"Revenge" (1986) d/ Christopher Lewis

You may or may not remember me examining director Christopher Lewis' debut effort, the shot-on-video slasher of the clamshell variety, Blood Cult (1985), some three years ago now. Clink the link, in any case, and reacquaint yourself with my thoughts on it. Tonight's review stands as the 16 mm-to-video sequel to that movie, starring Patrick Wayne, who'd fallen to these Wednesday night video rental depths from his epic drive in portrayal of Sinbad in 1977's Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, and the prolific John Carradine in one of six appearances he'd make two years from his death in 1988. Thanks to the yobbos at VCI, you can dump a tenner for the dvd, then question your very sanity, wondering why you ever bothered, just like I did...

 
"Maybe you should have stuck to handing out Lenin propaganda to hippies at the squat, Bernie..."
Those crazy Caninus cultists are back at it again, gutting nosey reporter broads in dark alleys, leaving behind those doggie coins at the scene of the crime as a sort of plastic-looking calling card for exactly... nobody who seem to be investigating the murders. When they give Carlton Moore (James Potts) an axe-face death for foolishly investigating that weird noise in the barn, it leaves only his plucky wife, Gracie (Bennie Lee McGowan), to fend off the real estate-maddened zealots, who try to scare her off with a lone motorcyclist, a madman who performs minor ramp jumps and menacingly (not really) kicks her pickup door in hopes that she'll sell the farm to the cult, seeing how their sacrificial altar to Caninus happens to fall inside her property line. Couldn't you guys just kill her and be done with it? Apparently not. The suffering continues...


No amount of percocet can remedy this Axe-head(r)in' headache.
Luckily for Gracie, a savior arrives on the scene in the form of Mike Hogan (Patrick Wayne), a former neighbor who's looking to sate his curiosity on the mysterious events surrounding his brother's death after paying respects to her late husband at his funeral, where the secret cultists strongly suggest she dump her farm deed in the wastepaper basket, right next to this movie's screenplay, I'd imagine. Some more brutal deaths, including a beheaded local horny bikini teen in a hot tub, lead the unlikely duo to investigate together, eventually booby trapping the cult's backwoods digs to rain on the sacrificial parade on an unholy night, with even a U.S. senator (John Carradine, looking more arthritically twisted than usual and mostly unaware of his surroundings) in attendance. Gee, I hope there's not a foreseeable twist ending in the works.


Michael's sister really appreciated those free tickets to the Nu Shooz concert.
At the time of this release, around my junior year in high school,  stuff like this was delegated to the middle of the week in my inner circle, and recognized as cheap thrills in comparison to the European stuff we were also tuning in to in the mid to late eighties. Compared to some of the direct-to-video junk being churned out these days, it's actually not that bad, though it certainly isn't good, either. The rubbery demon suit in the finale was kind of ambitious considering the blood letting leading up to it is downright miserly in volume, and far too infrequent in between great periods of uninspired dialog between John Wayne's son and a poor man's Angela Lansbury in Bennie Lee McGowan. Alas, I'm not about to let my teenage nostalgia sway the one Wop score this one surely deserves as revenge for making me endure it again after all these years. Looks good on you, Revenge. Wear it proudly.


"The Reese's Cup melted in my pocket on me...I hate licking my fingers."

"Nocturna" (1979) d/ Harry Tampa

If it wasn't for the emetic disco soundtrack double LP (I'm queasy just typing that) turning up now and again in record store cut-out bins, you might never know about tonight's review, a dreadful mess from the guy who brought you Fairy Tales and Auditions (both 1978), with enough disco, vampires, bad jokes, bad acting, and let's not forget disco, to leave your end of the "me" decade nostalgia purposely untapped for years to come. The film stars a thirty-five year old French/Vietnamese belly dancer named Nai Bonet, who pronounces her English dialogue correctly enough, she just can't string words together in a sentence without leaving the viewer feeling like they're in a logging mill. And if you think she's a lousy actress (and you will), wait 'til you see her spinning around repetitively in a gaudy disco gown for five minutes or more, the first time. Oh, 1979, you ate it sooo hard. Brother Theodore plays a horny werewolf who never transforms, and John Carradine's hands look like something out of a Picasso painting. Sy Richardson and Yvonne DeCarlo should be equally ashamed.


"If my arthritis-decimated punch-knuckles haven't creeped you out, let me play with my dentures for you!", exclaims Count Dracula (John Carradine).
Dracula's castle has fallen upon an economic rough patch by 1978, as it has since been turned into the Hotel Transylvania, as managed by the Count's ever-stiff, ever-smiling granddaughter, Nocturna (Nai Bonet), who keeps the geryatric King of vampires alive in the castle's basement catacombs. Dracula (John Carradine) drinks blood from a glass, pops his dentures in, and makes toilet jokes. Nocturna's assistant, Theodore (Brother Theodore) is a power-crazed werewolf who's been waiting for the Count to finally pass away, when he isn't hiding in the shadows peering in on Nocturna as she takes a lengthy bubble bath, followed by a hearty full frontal on-camera self-oil down. While watching an out-of-sync disco group called Moment of Truth rehearse for their upcoming gig in the Hotel's Claret Room (stop, you're killing me.), she falls for the gay blonde bassist (Antony Hamilton) who shows her how to move like a jagoff on a discotheque floor and they soon share an unerotic sex scene that wouldn't turn on Milosh the Filthy Stud zooted on cattle aphrodisiac.


"I'm-falling-in-love-with-your-embarrassing-disco-moves!", blurts the robotic Nocturna (Nai Bonet).
Determined to leave the vampire lifestyle behind, Nocturna and Jimmy head to Manhattan, where she meets with Jugulia (Yvonne DeCarlo), a relative who lives under the Brooklyn Bridge, and is introduced to a group of bloodsuckers, including a vampire pimp named RH Factor (Sy Richardson), who turn into cartoon bats when the fuzz busts in. Nocturna meets Jimmy at the Starship Discovery Disco, and they stink up the dance floor for several minutes at a time to dated-sounding disco tunes that never cracked the Top 100. She pays RH a visit and watches as his stable of vampiric bitches take their tops off and put the bite on some unsuspecting Manhattan Jew. Dracula and Theodore leave Transylvania for New York to return Nocturna to her homeland and heritage, and then there's more bad jokes, disco dancing, and whirling around clumsily. Theodore kidnaps the young couple, but Nocturna busts out of a fake-looking laundry bag to save her new beau, fangs out, before he can tap Jimmy's blood. "Go vey! Filth! Unspeakable filth!" says Teddy. Dracula shows up at the discotheque himself, and causes some piss poor visual effects to happen with his gnarled hands, but ultimately ends up sharing a coffin with Jugulia, and letting Nocturna face her first non-fatal sunrise with her mortal lover. Cue some more disco.


"If you hate my bad acting and even worse dancing, I can just cover my body in oil for you."
Bonet, who spent three hundred fifty thousand dollars of her own dough to finance the film and soundtrack, also appeared nude in an issue of Gallery to promote the film. Luckily for moviegoers, her acting career never made it to 1980. Her muscle-bound-yet-talentless blonde co-star, Antony Hamilton, later died of A.I.D.S.-related complications. If I bought the Media VHS (the last official release the movie has ever seen, to date, FYI) back in the early eighties (I snagged one for a buck or two as the video store era came to a close in the early nineties, and never once felt compelled to play it), chances are, I'd have been saltier than the Dead Sea. To any aspiring genre manufacturers currently mapping out a steelbook Bluray restoration, or other such silly nonsensical edition of tonight's review, I say to you: Don't you fucking dare do it. Some movies, like this one, do not deserve such a treatment.  Leave it buried forever, in it's concrete crypt, where it belongs. O solo woppo.


"You paid vivty bahks for ze vintage Media VHS? Go ah-vey! Filth! Unspeakable filth!!!"

"The White Buffalo"(1977)d/J. Lee Thompson

Tonight's entry is respectfully dedicated to Rikard,a bro with similar appreciation for the tits items in life.I'm finally getting around to this one well over a year later?Better late than never, haha.When I got dragged to see this one by my old man, a Bronson freak of great reknown the world over, I was mainly interested in seeing the titular pale bison trampling cowboys and indians alike under vengeful hooves.I didn't groove on Charlie's distinctive monotone action vibe 'til I hit double digits.For a skinny little Italian kid with a penchant for monstruous creature features like I was,producer Dino De Laurentiis' mid to late seventies stretch of bombastic animals gone awry movies was the emotional equivalent of missing Thursday and Friday from school with a fever,getting couch-based TLC from the em and pee,new toys,Nugent lps,and horror movie marathons(even though I just may have been technically healthy enough Thursday night for school on Friday,I may or may not have embellished the illness' seriousness for a few hours the next morning just to add on to the upcoming weekend.Parlaying sickness into accrued kid wealth and prolonged "me" time at age eight.And to think some skeptics have doubted my genius...).Just give me some sort of pissed off animal of significant size on a human-hating hullabaloo,and I'd eat it up with a fork,no questions asked.Tonight's entry was no different,at the time.

If there's one thing Bill Hickok(Charles Bronson) hates more than the top bunk, it's hard-charging mechanical buffalo puppets that haunt his dreams.

We meet Wild Bill Hickok(Charles Bronson) roused from the middle of his latest nightmare with guns a-blazin' towards a white bison of mythical proportions that frequently tramples through the legendary gunslinger's subconscious with the discretion of a diesel train.He's powerful opposed to such things, see, and ruinin' a feller's dreams like 'et is fixin' to get blasted, round these parts.Hickokski tracks the beast, pairing up with a cantankerous old geezer(Jack Warden) while pit stopped in a one cow town, while elsewhere, Crazy Horse(Will Sampson), the Indian, not the forty-ouncer, is having very real quandary of his own with the albino instigator, having selfishly trampled the Chief's entire village and murdered his own child just for the eff of it.Forced to repair his wounded pride and restore his tribal stature, Horse must hunt the animal himself, or forever be known as 'The Worm' to his peers, the first nation equivalent of being called a "Shirley", I'd wager.

When he's not trampling Hickok's dreams and destroying native villages under vengeful hooves, the white buffalo also enjoys long, impressionistic gallops in the snow and the music of  Lobo.

 When the men inevitably meet, they communicate through crazy sign language, despite speaking perfect English to each other at the same time, mind you, and after saving each other's lives in ambushes, respectively, they declare themselves 'blood brothers', even though both men are blindly determined to be the one to finally bag the achromatic fucker, singlehandedly.Hickok even turns down some choice western-style trim from the obligatory hooker with a heart o'gold(Kim Novak, in one of her final roles) while sharing a bed with her(!).Talk about dedication to the cause, baby.Stuart Whitman, Slim Pickens, and John Carradine all make their contrived genre cameos, while Clint Walker does a good job in a rare villainous turn.Though the beast is seemingly immortal, and powerful enough to barrel through mountainous snow and rock walls, the unlikely duo eventually fell it, with Crazy Horse riding atop and skinning it with a knife like a feathered Ahab of the West; the shabby plastic snow and less-than-believable sets pretty much serving as a final resting place, if not for the Hollywood western(Heaven's Gate would finish the job a few years later), then definitely for the horror/western/adventure.

Nevermind your healthy skepticism of my white skin.Lead me to your peyote, More-Ornate-Than-Wolves(Will Sampson).

Bronson was born Charles Buchinsky in the coal region of the Allegheny's in Pennsylvania to Polish and Lithuanian parents, changing his name to 'Bronson' during the McCarthy hearings because he thought his real name sounded 'too Russian'(!).Buffalo was his last picture for UA, a box-office dud that really signalled the end of his real creative ambitions in film, though he'd again work with director J. Lee Thompson on typical Bronson-fare titles like 10 To Midnight(1983) and The Evil That Men Do(1984), staying busy right up to his last feature, Death Wish V:The Face of Death(1994), before succumbing at the age of 81 in 2003.A real favorite of mine since my teens, Bronson's contribution to film, and the action genre in particular, is immeasurable, and really, he's great here as Hickok, a performance that's been brought to light since the film's recent re-evaluation by movie fans everywhere.On the scale, Buffalo earns two Wops, a very watchable exercise in exploitation.Check it out.

With the Great White Buffalo, they gonna make a final stand in the new, magic land.
 

The Howling(1980)d/Joe Dante

Call me a grit-eating freak over here,but I've always held Dante's lycanthr-opus in higher regard than Landis' "An American Werewolf in London".For all of Rick Baker's creature FX mastery,his four-legged moon beast came off like an angry teddy bear that moved like Angillas(from the Godzilla movies)in a wheelchair.Rob Bottin,given the work by Baker himself when he bowed out to work on American Werewolf, won the werewolf battle in my mind.Overall,Dante's flick was a bit funnier,paid more tributes to the genre,had stronger,more unsettling gore,and had a stronger cast.Which is not to say I'm not a fan of Landis' movie,I just think "The Howling" may very well be the best modern werewolf movie to date.

Before there was Stargate for Robert Picardo,there was Moongate.
Karen White(Dee Wallace) is a news reporter in contact with a sadistic serial killer named Eddie(Robert Picardo) who horribly mutilates women.They arrange to meet in a porn parlour beat-off booth on Hollywood Boulevard so that he can give Karen the scoop on why he kills.Eddie begins to transform into something before Karen's eyes,but is riddled with bullets by the badge boys in blue who have been tailing her.Her nightly bad dreams about the incident bring her to her headshrinker,Dr. Waggoner(Patrick Macnee)who suggests she and her husband,Bill(Christopher Stone) take a therapeutic vacation at his hideaway he calls "The Colony".In the meantime,Karen's friends Chris and Terry(Belinda Balaski,of Dante's earlier "Piranha"(1979))turn up evidence in Eddie's apartment that he might not have been barking up the wrong tree.Sketches of beast-men and women,wolves,and a retreat by the sea force the duo to delve deeper into Eddie's manias.
At The Colony,Karen meets a colorful crowd of the Dr's patients currently staying there,including a grizzled old man named Erle Kenton(one of John Carradine's last roles) who tries to throw himself into the fire at a bonfire/pig roast the first night.Karen's husband is taken by the feral beauty of Marsha(Elisabeth Brooks),who wears animal skins and bone necklaces and carries herself like an alley cat in heat.

As tempting as it may look,fellatio from Marsha(Elisabeth Brooks) might be a bad idea.
At night,Karen is now plagued by howling wolves in the distance to go with her nightmares and husband's wandering eye.Bill goes hunting with the boys,gets scratched by some sort of wild animal, and bags several rabbits,which Marsha's hunchbacked brother suggests he deliver to their shack in the woods,so she can skin and cook them for him.Later that night he rendezvous with Marsha by a fire in the woods,where both turn into werewolves as they fuck.Back home,Eddie's body goes missing from the morgue as Terry decides to meet Karen out at The Colony.When she arrives at the doctor's office,she notices the similarities between Eddie's landscape sketch and the Colony itself.As she digs through the doctor's case files,she is interrupted by a snarling werewolf who abruptly picks her up by the neck and tears it out with one bite.Back home,Chris is stockpiling silver bullets from a curio shop(run by the one and only Dick Miller!)and heading out to the Colony himself.Karen stumbles upon Terry's mutilated body,and is greeted by Eddie,still riddled with bullet holes,who digs into one of them to give her a piece of his mind(literally)as he begins to transform into a werewolf.She throws acid in his face and escapes to find Chris has come to her rescue.Will they escape intact?Will they rid the countryside of murderous Wyle E. Coyote looklikes?Does Dick Miller deliver anymore one liners?You'll have to see for yourself...

This coyote doesn't need ACME gimmicks to mess you up.
Cameos in the film include Roger Corman,writer John Sayles, and the late, great Forrest J. Ackerman,holding issues of his own Famous Monsters(# 24 with Werewolf of London cover is clearly visible,har har!)in the bookstore scene.All sorts of visual gags and references to earlier were-movies are spread throughout the production,including characters named after previous werewolf movie directors,adding to the tongue-in-cheek appeal of the film.If you havent seen this by now,where the hell have you been for the past nearly thirty years??I bestow upon it my highest rating of:

Crime is about to take a bite out of Belinda Balaski.

"Bigfoot"(1970)d/Robert F. Slatzer

More like,the corniest monster suits since "Goliathon/The Mighty Peking Man"(1976).
This isn't the worst Bigfoot movie ever made,but only because "Curse of Bigfoot"(1972) exists.Mildly entertaining,mind you,due to the various cult aspects abound within(John Carradine,Haji,groovy campfire dancing,horny hominids kidnapping buxom beauties for mating purposes,etc.),but the damned thing drags like Kharis' bandaged right foot across the floor in any mummy movie worth its moxie.

What was that tagline in the poster about "realistic and horrifying"?
Joi Landis(as played by Joi LanSING) does what any top heavy blonde did for kicks back in the sixties,she pilots a piper cub airplane unconvincingly.When the control panel proves too much for her tiny mind to comprehend,she parachutes out,into the northwest woods(of Big Bear Lake in California),or a Hollywood backlot set,depending on how keen you are to spot these things.She immediately climbs out of her pilot jumpsuit,realizing a skimpy mini with plunging neckline might be better suited for the rough woodland terrain.As she wanders around,Bigfoot,long recognized as a boobs man by the local tribal folklore,puts the moves on her and carries her off,screaming and kicking.

Next on treasure hunt list:half-buried dimestore latex gorilla mask,check.
Jasper and Elmer(Johns Carradine and Mitchum) are two junk dealing travelling salesmen just passing through,when car trouble forces the bumpkins to seek help from the local mountain folk at the general store.Meanwhile out in the woods/set,a young dirtbiking gang with guy nicknamed things like "Wheels" and "Dum-Dum"(!), is throwing a groovy campfire shindig with go-go dancing and beer.One of the couples decides to explore the set/woods on their own,and stumble foolishly onto Bigfoot burial ground,where Bigfeet lazily bury their dead(or cheap latex rubber gorilla masks,depending on who you're talking to)less than an inch from the surface,inspiring screams from the biker's bikini-clad chick.Where there's D cup breasts in an outta sight bikini,Bigfoot is sure to be found,boobsmith that he no doubt is.He lumbers onto the scene,and knocks the young man out with a wild haymaker(!) and drags his screaming chick off into the blackness.

Cleavage shots a'plenty in Bigfoot country.
When the kayoed thrill seeker comes to,he phones Cyrus,the sheriff,who laughs off the boy's wild tale of libidinous primates with "Deputy Hank",his trusty deputy.Jasper and Elmer overhear the story and volunteer to help the biker find his lost girlfriend,with ulterior ideas of capturing the creature and exploiting it for money.Back at Sasquatch's digs,the pole-tied prickteases deduct that Bigfoot is mating with human women and producing hybrid offspring,judging by the children in cheap ape suits curiously sniffing around,much to the dismay of the female bigfeet/women in cheap ape suits.The rescue party ends up getting captured and pole-tied,Bigfoot beats up the biker's motor pals out looking for him,and the sheriff decides to take the numerous call-ins seriously for a change and forms a posse to investigate.In a less-than-thrilling finale,the men manage to seal the giant alpha Bigfoot in a cave with dynamite and life on the mountain returns to normalcy.The end.

"They're practically sub-human, except that they still live like animals!" deduct our befuddled bimbos.
Besides the sub-par performances,pathetic script and special effects(and perhaps the degree that Carradine's arthritis had already twisted his hands into at this point),there's not much "horrifying" stuff to fill you in on here.Worth a look for laughs,it merits only:

The late John Carradine as Jasper B. Hawks,earns yet another paycheck.