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.

And the Crap Goes On....

So I had just about worn out my 100 movie "Bloody Nightmares" box set, when a look on amazon revealed something terrifying and interesting. Pendulum Pictures and Mill Creek had released TWO more 50 movie box sets recently. I bid on them and unfortunately won both on ebay.... I dived into the first set to arrive in the mail, "Mortuary of Madness".
50 more terrible, mostly shot on home video horror movies. How long, o Lord, how long....


Kill Syndrome This youtube quality ripoff of "The Devil's Rejects" was the first flick I watched from the "Mortuary of Madness" box. I was going to try and watch all the movies in the box in sequential order, but so many of these are completely unwatchable. If one of these flicks winds up on this blog, even if I tear it to shreds, it was better than some of the other films in these sets. I'd say two out of every five of these movies are completely unwatchable. This movie concerns a demented family that kidnap people, then torture and kill them in a storage unit. They film their nefarious deeds then sell the tapes to a snuff dealer. The bad guys are creepy looking and gross, but the endless scenes of ugly girl victims screaming and being tortured are extremely boring. I watched most of the torture scenes in fast forward. Some of the already boring and long torture scenes are shown in slow motion, only drawing them out further. This movie manages to feel very long for its 50 minute running length, maybe because its boring as hell. The ending is beyond lame and leaves the possibility open for a sequel. Yay.



Dead Teenagers Yet another film from Brain Damage studios. I went to their website and was surprised to see that a huge amount of their films are included in these Mill Creek box sets. In this film, a student in the library finds a notebook with 4 horror tales written in it. He reads em, and we watch em. The first one is called "The Boo Men", and though it is decently shot and pretty well put together, it is way too short and ultimately makes no sense. The second one is called "Full Moonlighting", an okay little werewolf story. Again, this one could have benefitted by being a little longer.
The third is a pretty bland haunted house story called "Skeleton Keys". The fourth and best story is called "Suckers". This one takes place in a real movie theatre, so it must have had the biggest budget. Its about Brian, a nerdy guy who works at the theatre with a very funny black kid named Kevin. Kevin is played by Joe Bahar, a young guy that should stick with acting. He's effortlessly funny. Kevin and Brian find a creepy old film reel in the theatre and strange things start happening. This story is the best out of this anthology because the people in it are interesting. Overall this was a decent, watchable horror anthology. The guy who made it, Chris LaMartina, must be pretty cool, because he thanks Mike Watt in the end credits.

I watched two more of these things today, so this shall be continued soon....

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:

Straight to Video Crap Explosion Roundup

If I didn't have an injured ankle that made my leisure time options limited to sitting around, this kind of behavior would make me a severe mental case, a retarded person, a sick sado-masochist, a depression case, or all of the above and more. But, I have to keep my foot elevated, and I feel like I am riding on a magic balloon carpet due to the painkillers I am legally taking for my ankle. So, I decided to keep forging ahead through this box set of 100 straight to video horror films that range from bad to the worst things ever captured by camera. Here we go:


The Crate
This one opens with two crackhead-like actors fishing by a river. These actors appear to have come straight from a group home, and they captured my attention. Their acting is hilarious because they are not playing crackheads, they are playing a museum curator and, (this is where the film really got me) THE MAYOR. The mayor is the more entertaining of the two crackheads, because he has this great gravelly voice, that I suspect came from smoking tons of rock or drinking tons of booze or both. They catch an ancient crate (looks like a produce crate to me). The museum curator cuts himself while opening the crate and an evil demon jumps out and starts killing people. The audio is really horrible, with crappy sound effects repeated over and over at deafening levels.

The two crackheads/actors think that they have killed the demon after a hilarious battle, and the gravelly voiced rock smoker/mayor decides that they have to cover the whole thing up. Of course, the demon escapes again and goes on a rampage. This movie is piss poor in every respect, but the truly horrendous acting and special effects put it in the so-bad-it made me laugh category. It was like a Stella short with non intentional humor. The end of the movie really sucked, because we never get to see what happens to the Mayor/crackhead. He was by far the best character in the movie.

Granny
This one surprised me with its professional look and film quality. Beyond that, no surprises. This was under an hour long and it felt longer than "Schindler's List". Probably the worst pacing I have ever seen in a movie. Absolutely maddening leaden pacing, even during the killing scenes. Its like whoever edited it was sippin sizurp. The granny-masked killer was creepy looking enough, but the tediously slow pace made this just about unwatchable. The professional look of it actually made it worse, as well. At least in the more amateurish ones, the crappiness of the proceedings can lead to some unintentional laughs. This was terrible.


Shower of Blood
This vampire tale had somewhat decent production values and nearly non-stop nudity. Its basically a softcore nudie flick with vampires. A group of hot ladies and their men go to one of the girl's Uncle Morty's house for the weekend. Morty returns and and it turns out he's a vampire. Lots of girls taking blood showers (hence the title) with rose petals falling on them ensue. If there wasn't a naked scene about every 5 minutes, it would be unwatchable. Nothing to recommend, but the shear amount of nudity kept me awake, at least. Also scores class points for overdubbed fart and burp noises every time one of the girls, who is supposed to be drunk, appears onscreen.

The Straight to Video Crap Explosion Continues...

I really thought I could never watch another crappy straight to video, shot on video film.... then I sprained my ankle. I was given a prescription for magic pain pills which make these utterly retarded "films" somehow strangely watchable. These reviews are a continuation of an earlier series about this gigantic diarrhea explosion of a boxed dvd set I was stupid enough to buy...
Aided only with prescription painkillers and my natural sadomasochistic viewing tendencies, I forged ahead....

Mayhem Motel
I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was shot on film. That's about where the pleasant surprises ended. If I had known the cover art looked like this, I would probably have liked the film significantly less. Its not a horror film by a huge margin, and this artwork makes it look like one. The movie is a bunch of vaguely connected vignettes that revolve around one hotel and range from unpleasant to disgusting to strangely hilarious.
One of the first images in the film is an overweight, hairy man getting into a bathtub. He leans forward and pukes into the water. It looks completely real. Then it cuts to another scene. The movie proceeds like this, showing you something disgusting then cutting to something "hilarious" like two mimes having sex. There is tons of disgusting sex humor, and I ain't gonna lie to you, some of it made me laugh. The movie ends with some good ole necrophelia, then a guy randomly shooting himself. This movie made zero sense and was very disgusting, but it kept my attention. I gleaned some interesting information from the closing credits:
"Some characters and concepts from Matt Biancaniello's one man performance 'purge'" Wow, that must be an incredible one man show. The cheesy nu-metal end theme song was by "Pleasurecrush" which is almost as cheesy as a name for a band as "KandleKrush" from Tom Goes To The Mayor.
And, most telling of all: "Special thanks to all of the motels and thier owners... ... they had no clue." Their misspelling is thiers not mine.


Next on my brain punishing double feature was "Dead Body Man" by some dude named Ryan Cavelline who made a bunch of the crapfests in this set. This one is basically a horror comedy about a wacky serial killer named Willie who wears a Freddy Kruger sweater and kind of looks like Bam Margera. The movie opens with a retarded guy picking up a hooker. Guess what? He's not really retarded, he's Willie the serial killer! He chops up bodies and sells them as meat, and all for God, who lives in his closet and tells him to kill. The movie turns out to be a ripoff of "Basket Case", as Willie has a deformed twin brother attached to his side. Although seemingly endless and pointless, there are some things that deserve a little bit o praise. Eddie Benevich's extremely over the top performance definitely kept my attention. He has some golden dialog, like when he tells a captive victim "You've never had sex till you've had sex with a chicken!"
There is basically zero special effects and the gore is extremely lame and amateurish. I would never recommend this to anyone in a million years, I'm just trying to keep you people abreast of what I'm doing with my life so that I don't lose my mind. I was surprised to see that there are TWO sequels to this already out.

The OTHER Best 2008 Comeback for A Grizzled Veteran

Everybody's talking about Mickey Rourke and "The Wrestler". I haven't seen it yet, but I am a fan of Mr. Rourke. Afterall, he starred in "Barfly", one of the best movies about drunks ever made and by far the best cinematic interpretation of Charles Bukowski's writing. Well, another grizzled veteran of the silver screen made a comeback in 2008, and not too many people know about it. Maybe its because he moves in silence, clad in black, his black hair greased back and his dark scowl distorting his visage into a hate mask of destruction. Yes, it is Steven Seagal I am talking about, and though his comeback didn't warrant interviews on NPR and a pictorial in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, it made die hard Seagalogists like myself take notice.


Seagal was once one of the all-time great movie bad asses. His rebellious attitude, the amount of gore and violence in his movies and his crazy conspiratorial politics all made for an intoxicating cocktail. From 1988 until 2001 (barring "Ticker" and "The Patriot") everything he touched turned to gold. Or if not exactly gold, at least movies that are entertaining as hell and just about the best thing to watch while stripping your mind of unneeded brain cells. Look, I could wax poetic about my love for the Ponytailed One, but you might be better off just reading this incredible book: Seagalogy. I can tell you, if Seagology was Tom Cruise's cult, he'd be making way better movies.

Ever since his last turn as a big screen action star, the crappy Ja Rule team-up "Half Past Dead", Seagal has churned out an endless succession of straight to DVD action flicks. They range from the fun ("Belly of the Beast"), to the palatable ("Black Dawn") to the downright horrible ("Submerged"). They've all had one thing in common, however. They are bad, bad movies.

Recently, however, Seagal has staged a mini-comeback. First he made "Urban Justice" in 2007. Now, by no means is this a good movie, but it is entertaining, and has a fairly straight ahead story. The problem with most of the worst of the Seagal straight to video films is that they have been extremely convoluted espionage tales. Nobody watches Seagal for the plot. The more stripped down the better. HIs best movie is "Out For Justice", and that has the simplest story out of any of his films. We watch Seagal, much like Jason Voorhees, because we want to see how he will dispatch large numbers of foes. In the classic Seagal films, he would never disappoint in this department. Hitting people with salamis, pool cues, pool balls, throwing people through windows, legs and arms breaking left and right. A perfect symphony of violence conducted by a large man with a ponytail and a penchant for wearing fancy three quarter length coats.

Seagal is getting old now, and it shows. First off, dude is fat. Second off, his face is looking pretty haggard. Now, i've been thinking for awhile that he could still make some decent films if he played his look right. Instead of being some dapper international spy and looking ridiculous, have him play an old burn out. That's just what they do in "Pistol Whipped" and it makes for Seagal's best film since "Exit Wounds".

Seagal plays a burned out drunk, a compulsive gambling disgraced cop. The great Lance Henriksen plays a powerful and mysterious guy who hangs out in an abandoned theatre and buys all of Seagal's gambling debts, which are over a million dollars. Seagal has to pay him back by killing a bunch of crime lords. Decent premise, right? On top of the decent story and brief but effective fight scenes, this film actually contains some of Seagal's best acting, ever! Not too impressive to some people, but for me, its a revelation. When you see a Seagal scene that actually approaches the universe that the planet Touching inhabits, you are seeing his best acting ever. Its a compelling character as well. Seagal pretty much looks like a fuck-up these days, so why not have him play a fuck-up?


I really liked this movie and I heartily enjoyed the Jim Beam Rye Whiskey that I sipped while watching it. I had only had Rye once before, some time when I was 21, I had a couple of glasses of Old Overholt and was not very impressed. I decided to give it another shot while watching this on my day off, and I was pleasantly surprised. Beam Rye has a sharp, spicy flavor, a pleasant aftertaste and a great, clean finish. It tastes way better than the Beam white label bourbon. The scary thing is, now there is a whole 'nother world of whiskey out there that I have to explore. Beam Rye, thank you for opening the doors to an even deeper level of drunken hell in my life. (That last sentence is a joke. My life is great, this blog is proof.)

Seagal drinks a lot in this movie, which is awesome. He walks into a bar and orders, in his trademark near unintelligible whisper, either a "Double dragon rock on the rocks" or a "double Jack and rocks on the rocks". Either way, impressive order. There is only one other line I felt the need to scribble down while viewing this and that was, of course, "You're cremated now, muthafucka!" Which is of course, a great line.

Anyways, this a wholly positive review, as I really liked the movie and the whiskey. See you in the funny papers.

File Under Crappy Remake

I was excited for this, I really was. I'm a huge Jason fan, and I've always thought that in capable hands his story could be a great, classic horror tale. And, more realistically, given the right treatment, Jason could kick serious tail in a new film. Think "Freddy Versus Jason" without Freddy. A well-directed, big budget homage to the man behind the mask. My friends Tim and Jill Voorhees, almost if not greater horror nerds than myself, invited me to join them for the super special midnight screening last night in Boston. (Not true, I totally invited myself.) My ladyfriend, a true trooper, (a "trueper" maybe? No? You sure?) came along for the ride, even though she had chased 5 year olds around all day (she is a child murderer.) (Joking, its for her job.) (At a child labor camp.) (Still joking.) We met up with our friends Ian and his ladyfriend, who I for no particular reason will call "Manda Bo Banda" in this column. (That's class, when you call your crappy blog a "column". I still want to see this damn thing get published. Too bad all the alternative weeklies in Boston blow donkey scrotum.) (I really need to chill out on the parenthesis.) We had a number of drinks at the Beacon Street Tavern, a stylish little bar with a great Irish bartender who gave me a free Miller High Life, which Milady and I impressed everyone at the bar with as we inhaled it scarily fast.

We walked over to the theater, all in great spirits and a little tipsy, excited and hoping for the best. Maybe I was a little drunk, but everyone there seemed drunk as well. In fact, the deep voiced black guy sitting behind us who wouldn't shut up said to his girlfriend after everyone shushed him, "I'm tipsy, I ain't shuttin up." His girlfriend threw popcorn at me as I left the theater, as well. I did my best menacing stare and pointed at her. I'm getting off track here, must be the day off hangover beers I'm sipping. Where was I? Oh, yeah, I was drunk in a theater with a bunch of drunks about to be very disappointed.

I had a bad feeling right from the get-go. The film uses that extremely annoying newer trend in direction where the action is shown in ultra-closeups with herkity jerkity camera movements. This basically renders it impossible to tell what the hell is going on. On the big screen, it leads to a ripping headache, as well. Even with a solid buzz and a pocket full of rum nips, this film was hell to look at. One of the only things I liked about the film was that Jason dispatches an entire crew of campers before the opening credits. You think that the movie is going to be about these jerky, horned up kids (as that is what all these movies are about), then Jason, with a rag on his head, kills them all. THEN it says "Friday the 13th". Everyone cheered. That was the best part of the movie.

One of the biggest problems with this film, and it has many problems, is that it focuses on the campers. Nobody cares about the victims. We like Jason. The victims are disposable, almost like props. Introduce a group of campers, show them naked, then have Jason kill them. We don't care about them. Maybe in the old ones, we cared a bit, because they are sometimes likeable, like Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover in Part 4. In this movie they all suck, really, really hard. There is one likeable Asian guy that actually has some funny dialog. That's it. Everyone else sucks and you just wish they would die right away. Nope. Jason takes his sweet time. The movie was hyped up to be a "re-imagining" of the first 3 films, a focus on Jason's journey from little retarded boy to king of the slashers. Where the film really disappoints, for hardcore fans of the series, is that it fails at being about Jason. Its about these lame college kids that you just wish would hurry up and die.

I don't really want to continue writing about this movie. It is that bad. It actually pisses me off just to think about it. Its about as horrible as a Jason movie can be. Its like a remake of all the bad parts of the Jason movies of old. Here they hit all the wrong notes and failed to make an evocative, even halfway decent vision of the Voorhees legacy. When you consider how truly bad most of the Jason movies were, its not a surprise that this is a cheap, crappy movie. I just hoped that by 2009, a film 6 years in the making, after a latter day gore renaissance, Jason would come back to take his rightful seat at the throne of the slasher king. It could have happened. Easily. But it didn't. This movie sucks and is an insult to all the fans of the series. My recommendation for anyone who has a hankering for Jason is go and watch "Friday the 13th Part 2", that's my favorite in the series and its about 20 million times better and more fun than this turd.

Author's Note: Proving that he is an even bigger horror nerd than me, Tim went and saw this again yesterday. He said it was way better on a second viewing without high expectations. I'll wait until it comes out on DVD and compare notes. 2-15-09