"Halloween III:Season of the Witch"(1982)d/Tommy Lee Wallace

"It's time. It's time. Time for the big giveaway. Halloween has come. All you lucky kids with Silver Shamrock masks, gather 'round your TV set, put on your masks and watch. All witches, all skeletons, all Jack-O-Lanterns, gather 'round and watch. Watch the magic pumpkin. Watch..."And so another Halloween season comes grindingly to a halt.You're halfway to sugar shock from all the leftover trick or treaters candy you've been eating all day,you don't know how to tell the drunken sexy witch who's passed out on your bedroom floor that you have zero recollection of picking her up at the bar last night...or the massive handprints you left all over her ass shortly afterwards(does the naughty witch want daddy to raise welts this time,hmmm?),and you're probably surfing through the mixed bag of horror the idiot box has to offer on this sacred night.Step onto the drawbridge here at Castle Wop,creeps,your uncle thinks he's got one more appropox and underrated genre film for you little bastards to sink your joke teeth into,before we bid adieu to WOP-tober,one more time.
I remember all the flak this movie caught upon release from the mindless masses who felt cheated out of their folding money,forced to endure an interesting and original horror premise,instead of what they wanted to see,yet one more crap sequel where the strong,silent type in the whited out Shatner mask methodically stalks and kills more sex-crazed bimbos and their idiotic boyfriends.Curse the producers for not feeding the crybabies the pabulum they long for!I can still hear the fucking boo's as the credits rolled and we vacated our seats,and I thought to myself:Why the fuck are these morons booing a decent movie and decided anthological turn for the series by Carpenter and Hill?As I grew older,I came to the realization that waterheads like the ones yelling at the screen that night make up the vast majority of the movie-going public.Don't make 'em think.Don't throw 'em a curve ball.And most importantly,don't put the Halloween franchise tag on a film that essentially has no Michael Myers in it(apart from two clever inserts in television broadcasts).As the years have gone by,more and more people have finally given this movie a chance,and to their dismay,they actually like it!And even the sheep got their wish six years later,when Michael Myers was resurrected for the fourth movie,the imaginatively-titled hunk of bowel-bilge "Return of Michael Myers",which in comparison,makes tonight's entry look like Raging Bull.

Guttman learns the hard way:Mess with the Irish trademark,get your yap zapped.
Eight days from Halloween,Harry Grimbridge finds himself running for his life from silent assassins in business suits.At a gas station,he collapses,clutching a latex Halloween mask,and repeating "They're coming." over and over.The attendant takes him to the local hospital,where a commercial for Silver Shamrock masks spurs the exhausted new patient to grab at Dr.Challis(Atkins)and proclaim,"They're going to kill all of us."After admittance,another suited killer pays Grimbridge a visit,separating his skull and driving his nose into his brain with his bare hands before returning calmly to his car,dousing himself in gasoline and exploding before the eyes of the shocked staff.When Grimbridge's daughter Ellie(Nelkin) arrives,Challis selflessly puts his family on hold yet one more time,buys a six pack of beer and drives off with her towards Santa Mira,where the shop owner was headed before his murder,and answers.Santa Mira is the predominantly Irish(shudder!) home of Silver Shamrock Novelties,run by Conal Cochran(O'Herlihy),whose keen business sense returned prosperity to the community.The closed circuit cameras on every telephone pole,the six o'clock curfew,and the mysterious goings on at the factory,yeah,he's responsible for all of those things as well.Upon checking in to a local motel,the pair meets Buddy Kupfer and his annoying family,and Marge Guttman,shop owners from out of town who also have business at the factory.That night,while Challis does a little gynaecological exam on Ellie,free of charge,Mrs. Guttman notices a computer chip in the back of the trademark of one of the Shamrock masks,while reading in bed.She monkeys with it,and eats fatal laserbeam that fries the bottom half of her face,causing buggies to crawl out of her flame-broiled yap.

As Marge gets laserblasted,Challis,the teat-suckling bastard,shows Ellie his phallus.
After touring the factory with the Kupfers,Ellie notices her father's car being guarded by more suits,but when she and Challis return to the motel room,they discover they can't contact anyone outside of Santa Mira by telephone.Suits make the scene and kidnap Ellie,causing Challis to break into the factory for an attempted rescue.He incapacitates one of Cochran's well-dressed cronies,discovering that he's not human,in fact,but a mechanical android,when a well-placed labonza punch yields yellow goop and wires.Cochran then gives Challis the classified version of the factory tour,revealing that in an effort to return the upcoming holiday to its pagan Celtic origins(take a deep breath here,folks),he's stolen a five ton Stonehenge monolith,hidden it in the factory,where tiny pieces of the mystical stone are placed into the company trademark in the back of the Halloween masks,which,when a computer-born pattern of flashing jack o'lanterns triggers them,they cause the mask wearer's head to fry,and rattlesnakes and crickets to pour out of the smouldering faceholes,as evidenced by the test-slaying of the Kupfer family before Challis' very eyes.Challis later breaks his bindings,frees Ellie,and initiates the computer sequence in the control room while dumping a case of trademarks on the workers below,resulting in spectacular laser beam-death for all of them,and Cochran being absorbed by the energy generated between the monolith and computers.The couple flee the factory as it catches fire,but discovers that Ellie is nothing more than one of Cochran's robots,and dispatches it,piece by piece.He makes his way to the filling station from the beginning of the movie,desperately trying to get the television networks not to play the Silver Shamrock 9 o'clock giveaway spot,that would signal the deaths of millions of kids across the country.Some trick or treaters gather to watch the flashing jack o'lantern on the gas station tv set,as Challis screams "Stop it!" into the telephone receiver.Oh,those Irish and their practical jokes.

Hey kid,what part of "Store your mask in a cool,dry place" didn't you understand?
Fans know genre fave Tom Atkins(and his moustache)well,as he's put in several horror shifts under John Carpenter(The Fog,Escape From New York,etc),cult favorites like Night of the Creeps,Maniac Cop,Due occhi diabolici,as well as turning up in the My Bloody Valentine 3D remake,and is always gracious to fans at horror cons,so go get a pic of your wife kissing his moustache already.Delectable cupcake Stacey Nelkin works steadily in movies and television to this day,her most memorable roles to woprophiles out there(besides tonight's review,of course)would probably be in Mad's Up The Academy,Yellowbeard,or opposite "Dangerous" Tony Danza in Going Ape.The late O'Herlihy had a long and admirable career in movies and television,most notably appearing in Invasion USA,The Last Starfighter,and the Twin Peaks tv series.Stuntman Dick Warlock,who portrayed Michael Myers in Halloween II,is on hand here as Cochran's mechanical assassin.Nancy Loomis,another long-time favorite of Carpenter,acts under her birthname of Kyes here,as Challis' wife.Last on the list of Halloween all-stars to work in this movie,the one and only Jamie Lee Curtis lent her voice,uncredited,as the Santa Mira curfew announcer.Well,there you have it.When next we meet up,it'll be November.A different season,but the same source materials here at the Wop,as you like it(especially your mothers).As for tonight's entry,it has its share of shortcomings(the factory control room resembling an empty warehouse with six Commodore computers set up in a circle leaves a lot to be desired),and plot holes(No,really,Conal,tell us how your sixty-something year old ass,and your team of robots-in-suits managed to steal a five ton monolith from one of the most visited sites in the world,and get it into California with nobody noticing?),but overall,it's not a bad movie.Well-deserving of two wops on the scale.

Happy, happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Happy, happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock.

"Tarantulas:The Deadly Cargo"(1977)d/Stuart Hagmann

...except that's a wolf spider,jackasses.
Oh 1977,how I dearly miss you,baby.I only wish I was older during you.As an eight year old,I missed out on Eraserhead and Suspiria in the theaters,though I was already checking out R rated movies with the old man.The skull-chick brushing her hair in the television commercial musta scared the Nutella off his Italian toast or something.All I know is I'm thankful nobody cracked their assbone on the perpetual pile of Micronauts scattered recklessly across the living room floor back then,and that I'm still not sure where Andrew Gold was headed with "Lonely Boy"(number fifty in the top one hundred songs way back then).Let me get this straight,pal.The kid was jealous of his baby sister when he was two years old?And subsequently moved out at age eighteen to find love,still emotionally scarred from the snubbing he took as a toddler?Only,his sister gets knocked up with a baby boy instead,and the cycle continues?You made more fuckin' sense when you wrote "Thank You For Being a Friend",which ended up as the theme song for tv's The Golden Girls,which also has me wondering...are they the "Golden" Girls because of their ages,or because they were part of your stable of geryatric bitches?Fill me in,brother.
1977 was also choice because they still shit out "movie of the week" horror tele-films like this,with absolutely no fucking basis in reality,not one A list star on the cast list(unless you count Claude "I'm always either a trucker,sheriff,or a fireman" Akins,and really,who'd do that.),and a nondescript script with more gaping holes than R. Bud Dwyer's forehead(granted,he only had one in his,but it was a fucking doozy)and chock full o'hokey false movie science that pays off with one of the most head-scratchinest endings you might ever see.Also,you may remember Matthew "Little House on the Prairie" Laborteaux/Labytoreaux/Labyorteaux/Laborteauk,as "Additional Voice" in Disney's Mulan and more recently,as "Additional Voice" in Bride Wars(2009).Yeah,you MIGHT.Seriously,this fucking kid was everywhere back then,you couldn't pull out a huge television power knob without seeing this pouty little prick's grillpiece squeezing every second out of his fifteen minutes.If I end up giving this review one wop afterall,it's gonna be because this annoying fuck gets bitten by spiders,and nobody bothers to save him.Nothing personal,Matthew,if you happen to be reading this between "Additional Voice" gigs.It is what it is.

Dan Challis and Johnny Fever wanna smuggle Ecuadorian coffee together,but they end up with a plane full o' quesa puro instead.
On a renegade smuggling mission direct from Mrs. Folger herself,Howard Hessman and Tom Atkins have recruited tres Ecuadorian peons to shovel pounds and pounds of coffee into burlap sacks,which they plan to turn into profitous folding money back in the States.Only problem is,the Ecuadorians kinda miss the alarming number of hairy mygalamorphs going into the bags with each shovelful.In return for their trabajando mucho,the daring duo opts to let the gents kip amongst the coffee beans during the flight to the northern region of the continent.Some of the spiders escape their burlap prisons and begin to bite the spaniards in the back of the plane.Cue hokey movie science lesson #1:Though,to any arachnophile worth his weight in chelicerae,the featured spiders are both Brachypelma and Aphonopelma species,which are terrestrial and usually extremely mild-tempered with non-toxic venom,the film's director would like you to believe these little darlins are "Ecuadorian banana spiders",capable of causing death in minutes.That's a pretty big fucking stretch,Armstrong,but we'll proceed.Adding insult to injury,one of the plane's engines shits out,forcing the would-be coffee moguls to crash in a field somewhere in an orange-producing burg in California.Literally seconds after the plane goes down,the crash scene is descended upon by all the main characters.Fireman Burt(Akins),Doc Hodgins(Pat Hingle),Mayor Douglas,the police chief,and even Joe and Cindy,a young couple.While trying to pry the plane's door open,they notice a steadily leaking flow of gasoline coming from the wreckage,so they naturally dig a trench around the site to divert the path of the petrol.That'd have been an ace idea if a random jackass on a motorcycle didn't speed out of control directly towards the wreck,crashing his bike,and effectively catching the fuel on fire and blowing up the plane.

Matthew(Matt Laborteaux)may be effin' with oranges here,but it'd be nothing but lemons for him later on.
Hokey movie science lesson #2:Ecuadorian banana spiders are made of a flame proof material,evidently,as the army of arachnids emerges from the explosion totally unscathed and begin biting the good townsfolk immediately,forcing Hodgins to set up a makeshift triage,where Joe's friend,who just happens to be a world-renowned arachnophile,deducts that the responsible culprits must be Ecuadorian banana spiders that stowed away in the coffee beans by the fucking hundreds,which by hokey movie mathematics,means that the some of the burlap sacks must've had more spiders than coffee in them...and still didn't get noticed.Peculiar that.And if that sounds a little funny to you,just wait til you wrap your collective minds around the town's methodology of ridding themselves of the menacing mygalamorphs.Oh yeah,Matthew(Laborteaux) is among the first to notice the spiders,pokes around at one with a stick,just like an annoying little fuck who's begging to get poisoned would do.Only,unlike the usual movie of the week fare of the day,where the snot nose would get a good scare and learn a valuable lesson from it all,this brat gets bitten,suffers,and dies.How fucking hot is that?Meanwhile,the mayor is prepping his oranges for the marketplace,ignoring the warnings of just about everyone in the movie to shut down his processing plant,which,by the way,has become infested with thousands of spiders who are attracted to the bugs that in turn,are attracted to the fruit.Just when all hope seems lost for Amity beac...uhh,the town of Finleyville,Joe researches the hairy antagonists further,coming up with Hokey movie science lesson #3:The Ecuadorian banana spider's biggest natural enemy is a type of wasp,and just the sound of its beating wings will paralyze the spider with fear for several minutes.Joe then surmizes that rounding up some bumblebees and recording the buzz,and amplifying it through a sound system in the plant,will buy them the time that they need to shovel and tong up all the paralyzed spiders and drop them into containers of alcohol.After throwing some fruit on the plant floor to draw the bugs which draws the spiders,they play the recording of the bees(bumblebees,specific South American wasps,what's the difference at this point,really)which freezes the tarantulas,allowing Fireman Bert,Joe,Cindy and the doctor to round the eight-legged varmints up and save the day,despite a momentary power shortage scare they manage to overcome.The shortage of good writing they never do.

What did I fuckin' tell ya?
Cargo proved to be Hagmann's last directorial credit(oh,sweet justice!),Claude Akins kept busy on the small screen up until his death in 1994,with Pat Hingle doing much the same until his death in 2006.Tom Atkins,of course,is very genre busy to this very day,much to the delight of horror nuts everywhere.Hessman was last seen on the genre map in Rob Zombie's H2,which I've yet to suffer through.Thank the gods for small favours.Tonight's entry is light on scares,heavy on polyester wear,and moderately full of unintentional laughs.It crawls upon the rating scale,feebly mustering a mere one wop.

Go ahead,Ida,a buck is a buck.Get eatin'!

"The Fog"(1980)d/John Carpenter

I wanna thank all the faithful readers out there for making this current month the most popular in the three years since the inception of "Wopsploitation",my ugly little bastard child seems to be catching on big time.You guys and gals are truly as tits as a Russ Meyer movie.And sexier,at that.I promise you,I've got no shortage of titles to give the once over,and I've also been thinking about bringing in a guest reviewer or two on occasion,just to add a little spice to the mix.We're gonna look at some real classics this week,and a forgotten gem or three while we're at it.So,pack one up,sit back,and get yourself a piece of the Wop.
In the late seventies and early to mid eighties,John Carpenter could do no wrong.He had an impressive streak of classic films,running from "Assault on Precinct 13" to about "Prince of Darkness" or so,the endpoint of his brilliance is arguable.Today's entry,often referred to as a "minor classic", is one of my favorite Carpenter films of all,and a stellar example of the director at his very best.Shot anamorphically to hide the low-end budget,the film boasts of an excellent cast of characters,sparse but effective makeup work by Rob Bottin(who plays pissed-off leper-ghost,Captain Blake in the film),and yet another memorably creepy Carpenter soundtrack.Though about a third of the film stands as reshoots and new scenes,as the director hated the first cut,the finished product is a surprisingly effective ghost story.I remember the way the audience freaked the fuck out in the theater during the trick ending,and thinking to myself,"Goddamn!That was cool!",and saying it repeatedly after shelling out 92 samoleans for the Magnetic Video VHS release afterwards.Looking back,it's painful what a guy had to pay for quality horror entertainment back in the early eighties...

John Houseman earns money the old fashioned way...in CAMEOS.
The night before Antonio Bay's centennial celebration,old Mr. Machen(Houseman)tells the local boys the lurid history of the town over a crackling campfire.At the same time,Father Malone(Hal Holbrook)has discovered the town's shameful secret hidden away in his church's walls,in the form of a huge gold cross,and the revealing diary of his grandfather.Do priests write diaries a lot?If so I'd imagine most of 'em would be pretty lurid and shameful...It seems a hundred years earlier,Malone's grandfather and five other conspiritors shit in the collective mouths of a leper colony led by the captain of a clipper ship called the Elizabeth Dane,named Blake who was looking to establish a settlement nearby.The six men lit a campfire on the rocky coast to simulate a lighthouse's beacon,and during a foggy evening,sent the ship full of lepers to an icy premature death.The town was then settled using the stolen gold and the incident hiden away from the light.That night,three fishermen are engulfed by an unearthly,glowing fog on the ocean,and when the men on deck see a ghostly clipper pull alongside their own boat,they are dispatched by shadowy killers.Meanwhile,Nick Castle(Atkins) picks up a hitchiker named Elizabeth(Curtis),and the two manage to get a horizontal bop in amidst the town coming unglued from midnight 'til one in the morning.Back at the church,Malone drunkenly tries to convince Kathy and her assistant(Leigh,Nancy Loomis)to cancel the celebration,telling them of the bloodshed Antonio Bay was founded on.At the old lighthouse where deejay Stevie Wayne(Barbeau) broadcasts her sleepy jazz show from,things are getting weirder.A piece of driftwood her son brings her begins to drip water before catching fire,and changing from reading DANE to 6 MUST DIE.And you thought jazz was boring.

Stevie Wayne(Adrienne Barbeau)can deejay into my microphone all night long,baby.
The next day Nick and Elizabeth charter a boat to search for his three missing fishing buddies,stumbling across an unresponsive boat housing the eyeless cadaver of one of the men,who at the morgue,momentarily springs to life,grabs a scalpel and carves a number 3 in the floor tiles.That night as the centennial begins,Stevie hears the death of her weatherman,as he investigates outside his post and is overtaken by hooks that dig into him out of the glowing fog.She frantically calls the babysitter,who is enveloped by the fog,and dispatched by the leper-ghosts.Just as they're about to add Wayne's son to their bodycount,Nick and Elizabeth rescue the boy in his pickup,and speed away from the swirling bank of death.The pillowchested deejay warns her listeners to stay out of the fog,leading Kathy and assistant,Nick,Elizabeth,and young Danny to the safety of the church,just as the unearthly fog creeps down upon the lighthouse where she's broadcasting.The group fends off the ghostly attack at the church,while the deejay corners herself on the lighthouse roof,battling back the vengeful lepers with their own crusty weapons.Malone brings the hulking gold cross out to Captain Blake,and offers himself as the final conspiritor,but the crew and the fog disappear in thin air with their stolen treasure returned.Wayne,still in one piece,warns her listeners to watch out for the fog,which reappears,sliding back under the church doors,and surrounds the priest who is abruptly beheaded by the leper captain.

"Roll the window up and hit the gas,he's just gonna squeegee the windshield and ask for change!"
Many of the character names are movie and book-related inside jokes(Nick Castle,Dr. Phibes,Dan O'Bannon,Mr. Machen)you'll be able to notice as the credits roll.Carpenter drew his inspiration for this project from a British horror film from the 50's that dealt with monsters that hid in cloud-cover.His next film would be the excellent "Escape From New York" a year later,which we'll look at at a later date.His marriage to the the lovely Barbeau came to an end in 1984,his credibility stuck around quite a bit longer,at least until he helmed the god-awful Ghosts of Mars in 2001.Still one of my favorite directors of all-time,without question.Coincidentally,tonight's entry stands at the sixth highest box office gross of all his films,which probably explains why they'd rape his cult classic with an unneccessary and overwhelmingly panned remake in 2005.Ironically,his own remake of The Thing(1982) is probably the greatest ever made.The Fog breaks through the stained glass with an ectoplasmic fist holding three wops under the cover of vengeful mist on the ratings scale...

Insert obligatory vengeful leperous apparition with glowing eyes and an itchy scabbard finger joke here.