ALABAMA'S GHOST (1972) - When Alabama (Christopher Brooks) accidentally drives a forklift through a wall in the basement of San Francisco's famed Earthquake McGoon's nightclub, he finds a hidden passageway that leads to a room that contains all the possessions of "World's Greatest Magician" Carter The Great (E. Kerrigan Prescott), who mysteriously died years before. Alabama finds a box that contains the address of Granny (Ken Granthan), Carter's "sister". The box also contains some magical herb (called "raw zeta"), which he and Granny smoke in a pot pipe. Alabama is forced to team up with Zoerae (Peggy Browne), Granny's assistant, as he wants to become a master magician using Carter's found possessions. This leads Alabama on a weird journey that includes vampires, robots, voodoo ceremonies, ghosts, rock music, go-go dancers, a disappearing elephant, a biker gang, a disembodied heart and the occasional drooling fanatic. Alabama puts on magic shows at Earthquake McGoon's, billing himself as "Alabama, King Of The Cosmos", to packed houses. He is picked-up by promoter Otto Max (Steven Kent Browne), who tells Alabama, "Surrealism is in. Surrealism is where it's at!" Otto books him on a tour across the United States, where he achieves much acclaim. Things start going wrong for Alabama when one of his female assistants is severely injured while he performs a sword trick (she also has two puncture wounds on her neck). More accidents happen which leads up to the grand finale: A world-wide televised showing of Alabama doing Carter's "disappearing elephant act", which will have dire consequences on anyone who watches it. How it ends: I'll never tell. I've barely scratched the surface on this off-the-wall, rarely-seen supernatural thriller. Director/producer/writer Fredric Hobbs (ROSELAND - 1970; GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS - 1973) has crafted an intricate, multi-layered film which can only be described as one-of-a-kind. Hobbs was way ahead of his time, kind of a David Lynch of the 70's. ALABAMA'S GHOST veers off into many different directions, but never disappoints the viewer. Watch it straight or stoned; it doesn't matter. It's a facinating experience no matter what state you're in.  E. Kerrigan Prescott, Christopher Brooks and Steven Kent Brown have appeared in all three of Hobb's above mentioned films. Also starring Karen Ingentron as Dr. Caligula, Ann Weldon as Mama-bama, Ann Wagner Ward as Marilyn Midnight and Neena the elephant. With special appearances by musical groups The Turk Murphy Jazz Band and The Landing Zone and improvational group The Cockettes.  I've unofficially heard that Hobbs gave up film to become a sculptor after making GODMONSTER. That's filmmaking's loss. This film screams out for a re-release as it is now only available on VHS on the OOP ThrillerVideo label hosted by Elvira, who interrupts the film midway to do some of her shtick. Anchor Bay should do a restoration and release it on DVD so it can get the cult following it deserves. Believe it or not, this film was Rated PG when originally released. This is the strangest PG film you will ever view!

ANGUISH (1986) - Warning: If you have yet to view this strange and manipulative horror movie (possibly the weirdest horror film made in the 80's to get a wide theatrical release), please do not read this review. This is a film that should be experienced for the first time with no previous knowledge of what you are about to be put through, because the narrative structure is quite unlike any film you've seen before. The film opens with severely troubled John (Michael Lerner; STRANGE INVADERS [1983] and nominated for an Academy Award for his role in BARTON FINK [1991]), a hospital orderly who is slowly going blind due to diabetes. He is having trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy thanks to his domineering mother (Zelda Rubinstein; best known for her role in POLTERGEIST [1982], but she is absolutely unforgettable here), who hypnotizes him on a daily basis. After his hypnosis sessions, John travels around in a trance and removes people's eyes with a scalpel, bringing the orbs to his mother as gifts. It's during one of these eye removal scenes (about 22 minutes into the film) that we discover that what we are actually viewing is nothing but a film (titled THE MOMMY) being watched by an audience in a movie theater, but it seems like some audience members are also being affected by Mommy's on-screen hypnosis methods (It's a sequence you won't soon forget once you've viewed it). It seems to particularly affect one male audience member (Angel Jove), who seems to take Mommy's on-screen suggestions a little too seriously (subtle hints are dropped that he has seen this film many time before in this same theater) and begins murdering members of the audience, while John is on-screen killing members of an audience in a theater showing the 1925 dinosaur film, THE LOST WORLD. As John begins decimating everyone in the theater on-screen, the crazy male member in the real (?) theater begins shooting people with a silencer-equipped pistol. One girl witnesses him killing the ticket-taker and the candy counter girl and escapes the theater (leaving her nervous female friend inside), but the killer then locks the theater doors so no one can leave or get in. It's not long before the fictional film on-screen and the actual killer's actions are being played-out in-synch in a finale that is must be seen to be fully appreciated. Just when you think it's over, it's not.  The best way to describe this film is that it fucks with your mind to the point that you're not sure what is real and what is fiction, much like what John is going through in the film-within-a-film. If I weren't a rational human being, I'd swear that I was actually being hypnotized while watching this. Director/screenwriter Bigas Luna (REBORN - 1981) masterfully makes us wonder if we are witnessing life imitating art or art imitating life, purposely keeping the viewer off-balance in a cacophony of sights and sounds that defy description (once you see the sight of a snail riding on the back of a pigeon, you'll swear that someone slipped you some hallucinogenics in your soda!). ANGUISH is probably one of the most original and overlooked horror films of the 80's; a total masterwork of the macabre (A lot of reviewers compare this to HE KNOWS YOU'RE ALONE [1980] because of the film-within-a-film opening, but the comparisons end there). The only way to fully appreciate this unheralded classic of modern horror is in a packed theater (man, that must have been cool, not to mention goosebump-inducing!), but Anchor Bay Entertainment offers a nice widescreen DVD that tries to duplicate the experience. I can't recommend this film enough to fans of obscure horror. It plays with your head in so many ways, you won't know whether you're coming or going. Why isn't this film more popular? This is a one-of-a-kind trip into the bizarre mind of a mad genius (Bigas Luna is like a demented Spanish David Lynch, except his narrative structure is much easier to follow), who would gain international arthouse fame with 1992's JAMON JAMON (hey, even I like that one!). After viewing REBORN and ANGUISH, I really wish that Mr. Luna strayed to the dark side just one more time. Stay through the end credits because it adds further depth to the experience. My highest recommendation. Also starring Talia Paul and Clara Pastor. Originally released on VHS by Key Video in a fullscreen version (not the best way to watch it). Buy or rent the widescreen DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment instead. Rated R.

BELIEVERS (2007) - Paramedics David (Johnny Messner; ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID - 2004) and Victor (Jon Huertas; THE INSATIABLE - 2006) answer a call of a woman passed out on Lake Road and when they get there, they find the woman, Rebecca (Deanna Russo), unresponsive, as her young daughter, Libby (Saige Ryan Campbell), screams at them to wake her up before "they" arrive. As David and Victor work to revive Rebecca (she has strange mathematical equations tattooed on her body), four men in white coats carrying guns pull up in a pickup truck, grab Rebecca and Libby and kidnap David and Victor, putting a bullet in Victor's shoulder to show they mean business. They are taken to a heavily guarded compound (actually a deserted missile base) of a cult of wackos called the Quanta Group, where David and Victor are "decontaminated" and questioned by a dweeb called IO (Erik Passoja), who informs them that in thirteen hours everyone in the cult will leave Earth to "perpetuate the species". David and Victor are then locked in bathroom stalls, as we watch the Quanta Group's leader, Dr. Talbot (Daniel Benzali; MESSENGER OF DEATH - 1988), also known as "The Teacher", using some psychic force on Rebecca's body in an attempt to revive her, but Libby tries to intervene ("You don't touch the Teacher!") and is locked in the same bathroom as David and Victor. Libby tells them that the Teacher is taking them to the other side of the universe, but they all have to go to sleep first. Thinking that everything is going to turn out like the Heaven's Gate mass suicide, David and Victor try to find a way to escape, especially when a seemingly-cured Rebecca shows up in the bathroom and offers to take them on their trip. Meanwhile, David and Victor's boss, Capt. Newsome (Dig Wayne), and David's pregnant wife Deborah (Elizabeth Bogush), try to locate them, but the Quanta Group have people on the outside covering up the evidence. The Teacher informs our captive pair that the Earth will cease to exist in a matter of weeks and offers to "save" them. The Teacher has a "formula" ("Numbers don't lie. People do.") that proves "a rain of fire will decend from above, incinerating all life on Earth" and explains to David and Victor that the Quanta Group, made up of scientists, researchers and philosophers, are the only people that will escape the Armageddon. The Teacher has knowledge of both David and Victor's lives that he can't possibly know about and it affects both David and Victor in very different ways (Victor is a devout Catholic and David is an Athiest). Is it possible that the Quanta Group is not a cult at all, but actually humanity's last chance for survival? I'm afraid you'll have to discover that for yourself. Let's just say that the ending is a killer.  Slow-moving, yet never uninvolving, BELIEVERS is a taut tale of people who either believe or refuse to, not just about the end of the world, but also in God itself. Director Daniel Myrick (co-director of the cult smash THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT [1999] and director of the horror films SOLSTICE [2007] and THE OBJECTIVE [2008]), working with a screenplay written by himself, Daniel Noah and Julia Fair (ALIEN RAIDERS - 2008), has fashioned a religious allegory disguised as a sci-fi thriller, a modern-day take on the Rapture. Myrick keeps us guessing whether the Quanta Group and the Teacher himself are real or just another brainwashing, mind-control cult with false doomsday prophecies. The scene where Rebecca seduces and the makes love to Victor while she repeats verbatim every word the Teacher (who has a Control Room full of TV's, where he can monitor every room in the compound) whispers in her ear (thanks to a small microphone implanted in her skull) is an example of how this film plays with audiences' expectations. The Believers think that the Teacher has real powers, while the non-believers will think it is nothing but a susceptible woman hypnotizing (by proxy) a man whose will has been weakened. In the end, it all boils down to the differences in David and Victor's backgrounds and those differences play a major role in how they react to the situation. While the film is not that bloody, there are extremely uncomfortable scenes, such as when David is "purged" with a car battery. The ambient soundtrack, full of low-range rumbles, electronic blips and whispering voices, adds to the creepy atmosphere. Though not for everyone's tastes, BELIEVERS is a seriously deranged take on how religion can be used for evil as well as good and how the best of intentions can come back and bite you in the ass. Also starring June Angela, John Farley, Carolyn Hennesy and Ray Papazian. A Warner Home Video DVD Release. Unrated.

BEYOND REASON (1977) - Weird psychological thriller, directed and written by star Telly Savalas, his only stint as a director, except for a few episodes of his TV series KOJAK (1973 - 1978). Savalas is Dr. Nicholas Mati, chief psychiatrist at the criminal unit of a mental hospital, who has unorthodox methods of dealing with his patients (When the film opens, Dr. Mati is seen shooting craps in the men's room [the most logical place to play craps, if you ask me] with a group of male patients). His methods aren't popular with the higher-ups (When the Head of Psychiatry tells Dr. Mati to stop gambling with his patients, he replies, "I can't. I'm down thirty bucks!"), but he seems to get results with his patients, who have all been committed for various violent and heinous crimes. Dr. Mati has an unusually bright outlook on life, but it becomes obvious to the viewer early on that he is either losing his grip on reality or suffering from a serious medical illness. Dr. Mati begins to lose his grip on reality when the beautiful portrait of a young woman that his wife Elaine (Diana Muldaur; MANEATERS ARE LOOSE - 1978) just painted turns into a grim, colorless portrait of a hideous-looking old hag. He begins butting heads with student doctor Leslie Valentine (Laura Johnson; Wes Craven's CHILLER - 1985), who doesn't agree with his "pop psychology" approach and takes an interest in an unnamed patient of his. The questions soon become: Is Leslie real or a figment of Dr. Mati's imagination? Is the unnamed patient actually Dr. Mati? Things get downright bizarre when a man Dr. Mati has never seen before threatens to jump off the hospital's roof and someone phones Dr. Mati to talk him down. When he gets to the roof, the strange man whispers something into Dr. Mati's ear and then jumps off the roof, killing himself. When one of his prize patients dies suddenly, even Dr. Mati begins to doubt his sanity (When he tells his wife about her painting changing from beautiful to ugly, she jokingly says, "It's simple, you're crazy!", not realizing that she may not be too far off the mark), but he also thinks that someone may be trying to drive him over the edge. The rest of the film details Dr. Mati's search for the truth, but he might not like what he discovers. The audience may not either, depending on their tolerance for existential and oblique endings.  Not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, BEYOND REASON is still an interesting, if flawed, foray into one man's descent into madness. The movie plays like one long picture puzzle, where the viewer is given small visual pieces of the puzzle to put together as the film progresses, but unfortunately, some of the pieces we are given seem to belong to some puzzle never revealed. While Telly Savalas (HORROR EXPRESS - 1973; LISA AND THE DEVIL - 1973) is good as Dr. Mati, one wonders how this film would have turned out in the hands of a more capable director. While Savalas' script isn't too bad, the look of the film is much too flat and TV-ish, like some Movie of the Week. There are some weird touches, though, such as the blind begging vagrant that gives Dr. Mati change for a ten-dollar bill and some of the hallucinations in Dr. Mati's mind. Since the whole story is basically told through Dr. Mati's eyes and mind, it's hard at first for the viewer to get a grasp on what is fact or fiction, but it becomes quite clear at the film's halfway mark that the reason why Dr. Mati is such an effective (or rather, affective) psychiatrist is because he, too, is harboring some deep, dark recessive memory that is slowly coming to the forefront. The film does drag in spots, but it manages to hold interest and the final shot may or may not imply that Dr. Mati is just a figment of a criminally insane patient's imagination, which gives everything that happened before it a whole new meaning. What's more puzzling to me is why Savalas picked this story as his only theatrical directing and writing credit. He seems to be exorcising some personal demons here, although the end result will leave the viewer unclear if he is pro or con on the subject of psychiatry. Also starring Marvin Laird, Bob Basso, Douglas Dirkson, Walter Brooke, Barney Phillips, Tony Burton, Lilyan Chauvin, Toni Lawrence, Larry Golden and John Lisbon Wood. Originally released on VHS by Media Home Entertainment and not available on DVD. Rated PG.

BIG MEAT EATER (1982) - Here's something you don't see very often: A horror musical with original songs, in the same vein as THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975). Unfortunately, this micro-budgeted Canadian production is weak in every department, from the acting and mediocre original songs to all the technical aspects. The quiet town of Burquitlam may seem normal on the surface, but behind it's façade, it's a real horror show. Unbeknownst to town butcher Rob Sanderson (George Dawson), huge, hulking black stranger Abdullah (Clarence "Big" Miller) has just killed the town's mayor (by shoving his hand into the spinning radiator fan of a car) and his gangster henchman (he stuffs the body into a blazing furnace) and walks into Rob's butcher shop (Whose store's motto is "Pleased to meet you, meat to please you!") when some meat deliverymen accidentally carry the mayor's dead body into the store. Thinking that Abdullah was sent over by an employment agency, Rob slaps a butcher's smock on him and hires him as an apprentice butcher. At the same time, a UFO (a bad model on a string) lands in town and the aliens (two wind-up toy robots) revive the mayor's dead body and possess the body of young, budding scientist Jan Wczinski (Andrew Gillies). The aliens' goal: Construct a landing pad for an alien invasion and steal the contents in the pit of spoiled meat that Rob keeps beneath a trap door his butcher shop. It seems the contents are fermenting into a substance known as "Bolonium" (Really?), which is the fuel the aliens need to power their spaceships. The resurrected mayor tries to close down Rob's butcher shop to gain access to the Bolonium, only he doesn't count on the murderous Abdullah being there to stop him. Meanwhile, Jan (who, for some unknown reason, doesn't seem to be possessed anymore) has created a jet engine that runs on Bolonium, so he attaches it to the Mayor's vintage Cadillac and flies it on a collision course with the alien spaceship. The film ends on a happy note, but not once does it address the questions on every viewer's mind: Where did Abdullah come from and why does he want to kill everyone?  This pretty bad horror musical tries way too hard to make itself into a cult film and it just doesn't work. Director Chris Windsor (his only directorial credit) places the film in some alternate 1950's universe, where people wear fedoras, drive Cadillacs (the kind with the big fins) and break into song and dance to advance the plot. Bluntly put, the songs (a strange mixture of ballads, doo-wop and new wave tunes) are terrible and the lipsynching by the cast of amateur actors rarely match the lyrics on the soundtrack. Windsor (who co-wrote this mess with Producer Laurence Keane) tries to make a musical version of PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE, complete with dimestore special effects and deliberate bad line readings, but you can't purposely set out to make a bad cult film. It's the audience that decides whether a film becomes a cult phenomena and BIG MEAT EATER is just too low-rent and uninvolving to register with audiences the way PLAN NINE or ROCKY HORROR did. It tries too hard to be different, as Abdullah walks around wearing a fez, a sub-plot concerning a family of Gypsies (who either warn everyone in town about the alien evil or contribute to it) goes nowhere and Rob is one of the most clueless people in film history. There are a few shots of bloody gore, but it is so cheaply done and out-of-place here, I can hardly see anyone being impressed by it. I can see what Windsor was trying to achieve here, but his results fail to hit their intended mark. On a whole, BIG MEAT EATER can't even be considered an interesting failure. It's just a failure. Also starring Howard Taylor, Stephen Dimopoulos, Georgina Hegedos, Ida Carnevali, Sharon Wahl and Heather Smith-Harper. Originally released on VHS by Media Home Entertainment and available on DVD from Koch Vision in a fairly sharp fullscreen print with a reworked Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Not Rated.

BLOOD DELIRIUM (1988) - This film is going to be hard to explain. Music composer Sybille (Brigitte Christensen, who spends the first few minutes topless) comes home and listens to the phone messages on her answering machine. To her surprise, one of the messages is from herself......from the future! On the message, she tells herself that they are like two flames that burn as one. While the message is playing, Sybille's piano starts playing by itself and objects start flying around the room. When her fiance, Gerard (Marco Di Stefano), comes over and she tells him what she heard and witnessed, he tells her that she's simply been working to hard and her mind is playing tricks on her. At the same time, famous painter Charles Saint Simone (John Phillip Law), known simply as "Maestro", is at his dying wife Christine's (also portrayed by Christensen) bedside. Before she dies, she tells her husband about "two flames that burn as one" and how she will come back from the dead to be with him again. After his wife's death, the Maestro goes quite mad and, for a year, he is unable to paint anything to his satisfaction. He gets the bright idea to dig up Christine's corpse for inspiration, so he and his servant, Hermann (Gordon Mitchell), who secretly pined for Christine (we see him kiss her all over her dead body during her wake a year earlier!), dig up her body and place her maggot-ridden corpse by her piano. Yes, Christine was also a composer and her last composition, titled "Delirium", echoes in the Maestro's head. The Maestro paints a mask of Christine's face, puts it over the skull of his dead wife's corpse and starts painting again, but when the mask falls off, he loses his mind even more, as he imagines that his wife is laughing at him. He ends up burning over one hundred of his valuable paintings along with his wife's corpse. Now here's when it really begins to get strange. When Sybille is playing piano at her home, a window blows open and an invitation to one of the Maestro's gallery showings blows in. Sybille goes to the gallery and as soon as the Maestro sets sight of her, he thinks his wife has come back to him. To make a crazy long story short, Sybille ends up at the Maestro's castle and is soon wearing Christine's clothes and playing Christine's music, while the Maestro (who thinks he is the reincarnation of Van Gogh) begins painting in earnest again. He still can't seem to paint what he feels (He says to Sybille, "Can you give me the color of suffering?"), but when the even loonier Hermann rapes and kills a local girl, the Maestro finds that missing element in his paintings: Blood! He hangs the murdered girl upside down and drains the body of all it's blood and uses the red stuff liberally in his paintings. When Sybille accidentally discovers Hermann cutting up the body and disposing of the parts in an acid bath, the Maestro drugs  and locks her in her bedroom. Things get weirder from here, as the Maestro runs out of blood ("I need more color!"), so he has Hermann kill one of Sybille's nosy friends. As Gerard rushes to help Sybille (he owns a two seater helicopter!), the finale finds "future Sybille" (thought the filmmakers forgot about her, didn't you?) saving both Gerard and Sybille (who are slowly being bled to death) and dropping pieces of the castle down on the Maestro (who, in keeping with the Van Gogh tradition, has cut off his own ear) and Hermann, killing them.  Of course, none of this film makes an ounce of sense, but it is so out-there and unusual, it will hold you in it's loony, hypnotic spell.  It should come as no surprise that this tale of obsession and possession was directed and co-scripted by Sergio Bergonzelli, who gave us the equally demented IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH (1970). Just like that film, BLOOD DELIRIUM is all over the map, throwing one twisted visual after another at us, whether it be Hermann's insatiable urge to fondle and kiss dead naked female bodies, the Maestro's obsession with Van Gogh or Sybille being kept drugged in a glass coffin (not to mention acid baths, which appear in both films). Also, just like in FOLDS, there's a twisted family dynamic going on, especially the relationship between master Maestro and servant Hermann. The Maestro professes his hatred of Hermann to Sybille, but the truth of the matter is one couldn't survive without the other. Both John Phillip Law (AMERICAN COMMANDOS - 1985) and Gordon Mitchell (ENDGAME - 1983) overact shamelessly (Truth be told, I've never seen either of them more animated than they are here, as they both are usually very stiff), but it suits this film like a comfortable pair of shoes on an aching pair of feet. Watching this film is like taking a short hallucinogenic acid trip, where time travel, body parts, copious amounts of nudity, necrophelia, paintings that bleed, spontaneously combust or explode, electrified doorknobs, vengeful spirits that manifest themselves as orbs of light and enough blood to satisfy the Red Cross for a month fleet across the screen and embed themselves in your brain. What more could you want? An undiscovered classic of weird cinema. Also starring Olinka Hardiman and Lucia Prato. Never released legitimately on home video in the U.S., the print I viewed was taken from a Greek-subtitled VHS tape. Not Rated.

BLOODY WEDNESDAY (1985) - Harry (Raymond Elmendorf) is having a nervous breakdown. He loses his job as a mechanic when he forgets how to put a car engine back together. He shows up at a church service in the nude. He is put into a mental institution but is soon released because he is not considered a threat to society. Harry's brother, Ben (Navarre Perry), sets him up with a new apartment in a deserted hotel and soon strange things, both real and imagined, begin to happen. Harry spots three thugs destroying an adjacent apartment and has them arrested, the thugs vowing revenge. Harry has a teddy bear that he imagines can talk. Before long, Harry's mind is playing so many tricks on him (his bedsheet turns into a snake; the deserted hotel suddenly has a bellhop and suicidal occupants) that no one believes him when the three thugs come back to get even. He manages to get away but is blamed for the damages. The FBI shows up at his door and accuse him of firing a rifle out his window at a passing plane. They find no rifle, only a broomstick. When the three thugs return again, Harry pulls a revolver from inside his teddy and plays an impromtu game of Russian roulette, scaring the shit (literally!) out of the hoodlums and then lets them go free. Harry has just made three new friends who are later instrumental in helping him obtain a machine gun. Harry falls in love with his psychiatrist (Pamela Baker), but she just wants to help him, trying to convince Harry to voluntarily commit himself. He refuses. Harry's wife (Teresa Mae Allen), whom he has seperated from, stops by to make his life hell. Many more things happen (some so surreal you'll have to watch it twice) to Harry until his mind completely snaps, causing him to grab the machine gun and slaughter dozens of patrons at a nearby diner. This is Bloody Wednesday. This is pretty strong material as an indictment against the mental health industry and outdated laws. Harry is an outcast in the outside world and since he hadn't committed any serious crimes until the finale, he couldn't be committed without his consent. Raymond Elmendorf is spellbinding as Harry, as we view his slow mental deteriorization resulting in the bloody and shocking final act of a confused man. This is not kid's stuff. Writer and producer Philip Yordan also scripted the strange film CATACLYSM (1980 - aka SATAN'S SUPPER and THE NIGHTMARE NEVER ENDS), DEATH WISH CLUB (1983) and many others dating as far back as the early 50's. BLOODY WEDNESDAY should be on your must-see list. A Prism Entertainment Release. Also available in a horrendous EP-mode transfer from Simitar Entertainment. Unrated. NOTE: I actually had some guy berate me by email for reviewing this film because he seems to think it sullies the memory of the people who died in the infamous slaughter at a McDonalds in California in the early 80's by a mentally disturbed man. Yordan may have based his screenplay on this incident but, seriously, lighten up! It's just a movie.

BUBBA HO-TEP (2002) - God bless Don Coscarelli's heart. He has made one of the most heartfelt homage/horror movies to come down the pike in quite a while. While you do have to wipe your mind blank and accept what follows in this film, you will be glad you did. An aging Elvis Presley (the always terrific Bruce Campbell), who has a cancerous growth on his penis, and a black man who claims to be President John F. Kennedy (the tremendous Ossie Davis), who claims that the C.I.A is keeping his brain alive by batteries in Washington D.C.,  must fight an ancient mummy who sucks the souls out of the assholes of the elderly people they live with at a home for the aged. This may sound ridiculous, but Campbell and Davis pull it off with such aplomb, that I almost forgot that we were dealing with a horror film here. Campbell's Elvis is a creature of regret, who misses his Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie (neither who gave their blessing to this film, but if they actually watched it, might have changed their minds) who comes alive when he and Davis must come up with a way to stop the killings in their home. The nurses and doctors (one played by Coscarelli regular Reggie Bannister) believe the deaths to be natural, but Elvis (who has some sort of psychic connection to the mummy) and Kennedy (who Elvis saves before his soul could be sucked out of his ass) know different. Filled with good humor and actual pathos, BUBBA HO-TEP should be congratulated on making a horror film with actual soul (no pun intended) and not the usual stalk-and-slash kill-a-thon that young people seem to love. The Elvis back-story is a hoot (I'm not giving it away here) and could have actually happened. The only drawback to this film is that there is no actual Elvis songs on the soundtrack as either it was too expensive or his estate refused to license them to the production. But just sit back and enjoy Campbell and Davis' performances. I doubt you see anything like this again and it wouldn't be a Coscarelli film without some flying lethal object: Here it is a giant scarab beetle which precedes every mummy attack. This is Coscarelli's first film since 1998's PHANTASM IV: OBLIVION. Let's hope he doesn't wait another 5 years until his next film. Will someone please give him a big budget and creative control and see what he can make? I know it will be a winner. Also starring Ella Joyce, Harrison Young and Bob Ivy as the Cowboy boot and hat-wearing mummy (yeah, you read it right!). TCB baby! An MGM DVD Release. Rated R.

CRASH! (1976) - It's interesting to compare director/producer Charles Band's earlier films (this is his second effort; his first being LAST FOXTROT IN BURBANK [1973]) with his later ones (like THE GINGERDEAD MAN - 2005) to see how much he has progressed. The funny thing is that Band has done just the opposite, he has regressed, as his earlier films, such as this one, are much more entertaining and fun to watch. CRASH! is actually two films in one. It's partly about a possessed car that runs other cars off the road (causing fiery crashes) and partly a supernatural murder drama about a husband trying to knock-off his wife. The wife in question is Kim Denne (Sue Lyon; END OF THE WORLD - 1977), who we see walking around a flea market (in the parking area of a drive-in theater). She spots a weird one-eyed stone idol and buys it from a strange man (played by Reggie Nalder; MARK OF THE DEVIL - 1969), after talking him down in price. Kim's husband, Marc (Jose Ferrer; DRACULA'S DOG - 1978; BLOOD TIDE - 1982), is a bitter, jealous old man that keeps tabs on Kim's every move. He's never forgiven Kim for confining him to a wheelchair, the result of a car accident where Kim was behind the wheel. After their latest fight, Kim storms out of the house, attaches her newly-bought idol to her keychain and takes off in her car (a Hemi Cuda convertible), only to be attacked by Marc's vicious dog (who he trained just for this purpose) and getting into a terrible car accident. Confined to a hospital bed and in a coma (and still grasping the idol keychain in her hand), Marc must figure out a way to kill Kim before she wakes up and spills the beans. He sneaks into her hospital room undetected (!) and pulls out all her tubes and wires, which lets a stream of her blood trickle down on the idol in her hand. The idol, we will later find out, is the image of Akaza, the God of Vengeance. Oh, no. Luckily, Kim's life is saved by nurse Kathy (Leslie Parrish; THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION - 1975) and Dr. Greg Martin (John Ericson; FINAL MISSION - 1984). Kim (whose entire face is bandaged) makes a full recovery, but suffers from a bad case of amnesia. While all this drama is taking place, Kim's driverless car goes on a murder spree, killing innocent (?) motorists and destroying dozens of police cars, the possessed car always coming away without a scratch. Dr. Martin borrows Kim's idol and brings it to an expert on the subject, which just happens to be Marc Denne. This is not going to turn out well at all, is it? Marc finally gets his hands on Kim, locks her in the sauna and works out a foolproof alibi. Too bad that alibi left no room for a possessed car, as it chases the wheelchair-bound Marc outside and pushes him off a cliff, the car exploding on top of him.  This is a weird mixture of car chase/crash exploitation (which was very popular during the 70's) and supernatural possession genres (Director Elliott Silverstein would mine the same premise the following year with THE CAR). There's something spooky about a driverless car speeding down the highway, causing death and destruction, and director Charles Band spends much of the film showing the possessed car causing accident after accident, usually culminating in a car flying in slow-motion through the air, crashing through objects (like signs, buildings or other cars) and then exploding in a fireball. When the final edit was turned in, the running time must have come up a little short, because Band repeats every car crash a second time when Marc locks a possessed Kim in the sauna during the film's closing minutes. The film is a stunt-filled extravaganza, but there are a few creepy moments, too, such as when a possessed Kim (her eyes get all big and red) forces her husband's wheelchair to run over his attack dog over-and-over until it is dead. Though very little blood is spilled, CRASH! (also known as DEATH RIDE and AKAZA, THE GOD OF VENGEANCE) is an entertaining quickie that should please both action and horror fans. If Band spent more time making films like this and less time on killer dolls and puppets, his resume wouldn't be half as bad as it actually is. Also starring John Carradine (in his usual five minute cameo), Jerome Guardino, Paul Dubby and cult director John Hayes (MAMA'S DIRTY GIRLS - 1974). I don't think that this ever received a U.S. home video release, although it was released on British VHS label VCL (the print I viewed) and on German DVD under the title DRACULAS TODESRENNEN ("Dracula's Deathrace"). Rated PG.

CREATURES FROM THE ABYSS (1994) - As soon as I put this DVD into the player, I felt that I had stepped into some sort of alternative universe. I can't quite come up with the words of how I felt when watching this really, really bad creatures-on-the-loose film, except to say that I could not take my eyes off the screen. It's like viewing the aftermath of an awful train wreck: you try to turn your head away from the carnage but your brain tells you otherwise. Five really, really annoying teenagers stupidly take their rubber raft out to the middle of the ocean and run out of gas. They stumble upon a deserted yacht that was actually an oceanographic biology laboratory and turn the ship into their own private party boat. Some deep ocean fish, previously unknown, have eaten radioactive-poisoned plankton and have killed the yacht's previous inhabitants. Now it's the kids' turn. After finding one mentally-challenged professor hiding in the engine room, Mike (Clay Rogers) decides to investigate what has happened and does not like what he finds. The professor has turned the poisoned plankton into a powder, which Bobby (Michael Bon) snorted up his nose, thinking it was cocaine. Hey, you're going to have to watch the rest of this brain-damaged flick to find out how it ends. I can't begin to detail everything that is wrong with this film. It could be the incredibly bad dubbing and voice acting. It could be the jackhammer editing that doesn't make sense half the time. It could be the extremely poor special effects and stop-motion animation.  It could be the insane dialogue. Here's a sample:  MIKE: "Professor? Have you been fucking fish?!"  PROFESSOR: "They were old enough!!!"  Or it could be that this is most probably the best badfilm that I have personally witnessed in quite some time. Directed without a shred of talent by one Al Passeri (real name: Massimiliano Cerchi), this Italian-made, Miami, Florida-lensed disaster (originally titled PLANKTON and also known as PIRANHA 4) contains nothing of value yet entertains with it's cheesy charms. A train wreck has nothing on this. A Shriek Show DVD Release. Not Rated, but contains several sex scenes along with the ritual slaughter. Also starring Sharon Twomey, Loren DePalma and Ann Wolf. While all three are great to look at, they have brains the size of guppies.

THE CROSS OF SEVEN JEWELS (1987) - Try to keep up with me if you can. This film opens up with a robed Gordon Mitchell presiding over a sacrificial orgy where women are naked and getting whipped while other couples are just getting it on (including a guy with a hairy back and a huge potbetty, bleech!). Mitchell keeps asking for "Aborin" to appear and when it does, it looks like something that would have resulted if Chewbacca and a gorilla mated. The film then cuts to Marco (director Marco Antonio Andolfi using the name "Eddy Endolf") meeting his long-lost cousin Carmela in Naples for the first time in 20 years. While they are walking down the street, a man on a motor scooter steals Marco's necklace, which happens to be the title creation. He acts like someone just stole his testicles and flags down two police officers and they chase the man down, but he unfortunately has passed the cross on to someone else. So leads us on a long journey for Marco's search for his necklace as we learn bits and pieces why it is so important to him. Marco soon finds out that the person he thought was his cousin actually wasn't, which soon leads him down a road which includes thugs, drugs, crime, the Mob and other very, very bad things, all which are tied to the possession of the cross. And what is Gordon Mitchell's role in all this? It's soon apparent that the cross holds some mystical powers as Marco begins having flashbacks, a naked wolf-man with hairy hands and an even hairier face (but, strangely, hair no place else) begins killing people (they melt when he touches them), and a Mafia boss snatches Marco and holds him prisoner. Somehow, this all ties in to the sacrificial orgy that was taking place in the beginning of the film. Good luck in piecing it together. This obscure Italian hybrid, directed by one-time wonder Marco Antonio Andolfi (who also supplies the cheapjack time-lapse transformation effects), is one big jumbled mess but is all the more watchable because of it. Mixing horror, crime, action, thriller and supernatural genres, CROSS is a hard film to understand, even if you pay 100% attention to it. The further you get into the film, the weirder it gets as you never know what direction it's heading. One minute you're witnessing a man melting before your eyes, then you see an acid trip-like flashback, then you are watching a Mafia drama and then......Aargh! My head's spinning! There's a truth serum interrogation, a stuttering mob informant, a truly hilarious werewolf transformation (try not to laugh at the absurdity of it all), a visit to a whorehouse, a love story, exploding bodies and too many other things (including beastiality) to mention. I'm still trying to figure out how the werewolf mysteriously loses all his clothes when he transforms (just a tiny piece of cloth hides his package) and then they magically re-appear when he changes back. If you are going to watch this film, please proceed carefully as a large number of you will not come out unscathed. I believe that's my highest recommendation. This film would leave David Lynch scratching his head. Also starring Annie Belle, Paolo Fiorino, Giorgio Ardisson and Zaira Zoccheddu. I managed to snag a German subtitled English-language copy of this film on DVD-R from a private collector as it never had a legitimate release in the States.  Not Rated, as it is chock-full of sex, nudity and bloody violence, including the death of a prostitute that contains all three elements. NOTE: This film is titled THE CROSS OF SEVEN JEWELS (it's the title on-screen) not CROSS OF THE SEVEN JEWELS as what seems to be printed on all the foreign VHS packaging I have seen.

DANGEROUS SEDUCTRESS (1992) - If you liked MYSTICS IN BALI and LADY TERMINATOR, then this film should be right up your alley. All three share the same director (H. Tjut Djalil, using the pseudonym "John Miller" here and using "Jalil Jackson" on others), the same Indonesian locales and the same twisted logic that could only exist in some alternate universe. This film opens up in Jakarta with a car chase between three diamond robbers and a cop with a chip on his shoulders. When the robbers' car crashes, dismembering one's arm and another's finger and spilling buckets of blood on the local flora, a model called Linda (Kristin Ann) witnesses the whole thing and is questioned by police. In a scene that can only be described a surreal, the dismembered finger walks to a hidden amulet (with a mirror in it) which swallows it up, the blood dripping from the plants is ingested by the amulet and the bones of a long-dead witch (Amy Weber) begin to re-attach themselves. Not quite fully developed (she only has one good arm and leg, the other two just skeletal), the witch beheads a nosy dog and sucks out all it's blood. She is then grabbed by the hands of Hell and pulled underground! Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Linda's sister Suzy (Tonya Offer) is being raped and brutalized by her boyfriend. She phones her sister who tells her to come to Jakarta to stay with her. Suzy goes to Jakarta just as Linda is sent to Bali on a modeling assignment.  Suzy finds a book of Indonesian spells given to Linda by an expert on local legends. Suzy recites one of the spells and brings the witch to her full-length mirror. The witch possesses Suzy and soon she is dressing in sexy clothing, picking up men and draining them of all their blood. She goes back to the mirror, slits her throat and feeds the blood (it comes out in a tidal wave) to the witch on the other side of the mirror. The cop becomes suspicious and meets his death when Suzy levitates his car in mid-air and blows it up. The man who gave Linda the spell book shows up in the nick of time to save Linda and Suzy, only to be sucked in the mirror. When Suzy opens the amulet, she sees the demonic face of the man. THE END. That's the best I can describe this delirious exercise which is part horror, part travelogue, part dance film and part model posing. There's plenty of blood, as one man is speargunned through the leg and pinned to a wall while Suzy slices him with a fish hook, three other horny men are slaughtered by meat hook and cleaver in meat locker and Suzy's abusive boyfriend (who tracks her down) is hung by his ankles and sliced and decapitated by flying shards of glass. It's all rather disjointed (just like LADY TERMINATOR) and the English spoken could only come from the pages of Indonesian writers who think this is the way Americans actually talk. That's part of it's charm. Another is the little bits of lunacy that occur throughout the film: The American diamond robber continuously slugging his driver while being chased in the beginning of the film is knee-slapping funny; the way the decapitated finger walks is also hilarious; the jazz score during the robbery chase is definitely out of place; the sex scenes have all the men still wearing their underwear, and some of the effects are truly priceless, especially the witch's reincarnation. This all adds up to a really weird experience which all of us need every once in a while. One caveat: The version on DVD released by Mondo Macabro optically censors the female nudity by placing white dots on nipples and ass-cracks. The version released on DVD-R by Midnight Video does not optically censor the nudity. It really doesn't hurt the film as nudity is at a minimum, but one wonders why Mondo Macabro released this version. American special effects artist Steve Prouty (TRUTH OR DARE?: A CRITICAL MADNESS - 1986) was imported to do the effects for the picture. They are memorable. Director Djalil has many more Indonesian films that are ripe to be discovered. Someone should release them. Any takers out there? Unrated for all the really good reasons.

DEVIL FETUS (1983) - In this wild and crazy Hong Kong horror film, a woman named Shu Ching buys a strange jade vase at an auction (it looks like a small demon straddling a giant penis), brings it home, places it next to her bed and, that night, she begins fondling it like a sex toy and starts getting horny. Before she knows it, the vase has turned into a slimy, worm-infested demon, who fucks her brains out. When her husband comes home from a six-month business trip and finds Shu Ching using the vase as a dildo, he smashes it into tiny pieces, only to have his face become a maggot-infested decaying piece of flesh. When he looks in the mirror and sees what he has become, he kills himself by jumping through the bedroom window. It's not long before Shu Ching discovers she is pregnant ("I feel disgusting!"), which is not good considering her husband's time away from home. Her husband comes back from the dead to haunt her and, after turning into a black cat (!), he kills Shu Ching by knocking her off a staircase. End of story, right? Not by a long shot. A priest has a vision of a monster baby bursting out of Shu Ching's corpse during her funeral, so he tells her family (including her mother, a sister and her husband and two bratty nephews) that Shu Ching and her husband are wandering spirits, but he is able to stop their wandering by placing magical protective parchments in their bedroom and tells them that if the parchments aren't disturbed for twelve years, they will rest in peace for eternity. Fat chance that is going to happen. Nearly twelve years pass and one of the nephews, Kent Chong (Eddie Chan), has returned home after after winning one of his many sword-fighting competitions (he's very handy with a rapier). Kent falls in love with a young woman named Juju (Shirley Lui), who is staying with the Chong family. Juju accidentally touches the protective parchments in the bedroom, the parchments burst into flames and the Chong's guard dog, Boby, ingests the ashes of one of the parchments. Boby attacks Kent and Juju, forcing Kent to kill Boby with a sword (Kent's mom blames the attack on her husband, saying that he always fed the dog chili!). Now things really get strange. Kent's brother, Wei, is possessed when he buries Boby in the back yard, later digging up the dog and eating its corpse! While driving home one night, Ma and Pa Chong think they have hit a woman who looks exactly like Shu Ching, but when they get out of the car, no one is there. When they get home and park the car, it suddenly has a mind of it's own and runs over the Chong's butler. A possessed Wei tries to drown Juju in the family pool and then rapes and strangles the family maid. Only Granny Chong (Ouyang Sha-Fei) seems to understand the gravity of the situation and hires an elderly white-haired priest to fight the evil. What happens next is better left for the viewer to discover, as describing it in a review would simply not do it justice. Needless to say, there's plenty of mind-warping sights on view and a few "What The Fuck?!?" moments that will leave your head spinning (if not detaching from your body and flying through the air).  Like most Hong Kong supernatural and horror-themed films of the 70's & 80's, DEVIL FETUS doesn't make much sense, but, by god, it is never boring. I'm sure a lot of the plot is lost to cultural differences and bad translation (the English subtitles are hilarious), but the film is a delirious mix of horror and martial arts genres. There's cannibalism (and dog-eating); a gooey death by crushing when the walls of a sauna close-in on Pa Chong (Ho Pak-Kwong); an arm reaching out of the grave and stretching like rubber to grab a frightened old priest; plenty of wire work; cheap opticals where Wei shoots laser beams out of his eyes; lots of reverse and stop-motion photography; worm-puking (a Hong Kong staple); and even a few scenes of nudity. Director Lau Hung Chuen (A CHINESE LEGEND - 1991) keeps everything moving at a brisk pace, even when you're not sure what the hell is going on. My only complaint is that the version I saw, which was sourced from the fullscreen Ocean Shores VHS tape, cuts off the subtitles on both the left and right sides of the screen and seems to edit out much of the dog-eating scene and nudity, especially Wei's rape of the maid. Those are small complaints considering what is still left on view (You want flying heads? The finale has more than it's fair share.). Also starring Gam Wing Cheung, Lau Dan and Leung Saan. Fortune Star has released an uncut widescreen print on DVD and there is also a widescreen VCD available from both Media Asia and Delta Mac. Not Rated.

DIGGIN' UP BUSINESS (1990) - This is the type of film no actor in their right mind would put on their credit sheet. Not that it would matter as it is populated by a bunch of has-been or washed-out thespians using their paychecks to supply themselves with enough booze or cocaine until their next job offer comes along. Get a load of this cast: Ruth (LAUGH-IN) Buzzi, Murray ("The Unknown Comic") Langston, Billy ("Don't call me midget!") Barty, Gary ("I can't get my hand off my ear!") Owens, Yvonne (Batgirl) Craig and Linnea ("Just Linnea") Quigley. You would think that with a cast like this the film would hold some camp value, but the sad fact is that this is such a lame, juvenile comedy that all you feel is sadness and pity for all those involved. The pathetic plot involves a funeral parlor employee (Lynn Holly Johnson, a long way from ICE CASTLES [1978]. Hell, it's a long way from ALIEN PREDATOR(S) [1985].) who needs immediate capital to fix discrepancies in the parlor's books. She comes up with a plan of performing "specialty" funerals which will bring the funeral home out of debt. A corpse is shot out of a cannon to fulfill his last wishes. Another cadaver dances one last soft shoe with his old vaudeville buddies. A dead stripper pops out of a cake for her final exit. It sounds funnier than it is. Lame jokes include a heart attack victim literally kicking a bucket, the burning of a sled called "Rosebud" and many more well-worn dead jokes. It must of had a rocky production history as two directors are listed. Mark Byers (TUNNELS - 1989) is credited for the original version and Tom Pardew (who also stars) is credited for the final version. Mr. Pardew is a better director than actor and that's not a compliment. Watch Tony Richardson's excellent 1965 funeral black comedy THE LOVED ONE to see how it should be done. You'll have more fun going to an actual funeral than watching DIGGIN' UP BUSINESS. A Monarch Home Video Release. Rated PG so don't expect to see anything disgusting.

DISCO GODFATHER (1979) - Rudy Ray Moore (who is enjoying a semi-comeback as of late, even though he could never act a lick) portrays Tucker Williams, an ex-cop and proprietor of the Blueberry Hill Disco. He goes on the warpath when his nephew Bucky (Julius J. Carry III of BRISCO COUNTY JR.) trips out on Angel Dust. In between scenes of disco dancing, Tucker uses his feet and hands to fight his way to Stinger (James H. Hawthorne), the biggest supplier of Angel Dust in America. Even though I think Rudy’s acting abilities leave a lot to be desired, I have found his films to be highly entertaining in a goofball kind of way. This one is no exception. First of all, Rudy makes an unlikely action hero. With his spandex jumpsuits and paunched-out stomach, he reminds me of that strange Uncle that everyone in your family talks about over Thanksgiving dinner. Definitely not action hero material. The scenes of people tripping out on Angel Dust must be seen to be believed. Bucky hallucinates that his hand is chopped off by a witch with a sword. Cartoon blood pours out of his wounds when he also imagines that he is being shot by three Brothers with big guns. This is really wild stuff. The action scenes are also unbelievable. Rudy has to be the stiffest martial artist in the world. He looks like he is in deep intensive pain every time he lifts a leg to plant a kick. The final 20 minutes are the most brain-numbing minutes I have sat through in quite a while. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Rent it to see what I mean. Directed by J. Robert Wagoner. Also starring Carol Speed (ABBY - 1974), Jimmy Lynch (who also did the makeup effects), Jerry Jones and Lady Reed. You could find a worse way to spend 90 minutes. A Xenon Home Video Release. Also known as AVENGING DISCO GODFATHER.  Rated R. For more Rudy Ray Moore madness, check out DOLEMITE (1975), THE HUMAN TORNADO (1976) and PETEY WHEATSTRAW (1977). (NOTE: MAD TV did a hilarious send-up of Rudy's films. They managed to do a spot-on parody full of bad acting and awful kung-fu. Catch it in repeats if you get the chance.)

THE EXECUTIONER PART 2 (1983) & FROZEN SCREAM (1981) - Who is Renee Harmon and why is she doing this to me? Out of all the films reviewed in this web site, these two are the absolute worst. The only constant between the two films is producer, screenwriter (story credit on FROZEN) and star Renee Harmon. Even though the storylines (if you could call them that) are completely different, both films are strikingly similar in so many aspects that Ms. Harmon has to take the majority of the blame. Both films contain bad post-synch sound (as if they were filmed silent), chainsaw editing that leaves the viewer both confused and disoriented, plenty of voiceover narration (spoken by the same person in both films) and the ever-present Ms. Harmon, who with her thick German accent, sounds like Dr. Ruth if she were to go to Nazi training school. Harmon speaks every line as if she were saying, "Ve have vays of making you talk!"  THE EXECUTIONER PART 2 is definitely the worst action flick your eyes will ever catch sight of with its poorly staged action scenes and disbelief-inducing plot. It's all about a Vietnam vet who kills criminals vigilante style and a cop (Chris Mitchum) and TV reporter (Harmon) who try to stop him. Try to make sense of the story if you can. I sure as hell couldn't. Many of the scenes are unconnected which leads to mucho confusion. To add insult to injury, there never was an EXECUTIONER PART 1 (thank God!) and was probably given that title to dupe an uneducated audience into believing it was a sequel to the then popular film THE EXTERMINATOR starring Robert Ginty. This proves how important it is to stay in school. This is unfortunately not director James Bryan's only film. He also directed the bloody but bad DON'T GO IN THE WOODS (1981) and the just plain bad HELL RIDERS (1984), which also starred Harmon. FROZEN SCREAM is an excreable horror flick about a doctor and his assistant (Harmon) who create a small army of zombies by attaching a device to victims' necks and freezing them. The zombies are then sent out to collect more bodies and to capture a girl (Lynne Kocol) who is getting close to discovering the truth. In comparison, FROZEN SCREAM makes Ted V. Mikel's ASTRO ZOMBIES look absolutely professional. Director Frank Roach also made the bad biker flick NOMAD RIDERS (1981). Renee Harmon can also be seen (and heard, dammit!) in LADY STREET FIGHTER (1978 - also directed by Bryan) and one of the worst films of all time, NIGHT OF TERROR (1986). The now-defunct Continental Video label issued THE EXECUTIONER PART 2 and FROZEN SCREAM as a double feature on one cassette. You may find it for rent in some of the older video stores. I dare you to watch them both in one sitting. Both films are Rated R.

EXTRA TERRESTRIAL VISITORS (1983) - Most people know this film under the title THE POD PEOPLE, thanks to the comic drubbing it took on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 (in one of their funniest episodes). While that edition is a comic delight, it doesn't hold a candle to the experience you'll have watching this, the theatrical release version. The film opens with three poachers driving to the forest to pilfer nightingale eggs (!) out of a tree (One poacher says to another, "Go get that ladder!" and he replies, "OK, OK! Heil Hitler!"). As they are stealing the eggs, one of the poachers spots a bright light in the sky and watches it crash into the forest. Also witnessing the crash is pre-teen Tommy (Oscar Martin), who watches the bright light decend to Earth through his telescope. The poacher leaves his two friends to fend for themselves, steals their truck and drives to the crash site, where he enters a cave and finds hundreds of alien eggs lying on the cave floor. Then something attacks and kills him. Rock star Rick (Ian Serra, who we see performing a terrible pop song in a recording studio, where an obviously gay engineer is wearing an "I'm A Virgin" t-shirt) and his entourage (including a quartet of horny women) hop into an RV and head to this forest for a weekend of rest and relaxation, while Tommy goes to the cave and steals one of the eggs. While Ricky and his friends are sitting around a campfife, Laura (Connie Cheston) goes for a walk in the woods and runs into the two poachers, who chase her (One of the poachers says, "Jesus, that little bitch can run a lot faster than I thought!", to which the other one replies, "Well, you're a jerk!" What?). While Laura is running away, she almost runs into a strange furry beast (we only see it's legs) and she ends up falling down a ravine, seriously injuring herself. Rick and Brian (Emil Linder) rescue the unconscious Laura and bring her back to the RV. Tommy, meanwhile, has hidden the egg from his mother Molly (Susan Blake) and crusty Uncle Bill (Frank Brana) by keeping it under his bed. Just as the egg hatches, Rick and his gang pull up to Molly's house and ask to use the telephone to call for help. The phone is dead (big surprise), so Molly tells them to stay the night because a rock slide has blocked off the only road to civilization. The two poachers (who don't seem too concerned about their missing friend) get paid a visit by an alien while they are sitting next to a campfire (One of them says non-chalantly, "What on Earth is that? Looks like a cross between a pig and a bear." Actually, it looks more like a cross between an elephant and a bear!). After saying, "Be cafeful, it could be dangerous!" (duh!) and then talking to the alien as if it were just another human being, the two poachers try to capture it ("You think it may be worth something?), but fail terribly. After they try to subdue the alien (including sneaking up behind it and then shooting it with a crossbow bolt), it slaughters the two poachers. Tommy's pet alien, whom he dubs "Trumpy", grows to adult size in less than four hours, thanks to Tommy feeding it saucers of milk and a jar of Planter's peanuts (I guess Reese's Pieces weren't available). What Tommy doesn't know is that Trumpy is able to shoot death rays out of it's eyes! Bill and Brian hop in Bill's car to try and find a way out of the forest (after one of the girls says, "What a fuck-up this back-to-nature crap is!"), while Trumpy amazes Tommy with feats of magic and levitation, moving objects around his bedroom (done using stop-motion animation) and making a CLOSE ENCOUNTERS-like song play on Tommy's Simon toy (Remember that fun plaything? After ten minutes playing with it, it went on my pile of "Toys To Never Be Played With Again"). Apparently, Laura has died (Bill alludes to it while speaking to Brian in the car) and Tracy (Maria Albert) wants to watch DALLAS on TV because, "Seeing other people's problems makes me forget mine." Bill and Brian drive to a Forest Rangers cabin, where Brian is attacked and killed by the rogue alien. Trumpy escapes from Tommy's bedroom, while Rick and girlfriend Sharon (Nina Ferrer) worry why Brian and Bill haven't returned (Rick says, "Bill's as thick as two planks!"). Tommy spies Trumpy killing Tracy in the RV through his telescope, as an injured Bill returns and gets off a shot at Trumpy with his shotgun, but misses. Rick is getting antsy and wants to leave (He says, "I ain't hanging about to find out who's next for the chop!"), but Bill and Molly talk him out of it (by simply stating, "It's getting dark outside!"). Trumpy returns and tells Tommy that he didn't kill Tracy, his brother did (!), so Tommy disguises Trumpy (by putting a monk's robe on him!) and Trumpy spies on Kathy (Sarah Palmer) while she takes a shower, scaring the shit out of her. Tommy finally tells everyone about Trumpy and the other alien's existence ("They just want to be your friend, but nobody will let them!"), so they try to kill Trumpy! Tommy and Trumpy escape into the forest, with everyone close behind, guns in hand. Bill gets killed by the other alien and Rick then kills it witha couple of rifle shots (the ground opens up and swallows the dead alien!). Tommy, in a bit of false anger, shoos away Trumpy ("Go away, I hate you!") and rejoins his mother and Rick. The last we see Trumpy, he's walking off into the fog-filled forest, all alone. The End. Wow!  This Spanish/French co-production is an obvious rip-off of E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL (1982), but since it was directed by Juan Piquer Simon (PIECES - 1982; SLUGS - 1987; CTHULHU MANSION - 1990), you know you're in for something special and this film delivers it in spades. It's apparent that Simon originally lensed this as a gore film, but post-production editing (against Simon's wishes) cut out all the gore (every time someone is about to get killed, there's an obvious jump-cut) to make it more "family friendly", but they forgot to edit out all the foul language (it's plentiful) and brief nudity (Do the gore inserts exist anymore?). The script, by Simon and Joaquin Grau (who has his name Anglicized to "Jack Gray") is just one non-stop piece of unbelievable dialogue after another and I was laughing until I had tears in my eyes (I had to rewind a few times, just to make sure I heard correctly!), due to the absurdity of it all. This film didn't need the MST3000 treatment, because the acting, dialogue and strange situations (there's so many scenes where day and night are in the same scene, due to frequent editing errors, the timeline in this film is like some surreal fairytale) all lend itself to self-parody. Trumpy and his ilk are a marvel of bad make-up effects. They look like some took a dwarf, slapped a miniature bear costume on him and then put a modified elephant mask on his head. I haven't seen a costume this bad since ROBOT MONSTER (1953). The scene where Trumpy magically moves everything around in Tommy's bedroom is a marvel of low-tech special effects and I nearly coughed-up a lung when Trumpy transformed Tommy's telescope so that, when he looked through it, he saw stock footage of elephants in Africa (maybe a distant relative?). This is now one of my favorite badfilms of all time and it should be one of your's, too. To sum it up: Try to find the non-MST3000 version and enjoy it on it's own twisted merits. You won't be sorry. Executive Producer Dick Randall added some scenes from Don Dohler's GALAXY INVADER (1985) to the beginning of this film for THE POD PEOPLE version of this film. Don't ask me why. Also known as THE RETURN OF E.T. (paging Mr. Spielberg!), THE UNEARTHLING and TALES OF TRUMPY. Also starring William Anton, Frank Suzman, Gary Richardson, Hugo Astral and Mark Treving. The print I viewed was sourced from a Spanish-subtitled VHS tape that was dupey, but watchable. Not Rated.

GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS (1973) - While most reviewers have given this obscure film bad press as a hokey monster flick, I believe that they’ve missed the whole point of this film. Sure, it contains a badly-assembled mutant 8 foot sheep (yeah, you heard me right), but I doubt that is all director/producer/writer Fredric Hobbs (who was also responsible for the title creation) was aiming for in this film. It is also a finely-crafted piece of political Americana. There are actually two monsters here: One is the mutant sheep. The other is more dangerous. He is the mayor and patriarch of Comstock, Nevada, a historical wild west tourist trap. He controls the town with an iron fist, keeping tabs on the local citizens by means of electronic surveilance and is not above committing murder to keep his town under control. The subplot deals with a mutant sheep being born due to escaping yellow phosphorous gas from a nearby mine. A scientist takes the fetus to his lab in Indian Flats (located next to Comstock) and nurses it to adulthood. Meanwhile, a representative from a huge corporation comes to Comstock in hopes of buying the town’s mining rights. The mayor has eyes on the mining rights for himself and sets-up the representative on a trumped-up attempted murder charge. The mayor gathers up an old-fashioned vigilante group and tries to hang the rep, but he escapes and ends up at the laboratory at Indian Flats. Events that follow lead to the mutant sheep escaping and causing havoc in Comstock. The mayor orders "the damaged mongoloid beast" to be captured alive so he can display it to paying customers ("Feast your eyes on the 8th Wonder of the World!"). The finale is a surreal experience as the townspeople turn on the monster and the mayor. You have to see it to believe it.  Director Fredric Hobbs (ROSELAND - 1970; ALABAMA’S GHOST - 1972) is a true film fanatic’s dream. Daring to take chances that sometimes fail, you still get the feeling that at least he is trying something different and sticking to his vision. This film contains a dog funeral, assorted bad guys (one is a disgraced Wall Street broker!), a tear gas shooting party and the aforementioned mutant sheep. The most unusual aspect of this film is that the corporate representative is the only black man in this film and not once is race ever brought up as an issue. It is truly refreshing to watch a film where a black person is treated just like everyone else, a real rarity for a 70’s exploitation film. Watch GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS with an open mind and you may find yourself having a good time. Starring Russ Meyer regular Stuart Lancaster (FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! - 1965) as the mayor, E. Kerrigan Prescott (ALABAMA’S GHOST - 1972) as the scientist, HILL STREET BLUES actor Robert Hirschfeld as the sheriff, Christopher Brooks (THE MACK - 1973), Peggy Browne, Erica Gavin (CAGED HEAT - 1974) and Richard Marion (CHILD‘S PLAY 3 - 1991 who now is directing EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND on TV!). A Something Weird Video Release. Not Rated, but would probably get a PG-13 in today’s climate.

GRIZZLY 2: THE PREDATOR (1983) - Here it is folks. The holy grail of unfinished and unreleased 80's horror. The cast contains such well-known names as George Clooney, Charlie Sheen, Louise Fletcher, Laura Dern, Deborah Raffin, John Rhys-Davies, Dick Anthony Williams, Charles Cyphers, Marc Alaimo and Jack Starrett. The story is simple: The crooked superintendant of Summit National Park (Fletcher) agrees to have a huge rock concert in the park, much to the displeasure of the park rangers, who feel they are spread too thin as it is. As luck would have it, a 20 foot tall grizzly bear is wrecking vengeange in the park, thanks to a poacher killing it's offspring for it's gall bladder. When the grizzly kills the poacher, the other poachers (led by Starrett) go hunting for it. The grizzly then kills three campers (which includes a horny Clooney and Dern and a very young Sheen) and makes it's way towards the concert. When the rangers start finding the bodies of the grizzly's victims, they enlist the help of French bear hunter Bouchard (Rhys-Davies) to track it down. This doesn't sit too well with local grizzly bear conservationist Sam (Raffin), who would rather capture it alive. Bouchard, Sam and head ranger Hollister (Steve Inwood) go searching for the grizzly while the poachers shoot and injure another ranger (he eventually ends up as a grizzly meal). The poachers dig a huge pit with wooden stakes to kill the bear, but greed and the grizzly get to them first. The grizzly makes it to the crowded concert (it arrives backstage, so it must have had a pass) where it sets off the pyrotechnics, impales Bouchard on a metal spike and flips the Jeep Hollister and Sam are in. Hollister electrocutes the grizzly on stage where the audience thinks it's part of the show (you gotta see that shot to believe it) and applaud wildly. The End.  Since this is just a workprint, the film is in very rough shape. The temp music soundtrack contains unauthorized tracks by Michael Jackson ("Beat It" and "Wanna Be Starting Something") and the bear is never seen until the finale. The attack scenes consist of reaction shots of the  actors waving their hands around their body and screaming and when the bear is to be shown, all you see is a blank screen. Since there is only the shots of the mechanical bear at the end, it stands to reason that the other bear attack footage was to be shot later on. All the sound on this workprint is live and no post-production looping is present. This is especially noticable when the actors talk on police radios or telephones and the reply voices are coming just off-camera. The question remains this: Would this have made a good film if it were finished and released? It's hard to say. From the footage I have seen, the film is not that bloody (the effects shots were probably also to be added later) and the story is pretty weak. The music acts in the concert, which consists of a bad early 80's New Wave all-girl singing group and an effiminate male headliner who dresses in a silver metallic jump suit, dates the film severely. The finale is unfinished and is represented as a series of outtakes, but you can get the gist of how it's supposed to end by watching the outtakes. It's the ecclectic cast that's the biggest draw. Seeing George Clooney, Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern at such early stages in their careers is a hoot, but their screen time amounts to less than five minutes. There's a subplot about Hollister's daughter Christy (Deborah Foreman) working as a gofer for the concert manager (Dick Anthony Williams) and falling in love with the girly-man headliner (before the concert, he prances around in a tight pair of short shorts!), but it eventually leads nowhere. Cannon Films was supposed to distribute this film, but went into bankruptcy, dooming this film before it was finished. Filmed mostly in Budapest, the Hungarian government seized most of the production's equipment for non-payment of bills. This film was directed/produced/scripted by David Sheldon, who co-wrote and produced the original GRIZZLY (1976). There are claims that this film ended up on TV in the late 80's. Don't you believe it. It is just one of those urban legends that refuses to die. Another film, CLAWS (1977), which also deals with a rogue grizzly, was retitled GRIZZLY 2 for overseas distribution and TV showings when the original film turned out to be an unexpected financial success. This workprint is about as complete as you are ever going to see it and is in no way in any condition to be shown on TV or in theaters. This is about as rare a find that I have ever received. I would like to thank the person that sent it to me, but I'll leave his name anonymous so he doesn't get clobbered with requests for copies. I know of no artwork for this film. If anyone has any preproduction ads for this or any promotion material, please contact me at my email link and we can work work something out.

HEAD OF THE FAMILY (1996) - Outrageous horror-comedy that blends the right amount of grossness and black humor. In the sleepy little town of Nob Hollow, the shopkeeper, Lance (Blake Bailey), is having a torrid sexual affair with Loretta (Jaqueline Lovell), the wife of the town’s only drug dealer. They conspire to get rid of her husband, but cannot come up with a foolproof plan until Lance spots the town’s weirdest (and richest) residents, the Stackpools, kidnap an unsuspecting motorist for use in some strange genetic experiments in their mansion’s basement. Lance blackmails the head of the family, Myron Stackpool  (J.W. Perra), into kidnapping Loretta’s husband to use in the experiments. Myron agrees and the plan goes off without a hitch. Then, Lance gets greedy and demands money from the Stackpools in exchange for keeping his mouth shut about the experiments. Lance and Loretta will soon come to regret messing around with the Stackpools. If this plot sounds generic, consider this: Myron has a giant head and a super-small body. He is the brains of the family and controls his two brothers (one has huge eyes and acute hearing while the other is just huge and dumb with the strength of ten men) and sister (a looker with a great body) using telepathy. Myron sees through their eyes and feels what they feel. Mix that with good acting and a crackling, sarcastic screenplay (by Benjamin Carr) and what you have is a film that’s hard to resist. The standout is Jacqueline Lovell (HIDEOUS - 1997; KILLER EYE - 1998), who can really act in and out of her clothes (full-frontal nudity and what a body!). She has quite a future in the business. Director Robert Talbot (MYSTERY MONSTERS - 1997) is actually a pseudonym of Charles Band, who this time actually keeps you entertained, tossing in frequent nudity, comedy and grotesque situations (including a Joan of Arc play performed by Myron’s failed experiments!). Hard to believe that this came from Charles Band’s production company or even from Band himself!. Also starring James Jones, Bob Schott, Diane Colazzo and Gordon Jennison. A Pulp Fantasy Home Video Release. Rated R.

HITZ (1988) - Weird story about child gangs in L.A. that tries to be a biting social commentary while mixing in some over-the-top humor. It doesn't quite gel as the comedy elements seem out of place next to (and within) scenes of extreme violence. A beautiful, yet ulcer-ridden, Juvenile Court judge (Emilia Crow) tries to cope with her job and her relationship with wheelchair-bound social worker boyfriend Francesco Quinn. She catches presiding judge Elliott Gould hypnotizing and feeling-up his court stenographer (Karen Black). When he is unable to snap Black out of her hypnotic state he is arrested and forced to leave the bench. His replacement (the late Thalmus Rasulala) is a child-hating judge who thinks all kids who commit crimes should be tried as adults. This leads to a head to head confrontation between him and Crow, who thinks kids are a product of their environment and can be changed if taken away from that environment and placed in a loving home. Crow is also under a doctor's (Sydney Lassick from THE UNSEEN and SONNY BOY) orders not to get too excited as her ulcer could kill her. This is not easy, as people are shot in her courtroom, people she cares about are viciously murdered and people she trusts (including Gould) continually let her down. Things come to a boil when a child witness she is protecting is hunted down by a street gang for giving evidence in a trial. Many people die before the story reaches its finale and there is a semi-happy ending. Strange humor abounds in director William Sach's (THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN, GALAXINA) screenplay. Rasulala, complaining of a bad Mexican meal the night before, asks the courtroom if anyone has any Pepto Bismol. He is offered Tums, Rolaids and Alka Seltzer but refuses them all saying, "What kind of courtroom is this?" This happens right after he sentences a child (who kills Gould with a stun gun after he observes Gould raping an underage girl in his charge) to stand trial as an adult. Black (in what amounts to a cameo role) returns to the courtroom after her hypnotic trauma dancing to "Mary Had A Little Lamb", slits her wrists and starts shooting up the courtroom with an Uzi. Gun violence is very prominent in this film. A girl, who douses herself and her newborn baby with gasoline, is shot in the head. A child is shotgunned. People are blown away for no reason. This is an uneasy film that would have worked better if the comedy elements were eliminated. Unlike most badfilms, the humor here is intentional making it a tough film to judge. New rap music was added to this 1988 film for its 1992 video release. A Vidmark Entertainment Release. Rated R.

HOMEBODIES (1973) - Here's a very interesting and unique premise: When their apartment building is condemned, a group of elderly tenants band together and begin killing all those they deem responsible for their situation (The poster art tagline reads: "A murder a day keeps the landlord away!"). At first, the silver-haired old fogies sabotage a highrise construction site down the street, messing with a cable that hauls steel girders, which snaps, killing a construction worker who was riding a girder to the top (One worker says, "Call an ambulance!" to which another replies after seeing the body, "Why bother?"). The octogenarians hope that accident will delay their eviction, but when it doesn't, they get more creative. When the callous Miss Pollack (Linda Marsh) shows up with eviction notices for everyone and expects then to vacate the premises immediately, the tenants, led by blind Mr. Blakely (Peter Brocco; TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE - 1983) and feisty, prune-eating Mattie (Paula Trueman, who is probably best known as the no-nonsense Grandma Smith in Clint Eastwood's THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES - 1976), make sure she knows in no uncertain terms that they are never leaving. Miss Pollack retaliates by turning off everyone's electric, gas and water, so the tenants fight back, first sabotaging the construction site's elevator, which kills three more construction workers. It forces the site to close down, which pisses-off the site's owner, Mr. Crawford (Douglas Fowley; BLACK OAK CONSPIRACY - 1977), who is also the new owner of the tenement building. When Mr. Crawford spots the elderly Mr. Loomis (Ian Wolfe; THX 1138 - 1971) giving the tenement building a new coat of paint, he sends Miss Pollack with the police to forcibly remove the old farts to their new digs: a colorless, lifeless retirement home. Miss Pollack notices that not all the tenants made the move, so she returns to the tenement building later that day and gets a butcher knife rammed into her stomach by Miss Emily (Frances Fuller), a slightly senile old woman whose father originally owned the building (Miss Emily repeatedly talks to an urn containing her father's ashes as if he were still alive). After getting rid of Miss Pollack's body (they push her down the street in a wheelchair and dump her body over a bridge into the coal car of a passing train), the geriatric set concentrate their attention towards Mr. Crawford, whom they capture and encase in a block of wet cement that is used as one of the foundation pilings of his highrise building. Alas, all this hard and dirty work does nothing to solve their problems, as another bigwig takes Mr. Crawford's place and pretty soon Mattie begins killing her elderly friends to keep them from talking to the police. It seems that even at a ripe old age, people can lose their moral compass and begin killing for self-serving reasons.  This biting black comedy, directed/co-written by Larry Yust (TRICK BABY - 1973), has much to recommend. First and foremost, the cast of veteran old timers (which also includes Ruth McDevitt and William Hansen), pull off the seemingly impossible task of making their characters sympathetic and downright deadly at the same time. Particularly effective is Paula Trueman as Mattie. The sequence where she has to get rid of Miss Pollack's car is a thing of beauty. She hasn't been behind the wheel of a car in over forty years and as she haphazardly drives the car, nearly hitting a young boy (who sticks his tongue out at her) and getting into several accidents, you can see the wonder in her eyes as she views sections of Cincinnati, Ohio (where this was filmed) that she hasn't seen in nearly half a century. The emotions she conveys with just her eyes says more than ten pages of dialogue ever could. Since this film was made in the 70's, don't let it's PG rating deter you. There are several grisly scenes, including Miss Pollack's stabbing (not only do you see the knife entering her stomach and the blade exiting out her back, you also see a close-up of Mattie pulling the knife out) and Mr. Loomis chopping off the toes of Mr. Crawford's foot when he finds his shoe sticking out of the concrete foundation (That is the scene I best remember when watching this on TV in the mid-70's). While there are a few funny deaths (the wrecking ball crushing a man taking a shit in a Porta-Potty being one of them), the film takes a deadly serious tone in the finale when Mattie begins killing her oldest and dearest friends, which forces Mr. Blakely, Mr. Loomis and Miss Emily to deal with her on her own terms. The sight of three elderly people chasing Mattie in paddleboats in a park lake sounds comical, but I assure you it's anything but. The film concludes on a totally satisfying note that's surprising as well as goosebump-inducing. I won't spoil it for you here. This is an unsung classic from the 70's that is must viewing for fans of macabre cinema. Director Yust only directed one other feature after this, the screwball comedy SAY YES (1986). Also featuring Kenneth Tobey, Wesley Lau, Norman Gottschalk and Joe De Meo. Released on VHS in the mid-80's by Embassy Home Entertainment and still awaiting a legitimate DVD release. Rated PG.

IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH (1970) - As escaped convict Pascal Gorriot (Fernando Sancho) is evading the police, he spots Lucille (Eleonora Rossi Drago) disposing of her dead, headless husband's body on the grounds of the castle she lives in with her son Colin and step-daughter Falesse (We don't know how the husband was killed, but we do see Mom and the kids standing over the dead body, the head lying a few feet away from the torso). The police surround the castle and capture Pascal (they almost catch Lucille in the act of buring the body), yet he keeps his mouth shut on what he just saw (including watching Lucille sending her husband's motorboat driverless into the ocean, making it look like he disappeared in a boating accident). Thirteen years pass and it's plain to see that Lucille and her now-grown kids are one fucked-up family. Besides Falesse (Pier Angeli, here billed as "Anna Maria Pierangeli") and Colin (Alfredo Majo) having a none-too-subtle incestuous relationship, it's even obvious to the casual observer that the entire family is psycho crazy. A family friend named Michele visits the castle with his dog and they both lose their lives rather quickly. The dog finds the grave of Daddy and begins digging it up, so Colin strangles the dog with his bare hands. Michele tries to rob Falesse of some jewelry, so she stabs him in the back with a dagger. Lucille and Colin dispose of Michele's body with a nice acid bath. A friend of Michele's named Alex comes to the castle the next day and ends up decapitated with a sword after he removes Falesse's blonde wig while they are making love (A flashback reveals that her father molested her often when she was a child). We also learn that Falesse has a twin sister named Ester (also played by Angeli), who is in an insane asylum in Zurich, Switzerland. Pascal, who has just been released from prison, shows up at the castle and blackmails the entire family. After making them dig up the grave of their murdered husband/father and only finding the corpse of Michele's dog, an angry Pascal holds the family at gunpoint, rapes both Lucille and Falesse and makes Colin shine his shoes. Pascal doesn't realize who he is dealing with, though, and he's eventually murdered in a unique way while taking a bath. Things take a really strange turn when someone claiming to be Lucille's late husband shows up at the castle and we finally learn the truth of what really happened on that day thirteen years earlier. There are quite a few more twists and turns ahead, but you really have to pay close attention if you want to keep up. As you'll soon find out, no one is who they pretend to be, so you may want to keep a scorecard handy to sort it out. Seriously, I'm not kidding!  From the opening minutes, where the first image we see is a decapitated corpse, a spoken word (as well as on-screen) quote from Freud and a disjointed timeframe that seems to have been done on purpose, you know that you're in for something special. The film just gets weirder as it progresses, as it tosses in incest, rape, a pair of vultures kept in cages as pets, a truly distasteful Nazi flashback that results into an even more amazing deadly bubblebath and trippy visuals and editing techniques that come straight out of a 60's LSD film. Toss in numerous decapitations, acid baths and a general sleazy tone and what you get is a surreal familial dynamic that would make the Addams Family quake in their boots. Director/co-scripter Sergio Bergonzelli (MERCENARY SQUAD - 1987; BLOOD DELIRIUM - 1988) constantly keeps the viewer off-balance, introducing new characters up to the very end, only to dispose of the just as quickly in gruesome ways and zig-zagging left when you think he's going right. The finale is a bit too much, as it piles on revelation-upon-revelation (This family has more secrets than Heinz has varieties) until your head spins, but it's never boring and contains some truly demented sequences as well as a surprising bit of full-frontal female nudity, unusual for a film made in 1970. IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH, an Italian/Spanish co-production, is a one-of-a-kind experience that should be a top priority for fans of weird cinema. Co-star Pier Angeli, who was once the lover of James Dean and was married at one time to singer Vic Damone, committed suicide the following year after starring in the awful horror film OCTAMAN (1971). She left a note saying that Dean was the only man she ever really loved (Ouch, Vic Damone!). Also starring Emilio Guiterrez Caba, Maria Rosa Sclauzero, Victor Alcazar, Giancarlo Sisti, Gaetano Imbro, Luciano Lorcas and Bruno Ciangola. Available in a watchable, but far from perfect, widescreen print on DVD-R from Luminous Film And Video Wurks and on VHS from British label Redemption Films. Not Rated.

KILL BY INCHES (1999) - Here's something you don't see very often: An art house horror film. Thomas Klamm (Emmanuel Salinger) works at his father's tailor shop, where his father (Marcus Powell) is a cruel, domineering man, but a master tailor. Unfortunately, Thomas is not such a great tailor because he has a severe problem correctly taking down his customers' measurements, an inadequacy that his father belittles every chance he gets. It's as if the measuring tape is Thomas' worst enemy. The sudden appearance of his sister Vera (Myriam Cyr), who is definitely Dad's favorite sibling, throws Thomas' life into a spiral of madness. Like her father, Vera is also a master tailor and can tell a person's measurements by just looking at them. Also, like her father, Vera has a cruel streak and when she learns of her brother's deficiency with a tape measure (She says to him, "A real tailor can take measurements by eye!"), she belittles him endlessly in front of customers. It doesn't help that most of Thomas' customers have the oddest shapes and deformities this side of a Charles Addams drawing (extremely obese; exceedingly long arms, etc), but Thomas still soldiers on in hopes of perfecting his craft. It gets to the point that when he looks at anyone, all he sees are numbers, but those numbers are usually always wrong. When customers begin complaining about Thomas' work and Vera has to fix them, Thomas slowly goes mad. The questions to the viewer are these: Is everything Thomas sees real or is it all in his mind? Is the annoying sewing machine repairman, Hector (Christopher Zach), having an affair with his sister? Does he even exist at all? When Thomas starts noticing that his customers are now going to rival tailors, he begins killing them, starting with young boy Albert (Nicholas Tafaro), who complained that the pirate costume Thomas made for him was cutting off circulation to his hand. Thomas then turns his deadly intentions towards his sister. He disposes of all her asthma medication (At least I think it's asthma medication. It's a thick, black viscous liquid that Vera secretly inhales in the bathroom when she doesn't think Thomas is looking.) and when she passes out, he wraps her in measuring tape and safety pins, making her look like some weird mummy. He then goes to the annual Tailor's Ball, where he wins the competition, yet all his father has to say to him is that maybe next year his sister will show up, win the competition and make him proud. What does a son have to do to win his father's approval, get a sex change?  Before anyone starts jumping down my throat, let me begin by saying that this film is not for everyone. Hell, I'll even go as far as to state that this film is not for 95% of the movie-going audience. This is an extremely slow, deliberately paced psychological chiller that takes it's own sweet time to get to the payoff. This is also a well-made independent film (partially financed by the Independent Film Channel), directed/produced/scripted by Arthur Flam and Diane Doniol-Valcroze, who would later write the screenplay for the horror film PENNY DREADFUL (2006). The film is relatively (though not completely) dialogue-free until the Tailor's Ball finale, where Thomas must face-off with other tailors by guessing the measurements of various models that they have never seen before. It's a surreal experience that can't be properly explained with mere words. I guess "surreal" is the best way to describe the whole film, as the people appearing in it don't look or act quite like any human beings you're ever liable to meet and the entire film has an otherworldly, yet familiar, look to it, like David Lynch shot a film set in the 1950's but left some modern-day items on view in the background just to throw us off. It's very disarming and creepy, especially with the ambient music soundtrack that drones in the background of nearly every scene and Thomas constantly eyeing that sharp spike that protrudes from the tailor shop's wall. Though not for everyone's tastes, KILL BY INCHES is a relatively oddball and effective little psycho flick for those who care more about mood than blood and guts. According to the IMDB, the only previous credits Mr. Flam and Ms. Doniol-Valcroze have before this are a series of short films they directed in the 90's. I, for one, will definitely check out anything the make in the future because they have a signature that's hard to duplicate. Available on VHS & DVD from Fox Lorber Films. Not Rated.

KING OF THE ANTS (2004) - This strange film by Stuart Gordon, rewards the patient viewer. This is not a horror film, so those looking to rent it for the horror aspects (including the nifty, if deceiving box art) are bound to be disappointed, even though there are horrific images on view. This begins like a standard thriller where down-on-his-luck housepainter Sean Crawley (Chris McKenna) is propositioned by electrician "Duke" Wayne (a terrific George Wendt) to come and work for his boss Ray Mathews (Daniel Baldwin). Ray asks Sean to follow Eric Gatley (Ron Livingston) around town and report Gatley's movements back to him. Sean follows Gatley around on his bike (!), taking pictures and notes. He spies on Gatley's wife, Susan (Kari Wuhrer) and begins to fantasize about her. While sitting drunk in his car, Ray asks Sean to kill Gatley for $13,000. Sean agrees and kills Gatley in his home (a real disturbing scene that ends with Sean dropping a refrigerator on the refusing-to-die Gatley, who keeps repeating, "There's someone at the door."). As a precaution, Sean takes some incriminating papers from Gatley's briefcase, which point to Ray's involvement in Gatley's death. When Ray refuses to pay Sean for the hit, Sean tells Duke that he has a folder that will fall into the right hands if he is not paid. This is where things get weird. Sean goes through long, goosebump-inducing torture scenes at the hands of Ray, Duke, Carl (Lionel Mark Smith) and Beckett (Vernon Wells) which involves golf clubs, foam rubber and a locked shed in the desert. Sean never gives up the folder and it begins to seem like he looks forward to the next torture session. He has hallucinations of Susan, at first sporting a penis and then as some deformed monster that eats her own shit. Sean escapes with the help of his friend George (Timm Sharp) after killing Duke by taking a giant bite out of his neck. Sean goes to the homeless shelter where Susan works, where she nurses him back to health and eventually takes him home, the same home where he killed her husband weeks before. Then things get even weirder....... To give away the rest of the film would be doing a total disservice to the viewer. This remarkable film is a disturbing look of how a seemingly normal person can shift gears and become something that we would rather not dwell on. Everyone involved in front of the camera does a terrific job (even the usually routine Wuhrer excels here), but George Wendt (who is also a co-producer) steals the show, shedding his Norm image from CHEERS, portraying a mean-as-dirt goon (with what looks like a bad case of facial sunburn), who has no patience for disobedience.  Director Stuart Gordon (DAGON - 2001) takes an obscure novel (screenplay and novel by Charles Higson) and turns it into a film devoid of morals and it works thanks to his always-peculiar spin on the human condition. KING OF THE ANTS may not be for all tastes, but I found it an exhilarating ride on the wild side, a side that too few films are willing to take. Filled with grotesque images and brutal violence, I was surprised to find out that it was passed with an R-rating without any cuts. Go out and rent or buy this film! A DEJ Productions Release. DEJ is a label owned by Blockbuster Video, but don't hold that against this film. Rated R.

LADY STREET FIGHTER (1978) - Renee Harmon and director James Bryan strike again. Harmon, who starred in and produced Bryan's THE EXECUTIONER PART 2 and HELL RIDERS (both 1984) and starred in other films such as FROZEN SCREAM (1975) and NIGHT OF TERROR (1986), tops all these films in sheer badness and total unbelievability. This is one brutal 73 minutes to sit through. When Linda Allen (Harmon) hears that her sister is killed (we see the sister tortured in the beginning by being tied to a table topless and having her hands whacked with a pool cue) by a league of hitmen called Assassins, Inc. (No, really!) looking for a master file containing all the hitmen's names, she flies to L.A. to seek revenge. Realizing that they have killed the wrong sister, they try to kill Linda at the airport but she gets away after shooting a driver/assassin and stealing his car. Corrupt FBI Agent Rick Pollard (Joel D. McCrea Jr.), who has ties to Assassins, Inc., is sent out to stop her, but finds himself falling in love with her. The rest of the film contains copious nudity, very badly staged car chases, gun fights and kung-fu fights, an orgy where a murder mystery party takes place (and a murder actually happens), bad post-sync dubbing (why, oh why, didn't they dub Harmon's thick German accent?) and an ending which is so lame that you shake your head in disbelief (check out that toy burning house!). It even promises a sequel at the end credits, which thankfully never happened. While most reference materials list this film as being made in 1985 and there is no production date in the credits, I seriously doubt it as the fashions and cars on display clearly put it in the mid-to-late 70's era. Liz Renay shows up in a cameo doing a strip routine and the music soundtrack is a direct rip-off of Ennio Morricone's score of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966). Also starring some unknown named Trace Carradine, who gets a sword rammed through him by Harmon after he tries to make her give him a blowjob ("Take off my pants bitch!"). Director James Bryan is best known for directing the bloody, goofy film DON'T GO IN THE WOODS (1981), which stands head-and-shoulders above anything else he has made and that's not saying much. Renee Harmon left acting and took up writing books on auditioning for movies, surviving as an actor and film producing and directing! I've been dying to see LADY STREET FIGHTER for years. Now I wish I just died. A Unicorn Video Release. Not Rated.

LION MAN (1975) - Turkish genre films have become quite popular lately. Not because they're good, mind you, but because they are crazy, off-kilter and defy description. For a long time, grey market boots of Turkish versions of STAR TREK ("Turist Omer Uzay Yolunda"), THE EXORCIST ("Seytan"), SUPERMAN ("Superadam"), STAR WARS ("Dunyayi Kuraran Adam") and even THE WIZARD OF OZ ("Aysecik Ve Sihirli Cuceler Ruyalar Ulkesinde") have been floating around in fuzzy third generation dupes. LION MAN was one of the first Turkish films to get a legitimate VHS release in the States and it's a hoot. King Solomon and his pregnant queen have their kingdom overthrown by his scheming second-in-command. Solomon manages to block the door so the Queen can escape (He refuses to move from the door, even after being run-through several times with swords. He eventually relents when they cut both his hands off!). The Queen dies giving birth in the middle of the forest and the child is raised by lions! Lion Man (Major Turkish star Cuneyt Arkin, billed here as "Steve Arkin"), now all grown-up, looks to win back his kingdom by killing all the enemies of his father. This entails swinging from vines, uprooting trees with his bare hands and beating people to death with them and roaring like a lion (he can't speak) while using his hands like lion paws to rip the faces off his enemies. Along the way, he falls in love with a patriotic farm girl, even though she stabs him a couple of times. Eventually, he will get into a final showdown with his father's killer. Expect lots of blood and flying body parts. This is enjoyable trash, even if it's for all the wrong reasons. First off, the dubbing is atrocious, as all the voice talent speak in a monotonous drone and it's never more noticable as when the Queen goes into labor or when Lion Man's girl tries to teach him English (he picks it up quickly). You'll be in stitches. Secondly, the music score is wildly inappropriate. Most of the music cues seem to be lifted from romance movies as the orchestras hit those crescendos usually reserved for when people kiss. The only problem is that they play it during the battle scenes. The film is also full of hilarious dialogue. You'll hear lines like: "That's King Solomon's bitch!" or ""Lock her up until she dies!" and "What do you want you lousy bitch?" Let's not forget the outrageous action scenes where Lion Man and his new fighting force (one guy looks loke Robert Tessier) maim, mangle and generally decimate anyone who stands in their way. You'll marvel at people who are mortally wounded that still fight as if it were only a scratch, well-placed trampolines and poles that Lion Man (who's now a gymnast!) uses to jump, spin and flip over his enemies. The "choreography" used in the fight between Lion Man and his half brother is better viewed than described. Let's just say that if you don't laugh, it's quite possible that you were born without a sense of humor. Director Natuch Baitan tosses in enough graphic bloodshed, including gut-spilling, stabbings, appendage removal, face-rippings and acid burnings (Lion Man loses the use of his hands to acid, so he simply has the blacksmith fashion him a pair of steel claws "bigger and sharper than a lion's"!) to make this a must-see for fans of gory shenanigans. The sight of Lion Man scaling a castle wall with his new hands is a sight to behold. Recommended viewing for those who like it weird. Followed by an inferior sequel titled LIONMAN II: THE WITCHQUEEN (1979). Also starring (all names Anglicized) Barbara Lake, Charles Garret, Alison Soames, Tim Jackson and Natasha Moritz. A Best Film and Video Corp. VHS Release. Not Rated. For more info on the zany Turkish film scene, read Pete Tomb's excellent tome Mondo Macabro.

THE MANIPULATOR (1971) - Sure, you could dismiss this film as a piece of arty claptrap with an incoherent plot and an over the top performance by Mickey Rooney, but you would be missing the point. It's worse than that.  It is an assault to the senses to any sane person who watches it. I was a babbling idiot for at least four hours after viewing this rare piece of pseudointellectual trash. Here's the story in a nutshell: Demented person B.J. Lang (Rooney), who believes he is the best film director in the world, kidnaps Carlotta (Luana Anders) to star in his latest film. The only problem is that Lang is making this movie in his mind and torments Carlotta every chance he gets. Rooney dresses as Cyrano De Bergerac, puts on red lipstick and blue eyeshadow, sings "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" over and over, and gives orders to imaginary people as he holes up in a cobweb-filled abandoned theater (or meat storage facility, it's that confusing). He makes Carlotta recite lines and sees old naked people prancing around in his mind. Director Yabo Yablonsky (his only directorial effort, thank God, although he had written screenplays for REVENGE FOR A RAPE [1976], JAGUAR LIVES! [1979] and others before passing away in 2005), films the sets with weird camera angles, freeze frames, sped-up and slo-mo photography, non-stop talk and imaginary scenes taken from the mind of Lang (including an orgy). All of this is done to cover the fact that there is just not enough movie here to fill a thirty minute time slot, even though the film runs over 90 minutes. I never thought I would say this in my life: I actually felt sorry for Mickey Rooney and he has made some bad choices in his career (SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT 5: THE TOY MAKER anyone?). This one (also known as B.J. LANG PRESENTS) is probably the lowest point of his career. It also contains a cameo by Keenan Wynn as a wino, who gets run through with a sword by Rooney. Lucky Keenan. Stay away from this and keep your sanity. I'm sure Yablonsky was shooting for something here, but it either went way above my head or just sucks shit. I choose the latter. Stay tuned for a "What the FUCK???" moment after the credits. A Vestron Home Video Release. Rated R.

THE MANSON FAMILY (1997-2003) - Let me set the record straight: I am a horror enthusiast and have seen some of the most brutal and unflinching films that have ever been released. I usually walk away after they are finished and begin writing a review. I couldn't with this film because I couldn't finish a thought in my head. After this film's 93 minutes were up things kept getting scrambled in my noggin and I walked around in a daze for several minutes before I could compose myself and head off to bed. There, I laid awake all night in fear of closing my eyes. This hasn't happened to me since I was a kid. I was never a big fan of director Jim Vanbebber. I found his DEADBEAT AT DAWN (1988) to be a pretentious, amateurish, rather boring, if extremely bloody, exercise in revenge. Now, after watching his latest film, I'm under one of two opinions: 1) He's one of the best independent directors around and deserves all the accolades he is receiving for this film, or; 2) He's one of the most dangerous and insane men on the planet and should be put away for the rest of his natural born life. Everyone born before 1969 knows the story of Charles Manson. If not, I'm not going to explain it here as you can go out and rent or buy both versions of HELTER SKELTER (1976 & 2004) or THE HELTER SKELTER MURDERS (1970) or countless other films that dwell on Manson (including the seldom-seen THE MANSON MASSACRE - 1976). This film is not his story, but the story of his followers, a bunch of drug and sexed-out outcasts just looking for someone to lead them on a path to glory. And what glory they achieve. When not dropping acid, smoking pot or having group sex, they really have nothing else to do except listen to the crazed ramblings of Manson (played here with extreme minimalism by Marcelo Games). Told as a series of interviews using both film (with fake emulsion scratches) and video, flashbacks and intercut with scenes of four kids in 1996 about to attack a TV studio that is going to run a Manson documentary the next day, THE MANSON FAMILY is a hard film to take your eyes off of. It is also an assault on the senses, both aural (especially if you watch it in 5.1 Dolby Surround) and visual. Filled with shock cuts, bloody violence (especially the final 15 minutes), full frontal nudity and sex (but not pornographic), this is a tragic story about how the end of the 60's came to be known. Before the killings (Sharon Tate is never mentioned here, but you know it's her when she is killed), the 60's were known as the free-love, pot-smoking, anti-war generation, where everything was permissible as long as it felt good. The Manson family changed all that. The story Vanbebber tells is a vivid and mostly true one (the 1996 sections nonwithstanding), told in such an in-your-face way, that you can't help but get involved. All the actors (including Vanbebber as Bobby) are non-pros, whichs adds to the realism and, when the violence does erupt, it is unrelenting. I would give this film a big thumbs-up if I weren't afraid of pissing off the victims' families of Manson's followers (whose names are never mentioned thoughout the entire film, probably due to legal reasons). It's still a powerful document of how people with nothing to look forward to are easily manipulated and how it can still happen today. Jim Vanbebber started this film in 1997 and did not have the funds to complete it. Blue Underground stepped up to the plate and gave him the capital to finish the film. I endorse this film only for people that can handle violence in a realistic way and realize that something like this can (and does) happen all the time. This is a film about the alienation of youth and unless we, society in general, do something about it, history will keep repeating itself over and over. Also starring Marc Pitman, Leslie Orr, Maureen Alisse, Amy Yates, Tom Burns and Michelle Briggs. The soundtrack also contains actual songs sung by Manson. A film hasn't affected me like this in a long, long time. A Dark Sky Films DVD Release. THE MANSON FAMILY is available in R Rated and Not Rated cuts, with the R rated cut missing 9 minutes of footage. Also available in a 1 disc or 2 disc set. If all you want is the film, get the 1 disc set. The 2 disc set contains over 160 minutes of extra material, including interviews with cast and crew and a demented actual interview with Charles Manson. If you think that over 35 years of prison has changed this maniac, think again. He's still a complete sociopath and will never, ever get parole. And remember: "Charlie Can't Surf!" It's Creepy-Crawl time!

MICROWAVE MASSACRE (1983) - This bad taste horror comedy has only one redeeming feature: The dry delivery of late comedian Jackie Vernon (he was the voice of the animated Christmas perennial FROSTY THE SNOWMAN, for chrissakes!). Construction worker Donald (Vernon) has a very serious problem: His forever-nagging wife May (Claire Ginsberg) hasn't made him an edible meal in months (his latest box lunch was a whole crab slapped on a roll) and he's getting tired of eating all her mis-prepared meals. He even begins to eat dog food because he thinks it tastes better than May's slop. Things only get worse when May purchases a big-assed Major Electric microwave oven (Model #X1-74A) and cooks Donald faster and even more inedible cuisine (which she pronounces "coo-zine"). Donald fantasizes about killing May until one day he goes too far and actually kills her (he gets drunk at a bar, comes home, spits water on dinner, pisses in the fireplace and caves May's head in with a pepper grinder). He wakes up the next morning and finds May in the microwave and, as a final tribute, microwaves her body on high. He saws up her body into pieces, wraps them in aluminum foil and puts them in the refrigerator next to the other leftovers. One night, he accidentally grabs one of her body parts (thinking it's a leftover) and eats it. He likes the taste and soon he is bringing box lunches of May meat to his construction site. His friends, Rosie (Loren Schein) and Philip (Al Toupe), take bites and Donald's lunches become the hit of the construction site. Soon, he is creating different dishes from May's body parts and serving them to his friends. When Philip mentions that the meat is beginning to taste old and tough, Donald gets the idea that maybe younger women would taste better. He begins bringing prostitutes home and giving them the old X1-74A treatment ("I'm so hungry, I could eat a whore!"). The microwave proves to be Donald's achille's heel, however, as the pacemaker in his chest malfunctions every time he uses the microwave. He can't help his addiction, though, as Rosie and Philip find him lying next to the oven, dead of a heart attack, a full plate of arms and hands sitting in the microwave.  This really is a pretty piss-poor film only made bearable by Jackie Vernon (who actually died of a heart attack in 1987), in a rare filmic outing. Director Wayne Berwick (whose father, Irv Berwick, directed MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS - 1959, HITCH-HIKE TO HELL - 1977, MALIBU HIGH - 1978, amongst others) throws in every cheap sex joke imaginable and only about 10% of it is funny. Thankfully, Berwick also throws in plenty of female nudity to keep your eyes occupied through the slow parts. The acting is uniformly awful from the mostly non-professional cast and even Vernon looks like he's reading off cue cards on several occasions. The gore, such as it is, consists of severed body parts lying on the counter, in the microwave, in the refrigerator or being eaten by the cast, all of it used for comical (?) effect. Things reach the nadir when "dark meat" jokes are made about eating the flesh of a dead black hooker and when Donald's sexy next door neighbor uses a cordless vibrator to dig holes in her garden. Another tasteless bit is when Donald is shown cutting up a Chinese woman (for his "Peking Chick" dish), all you see on the counter is a kabuki wig and a big pair of round eyeglasses. How you feel about this film totally depends on your tolerance for cheap jokes, bad acting and severed body parts. I must admit, I did laugh out loud a couple of times even though I knew I shouldn't. The late Robert A. Burns was art director on this. Also starring Lou Ann Webber, Cindy Gant, Sarah Alt, Phil De Carlo and John Harmon. A Midnight Video Release. Not Rated. "Hello, Coast Guard? Is the coast clear?"

MR. NO LEGS (1980) - This head-scratcher of a film will have you doing double takes (and maybe even spit takes!). This is mainly an action film concerning drug dealing, double crosses and car chases but the title character is so mean and unrelenting that it deserves to be in the total weirdness category. A legless, wheelchair-riding mob enforcer (Ron Slinker) works for his drug-running boss (Lloyd Bochner), killing rivals with shotguns hidden in the armrests of his wheelchair or jumping out of his chair (using his arms!) and karate-chopping or knifing snitches and goons who get in his way. When the daughter of a cop (Ted Vollrath) turns up dead, he and partner Richard Jaeckel (GRIZZLY - 1976) begin to track down those responsible. When they begin to get too close, Mr. No Legs tries several times (quite unsuccessfully) to kill the cops. This worries his boss, who begins to see him as more of a liability than an asset, and orders him snuffed out along with the cops. This does not sit well with Mr. No Legs......  While basically a cops and robbers film, the unusual Ron Slinker, who can't act a lick (this was his only film role), makes you take notice. When he leaps out of his chair (in slow motion), beating people up with his stumps and even jumping into a swimming pool to take on two hitmen, you begin to realize that this is strange stuff. Director Ricou Browning (who played the Gillman in all three CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON films) falters toward the end, when Slinker is killed two-thirds of the way through the film and it turns into a 25 minute car chase (provided by Joie Chitwood and the Danger Angels), where crooked cop John Agar (NIGHT FRIGHT - 1967) races around the Florida panhandle trying to avoid capture. Still, it's not a bad little film. It manages to keep your attention due to the strange subject matter and the frequent bloody fights, stabbings, legless kung-fu and shotgun blasts. Also starring Rance Howard as a sidekick of Mr. No Legs. I picked this one up on DVD-R from 5 Minutes To Live. It's kind of dupey, but watchable. Not Rated.

MOONCHILD (1972) - I really have nothing against arty horror films, but it seems to me that some actual horror should be thrown-in with all the pretentious philosophical dialogue and fancy camerawork, no? After an on-screen quote by Edgar Cayce ("You may not even have to come back at all if you become perfectly developed in this life."), we witness our young protagonist, known throughout most of the film as the "Student" (Mark Travis), running through some dark catacombs, trying to escape some unseen force chasing him. Our narrator, an old man called Mr. Walker (John Carradine; FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND - 1981), takes us back in time to show us how the Student ended up in this predicament. It's 1920, and the Student, who is a pastel painter and sketch artist, is hitchhiking through the California desert, when he ends up at an old mission that's been converted to a hotel. Mr. Walker happens by while the Student is painting a picture of the hotel and tells him that he should pay close attention to "the bells", especially the one with a "No.7" stamped on it. The seemingly-mad Mr. Walker takes him to the hotel, where the Student becomes fascinated with the building's architecture and meets an odd assortment of characters, including the hotel's manager (Pat Renella), who makes the Student register by signing the guestbook with his name and birthdate (the manager may be the Devil himself); a mysterious gentleman called the Maitre D' (Victor Buono; THE EVIL - 1978), who tells the Student that everything he sees is an illusion (he may actually be God or one of his angels); the hunchbacked, one-eyed servant called Homonculus (Frank Corsentino); the creepy maid (Marie Drew); and a beautiful girl (Janet Landgard), who haunts the Student's dreams. When the manager finds out that the Student's zodiac sign is Cancer, he dubs him "Moonchild No. 7" and from that moment on, he begins having flashbacks to a previous life, when the hotel was just a mission a couple of centuries earlier. It doesn't take a genius to deduct that Moonchild No. 7's life is pre-destined to end up here and play out the same pre-determined outcome as he did in six previous lives, with the same set of characters that now occupy the hotel. The rest of the film is a series of flashbacks-within-flashbacks, told in an artsy-fartsy style (weird camera angles; close-ups of red meat being sliced and consumed; quick, jackhammer-style editing) and containing many obtuse conversations about life and death. This continues for 78 agonizing minutes, as Moonchild No. 7 tries to alter his fate from repeating itself. He fails miserably.  MOONCHILD amounts to be nothing more than a USC film student's master thesis on the cyclicity of life and reincarnation (this would make a great companion piece with director Christopher Speeth's equally long-winded MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD [1973]). Director/writer Alan Gadney (Not surprisingly, his only film credit. He's now a successful book marketer.) and Director of Photography Emmett Alston (who went on to direct such genre fare as NEW YEAR'S EVIL [1980], TIGERSHARK [1986] and DEMONWARP [1988]) have fashioned a philosophical horror film where Renella's Devil and Buono's God characters relentlessly battle for the soul of the Student, while Carradine (who sometimes speaks directly to the camera) tries to keep us up to speed in his dulcet, Shakespearean voice. This is really nothing but a cheap reincarnation horror tale dressed-up in convoluted dime-store Psych 101 dialogue ("Seek the life to perfection." "God preserve us. The Devil rides in women's loins!") and the occasional quick glimpse of early-70's gore (blood gushing out of a sword wound; a throat slashing). The flashback sequences (conceived by editor Jack Conrad, director/writer of the obscure actioner COUNTRY BLUE [1973]), which take place in a Spanish Inquisition-like atmosphere (where we find out that the Student actually has a proper name, "Gavilan"), contains the film's only horror sequences, but it comes so late in the film and you'll have to put up with dialogue that's so heavy-handed and forced, it's hard to imagine for anyone but those with the patience of a saint would give a damn. Both Victor Buono and John Carradine (who has more spoken lines here than ten of his latter-day horror films combined) are consummate professionals (and, apparently, willing to help out a film student for little or no money), but it's hard to give a rat's ass when the film around then is such a pretentious bore. When this film was released to U.S. theaters in 1974, it was advertised as an EXORCIST-type film (The tag line reads: "Racing Towards His Final Exorcism!). Man, audiences must have been pissed when they realized they were conned. Filmed at the still-standing (and operating) Mission Inn in Riverside California. Also starring William Challee and Robert Randles. I don't believe that this ever got a legitimate home video release in the U.S., but it can be purchased on VHS and DVD-R from Sinister Cinema. The version I viewed was sourced from a Dutch-subtitled VHS tape. Rated R.

A NAME FOR EVIL (1973) - John Blake (Robert Culp) is feeling the pressures of big city living. He has a combination deadbolt on his apartment door to keep out burglars. He is so fed up with what he sees on TV that he throws the set off the apartment balcony. He also has a hard time separating fantasy from reality. Every time he sees his shrewish, unloving wife (Samantha Eggar), he has visions of naked dancing girls and people dressed in skeleton costumes. Blake leaves his family-owned architectual business and moves himself and his wife to his late great grandfather's country estate, called The Grove. There is a problem with this estate: Blake's great grandfather, known as The Major, built The Grove and swore that after his death, no one would ever inhabit it. Blake and his wife are the first people to live in The Grove in over 50 years and almost immediately Blake begins to experience strange phenomenon. A white horse mysteriously appears and disappears. A voice continuously warns him to get out of the house. He sees strange shadows cast on the walls. He is attacked by a stream of fire. He also believes that The Major has his sights set on Mrs. Blake. Oh, did I mention that he takes part in a nude dancing orgy led by the town's preacher? It is up to us, the viewer, to decide if all the stuff that is happening is in Blake's mind or if it is real. If it is real, is The Major the cause or is someone else trying to drive him mad? You try and figure it out. I sure as hell couldn't. This Bernard Girard (THE MAD ROOM - 1969; THE MIND SNATCHERS - 1972) directed psychodrama has a surprising amount of full frontal male and female nudity (in Culp's  case, one could say, "I Spy a small penis!"), but very little else. Girard's idea of telling a story involves layering multi-colored lighting with arty camera angles. His screenplay is confusing and moves at a snail's pace. Samantha Eggar (THE BROOD - 1979; CURTAINS - 1983; RAGIN' CAJUN - 1991) has a hilarious scene describing Culp's masturbatory habits and tries to castrate Culp with a straight razor. Culp, who starred in his share of stinkers, including BIG BAD MAMA 2  (1987), SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT 3: BETTER WATCH OUT (1989) and XTRO 3: WATCH THE SKIES (1995), wanders around looking confused and seems embarassed during his nude scenes. The sad fact is, if it weren't for the nude scenes, I would have fallen asleep long before A NAME FOR EVIL reached its' mind-numbing conclusion. Also starring Sheila Sullivan, Mike Lane, Clarence Miller and Sue Hathaway. A Paragon Video Release. Rated R. NOTE: Beware of the version of this film shown on American Movie Classics (AMC). It is shorn of all the nudity, contains alternate scenes and actually makes less sense than the version on tape. Avoid both at all costs!

NINJA III: THE DOMINATION (1984) - After the unexpected success of ENTER THE NINJA (1981), Cannon Films founders Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus produced two official sequels (both starring Sho Kosugi), REVENGE OF THE NINJA (1983) and this one, a strange and entertaining mixture of martial arts and horror genres. The film opens with a seemingly indestructible ninja killing a millionaire industrialist, his girlfriend and several bodyguards on a golf course before leading the police on a chase, where he kills numerous cops (as well as destroying a police helicopter) before being gunned-down by several officers (we see all the officers' faces in close-up, as well as one cop whose face is obscured by the sun, so we know that their lives will be in danger later on), The mortally wounded ninja (he has been riddled with over 50 bullets and shotgun blasts) manages to escape in a puff of smoke and stumbles into the desert, where telephone line repairwoman Christie (Lucinda Dickey; CHEERLEADER CAMP - 1987) offers him help, but instead is attacked by the ninja and then possessed by his spirit after accepting his samurai sword. The pretty Christie then begins having visions of all those officers' faces and begins killing them one-by-one while possessed by the ninja and then has no memory of committing the murders when she wakes up (The first clue Christie should have known something was wrong was when she suddenly has knowledge of martial arts and beats the snot out of a street gang when they threaten to rape her). Christie begins dating persistent street cop Billy Secord (Jordan Bennett) when he refuses to take no for an answer (He follows her to her aerobics class and shortly afterwards he's licking V8 juice off her bare breasts!) and, wouldn't you know it, Billy's partner is one of the cops involved in gunning-down the ninja. As Christie's behavior becomes more bizarre (the possession scenes are simply priceless, as the samurai sword floats in mid-air [on a visible wire] and Christie travels to the dead ninja's secret cave to grab some weapons and don his ninja outfit) and more cops end up dead, including Billy's partner, the sudden appearance of eye patch-wearing Master Ninja Yamada (Sho Kosugi) arriving in town from Japan can only mean one thing: An eventual showdown between him and the possessed Christie. Billy grows more concerned with Christie's demeanor, such as her sudden interest in Japanese culture and her "black-outs", so he takes Christie to Miyashima (James Hong; THE JITTERS - 1988), a phony expert on Japanese possession, who chains Christie up at the waist and performs a ritual over her body. A totally surprised Miyashima is not prepared for the result (think THE EXORCIST on steroids) and warns Billy that Christie is possessed by a "Black Ninja" and "only a ninja can destroy a ninja." I think we can all see where this is headed, but the question still remains: Who is the officer whose face was obscured by the sun? Could it possibly be Billy and will the possessed Christie kill him?  This totally absurd martial arts/horror film, directed by Sam Firstenberg (AVENGING FORCE - 1986; SPIDERS 2 - 2001) and written by James R. Silke, who both handled the same chores on REVENGE OF THE NINJA, as well as AMERICAN NINJA (1985), is so outlandish and full of "What The Fuck?!?" moments, you can't help but enjoy yourself. There are plenty of moments to relish here, especially Christie's EXORCIST-like transformation in Miyashima's shop, where she spins around like a wound-up propellor on a toy airplane, while her face and hair get all spooky and she starts speaking in tongues. Another outrageous scene is the possessed Christie's slaughter of several police officers at a cop's funeral. Watching cops being killed at an officer's funeral is one of the strangest sights I have ever seen in a film. But my favorite scene, bar none, is when Christie tries to fight off one instance of possession by (get this) aerobic dancing at a furious pace! If you aren't laughing hysterically at this sequence, I can guarantee that you don't have a humorous bone in your entire body. Think FLASHDANCE by way of a Solid Gold Dancer high on PCP. This film has it all: Bloody deaths (most by sword impalement of some kind), martial arts fights (choreographed by Sho Kosugi), gravity-defying stunts, car crashes, Lucinda Dickey in the nude and plenty of optical and laser effects (including Christie being scanned by an arcade console game called Bouncer, a real prototype game system that was never mass produced). This is one of those films that restores your faith in American action films. Unfortunately, this was the last in the series, as Yoram/Globus and Cannon Films went in a different direction (but not any less enjoyable), making action films starring Michael Dudikoff, starting with the aforementioned AMERICAN NINJA. Sho Koshugi left Cannon Films and went on to appear in a string of martial arts actioners, including NINE DEATHS OF THE NINJA (1985), PRAY FOR DEATH (1985), RAGE OF HONOR (1987) and hosting a VHS series of martial arts flicks for Trans World Entertainment. Also starring David Chung, Dale Ishimoto, Bob Craig, Pamela Ness and Roy Padilla. Originally released on VHS by MGM/UA Home Video and still awaiting a proper DVD release, although there are many gray market DVDs floating around with custom DVD covers. Rated R.

NO SUCH THING (2001) - Billed as a modern day fairy tale, I believe it is more about the miracles of life and death. In what can only be described as an alternate universe, the film first takes take place in New York (Manhattan has been bought by an entertainment company) where Beatrice (Sarah Polley of DAWN OF THE DEAD - 2004) works as a gofer for TV news bigwig and unfeeling The Boss (the always entertaining Helen Mirren). When Beatrice finds out that her fiance is missing in Iceland covering a story, she asks The Boss to let her go find out what really happened. The plane that Beatrice is on crashes into the ocean and she is the only survivor. With nearly every bone in her body broken and nearly no chance of walking again, Beatrice undergoes an experimental procedure with the help of kindly Dr. Anna (Julia Christie) which lets her walk again. Beatrice then goes to Iceland where she finds a monster (Robert John Burke of DUST DEVIL - 1992; THINNER - 1996 and HIDE AND SEEK - 2005) who speaks perfect English, breathes fire and wants her to destroy him. Even after discovering that he has killed her fiance, Beatrice cannot find herself to kill the beast. (She does pump a slug into his stomach but it has no effect. The monster then points the gun at his head and pulls the trigger and it also has no effect!) The monster confesses to Beatrice that he is immortal (has seen mountains decay), is an alcoholic, insomniac and the only one of his kind in the world. The only person able to destroy him is Dr. Artaud (Baltasar Kormakur), who the monster wants Beatrice to find to end his misery. The only way Beatrice will do this is if the monster accompanies her in the search, which leads back to New York. To give away any more of the plot would be to destroy the film as it is one of the most humanistic portrayals of good and evil (and what defines them) to be portrayed in films. Who would have thought that this fertile gem would come from Long Island director Hal Hartley, who mainly does romantic dramas (He also did the haunting music score here). The use of authentic locations and actors in Iceland greatly enhances the drama and Burke is a hoot as the monster (makeup courtesy of Mark Rappaport), spewing diatribes and downing massive amounts of alcohol. Though short on blood and gore, that's not the point of this film. The real point is how the public views you and how long the entertainment industry (including the news division) can keep you in the spotlight before they chew you up and spit you out. I guess it's not an alternate universe after all. This did get a theatrical release and many good reviews but bombed at the box office. I believe the normal viewing audience will let most of the parables drift right over their heads. Don't let this happen to you. This is a masterpiece of weird (but true) cinema. As Dr. Artaud says: "What would the world be without monsters?" An MGM/UA Release. Rated R.

PREMONITION (1972) - This is the first directorial effort from Alan Rudolph, a trippy counterculture horror film that displays touches of Rudolph's quirkiness that would blossom much later in his arthouse films, including CHOOSE ME (1984), TROUBLE IN MIND (1985) and MADE IN HEAVEN (1987). The film opens with hippie guitar-playing troubadour Neil (Carl Crow) singing a ballad while walking through a deserted, windswept town and then sitting down and talking directly into the camera. He begins narrating a story that begins three years earlier, when he took a job as a driver/assistant to Professor Kilrenny (Victor Izay; BILLY JACK - 1971), who is looking for an ancient Indian village somewhere in the Mexican desert. As the Professor sets out on his own, Neil builds base camp and smokes some weed. The Professor finds a skeleton lying amongst a field of some strange red plants and runs back to Neil to help him retrieve it. When Neil gets close to the skeleton, he has visions of a horribly-scarred head and when he helps the Professor load the skeleton on the back of the pickup truck and they drive away, Neil has another vision which causes him to crash the truck and destroy the skeleton. The experience forces Neil to give up drugs for three years (although he's smoking a joint while narrating this tale). The story then skips ahead two years, where Neil and his best friend Baker (Winfrey Hester Hill) join a rock band and get a gig at a bar, but Neil's strange behavior gets him and Baker kicked out of the band. Neil and Baker join fellow musician Andy (Tim Ray), who also suffers from some serious nightmares, and form a musical trio. They head for San Francisco on their motorcycles (leading the way for several EASY RIDER-like vignettes) in hopes of hitting the big time, taking up residence in an old abandoned farmhouse. Andy immediately has a bad case of déjà vu and tells Neil and Baker that something bad happened here (He says, "I saw the Devil here. She was here!" to which Baker jokingly replies, "She couldn't have been here. I left her at home!"). Pretty soon, both Neil and Andy begin sharing the same nightmares, which involves a smoke-shrouded demon, three hippie chicks in a field and Andy getting decapitated. The question soon becomes: Are these nightmares or prophetic visions? When Andy begins smoking the leaves of the red plant (the same red plants that were growing around the skeleton in the Mexico desert), he begins to unravel the mystery, much to Neil's dismay. A chance encounter with Professor Kilrenny and a rock concert at the farmhouse results in Neil and Adam discovering the truth about their nightmares and possibly unleashing a force that will continue to kill for years to come.  This is a confusing and dated, yet, somehow, very involving horror film. Sure, it's full of drug references, dated hippy dialogue and trippy visuals (including freak-outs and weird camera angles), but director/producer/writer Alan Rudolph (whose next film would be the god-awful BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD [1974] and would later make the interesting cattle mutilation/conspiracy thriller ENDANGERED SPECIES [1982]) spins a highly involving yarn that rewards the patient viewer. Rudolph tosses-in every visual trick in the book, including flashbacks-within-flashbacks, subliminal editing, solarized shots of hippie chicks dancing, psychedelic trip sequences with lots of colorful gel lighting and a very early example of Steadicam work. While the film is not very bloody (just a quick shot of a decapitation, a burned corpse and bloody head wounds), it is absolutely creepy in spots (especially the shared nightmare) and the droning electronic score that accompanies those sequences are sure to raise some goosebumps. This is an interesting and rarely-seen first feature from a director whose acclaim has come due to his odd choices in subject matter. To the untrained eye, this film may seem to be nothing more than a minor hippie drug horror flick, but auteur Rudolph is actually revealing much more to the viewer. Like most of his films, PREMONITION (also known as HEAD and THE IMPURE) has layers to it that can be peeled away if you know what to look for. This would make a great double feature with Fredric Hobb's ALABAMA'S GHOST (1972). Not to be confused with director Robert Allen Schnitzer's THE PREMONITION (1975), an equally weird and worthwhile foray into minds damaged and destroyed. Also starring Judith Patterson, Durt C. Lodd, Michelle Fitzsimmons, Barry Brown and Shelley Snell. Originally released on VHS by Active Home Video and not available on U.S. DVD. Rated PG.

PSYCHO KICKBOXER: THE DARK ANGEL (1992/1997) - Kickboxer Alex Hunter (Curtis Bush) seemingly has it all: His kickboxing career is taking off, his girlfriend Julia (Stephanie Godfrey) has just accepted his marriage proposal and his father, Chief of Detectives Alan Hunter (George James), is about to put away crime lord Hawthorne (Tom Story) for a long time. Hawthorne's not having any of that (He's so mean, instead of cutting off an underling's pinky finger as a sign of loyalty, he cuts-off the poor schmuck's entire hand!), so he has his thugs kidnap Alex, Alan and Julia as they walk out of a restaurant and brings them to a warehouse, where a tied-up Alex is forced to witness his father getting his head blown-off with a shotgun (a very gory effect) and then watch Julia being gang-raped, followed by having her throat cut. Alex is shot, beaten and left for dead, but he is saved by black wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran Joshua (Rod Suiter), who nurses Alex back to health and turns him into the "Dark Angel", the psycho kickboxer of the title (We soon find out it was Hawthorne who put Joshua in the wheelchair, not the Vietnam War). Alex, who is wanted by the police in connection with his father and Julia's deaths, thanks to evidence planted at the scene by Alan's crooked cop partner Harry O'Reilly (Ray Brown), dons a black ninja outfit and begins cleaning-up the streets of rapists and drug pushers, which begins to interfere with Hawthorne's criminal enterprises. The cops put a bounty on the Dark Angel's head and Alex gets more attention than he needs when he saves tabloid reporter Cassie Wells (Kim Reynolds) from three rapists. Cassie joins forces with private investigator Jack Cook (Rick Clark) to discover the true identity of the Dark Angel so Cassie can get a front page story and they both can split the reward. As Alex goes on a bloody revenge spree, Hawthorne kidnaps Cassie, Jack and Joshua and forces Alex to fight a series of increasingly more difficult opponents in Hawthorne's nightclub. When Alex runs out of opponents, he turns his attention towards Hawthorne's right-hand man, Hawk (Del Potter), who slit Julia's throat in the beginning of the film, and then Harry, while Joshua, (sans wheelchair), makes sure that Hawthorne doesn't live to see tomorrow.  This ultra-low-budget actioner, directed/produced by Mardy South (his only directorial credit) and written by Kathy Varner, took 14 months to film and nearly five years to find a distributor, yet it is not nearly as awful as it should be. Sure, some of the acting is sub-par, the sound effects over-amped and the photography grainy, but the film has a visceral energy that can't be denied and there is some extreme gore on display here that is surprisingly well-done (and unusual in a flick like this). The visceral energy comes courtesy of star Curtis "The Explosive Thin Man" Bush, who was 5-time World Kickboxing Champion and a professional middleweight boxer at the time of this film's release. While he's not much of an actor (he's usually plays a background extra on TV shows like LOST [2004 - 2010]), his martial arts sequences are usually very well done and violent as hell. This is the type of film where every rapist, drug dealer and street scum has extensive martial arts experience, which makes for highly improbable, yet entertaining, street fights. My favorite scene comes when Alex saves a woman from a carjacking by beating her attacker to a bloody pulp. The woman then becomes so enraged, she starts her car and runs over her attacker's head, squashing it like some ripe watermelon. It's scenes like this which keeps the viewer totally off-balance and while I would never call PSYCHO KICKBOXER a good film by any stretch of the imagination (it's anemic budget shines through in nearly every scene), I must say that it was much better than I expected it to be. It's got paraplegic-fu, a knife in the forehead, full-frontal female nudity and bursts of graphic gore (although the DVD artwork, depicting Alex kicking some guy's head completely off his shoulders in a geyser of blood, appears nowhere in the film). You could do a lot worse and probably have. Filmed entirely in Hampton Roads, Virginia using local talent exclusively in front and behind the camera. Also starring Frank Gagnano, George James and Andrew Peele. Originally released on VHS by E.I. Independent Cinema and now available on DVD from Shock-O-Rama Cinema as part of a double feature, with the equally weird, but less than stellar CANVAS OF BLOOD (1997). Not Rated.

THE RAPTURE (1991) - Should be subtitled THE DAY ALL HEAVEN BROKE LOOSE. Attempting a description of this film is like trying to explain the color orange to a blind man. Mimi Rodgers (great performance) is Sharon, who by day has a boring job as a telephone operator and by night cruises airport bars and motels with her sexual partner, Vic (Patrick Bauchau), looking for couples to swing with. At her job she overhears a trio of her co-workers talking about "The Dream" and "The Boy". No one will tell her what it means explaining that she will understand it all if she puts her trust and love in God. "The Dream" is actually a vision of The Rapture, when God comes down to Earth to pass judgment. All those who do not believe in Him will perish, and will not be able to enter Heaven. "The Boy" is a black child prophet who knows the year when the Rapture will happen. Sharon becomes born again and leaves behind her life of sexual debauchery. She marries and has a baby girl. Six years pass and she and her family are still living the life of God. Tragedy strikes when Sharon's husband (David Duchovny) is gunned down, along with a half dozen other people, by an alcoholic ex-employee he recently fired. Sharon has a vision which she interprets as meaning God wants her and her daughter to go to the desert and wait for Him to take them to Heaven. After many weeks and some false alarms, Sharon becomes disillusioned. Partly due to malnutrition and exposure and partly due to her religious fervor, she decides that God wants her to kill her daughter so she can be in Heaven with her daddy. Sharon cannot kill herself because that would be a sin. She is arrested and loses her faith. The remainder of the film is genuinely eerie and goosebump-inducing, so I will not spoil it for you. This sleeper of 1991 is sure to become a classic in the years to come. Sprinkled throughout with weird visuals (i.e. religious symbolism tatooed on a naked lady), nudity and shocking bits of violence. It's like tripping on acid without the after effects. Everyone is to be congratulated in front and behind the camera. Highly recommended! Director Michael Tolkin (THE NEW AGE - 1994) could never top this one in a million years. A New Line Home Video Release. Rated R.

REBORN (1984) - This would make a great double feature with THE RAPTURE (1991). This one is an ultra-weird indictment against televised evangalism. Dennis Hopper is Reverend Tom Harley, who performs bogus faith healings coast-to-coast via satellite. The Reverend's associates catch wind of a true faith healer in Italy and send Michael Moriarty to bring her back to the States so she can tour with the Reverend's group. Mary (Antonella Murgia), the faith healer, is a virgin and falls in love with Moriarty. In one of the strangest scenes in film history, Moriarty's dick gets stuck inside Mary's vagina when she passes out while making love for the first time (every man's nightmare!). Mary is soon separated from Moriarty by the Reverend, as she is taught English, shaved under the armpits and generally Americanized. The Reverend has made her a viable commercial property. Mary slips deeper and deeper into depression and Moriarty begins to hear voices emanating from his boom box and television. Moriarty finds out Mary is pregnant and steals her away from the Reverend. Mary delivers her baby (a boy) at a gas station with the help of three old attendants. (Get it?) After seeing one of Mary's true healings, the Reverend becomes a true believer and is born again. And did I mention that God pilots a helicopter? This little-seen film is a must for fans of the bizarre. It boasts a fairly restrained performance by Hopper, Moriarty's usual quirky acting (an asset for most films he appears in), along with nudity and some strange religious imagery. No blood is on hand because the story line is devoid of violence. Director Bigas (I bet he was teased a lot in school) Luna also made the equally weird and enjoyable ANGUISH (1986). Co-star Francisco Rabal can also be seen in CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD, William Friedkin's SORCERER and his final film, Stuart Gordon's DAGON (2001). REBORN is immensely entertaining. An Ace Video Release. Rated R.

REDNECK (1973) - What a ridiculously entertaining film. Two thieves, Mosquito (Franco Nero) and Memphis (Telly Savalas, sporting the phoniest Southern drawl I've heard in quite a while), rob a jewelry store in Rome and kill the owner. In their haste to escape, their getaway driver, Maria (Ely Galleani), wrecks the car (she drives straight into a funeral procession, dislodging the coffin from the back of a hearse and dragging it across the pavement!), forcing them to steal another car. They don't realize that thirteen year-old Lennox Duncan (Mark Lester) is in the back seat until they stop for gas. Lennox tries to escape by running through a field of sheep, but the trio recapture him and Memphis murders a little boy shephard just so there will be no witnesses (a truly shocking scene). When Mosquito's connection doesn't show up at the prearranged location (an auto junkyard) to fence the stolen jewels for cash, the trio (plus boy) must find a way to get safely to France, using little Lennox as a "passport". When they are forced to stop at a roadblock and the dope-smoking Memphis notices how the police are helpless as long as they have Lennox captive, Memphis sees this as his ticket to easy street. They steal a Rolls Royce from two old ladies on the side of the road and Memphis picks up two street hookers for some personal enjoyment. When he goes to pay them with some of the stolen jewels, Memphis discovers that all he and Mosquito stole from the jewelry store was nothing but worthless cutlery. Everything changes after that. The trio turns on each other and Lennox uses that knowledge to his advantage. Maria wants to leave on her own, but Memphis rapes, then kills her. He then puts her body in the Rolls and pushes it over a cliff. Lennox, meanwhile, has aligned himself with Mosquito, as they search for a now-missing Memphis and the now-dead Maria (Mosquito lets Lennox take sips from his J&B bottle to keep warm and he gets drunk!). They come upon a mansion of an aging Princess (Maria Michi), who feeds and gives then shelter. Mosquito and Lennox slowly become friends (Mosquito  even shaves in the nude in front of him!), but one gets the feeling that Lennox is wise beyond his years. A psychotic Memphis shows up at the mansion and soon it's a battle of wills. Lennox begins playing Memphis and Mosquito against each other as they try to stay one step ahead of the police while trying to make it across the border. Of course, things turn out badly for everyone involved, but only one will make it out alive as a totally changed individual.  This British/Italian co-production is a real hard film to categorize. One moment it's a heist thriller, then it's a chase drama and then it's a slapstick comedy, but all the while it has a real nasty edge to it, thanks to the over-the-top performance by Telly Savalas as Memphis. Maybe "over-the-top" is being too mild, as Savalas plays his character as a no-remorse, soulless psychopath, who sings "Jesus Loves The Little Children" while blowing away kids, women and even a dog (!) and then screaming incoherently, "I didn't want to do it! They made me do it!" While Savalas' laughable Southern accent comes and goes, his savagery never wavers, especially the scene where he locks a family in a mobile home and dumps them in a lake, blaming his act on Lennox for trying to tell them who he is (Memphis' balls get caught on the trailer hitch when he pushes the trailer and he spends the rest of the film with a huge blood stain on the crotch of his pants!). Surprisingly, the only nudity on display here is from Franco Nero (THE FIFTH CORD - 1971; DAY OF THE COBRA - 1980) and Mark Lester (SUDDEN TERROR - 1970; WHO SLEW AUNTIE ROO? - 1971), as director Silvio Narizzano (THE CLASS OF MISS MACMICHAEL - 1978; BLOODBATH - 1979) uses Win Wells' script as a showcase for a battle of personalities. While no one trusts anyone else, they stick together because they have no one else in their lives to care about them. Even Lennox's wealthy mother (Beatrice Clary) doesn't know her own son's age when she reports him missing to the police, so it's no wonder why Lennox is such a fucked-up, conniving kid. I especially liked the nihilistic ending that shows people like Memphis aren't born that way, they're created as a by-product of their environment. Memphis is really the only person in this film who truly understands Lennox and his motivations (and, therefore, doesn't trust him), so it comes as no surprise who Lennox morphs into in the final shot. REDNECK is a strange hybrid of a film that works, thanks to (and, sometimes, in spite of) Telly Savalas' grandstanding performance. Strictly 70's in terms of actions and consequences, morality and greed. Catch it if you can. Also starring Duilio Del Prete, Aldo De Carellis and Tom Duggan. This use to play on TV (in edited form, naturally) during the 70's and early 80's and I don't believe this ever got a legitimate U.S. home video release. Available on British DVD from WHE Europe Limited. Not Rated.

RUNAWAY NIGHTMARE (1982) - I doubt that you'll find a stranger film like this one in a long while. Two worm and snail farmers (Director Michael Cartel and Al Valletta) witness a live burial in the Death Valley, California desert.  They dig up the body and find a breathing nude girl in the coffin. They take her back to their farm and they themselves are kidnapped by a group of all-female cult members. After numerous lame jokes and a gunfight gone terribly wrong, the two men are voted into the group, entitling them to share in all their communal property. It seems the girls were dealing with the Mafia and were cheated out of a load of platinum (!?). The girls make the men do menial chores like chopping wood into splinters and moving boxes from one place to the next for no apparent reason. You'll be shaking your head in disbelief as you witness one inane scene after another, strung together for no other purpose than to make the film a decent running time. One of the guys gets a hot foot (!) while another scene shows a girl destroying a TV with an axe after being rebuffed for sex by one of the guys. The men have sex with the girls except for one who is a lesbian ("I hate MEN!"). The men help the girls get back their platinum from the Mafia.  I haven't even scratched the surface of this weird film. There are bar fights, gun fights, girl fights, a warehouse explosion, strip chess, pinball playing and vampirism! Absolutely no one in this film can act a lick. One wonders where director Michael Cartel's (who also acted in the 1974 sexploitationer PETS) head was at when he made this atrocity (Thank God, his only one). Was it up his ass or was he just high on peyote? In either case, you will be glued to the screen just to view and believe the awfulness of it. You won't be able to take your eyes off of it because of the sheer badness in every aspect of filmmaking it shows. It's the REEFER MADNESS of the 80's. Also starring Cindy Dolan, Jody Lee Olhava, Cheryl Gamson, Georgia Durante and Sijtske Vandenberg. An All Seasons Entertainment Home Video Release. Not Rated because it contains a lot of nudity (which seems inserted after the movie was finished because it looks like it was shot on videotape) but, oddly, contains very little blood or gore. This is one weird film that will have your head shaking in disbelief so much, that you're likely to get whiplash!

SCORPION THUNDERBOLT (1985) - What is the facination with snakes in Oriental cinema? Fourteen women have been brutally murdered by a giant snake-like creature and the police are clueless. A vampire witch with long metallic fingernails performs a ritual while Richard (Richard Harrison) is screwing a female hitchhiker in a porno screening room. The hitchhiker pulls out a knife and tries to stab Richard, but he stops her and she dies while spewing yellow goo out of her mouth. A cackling madman breaks into policeman Jackie's (Bernard Tsui) apartment, handcuffs him, rapes his girlfriend and injects her with a drug. Jackie manages to free himself from the handcuffs and beats the crap out of the laughing madman while three young women watch the fracas from their apartment window. The snake creature then kills the three women in their apartment while a blind man plays the flute outside. Another madman has a woman in his apartment tied spread-eagle while he plays a game of nine ball with her vagina (he shoots pool balls with his cue right at her snatch!). Richard is nearly killed by a plumber he calls to fix his leaky pipes, but kills him with the exercise bar he was using to work out. Jackie and his girlfriend are then attacked in their moving car when it suddenly fills with snakes. They crash but manage to escape. Does this review seem severely fragmented? Believe me when I tell you that this is nothing compared to watching this film. It seems the vampire witch has something to do with newspaper reporter Helen (Juliet Chan) turning into a snake monster at the worst times imaginable. She attacks and kills a waiter and a couple taking a bath while transformed into the snake creature and her cheating boyfriend Jackie begins to worry about her. Meanwhile, Richard is being attacked by people under the power of the Queen of Scorpions, the vampire witch, who wants the ring Richard is wearing, as it is the only object that can destroy her. Richard goes to a prophet, who gives him a golden sword and a mystical mirror to defeat the Queen. Helen confesses to Jackie by saying, "I am not a human being. I am a snake demon!" and then tells him a story (told in flashbacks) that is right out of a twisted Mother Goose tale. To make a long story short, everytime the Queen of Scorpions bangs on her tom-toms and the blind guy (who is a security guard!) plays his flute, Helen turns into the snake creature. In a scene that must be seen to be believed, Helen transforms into the snake creature in front of a bunch of policemen, grabs Jackie's real girlfriend and flies through the air. Jackie saves his girlfriend by slicing his chest open with a knife and letting the snake creature suck on the wound! In the finale, Helen is shot and killed while Richard must fight numerous possessed people before he can square off with the Queen of Scorpions using his ring, mystical mirror and golden sword.  Yes, this is another one of director Godfrey Ho's cut-and-paste jobs for producers Joseph Lai and Betty Chan (see reviews of COBRA AGAINST NINJA -1987 and NINJA THE PROTECTOR - 1986) for their IFD Films and Arts Ltd. production company, but this one is different. Instead of the usual martial arts chicanery, this one is an honest-to-goodness horror film and, although the newly shot footage of Richard Harrison has him fighting numerous opponents, not once does he or anyone else don a ninja costume (the old footage is taken from a Korean film titled GRUDGE OF THE SLEEPWALKING WOMAN [1983]). Since there's not a lot of interaction between the old and new footage, it doesn't seem overtly obvious like some of Ho's martial arts "epics". Nevermind that the film doesn't make any sense, there's a lot of things to like about this, from the crazy snake monster (it's jaw-dropping), the bloody murders (including in the flashback, where a guy [actually the flute player] gets his eyes yanked out of their sockets by a couple of snakes), the crazy set-pieces (I dare you not to laugh at the loony pool player), frequent nudity (even Richard Harrison get to screw a young woman) and, of course, the insane dubbed dialogue (after transforming from snake demon back to human form, Helen says to Jackie, "Jackie, my arms hurt!). I'm beginning to appreciate these Godfrey Ho pastiches, even if it's for all the wrong reasons. You should dig this one, too. Also starring Nancy Lim, Cynthia Ku, Maura Fong, Samson Kim and Cathy Evan. Available on DVD from those thieving bastards at Videoasia/Ventura Distribution as part of their TALES OF VOODOO series (Volume 5). It's a slightly letterboxed, but overly dark, VHS port. Also available on DVD from Ground Zero, as part of their "Brooklyn Zu" series. Not Rated.

SONNY BOY (1989) - I still haven't figured out this movie. Either it's one of the greatest put-ons ever committed to film or a serious statement about child abuse. It begins 17 years ago when Weasel (Brad Dourif) steals a red Caddy (after shooting the occupants) and brings it to Slue (big Paul L. Smith), who runs a stolen property ring on the outskirts of a barren desert town (filmed in Deming, New Mexico). Slue runs the town with an iron fist, the sheriff (Steve Carlisle) and all the occupants bow to his every whim or die. What Weasel doesn't realize is that there is a baby boy in the backseat of the Caddy and when Slue finds it, he wants to kill it or sell it. This doesn't sit well with Slue's wife, Pearl (played by David Carradine in drag!), who wants to keep it and raise it as her (his?) own. Slue relents, because he wants to keep Pearl happy, but practices a particular brand of tough love to the baby, who everyone now calls "Sonny Boy". As the years pass, we watch as Slue whips Sonny, crucifies him on a pole and sets a fire around him (to toughen up his skin!), and finally cuts his tongue out. Cut to the present and Sonny Boy (Michael Boston aka "Michael Griffin") is a feral animal, chained to a pole, filthy with tattered clothes. Slue uses Sonny for some of his more violent robberies, setting Sonny free to kill and eat Slue's robbery victims (including a priest, who tries to stop Sonny from stealing a statue of Christ off a cross). Things begin to go terribly wrong when Charlie (Sydney Lassick), one of Slue's yes-men cronies, and Weasel use Sonny for one of their private robberies, unknown to Slue. Sonny bites off the tip of Weasel's thumb and escapes, making his way to the town and killing a woman who comes on to him. The townspeople revolt and chase Sonny back to Slue's home. The mob kill Slue and Pearl, setting fire to the compound. A kindly doctor (Conrad Janis) saves Sonny, brings him home and attaches a monkey tongue (!) to Sonny, where the first word out of Sonny's mouth is "No!". I haven't really begun to scratch the surface of what this film has to offer the viewer. The acting is uniformly excellent by a cast of veterans, the music moody (including a haunting song written and performed by Carradine), the photography (by Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli) elegant, and everything else is above par. SONNY BOY is likely to be one of your favorite films once you see it. David Carradine is a wonder here. If you thought he was supreme in KILL BILL, wait till you see him in this. He plays his role as a woman straight without a trace of campiness. You really feel the compassion, even if it's twisted, he/she shows for Sonny and Slue. Pay attention to Carradine's transformation through the 17 years.  Paul L. Smith (PIECES - 1982), Brad Dourif (he's excellent in HBO's DEADWOOD [2004]) and the late Sydney Lassick (THE UNSEEN - 1980) give grimy performances as people berift of souls, especially in the shot of Slue blowing away an officer with a howitzer for questioning his orders. I'll leave the rest up to you to take in. Director Robert Martin Carroll has made just one other film: the hard to come by BABY LUV (1999 - aka: BABIES FOR SALE), a surreal tale of baby-selling and the unexpected consequences that come with it. Based on these two films, someone should give Mr. Carroll some financing to start making more films! We need someone like him to juice-up the business. SONNY BOY is required viewing for anyone with an interest in the unusual, the way-out and the wacky. Also starring Savina Gersak, Alexandra Powers, Steve Ingrassia and Stephen Lee Davis.  Produced by Ovidio G. Assonitis (BEYOND THE DOOR - 1975; TENTACLES - 1977 and many others, sometimes using the pseudonym "Oliver Hellman"), which would explain why some reviewers seem to think that Carroll is a pseudonym for some Italian director. It's simply not true. A Media Home Entertainment Release. Rated R. This film screams for an uncut DVD release, since the version I saw on VHS seems to cut out some of the more brutal bloodletting. NOTE: This film had a midnight showing at the Landmark Nuart Theater in Los Angeles on May 12, 2006 with Mr. Carroll as guest speaker.

SOUL VENGEANCE (1975) - Originally titled WELCOME HOME BROTHER CHARLES when released to theaters, this film opens with Charles (Marlo Monte) standing on the edge of a building, ready to jump while a police detective tries to convince Charles' wife Christina (Reatha Grey) to talk him out of it. The film then flashes back in time to detail why Charles is in this predicament. Charles is a small time dope dealer who is busted by brutal white cop Harry (Ben Bigelow), who hates black people because his wife cheated on him with a black dude. Harry viciously beats Charles in the back of his squad car and caps it off by nearly castrating him with a straight razor. Harry's partner, Jim (Stan Kamber), is the exact opposite of Harry, but goes along with the beating because Harry is considered a hero in the public's eye because he diffused a bomb at an airport. When Charles is brought to trial, he is railroaded into prison by Harry's false testimony and the legal manouevers of a crooked prosecuting attorney. After three years in prison, Charles is released and learns that everything on the outside is much different now. Drugs are rampant, his girlfriend has been turned into a stripper by his best friend and his younger brother has joined a street gang. Hoping to stay on the straight and narrow, Charles gets a new girlfriend (and later wife) in ex-prostitute Christina and tries repeatedly to get a job, but time and time again he is unsuccessful. After seeing how everyone from his past that have done him wrong are now doing so well and seem to be prospering off of his misfortune, Charles decides some payback is in order. Since his release from prison, Charles has gained some unusual supernatural powers: The ability to get women to do anything he says just by staring in their eyes and the truly amazing ability to make his penis grow enormously long (I'm talking yards, not inches!). Long enough to strangle his enemies, which includes racist cop Harry, the conniving prosecuting attorney and the judge who presided over his trial.  This all leads back to the scene on the roof, where Christina offers Charles a one last word of advice (and it is chilling).  This amazingly cheap exploitation film (some may call it blaxploitation, but I think it offers more than that) comes to us courtesy of one man wunderkind Jamaa Fanaka (PENITENTIARY - 1979; STREET WARS - 1992), who always turned out one-of-a-kind jaw-droppers. SOUL VENGEANCE (his first film) is no different. It plays like a real cheapjack (but sincere) "Bad Man Goes Straight" drama (where, surprisingly, not a single gunshot is fired), where we witness Charles go through a series of setbacks, although he always manages to maintain his composure thanks to the loving care of Christina. That is, until the final third of the film. From the moment Charles goes to the doctor to discuss is unusual "condition", the film takes a sudden U-turn into the surreal. His seduction of Harry's wife (Tiffany Peters) right up to the subsequent penis strangulation of the prosecuting attorney (where we finally see the full monstrous monty in action) are classic moments of "What The Fuck?" cinema. Christina's final word to Harry (which freeze frames at that exact moment) is also unexpected but also rings true-to-life. It did give me goosebumps. SOUL VENGEANCE is must-viewing for anyone interested in something really strange. It contains Fanaka's patented jumpy editing, static camera work and extreme close-up, but the subject matter is straight out of the twisted mind of a madman. A madman named Jamaa Fanaka (whose real name is Walter Gordon). That's the reason why I like his films. They always go in a direction you don't expect them to. Also Starring Jake Carter, Jackie Ziegler and Ed Sander. A Xenon Pictures Release. Rated R.

STRANGERS IN PARADISE (1984) - Director/producer/co-screenwriter Ulli Lommel (THE BOOGEY MAN - 1980) has made some strange and awful films in his life after leaving his native Germany and moving to the States, but nothing he has done could be depicted as strange as this sci-fi/musical that can be best described as a cross between THE STEPFORD WIVES and THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, only this film is so bad that I was busting a gut laughing at what was taking place on the screen. Master mesmerist Jonathan Sage (director Lommel) escapes Germany during World War II to England after Hitler (Lommel again) wants to use him to hypnotise the populace to do his bidding. While London is being bombed, Sage is cryrogenitically frozen with instructions not to be dethawed before the time is right. Cut to the town of Paradise Hills, California ca. 1984, and the parents of punk rockers, homosexuals, prostitutes, etc. try to straighten out their children using a device called the "Repentogram". The device works for about five minutes but then the kids revert back to their usual ways. Frustrated, they have one of the parents fly to London and thaw out Sage in hopes that his powers will work in place of the Repentogram. Sage, at first, is in awe at all the new inventions, including televisions, computers in every home (the only thing Lommel got right in the future, even if he was 15 years early), and all the modern conveniences. He begins working on converting a homosexual and lesbian and his powers turn them straight! Needless to say, he is a hit with the parents but there will be a steep price to pay. What make this film so funny are the frequent musical interludes that describe what Sage is doing to the mind of these youngsters. The homosexual/lesbian sequence is so funny/bad that I nearly peed my pants. He turns a Jim Morrison lookalike from a rock 'n' roller into a folk singer who then throws rock records into a bon fire in another laugh-out-loud sequence. The parents think they now have the "ultimate weapon" in the war on teenage rebellion, but they don't realize that teenage rebellion has been going on forever and that's what shaped the world. Lommel is so low-key in his role (He says, "Most things that are forbidden are the most fun" before going bowling and playing video games in another musical interlude!) that he is not so much an imposing figure as a good guy just misunderstood. Some of the musical numbers are good (especially the WWII number in London, which is intercut with German bomber planes destroying the city), but most of the numbers either fall flat or are unintentionally funny. If you are in the mood for a good laugh, I recommend this film highly. Just don't be looking for a good film. It's definitely cult material, just not good cult material. Also starring Ken Letner, Thom Jones, Geoffrey Barker, Cliff Brisbois, Ula Hedwig and a cameo by co-writer Suzanne Love (Lommel's wife at the time).  Lommel is still making films today, including ZODIAK KILLER (2005) and a bunch of other true life serial killer films (including the B.T.K. and Green River killers) to be released by Lions Gate Films for home video release . A Vestron Video Release. Not Rated. The WWII number also appears as the opening theme of Domonic Paris's compilation film FILM HOUSE FEVER (1986) with early appearances by Steve Buscemi and Mark Boone Jr. as an avid film watchers who are turned into zombies in the end.

SURGIKILL (1988) - When one thinks of Andy Milligan, the thought of intentional humor doesn't automatically spring to mind. Quite the contrary, as Milligan's body of work is notorious for it's unintentional humor (not to mention the many anachronisms in his period horror films), bad acting and hectic camerawork. SURGIKILL is Milligan's last film (he died of AIDS in 1991), a kitchen-sink hospital comedy (with bits of gore) that tries to be a parody in the vein of AIRPLANE (1980), but fails on nearly every level. The acting is still uniformly awful and the sets simple (bare, white cinderblock walls are the norm here), but the camerawork is so static, it's like a filmed stage play, proving that Milligan's heart wasn't in this (he was merely a hired hand here) and was running on fumes. The story (if you can call it that) is about the employees and patients of Goode Community Hospital (the most understaffed and bare-bones hospital I have ever seen), run by Dr. Grace Goode (the single-monikered Bouvier, who is truly awful), as the hospital tries to find a way to stop from closing down and being turned into a shopping mall. This is the worst run hospital on record, as orderlies keep spilling bedpans and urine on patients and the desk nurse, Rona Ratchitt (Dan Foster-Jones in drag), cracks wise to the admitting patients, their family and the staff over the public address system. Trouble ensues when an escaped mental patient, Lizard Lips (Jim Allen), roams the halls disguised as a doctor and begins killing the patients and staff, while a new hire, 16 year-old Dr. Albert Schweitzer (Doug Eames, who sucks on a giant pacifier he wears around his neck), learns the ropes from Dr. Goode, Dr. Harvey (Michael Lunsford) and Dr. Fine (Al Silver), who are all just as inept as they come. As more patients end up dead or injured (one patient explodes when her anesthesia tank is substituted with an acetylene tank; another patient is castrated; another is pushed down a flight of stairs; and still another is hung by the neck), Dr. Goode and her staff cover-up the crimes for fear the bad publicity will shut their doors (Well, duh!), Too many patients end up dead to go unnoticed, though, as the relative of one dead patient threatens to sue and Nurse Ratchitt turns out to be Dr. Goode's only surviving male relative, who wants to kill Dr. Goode and take over the hospital. Folks, this is the longest 88 minutes I have ever experienced, as the jokes fall flatter than Olive Oyl's chest and the pacing is slower than a loved one's funeral.  This is truly painful to watch, as the script, written by Milligan, never rises above the schtick a third-rate Jewish comedian would perform in the Borscht Belt of the Catskill Mountains in the 50's & 60's (Most of the jokes here would make Henny Youngman wince. Yes, they're that bad.). Those expecting Andy Milligan's patented crapfest (including such films as TORTURE DUNGEON [1970], LEGACY OF HORROR [1979], CARNAGE [1983] and MONSTROSITY [1987]) will be doubly disappointed here. The gore is sparse (the only real instance of gore happens when the female patient explodes [offscreen] and obvious animal guts and intestines are thrown on everyone in the operating room) and the acting (including an undertaker that looks and acts like Oliver Hardy!) is even broader (and brutally terrible) than normal. I honestly can't imagine what Milligan was thinking when he was making this, as it is desperate even by his standards (Maybe he was experiencing the early effects of AIDS). Even as a little-seen relic, SURGIKILL is so unfunny that it transcends being unfunny and becomes the sort of film a Death Row prisoner would watch to make what life he has left on Earth seem a little longer than it actually is. A total abomination and not the way to end a career, even if your name is Andy Milligan. Also starring Peter Linardi, Carroll Oden, Jeremy Logan, Lynn Angus, Patrick Thomas, Michael Buckband, Robert Odell (who gets the patented Milligan "meatcleaver-to-the-head" death), Shari London, Kip Reynolds and porn star Joey Silvera. Produced and released on VHS by Media Arts Productions, LLC. Not available on DVD. Not Rated, but there's nothing here (nudity, foul language or violence) that goes beyond a PG-13 rating.

THUNDER OF GIGANTIC SERPENT (1988) - Yes, this is another one of director Godfrey Ho and producers Joseph Lai & Betty Chan's (for their IFD Films & Arts production company) cut-and-paste jobs, where newly shot footage of English-speaking actors is spliced into a pre-existing Hong Kong film, but I'm glad to report that there are no ninjas to be found here, as this is more of a horror fantasy with action elements in the vein of Ho's SCORPION THUNDERBOLT (1985), only this is possibly more bizarre and awesome in it's outrageousness. Simply put, this is a story about a little girl named Ting Ting and her intelligent pet snake Mozlar, who grows larger and larger thanks to a top secret experimental formula dubbed the "Thunder Project" but, as with most of Godfrey Ho's patchwork films, the majority of fun to be had here is in the hilarious English (actually Australian) dubbing and cockeyed storytelling, not to mention the incredibly chintzy special effects. Dr. Lee has created a formula that can make plant life grow up to 300 times it's normal size, thereby eliminating world hunger, but when the military confiscates the formula to test it on reptile life (they test it on a frog and it instantly grows huge, but nowhere near 300 times) and a group of terrorists invade the facility, a lone female scientist grabs the formula and escapes in a car. When she gets into an accident and the formula is ejected from the car (it's kept in a Plexiglas case), a young girl named Ting Ting (Who was just being teased by a couple of boys, who tell her, "You're the worst because you're a girl!") finds it and decides it would make a good cage for her pet snake Mozlar (Who nods it's head yes and no to Ting Ting's questions; an effect obviously achieved by tying fishing line around a live snake's hard and pulling on it!). As soon as Mozlar is put in the cage, he grows about twenty times it's normal size, dwarfing Ting Ting and forcing her to sneak it out of her bedroom (her parents don't want her having a normal size snake, never mind a giant one!) and keeping him in a shed in her backyard (it's small on the outside, but big as a warehouse on the inside!). Mozlar and Ting Ting become very close (they toss a beach ball back and forth and Mozlar saves her from a falling tree), but she has a hard time hiding her giant friend, because every time he comes into contact with electricity, he grows bigger and bigger. In the newly shot footage, which cuts into the film proper every 15 minutes or so, government agent Ted Fast (Pierre Kirby; star of Ho's FULL METAL NINJA [1988] and NINJA OF THE MAGNIFICENCE [1988]) tries to stop head terrorist Solomon (Edowan Bersmea; Ho's ZOMBIE VS. NINJA [1988], also starring Kirby) from getting his hands on the formula, which leads to several gunfights, usually resulting in Solomon's goons being riddled with bullets. To make a long story short, the terrorists kidnap Ting Ting and hold her in a highrise building. Mozlar, who is now truly gigantic, wraps his body around the outside of the building, searching floor-by-floor for his best friend (and killing innocent bystanders with falling debris!), while her parents wait nervously outside. The military send in some fighter jets to kill Mozlar, not understanding that he only wants to save the little girl. Mozlar dies in the same manner as King Kong, Ting Ting throws a hissy fit and Ted finally meets Solomon face-to-face, killing him with a couple of bullets to his chest.  I found myself laughing out loud hysterically on several occasions, usually whenever Mozlar and Ting Ting are on-screen. In his early growing stages, Mozlar grunts like a chimpanzee and, when he's fully grown, he roars like a lion! Any electrical shock will make him grow, so when the plot calls for it, Mozlar is hit with a lightning bolt (which also gives him flying powers!) and then zapped by a homemade electric fence built by the extremely inept terrorists. The amazing snake effects are realized by full-sized puppet mock-ups (Believe me, you haven't lived until you've seen Ting Ting take a ride on the back of Mozlar's head!) until the final stage, which is done on obvious miniature sets and blue screen work. I was sitting there slack-jawed at the cheesiness of it all. This also contains all the standard Godfrey Ho (who directed as "Charles Lee" and scripted as "Benny Ho") trademarks: Badly-matched old and new footage; hilarious dubbed dialogue (When one of Solomon's goons informs him that they have lost the formula, he replies, "Brilliant deduction, Sherlock!"), exaggerated sound effects and the same park location as in all his other patchwork films. There's also the sight of kids practicing the sport of roller skiing down a grassy hill (Why didn't this catch on?). The woman who dubs Ting Ting's voice is really annoying, especially the extended screaming/crying jag she goes through in the finale. If I were her father, I believe a hard slap to her face would have been called for. She also can't seem to make up her mind if her pet snake's name is "Mozlar" or "Martha", as she calls it both. Still, this is an oddly entertaining mixture of sickly sweet family drama, bloody shoot 'em up action and giant monster genres. Ignore all of Ho's new footage and enjoy the tale of a girl and her giant snake. I certainly did. Also known as TERROR SERPENT. Also starring Lee Hsiu Hsien, Carol Chang, Lin Shin Cin, Andy Lee, Danny Raisebeck, Dewey Bosworth, Jorge Gutman, Patrick Frbezar and Jim Lau. Never legitimately available on home video in the U.S.; the print I viewed was sourced from a Greek-subtitled VHS tape. Not Rated.

TOP LINE (1988) - Franco Nero (REDNECK - 1973; ENTER THE NINJA - 1981) is Ted Angelo, a down-on-his-luck writer living in a Columbian tropical paradise and looking for a story to pull him out of poverty. When part-time girlfriend Juanita (Shirley Hernandez) shows Ted a knife, along with some other relics, her fisherman boyfriend Paco found in the mountains, Ted takes a closer look at them and finds an old manuscript that will lead him on a long, strange trip. It seems whomever he shows the manuscript ends up dead, so when good friend Alonzo Kintero (William Berger; HELL HUNTERS - 1986) is found tortured and murdered, Ted heads to the jungle compound of Heinrich Holzmann (a badly-dubbed George Kennedy; DEMONWARP - 1988), a collector of pre-Columbian artifacts (and possible Nazi) for some information on the manuscript. Heinrich turns Ted away like an unwelcomed guest, so Ted returns home and has Paco show him where he found the relics. This leads to a hidden cave in the mountains where Ted and Paco discover a hidden door; behind it lies a fully intact ancient sailing ship that Paco mistakens for Noah's Ark. Ted recognizes the ship as a 15th Century vessel, but the question still remains: How did a huge ship get concealed in a cave in the mountains? As Ted examines the ship more closely, he discovers what can only be described as alien artifacts in the ship's cargo hold. When Ted touches one of the artifacts, the whole mountain starts to rumble, forcing Ted and Paco to flee. Ted begins to see dollar signs, but the dastardly Heinrich also wants to protect the cave's location and sends his men to kill Ted (Ted has to run barefoot through a field of cactus [cacti?] to avoid a cackling Heinrich, who is trying to run him down with a car). It turns out that an alien spaceship plucked the ship out of the water five hundred years ago and crashed into the mountains. Heinrich has been plundering the location for years and will kill to keep it a secret, so Ted sends for a team of treasure hunters from New York to help him document the find. It turns out the treasure hunters are actually professional killers and after they unsuccessfully try to kill Ted, he joins forces with June (Deborah Barrymore; WARRIORS OF THE APOCALYPSE - 1985, who also acts under her real name, Deborah Moore), Alonzo's assistant, to find out why everyone will kill to keep the cave location a secret. As they will soon find out, no one is who they seem to be and some are not even human. Ted gets to write his next book, but the odds are good it will never get published. Talk about your Pyrrhic victories!  This Italian-made, Columbia-lensed film is a hard one to categorize. Throughout most of it's running time, it plays like a straight-ahead action adventure, but later takes a darker, nastier tone as the film starts moving into sci-fi and horror terrotories. Director/co-writer Nello Rossatti (THE SENSUOUS NURSE - 1975; TIDES OF WAR - 1990), who is credited as "Ted Archer" on some prints, has no problem showing children being murdered, people being shot in the head or back and other bloody mayhem, as the film then veers into a government conspiracy thriller. Ted and June are hunted down by all factions of governments from around the world, as Ted theorizes that the alien artifacts in the cave will technologically advance our planet by thousands of years and anyone who has knowledge of the location must be destroyed. Things head into surreal territory when someone sends a cyborg (one such instance of alien artifact reverse-engineering) to kill Ted and June, turning the proceedings into a bastardized version of THE TERMINATOR (1984). There's so much more here to take in (including the cyborg [who, unfortunately, picked today to wear a red shirt] getting clobbered and dismantled by a raging bull!), so down a fifth of Jack, smoke a joint and then try to figure out if Chris Carter ever saw this before he came up with the idea for THE X-FILES. There are more than a few comparisons to make here. Also known as ALIEN TERMINATOR, but, to be fair, he's only in the film ten minutes, tops. Also starring Mary Stavin, Rodrigo Obregon, Larry Dolgin, Steven Luotto and Robert Redcross. Never legitimately available on home video in the U.S., but English-dubbed prints can be found on VHS from Japan and Britain. The print I viewed was sourced from an Italian TV showing with the station ID bug on the bottom right optically fogged-out. Not Rated.

VOODOO SWAMP (1960/1961 est.) - Tucked away as an unannounced extra on Media Blasters/Shriek Show's DVD of Barry Mahon's 1961 shocker BLOOD OF THE ZOMBIE (aka THE DEAD ONE), this early sixties homemade horror film/travelogue is a sight to behold even if for all the wrong reasons. Shown sans titles or credits (According to Carl Morano, one of the head mucky-mucks at Media Blasters, this is an unfinished, never released feature from Mardi Gras Productions, the same company responsible for THE DEAD ONE. That's all the info they have!), this compact little film begins with a woman traveling to Louisiana looking for her missing twin sister. She hires a bossy private dick, whose favorite weapon is a machine gun. Together, they travel by row boat down the Louisiana bayou looking for her sister, who has been turned into a zombie by a white voodoo queen. The queen's muscular, grunting henchman kidnaps the girl and it's up to the private dick, along with the clueless police and even more idiotic friends, to save her. I dare anyone not to laugh while watching this. It's filled with priceless post-synch dubbing and incredible visuals. When the private dick finds his friend passed out on the banks of the swamp, his friend increduously says, "I'm so hungry. Have you got anything to eat? I'll take anything!" Another scene has the private dick talking to a friend at a strip joint while a pastie-wearing dancer gyrates to some unheard music (remember this is an unfinished film). Still another scene has the private dick teaching the girl how to shoot the machine gun. She proceeds to shoot their row boat full of holes. The next shot is of them boating down the swamp as if the previous scene never happened! As a matter of fact, nothing much happens here until the finale, where someone loses their head in a quite graphic (for its' time) machete decapitation and a bunch of people get machine-gunned to death. The only real gripe I have with this film is the glee it shows in killing animals. The ASPCA would have a field day here as we witness the real-life killing of wild boars and other animals for our viewing enjoyment. Was this really necessary? Since this is the first time that this film has been released to the general public, don't go looking for details of it on the Internet or in any review books. You won't find any. This is a minor gem that should please those looking for some new kicks, if your kicks involve double exposure editing, colorful swamp scenery (some of it very well photographed), dreadful acting and dubbing and, most of all, stupid people doing stupid things. If anyone out there has any information on this film (director, producer, screenwriter, actors, etc), please send me an email by clicking here. This is the first major find of 2003! A Media Blasters/Shriek Show DVD Release. Not Rated. UPDATE!!!  An Australian reader sent me the following information concerning this film via email: The writer, cinematographer, director and producer of VOODOO SWAMP was Arthur Jones. He was the inventor of Nautilus and MedX exercise equipment. He plays a small cameo as one of the patrons in the bar. It was made in 1960 or 1961. A little info about the movie is also in Arthur Jones' biography, "Younger Women, Faster Airplanes, Bigger Crocodiles" by John Szimanski (www.fractionalplates.com). Have a look at the arthurjonesexercise site. Go to "And God Laughs."  Click on chapter 18.  On page 5 of the chapter he mentions something about the origins of the movie and why it was not released. There's another mention of Bill Pearl and VOODOO SWAMP in the book, but I can't remember where. The inspiration for VOODOO SWAMP was MACUMBA LOVE (1960). The bodybuilder in the movie is Bill Pearl. Some details of the movie are written in a chapter of his latest book, "Beyond the Universe." Bill was a Mr. America and 4-time Mr. Universe. (His contact details are on his website: www.billpearl.com). Arthur's recollection about Bill and the movie are somewhat different though. Arthur invented a gyroscopic camera mount for filming animals from a moving jeep. Check out Arthur Jones (inventor) on Wikipedia. It gives a very brief outline of some of his accomplishments. There is a book called Crocodile Trader (written by Rory Macaulay), which details one of his expeditions to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in the late 50's.  He was a big time importer of animals to America for zoos. You may have heard of Arthur's TV shows: CAPTURE and WILD CARGO. They were older, more hardcore versions of the later Wild Kingdom. Arthur made another movie, called SAVAGE in 1962. Arthur Jones died on the 28th of August 2007. If I can find more details about VOODOO SWAMP, I'll e-mail again. Hope this helps.

WEIRDO: THE BEGINNING (1988) - This is director Andy Milligan's next to last film (the final one being SURGIKILL also in 1988) before succumbing to AIDS in 1991 and I must say that I was surprised in a good way. Milligan was known as the auteur of trash and, while this film can also fit in that category, it also is much better made than most of his films and has some stinging criticism of Catholicism (probably due to the way the Church treated AIDS and homosexuals). Mentally retarded Donnie (Steve Burington) lives in a shed of the home of Miss Martins (Naomi Sherwood), who lets Donnie run odd jobs and generally treats him well. Donnie gets picked on constantly by a gang of motorcycle toughs led by Nails (Shawn Player), who punch, stab and try to drown him and generally make his life miserable. Donnie finds a friend in Jenny (Jessica Straus), a girl with a leg brace who was raped when she was fourteen. Donnie also has a problem with sex and he is a voyeur, watching one of the gang nailing Boots (Julie Winchester) and tries to put the moves on her himself when the gang leave her alone in a shack, only to be threatened with a knife by Boots. Jenny (who is warned by a preacher to stay away from Donnie because he is "different" and suffers from a sexual urge that cannot be treated) runs away from home and stays with Donnie in his shed where they make love for the very first time. Donnie goes to the house of his abusive alcoholic mother (Lynne Caryl) who tells him that his father was also his uncle as his mother had an incestual relationship with her brother, making Donnie the way he is. She wants to sell Donnie to a man in Mississippi for $1500.00 to be used for manual labor (in other words, a slave). When Donnie refuses, Ma beats him with a belt and Donnie picks up a meat cleaver and cuts off her head and plants a pitchfork through the neck (a Milligan staple) of the Mississippi man. With his mother's head in a plastic bag, Donnie goes to the church where he is abused by the preacher's wife (who threatens to separate him and Jenny) and he plants a giant cross through her chest. He strangles and electrocutes the preacher with a string Christmas lights when he calls the cops. When Miss Martins catches Donnie and Jenny together (and calls Jenny a "slut"), Donnie finds out that Miss Martins is actually his aunt and kills her by burning her with the stove and alcohol. When Donnie tells Jenny everything he has done, he tells her that he is running away and will come back for her. She refuses to leave him  as the entire town searches for him. Nails and his gang find them first and Donnie slits Nails' throat and cuts off both his hands. Realizing that he is doomed, he knocks out Jenny and faces the angry mob, who beat him to death with clubs and tree branches. When Jenny comes to, she sees Donnie on the ground in a pool of blood, but when she comes back with a policeman, the body is gone and only Donnie's bloody clothes remain. With a smile on her face, Jenny walks away......While weak in the acting department (this is a Milligan film), the story still packs a punch and has a lot to say about society in the 80's. It really helps if you read the book THE GHASTLY ONE: THE SEX-GORE NETHERWORLD OF FILMMAKER ANDY MILLIGAN  by Jimmy McDonough to truly understand what type of person Milligan really was. It's a facinating read into a world most of us will never see. To read it is to get a glimpse of Milligan's lifestyle. It's not pretty. Neither is this film, which is long out of print and should be getting a DVD release shortly. The OOP tape was released by Raedon Home Video under the title THE WEIRDO. For more on Milligan, read my reviews of CARNAGE and MONSTROSITY. Not Rated.