"The Haunted Palace" (1963) d/ Roger Corman

This sixties slice of gothic garishness masquerades as an adaption of E.A. Poe in name only, when in reality, it's a loose adaption of Howard Phillips' own The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, as realized for the silver screen by such genre heavyweights as Lon Chaney, Jr. and the inimitable Vincent Price in the title role, with Debra Paget, who you'll recall from The Ten Commandments or Love Me Tender opposite Elvis, as his faithful spouse. My current copy is an MGM dvd double bill with another Price favorite, 1962's Tower of London, for those collectors out there that might give a damn about such things. Anyway...Onward!


 Mrs. Ward (Debra Paget) is surely a dime piece of early sixties arm-cake, dads.
100 years after being burned alive for sordid warlockery and young maiden-based Necronomicon rites by the inhabitants of Arkham, placing a wicked curse of rotten luck upon them for this thing they're now guilty of, Joseph Curwen (Vincent Price) is given a living vessel of reincarnation in his own great grandson, Charles Dexter Ward (Price), who's arrived in town with his beautiful young wife, Ann (Debra Paget), to assess the value of his grandfather's estate, which he's recently inherited. He's instantly recognized as a descendant of the male witch by a descendant of one of the men who condemned him to death, Edgar Weeden (Leo Gordon), and treated with much prejudice and scrutiny on account of this, by the townsfolk who've seemingly sired a weird sub-race of mutants that they lock away like wild animals. Then there's Simon (Lon Chaney Jr), a servant that suddenly turns up out of the darkness at the estate, to generally assist the warlock's spirit and creep everybody out.


"I shouldn't have displayed my 'Trump 2016' badge in front of this unreasonable gaggle of social justice warriors..."
Naturally, Ward is hypnotized by a portrait of his ancestor, which leads to spiritual possession, further Necronomicon spells in the estate's secret witchcraft chamber, handily equipped with it's own multi-armed and budget-shabby demi-god at the bottom of a well, and Ten Little Indians-style retribution upon those specifically responsible for his death over a hundred years earlier. For Ann, it's no picnic either, as she's projecting her husband's sudden transformation into an abusive heel, into attention from the town doctor, Willet (Frank Maxwell) who tries to help her free her husband from the clutches of the vengeful ghost, before he can resurrect his lost love from her current status of long dead, and rotting in a coffin. If all of that doesn't interest you, perhaps there'll be a twist ending of sorts to win you over in the final reel. Perhaps...


I had a rubber Kresge's bought one just like this that Big Jim and G.I. Joe had to combine resources to defeat in the killing fields of my backyard.
You'll recognize Elisha Cook, Jr. from his memorable roles in genre-stuffs like Blacula (1972), Dead of Night (1977), Salem's Lot (1979), and Messiah of Evil (1973). Frank Maxwell showed up in Corman's own The Intruder (1962) as well as the Bronson vehicle, Mr Majestyk (1974). Arguably the last decent thing Lon Chaney Jr was ever to appear in, I'd wager. The participation of Price alone, with his masterfully theatrical take on duality of character, complete with the full range of exaggerated facial expressions we came to recognize and love to watch, elevates this one into intermediate levels of watchability, and would've been a hoot to see at the drive-in of the period, I'd imagine. Two Wop respectability here, one of the better Corman films of the era. Snag a copy.


"Not good enough for Instagram, not even good enough for a FaceBook selfie, as it were, my dear..."

"It Conquered The World" (1956) d/ Roger Corman

Here's some mortifying early sci-fi fare from prolific schlockmeister Roger Corman, who'd already directed six movies by then, this one, the third of four movies he'd already directed that year. To sell this far out piece of drive-in fodder, he needed some straight faced actors, and they didn't come much more straight faced than Peter Graves or Lee Van Cleef, who are both dynamically deadpan as ever. Paul Blaisdell, who provided special effects on some of my greatest Saturday afternoon memories as a kid, like It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958) and Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), designed the... memorable alien monster suit in tonight's review, even going so far as to wear it dramatically on camera, as well. What balls, young man.


"Plissken...Plissken....where are you, Plissken?"
Dr. Tom Anderson (Lee Van Cleef) has been warning them all along about launching satellites into unfriendly space, when the government's latest nine million dollar project leaves our atmosphere. Dr. Paul Nelson (Peter Graves) is Tom's level-headed pal, far too level-headed to ever keep a c.b. radio set up behind a curtain for the sole intent of chatting extensively with angry-looking vintage orange juicers from the planet Venus while at home, as Tom might. Wouldn't you know it...the cucumbery Venusian King gets chatty with Tom, hijacks the satellite, and hitches a ride to Earth in it, wiping out all forms of power on the planet, save for his new pal Tom's car, electricity, etc. Immediately, the interstellar vegetable sends out eight rubbery flying pitas from Hell, each equipped with mind control stingers for the backs of the necks of some influential people.


"Nooooooo! Anything but tittie twisters!!!!"
Tom has had enough of skeptics and naysayers and is all on board with a total Venusian takeover, despite the empty protests of his frustrated wife, Claire (Beverly Garland), who sleeps alone while her husband and his space carrot buddy plot and scheme for world domination on his c.b. radio all night long. Paul remains adamantly pro-Earth, as evidenced by the hot slug he puts in his alien possessed wife's belly before she can slap a latex mind control pizza on the back of his neck. While Paul tries to reason with his brainwashed buddy, Claire sneaks out with his rifle, and drives to the cave where her husband's boss currently resides, pumping some shells into him before she ultimately gets pincer-choked the fuck out, for keeps. A nearby troop of  slapstick soldiers (led by Dick Miller, no less) fares no better with bazookas, until Tom shows up with a hand-held blowtorch with the Venusian's eye socket written all over it.Alas,  a momentary pincer-grab proves too much for him, and he slumps dead next to his c.b. pal, just in time for a summary pro-humanity speech from Paul that wraps it all up.


"The damned thing won't stop holding still, Sarge!"
I must've seen this one twenty times as a kid, between Dr. Shock's Mad Theater/ Horror Theater and Uncle Ted's Ghoul School, its unsophisticated visuals forever ingrained in my earliest genre movie memories. Stuff like this may not hold much appeal for today's sci-fi fan, bombarded with cgi-born spacescapes and state-of-the-art effects and make ups, but for an old schooler like me, it's a brief (just over an hour), nostalgic walk down memory lane. Still, as much as I love Roger Corman's stuff, I couldn't give this one more than one Wop, strictly for the many laughs it provided upon re-inspection. Approach with caution.


"Get away from me with that blow torch, Angel Eyes!", says the Monster (Paul Blaisdell).

"Humanoids from the Deep" (1996) d/ Jeff Yonis

In 1996, schlock god Roger Corman remade a few of his earlier B-movie classics for Showtime cable network under the "Roger Corman Presents:" banner, tonight's review being one of them; an update of sorts on the 1980 cult classic starring Doug McClure and Vic Morrow. After having read an online review of this one that boasts it's "more consistent, realistic, and mature" than it's predecessor, it's kinda startling to see so many blind waterheads with internet access these days. Maybe even more so to see people who've dropped their collective entertainment bar so low that a fucking stinkbug couldn't limbo underneath it, even if he was sucking his gut in.


He looks as bored, dead, as I was, watching him die.

At the outset, we see some military types shooting up and flamethrowing an oversized container only to notice that whatever was housed inside has made a beeline for the convenient manhole escape route located a few feet behind it (that the soldiers apparently never scouted out). One of the soldiers sticks his head down the manhole. Au revoir, la tête! Then it's business as usual, with government cover ups and environmentalists protesting the local hatchery, where unscrupulous white guys, led by Bill Taylor (Mark Rolston, from 'Aliens'), count money and wantonly dump a synthetic growth hormone  named Synestin (as kept in empty-looking fifty-five gallon drums, naturally)  into the surf even after they've been videotaped in the act by the young activists, one of which happens to be dating  the daughter (Danielle Weeks) of a local fisherman named Wade (Robert 'Revenge of the Nerds' Carradine, looking appropriately grizzled here) and Ron Howard's weird-looking brother Clint is also aboard as some sort of  mostly useless law enforcement officer.

"Hold 'im in, Ellie Mae, you don't wanna lose yer Jazzy privileges at thet thur K-Marts, now..."
Emma Samms shows up as a genetic scientist posing as a news reporter and straightfacedly reveals the government's evil plot to transform five death row inmates into amphibious super soldiers, except, they fucked up and created these humanoids from the deep, instead. The horny fishmen abduct some local females and goop them together into a big latex pile in a cave on the shore, then familiarly attack the town's waterfront fair in a sequence directly snatched from the original movie. A chick gives birth to a fish-baby on a pool table at the dive bar, and later, Samms hatches her own tadpole at a midday traffic light. Typing finger suddenly compelled to hit the Z key, repeatedly.


Sometimes you get to play Fallon Carrington-Colby in Dynasty, sometimes you share a latex cocoon with a variety of half-nude twenty-something bimbos.
If you're going into this one with fleeting hopes of revisiting the exploitative levels of nudity, gore, hokey ignorance, and horny fishman sex that the original delivered, you're not gonna experience a single one of those things here. Even the creature effects (when the crew could be bothered to shoot new footage, lazily relying several times on whole sections of footage cut directly from the 1980 effort) look worse, as you can see for yourselves, below. On the scale, the Humanoids remake baits a familiar hook, struggles for eighty-six minutes, and pulls an old boot out of the foam for it's troubles. Goose eggs.


It's work like this that reminds me how much I liked Rob Bottin.

"Up From the Depths"(1979)d/Charles Griffith

Tonight's review is proof that by the end of the seventies, Italians weren't the only ones trying to cash in at the box office with cheaply produced 'Jaws' rip-offs, as if the misleadingly ambitious one-sheet above wasn't enough evidence for a conviction on it's own.The alternate one-sheet for Piranha(1978) called, and it wants it's terrified female swimmer back, guys.Helmed by Charles B. Griffith, the screenwriter behind such cult classics as It Conquered the World(1956), Attack of the Crab Monsters(1957), and Death Race 2000(1975), and produced by prolific Filipino filmmaker Cirio(Savage!, T.N.T. Jackson) Santiago, Depths is a mostly boring mix of the fiberglass, tits, wooden acting, and stage blood necessary to encapsulate the average Roger Corman movie experience, barely covering it's end of a double feature disc, as paired with Santiago's own rip-off of the same movie, 1987's Demon of Paradise, but let's not get ahead of ourselves, folks.One shitty Jaws rip-off at a time.The Phillipines-as-Hawaii backdrop is used here to weave the all too familiar "Resort-goers repeatedly dined upon by large aquatic predatory animal that's ignored by the authorities until they're forced to blow the thing up with explosives after the body count turns the ocean's tide blood red" premise, the frame dressed with the likes of Sam Bottoms, who'd just come off the success of Coppola's Apocalypse Now(1979), and lovely television actress Susanne Reed, and minimal creature/gore effects provided by none other than The Fly II(1989) director Chris Walas, fresh from his stint on Piranha(1978), another popular Corman production that unapologetically apes the earlier Spielberg adventure/thriller hit itself.

"Human entrails?Everytime I get in the goddamned ocean...Every goddamned time!" 
After an unusual oceanic current frees up a prehistoric man-eating fish, that either resembles a pilot whale with Eric Roberts' mouth, or an oversized lower intestine with a mean face on the end, depending on the positioning of the camera in the water, the hateful surfboard-with-teeth stakes a peckish claim off the remote beaches of Mahu(or the Philippines, whichever works best for you) where unsuspecting vacationers, which include bickering out-of-shape bathers, kids who take drinking glasses into the ocean while swimming(nothing beats a tall, midday glass of saltwater, eh, kids?), gangly British playmates named Iris Lee(Denise Hayes), a Japanese Samurai, and a scientist named Whiting(Charles Howerton) who happens to be researching deep sea fish.Add to the mix a gorgeous young public relations rep named Rachel(Susanne Reed) and her sideburn-heavy love interest, Greg(Sam Bottoms), and even an alcoholic beercan-chucking fisherman named Earl(Virgil Frye) and the lanky lightbulb-headed hotel manager named Forbes(Kedric Wolfe) he's eternally at odds with.Ol' Forbesy alternates between shirtless in a palm leaf hat and a groovy pink action suit while ignorantly denying the impending danger to all with hokey overacting zeal that Billy Shatner might be envious of.Whenever the predator strikes, it's a muddled mishmosh of shots of oncoming teeth, hunks of meat being shaken back and forth underwater, and the obligatory red dye emptying into the deep, 'whenever' in this instance meaning 'every single goddamned time'.

"This shark must've survived solely on Spielberg's '1941' box-office receipts..."
The fiendish fish eats a photographer(only after he's set his expensive camera down on the rocks in front of him, mind you) in about three feet of water, while Forbes stubbornly exclaims that there are no sharks in the Hawaiian Archipelago.Add 'marine biology' to Forbes' growing list of inadequacies.Several forgettable attacks later, the haughty Chrome Dome offers a case of rum bounty for any tourist willing to tangle ass with the hateful halibut, leading to a mad scramble of eager vacationers grabbing decorative spears off the hotel walls, somehow forgetting that the aqua-beast has been seemingly impervious to shotgun slugs and even 5.56mm rifle ammo up to this point.A wisecracking R. Lee Ermey(!) even shows up in Hawaiian shirt with homemade flamethrower, but to no avail.Earl loads his boat up with ammunition and beer, and joins the good fight himself.The beast rams into Dr. Whiting, who pleads, dying from internal injuries, with the others:" Don't throw me back in! Don't let it get me!", which his associates interpret as: "Please strap my lifeless corpse with explosives and heave it into the water as boobytrapped fishbait!", and do just that.Judging by the circle of red dye in the water, post-off-camera explosion(explosions are expensive to film, you dicks), the fish is effectively slain and life returns to normal for the survivors, even the comic relief Samurai who's been unable to get his canoe off the rocks for the past twenty-five minutes.Insert rimshot, roll credits.

Red Snapper for dinner tonight again??Eh, twist my arm.
Corman would follow tonight's review up with the equally Jaws-ish Humanoids from the Deep(1980), a much more polished and enjoyable movie, in your humble narrator's eyes, anyway.Griffith went on to helm the rarely-seen  Ollie Reed vehicle, Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype(1980), Smokey Bites the Dust(1981), and Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II(1989).After providing the effects for the U.S.-shot sequences on Sergio Martino's Isle of the Fishmen(1980), Walas would go on to score makeup credits in everything from Cronenburg's Scanners(1981), Caveman(1981), and Joe Dante's Gremlins(1984), while providing effects for Humanoids from the Deep(1980), Dragonslayer(1981), and Cronenburg's Naked Lunch(1991).Though you'll no doubt remember Sam Bottoms as Cpl. Lance Johnson in Coppola's war epic, he also turns in solid performances in Eastwood pics The Outlaw Josey Wales(1976) and Bronco Billy(1979), getting his debut in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show(1971), and dying prematurely at the age of 53 in 2008, while his striking co-star Reed returned to television, turning up on shows like Baywatch, Airwolf, and Knight Rider.On the scale, Depths rarely rises from said murky expanses, meriting a single Wop.It could've used a bigger boat, indeed.

"You're right, my balls do stretch out to here for expecting to be taken seriously while wearing this pink get up in public."

"The Trip"(1967)d/Roger Corman

Inverse to the producers' warning that precedes tonight's review, a Hollywood flirtation with head-freakin' hallucinogenics as penned by no less than Jack Nicholson, is a short disclaimer from this guy over here:Ah, glorious lysergic acid diethylamide.Where does a guy like me begin to write about our many mind-blowing escapades together over the years.Without your entheogenic pleasures, I might not have ever mooned state troopers from a van window, shouting:"Behold! The fancy ass of the DEVIL!", I might not have been bitten by a pissed off African baboon spider that I thought I was communicating with, I might not have stopped my vehicle in courthouse traffic, worried that the front of the car, engine and all, had just dissolved into liquid metal and poured onto the asphalt.I might never have played naked hide n' seek with my girlfriend all over my apartment, culminating in a vista-revealing bathtub fuck that unlocked the secrets of the universe to me.Oh, you get the idea, already.Potent acid is tits, dudeskis.Tonight's feature focuses on some hip cats of the day and just such a journey to the center of the mind, as portrayed by genre faces Peter Fonda, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern, and Dennis Hopper, among others, and as directed by the original Motor City Madman and B-Movie Bishop, Roger Corman, in between his uncredited work in the director's chair on A Time for Killing(1967) and 1968's The Wild Racers.Semi-corny in its posi-delivery of the microgram-laden mirth; it's always a good time to viddy when you're in an altered state yourself.Diiiig...

"Yeah, I was Babalugats in 'Cool Hand Luke', maaann, I'll bogart this spleefie if I want to..."
Paul Groves(Peter Fonda) is a mild-mannered director of television commercials in the midst of a heavy divorce from his unfaithful wife, Sally(Susan Strasberg), a chick who's not opposed to rocking a salmon polyester pantsuit out in public just for kicks.Is it any wonder he's looking for some introspective on his own successes and failures in one o' them there acid trips all them youngins seem to be poppin' off on, in between their flower power and their Lothar and the Hand People records.He enlists his buddy, John(Bruce Dern), as a chaperone for his twelve hour mental vacation, as provided by Max(Dennis Hopper), a babbling, reef-tokin' white Navajo wanna-be in leather dungarees, who owns the local psychedelically painted drug spot frequented by the upper eschelon of turn-onners, tune-inners, and obligatory drop outs.A hot young blonde tells him that she thinks "acid-takers are groovy."Paul retreats upstairs with John and drops with some apple juice, while Max passes around a hog's leg downstairs and mumbles incoherently.John tells his soon-to-be-soaring associate that he probably won't wanna eff with all the recording equipment he's laid out for himself once he's on his trip.Before you can say, "Down on Phillip's Escalator", Paul's starting to see some things over there.John, guarding against a possible freakout, tells him, "I'm gonna be here, man, trust me.", as Paul starts getting into some beautiful stuff, like holding the sun in his hands, and swimming bare-assed and free.He imagines bedding the hot blonde from earlier and his soon-to-be ex-wife at the same time in a groovy ménage à trois until he's being chased on the beach by Templar-esque knights on horseback.Then he's on a merry-go-round with midgets being forced to watch his spouse share adulterous kisses with another man on a big screen, while Max appears and passes hippie judgement upon him for working for a living.John! John, where's that thorazine, maaaaaan!I wanna get off!

Would you let this man chaperone your first acid trip? Me neither.
John pulls the incoherent naked wreck out of the pool and towels him off, then does exactly what he promised he wouldn't do, in leaving Paul alone while he's gone to score some more juice.Paul imagines John is slumped dead in a chair with a paintified headwound, and slips out into the street in the middle of the night, peaking his nuts off.He lets himself into a strange household, rousing the resident little girl from her sleep, watching television with her and getting her a drink until her father wakes up and scares him off.He grooves on the washing machines at a laundromat and suggests to a spinster-in-curlers that they communicate with each other using only their minds, before running off when she calls the police as he tries to free the girl he imagines he sees spinning in a dryer full of the woman's clothes.He snags a table at a psychedelic club on Sunset Strip, but splits prematurely when the cops make the scene, somehow making his way back to Max's place to come down in the process.After he tells the drug dealer he may have led the cops to his doorstep, he's told to head back to the strip where John, who isn't dead afterall, can collect him again.This time, he bumps into the aforementioned hot blonde who speeds off with him in her convertible sports car to her place, where they have all kinds of trippy sex, while he hallucinates about the hooded knights, only they're Sally and the blonde in disguise.The next morning, she asks him whether his trip was a good one or not, and he remarks that though he found love, he may need another day to reflect upon the turn of events, as the screen freeze-frames on his face, then cracks like glass, Fulci-style.Roll credits...

Sex whilst trippin' face? L.S.D.elicious!
As you might have guessed, the flagrant use of boring jazz in the soundtrack was a big red light for me.I'm thinking Corman should have scored some genuine psych rock instead, a la Pink Floyd or the Amboy Dukes, for authenticity's sake, I dunno.You can see Henry Fonda's rebellious son, who's experienced a sort of cinematic renaissance of late, in a treasure trove of genre cult classics;The Wild Angels(1966), Spirits of the Dead(1967), Easy Rider(1969), Spasms(1983), and even the crappy remake of Escape From New York, 1996's Escape From LA.Dern, a premier psycho in television and movies dating back to 1960, was at his genre best in the late sixties/early seventies, scoring credits in everything from Bloody Mama(1970) and The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant(1971) to Black Sunday(1976) and Hitchcock's Family Plot(1976).The curler-coiffed Barboura Morris dates back to early Corman, appearing in The Wasp Woman(1959) and The Haunted Palace(1960).Judy Lang, who plays Fonda's blonde sex-interest, can also be spotted in The Psycho Lovers and Count Yorga, Vampire.Curiously, LSD-25 was last completely legal in the United States in 1966, but you don't have to be a hardcore blotterhead to enjoy the cultish charm of Trip, which earns two double-dipped wops on the ratings scale.Add it to your collection.

Woooooooooow, maaaaahnnnn...

"Rock 'n' Roll High School"(1979)d/Alan Arkush

Gabba gabba we accept you, we accept you, one of us! I've been compliant with the rules(laws of Germany,be nice to mommy,don't talk to commies,et al)as far back as I can remember, and thusly, have been rewarded by many years of punk-fueled four chord auditory bliss for my efforts.Face it, if you don't dig The Ramones, then perhaps your taste in music needs a wake up kick-in-the-skull.
It's lucky for us then, that director Arkush and co-writer Joe Dante revised their "Disco High" production to center around the seminal punk icons from New Yawk and not some ensemble of 'froed jackasses decked out in J.C. Penny's fall 1978 line on a light up discotheque floor.Not for this movie, anyway.As it stands, School is top shelf cult comedy with memorable turns from the always adorable P.J. Soles, Clint "Have some Tranya..." Howard, former child actor Vince Van Patten, director Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov,Corman reg Dick Miller, and The Ramones themselves, some tits FX work from maestro Rob Bottin, and a killer soundtrack featuring the legendary MC5, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Alice Cooper, V.U., and Brian Eno.Apart from the hokey chowderheaded humor painted on with heavy hands throughout the movie, there's a time capsule feel that brings you right back to the late seventies; custom vans, tube tops, satin baseball jackets, if you were alive back then, you know the drill.Everything about this movie, a cult classic of the highest order, is crazy good on your constitution.

Principal Togar(Mary Woronov)breaks more balls than Jackie Gleason in The Hustler.
The year is 1980 and Vince Lombardi High has just welcomed the latest in a long line of would-be principals(they all suffer nervous breakdowns, it would seem), a castrating, totalitarian bitch with ice water in her veins named Evelyn Togar(Mary Woronov).Standing in the way of Togar's New School Order is rock/roller, Riff Randall(P.J. Soles), also the most fanatical of Ramones fans the world has ever seen.She's constantly hijacking school audio equipment and blasting Ramones tracks over the loudspeakers, causing the entire student body to suddenly burst out in uncontrollable dancing.Randall is being stalked by socially retarded prep-dork, Tom Roberts(Vince Van Patten), who is, in turn, being stalked by Randall's best friend, brainy wallflower Kate Rambeau(Dey Young).Both crushers visit Eaglebauer(Clint Howard), who's got an office just past all the pot smoke in the boy's room, for hook up help, while Randall camps outside the Ramones upcoming venue(where she hopes to lay a new song she's written, aptly called "Rock 'n' Roll High School" on the band) for three days to buy tickets for herself and most of the student body.Togar is aided by two portly hall monitors, Hansel and Gretel, who assist her in showcasing the damaging effects of rock n' roll on laboratory mice to the music teacher(my only argument here is The Nuge should have been much higher on the Rock-O-Meter), McGree(Paul Bartel) and the gym teacher, Coach Steroid(Alex Elias), while Randall leads the girl's gym in an impromptu rendition of her song.After Togar jacks Riff's tickets, she retreats to her bedroom to self-medicate with a phatty jibber, and daydreams that The Ramones are playing to her.

Three of my favorite food groups all in the same screenshot.
Randall and Rambeau score another pair of tickets off of Screamin' Stevens'(Don Steele)radio show at the last minute after setting up a van date(I need to get me one of those vintage bad boys) that night with Tom and Eaglebauer.At the show, Riff's attempts to get her sheet music backstage to Joey and company are thwarted by overzealous groupie, Angel Dust, and the band's manager.McGree shows up in a French pee-pee hat, pogoing next to a giant rocked-out mouse-turned-Ramones-fan.Eaglebauer and Tom show up and foil Dust's hasty getaway with Riff's music, as Tom decides that it's really Kate he digs afterall.A furious Togar hears Riff on the mic at the show, and calls the parents to schedule a Ramones record burning which causes the entire student body to rise up and take over the school, chucking filing cabinets out the windows and spray-painting graffiti on the walls.The Ramones arrive on the scene and play amidst the chaos, giving Riff a signature leather jacket, making her an honorary Ramone.Togar calls in the police, and when the chief(Dick Miller) calls for an evacuation of school property, Randall and friends exit the premises with a trick up their sleeves.The Ramones play the title track in front of the crowd of police and dismayed parents as Riff detonates bombs that Kate built in chem lab, blowing the entire school up and adding Togar to the growing list of basket case educators."Now that's what I call 'anarchy'!" as (P)Rik used to say...

"Listen, Bottin, you can dress in as many giant mouse costumes as you want, you still gotta pay the cover charge, pal."
Everytime I hear Ramones classics like "Blitzkrieg Bop", "Sheena is a Punk Rocker", "Teenage Lobotomy", or "She's The One", it always takes me back to the good 'ol days at venues like CB/GB's, The Rat, TLA, E Factory, The Pipeline, Coney Island High, Stalag 13, and some others across the east coast I used to dig going to.As a lifer, I still never completely rule out a good circle pit now and then.Anybody who's ever taken the rebellious route in life, even for just a moment, will appreciate this movie for what it is.Loud, fast, and fun.On the scale, a perfect four Wops and my highest recommendation.Togar eats it!

At least Joey's grill-cam didn't catch him at an unflattering angle...Ahem.Yeah.

"Galaxy of Terror"(1981)d/Bruce D. Clark

Dio scapa da letto senza gambe!The weather's like your family favorite,overachieving dork cousin out there,pals o' mine,no matter how much time you spend with it,it never seems to get any cooler.That one,like my last live-in girlfriend,was cheap and easy.I'm planning on partying it up a little bit once the sun goes down,but I wanted to throw a new review up for you guys beforehand.I've been dragging ass the past couple of days,the heat's got me moving slower than the second reel of "A Clockwork Orange"(1971) over here.All truth.Current humidity-based lethargy aside,we're on ched to surpass all three previous years at the Wop in review volume regardless,so go easy on me,you ass-slap happy bastiges.I did the rural Pennsyltucky amusement park thing the other day,and if I had a dime for every semi-nude overdeveloped teenage girl with dirty feet I saw,I'd be breaking open a brand spankin' new carton o' smokes right about now.I'm happy to report we've recently moved up to the number three spot for exploitation movies on networked blogs,tanto meglio e molto grazie a tutti dei miei "woprophile" amici,abbracciandoti e baciandoti caramente!E' figo.Vieni con me,non e' vero?
The colorful,eye catching one-sheet for tonight's entry hung in my room for quite a while back in the eighties after seeing it at the Gateway Twin Cinema in '81,and when someone'd ask about the movie it represented,I'd exclaim,matter-of-factly:"You're looking at the best part of it." which is really speaking volumes,because the two hardest things to do in 1981,in no particular order,were:squeezing your ass into Sergio Valente jeans then evening the giant cuffs at the bottom,and convincing an eleven year old me that there was a such thing as a bad horror movie.I'd just never buy it.I'd defend any horror movie,regardless of how bad it was,to anybody.But even that younger version of me would still tell you that this one sucks.As years went by,the one-sheet came down off my wall,and the movie disappeared from my memory,for the most part.Then,inexplicably,I started romanticizing about it,forgetting what my old man had said as he walked outta the theater with me("That was STUPID!And CHEAP!")and wanting to see it again,recalling an impressive cast of B-movie staples like Erin "Happy Days" Moran,Sid Haig,Edward Albert,Robert Englund,and Ray "My Favorite Martian" Walston,and something about a giant space maggot raping a pillow-chested broad and sliming her to death.As the VHS era had long since passed,and I had dumped thousands upon thousands of video tapes,and since tonight's review had been surpassed for dvd release to that point,I scored myself a bootleg,and got comfy on the couch with two packs of smokes and ample AMP energy drinks,ready to rediscover what I had convinced myself was a "lost gem"...

Alluma(Moran) is psi-sensitive.Mean nothing to you?Don't sweat it,it means nothing to the plot,either.
The spaceship Quest is sent to the far-off planet of Morganthus by a gent called the Planet Master,who's sort of like the Dungeon Master except his head is a glowing red ball of light instead of greasy hair,coke bottle glasses,and zits the size of golf balls,to investigate a recent crash and search for stranded castaways.Aboard the Quest,Captain Trantor(Grace Zabriskie),the lone survivor of a historic disaster which has her entire crew wary of her piloting skills,puts their minds at ease with roughly thirty seconds to prepare for her several dangerously risky hyperspace jumps to the planet,culminating in a crash landing next to the ship they were sent to look for in the first place.See?She was the right woman for the job,afterall.After some limp in-fighting,the crew sends a surface team out consisting of Quuhod(Haig),who has a hard on for crystal throwing stars,Alluma(Moran),who is psi-sensitive and the main love interest of Cabren(Albert),the ship's official porn stache,Cook(Walston),who is...yeah,the ship's cook,Baelon(Zalman King),Ranger(Englund),the ship's high-strung engineering officer who loves to argue,Damiela(Taaffe O'Connell),the blonde with big tits who's afraid of worms,Commander Ilva,and Private Cos,the intergalactic reboot of Don Knott's Mr. Chicken.Upon finding the corpses of the former crew,the quick-thinking,hair-triggered team incinerates them immediately with laser fire.Thinking nothing of it,they return to their ship,leaving Cos behind to have his brain chewed upon by a stop motion insect-thing of palpable low budgeted origins.

Robert Englund,pre-cheesy glove knives,holding a cheesy prop laser pistol instead.
The crew sets out again to locate the rootage of the distress call,this time investigating the giant alien pyramid a few hundred feet away.Ilva,overwhelmed by his duties,hands command over to Baelon,and is then sucked dry by retractable rubber hand puppets.Quuhod uses his crystals to gain entrance to the pyramid,but is emotionally devastated when they break,and even more so when a shard flies into his arm,causing him to sever it before it does any more damage,failing stoutheartedly when that severed arm plants a crystal into his chest.Damiela stumbles upon Quuhod's corpse,teaming with maggots only moments later,and incinerates it according to ship protocol,only one little writhing critter escapes the flame,only to grow to enormous size,and tear off all her gear with its slime-soaked mandibles and hump her to death,coating those sweater puppies with ooze and leaving her slimy,naked corpse very dead,and apparently,well satisfied.The captain manages to cook herself alive like a Christmas ham,Baelon gets dispatched by a lackluster rubbery beastie,and Alluma gets squeezed by disappointingly non-rape minded tentacles that cause her head to explode(wouldn't you have loved to see that on Happy Days?Fonzie:"Whooooaaa,Shortcake's head just exploded,Mr. C!Conference in my office.")leaving Ranger and Cabren to realize that its the crew's own inborn fears that are killing them.So...what's the scientific term for fear of being raped to death by giant space maggots again?Cabren faces off against the Planet Master,who's doffed off his Ray Walston cook disguise,and slipped into his more comfortable red glowing head,and informs the 'stache that the pyramid was a toy for the minds of ancient race's children to overcome their fears.Cabren kills the Master for wiping out his crew,thus replacing him as the new Planet Master,his moustache forever obscured by a nifty red glowing head.

"Baby,that's it!Stroke my laterohypopharyngeal organ,you filthy little minx!"
It took me several days to gather my thoughts on this production,and it'll probably take you twice as long to sit through the damned thing.This would be the second film James Cameron worked on,as production designer and second unit director,and it's been said the infamous space maggot rape scene was handled by Jimbo himself.Gotta give the guy credit for that,at least.That's not something very many filmmakers can throw on a resume,right?Another tasty bit of useless trivia concerning Galaxy,is that no less than four members of the principal cast has appeared in different incarnations of Star Trek,with Haig actually appearing on the original series itself.I'm sure all of them would agree that this was a budgetary step downwards from then.This would also mark the last film Clark would direct,after helming genre fare like Hammer prior to in the seventies,giving rise to the question,how much of a talentless hack behind the camera lens do you have to be before the likes of Roger Corman sends you curbward?Once you've sit through Galaxy,the answer will make itself apparent to you.The film met with ratings board resistance early on,facing an X rating if it didn't greatly expurgate the infamous horny foodworm scene(it was all there in the theater),though later prints would restore the scene in its entirety.Besides the rubbery special effects,it must be noted that the script also fucking sucks and is brutally lazy,where every character's lines are bereaft of personality save for some bickering and whining,all of which is delivered lifelessly,of course.Corman could have had himself a medicore Alien-rip off on his hands,but the finished product falls well flat of even that grade curve.The only positives I could cull from the whole experience are the aforementioned fly larva-fuck scene,and as inept and boring as it stands,at least it isn't Inseminoid(1981).Rubbery monster hands emerge from openings on a familiar set used on two or three other movies previously, and slap a mere single wop across your face.As my father said that day in 1981,"That was STUPID!And CHEAP!".Father knows best.

He was about to facepalm himself for signing on to do this yawnapalooza,but a rubber hand beat him to it.

"Humanoids from the Deep"(1980)d/Barbara Peters

A Roger Corman-produced eighties throwback to monster movies of the fifties,Humanoids boasts a solid B cast,effective Rob Bottin makeup and effects,and the horniest mutant salmon monsters you've ever seen.Plenty of gore,boobs,intolerance,and hokey science delivered by a dame abound in this low budget gem.A remake was made years later for Showtime sans the sex,nudity,and gore,but the question arises:Why fuck with Corman gold?

Doug McClure and Ann Turkel,both rocking the puffy vest.
Fishermen from the sleepy fishing burg of Noyo(where EVERYONE'S a fisherman,and everyone rocks puffy vests) have got a whale in their nets,only it's a pissed-off titular humanoid from the deep,who proceeds to make mincedmeat of the net,pulling one of the fishermen under the boat and treating him like human goldfish flakes.One of the other anglers tries firing a flare into the air for help,but in an instant jackass move(add water and stir),slips and fires it into the deck,causing the boat to explode,killing everyone aboard.Nice one,jackass,the humanoids weren't formidable enough to kill everyone off in the first place without you pulling a Jerry Lewis.
Peggy and Jerry are showing affection for each other in the ebbing surf when Jerry is pulled under the water.When he lifelessly pops up,his face looks like thinly-sliced pancetta.Peggy tries to outrun the amorous amphibian responsible for her boyfriend's death,but to no avail.The humanoid throws her into a pile of sludge in the sand,rips off her bikini,and treats her like a Bowery prostitute(insert porno wah wah pedal guitar).

"That's right!That's right!Who's yer effin' daddy,bitch!"
Amidst the fishy sex and gore,there's Jim(Doug McClure) and Hank(Vic Morrow).Jim is a two-fisted,beer drinking environmentally-conscious fisherman.Hank is a two-fisted,beer drinking company man who fishes and hates Indians.The company is Canco,which has been genetically altering salmon with a growth hormone, sending Dr. Susan Drake(Ann Turkel) along to make sure their experiments havent grown into seaweed dripping,sex-crazed homicidal monsters along the way.Too late,they have.Oops.
When the humanoids kill the town's dog population,naturally Hank blames the lone Indian,dynamiting his house,and setting the stage for a drunken punch-up outside the local dance.In Hank's defense,he does wear a puffy vest also.

Racial hatred also dons the puffy vest;Meet Hank(Vic Morrow).
In the meantime,a goofy ventriloquist is about to bed a local pretty young thing(with enough vaginal wool to knit your Aunt Beatrice a turtleneck sweater) in a tent on the beach.That doesn't happen.A humanoid shows up and cockblocks the voice-thrower,killing him and humping her.By the time Jim and Dr. Drake(who,by the way,shows her feelings for Jim by rocking a puffy vest,too)have caught on to the gist of the whole terrifying affair(The humanoids are mating with human females to further evolve.Brrrrrrr.),the fishy lotharios have set their sights on the local carnival,showing up in murderous schools of fishmen to murder the town's men,and rape the women,among them,this year's "Salmon Queen"(I wonder if anyone else sees the irony here...)who tries to escape,but the result is the same:bikini ripped off,fishman lovin'.Jim resourcefully uses gasoline to dispatch the humanoids,and all looks to have returned to normal the next morning,except Peggy,who was discovered half-alive in a bed of seaweed on the beach,delivers, to the dismay of the pediatrics doctors, a screaming bloody baby humanoid from the deep from her torn-open belly.Fishmen:1,Noyo:0.

Is that a tentacle in your pocket,or are you just glad to see me?
Always dug this movie when I was a kid,maybe it was the cool creatures and gore,probably all the boobs and bush shots,but either way,it still delivers the fishy goods after all these years.Roger Corman has always managed to entertain the audience,despite monetary or artistic shortcomings,and for that,he remains a personal favorite.Check it out!
Two out of four B.W.'s