Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to the 40th edition of Brain Hammer’s PICKS FROM THE CRYPT! It’s hard to believe that I’ve been spewing my deranged ramblings all over this website for almost two fucking years. Time flies when you are having fun. I’d like to thank my drunken and shiftless editor Wil for giving me a place to call home. Big thanks to Molly for sending me all sorts of goodies in the mail (I’m still waiting for those dirty panties you promised me!) and I have to give a big shout out to everyone that has given me positive feedback on the message boards over the last two years.

The fact that people actually take the time to read what I write is always mind blowing, and I’m proud as Hell to know that my reviews have inspired more than a few dvd sales and rentals! The greatest compliment I’ve ever received was from a dude who told me that he saw a CLASS OF 1984 dvd on the shelf and thought of me. He bought that flick on the spot based on my recommendation and wound up loving it. That alone makes this column worth doing for me! It’s an honor for me to even be loosely associated with the classic horror and exploitation flicks that I love so much.

In honor of my 40th PFTC column, I have chosen three of my very favorite 80’s horror flicks about deranged serial killers that brutally slaughter women like cattle! Snuggle up with someone you love…and LET THE BLOODSHED BEGIN!!!

DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE (1980)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0080645

The late, great Nicholas Worth (Swamp Thing) chews up the scenery as Kirk Smith, a deranged Vietnam vet with a voracious appetite for weight lifting and strangulation. Kirk spends his days working as a sleazy photographer, prowling the streets of Los Angeles looking for attractive young women. When night falls the psycho strangler violently breaks into the homes of women that live alone and has his way with them. He enjoys burning them with candle wax, biting their breasts, and violating their every orifice. Kirk favors an unusual Vietnamese method of strangulation: wrapping a large gold coin in nylon and using it as a tourniquet to slowly squeeze the life from his lingerie clad victims.

Not content with the brutal acts of rape, mutilation, and strangulation, Kirk also has a fetish for leaving his victims’ dead bodies in lurid positions in public places. This final outrage is a slap in the face to the terrified citizens, and to the dumbfounded police. The ego maniacal serial killer also enjoys calling in to a local radio show to taunt the female psychologist host – Lindsay Gale, by boasting of his demented crimes in a terrible sounding Spanish accent. A police detective investigating the case becomes romantically involved with Lindsay, just as Kirk also decides to to set his sights on her. This love triangle quickly turns deadly, because no matter how hard Lindsay tries to stay alive – the murderer is always just a phone call away.

DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE is equal parts sleazy/disturbing/inept/hilarious. The sweaty psycho killer is fantastic and the numerous scenes of him in action are brutal and convincing stuff. Nicholas Worth does a great job playing an emotionally disturbed character, wildly fluctuating from angry to sobbing – often within the same scene. The movie then takes a turn for sheer unintentional hilarity whenever it features the bumbling police officers that are investigating the case. The comedic value is great enough that Rhino Home Video once released this film (in a heavily edited form) on dvd.

Don’t mistake this flick for pure schlock though, as it packs a quite a punch in the vein of other crude, yet effective flicks like “Don’t Go In The House” and “Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer.” The original storyline was based on the Michael Curtis novel “Nightline,” which was a fictionalized account of the notorious “Hillside Strangler” case. The corpses of the female victims being left in lurid, open legged display by the killer and the formation of a “strangler task force” are both taken directly from the real case.

Fans of serial killer flicks, police thrillers, brutal home invasion kills, and occasional moments of odd, out of place cheesy comedy will no doubt appreciate this. BCI released a beautiful looking, 100% uncut dvd release of DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE that includes goodies like a commentary track with director Robert Hammer (no relation), an interview with Nicholas Worth, a stills gallery, and a nifty trailer reel featuring ads for a few of Crown International’s classic genre flicks.

Check out the trailer for DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE!

MANIAC (1980)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0081114

The late great Joe Spinell (Rocky, The Godfather) commands the screen as Frank Zito, a deranged serial killer who prowls the streets of the big apple looking for beautiful women to rip the life out of. Frank was the end result of childhood of brutal child abuse. His beautiful mother Carmen tormented his young mind and savaged his body, leaving him with both emotional and physical scars. Despite this abuse Frank loved his mother with all of his heart and when she was taken from Frank when he was very young in an auto accident he never fully recovered.

His adult mind becomes lost in a sea of voices. He harbors a deep resentment for women, in particular the ones the ones that sit and smile and say “yes miss, no miss, not now miss, whatever you say miss?” In Frank’s defense – it really is enough to drive a man crazy. Frank defends himself with a shotgun and hunts for tasty game after dark. His male victims are just random joes caught with their pants down and are quickly disposed of with strangulation or a face full of lead. Frank Zito is a ladies man. The women are treated to more torturous ways of slaughter and are routinely strangled, shot, stabbed, and scalped.

The scalps are very important to Frank. He brings them home to his creepy looking apartment and nails them to the heads of mannequins that he uses for sex. Frank also dabbles in the arts. He works as a painter, abstracts mostly, some stilllifes, landscapes, that sort of thing. As an artist, Frank lives by the philosophy that things change, people die, but in a picture or painting they are yours forever. The mannequins are Frank’s supreme creation, and he captures the beautiful young women so that they may be his forever.

That’s why Frank has such a fancy for fancy girls and their fancy dresses and lipstick, laughing and dancing. He has to stop them because they don’t know when to stop. He warned them not to go out tonight. They can lock their windows and doors, but they can’t lock the madman out of their minds. The voices in Frank’s head implore him to be careful and always warn him that he could be taken away for doing the things he’s doing. This doesn’t stop Frank from stalking and slaying as many women as possible.

Frank’s already busy life becomes even more complicated when he takes a stroll in the park one day and winds up being photographed by a stunning young fashionista named Anna D’Atoni. (Caroline Munro of Slaughter High fame!) Frank tracks Anna down and the two hit it off in a big way. Despite possessing an appearance that could be politely described as “creepy looking” or perhaps “weird and greasy,” Frank charms the pants off of Anna and takes her out to dinner at a restaurant over in Jersey called Clams Casino. Great Italian food. Frank later attends one of Anna’s exclusive fashion shoots. This allows Frank the opportunity to tap his toes to the funky sounds of Don Armando and the 2nd Avenue Rhumba Band’s sizzling number “Goin’ To A Showdown.” It also gives Frank to the perfect chance to follow a model named Rita home and stick a large knife in her chest because she knew. Rita Knew.

Frank’s third and final date with Anna sadly didn’t go nearly as well. A nighttime visit to the graveyard to pay respects to the beautiful Carmen Zito sounds like a perfect date, but Frank loses control of his emotions at the gravesite. Overcome with the feeling of emptiness and loss, Frank desperately reaches out at for woman now closest to his heart and attacks Anna. Scared and confused, Anna lashes back with a shovel and gives Frank a terrible cut on his arm. Losing blood and the final shreds of his sanity, Frank lamely retreats to the comforts of his apartment. But the worst for Frank has yet to come. His many female companions now have revenge on their minds and decide to take matters, and Frank’s head into their own hands.

MANIAC is one of my all time favorite flicks. I recall having nightmares about a guy jumping up on the hood of my parent’s car and shooting us after watching Bill Lustig’s fucking masterpiece of sleazy splatter as a wee impressionable Brain Hammer. Tom Savini’s gore effects in this flick are some of the sickest stuff he’s ever done, and that is really saying something. The graphic scalpings, skewerings, and shotgun shenanigans vividly displayed in this flick caused many stomachs to turn when it was first released. Even Stephen King admitted to have been disgusted by it. In his 1981 book “Danse Macabre” he refers to the classic whore scalping scene as “well-nigh impossible to watch.”

This infamous and controversial flick really set a new standard for other 80’s flicks to follow in terms of grit and grue. Few slashers or exploitation flicks can come close when it comes to possessing a suffocatingly disturbing, perverse, and violent atmosphere. MANIAC is a brutal film that is clearly love it or hate it material and more than a few critics hated the film. Some self righteous cunts in California even took it upon themselves to paint over beautiful billboards with the classic Joe Spinell crotch shot artwork. Some newspapers refused to run ads, or even list the title of the film. Despite, or more likely because of this controversy the film was very successful. Joe Spinell was right, it wasn’t just a horror picture, it was a HAPPENING.

I really can’t say enough great things about Joe’s performance in this flick. MANIAC was Joe’s baby. Joe Spinell wrote both the story and screenplay and co-produced the film. His performance is completely over the top, but is also really disturbing because it comes across as real. MANIAC is a genuinely chilling film because there have been more than a few real life Frank Zitos in the world. Joe Spinell was one of the first people to accurately portray a demented serial killer and really delve deep into the twisted mind state and background of the character. He carries the whole movie. You spend every second with the killer and there’s no attempts to make sympathetic characters out of the victims. It’s to Joe’s credit that every scene in MANIAC is riveting. I’m a huge fan of Joe Spinell, I even have the Tony Gazzo action figure. It’s a shame he left us so soon, I would have loved to see him starring in more movies.

Bill Lustig did a great job here directing his first non-porno flick. MANIAC was made on a very small budget but still looks and sounds fantastic. Bill later went on to direct a string of cult classics, including “Vigilante” and the Bruce Campbell/Robert Z’Dar epic “Maniac Cop.” I consider MANIAC to be Bill’s true masterpiece, and I’m not alone on that one. This flick has quite the cult following. Frank Zito is known to prowl around the net, and even has his own myspace page.

Bill Lustig’s Blue Underground recently re released MANIAC on dvd. This is a must own dvd that includes a wealth of bonus features including audio commentary from Bill Lustig and Tom Savini, a 49 minute documentary on Joe Spinell, a radio interview with Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro, trailers, still gallery, and a “Gallery Of Outrage” consisting of the film’s many bad reviews. If you don’t have this in your collection you suck.

Check out the trailer!

NIGHTMARE (1981)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082818

A very sweaty man in tighty whiteys writhes around in his bed before waking up and finding a bloody severed head at the foot of his bed. The freshly severed head then opens its eyes, which causes the man to begin screaming. It was all just a dream – or a NIGHTMARE, if you will. The sweaty man in question is a criminally insane psychopath named George Tatum. George is a homicidal schizophrenic who suffers from mild amnesia, dream fixation, and seizures. After being arrested for the sexual mutilation and murder of a family in Brooklyn, George Tatum is sent to a mental hospital where he is force fed a cocktail of experimental hypnotic drugs.

The doctors hope to cure George of his reoccurring dreams and violent episodes by keeping him doped up and subjecting him to radical behavior modification techniques. The secret experiment is quickly dubbed a breakthrough success and the doctors believe that they have completely rebuilt his damaged mind. The next logical step is reprogramming George for future government and lucrative private sector use. Before George can be sold to the highest bidder, the doctor in charge of the experiment foolishly decides to release him into the general public on his own recognizances. This proves to be a deadly mistake.

George Tatum is still incurably insane. The drugs can only temporarily suppress his desire to kill and mutilate, they cannot completely erase the twisted memories from his mind. George begins cruising the NYC sex shops and the lurid sight of whores behind glass is enough to make him fall to the ground and begin foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal. George then hops into his car and begins the long drive from New York to Florida. George is strangely determined to track down a single mother named Susan Temper and her three children, and he is more than willing to kill anyone who gets in his way. For the Temper family, George’s twisted dreams become a real life nightmare that they can’t escape alive.

Writer and Director Romano Scavolini is the mastermind behind this controversial 1981 slasher flick. His inspiration for the story came from an article in the New York Times, which described how the CIA had been administering experimental drugs to schizophrenics. Scavolini used this disturbing idea as the basis for a horror story, and NIGHTMARE was the end result. What makes this film so disturbing is the fact that there has been plenty of real life George Tatums. He is not the boogeyman, or a masked mauler who strikes without any real reason or motive. George Tatum is a psychopath, and one of the most convincing in horror history.

Baird Stafford does a fantastic job in the lead role of George Tatum. He spends most of the movie sweating like a pig in his underwear. He might have been a little too convincing as a psycho, as he only went on to star in one other movie seven years later. The highlight of this flick for me is an incredible sequence where George Tatum suddenly appears behind a unsuspecting victim that is talking on the phone. Baird has just the slightest hint of a smile on his face, and you know the worst is about to come. He slits the woman’s throat and Scavolini treats the audience to a loving close up of her gushing wound. Blood spurts from her throat as she gurgles and struggles to breathe. Then George sits on top of her and begins slowly plunging the knife into her body. What makes this scene really stand out is the way that George appears to be fucking her with the knife. Sweat pours from his hair as he reaches his climax, and the scene is punctuated with a nasty shot of George licking the blood off his hands.

The rest of the cast is horrible, although it’s hard for me to decide if I dislike the actors or the characters that they are playing. The character of Susan Temper is one of the most thoroughly unlikable and unsympathetic I’ve ever seen. She’s a stressed out single mom who spends the majority of the film sleeping, fucking her bearded boyfriend Bob on his boat, and yelling at her children. There’s a scene where she completely abandons her children and thoughtlessly leaves them locked outside of their house while she frolics with her lover. Of course, with children as wretched as hers it’s somewhat easy to understand why she acts like she does. Her daughters are two chubby little pigs that never stop screeching and squeeling. And then there’s the one and only C.J.

C.J. Temper is a purely evil little bastard with a Dorothy Hamill haircut. He’s a rotten little schemer that loves to pull elaborate, mean spirited pranks on his family, friends, and babysitter. He smirks as the police are called in to investigate his dirty deeds. He later pours ketchup all over his body and pretends that someone stabbed him, which causes his frantic mother to almost kill herself racing home. Just when you think you can’t hate this little fucker any more, he then has the appalling nerve to mock the brutal death of his best friend. It’s almost impossible not to despise him and root for his violent demise. C.J. manages to be a formidable foe though, and proves to be an expert shot as he arms himself with a handgun and precisely blasts through a small hole in a door with the trained skill of a professional marksman.

No discussion of NIGHTMARE would be complete without mentioning the Tom Savini controversy that surrounds the film. Romano Scavolini claims that Tom Savini was the special effects supervisor for the entire film. Tom Savini claims that he never worked on the film because he was too busy working on Creepshow at the time. Despite Savini’s dismissal, there are several photos of him on the set that prove he worked on at least one scene in the move – the centerpiece decapitation by hatchet. This incredible scene is the bloody highlight of the film. It is shown in pieces throughout the film, and then shown in its entirety at the climax. Fans of Friday The 13th will find this decapitation to be a very close recreation of the classic Betsy Palmer head slice. Watch the blood flow, watch the twitching hands in front of the body. It’s trademark Tom Savini. There’s really no denying that he created that effect. How much, if any of the rest of the film he worked on is debatable. The rest of the effects in the film are all effectively gruesome, but they are perhaps not quite up to snuff with Savini’s usual work.

Tom Savini was furious when his name was splashed all over the posters for NIGHTMARE, and he successfully sued the production to have his name removed from the ads. His name still appears in the credits of the film though. Savini claims that the producers offered to pay him for his name value only, not for his work. He found this distasteful and dishonest and refused. Romano Scavolini on the other hand is adamant that Savini was the special effects supervisor on the film, and claims that Savini refused to have his name on the film because he wanted the credit to go to his friend and assistant Ed French instead. Regardless of who you choose to believe, the photos prove that Savini worked on the film in some capacity. It remains one of the great slasher controversies to this day.

NIGHTMARE was also a source of much controversy in the UK. The film was banned by BBFC as a Video Nasty, and the head of UK video distributor Oppidan served six months in jail for selling an uncut version of the film! This is the only time in history that someone went to jail for distributing a horror film. Angry critics and bad reviews savaged the film in every country it was released in. The New York Daily News wrote three separate articles attacking the film. Despite, or more likely because of this controversy, the film quickly became a box office success. Variety reported that the film earned over 4 million in 28 cities throughout America and Canada. Not bad for a low budget slasher flick.

I consider NIGHTMARE to be one of the very best 80’s slasher flicks. It works in a big way because of how brutal and realistic it feels. There are a lot of other slasher flicks that are faster paced and have better acting and higher production value, but very few can compare in terms of sleaze, splatter, and an overall sense of shock and disgust. If you want to go inside the mind of a schizophrenic killer, this is a must see flick. This is also essential viewing for all fans of slasher flicks. At the moment, there hasn’t been a proper dvd release in the States. The good folks at Code Red are currently working on a special edition dvd release, and the sooner this happens the better. I am a huge fan of this flick and it deserves a much larger audience.

Check out the trailer for NIGHTMARE…if you dare!!!

KEEP THE BLOOD FLOWING!!!