"Popcorn" (1991) d/ Mark Herrier

Here's a curious little oddity that should have been the next horror opus from the collaborative team who brought us Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972) and Deathdream (1974)(only two of my favorite genre releases of a decade rich with cult classics), but apparently, producer Benjamin "Bob" Clark and writer/director Alan Ormsby had creative differences early on, which forced Clark to replace Ormsby in the director's chair with Mark Harrier, the young actor who played "Billy" in his earlier hit comedy, Porky's (1982). In the end, even Ormsby's screenwriting credit is under the pseudonym "Tod Hackett", and only the faux footage he shot for the retro-horror movies shown in the theater remains in the final cut. Clark even replaced the original female lead, Amy O'Neill, with Jill Schoelen, who had appeared in genre work like The Stepfather (1987), Cutting Class (1989), and Phantom of the Opera (1989) to that point.


If I was to hang movie-related values on the multiple movies-within-a-movie movie...
A gaggle of mostly repellent collegiate film students (with all the personality of that A/V uber-dork with a hunchback full of patch cables, back in high school) decides to hold an old fashioned all-night horror movie marathon to raise funds for their study program, with the help of Mr. Davis (Robbins), who looks like he won his seventies jew-fro in a potato sack race at the Brady place, and kindly old ham, Dr. Mnesyne (Walston), who lugs several trunks full of vintage theater props from the historic first run of the B-movies they've got lined up. Cue: overly long theater house restoration montage with obligatory fun pranks and wisecracks that the college set is renowned for, a la "we wished that summer would go on  forever, man!" or something. Oh, it's just that, one of the trunks contains a reel from an unfinished  horror movie called "Possessor", made by a mad visionary/film guru named Lanyard Gates who killed his family on stage and tried to burn the theater down fifteen years earlier. Maggie (Schoelen) faints upon screening the avant-garde footage, recognizing the director on the screen as the same man from her recurring nightmares. Her mother (Dee Wallace) suspiciously dismisses the connection between the two, but after a crank call, she pays a late night visit to the theater with gun in hand, and is attacked by the marquee letters(!), which rearrange to spell out "Possessor" and gets grabbed up in the dark while snooping around inside.


...then Jill, you're the nectarous white cheddar seasoning on the profuse vat of wop-corn in my lap...
This all leads up to a murderous crescendo at the theater, packed with rabid genre nut weirdos of all sizes, shapes, and costumes, when somebody starts creatively offing the college goers in the wings. The wheelchair-ridden invalid gets electrocuted off the prop control board during "The Electrified Man"(which stars Crispin Glover's father, Bruce), while Mr. Davis gets shishkebabbed on a giant prop mosquito's proboscis. It's up to Maggie and her ever-horny/clumsy boyfriend to determine whether Gates survived that theater fire all those years ago, or another entirely different maniac with a similarly homicidal agenda. The power goes out, and a full Jamaican band inexplicably takes the stage and sedates the horror-hungry crowd with some generic reggae(luckily, the only musical style that doesn't require electricity for it's electric instruments), before the wild latex switch-o-face on stage square-off in the finale that'll leave you satisfied, I'd merit a guess...


...and Tony's the greasy two hundred and seventy pound mouth breather who's obstructing my view of the screen and about to get baptized in fountain soda...
Though the pacing is uneven at points, some of the supporting cast fail to lend any real character to the script, and the sun-drenched Jamaican locale isn't redolent of other, more sinister Clark/Orsmby work, there are some memorable deliveries by Villard and Walston, Ormsby's retro-faux movies are a whimsical tribute to the bygone era of Castle-styled theatrical showmanship (and I don't know about you, but I could imagine a few lines of dialogue early on coming straight outta the man himself, still in those horrible striped bellbottoms of yesteryear), and though Schoelen looks mostly uninspired throughout her scenes, she's never very difficult to gaze upon. Flaws notwithstanding, Popcorn still manages to be a pretty entertaining experience, and for that it wrangles a pair of Wops on the scale. Give it a look.


...while Tom's strictly seventies retro snack bar cartoons here, and nobody likes to miss those.

"A Christmas Story"(1983)d/Benjamin "Bob" Clark

We've arrived just hours before the winter sun's ignited on Christmas day,folks,and Big Wop still doesn't know A)what day it is,B)who Jesus was,or C)what prayin' is.How can I be saved from the eternal grave?As long as the authorities don't stumble upon Kris Kringle's jolly cadaver I've covered with a tarp in the backyard 'til the ground softens up a bit,I should be right as dodgers.The fat Marxist fuck misstepped into one of the spring traps I set under the X-Mas tree,then ate one of my calebas curare Christmas cookies and washed it down with a tall glass of arsenic milk before turning his toes up sometime this morning.You thought I had forgotten that morning in 1975 when you put groovy-patterned polyester curtain pants under the tree with my name on them,didn't you,Claus.The last,fatal mistake of Saint Nick.I buried a steak knife in his labonza,just to be sure.I hope Doc doesn't notice it missing.I'd hate to be digging lime pits 'til spring time rolls around...
In the past,seasonal flicks like "Miracle on 34th Street","It's A Wonderful Life",and "A Christmas Carol" were widely regarded as the must-see movies when the Christmas season rolled around every year.With 2011 right around the corner,it's fitting that an offering that dates from my generation that comes from one of my favorite genre directors has effectively replaced those earlier films as the top Christmas movie of all-time.If you haven't seen it by now,where the hell have you been the past twenty-seven years?Ted Turner only runs a brisk twenty-four hour marathon of it every single year,yet failing to tarnish the film's innocent,shining brilliance for even a second.The period piece helmed by Bob "Black Christmas" Clark,and penned by author/raconteur,Jean Shepherd,has successfully harnessed a bit of the magic that surrounds the holiday season,achieving timelessness in the process,a live-action Norman Rockwell painting bursting with beautiful simplicity and bittersweet imagery.A masterpiece if ever there's been one.

Beware:Scut(Zack Ward),of the despised yellow-eyed Farkus clan.
Nine year old Ralphie Parker(Peter Billingsley)is possessed with one obsession for the upcoming Christmas holiday:scoring himself a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock,and "a thing that tells time",as he would so poignantly write in a future essay for school.The only problem is,the gargantuan odds are stacked against the bespectacled tyke.Being a good boy is a monumental task when you and your younger brother Randy are terrorized daily by yellow-eyed Scut Farkus(Zack Ward)and his green-toothed toadie,Grover Dill,and your old man(Darrin McGavin)spews obscenity so thickly it filthily floats over Lake Michigan to this very day.Ralphie's overbearing mother(Melinda Dillon),who wraps Randy so snugly in layer upon layer of winter clothing that he can no longer move his arms or get up from the snow after falling down,has already vetoed the BB gun request,grimly warning,"You'll shoot your eye out!"The old man has enough holiday headaches of his own,guarding the Christmas turkey from the Bumpus' freeloading bloodhounds next door(and sneaking a taste for himself whenever his wife isn't looking,bonafide golly turkaconis freak that he is),guarding his tantalizingly garbed leg lamp(translation:important award)from his scheming wife,eternally battling with a stubborn boiler in the basement,and a younger son who refuses to eat what's on his dinner plate unless he can pretend to be a piggy in the hog trough with it.

"Bumpuses!Sons o'bitches!"A bonafide golly turkaconis freak's best laid dinner plans are soon thwarted.
Just when it looks like curtains for Ralphie's dreams of winging bad guys with spectacular hip shots;he utters the f-dash-dash-dash word in his father's presence while changing a tire,earning him a bar of soap in the mouth,he spouts a mile of obscenities while turning the tables and bloodying the Farkus boy,his amazing Christmas present essay earns a C-plus,and a reprisal of his mother's eye-loss sentiment from his teacher,as well.He goads his schoolmate Schwartz into sticking his tongue to a frozen flagpole in the school courtyard on a triple dog dare,and is ultimately denied by a department store Santa who echoes his mother's eye-warning before shoving him down a decorative sliding board with a boot to the face.When Christmas morning arrives,the last present he unwraps turns out to be his holiday holy grail,and when he runs out in his pajamas to play with it,amidst protests from his mother that are extinguished by the old man's admittal to having one just like it as a boy younger than Ralphie,his first shot ricochets and hits him directly below his eye,knocking his glasses to the snow.As he desperately feels around for them,he pulverizes them with a foot,then whips up fake tears and a fantastic fable about a rogue icicle smashing the glasses and causing the welt.Meanwhile a horde of Bumpus hounds barge into the house and make off with the family's turkey,forcing an impromptu dinner at the local Chinese restaurant,the only place open on the holiday.The family snickers at the Asians' inability to sing Christmas carols in Engrish,then enjoy a hastily prepared duck,head still attached.The film ends with Ralphie sleeping soundly with his trusty air rifle close by,in what would be remembered by the grown up narrator(Jean Shepherd)as the best Christmas ever.

Ralphie(Peter Billingsley),pink nightmare/deranged easter bunny variant.
From the first time I saw Story,visiting my buddy's place in New Jersey,I instantly connected with the movie,as most people do.Nearly every vignette within,I could relate one or more of my own to,minus the pink bunny costume,of course.The feelings of an era that passes with no prior warning,that if you're lucky enough,you'll experience vicariously through the eyes of your own kids as they repeat the rituals themselves.A view of the immediate world through an innocent child's eyes and imagination,and really,what could ever be better than that?Without trying to condescend too much here(or a seventies Coca-Cola commerical),if we retained that same wonder and amazement for just a bit longer,kept it unspoiled by the harsh realities of life and the world around us,perhaps it would be a better place for all of us to cohabitate in.Movies may come along to better capture the feelings of a changing society with ever-changing values and rituals,but for your humble N,none will say more to me,personally,than the cult hit from 1983.One of the best ever,and certainly the best holiday movie ever,in my opinion.Four wops and the highest recommendation.

"You'll shoot yer eye out,kid!",warns a safety-minded department store Santy.

"Black Christmas"(1974)d/Benjamin "Bob" Clark

You're covering a Christmas movie in June?O Wop of Magnitude,have you finally descended into pure madness?You might be saying something like that right now if you were unfamiliar with tonight's entry,probably the prototype for all slasher films that followed,arguably the apex of the amalgamation,teeming with psychological terror,forever laying the disconcerting groundwork for the horror subgenre born out of it.We've covered a lot of "Bob" here at the Wop,but tonight,we'll scrutinize his finest piece of genre work,simplistic in its approach,effective in its delivery,and magnificent in its result.Cynics,take note:If you've never watched this movie before,and doubt the potentcy of its horrific brilliance,simply screen it all alone,late at night,in the dark.Chances are,a lot of what transpires will stay with you long after the lights have come back on,and possibly well into when you turn them off again.My tastes in film,though mostly unchanged since the lifelong love affair began all those years ago,have matured to a degree,and intuition tells me that the movie in front of us tonight,is the ultimate of its class.When you've seen this,like examining strands of horror dNa under a microscope,you instantly see the origins of what made something like Halloween(1978)so effective.In the director's chair,Clark plays a maddening game of cat and mouse with the viewer's deductive reasoning,clouding the film's simple,chilling truth until the bitter end with narrative worthy of a Hitchcockian whodunit,relentlessly applying layer upon layer of moody atmosphere to each frame like a master baker,with ample performances from his cast,which includes John Saxon,Olivia Hussey,Keir Dullea,Margot Kidder,and Nick Mancuso,who combined vocal talents with up to five other actors(including Clark himself)for the unforgettable crank calls from the killer.Due to differences in personal tastes,I can't say for sure whether or not you'll love the movie(probably the only one ever) pulled from prime-time network television for being "too scary" for network audiences,but it'll stay with you.Maybe longer even than you'd like.

Jess(Olivia Hussey),that's the wrong type of wreath,honey.Funeral wreaths...
Late one night,while a sorority house hosts a Christmas party,an unbalanced individual shows up outside,climbs up the trellis,and in through an open attic window.Inside,Jess(Hussey) receives another in a series of obscene phone calls,peppered with a strange mix of whines,groans,obscenities,impersonations,and multiple voices, from someone she's dubbed "the moaner".Meanwhile,Clare(Lynne Griffin)retires to her room to finish packing to go home for the holidays,and gets herself asphyxiated with a sheet of plastic from the closet.The homicidal stranger retreats back to the attic with the spoils of his hunt and props her up in a rocking chair with a window view,the plastic still wrapped around her head.The next morning,Clare's father(James Edmond) arrives to pick up his daughter,only she's nowhere to be found.At the same time,Jess visits her boyfriend,Peter(Dullea),a maladjusted schizoid with dreams of pounding piano keys with his ham fists for a living,with news of pregnancy.When she returns to the sorority she receives another crank call.Barb and Phyl(Kidder and Martin)accompany Mr. Harrison to the local constabulary to file a missing persons report,but when the desk sargeant(Doug "Porky's" McGrath)slags off their concerns with ideas of Clare shacking up with a secret boyfriend on the side,Barb gives the sorority phone number to the obtuse officer with the new exchange...fellatio.Nash is clueless,as the other cops derive great mirth from his ignorance.Jess informs Clare's boyfriend Chris(Art Hindle)of her disappearance,and when he becomes enfuriated at the police's indifference,he storms the station house,demanding the attention of Lt. Fuller(Saxon),whose hands are already full,searching for a missing schoolgirl,and enlisting the concerned collegiates as a search party.Back at the house,Mrs. Mac(Marian Waldman),the girls' binge drinking den mother, investigates noises in the attic she attributes to her cat,and instead finds her face on the wrong end of a crane hook.

The psychiatrists that told Billy(Albert J. Dunk)he was a little nuts,lied.He's a lot nuts.
The search party discovers the mutilated body of the young schoolgirl in the park,and Jess returns home in time for an even more disturbing phone call,after which Peter shows up to discuss plans for their lovechild,offering to give up his career in music to care for the expectant mother,who stuns him with plans to abort it instead.He storms out,in a blind,furious rage.Barb,stuck at the house for the holidays,drinks past the point of anebriation,and after retiring to her room to sleep it off,is stabbed to death with an ornate glass unicorn from her night table,while Jess listens to a group of door-to-door carolers.Jess decides to report the obscene calls to the police,with Lt. Fuller and a technician installing a bug tracer to the phone,directing the terrified girl to keep the caller on the line as long as possible so they can trace his whereabouts,and place an officer in a squad car outside to guard the house.When Phyl later goes up to check on Barb,her fate is all too similar.When Jess receives more calls,this time using Peter's direct quotes from their argument,Fuller is convinced Peter is behind the calls,further reinforced by the discovery of his thoroughly trashed piano in the work room.Finally the crank calls are long enough to be traced and the lawmen fall upon the horrible truth:the calls are coming from inside the sorority house.Nash informs the girl of this over the phone,telling her to retrieve her girlfriends and vacate the premises immediately,but Jess,armed with a fireplace poker,instead discovers her friends corpses upstairs and is attacked by the unknown killer,before barricading herself in the cellar.Peter arrives and breaks a window to gain entry and corner his girlfriend.When the police arrive on the scene,they find their officer slumped dead in his cruiser,with his throat cut,and in the basement,a hysterical Jess clutching the same fireplace poker,next to the lifeless body of Peter,who she beat like a redheaded stepchild.Believing the case is closed,the police and doctors leave the girl sedated and sleeping in her room,and go outside to deal with the media blitz.Up in the attic,Clare and Mrs. Mac's corpses remain undiscovered,and as the killer starts to let himself down from the attic,introducing himself with a whisper,"Agnes,it's me,Billy.",the phone begins to ring.

Always a stickler for freshness,Billy packs Clare's(Lynne Griffin)head in plastic.
Even the list of people who didn't make it into tonight's film for one reason or another reads like a who's who of Hollwood:Bette Davis,Edmund O'Brien,Gilda Radner,Malcolm McDowell.Also released as "Silent Night,Evil Night"(to avoid being mistaken as a blaxploitation flick...put yo weight on it,mothafuckas!),and "Stranger in the House" for television,the story was inspired by real-life murders that took place in Canada during the holiday season.Imagine Olivia Hussey's surprise when Steve Martin told her she was in one of his favorite films of all-time,and it wasn't Romeo and Juliet(1968),but tonight's review instead,which he claims to have seen 20 times(I've sat through it that many,easy).Studio execs approached Clark about changing the ending to have Jess wake up alone with Claire's boyfriend Chris revealing his true nature with the line "Agnes,don't tell them what we did." before killing her.Thank the gods he stood his ground on that one.Naturally,in 2006,the makers of Final Destination released their remake of tonight's entry,which was naturally depressingly awful on all levels,and bereaft of everything that makes the original a classic(Notice a pattern here,Hollywood?).Jaundiced cannibalistic siblings?Seriously,lay off the crystal meth,retards.We won't be covering that particular commode cake here anytime soon.At the moment,I honestly think this entry is the finest example of the slasher movie,to date,and as such deserves the highest scale rating possible,and the full recommendation of yours cruelly,to boot.

What lies within this eye signifies demise is nigh.

"Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things"(1972)d/Benjamin "Bob" Clark

I've seen more than a few review sites teeing off on Bob Clark's 1972 low-budget zombie opus recently.But these people are wrong.I'm not a blind defender of the late director's work,especially when it comes to fare like "Superbabies 2:Baby Geniuses"(2004) or "The Karate Dog"(2004).I've never shied from calling a spade a spade.But Children doesn't deserve the negative e-press it's been getting,either.I happen to dig Alan Ormsby's over-the-top,hideously dressed,obnoxious dickhead director character pretty highly.He's such a fucking snot,you're begging the zombies to start climbing out of their graves and eating him within the first five minutes.And the outfit he's got the balls to rock here only intensifies this vibe.The striped bellbottomed action slacks he proudly rocks might just be the John Merrick of cinematic fashion history.His ascot is also pretty gay.The makeup work and sparse gore effects are relatively effective for the budget,more often than not,and the entire production reeks of old time creepy atmosphere that so many films simply haven't got.When I first saw this late night New York cable staple,I was probably five or six years old, alone in a spacious and dark parlour,and I thought about reinforcing the big picture window in there with a coffee table and hammer and nails once or twice that night.I have no qualms stating that this movie has a deserved place in the top twenty zombie flicks of all-time,not just the seventies.

Wake up,Orville,and eat him,before he says anything else...
Alan(Alan Ormsby),is a pompous directorial dick-in-the-mouth,heading a nocturnal boat ride to a desolate graveyard island with his small acting troupe full of stereotypes;the fat comedian(Jeff Gillen),the macho leading man(Paul Cronin),the ball-busting yenta(Valerie Mamches),the innocent female lead(Jane Daly,the only actress who didn't share first names with their respective character),and the cosmically-fried she-kook(Alan's wife at the time,Anya).Alan has a gruesome evening of murderous historic legend,grave-robbing,and dead resurrection spells planned for his actors,which he affectionately refers to as his "children".Unbeknownst to the group,two of Alan's stable,a pair of flamboyantly gay actors in horror costume and makeup have arrived on the island a few hours earlier,subdued the caretaker,dug up a fresh corpse,and personally replaced him in the earthen grave.Six hundred thousand hammy cliches,dry jokes,and catty replies from artsy egotist Alan later,after gay Roy pops out of the coffin,Paul bloodies his nose and Jeffrey pisses his pants,but the director saves the best for last.Out of a huge chest the actors have carried to the graveyard,Alan pulls a dusty old grimoire and sorcerer's robe.He gives the men the dried blood of an infant(where does he get this shit?)to sprinkle on all the graves,so that he may raise them from their eternal slumber to do his bidding with a spell from the book.That doesn't seem to work.Val hops into the open grave and gives a spirited performance of Jewish name-calling to the Devil,meriting applause from the other actors.Never to be one-upped by a subordinate,Alan demands that the actors bring the fresh corpse,a fellow named Orville(Seth Sklarey),back to the cabin with them,to the dismay of everyone involved.As Roy and Emerson clean up at the graves,slowly,the earth begins to spit out its horrible decaying contents,which proceed to eat Emerson and the poor bastard caretaker,still gagged and tied against a tree,and bite Roy fatally,before he breaks free and limps back to the cabin to warn the others.

You're never too old(or dead)for a good circle pit.Insert obligatory B-Dub age joke here.
At the cabin,Alan clowns with his rotting prize,mock-marrying it with a doily on its head,and sending the spacy Anya over the top,hysterically screaming about disrespecting the dead,causing the director to angrily take his corpse upstairs and lie with it....blech.At this point,a bloodied Roy arrives at the door just ahead of a sea of ravenous zombies,forcing the troupe to barricade themselves into the cabin.Frantically searching for a solution,Alan sends Paul out a side door,only to have him eaten seconds later by a fiesty female zombie.The corpses pull Terry out the door to her death shortly afterwards when Alan discovers a passage in the spellbook to send the dead back to their graves that unfortunately requires the original corpse to be returned to its final resting place(which isn't the cot upstairs).He recites the incantation anyway,and the flesheaters seem to dissipate back into the blackness of the night.When the remaining survivors go out to investigate,they're swarmed by ghouls around the corner,engulfing Jeffrey and Val.Alan and Anya retreat back to the cabin,but the zombies break in and corner the two on the stairs.In the ultimate dick move,Alan throws the frail girl to his rotting attackers as a flesh and blood sacrifice and locks himself in his upstairs room...where Orville's finally come around.The zombie embraces the screaming director as a mob of ghouls bursts through the door.A group of the reanimated corpses make their way onto the troupe's boat as the credits roll.

Paul plus Caro syrup mixture plus female ghoul equals midnight snack in the woods.
Most of the actors on board here also took part in other Clark vehicles.Gillen went on to play Santa Claus in A Christmas Story(1983),Anya Ormsby and Jane Daly had roles in Deathdream(1974),Seth Sklarey was uncredited in Porky's 2:The Next Day(1983),and Alan Ormsby,after co-writing this film with Clark(and doing the makeup effects), went on to write Deranged(1974) and Deathdream.VCI released a special edition dvd in 2007,but I've done just fine with their earlier,less-choice 1999 disc all this time,thanks.There was talk of a Children remake in 2007 with Clark supervising,but the project probably went with the director to his untimely grave the same year.Let the record show that I'm a huge fan of Clark's genre entries,especially those where Ormsby was involved,and this film is no exception,always holding a special place in a dark recess of my black little heart.Give it a chance,and you may end up saying the same thing about it.It comes highly recommended.

Receding,Orville? Really? You can barely notice,you being so dead,and all.


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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.