HAUNTEDWEEN (1991)

Most people think that slasher movies died when the 80's came to an end but unfortunately, even before SCREAM came along in '96 and we got a bunch of shitty/smart-ass/self-aware Hollywood-ized slasher flicks, there were still a bunch of low-budget hack and kill movies being pumped out by maniacs and/or stupid people. This one here is about as low-budget as you can get from a shot-on-video killer on the loose tale that hits every cliche of this, already by this time, completely worn out genre. The FX consist of some fake blood being thrown on people and the rest of the budget seems to have gone towards Halloween masks and a van that gets shot and instantly explodes. The grating background music sounds like it's from some kind of an instructional video. This was filmed in Kentucky using locals who I'm assuming weren't actual actors of any kind. The fact that they gave this thing a feature length running time is astounding. Most of the time is filled with a bunch of unimportant dialogue which dares you to sit through it. I was also a little bit disappointed that the title didn't refer to a ghostly possessed penis.  The positive things I will say about this is there are a couple of attractive ladies who do have the decency to at least get their tops off before being butchered and there's a nifty sequence where our masked killer puts on a show of killing people in a haunted house that sorta reminded me of a shitty version of BLOODSUCKING FREAKS but I'm not sure if it's worth sitting through this whole thing just for those couple of bright moments.  There is a HAUNTEDWEEN II promised after the credits but thankfully I don't think that ever happened.

Believe it or not Hanks here with the extra stupid accent is actually our hero:

SON OF SAM (1977)

This movie is a really big mess!  It starts off with a pre-credit sequence that lists a bunch of serial killers and then we get a full song by some 70's lounge singer named Johnny Charro and then we get a sorta-proto-slasher movie.  The main problem with this movie is it appears to have been patched together by some very inept filmmakers.  There's weird cuts, lingering shots of nothing, inexplicable use of slow-motion, weird freeze-frames for no reason and just strange editing choices all around.  In addition the acting is down there around BLOOD FEAST levels.  It's overall a tough movie to sit through without feeling like you might lose your mind before it's over.  Probably the weirdest death scene has a fellow who gets slashed up by being strangled with a telephone cord?  This movie also really doesn't have anything to do with the real life "Son Of Sam" David Berkowitz and originally had the more boring title of HOSTAGES.  The print I viewed didn't have the "ANOTHER" in the title like every poster seems to. The cool-looking poster is definitely the best thing about this whole movie!

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD (2009)

I've had this movie sitting on my to-watch pile of DVD's for a long time now.  I kept putting it off mainly because all I've heard is how terrible this movie is and what a disappointment it was coming from Mr. George A. Romero, the man responsible for basically creating the modern-day zombie movie as we know it.  Another scary thing is that this is a sequel to DIARY OF THE DEAD which I also didn't feel was a very good film except for maybe the opening scenes of dead people starting to rise.  For the most part after watching this one I would have to agree that this movie is, as expected, just basically not very good.  It sorta reminded me of that scene in DAWN OF THE DEAD where a biker gang has a pie fight with zombies and what it would be like if you stretched that out for 90 minutes.  Except in that scene I always thought that at least the bikers were cool(and it would probably make an entertaining film if we followed them around) and in this no one was in any way cool or interesting and I didn't care about anyone.  Every character is pretty much an asshole and nothing seems to be very serious.  Also there's a completely distracting use of bad CGI for every little spurt of blood that makes it even more cartoonish.  Also why was the island set in the old west with horses and stuff?  Also why was everyone on this island Irish?  Also was this supposed to be a comedy cuz it's barely a horror film?  Also, and most importantly, is Romero still capable of making anything worthwhile?  It's looking pretty doubtful at this point.  While there are way worse zombie films out there considering this one was made by someone who, at least at one time was capable of making classic horror flicks it's all pretty sad and only slightly better than your typical bottom-of-the-barrel, no-budget backyard-made zombie crap movie.

BARFLY (1987)

"Your mother's cunt... STINKS like carpet cleaner!"

Having been a huge fan of Charles Bukowsi's writings since I was a stupid teen this movie has been one that I've probably re-watched more than any other in the drama category.  It's a movie that I love for it's depiction of a mostly crazy yet completely individualistic person.  This person is, of course, just a thinly veiled personification of  Mr. Bukowski himself.  It's this personal touch that gives the movie such a strong resonance and deep feeling and also moments of complete absurdity.  If there's any negative aspect to this film it would probably be the all too Hollywood feeling that many of the scenes fall into.  The fight scenes are the most unrealistically staged looking things that you would expect to see in your typical American action film and some of the characters and their actions seem very cartoonish but regardless of this the movie never fails to entertain me in the many viewings I've given it.  The main credit has to go to Mickey Rourke who shows his acting abilities that place him up there with actors like DeNiro and Pacino in portraying a person most people would call a loser but I think in many ways he's better than most of the plastic people we worship in this sick society.  It's too bad Mr. Rourke wasn't born a decade earlier when there were more quality films being made that he would've fit right into.  Rourke would go on to win awards for his starring role in THE WRESTLER, which I think is a great film also, but he really should have won something for this also. It's also a great film to watch while drinking excessively.  There was a sorta-remake made of this in 2005 with Matt Dillon called FACTOTUM but you're better off sticking with the original.

THE WRESTLING WOMEN VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY (1964)

"Maybe that stupid mummy has fits and undresses.  Who knows what he has beneath his clothes?"

The sixties were a decade chock full of silly superhero comic book movies.  I woulda thought it was all Batman's fault but that goofy show hadn't started yet and Mexico was already pumping out these wrestler/superhero flicks.  They were mostly masked wrestlers but also, like in this one, a few lady wrestlers starred.  I guess it kind of goes along with the women's lib movement starting up at the time since you get scenes of ladies throwing men around and generally kicking their asses.  In addition to this we get an evil Asian bad guy(who looks way more Mexican) named The Black Dragon in the dubbed version, judo girls, a goofy comic relief guy and best of all a mummy(who doesn't really show up until the last third of the movie).  The mummy's origin is all told with stock-footage from 1957's THE AZTEC MUMMY which would be used a few more times over the years.  This mummy character seems to also be half vampire since he can turn into a bat and a spider and is afraid of the sun.  Why this is I'm not sure.  Maybe if you take a vampire and mummify him this is what happens but I don't recall that ever being clarified.  Overall this is a fun goofy flick but only for lovers of really bottom-of-the-barrel silly Mexisploitation.  There was a re-edited(with 60's pop music) version of this titled ROCK 'N ROLL WRESTLING WOMEN VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY but I recall that being really awful.  The wrestling women here had appeared together prior to this in DOCTOR OF DOOM where they fight a guy in a KKK hood and his gorilla henchman.

Apparently there was a shortage of Asians in 1960's Mexico since our judo chicks also look suspiciously Mexican:

EXECUTIONS (1995)

This is a strongly anti-capital punishment, made for video, documentary which looks at methods that people have used around the world to kill other people in the name of justice.  It is a really good historical look at the barbaric practices of humanity even if it is completely slanted to make you hate the death penalty in all forms.  We go from the guillotine in France to Nazis in World War II to Communists in China and Russia to the electric chair in America and on to the lovely practices of beheading in the Middle East amongst other places I probably never want to travel to.  The most memorable and shocking clip here is of a man in Lebanon who is shot multiple times(including in the face) and somehow keeps breathing.
Personally in theory I think the death penalty makes perfect sense.  I mean if someone kills someone I care about taking them out seems logical.  The grey area comes in when we give the power of vengeance to a government that will undoubtedly misuse it.  Also leaving the power of life and death in the hands of an angry mob(as is shown here with middle eastern stonings and such)  is an even worse idea.  So while I agree with the basic concept of an eye for an eye when put into practice it's a pretty hard thing to justify in a societal structure.  I also think, despite what is argued in this video, that lethal injection doesn't seem like that horrible of a way to check out and it would definitely be my preferred method if I had a choice.
I think this would probably appeal to fans of mondo-movies and stuff like FACES OF DEATH even though it's not quite as gory, features actual footage and is way more thought-provoking than just your typical shock for shock's sake gore vid.  There was an EXECUTIONS II that came out the same year as this.

BOGGY CREEK (2010)

My recollection of the original 70's THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, from catching multiple TV showings about 30 years ago, is a little foggy but I do recall it being a sort of pseudo-documentary thing about a Bigfoot monster in a swamp in the Southern U.S.A. Sort of a feature length episode of IN SEARCH OF... without Leonard Nimoy's great narration. It was sorta spooky and atmospheric, at least from what I remember as a kid watching it. This movie here doesn't seem to have anything to do with the original recipe. It's not a remake and it's not a sequel(there already was a sequel in the late 70's). I guess it's what the cool kids call "a re-imagining"(which means they just stole the title). This movie basically plays like a crappy slasher flick complete with uninteresting characters that you don't care about. I do generally love slasher flicks and I also do generally love Bigfoot movies but this mash-up isn't what I hoped it would be(NIGHT OF THE DEMON still holds the crown in that mixed-up genre). I noticed one of the young fellows in this just seems to be here to show off his 6-pack abs and dreamy good looks(too bad I don't know any 14-year old girls into horror movies I could recommend this to). Our featured crazy-psycho slasher is a tall hairy monster with sharp fingernails. He also likes to eat people but only a little nibble(to show who's boss I guess). Also he doesn't kill women, he takes them back to his secret Bigfoot lair to screw and make more Bigfoots. I'm not sure what the lady Bigfoots do but this movie isn't worth thinking that much about. It's also probably not worth wasting your time on watching unless you prefer horrible pop music, shitty modern editing(shaking the camera a lot) and boring kill scenes to go with your slasher/monster flick. Another thing that pissed me off was the non-ending where nothing is really explained. I would give this movie one star for starring an actor named Texas Battle. That name is awesome! I gotta go back and re-watch the original sometime to forget about this.

INSIDE DEEP THROAT (2005)

The most profitable and arguably the most important film in the history of X-rated cinema is looked at in this really well done documentary that cost about 80 times what the original film did back in 1972.  It features commentary by people like John Waters, Larry Flynt , Al Goldstein as well as just about everyone who had something to do with DEEP THROAT.  Also you get all the insane voices of the morally righteous who are so assured of their superiority that it's amazing that anyone ever did(and even more amazingly still do!) take people like this seriously.  Overall I found this movie to be actually pretty depressing when you realize that the high point of cinema is so far behind us as a culture and all that is being produced today(whether you're talking about mainstream or adult movies) is recycled garbage with not even the first inkling of an original idea involved.  On the flip side I guess you could say that the adult industry is a whole lot safer to be involved with nowadays since it's a legitimate business without the criminal element that was such a big part of it back then.  Unfortunately it doesn't produce anything worthwhile to anyone with half a brain these days.  As is pointed out in this film the dream that hardcore cinema would keep growing and take over the mainstream died with the infiltration of cheaply made VHS movies but maybe(hopefully) they just had it backwards and eventually Hollywood would keep getting raunchier and raunchier.  It's too bad 39 years later we're still waiting for the day to come when filmmakers have real artistic freedom.  There's an R-rated and an NC17-rated version of this out there.

CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL (1993)

Before SOUTH PARK became a super huge mainstream hit TV show, that you can't avoid if you try, Trey Parker and Matt Stone put out this wacky gory musical comedy version of the Alfred Packer story. Just like that show that helped popularize that sort of brainless one-note comedy that all the kids love, in shows like THE FAMILY GUY, this movie is just a series of ridiculous events strung together with a stupid story-line. It's about a group of gold prospectors who get lost in the wilderness and end up eating each other. It starts out with a bloody tongue-getting-ripped-out-of-a-head cannibal attack scene and then gets sillier from there on out. You get a wacky tribe of Indians played by Japanese folks, a Southern Confederate Cyclops monster and unnatural love for a horse. The team's later movie ORGASMO was probably a bit funnier to me but this one is still worth watching if you're not completely sick of this style of random anarchist humor yet. Most of the musical bits are as awful as you would expect but I'm sure that's the whole point. This was distributed on home video by TROMA and I will say it's way more entertaining than 90% of the shit released on that label.

THE MUTILATOR (1985)

The 80's were a great time as far as low-budget cheesy slasher movies being released on VHS went. You got stuff like SLEEPAWAY CAMP and SPLATTER UNIVERSITY along with a billion other titles and they were all exactly what you expected. So if you were a gore-obsessed little creep like myself these were good times to own a VCR. Looking back these movies are not as great as I may have remembered them but they're still fun enough in a bottom-of-the-barrel kind of way. This one has a guy whose wife is accidentally shot dead by his son so naturally, in a movie of this type, he has no choice but to get drunk on Jack Daniels and then go bat-shit crazy and start mutilating teenagers to death. If you watch the unrated version you get even bloodier kills including a large fishhook through a vagina scene which is pretty nasty. There's also a goofy theme song that sounds like it belongs in a teen sex comedy titled FALL BREAK which was also the original title of this flick. It shows up every once in a while in case you forget what a stupid-ass movie you're watching. It also features your typical stupid ending with the killer coming back from the dead a couple of times and a cheap "shock" finale. So all in all you've got boobs, blood and a maniac who uses a battle-axe, am outboard motor and a few other nifty marine-themed implements of destruction. What more could you want from a dumb slasher flick?




                                                            AKA FALL BREAK:

DEAD MEN WALK (1943)

Watching this movie made me appreciate how great Bela Lugosi is.  Not that Mr. Bela is in this movie, it just seems like something he shoulda starred in and I'm sure he would have done a way more entertaining job than George Zucco does.  While I'm sure Mr. Zucco was a good enough actor for the times he just seems way too much like your everyday normal middle-aged, balding white guy to be very scary.  It's like if someone's dad ran around pretending he was a vampire it would probably be more embarrassing than frightening.  The story here is about a couple of twins both played by our buddy George.  One is a doctor and the other one is an evil son-of-a-bitch vampire.  The vampire is way more interesting of course and he even has himself a dim-witted henchman named Zolarr(played by the king of crazy sidekicks Dwight Frye) which is always a good idea.  He also appears to be a ghost at certain times for no real reason.  Overall this is obviously a really cheap movie rushed out to cash in on DRACULA's earlier success and it's pretty mindless and only mildly entertaining.  It helps a lot that the whole movie runs only about 60 minutes before it's all over because parts of this are pretty slow and easily lead to boredom.  I did learn watching this that apparently burning a vampire/ghost's body during the day kills him. So that's good to know.  Check it out only if you dig the classics.

THE DRILLER KILLER (1979)

                                       "You into rock and roll head trips, baby?"

Abel Ferrara is one of my all-time favorite directors. The guy would go on to make way more polished films than this one and is probably best known for KING OF NEW YORK and/or BAD LIEUTENANT. Being a fan of cult/underground films though this one is probably my favorite of his followed closely by the also great MS. 45. I also generally love movies(like TAXI DRIVER) where the main character's life is unraveling and there's a slow downward spiral into madness.  The fact that this movie is so unpolished and looks like it was directed by a true maniac works highly in it's favor. It's sorta like if you took a slasher film and slammed it into a gritty punk rock documentary about a loser artist who's slowly slipping into madness. Like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE the film has that documentary look and feel that makes you feel sleazy just by observing it.  It's funny how almost every review I've ever read of this points out the low-budget and ugly-look as detriments when they're really the film's strongest assets.  You get the expected killer drill scenes including an impressively done(for the budget) head-drilling, lesbian showering, gratuitous crappy punk rock music, a rabbit's corpse mutilated  and tons of bad acting.  I would say if you're hardcore into typical 80's slasher flicks this one might not be for you.  Even though it's often lumped in with those this exists in a special place above those brainless purely splatter-for-splatter's-sake flicks.  Anyone who can appreciate insane cinema should check it out.  I still need to catch Ferrara's earlier porn flick because I can't imagine what that was like.

MESSIAH OF EVIL (1973)

I've tried watching this movie a couple of times and fallen asleep very soundly. Having finally endured the whole thing I have to say this is probably one of the worst horror films made in the whole decade of the 70's.  Things just sorta happen throughout the movie with only a half-assed explanation given.  There's a town full of pretty well behaved zombies that work as a team.  They do eat their victims but we never actually see that on screen.  We never actually see much gore at all just a little blood that comes out of peoples eyes for no reason and a nice throat-slitting pre-credit sequence.  There's a zombie guy that looks like he stepped out of THE OMEGA MAN who shows up everywhere.  The most memorable scene is that fellow biting a mouse's head off and drinking it's blood but I feel like I've seen that in way better films also.  This was shown last night on a double bill with THE DRILLER KILLER and the difference between those two films is like night and day.  D.K. is a loud in your face movie filled with energy and there's always something fucked-up going on.  It's also not hard to follow whereas this thing is just a muddled mess that's not worth trying to decipher.  It's sort of like if you took your typical nonsensical 1980's Lucio Fulci gore film and removed all the gory bits and added an annoying voice-over.  That would be fucking awful and that's what you get here.  Multiple AKA's include DEAD PEOPLE, REVENGE OF THE SCREAMING DEAD, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, NIGHT OF THE DAMNED, DEAD SWAMP and my personal fav MESSIAH OF THE EVIL DEAD