Monster Dog(1985)d/Claudio Fragasso

Let the record show that I'm a huge Alice Cooper fan from waaaaay back.Some of you out there may have already gathered that from the review I did of The Nightmare last October.His legendary career spanning some forty years is overbrimming with dizzying highs and nauseating lows.Unfortunately,tonight's entry definitely falls into the latter category.After two stints in rehab nearly pulverized his musical legacy,by 1984,hard hearted Alice found himself at the bottom of the bargain bin looking up.With his albums being panned,the shock rocker turned to genre writer/director Claudio Fragasso for a film vehicle that would draw the brakes on his plummeting skid towards mediocrity.Not a good move,Coop.Luckily his collaboration with the man responsible for such non-classics as Rats:Night of Terror,Zombie 3,Hell of the Living Dead,and Troll 2,wasn't the final nail in Alice's artistic coffin,as he bounced back the following year with a successful heavy metal reinvention of his musical persona,and even scoring soundtrack work and a few cameos in some genre films,while this Spanish production thankfully sank into a quagmire of forgotten z-grade celluloid trash.Drawing positives from this mess,the two songs "Identity Crises" and "See Me in the Mirror" he provided for the soundtrack,though unavailable on any albums(save for the superior boxset "The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper"),are excellent.Sadly,the rest isn't appetizing to even a mangy,starving mutt.

Sometimes I'm...a dead ringer for Bob Cratchett?
Vince Raven is a top tier rockstar(played by rockstar-on-the-downswing,Alice Cooper,and badly dubbed by someone who is obviously NOT Alice Cooper)returning to his hometown to shoot a music video with a small crew in a conversion van,like so many of the biggest celebrity musicians were doing in the mid-eighties(cue eyeroll).Only,Raven's hometown holds few good memories for him since his father was afflicted with a rare heart disease that caused him to not only fly into a primal rage,but display characteristics of lycanthropy(!),ultimately getting him brutally eighty-sixed by the superstitious townfolk.After maneuvering the seventies vehicle through what seems like an eternity of atmospheric dry ice...err,umm...fog,Raven is stopped by the local sheriff and deputy who warn of a ravenous pack of wild dogs that have killed several times already,then break his balls about both his crazy rock n' roll,and his crazy daddy that they had to murder years ago.Further on down the soundstage...uhh,err...ominous night road,the van hits a dog,and when Raven's crew gets out to investigate,they stumble across a bloodied senile lunatic who's patterned himself a little too closely to Crazy Ralph from the Friday the 13th series.Dogs,wind,moon,death...whatever you say,claret chin.When they finally arrive at the mansion,it is barren,with no sign of Joss the caretaker to be found,save for some sandwiches he has made,and a "Welcome Home Vince" banner.Pull out all the stops for the rockstar.

"¡Le todo condenan!" says Crazy Ralph's Spanish cousin,twice removed.
After some momentary visions of Vince in werewolf makeup that makes The Werewolf(1956)look like The Howling(1980),the crew's attempt at shooting a gothic video in the mansion is interrupted by Joss's lifeless body crashing through an upstairs window and onto the terrified leading lady.Raven,still decked out in his slightly embarrassing video duds and makeup sets off to look for whatever did in his shaky handed malt-maker.While he's gone,a carload of scruffy local rabble pull up outside the mansion,looking like extras in a Leone western rip-off,and vowing to plug the rock n' roller fulla holes,and free the town we never get to see from the grip of moon-based mayhem.At this point,the pack of wild dogs lay siege to the huge house,led by what looks to be nothing more than an oversized Mardi Gras-style papier mache' head,and brutalizing both vigilantes and video crew alike.When it looks like curtains for Sandra(Victoria Vera),Raven's girlfriend/video director,who's barricaded herself in a room,Vince shows up out of nowhere,and mysteriously the dogs cease their attack,and lie at the two survivors feet as they tip toe out to safety,where Vince is clawed by the titular giant head before blasting it,and revealing through off-screen metamorphosis that the werewolf was....drumroll...the bloody geryatric whackjob.Raven,now caught up in the throes of the curse,pleads for Sandra to shoot him before he transforms into something unintentionally silly,and luckily,she does just that,as he languishes in mid-sub-par,south of the border change-o-head transformation.Bloodied and exhausted,the female survivor stumbles off,almost looking like she's been raped(she's not the only one who feels violated,believe me),before a reprise of Raven's earlier video takes us to credits.Thankfully,it's all over.

Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately,Alice?
If you can get past the fact that very little happens for long periods of time...arond ninety minutes worth,to be precise,and a hokey script full of corny speeches like:"Oh, bullshit,Vince!The year 2000 is just around the corner. I am a recognized expert in electronic videos and you are the hottest rock n' roll star... in the world! You're making records, videos, movies ... on high-tech electronic equipment of fantastic sophistication. You can get on a plane tonight and be in Australia tomorrow. And you're scared of werewolves.",you might just get a few kicks out of this.Alice Cooper treads dangerously close to wooden cigar store indian territory with this performance,and face it,if you're a rockstar in real life that can't convince people you're a rockstar on the big screen...you're pretty much effed,buddy.The effects are piss-weak,the supporting cast is relatively uninteresting,and the pacing is bound to have you yawning and looking at the clock on the wall repeatedly.I can't recommend this to anyone,save the hardest core Cooper completists.


...More like papier mache' dog.

B.W. Goes to the Movies:Friday the 13th(2009)d/Marcus Nispel

"It's gonna be fuckin' stupid."I must've heard that twenty-five times since the first time I saw the teaser trailer and suggested to my roommate Doc that we should hit the theater for this new Friday the 13th remake.Well,no shit,Dr. Obvious.The whole series was never exactly renowned for any tangible integrity dating back thirty years now,and I had no notions this year's model was gonna be any different,especially after hearing Michael Bay's name was attached to it.If you've been living like the unabomber for the past ten years,Bay is the douchebag responsible for the reprehensible and unnecessary remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its even less necessary prequel,among others.What possessed this guy who once directed a Great White(the band,not the Italian Jaws rip-off)video to take an extended artistic leak all over a beloved,nearly flawless horror classic like TCM I'll never comprehend(I'll bet fellow douchebag Rob Zombie might have the answer to this one),but in this case,we're talking about a franchise that has sent its trademark hydrocephallic murderer into space,to Hell,and midtown Manhattan for twenty onscreen minutes in the worst of the series,ferchrissakes.How much worse could Michael Bay make it?

Don't look now,there's a huge,deformed,homicidal mongoloid bent on blood vengeance directly behind you.
I'll lay the good news on you first.It doesn't outstink Jason Takes Manhattan.That said,it's still not a good movie.Sure all the trendy MTV camerawork and editing is in place(which I'm completely fucking tired of by now,thanks),the obligatory attractive twenty-something nymphomaniacs searching out a ganja cashcrop(didn't we see this sort of thing in the poop TCM remake?) that happens to have been planted..drumroll..not all that far from the notorious Camp Crystal Lake,where the horrible murders took place all those years ago,culminating in the lopping off of Mrs. Voorhees' screaming domepiece,and the now-commonplace horrible redneck-neighbors-in-the-know who let the revenge-minded retard dole out disturbing death from his packrat shack(oh yeah,now it's a house).Only now,he's got an underground mine he utilizes(hey,it works in My Bloody Valentine,right?Who needs the summer camp thing,anyways!).As for the protagonists,none of them possess an inkling of what could be lightly described as likeable personality.Not since Larry Zerner's Shelly in Pt.3 in 3D has there been a victim I've hated instantaneously as much as every single body that falls by the wayside in this disaster.The murders,which I've heard ravings about all over the place,are neither original,nor particularly gory.There's also only one instance of Harry Manfredini's signature incidental score in the whole film.Seriously,it doesn't even deserve this much written about it.German-born director Nispel should have stuck to Puff Daddy and Spice Girls videos.What harm would there have been in financing a Jason movie that takes the franchise off in a new and/or original direction a la Jason X,instead of forcefeeding rabid horror fans the same old pabulum repackaged and dumbed down a thousand times over the way this one was?Now for the scary part...This scheiße-fest is already doing extremely well at the boxoffice,so expect an assinine sequel in the near future.Ki,ki,ki,ma,ma,ma.

Seriously,Sackhead Jason should hit Antique Roadshow.Look at all that junk!

Curse of Frankenstein(1957)d/Terence Fisher

In the late fifties,the British gothic horror giants at Hammer set out to remake several of the Universal classics,this entry being the first.Director Fisher commits to celluloid not only an entirely different motion picture than the 1931 Universal original,but in several brilliant twists,avoids following most of Mary Shelley's classic novel in the process.Though Peter Cushing establishes himself as the quintessential baron toying with life and death in the confines of his laboratory,studio mate Christopher Lee struggles as the patchwork creature,despite brilliant makeup from the late Phil Leakey,and doesn't bring much to the role,save for swinging his arms around and snarling menacingly.He did very well for himself, attaining megastardom,revered worldwide as a great actor anyway,and did not return for the sequel the next year.This film would catapult Hammer to the forefront of British cinema,panned by some critics,but overwhelmingly received by audiences of the day,and remains a true classic and essential viewing for any horror aficionado worth two disembodied hands wrapped in a hanky!

That's right,Baron.The bowl of dry ice is firmly in place...
Baron Victor Frankenstein(Peter Cushing) awaits the punishment phase of his sentencing in a cell,when he is visited by a priest,who agrees to hear the condemned man's sordid tale.As a young man who has inherited his family fortune,he is mentored by Paul Krempe(Robert Urquhart),who later becomes the brilliant young scientist's assistant in successful experiments creatng life where there was once none.When the men reanimate a dead puppy,Paul's joy is overshadowed by Frankenstein's urge to take the experiment much further.The one time tutor reluctantly agrees to help the Baron,until after stealing a corpse from the gallows,he witnesses Victor sawing off the head,and realizes the world,science included,may not see the duo's experiments in the same positive light!When Frankenstein's first cousin,Elizabeth(Hazel Court) comes to stay at the castle,Victor neglects to inform Paul or the maid he's been sleeping with, in between their gruesome work, of the young girl's arrival or future living arrangements.Paul turns a blind eye to the Baron's nightly scavenger hunts for suitable body parts for his creation,instead trying to convince Elizabeth to find somewhere else to live,preferably someplace without a mad scientist!

Horrible makeup,even more horribly miscast;the brilliant actor casts aside the bandages.
When Victor has assembled the creature,save for the brain,he stages a convenient accident at his home for a brilliant old scientist with no immediate family,later removing the genius' brain from the cadaver to complete his makeshift man.Once brought to life,the creature(Christopher Lee)escapes from the lab,killing a young boy and an old man in the process,before a well placed bullet from Paul's rifle sends the monster from whence it came.When the maid threatens the Baron over marriage promises he had made to her during their carnal liasons,he turns her over to the creature,which he has once again given life.Naturally,the creature frees itself from the chains Victor has shackled it in,and when it attacks Elizabeth,he destroys it once and for all with the flame from an oil lamp.When Paul visits the condemned Baron in his cell,he fails to corroborate the mad story Frankenstein has shared with the priest,effectively sealing his fate,as he leaves the jail with Elizabeth in tow.Was the whole thing a figment of Frankenstein's imagination?Or did Paul purposely avoid telling the truth to eliminate his rival for the hand of the young girl?Only the guillotine knows for sure...

Elizabeth(Hazel Court)and her marvelously smashing twin corset-pedoes.
In the autumn and winter years of his career,Lee has gone on to become a sort of elder statesman of global cinema,enjoying several successful periods to this very day,though he'll always be one of my favorite on-screen baddies,and my top choice as a certain infamously undead,bloodsucking count!Cushing's career spanned nearly sixty years,up until his death in 1994,finding the actor reprising his role as Frankenstein several times,Van Helsing in Hammer's long running Dracula series,Sherlock Holmes,and even Dr. Who in the original films!Both men officially met on the set of this entry,though they had acted on earlier efforts together,and began a lifelong friendship,repeating phrases from Looney Tunes cartoons(!)in between takes.Terry Fisher continued to direct most of the major Hammer horror efforts(directing Lee twelve times!),his last being Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell(1974) before succumbing in 1980.This is a classy effort that makes for enjoyable repeat viewings,and as thus,it merits the very highest of ratings,and is highly recommended from your humble N.

That's an awfully nice pea coat,Chistopher.Really.

Slumber Party Massacre(1982)d/Amy Jones

All the...ahem...drilling... I was involved in this past weekend served as inspiration for tonight's entry.The screenplay for this longtime fan favorite was originally written by local poet/novelist Rita Mae Brown as a parody of slasher films,then shot as a serious film,and ironically plays as an unintentional comedy after all is said and done.Aren't flicks like this the best kind,kiddies?Yeah,I'm joking,by the way.Formulaic?You'll find more formula here than you could on Julius Sumner Miller's PBS blackboard back in the seventies.There are some uncredited Mark Shostrom gore effects on display here,an awful lot of twenty-something female nudists masquerading as teenaged high school chicks,meatcleaver-on-snail violence,would-be heroic voyeur-nerds,blatant sexual allegory involving the killer's enormous weapon and helpless female victims,a lot of the necessary elements to make this a thoroughly entertaining slasher flick,really.It might help if half your brain shuts down beforehand from a debilitating stroke,but then again,even that might not help you get through it.

Scream Queen Brinke Stevens provides my favorite scene in the movie.
Since her parents are out of town,Trish decides it might be high time to invite all her high school friends to one of those slumber parties that you'd be lucky to find middle school aged girls at.After a painfully inept varsity girls' basketball practice,Coach Jana thankfully sends the scrubs to the showers,where they spend a lot of time catting at each other,which proved compelling viewing to your humble N,and not at all any prolonged shots of Linda(Brinke Stevens)soaping up perky on camera hammurabi's.Honest.Valerie(the late Robin Stille),the new girl in school who lives next door to Trish,is sooooooo totally not invited.Oh yeah,mass murderer Russ Thorn,an effeminate-looking hispanic in popped denim collar with a two foot long industrial cordless drill that never needs charging...ever,has escaped.From where,is simply not important.I'm just guessing he's looking for just the right slumber party to terrorize.He warms up by drilling through the bubblehead of a telephone repairwoman,just as our two heroes Neil and Jeff take a called third strike while trying to hit on her.Linda eats spinning steel drillbit death next,after an empty classroom cat and mouse game with Thorn proves tragic when an earlier drill wound's cascading claret leads the driller killer right to her.

Meatsa,Meatsa.You'd better make sure Russ Thorn gets his pizza in thirty minutes or less.
Next door,Valerie has to make do by breaking her giant Shirley Temple-sized lollipop-licking sister in hot pants, Courtney's cazzies about doling out hand jobs while in fifth grade(which for Jennifer Meyers,must have been nearly two decades previous),then scolding her for reading her copy of Playgirl.At the decadent slumber party she wasn't invited to,the girls get their tits out directly in front of a window that our socially inept heroes happen to be peering through.Thorn quickly puts a damper on the wholesome festivites,drilling the neighbor,who's out cleaver-chopping snails(!),the pizza delivery guy,the basketball coach,the two poor male bastards,and several of the bubbleheads in attendance before the snubbed siblings decide to investigate the girls' gathering for themselves,which leads to a boffo showdown finale against the drill-wielding psychopath,who exclaims,"Takes a lot of love for a person to do this"(!!),before the sisters stab him in the back,chop off his hand with a machete,slash his belly open,and then skewer him on the aforementioned weed chopper before the credits roll,making the cinematic world safe once again for horny pot-smoking chicks to get together and disrobe in front of windows to the delight of nerds who plan their nights aound such gatherings.At least until Slumber Party Massacre 2 came out five years later...

Is it the power drill or the popped collar that makes the girls scream? We may never know.
Brown achieved her success writing best-selling mysteries,the majority of which she credits her own cat as co-author(!!!),while director Jones moved on to the much scarier The Rich Man's Wife,starring Halle Berry.Robin Stille enjoyed cult favorite status due to this entry,and later,Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama,before committing suicide in 1996.Brinke remains busy,as always,between countless movie projects and convention appearances.This flick spawned three sequels,none of which I've ever bothered with,after having my intelligence insulted by the original.Besides the delightful Stevens,I really couldn't find much on either dramatic or parody level to maintain my interest beyond one or two viewings.Appropriately,this one's getting drilled on the rating scale with an unimpressive score of:

Randy Courtney(Jennifer Meyers) gave grade five handys,yet finds this machete blade dandy.

L'ultimo Squalo(1981)d/Enzo G.Castellari

As the proudest of Italians,I honestly feel that we,as a people,never half-ass what we set out to do.Even when we're ripping off American blockbuster movies.So when Enzo Castellari's L'ultimo Squalo(Great White,U.S. title)was successfully sued by Universal Pictures and yanked shortly after release,Americans had little idea of what a bombastic trainwreck of a motion picture they were missing out on.With a four million dollar advertising budget,a cast of b-movie staple actors,an outta sight disco soundtrack by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis,a script that generously borrows from both Jaws(1975) and Jaws 2(1979),and a mechanical monster that looks to have cost no less than forty-six bucks to construct,Squalo is one of the finest pieces of exploitative garbage to have ever thread a movie projector.Seriously,this film is like Plan 9 From Outer Space with a dorsal fin.Steven Spielberg couldn't have topped this if Richard Dreyfuss looked directly at the camera fifty more times than he already did in the original screen adaption of Peter Benchley's(remember that name)novel.Though no region one dvd exists at this point,get your hands on a PAL format release,or a bootleg immediately.You won't believe your eyes.

"He's down therrrre...waiting to attack.That's been his patterrrn...right before he makes an attack." says sometimes Irish shark fisherman,Ron Hamer(Vic Morrow).
When one of Jenny Benton's(acting-wise think Keanu Reeves with breasts)cool windsurfing buddies disappears one morning,she enlists her father,writer Peter Benton(not Peter Benchley)to track down the wayward watersporter.Benton(James Franciscus)calls in grizzled sea captain Ron Hamer(Vic Morrow),who's stumbled across a chunk of the boy's surfboard while floating around off the coast of Port Harbor(and floating in and out of a bad Irish accent),to help in the investigation.After Hamer deducts that only a great white shark is large enough to do the kind of damage seen in the piece of surf equipment,both men deliver the bad news to Mayor Wells(Joshus Sinclair),who slags them off,as he busily prepares for a re-election campaign AND an annual regatta/windsurfing competition that will boost the sleepy town's tourism immeasurably.After discovering a local fisherman's swamped boat,his severed arm floating below,the mayor agrees to put up safeguards against this rogue menace,in the form of a metal underwater gate,which the shark abruptly busts through anyway.During the windsurfing competition,the beast surfaces and sends the townspeople and surfers into a frenzied panic,before hitting a rowboat with the mayor's assistant on it,sending him twenty feet straight up into the air(!)and back down into the water,where the shark eats him in front of tv cameras(!!).

Shark attack or dummy on a rowboat hitting a depth charge?You decide.
When the local media pressures the mayor to act,his son and friends take his father's boat out to hunt for the killer,which promptly bites off Benton's daughter's leg.Wells then takes a chopper out over the sea,hanging a rack of ribs on a towline over the water(the mere scent is all it takes,apparently),and when the shark pulls the winch directly off the helicopter,the politician falls into the surf,eventually getting both of his legs bitten off(!!!)trying to climb back into the chopper.The shark then sinks the chopper,as well.Later,Benton and Hamer,equipped with a singular dynamite belt(nothing like being prepared),take the sea captain's boat out to hunt the shark,but in the underwater melee,Hamer drowns.When the local newscrew ties off a chunk of meat to the pier as bait,the shark tears the entire dock loose,trapping a dozen or so people on it.As Benton drives Hamer's boat back into shore,he comes across what's left of the trapped citizens,and as he helps them onto the boat,he becomes trapped himself on the floating dock.As he fends off the shark's attacks with a plank of wood,Hamer's dead body comes to the surface(from miles away,mind you)and bumps into the edge of the dock.The writer pulls his lifeless buddy onto the floating deathtrap and takes the detonator from the deceased fisherman's still-intact dynamite belt,as the shark surfaces again,and promptly eats Hamer's corpse.At this point,Benton slo-mo jumps off the flotilla (for no apparent reason)and pushes the detonator,effectively blowing the 30-plus foot predator to smithereens.Back on dry land,the writer punches out a nosy television reporter and walks off with his wife,to try and pick up the pieces of his life.

Peter Benton(James Franciscus),a writer in a wetsuit,clutching a lifeless chunk of prosciutto(Vic Morrow)to use as bait.
The late Morrow,a poor man's Quint, regularly flubs his lines,talking in nonsensical circles in spots(his slideshow speech and on-boat pep talk to Franciscus are particularly heinous/hilarious),while Franciscus,a poor man's Chief Brody,is left to improv through it as the camera rolls.The impossibly fat and conical mechanical shark(constructed by Giorgio Ferrari,but too clunky and awkward to draw comparison to the automobile of the same name!),which does an awful lot of bobbing in and out of the water,is about as menacing as swimming pool cramps.Castellari,who directed everything from westerns to post-apocalyptic set pieces,generously fills in here with ample stock footage of great whites of varying sizes,tiger sharks,nurse sharks,and bull sharks.What's-ah the difference,eh?!!The gore is plentiful and passable,albeit mostly amputated legs and poor bastards bitten in half at the waist,with a severed arm or two thrown in for good measure.It's been lumped in among the worst movies ever made in some circles,and though I really couldn't argue against that distinction here,it IS highly entertaining,and uproariously funny in the most unintentional of ways.Hunt yourself down a copy,even though on the scale it bobs to the surface flaccidly with a meager score of:

Eh,squalo!Mangiate ed ingrassate!

The Entity(1981)d/Sidney Furie

The fact that nothing much is going on in the one-sheet should tip you off...
I hadn't thought much about this entry since seeing it in its first run,only acquiring it at the request of my then-girlfriend who claimed it frightened the shit out of her when she last saw it,sometime in the early 90's(when she was probably like nine years old,mind you).I did not have such fond memories of it.Did we watch the same movie? After revisiting Furie's big screen take on the Frank deFelitta novel,the stale taste in my mouth had returned.I suddenly remembered why most of the movie had eluded me at first mention.It sucked.
I just don't buy it for a second.If I was in the same paranormal situation,being visited nightly by an unseen horny succubus...let's just say there'd be one bottomed out ectoplasmic bitch limping back to hell and asking the dark lord and master for an ice pack and a few nights off.Hell,most of the girls I know would make this otherworldly horndog blush in the first five minutes.I'm just skeptical as to whether an invisible main character makes for good cinematic copy these days.It doesn't help that there's little help elsewhere in the flick to back up the see-thru gent.Whatever scares the filmmakers try and ante up here seem invisible at times,but sadly,I think it's because they just aren't there in the first place.

Women aren't naturally bad drivers,they might just have an invisible incubus trying to kill them while they're driving a vehicle,is all.
Carla Moran(Barbara Hershey)is a single mother of two,living a normal existence in Los Angeles,until one night,while innocently slapping some cream on her gams,she is given the forceful in-out by an unseen assailant.After post-coital investigation turns up no evidence to support this,she wrongly slags it off as a vivid nightmare,until her bedroom violently explodes all around her,causing the frazzled woman to spend the rest of the night at a friend's house.When she returns home,she's given the supernatural high hard one again,this time right as she's drawing herself a bath.The next morning in the car,the invisible force takes over once again,erratically swerving her through traffic and nearly killing her in the process.At this point she seeks out mental help from a psychiatrist named Sneiderman(Ron Silver),who believes the distraught dame is merely physically manifesting her own deep-rooted fear of sex instilled in her through her upbringing.Her harrowing polter-goosings drive her from the arms of her boyfriend Jerry(perrenial cinematic scuzbag Alex Rocco)and to the attention of a pair of nerdy investigative ghostbusters,who offer to try and lend her a hand she can actually see for a change.

Carla(Barbara Hershey)shares some quality alone time with the netherworld's elbow-tittin' champeen.
After the two dorks set up their paranormal pots n' pans equipment at Carla's place,the ethereal incubus only manages to manifest electric energy from the ceiling.But when Jerry later returns,he finds his partner sprawled naked on the bed,her body being pawed by invisible hands,and when he tries to rescue her,her son misconstrues his attack on the ghostly being with a chair as an assault on his mother,when he clobbers the poor girl in the head with it instead,in mid-spirit fuck(!).At this point,the two ghostbusters call in reinforcements,who set up a roofless replica house in a high school gymnasium,arming it with huge tanks of liquid helium to freeze the spectral rapist in his tracks,since he can move physical objects,and therefore must have some semblance of physical mass himself.Sneiderman makes a mad dash to save Carla before their experiment plays out,but is taken into custody,and forced to watch the whole thing from the sidelines with the parapsychologists and the military.The incubus shows up and tries to do in his earthly squeeze with the helium spray nozzles,and ultimately exploding the tanks themselves in a vulgar display of power,emptyheadedly freezing himself in a mountain of solid helium,which he bursts out of in an even more impressive and vulgar display of power.At the tail end of a very long and drawn out two hours,Carla finally moves her family to another city,when titles roll,telling us that her attacking apparition still scores with her from time to time.

"If we magnify this corner of the photograph,we might be able to make out something happening(but I doubt it)."
The perpetually plain Barbara Hershey breaks out her own real sweater puppies here,and also pops her head out of a hole in the bed with an unconvincing nude latex body designed by Stan Winston(!!) to move on its own,as it were being groped by invisi-mitts.Not his proudest FX moment,I'm sure.Hershey remains very busy on the acting circuit,though I only really dug her in Boxcar Bertha(1972) and Falling Down(1993).They could have cast a hotter chick,I'm saying.The whole story is allegedly based on the real-life ordeal of Carla Moran,who may or may not still get poked by a poltergeist.If so,at least one of us is scoring some regular sex.Good for you,sister.Personally,I felt the whole thing dragged along,clocking in at over two hours,with precious few hump-scares to mention.You may get an unintentional chuckle from the spectre boobs,or the Charles Bernstein-composed incidental rock guitar rape score,but you probably won't.Hideo Nakata plans to remake this mess,and that's really all it needs to be permanently cemented into dragsville:Japanese genital-fogging.The scale's rating this time around materializes as a disappointing:

If you're looking for massive frozen helium mountains exploding in a gymnasium,then look no further.

Hands of the Ripper(1971)d/Peter Sadsy

Involuntarily skipping out on the St. Valentine's weekend festivities,save for third wheeling it at the local Johnny Rocket's grease pit with my roommate and his girlfriend(You wanna know who pumped a pocketful of nickels into the jukebox and tortured the entire establishment with "Chantilly Lace" by the Big Bopper on an endless loop?Look no further,bastards.),I found myself reflecting upon which macabre movie morsels I was going to serve up to my virtual valentines here in the emperor's kingdom,and though I was unsure at first,I knew there oughta be a good deal o' red.
Not my favorite Hammer film of all time,though one would think it's possessing of enough classic elements to merit that much-coveted top spot;excellent setting in jolly old Victorian E',more red stuff than I ever remember seeing on the screen in any other Hammer movie off the top of my head(and they always upped the ante in the blood sweepstakes in those days to begin with),lippy east end whores in a cage(I live for such smashing visuals!)sterling performances by the late Shakespearian actor Eric Porter and the lovely Angharad Rees adding to the sombre tone of the film,but in the end,the whole family values of Saucy Jack the Ripper angle left me more than a little drained,no pun intended.

Constable Crepewool,about to spring his adamantium claws into action.
The Whitechapel Ripper is a multitasker at heart,we find out,early on.When he's not out ripping whores,he's a family man,tending to his wife and young daughter,Anna.By tending to,I mean shanking his soulmate in the labonza and psychologically twisting his little girl's subconscious into mental taffy.More than a decade later,we find his daughter living with a phony medium-cum-madam,and when she's not faking voices from the ethereal afterlife,she's entertaining slimy cocksmiths like mr. Dysart(Derek Godfrey),who flashes gaudy baubles at the teenager so that she might allow him to get his bloody end away already.When Dr. Pritchard(Eric Porter)bursts in to investigate screams of terror from the medium's humble abode,he finds the psychic impaled on the bedroom door,and Anna staring off blankly as Dysart hastily exits stage left.The doctor,a self-proclaimed student of Freud,does not implicate the flesh hound during questioning by the old bill,deciding to take in the ubiquitously unhinged urchin to his own home,for something frightfully new to Victorian England, called psychoanalysis.He then blackmails Dysart to use his influence to discover anything he can about Anna's shadowy past,and rescues the girl from a jailcell full of unclean,mouthy slappers,planning to break the news to his son and his blind fiancee when they arrive from the train station.

After being ripped,Dolly(Marjie Lawrence) makes folly of being able to swally,by golly.
Anna repays the good doctor's kindness by smashing a hand mirror and planting it in the neck of the physician's maid.It seems that the combination of reflective light and a kiss,whether amorous or platonic,sends Saucy Jack's daughter off in her famous father's footsteps,evacuating the life out of whoever's foolish enough to be that close in the first place,dammit.She then wanders out in her subconscious trance to the red light district,where the cliched "hooker with a heart of gold" takes her in,only to wind up dead on the cobblestone with multiple hatpins through her hand and into her neck and eye.Rather than turning the young murderess in to the authorities,Pritchard,still of the opinion that he can cure the girl's madness, takes her instead to Madame Bullard,another psychic,at the request of Dysart.The woman identifies the troubled young thing as the ripper's daughter,but when she kisses the girl,she ends up stabbed dead.Pritchard himself finds himself on the wrong end of a sword to the kidneys,but innovatively uses a door handle to un-skewer himself so that he can rush to stop Anna before she does any harm to his son's love interest at the whispering gallery inside St.Paul's Cathedral.Does the bleeding Brit save the day?Or is the blind belle to be brutally butchered by Pritchard's obtuse-of-mind-but-not-of-blade obsession?Get your hands on this ripper to find out.

Prostitute Long Liz threads the eye of the needle on her night off.
The Hungarian-born director Sadsy was responsible for a myriad of Hammer-based horrors,such as Taste the Blood of Dracula(1970),Countess Dracula(1971),the rarely-seen Nothing But the Night(1973),as well as several episodes of Hammer House of Horror in 1980,any or all of which I enjoyed a great deal more than this entry,despite being anxious to see it as far back as I can remember after seeing the British marquee poster above in a hardcover tome on horror films as a child.Eh,whattayagonndo.The character of the pincushioned prostitute,Long Liz,was actually named after one of Jack the Ripper's real life victims.There's enough here to keep the average Hammer-head glued to the screen for just under an hour and a half,but of all the classic genre fare the studio churned out in the seventies,this one just seems to fade into obscurity in comparison.Definitely worth a look,despite my personal beefs.On the scale,I'll have to rate this ripper:

Anna(Angherad Rees) doles out my kinda valentines,that's for sure.

Cursed(2005)d/Wes Craven

Wes "Last House on the Left" Craven directs,Rick Baker and Greg Nicotero/KNB handle the creature and gore effects,and adorable cutie pie Christina Ricci is the female lead.That's a pretty good lineup on paper.So why is this not a better movie?It's certainly a passable ninety minutes worth of light entertainment,but it really should have been so much more.I've racked my brain on this perplexing puzzle quite a few times by now,and this is what your humble N comes up with.Ricci does an admirable job with her material,and is gorgeous,as usual.The werewolves look good,if not a bit CGI-heavy a la Underworld.Nicotero is criminally underused on the gore end thanks to the inevitable PG-13 chop,but his crimson contribution is enjoyable,as always.Besides the myriad of problems Craven had to wade through just to have the film released(three years after production began),the movie suffers from Kevin "I Know What You Did Last Summer" Williamson's goofy,airheaded script.It feels like a horror movie made by people who neither enjoy horror movies,nor understand what goes into making a good one,and a thinly-veiled vehicle for hot young stars of the moment to strut attractively across the big screen,like the "I Know" series was nothing more than.What a shame...

That's nothing,Ricci,you should see the infernal thing when it's erect.Hahaha!
Two bubbleheads as shallow as a wading pool for kiddies enjoy a fair on the pier when they decide to pay the fortune teller(Portia de Rossi) a visit.The gypo sees moon-based danger in their palms,but the girls cluck disgustedly that the soothsayer fails to notice their Korean French-tipped manicures,or something equally vapid. Enter Ellie(Chistina Ricci) and her embarrassingly nerdy brother Jimmy(Jesse Eisenberg) driving home that night,only to hit some animal with their car on the winding mountain road,ploughing into another vehicle,causing it to flip over the guard rail and into the woods below.When the siblings try to rescue the airhead(Shannon Elizabeth)trapped upside down in the driver's seat,a werewolf snatches her up as prey and effectively puts the mark of the beast on both of them.Jimmy immediately believes they've been affected by a werewolf,trudging through his comic books and crypto websites to map out a course of action.Ellie works for the Craig Kilborn Show(!),and her increasingly wolfish traits become so apparent,she's soon catching Scott "Chachi" Baio's eye while scheduling his appearance on the show(!!).Meanwhile back in high school,it's the plight of the nerd for Jimmy.He's attracted to a girl,who dates the head of the wrestling team,Bo(Milo Ventimiglia),an abrasive sporto meathead who constantly accuses Jimmy of being a homosexual.Ellie is also having problems of the heart with her boyfriend,Jake(Joshua "Dawson's Creek" Jackson),who's opening a Hollywood club filled with horror movie-themed mannekins and a hall of mirrors right out of the New Scooby Doo Movies.

Leaving your dinner half finished when there are werewolves starving in Romania?Come on!.
After defeating Bo and his jock buddies in a wrestling match in the gym,Jimmy is visited by the defeated meathead,who confesses his own gayness to him(!!!) as they escape the attacks of Zipper the dog,who was infected with lycanthropy when he bit Jimmy on the night of their car crash.You following this?Soon the other member of the bopsy twins from the pier turns her toes up after clashing with a ravenous werewolf in the parking garage.Jake tells Ellie that he's a werewolf,but before he can explain further,she speeds off.At Jake's club,the two boys try to rendezvous with Ellie,but are foiled by a werewolf in the hall of mirrors.At this point I expected to see Shaggy and Scooby disguise themselves as barbers and set the wolfman up for a shave in the chair.But I digress.It turns out this skinny,sassy bitch with massive Vince Vaughn-esque bags under her eyes that Ellie works with completes the were-puzzle,infected with the curse when she herself slept with Jake,killing off female competitors for the alpha male of the pack.In full transformation,she flips the bird to cops before they blow her brains out.Not even Landis would have went there.The shaggy denoument finds Ellie shovel-blading off Jake's head after plunging a silver cake server into his chest,breaking the curse for the siblings and their pooch.Jimmy gets his girl,Bo is the homoerotic third wheel,and Ellie is left to clean up their mess of a house.Cue trendy music as the end credits roll.

So friggin' cute,even werewolves wanna smooch her.
Yeah,it's definitely the script.Personally,I don't think Craven's done much of anything merit-worthy since Last House on the Left(and that was a LONG TIME AGO,kids),and this furry Gilmore Girls episode didn't do anything to slow his artistic slide into the Hollywood septic tank.Overall,it succeeds as a Wednesday night time waster,if sandwiched between two movies you might have actually wanted to see.Chug several cautionary beers beforehand,and you may get your jollies from the always attractive Ricci and/or Nicotero's on-screen grue.A Wop each for those two factors alone is all I can award this yuk-fest in good conscience.The makers of this film should thank the heavens that the collective ghosts of Larry Talbot and Waldemar Daninsky haven't showed up during the lunar cycle and waffled them for this effort.

Baker/KNB's upright lycanthropic vision ultimately unveiled.

Wop's Premio Dardos Award Winners

The Dardos Award is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web.

The Rules are: 1) Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog. 2) Pass the award to another five blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgement, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award.

Samuel Wilson,of "MONDO 70: A Wild World of Cinema" blog fame, bestowed the honour upon me,so in turn,I'm doling out five Latin Dart Prizes of my own to fellow bloggers who do their jobs,and excellently,at that.Come get yer Dardos Stamp,you exquisite rascals,you!



I Spit on Your Taste

Nigel's got champagne taste in both film and youth subcultures,a diamond geezer,he is.

Life and Death

Victoria is not only the hottest blogger I've come across,but she manages to do a bang up job blogging,doing special makeup effects,and graphic artwork and design.

Soiled Sinema

These two consistently post stellar reviews of interesting films,and push the envelope in an intelligent manner.

Final Girl

Stacie is just Stacie.I dare you not to love her for it.

The Drunken Severed Head

Let's hope this award moves ol' Head a step closer to finding the rest of his body.His blog is choice indeed.

Deathdream(1974)d/Benjamin "Bob" Clark

Not a day goes by where I don't ponder how much I miss the late director of this entry,Benjamin "Bob" Clark,the man responsible for the original Black Christmas,Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things,and later on,Porky's and perrenial holiday masterpiece,A Christmas Story.The man was truly a gifted artist with a remarkable vision,and his take on "The Monkey's Paw",written by genre staple Alan Ormsby(who has a cameo and handles the brilliant special makeup effects with a young assistant by the name of Savini!),is a creepy atmospheric classic of seventies cinema,a seething social commentary of the Vietnam war,and one of my personal all-time favorites.The cast is tremendous,from The Godfather's John Marley to then-newcomer Richard Backus,and everyone in between.It used to be you couldn't have a horror movie conversation without this movie or Clark's other work getting namedropped multiple times.That's the way it always SHOULD be.Those of you who've never experienced it,really oughta pick up the Blue Underground dvd ASAP and do yourselves the favor.This is what horror is all about.

If war isn't Hell,it's gotta be a close second.
Andy Brooks(Richard Backus)eats communist-administered hot lead death in Vietnam.When an army captain breaks the tragic news to Andy's family,his father(John "Horsehead" Marley)and sister(Alan's then-wife and "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things' uber-weirdo,Anya Ormsby)are devastated,consoling each others' tears with hugs,but his mother(Lynn Carlin)refuses to accept what she's heard,slipping into a state of repudiatory shock,clutching a candle and rocking back and forth into the blackness.Later that night on a darkened Florida highway,a truck driver picks up an unseen hitchhiking soldier,returning home from Vietnam.The next morning his corpse is discovered by the authorities,propped up in the driver's seat of his cab,throat savagely slit and drained of blood.When the Brooks are awakened from their sleep that night by a noise at the front door,they're shocked by the unexpected sight of their son's return from the war.Immediately Charles notices that the bloody conflict has changed Andy,who sits in the rocker at great lengths,staring off ominously,before disappearing when the sun goes down.The family throws a picnic for him in the backyard which goes horribly wrong when Andy abruptly grabs one of the neighborhood kids before turning his hateful violence on the family pooch,chucking it through the air towards an early dirt nap.Television news broadcasts about details surrounding the dead trucker spark Charles' curiosity,who schedules a surprise vist for Andy from Dr. Allman.

An officer(director Clark himself!)examines the gruesome aftermath of Andy's return.
When Andy follows Allman back to his office,he allows the doctor to examine him,revealing that for all intents and purposes,he is a walking corpse(!).He thanks the physician for his efforts with several scalpel blows to the midsection,helping himself to Allman's blood via a hypodermic needle,momentarily quelling the perpetual rot of the dead flesh on his cadaver(!).Meanwhile,Andy's sister Cathy decides its high time that her brother reunite with his best girl,Joanne(Jane Daly,also of CSPWDT fame),setting up a romantic double date at the drive in.Andy spends the majority of the date void of emotion,hiding his increasing fleshrot behind a turtleneck,leather gloves,and sunglasses(!!!),and when Joanne notices her beau's decay,he kills her,sparking panic and chaos at the outdoor theater.He recklessly drives home,where Charles cannot bring himself to shoot his rapidly rotting namesake,and his mother hurries him out to the car,where he is shot with no effect by approaching policemen.A highspeed chase to the cemetery ensues,the desperate woman hauling her son to an open grave and headstone where he had primitively scratched his name and birth/death dates with a rock.The police arrive on the scene to find Christine weeping as Andy futilely tries to bury himself,finally dying for keeps this time.

Everything doesn't look fine,Bob.
Also released as Dead of Night(not to be confused with the excellent Dan Curtis/Richard Matheson 1977 television anthology),and La Morte Dietro la Porta(The Death Behind the Door) in Italy.Christopher Walken was also considered for the role of Andy,but Backus nailed it with his soulless stare of hate,and was cast instead.Clark had planned to ressurect Children Shouldn't... as his career had taken a decidely goofy turn as of late,helming such forgettable fodder as Baby Geniuses and its sequel,and made-for-television fare like The Karate Dog and Maniac McGee,but an unfortunate car crash claimed his life in 2007.Ormsby took the directorial chair for Deranged,and later uncredited for Popcorn(1991),as well as writing the script for My Bodyguard(1980),and most recently,for television shows like Nash Bridges and The Substitute at the outset of the '00s.Backus scored himself a prolonged role on soap opera,Ryan's Children,before moving on to tv shows like Spenser:For Hire and Law & Order.This entry enjoyed a long run on late night horror shows,and deservedly so.Clark's powerful Vietnam allegory where Americans die in battle,and those that don't,return home as zombies,remains effective and somewhat poignant during our current crisis in the Middle East.Still one of the choicest horror movies of the 70's,I often find myself sitting down for a revisit.The highest possible scale rating,and a sincere recommendation is what I bestow upon it.

Andy(Richard Backus)is just looking to find his way home.

Piranha Part 2: The Spawning(1981)d/James Cameron

Take it from ol' B.W.,even the biggest Hollywood hotshot directors have movies under their belts they'd like to forget.Take James Cameron,for example.Sure,he's responsible for big budget spectacles like Aliens,True Lies,The Terminator,and Titanic,but his humble beginnings include Galaxy of Terror(1981) and this particular ridiculous piece of dogshit.Don't get me wrong,I have fond memories of watching it in the rental days,and there are enough elements in place that it manages to entertain despite its shortcomings,but let's not pull punches here:This movie sucks all kinds o' bloated pungent donkey balls.So much so that it's a minor miracle that Cameron went on to have the career he has,I know if I was hiring a director for MY motion picture and he walked in with a nice professional-looking resume that had this movie on it,I'd second guess myself over hiring the bucciaolo to hold my boom microphone.That said,let's reflect on the positive aspects of the film:Lance Henriksen in his pre-leather wallet days,Italian goremeister Gianetto De Rossi admirably assassinates several characters(we won't break his balls about the carnivorous flying fish effects just yet),genre vet Stelvio Cipriani's excellent film score,and of course, Leslie Graves' underutilized D cup gashingas hidden in an eighties-tastic half shirt.If she broke those puppies out,we'd be looking at a different review,my friends.

Even Chief Kimbrough(Lance Henriksen)smirks at the idea of flying piranha hybrids.
At the outset two divers decide to have themselves an aqua-fuck next to the sunken remains of a ship,before they're torn to pieces by hundreds of unseen predators.Their bodies are discovered by a professional scuba instructor and single mom named Anne(Tricia O'Neill)while on a dive with a group of tourists.One of her students,a herman named Tyler Sherman(Steve Marachuk)has a fire down below for her,but her ex-husband happens to be the island's own police chief Yarbrough(Lance Henriksen) investigating the mysterious dual demise in the murky depths,and keeping his former partner on a short leash.Meanwhile,her son scores himself a job as first mate on a pleasure boat for a stuffy old snob who doesn't know his own prick from pumpkin butter about boating,and... AND... his bangin' daughter who's got bountiful busoms just a-burstin' out all over the freakin' place.It's gonna be a good summer,as DeNiro once said in a much better movie.Anne convinces Tyler to break into the morgue to take photographs of the dead bodies,and he obliges,figuring the stunt will score him some easy wizard's sleeve from the curious milf.A cleaning lady bursts in on their hijinks and chases them,before(here comes the "Holy Saint Xenobius" moment,wait for it!) a toothy flying fish flies out of a gaping wound in the corpse's midsection and chews the black woman's throat out before smashing out a window and flying off(!!!).Yeah,I'm rubbing my eyes over here,too.

This diver's got a loverly smile,courtesy of makeup wiz Gianetto "Zombi 2" De Rossi.
Yarbrough discovers his ex-wife's credit card at the crime scene the next day,and when he shows up to question her,she's sleeping off a sympathy fuck with Tyler.Meanwhile,two pirate-esque bimbos cheat a poor retarded stuttering resort chef out of a box of supplies before the flying death-dealers make a meal out of them.Anne's son sneaks off with the pillow chested crewmate in a rowboat,and Tyler comes clean about really being a genetic engineer staying at the resort to try and monitor a lost cannister of hybrid piranha/flying fish he'd helped develop.And just in time for the resort's annual fish-stravaganza,where guests call the fish from the ocean's surf by tiki torch in the moonlight.The hotel manager,Raoul,is more concerned with a succesful party than the impending bloody decimation of his tourists.Sniff,sniff,I smell the Jaws formula in here somewhere.The police chief sets out in his chopper to look for his fleshhound son and his concubine,and Anne and Tyler dive to the wreckage to set off explosive charges to rid the island of its winged threat once and for all.The mutant fish fly out of the water and turn the tables on the hotel guests,flapping,biting,and squeaking like bats in the process.Tyler eats carnivorous mutant death at the jaws of his own aquatic Frankenstein-esque creations,but Anne places the charges and after Yarbrough inexplicably crashes his own chopper into the ocean(?),he scores a boat and saves his ex-wife and the two kids just in time for a giant underwater trademark Cameron explosion,saving the day.Sound ridiculous?It is.It really is.

Smoking ganja would prove fruitless for this poor bastard.
In defense of De Rossi,always one of my favorite makeup artists,his gore is top-notch as always.His boxy-looking "fish" which clunk clumsily through the air like Science Patrol spaceships from the old Ultraman television series and resemble winged trout with choppers,can't really be blamed on him.Look at the assinine script he was given to work with,ferchrissakes.Producer Ovidio G. Assonitis allegedly gave Cameron no freedom,only allowing the director to film the movie,cutting it himself,and then re-cutting it when he discovered Cameron trying to edit it himself.Cameron,when asked about the film,smirks "I believe 'The Spawning' was the finest flying piranha movie ever made."Whether you consider the guy a talented director or a blowjob hack who made good,you have to admit he's got a sense of humour.Director of the original 1978 movie,Joe Dante's gotta wince when this movie comes up.This entry flaps and squeaks its way to a scale rating of an embarrasing:

Insert your obligatory "head" joke here.

My Bloody Valentine(1981)d/George Mihalka

Face it,everyone's a fan of the original My Bloody Valentine,and I've been no exception since I frequented the American Theater down on Main Street multiple times the week it ran way back in 1981,proudly displaying the great one-sheet on my bedroom wall for years to come.Even so,as an eleven year old,I knew what I'd seen was an incomplete realization of what director Mihalka had envisioned for the big screen,thanks to Fangoria's stellar coverage(as always,it seemed!)of the film,and juicy stills of gory splendor that had seemingly vanished from the theatrical print to avoid the ever present X rating for violence slasher flicks were facing in that era.When the first dvd was released,I was frankly pretty bummed.The gore hadn't been replaced,the disc was bare bones,and the disc sleeve looked like balls.When I caught wind of the pending remake,I was less concerned with the new interpretation and more hopeful that a special edition that did proper justice to the original would surface.Ask and you shall receive,as they say.Lion's Gate has delivered the definitive dvd,with ALL gore restored and a slew of extras,making me one extremely happy camper...or is that miner?

Chief Newby removes Mabel from the skin cycle.
Twenty years have passed in the little working class town of Valentine Bluffs since a methane gas explosion trapped five miners in a shaft while the crew foremen left the mine early to attend the town's Valentine's Day dance.Selfless guys,these supervisors,huh.Six weeks later,a miner named Harry Warden is rescued from the cavernous blackness,after dining on his dead co-workers' flesh to survive.Shit happens. After a year in the squirrel farm, Warden escapes on Valentine's Day to snuff the candles of all the guilty supervisors,cutting out their hearts and leaving them as a cautionary warning that,if the town ever has another Valentine's dance,the blood will once again spill.You know,I'll bet the townspeople will try and have a dance ANYWAY later on in the picture!In the present,the Bluffs' prodigal son T.J. Hanniger(Paul Kelman)has returned to town to work in his father's mine and try to patch it up with his one-time squeeze,Sarah(Lori Hallier),only to find she's now enjoying best girl status with fellow miner Axel Palmer(Neil Affleck).No worries,he's got a few days to try and reach her before...drumroll...the big Valentine's dance.And then the murders start happening again.

Lucky might want to rethink his nickname at this point.
As the night of the dance approaches,the mayor and sheriff have a mounting pile of Valentine's candy boxes with human hearts in them on their hands,and naturally deduce that miner-turned-cannibal Harry Warden has returned to exact revenge on the town for ignoring his prior warnings.Meanwhile,horrible Harry is the last thing on the young miners' minds,as they prepare to get loaded,fistfight,and make out with their dates like any good boys would do in the same sitch.When the officials finally step in and cancel the dance in hopes to quell the bloodshed,the boys plan a secret party anyway.And where better to hold it than Hanniger Mine itself?Yeah,brilliant idea.During the party progression, copulation-minded couples eat brutal pick-axe death at the hands of the mystery miner-maniac,when the sheriff and his mayoral counterpart find out that Warden hasn't escaped from his rubber room afterall,and died while institutionalized.So who's killing everybody?Could it be a jealous Hanniger looking to better his odds with Sarah by eliminating all his co-workers?Or could it be someone else entirely,bereaft of a full deck,and following an inner voice to carry on in Warden's footsteps?Curl up with your sweetheart and discover the horrible truth for yourself!

Make no mistakes,the uncut version is a different experience entirely.
What was once,in my estimation, a run-of-the-mill slasher that was slashed itself by heavy censorship has been restored to levels it should have achieved all along.There's an assload of inventive gore splashed across the screen here,transforming the viewing experience into a harrowing,disturbing,and memorable one!The effects by Thomas Burman look marvelous,at least on par with Savini's work of the day,causing Mihalka to screampuke at the sight of at least one of them!I'll finally place this entry in its rightful place among the top slashers of the eighties,believe me,it's been a long time coming.Mihalka shopped a sequel to Paramount in 2001,which they abruptly snubbed,citing the original's so-so returns at the box office.The special edition dvd should set you back anywhere from ten to fifteen bucks,and you really do owe it to yourself to run right the hell out(or is it oot?Canadians,set me straight!)and add this to your collection.I'll be putting the new 3D remake in proper perspective here shortly,as I can think of at least one reader who's ready to spring from her horror-loving honches at your humble N over it!CoughVictoriacough.This one,on the other hand,scores a solid scale rating of:

Harry Warden dishes a dose of very violent Valentine's vengeance to Axel's dead daddio.

King Kong(1976)d/John Guillermin

Because nothing screams originality like a REMAKE.
Nothing exceeds like excess.And no name greater personifies that word than Dino De Laurentiis,synonymous at one point with overblown,big budgeted cinematic flops.If you asked me what I thought about this first remake of the 1933 classic after first seeing it in the theaters as a six year old,I would have exuberantly rambled about its greatness exhaustively.Thirty-three years later,I have a markedly different outlook about it.It's not FX wizard Rick Baker's collaboration with Carlo "Alien" Rambaldi,it's not the star-studded cast,peppered with cult faves like John Agar,Dennis Fimple,and even Forrest J. Ackerman,and it's certainly not Jessica Lange in her introductory role as Kong's bubbleheaded hand candy.For all the publicity and hype this flick generated in its day,it just hasn't held up very well over time.Enraged simians tend to fling poop,and the finished product here smells no differently.

Jessica Lange gawks at the idea of a future sex scene with Jack Nicholson.
Petrox Oil executive,Fred Wilson(Charles Grodin) heads an expedition to an uncharted island in the South Pacific that is believed to hide a depository of oil and is hidden by a permanent low-lying cloud bank.A scruffy primate paleontologist named Jack Prescott(Jeff Bridges) stows away on the ship,busting in during a slide show to warn the crew of a seldom heard history of impending danger on the island,which according to legend is guarded by a monstrous god named Kong.His efforts land him a gig in the brig,but as he's being escorted down by Wilson's shiphands,he glimpses a liferaft afloat off the starboard bow,which,when retrieved by the oceanliner reveals an unconscious half-dressed starlet inside(my favorite kind!).When Prescott brings the dingbat around with smelling salts,it's painfully obvious the crew should have left her floating on the ocean indefinitely.Dwan(Jessica Lneag,I changed a few letters in her name to make it sound more memorable,ya know?)was on a pleasure cruise to Singapore aboard a yacht, peddling her fleshy wares to score herself a part in an upcoming movie,but was spared when she refused to stay below to screen "Deep Throat"(!)as the vessel exploded.The men try to tune out her bubbly airheaded personality and focus on her smokin' curves as they send a recon team into the fog bank towards what they think is the motherlode.

Kong gets to second base with his not-so-eager-to-please shipwrecked squeeze.
After managing to strike out on the oil gamble,fudge up the island natives' symbolic wedding rehearsal,and let Dwan get abducted by aggro Island Abos right under their noses,the rescue team arrives at the Skull Island wall too late,left to track a set of six foot wide footprints.Elsewhere on the island, Dwan is having the first date of a lifetime.Kong(Rick Baker) fluctuates back and forth from mesmerized at the blonde's natural beauty,to thoroughly disappointed that she can speak.After being screamed at,punched,and accused of male chauvenism,the poor brute probably looks forward to getting shot off a New York skyscraper already.As the ape wrestles with a giant-sized constrictor,Prescott arrives on the scene and rescues the bimbo. Wilson decides to slip the monstrous monkey a massive mickey and claim him as an advertising gimmick for the oil company.Back at the unveiling in New York,the saavy exec chains and cages the towering simian inside a mammoth gas station pump,and to add insult to injury,puts a cheesy enormous crown on his head.The things a henpecked guy'll put up with in the name of love,eh?During the glitzy reproduction of the native ceremony,the press people get too close to Dwan,and Kong abruptly breaks the fuck out like chickenpox.Cue metropolitan devastation.Before reuniting with his little bubblehead,the ape stomps New Yorkers(face it,most of 'em had it coming!),derails a train,and makes a general nuisance of himself.Once he's got Dwan,he heads for the buildings that most resemble his happy place back on Skull Island:The World Trade Center.Only happiness proves evasive due to soldiers equipped with flamethrowers and combat choppers who machinegun our tragic hairy hero until he rolls off one of the towers to the street below,leaving the New Yorkers to return to their Soho coffeehouses and Greek midotwn electronic stores.Moral of the story:Women...If they couldn't cook,we'd hunt them for their pelts.

Snubbed for a cab ride,The King of Skull Island goes bananas in the Big Apple.
Nevermind the fact that Rambaldi built a forty foot high 1.7 million dollar robot(which occupies exactly ONE MINUTE of screen time.No typo.)for this trainwreck,or that Mario Bava refused to leave Italy to helm the directorial chair(which was also turned down by Polanski and Peckinpah,and even Spielberg was considered early on),or Baker's long-time dissatisfaction with the suit's realism on camera,or seventies sex kittens Bo Derek and Britt Ekland turning down the role of Dwan,or the fact that there's more blue screen here than in a local news weather forecast segment.Just be thankful we weren't forced to endure Barbra Streisand in the female lead,as she was considered at one point in pre-production.I shudder to think upon what might have been if she had taken the role.Of the three Kongs,this one is the weakest by far,but it does have a fun cult element about it that renders it watchable.Jessica Lange probably scored herself second place on my childhood crush list because of this turn,directly behind Farrah Fawcett-Majors.Like her mother,Hope Lange,she is exceptionally beauitful,and proved afterwards,she too,is a great actress,Dwan aside.King Kong Lives was the atrocious sequel with the ridiculous storyline and dated suitmation effects that nobody asked for ten years later.Don your ceremonial monkey mask,dig the voodoo drums,as they beat out a Wopsploitation score of:

The great ape plays dead to avoid thirty thousand swarming Manhattan squeegee bums.

The Strangers(2008)d/Bryan Bertino

Every once in a while,a refreshingly original horror movie floats to the surface in a sea of direct-to-dvd dreck and rotten remakes.Writer/director Bryan Bertino's freshman effort,The Strangers,is just such a flick.He has proven that sometimes,when dealing with terror onscreen,less is more.With a small cast headed by Liv "LOTR" Tyler,and a small story with sparse gore,he's packed an hour and a half worth of film stock with ample atmosphere,tension-laden suspense,and several solid scares.Gone are most of the conventional slasher staples;the group of forgettable sex-starved bodycount teens have been replaced by a sympathetic couple-on-the-rocks,the cookie cutter violence and gore have been chucked out the nearest window and in their place,genuine suspense and terror that borrows from classic fare like Halloween(1978)and Texas Chainsaw Massacre(1974)if anything.I went into this one with low expectations,and came out with unexpected hope for the genre afterall.I look forward to seeing more from Bertino,he may just have some more up his sleeve.With the lights out,screening this alone on your couch late at night,you may feel compelled to put your spotlight on outside,and check.Just for the hell of it.

Kristen and James'(Tyler and Speedman)relationship is over.And that ain't all.
James(Scott Speedman)planned a romantic post-wedding reception evening for he and his girlfriend Kristen(Liv Tyler)at an out-of-the-way summer home,after popping the question on her at the party,but things go from disappointing to not fucking good at all for the disintegrating couple as the night progresses.By the time they arrive at the seventies-tastic digs he's decorated in rose petals beforehand,his girlfriend has already returned his engagement ring,leaving the pair to spend an awkward platonic evening in the country instead.To add to the thickening fog of weirdness,just as Kristen breaks down at the sight of her bummed out beau and offers him some consolation-panties,they are interrupted by a late night caller knocking on the door.James finds a young blonde girl standing just out of the light when he answers the door,looking for Tamra,who obviously isn't there.He drives off in search of cigarettes for his ex(I wouldn't smash extra condiment packets into her face if she was starving after what she pulled,but hey,that's just me)when the knocking begins again,leaving the lone beau-dumping beauty to realize this mysterious young girl is not alone out there in the darkness.

Call me paranoid,but someone's behind Mike(Glenn Howerton),I just know it.
Repeatedly the hysterical girl's emotions are played with as she is terrorized by a trio of twisted trespassers,all wearing masks.When James returns,he finds her huddled in a bedroom,desperately clutching a knife and sobbing uncontrollably.While he hears the harrowing details of her time alone,someone trashes his car outside,smashing the windows and slashing the tires.Realizing her story is true,he tears the house apart looking for a gun to defend themselves from the unseen attackers as they draw the word "hello" all over windows in lipstick,pound the door,and run from shadow to shadow,just out of sight.When Mike,James's drunken friend from the wedding,shows up to rescue his jilted chum from the awkward evening,he is repaid with a mug full of searing hot buckshot,when James accidentally shoots half his face off.The strangers begin to draw their net around the horrifed couple tighter,finally capturing them both despite their best efforts to escape.The next morning Kristen awakes to find the three masked assailants observing she and James,as they are roped together in the middle of the living room.She desperately pleads for their collective lives and asks the younger girl why they were doing such dastardly misdeeds to them,when the girl matter-of-factly replies,"Because you were home." They remove their masks and take turns stabbing the young couple.Later on,a creepy pair of door-to-door Mormon kiddies pass the trio in their pickup truck on the road.The young girl takes a pamphlet from them and returns to the truck as they drive off.The young religious zealots arrive at the summer home,drawn in by the smoldering car outside and trashed surroundings.As they wade through the gory aftermath and dead bodies,one reaches out to touch Kristen's motionless form.She springs up,grabbing the boy and screaming bloody murder.Cuz afterall,that's what it was,eh?

Shotgun-1,Mike's grillpiece-1/2.
75 million clams later,it's safe to deduct this gritty little ditty turned a profit that weren't too shitty.The soundtrack,which was employed marvelously,includes stand out tracks by Waylon Jennings,Joanna Newsom,and Gillian Welch.A sequel is scheduled for production, to naturally mash a good idea straight into potatoes,as the industry big wigs oftimes do.Personally I'd like to see more new horror directors channel the emotion this film's producers captured onscreen for their own work,instead of blindly copying it down to the last frame,and turning it into the latest hot trend.You're bound to enjoy this sleeper once you sit down to it.As well as ranking it one of my underrated films of the year for '08,I'll also bestow upon it a rating of:

Hey little Mormon kids,Kristen probably doesn't want a pamphlet.