Esham Puts Out Awesome Horror Album

Esham, the rap kingpin of Detroit, isn't for everyone. The only other person as bizarre as he is in hip hop is probably Kool Keith, and Keith is probably even more bizarre, but they are very different. (Keith and Esham collaborated on Keith's classic album 'Spankmaster'.) Esham is pretty straightforward, a straight gangsta rapper, but his natural eccentricity comes through on all his projects. The beats are on some other, other, other isht and Esham raps alot about demons, ghosts, evil spirits and so on. I haven't peeped too much of his stuff in recent years, mainly because he aligned himself with the ICP crew... though he recently made an album dissing ICP and distributed it at the Gathering of the Juggalos, which is pretty awesome and ballsy. ICP would be the first to admit that they wouldn't exist without Esham. I know to most people that probably makes Esham sound somewhat terrible by association. Esham's first album "Boomin Words From Hell" came out in 1990, when Esham was like 13 years old. I have it on cassette. You can't really blame him if some lame people were influenced by him. I mean, Eminem was influenced by him. So, he was one of the very first 'Horrorcore' rappers, he's from Detroit, one of the scariest places, period, and he has just released a horror concept album. Each track is about a different horror icon/theme and this has to be the only rap album to ever sample "Ichi The Killer". Its pretty obvious that I love it. Its pretty amazing. Who else besides Esham would make a rap song called "Attack Of the Blob", where he rhymes about being not only the blob, but a crime kingpin. Yeah, he's got the whole city covered, so he's the "Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah blob!"?!
Then there's a song called "Evil Dead", where one of Esham's boys with a wicked cool accent raps about being Ash and he takes it right from 'Evil Dead' through 'Army of Darkness'.
Then there's "Freddie Krueger" where someone named Dr. Hustle rhymes "I'm Freddie Krueger with a brand new Ruger/leave that ass stinkin like a pile of manure". Horror nerds would argue that Freddie would never just shoot someone, but I think that's a pretty good rhyme.
Then there's "The Invisible Man", which is, of course, about what the Invisible Man would do in a strip club. Seems like a wacky premise, but remember, Esham is from Detroit. This is a family oriented blog, so I won't go into some of the racier details, but a guy at the bar says "Yo, who just drank my drink?!" and Esham says "The Invisible Man!" Awesome.
This is a very entertaining horror-rap album. It kind of tries to be serious at the same time as being 'creepy', which might turn some people off, but for me it just kind of made it more fun. My favorite horror-rap album of all time is Kool Keith's turn as Dr. Dooom: "First Come, First Served". Keith's brand of horror-rap is more like a totally over the top Troma movie, so out of control that it is impressive but doesn't actually scare you (although some of the tracks reach such a level of dementedness that they actually are pretty disturbing.) This is more like a gangsta guy that loves horror movies paying homage to the genre. Might not be for everyone, but I like it. If you like hardcore rap and horror movies, you'll probably like it too.

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer + Ten High + Bubba Cola= A Good Afternoon

I recently moved to the scenic, tree lined streets of Roslindale, a Boston neighborhood that borders Roxbury, JP, Mattapan and Hyde Park. You can look it up on wikipedia if you need to know more about it. I haven't found a job yet, so I decided to hit Save-A-Lot in Roxbury and buy, among other things, a 2 liter bottle of Bubba cola. How much, you ask? 79 cents. Yep. A bottle of Ten High bourbon, left over from my boy Jayck Deez' visit last week and some star and heart shaped ice cubes from my dollar store ice tray, served in a TWA Germany glass (one of a complete 'Cities of the World' glass set that my girlfriend's mom so graciously donated to our apartment) kept the cold wetness of the afternoon at bay. To watch, a straight to dvd horror flick entitled "Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer".

This movie is the rare modern horror film that gets the horror/humor thing just right. The humor is light, and not too cheesy, which all too often takes away from the horrific aspects of films that attempt to blend laughs with screams. The horror is gory, and very well done. Its basically about a plumber named Jack Brooks, who is messed up in the head because his family was killed in front of his eyes by a monster when he was a kid. He goes to community college, where his professor is Robert Englund. The professor turns out to be evil and insane and has Jack over to do some plumbing work, where the mayhem begins. There is very little CGI, which made me very excited. A good rubber suit looks better than CGI any day of the week, and this film proves it. The story moves fast and is surprisingly intelligent. The direction is good, the film looks great, the acting is good, there is basically nothing wrong with this movie. The DVD cover art is wack, with an obviously fake 6-pack plastered on the hero's torso. Why the hell didn't they use the cool-ass art that I included at the top of this bloggin? Don't worry, there is no homo-erotic chest baring going on in the movie. No homo-erotic male nudity, no CGI, this movie is just about the polar opposite of "300", and that's a good thing in my book!

This is basically a great movie to kick back with some cheap cola and cheaper whiskey and have a great unemployed afternoon with. The ending leaves the opportunity for a sequel wide open, and I hope they make one! This is a fun horror movie, under-hyped and under-seen, and I couldn't recommend it more! I really look forward to anything new from the creative team of Jon Knautz and John Ainslie. This movie kicks major tookus.

Don't Go In The House

I currently have Fridays and Saturdays off. This leads to some strange Thursday nights. All my friends have to work on Friday, so Thursday night is usually a little pocket of solitude to kick off my weekend alone. 1:30 a.m., Thursday night: the girlfriend is asleep, the beer is cold, and I am scouring my shelves for something to watch. I need something sleazy, degraded, preferably from the late 1970s or early 1980s. It needs to be exploitation, but not too cheesy. I need something dark, something bizarre, something that stands the test of time but is so of its time that it takes me away from these foul times we inhabit. The answer is found with the "Grindhouse Psychos" box set and "Don't Go In The House".

This film is much better than any other film that I've ever seen with a title that begins with "Don't". Yes, it is even better than "Don't Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood", but that's sort of an apples and oranges comparison, isn't it. This particular "Don't" concerns a young man named Kohler, who lives with his mother in her giant, creepy house. We learn through flashbacks that she would burn his arms over the gas stovetop as a boy to "burn the evil" out of him. He now works at a giant trash burning incinerator plant. The film opens with a fellow worker of Kohler's tending the raging fire, not noticing a highly flammable aerosol can, presumably placed in the incinerator by the intently observant Kohler. The can explodes, dousing the worker in flames. Kohler does nothing but stare at the writhing, burning man. The fire effects are excellent and look way better than today's CGI cartoon blazes.

Kohler's superior berates him for not helping the man, calling him a "faggot" in the locker room. Kohler's buddy, who could easily be played by Michael Showalter if they ever remade this film, tries to get him to go to a bar after work to talk about the situation. As they stand outside the incinerator plant on a cold New Jersey or Long Island winter night, I realized that this film boasts some excellent photography. The darkness and swirling snow really captures the lonely weirdness of the small town Northeast winter experience. The winter setting also creates an interesting contrast to the fire that burns inside of Kohler, the fire which later manifests itself when he starts chaining up girls in a fireproof room and setting them ablaze. First, though, there is the matter of Kohler's mother.

He returns to work to find her dead in her chair. He is sad at first, then the voices in his head tell him that he is free at last. So he starts partying, turning his music up loud, smoking cigarettes in the house, jumping on the furniture. The voices goad him on. The sound of his mother screaming at him put his party to an end.
The whole look of the film is really great for what it is, a disturbing little psycho potboiler. But the house looks genuinely creepy, his room looks like what a disturbed man-child's room would look like, and so on. Once he fireproofs a room and buys a fireproof suit from an Army Navy store and starts convincing attractive young women to accompany him back to his house, often to see his "sick" mother, the film takes off. We watch his already damaged psyche erode as he kills the girls and keeps their scorched carcasses in a special room upstairs.

The psychology is right on the money, as far as the serial killer model goes. Child abuse is the first and foremost creator of serial killers, and this film really captures that. This is a non-exploitative exploitation film that had my eyes glued to the tube all night. There are genuinely frightening moments and the whole thing keeps a sustained tone of creepiness that will keep you watching intently. Definitely excellent viewing material for a late night beer session.

Seagal Vs. Zombies and My Unnatural Thirst For Red Wine

So far on this blog, when I drink some hooch, its usually just that, hooch. Cheap beer or hard booze, likker. Recently I have come to the realization that rye makes me completely insane a la Jim Lahey, so I've decided to give the hard stuff a break. What do you drink when you can't drink hooch? Wine. Cheap, strong, red wine is the best place to go in such situations. In my younger days I tangled with the Carlo Rossi and the Livingston Cellars and the Franzia. In fact, my expertise in the cheap wine category led to the crap wine area in the liquor store where I worked to be named after me. It is still referred to as my wing at this particular store, which brings me no shortage of adulation.
I am older and more refined now, so I passed up the opportunity to get poisoned and hungover for two days by drinking a jug of Rossi and went for the Georges Duboeuf's Cuvee Rouge. At most fine package stores, this French red table wine is cheap as hell. Mine was $4.99 a fifth or two for $9. Noting this value, I went for the twofer. This stuff is no joke. Its not the greatest wine you'll ever taste, but its leagues better than Rossi and them. After feeling very buzzed after only two or three glasses, I noted that the wine is 12.5 % alcohol. Lots of bang for your buck.
click for full size

I settled down with my classy beverage to watch what looked like a very promising film. Steven Seagal versus vampires, as the synopsis on the back of the case describes it. Its actually Steven Seagal versus zombies. Holy moses, if done right, this could reach new levels of awesomeness not known to human beings. I felt like this was the OT VIII of Seagology. Unfortunately, like my life, this blog and the new Tacos at Midnight Doritos, this film is an exercise in blown potential.

I had a hankering that this film wouldn't be as awesome as it should be when I realized that there were tons of central characters besides Seagal. We watch Seagal movies to see Seagal. Sure, there are zombies in it, but they are just things for Seagal to destroy, in hopefully very gory ways. Instead, we have all these survivors walking around an abandoned hospital and having the exact same conversations that zombie survivors in approximately 1,000,000,999 zombie movies have had. Nobody is watching this lame zombie film for the lame zombie film in it, we want Seagal. Big, fat Seagal, in his three quarter length coat and his samurai sword. BUT no, either he didn't get paid enough to be in most of the film or whoever wrote and directed this is a commie and wants Seagal to share the spotlight with a bunch of other people. Never a good idea. Seagal is too big of a celestial body, all smaller things that enter his orbit get sucked in by his greater gravity and burn up in his atmosphere.

Not only are there lame survivors, but Seagal is part of a team of zombie hunters. Lame. It should be Seagal alone, protecting the survivors and slicing and dicing and kicking the crap out of the zombies. The Seagal inflicted violence just isn't there, as well. How come they can show zombies eating people's guts, but not show Seagal poking their eyes out and breaking their limbs? Talk about your screwed up values. Its fair to say that the zombie genre is dead, when even a force like Seagal can't breath new life into it. Its not his fault. About two or three straight to video Seagal movies come out a year and it seems like every single day, two or three zombie movies come out. That's around a thousand or so zombie movies a year versus his two or three movies. Even a monster like Seagal can't turn the tables on the never-ending tide of zombie movies. Damn, this could have been good though. Will somebody cool make a Seagal movie, please? Quentin Tarantino or Rob Zombie or somebody cool, please save this fat old bastard's career, thanks.

Crappy Movies Forever

So, I received yet another collection of obscure straight to video, mostly shot on video horror films, this one entitled "Catacomb of Creepshows".


I continued to nurture my injured ankle and damage my brain by watching more of these atrocities.

Curse of Pirate Death
Yet another flick from Brain Damage Films, a no-budget studio that churns out gory trash. This film was edited by Mark Polonia, brother of the late John Polonia. I have been a "fan" of theirs for years now. They made some of the worst/best shot on video films ever, starting with the ludicrous, disgusting "Splatter Farm" in the 80s.
This film concerns a pirate named Pirate Death who, back in the dayz, had a witch cast a spell on his hidden treasure. Whoever tries to take it gets killed by the retarded looking zombie of Pirate Death. This film stars Syn Devil, an actress seen mostly nude, who has boobs that are so giant and fake that they approach grossness. She appears in tons of these no-budget horror films. This film is filled with pointless nudity, terrible dialog, horrible acting and lame gore. That said, I kind of liked it. Its just stupid enough to be funny and contains enough completely idiotic scenarios to hold my attention. It loses steam towards the end, but over all I found it "enjoyingly retarded". (Quoted from my viewing notes.) Oh, and Ron Jeremy makes a random appearance as a pervy college professor.

Super Hell 2
This Cannibal Friends production was shot in and around my old stomping grounds of Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville is across the Ohio river from one of the nastiest places on earth, southern Indiana. People think of Kentucky as being a little bit redneck, which it is, but its like Mid-Town Manhattan compared to southern Indiana. The people even look different over there, like the gene-pool is tainted or something. (No offense to any of my friends that I worked with in Jeffersonville.)
The movie is basically completely retarded and totally pointless. I did like how it was set in hell, and hell is depicted as being Southern Indiana. That part of it struck a chord with me, because I thought it was about the worst place I'd ever seen next to Detroit. Syn Devil makes another appearance here, showing off her gross boobs. The movie basically consists of random, sometimes "disturbing" imagery and makes zero sense. It reminds me a little of the movie my friends and I made in High School. This dvd is available for free rental at Wild N Woolly video in Louisville. Wild N Woolly is the best video store I've ever had a membership to and I actually remember seeing this on the shelf there.

I've recently bought some bad-non shot on video DVDs, so my next column will be a break from these mind-numbing box sets.

The Crap Keeps 'Splodin'! Straight to Video Mind Torture Continues.

As my ankle takes it time healing, I continued to wade through the dark underbelly of the sub-film sewer known as the Pendulum Pictures 100 movie set "Bloody Nightmares"...


Dead 7 Contrary to the horrendous cover art, this was actually one of the more technically competent movies I've seen so far in this box set. Once you get past the retarded intro by a severely annoying punk rocker in a leather jacket, this one is surprisingly okay. There is a frenetic style of camera work here, most likely influenced by early Raimi and Peter Jackson. The acting, is as usual, very bad, but there is some surprisingly good gore. The story concerns an evil meth dealer who kills an underling and dumps him down a mineshaft. A strange boy who lives in the woods witnesses it, so the bad guy tosses him down the shaft as well. For the rest of the movie, we witness just how much of an asshole the villain is (he strangles his girlfriend for getting fingerprints on a Steely Dan CD!). Towards the end, a mysterious person starts killing all his friends. Take a wild guess who it is. Anyways, this was somewhat enjoyable.


Dr. Shock's Tales of Terror
This collection of four zero budget horror tales comes from Ohio based Aftershock Studios. What is it with the mid-west and no-budget horror movies? The opening credits and the wacky host, Dr. Shock, are painfully lame. The short movies themselves are pretty fun, however. The first is an okay Mob/Vampire tale called "Bullet for the Vampire". Okay gore, and decent video quality and production values, in comparison to most of the other trash I've been watching. The 2nd is called "The Town That Loved Pizza", basically a Texas Chainsaw rip off about two hulking inbred brothers that kill people and put them on pizzas. Fun and stupid, without pretense to be anything more. The 3rd would be "The Garden Tool Murders", my favorite out of the four because it has the least story and the most gore out of all of them. A landscaper kills people with different garden tools. Thats it. The 4th and worst one is called "Demon's Day". There is a prostitute in this one that for the life of me I couldn't identify as a man or a woman. This one was pretty painful and retarded. Not like anyone reading this will ever watch it anyway. This flick was overall a somewhat entertaining experience.


Hell's Highway
This was definitely one of the best movies that I have seen so far on my excursion into the depths of straight to video crapfests. It even has a big star in it: Ron Jeremy! He's in it for all of 2 minutes, but he gets his dick bit off, so its pretty memorable. This one is about a stretch of highway in Death Valley where an evil hitchhiker kills people trying to pass through. There is plenty of impressive gore and even a totally bizarre surprise ending that I didn't see coming a mile away. Oh, and everyone is drinking Mickey's Malt Liquor the whole time, which I liked. Definitely a cut above most of the crap in this set.


The Invitation
This started out promisingly enough. The video quality and direction is decent and the girls are actually pretty good looking. It actually succeeds in being creepy, which is saying something. A group of kids accidentally kill a kid they don't like when they are little. 14 years later, they get an invitation for a reunion at a country resort. Then a bunch of ghostly mayhem begins. I would have liked this more if it was a straight ahead slasher flick, as cheesy ghosts don't do anything for me. In fact, I wrote in my notebook: "Ghosty Borey". The film completely falls apart towards the end and has an extremely lame ending.


Las Vegas Blood Bath
I'm extremely surprised to find that this sells for $31.98 used on VHS on amazon! This is basically a plotless rip off of Maniac, with some dork named Ari Levin trying to be Joe Spinelli. Its from 1989, and has many unintentionally hilarious things on display. Ari's wife cheats on him, so he cuts her head off and rides around killing women and talking to her head on the Vegas strip. Just as you are starting to enjoy this movie, there is a pointless, half hour long scene of a girl's baby shower. I know they were just trying to pad out the running time, but this is truly ridiculous. There are also scenes of oil wrestling by "B.L.O.W.", the "Beautiful Ladies of Oil Wrestling". This film is so incredibly inept, stupid and sleazy that it gets my recommendation, if only to see just how bad a movie can be. The end theme song, by Chris Crump and David Royal Dalton, is incredibly funny, as well. Phew, I need to go wash my brain now.
The amazing end theme:

The Only Bad Movie with Academy in the Title...

Is also the only bad movie with Reanimator in the title: Reanimator Academy. While I knew this was going to suck, as it is a part of the Tomb of Terrors box set, I wanted to believe. I mean, it has Academy in the title, usually a sure sign of greatness. The odds were against it, however, as a movie in the Bloody Nightmares 100 movie set has about a 1 in a hundred shot at not sucking. And I mean sucking! Like Hoover Vacuum, Deep Throat sucking. This shot on video atrocity is about a Jeffrey Combs look alike who lives in a frat. The frat is pretty lame, except for the fact that they have big parties in the daytime where they drink Bud Dry and wear boxer shorts on their heads. So they are actually pretty awesome. One of the main stars of "Redneck County Fever" is in attendance at their party. Seeing as this was also filmed in Texas, its making me think that this unknown guy is some sort of regional Texas shot on video star of the late 80s/early 90s. Anyways, the Jeff Combs look alike brings a rotting rubber head back to the frat and REANIMATES it! It turns out that it is an old timey comedian, so the head makes non-stop wisecracks. His crack about Rosanne Barr is pretty good. This film was so painful to watch that it is actually painful to write about. With that, I will cut my review short. That is, unless I feel more motivated about relating the sheer pain and misery that this crap movie bestowed upon me later.

Zombie Rampage, the Straight To Video crap explosion continues....

Zombie Rampage (Director's Cut, 1992)

This film is so incredibly inept and stupid that it definitely has a retarded sort of charm. Add in the fact that it was shot in 1989, and I say "Okay." The dialog is hilariously bad, there are actually a few impressive gore scenes, and the script seems like it was written by a 13 year old. You get to see all the archetypes of amateur late 80s regional horror flicks. The metal guy that looks like Dave Mustaine, the pimply guy with glasses and a mini-curly mullet, the blonde girl with feathered bangs. Its about a zombie rampage (hence the title) that occurs when dimwitted gang members do a voodoo ritual to try and bring their dead brothers in arms back to life. It definitely is a horrible movie, and earned an impressive 1.4 out of 10 on IMDB, but I found myself enjoying it. This film could have definitely benefitted from filmstock, however. It was apparently shot using consumer grade 80s VHS equipment. Either that or the version in the "Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares" box is a dub of a dub of a dub. This would have more fans, I'm sure, if it had been shot on even 8 mm, (I know that there was a recession in 1989, much like in 2009 and much unlike 1999, so I'm not out of touch enough to suggest that Auteur Director Todd Sheets should have used 16 mm.) Its bad, but I liked it and am going to watch more Todd Sheets movies, he's made 34 of them!

Straight to Video Crap Explosion

Back in September or so, I found a Border's gift card under the seat of my car. I have no idea where the card came from, but it was worth $30. I decided I would spend it on something really stupid. I found what I was looking for in a boxed set of 100 horror movies called "Bloody Nightmares". This set combines two previously released 50 movie boxes: "Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares" and "Tomb of Terror". Mill Creek has been releasing these 50 movie DVD packs for awhile now, and for the money they are a good buy if you are a crap movie addict with just a touch of sadomasochism in your mental ingredients. Many of these films, even in some of the "better" collections like "Chilling Classics" and "Drive In Movie Classics" are definitely in the "so bad they're good" category. But this one hundred movie diarrhea explosion of amateur level horror movies takes a special kind of viewer. A viewer who loves pain, and drinks heartily to quench that pain. A viewer with iron resolve, iron will and an iron beer gut.
All 100 of these films represent below the bottom of the barrel video swill. Some of them are so amateurish and crappy that they make movies I made with my friends in my backyard when I was 13 look like Cecil B. DeMille. I will say that basically none of these movies merit recommendation, but I will share my experience for future generations of self destructive film critics and also to show my readership exactly how very serious I am about my art and how ready I am to suffer for it. This is the ultimate in cinematic self sacrifice, the film critic's version of kamikaze.
(Author's Note: This entry will be added to as I wade my way through this sea of cinematic sewage, new entries will appear as I continue to torture myself with these horrendous movies.)




The Traveler
The very first film I watched out of this buttload of crap films turned out to be one of the best. As it started, I sighed with the usual "why am I doing this to myself" feeling of regret as soon as I saw the cut-rate video and sound quality. Strangely enough, however, the film grabbed me. The pacing is decent, and it turns out to be a very sick and disturbed little chunk of homemade horror. The gore effects are extremely well done for the seemingly non-existent budget. Some of the stuff in here was actually so gross that it made me feel nauseous. If you are stupid enough to buy the "Tomb Of Terrors" box set, this is the best film in there. And, while it is horrendous, it stands head and shoulders above the rest of the garbage it is packaged with.

Demon Sex
This is unwatchable crap about a demon strain of alien DNA or something. It stars a bunch of fat dorks and a bunch of strippers and Brinke Stevens. The demon stripper girls can only get turned on when they see blood, sounds like an entertaining premise, right? No entertainment is to be found here. This is horrible.

Soul of the Demon
This one turned out to be a goofy bit of early 90s/late 80s fun. Definitely of the "so bad its good" category. The main characters are a bunch of lame rockers who have some amazing dialog. There is one awesome broham who gets killed way too early. He has some amazing lines and has to be heard to be believed. He walks in late to a seance party his mulleted friends are having with a six pack and some pizzas. He says "Did you guys conjure up any evil spirits? Pinhead? Jason? Chucky? If they had known we had pizza, they might have stayed and partied with us! Brew-ha anyone?" Incredible. Definitely one of the most entertainingly bad films to be had in the "Tomb Of Terrors" box. Actually has some good gore, as well.

Redneck County Fever
This film contains no gore, no hot girls in bikinis screaming in prison and basically nothing to make it stand alongside the other splatterfests it is packaged with. Well, maybe the fact that it was shot on a camcorder and is really bad makes it a suitable addition to the "Tomb of Terrors". This film is about two jerks in Zubaz who get lost in a rural Texas town. The film is neither funny or exciting in any way, but for some strange reason is sort of palatable. At only 60 minutes, it doesn't outstay its welcome, but unless you are really hungover and have nothing to do, like when I watched it, those 60 minutes will most likely feel like they were robbed from you.

Slasher (1987) This is a strangely re-edited version of "Blood Cult".
This movie was considered Z-Grade when it was released in 1985. Compared to the newer swill in these box sets, it looks incredible. This version of the 85 film is from 1997, and among the many crappy re-edits that are supposed to hide the fact that it is in fact an older movie, the sound cuts out for the last half hour. Not that it was that good in the first place. This is a crappy re-edit of a crappy film and thus is extremely crappy. A couple good gore scenes and somewhat professional looking camera work make it look impressive in comparison to the other crap fests in this box set.

Kill Them and Eat Them

More unwatchable crap, this time about mutants terrorizing street people. The theme music is good, and there is some cool old school looking animation, but overall, this is a snooze-fest.

Purvos

More unwatchable crap, this time about a perverted serial killer clown named "Purvos". This one amazed me by how unattractive all the women were. I passed out within an hour of putting it on.