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The Devonsville Terror (1983)
Fun folk horror battle of the sexes
The Devonsville Terror starts 300 years before the movie proper with the persecution of some witches for things like brewing something in a cauldron, reading Tarot cards and seducing men. They are all dispatched while the men folk look on lasciviously. The leader is played by the ugly guy who played "Cousin Billy from the rock shop" in The Giant Spider Invasion along with small roles in other films by Bill Rebane. We get some close ups of his hideous visage as he licks his lips lustfully. The three women are all killed in different ways- one is eaten alive by hogs, another is put on a big wooden wheel and rolled down a hill while it's set ablaze and the third is killed more traditionally by burning at the stake. After about ten minutes the movie continues in the present. The location is a small town in Wisconsin, we learn that it's both very religious and conservative, with the men dominate. This mostly quiet, uneventful town is about to be disrupted by the most destructive force in the entire universe- women. Three women arrive in the town at the same time who may or may not be witches. They bring with them things much more calamitous than any plague or blight- feminism, environmentalism and the most destructive force of all, female sexuality and beauty. This comes in the form of director Ulli Lommel's muse and wife at the time the foxy Suzanne Love. She's a school teacher who despite her conservative dress and demure nature informs her students that God may have been a woman. In this community it would be better to say God didn't even exist than to state such a blasphemy. She catches the eye of many of the town's men including one who has just murdered his wife with a pillow. He's played by the jowly, always dejected looking Paul Willson. He had a decent career both before and especially after this most notably in Office Space a film I find highly overrated despite only having half-watched it on regular TV with all the unnecessary swears cut out. He's very good here coming off as both loathsome and somewhat sympathetically pathetic as he tries to woo the pretty young teacher. These scenes are pure agony as he blathers on and on while she sits/stands there silently while still able to seem compassionate and expertly hiding her contempt for this disgusting (both physically and morally) creature.
The other new arrivals are a young student who wants to test the water for pollutants despite the town having dumped the same stuff in the river for 50 years with seemingly no ill effects. The town really doesn't need nor want someone interfering with what is probably the only industry there. There's also a femme-Marxist female radio DJ spreading women's lib propaganda in a town that is doing just fine with women in their servile place. She's no fun-loving Stevie Wayne but sour and unlikable with bad teeth and an attitude to match. Donald Pleasence shows up in an extended cameo as a doctor infested with worms trying to break the curse put upon his ancestors before he is consumed slowly and painfully by the wriggly little monsters. He may be the towns only hope for true salvation while the rest of the men are about to repeat the mistakes of their forefathers, the execution of these modern day witches. The methods are similar but updated somewhat with one being eaten alive by dogs, another dragged behind a car to her death and the good old reliable burning at the stake saved for Suzanna Love's character. It turns out she is actually all that they fear a woman might be and this leads to an exciting sequence towards the end that completely rips off the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark, only the people getting killed here are more loathsome. This is the gruesome highlight of the movie with an axe to the skull, an exploding head and an extended meltdown of Paul Willson's ugly head which isn't very realistic but still awesome. She accomplishes all three of these unique kills while tied to a stake and by shooting lasers out of her eyes. The movie ends with her boarding a bus to presumably travel onto other towns to use her feminine wiles and sexuality to destroy even more lives and communities. While trendy destructive fads like environmentalism (now know as the cult of Climate Change which has been expertly and easily debunked by Tony Heller) and more modern ones like transgenderism will eventually fade and lose their power, female beauty and sexuality will always be a destructive force so long as men are still able to obtain an erection. I'm sure you've read that a nation/kingdom/empire is more likely to be in turmoil and at a war with a woman in charge. For a good 20 to 30 years most women will have an upper hand in the battle of the sexes but once they hit that certain point I hope they didn't buy into the modern lies of feminism and women's liberation and pursued a family instead of wasting their good years on a career that will never bring real fulfillment only ever decreasing in value monetary gain, wasted years and deep regret. I doubt this film was trying to express anything like my interpretation 40! Years later and most likely Lommel just went along with his wife who co-wrote it to give her an ego boost by portraying her as a strong, sexy woman who brutally destroys all the men who have transcended against her kind.
The Devonsville Terror isn't a horror film packed with fright and gore with most of the runtime rather slow paced and building up to the final conflagration. Fortunately it does a solid job of building up a feeling of autumnal horror and looming dread. The location is perfect being made in Gleason, Wisconsin where Bill Rebane set up shop to make most of his regional classics. Rebane is a producer here with a couple of other Rebanes along for the ride. The main cast is pretty solid here and while Suzanna Love isn't a stellar actress she's very good here in a role that requires her to be mostly cold and unemotional. Donald Pleasence is in his typical aloof, eccentric role he would play around this time in his career even getting to pull worms out of his skin. Paul Willson is easily the best actor here playing a character you'll mostly hate but at times feel sorry for. There's also a number of too brief topless scenes from Suzanna and most of the bloody parts are confined to the beginning and ending. Overall I think The Devonsville Terror is a fun, borderline classic of "folk" rural horror being both atmospheric, sexy, bloody and possessing a very fun plot about the eternal battle of the sexes.
Edgar Allan Poe's Darkness (2007)
Poe's corpse could write something better
Edgar Allan Poe's Darkness is featured in the Mortuary of Madness 50 movie box set. Unlike many of these films released on Pendulum Pictures box sets this at least somewhat resembles an actual film with decent cinematography and audible audio. Unfortunately that's about the only positives I can say about this one. The story has a theatre troupe of about 4 people enacting some of Poe's stories. This allows for much pretentious and annoying dialogue. The worst culprit is the main character Rex played by co-writer Adam Smoot. His character is annoying, innovatively foul-mouthed (not as much fun as it sounds) and he tries to affect a gruff voice that only makes his come off as even more painful. His character is meant to be "hard" and intimidating but he just comes off as a scrawny, insecure wuss. He ends up being one of cinema's most loathsome characters.
The other two main characters are a blonde guy who likes bloodletting and the girl in the middle who both men seem interested in but they also seem interested in each. The two "bros" even partake in bloodletting, cutting their arms and sucking each other's blood. Doing this with a chick would be hot, with another dude it's just totally gay. Fortunately that's the extent of the homosexual antics though there's still some pretty strong gay vibes between these two especially after the girl disappears. There's some subplot about the blonde guy being haunted by the ghost of Poe. There's also flashbacks to a really bad and effeminate actor who is supposed to be Poe. These are even more painful than the rest of the movie. There's mostly just dialogue for this films preposterous 90 minutes runtime. It doesn't even cut you a break by having opening credits. There is a bit of gore at the end including severed body parts in a fridge and a well done slit throat. Overall, this is pretentious, bad dialogue heavy, boring and almost completely lacking in tension or atmosphere or anything else you'd want from a supernatural horror film. This isn't the worst thing on these box sets and is more competent and ambitious than most but it's also not something anyone needs to see unless you're a Poe fanatic or masochistic like me and willing to sit through all 200 films on these 50 movie box sets.
Toof (2019)
A movie about a gay dentist would probably be better
The first Tooth Fairy movie is one that eluded me on my bi-weekly visits to the Human sideshow known as Walmart. I guess I was slightly pickier back then. I bought the fourth entry there recently not realizing it was part of a series. Fortunately I found parts 2 and 3 at Goodwill and was able to obtain the original on eBay for less than the cost of a new movie and that includes shipping. A word of warning to people hoarding Scott Jeffrey movies for resale value later on, don't do it. Even those sexy slipcovers won't make these turds valuable. This doesn't feature Scott's usual coterie of actresses/actors with none of the faces familiar to me. It does feature the overly dramatic dialogue and talkative nature of most of Jeffrey's movies. Like all of them they start out fast and furious and then plod along with endless drama and boredom for the vast "middle" part of the movie. Things pick up at the end with some decent kills involving teeth removal and a toothbrush death which was unrealistic but fun. This movie also features some pro-sugar propaganda, with the deadly white substance being one of the few things that can harm Tooth.
Tooth is a really lame moniker for a killer creature. The creature itself is kind of cool looking during its brief screen time. This also features a quick scene of the often annoying/occasionally funny Shawn C. Phillips in an online video explaining the history of the Tooth Fairy. Like most Scott Jeffrey produced movies this is dreary, colorless, humorless, way too talky and wastes a beautiful English countryside location. There's no sex/nudity as usual though the cast is absent of beautiful women so it's not a huge loss. There's also a very sparse amount of blood and gore. Jeffrey has been involved in some fun films, Tooth Fairy isn't one of them. I'm really glad I have 3 more Tooth Fairy films (with a fifth film in production) to look forward to.
Amityville 1992: It's About Time (1992)
You'll wish Megan Ward was your sister.
The sixth Amityville film from the original series is surprisingly one of the best. This continues the cursed object part of the series and is like part 4 set in sunny California. The lack of the dreary New England/Canadian locals of earlier entries is detrimental to the atmosphere but this entry more than makes up for it in the pure fun factor while adding a decent amount of gruesomeness. The original house is of course absent though it does make a couple of "minor" guest appearances. The cursed object here is a clock brought home by an widowed architect who has two teen children. This brings a new and interesting element to the film of time being slowed down or stopped by the cursed clock.
The pretty Shawn Weatherly who you've hopefully seen in the cult classic Shadowzone plays the architect's ex-girlfriend who has been watching his kids. Early on there's a sweaty sex scene between the two which doesn't feature nearly enough female nudity. A grunting, sweaty Stephen Macht isn't a pretty sight as he looks like he would be a runner up in a Rondo Hattan look-a-like contest with Ron Unz winning first place. The Easter Islanders could have modeled their giant stone heads after one of his ancestors. The clock slowly influences members of the household as they start to change drastically and lose touch with reality. Even the dog goes nuts, attacking Stephen and leaving him with a nasty leg wound. The wound effects are very well done and gets nastier and more infected looking as the movie progresses eventually ending up looking like a body horror grotesquerie.
Other characters here are a psychiatrist who is annoying and has a love affair with Shawn. He's easily the least interesting part of the film. Nina Talbot plays a seemingly crazy old lady who knows the history of the clock. She looks like she could be Meg Foster's grandmother. The clock belonged to medieval child murdered Gilles de Rais who I think I first learnt about from a Brodequin song. The son is the rebellious type. A one point he's accused of painting a Swastika on a neighbor's garage. This causes a full-scale police investigation which is almost a big a waste of resources as assigning dozens of FBI agents to investigate a garage door pull. In the real world every single one of these vandal "hate crimes" turns out to have been done by one of the people it's supposedly targeting. As some have said the supply of "White supremacy" is greatly exceeded by the demand. See the most recent example of an artist in Chicago using noose flyers to get publicity for her "art". If a simple piece of rope can halt the construction of the unnecessary center for one of the worst and ugliest presidents in history I would encourage people of all races to hang them. The last and best cast member is the daughter played by the adorably sexy Megan Ward. The malign influence of the house turns her from innocent to a sex-pot. At one point she's molested by her mirror image. I'm not sure if that counts as incest or just masturbation, either way it's pretty hot.
There's lots of black goo in the film making one think Armus might be invading the house. While not especially gory this still manages to be more gruesome than most entries. There's a severed dog head in a bucket and the old lady is impaled by a bird statue on top of an ice cream truck. Megan Ward uses her seductive little body to lure her boyfriend into a trap. He's sucked into a pile of goo at the house and briefly looks like that talking pizza from House IV which also came out in 1992. Eventually things start going really crazy with both Stephen and Megan really losing it. She tries to seduce her brother in a scene that will make fans of the superior second film very happy. Stephen's leg wound has gotten really nasty looking and Shawn ends up stabbing him with one of those annoying architect's tools that they use to show off and look cool in a very painful looking gore shot. There's some really bad special effects (the only fake ones in the movie) and a couple of twists to end it.
Amityville 1992: It's About Time is a superior entry in the original series and is surely better than anything made recently exploiting the series' limited name value (except for maybe Amityville Vibrator). It feels much livelier than the slow, plodding 3-5 films and has some fun gruesome effects work. The cast is much better than the 5th film. The yummy Megan Ward stands out as the seductive sister/daughter and brings back incest to the series, the brother/sister subplot being the most beloved part of the second film. Evil curses that make people horny are much more interesting than ones that merely make them murderous. This also does a decent job of combining "fun" scares with some actually tense and scary ones. While it's in no way a horror/comedy it does have enough lighter moments to keep it from being as stuffy as previous entries. If the dull part 4 and the slow but passable part 5 made you turn against this series watch this one and you'll realize it still has fun to offer.
Carnage Road (2000)
Could have used more Carnage.
Carnage: The Legend of Quiltface is a grimy, rotgut, redundant slasher from very marginal cult horror director Massimiliano Cerchi who also did Satan Claus and Hellinger. This also has involvement from both Polonia brothers back in happier times when John was still around. The movie starts with two idiots going out to the Nevada desert to take photos for a college class. The overly-freckly girl almost immediately gets topless and it turns into a sex scene with both participants wearing pants. They are hacked to death by titular killer with a prop machete which is used in all the kills here. After the credits we meet the main characters including a young couple. The girl showers and can't be bothered to show any nudity. She's played by the foxy young Molinee Green in her debut film, after this she would get over her shyness and spend the rest of her fairly lengthy career in the disgusting pornography industry. To quote Gen. Patton about the sham Nürnberg trials, "it's not cricket and is Semitic". Later on she would offer her body to Quiltface to save herself foreshadowing her later career of offering her naked body on screen to make a living. Most men of a certain ideological slant understandingly frown on pornography but that makes me wonder what they whack it to. Triumph of the Will? Tasteful nudes of Savitri Devi? Their collection of Castle Hill books? Next we are introduced to the other two main characters a vain, kind of attractive redhead and a dork she puts in his place by making him realize a pretty woman can only be interested in a man's bank account.
It turns out these are classmates of the two people slaughtered in the beginning and they are heading out to the barren desert landscape to take photographs instead of taking them of the Vegas strip like the rest of their class. Who wants to hang out in the hot desert when you can go play video slots with cool bonus games and craps with up to 100x odds? They are driven there by a surly, foul-mouthed guy who looks like he should be fronting a Pantera cover band. For the next while we get to watch them walk around and take a few photos of the not very exciting desert environs. Quiltface kills the dorky guy offscreen with a machete. Eventually the group is hacked down to one and it's unfortunately the foxy girl's boyfriend. He's pretty tough as he survives having the machete buried deep in his skull. It does affect him though as he spends the rest of the movie kind of stumbling around like an idiot while trying to survive the wrath of Quiltface and his accomplice, an ugly desert mountain man with a fat gut who can't afford a shirt with buttons. They are both 'Nam vets and Quiltface had his face shot off in that pointless war and the other guy made him a new face out of the faces of people stupid enough to wander into the barren desert. They are killing people due to being bitter over how the vets were treated after the war and are possibly some of McNamara's morons who according to some sources may have died by the hundreds of thousands in that war. It wouldn't be the first time modern wartime causalities were vastly under/over-stated. The film ends on a hopeless note, almost as hopeless as the lives of people who would watch something like this more than once.
As far as low rent slashers go this isn't too bad to me. You get a bit of nudity at the beginning, a few kind of bloody kills and a goofy but kind of scary killer and it's less than 70 minutes long. Nothing in this movie will make you think hard or feel any emotion but indifference which is what I want sometimes after a long day of reading about the depressing world we currently are trapped in. While the desert location isn't that unique it's still a nice change from all the backwoods slashers. The acting is pretty bad as expected with Mack Hail standing out as the surly van driver. One for the really hardcore slasher completionists whose wretched lives have long ceased to have any real meaning and are just kind of going through the motions until their (hopefully) early and unnoticed demise.
Slaughter Day (1991)
Evil Dead Hawaiian-Style!
Slaughter Day is quite the anomaly- a backyard SOV gore-fest rip-off of The Evil Dead made in Hawaii! Even better the main characters are a couple of long-haired, working-class White dudes who wear AC/DC shirts and light their cigarettes with other cigarettes! This is set somewhere in rural Hawaii and other than a few minor roles for native Hawaiians and a scene of a beautiful waterfall in a lush tropical rainforest this doesn't come off as very "Hawaiian". Most of the movie looks like it could have been set in any number of rural areas in the continental US. It starts out fast with the boys going to a job at a remote plantation only to be immediately attacked by a possessed person. Blood spurts and flows freely in this film with a generous helping of cheap but effective low budget gore effects including full body dismemberments and things shoved inside of bodies. Think more early Schnaas than Ittenbach.
The movie never lets up for long and there's a number of not very well choreographed fight scenes. There's quite the ambitious one towards the beginning which is a fight in the back of a moving pickup truck. Not something I was expecting to see in a amateur SOV film. The plot is a mostly typical Evil Dead rip-off with people getting possessed, trying to kill our protagonists and then getting hacked to pieces with even the parts being dangerous. The Necronomicon here is actually an artbook- H. R. Geiger's Necronomicon. If you watch the movie with subtitles you'll discover that it's hilariously called the "Microeconomic"!? Get someone with an at least scant knowledge of horror to subtitle your films please Visual Vengeance. The possession happens when a person puts on a demonic gasmask which is goofy but kind of cool I guess. It can also make a person invisible which happens once in the movie. For some reason they left in footage of the cameraman yelling at the person to move out of the shot after he's supposed to have turned invisible. An odd inclusion but it adds to the low budget charm. The acting is what you would expect and there's little character development. At the end the brothers take a yacht trip to dispose of the body parts. This trip probably costs more than most SOV films did. While we only get to see a small rural area of Hawaii here this is still more expansive than many films like it. Slaughter Day is a lost SOV almost gem with a thankfully brief 58 minutes runtime. The mostly frantic pace and threadbare plot don't really require anything longer. Visual Vengeance has only been around a few months but has already released a number of gems (well not the Chupacabra films, those are truly dreadful). This should be a Vinegar Syndrome "partner label" (sounds literally gay and lame, cohort or collaborator sounds superior) as it's better than just about any of their others outside of Satan's Core.
Night of the Zodiac (2022)
Why would he move to Detroit?
Detroit area lensed slasher obsessed by SOV, VHS and the Zodiac Killer. There's ample kills here and they are exuberantly bloody. Funnily the only bloodless kill was probably the best as it involved the murder of a magician. The world doesn't need more magicians, even one is too many. The killer just wanted to make a film in tribute to the Polonia's and Tim Ritter types. He then gets a call (was in it his head?) from the Zodiac Killer himself! This inspires him to kill real people for his SOV masterpiece including his fat, annoying land lord and a jaundiced bum. He also smashes a young boy into a pole until he dies and knifes a nosy young girl in a wheelchair. There's some outside scenes of Detroit area environs including a visit to Belle Isle but nothing that looks too seedy or decaying. There's endless shots of the guy's VHS collection and cult posters. Such highly desirable VHS of films like Splatter Farm, The Abomination, and Tales from the Quadead Zone get screen time and Splatter Farm is even watched by the killer on an old TV. They really dropped the ball by not including (that I noticed) a VHS of cult Michigan-made 80s SOV slasher THE HACKERS. Fix that in your next movie please! VHS snobbery is in full effect here with nary a DVD or Blu-ray in sight. There is a laserdisc played at one point. Don't these "collectors/hoarders" know that VHS tapes only last THIRTY YEARS and practically all of them are decaying as we speak and will be worthless anytime now. Sell them now for as cheap as you can. It's time to upgrade to DVD and maybe when 32K comes out you can upgrade to Blu-ray. You're not impressing any cute girls with VHS tapes of obscure backyard films that only you and your online friends have heard of. Anyways, Night of the Zodiac is a loving tribute to those films and that era and while overlong is worth a watch. The Zodiac part left me cold as I don't know much about him, find ciphers beyond my comprehension (the filmmaker made ciphers just for this movie and explained them in a feature on the Blu-ray and I still don't know what they are) and refuse to watch a 2 1/2 hour David Fincher movie about the killer.
Casa privata per le SS (1977)
Dirlewanger is a cool name
SS Girls is from cult favorite director, Bruno Mattei. It features Macha Magall who was ravishing in her role in the filth-ridden classic The Beast in Heat. Her role is smaller and much less interesting here though she does get naked. The plot is a rip-off of the not especially good Salon Kitty. A brothel is set up to root out SS officers trying to oust Der Fuhrer. One of the highlights of the film is the training montage of the brothel women. They do normal things like exercising and fencing and this is intercut with scenes of their sexual training. This includes whipping, being raped by Sal Boris (The Beast from The Beast in Heat in an unfortunately miniscule role), sapphism, sex with fatties and even an unfortunate man with one leg and a horribly deformed upper torso, they have to train for every kind of sex so even a dog is included in a not very graphic scene. This montage ranges from hilarious to gross but is never erotic. The leader of this camp brothel is pasty and effeminate and very obviously a closeted homo, the best kind. At one point he wears an outfit that makes him look like a member of the mediocre modern band, Ghost. If they were inspired by this movie I might actually come to like them. Even through the silly dubbing you can tell he gives an especially unhinged, maniacal performance. The women here vary in attractiveness as they always do in this sort of thing with no one really standing out too much in beauty.
Dirlewanger even shows up. He's to be eliminated by order of Der Fuhrer for being too brutal even for the Third Reich. He's been accused off all manner of atrocities with the film seeming to go easy on him. One of them being the routinely debunked "human soap" myth that went back to even World War I. The actor playing him doesn't really resemble the real man as he probably looks more like an ugly John Steiner who was probably in at least one of these NSploitation films. This part seems to be added to make the characters here seem less than "total evil". It's all undone though with the lame and overly moralizing ending which kind of torpedoed the film for me. This isn't especially violent, gruesome or bloody. We do get some war action late on, most of which had to be from a different film. The ending involves a self-righteous frontline soldier who wants to save the "whores" and an SS orgy at the brothel.
This film is saved by a crazy performance by the main character, lots of nudity/sex and some perversion. There's no Human experimentation here or interpretive dances in "gas ovens" unfortunately. This gives the film a less cruel and reprehensible vibe than many of these. I wish Italy had made many more than the couple dozen or so of these slanderous, wonderful sleaze-fests about their former ally. I also wish the Soviet Union had been on the losing side of WWII so we could have gotten filth like Cannibal Holodomor and Cheka Cocaine Slaughterhouse.
SS Lager 5: L'inferno delle donne (1977)
Reprehensible sleaze
This was made on the same set with the same director and most of the principal cast of SS Experiment Love Camp. The actor who plays the sadistic Lieutenant here (Sergeant in the other film) looks strikingly like Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Sturmer and so anti-Semitic fellow party members condemned him. The blonde haired doctor returns as does the self-righteous, objecting older doctor in a similar role as the last film. A new actress with a big role is introduced here as one of the prisoners, a sassy, Jamaica woman who looks like a low rent Pam Grier. Unfortunately her annoying character survives the entire movie.
Like the companion film this has lots of female nudity and even some shower scenes (the cleansing kind). Male nudity is once again limited to backsides without a single dangle-down swinging about. The women here once again are average looking at best and once again most with unimpressive chests. There's some decent experimentation scenes involving burns with women's legs set ablaze which look realistic and painful. The women are topless of course during these procedures because these men are so evil they like to ogle boobs while doing their painful procedures. There's also scenes of women burned alive in homicidal "gas ovens". One of these scenes shows seemingly dead women put in the ovens and when the fire starts it appears to revive them and they do a brief interpretive dance bit. This film also manages to combine the brothel and experimentation genres of NSploitation films.
The films best and "redeeming" part is an extended torture sequence of nude women by the Streicher dude. He pulls out fingernails, puts lit matches under nails, punches a woman with a spiked fist in the stomach so her guts come out and squeeze a woman's skull with a strap and vise until blood pours out. The highlight is a tongue torn out of a pretty redhead's mouth. Ironically Streicher himself was tortured at Nurnberg including being whipped, spat upon, burned with cigarettes and having his genitals beaten. This film is notorious for featuring real concentration camp photos/footage. This includes the infamous footage of a British bulldozer pushing emaciated corpses into a mass grave. This is from after the British liberation of Bergen-Belsen where tens of thousands died from disease mostly typhus as the camp became vastly overcrowded towards the end of the war. Typhus took the lives of 13,000-15,000 more prisoners while under British Administration. The two most famous inmates to die of disease here were Margot and Anne Frank after being evacuated from Oswiecim. SS Camp: Women's Hell is unpardonable sleaze, mean-spirited and ugly. It's bleak and mostly hopeless with the only hope of "salvation" for the prisoners being the rape-hungry, marauding Soviet army attacking the camp towards the end. This provides a little action for a film that is sometimes lifeless. These two films are passable sleaze but lack the outrageous over the top and often hilariousness of NS classics like The Beast in Heat and my favorite the Gestapo's Last Orgy.
"Who knows the truth and does not speak it out, is a deplorable coward!"- Julius Streicher.
Ghost Warrior (1984)
Decent but lacking in real excitement
Ghost Warrior is a low budget fish-out-of-water story about a 400 year old Samurai who is resurrected in 80s Los Angeles which would probably even confuse a person being only resurrected after 40 years. Despite being paired by Shout/Scream Factory with the more horror oriented The House Where Evil Dwells this is in no way a horror film but more of an action/thriller drama with light sci-fi elements. This is competently made and looks good but it's just a film with little momentum or urgency and nothing feels important and any excitement is muted. The cast is decent though no one looks familiar or seems memorable. The main girl is cute and looks like a young Denise Richards. She starred in the decent slasher Humongous but I didn't recognize her here. Thankfully there's no love story between her and the samurai as she just tries to guide him through modern day L. A. A romantic subplot would have dragged down an already unexciting film. This film was so low budget they couldn't even afford a "notable" Asian actor like George Takei, James Hong or Pat Morita. Yes, I know one of them isn't Japanese but like any American can tell the difference just by looking at them. Any who claims otherwise is a liar and a scoundrel.
The film mostly slogs along with the samurai having awkward encounters with home invaders, idle motor vehicles and a TV playing a WASP video. At one point he encounters a gang and despite this being an independent film it's one of those multi-cultural gangs mandated by Hollywood propagandists. He saves an old black man from them including cutting off a hand in one of the films few gory scenes. This assault made me think of the recent story of poor, old 73 black man, James Lambert who was murdered with traffic cones at 3 am on the streets of Philadelphia. His attackers weren't young adult multi-racial men but a savage, feral gang of 10-14 year old male and female black "children". A disgusting and vile story almost completely ignored by the media. Sorry James your black life didn't matter because it was ended by people who weren't pale enough. The kindly old rescued black man takes the Samurai to a sushi restaurant which is kind of hilarious. He's mistaken by a couple there for Toshiro Mifune proving again that all East Asians look alike to Americans. Eventually the plot gets going as the scientists who resurrected him try to hunt him down. They want to kill him and make it look like he was never revived so they can't be blamed for his murderous rampage.
Ghost Warrior is decent but just never gets very exciting. There's some violence including a severed hand, knife to the eye and other sword slashings. One person is killed in a samurai/motorcycle duel but they drop the ball not showing the person's top half flying off with blood showering all over. Instead they just show you him lying on the ground with some blood oozing from his mouth. Another way they drop the ball is when the girl feeds him a cup of Ramen noodles. We never get to see his reaction to see how they might compare to ancient Japanese cuisine. Are cheap Ramen noodles just as good as Asian food from hundreds of years ago? We'll never know because this movie just isn't that well thought out. This is R-rated but the violence isn't especially graphic though it has to be the only reason for the R-rating as there's no drugs, sex/nudity and only mild profanity. There's a few racial slurs as the gang calls him things like "Banzai" and "Nip". Nip makes me think of that Seinfeld episode where Elaine exposes herself unknowingly in a Christmas card. The Ghost Warrior title isn't really appropriate and only mentioned during the movie as him being a "ghost" from the past that doesn't belong in this era. An alternate title in the trailer is Swordkill which is kind of cool but also bland. This movie is also kind of cool but also bland. 81 minutes is plenty long for this. It's basically a movie to watch when you don't want too much excitement and just want to relax with something safe and mostly inoffensive.
Streets of Death (1988)
Starring the Soup National Socialist
Streets of Death is one of 4 horror films from the hilariously-named director of the ultra-sleazy Victims!, Jeff Hathcock. Streets of Death is only semi-sleazy and considering it's about hookers and snuffers this is pretty disappointing. Like other SOVs from this era such as 555, Blood Cult and L. A. AIDS Jabber is seems to want to be an actual "film" by adding character development and boring police procedural scenes. We get a love story between two cops, one going undercover as a prostitute. A little after the 40 minute point an ex-detective/alcoholic cop character shows up all to shoehorn in a pointless redemption story for this person no one will care about. This is all to extend the running time with boring investigation scenes and endless walking around sleuthing. The movie ends up being a nearly unforgivable 94 minutes, the 70-80 minute range would be more than adequate for something like this.
It's not all bad though, this is much better filmed than your backyard SOV films and the acting is competent and there's some well done cinematography considering the limitations of the format. The kills are kind of bloody though there isn't much in the way of actual gore and there's some nudity. A film about hookers and snuff films needed much more nudity and some down and dirty sex scenes not to mention more brutal kills. Tommy Kirk shows up to lend this some "star" power. Larry Thomas better and only known by most as the Soup National Socialist in Seinfeld plays one of the snuffers. He's decent here though neither of these guys come off as sadistic killers and appear to be doing it more for the money. It's not even good money as they are supposed to get $4000 for 8 snuff tapes, that's $500 per victim and $250 per snuffer. There's got to be an easier way to make a couple of hundred bucks than to murder a person and film it. The film would have been much better if at least one of them was a leering, sadistic, psychopathic butcher prone to horribly mutilating and necrophiling with the victims. Later on it's implied that Thomas' character might be gay and the other guy might be impotent as they seem doubtful about being able to add sex to their latest video as the distributor requested. There's not nearly enough sleaze or violence to enliven this movie though it does pick up with the final battle in a factory at the end. By then it's too late as the film has been bogged down with relationship drama and character development. This isn't terrible but like L. A. AIDS Jabber it's more of a promising idea that turns out in a overlong slog instead of an offensive filth-packed cult classic.
A film like this doesn't really deserve a slipcovered Blu-ray release but I'm glad it got one from Culture Shock. There's an interview with Larry Thomas on the disc and he seems to be somewhat fond of the films now. Years ago he was deeply ashamed of these little horror films and tried to keep them out of his filmography while also being busy suing people selling ladles with the likeness of his Seinfeld character. He seems to have mellowed out in his old age as I haven't even heard of him trying to sue Andrew Ho yet, who sounds like a pretty awesome dude. It's also possible he realized his only known character would be deemed "unacceptable" in today's climate and it's better to be remembered for cheap little horror films including one where he kills women on camera for a cheap payday.
Dashcam (2021)
Annie Hardy is hot!
About 50 minutes into Dashcam I realized Annie Hardy sounded just like Kristen Schaal, after this I envisioned her as what an adult version of Louise Belcher would be like- loud, brash, impulsive, selfish, resistant and untrusting of authority and with a crude, immature sense of humor. With many viewers loathing the Annie character (I think she's mostly adorable) watching it with this in my mind might make her more tolerable. Annie Hardy puts her all into playing "herself" and if she's even 1/10th like this in real life then she's totally hot. The rest of the cast is mostly inconsequential and this is 99% the Annie show.
As far as "found footage" goes this has more scares and gore than average packed into the approx. 68 minutes runtime of the movie proper. Like most found footage films this was relentlessly profane with lots of crude and immature sexual humor which I like and feels authentic to the main character. There's lots of Annie "rapping" over the end credits which gets this to about 80 minutes long. The "rapping" parts are definitely the nadir of this and rapping by anyone is always terrible, White or other and should be punished by removal of vocal chords. To parrot-phrase the indifferent doctor from Dr. Butcher, M. D. "patients rapping annoyed me, performed removal of vocal chords." The song from her band Big Drag over the end credits is actually pretty solid.
Like I said before the gore here is pretty good though it's not a gore-fest. There's a cool looking creature towards the end which is unfortunately only seen briefly. There's some good scares and tense scenes, none of it coming off as fake. In addition to blood and gore there's also puke, pee and poo. The Annie "character" has a frantic energy throughout and this bleeds over to infect the rest of the movie. This never slows down for long and lots of "happenings" are packed into the meager runtime of the film proper. I also liked how despite being in mortal danger she took the time to briefly play with a Trump bobblehead in an abandoned car. This seems like something a deranged "Trumpy" supporter would do. I'm not sure how much of this is merely a commentary on and how much is mockery of "Trumpeters" and anti-vaxxers and what not. It's not a big deal to me as the reaction to Trump on both sides is comical to me and getting so riled up over an orange-fleshed buffoon seems the height of absurdity. I imagine reactions to this film will be similarly polarizing with most people despising the Annie Hardy character while I found her mostly adorable. If you want a found footage film that has actual momentum, a lively annoying/adorable main character, some creatures and actual gore for a change this is worth a watch.
Reap of Evil (1994)
Brian's Bloody Beginnings
Reap of Evil (1994) is the feature length debut of the current undisputed splatter-master, Brian Paulin. It starts out with what will be the first of many dream sequences in the film with the character waking up terrified, there's a bit of gore here, which looks cool though it's hard to determine what's going on exactly. This is SOV and the low quality continually hampers the generous creature and gore effects here. The credits role with some generic but decent "horror" music. The soundtrack throughout is solid, about what you expect in a low budget horror and there's a few killer extreme metal tunes. The film proper starts with a group of friends playing poker, this includes Brian Paulin and his frequent collaborator, Rich George. Eventually they start talking about their horrible dreams, an omen of horrors to come.
For the next 20 minutes or so we get to see the main characters daily lives while the crescendo of creepiness builds up. A group of priests discuss the horrible dreams both they and the main characters are having and how it's a harbinger of something very, very bad on the horizon but they want to cover it up. The main priest has some pretty cool make up that either makes him look old or horribly scarred, once again the unfortunate low quality makes it hard to tell. There's some sparse but solid gore in this first part including a head torn straight off and the flesh of a breast being cut off and then a character molesting and cutting the heart, this is only a dream though. Brian gets covered in a flood of blood and then is drowning in it which is filmed effectively in slow motion.
At this point we are treated to what I thought was real disaster footage but it's actually footage from a disaster drill in the area Brian was privy to film. There's some injury gore that you won't be able to tell is only effects work. This is a good inclusion and is a way to show that not only are the main characters experiencing something terrible but it's spreading, possibly worldwide. Things break down for the characters further as a woman in her kitchen is attacked by a pretty cool looking demon. I'll probably mention this again but the low quality here makes it hard to tell just how awesome this full body make up job is but I definitely appreciate the hard work Brian surely put it. Another character is attacked by a creature briefly rendered with stop motion. I don't remember Brian using any in his other films but it's cool to see here. It sprays him in the face with an acidic liquid. His face proceeds to melt in a grotesque and profuse way, a splatter sequence that puts most gore scenes in 99% of low budget horror to shame.
Brian isn't just a gore guy as there's quite a few explosions here of miniatures, the low picture quality and darkness making it not so obvious. The remaining characters either opt out or try to make a run for it. There's a very quick face removal that is pretty nifty. We get some brief stop motion footage of what I think was a creature that rose above the tree tops but it was too dark to tell for certain. Next there's a nasty arm-ripping with some sinews still attached to make the pain more palatable.
Around the 55 minute mark one of the characters appears in a Hellish realm. I think it's Rich George but it's pretty dark so I can't be 100% sure. He can't speak because a narrator demon has taken out his vocal chords. He also eats them. You'll be able to tell almost immediately that the demon is Brain Paulin in make up. Most of the small cast here plays multiple characters/demons. As he's escorted through this nightmarish place he encounters many strange/gory scenes and a variety of demonic entities. There's even one that looks like a Grey alien which is shown way too briefly. At one point he's fed demon turds which I have to imagine is much, much worse than Human feces. A pedophile rapist that looks like Jesus has his penis bitten off. Brian's not a big fan of religion. One demon has a needle like protrusion that is inserted into the man's eye. This actually looks pretty realistic and the low quality may actually help here. Explosions go off including amongst large model skyscrapers with a giant stop motion demon. It appears that they have been freed from their purgatory and are ready to conquer the Earth for themselves. The guy makes it out of Hell but has he escaped to someplace even worse?
Reap of Evil has a couple of major drawbacks- the low picture quality and it's way too dark at times to see what's going on. This is especially annoying considering how much hard work went into the gore and demon effects here. There had to be at least a dozen different creatures/demons in the movie. This film was not lacking in ambition and is worth seeing for the effects work alone. I bet more effort was put into this than most horror films even ones with a reasonable budget. Brian of course handled much of the work himself with the assist of a small crew. His devotion to gore, monsters and horror is astonishing. Acting here is about what you expect, not really worth slandering though there's some thick New England accents. Had I known about this in my tape trading days back in the 90s it would have been a longtime favorite along with the German splatter classics. I'm pretty sure this was influenced by Ittenbach as it reminds of both The Burning Moon and Black Past (hell sequence/gory dream sequences) without feeling redundant of either one. Also, it made me think of Stanze's Savage Harvest but that came out the same year. Not sure what else I think could have influenced it as it feels pretty unique. I don't want to overhype this but for a first major work by a filmmaker probably working with the money you'd get for recycling a bunch of soda cans in Michigan it's pretty remarkable and the ambition and hard work put forth here should be appreciated by any and all low budget horror fans/filmmakers.
Camp Hideaway Massacre (2018)
$10 smelly tents for rent
Camp Hideaway Massacre is the kind of cheap, gory, pointless trash that makes me smile. It starts with a topless woman running, bouncing through a field. That's it as we get text that says Two Months Earlier. We are introduced to a group of foul-mouthed metalhead friends. The soundtrack throughout is mostly decent extreme metal tracks. It turns out one of the friends is a machete-wielding killer. A random couple is briefly introduced before getting offed by him including a really fake and goofy looking but exuberantly bloody decapitation. This film is a bit like Don't Go in the Woods as people are introduced randomly with little character development just to get gorily killed off. That film is an all time slasher classic so I'm glad to see that format utilized here.
The people bumped off here are lured in by the promise of renting a stinky tent in the woods for $10. A mother and daughter are duped into this irresistible offer and are brutally murdered with the daughter's death being especially bloody. There's lots of scenes of the friends sitting around, smoking the devil's parsley and talking about nothing of note. A third couplet of people rents the smelly tent and the girl is quickly killed. The man has a gun though and threatens to use it, this is for wimps though so he takes on the dude with a machete bare-handed. Another of the friends shows up and gives him a well deserved gunshot to the head with his own handgun. More insipid dialogue. We then get a bit of a change as one of the other dudes procures the machete to gruesomely hack off the head of a guy he had a minor disagreement with. The gore effects aren't great here but bloody and frequent enough to add significant value to the film.
Tina Krause is looking for her friends asking people about town and handing out flyers. Another couple is introduced, being possible sapphists but this is never confirmed as they just talk about absolute nonsense like they are completely braindead and there's no carpet-munching or anything. The one girl is kind of cute in a Claire Boucher kind of way. They complain a lot about the stench of the tent but end up in it anyways. Is hiring a tent for $10 in a clearing really that appealing and that great of a deal? They both get slaughtered with the machete and there's some nice gushing wounds on display. Tina Krause shows up to her hotel room and proves that despite approaching 50 when this film was made she still isn't shy. She has a shower scene lasting about 3 minutes including full frontal. She still looks good but her brother Brian should probably have a talk with her about getting some self respect in her advanced age. Two women are standing by a camp fire and get messily killed by a machete and gun. I'm not sure if they paid the $10 for the odiferous tent or not. Tina now rents the noxious tent and is smoking mooster as she gets attacked by the machete dude. He doesn't kill her yet but manages to pull her shirt off. It turns out she's the girl from the beginning! We are treated to even more footage of her almost 5 decade old mammaries bouncing about and it's not unenjoyable.
Tina is caught at night and tied to a tree with barbed wire. They put a jacket on her but make sure to expose her breasts a little. She delivers some truly awful dialogue while tied up. Not that any of the other dialogue in this film is worthwhile outside of comedic value. We now found out that the friends have been killing people to feed to a demon. What you thought was a simple stupid slasher is now an idiotic demonic horror/thriller! Tina is murdered with lingering shots of blood pouring across her ample bosom. It's day now and we get some more poor and hard to hear dialogue from the three friends. A pregnant mother and her hot, young daughter have now rented the pungent tent. They wisely sit outside of it in chairs. The guys show up and the mother is gunned down. The daughter bounces away and being possible jailbait leaves her shirt on. Her throat is slashed with the machete. It's night now and the mother or possibly another pregnant woman is attacked by the demon. It's just a guy in a mask but still pretty cool looking. In a very graphic scene sure to make abortionists either hard or wet as it rips the fetus out of her still alive and screaming. The machete killer screams "no!" as blood splatters on his face. Fade to black as the still alive newborn cries.
Camp Hideaway Massacre is recommended for people with no taste, no life, no dreams and no future. The Hideaway title is a just a rancid tent in a clearing not very deep in the woods. The plot is almost non-existent. The dialogue is risible and often hard to make out. The acting is as bad as you expect with even Tina Krause being awful. If you just want mindless gore, stupid people dying and middle aged but still quality nudity this is highly recommended. It at least delivers more bloodshed than a majority of slashers now and I found it a lot of trashy fun. Alpha Video has released it on DVD and as with many of their releases you run the risk of it crapping out on you, fortunately mine only did that during the end credits. Most others will wish it happened after the first five minutes but for a select few this will prove a fun, mindless, rotgut classic.
Feeders 3: The Final Meal (2022)
Hungry for more?
Feeders 3 is the sequel to a sequel of the film that nearly sunk Blockbuster Video. I re-watched the original recently and enjoyed it immensely, loving it's ultra cheap DIY nature. Feeders 3 is like every modern day Polonia film- more polished but lacking the youthful spirit and just plain sense of fun of films like Splatter Farm, Hallucinations, Dweller and many others. The movie picks up 20+ years after the events of the first two films. A film crew is making a documentary of the events while a mysterious man in a wheelchair looks on. He's played by Mark Polonia. There's also some scenes with a crazy, long-haired man in an insane asylum who is blamed for the aliens original killings. At the same time a new group of Feeders is returning to Earth, hungrier than ever. They are adorably ugly puppets like in the first one. The Feeder puppets used in the documentary are even goofier. To add a little spice this also takes place on Halloween.
The cast here has lots of recent Polonia regulars and even some veterans like Todd Carpenter and Jeff Kirkendall. No Jon McBride is a big letdown. He should do another Cannibal Campout film. Cannibal Campout but on Splatter Farm, anyone? Like Mark's Return to Splatter Farm this is a better made/acted film than the original but also completely lacking the "vibe" that made those films mircro-budget classics. There's a good dose of comedy here, some of it kind of funny. There's a generous amount of footage from the first two Feeders. We even a reference to Donna Michelle Productions, a character having that name. A bit odd since they released Splatter Farm and not Feeders. Some interludes with horror hosts are included which I don't see the point of.
The highlight here is of course the Feeder puppets with them having a decent amount of screen time in the second half. They have some fun attack scenes though they don't really eat anyone. The best kill is probably the old lady who thinks the Feeders are trick or treaters. There's a shower attack with no nudity but it's not really missed in this case. There's an appearance by Santa and some "stunning" revelations at the end. This is basically 79 minutes of silliness with two many characters and pointless subplots. It's nice to see the Feeders again even if the rest of the movie is on par with a lot of Mark's recent stuff. It's cliché but Feeders 3 is proof "you can't go home again".
House Squatch (2022)
Polonias do comedy
House Squatch is a comedy horror from Mark Polonia and his son Anthony. It's not especially funny with a lot of fart jokes many of them emitted by a dead real estate mogul. The plot is simple- a sasquatch takes up residence in a suburban home and becomes the title creature. The locals and a real estate developer want it gone because it's dragging down the property values though probably not as low as they get in the average big city HoG. The sheriff is tasked with the duty of taking out the creature before it kills all the neighbors. The first people it kills are two "women" one an actual woman and one obviously a large, bearded man wearing a mask. I guess this is supposed to be funny but is one of the worst bits in a film with many jokes that fall flat. I hope it's making fun of the absurd "trans" rights/child castration movement but it's probably just included as goofy humor.
The cast here is mostly regulars from recent Polonia productions, some of them being welcome faces, others I don't need to keep seeing. There's some kills here, all played for laughs with some gore. There's a city wide junk-fest going on, reminiscent of city wide garage sales I adore. The music is annoying and pervasive as it's almost always a "cutesy" holiday style theme or something like you'd hear in Home Alone along with some brief "intense suspenseful" music. I guess this is kind of like House Shark only slightly worse as the characters aren't quite as interesting. It's only 71 minutes though which is a relief.
I Eat Your Skin (2019)
Lose and wretched remake
This is a loose remake of the fun 1971 Del Tenney movie. It's filmed entirely in The Philippines which is one of the film's very few positives. This is a rare horror movie that is set mostly during the day. The acting is pretty dismal and the characters bland. Most of the dialogue is drowned out by the soundtrack. There's a gay guy who likes to go around shirtless in his underwear which I can't even imagine people of that persuasion finding erotic. The star here is Sunny Leone who has limited screen time. Late in the movie the gay guy is possessed and rapes here and we get to see both of their butts, the only nudity here. Sunny is still very attractive and used to be in Penthouse and involved in the sordid world of pornography. She doesn't even really dress provocatively which would have been a boon to the film.
This is only 71 minutes long but at that length still drags as the horror doesn't really kick in until like 50 minutes. There's a bit of gore including a small amount of skin-eating. Not nearly enough to redeem this sludge. Since this film is loosely connected to the world of Dustin Ferguson it of course has some footage from the original film. This is shown through a filter and won't make you want to watch the original. The original is at least fun, unfortunately this is a nothing movie you can safely avoid.
Axegrinder 5: Blood Vengeance (2022)
Continuation of part 4
Axegrinder 5: Blood Vengeance is a direct continuation from part 4. This means for the first 25 minutes there's lots of footage from part 4 including all of the kills. Dennis Devine returns to direct here as does one of the convict girls and the sister? Of the pretty Asian chick. This feels like something made quickly to cash in on the "name" value of the franchise. There's about 3 new kills here which are decent. The all female rock band only mentioned in the first film are the main focus here. There's also an annoying, weird, redheaded, short White dude who is somehow related to the cute Asian girl. He eats sunflowers to add comic relief. Part 3 was pretty awful and 4 redeemed the series a bit. This feels like a regression but at least it didn't feature a plethora of footage from parts 1-3. David Sterling seems to like to hamstring his directors with very limited budgets which force them to reuse footage from previous films all the time. This is only 71 minutes and is barely passable as far as backwoods slashers go. When is part 6 with footage from all 5 previous films coming out David?
Axegrinder 4: Souls of Blood (2022)
Decent 4th entry
After the poor 3rd entry Axegrinder 4: Souls of Blood is a return to form directed by the veteran hand of Dennis Devine. Devine has been directing these kind of movies on a steady basis since 1998 with Fatal Images, Dead Girls and the anthology Things to his credit before that. His films are usually pretty decent considering the impoverished budgets he always has. The 3rd entry was derailed by Joe Sherlocks fat girl fetish and felt more like a film for people lusting after flabs of flesh than a slasher film. The women here are skinny and more to my taste with most of them being at least kind of cute.
This stars the pretty Josie Hung in a double role and in a rare starring role for an Asian woman. An early highlight is a woman running around topless played by the quirky named Apricot Pitts. Unfortunately she's dispatched pretty early so she doesn't get to run around the entire film topless. She looks like one of those Suicide Girls you used to hear about all the time but not anymore. Did they finally live up to their moniker and commit mass ritual suicide? Despite having a mostly female cast there's no other nudity here. The kills here are decent, better than part 3 and maybe 2 but not living up to the fun low budget gore of the original movie. Unlike part 3 this is set again in the woods where it should be. There isn't a lot to say about this but if you liked the first 2 and the first 3 Camp Blood films you'll probably dig this.
Axegrinder 3 (2022)
For chubby-chasing horror fantatics.
Axegrinder 3 is co-directed by Joe Sherlock. If you've seen his other films you know he's more interested in filling the screen with large and in charge females than actual horror. Sure there's some bloody (but not gory) killings mostly without an axe but the main focus is big girls. While most keep their clothes on there's a fair amount of nudity for people who are into that sort of thing. There's even a hot tub threesome where the fornicators probably exceed the 1000 pound range. The film is brief at 69 minutes but even that feels a bit long.
The cast here often have what I'm sure they think are unique names like Emilynn, Roxxy Mountains, Tonjia Atomic, Sparx and Qapla'!! Which I think is a Klingon word. Unfortunately the fascinatingly named and lovely Kasper Meltedhair has the wrong body type for the filmmakers as her presence would give this film some value for me. One scene involves a husband watching a chubby vampire girl photo shoot and shower video while his wife is on the phone. He seems to be enjoying it purely on a non-sexual level as he doesn't even fondle himself once. I'm not sure who this movie was supposed to appeal to as I can't imagine most male horror fans are into the larger lasses but I guess Sherlock is living the dream making these films. On to part 4 which has to be better.
Cryptid (2013)
Fun micro-budget monster masher
Cryptid is a micro-budget horror flick about a government created monster. Cryptid gets loose and ends up in a guy's grocery bag. Once inside the house it escapes and eats his adorable dog named Spunky. He tries to kill Cryptid but the creature makes it out alive despite being injured and hides in an alley. Cryptid undergoes a gruesome transmogrification here though some of the effects are obviously black trash bags as his skin sloughing off.
A few years later murders are happening in upstate New York. The MIB are investigating including interrogating a cryptid blogger. These MIB agents are all clones. There's also a retired FBI agent on the hunt for Cryptid. There's a fair amount of cheap gore here, almost all practical FX. Cryptid himself is the highlight being toothsome, goofy looking with eyes all over and adorable despite being ravenous and needing to eat 80 times its body weight. The highlight is the attack on two wasted stone-heads who are feeding it potato chips. One decides to hand feed it as they laugh away as a crunching sound is heard. They look down to see that he has had his hand eaten away by Cryptid! There's also a violent attack by Cryptid on a bar full of people. This scene would have been better without the constant annoying screaming though. Cryptid likes to hid inside of people's faces and guts as he attacks others. At 82 minutes this might be a tad too long. The production values are low but the acting is passable and the film looks fine. The sound is also good as you can hear the dialogue and features tunes by melodic death metal band, In the Casket. Good fun for fans of low budget creature features.
American Sasquatch (2020)
Borderline worthless
American Sasquatch appears to be a bunch of shorts sloppily jammed together to make a "feature length" (75 minutes) movie. It starts with ten minutes of people talking to the camera including Shawn C. Phillips who is occasionally funny but often overly exuberant and annoying. He brags about his DVD/blu-ray collection which we don't see. It's been shown in other movies and seems to be mostly common films on DVD with a few more obscure ones thrown in. We then get a found footage short with people in the woods arguing and little happening. There's a brief offscreen creature attack so they didn't have to put any effort into actually showing a 'squatch.
The next story is a guy walking through the woods, setting up his camp, going to sleep and then waking up. After awakening he is almost immediately dispatched by what I presume is some sort of sasquatch/bigfoot. You can see it in shadows and it's clearly a guy with long hair with normal clothes on. A small bit of gore is this parts only real value but at least it's not as annoying as the earlier parts. The last story is a father and son going hunting in the woods during winter. Not much happens until the son is torn in half by a sasquatch. It's a hilariously bad effect with cartoon blood splattering on the camera. At least we see a real sasquatch costume even if it's quite goofy. There's a brief "shock" ending to this short. This part is probably the best by default of actually showing a monster suit. This is a mostly worthless collection of shorts with little happening, almost no actual monster action, little gore and no real humor. A good candidate for worst "movie" of all time.
Up for Rent (2006)
Most serial killers aren't White.
Up for Rent is film #41 in the Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares box set. It's a three part horror anthology with an uninteresting wraparound story. All 3 stories are of the everyday horror sort with none being a more interesting supernatural/monster/alien type. The first is easily the worst about a woman with an abusive/infedelious husband. All the characters here are unlikable and the story isn't especially interesting. There's an excessive bloody knife murder which is the highlight and a twist ending. Story two is about a serial killing necro-rapist and story three is about another serial killer this time an incompetent one who works at a plastic factory and the whole story is comedic in nature. Both of these stories have some decent gore and nice looking women. For some reason none of the female victims are nude only stripping down to their underwear. I guess when you rape a corpse you don't want to further demean it by taking all their clothes off. There is some nudity in stories one and three but not of any murder victims. Both of these stories also have twist endings. Both of the killers in the last two segments are of course straight, White males. This would surely make Antarian piece of poop Dick Wolf proud. Neither of these killers seemed to have the numbers of someone like Billy Chemirmir or 5 out of 6 of LA's Southside Slayers, representatives of the true "color" of serial killing.
Once you get past the first story this gets pretty decent. Story 2 is sleazy and story 3 is funny so they aren't redundant despite similar subject matter. All 3 directors here were involved in Human Behavior from the Tomb of Terrors box set which I didn't care for, Up for Rent is a definite improvement. The almost 100 minutes runtime was a bit much though. Directors Derek and Shane Cole went onto a decent career including a film I've had laying around for years, The Mutilation Man (not to be confused with Andy Copp's incredible film). I should probably finally get around to watching that if I can find it.
Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank (2007)
Cannibal Chicks from California
This is film #39 from the Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares box set. I skipped #38 because it's City in Panic (13 on this set) which is a pretty good sleazefest and there's a DVD release of it from Massacre Video which I'm sure is in better quality. Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank feels like something made with the involvement of Jeffrey Leroy or David Sterling but puzzingly neither of them are invovled here. Also, this should probably have been called Cannibal Chicks from California as there are no vampires involved. This is about competing teams of archeologists, mostly women trying to find ancient artifacts. One team is even focued on sex toys from Pompeii! Obviously this isn't a very serious movie. Some of the girls are pretty cute and of course the prettiest one dies about halfway through. Considering the subject matter and tone nudity is suprisingly sparse, only appearing after the halfway part and not especially noteworthy. One of the nude scenes involves a woman who looks like Artemis from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, one of my least favorite characters from that show along with Cricket. This scene I could have done without. The whole plot is goofy and disheveled, not making much sense. Women rub ancient jewels on themselves and turn into cannibals. The gore here is pretty good- cheap and messy, mostly practical with some goofy and pointless CG additions. The acting is passable and the production values aren't too dreadful. Better than many films of this kind and worth a watch for fans of films made by Leroy, Sterling and Dennis Devine.
Sister Krampus (2021)
Polonia mediocrity
Sister Krampus starts out well enough with All-lied war criminals discussing their off-screen rape of an Austrian nun. These scum are American and not Soviets as you'd expect. Either way they'd have made Ehrenberg proud. They all wear mismatched uniforms that don't fit very well. Pretty soon they are dispatched somewhat gorily by a demon. There's a decapitation and a face and neck ripping both of which are pretty weak. Unfortunately this is about all the gore we'll see in this under 80 minutes movie. We then get two unattractive sisters in modern day Austria who end up staying in a house near the nunnery where the atrocity was commited. Strange things start to occur and it's up to them and the woman they are staying with to stop the evil. We are also treated to an extended version of the scene with the soliders from the beginning. For some reason Krampus and the sister's demonic spirit have joined forces. There's also a zombie helper who was one of the soldiers from the beginning. He has a cheap but gruesome looking mask on being about the only "gory" stuff outside of the opening. The final battle is very underwhelming. The movie has a goofy and happy ending. After the opening I thought this would be a cheap but gory horror with Sister Krampus ripping lots of people apart. Instead it was bogged down by lots of dialogue and what action happened later on was uninteresting. The horror wasn't scary or really very interesting. There's a few familiar Polonia faces here which was nice but the film just never really went anywhere. It's at least much better than Alien Surveillance and Dune World.