BLACK MAMBA (2016) ****

Look out, Tommy Wiseau.  Watch your back, Neil Breen.  There’s a new sheriff in town and her name is Belinda M. Wilson. 

Black Mamba is one of the most delirious cinematic experiences I’ve had in my lifetime.  That’s not hyperbole.  That’s just a fact. 

The film is basically a horror anthology with various characters coming to see the eponymous witch (Wilson) and asking her to make them potions so their wishes can come true.  Naturally, they backfire on the poor saps in spectacularly hilarious ways.  It sounds ordinary enough, but it’s Wilson’s completely nutzo handling of the material that makes the movie so special.  If there’s a missing link between Fateful Findings and Black Devil Doll from Hell, this is it. 

The first story is the best.  It is a gleefully deranged tale of an infertile couple trying to conceive.  I laughed so hard and long during some stretches of this sequence that I probably lost some vital bits of dialogue, but that’s okay.  I plan on watching it again very soon.  The conception scene is one for the books.  It will have you splitting your sides in laughter.  There are also moments here that are reminiscent of It’s Alive, Grave of the Vampire, and How to Train Your Dragon.  No, I am not on drugs. 

The next tale just can’t compete with the first, but it’s a really good/bad one any way you slice it.  It centers on a woman who wants to look beautiful.  The scenes of her holding a running commentary on the action (everyone in the movie seems to be incapable of having an interior monologue) are still really funny and the big bathtub scene is a winner too. 

The third tale gets my vote for the second-best sequence.  It’s about a guy who wants to swim with mermaids.  The underwater CGI effects will have you busting a gut, but our hero’s antics and wisecracks are genuinely hilarious, and his scuba diving get-up is priceless. 

Next, we have a story about a woman who wants a love potion to make her doctor fall in love with her.  Things go horribly wrong when her husband accidentally drinks it.  Like the second segment, this one is more of a traditional horror tale.  However, nothing can prepare you for the confrontation between our heroine’s suitors.  You’ll have to pick your jaw up off the floor. 

For the final segment, we get to see what happened to the couple from the first story once they brought their monster baby home.  I kind of wish it had been kept together as one long segment, but hey, that just adds to the overall unpredictable nature of the film. 

The way Wilson uses shoddy CGI with reckless abandon is glorious.  Some scenes look like people standing in front of a green screen while the Sims is playing in the background.  In fact, there are some scenes that feature more effects going on in one single shot than most big budget Hollywood films.  You’ve got to admire that fearless sense of ambition, especially when Wilson’s reach perpetually exceeds her grasp. 

In short, this is a mind-blowing experience.  For bad movie fans, Black Mamba will hit like a pure shot of adrenaline.  This flick contains more WTF moments per minute than just about any I’ve seen.  Connoisseurs of Grade Z cinema, the gauntlet has been thrown down.  Check it out ASAP. 

TWISTED SEX VOL. 3 (1994) ***

The third collection of ‘60s sexploitation trailers from Something Weird begins with trailers for artsy fare like I, a Woman and Therese and Isabelle.  Don’t be alarmed though.  It doesn’t take long before you’re hit with a veritable avalanche of sleazy previews for roughies like Come Play with Me and Olga’s Dance Hall Girls.  Along the way there are ads for nudie cuties (The Beast That Killed Women), Mondo movies (Primitive Love, which features Jayne Mansfield performing a sexy striptease), and films that are sadly lost to time, like the incredible looking Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico. 

Probably the most memorable trailer is for Ravaged (AKA: After Mein Kampf), which mixes sexploitation and stock footage of actual Nazi atrocities.  You know, fun for the entire family.  There are also some great ads for oddities and rare films like The Adventures of Busty Brown, The Diary of Knockers McCalla, and the wonderfully titled Scarf of Mist, Thigh of Satin. 

You know, I like to think I know a thing or two about smut movies.  So, when I come across a trailer for something like Obscene House featuring the unforgettable sight of “Fat Mama”, an overweight madam, it’s nice to know even I can be surprised by some of the shit Something Weird manages to cram into these things.  (See also the amazing trailer for Carny Girl.)

This volume is a tad overlong and begins to run out of steam before crossing the finish line.  Things wind down with hippie movies such as Like It is and Acid Dreams before concluding with an ad for an educational short called The Art of Marriage.  There’s also a random short about a blonde wife who perks up a cocktail party by stripping in the living room that’s just there as filler. 

Fans of tawdry taglines will have a field day with this installment though.  Some of my favorites belong to Therese and Isabelle (“A milestone in motion picture candor!”), The Sin Syndicate (“A frank, uninhibited exposition of the girl racket!”), Prostitutes Protective Society (“Scene after scene of nude violence!”), Unholy Matrimony (“Unholy Matrimony took years to research, months to maintain, and nerves to show!”), Mr. Mari’s Girls (“Obscene and banned by the public!”), and Hot Skin and Cold Cash (“A picture you can’t miss… UNLESS YOU’RE A SISSY!”).  Meanwhile, Meeting on 69th Street promises “Sick sex doings!”

Well, if you’re like me and know am, and sick sex doings are what you crave, you can do a lot worse than Twisted Sex Vol. 3. 

The complete trailer rundown is as follows: Michelle, The Passionate Strangers, The Twilight Girls, I a Woman, Therese and Isabelle, The Girl with the Magic Box, The Beast That Killed Women, Primitive Love, The Soul Snatcher, Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico, The Sin Syndicate, Prostitutes Protective Society, Death of a Nymphet, Come Play with Me, Olga’s Dance Hall Girls, Justine:  The Erotic Excitement of Evil, Mondo Oscenita, Unholy Matrimony, Hot Erotic Dreams, Ravaged, Prowl Girls, The Adventures of Busty Brown, The Diary of Knockers McCalla, Mr. Mari’s Girls, Sex Club International, Infidelity American-Style, Hot Skin and Cold Cash, Scarf of Mist Thigh of Satin, Allison Women are Bad, She Came on the Bus, Meeting on 69th Street, Obscene House, A Taste of Hot Lead, Delilah, Carny Girl, I Want You!, Like It Is, Acid Dreams, The Art of Marriage, and a random short. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: SKINNED ALIVE (1990) **

From producers J.R. (The Dead Next Door) Bookwalter and David (Nightmare Sisters) DeCoteau comes this sporadically entertaining low budget horror/action hybrid. 

A crazy one-eyed killer named Crawldaddy (Mary Jackson from Exorcist 3) goes around in a van killing and skinning people with her two psycho kids Phink (the late Scott Spiegel) and Violet (Susan Rothacker) in tow.  When their van breaks down, a kindly old mechanic (Lester Clark) lets them spend the night while he fixes their vehicle.  Unbeknownst to their host, the houseguests murder a delivery boy and a Jehovah’s Witness right under his nose.  When the killers eventually turn on the mechanic and his wife, it’s up to his ex-cop neighbor (Floyd Ewing, Jr.) to save the day. 

Skinned Alive features some Raimi-inspired camerawork and editing (there’s even a scene in a cellar that’s reminiscent of the Henrietta fight in Evil Dead 2), which makes sense since Spiegel co-wrote Evil Dead 2.  The gore is also decent as we get a machete through the chest, hacked off fingers, a gory bullet to the head, a body shot all to hell, gut spilling, a bayonet to the throat, and a bullet through the cheek.  It takes a while before we finally get to all the skin cutting and peeling scenes though.  While the effects of the actual flesh slicing are hit and miss, the reveal of the skinless corpse is effective. 

All of this is kind of fun when it’s focusing on the family of crazies terrorizing people, but the whole thing more or less stops on a dime once the focus switches to the alcoholic neighbor/hero character.  The stuff with his cheating wife and her scumbag lawyer just slows things down to a crawl(daddy) and the odd comic relief sound effects are really out of place with the scenes of divorce and substance abuse.  In fact, the overuse of humor throughout is more of a hindrance than anything.  The filmmakers treat the gags almost like a crutch.  It’s like they thought they could let themselves off the hook for the amateurish production values of no one took it seriously. 

Spiegel is good though.  He seems to be having fun, despite the uneven material, especially during the climax.  Rothacker is amusing too.  She gets a memorable scene where she performs a striptease for her brother where she cuts her clothes off and incorporates flayed skin in her act.  Too bad the rest of the cast overact and/or are kind of annoying. 

Clips from this later turned up in Bookwalter’s Shock Cinema series. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: THE LAST THANKSGIVING (2020) ***

A bunch of surly restaurant employees are grumpy they have to work on Thanksgiving.  Meanwhile, a cannibal family who have a long tradition of capturing, killing, and eating people on Thanksgiving (they even keep the “leftovers” locked up in the closet) show up to the diner and massacre the staff.  They then take the survivors back home for a meal around the dinner table, but who will be on the menu?

If you’ve ever been in the food service industry, you may feel a tinge of recognition here.  Little touches like customers coming in right at closing time really hit home.  It’s not Waiting… or anything, but these scenes are pretty funny.  It also helps to build sympathy for the characters, even when many of them are grouchy, foul mouthed, and bitter.  

Linnea Quigley shows up in a small role as a customer, and even though she’s the only recognizable name here, the rest of the cast are very good.  The film is short and breezy, and it doesn’t waste a lot of time getting down to business, which is appreciated.  It doesn’t set out to rewrite the book on making a holiday horror film, but it is certainly one of the better low budget efforts that have come down the chute in recent years.  The kills are fun too and show some ingenuity on an obviously low budget.  There’s burning, scalping, head splitting, a scythe through the chest, carving knife deaths, and a melting body.  We also get not one but two standout death sequences.  The first is a death by whisk and the second is a decapitation by dishwasher, both of which might be cinematic firsts. 

I will say that some of the editing is a little confusing in the climax, but it’s not enough to ruin the fun.  There is at least one inventive transition scene during this stretch of the film, so that helps.  The twist ending is solid too, even if they don’t have much time to properly flesh it out.  Small quibbles aside, The Last Thanksgiving is a feast for fans of low budget holiday horror flicks. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: TRAILERS #20: HORROR/SCI-FI (1992) ***

Here’s yet another in a long line of Something Weird compilations of horror and Science Fiction trailers.  This one focuses on the films of the ‘60s and ‘70s.  Things kick off with an ad for Crazy Music, which is just an odd retitling of Dr. Seuss’s The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.  Fans of weird alternate titles will enjoy the trailer for The 4D Man, which also appears here as Master of Terror. 

The trailer for William Castle’s 13 Frightened Girls is kind of fun as it’s advertised as starring thirteen beauty contest winners from around the world.  Speaking of gimmicks, theater owners force patrons to sign a “Certificate of Assurance” before seeing The Corpse Grinders to state that they are of “sound mind and body”.  (But would you really be of sound mind and body if you were going to see a Ted V. Mikels movie?)  The best gimmick featured here though is the free Rasputin beard giveaway to those who attend a double feature of Rasputin, the Mad Monk and The Reptile!

While we are on the subject of Hammer, they are well-represented with the likes of The Gorgon, Prehistoric Women, Five Million Years to Earth, and Twins of Evil.  On the other side of the pond, AIP has quite a showcase of trailers too, including The Food of the Gods, Squirm, and Futureworld.  There aren’t many Japanese trailers here (although we do get one for Godzilla vs. Megalon), but The Human Vapor gets my vote for best tagline of the bunch with:  “Is he man or astro-man?”  (The Gorgon gets second place with:  “No one looked upon her face and lived!”)

Since the majority of the trailers come from the ‘60s, they are a little on the tame side.  Only The Flesh and Blood Show shows off some skin, and The Gore Gore Girls gives us glimpses of gore.  The previews are shown in chronological order, so they do get a little bit more graphic as they go along.  That said, there are a lot of ads for PG rated flicks here. 

I think my favorite trailer was for Voodoo Heartbeat.  That’s mostly because I just watched the movie earlier in the week.  Still, it was a pretty rad addition. 

The complete line-up is as follows:  Crazy Music, The Dead One, Battle Beyond the Sun, 13 Frightened Girls, The Human Vapor, The Gorgon, Master of Terror, a double feature of Rasputin, the Mad Monk and The Reptile, Prehistoric Women, They Came from Beyond Space, Five Million Years to Earth, Superargo vs. Diabolicus, Nightmare in Wax, Twins of Evil, The Corpse Grinders, Voodoo Heartbeat, Vampire Circus, The Flesh and Blood Show, Werewolf of Washington, The Gore Gore Girls, The Thirsty Dead, Disciples of Death, Old Dracula, The Food of the Gods, Godzilla vs. Megalon, Squirm, Futureworld, At the Earth’s Core, Carrie, King Kong (1976), Rattlers, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Meat Cleaver Massacre, Piranha, Halloween, and Alligator. 

HOW TO SUCCEED WITH GIRLS (1964) * ½

Pete (Paul Leder, who went on to direct A*P*E) is a womanizing asshole.  Harvey (Leon Schrier) is a pushover who is always daydreaming about women.  Pete also happens to be banging Harvey’s wife.  One night, Pete meets Harvey in a bar and decides to take him out for a night on the town to show him how to pick up women. 

I saw a trailer for this a while back on a trailer compilation called Twisted Sex Vol. 2 where it was advertised under its alternate title, The Peeping Phantom.  Well, it’s not twisted and there’s very little sex in it.  There is also no peeping or any phantoms either.  It’s pretty much an overstuffed mess, but it’s the kind of overstuffed mess that makes for a great trailer since you can make it look like a classic by using brief clips of choice moments.  When these scenes play out within the context of the movie though, they kind of get lost in the shuffle since the whole thing is so scattershot. 

The movie is novel in that the “real” segments are in black and white while Harvey’s daydreams are in color.  These daydreams are the only thing worth a damn in the entire movie.  The first and best takes place in a mad scientist lab with Pete wearing masks of various Universal monsters.  The others involve Harvey rescuing his busty secretary from a sultan’s harem, appearing as a cowboy in a Wild West cathouse, and as a United Nations ambassador.  This scene isn’t bad as Harvey watches in delight as all the other ambassadors (all played by hot women) settle their differences with a big clothes-ripping catfight.  However, the movie really needed more scenes of this caliber. 

Even then, the fantasy sequences, while they feature a few scantily clad women, are all tease and no please.  The Benny Hill-style fast-forward and rewind scenes of women running around aren’t very funny either.  The “real” world scenes are a total drag though and are often painful to watch.  It doesn’t help that a little of Leder’s loutish character goes a long way. 

Yes, that’s future Golden Girl Rue McClanahan as Pete’s ex-girlfriend.  She’s one of the few bright spots, even if she isn’t given anything to do.  She does get a skinny-dipping scene, but we only see bits of her bare back and leg. 

Screenwriter (and director of Baby:  Secret of the Lost Legend) B.W.L. Norton later collaborated with Leder for the immortal I Dismember Mama.  

AKA: The Peeping Phantom. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: SHIVER ME TIMBERS (2025) **

This is the second public domain slasher flick I’ve seen this year starring Popeye.  Sure, it’s not as consistently entertaining as Popeye’s Revenge, but it has its moments.  

The year is 1986 and people are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Halley’s Comet.  A group of teens hang out and party on the beach hoping to get a glimpse of the comet.  When it finally streaks across the sky, a scrawny old sailor accidentally smokes a bit of the comet in his pipe (I guess there wasn’t any contaminated spinach around) and he turns into a musclebound killer. 

Things kick off with a nice little homage to the opening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  Characters also quote Ferris Bueller, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, and Army of Darkness.  However, it takes more than referencing other movies to make a compelling one of your own.  It’s also annoying that the characters talk about horror movies but in the way that today’s kids do.  I mean even though it’s set in the ‘80s, nobody really looks, dresses, or acts like they came out of that decade.  It just feels… off.

Another issue is that the filmmakers don’t really take advantage of Popeye.  He resembles the character we all know and love (although he’s curiously lacking his trademark forearms) and says, “I yam what I yam” and “Well, blow me down”, but that’s about it.  Hell, he doesn’t even eat spinach.  I did like that the hot goth girl was named Olive Oyl though. 

At least the gore is plentiful, which makes it worth sitting through.  Popeye puts his fist through a guy’s face, tosses another into a vat of toxic waste, and crushes a teen’s head.  The standout death comes when he rips off a dude’s head and shits down his neck… literally.  The over-the-top ending that owes more than a little to Army of Darkness is fun, but it’s ultimately too little too late.  It also doesn’t help that the CGI blood and effects are mostly awful.

Even the short running time is a mixed blessing as the film is often choppy, and the pacing is erratic.   You also have to sit through long scenes of the teens partying and tripping balls.  The set-up for a sequel could work though.  That’s only if the filmmakers learn to embrace the quirkiness of the character and utilize him to his full potential.