WARNING: If you don’t like spoilers, do not read any further. This review will be full of them. Sorry, that’s just how I roll.

The trailer was my first exposure to this film. I remember seeing it on TV and it immediately caught my interest simply because of its title—HUMONGOUS! Based on what you see in it, you can easily assume it’s a monster movie, and that’s what I thought it was. I also thought it took place in a jungle and not the woods.

I didn’t end up actually seeing the movie until it hit cable, and it hit right around the time that HBO series, THE HITCHHIKER, was playing. The guy who opens and closes the show, Page Fletcher, is also in HUMONGOUS. He’s in the prologue only, and from what IMDB says, HUMONGOUS was his first acting gig.

As the movie went on, I quickly learned, to my disappointment, that it wasn’t the kind of monster movie I was hoping it would be. There’s a monster in it, no doubt, but it’s of the deformed man-child variety. I watched it regardless, and in the end it never made much of an impression on me. It’s funny, though, how your tastes in movies change as you get older. Movies you may have liked and even loved in youth, you may end up disliking or outright hating as an adult, and visa versa. HUMONGOUS falls into the latter category thanks to an opportunity I had, via a bootleg DVD I secured, by happenstance mind you, to see the movie before it hit “legit” DVD.

My express purpose was to see if my original assessment of the movie had stood the test of time. It did not. I enjoyed it more now than when I was a kid.

Okay, now, let’s dissect this mother.

HUMONGOUS begins on ‘Labour Day Weekend, 1946,’ with what one can gather is a posh party on some unnamed non-tropical island. This is where Page Fletcher comes in. He plays a real douchebag of a scumbag who’s drunk and has designs on this one particular chick. You get the impression right away that she doesn’t like him, but whether it was from a relationship gone bad, or from just some sick fascination Fletcher’s character may have had towards her, we never learn. Their backstory is never fleshed out other than what you see in the prologue. Not saying that’s a bad thing, just stating it as a matter of fact.

Like all scumbags who get drunk and have their eye on a girl at a party, things turn bad real quick. He follows her off to a secluded place, his pestering the turns into bitch slapping, and that in turn quickly escalates into a full fledge rape. As the rape occurs, the German shepherds she was paying attention to in their pen prior get agitated by her screaming, and start to climb over the fence.

Keep in mind this version Scorpion Releasing has put out is the UNCUT version, and most of the cutting that was done is right here in the rape scene. There’s a special feature you can access labeled, R-Rated Beginning Scene. On the back of the DVD it’s called, Alternate Pre-Credit Sequence. The R-Rated version was the version that was also put onto VHS and aired on cable, as is mentioned in the commentary, and the footage that is cut are close-ups of Fletcher’s drunk, sweaty, quivering face as he rapes her. Without these scenes, it looks like he only beat her. The dogs attacking him in the moments that follow the rape was edited, too. A horrible wound on his Achilles’ heel; where it’s shown to be nothing but a bloody hole was excised and so was the fatal beating she gives him with a rock was altered. She hits him twice; one of those blows was excised for the theatrical cut. In this new version you also get to see a longer shot of him just laying there coughing up blood before she bashes him.

The scene dissolves and we move into the opening credit sequence, which is a montage of period photos of this woman as she grows up, and of her family and friends, set to laid-back music from the forties. It’s a nice touch, which sets it apart from what you would expect from what was advertised as a simple “monster movie.”

When we finally get to the movie’s protagonists, we learn three of them are related: the two guys and the short chick with the huge glasses. The two remaining girls are the guy’s respective girlfriends. Aside from Page Fletcher, the only other two actors I am somewhat familiar with is the red-head, Joy Boushel, who’s the girlfriend of the group’s resident douchebag, and Janet Julian, the main squeeze of the movie’s perceived hero. The former actress I have only seen in one other movie, David Cronenberg’s remake of THE FLY. She played the chick Jeff Goldblum picks up in the bar after he destroys that guy’s wrist when they arm-wrestled. Julian looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her, that is until I listened to the commentary and learned she played Nancy Drew in that seventies, Hardy Boys TV show with Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy.

Both chicks display ample amounts of T&A, with only Boushel, though, getting naked, from the waist up. Julian’s trim, tight, nipple-popping frame, however, is constantly on display in the skintight clothing she wears. The short girl, with the horrendous glasses, has a body, you can tell in a few shots, but the filmmakers decided to keep it covered with sweat pants and long sleeve shirts through most of the film.
For shame, filmmakers, for shame.

When we first see the kids, it’s evident right off the bat there is tension between the brothers, and even between the douchebag brother and his chick as they all get ready to take off to places unknown in their boat. This is the one problem I had with the movie, and with all movies where there are a group of people under siege by some outside force. For some reason filmmakers think they can’t generate any conflict if they don’t have a resident douchebag in the group. They don’t seem to realize that every person has the ability to be a douchebag from time to time, just like they all have the ability to be heroes. Instead they saddle one person with so much douchism that it makes it hard to believe he, or she, would have any friends in the first place.

Case in point with HUMONGOUS’, Nick Simmons, played by John Wildman. After they rescue a guy stranded on a boat in the middle of the foggy night, douchebag Nick, feeling perpetually inadequate and drunk decides for no reason at all to start the boat up and get it moving. Mind you the guy they rescued warned them not to keep going for their boat will get stranded on the treacherous rocks near what he calls, Dog Island. Up to the point when Nick decides to move the plot forward and fuck everyone’s lives up, they all decided to sit it out until morning.

The guy they rescued tells them about the old, reclusive woman who lives on the island and is only seen twice a year when she goes into town for supplies. We also learn later that she owns a lot of dogs. You can see there is more than a little connection between this old lady and the chick we saw raped in the prologue.

Another plot point that isn’t set up well is the fire that starts when Nick runs the boat into the rocks. All you see is a fire start up. How did it start? We may never know. Apparently, the writer and director don’t know either, for they point that error out on the commentary.

Everyone dives off the boat, except Carla, the chick with the glasses, before it explodes, and manages to make it to shore. This is when the dying starts. By the way, Carla shows up later in the last glaring plot point error when she’s discovered hiding in the boathouse, the same boathouse where Nick ends up getting killed. She rattles off a quick explanation of how she got there, but no indication she was aware of Nick’s death, which it seems to me she should have been. How could she not be.

THE ‘DEFORMED’ FACE OF DEATH

Our first kid to take a dirt nap is Douchebag Nick, who once he gets to the island is suddenly acting all normal and probably sorry he fucked everyone like he did. To make up for it he volunteers to hike up the cliff and to the old woman’s house for help. During his hike through the woods we get another pet peeve of mine that filmmakers occasionally perpetrate when filming someone at night—the dreaded day-for-night gag. Or, in the case of HATCHET, they set up so many huge spotlights, which I assume is to mimic moonlight that it still ends up looking like day. The moon does not shine that bright at night. Believe me. Anyhow, to the director’s credit he mentions that the shot I just mentioned should have been darker. Ironically, the bootleg I saw of it this passed summer was so grainy that it looked more like a night shot than this remastered transfer does.

Nick is chased by a dog and eludes it, and manages to make it to a boathouse. This is where our deformed man-child cuts the kid’s life short, first by scaring him shitless by shoving his deformed eyeball up to a crack in the wall as the kid peers out, then by making him scream like a girl when he busts in to kill him.

And that’s it.

The movie, overall, is not full of gore. Only one gore shot exists and that’s when Carla is killed.

The next ones to go are Nick’s girlfriend, Donna, and the guy they saved, whose name may or may not be, Bert. I can’t recall. Bert suffered a foot injury in the boat debacle and has gone into some kind of shock and is lying on the beach freezing, so Donna decides to put her assets to good use and undo her shirt and lay against him to give him some body heat. Our deformed man-child attacks in a rather effectively edited scene, throwing Donna onto the ground in such a fashion that insinuates she was probably just killed, and Bert has his throat stomped on by the creature. All this happens in split second cuts that work wonderfully.

Our supposed hero, Eric, is the next in line to push up daisies. His death scene is nicely played out as the “creature” bursts up from its lair in the cellar. Eric gets the upper hand first, though, by seemingly beating it into unconsciousness, but sadly this isn’t the case. The creature attacks just as he tells his chick that everything’s okay now. The humongous brute puts Eric into a bear hug and snaps his back like a fucking twig.

Finally, we get to Carla, whose walking papers are handed to her at the end of the movie when she runs out of the boathouse and into Sandy, but you see Sandy is in the middle of running for her life, and poor Carla has no idea what hits her when she’s picked up by Humongous man-child and has her face crushed. She’s then tossed aside like yesterday’s garbage as the “creature” pursues Sandy into the boathouse for their anti-climatic confrontation that involves a lot of fire and a burned down boathouse.

The ending here is where we finally get to see some of the man-child, but only from a distance, and the only close-ups we ever get of him are of his eyeball earlier in the movie and his burned visage at the very end of the flick after Sandy has impaled him on a sign post. It’s stated in the commentary that due to their low budget the FX for Mr. Humongous didn’t come out as planned, hence why we never really see what he looks like until he’s all burned up.

The movie ends with a final shot of Sandy sitting on the dock.

Also stated in the commentary is how shortchanged HUMONGOUS got come time for it’s release back in 1982. Avco Embassy was changing hands at the time, and the new guy in charge wanted nothing more to do with horror movies, it’s also suggested this is why the marketing campaign gave it such a shitty poster and why it got such a limited release.

Despite those “flaws” I mentioned earlier, which aren’t so bad that they’ll distract you from the movie as a whole, this is a damn good movie that starts out making you think you’re getting a slasher movie, or a monster movie, but it ends up giving you something a bit more subdued, and something a tad more layered, in the nature of the “creature,” that is. There are times when you do feel sorry for what it is, and what it has to do to survive. Yes, it’s a horror movie, but not a gore filled one, which sometimes, believe it, or not, I actually like.

THE DEFORMED MAN-CHILD ON DISC

Scorpion Releasing has done wonders at restoring this movie to how it should have looked when it first hit VHS. What was once a grainy and extremely dark movie, so much so that when it gets to the point in the movie when the kids are investigating the house, the film was pretty much unwatchable is now full of detail and light where there should be light. Those unwatchable scenes are still dark but not to the point where you can’t see the shapes of furniture and doorways and knick-knacks, and other sundry articles.

The movie has been released as part of Katarina’s Nightmare Theater Line. Who is Katarina Leigh Waters you might ask? Good question since I have never heard of it before now either. Apparently, she’s an ex-WWE wrester, and acts in low budget films from time to time. Like Code Red who has their own ex-wrestling diva, Scorpion has scored Katarina to host a line of movies, presumably with the same tactic in mind as Code Red, to get a new demographic of buyers to see if that can make more money.

And, like Code Red, Katarina bookends each film, but unlike Code Red’s Maria Kanellis, who does comedy shtick, Katarina actually talks about the movie providing trivia about it stars and filmmakers where she can.

She also moderates the commentary with director, Paul Lynch, writer, William Gray, and Horror Journalist, Nathaniel Thompson, but does not get in the way of their very informative talk. Gray and Lynch also worked on DEADLY EYES (aka THE RATS) and THE CHANGELING respectively, and also share a couple of accounts from those movies as well. The best one being that the house in THE CHANGELING was not supposed to burn down at the end of that film! Guess someone didn’t get the memo.

There’s also the aforementioned R-Rated Beginning Scene, which I discussed earlier on the DVD, and a bunch of trailers for other movies in the Katarina’s Nightmare Theater Line. And, if you don’t like the Katarina banner on the top of the DVD cover, there’s reversible artwork without it.

Read Shawn’s Dissecting NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980).

Being a movie hoarder, er….collector, certain titles repeat in my collection and not just once, twice but sometimes three, four or five editions of the same title. Gaining numerous items of the exact title does a number on my subconscious; the notion that is inserted about these various editions leaves me lethargic in getting to the actual movie and, in turn, can cease my ambition in reviewing a blu-ray edition of one of the best, if not the best, exploitive movie we’ve seen to date! Cannibal Holocaust is notorious around the world and was once believed, and probably considered still is, a snuff film even if the actors have revealed themselves alive and well. In my eyes, Cannibal Holocaust is a kind of snuff film, but not the sort of snuff film that you’re thinking.

A deep exploration professor is led into the vast, civilized-untouched world of the jungle where four documentary filmmakers had vanished two months ago. These cocky filmmakers seek to reap the jungle’s local tribes who have never seen the white man and prefer the taste of human as a delicacy amongst themselves. What the professor finds among the tribe are a weary group of tribesman and frightened tribal women; he also discovers the remains the skinned to the bone remains of the four filmmakers and their lost footage. He brings the footage back to America and before a mainstream program can display the images before their captivated audiences, he screens it and nothing could prepare himself to the monstrosities displayed not only by the jungle and the tribe buy also by the four documentarians.

Ruggero Deodato has been accused, arrested, guilt-driven and combated about his controversial 1980 feature in which actors have stated during production have feared for their lives and years after production wanted nothing to do with the film or Deodato ever again. The tribulations of Cannibal Holocaust mask the brilliancy of Deodato’s direction and editing creating an unfortunate blinding girth of graphic flesh eating scenes, nearly raw sexual aggressions against women, and glorifying the malevolence displayed by the four filmmakers. Cannibal Holocaust is a film within a film; creating two very separate stories and entwining them into one very real heart stopping and ghastly story that is gracefully scored playfully and disturbingly by Riz Ortolani, who ironically mostly scored comedies.

Shameless Films of the United Kingdom brings Cannibal Holocaust to Hi-Def and we all know what that means; it means every detail, every intense graphic situation will be displayed will be detailed to the very last piece of torn flesh from the bone. Watch the cannibal tribe chew bits of intestines between the gaps of their dentist forbidden chompers! Yum-mie! Shameless provides two versions of the film; the Deodato edited version which omits minutes upon minutes of real animal cruelty (the snuff film I had referred to up top) and the uncut, “road-to-hell” version. The latter option I would definitely opt into if I were you! This blu-ray edition is fine-tuned and well worth the extra few bucks in shipping from our British brothers.

When people think of director Tobe Hooper, the outstanding Gunnar Hansen, chain-swinging Texas Chainsaw Massacre film from 1974 will be the first relative thought to pass behind their eyes. The automatic thought process can’t be helped; Hooper has pre-determined and programmed our minds with his best and most popular work. He did such a good job at consolidating our minds that we can’t even envision his other work that stands alone out there in the cinema world (with the exclusion of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 because that is part of the same franchise.).

The acclaimed director has other genre defying films that seem to be forgotten or these films are beloved, yet Hooper is never to be the connected with them when you’re watching the film or just even being told the title. Eaten Alive, Lifeforce, Spontaneous Combustion, Salem’s Lot, and The Mangler are all a part of Hooper’s legacy and all are a part of a wide range of talented genre qualities ranging from serial killers to psycho-kinetics to vampires to sci-fi. There lies no surprise that Hooper decided to take on a project that involves clowns and a mutant mongoloid in the 1981 carnival classic The Funhouse.

Amy Harper was told specially not to go to a traveling carnival that has come to town because of their fatally-shady past. Her three friends convince her otherwise, leading her to a rather fun night, but when one of them suggests spending the night in the funhouse, that’s when the trouble starts. The four witness a lumbering carny murder another after a verbal conversation takes place. With no way of getting out, the friends are trapped in the funhouse with a hideous, fearful killer mongoloid and his father are seeking to set things right…the carny way.

Hooper does an amazing job as always setting up the atmosphere with the world he directs. The Funhouse is no different as the carnival world comes alive in the most creepy manner. Hooper delivers a psychedelic feel and adding nightmare worthy clowns and a mutant with a green Frankenstein mask won’t have any one sleeping well for weeks. There’s such a serious tone about the carnival barkers that comes off haunting and malevolent. All three barkers are played by Kevin Conway and with Conway’s tone of voice, there is no distinguishing between evil and good. The Funhouse itself is a titled character as the force that is keeping the friends from their safety. Filling with horror elements and many secret passages, the funhouse becomes a death trap maze and only the carnies know the way out. The cinematography by Andrew Laszlo is absolutely stunning for early 80′s horror. You have Hoopers dark and gritty old house basement look from Texas Chainsaw Massacre and then there is the cool steel of air shafts and vivid colors of the funhouse all coming together to make a single entity.

The Funhouse has become one of the favorite carnival carnage films that I’ve seen. It also marks one of the few times the lead actress shares with us her can-cans and lives to tell the tale! You may not know the name Elizabeth Berridge but you will sure remember her twins! In all seriousness, The Funhouse is a stellar ride in a hokey fashion – no gruesome blood and only sheer terror. I hope that when you see The Funhouse, you will then think of Tobe Hooper. Check out The Funhouse being released by Arrow Films; their packaging and menus are quite impressive. This Blu-ray release has the best image quality I’ve seen from them in quite awhile in comparing their other releases.

Savage Streets. The only movie to bring Linda Blair, Linnea Quigley and John Vernon together where drugs, rape and murder live and breathe on the streets of Los Angeles. In an era where the punk-apocalypse was in high time with similar films like Death Wish 3 and Class of 1984, Savage Streets fits snugly right into the fold creating a mixture of women empowerment, revenge and crime doesn’t pay. Though Savage Streets lacked a popularity-winning audience, the Danny Steinmann and Arrow Films released film exploits a lot of guts in this more urban day of the woman flick.

When a drugged out gang of foursome beat and rape the deaf and mute little sister of high school bad girl Brenda, the punks opened Pandora’s box. Hot on their tails, Brenda vows to hunt down the individuals; the only problem is she hasn’t the slightest clue who they are, but as the tensions build between the four, one of them is on the verge of cracking and spilling all of his guilt in the wake of Brenda’s anger. Armed with a crossbow and a merciless thirst for blood, no one stands a living chance against a bitch with attitude.

In the height of her short lived career, Savage Streets could be said to be her last cult movie, but at what cost? Blair has noticeably gained weight, even since her role in Hell Night in which she still looks as thin as she did in the Exorcist. Also, Blair decides to have a moment of zen and expose her breasts…her large supple breasts; I’m sure this gave all the fan boys a thrill. Was Blair aware of her decline in stardom and decide to pull the oldest card trick and going the nude route, perhaps, but this is a bold film for her by taking the role of a leader of an all woman sweetheart gang and putting a spin on I Spit on your Grave. So, there has to be some judging of the weight on what you may contribute the lack of success for both Savage Streets and Linda Blair.

The plot relies mostly on chance as the extreme coincidences of Brenda’s gang and male gang, led by a vicious Jake played by the ugly mug of Robert Dryer, being at the same places at the same time can be considered a stretch in some cases. However, these coincidences always lead to interesting results resulting in brutality to no limits. As the film progresses, Jake’s gang goes from being a bunch of druggies having a good time to reeking hell on the streets truly making them savage. Their motivations are trivial at best, but their stoned out mentality rots away their conscious leaving them ruthless and cold and making it easier for us to loathe them. Sal Landi as ultra-bod Fargo and Scott Mayer as the hyena Red complete and compete with Jake’s irrationality to beyond insane.

British DVD and Blu-ray release company Arrow Films brings Savage Streets back to UK DVD but with a price. Plagued with ghosting image issues and audible discrepancies, this release comes off a bit of an annoyance. Luckily for us, Director Danny Steinmann really put out some remarkable clear scenes that can be clearly visible even to the clouded eye. Check out http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/Arrow Film’s release of Savage Streets, but make sure you own a region free player or else you’ll be waiting for this cult classic for a long time.

(Blood Buddy)

(Batteries Not Included)

DVD Release Company: MGM / 20th Century Fox (http://www.mgm.com / 20th Century Fox)
Language: English
Length: 87 Minutes
Image: Color
Year: 1988
Rated: R (Violence and Language)
Release Date: September 15, 2009

“This is the end, friend.” – Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent)

MOVIE REVIEW

Children are creepy. Dolls made to resemble children are creepier. This is what makes Child’s Play a frighteningly bold movie. It makes the childlike doll an actual character, giving it life, a voice, a persona and a motive to kill. Child’s Play introduces a madness that topples over our notion of precious innocence and it cuts deep into our childhood to where we can never look at a doll the same ever again.

All young Andy Barclay ever wanted for his birthday was a Good Guy doll. When he finally gets one of the red headed, “hi-di ho” Good Guys, he can’t wait to get rid of it. The doll is possessed with the soul of a notorious Chicago serial strangler, Charles Lee Ray, played by one of the genre’s most recognizable character actors Brad Dourif. Andy and his mom Karen, played by Catherine Hicks, must try and convince detective Mike Norris (Fright Night’s Chris Sarandon) that the doll is alive and killing without batteries.

I can see where some casual movie folks may watch this late 80s classic and say, “What is so scary about a doll?” Chucky is no ordinary doll, in fact, Chucky is only a doll on the outside. On the inside, he is a monster; a madman who will stop at nothing to get what he wants even if he is only 4 feet tall. An instant successful film that has a doll with the same or, perhaps even more, screen time than the main characters.

Sarandon chases Dourif

One of the reasons this film does so well is for its remarkable casting choices. I want to start with Chris Sarandon. His performance in Fright Night still chills the spine as the vampire next door neighbor Jerry Dandridge. Here, he is the hard working, honest cop looking for the truth and tying up the loose ends. He is Charles Lee Ray’s nemesis to the end, friend! Catherine Hicks has that wholesome appeal and that ability to make you believe if something unreal is going down then it must be real. You have to give most of the film’s credit to the next two actors: Alex Vincent and Brad Dourif. Vincent plays Andy Barclay, the six year old kid who knows Chucky’s alive and nobody believes him. His performance is flawless, making him one of my favorite child actors. The adorable factor helps because you want to sympathize with this kid so much yet nobody wants to believe him. Brad Dourif is Chucky. His voice is powerful, making the persona of Chucky powerful and, also, evil to the stuffing. Dourif’s voice dubbing makes you forget Chucky is made of shiny plastic – or made of animatronic mechanisms for that matter.

The doll itself is revolutionary. For the creators, it was a succeed or fail scenario. Good Guy doll Chucky is a pioneer of the new wave of animatronics that were steadily being implemented into movies in the late 80s. Kevin Yagher showed up with his A game and made director Tom Holland, and I’m sure the pockets of studio execs as well, very pleased. Though these techniques were relatively freshmen in the college of special effects, they hold such a high bar over any computer generated images in realism. Chucky had various moving parts in his face (mouth, eye brows, cheeks and eyes), he had a robotic skeleton, he had hydraulic forces, he had drill motors, etc. Of course, there were many different kinds of Chucky dolls each made for each of those qualities I listed above and you really have to look at a movie like that; you have to look behind the scenes and see the work that goes into it. Child’s Play is a phenomenal movie by itself but it would not be as successful if it wasn’t for the efforts of Yagher and the rest of the effects crew. Let me not forget to mention, the little person in the Chucky suit and making the sets 3 times larger so it seems Chucky is still small. Brilliant idea, first of all, and, secondly, brilliantly well executed. There were a few cinematic “ooo and awe” scenes with this technique. After Chucky is basically burnt toast, he slowly creeps upon Andy with his knife raised high, smoking and disfigured from the remnants of fire, and taking one slow step after step toward Andy almost tauntingly awaiting for the kid to scream. Well, done, little person Ed Gale, well done.

On the rampage!

As I revert back to the idea about children and their innocence and their innocent toys, I’d like to ask a question to all the readers. Were you ever afraid of dolls? Didn’t they creep you out with their side curl plastic grins, their realistic stringy hair, their awkward comments about being happy and their jerky movements? Using children in horror movies is nothing new, of course. Children have their own world and as we grow up, we fear the unknown which is their world. When Andy starts to reveal that Chucky is alive, mother Karen and detective Mike fear this theory. Their minds aren’t open to the possibility of a doll coming to life and committing acts of violence or even murder. It is insane and we fear the insane because the insane can end up like Charles Manson. Yes, I made a connection with a movie and crazy Charlie.

The portrait of innocence

If I had to mention one forgettable aspect of Child’s Play, it would have to be the score. It just didn’t stick with me. I know that it fits the movie; it coincides with the scenes but there is no reason for it to stick to your mind like a parasite. What I’m trying to say is that there is nothing the score does to hinder the film but there is nothing that makes it appealing; I wouldn’t upload it to my iPod.

The overall review of Child’s Play is very high. The unique storyline has been the spawn of many sequels and conjures up thoughts on how the way we look our childhood toys. It has had us face our own fears of dolls and it has the name Chucky become a household name in the horror genre. There is really nothing more to say about a twenty one year old film. Its been reviewed before and, I’ve briefly, revisited it again for the sake of what I’m about to review next – it’s new playable format and features on the Blu-ray.

DVD REVIEW

The MGM and 20th Century Fox collaboration on the Child’s Play Blu-ray image transfer is remarkable. The picture is so clear at 1080i that it feels like I’m watching a movie that was just released yesterday. The sound is booming out of every single surround speaker and sub woofer that I have. So, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the format. Special features are just as impressive. They include four featurettes which mainly focuses on the creation of Chucky and the assembling of the cast. You also have very entertaining commentary by Alex Vincent, Catherine Hicks, Kevin Yagher, producer David Kirschner, screenwriter Don Mancini and, also, Chucky – yes, Chucky. Also, look for the Easter egg of Chucky saying he is “fucking back.” I won’t spoil where that Easter egg is hidden. If you don’t have a Blu-ray player just yet, no worries. This release has the DVD copy as well.

The overall review of the special features for this release is off the charts! Hours of special features to view and to enjoy. There wasn’t any lengthy, uninteresting bonus material. The animated menu reminds me of a first person shooter video game with very creepy background music. Genuinely dark artwork on the front cover can grab anyone’s attention. Nicely done.

Uninvited / Mutant

“You want some of this, you little pussy?” — Albert (Clu Gulager)

Uninvited MOVIE REVIEW

I always knew cats were the devil’s spawn. Now, I have proof! This is one bad mutated pussy and when I say bad, I mean so awful it wreaks of weeks old kitty litter. But, really, what is so scary about a cat except the fact that they are the most independent little shits on the face of the earth? This movie delivers a knock out of laughter instead of chills and thrills. It is purrfect for a Friday night backup-backup plan and it is a cheesy, 80′s creature feature contender.

In the depths of a genetically altering animal experimentation laboratory lies one of, if not the most, dangerous felines. Make sure you feed it and be nice to it because if you’re not, it mutates – a cat within a cat – a ferocious, horrendous creature that spews out the mouth of it’s host and if it bites you, you’re poisoned with its genetically altered DNA. The cat escapes the labs, making his run to freedom. It is discovered and taken on a luxurious yacht by two spring break coeds Bobbie and Suzanne and their three college male companions. Being invited by the fraudulent yet sophisticated murderer Walter Grahams, the scenario spells disaster for the group friends as if worrying about criminals wasn’t bad enough but now there is a hungry, monster cat on the loose spreading his mutated blood.

Right from the get go, you know this is going to be a classic campy film when a cat, who has diarrhea of the meowing mouth, stalks and kills genetic engineers and security guards. The creature is the very similar to the qualities a werewolf but instead of only turning rogue by full moon, this furry feline goes buck wild whenever it gets cornered or hungry. Oh, by the way, it likes human fingers – they’re basically catnip. What I don’t understand the most about this creature, is that there is an evil cat within the cute and cuddly cat and when it attacks, the cute and cuddly just vomits it out and … well, you’re dead by then.

Why the mouth? That is my question…

To my surprised, there are some cast members that took me by surprise. Why are they in this, I thought to myself. Naked Gun captain, George Kennedy, plays as Walter’s partner in crime. The large, white stringed haired veteran actor, and veteran war hero, was the most legit part of anything that is related to the movie biz when it comes to the Uninvited. His character’s name is Mike Harvey, the toughest of the tough and he hates these “young punks” who have taken a liking to the yacht cruise – they just might get in the way of him and his money. Though Mike is the most prolific actor in the film, he is completely overshadowed by Clu Gulager’s character Albert. Clu, a legend of film and the father of Feast director John Gulager, makes Albert this quirky lackey with bad teeth and a taste for cheap alcohol. At one point, the very hot captain Rachel lets Albert steer the liner and, of course, the obvious happens – he screws it up. That silly Albert.

The rest of the cast are a bunch of unknowns but were decent enough to keep Uninvited watchable. The two coeds were basically a tease the entire film. I’ve never seen this an 80′s horror movie that didn’t have seductive women show off their goods. This is a first for me. When you’re first introduced to Bobbie and Suzanne, they’re barely wearing anything – high cut-off shorts, shredded shirts with tiny bikini tops underneath. They also unbutton their shirts to where only cleavage shows, Suzanne is topless but shield by her damn pillow and Corey, and the thick but curvy Bobbi wears an 80′stastic workout outfit. Where is my gratuitous nudity!? Let me stop talking about Bobbi and Suzanne – they just pissed me off too much through the entire film. The three college guys that accompany them are Corey, Daryl and Martin. Corey is the pre-law student with cockiness as big as his blond mullet, Daryl is the wrestling jock with a A.C. Slater impersonator complex and Martin is the most predictable character as it is revealed he is a biologist working on his doctorate – genetically mutated cat and a biologist who just happen to make the same cruise…yeah, it is obvious to what is going to happen. Whenever there was a close up scene of these kids kissing, there is nothing more nauseous than the detailed slurping dubbed in – much like the meow turrets the cat is cursed with.

Martin vs The Cat – pre-match showdown

When you can visually tell that a movie is being made on a production stage, that is when you just can’t take it seriously. There was just too much to stomach with the phony rain, wind and lightening storm sequences. The toy model ship, that looked nothing like the real liner they showed earlier, floated in what looked to be someone’s pool or bath tub. But in a way, it gives it that classic creature feature look and feel – something you would catch on TV at 3 a.m. Having seen Plankton, aka The Creature from the Abyss, I thought I was having deja vu. I swear that this was the American version of that and with a cat instead of killer almost microscopic plankton. The evil cat was a mere hand puppet which in some scenes you could see the arm of the, I’m sure embarrassed, puppeteer. When the cat fully transitioned, you couldn’t tell the difference between it and a dirty green old mop head. The only decent part of the effects had to be the violence and brief gore scenes. They were C+ passable which is really saying a lot for low-budget in the late 80s. There was a sense of realism and nastiness about the pulsating and exploding veins, the chewed up and punctured ankle, the eaten fingers, and the fatally gashed faces. This is one issue they did right and I think it saved it from being a boring snore. I would ask myself, “what will this cat do next?”

It took the term catnip seriously.

I’ve seen bad endings before in my life but this tops them all. I don’t want to give it away for whomever is willing enough to be a victim of such a project. I took it on because I have an understanding and an appreciation but for the most of society (like my friends), I would get a disconcerting, contorted “what the hell” look from them. But, this is an ending that has to be seen to believe in the absurdity and for shits and giggles. I still have the last image of that scene stuck in my head, on loop and it is haunting me in a comical kind of way.

Toy boat!

The overall review of Uninvited is very low. Don’t confuse it with the more current movie of the same name; they’re nothing alike and have nothing in common. However, don’t neglect this Uninvited totally. I didn’t give it the lowest rating for no reason. There are moments of comical and horror fidelity that should be recognized. Keep this in mind too – there have been moderately successful movies out there that contain killer felines such as the original and the remake of the Cat People, the demon lions of The Ghost and the Darkness and the undead cat from Pet Sematary who had more than nine lives. If you have nothing better to do and this movie is staring you in the face, pop it in and count all the goofs – check out the scene where the pickup truck crashes just before an overpass and about 10 panes of glass break – literally, the same pane sound breaks over and over.

All images and logos provided by Liberation Entertainment & Badmovies.org. (No disc drive on my netbook so I can’t provide my own!)

Mutant MOVIE REVIEW

Mutant

(Night Shadows)

(The Pestilence)

“How can I get a chemical reaction from a little girl?” – Josh (Wings Hauser)

A sort of sleeper from the 80′s, Mutant embarks on the effects of neglected chemical waste upon the human body and mind. This small world apocalyptic film has a familiar Night of the Living Dead appearance and a smidgen of a hard to imitate feel. The desperate need to know what happens next grips you to the last breath while progressing to feed your mind with camp candy. And though rightly under the radar of most horror films during this groundbreaking decade, it is certain that Mutant is without a doubt a favorite among most horror enthusiasts.

Brothers Josh and Mike take a road trip from the city to the great outdoors in hopes for some rest and recreation. What they get is a welcome wagon of city-hating hillbillies, a drunk sheriff who’s only solution to no trouble is to banish the brothers and is a small town called Goodland where most of it’s residents start to feel the effects of a chemical waste that transforms them into bloodthirsty mutants! With his brother missing, Josh is stuck in a middle of nowhere town and will go anywhere and do anything to find him, but when some of the population ends up missing, some end up dead and some end up something far more worse, there seems to be little hope of finding Mike and escaping Goodland alive.

Josh & Mike on R & R

I went into this film with a bit of pre-judging. You have to show a little mercy on me because it is double featured with Uninvited and, having never seen Mutant before, there was doubt that it would be much of the same – a wish washy attempt at trying to make horror through the talents of the untalented. With a good amount of guilt and without any excuses what so ever, I do admit that Mutant was not even in the same godawful category that it’s double feature cohort is so rightfully placed. Favored with a particular gloomy charm and brazened with its spectacular transformation scenes that give it an 80′s modern day cinematic creature feature value, I came out smiling from cheek tip to cheek tip. There isn’t even a slow start in this fast paced script as we are in full thrust of Josh and Mike’s troubles with the hillbillies and then with the disappearance of Mike.

Zombie/vampire attack!

The mutants stagger to the top spot in the best portion I take away from a film. Mocked in full Dawn of the Dead grey and black skin coloring and chalked full of scenes of similar tightly bunched horde groups extending their arms and fingers for their victims, one can not help but to think that these zombies had a bit of influence gliding through their veins instead of the green, hot-as-lava chemical waste blood substitute. If the same look was used in today’s movies, a straight fire of vicious negative bullet comments and opinions will have that flick coming out full of disgraced holes, but the look works here and I do believe there are factors that make it work: For one, it is made over two decades ago and that is instilled in our minds and we look past outdated effects (to a certain point); secondly, there is the cinematography that does well with the act of desolation; lastly, a few differences separate Romero’s zombies with these mutated rednecks besides the cause and effect – these mutants are leeches who drain their victim’s blood through a goo spewing slit in their hands and they have a fear of all kinds of light making them more like vampires than actual zombies.

The blood sucking slit.

This top spot pick doesn’t come without its doppelganger, however. The mutants are also what make this film as cheesy as cheddar. The sounds that exited their mouths were generic roars like you might hear from a low-budget dinosaur epic – the Carnosaur films comes to mind or the stop-motion Clash of the Titans. Its bad enough one of the mutants do it but when they’re all on the screen roaring together, you can’t help but to press a few times that negative symbol button right under the word “volume.” The other issue is how the hell did the people get exposed to the chemical waste in the first place? This is my and the film’s biggest problem. We know the chemical waste and the blood hungry effects are connected but how does point A get up with point B to make point C? There is a little, damn near brief, hint about what might had happen when one of the chemical workers say that the wastes “goes on for miles.” Is it in a free flowing body of water like style ? Is it in a river of slime? Are gremlins carrying barrels labeled with cross bones and skulls on their backs to the town of Goodland? The enigma doesn’t put the film in any kind of mysterious status or any other kind of notoriety.

What amazed me the most about Mutant were the moments of mise-en-scene awe. Everything came together perfectly for a particular scene, making it powerful, attractive, suspenseful and an example of one of those scenes is when Mike and Josh stumble on what they think is a town drunk, lying face forward toward the train tracks. As Mike turns the fellow over to the audience, a wide-eyed face full of death glares at us and a speeding train screams past at the same time. Josh and Mike are forced into silence as they literally have no idea what the do in the situation. That is a great scene – a moment in the duration that can be analyzed and appreciated. This, my friends, brings out the film student in me.

Lack of sleep or chemical waste product?

The overall review for Mutant is moderately high. Who can say no to a film that overuses the fog machine, who uses gross pulsating horrors creating the timeless effects and who can get a lead actor named Wings Hauser to star as the lead. This movie can. Overlook the poor poster and DVD cover and come to realize that the beauty is within.

Uninvited / Mutant DVD REVIEW

The overall review for Uninvited / Mutant is the lowest of the low. The Liberation Entertainment single DVD release of Mutants & Monsters is a skeleton release. Drenched in full frame, and I believe Uninvited was VHS ripped, the quality doesn’t take most of the fun away, thankfully. In fact, Mutant has a rather smooth transfer with minimal image imperfections. The extras, as I said, are bare to the bone with only a trailer for each film is available. The menus for both films use the same soundtrack made for Uninvited. The only thing really going for the appearance is the cover – the cheesy, throwback cover. It’s a cheap release – good for a quick fix of horror amateur hour. Check these films out when Liberation Entertainment released on September 29!

Not so Basic Instincts: The Banker

What can I say? Sure I think Robert Forster is the hottest thing since low-fat cheese and yeah he just happens to be in the last two erotic thrillers I reviewed but that has nothing to do with why I chose The Banker as my next film. It just so happens that he made a few of these movies back in the day and I just tend to own them because like I said, he’s hot.

But there’s a lot going for The Banker besides Forster’s rippling muscles underneath tanned flesh. Seriously. There’s also Duncan Regehr, Jeff Conaway, Leif Garrett (just wait until I review Party Line, Leif’s best movie ever) and Richard Roundtree. I know, you want to know about the girls… Well, there’s the lovely Deborah Richter, there’s Teri Weigel (a porn star who can actually act) in a glorified cameo as Hooker #1 and Shanna Reed in the Anchorwoman in Peril role. It also has a wealthy murderer who isn’t against killing his victims with a crossbow! And Forster’s character sleeps in a tree house. And I don’t mean an Architectural Digest tree house; I mean his nephew’s tree house! In short, it’s got it all! Well, except a lot of sex, but more on that later…

The Banker is about this cunning killer who picks up prostitutes, has sex with them and then stalks and kills them. It’s not like these girls are the brightest lights on the Christmas tree, but there is this low rung reporter who is desperate for juicier fare and is all about giving the victims some respect, which in turns gets her more viewers. The killer is totally eluding the police (i.e. Robert Forster) and this same nosy reporter (i.e. Shanna Reed) just happens to be Forster’s ex and she stays hot on his heels in the hopes of getting a good lead for her story. Meanwhile, these two pimps (Jeff Conaway, Leif Garret) get into all kinds of trouble and are somehow connected to the Banker (although that part is never really explained), and that helps Robert get closer to the killer.

What does all this mean, you ask?

Nothing really. It’s a convoluted plot, I’ll give you that much. But basically this DTV thriller is good stuff, and always keeps its tongue in its cheek. It’s breezy sleaze and a great way to kill a weekend afternoon! Forster remains the likeable hero that he is famous for and Shanna Reed is good as his love interest, if slightly annoying in her kulots. Duncan Regehr is something else though; he puts on Indian paint and basically pretends like he’s a real life version of The Most Dangerous Game with his big old crossbow. I’m guessing he has a small penis.

There’s really not much in the way of erotica though, so be prepared for about 30 seconds of skin, thanks to Teri Weigel and one other girl (and that other girl is with Jeff Conaway which makes the whole thing disturbing to me). So as far as erotica goes, it’s not a great entry, but is still it’s worth a shot for Forster who remains a friendly face in indie films.

Want more by Amanda By Night? Check out Made for TV Mayhem

Cavegirl (1985)

Sure this is a romantic-comedy and has nothing to do with horror. So why am I talking about it? Because it’s Another USA Up All Night “classic”, it has Michelle Bauer naked and I’m really fucking bored.

Nobody likes the nerdy Rex (Daniel Roebuck of Dudes, Disorganized Crime, Bubba Ho-Tep, plus a shitload of other stuff), not even Michelle Bauer’s naked boobs like him. Poor guy. Anyway, his archeology class (they have those in high school?) goes on a field trip to a mine shaft that somehow transports him back to the Stone Age. Oh wait, he was fondeling some magic crystals and I think maybe got shot by a missle? Doesn’t matter.

He exits the mine and soon runs into some silly cave-people who don’t like him either. The Cavegirl, is played by Cynthia Thompson (Tomboy, Traci Lords Not of this Earth). Her film career wasn’t very extensive which is a shame cause she’s so damn hot. Anyway, the Cavegirl, Eba discovers Rex sleeping and I guess is facinated by his 80s clothing.

Some cannibals show up and capture Eba and the other group of cave people. Rex saves everyone and the cavegirl finally fucks him. The sex scene was to brief, but then again I also think every sex scene in a film should be hardcore and involve anal. When he returns to his own time and nobody believes his story, he remembers his life sucks and goes back through the magic mine shaft to the past. I think getting away from that damn “Feed the World” song may have been a factor too.

Hundra (1983)
Great, awful barbarian flick of the 80s. Hundra’s played by ex-wrestler Laurene Landon (Maniac Cop 1 & 2, The Stuff, Full Moon High, America 3000 and Masters of Horror: Pick Me Up). While off collecting firewood or some shit, her psuedo-Amazon villiage is attacked by a tribe of all male barbarians, who rape and kill everyone. Like real men, they only communicate via burping, grunting, farting and laughing. Then she goes to their camp and kills them all. If that was the whole movie it might have been genuinely good.. maybe. That’s just the begining though.

Hundra then goes to see some wise old bitch who tells her that as the last of her tribe, it’s up to her to repopulate it and that she should go to the nearest city to find herself a Bull worshipping man. As she’s heading out, Hundra gets attacked by a midget barbarian riding a shetland pony.. this movie’s worth watching for that scene alone. She then gets naked and rides her horse along the beach for no reason other than to show us her tits. Good enough reason to me.

When she gets to the “Bull city” she gets in a fight, kicks some ass and then the town guards run her off a roof. When this healer guy fixes her up, she decides he’s worthy to breed with. Being a crude barbarian though, he doesn’t want to bang her. So she recruits some priestess to help teach her to act Ladylike.. blah blah blah. It’s cheesy, it has boobs, it has sword fights. That’s pretty much all that matters in a barbarian movie.

I ordered the dvd for $12 last week when I was trashed, turns out it they went all out on this one. It includes the film’s soundtrack (done by the same guy who scored Red Sonja and Mel Gibson’s Hamlet) and a mini-comicbook that has some lesbian sex. The DVD has tons of special features too. Not that I ever watch those but it’s nice having the option. The back cover also has a shot of her naked on it with a bar over her boobs. Classy!

IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX: CALAMITY OF SNAKES!

Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to the third (and possibly last) edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, a new and exciting column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to send my way.

A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from Molly asking me if I would be interested in reviewing a fucked up movie called CALAMITY OF SNAKES that a friend of HYB’s was distributing. She even assured me that it would be a really fun movie to watch while drunk or high.

Normally I wouldn’t dare imbide in such dangerous substances, but since my editor said it would improve my review I took her advice and got good and stoned before popping in the widescreen anomorphic edition of director William Chang’s CALAMITY OF SNAKES that the good folks at Apprehensive Films have released. To my delight I discovered that this is a brutal and bizarre 1982 Hong Kong horror film in the nasty tradition of the Mondo and animals gone wild subgenres of the 70′s.

A construction crew working on a brand new luxury apartment building stumbles upon a large nest full of hundreds of poisonous snakes. The ruthless owner of the complex orders the snakes killed, despite the frantic warnings of his psychic wife. The crew savagely slaughters the snakes with shovels, rocks, and an earth mover. The camera catches every gruesome moment of this and never once looks away. This scene goes on forever and is quite difficult to sit through.

Next up we meet the leader of the construction crew, a good natured chap who claims he isn’t against religion, he just feels one shouldn’t be too involved in it. He romances the daughter of his boss and the two kids take in a street vendor who promises to kill and slice apart poisonous snakes so that they can drink the blood, which will make them feel very good and healthy. We are then treated to more snake slaughter and shots of people happily guzzling snake blood.

The remaining snakes band together and seek revenge by slaying a couple while they screw. The construction crew responds by spraying the snakes with poison. This only angers the snakes and they kill off a few more potential renters. The land owner then instructs his crew to kill the snakes with the help of several bloodthirsty mongooses. This is yet another torturous scene that goes on forver and punishes the audience with more shots of snakes being ripped apart for real.

Still more snakes continue to flood the apartment building, so leader of the crew seeks out a martial arts master and snake expert. We are introduced to this guy in a disturbing psychedelic sequence where he is covered with snakes, pulls snakes out of his mouth, and lets a snake bit his tongue. This dude shows up at the apartment building and has a massive kung fu battle to the death with the oversized and magically powered mutant leader of the snake army!

The snake is sent packing and everyone celebrates. We then settle into about three hours of bullshit before things pick up again and the snakes return to kill the landowner’s weasel henchman in his car, snuff a few old folks while they knit, and then launch a massive attack inside the apartment’s building’s conveniently located disco! Finally, the fire department is called in and the firefighters finally exterminate the snakes once and for all with fire extinguishers, axes, and fire! The final mayhem degenerates into an all out war between the firefighters and the mutant flying snake leader!

What a fucked up movie indeed. It’s hard to endorse any flick where so many animals are killed on camera, but I have to admit this flick was fairly entertaining in a cheesy and sleazy sort of way. Despite being released in 1982, this flick has a distinct 70′s vibe. My favorite part of the movie was the soundtrack, which includes stolen cues from the classic soundtracks to MANIAC & ZOMBI. This is pure exploitation, not for everyone and certainly not for the weak or easily offended. I wouldn’t rank this one with other animal rampage classics like KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS or DAY OF THE ANIMALS, but this is certainly worth a look a for fans of wacked out HK cinema.

Hats off to Apprehensive Films for this very nice dvd release that includes the uncut widescreen version of the film. The dvd also includes a crappy short film called GHOULIGULA, and trailers for other Apprehensive Films releases including CENTIPEDE HORROR, HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, and NAKED MASSACRE. Sleaze lovers should check out afcinema.net and grindhousedvds.com for more details on other upcoming releases.

KEEP THE SNAKE BLOOD FLOWING!!!

Man, I’m almost offended no one here at Horror Yearbook has reviewed this classic yet! This is one of the best treasures the 80′s gave us and so much better than the original, if you ask me! USA Up All Night used to play this all the time when I was a teenager, but when that show went off the air and we eventually entered the era of DVDs, Mary-Lou became a distant memory.

The first Prom Night.. even parts 3 and 4 have been out on DVD for a decade now.. And longer, as cheap $5 VHS ghetto re-releases. Maybe there was some copyright crap or something holding it back. Seems likely, considering. I’m too lazy to look into that though. All that matters now is that, my quest to find Mary-Lou ended a few years ago, when at long last it finally became available on DVD. Sure, it’s a no frills DVD with a lame new cover, but fuck it.

As for the movie itself, it begins in the late 50′s at a Hamilton High School’s Prom, where the local tramp and “bad girl”, Mary-Lou Maloney (Lisa Schrage) ditches her goody-goody date, Billy for the supposedly studdly Buddy. When it’s announced that Mary-Lou is that year’s Prom Queen, the heartbroken Billy seizes the opportunity to humiliate her and tosses a pilfered stink bomb at her during her coronation. Unfortunately, since dresses were flammable back then, the bomb’s fuse lights her up like a X-mas tree and she burns to death.

30 years later, the wholesome Vicki (Wendy Lyons) and likely Prom Queen candidate, is looking in the Hamilton High School basement for some old gear for the upcoming prom, when she finds a dusty old trunk. Upon opening it however, she unknowingly releases the spirit of Mary-Lou..

Now, Billy is all grown up and is played by Michael Ironside. He’s also the school’s principal and the father of Vicki’s boyfriend. He immediately suspects Mary-Lou’s back but isn’t sure on any of the details or a way to prove it. As for Vicki, she begins hallucinating and having strange dreams, like in the scene where her rocking horse comes to life. That’s the only part of Hello Mary-Lou I dislike, simply because it doesn’t fit the over-all feel of the film. Whatever, though, the dreams end soon enough and Mary-Lou gets settled in.

Possessed by Mary-Lou, Vicki now has self-confidence, dons bobby-socks, a poodle skirt, etc, and becomes slutty. She even makes-out with her dad! She also has all the oldies Mary-Lou songs as her theme music and uses all the “cool” Ritchie Cunningham catch phrases like “See ya later.. Alligator”.

It doesn’t take long for Billy aka Principal Nordham to eventually figure out, to his horror, that his son’s girlfriend is possessed by Mary-Lou Maloney and most likely responsible for the recent mysterious deaths at school. That’s when he enlists the help of good old Buddy, who having been so scarred from watching Mary-Lou burn to death in ‘57, had sworn off the pussy and became a priest.

I won’t give away the ending. Mostly because I don’t feel like typing anymore. If you haven’t seen this flick though, I urge you to do so soon. Also, yes.. there’s plenty of tits and you even see Vicki’s pussy. There’s also a standard 80′s death by a computer shooting electric tendrils into a victim!

The Boogeyman (1980)
Directed by Ulli Lommel

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you killed your mother’s abusive boyfriend in front of a mirror, then twenty years later broke that mirror, reassembled it, bled on it, and hung it up in your kitchen? If so, then “The Boogeyman” has the answer for you!

In this, “The original 1980 version,” as the DVD cover proudly exclaims, young Lacey and Willy are forced to play outside by their drunken slut of a mother while she fucks some random drunk on the couch. Those rascally kids get up to no good and start watching through the overly large, curtain-less window which is conveniently located directly in front of said couch. When mom sees this, she is none too pleased, and she and her lover, who is at this point wearing one of her stockings over his head, tie young Willy up and beat him. Afterwards, mom and the boyfriend retire to the appropriate place to have casual sex when you have children, a.k.a. the master bedroom, while Lacey runs downstairs and finds a kitchen knife with which to free her older brother. Willy proceeds to borrow a sequence from the original “Halloween,” and makes his way down the hallway using first person point of view while holding the knife directly in front of the camera. (Side note: young Willy magically becomes about six feet tall during this sequence.) Needless to say, Willy stabs the boyfriend while Lacey watches THROUGH THE MIRROR. Foreshadowing! Also, the boyfriend officially dies the moment a glob of blood bubbles up through his back with a hilarious “blub” sound. Kind of like that sound effect they use in “Ghostbusters” with the ectoplasm.

So twenty years later, Willy, who is now a retarded mute and apparently served no time in juvie, and Lacey, who is now married and saddled with a kid at the ripe old age of 23, live on their Aunt and Uncle’s farm where everyone eats in a kitchen full of unvarnished cabinets. Lacey, who clearly never learned to let the past stay in the past, becomes hypnotized by the sight of her husband Jake carving a roasted chicken with a large butcher knife. Is this the first time in twenty years she’s seen a knife? Doesn’t she live on a farm? Anyway, also during this dinner, for no reason whatsoever, Lacey receives a letter from her mother with whom she has not had contact since the infamous night of murder. Her mother begs to see her and Willy before she dies, but unfortunately for her, this subplot will eventually go nowhere. What all this does, however, is trigger Lacey to have a nightmare which prompts her husband to enact a plan to rid her of this traumatic event once and for all. Jake’s plan involves (1) revisiting the scene of the crime, (2) Lacey confronting her mother, and (3) Lacey seeking psychological treatment. For all the hoopla, he only manages two out of the three, and considering the importance placed on the mother early on in the movie you would think they might’ve cut the psychologist storyline from the film, but no.

So cut to a psychologist who treats his patients while sitting IN FRONT OF A MIRROR. Are you detecting the theme yet? Considering she’s gone to all this trouble to see the shrink (which believe me most likely involved days of wrangling with her insurance provider over co-pays) she is awfully vague when discussing the defining event of her life. To get over her reticence, the doctor places her under hypnosis where she talks in a goofy voice which is most likely supposed to be the voice of the title character.

As though her schizoid breakdown in the therapist’s office wasn’t enough, Jake drags her to the house where the murder was committed. You can tell Lacey is falling apart emotionally at this point by the way in which she smokes her cigarettes. Conveniently, the family currently living there is putting the house on the market, so Lacey and Jake take advantage of this opportunity to poke around the house.

MEANWHILE, back at the farm, Willy, who clearly has not been trained as a retarded mute, is feeding the animals in the barn when a local slutty friend of Lacey’s stops by for some eggs. Despite the loud warnings of the animals, who are going ape shit the moment she walks in, Lacey’s friend proceeds to come on to the grown man with obvious emotional issues. How does Willy respond to her advances you ask? By strangling her of course! That is until he LOOKS IN A MIRROR. Jesus. This whole sequence was very “Of Mice and Men.” I was waiting for him to kill her then ask “why lady stop talking?” Anyway, the mirror stops him (or maybe tried to make him, who knows) from killing the girl, who runs from the barn and I guess never tells anyone what happened because we never hear from her again. Maybe she was embarrassed about getting rejected by a mute.
Over at the house of childhood murder, Lacey stumbles onto the mirror that witnessed the crime and begins to see the deceased drunken lover rising from the bed and walking towards her. Like any normal person, Lacey begins smashing the mirror with a chair, which amazingly enough, doesn’t really upset the current owners of the house. She doesn’t even offer to replace it or reimburse them for it. She and her husband instead take it and all its pieces back to the farm so Jake can teach her a lesson. He is tired of all this traumatic flashback bullshit and doesn’t believe that she saw a murderous ghost in the mirror. Hey Jake, cut the girl some slack. She witnessed a murder at the age of three! Oh, and by the way, it was revealed that the mirror came with the house and the owners never once took it down or moved it from the spot where it was placed TWENTY YEARS AGO. The crux of Jake’s plan to rehabilitate his increasingly high strung wife is to glue all the pieces back together and stick the mirror on the kitchen wall. But wait! One shard is unaccounted for, and after all this set-up, the action finally gets into motion.

What proceeds is a number of scenes in which various shards of the mirror receive extreme close-ups, followed by a ghost with respiratory problems either killing people, or forcing people to kill themselves.
I won’t give everything away, but there are a couple of fun, and satisfying, death sequences. The thing that makes this movie worth watching is when Lacey finally gets possessed by the Boogeyman and goes all kinds of Linda Blair crazy on her husband, a priest, and Willy. Also, note how the director flat out steals the image of the Amityville house, windows for eyes and all, when the shit hits the fan. In fact, this movie owes a lot to “Amityville” and “The Exorcist.” My major complaint with the film is the title, because it is really misleading. It should’ve been called “Ghost Mirror,” or something along those lines.
“The Boogeyman” is best viewed in the company of others who will most likely laugh at the same scenes you will. There’s something amusingly charming about a movie that tries to scare you by flashing to pieces of a broken mirror and punctuating it with a few keys of early ‘80’s synthesizer music. I will leave you with this gem of an exchange from the final act of the movie, which occurs right before Jake discovers his wife has been possessed by a 3×3 inch square of shattered mirror:
(Oh, one last thing, Lacey is standing at the stove with her back to Jake, cooking dinner while people are dying around her.)

Jake: “Lacey, what are you doing?”
Lacey: “I’m fixing supper dear.”
Jake: “Lacey, Uncle Ernest and Aunt Helen are dead!”
Lacey: “Oh, that makes dinner for four then. Father Reilly, you’re staying aren’t you? Would you be a doll and fix me a drink?”

(For the record, she never gets that drink.)

Read all Andrew’s Reviews and Articles in his Archives

New Year’s Evil (1980)
Directed by Emmett Alston

Welcome to a time when movies had songs written exclusively to use the title in the chorus, nurses were sexy and smoked in the hospital hallways, and the host of a New Year’s Eve New Wave countdown show could be in her mid-40’s and still hip! Welcome to “New Year’s Evil”!

This is an interesting movie for a few reasons, not least of which is its use of a killer whose face is visible from the second kill on. It keeps the normal “whodunit” guessing game from taking over what is a pretty simple concept: man hates women, man kills women, man uses national holiday as motive to kill. We’re still left with a question as to who exactly the killer is, but anyone with half a brain, or whose seen more than one of these types of movies, can figure it out pretty quickly.

That’s not to say, however, that the killer doesn’t use a variety of disguises. He’s sort of the Sydney Bristow of serial killers, adopting looks such as male nurse, Hollywood power player, priest, and cop. Where he lacks imagination is in the name department, simply referring to himself as “Evil.” Not the most original, or flashy, of names, but hey, it gets the point across. I guess “Baby New Year” kind of lacked pizzazz. While making the trademark slasher-calls-his-ultimate-victim phone calls, he uses a pre-historic looking vocoder that resembles a long silver tongue depressor, attached to the world’s largest tape recorder. No seriously, it’s so big it includes a shoulder strap, which he rocks without a bit of self-consciousness. It really looks pretty ridiculous, especially since he carries it to every crime scene and casually (which I mean in the most sarcastic sense possible) reaches for the record button before each kill.

Speaking of rocking, our sort-of heroine, Diane “Blaze” Sullivan, is a glam rock Elvira-trannie cable tv host. She looks well beyond her prime and even comes complete with an adult son, Derrick, who we’ll get to in a moment, and a deadbeat, alcoholic, drug addict husband currently vacationing in Palm Springs. Her show, “Hollywood Hotline,” is a viewer call in request line, which also features a live New Wave band, and a mosh pit full of zonked out “punk” rockers, the kind you would only find in a movie like this one, or “Knights of the City.” All I’m saying is they’re very Hollywood. Kind of “Zoey 101” meets “The Warriors” with a dash of Ziggy Stardust. In other words, they’re not very threatening. Also, the sound crew on this movie miked the crowd scenes in a way that allows you to hear the shuffling of their feet over the songs. It sounds like a zombie horde invaded the party.

At any rate, it’s obvious fairly early on that Blaze is your typical self-involved showbiz type, but the actress (Roz Kelly) makes many attempts to give her character a touch of humanity, mostly in the scenes involving her disappointment of a son. The son, you see, is a struggling actor who has just landed a starring role in a television series called “Starship Earth.” Much to his chagrin, mom is not very interested in hearing about her son’s big break, and leaves him alone in her dressing room where he can freely sniff her stockings and then wear them on his face, all while complaining about the fact that people think he has mental problems and then looking at himself in the mirror and exclaiming “Now what do you think?” Umm, that you’re crazy, just like everyone else said. He pops some mystery pills, which explain this actor’s unbelievably flat, Quaalude heavy performance, and then I guess attempts to throw us off the trail of the killer’s identity, but this proves to be ultimately futile since WE ALREADY KNOW WHAT THE KILLER LOOKS LIKE! If you’re going to use a red herring, then don’t show us the real “Evil’s” face.

“Evil” racks up a nice body count of seven victims before his killing spree comes to an end. Each one is punctuated by a guitar riff that leads into the headlining band, “The Shadow’s”, set. It’s after the second murder that “Evil” begins calling into Blaze’s show and announcing his New Year’s Resolution to kill each time the new year is celebrated in a different time zone. There’s the nurse, who admits out loud, that she’s only known him (in his male nurse disguise) for ten minutes before trying to screw him in the supply closet. Then there’s a great scene involving two young actresses he picks up (in his Hollywood Player look) at a club, and proceeds to take to a “big party at Erik Estrada’s place” (HA! You can tell it’s 1980!). One of the girls is even asphyxiated with a giant bag of weed!

The movie starts to take a turn towards revealing the killer’s pathology around victim number 3. It’s in this scene, involving a girl he inadvertently kidnaps during a carjacking chase sequence with a biker gang, that we are introduced to the classic serial killer profile of domination and control. Initially, the girl begs for her life, but as she becomes more personalized, his knife (or phallic symbol if you’re so inclined) slowly goes limp. When she tries to take control by offering “to get it on” with him, she incites the source of his rage and his knife pops back up. It was an interesting scene, psychologically, in what otherwise seems like a simple slasher film.

This was another thing I enjoyed about “New Year’s Evil.” By not giving the killer a mask, and allowing us to watch his process while stalking his prey, we get a Ted Bundy-esque murderer instead of the usual supernatural, masked villain. The filmmakers take this idea a step further during later scenes when a psychologist, with an awesome speaking voice, explains that the killer hates women, which is evidenced by the way in which he mutilates their breasts after their deaths (something that occurs off-screen). Each woman, he explains, is “Evil’s” way of working himself up to his ultimate victim, Blaze, who is the representation of all the things he hates. He goes on to say that his use of the recordings and phone calls is an attempt to gain notoriety and infamy in the same way the Son of Sam and the Zodiac did.

All this talk comes to a head in the conclusion, when “Evil” finally confronts Blaze (who is wearing a fabulous red one-piece jumpsuit with black knee high boots) and explains that “ladies are not very nice people” because they are “manipulative, deceitful, immoral, and selfish,” and he’s tired of feeling “castrated” by them. Then he ties Blaze to the bottom of an elevator in a very creative torture sequence and announces that he’s going to start the New Year by “going to the Rose Bowl with my boy.”

Eventually, as we near the end, “Evil” does don a creepy as hell, pre-“Point Break,” Richard Nixon mask, but by this point it’s really not necessary other than to remind you that “hey he’s a mass murderer” and to throw in some last minute cheap scares. Overall, this is solid movie, and a fine addition to the genre of holiday themed slashers.

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Director: Stuart Gordon

Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree

Mad Scientist, Dr. Pretorius and his assistant, Dr. Tillinghast (Combs) have invented a machine called the Resonator. The machine creates vibrations that stimulate the pineal gland. The gland grows to abnormal size and gives you a sixth sense that allows sight into another dimension (as well as making you a horny bastard) and the creatures and monsters that inhabit it. But they can also see you and they aren’t very nice.

Pretorious gets killed by one of the creatures but isn’t exactly dead as his head (and brain) are eaten by the thing and therefore his essence lives inside the horrible inter-dimensional monster. Tillinghast is arrested for the murder and confined to a mental hospital where psychologist Dr. McMichaels (Crampton) takes him into her custody to evaluate him after she hears his outrageous account of the murder. With the help of Bubba (Foree), a police officer assigned to the case, she takes him back to the scene of the crime to reenact it.

Review by Greg Baty of Playground Movie Reviews

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