"Vampire Cop" (1990) d/ Donald Farmer

From the guy who gave you Demon Queen (1986) and Cannibal Hookers (1987) comes this no-budget SOV vampire opus that's tit-heavy with the heavy tits of cult face, Melissa Moore, who you might recall from things like Sorority House Massacre II (1990) and The Invisible Maniac (1990), lots of spurting stage blood and prop fangs, and a cameo from none other than Mal Arnold, who apparently hadn't learned a thing about acting in the nearly thirty years since he first graced the screen as H.G. Lewis' homicidal Egyptian caterer, Fuad Ramses, in Blood Feast (1963). Chances are, you won't mistake this movie for Herzog's Nosferatu.


I haven't seen that much hanging ham since I walked past the slaughterhouse that time.
...So after seeing a sleeping blonde dreaming of an acid-washed denim-wrapped arm (it's 1990 all day) reach down to silence her and some prop fangs,  there's a bikini contest at a club full of mulleted mooks and meatheads shaking their asses and then this vampire cop named Lucas (Ed Cannon) interrupts an abusive guy forcing himself on a skinny redhead, tearing his shooter hand off and giving him a bloodless neckbite for his troubles. The dreaming blonde (I'm not sure if her dreams constitute nightmares, save for the viewers themselves) turns out to be a reporter named Melanie (Melissa Moore) who's in cahoots with Lucas; their hotel room sabbaticals packing less heat than the Larry O'Brien Trophy Ceremony this past week.


"This was my only role ever!", hisses Lucas (Ed Cannon) of Vampire Vice.
Anyway, lots of dialog is lifelessly delivered by embarrassingly dressed people on depressing-looking sets, some of these people may or may not be drug dealers seeking vindication by kidnapping a prying Lt. Ryan (Mal Arnold), who's getting too close to their operations with his live news commentary, and off-camera chainsawing him up like so much firewood, which his squinty, hesitant line delivery reminds one of at times. There's a featureless finale where Lucas pits his Party City vein-drainers against these polluting palookas, one of which goes vampire himself, and gives a slo-mo plastic-toothed kiss to Melanie before Lucas can overpower him, ending up in a lackluster flaming latex-y sunlight purge and a news report that Joe Dante more effectively showed you nine years earlier. Eject.


"Garbage compactor-cam, after all these years you've caught up to me..." says Fuad Ramses, errr..Lt. Ryan (Mal Arnold).
I probably picked this one up during my storied rental run at Gateway Movieland Video on morbid curiosity born from the words of Michael Weldon's Psychotronic magazine, long-time staple food for my brain, and the opportunity to revisit a guy like Mal Arnold, whose on-camera ineptness kept every kid in my neighborhood in stitches in the early eighties during my parlor screenings. Whatever the case was, it still wasn't worth it. Flesh-wise, it didn't dent the armor of Cinema 309's selection of sin of which I was well familiar with by then, and my ample blood supply from superior underground lenses of the likes of Buttgereit and Peter Jackson (then) remained monopolized, as one might expect. One might also expect the paltry score of a single Wop on the ratings scale for Vampire Cop, and they wouldn't be wrong in doing so. Skip it.


"Look at me, I'm Dee Wallace!", exclaims Melanie (Melissa Moore).

"Blood Feast"(1963)d/Herschell Gordon Lewis

Ahhh,this one takes me back.I was twelve or thirteen when I first ordered tonight's review,along with its follow-up,2,000 Maniacs(1964),from Cult Video,and though I'd already read enough about the movie,nothing could prepare me for the first time I popped it into the Panasonic.Globally recognized as the first splatter film,Feast hasn't got too much else going for it besides that dubious distinction.The acting is abysmal,the camerawork is shoddy,even the soundtrack,ineptly provided by H.G. himself will have you bleeding out of the nose like the fountain at Trevi.My prejudicial love for it aside,this is quite possibly one of the worst movies ever made.As you droogs would expect,this also makes it one of the most enjoyable sixty-seven minutes you could ever spend.Watch as non-actors with hokey drawn on eyebrows stumble through ridiculous dialogue while bowing to a clothes mannekin painted gold.Watch Playboy Playmate for June 1963,Connie Mason,so uncomfortable in front of a camera lens that she shivers,as she makes out with Bill Kerwin,a guy who looks old enough to be her father.Watch animal entrails being amateurishly splashed over curvy Floridian cuties of the day.Awful as it is,it remains the pioneer for all gore flicks that would follow,and deserves its place in horror movie history.

Dig Fuad's crazy hypno-brows.One glance and bitches are under his power.
Victim number one overhears a news broadcast on her transistor radio telling all women in the area to lock their doors and windows,as a killer is loose.Sounds like the optimum time for a bubble bath,with her copy of "Ancient Weird Religious Rites" written by Fuad Ramses(Arnold)nearby.The author pays the young bubblehead a personal visit,and with a long knife,pokes her eye out before some prolonged off-camera hacking produces a bloodied mannekin leg.He'll take that,thanks.Mrs. Fremont(Lyn Bolton),a society well-to-do who looks as though she jacked Minnie Pearl for her wardrobe,inquires about throwing a party for her daughter Suzette(Mason) at an Exotic Catering service,run by none other than...Fuad himself.This guy doesn't keep all his eggs in one basket,does he."Have you ever had...an EGYPTIAN FEAST?"he asks,using his hypno-brows to convince the woman to book him for the party.He limps to the back of his store afterwards,where he's got an altar to Ishtar or Macy's summer Mod line of 1963,one or the other,set up.He talks to the Mother of Gold Spray Paint in Fashion Pose about the upcoming feast,and the ingedients he's yet to collect.Ingredients?A young couple necking on the beach at night is disturbed by a machete-wielding caterer with a limp,the man is knocked cold,the woman is de-brain-ified with the blade,and for some reason,a boa constrictor bears witness to the horrible crime.Afterwards,the Chief(Scott H. Hall) and his lone detective,Pete(Kerwin)discover that both victims belonged to some sort of book club.Pete may have a fledgling hunch about the connection...

Marcy(Ashlyn Marton)didn't have any brains,H.G. had to fake it.
Pete's been cradle robbing with Suzette(judging by Pete's age,he may even have been fallopian tube robbing),and after attending a stuffy lecture on the blood feast of Ishtar,spiced up by a low budget fantasy fleshback sequence,their necking party is interrupted by Pete's police radio,announcing another victim has been discovered,only this one is clinging to life.At the hospital,the girl whose face has been hacked off,and both eyes gouged out,sputters out the clue that the killer kept saying the name "Eetar" before her life support machine farts out.Eetar...Ishtar.Nah,couldn't be.Fuad then abducts Suzette's bubbly,top heavy pal,Trudy Sanders(Toni Calvert)in broad daylight,right from the Fremont's pool.This man's uncanny.Back at his catering digs,he whips Trudy and catches the blood from her wounds in an urn,before throwing that mannekin leg from earlier in the pizza oven.When Pete finds out that the Fremonts are having an Egyptian feast,he phones the professor who gave the lecture,and finds out that Fuad Ramses wrote the book on the subject,the same Fuad Ramses that's catering their party,the same Fuad...you get the idea.Pete,now officially with a hunch,rides over to Ramses Catering place with the chief,and they find the makeshift altar,the gold store window mannekin,a blood draped mannekin on the table,everything.To the Fremonts,old chum!Fuad has Suzette strewn out on the kitchen table with her eyes closed,reciting feaux-Egyptian gibberish,when Mrs. Fremont stumbles upon him,about to lop off her domepiece with his machete.Her screams cause him to limp off into the street,kinda odd,since he was so bold about his killings prior to this.The cops arrive and give chase,but Fuad and his gimp leg prove too agile for the young,healthy officers,and he manages to unwittingly hop into the back of a garbage truck,getting himself compacted amidst piped in phony screams,like the garbage he was.Pete haughtily recalls how he finally cracked the case in sixty minutes,when it took the audience about three,and we see Ishtar,perhaps ready to return to the front window at Macy's at last.

Astrid Olson provides the beef tongue for the Fremont's Egyptian feast(cue cheesy organ).
Despite the myriad of shortcomings it displays,Feast's amateurish gore effects are still kind of shocking today.I'd love to see the audience's expression back in '63 when they were first hit with raw animal entrails and flesh in color.It must have been amazing to witness.Kerwin and Mason would return the next year for Lewis's 2,000 Maniacs,which we'll tackle at a later date,a much more polished effort from the "Godfather of Gore" himself,and more likable entry,for sure.I can remember me and the boys yukking it up on a regular basis with Feast back in the day,drawing pictures of Fuad's eyebrows and Ishtar's fashion pose.There'll always be a spot reserved for it in my black little heart.On the scale it rates one wop.

Fuad(Mal Arnold)gets compacted amidst dubbed screams like the trash that he is.