B.W.'s Top Twenty Sex Sirens of Cult Cinema : Twenty to Eleven

                         20) Ornella Muti

                        19) Lina Romay

                    18) Yutte Stensgaard

                           17) Pam Grier

                      16) Linnea Quigley

                      15) Danielle Harris

                         14) Linda Blair

                  13) The Collinson Twins

                    12) Caroline Munro

                    11) Jamie Lee Curtis

"Halloween"(1978)d/John Carpenter

Truth be told,for the longest time,this was my favorite horror movie.After seeing it opening night at the Gateway Twin Cinema back in 1978 with my father,I have seen it almost four hundred times to date.Arguably creating the motivation for the modern slasher movie wave that followed,Carpenter draws his inspiration here from Hitchcock and Bob Clark,among others,and crafts a beautifully composed,brilliantly simple film,packed with tension and jump scares,and whose terror stems not from body counts or elaborate gore effects,but from implied violence/visuals,first person killer's eye view camera work reminiscent of "Black Christmas"(1974),and a gripping,unforgettable score penned by Carpenter himself.Word of mouth quickly earned tonight's entry a heavy reputation,and before long,the little independent film made for three hundred and twenty thousand dollars went on to gross nearly fifty million at the box office.Regardless of where it happens to fall on your list,surely it deserves rank among the greatest horror movies of all time.Jamie Lee Curtis,a nineteen year old relative unknown at the time,would secure her place as the top scream queen of the next decade with her talent and tonsils both receiving ample screen time here.The cast,made up mainly of Carpenter regulars and unknowns was led by the late,great character actor Donald Pleasance(who shares a birthday with your humble N,by the way),who signed on for twenty thousand dollars,in place of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee,who both declined the role,with Lee later admitting that doing so was his biggest career mistake(!).What follows is the legend of the indestructible evil from behind the two dollar William Shatner mask,and the legacy that grew out of it...

Evil personified or trick or treat candy sugar-induced violence,you decide.
The sleepy little suburb of Haddonfield,Illinois is forever marred by the brutal stabbing of Judith Myers on Halloween night,1963,by her six year old brother,Michael(Will Sandin),who spends the next fifteen years in Smith's Grove Warren County Sanitarium under the watchful eye of Dr. Sam Loomis(Pleasance),who recognizes the catatonic boy for what he really is,the living embodiment of pure evil.Just before the fifteenth anniversary of the murder,Loomis is called upon to transfer his patient,so that he can be tried as an adult,but in the midst of a violent thunderstorm,Michael escapes into the dark night,stealing the very vehicle intended for his transfer.The doctor knows exactly where the silent killer is headed,and follows the bloodtrail(a mechanic with his head twisted around)and morbid clues(Judith's tombstone has been stolen) to Myers' hometown,enlisting the local sheriff, Leigh Brackett(Charles Cyphers) who's investigating a hardware store break in where knives,rope,and a mask have been stolen,to assist in the manhunt,though plainly,this isn't a man they're after...
Laurie Strode(Curtis),a bit of a wallflower compared to her sex-starved girlfriends Annie(Nancy Loomis)and Lynda(PJ Soles),promises her father she'll drop of the keys to the Myers house on her walk to school,immediately overcome by the feeling she's being watched by...somebody.While daydreaming during class,she notices a station wagon parked outside the school with a state seal on the door.When she looks towards it again,it has gone.After school,as the girls walk home planning their Halloween festivities around Laurie and Annie's babysitting gigs at the Doyle and Wallace residences that night,they're interrupted by the same station wagon playing tricks with them before screeching off.Later on the walk,Laurie notices someone up ahead hiding behind the bushes,but by the time the girls investigate,the figure is gone.

"Before we pull up to the main gate,Marion,wanna do some thorazine and hit the back seat?"
At the Myers house,the doctor and sheriff find the mangled remains of a partially-eaten dog,but little else,as Michael has been watching Laurie as she babysits Tommy Doyle,and later Lindsey Wallace,who gets pawned off on her while Annie drives to pick up Paul,her boyfriend who's been grounded from car priviledges for egging and soaping.Her red Monte Carlo will never leave the Wallace garage though,as she's strangled by Michael from the back seat,before he cuts her throat.When Lynda and Bob show up,they find an empty house,and after finding out Annie's alleged whereabouts from Laurie,they go upstairs and fuck in the Wallace's bedroom.When Bob goes downstairs for beers,Michael bounds out of a pantry door,pinning the boy to a wall with a one-handed chokehold,then lifting him off the ground,and pinning him to the wall with a knife.When the bedroom door opens,Lynda is surprised to see a silent figure covered with a bedsheet and Bob's glasses,but when she calls Laurie to check in,the shape strangles her to death with the phone cord.Laurie,concerned by the gasping and abrupt end to her phone call,puts both children to bed and decides to walk across the street and find out what's going on for herself.To her horror,she discovers the scare-traps Michael has set up for her in the upstairs bedroom involving the bodies of her friends and his sister's headstone.She narrowly escapes back to the Doyles,and after believing she's killed her masked attacker,sends the kids screaming out into the street for help,drawing the attention of Dr. Loomis who's been wandering around looking for signs of his patient's presence.As he rushes up the Doyle steps,he finds Laurie struggling with Michael,pulling his mask off in the melee,which he sheepishly pulls back over his face,as the doctor empties his revolver into him,the force of the bullets sending the killer off an upstairs balcony onto the lawn below.Laurie tearfully asks the doctor what the boogeyman is,to which Loomis replies,"As a matter of fact,it was."He looks out the balcony window to where Michael's body lay,but it's gone,as he knew it would be.Reading the doctor's expression,Laurie sobs uncontrollably.

I probably would have used something different to choke Lynda(PJ Soles).Ahem.
As another film with loads written about it already,I'll entertain you with bits of Wop-based Halloween trivia instead,as nauseatingly fan boy as that is,this time around.Halloween was the first vhs tape(of thousands)I ever bought,for fifty bucks,back in 1981.Being brought up in an Italian catholic household,I spurred on the wrath of my uncle,who was my sponsor,when I took Michael(after Myers,of course)as my confirmation name,which I use as my middle initial to this day.When I turned sixteen,my parents got me a jack o'lantern shaped cake for my birthday,as I had reached my two hundredth viewing of the film shortly beforehand.Fittingly,for one Halloween(the holiday,not the movie,in this case) party,I did the whole to-the-letter Michael Myers right down to the coveralls and Don Post mask from the original mold,and stayed in character the entire evening(if you wanted to talk to me,you had to wait for me to take the mask off haha),even when doing shots,beers,and bong hits(I also went down to dinner one night with the damned thing on,while under the influence of a certain three lettered hallucinogen,and ate with my parents who barely noticed).At one point I could recite the whole movie,down to the credits,as they rolled,and probably still could if I gave enough of a shit(Fear not,I don't.).I still have loads of memorabilia,scripts,foreign release posters,novelizations,etc.,and though I've gotten over my adolescent obsessions(mostly) with said film,it retains a spot in my Top list forevermore,regardless.It spawned a slew of unwarranted and mostly forgettable sequels,and...a dogshit remake by a blowjob hack,which I'll finally be shredding here sometime next week.The original,of course,merits the highest possible rating,and remains necessary viewing for all.

I'm your boogeyman,I'm your boogeyman,turn arouuuuuuund...

"The Fog"(1980)d/John Carpenter

I wanna thank all the faithful readers out there for making this current month the most popular in the three years since the inception of "Wopsploitation",my ugly little bastard child seems to be catching on big time.You guys and gals are truly as tits as a Russ Meyer movie.And sexier,at that.I promise you,I've got no shortage of titles to give the once over,and I've also been thinking about bringing in a guest reviewer or two on occasion,just to add a little spice to the mix.We're gonna look at some real classics this week,and a forgotten gem or three while we're at it.So,pack one up,sit back,and get yourself a piece of the Wop.
In the late seventies and early to mid eighties,John Carpenter could do no wrong.He had an impressive streak of classic films,running from "Assault on Precinct 13" to about "Prince of Darkness" or so,the endpoint of his brilliance is arguable.Today's entry,often referred to as a "minor classic", is one of my favorite Carpenter films of all,and a stellar example of the director at his very best.Shot anamorphically to hide the low-end budget,the film boasts of an excellent cast of characters,sparse but effective makeup work by Rob Bottin(who plays pissed-off leper-ghost,Captain Blake in the film),and yet another memorably creepy Carpenter soundtrack.Though about a third of the film stands as reshoots and new scenes,as the director hated the first cut,the finished product is a surprisingly effective ghost story.I remember the way the audience freaked the fuck out in the theater during the trick ending,and thinking to myself,"Goddamn!That was cool!",and saying it repeatedly after shelling out 92 samoleans for the Magnetic Video VHS release afterwards.Looking back,it's painful what a guy had to pay for quality horror entertainment back in the early eighties...

John Houseman earns money the old fashioned way...in CAMEOS.
The night before Antonio Bay's centennial celebration,old Mr. Machen(Houseman)tells the local boys the lurid history of the town over a crackling campfire.At the same time,Father Malone(Hal Holbrook)has discovered the town's shameful secret hidden away in his church's walls,in the form of a huge gold cross,and the revealing diary of his grandfather.Do priests write diaries a lot?If so I'd imagine most of 'em would be pretty lurid and shameful...It seems a hundred years earlier,Malone's grandfather and five other conspiritors shit in the collective mouths of a leper colony led by the captain of a clipper ship called the Elizabeth Dane,named Blake who was looking to establish a settlement nearby.The six men lit a campfire on the rocky coast to simulate a lighthouse's beacon,and during a foggy evening,sent the ship full of lepers to an icy premature death.The town was then settled using the stolen gold and the incident hiden away from the light.That night,three fishermen are engulfed by an unearthly,glowing fog on the ocean,and when the men on deck see a ghostly clipper pull alongside their own boat,they are dispatched by shadowy killers.Meanwhile,Nick Castle(Atkins) picks up a hitchiker named Elizabeth(Curtis),and the two manage to get a horizontal bop in amidst the town coming unglued from midnight 'til one in the morning.Back at the church,Malone drunkenly tries to convince Kathy and her assistant(Leigh,Nancy Loomis)to cancel the celebration,telling them of the bloodshed Antonio Bay was founded on.At the old lighthouse where deejay Stevie Wayne(Barbeau) broadcasts her sleepy jazz show from,things are getting weirder.A piece of driftwood her son brings her begins to drip water before catching fire,and changing from reading DANE to 6 MUST DIE.And you thought jazz was boring.

Stevie Wayne(Adrienne Barbeau)can deejay into my microphone all night long,baby.
The next day Nick and Elizabeth charter a boat to search for his three missing fishing buddies,stumbling across an unresponsive boat housing the eyeless cadaver of one of the men,who at the morgue,momentarily springs to life,grabs a scalpel and carves a number 3 in the floor tiles.That night as the centennial begins,Stevie hears the death of her weatherman,as he investigates outside his post and is overtaken by hooks that dig into him out of the glowing fog.She frantically calls the babysitter,who is enveloped by the fog,and dispatched by the leper-ghosts.Just as they're about to add Wayne's son to their bodycount,Nick and Elizabeth rescue the boy in his pickup,and speed away from the swirling bank of death.The pillowchested deejay warns her listeners to stay out of the fog,leading Kathy and assistant,Nick,Elizabeth,and young Danny to the safety of the church,just as the unearthly fog creeps down upon the lighthouse where she's broadcasting.The group fends off the ghostly attack at the church,while the deejay corners herself on the lighthouse roof,battling back the vengeful lepers with their own crusty weapons.Malone brings the hulking gold cross out to Captain Blake,and offers himself as the final conspiritor,but the crew and the fog disappear in thin air with their stolen treasure returned.Wayne,still in one piece,warns her listeners to watch out for the fog,which reappears,sliding back under the church doors,and surrounds the priest who is abruptly beheaded by the leper captain.

"Roll the window up and hit the gas,he's just gonna squeegee the windshield and ask for change!"
Many of the character names are movie and book-related inside jokes(Nick Castle,Dr. Phibes,Dan O'Bannon,Mr. Machen)you'll be able to notice as the credits roll.Carpenter drew his inspiration for this project from a British horror film from the 50's that dealt with monsters that hid in cloud-cover.His next film would be the excellent "Escape From New York" a year later,which we'll look at at a later date.His marriage to the the lovely Barbeau came to an end in 1984,his credibility stuck around quite a bit longer,at least until he helmed the god-awful Ghosts of Mars in 2001.Still one of my favorite directors of all-time,without question.Coincidentally,tonight's entry stands at the sixth highest box office gross of all his films,which probably explains why they'd rape his cult classic with an unneccessary and overwhelmingly panned remake in 2005.Ironically,his own remake of The Thing(1982) is probably the greatest ever made.The Fog breaks through the stained glass with an ectoplasmic fist holding three wops under the cover of vengeful mist on the ratings scale...

Insert obligatory vengeful leperous apparition with glowing eyes and an itchy scabbard finger joke here.

"Halloween II"(1981)d/Rick Rosenthal

"Heyyyyy,man,this ain't H2!"Fret not,Rob Zombie fans,when I choose to tear apart your favorite dreadlocked egg-purse's sorry excuses for remakes here at the Wop,you'll know.Tonight we examine the real sequel to Carpenter's 1978 horror masterpiece,which might not be all that great of a movie,but it's still light fucking years ahead of anything Zombie has the balls to slap the Halloween title upon.So we're still talking the original faceless Boogeyman and living embodiment of evil here,and not the abused,mutant piece of white trash with the mask fetish,to set the record straight.
Despite a few spirited moments of hilarity(mostly unintentional,and Loomis-based) peppered throughout the production and Alan Howarth's excellent electronic collaboration on Carpenter's superlative original score,ultimately,this sequel falls flat.Despite the fact that sequels rarely live up to their preceding films,there are a few glaringly obvious reasons that tonight's entry only manages to be average at best.In the original film,Nick Castle portrayed Michael as the ultimate evil with a child's perspective,on a perpetual and deadly trick or treat,hiding in the shadows,setting up horrific scares for his victims,looking on with wonderment at his trophies as the night progressed.In the sequel,Dick Warlock clocks a lot of on-screen time,methodically plodding through victims,churning out a lot of on-screen violence,where the original implied most of its kills,relying instead on good old fashioned white-knuckled suspense and jump-scares.That suspense is non-existent here.Sadly,it all seems like a contrived,punch the clock affair in the end.

Laurie Strode(Jamie Lee Curtis) wanders the halls of Haddonfield Memorial,the emptiest hospital in cinema history.
We pick up with Michael leaving the scene of the Doyle house,casually strolling through the neighborhood,helping himself to a kitchen knife at the Elrod's household(and bleeding on Harold's ham sandwich)which he uses to slash the throat of some local young gossip hound,while avoiding Dr. Loomis'(Pleasance) and Sheriff Brackett's(Charles Cyphers)bickering pursuit.The two men come upon a faceless shape walking down the sidewalk,but after he walks out into the street,he's pinned between a squad car and a delivery van,and is burned to death by the ensuing explosion.At this point,Deputy Hunt(Hunter Von Leer) arrives on the scene to inform Brackett that several teen bodies have been discovered at the Wallace house,one of which being his daughter Annie(Nancy Loomis).At this point,Brackett disappears from the story,leaving Hunt to assist the doctor in hunting down his former patient.Meanwhile,Laurie Strode(Curtis),the only survivor from Myers' bloody onslaught earlier that evening,is whisked away to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital,in shock,with a fractured ankle,and in need of stitches.The hospital staff,who seem to be the only other people in the place,are comprised of bubbleheads,sex maniacs,pot smokers,neglectful maternity ward nurses,incomepetent night watchmen,and one drunken doctor.Michael intuitively heads towards the hospital in pursuit of the one that got away.You know where this is going...

Michael helps the marshall unlodge a pesky candycorn stuck in his throat.
When the coroner examines the charred corpse of Loomis' suspect,the dental records show that the body most likely belongs to teenaged Ben Tramer(so much for Laurie going to the dance,afterall,eh)and not the Boogeyman.The good doctor and deputy investigate a break in at the school,where "Samhain" is written in blood on the chalkboard,and a crayon drawing of a family is skewered to a desk,right through the sister.Apart from obviously being a big proponent of Glenn Danzig's side projects,what's this evil son of a bitch trying to say anyway?Back at the hospital,Myers eighty-sixes nearly everyone,with hammer claws to the skull,hypodermic needles to the eyes and temples,scalpel impalings,blood drainings,strangulation with stethoscopes,boiling bobblers in overheated therapy pools,while Strode goes in and out of consciousness,amidst dreams of her adoptive parents taking her to see a young boy in an institution.Hmmmmm...Nurse Chambers(Nancy Stephens) arrives with a marshall to escort Loomis back to Smith's Grove,but when she inadvertently blurts out that Laurie is in fact Michael's other sister,the doctor forces the marshall to return to the hospital at gunpoint.In a final standoff in a room full of explosive gases,Laurie manages to shoot Michael in both eyes with Loomis' pistol(beginner's luck?),as the wounded doctor opens all the tank valves.As Laurie limps out to safety,Loomis blows the room sky high,killing himself and his murderous patient.A figure engulfed in flames stumbles out of the fire,burns for about four hours,and collapses.Laurie is whisked away to yet another hospital,cueing shots of a burning Halloween mask and the Chordettes' "Mister Sandman" for whatever reason.

Dr.Loomis(Donald Pleasance)flicks his Bic just in the nick.
Originally set to take place years later in a high rise apartment building,this sequel was a financial success,though panned almost universally by critics for its rigid slasher foundation popular in the early eighties,instead of following the successes of the original.Carpenter who declined directing here("I had made that film once and I really didn't want to do it again."Good for you,John!)in favour of producing,continued to enjoy huge success throughout the eighties with The Thing,Escape From New York,Christine,etc.Jamie Lee Curtis,a continuity no-no here with her hair still partially bleached from her portrayal of Dorothy Stratten in "Death of A Centerfold" a year earlier,went on to enjoy a fruitful career in movies and television,even revisiting her Laurie character in later retarded cash-in sequels, H20(1998) and Halloween:Resurection(2002),before mainly focusing on her family instead,in 2006.The excellent British character actor,Donald Pleasance,continued acting up until the end,in 1995,reprising his Loomis character in the fourth,fifth,and sixth movies of the series.It'd be virtually impossible to match Carpenter's original groundbreaker,but Halloween 2 stands alone as a fairly average slasher pic,with several enjoyable moments,despite its shortcomings."I'll shoot it two Wops!I'll shoot it two Wops!I'll shoot it in the heart!This film...this movie isn't human!" in my best Donald Pleasance impersonation.

We sure see a whole helluva lot of Michael Myers(Dick Warlock)in this one.

"Prom Night"(1980)d/Paul Lynch

When Jamie Lee Curtis,daughter of "Psycho"(1960) star Janet Leigh and actor Tony Curtis, was crowned the apex 80's scream queen after the success of "Halloween"(1978) and "The Fog"(1980),it seemed like she could do no wrong.But then "Terror Train"(1980) and this little Canadian disco slasher brought us all back to earth.Is it any wonder her bleached out,drugged up appearance and five lines of dialogue in the emptiest hospital in history in "Halloween 2"(1981) marked her final horror appearance for over a decade?I think not.Of course she's had a long,fruitful Hollywood career since then,amidst rumors of batwanger-dom(probably started by me,and due to that mannish square chin of hers)which I'll dismiss once and for all with the following publicity still:

Yeah,Jamie was rocking a serious pair of dirty pillows.
Hermaphroditic rumors put to final rest,let's get on with the review,shall we?

Callous kids send she-stutterer to early grave.
There's no doubt about it,kids can be venemous,hurtful little bastards.All Robin wanted to do was to fit in with the local scruffy young tearaways as they played "The killers are coming"(popular children's game?) in an abandoned warehouse somewhere in Canada.Stuttering,a sure s-s-s-sign of weakness marks the little girl for ridicule followed by abrupt gruesome death as she plummets out a window to the pavement below.Adding insult to injury,the remaining shards of broken windowpane follow,cutting the corpse's throat and removing all doubt.Gross.The four kids,fearful of retribution, form a pact to keep the events of that day a secret between them.Six years later the murderers are all high school kids in their twenties, preparing for the annual prom,only a vengeful killer(in a disco glitter ski mask...no,that's not a typo.) has different bloody plans for them as well.
Kim(Jamie Lee Curtis) and Alex are Robin's siblings(Leslie Nielsen is their father...remember when this guy took serious acting roles?),putting the tragedy behind them through exhilarating disco moves on the dancefloor.Each of the guilty teen/twenty-somethings,Nick(Kim's prom date),Kelly,Wendy and Jude is plagued by crank calls,reminding them of their terrible secret and taking the joy out of prepping the gymnasium for the prom's "Disco Madness" theme(no,that's not a typo either).Somewhere in there is an overweight afro-coiffed Jewish pot smoking nerd with a makeout van with plush carpeting in the back,and a moronic Sicilian-type bully who doesn't seem to realize Welcome Back,Kotter had already died a syndicated death,aping an aggresive,more stupid(is this possible?) Barbarino at every turn.One by one the childhood killers get their comeuppance at the aforementioned dance,but not before Kim does an onscreen ten minute boogie,and later evades the glittery axe-wielding killer with blouse open,exposing her ample sweater mates for a solid five minutes.In the end,people die violently,Kim survives the onslaught,and her brother Alex is unmasked as the murderer and lone witness to their misdeed six years earlier after Nick heroically beats him upside the domepiece with his own axe,effectively killing him.It's safe to disco once again.

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba beheaded.
Certainly not a top slasher entry by anybody's standards,this one does boast of some decent gore and atmosphere at times,though weighed down by a drawn out script full of loose ends,and badly dated,thanks to the prom full of boogiers.Nielsen is used too sparsely here,and the cast of co-starring caucasian afro-coiffed canucks(they all seem to enjoy the hairdo,strangely) doesn't add much beyond a chuckle.Jamie's lungs don't get much of a workout in the scream department,though the sight of her hustling underneath the mirrored ball just may give you many sleepless nights anyway.

One out four B.W.'s