie Fargeat for The Substance

Parker Finn for Smile 2

Arkasha Stevenson for The First Omen

James Watkins for Speak No Evil

BEST ACTOR

Ryan Gosling in The Fall Guy

James McAvoy in Speak No Evil

Dennis Quaid in The Substance

Jason Statham in The Beekeeper

Denzel Washington in Gladiator II

BEST ACTRESS

Nell Tiger Free in The First Omen

Demi Moore in The Substance

Margaret Qualley in The Substance

Naomi Scott in Smile 2

Sydney Sweeney in Immaculate

BEST ACTION MOVIE

The Beekeeper

The Fall Guy

Furiosa:  A Mad Max Saga

Gladiator II

Road House

BEST HORROR MOVIE

The First Omen

Smile 2

Speak No Evil

The Substance

Terrifier 3

WORST HORROR MOVIE

In a Violent Nature

I Saw the TV Glow

Longlegs

The Mouse Trap

Stream

WORST REMAKE

The Killer

Nosferatu

Possession:  Kerasuken

Salem’s Lot

The Strangers:  Chapter 1

BEST SEQUEL/PREQUEL

The First Omen

Gladiator II

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Smile 2

Terrifier 3

WORST SEQUEL/PREQUEL

Alien:  Romulus

Beverly Hills Cop:  Axel F

The Strangers:  Chapter 1

Twisters

Venom:  The Last Dance

Stay tuned!  The winners will be announced in the next two weeks or so!