"Cat People" (1982) d/ Paul Schrader

I remember rolling with the pre-release buzz around this one, a loose remake of the 1942 original, in all the genre mags of the day,  yet coming away from my first screening feeling pretty underwhelmed by it all somehow. By 1982, I guess I must have expected full-blown FX-dripping transformation sequences and gory murders abound, a much harder nut to crack in my early teens on monster-based matters than most. I like it a lot more now, and it's easy to see why: A superb cast built on familiar names like Malcolm McDowell, Nastassja Kinski, Lynn Lowry, and Ruby Dee, an engaging screenplay written by Alan Ormsby, who had a hand in some of my favorite movies of the prior decade (Deathdream, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Deranged), some effectively minimalist makeup and gore work from Tom Burman, and competent direction from the guy who brought you Blue Collar(1978) and American Gigolo(1980).


Lynn Lowry can be a scratching post in my pad anytime.
Irena (Kinski) meets up with her long-lost brother Paul (McDowell) in New Orleans, having been separated since the death of their animal trainer parents in early childhood. He leaves his sibling with Female (Dee), his Creole housekeeper, while he slips off to maul a leggy prostitute (Lowry) after having taken the form of a melanistic leopard, as he sometimes enjoys doing. His feral indiscretions lead to an abrupt capture by the local police, aided by the hearty tranquilizers of some nearby zoo-hands, who transport the feline Paul to his new permanent res: a smelly, undersized zoo cage. His sister, also a were-leopard, though unrealized as yet, sniffs him out at the zoo, with her feline sensuality even attracting Oliver (John Heard), who hires her for the gift shop on the spot. For Paul, sex with humans transforms him into a big cat, but only by murdering one can he change back. Enter one poor bastard named Joe (Begley, Jr.), who gets a little too close to Paul's enclosure while carrying out his zoological duties, and eats arm-torn death because of it.


Watch Ed Begley, Jr. become less arm-ly, and thus, considerably more leg-ly.
As it goes, Paul suggest that he and his sister begin an incestuous relationship, as it is the only physical contact that either sibling can experience without metamorphosis occurring. A blech-worthy proposal until you factor in that the entire were-cat race is based on incest and your sister just so happens to be Nastassja Kinski. Well, Irena's more interested in having sex with Oliver, who's holding Alice (Annette O'Toole) at bay just for a chance to have sex with Irena, who would transform into a leopard if she had sex with...yeah, you get the idea. Paul's jealousy lands him on an autopsy table, where he ultimately disintegrates, leaving the oft-nude Irena to ponder the difficult decision between a sex-less romance with Oliver or life as a huge jungle feline. I'll leave the finale for you to discover when you check this one out for yourselves...


That's an odd-shaped fur ball.
There are some notable cameos from Dan "Night Court" Larroquette and Ray "Twin Peaks" Wise to mention. The always adorable Kinski is perfect here, exuding feline sensuality throughout the nearly two hour running time and bare-assed nearly as long, and I suppose McDowell is equally cattish, leaping about and preening himself when he isn't trying to slip 'Tass the brotherly bone. Speaking of sexies, Lynn Lowry also gets semi-nude for the cinematic cause, as per usual, as does O'Toole, who's in possession of the most impressive breasts of the lot, flat-chested McDowell included. Needless to say, the Giorgio Moroder score and familiar title track by Bowie are equally impressive. It's an odd, little movie that carves it's own erotic were-leopard thriller niche in the genre-drenched decade of the eighties, and holds up pretty well over thirty years later. Altered states will heighten your experience. Just sayin'. You'd do well to add a Shout! Factory copy to your collection immediately, if it isn't already there, that is. On the scale, People purrs it's way around my leg to three wops. Recommended.


Animal whisperer that I am, I'd put out a saucer o' milk for a sweet little stray like this one.

"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.

"Deranged"(1974)d/Alan Ormsby & Jeff Gillen

Few real-life people have inspired more box office screams than the legendary 'Butcher of Plainfield', Ed Gein.Without Eddie, there would be no "Norman, bring me my chair!", no "Look what your brother did to the door!", no "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."One of the more accurate cinematic accounts of his monstrous deeds came in 1974 when uncredited producer Benjamin "Bob" Clark handed the directorial reigns of tonight's review to Alan Ormsby and Jeff Gillen, who he'd worked with on Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things(1972) and Deathdream(1974), after deciding that the script was too distressing for his tastes.The film, considered lost for years after its initial release on the drive-in circuit, marked the beginning of a long and illustrious career in special make up effects for a young Tom Savini, who shared the grue duties with writer/co-director Orsmby.The movie turned up as half of a MGM Midnight Movies double bill dvd with Motel Hell(1980), and then a lush 30th Anniversary Collectors Edition popped up five years later in Germany, which restored a notorious brain-scooping sequence ommitted from U.S. prints, offering an anamorphic widescreen print, a booklet, and a slew of excellent documentaries and extras(Of course, I had to have both, genre snob that I no doubt am).A grim black comedy benefitting from an effective star turn by Roberts Blossom as "Ezra Cobb, the Butcher of Woodside" and Carl Zittrer's creative use of The Old Rugged Cross hymn as a moody instrumental throughout, Deranged remains a must see cult classic for horror-hungry woprophiles and true crime buffs alike.Forwards!

"I thought SpaghettiOs were yer favorite, Mama!"
An onscreen narrator(Leslie Carlson)sets us off on our journey into the psychosis-ridden mind of one Ezra Cobb(Roberts Blossom), a backwoods shut-in whose world revolves around his domineering, bed ridden, bible thumper of a mama(Cosette Lee) who warns,"...the wages of sin are syphilis, gonorrhea, and death!" and rants about "sluts with pus-filled sores".She finally turns her toes up one fateful day as he's spooning hot green slop down her throat, geysering blood from her nose and mouth which Ezra flaccidly tries to spoon back into her deceased yap.A lonely year later, he decides to rescue his mother from the coffin she's spent the last twelve months rotting inside.He's pulled over by a policeman as he's bringing the stench-drenched wench back to the farmhouse, downplaying the foul odor as from a slaughtered pig and later apologizing to her decayed cadaver for calling her a hog(!).A year long dirt nap has taken its toll on Mrs. Cobb's grill-piece, leading her faithful son to study taxidermy and embalming, robbing random graves for spare parts to preserve and repair her worsening condition after a neighbor explains the concept of newspaper obituaries to him.At the behest of his mother/own twisted mind, he agrees to meet up with Maureen Selby(Marion Waldman),a portly local psychic and long-time friend of his mother's, who they both trust because she's fat(!!).When Maureen uses a hokey seance as an excuse to hurl her tonnage at Ezra, he panics and shoots her in the face through a down pillow.Soon, Cobb is exhuming more corpses to keep his mother company, and for making soup bowls out of their skulls and drumheads and clothing out of their tanned and stretched skin.Creativity has no boundaries when you're mentally insane.

Ya got yer Cobb-wear that's made of embalmed ladies, a heart in a frying pan and lips on a string...
A bartender named Mary(Micki Moore) tickles Ezra's fancy, and when she turns down his amorous advances, he slashes her car's tires, then shows up offering her a ride and tire change with no romantic implications whatsoever.Instead, he takes her back to the farmhouse, tying her down to a dining room chair amidst his collection of putrefying trophies, proudly showing her his handiwork and even donning a human skin mask himself before she breaks loose, tossing the brittle bodies at him in attempt to escape.He finally propitiates her minor revolt by braining her in the skull with a human femur.Next, general store clerk Sallie Mae(Pat Orr)becomes Ezra's object of obsession, and while his neighbors are off hunting, he wings the young innocent with a .22 in broad daylight while she's working, and throws her unconscious body into the back of his truck.On the ride back to the farmhouse, she regains consciousness and jumps out, leading Ezra on a wild goose chase through the surrounding woods before he finally dispatches her with another shell.As Sallie has gone missing, the authorities deduct that Ezra was the last customer in the store, and a posse races to the Cobb farmhouse to rescue the poor girl.Meanwhile, Ezra has strung Sallie's body up like a freshly killed deer, gutting her appropriately to the delight of his mother's wishes.When the group arrives, they find Ezra sitting among his morbid collection, giggling uncontrollably, another one for the rubber room.The narrator tells us that a few nights later a similar posse gathered itself up and burned the Cobb farm to the ground.

One of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn't belong...
Co-director Gillen spent most of his career playing small roles in Bob Clark's films, most notably, the department store Santa in A Christmas Story(1983) before passing away at the tender age of 53.Though most of you will remember Alan Ormsby's cornea-searing seventies wear and obnoxious demeanor in Children Shouldn't, he makes a bald wigged cameo here in a picture frame as Maureen Selby's dead husband.Harvey Keitel(!) auditioned for the role of Ezra.I'll give you a few minutes to visualize the impersonation of how that went that I'm currently embarking on...Deranged remains one of the most accurate screen depictions of the sordid Ed Gein story to date, heads and tails above Ed Gein(2000) and the embarrassing direct-to-video Ed Gein:Butcher of Plainfield(2007) with the laughingly miscast Kane Hodder portraying Eddie as a muscle-bound meathead.Uhhh, fail?Though more humorous than scary, Deranged maintains an eerie mood throughout, and scores three big ones on the scale.Necessary viewing.

# of blood-drenched milkwagons in "Deranged": Two big ol' good 'uns.

"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.