"Deadly Blessing"(1981) d/ Wes Craven

The Hit(tite)s just keep a' comin as we'll kick off June and travel to root beer country in examining tonight's minor 1981 cult fave from genre director Wes Craven, an odd blend of religious zealotry and the supernatural with appearances from cult icon Michael Berryman, Sharon Stone, Maren Jensen, and most memorably of all,  perhaps, Ernest Borgnine-in-Pa. Dutch chin. The resulting affair is surprisingly moody and grim and one I sat through several times in the cable box era and re-watched several more on videotape as an aspiring horrorphile in the early eighties, until finally taping over it for some Saturday night MTV concert, you know, back when that channel actually played music? There I go, sounding like the neighborhood wallet-necks I used to get under the skin of back in the day again. Now, thanks to those diamond bastards at Shout Factory, who've lovingly re-released the film in a deluxe edition on dvd and Blu-ray with more extras than you can shake a scythe at,  you can discover this one for yourselves, as well...


"I couldn't help my impure thoughts, father, did you see how plain she was??"
When Hittite leader Isaiah Schmidt's (Borgnine) son Jim is runneth over by his own tractor, things go from bad to worse for his pregnant widow, Martha (Maren Jensen), left to tend their farm alone and shunned by the simple religious townsfolk as a succubus(!),  for luring one of  their flock away in the first damned place. Now, Martha's attractive and all, but it's her buddy Lana (Stone) that's genuine sex vamp material here if you ask me. It turns out that Martha's not the only one the zealots dig pestering, as Louisa's daughter Faith (Lisa Hartman) is often chased around the fields and called a succubus herself by a scripture-spouting slowpoke named William (Berryman). Hold on one butter-churning minute, you Hittites, all these dames can't be succubi, can they?


"I never get to churn the butter!" barks William (Michael Berryman).
When Lana and Vicky (Susan Buckner) show up to lend support to their girlfriend, it all goes to Hell in a horse-drawn buggy. Vicky develops designs on Isaiah's son John (Jeff East), and William mysteriously turns his toes up out in the barn as he's shivved in the back, adding more fuel to the Mennonites' manias. It gets weirder yet when Lana has vivid recurring dreams about being forced to swallow a live spider as it parachutes down into her mouth, held open by anonymous hands.An inquisitive snake turns up in Martha's bathwater, and John's roadside makeout sesh with the Vickster ends with bladed stabwound death for him, trapped gas tank explosion death for her. In the end, Louisa turns out to be nuttier than a Snickers, and Faith turns out to be a maaaan, baby, leading to a knock-out, drag down, ahem... finale.


"Funny, this doesn't taste like a Haplopelma Albopilosum...."
Craven would follow this one up with Swamp Thing(1982), before scoring genre immortality two years later with A Nightmare on Elm Street. Hartman, who had a minor recording career of her own in the late seventies, ended up raising a family with country superstar Clint Black. Pennsylvania native/"Basic Instinct" muff shot, Sharon Stone is still hot, by God . Though Blessing is no masterpiece by anyone's standards, it's packed with enough flair and atmosphere to merit a respectable two big ones on the scale. Check it out.


"Hey lady, why you wearing bikini bottoms in the bathtub??"

"Demoni 2" (1986) d/ Lamberto Bava

Remember how much fun you had the first time you saw Lamberto Bava's schizophrenic cult classic, Demons(1985)? Well, Team Dario wasted little time in banging out a sequel, hoping to cash in on the international success of their original effort, and that's almost never a good sign, right out of the gate. Sure, there's contagion-spreading demoniac mayhem at every juncture, as crafted by the maestro Stivaletti, and fan favorite Bobby Rhodes returns in an almost identical capacity, and Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni lends her inimitably adorable pouty persona as teenaged catalyst to the on-screen madness, but the results fall well short of the first film's vigor in the end. Still, you could do a lot worse...


"Fix this earring for me, I'm gonna do the Molly Ringwald all goddamned night!"
Sally(Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) ducks out of her Sweet 16 birthday party only to get caught up watching a documentary on television about that big outbreak of demons a few years back, you remember that, don't you? A group of amateur thrill-seekers scales the high security wall of 'the forbidden zone', where the contagion had been contained, but, after stumbling upon a frozen demon corpse while inside, the investigators unwittingly reanimate the homely fellow, who takes it upon himself to kill the lot of them and dramatically break out of the television screen, infecting Sally, who's too startled to resist, in the process. Naturally, she spreads the evil to her party guests through her fingernails, letting them know that the 'floppily dancing  around her high rise apartment to The Smiths and Peter Murphy' segment of her get together has officially ended.


"She watched that documentary on television in a highrise apartment building, GET IT?!!?" barks Tony th-errr, I mean, Hank the Personal Trainer (Bobby Rhodes).
The newly-transformed demons spill out of the young girl's apartment, rushing to infect the entire populace of the building after a collective bleed burns through the floor Alien(1979)-style and knocks out the power, leaving salvation this time around to George (David Knight) and his pregnant spouse, Hannah ( Nancy Brilli), as they join with Bobby the Pimp's identical twin, Hank (Bobby Rhodes), who's been pumping iron in the building's gym and also quite adept at battling back the belligerent baddies.Little boys turn into bloodthirsty demons, hell, even family dogs transform into demons here. An embarrassing winged imp puppet with visible strings  terrorizes the expectant mother-to-be. A little girl (Asia Argento, in her debut) watches helplessly as her father is swarmed by demons as the struggle moves to the parking garage. George and Hannah decide to make their way to the roof, finally infiltrating the mysterious self-sufficient television station that started the epidemic, but demonic Sally does her best to stop the couple from escaping. She fails and eats half-blinded impalement death. Hannah gives birth. The baby isn't a demon. Is it finally all over? Of course not.


They grow up right before your eyes, don't they?
Lino Salemme ( the unforgettable coke-snorting 'Ripper' from the original ) makes a nice cameo here, playing a security guard this time around, and Virginia Bryant is on board as a classy call girl. The soundtrack is handled by Simon Boswell, with a few memorable cuts, but for me, the Simonetti metal score of the original wins out, hands down. Michele Soavi's La Chiesa (1989), originally intended as a second Demons sequel, would follow, and Bava would helm the made-for-tv The Ogre in 1988, which would be known as Demons III: The Ogre stateside, and even Umberto Lenzi's Black Demons(1991) was released as Demons III in several countries. This entry earns itself two wops, a flawed but enjoyable effort.


"Don't post that one to FB, you missed our collective sideways peace signs and duckfaces!"

"Drive-In Massacre"(1977) d/ Stu Segall

Forget any visions of  half-dressed, Flowbee-coiffed Farrah lookalikes getting claret-splashed in the back of  customized vans or terrified drive-in patrons screaming against an outdoor screen playing fifties sci-fi classics as a backdrop that the deceptive one sheet for tonight's review may have invoked in you during your first glance. You won't get any of that here. If you're in the market for nerve-wracking synthesizer scores, line-flubbing detectives, stuttering sideshow geeks turned janitors-in-Pinocchio hats,  anti-social drive-in managers decked out in polyester leisure suits, or murky lighting, muffled sound, and establishing shots that go on and on like Uschi Digart's buh-hubbas and make seventy or so minutes feel a lot more like two and a half hours, then you'll probably dig this one for the sheer ineptitude of the thing.


It's what's playing tonight, and also, what's happening. You see what they did there?
Couples are getting whacked by a sword-wielding fiend after burping dialog unconvincingly at each other in a darkened drive-in theater that's run by a miserable, mouthy bald prick in his polyester pimpiest, if we're to believe the cut n' pasted one-sided newspaper headline pointed at the camera by one of the two mostly sedentary detectives on the case. Who the fuck could it be?There's quite a few one dimensional suspects to choose from: The unseen drive-in/carnival owner with a suitcase full o' swords? Austin, the aforementioned abrasive chrome dome manager who swallowed swords previously?  Germy, the stuttery one-time bite-offer of snake and bird heads und sword swallower in the carnival that formerly employed him? Orville, the local pervo who just wants to beat his meat? One of these squarish cops is gonna have to embarrassingly pose as a woman at the drive-in to draw the killer out, I know that much about cinematic crime investigation techniques.


Do you remember where you were when you first saw the fake headlines?
Just when you're sure you've pieced together the plot, you're treated to twenty minutes of a police standoff with a babbling machete-gripping stranger('Buck' Flower, no less) in a warehouse that ends up having fuck all to do with the ongoing nightly 'massacre' at the drive-in as he ends up having only escaped the nuthouse that same day. So who was the killer? None of the above! The cat is on the loose at your drive-in, as a hasty voice over tells us after a sloppy freeze of the harmless janitor fellow's corpse, looking to add you to his admittedly unimpressive body count thus far! Like anybody'd still be paying attention to this crap in a car with a hot broad at the drive-in...


Funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky bald-ass boss (Newton Naushaus).
Segall's early slasher has the feel of a latter day J.G. 'Pat' Patterson or H.G. Lewis clunker minus all the red stuff, and with classic lines like "I just wanted to beat my meat!" and "She's in pretty bad shape... she's been murdered with a sword.",  it's easy to confuse it as such at first glance. I much prefer his later porn fare, like 'Up n' Coming"(1983)( starring the late Marilyn Chambers, Loni Sanders, and Johnny Wadd himself!). You'll instantly recognize 'Buck' Flower from his numerous cameos in John Carpenter's films throughout the era; George also co-wrote the movie with Segall, before moving on to better things like 'Devil's Ecstasy'(1977) and 'Capture of Bigfoot'(1979).A lot less fun than it coulda/shoulda been, and therefore, one wop on the scale.


Gettin' a little head at the drive-in was never like this!