THE CORPSE GRINDERS 3 (2013) ½ *

You know you’re in trouble when you can’t even understand what the fuck the actors as saying in your movie.  The entire cast of The Corpse Grinders 3 speak with thick, unintelligible accents, saying their lines phonetically, and even then, failing miserably at that.  Are they Mexican?  Spanish?  French?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Then again, maybe it’s a blessing you can’t tell what they’re saying. 

The crazy thing is, it shouldn’t matter what they’re saying because this is a Corpse Grinders movie.  As long as people are being fed into cat food machines and the cats that eat the human flesh become feline killers, all should be well.  Even then, director Manolito Motosierra can’t deliver the goods.  The new corpse-grinding machine is cheap looking, poorly utilized, and it seemingly takes forever to get started. 

I know Corpse Grinders 1 and 2 director Ted V. Mikels made some shoddy movies in his time, but this one looks even shoddier if you can believe it.  Mikels only produced this sequel, and I’m surprised he kept his name on it.  I mean even Mikels never made a flick this bad.  Motosierra also loads the film with lots of painfully unfunny comedy.  I guess I could’ve forgiven that if the movie didn’t move at a snail’s pace and wasn’t filled with atrocious acting and incoherent dialogue.  

The only thing separating this and a No Stars review is the Gremlins-inspired scene where a killer cat winds up in a microwave.  I could handle the stupid cat puppet effects.  It’s when the movie switched over to shitty CGI cat attacks that I had to tap out.  There’s also a cat-man that is just too stupid for words. 

In short, The Corpse Grinders 3 is the Lost Ark of horror sequels.  It’s a movie so bad that if you look directly at it, it’ll melt your face off.  I’d rather eat cat food than watch this one again. 

TRILOGY OF TERROR 2 (1996) ** ½

Dan Curtis returned two decades later with this sequel to his classic horror anthology, Trilogy of Terror.  It’s kind of a downgrade in every department.  Instead of Karen Black appearing in each of the stories, we get Krull’s Lysette Anthony (who was also in Curtis’ short-lived Dark Shadows reboot from the ‘90s).  I’m not saying she’s bad or anything, it’s just that she doesn’t disappear into her characters the way Black did.  Also, whereas the first movie’s stories were a tight 24 minutes each, these tales clock in at an even half-hour.  That means the set-ups take a lot longer and pacing is often sluggish.  Still, as anthology sequels go, it’s surprisingly decent.  Heck, it even threatens to be fun on a few occasions.

In “The Graveyard Rats” (**), Anthony plays a cheating wife of a paralyzed millionaire.  Although he treats her cruelly, he somehow manages to keep her in his will.  Eventually, she and her new lover plot to kill him, not realizing the key to his fortune lies inside of his coffin. 

This tale takes a long time unfurling its premise.  Once it finally picks up a little steam, it’s undermined by some terrible rat effects that look like rubbery hand puppets.  Anthony’s fate is also predictable, and the whole conclusion is more than a tad underwhelming. 

“Bobby” (** ½) finds Anthony as a grieving mother who uses black magic to bring her dead son back to life.  At first, he seems normal and the two get along just fine.  Then again, anyone who saw Deathdream or Pet Sematary knows when your dead kid comes back to life, it usually doesn’t turn out so well. 

Bobby plays kind of like a variation on the first movie’s tale, Amelia as it’s essentially about a woman trapped in her home while a pint-sized murderous munchkin terrorizes her.  Despite the predictable nature of the story, it’s not entirely without merit.  Curtis delivers some atmospheric moments and gives us at least one genuine jump scare.  That said, like The Graveyard Rats, it goes on much too long.

“He Who Kills” (** ½) is the final tale.  While Bobby felt like a spiritual successor to Amelia, this is a direct sequel; picking up hours after the events of that story.  It starts with the crime scene where cops find Amelia (famously played by Karen Black in original) and her mother dead in her apartment, with the charred remains of the Zuni fetish doll not too far away.  They send it off to the crime lab where a forensics expert (Anthony) examines it, and before long, the doll comes to life and tries to make her his next victim. 

This is basically a remake of Amelia, just with a different prologue and a new location.  Curtis even goes so far as to copy many of the same shots from the original and recreates a few of that film’s most famous moments (like the briefcase scene).  Although I kind of wish there’d been a little bit more to it, it’s definitely watchable and moderately entertaining.  The tongue-in-cheek humor also helps.  (One character is seen reading a Dark Shadows comic book.)

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975) ***

In the mid-‘70s, there was no hotter name in TV horror than Dan Curtis.  After a string of successes that included Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker, and Dracula, he teamed up with frequent Twilight Zone scribe Richard Matheson and Logan’s Run novelist William F. Nolan for this trio of horrific tales.  As a fan of anthology horror movies, I’m almost ashamed to admit I’ve never seen this one.  Oh well, we all have blind spots.  It’s time to rectify that.

I’m also a big fan of Karen Black, which is another reason why I can’t believe I haven’t seen this sooner.  There may be only three stories, but Black gets to play FOUR different characters.  That’s a lot of Black for your buck.  

In “Julie” (****), Black plays a mousy professor.  A lothario student gets infatuated with her and continually pesters her to go on a date.  Finally, she acquiesces, and in return, he drugs and rapes her.  He also blackmails her into doing more unspeakable acts until she eventually plots her revenge. 

This sequence must’ve been quite shocking for primetime TV at the time.  Although nothing is ever shown, A LOT is implied, which also sort of makes it even more icky.  It’s (unfortunately) even more timely now than when it first aired, but that is kind of what makes it so powerful.  It’s anchored by a great performance by Black, her first of many in the film.  

Black gets to play both “Millicent and Therese” (**) in the next segment.  After the death of her father, the prudish Millicent suspects her sister Therese is responsible.  She eventually comes to believe Therese is a witch and takes to using her own black magic against her.

It’s fun seeing Black as two such disparate characters as she goes from playing spinster Millicent to the vivacious sexpot Therese.  That’s about where the fun stops I’m afraid.  Unlike the other tales in the anthology, this one is sluggishly paced.  There’s really not much of a payoff either and on top of that, the twist ending is predictable.  I did like seeing Police Academy’s George Gaynes as Black’s doctor though. 

“Amelia” (****) is the third and most famous story. She comes home to her apartment and finds a Zuni fetish doll waiting for her in the mail.  When its mystical chain is accidentally removed, the doll comes to life and stalks Amelia. 

Amelia is one of the most highly influential anthology horror stories of all time and has been ripped off many times in the past few decades.  It’s hard to imagine Child’s Play or Tales from the Hood without it.  It starts slow and features a long phone conversation that acts as an exposition dump to set up the “rules”.  Stick with it though because Curtis is just getting warmed up.  Once it starts kicking ass, it never lets up.  Curtis gets a lot of mileage out of just the one character and location, creating lots of tension and suspense, culminating in a memorable final shot.  All in all, it’s one of the greatest TV horror segments of all time. 

AKA:  Tales of Terror.  AKA:  Terror of the Doll.

TO ALL A GOODNIGHT (1980) **

To All a Goodnight is a Killer Santa Claus movie released the same year as Christmas Evil, but four years before the iconic Silent Night, Deadly Night.  It probably owes more to Black Christmas as the murderer is targeting college girls who are staying in their sorority house over Christmas break.  Like Prom Night (which was also released the same year) the killer’s ire stems from a prank gone wrong years earlier.  The reveal of the killer is almost identical to the one found in another 1980 slasher, but if I told you which one, it would immediately spoil it for you.

One novel touch:  The school is close to a private airstrip.  In most of these movies, the boys from the other school just climb in through the window.  In To All a Goodnight, they actually charter a private plane in and the girls go pick them up.  I can honestly say I hadn’t seen that one before.

Would it surprise you that two of the most memorable screen villains from the ‘70s were responsible for this?  David Hess, Krug from Last House on the Left directed it and none other than the Incredible Melting Man himself, Alex Rebar wrote the script.  You kind of wish they took better notes from Wes Craven and William Sachs though.  

To All a Goodnight is perfectly acceptable, especially for an early-era slasher.  The biggest problem is that the fucking thing is so dark looking, it’s hard to tell what’s going on during a lot of the nighttime scenes.  That’s probably due to the shitty print I saw, but still.  How dark was it?  Well, it’s so dark that I had to learn from IMDB that the guy who played the pilot was none other than porn star Harry Reems!  Yes, it’s so dark you can’t even tell he’s in the movie.

Another problem is that Hess doesn’t really know how to make the kills suspenseful.  He just shows someone opening a refrigerator/walking through the woods/getting boned and then the killer jumps into frame and stabs/slices/chops them up.  No build-up.  No tension.  It just happens.  Kudos on the shower scene though.

To All a Goodnight is also memorable for being the debut of Jennifer Runyon.  Her name might not be familiar to you, but I’m sure you’ll recognize her from the opening scene of Ghostbusters when Bill Murray tried to pick her up while testing her psychic powers.  Runyon was always one of my favorite actresses growing up, so it was especially fun seeing her playing the Final Girl in this.  She later married Roger Corman’s nephew, which only makes her cooler in my book.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: TWICE DEAD (1988) **

Siblings Tom (The Brain) Breznahan and Jill (Night of the Creeps) Whitlow move into a house where an actor murdered his girlfriend before hanging himself in the ‘30s.  For some reason, a biker gang likes to hang around the place and enjoys tormenting the family.  After a lot of back and forth between the warring factions, the bikers invade the home and hold the teens hostage.  It’s then when the ghost of the dead actor comes after the home invaders.

Twice Dead is a weird mishmash of The New Kids, April Fool’s Day, and an Amityville sequel.  It borrows from a lot of different subgenres, seemingly at random and none of them ever gel.  Most of the scenes of the punk hooligans harassing the teens are tedious, although I did like the part where our heroes throw a coffin out the back of a speeding hearse and into the grill of their pursuers’ car. 

The gore includes a decapitated head spinning around on a record player, and deaths by a dumb waiter and a possessed motorcycle.  I guess it already spoiled things by saying the flick borrows from April Fool’s Day, which means many of the deaths are just elaborate hoaxes.  However, unlike that film, the people all eventually wind up getting killed for real, hence the title.

I’ve liked the two leads in other movies, but they’re kind of bland and forgettable here.  Same goes for supporting players Brooke Bundy and Todd Bridges, who aren’t given much to do.  The only one who makes much of an impression is Skinamax siren Charlie Spradling who gets the best death of the movie in which she gets to come and go at the same time, if you catch my drift.  Other than that winning moment, Twice Dead is barely worth watching once.

THE DEATHHEAD VIRGIN (1974) ½ *

Back in my early twenties, there used to be a place called Dawn’s Video that seemingly popped up out of nowhere in my hometown and didn’t really last very long compared to the other mom and pop video stores in the area.  They mostly had crap movies, but for a guy like me who practically lives for crap movies it was like a dream come true.  Unlike most video stores, they just kind of threw the empty, flattened-out boxes of the older releases and kept them in bins in the middle of the floor, so every time you went in there, it was like a scavenger hunt.  They also had a great deal:  Ten movies for ten days for ten dollars.  You couldn’t beat that.  Now because you’re getting ten movies, you often have to pad the last three or four movies out.  I mean for every Faces of Death, Death Race 2000, or Piranha there had to be more than a couple stinkers.  Let me tell you, folks.  The Deathhead Virgin was the granddaddy of all the Dawn’s Video stinkers.

During the 31 Days of Horror-Ween, I’ve been revisiting a few movies here and there.  I thought it might be fun to revisit a movie that I had once felt was the WORST MOVIE EVER when I first saw it and see how it holds up now.  At the time, I thought you couldn’t get any worse than The Deathhead Virgin.  Well, I’ve done a lot of living since then and have seen enough crappy movies in the past twenty years or so to know that’s no longer the case.  I now know there’s plenty worse movies out there than The Deathhead Virgin.  Not a lot mind you, but certainly plenty.

You know you’re in trouble in the first scene when one of my favorite unsung exploitation actors of all time, Vic Diaz shows up.  I don’t mean that in a disparaging way.  I mean I think of this guy as the Marlon Brando of the Philippines.  No, what is so distressing is the fact that the producers inexplicably dubbed his voice with another actor.  It’s a shame not only because he already had a distinct voice to begin with, but also because the guy they replaced his voice with sounds like a cut-rate Bela Lugosi impersonator. 

Jock Gaynor stars as a scuba diver who finds a skeleton (with a full head of hair, mind you) tied down spread eagle on a sunken ship.  He stupidly frees it, and it becomes a nude woman who wears only a mask that murders people.  His partner Larry Ward obtains a medallion found in the wreckage and the cursed trinket sometimes turns him into a killer too (usually just after he has a negative vision freak-out).

Director Norman Foster had a long and varied career.  He directed everything from Charlie Chan to Davy Crockett to the Green Hornet.  What he was doing in Manila directing what is essentially a vanity project for television star Gaynor masquerading as a horror film is anyone’s guess. 

The Deathhead Virgin is filled with long, boring, and hard-to-see underwater sequences.  If you think they’re bad though, just wait till you see the stuff that occurs on dry land.  The interminable dialogue scenes are dull and listless, and the cinematography is so dark and drab that the nighttime scenes look just as murky as the underwater sequences.  It all makes for a boring, confusing, slow-moving slog.

Speaking of slow-moving, the opening credits sequence is unnecessarily strung along for an entire fifteen minutes before the title even appears onscreen! 

The masked villainess is the only real memorable part.  While we’re on the subject of her memorable parts, they’re often indifferently lit, so it’s hard to see them.  Only the intermittent nudity keeps it from drifting into NO STARS territory.  I mean there’s a scene where Gaynor fights the nude killer underwater (talk about skin diving!), so it’s not completely without merit.

The big problem with The Deathhead Virgin is that just when you think it’s over, it isn’t.  The whole narrative winds up being a longwinded flashback.  Right when it feels like the movie should end, there’s still 25 minutes left, which is downright infuriating, mostly because it’s the slowest 25 minutes of your life (or the movie, take your pick).  If it had ended at the 70-minute mark, it might’ve skated by with ONE STAR, but unfortunately, it just keeps going. Of those last 25 minutes, you have to wait till the last 60 seconds for anything remotely horrific to happen.  Even then, it’s not even worth it.

I can’t say I enjoyed revisiting this one.  I don’t even know why I did.  (If only to reminisce about Dawn’s Video for a bit.)  If this review will prevent at least one person from watching The Deathhead Virgin, then at least my job here is done.

BEYOND THE SEVENTH DOOR (1987) *

Boris (Lazar Rockwood) is a thief fresh out of jail who gets a tip from his ex-girlfriend Wendy (Bonnie Beck) her wealthy employer has a stash of loot hidden in the basement of his castle.  They break into the place and are immediately locked in, thanks to the elaborate security system.  They soon find themselves faced with a life or death predicament as each room in the basement has a particular riddle that needs to be solved or else, they’ll die a horrible fate.  Working together, they solve the riddles, making their way room to room as they eventually reach the dreaded seventh door. 

I guess the nicest thing I can say about Beyond the Seventh Door is that it plays like the prototype of Saw.  Most of the movie is filled with scenes where an ominous voice comes through a speaker and gives the trapped characters clues on how to escape each booby-trapped room.  Beyond that (see what I did there), it sucks. 

I know it’s a low budget movie, but the whole thing is painfully cheap looking.  It looks like a bunch of people stumbled upon a boiler room and decided to make a whole movie around it.  It doesn’t help that it's incredibly boring, and the rooms are nothing more than low budget variations on shit you’d see in Indiana Jones movies.  (There’s a briefcase of cash substituted for the golden idol, a ceiling full of spikes being slowly lowered, and lettered floor tiles.) 

I guess there are some of you out there who will probably hail Lazar Rockwood as your new favorite bad actor as he resembles James Hong dressed as Rambo (or maybe Gollum cosplaying as Sonny Landham.)  His line readings are something else.  Imagine Tommy Wiseau imitating Bela Lugosi.  I can’t fault you for loving his performance.  It just needed to inhabit a better movie.  

Just when you think it can’t get worse, there’s a love scene between Rockwood and Beck.  That might not seem like a bad idea, but did they have to do it while the corpse of an old guy looks on?  Director B.D. Benedikt doesn’t show anything during the love scene, which is odd because in the scene before, he showed Beck use a screwdriver to remove a screw in one long, continuous take.  It’s like he’ll show unscrewing, but not actual screwing.  If that isn’t the tip-off that Beyond the Seventh Door sucks, I don't know what is.