"It Lives Again" (1978) d/ Larry Cohen

Before he got freaked out by tigers in Apocalypse Now (1979), before Nic Cage romantically rendezvoused with Deborah Foreman in his health food store in Valley Girl (1983), and before he dealt in queer-stomping Vietnam jungle boots in 1993's Falling Down, Frederic Forrest lent himself to this second installment of Larry Cohen's micro-budgeted belligerent baby trilogy, 1978's It Lives Again. Also on board here are Kathleen Lloyd, who you'll remember foolishly swore at Satan's sedan in The Car (1977). She also starred opposite seventies teen dream, Leif Garrett, in Skateboard (1978). John Marley, of The Godfather (1972), Deathdream (1974), and even The Car (1977) fame, adds more dramatic validity to this effort than it deserved, really. Still, we press ahead...


"You see Mork leave the planet last night? Nanoo-nanoo, man...", quips Frank Davis (John P. Ryan).
As the Scott's (Kathleen Lloyd, Frederic Forrest) watch the last of their baby shower guests leave the premises, a lone hanger-on named Davis (John P. Ryan) relates his awful story (see: It's Alive (1974) for details) to the couple, warning that they, too, are on the dawn of becoming parents to a homicidal mutant with a penchant for neck-chewing, and the government has been secretly monitoring their pregnancy with full intent to abort the feisty little rascal with a flurry of bullets the second he enters the world. It would seem that Davis is in cahoots with a group of doctors who see untapped potential in the bellicose babies, and have two other gore-geous little bastards caged up for monitoring and experimentation at a location to be named later. Leading the charge of infant-snuffing cops is a fellow named Mallory (John Marley), who seems to derive special joy from extinguishing the mutant babies' lives for some unknown reason, and his zeal unwittingly gets him held at gunpoint by Davis at a hospital full of cops and SWAT team members before he can carry out another death sentence, even clearing an escape route for the rogue doctors' eighteen-wheeler birthmobile. Of course, the Scott's little fanged darling is miffed-in-a-minute ornery from the outset, and never met a throat he didn't want to pounce on and gouge open with his muscular claws n' teefers.


"...I snuck a teething ring in when the c.o.'s back was turned. I'll let you chew on it for a loosey."
When Jody ducks out of a theater (just as Bruce Lee's about to snap Jackie Chan's neck in Enter the Dragon (1973), too. How fuckin' cool is that?) to hop a city bus to meet up with her husband at the aforementioned location, her purse has been bugged by her own mother, who's adamantly anti-monster and working with the coppers, who are zeroing in on the morbid secret nursery coordinates by the minute. Meanwhile, the other two monster babies (Adam and Eve, lulz) aren't much in the mood to crawl through a maze in the hideout basement for analysis, and break the fuck out like the measles, chomping any neck in their path, and causing the usual one or two drops of blood associated with such attacks, by now. The Scott baby martyrs Davis in the woods after he helps the child escape the safe house before they can flood the place with gas, wasting his two mutant siblings in the sudden raid and further polarizing his parents; mom wants to show him love, while pop has sided with Mallory and company, eager to baptize his new son with bullets. How does it all wind up? That's for you to find out when you hunt down a copy for yourselves.


"Scott, this is Kevin...my bike is broken. Can you help me? Ovah."

I picked this one up on a double disc with the even worse second sequel, It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1988). Must be a sliver of masochist in me, after all. Cohen, who offered up blaxploitation gold in Black Caesar (1973) and it's rapid-fire sequel, Hell Up In Harlem (also 1973), would go on to take the chair on efforts like God Told Me To (1976), Q (1982), and 1985's The Stuff, unforgettable stuff, indeed. You'd definitely think FX God Rick Baker had grown too large for a production like this by 1978, having already tackled projects like King Kong (1976) and Star Wars (1977) in the four year interim between the 1974 original and It Lives Again. Apparently not. Still, the man would again give us jaw-dropping, eye-popping stuff in genre classics like Altered States (1980), An American Werewolf in London (1981), Ghost Story (1981), and even Videodrome (1983), so let's not make too disparaging an adjudication on him here. On the rating scale, It Lives Again matches the score of the original, an impressive feat if said score hadn't been a single Wop. But it was. And it still is. Approach with caution.


"I'll whack you execution style if you don't turn off Anne Murray already...", warns Scott (Frederic Forrest).

"The Funhouse"(1981)d/Tobe Hooper

Like most genre enthusiasts, I fully recognize Tobe Hooper's crowning cinematic achievement, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as one of the greatest horror movies ever made.It's just the erratic shit he followed it up with that I've gotta take issue with.With TCM, he took a high and outside pitch and sent it deep into the upper decks for an uncontestable grand slam.His 1981 offering, The Funhouse, which was ravenously hyped by most horror zines of the day, is closer to a sputtering ground out back to the pitcher.I've noticed a lot of people out there seem to hold fond memories of this one, but it's a fucking mutt, plain and simple.I remember coming away from my first viewing feeling betrayed by all the advance press and leaked photos of Rick Baker's special extreme cleft deformity makeup, having just endured a lethargic, scareless, and mostly bloodless turd.After a few pay-cable viewings and a half-hearted vhs rental in the eighties, I buried the lackluster experience in the darkest recesses of my mind until the technological breakthrough of dvds forced me to re-examine the damned thing, hoping I was overly critical towards it, or perhaps a different cut of the film would change my mind.An emphatic "Cazzo no!" would be the case.On the positive side of the coin, Hooper provides some decent old fashioned atmosphere and suspense in a classic carnival setting dressed with creepy vintage animatronic figures and surreal lighting that's reminiscent of Argento in spots.On the other hand, the cast leaves me pretty flat, apart from perhaps Sylvia Miles and Kevin Conway, as a skeevy fortune teller and sideshow/funhouse/stripshow barker, respectively.Also, the story, as novelized from the screenplay by horror fiction icon Dean Koontz under the pseudonym Owen West, takes something like eight and a half hours to finally kick into high gear, and once it does, it leaves me thinking there ought to have been more.More scares, more gore, more of a body count, more focus on Baker's makeups...but there isn't.

I'm suddenly compelled to whip myself up a pair of fried eggs for some reason...
After Amy Harper(Elizabeth Berridge) gets her titties rubber knifed in the shower by her prank-loving brother Joey(Shawn Carson), she not only renegs on taking him to the carnival(you know, the one where two little girls' dead bodies turned up at last year...) on Saturday, but also vows to exact memorable revenge upon his gruesome little ass for his mischief, before venturing out on a first date with a grease monkey named Buzz(Cooper Huckabee) who can't even pick her up at a decent hour, ferchrissakes.They pick up Liz and Richie(Largo Woodruff, Miles Chapin) and pass around a quick jibber, as Joey climbs out of his bedroom window, determined not to miss the carnival and a perfect opportunity to spy on his older sibling.Buzz wins Amy a stuffed animal and explains his unfunny dancing duck joke to her at the top of the ferris wheel.Amy discusses her troublesome virginity with Liz in the bathroom, when they're interrupted by a over-zealous bag lady(!) who reminds them that God is watching them.Joey gets a ride proposition from a toothy creep who points a shotgun at him.Meanwhile, inside the sideshow, Buzz marvels at a lip-licking cow with a cleft palate and another with a parasitic twin growing out of its face, no doubt, two of the 'eighteen worst mistakes that God ever visited upon man', this movie excluded.Before leaving, Richie drags the double date into a separate tent that contains a mutated baby floating in a lighted jar that momentarily puts a damper on their cannabis-based hijinks.The funhouse barker(Kevin Conway) puts a chill up Amy's spine with his monologue before the group ducks into the magician's tent, as Joey finally makes the scene, dumping a sack of change at the ticket booth.After smoking another discreet pinner(these kids know how to party) behind the tent, the group decides to check out the hooch-slugging fortune teller, Madame Zena(Sylvia Miles), who tells Amy a tall, dark stranger will enter her life amidst her friends' pot-induced giggles("Don't come back or I'll break every fuckin' bone in your body!", she later warns).Richie suggests that both couples stay at the carnival after closing, spending the night in the funhouse.Probably not a good idea, dude.

"Ewwwww, Rasputin's penis!I'll give you a buck if you take it outta the jar and tug it like a bell rope!"
Joey watches as the funhouse cars that contained his sister and her friends return to the mute operator in a Frankenstein mask outside without the prior passengers inside as the carnival shuts down for the evening.The couples notice gaps in the funhouse floorboards that reveal an office below, where the wheezing mute in the Frankenstein mask has solicited Zena(100 bucks for Sylvia Miles?C'monnnn.) for sex.While Zena administers a handy to kick off the action, Frankie prematurely pops his cookies, and when Zena refuses to refund him his money, she gets choked the fuck out for her thriftiness.While the gang beats a hasty retreat for the (locked, of course)exit, Richie jacks all the samoleans outta the office cash box, earning the masked mutant a hearty beating at his own hands(!), to the glee of his barker/father("You really did it this time, didn't ya?!You killed one of the family!"), until he rips off the latex to reveal a severely deformed, blood-curdling cleft-grill and red eyes.Richie carelessly drops a cigarette lighter through the spaces in the floorboards, alerting the carnage-crazy carnys to the intruders upstairs.At this point there's a whole lotta walking around in the dark, until finally the funhouse power is turned on suddenly, as the barker tries to goad his misshapen son into doing one last bad thing for him so they can bury the bodies and go fishin', like they used to.Richie gets lassoed with a noose and hung in front of his panicked pals as the surrounding props once again come to life, the stolen money floating down around them like so much confetti.Buzz blindly swings an axe down into an oncoming ride car, only to discover his blade planted in Richie's dome instead, with Liz hysterically chasing afterwards and falling through a trap door in the floor, later to be killed off-camera when she plants a dagger in the monster's back.After dispatching the gun-wielding barker by skewering his hayseed ass on a sword, Buzz is, in turn, taken out by the murderous freak, leaving only Amy to fend for herself against it in the dark and foreboding funhouse.Just remember, it aint over until the mechanical fat lady sings, which, in this movie's case, probably should have been directly after the opening credits...

"Sorry, kid. You must be this hideously deformed to ride this ride."
Hooper was approached by no less than Steven Spielberg to direct his E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial(1982), but was too busy working on this movie at the time.He'd team up with the director a year later on the wildly popular Poltergeist(1982), though it's been argued that Hooper had precious little to do with the finished product, as Spielberg directed the actors, designed storyboards, and cast the movie on his own, but was unable to direct another movie while still immersed in E.T. due to a clause in his contract.In between all of that, he was also replaced in the director's chair(translation:quit) by Piers Haggard on the 1981 Oliver Reed/Klaus Kinski thriller, Venom.He would eventually direct Lifeforce in 1985.Berridge would go on to play Constanze Mozart in Amadeus(1984), while Huckabee, who'd scored genre roles in The Pom Pom Girls(1976) and The Curse(1987), has enjoyed a long career in television.On the scale, Funhouse gains a single Wop, not being very much fun at all.

"Hit yerself, you ugly thing!"

"The Thing with Two Heads"(1972)d/Lee Frost

Contrary to all that jive-ass motherfuckin' bool-shit you mighta heard for yourselves in history books, the road to healthy race relations in America was paved by the late exploitation king, Lee Frost when he finally answered society's eternal question, as evidenced by the dyn-o-mite one sheet above:Couldn't we just sew the dome of an elderly honkey racist onto a young soul brother's shoulders and be done with it already?Admit it, you've always wanted to see something like this, I know I have.Funny enough, as much as dual-domed cats wreaking havok upon the unsuspecting populace appealed to me, this was not my favorite double header growing up, thank Bruce Dern and AIP's The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant(1971) for that.I blame the lack of homicide in tonight's entry(and the lack of tension, the lack of scares, the lack of...you can dig where I'm takin' this, baby.).Decades later, my sentiments towards the delightfully absurd drive-in cult classic have indeed softened, though I honestly feel Frost and co. merely scratched the surface concerning the concept, and should have taken it as far as they could.They might have had an all-time classic on their hands, for serious.As it stands, it's a pretty good time.The goril-licious special makeup effects were provided by none other than the apetastic Rick Baker, who also appears on camera in his two headed silverback suit.The cast is headed(ouch, sorry)by B-vet Ray Milland, who turns in a worthy performance as Rosey Grier's pesky caucasian shoulder growth.The aforementioned Giants/Rams defensive tackle doesn't show as much of a knack for acting as he once did for writing needlepoint books for men in the mid-70's, but he does manage to keep a straight face throughout all of this, and that had to have been near to goddamned impossible.

"Mbutu, you said the 'nanners was free, why are dese here peepul lookin' at us dat way?!!"
Enter one cancer-riddled, wheelchair-bound brain surgeon named Max Kirshner(Ray Milland) who's also being eaten alive from the inside out by an even more degenerative cancer, sometimes referred to as 'intolerance'.Entirely unsolicitous over his own looming mortality, Kirshner has been conducting some idiosyncratic experiments in his basement lab(the 'basement laboratory' is almost never a good sign for humanity in these movies)involving some innovative transplant theories concerning the dome.Thus far, he's successfully grafted an uncommitted goriller skullpiece onto the host body of another simian(are live gorillas that plentiful on the American black market?How the hell is a dying paraplegic getting a sizeable metal monkey cage past the neighbors anyway?It just doesn't matter, as Bill Murray used to say after a thorough nose-powdering) and the dual-domed chest pounder hasn't even broken loo...yeah, nevermind.The fruits of the stockboy's thirty-five cents an hour labor at the local grocery store are soon dashed from the shelves by the brute force of the doubled up jungle demon on a quest for...bananas, of course.One tranq dart later, Kirshner amputates the original host head from his test subject, which incredibly survives, leading him to up the ante on the head-switchin' sweepstakes to human stakes.Dr. Desmond(Roger Perry) is called in to remove the mortally ill surgeon's lid before his cancer spreads any further, and graft it onto a healthy body.Death row inmate Jack Moss(Rosey Grier) volunteers himself for the procedure, thinking that donating his body might just buy him the necessary time to prove his innocence against the criminal charges hanging over his head.Damn, Rosey.That's a tight spot.

"Ya got the wrong William Smith, I'm tellin' ya!"
After a successful operation, Kirshner groggily awakens to find he's currently affixed to the shoulder of a hulking negro, to which he ponders aloud:"Is this some kind of joke?"Once he's certain that it isn't, even, he accepts his multiracial dilemma for the moment, realizing that his head can again be removed and placed on a honky body at a later date, if only the revived Moss, who flips his wig at the idea and promptly escapes, was as receptive.Moss enlists another brother, Dr. Williams(Don Marshall), who Kirshner had previously turned down for a position on his staff due to his skin color(oops!), to help him flee from the cops.Cue: police cruisers v. two-headed-negro-on-dirtbike chase sequence that seemingly goes on for, like, ever or something.Once the unlikely duo(trio?) arrive at Moss' girlfriend Lila's(Chelsea Brown) place to hide out, Kirshner's wisecracking head singleheadedly sets the civil rights movement back fifty years with Bunkeristic barbs like "Is that all you people think about?" when Jack and Lila contemplate getting bedroom funky despite the presence of Kirshner's grill mere inches away, and "What are we having for dessert, watermelon?" in protest of the soul food Lila has cooked the household.As you might imagine, soon, all black parties involved are plugging for the A.S.A.P. evacuation of Jack's mouthy euro-dome from his shoulder.How this cautionarily dark racial horror-comedy finally plays out in the end, I'll leave for you to discover for yourselves...

Not juss' one, but two mufuggin' heads y'all...
Chances are, if it was labelled 'exploitation' in the sixties and seventies, there's a good chance Lee Frost was in the director's chair for it.Whether it was nudies like 1962's House on Bare Mountain, mondo documentaries like Mondo Freudo and Mondo Bizarro(both 1966), nazisploitation like Love Camp 7(1969), or blaxploitation gold like tonight's review and The Black Gestapo(1975), this cat filled many a sleazy grindhouse with grimy goodies in his day, methinks.Grier enjoyed a lengthy career in television, appearing on everything from I Dream of Jeannie and Love Boat to Kojak and CHiPs.Milland would later venture into genre territory with roles in Terror in the Wax Museum(1973), 1975 telepic The Dead Don't Die, The Attic(1980), and even Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby(1976).It turns out that Rick Baker, who would follow up his work here with John Landis' Shlock(1973), would contribute more than once to the blaxploitation sub-genre, supplying make up for Black Caesar(1973), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman(1974), Coming to America(1988), and also Eddie Murphy's Nutty Professor movies.We'll give you a pass for Norbit(2007), maestro.It's only fitting that this titular Thing with Two Heads earns itself two solid wops on the rating scale.Give it a look and you just might have yourself a grand ole time with it, if you're not careful.

You just lie there on life support tubing until yer tolerant, Milland!

"The Wolfman"(2009)d/Joe Johnston

Though I'm definitely a splatter-era horror aficionado,I spent most of my formative years taking in the classic originals,with The Wolfman at the top of my favorite list,due to my old man's equally nauseating love for said monster and film.
After hearing about all the problems leading up to the release of the remake of Universal's 1941 classic(musical directors,complete re-edits,reshoots,musical release dates),you'd expect the worst for such a seemingly cursed production.Having finally taken in the entry-in-question for myself,I can report to thee,my beauties,that it ain't nearly as bad as I thought it was gonna be.Of course,if you're from the camp of people who expected this incarnation to blow Lon Chaney,Jr.'s clear out of the kennel,then this will be a very bitter Milk Bone for you to chew upon,indeed.The lush cinematography is atmospheric and artfully mapped out within for the film connoisseur to drink in,but upon a very schizophrenically scripted foundation,bogged down with a torrential downpour of cinematic cliches and in-jokes that could have the viewer wondering if he was watching an uber-expensive Howling prequel instead.Which is kind of the level it works on,strangely enough.
Del Toro,Hopkins,and even Hugo Weaving in a head-scratching turn as Abberline of the Yard(Shouldn't you be in Whitechapel investigating Saucy Jack,guv?)all turn in solid performances given the surroundings and circumstances.The delicious Emily Blunt is adequately sexy set decoration in her wood-inducing Victorian bustiers and corsets.Just as the money shot is to porn,so is the transformation scene to werewolf movies,and Wolfman's is nothing short of spectacular,if not perhaps a little too smooth,due to CGI.Despite mixed reviews,the film has grossed over 160 million to date,which means it has turned a profit,albeit a very marginal one,due to the ridiculous budget assessed to the production.Dog'll hunt,as they say.

"They do not see what lies ahead, when Sun has failed and Moon is dead."
The scene is the Blackmoor forest,1891.Ben Talbot,brother of acclaimed thespian,Lawrence(Del Toro),is on the run from a nightmarish mashup of both man and wolf.He doesn't make it.Ben's fiance' Gwen(Blunt)travels to London to inform Lawrence of his brother's disappearance,motivating the actor to travel via locomotive back to Blackmoor for answers.On the train,he comes into possession of a finely crafted sword/cane with an intricately designed silver wolf's head,after hearing of its French lycanthropic origins from an elderly gent(Max Von Sydow)he shares a compartment with.At the family estate,reconnecting with his father,Sir John(Hopkins)opens up old wounds like his mother's alleged self-inflicted Columbian necktie and own subsequent institutionalizing at his father's hands,and new ones,like the discovery of his brother's savaged,unrecognizable corpse,which he grimly inspects for himself at the local slaughterhouse.The locals blame a passing caravan of gypos and their dancing bear for the vicious murder,and after the funeral and Gwen departs for London,Lawrence pays the gypsy camp a visit.Angry townsfolk descend upon the camp,demanding the bear from the fly-by-nights,but a wolflike beast attacks,slaughtering locals and gypsies alike,and biting Talbot in the process.Maleva sews the fallen actor back together amidst protest from her peers,citing the fact that he can only be killed by somewho loves him now.At this point Gwen returns to Talbot Hall to nurse Lawrence back to health,and he recuperates fully after only a few weeks.Sir John's manservant,Singh takes the opportunity to show the young man a munition of silver bullets he's been stockpiling.

Yeah,dunk him again for that Che movie he did for Soderbergh.And again.And again.
Inspector Abberline(Weaving)arrives on the scene,deducing that Talbot was fully capable of eighty-sixing his sibling,due to his uncanny ability to play mentally disturbed characters like Macbeth and Hamlet,which is enough for Lawrence to send Gwen back to the city for protection once again.He then follows his father into the catacombs beneath a family crypt,where he finds Sir John has built a shrine to his dead wife that includes a chair with various leather and chain restraints built into it.He locks himself in,explaining that he's been dead for years.At this point Lawrence abruptly transforms into the titular wolfman and serves up tooth,fang,and claw-based suffering to the townsfolk who had set a trap in the forest for the beast.The next morning,Sir John leads the constable and his men to the spot where his son lies,bloody and back in human form.Oh,it's shocky/dunky time at the asylum for you again,little Larry.His father visits him betwixt the state-of-the-art health treatment procedures,and relates that god-awful time he was bitten by an unidentified feral beast in a remote Indian cave,and how his Sikh had taken precautions,binding him up every full moon cycle,except the night that he happened to kill his own wife and the night he knocked the Hindu cold after a heated argument,and happened to kill his other son,which awakened the hunter's primal urges to the point that he shouldn't like to be bound up on those glorious nights any longer.Who could blame the guy.In an observation room,Lawrence transforms into the lycanthrope,murdering the doctor in front of a throng of terrified onlookers then escapes into the night.Cue the father-son werewolf-off at Talbot Hall,which catches ablaze in the process,and the bestial battle which finds Sir John kicked into a fireplace and beheaded by the younger lupine creature.The inspector arrives to bag himself a murderer,but Gwen foils his silver shot,buying the law officer a bite from Lawrence,who chases off after the girl into the forest.The beast corners Gwen by a waterfall,but her appeal to his human soul buys her enough time to plant the necessary silver slug into his heart,freeing him from the curse.Flames engulf the estate,as she ponders where the man ends and beast begins.A howl is heard in the distance.

Talbot serves up a nifty dew claw laryngotomy.
Mark Romanek was the original director on the picture,but he bowed out over creative diffences less than a year later,allegedly over the werewolf design with Del Toro,among other things.Del Toro wanted the new creature to more resemble Lon Chaney,Jr.'s incarnation,which gives the viewer what he or she sees in the finished product.Makeup wizard Rick Baker,who also vied for the retro-look,(claiming he didn't have to do much work on the actor,who was hairy to begin with)handled the job here,as well was cameoing as Talbot's first victim.There were also problems concerning Danny Elfman's soundtrack treatment,but relating to you all of the difficulty in completing the film here might take another sixty years.All-in-all,the film has an undeniably gory B feel to it,and I'm not usually anti-B myself,but I can't help to think the producers were shooting for a classic,epic movie here,a sort of horror Gone With The Wind.The movie,despite its many setbacks and flaws,did a decent job of entertaining me,regardless,and my father,Chick/Chuck/Chaz/Charlie or Monte,for short,as he sometimes introduces himself,also liked it.You could watch a lot worse these days.Two wops.

"Did he say,"All ye, all ye 'outs' in free!" or am I hearing things?"

"It's Alive"(1974)d/Larry Cohen

First on the agenda this evening,I'd like to take a moment to wish the charming and very talented Stacie Ponder a very happy birthday.You'd do well to mosey your narrow,little woprophile asses on over to her Final Girl page,which is packed with more tasty cinematic goodness than one of Uschi Digard's bobblers,and do the same.Her writing is always highly entertaining,informative,and irreverently humourous.I don't often say that about people who aren't me,but in this case,it's all true.I figured,what would be a better birthday prezzie for Ms. Ponder than to examine her Film Club entry for the month,Larry Cohen's "It's Alive".I know it ain't exactly the pony she may or may not have always wanted,but it's the thought that counts,right?This also negates some of the cobblers that one might encounter if they skimmed over my Kindergarten report card from the same year.I have (finally)learned to play well with others,keep my hands to myself,properly tie my shoes,and make halfway decent 3's,6's,and 9's with a number two pencil.Thirty-six years later or not,progress is still progress.Anyway,buon compleanno e tanti auguri,kiddo.
Though most of Larry Cohen's movies are easily lumped into the low budget,trashy fun category,tonight's entry poses the deep philosophical question:Is it family or just a veiny balloon-headed fanged and clawed monstrosity with Peter Lorre eyes on a killing spree?We can't easily come to any answers without further examining the modest box office hit under the woproscope more closely.It boasts of an excellent score by Bernard "Psycho" Hermann and some effective puppetry and special effects by Rick Baker,early in his career.Surprising,perhaps,is the subdued tone throughout the film,underplaying the potentially shlocky premise,and understating the monstrous element of the killer baby and the murders it commits,instead focusing on the trauma of said events within the family,making for a decent horror experience.Of course,I'm sure this is mostly unintentional luck on Cohen's part,knowing at one point he suggested putting two live chickens in the mutant baby costume for effect.Real nice,Larry.Real nice.

After the jar of Prego sauce exploded,the entire hospital staff decided to take a nap,all at the same time.
The Davises are expecting their second child,with Frank(John Ryan),Lenore(Sharon Farrell),and their son,Chris(Daniel Holzman),making preparations as Lenore goes into labor.The couple avoided a second pregnancy for several years with oral contraceptives,but when they were financially secure enough for the extra mouth to feed,Lenore started taking untested,experimental fertility drugs to speed the process along.Due to this,she gives birth to a musclebound,bug-eyed,fang-yapped,globe-domed freak that proceeds to wipe out the whole delivery room in a bloody post-natal coup,save for mommy,of course.By the time Frank bursts in to see the grue-soaked remnants of humanity strewn about Lenore's gurney,she's screaming for her baby,who's exited the crime scene stage right,via a window.Frank and Lenore are allowed to leave the hospital as the police follow a tragic trail of lifeless sons o'bitches on their city-wide babyhunt.Even the poor milkman eats vicious infant-inflicted death(maybe he's teething?I dunno)as the bellicose baby makes its way back to the Davis house.The press and police badger the couple until Frank is forced to take a leave of absence from work over the unwanted publicity.He draws an ugly metaphor of himself as Baron Frankenstein,and his new fugitive son as Karloff's monster while talking to detectives on the case,only citing himself as the true monster for unleashing such an atrocity upon mankind,disowning it as a son,and ultimately vowing to help the men track down the pint-sized,milk pint-guzzling killer.

Filmed in lush baby-vision:Everybody looks like this to me when I'm partying.
Meanwhile a university prof contacts the quack responsible for prescribing the experimental drugs to Lenore,telling him that the genetic freak was indeed the product of his empty-headed script,and that once the little monster's been eighty-sixed,the doctor can join the team examining and studying the corpse for research purposes,provided he can snag it for them.Lenore hides the homicidal tyke in the basement,when it shows up,shagged,fagged,and fashed from breaking into a school and killing policemen.When Frank discovers his wife is knowingly hiding the belligerent baby,she pleads with him not to hurt their son,and that he's simply frightened and would never hurt the family.He goes to the basement,gun in hand,to find his son Chris talking to his brother,vowing to protect him,and after getting his meddlesome kid out of his sights,he wings the monster,which escapes again,killing an old friend of the family in the process.When the police contact Frank with news of an infant sighting in the sewers,he rushes out to help with the search,but when he finds the baby,he realizes the murderous rugrat is only frightened,and attacks only out of fear.He finally bonds with his son,picking him up and wrapping him in his jacket,before trying to sneak past the cops who draw their weapons.The fertility doctor urges the men in blue to open fire on the creature,who dives out of Frank's arms onto the loudmouth,killing him as the cops empty their barrels into both.As the police escort the Davises home,a call over the radio announces another killer baby has been born in Seattle.And that particular baby would grow up to sing for Alice in Chains.Nah,just kidding.

Is that an orange checkered polyester pajama pantsuit?That really is horrifying.
I'd have an easier time upgrading this decent little shocker to two wops,if Cohen didn't find it necessary to beat the idea into the ground twice more,with "It Lives Again"(three babies)in 1977,and "It's Alive III:Island of the Alive"(giant grown up babies exiled on a deserted island where they can't hurt anybody!!!)in 1987, the most ridiculous of the trilogy(yet,strangely watchable,due to the always great Michael Moriarty's excellent improvisational skills).It probably deserves more than the one I'm bestowing upon it here,like,perhaps one and a half wops(if there were such a rating!),but the verdict is in.A cheesy-yet-enjoyable Cohen cult classic with more than a few brilliant moments that might make you momentarily forget you were watching a Cohen flick.If you ask me,the kid should've killed everybody for their gaudy seventies fashion sense.One wop.

When Eddie Money sang,"Baby,hold onto me",I don't think he meant this particular one.

Cursed(2005)d/Wes Craven

Wes "Last House on the Left" Craven directs,Rick Baker and Greg Nicotero/KNB handle the creature and gore effects,and adorable cutie pie Christina Ricci is the female lead.That's a pretty good lineup on paper.So why is this not a better movie?It's certainly a passable ninety minutes worth of light entertainment,but it really should have been so much more.I've racked my brain on this perplexing puzzle quite a few times by now,and this is what your humble N comes up with.Ricci does an admirable job with her material,and is gorgeous,as usual.The werewolves look good,if not a bit CGI-heavy a la Underworld.Nicotero is criminally underused on the gore end thanks to the inevitable PG-13 chop,but his crimson contribution is enjoyable,as always.Besides the myriad of problems Craven had to wade through just to have the film released(three years after production began),the movie suffers from Kevin "I Know What You Did Last Summer" Williamson's goofy,airheaded script.It feels like a horror movie made by people who neither enjoy horror movies,nor understand what goes into making a good one,and a thinly-veiled vehicle for hot young stars of the moment to strut attractively across the big screen,like the "I Know" series was nothing more than.What a shame...

That's nothing,Ricci,you should see the infernal thing when it's erect.Hahaha!
Two bubbleheads as shallow as a wading pool for kiddies enjoy a fair on the pier when they decide to pay the fortune teller(Portia de Rossi) a visit.The gypo sees moon-based danger in their palms,but the girls cluck disgustedly that the soothsayer fails to notice their Korean French-tipped manicures,or something equally vapid. Enter Ellie(Chistina Ricci) and her embarrassingly nerdy brother Jimmy(Jesse Eisenberg) driving home that night,only to hit some animal with their car on the winding mountain road,ploughing into another vehicle,causing it to flip over the guard rail and into the woods below.When the siblings try to rescue the airhead(Shannon Elizabeth)trapped upside down in the driver's seat,a werewolf snatches her up as prey and effectively puts the mark of the beast on both of them.Jimmy immediately believes they've been affected by a werewolf,trudging through his comic books and crypto websites to map out a course of action.Ellie works for the Craig Kilborn Show(!),and her increasingly wolfish traits become so apparent,she's soon catching Scott "Chachi" Baio's eye while scheduling his appearance on the show(!!).Meanwhile back in high school,it's the plight of the nerd for Jimmy.He's attracted to a girl,who dates the head of the wrestling team,Bo(Milo Ventimiglia),an abrasive sporto meathead who constantly accuses Jimmy of being a homosexual.Ellie is also having problems of the heart with her boyfriend,Jake(Joshua "Dawson's Creek" Jackson),who's opening a Hollywood club filled with horror movie-themed mannekins and a hall of mirrors right out of the New Scooby Doo Movies.

Leaving your dinner half finished when there are werewolves starving in Romania?Come on!.
After defeating Bo and his jock buddies in a wrestling match in the gym,Jimmy is visited by the defeated meathead,who confesses his own gayness to him(!!!) as they escape the attacks of Zipper the dog,who was infected with lycanthropy when he bit Jimmy on the night of their car crash.You following this?Soon the other member of the bopsy twins from the pier turns her toes up after clashing with a ravenous werewolf in the parking garage.Jake tells Ellie that he's a werewolf,but before he can explain further,she speeds off.At Jake's club,the two boys try to rendezvous with Ellie,but are foiled by a werewolf in the hall of mirrors.At this point I expected to see Shaggy and Scooby disguise themselves as barbers and set the wolfman up for a shave in the chair.But I digress.It turns out this skinny,sassy bitch with massive Vince Vaughn-esque bags under her eyes that Ellie works with completes the were-puzzle,infected with the curse when she herself slept with Jake,killing off female competitors for the alpha male of the pack.In full transformation,she flips the bird to cops before they blow her brains out.Not even Landis would have went there.The shaggy denoument finds Ellie shovel-blading off Jake's head after plunging a silver cake server into his chest,breaking the curse for the siblings and their pooch.Jimmy gets his girl,Bo is the homoerotic third wheel,and Ellie is left to clean up their mess of a house.Cue trendy music as the end credits roll.

So friggin' cute,even werewolves wanna smooch her.
Yeah,it's definitely the script.Personally,I don't think Craven's done much of anything merit-worthy since Last House on the Left(and that was a LONG TIME AGO,kids),and this furry Gilmore Girls episode didn't do anything to slow his artistic slide into the Hollywood septic tank.Overall,it succeeds as a Wednesday night time waster,if sandwiched between two movies you might have actually wanted to see.Chug several cautionary beers beforehand,and you may get your jollies from the always attractive Ricci and/or Nicotero's on-screen grue.A Wop each for those two factors alone is all I can award this yuk-fest in good conscience.The makers of this film should thank the heavens that the collective ghosts of Larry Talbot and Waldemar Daninsky haven't showed up during the lunar cycle and waffled them for this effort.

Baker/KNB's upright lycanthropic vision ultimately unveiled.

King Kong(1976)d/John Guillermin

Because nothing screams originality like a REMAKE.
Nothing exceeds like excess.And no name greater personifies that word than Dino De Laurentiis,synonymous at one point with overblown,big budgeted cinematic flops.If you asked me what I thought about this first remake of the 1933 classic after first seeing it in the theaters as a six year old,I would have exuberantly rambled about its greatness exhaustively.Thirty-three years later,I have a markedly different outlook about it.It's not FX wizard Rick Baker's collaboration with Carlo "Alien" Rambaldi,it's not the star-studded cast,peppered with cult faves like John Agar,Dennis Fimple,and even Forrest J. Ackerman,and it's certainly not Jessica Lange in her introductory role as Kong's bubbleheaded hand candy.For all the publicity and hype this flick generated in its day,it just hasn't held up very well over time.Enraged simians tend to fling poop,and the finished product here smells no differently.

Jessica Lange gawks at the idea of a future sex scene with Jack Nicholson.
Petrox Oil executive,Fred Wilson(Charles Grodin) heads an expedition to an uncharted island in the South Pacific that is believed to hide a depository of oil and is hidden by a permanent low-lying cloud bank.A scruffy primate paleontologist named Jack Prescott(Jeff Bridges) stows away on the ship,busting in during a slide show to warn the crew of a seldom heard history of impending danger on the island,which according to legend is guarded by a monstrous god named Kong.His efforts land him a gig in the brig,but as he's being escorted down by Wilson's shiphands,he glimpses a liferaft afloat off the starboard bow,which,when retrieved by the oceanliner reveals an unconscious half-dressed starlet inside(my favorite kind!).When Prescott brings the dingbat around with smelling salts,it's painfully obvious the crew should have left her floating on the ocean indefinitely.Dwan(Jessica Lneag,I changed a few letters in her name to make it sound more memorable,ya know?)was on a pleasure cruise to Singapore aboard a yacht, peddling her fleshy wares to score herself a part in an upcoming movie,but was spared when she refused to stay below to screen "Deep Throat"(!)as the vessel exploded.The men try to tune out her bubbly airheaded personality and focus on her smokin' curves as they send a recon team into the fog bank towards what they think is the motherlode.

Kong gets to second base with his not-so-eager-to-please shipwrecked squeeze.
After managing to strike out on the oil gamble,fudge up the island natives' symbolic wedding rehearsal,and let Dwan get abducted by aggro Island Abos right under their noses,the rescue team arrives at the Skull Island wall too late,left to track a set of six foot wide footprints.Elsewhere on the island, Dwan is having the first date of a lifetime.Kong(Rick Baker) fluctuates back and forth from mesmerized at the blonde's natural beauty,to thoroughly disappointed that she can speak.After being screamed at,punched,and accused of male chauvenism,the poor brute probably looks forward to getting shot off a New York skyscraper already.As the ape wrestles with a giant-sized constrictor,Prescott arrives on the scene and rescues the bimbo. Wilson decides to slip the monstrous monkey a massive mickey and claim him as an advertising gimmick for the oil company.Back at the unveiling in New York,the saavy exec chains and cages the towering simian inside a mammoth gas station pump,and to add insult to injury,puts a cheesy enormous crown on his head.The things a henpecked guy'll put up with in the name of love,eh?During the glitzy reproduction of the native ceremony,the press people get too close to Dwan,and Kong abruptly breaks the fuck out like chickenpox.Cue metropolitan devastation.Before reuniting with his little bubblehead,the ape stomps New Yorkers(face it,most of 'em had it coming!),derails a train,and makes a general nuisance of himself.Once he's got Dwan,he heads for the buildings that most resemble his happy place back on Skull Island:The World Trade Center.Only happiness proves evasive due to soldiers equipped with flamethrowers and combat choppers who machinegun our tragic hairy hero until he rolls off one of the towers to the street below,leaving the New Yorkers to return to their Soho coffeehouses and Greek midotwn electronic stores.Moral of the story:Women...If they couldn't cook,we'd hunt them for their pelts.

Snubbed for a cab ride,The King of Skull Island goes bananas in the Big Apple.
Nevermind the fact that Rambaldi built a forty foot high 1.7 million dollar robot(which occupies exactly ONE MINUTE of screen time.No typo.)for this trainwreck,or that Mario Bava refused to leave Italy to helm the directorial chair(which was also turned down by Polanski and Peckinpah,and even Spielberg was considered early on),or Baker's long-time dissatisfaction with the suit's realism on camera,or seventies sex kittens Bo Derek and Britt Ekland turning down the role of Dwan,or the fact that there's more blue screen here than in a local news weather forecast segment.Just be thankful we weren't forced to endure Barbra Streisand in the female lead,as she was considered at one point in pre-production.I shudder to think upon what might have been if she had taken the role.Of the three Kongs,this one is the weakest by far,but it does have a fun cult element about it that renders it watchable.Jessica Lange probably scored herself second place on my childhood crush list because of this turn,directly behind Farrah Fawcett-Majors.Jessica,whose parents Al and Dorothy probably want to murder me for incorrectly tying their daughter to the unrelated Hope Lange, proved afterwards,she too,is a great actress,Dwan aside.King Kong Lives was the atrocious sequel with the ridiculous storyline and dated suitmation effects that nobody asked for ten years later.Don your ceremonial monkey mask,dig the voodoo drums,as they beat out a Wopsploitation score of:

The great ape plays dead to avoid thirty thousand swarming Manhattan squeegee bums.

Octaman(1971)d/Harry Essex

Sometimes when you go back and revisit one of your favorite artists or performers earlier work,you're pleasantly surprised,and you gain a greater appreciation for them.I've always championed the special makeup effects work of Rick Baker,who is without a doubt a master of his craft.That being said,this early Baker outing is like an upper decker some drunken wiseass pooped into your toilet's cistern at a party last month,and by now your whole place reeks of its putrefying stench.In Mr. Baker's defense,his creature suit(co-designed by Doug Beswick)isn't the only thing that suck about Octaman.Just about every aspect of this movie sucks.In fact,the only way it could possibly suck MORE is if it was remade these days by Uwe Boll or Rob Zombie.Maybe.

Eyeee eyeeee eyeeee eyeeeeee....Yeah I took the low road here.
A scientific expedition in Mexico(California)led by Kerwin Matthews and Pier Angeli(who overdosed and died during the filming,by the way) uncovers small rubbery mutated octopi specimens in a lake they soon deduct got that way by nuclear waste dumped into the sea which has seeped into nearly all its tributaries by this point.One of their ridiculously corny, stereotypically non-Mexican Mexican guides tells them of stories his grandmother told him of a sea serpent with many arms that terrorized the area for years,then produces a crude drawing he made of the legendary creature.Nevermind the fact that two thirds of their previous group is missing,and one is dead.Nevermind that octopi don't naturally occur in lakes.Come to think of it,throw anything you may already know about anything and strain your eyes to the poorly lit interior shots,and the abysmally lit outdoor shots.You may even thank the film's producers for the vast number of dark shots,having less cheezy garbage to actually see and laugh mockingly at.

How does an Octaman walk around on dry land?Why,his rubbery octaboots,that's how!
When Octaman lumbers on camera,he tends to swing his four tentacled arms(two are attached to his legs,mind you)around listlessly,sometimes pimpslapping fake Mexicans,sometimes into inanimate things on location.Either way,he's obviously pissed that these scientists have tried to octa-nap his little rubber cousins for research purposes,often picking up Pier Angeli and trying to make off into the lake with her,King Kong-style.The actor in the octa-suit probably doesn't enjoy the enormous latex Mardi Gras octa-head Baker designed for it too much.He gets momentarily captured in a net,he downs a tree so the team can't leave the site,he attacks team members on a row boat,he pops out of their Winnebago and slaps them around,he tries to carry off Angeli again,then gets pumped full of bullets,before lumbering listlessly to the edge of the lake and submerging himself.A fake Mexican guide chucks a carved likeness of him into the water and the credits roll finally.Will man's folly create another Octaman?Let's fucking hope not.

Not the greatest makeup work Rick Baker has ever committed to the big screen by a long shot.
Did I say earlier that this movie sucks?I wasn't bullshitting you.Thankfully,Baker's work improved by leaps and bounds,winning him six Oscars.I'd suggest viewing this one for unintentional comedic aspects,but unfortunately,they don't even exist here.Though it received a lot of press in old issues of Famous Monsters which endears it to many horror buffs,I can't in good conscience stamp this turkey with any other rating than:

The late Pier Angeli,as seen in dynamic new Octavision(which only has five lenses...)!

"The Incredible Melting Man"(1977)d/William Sachs

Long before FX master Rick Baker won accolades for "An American Werewolf in London"(1981) or "Harry and the Hendersons"(1988),he toiled away in low budget flicks like John Landis' "Schlock!"(1971),"Octaman"(1974),and this William Sachs film,to the delight of little horror nuts like myself.Lately he's been toiling away in crappy Eddie Murphy movies,but the guy is a true artist,regardless of whether he's associated with "Norbit"(2007)or not.Some memorable cult cameos include Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith,Janus Blythe(Ruby from "The Hills Have Eyes"(1977)),and Jonathan Demme,who later directed "Silence of the Lambs"(1992)!

Truly scary fatso nurse runs directly at the camera in slo-mo.Terrifying.
So they send a team of astronauts to Saturn,despite the fact that the planet is a ball of gas and has no surface whatsoever to land on,you with me so far?When the rocket closes in on its target,some wiseguy has transformed the planet's normally icy rings into firey ones,causing a strange phenomenon to occur.Steve West(Alex Rebar) bugs his eyes out looking at stock footage of solar flares and gets a slight nose bleed.Yeah,he's in all kinds of trouble when he somehow returns to Mother Earth.Doctors back home know these symptoms all too well,explaining that the heavily bandaged man in the hospital bed has started to melt like a pint of Turkey Hill Moose Tracks ice cream.Naturally the doomed astronaut gets out of his bed,unwraps himself,and takes a gander in the mirror.His rugged seventies looks...his porn stache...turkey sandwiches,turkey stew,gone,all gone!Bumpuses!Sons a' bitches!Sorry,wrong movie.Anyways,he goes crackers and a rotund nurse gallops down a long hallway in slo-mo,screaming(and no doubt wheezing from the exercise)as she smashes through a glass door.The titular melting man has been unleashed on an unsuspecting local populace.Since he's dripping all over the place,he needs "cells" from his victims,which he obtains by partially eating them.Makes sense.

The finest decapitated head cascading over a waterfall and smashing on the rocks below in slo-mo I have ever seen.
So Melty wanders around searching for victims to eat to slow his melting process,and thanks to the massive continuity problems of the film,dusk becomes the middle of the afternoon,and then back to night.Mindless fans of films like "Men in Black" might not notice such a faux pas,but I digress.He stumbles onto a fisherman in the wilderness,and dispatches him off-camera,but not before he can send the angler's decapitated,bloody head downstream,where it goes over a waterfall and dashes on the jagged rocks below,all in beautiful slo-mo.He then interrupts a group of well supervised little kids,who playfully smoke cigarettes together,and spares them,knowing the cancer will take them all out in years to come more painfully than a melting,flesh-eating astronaut ever could.He also snuffs a couple of lemon-thieving horny old codgers.No,I didn't make that up.He inadvertently interrupts a photographer and his comely,young subject(provocatively portrayed by the late Cheryl Smith)as he struggles to wrestle her tube top down so he can photograph her chachabingos against her will(artistic license,sexual assault,all the same).She backs into a disembodied arm whose hand grabs her ankle.Even disembodied body parts love boobs.

What's cooler than little kids smoking? Nothing,that's what.
Meanwhile,in the world of folks who aren't currently melting all over their groovy leisure suits,Steve's best friend,Dr.Ted Nelson is distraught over his friend's low drippy state and the fact that he's got no crackers in his house.No,I didn't make that up either.To make matters worse,a NASA general eats his last turkey leg,then West scarfs down Nelson's in-laws(the aforementioned oldies who're out trying to heist lemons).At least the guy isn't melting,right?Out of crackers,turkey legs, and in-laws,the good doctor sets out to find his snot-like chum before it's too late.

Astronaut Steve West needs a nip and tuck,courtesy of FX wizard Rick Baker.
In the finale,Nelson finds the melting man at the local power plant,surrounded by cops who plan on filling the oozing astronaut full of lead.He pleads for West's life and gives the lawmen his credentials.The cops naturally shoot the doctor instead.Also not made up,folks.The enraged melting man converges on the absent-minded cops who shoot him to no effect.He kills the officers,throwing one onto some power lines below,electrocuting him real good.Then he finds a comfy wall to fully melt away into nothing against.The next day,a black custodian cleans up the astronaut pudding as a radio announces another mission to Saturn about to take place.Oh sweet irony.

The late,great Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith,topless,as usual.
A pretty good,if somewhat disjointed time to be had revisiting this one,kiddies.Baker's makeup and gore effects(!) are pretty effective for their time,the logic-bereaft script contains several good unintentional laughs,and it all moves along quickly and painlessly.You could do worse than sitting down to this one,like...for example,"Octaman"(1974) or even worse,"Norbit"(2007).Sorry,Eddie.

Clean up in aisle nine...