THE CHILD (1977)

 This one has some great creepy atmosphere, some ghouly monsters running around, some decent gore shots and a creepy little girl. It sorta plays like an American version of a Jean Rollin Eurotrash film. On the down side it's super slow, has some really clunky acting going on and nothing is ever really explained. The monsters seem like they could be created from the little girls subconscious but that's just a guess she also might just be good at raising wacky-looking corpses from the dead to get revenge on people who piss her off. An interesting oddball flick that's maybe worth watching once if you like off-kilter 70s horror stuff. AKA ZOMBIE CHILD and KILL AND GO HIDE

Italian title(HOUSE OF THE ZOMBIES):

Sweet gory poster!!:

THE CURIOUS DR. HUMPP (1969)

 Very strange movie here. There's this talking brain in a jar who controls this doctor who sends out his monstrous experiment, who wears sparkly platform shoes and likes to play music for naked ladies, to capture various couples, some hippies in an orgy, a coupla lesbians and a stripper. From there our titular Dr. Humpp fills them full of an aphrodisiac and extracts "bodily fluids" from them while they're screwing in order to keep himself alive. Oh and he also has an army of robot-like henchman to guard his castle and dispose of the bodies he's used up. What the point of all this is I'm not totally clear, something about finding the key to immortal life or something. For a movie that's chock fulla so many bizarre things it does drag a bit and it's runtime seems a bit long. On the other hand it's so strange that you kinda have to at least watch this one once just to say you did. It kinda reminded me of a more sex-filled AWFUL DR. ORLOFF and if that sounds good to you give it a look.
 This was originally released in Argentina under the title THE VENGEANCE OF SEX with way less sex scenes(17 minutes or so of them) which were inserted by the American distributor to make it an "adult" film. This would probably make the film flow a lot better.

AUTOPSY (1975)

 I probably would like this movie more if it had a different leading actress. Mimsy Farmer looks fine and maybe it's not even her fault but usually the roles she's in tend to irritate me in some way or another. In this one she has loads of dreams and hallucinations and freaks out constantly. Another thing I tend to hate is when a movie starts blending reality with fantasy and we're supposed to keep track of what's real and what's in the mind of a koo-koo nutjob lady. This film I suppose is technically considered a giallo but it strays from that and just seems like a very strange murder-filled film that I couldn't totally get into or find myself caring much about the characters. I have only seen the old VHS-tape version of this so there's probably a few juicer parts missing but from what I saw I'm not really in a huge rush to view this again for a while. On the positive side though there is plenty of nudity, sex and sleaze and some gory bits in the morgue which make this an interesting movie to watch in your backyard while nosey neighbors try out their peeping skills. AKA CORPSE, THE MAGICIAN and THE VICTIM. There's also a cut version titled TENSION.

EDGE OF THE AXE (1988)

 Out of all the gazillion 80s slasher flicks this one is right down there towards the bottom. The death scenes are decent enough and they do deliver the axe-violence that we're promised with the title but in-between these parts are a lot of boring bits where everyone is a jerk and our main character, Barton Faulks, is a nerd who is obsessed with computers(which may have been slightly more exciting in 1988). The killer is also fairly generic with his plain white mask and the big reveal at the end seems pretty dumb. To put a rotten cherry on top of all this the music on the soundtrack is insufferable garbage. Stick with the early 80s slashers for less dull bloodshed.
 This movie was an American and Spanish co-production but I would have never guessed that by watching it since it comes off as a standard U.S. direct-to-video flick(though it probably at least had a theatrical release in Spain). Also I woulda never guessed the  director of this was Jose Ramon Larraz(using his Americanized pseudonym Joseph Braunstein) since back in the 70s he made VAMPYRES which is quite a stylish, good-looking film and there's nothing at all stylish about the look of this thing. Jack Taylor does show up in a small part which shoulda clued me in that there was a Eurotrash connection here.

FRIDAY THE 13th PART 2 (1981)

 So this one pretty much negates the whole premise to the first movie since now Jason Voorhees actually exists which means his mom was killing all those people in that other movie for no reason whatsoever. Of course following some sort of cohesive plotline was never really all that important with this series and that starts right here with the first sequel. Jason wears a sack on his head like The Elephant Man, a double murder/shish-ka-bob killing is ripped off from Mario Bava's BAY OF BLOOD and it's all pretty similar to the first movie. They also get rid of the final girl from the first movie, Adrienne King, and Crazy old Ralph, Walt Gorney, giving that film even less importance. This pretty much sets the standard with the next film giving Jason the final touch when he finds his hockey mask. Pretty standard slasher given more importance than it probably should have just because it's part of this very popular(with horror freaks anyway) series.

 

EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE (1995)

 Prime example of why 90s Hollywood cinema is garbage. I'm pretty sure the only reason anyone has ever viewed this film is to see Alyssa Milano doing her first nudie scenes after being Tony Danza's little sweetheart on WHO'S THE BOSS?. The only reason I watched this is because a friend of mine is obsessed with Alyssa Milano and this is the movie to watch to see a lot of naked Alyssa Milano. The weird thing is that Miss Milano plays a virgin raised in a convent who strangely, but thankfully, ends up with her boobs out a lot plus as a bonus she dabbles in a bit of lesbianism.  That and the other naked vampire chicks are pretty much the only things of interest for me in this though since the whole thing is what I imagine TWILIGHT is like except without the boobs and sex.  I've never seen those movies since I'm not 12 years old but so far this is probably the worst vampire related movie I have ever seen.  It seems to me if you're gonna make a vampire movie with tits maybe you would want it to appeal to someone over 13 but, who knows, maybe they were aiming at the typical mainstream male who has the mentality of  a child anyway.  So I guess if you just wanna fast forward through all the stupid boring parts go ahead or just watch those clips online like a smart person. Being a masochist I did view this whole movie and somehow managed to stay awake while doing so. It's quite boring. There's a lame-ass vampire who I guess is bi-sexual because he transforms into a horny Jennifer Tilly at one point to make out with the male lead. Milano plays a virginal girl at first but then becomes sort-of a lesbian before it all ends. The plot concerns our dumb vampire trying to get Milano to fall in love with him. Why he doesn't just bite her and get it all over with really quickly I'm not sure but whatever. Don't watch this unless you like bad 90s fashion, shitty soundtrack music, dull characters and a dreaded TWILIGHT-like romantic theme. AKA THE NOSFERATU DIARIES: EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE
 There was a remake in 2012 because I guess there's a law now that they have to remake everything that was ever done before.

THE WILD WORLD OF BATWOMAN (1966)

 Director Jerry Warren had a whole career making crappy movies. This is another one. No real plot to speak of, cringe-worthy comedic efforts and not much amazing superheroics take place . This one does have some cool stuff in it though. Like rock n roll go-go dancing, goofy outfits, a bad-guy named Rat Fink(who looks nothing like and has nothing to do with the real Rat Fink), some crazy hairdos, the mole people from the movie THE MOLE PEOPLE show up! and it even turns into a beach party movie for a little bit. It's like a time capsule back to before the world was dulled and you could goof on stupid TV shows like BATMAN. Warren did wind up getting sued by DC Comics for that but he ended up winning. He did eventually change the name of this upon re-release to SHE WAS A HIPPY VAMPIRE. Which is a bit weird since no one is actually a vampire. If you're looking for some groovy visuals with not much plot to get in the way throw this on to liven up the atmosphere in your tiki bar.

SHATTERED INNOCENCE (1988)

 The real-life tragic story of porn star Shauna Grant could probably make a decent movie. Perhaps something along the lines of STAR 80. Sadly this is a made-for-TV deal and is pretty much like everything else that played on the Lifetime Channel back in the 80s complete with overacting/over-dramatization of everything. It also works as a very anti-porn diatribe which we've all seen done a million times before and after this and that becomes quite humorous and boring all at the same time. The main character here given the porn name of 'Lara Dawn' has such awful clueless parents(particularly her screeching mother) that it's sorta hard to feel too sorry for them when things end badly. The story takes place in the 80s yet they choose crappy Fleetwood Mac and Peter Frampton songs from the previous decade to put on the soundtrack for some reason. Overall it's a typical TV-movie where you get exactly what you expect.
 When I first started watching this I thought maybe it was the story of porn star Savannah but that woulda taken place in the 90s and that hadn't happened yet. Why the hell didn't she get a stupid TV-movie made about her? Life is so unfair!  



The real Shauna:

THE AMBULANCE (1990)

 This is the worst Larry Cohen-directed movie I've seen. Written and directed by the man who has always entertained me in the past with his killer baby movies, blaxploitation gems and Q, THE WINGED SERPENT. I guess even he wasn't capable of making a very good film once the dreaded 1990s came along. There are some weird elements in this including star Eric Roberts and his very 90s mullet, his sidekick played by a 70-year-old Red Buttons(who kicks ass using a bedpan in one delightful scene), James Earl Jones as a police captain who's afraid of comic books and Robert's boss played by Marvel Comics Stan Lee in what might be one of the biggest roles I've ever seen him in. The movie itself is a mix between horror/thriller, action and some stupid comedy thrown in. It mostly fails at being a good example of any of those things. Everyone Roberts meets is a complete asshole to him which sorta makes sense since his character is no prize himself and his sole motivation throughout the movie seems to be to screw a girl that he just met(and harassed) and has become instantly infatuated with. Stick with Cohen's earlier stuff for a better time.

RESPECTABLE: THE MARY MILLINGTON STORY (2016)

  Outside of maybe seeing a few nudie pics of her in some British porn mags I acquired at a young age I really didn't know much about Mary Millington before seeing this documentary. I think it's safe to say she was a way bigger deal in England than here in the U.S. but even if you have no idea who she was this is still a fairly entertaining look at a very uninhibited lady who came out of the swinging 60s and worked her way through the European smut-market to make a whole bunch of money off of horny fellows. It's all the more remarkable that she was able to accomplish this living in a country where much of the material she appeared in was technically illegal at the time but notoriety does sell and it did just as well 40 years or so ago.
 This made me want to seek out a bunch of British sex comedies that she appeared in(COME PLAY WITH ME, THE PLAYBIRDS etc.) as soon as I can! It does play, for the most part, more like a TV special(with porn scenes!) than a feature film but it's still worth a watch to see how far, in some ways, we've come from certain types of repression. Of course it could be argued that today's repressive ideologies are just as pervasive but hey at least you can watch porn in England so I guess that's something nice.

TIME CHASERS (1994)

 I tried watching this back when it was originally featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and I would never make it all the way through the movie because it was so awful. Having seen it done by the Rifftrax guys I did make it to the end but really only because it was in a theater and I already payed for my ticket, oh and also the couple of beers I had in honor of Cinco de Mayo helped me along. This is a really terrible movie but it was made in 1994 so I do pretty much expect that. It's clearly a low-budget sorta rip-off of BACK TO THE FUTURE which I was never a huge fan of either but at least that movie was done well whereas this is not so much. Stupid plot about time traveling using an airplane and a Commodore 64 computer, lame fx, action scenes that are as dull as can be and not very appealing actors doing stuff that really makes no sense. I guess watch it only if there are people making fun of it and even then it's a tough watch. AKA TANGENTS

The pride of Vermont!:


Oh those wacky robots!: