HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT (1986)

                                  "Tripping, Jack Daniels! All That Shit Rules!!"

 Being old enough to have lived through the era when heavy metal bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden ruled the world this is a pretty embarrassing look back at those days. A short video featuring drunken/stoned typical metal-heads taped in the parking lot of a Judas Priest/Dokken concert you get a non-stop stream of rambling loud-mouths, ugly hairstyles and ridiculous fashions it's really the perfect portrait of the 80's just the way I remember them. Back in the day my friends and I made a few stupid drunken videos just fucking around with the old camcorder luckily none of those has gotten the wide release that this one has. That has got to be a hell of a way to be remembered. The one mullet-haired fellow in the matching zebra-striped ensemble who hates punk rock and Madonna was the highlight to me with his well thought out criticisms.

"I'm on acid. That's where I am!"- a wise man

ROBO VAMPIRE (1988)

"Orientals are a stubborn race"-Caucasian ghost lady

If you ever thought to yourself "Gee, wouldn't it be great if they mixed the movie ROBOCOP with a kung fu flick and then threw in some of those crazy Chinese hopping vampires" this is the perfect movie for you.  Producer Tomas Tang was known for putting together a bunch of those terrible, direct-to-VHS ninja flicks from the 80's where he spliced 2 different movies into one giving them a schizophrenic mess of a feel(FULL METAL NINJA, ZOMBIE VS. NINJA, NINJA DEMON'S MASSACRE etc, etc.).  This film is no different cuz you get the vampire/kung fu flick and then as a bonus you also get this crappy action movie with lots of gun-fu.   Somewhere in all that you also get a ridiculous looking RoboCop rip-off guy with a silver helmet and silver pads all over his body that fights the vampires by moving in exaggerated robotic slow-motion .  The main bad guy is a jumping vampire in a rubber gorilla mask who shoots fireworks out of his hands who's in love with a ghost lady.  There's also some water torture that doesn't look too bad, white ghost lady boobs and a guy gets his eyes gouged out by a bloody Curly-style Three Stooges poke.  Trying to figure out the plot to all this makes my head hurt so I'll just say check it out if you can deal with insane nonsensical Asian foolishness.

Fun facts:
Godfrey Ho is listed as the director of this on IMDB but as usual their information is wrong.
There's two other appearances of ROBO VAMPIRE in sorta-sequels COUNTER DESTROYER and DEVIL'S DYNAMITE.

Terrifying fight scene:

CYCLOPS (2008)

Everyone knows that made for sci-fi channel movies are terrible and, of course, so is this one. Even being produced by Roger Corman and featuring Eric Roberts doesn't help out very much. The main problem, as always, with these is the absurd, cartoony, SHREK-looking title monster which just reminds you of a ROGER RABBIT situation. Set in ancient Rome this one's basically a monster on the loose movie and for a subplot you get a sorta cheap-ass version of the movie GLADIATOR. Surprisingly there's a lot of blood for a TV movie. You get throat-slicing, heads ripped-off, a hand bitten off, multiple stabbings and various bloody bashings. I guess CGI-blood is perfectly acceptable for prime-time viewing. Don't waste your time.

ROCKIN' WITH SEKA OR... SEKA'S CRUISE (1980)

Ziggy Zigowitz Jr., whoever that is, directs this porn romp where our heroine Seka plays a sexy stewardess who tells raunchy stories about people she met on various flights and then fucked. Of course, then we flashback to the sex scenes.  It's basically just a collection of various threesomes and other sexual combinations but they are pretty good scenes.  A bunch of classic stars show up including Jamie Gillis, Juliet "Aunt Peg" Anderson, Desiree West and the king John Holmes.  There's one very silly threesome scene with a song about boogieing that's pretty ridiculous.  There's not much else to this movie but if you like classic porn with very little plot to get in the way of the sexual acrobatics then this is a good choice for you.


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THE HORDE (2009)

Pretty decent zombie flick from Belgium that starts with a group of cops battling it out with a gang of criminal gangster types in an apartment building.  Sound familiar?  Yes the opening reminded me a lot of  DAWN OF THE DEAD, you even get someone getting their neck bitten out before all hell breaks loose.  These are the fast moving style zombies though so if you're not into that this movie won't be for you and since they're the running type the whole film plays more as an action movie and isn't very scary at all.  It is probably the fastest moving zombie film I can recall and for an action movie it's pretty good and people get eaten alive so that's something you don't see in a typical action flick.  Everything that happens is pretty typical for the living dead genre though and I have to take off credit for the cgi enhanced blood but it's probably worth checking out if you're not completely sick of zombie movies in general.

BLACK STREETFIGHTER (1974)

This movie has nothing to do with Sonny Chiba but it's still a decent time-wasting, typically 70's, blaxploitation flick.  Every white guy is either a mobster or a corrupt cop or just your average racist asshole and every black guy is treated like garbage and used for one purpose or another so with all the build up it's pretty sweet by the time we get to see a little payback to "the man".  The plot is a simple one about our hero, Leroy Fisk, who becomes an illegal bare-knuckles streetfightin' man to try and make something of himself.  Well needless to say, with all the mob connections and a dirty cop named Heineken, played by Dabney Coleman, on the take, this doesn't turn out to be the easiest way of getting rich.  Philip Michael Thomas who went on to be the black guy in MIAMI VICE shows up as two different ridiculous characters(a wino and a pimp).  While this is obviously a super low-budget film and the music is pretty lame I still enjoyed it for the cheap-ass ROCKY feel it had to it and that musta been a hard movie to rip-off since it hadn't been made yet.  Plus it has a strange sorta hopelessly insane ending which was neat.  It's more probable that they were ripping off the Charles Bronson flick HARD TIMES which has a kinda similar streetfighter plot and even features Hard Boiled Haggerty who also show up here. A.K.A. BLACK FIST and BOGARD(who the hell is Bogard?  There's no one in this movie with that name that I saw).

OMEGA DOOM (1996)

A futuristic, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi action movie with very little action.  Rutger Hauer here plays a robot who gets shot in the head leading to his confusion and walking around a whole lot.  Then there's some fighting robot gangs but mostly just talking and walking.  Yuck!  Weren't the 90's great times when tons of garbage like this would get released right to video?  No, they really weren't.  How does Hauer go from being so good in BLADE RUNNER to so bad in this?  I guess you could blame Director Albert Pyun since he has pretty much made a career out of making films like this that are not on anyone's top ten list except maybe lame nerds.  How he still gets to churn out movies of any sort is a mystery to me but he's still going.  Might not be the worst thing you will ever see but it's gotta be close to it.

Shitty pseudo-trailer collage of assorted crap:

DEATH WATCH (1980)

A futuristic sci-fi film that predicts the popularity of reality television but takes it one step further by being a show about a person who is going to die and we all get to watch. Harvey Keitel stars as a man who gets cameras implanted into his eyes and then befriends our heroine to get all the necessary shots and heart-stirring moments on tape. Harry Dean Stanton from REPO MAN is the head of the morally insensitive TV station, Max Von Sydow shows up towards the end and it's all based on a sci-fi novel from 1974 called The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe . Filmed in Scotland there's some beautiful scenery on display and this is a good movie to see in an actual theater as nature intended. It does however drag in spots and the ending seems sort of abruptly handled but it had some good ideas here and there and is worth watching if you're a serious sci-fi type.

VAMPIROS LESBOS (1970)

Director Jess Franco is one of my favorite all time directors.  He's also the most prolific having made close to 200 films so far.  This is one of his better known flicks and deals with lesbian vampires, which was a topic(obsession?) he would revisit many, many times.  I think the majority of viewers see Franco's work as inept due to the fact that to him plot wasn't always the most important factor.  There is a plot to this one but it's the visuals and awesome fuzzy psychedelic soundtrack that are the stand out features(Tarantino borrowed one groovy song for JACKIE BROWN).  With lots of nudity, blood, vampire hi-jinks and Franco's trademark zoom shots, this one seems to be almost a perfect blend of trashy horror and art-house asthetic rolled up into one.  Star Soledad Miranda(who Franco used in a bunch of his early films) looks amazing here as a victim of Count Dracula that hates men.  She does keep one around as a henchman named Morpho, a character from Jess' great AWFUL DR. ORLOFF and a bunch of other stuff, so men are not seen as completely useless, just mostly, which brings up an interesting stereotypical lesbian viewpoint filtered through the lens of a male director who loved to ogle women.  It's too bad Miranda would go on to die in a car crash the same year this was filmed.  Her look fits so perfectly in the sleazy universe of Mr. Jess.  Franco himself plays a great role as a demented servant who likes to keep women in a basement to torture for his amusement and pleasure and he does make an excellent creepy Renfield-like character.  Check it out for a strange sexadelic trip made by a leering madman.

TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM (1967)

This is probably one of my fav Christopher Lee movies.  It's a simple plot that starts out with Mr. Lee getting the spiky mask from Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY shoved onto his face and then drawn and quartered for being a naughty boy and killing a bunch of virgins.  From there it's time for Lee or, as he's known here, Count Regula(which sorta sounds like Count Dracula) to get his revenge by coming back from the grave and pulling some Edgar Allen Poe inspired tricks out of his sleeve including that old Pit and The Pendulum gag.  There's a memorable amazingly Gothic scene with our heroes in a carriage driving through a forest that has naked dead bodies and various body parts hanging out of trees.  The only down thing is our hero, played by Lex Barker, who was Tarzan back in the 40's.  His "acting" is pretty one-dimensional.  Originally titled BLOOD DEMON(Lee needs blood to stay alive, just like a vampire) and I have it on a cheap-ass VHS as CASTLE OF THE WALKING DEAD.  A good watch if you dig creepy atmospheric horror and Christopher Lee basically doing his Dracula bit in a different(Germany) setting.

HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959)

English horror films from the 1950's are not known for being particularly graphic yet this is one is surprisingly bloody for the time it was made.  I really liked this story of a horror writer who helps the police solve a string of murders but becomes way more involved in the killings than he should and uses hypnotism to do it.  In fact, the movie was filmed in "HYPNOVISTA" which just meant a guy came on before the movie and told you about the magical powers of hypnotism and then he hypnotizes the audience and tells them they will feel like they're actually in the movie.  Hypnotism plays a big part in the plot.  Pretty damn cheesy but  the version I saw didn't have this guy so I do feel a little cheated.  You get various killings shown including a beheading, a heart stabbing, ice-tongs to the neck, death by giant 50's computer ray, death by a barrel of acid and the most famous one, a woman gets her eyes poked out by some trick binoculars with spikes that shoot out of them.  The weapons used are mainly from our main character's museum of old time torture devices which he keeps in his basement and is modeled on an actual collection of that kind of stuff that Scotland Yard actually has("The Black Museum").  Check it out for some super bright red 50's blood.


This trailer gives away just about every plot point:

PONTYPOOL (2008)

I'll give this Canadian horror flick credit for having a different take on the whole zombie movie thing.  Whether it's all that brilliant or not I'm not so sure.  It seems that the virus that infects people in this is passed on through language and in particular certain trigger words, which is kind of a weird/abstract thing to wrap your head around.  As you would expect from a movie about a language virus there's a whole lot of talky-talk and not really all that much in the way of action or gore.  Almost everything is described to you from a radio station which makes it all feel like a play more than an actual movie of any sort.  It is an interesting experiment but I found the whole movie so slow moving and drama-like that any real horror or any truly scary elements almost felt out of place.  I can see where this would appeal to fans of a more psychological style of horror but I just didn't find it very entertaining and just needlessly bizarre with no real explanation for anything.  Give me a brainless fun zombie flick like BURIAL GROUND any day over this pseudo-intellectual mumbo-jumbo.

TRUE GRIT (2010)

I never cared at all about John Wayne movies so I can't tell you how this compares to the original version.  I'm a spaghetti-western fan.  I don't care much about big-budget Hollywood films(Although I know without them all the crazy rip-off movies from Italy and Hong Kong that I find much more interesting to watch wouldn't exist) and I sure as hell don't give two shits about the Academy Awards.  With that being said I think that The Coen Brothers films are rare examples of something interesting coming out of the superficial, glossy cesspool that is modern-day Hollywood.  Their movies are almost all just off-kilter enough to be watchable and entertaining spectacles, even if I don't find them very re-watchable.   This movie is about revenge and justice like most good westerns and is a pretty simplistic tale.  A 14-year-old girl hires a bounty hunter to catch the killer of her father and that's it.  The interesting aspect, like all of the Coens movies, and the thing that makes it worth watching, is the characters and how they react to the situation they're in.  All in all you get tons of shootings(they even shoot a horse!), a few hangings, a stabbing and some fingers get chopped off.  There are a few seemingly unrealistic elements, like, for example, a lot of the characters here seem quite old and fat.  I'm no historian but I would think living in the old west would've been pretty rough and being old plus totally out of shape would drastically cut down your hopes of survival but if you're not a nit-picky asshole like me check it out.  It's no DJANGO but not terrible if you dig westerns at all.

CHINESE TORTURE CHAMBER STORY (1994)

After watching this movie I feel really lucky that I didn't live in olden times China and I feel extra lucky that I didn't have to go to court in the one depicted in this movie. According to this movie every person who even appears in a courtroom is totally guilty and deserves to be tortured until they confess to their guiltiness. Not the most democratic system I've ever heard of, but then again it might still be better than some courts in the middle east today. One of the weird things(it's packed with weird things like the nonsensical subtitles for one) about this movie is, like many other category III rated movies from Hong Kong in the 90's, the tone, which goes from horrific torture scenes to super-silly slapstick comedy to ridiculous over-the-top romantic love story with a scene right out of Demi Moore's GHOST(complete with a Chinese-sounding version of UNCHAINED MELODY). Luckily I don't mind my films being totally dyslexically paced and it added to the "what the fuck will happen next" vibe that I enjoy in films like this. You get plenty of naked Asian ladies on display, an invisible man attempting to rape someone, an exploding penis, crazy sex toys and an amazing scene of high-flying kung-fu style fucking(fuck-fu?) that needs to be seen to be believed. I would highly recommend this one to fans of extremely nutty cinema. There's also a sequel that's supposed to be equally as insane that I need to check out one day.

Kung Fu Fucking - The funniest videos clips are here

PSYCHIC KILLER (1972)

Pretty boring movie about a supernaturally powered psychic fellow. It seems this guy was wrongly imprisoned for a murder that he didn't commit and when he gets out he's understandably not too happy about it and starts offing the people responsible by going into a death-like trance state and using his magical powers. One memorable scene has a butcher(played by Neville Brand from EATEN ALIVE) psychically compelled to stick his hand in a meat-grinder, besides that though this is a good cure for insomnia. Amazingly this movie was rated PG when originally released even though there's some mildly bloody death scenes.

DIE SCREAMING, MARIANNE (1971)

Susan George, probably looking the hottest out of any other movie I've seen her in, stars in this tale of a family that goes to extreme measures to obtain some inheritance that only she can get her hands on. The problem with a lot of English director Pete Walker's films is that you go in expecting a horror film when what you get is really just a thriller with a horror movie title and poster. What you get here isn't terrible for a thriller but it never lives up to the expected bloodiness that would become more common throughout the 70's. You also are never sure what any of the characters are up to which I guess is supposed to keep you on the edge of your seat but it left me just feeling confused through much of the running time. Not a complete waste of time but I did feel cheated that we only got to see George go-go dance during the title sequence which was very James Bond-like. This was originally rated X in England. Why that is I have no idea.

"Balls!":

TEENAGERS BATTLE THE THING (1958)

Obscure monster flick about a group of archeological students and their teacher(who's named Bill Wyman but doesn't look anything like that guy from The Rolling Stones) who go digging around an ancient Indian burial ground. I guess back in the 50's people didn't know yet that this was always a bad idea in movies like this. Anyway they find an American Indian mummy who comes back to life. This thing looks like a ridiculous mix of a bigfoot creature and a teddy-bear with big nasty teeth and a paper mache face. This silly mess was colorized and re-released to TV stations in 1978 with some new wraparound footage and re-titled CURSE OF BIGFOOT to cash in on the 70's bigfoot-mania going on. Watching a longer version of this craptacular epic seems like a terrible idea though. It's no TEENAGE WEREWOLF or even TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN.

THE BLACK GODFATHER (1974)

Bottom of the barrel as far as blaxploitation flicks go.  This movie doesn't really have much going for it.  It's really just a shitty, low-budget, funky version of THE GODFATHER which came out a few years before this.  It probably wouldn't look so bad but compared to all the other amazing black films from this era it pales greatly.  You get some car chases, shootouts, some lady kung fu and a whole lot of urban drama but, to me, one of the main problems is the really generic sounding soundtrack.  Films like this need that extra something that a Curtis Mayfield or a Willie Hutch add to the experience.  Watch SUPER FLY or THE MACK or even THE AVENGING DISCO GODFATHER for a much better overall time.

The boom microphone should have gotten a co-starring credit.  He even shows up in the trailer:

CHUCKY LOU: THE STORY OF A WOODCHUCK (1956)

Short film from the 50's where we see a woodchuck get abducted, taken from his natural habitat, thrown in a cage, fed shitty food and forced to wear dresses to amuse children.  It's supposed to be educational but the only thing I learned from it is that people, and especially kids, can be real jerks and I already knew that.  On the other hand if this film starred a precocious little monkey it might be my favorite of all time.  Check it out if you dig woodchucks in hula skirts.

This version has some annoying repetitive music dubbed in so all the retarded kids can dance around like mongoloids while they watch:

THE SINFUL NUNS OF SAINT VALENTINE (1974)

A Valentine's Day movie that has nothing to do with Valentine's Day except for the title.  As far as naughty nun flicks go this one is pretty mediocre at best.  Nothing really all that shocking happens and it's basically a love story between a woman who was sent to a monastery and a fellow accused of being unchristian.  There is a lot of naked nun-flesh on display, a whipping and a hint of lesbianism here and there and that's about as shocking as it gets.  I did enjoy the brief appearance of a ranting Satanic witch.  Too bad she didn't have a bigger part.  I also like how this film, like most everything else in this genre, shows organized religions immense capacity for evil.  For way more insane stuff go with some Bruno Mattei nunsploitation or even Ken Russell's THE DEVILS which this seems to be a sort of takeoff on.

Thing I learned while watching this- Apparently when you brick up nuns in a convent a bunch of them take off their tops and then they go crazy and start killing each other!

VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS (1970)

A Czechoslovakian surrealistic, fairy-tale-inspired vampire movie that reminds me of the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky but perhaps even less linear, if that's possible.  I can go either way with art films.  They can come off as boring pretentious messes to me or, like this one, they can be fascinating looks into bizarre worlds that are like a puzzle I'm never going to be able to solve but I want to keep trying.  The plot, if you want to call it that, is about a 13 year old girl going through puberty and experiencing a bunch of interwoven dreams about religion, blood-suckers and sex.  There is nudity by an actress who is underage but anyone who sees this as child porn is a fucking retard and should go play with a ball of lint instead of watching movies.  The shots are amazing, the sets are incredible and the whole thing feels like an exercise in pure cinema that I would love to get the chance to see in a theater someday. 

THE LOVE MERCHANT (1966)

                                                   "We're all very sick people"

The basic plot of this 60's sexploitation flick is pretty similar to INDECENT PROPOSAL.  It seems rich Mr. Harvey likes paying for ladies and it don't stop him if they happen to be married.  Not personally being a big fan of modern Hollywood crap I couldn't tell you exactly how similar or not but I'm betting there weren't any sleazy lesbian biker chicks in the big-budget version. This one does have some biker types who look more like they stepped out of Brando's THE WILD ONE than anything very 60's-ish and it also has some lesbianism. Not sure if the DVD I have of this is cut or not but it sorta seems like it is as they cut away before anything too explicit is shown. Of course this era was way before hardcore anyway so It's hard to be sure. Overall I felt this Joe Sarno directed romp was enjoyably compelling with it's ridiculously cheap sets, awful stilted acting techniques and all, plus although Sarno claims he never made any roughies this one comes pretty close.  There might even be some underlying subtext about class systems and relationships but I appreciated it more for the absurd go-go dancing and giant sexy underpants.

DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARCROW (1981)

It's hard to believe now but some made-for-TV horror movies from the 70's through the early 80's were actually pretty decent time-wasters.  There were a bunch that creeped me out as a kid like TRILOGY OF TERROR which starred Karen Black and GARGOYLES which starred a bunch of spooky cave monsters.  This one also stood out as a simplistic yet effectively told tale of revenge that I fondly recall from my younger days of TV addiction.  I've read that this was originally supposed to be a theatrical feature and with a little added blood and guts I could see it working as that equally well.  This story concerns a retarded man, named Bubba, played by Larry Drake(who went on to later play DR. GIGGLES) who gets wrongfully accused of killing a little girl.  Charles Durning plays a local-yokel, not-so-intelligent mailman who gathers up a posse of equally dimwitted redneck types to get revenge.  Bubba decides to hide in his favorite scarecrow which doesn't turn out to be the optimal hiding spot for him and he gets himself all shot up.  This is when the revenge starts to get dished out.  Is it Bubba back from the dead?  Is it the little girl who wasn't killed in the first place?  Is it the lawyer who somehow couldn't put a case together against a bunch of guys who shoot a retarded man to death at point blank range?  Well I won't ruin the nutty ending for you(there's some killer bulldozer(killdozer?) action).  However you can just look at any review on IMDB and they'll be glad to let you know every plot point. 

THE VAN (1977)

Classic stupid 70's R-rated teen sex comedy that features a Danny Bonaduce-looking fellow who gets himself a van and gets laid.  His van is pretty awesome and comes with mirrors, a water-bed in the back and even a toaster!?  Features van racing, boobs, drugs, that Chevy van song, a naked girl with a huge R. Crumb animated chick-looking ass and a fake-out tragic 70's ending.  A tough bad guy named Dugan who looks like he listened to a lot of AC/DC in his time and sorta reminds me of The Incredible Hulk, refers to himself in the first person a lot and has some memorable lines like "Nobody calls Dugan a turd".  Danny DeVito shows up in a few short scenes.  Check it out for something entertaining yet at the same time dumb as hell.

STRIP FOR ACTION (1996)

For a movie called STRIP FOR ACTION! there isn't really that much stripping going on. The movie starts out with a bang as a robbery at a strip-club turns into a full-blown shootout massacre but from there it just becomes a hostage caper. The lady hostages(Maria Ford and Nikki Fritz) are believable as strippers so at least the scenes with them is something nice to leer at. Overall this is basically your typical stupid action movie with bad acting and stupid characters making stupid decisions. What would have probably been a cool exploitation movie if it was made in an earlier decade is just another example of why the 90's were a real low point for everything in American culture. A.K.A.HOT TICKET