TUBI CONTINUED… VAMPIRE ON BIKINI BEACH (1988) * ½

There’s been a rash of vampire-like killings in a seaside community.  Meanwhile, a beach bunny’s budding romance is interrupted when she comes into possession of the Book of the Dead.  Naturally, the vampire wants it too so he can create an army of undead vampire minions.  Will the beach bunny and her bikini-clad friends be able to stop the nefarious bloodsucker from taking over the world?

Vampire on Bikini Beach should’ve been called How to Pad Out a Bikini because it contains a shit-ton of padding.  There are gratuitous radio broadcasts, a five-minute long opening credit sequence, random shots of people surfing and windsurfing on the beach, nightclub performances (one tune is appropriately titled “Sucker”), and montages of beach bunnies trying on swimsuits (which is the only acceptable form of padding in a movie like this).  It also contains an awkward flashback structure complete with random bits of narration and long stretches where people are so far away from the camera that the filmmakers can loop in additional dialogue to clarify what the hell is going on.  Combine that with the abrupt ending, and it’s enough to make you suspect that this was either abandoned or unfinished, and an editor made an extra $50 doing a patch-up job to get this looking close to something approximately a releasable picture.   

Also, I’ve got to wonder if the version that was uploaded to Tubi was a rip from the film’s broadcast on USA’s Up All Night as the curse words are muted out.  Then again, there’s a brief post-coital butt shot in there about halfway through the movie.  Still, this marks the first time since the inception of this column that I’ve watched a flick that’s been edited for language but not nudity.  

The horror elements are weak, which I guess is to be expected from a horror movie with the words “Bikini Beach” in the title.  The stalking scenes feel rushed and most of the killing occurs offscreen or via POV camerawork.  I will say, the make-up on the vampire’s half-man/half-bat assistant is pretty good though.

AKA:  Vampires on Bikini Beach.

TUBI CONTINUED… MONSTERLAND (2009) ** ½

When Jorg Buttgereit, the man who gave the world Nekromantik 1 and 2 makes a horror documentary, you just expect more.  Although it goes through all the proper motions and boasts a strong list of interviewees (John Carpenter, Rick Baker, Kim Newman, Joe Dante, Greg Nicotero, and more) and subjects (Frankenstein, Godzilla, King Kong, etc.), Monsterland kinda falls flat.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s perfectly watchable.  It’s just not very thorough.

While I applaud Buttgereit for some surprising inclusions (like Tetsuo:  The Iron Man), the bulk of the documentary plays like an old hat.  The most irritating thing about it is that they couldn’t get the rights for some of the clips, so they are forced to play snippets from other movies to illustrate their point.  For example, when talking about the original King Kong, scenes from the Peter Jackson remake are shown.  Or when scenes from Godzilla vs. Destoroyah are played during a discussion of the 1954 Godzilla.  And don’t even get me started on the scene where they show clips from a Frankenstein “fan film” in lieu of footage of Boris Karloff in the 1931 Frankenstein.  Seriously.  What the fuck?

Now that I got that off my chest, I will say there are some good moments here.  The highlight is the interview with H.R. Giger who discusses designing the Alien and shows off some sculptures, artwork, and movie props.  I also enjoyed the little sidebar that focused on “G-Fest”, the Godzilla convention where fans make their own homemade kaiju costumes.  

Despite that, there were still a few things that stuck in my crawl.  Like the weirdo guy who was obsessed with Ed Gein.  I know they had to get this thing to the hour mark, but this crap could’ve easily been excised.  Oh well.  I guess if you want to hear John Carpenter talk about Halloween AGAIN, you should enjoy it.

TUBI CONTINUED… LOW RIDERS VS. ZOMBIES FROM SPACE (2018) **

The opening scene of Low Riders vs. Zombies from Space is kind of fun as a Latino car enthusiast spots a meteor crashing to Earth.  I only wish the rest of the movie lived up to this sequence, which is a nice mix of ‘50s sci-fi and 21st century muscle cars.  Heck, it even has a hard time living up to its title.  

A mechanic who owns a low rider equipped with a snazzy hydraulic system picks up his sultry firecracker of a girlfriend for a date at the local VFW.  Meanwhile, two valets smoke weed contaminated by the fallout of the meteor and turn into zombies.  Eventually, they crash the venue and turn more people into zombies, leaving our heroes to fight for their lives.  

Low Riders vs. Zombies from Space is long on Low Riders and short on Zombies from Space.  In fact, the zombies don’t even show up till the last twenty minutes of the movie.  Before that, a lot of the running time is devoted to long scenes of people driving around, which is little more than an excuse to show a bunch of hot-waxed hot rods bouncing up and down and profiling along the strip.  These scenes go on forever and feel like a low rider version of Manos, the Hands of Fate.  At least the cheesy rap songs that accompany these sequences are good for a laugh.  

A lot of the time, you’ll swear someone just filmed footage from a car show and made it into a horror movie.  One long sequence involves car club members lining up their cars in a parking lot and showing off their hydraulics.  Still, even with a running time that’s relatively scant (fifty-seven minutes), these scenes go on forever and are ultimately kinda pointless.  By the time the finale does roll around, it feels rushed and anticlimactic.  There are one or two amusing moments here and there (like when a car bounces around and squashes a zombie), but honestly, it’s not quite enough to make it worthwhile.

AKA:  Lowriders vs. Zombies from Space.  AKA:  Lowriders vs. Zombies.

TUBI CONTINUED… SATAN’S BLADE (1984) ** ½

Satan’s Blade kicks off with a neat opening sequence that would make for a fine short film.  It has a cool double twist and really sets up the movie with style.  Sure, everything that comes after this sequence is a bit on the uneven side, but overall, it’s a shade or two better than your average low budget slasher.  

A couple comes to a mountain resort where there has just been a double homicide.  The crazy lady who runs the place thinks it’s the work of the local legend, an insane mountain man who stalks the woods with a big ass hunting knife.  Meanwhile, a gaggle of hot-to-trot coeds also come to the resort looking for a good time, and one of them even tries to seduce our married hero.  Will he be able to keep it in his pants and save his marriage?  Or will the killer ruin his chances to score?  

Satan’s Blade contains lot of scenes of cars driving on mountain backroads while dubbed-in dialogue fills in the character’s backstories.  Although this process is technically crude, it’s rather economical from a storytelling point of view.  It doles out vital plot information, and once the car finally gets to its destination, the audience is caught up to speed with everything it needs to know about its characters.  

In fact, the whole movie is kinda cheap and crude.  There are visible boom mikes, long scenes of people walking slowly through the snow that pad out the running time, and less than stellar acting.  However, that all sorta adds to the fun.  Heck, there’s even some legitimate laughs to be had, like when our recent law school grad hero tries to seduce his wife using an unending series of lawyer-related innuendos.  Couple that will a good amount of T & A and a handful of decent kill scenes and you have yourself an A-OK slasher.

TUBI CONTINUED… VAMPYRZ ON A BOAT (2022) * ½

A crew of seamen take a job driving a top-secret research team around in circles in the middle of the ocean.  Seems the scientists are performing experiments on a vampire… er… vampyr who is being kept below deck.  Naturally, it doesn’t take long for most of the crew to become vampires… er… vampyrs… er… vampyrz… er… VampyrZ too.  

Goofy title aside, VampyrZ on a Boat (I have no idea why it’s spelled that way or why the “Z” is capitalized, so I’ll just move past it) does at least contain one novel scene as the vampire outbreak occurs in an unexpected and fun way.  Instead of the vampire getting loose and biting people, a mosquito bites the vampire and then flies into the kitchen and bites the cook, effectively turning him into a vampire.  Vampire mosquitoes.  I think that might be a silver screen first.  That’s worth an extra ½ * right there.

Unfortunately, after an OK set-up, it’s all downhill from there.  The attempts at humor are downright painful (the guy with the ventriloquist dummy being the main offender) and the vampire attacks quickly become repetitive.  (They move fast because the editor put in a lot of jump-cuts.)  The oddest element is the whole Groundhog Day/Happy Death Day/Edge of Tomorrow time loop subplot where our hero perpetually wakes up with a hammer in his head and keeps on ticking.  This plot device is clunky at best and slightly incoherent at worst.  The ending is awful too and pretty much sucks the life (no pun intended) out of the whole deal.  

VH-1’s Carrie Keagan co-stars as a sexy and feisty reporter who becomes prisoner of the main vampire.  She’s the only bright spot in the movie as just about everyone else in the cast is irritating.  Too bad she never gets anything worthwhile to do, even though she TryZ her best.

BIRDEMIC 2: THE RESURRECTION (2013) ****

The birds are back in this incredibly awful and frequently hilarious sequel to the WTF classic, Birdemic.  

I knew I was in for a good time when the film opened with a five-minute long sequence of our hero Bill (Thomas Favaloro) casually walking down Hollywood Boulevard.  He’s a producer who’s casting a movie and turns to the hero from the first flick, Rod (Alan Bagh) to finance his dream project.  Naturally, they decide to cast their girlfriends in the movie.  All is going swimmingly when a red rain descends on Hollywood.  The precipitation soaks into the La Brea Tar Pits, resurrecting flocks of killer prehistoric birds who rise out of the muck and converge on Hollywood, pecking and killing everyone in sight.  Our heroes must band together once more, pistols and clothes hangers in hand to fend off the undead bird menace.  

Both Birdemic movies have been about wildly successfully and blissfully dumb white people being wildly successful, blissfully dumb, and incredibly white for no reason whatsoever for about half the running time.  I’m not sure if this is some sort of social commentary on writer/director James Nguyen’s part or not.  Either that or he’s just too lazy to think up any problems, drama, or obstacles to put in front of them, except for the killer birds, of course.  At any rate, the scenes of the character acting awfully white are downright hysterical as the acting and dialogue often exceeds the jaw-dropping idiocy of the original film.

Yes, all the stuff you loved about the first movie crops up again.  Awkward love scenes in which the participants keep their underwear and pants on?  Check.  Random dance sequences?  Got ‘em.  Editing that starts to fade in or out and then doesn’t at the last second?  You bet.  Passionate speeches about global warming?  Uh-huh.  (Tree Hugger Guy returns!)

There are also new elements here that help to increase the hilarity.  Like the fact that not only are birds attacking this time around, but also cavemen and zombies.  What makes the zombie attack scene so funny is that they emerge from their graves wearing jeans and T-shirts.  I mean, shouldn’t they have been buried in… you know… a suit and tie?  But by far the funniest sequence is when our heroes band together and look for survivors.  They cruise around the city checking the pulse of EVERY SINGLE body they come across before solemnly announcing, “He’s dead.”  It was funny the first time it happened.  It was gut-busting the tenth time.  By the fifteenth time, I was wiping tears of laughter out of my eyes.

And what would a Birdemic movie be without horrible special effects?  In addition to the shitty CGI birds, we also get a laughably bad CGI jellyfish attack.  That’s pretty funny on its own merits, but hearing the characters alliteratively refer to it as a “giant jumbo jellyfish” over and over again in like, the span of a minute is fucking hysterical.  The truly perplexing addition of a crappy CGI ambulance that drives off at the end of the scene is the perfect cherry on top of what was already an absolutely bonkers sequence.  

Once again, Nguyen has made a movie that is distinctly his own.  He really put his heart and soul into this thing and we as a moviegoing audience are all the better for it.  Because his heartfelt sincerity is felt in every scene, the sequel blissfully contains the same Ed Wood-type vibe that made Birdemic a camp classic.  (There’s also a scene where characters drive around Hollywood and their sunglasses disappear and reappear within alternating shots, which I’m sure would’ve made Wood envious.)  

Probably the most amazing thing about the movie is they actually got permission to film inside Universal Studios.  (At the now defunct Jaws ride, no less.)  The best part is when the bird battle is over, the characters conduct a monotone discussion about the Jaws franchise.  I love it.

This is one sequel that surpasses the original.  It's rare when it happens, but you love to see it when it does.  Oh, and by “surpasses the original”, I mean, “it’s even more gloriously stupid and jaw-droppingly unhinged”.

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE EMANUELLE (2023) **

I’ve been saying this for a while now:  Hollywood should be making as many fake Emanuelle movies as they do fake Amityville movies as both titles are public domain and can be used by anybody.  Leave it to the good folks at Cinema Epoch, who have made their share of both, to combine the two franchises into one and unleash Amityville Emanuelle on the world.  

Things start off with a depiction of the DeFeo murders before flashing forward to the present.  It seems that after Ron DeFeo died in prison, his now-grown son begins having horrifying visions.  The daughter of George Lutz receives DeFeo’s ashes from a cuckoo friend of the family, and she too begins experiencing nightmares.  The ashes then turn her into a complete horndog as she starts banging guys at the drop of a hat.  (She even has a threesome with two random dudes she meets at a bar.)  It’s then up to DeFeo Jr. to help her exorcise the evil spirits once and for all.  

You know, it sort of makes sense to combine both Amityville and Emanuelle franchises from a financial standpoint.  However, if you dive a little deeper, you’ll notice they sort of fit together rather well.  Consider the original Amityville murders took place in November of 1974 and the first official Emmanuelle movie came out just a few weeks later.  Makes you think, don’t it?

Speaking of thinking, I honestly think this might’ve worked better had the filmmakers called it “Amityville Legacy” or “Ashes or Amityville” or something along those lines.  When you start putting “Emanuelle” in the title, it brings along a certain set of expectations, and if you can’t deliver on those expectations, then why even bother?  I mean, no one is even called “Emanuelle” in the movie!  Sure, the ashes turn our heroine into a sexually liberated woman, but she doesn’t do nearly as much humping as Emanuelle.  So, that is a bit misleading.  It also doesn’t help that she keeps her clothes on the whole movie, and that a lot of the sex scenes occur off screen, which is definitely not a good thing when you’re talking about an Emanuelle flick.

While it fails miserably as a fake Emanuelle movie, Amityville Emanuelle surprisingly isn’t too shabby of a fake Amityville movie.  It contains at least one semi-effective scene where the ghost of DeFeo interrupts a group of friends who are playing with a Ouija board and blows them away.  Also, bringing members of both the Lutz and DeFeo families together to stop the Amityville curse was a nice touch.  Having sat through over twenty-five fake Amityville flicks in the past few weeks, you can trust me when I tell you this is far from the worst one out there.  It’s just a shame the ending sucks.