"It Happened at Lakewood Manor" (1977) d/ Robert Scheerer

Even if you missed tonight's review when it was first broadcast back in 1977 (I didn't, so nyah nyah, motherfuckers. You never missed cool shit like this back then, it was forbidden.), you were probably drawn in years later by the USA Home Video big box vhs with Suzanne Somers' ant-engulfed milk wagons depicted on the sleeve, and really, who'd blame you for that? I picked it up myself, back then, for that very reason, only to be reminded that, for heavy on names it was, with the likes of Robert Foxworth, Lynda Day George, Brian Dennehy, and even Suzanne Somers, in a brief cameo capacity, though she receives top billing for it, all on board, it was pretty light on delivery of the genre goods, though it remains a nostalgic stroll back to a time when television networks created their own quickie cash ins on silver screen trends, and with movies like Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), Grizzly (1976), Day of the Animals (1977) all cashing in at the box office, eco-horror proved too lucrative to ignore for their small screen competitors.


Come n' die on the floor (come n' die on the floor) meet the ants and you're through (meet the ants and you're through)...(sung to the tune of "Three's Company"main theme)
Two construction workers stumble into a swarm of ultra-aggressive ants with a toxic bite in a closed section of the Lakewood Hotel, during an extensive renovation, but before they can warn anyone of the impending poison picnic, they get buried alive. Oops. Now, like a hundred minute episode of Love Boat, we get the main cast of characters; there's the elderly proprietor, Mrs. Adams (Myrna Loy) and her sultry daughter, Valerie (Lynda Day George), who's having flesh-pleasure with the foreman, Mike (Robert Foxworth), who discovers the workers' corpses with his buddy Vince (Bernie Casey! Hot damn, that's outta sight.), and then there's real estate mogul Fleming (Gerald Gordon) actively pursuing his dream of turning the place into a casino, and his busty piece of side trim, Gloria (Suzanne Somers), along for the ride, to sit around in next to nothing and look really fucking good, doing it. Meanwhile, the aggro army of ants assaults a young boy, then kills a cook, and nearly adds Vince to its growing list of fatalities, which Mike has a hunch that they just might be responsible for...


"You little bastards! BAAAAAAAAASTARDS!"
Enter two workers from the Board of Health (Anita Gillette, Bruce French) who make the investigative scene, determining that these ants are not only poisonous, but highly resistant to insecticides. A recipe for disaster if ever I've heard one. Meanwhile, Gloria's slumped dead on the floor, with ant-engulfed titties, another health board bloke bites the dust, and a rag tag group of survivors is being driven upstairs to safety by the ants, who've overtaken the hotel from their massive nest in the pit, and number in the millions. The authorities dig a trench to hold the deadly army back, using water and gasoline to fuel their rescue of the trapped patrons and employees inside. Finally, only Mike, Valerie, and Fleming remain, cornered by ants. Fleming miserably fails his attempt at a triple Lindy to safety out the window, and the two trapped lovers are forced to breathe through tubes as they're rescued by workers in white suits who smoke the little bastards out. But could it all happen again? It could've, but thankfully, it didn't.


"Ahhhhh!!! Somebody loose-topped the pepper shaker on me!"
Super soul brother Bernie Casey was still riding a wave of popularity at the time of this tv movie, one that started with 1969's Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and included genre classics like Gargoyles (1972), Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976), and Cleopatra Jones (1973), while Foxworth showed up in Damien :Omen II (1978) and Prophecy (1979). Somers appeared in Bullitt (1968), American Graffiti (1973), Magnum Force (1973), and even Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977) before scoring the familiar role of Chrissy Snow, really the only reason you'd ever be caught dead watching Three's Company, besides splitting a side at whatever getup Furley has on, and Stanley Roper's zingers at his horny, homely old wife, but you get where I'm coming from. Myrna Loy was an actress who was huge in the twenties and thirties. Like I was getting to earlier, you may want to revisit this one for nostalgia's sake, and truthfully,  seeing it takes me back to grade school, where I was much like the Wop you see before you now, but with more hair, and less tattoos. Still, I've gotta cite it's overall weakness in the delivery of quality seventies eco-horror like many of it's counterparts managed to achieve. On the scale, Manor merits a measly single Wop, worth a look for hardcore horror addicts, perhaps.


"You mean we're smoking dog shit, man?" 

"Mortuary" (1983) d/ Howard Avedis

From exploitation king Howard Avedis, the man responsible for drive-in gems like The Teacher (1974) and Sybill Danning boob-nanza, They're Playing With Fire (1984), comes tonight's review, a golden era slasher that features the likes of a scene-chewing Bill Paxton along with Lynda Day George and her husband Christopher in what would be his final role, and let's not exclude a memorable trailer that featured cult legend Michael Berryman, who's interestingly nowhere to be found in the final cut of the film. Though it's pretty standard stuff, borrowing from a handful of earlier genre movies, it can boast of nude scenes from bonny auburn lass Mary Beth McDonough, who you'll remember played Erin on The Waltons. A foine ting, that.


"What a last movie to remember me by!", ponders Hank (Christopher George).
Christie (Mary Beth McDonough) suspects that her father's pre-credit chlorinated pool-death was no accident, her suspicions only strengthened by the onset of nightmares, sleepwalking into the pool in a nightie, and the feeling that she's being tailed by a hooded freak in a morgue wagon. Her goofy boyfriend Greg (David Wallace) doesn't help matters, spying on local undertaker Hank Andrews (Christopher George) as he leads a candlelit ceremony at his warehouse, decked out in red robes, with Christie's mom, Eve (Lynda Day George), in attendance, and getting a tire-heisting pal skewered on an embalming tool in the process. In the meantime, pay no mind to Hank's creepy son, Paul (Bill Paxton), who's got a slightly unhealthy crush on Christie, himself, and is taken to lurking about like a weirdo when he isn't slamming embalming tools into cadavers under dad's militant supervision. Hey, nobody ever mistook this for a murder mystery...


She must be watching dailies from her performance in "Pieces"(1983).
Just as Greg and Christie's investigative spying rules out Hank and Eve, who've been using secret seances to get to the bottom of the girl's father's untimely death, her stalker turns out to be Paul to nobody's surprise, decked out in gothy corpsepaint and hood, eager to terrorize the girl and her mother at the house during a power outage, after Christie wisely interrupts a screw on the living room floor to tell Greg she doesn't want to see him for a while, leaving nobody to protect the women later when Paul gets murderously pokey with his tool again. Hank interrupts Paul's impromptu Happy Birthday to Me (1981)-style wedding at the mortuary, with slumped corpses all seated around the groom and his naked bride-to-be(embalmed), and eats bossy father-type death for his troubles. Greg saves the day with a loaded M-16 he found stashed in a coffin earlier (I would have thrown the top hat at him, but that's just me), only to have the mother's corpse-in-attendance spring to life for a final attack a la Buio Omega (1980) or Pieces (1982). Take your pick.


"You bring up that Fish Heads video again, and I'll embalm ya, brah!", warns Paul (Bill Paxton).
David Wallace, who you may have seen in Humongous(1982), went on to a career in television and soap operas. After Christopher's death, Lynda Day George would appear solely in tv roles, with Mortuary serving as her last horror movie appearance to date, as well. Paxton shows up in everything from The Terminator (1984) to Aliens (1986) to Brain Dead (1990) and The Dark Backward (1991), before famously scoring roles in major studio flicks like Titanic, Twister, and Tombstone. On the scale, a mostly predictable cookie cutter slasher with more boobs than blood and more chuckles than atmosphere, and as such, it merits a single Wop. Mehhhh...


Dead chicks can't feel it when you insert the tool. Mortician/necrophiliac jokes make the world go around.

"Pieces"(1982)d/Juan Piquer Simon

Tonight,we're gonna peer luridly through a half shut eye like we were Paul "Bluto" Smith at something of a minor splatter classic from the eighties that has a little something for everybody.I'm not shittin' ya.Though tonight's movie has several elements of,and tries desperately to be a giallo,anyone who would call it one is obviously mentally exhausted,and needs to lie down,before they say anything else assinine.Simon's directorial effort is so full of unintentional humor,ridiculous dialogue(“There’s nothing like smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed!” “I don’t want to wait for the coroner’s opinion. Can you give me yours? Do you think that chainsaw could be the murder weapon?”),continuity errors,and script holes,you just might think he set out to make a full-blown comedy,if not for the abundant gore and melodrama spewing forth from actors Christopher George and Lynda Day George,who both add to the belly-laughs throughout.The whole production reeks of vintage eurosleaze,which one could fesibly attribute to the screenplay being co-written by Joe D'Amato,the Italian sleaze king.This one is so much fucking fun to watch,I dare you not to have a great time screening it with buds and beers.

That's a pretty pensive look for somebody who's cleaved in half.
A young bobblerhound pieces together a nudie jigsaw puzzle in Boston in 1947(don't let the modern New England Patriots banner on the kid's wall throw you,despite the fact the AFL team formed in 1960 was the Boston Patriots and didn't change to New England until 1971...these are mere trivialities,kids!),and when his mother breaks his eggs about it,he abruptly buzzsaws her ass into pieces and blames it all on an unknown madman,thus,getting away with it.Decades pass,when suddenly a mysterious black gloved,chainsaw wielding psychopath starts wantonly whittling away at women on a college campus,using bits from each to piece together a patchwork version of his mother from all those years ago.It's Harvard University,by the way.What other Ivy League institution would hire Bluto as a gardener,Bruce Le as a Kung Fu instructor,and is chock full of air-headed sex-crazed bimbos who get naked at the drop of a dockworker's scally cap?The local constabulary is called in,and though Detective Bracken(George) has taken Bluto into custody as a suspect,he has no leads.Though naked dismembered chicks are turning up with frightening regularity,the police and dean agree to keep a lid on it,so naturally,more chicks will venture out alone after dark,thus keeping the killer in fresh body parts for his gruesome puzzle.Kendall(Ian Sera),is a dork/student/sex machine who becomes Bracken's top suspect when the murders continue despite the detainment of Popeye's arch-nemesis.Soon afterwards,when Kendall is cleared of all possible charges,the detective invites him to help out with the investigation.You know,I thought you might be the killer,but since you're not,do you mind being deputized?Makes total sense.

"Bastard!Bastard!BAAAAAAAAAASSSSTAAAAAAAARRRRD!"
Bracken then brings in Mary Riggs(Day George),on her first undercover assignment,as the university's tennis pro,who,on the court can barely hold a tennis racket.Despite using the female badge as bait for the murderer,Bracken immediately identifies her as a cop to Kendall,who,you might remember,was a top suspect.As she flaunts her goodies walking on campus at night,she's assaulted by a Chinese fella who kicks the flashlight and gun out of her hands before taking one of hers right in the egg purse.Turns out,Harvard has a Kung Fu instructor,who randomly kicks at women at night on campus after eating bad chop suey.When Riggs and Kendall discover yet another slaughtered daughter's eviscerated remains,she pumps her fist at the heavens and screams,"Bastard!" so unconvincingly she makes William Shatner look like Daniel Day Lewis.When Bracken finally draws a bead on the killer's identity,he takes the student along to make the collar,and save Riggs,who's been grabbed by the black garbed fiend,after he drugs her in his office,reducing her to a moaning stiff.Yeah,it's the dean.Apparently,a high profile place of learning doesn't have very stringent screening policies for the head of its faculty,nor did his administrative duties cut into his chick-chainsawing extra curriculars.Also peculiar,is the fact that he keeps his incomplete patchwork woman corpse in his office.Do the cleaning staff just dust around it?Finally,when all is said and done,the damned thing comes to life and slaps a Swedish grip on Kendall's package through his jeans,mutliating his genitals as his screams cut to a freeze frame.This,also,makes a lot of sense.

"...although one goes to bed, apparently free of grit, when you get up in the morning, your bed's always full of bits!"
Simon also directed genre fare like Slugs and Pod People,though this,is definitely his crowning(right!) cinematic achievement,as far as I'm concerned.Brit Edmond Purdom and Italian western veteran Frank Braña are also credited here,as well as Bruce Lee imitator,Huang Kin Lung("Bruce Le") for some unknown reason.Eli "Hostel" Roth cites it as one of his favorite movies,and his bizarre Pancakes sequence in Cabin Fever had to draw some influence from this entry.Either way,it definitely delivered the goods it promised on the box art at a time when elaborate packaging often hid the fact that nothing much could be found inside.Nothing could be further from the case here.I'll sneak up on the scale with a revving chainsaw behind my back,and hack two respectable wops as a rating.

A crotch grab that Michael Jackson'd be envious of.

"Day of the Animals"(1977)d/William Girdler

Phew, it's a scorcher out there today, hot enough to fry up a hunk o' scrapple on an old lady's ass.Thanks to the eco-friendly, nature runs amok, b horror movies of William Girdler back in the late seventies, the worst we have to worry about thirty years on is an uneven tan or heatstroke.Back in 1977, with everyone spraying their aerosol cans of Right Guard haphazardly into their smelly armpits, we were depleting the protective ozone layer, and allowing harmful ultraviolet rays through to the earth's surface,which with a little creative license could feasibly set all animals on a kill-crazy rampage against the human beings that cohabitate the planet with them.It COULD happen, or so says the preachy sprawling introduction to our entry this afternoon.Not to mention the dated habit of chucking your garbage out the window of your car while speeding down the highway back then,which brought a tear to the eye of many a native American in groovy public service announcements.And if you think the ignorant white man could make an Indian cry in commercials during the tumultuous seventies, wait til you see what Leslie Nielsen has lined up for them in this flick.In fact,this is the Leslie Nielsen acting clinic those of you who've tired of watching him plod away in slapstick comedy the past twenty-five years have been praying to the casting gods for.Wipe the sweat off your brow,look troubledly upward at the sun,and hike forward,little droogies.

Before Leslie Nielsen was moonwalking at baseball games,he slung racial epithets at Native Americans with the best of 'em.
Steve(Christopher George),with the help of his trusty native American pal(really Syrian,mind you)Santee,leads a gaggle of tourists up a mountain trail,for an exciting weekend of camping,foraging for wild radishes,and fending off dangerous wild animals,driven pazzo by the rapidly depleting ozone layer.Along for the hike are Terry(George's real life wife,Lynda),a young couple in need of therapeutic healing of their tocky relationship,a young couple that seems to be doing just fine,a whiny Jewish matriarch and her young son,a bird-watching nerd,an ex-football star dying of cancer,and a Wall Street ad exec named Jensen(Leslie himself).At the base of the mountain,the townsfolk are experiencing all sorts of nasty attacks by animals that normally don't seek out aggro,leading the military to roll in and declare martial law,evacuating the higher elevations.You know,where our hikers are currently stranded unknowingly.The troubled couple's weekend gets progressively worse when Mandy is attacked by a wolf,and when Frank leads her back down the mountain,she's attacked by a rowdy crew of hawks and vultures,causing her to fall off a ledge onto a fatally phony blue screen effect.Back on the trail, the party is being stalked by a wide range of animals,being annoyed by Mrs. Goodwin's kvetching and Jansen's hateful nicknames for everyone involved.Pretty soon,Jansen splits the party in two,questioning Steve's ability to lead the people to safety,hiking off with the young couple,the mother and her mollycoddled son.

Don't sweat it, sister.That blue screen behind you oughta break your fall.
While Steve's half of the hiking party is being attacked by cougars and wild dogs,Jansen's half is under attack by a shirtless,rain-soaked ad exec who loses his marbles,shouting,"You lily-livered PUNK!I'M running this camping trip!I take what I want and I give ya what I wanna give ya!And right now I want THAT!(pointing to Andrew Stevens' squeeze)C'mon,baby!" throwing women and children to the ground,skewering boyfriends on tree branches,and claiming terrified young girls as his prize in the name of chauvenism, before foolishly trying to bear hug a grizzly bear(!)and eating broken back death in the mountainous mud.What a tour de force by Nielsen.Is it any wonder he's fallen back on comedy since this performance?Jaw-droppingly incredible.In the forest,only Steve,Terry,and Santee survive the ecological onslaught by drifting down river on a raft,and elsewhere,Mrs. Goodwin,her son,and the prize girlfriend weather the storm by hiding out inside a wrecked chopper.By the time the smoke finally clears,men in haz mat suits are sifting through dead animals and men in the streets,rescuing the few shellshocked survivors and scratching their collective dome pieces over how to avoid pissing off Mother Nature in the future.Moral of the story:Be cool to each other,and the planet we live on,or we'll all be sorry,maaaan.

Someone tell little Michelle it's the ozone being depleted, not Peter Pan peanut butter.
This was Girdler's follow-up to his "Jaws with claws" success,Grizzly,the year before,which utilized much of the same cast and locations to earn top independent film of 1976 awards.He directed nine genre films,which included Three on a Meathook,Abby,Asylum of Satan,and The Manitou before losing his life at the age of 30 in a helicopter crash in the Phillipines.Christopher George went on to B movie success in such genre fare as Fulci's City of the Living Dead,Graduation Day,Enter The Ninja,Pieces,and Mortuary before he died of a heart attack in 1983.Lynda Day George worked in Pieces,Beyond Evil,and Mortuary,among several television roles before retiring from acting in the late eighties.Nielsen acted in Prom Night and Creepshow before moving on to an endless series of comedic roles,which he still churns out to this day,at 83 years old!This entry is pretty standard fare,but between some of the effects and Leslie Nielsen's outrageous contributions,you'll definitely enjoy it at least once.Day of the Animals rolls out its sleeping bag with two solid Wops on the almighty rating scale.You hear that,Animals?I take what I want and I give ya what I wanna give ya,you lily-livered punk!

Simply the finest shirtless,ozone-loony Leslie Nielsen v. grizzly bear scene ever committed to celluloid.