Horror Part 03

Suspiria - A

Dario Argento's most famous movie and one of my favorite all time horror movies. It is the tale of Susan, a ballet dance who wants to refine her skills at the most famous ballet school in the world. But the ballet school is a very strange place with all kinds of secrets that often led to grisly murder. The movie is extremely colourful, Argento uses striking colours all across the school which adds to the supernatural feel of the strange school. But what really makes the movie spooky is the musical score by the Goblyns. There are only a few deaths in the film but each is extremely memorable. This is one of Argento's best skills is to make each death very personal. They seem more like real deaths than just actors playing at murder. An excellent and suspenseful horror masterpiece, a must see for all horror fans.

Evil Altar - F

You know it is a bad sign when the guys that wrote the movie are also producing it and are also composing the score to the movie. The movie is about one satanic guy, the raspy voiced William Smith who sleepwalks through the movie, and his collector, a doughie undead guy, who are collecting victims to open a gate to hell. The adults of the town of Red Rock, although the name is never actually said I got it from IMDB, is also in on the scheme to some degree. Then our heroine, Terri is out hunting and accidentally shoots the collector, doughie zombie guy, while he is dragging Tommy Chong's son off to be scarificed. This makes the satanist go after her. Like usual it is upto some teens to save the day. The movie features Robert ZDar, probably best known as Maniac Cop, from the like titled series. There is a reason why in most other movies he is in heavy make-up, that guy has enough face for about six people, and more chin than Bruce Campbell. The movie is hampered by a myriad of problems, chief among them is to save money the movie has no lights outside of normal everyday lights so when they turn the lights out it becomes almost impossible to see what the hell is going on, this is very bad for a horror movie. Another problem is the 18+ subplots that bog the movie down and then none of them are really finished to any degree. Also there are extremely few murders, and most the murders are done off camera leaving very little suspense. The other problem is despite being a low budget 80s horror movie with some rather attractive women there is no nudity, I mean come on if you are making a crappy movie at least get the women to undress so that I can justify sitting through that hour and a half.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre - B

The original 16mm Low Budget Horror Drive-In Chainsaw Wielding Psycho Movie. Not exactly a big hit with the Texas Board of Tourism let me tell you. There really is no plot, a group of kids go to see this old house and one by one are killed by Leatherface, the loony with the butcher's apron and a mask made of human flesh. The act like stupid teens and get killed one by one until the cute blonde is alive at the end. The film is well shot with lots of inventive camera tricks and well thought through setups but the movie suffers from its low budget leaving it with an amateurish feel to it. The fat hillbilly gimp in the wheel chair becomes infinitely annoying after about five minutes but his much deserved death comes almost an hour into the movie leaving you with 55 minutes suffering through his awful acting, accent, and character. The only decent character in the movie is our heroine Sally but she too gets on your nerves during the way too long screaming scene. The movie was a good stepping stone to bigger and better things to come but just can't stand the test of time. Two interesting pieces of trivia for all of you, the narrator in the beginning of the movie was in 1974 an unknown actor named John Laroquette, and the man who played the freaky camera wielding hitchhiker is Edwin Neal who has since gone on to do voice work in over a dozen anime tities such as Devil Lady, Queen Esmeraldas, Lost Universe, City Hunter and Sakura Wars TV.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003 - A

Every once and awhile something comes along that surprises me, this movie is one of those surprises. When this movie came out in 2003 there was a great howl among Horror purists that they dared to remake the drive-in classic the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but lets face it folks the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre really was a bad movie with great cinematography. While this version has a little simplier cinematography it manages to beat the original in every other way, including the fact that in this movie there is a chainsaw massacre, in the original one guy dies from the chainsaw, I'm sorry but one guy makes a chainsaw homicide, or possibly chainsaw manslaughter but not a massacre. In this movie plenty of people get dead at the hands of Leatherface's chainsaw. In the first movie the teens in the van just sorta end up at the house, in this version somebody actually sat down and worked out a story about why the kids end up at the house. In this version they are traveling to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert after returning from Mexico. They pick up a hitchhiker much like the first but this time there is a girl, very parched. She babbles that they are all dead then pulled a big 357 from between her bloody thighs (you can interpret the bloody inner thigh anyway you want), and proceeds to blow the back of her head off. Now this is the exact point where I knew this movie was going to be better than the first when they showed the brains spraying out the back and then the camera pans through the hole in her head. They have to deal with the corpse in the van that is starting to stink up the place. They are told to go see the sheriff out at the old mill, now right there is a big red flag for me, I don't go to any old mill for anything or anybody. They go to the old mill and a chainsaw massacre insues. This movie gets an automatic B for Jessica Biel in her tight white tank top and hip hugger jeans, althought I'm totally sure they had hip huggers in 1973, no matter she looks hot, hot, hot in them, them, them. She is also quiet fiesty and screams less and fights more than her original version. The movie is much better put together, the kids actually are a lot less stupid than most horror movie kids. I'm quiet amazed to be saying this but this remake is actually a lot better, a lot I say, better than the original and really scary too.

Warlock Moon - D

A movie that involves neither a warlock or a moon. It is a take on the Hanzel and Gretel tale that takes place in some old run down day spa and involves witches and cannibals, it is a horror movie villian double feature. This movie was made in 1973 in Berkley California and has some nice shots of the campus there. The movie really is pretty bad, the script is extremely weak with enough holes and continuity errors to drive any casual film fan completely insane. The movie's strongest point is the two leads, Laurie Walters, and Joe Spano. Joe Spano is probably best known as Lieutenant Henry Goldblume on Hill Street Blues in the 80s. There are couple of scenes in the movie that are there purely to show off the acting ability of the pair. This movie came out almost at the same time as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and has a oddly similar story, some people have surmised that maybe the maker of this movie perhaps borrow liberally from Tobe Hooper in making this rather dubious film. It didn't really matter if they did steal the idea or not this movie had no impact at all while the Texas Chainsaw Massacre had a major influence on all horror to follow.

Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight - B+

This is a hour and a half long version of a Tales From the Crypt episode complete with lots of B movie actors, Billy Zane, Bill Sadler, Jada Pinkett Smith, CCH Pounder, John Schuck, and Dick Miller, it has snappy lines, see anything said by Billy Zane in the movie, naked women, and some freak monsters. The movie does an excellent job as a B Movie, it doesn't get complicated, the scares keep the story moving, it has Dick Miller in it. This is a good easy to watch movie.

Hell High - A

This is one of the truly original completely out of deep left field slasher movies I have seen in awhile. The story takes place in Westchester County New York where a group of kids plays one too many pranks and things go horribly wrong for them. This movie is really a different where the people should be victims are in fact the aggressors in the first part of the movie, and I mean aggressors, the leader Dickens, played by Christopher Stryker, is a total sociopath. At one point he pulls out a ten inch blade on a football player strapped to a gurney and asks if he would like his leg wounded opened wider. This movie toys with all the conventions of the slasher sub-genre, the characters we should side with are totally lacking in morals that at one point two of them attempt to rape their soon to be killer, yes attempt to rape. The movie was made between 1984-1985 during the peak of the slasher craze in film making but the movie didn't make it out until 1989 by that time slasher movies were universally panned and the movie made about 100 thousand dollars and Christopher Stryker had died of AIDS in 1986. The movie really twists and turns and manages to surprise the most hardcore of horror veterns like myself with some real creative writing and good camera work. The only problem is with the version I have seen that was put out by Media Blasters is there is a scene missing where one of the characters goes to steal the captain of the football teams's jacket. But that is a minor problem, this really is a good and different slasher movie that any horror fan worth his butcher knife and hockey mask should check out.

The Last Shark - D

When the movie vikings raid Jaws and they returned with this movie. The movie involves a killer shark terrorizing a coastal city during its annual summer festival and it is up to an author Peter Benton, whose name is humorlessly close to Peter Benchley who wrote Jaws, and a salty fisherman played by Vic Morrow with a really bad Scottish Accent. Add to that a power hungry politican running for governor and an unscruplous news reporter and we have lots of shark bait. This movie has absolutely no character development or invests any time in any of the characters, essentially they are just shark food. The shark looks awful, I mean couldn't have they stolen Jaws from the Universal Theme Park for the movie they stole everything else from the movie why not the shark. Another problem with the movie is that it is just very low budget and tries to shoot a good quarter of the movie underwater. We find out that you need a lot more money to do any underwater shots because everytime they go into the water it becomes a black inky mess and you can't see anything. The movie ends up being more of a comedy farce of Jaws than a scary rip-off. This movie is extremely hard to find because Universal got a little pissed when this movie came out and did their best to make sure it got as little release as possible, but thanks to the miracle of the Internet I was able to watch this and wonder why Universal put up any fuss at all Jaws has nothing to worry about against this movie.

Erotic Nights of the Living Dead - C

Sleaze Auteur Joe D'Amato porno zombie movie. It is the mix of Lucio Fulci's Zombi and Deepthroat. A horny hotel developer hooks up with a hot chick and goes to Cat Island with a scruffy boat captain where they meet a blind old man and a really hot mysterious chick, Joe's feature lady Laura Gemser. The movie is surprisingly good for a porn, the blood and guts are a little cheesy and there is one part that I'm not sure about the continuity of the movie. It involves some fishermen and I thought at first they were on the main island but then the horny resort developer finds the statue and the still burning candles the fisherman set out like four days earlier, those are some bad ass candles. This movie was shot at the same time as an almost identical movie called Porno Holocaust, but from what I have heard this was is vastly surperior. A surprisingly good zombie movie with a lot of sex, if you are in the mood for porn and zombies, you can't go wrong with this movie.

My Little Eye - F

Think Real World Meets the Blair Witch Project and you get this rotten piece of Canada Horror. It has all the bad aspects of both, lots of stupid young adults screaming at each other and moments of shakey cam work that makes the Blair Witch Project appear well film. The movie plods along at a horrible pace, it takes 30 minutes for the first real plot point to occur and it takes 70 minutes for the first body to show up and this isn't a mini-series it is a 90 minute long movie. Now the no bodies for almost the entire movie I would understand if there was some serious build up, but they spend more time having the cast scream at each other and act pretenious making me think I was watching Real World rather than a horror movie. The house is rather creepy but misused, the cast had some good points but again miss used. The biggest complaint I have is how it was shot. Most of the movie is shot through the eyes of the web cams that are placed throughout the house, this creates a rather big problem the web cams don't have microphones on them, so when they are ten feet away you can hear only every other word in a conversation except when they are screaming at each other and guess what the screaming doesn't advance the plot. This movie recieved the F the third time I had to rewind my DVD to try and hear what they were saying because I was confused. If that wasn't bad enough if not being shot through web cams it is shot through Blair Witch shakey cam which makes you horribly nauseated. Another point against it is the logic of the movie, in the beginning of the movie we aren't really introduced to the characters, they have the usual bullshit why do you want to be on our web cast opening but once the movie gets going they've already been in the house for 5 and a half months, it doesn't let you associate with any of them. Another logic issue is at one point they say the heat is off but yet twenty minutes later somebody is taking a shower, apparently no heat doesn't affect water in December. Laura Reagen gets a dubious place in my book for being in not one but two horror movies I hate, she was also in the retched Wes Craven Present's They. The only slight redeming quality this movie has is that Jennifer Sky, of Cleopatra 2525, plays the slut who gets naked. I like her but again nothing to work with. Stay far away from this movie at all costs, I give it the Kiss of Death.

Shadows Run Black - D-

This is a really bad movie, the only thing that saved it from the F was the fact that I had a couple of really good laughs while watching it. The story is extremely muddled and hard to follow invovles a group of college friends who are ending up dead at the hands of a killer named either the Black Angel, not all that original, or the Co-Ed Strangler, a better name. Enter a foul mouthed cop Rydell King and Jody, a friend of all the victims. Jody also has problems at home, she had jungle fever and her brother? is a complete racist. Women get naked and get dead through this movie as it slowly plods along without really advancing the plot any. This movie really maxed out the nudity, every ten minutes another victim gets naked but because they maxed out on nudity they could afford any gore so each death is not shown. The movie is notable because it is the second film to feature Kevin Costner. The movie was made in 1981 but it wasn't released until 1986 so that is why the movie has a real 70s vibe to everything. Among the movies many problems is the inconsistance of the ages of the women, some look like their 20, others look like they are in this late 40s. It is best to think of this movie as if they had written a complete script but on a windy day they lost every third page and decided to shoot with what they had. Good movie to make fun of but not a good movie if you want to be scared. Odd DVD note, the DVD version of this movie I saw is the most stripped down DVD ever, it didn't have subtitles or a spanish language track, all it had was scene index and play movie, probably the special feature was the scene index.

Witchtrap - B-

This movie was billed when it came out in 1989 as Not the Sequal to Witchboard. This is another possessed house movie from Kevin 'Night of the Demons' Tenney and features many Tenny reliables. The movie is about a house that was owned by a satan worshipping magician who died under mysterious circumstances two years ago and his relative wants to turn the place into a bed and breakfast. But our satan magician isn't too keen on that so the relative has to call in a psychic team to cleanse the house. Along with the psychic team comes three gruff security guards to make sure everything stays safe. Needless to say things don't stay safe for long as the psychics they bring along allow the ghost to pick off the people one by one. The movie features B-Movie Goddess Linnea Quigley in a small role where she dies and way too earlier for my taste. The only other good actor in this movie is James Quinn more famous for being all the demonic voices found in any Kevin Tenney movie, especially Night of the Demons. Only Quigley and Quinn are able to act and also give life to Tenney's rather funny script. The script is cliche ridden like a cheap detective novel but three of the characters are cheap detectives so it works on a strange level. The first twenty minutes are a little hard to make it through as these non-actors chew on the script but once the people start dying and heads start exploding the movie gets good. My biggest gripe about the film is the main heroine Kathleen Baily, who really struggles with the script and seems her only talent is to thrash about like she has epilespy and press herself against walls with her eyes bulging out. All in all an enjoyable late 80s cheap horror movie.

Sadomas Ghost - C-

Lucio Fulci steps out of the realm of zombies in exchange for Nazi Ghosts. A group of American college students get lost in the middle of France and find their way into a mansion that was occupied by Nazis who died in a bombing raid while conducting an orgy. The group drinks and then sleeps in the mysterious mansion where the ghosts of some of the nazis and their playmates start to intice the students with chances to fulfill their deepest desires but they come at a cost. The movie is interesting, a good haunted house idea, but it doesn't seem to get going. There is no identifiable main character we're suppose to follow, possibly that was by design but it makes it hard to get into the movie. The characters are rather one dimensional partying college student types. The movie takes too long to really get going, it is over 40 minutes before you really get into the movie with the Russian Roulette scene that goes on a little too long. The movie has a very creative ending which helped it recieve the C. This is an Italian horror film so yes there is nudity from most of the female cast but even that is a litte directionless. This could have been a good movie if they had given it direction and followed it from the get go but instead it ambles about for more than half the movie. Probably extremely hard to find, I had no luck in find a movie poster for it anywhere. This is a late entry in Fulci's career being released in 1988 and you get the sense that a lot of his zeal for horror had been drained.

Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama - A

If you can't tell by this title this isn't high art, it is low brow low budget horror at its best. The movie starts off cut straight from Animal House or Meatballs, a group of losers, two nerds and a fat slacker go spying on a sorority initiation complete with shower scene and gratious paddling. These losers get caught and are forced to go with the two initiates to steal a bowling trophy from a bowling alley in a mall. Okay the premise is totally ridiculous but that is part of the charm of the movie, everything is so over the top. Well they go and meet Spider, the ever wonderful Linnea Quigley, as Spider the tough punk chick who is out to loot the bowling alley. She really does wonders with the script, especially playing opposite Brinke Stevens, or Buck Flower. Well they steal a trophy and accidentally drop it, and like a Genie from a bottle an emaciated Gremlin appears with a voice like a 70s Soul Singer. He starts granting wishes and of course he being six inches high and looking like evil the wishes go horribly wrong and the kids find themselves at the losing end of demonic chicks. This really is a fun movie, not just for Linnea Quigley, but because it is silly and scary at the same time. This is also the first movie I've seen with Linnea in it that she doesn't get naked, true her punk rocker top is rather torn up and in a few low shot scenes you can get a pretty good look at her breasts she doesn't take her clothes off, also she is the protagonist instead of victim number 3. A true cult classic, if you want a cross section of 80s slasher movies this has it all, sorority babes, demons, shower scenes, a mall, punk chicks, nerds, sloppy slackers, snotty sorority sluts, the only thing it is lacking is a guy in a hockey mask with a chainsaw and it would have covered all the 80s horror bases.

Scream Bloody Murder - F?

This movie really has me stumped, I'm not sure if it is a brilliant subtle satire of all horror movies or the stupidest pile of shit ever put on film. Normally when I watch a movie I quickly get a feel for the movie, this movie never gave me any vibe whatsoever. It is a softcore porno horror movie without the porno, it is a WB teen angst drama with out drama, it is a comedy without a punchline, or maybe that is the punchline afterall. A group of private schoolgirls, one for each stereotype are supposedly going to some sort of dance but end up out in the desert in a junkyard while the car gets fixed and they slowly end up dying off one by one. This would have been okay if not for such a ridiculous premise and the fact that the killing doesn't start until 45 minutes into the 80 minute movie. By that point I was praying, hoping, even trying to cash in karma that they would all die immediately. The acting was beyond miserable, these girls had good looks but the movie never capitalizes on any of it instead they try and move the story along by making these bimos act, which none of them can do. There a couple of good lines but two good lines don't make a movie. I wish I could hate this movie, it would make it easier on my mind, but my mind is currently trying to figure out what happened. Usually I'm pretty black or white about these things, but this one I should hate but part of me is saying that it was meant to be funny so I shouldn't come down so hard on it. The humor was basically 21st century humor, crude physical humor with some homosexual jokes and your lame jokes. The movie sucked both as horror and comedy but hey maybe in tens years it will be a cult classic like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama but unfortunately I had to watch it two years after it came out so I have to say it sucks.

Cheerleader Camp - C-

Girls at cheerleading camp are getting picked off one by one by an unknown psycho while dealing with your average WB-style teen angst. This is a real basic by the number late 80s slasher movie. Saying that doesn't make it a bad movie, it just makes it a run of the mill slasher. My only problem with the movie is that the killings don't start earlier enough and are badly spaced. It would have been better for the plot to pick off a few more nameless day players to keep the killer plot in motion, teen angst is expected in a movie centered around cheerleaders but it shouldn't have been the crux of the movie. The ending was good, it was some what expected if you followed along but it was nice to see some deception on the part of the filmmakers. Features Teri Weigel in her first film role before going on to a long string of porno movies, Leif Garrett where he raps, yes that is one of the more weird parts of the movie watching Leif Garrett rap, but my favorite actress in the film is Lucinda Dickey, who plays the main character's best friend and the cheer squad mascot, a big green gator. Sadly this was the last feature film Lucinda did before settling down to married life. This movie gets the MadGSC Award for most creative use of a bear trap in a slasher movie, remember bear traps aren't just for feet, sometimes heads too.

Chopping Mall - C

What happens when the ultimate in mall security goes haywire? Lots of kinky teens who are enjoying some sex in a furniture store get splattered with lasers by the little tank monsters. Another fine film by Jim Wynorski and Roger Corman, these two together probably make the cheapest film maker in history. This isn't a bad sci-fi horror romp, it is short, it is bloody, and has some funny moments usually involving other movies, for instance to get firearms they go to Peckinpah's Sporting Goods, in reference to legendary filmmaker Sam Peckinpah and when the three fornicating furniture salesmen come out they are walking in the same pattern as William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, and Warren Oates do when they go to face down the Mexican General at the end of the movie, the other is a more subtle joke, even the nerdy salesman asks what if they can read minds, one of them replies then he'll be real mad when he gets to me, is a direct line from the 1951 Thing from Another World. I can not for the life of me figure out what they have to do with the movie or each other, maybe it was just the writers going insane. Look for a cameo from Dick Miller, a Corman regular. Only other notable actress in the movie is Barbra Crampton of Re-Animator Fame, only problem is also the most irratating character in the movie who whines constantly, and you rout for her death just to shut her up. I like the robots in this movie, you will never find a more plucky group of killer robots than these, they are bullet-proof, fireproof, they have lasers, cutting torches, and plastic explosives (why the hell security robots are issued with plastic explosives).This movie is quick, easy, and leaves a fresh lemon scent when over. Remember it is never nice to taunt the killer robot.

Zombi 3 - D-

Ten years after the first Fulci Zombi comes Zombi 3. Now before your brain starts to hemorrhage trying to figure how what happened to Zombi 2, the first Zombi is in fact the second Zombi film. The first Zombi film was in fact George Romero's Dawn of the Dead re-edited by Dario Argento for European audiences and called Zombi. But none of this matters because Zombi 3 has absolutely nothing to do with Argento's Zombi or Fulci's Zombie. In fact Lucio Fulci has almost nothing to do with this crap fest that bears his name, he directly only 15 minutes of the movie and then quit. The task of directing this movie went to Bruno Mattei, whose former occupation was a housepainter. I think that really is a bad sign for your movie when you allow a housepainter to direct. The movie has a plot like a PC Game, it is just there to string together the next zombie attack. The movie has three groups of people in which the story revolves, one are the scientists and military who have developed the zombie making drug called Death One. Really you guys didn't stop to think that Death One would be a really bad name for marketing your drug. The next group are some people in an RV and three soldiers on leave, the third are a couple in a sports car. I can't explain it any better than that because the movie never explains it. It takes a grueling 40 minutes to really get the zombie attacks to start, which really is a bad idea because in a zombie movie you should get your gore splattering all over the screen as soon as possible. The movie slowly picks off the people one by one as the scientists and the military yell at each other in an office over how to deal with the problem and the military comes up with the brilliant idea simply to kill everybody in the infected area, I love the military in these movies takes the simpliest and usually the most brutal method to hide their incompetance. The movie really sucks, the acting is dismal, there is no plot to speak of, only thing that saves the movie from F-ville is that once the zombie killing starts the movie has some pretty good gore scenes so if you are a fan of gory zombie action i recommend fast forwarding through at least the first 30 minutes of the movie and then sit back and watch the guts fly.

Exorcism - C

Jess Franco directs Jess Franco in a tale of a defrocked priest who accidentally stumbles on a swingers' club that puts on black mass plays, and not being in on the joke the priest, who was kicked out of the priesthood because he was running running all cylinders, thinks its real so he starts hunting down and murdering the people involved with the swingers' club. This is another Jess Franco film, you get lots of nudity, some pretty gruesome death, and then nudity. The main character is Jess Franco's wife and main star Lina Romany playing Anne one of the actress in the fake snuff plays the swingers' club puts on. Jess Franco is suprisingly good as the super creepy ex-priest turned inquisition style slayer. The cops feel a little tacked on and not much use but you see that a lot in explotation cinema from Europe. The version I watched was the fully restored version, but some of the cut scenes didn't age well and you can really tell when the movie cuts to a cut scene because everything swifts and often the scene is often faded. That is the problem with all Jess Franco movies, every one of them gets cut into about eight different versions for various countries and all of them are given different names so sometimes you can watch the same movie but it will a different title and often a totally different movie. Another decent but not stellar from Franco.

Nail Gun Massacre - F(B)

Nail Gun Massacre is one of the few movies in history to not only not have a plot, but not give names to any of the characters. The tag line of the movie is, Its Cheaper than a Chainsaw, I never heard a better tag line. This movie was probably made for 20 bucks and two chickens. The story, such that it is, is about a woman who is raped at a construction site, only problem is the hairy contruction workers get more naked than she does. Then this short, clearly female, person in black and grey camoflouge, wearing a motorcycle helmet covered in electric tape starts killing people with a nail gun, hence nail gun massacre. The movie was shot in Texas and the film makers because they had only twenty dollars used mostly locals and a few cheap strippers as characters, one scene you can clearly see the old lady in the store reading from a piece of paper. They introduce lots of people, most of whom get killed shortly there after but because they don't give anybody names it makes it impossible to explain this totally pointless movie. The sheriff or deputy or fat guy with a cowboy hat and a badge from a vending machine wanders about with the local doctor, who is dressed like he belongs to a 50s Street Gang from West Side Story. When the killer is revealed he goes from a short female to a tall male adding to the confusion. This is possibly one of the worst movies of all time, that being said I laughed my ass off the entire time, whenever the killer speaks he is giving off these god awful one liners each more absurd than the last. This is a truly obscure classic that has to be seen to be believed.

Graduation Day - D+

I'm not the biggest fan of Troma movies, I really don't know why they've never really appealed to me. That being said we now look at Troma's 1981 release of Graduation Day, a movie that has the look and feel of an ABC After School Special. If you were around in the late 70s or 80s to watch one of these moral treasures lets just say they sucked much like this film. The story is about the star track girl who dies of a blood clot while running the 100 meters in 30 second and then on graduation day somebody comes looking for revenge on the track team. The movie's only redeeming factor is that it is the first horror film for B-Movie Scream Queen Linnea Quigley, before she had bit parts in a few 70s softcore comedies and a Cheech and Chong movie but this was her first part where she gets stalked and killed by a masked killer. The movie was made in 1980 and that really was one of the worst times for a director to make a movie in a high school, it is all tight shorts, feathered hair and hideous colours, the graduation gowns are canary yellow. I swear if I had graduated in 1980 and had to wear a canary yellow gown I would still be in therapy. The deaths are all fairly generic, except for death by pole vaulting, that one was a creative kill. All in all this really has the feel of some really twisted but still awful After School Special, now I'm not sure if that is what Troma intended or not but that is the end result. The only thing that saved this movie from the F was Linnea Quigley's first performance and a cameo by a then unknown girl who was the neice of the director Herb Freed known to the world as Vanna White of Wheel of Fortune.

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers - B+

A cult of attractive street walkers are carving up their johns for the sake of the ancient chainsaw cult. Enter private detective Jack Chandler who is on the hunt for Samantha a runaway from Oxnard played by Linnea Quigley. The movie is from the softcore mind of Softcore Auteur Fred Olen Ray maker of dozens of softcore films in the past few years but started off making goofy horror movies. The credits give you all the information about the tone of this film, first it says written by Dr S. Carver and B.J. Nestle, and the next credit reads, Screenplay Drastically Re-Written and Improved Upon By Fred Olen Ray and T.L. Lankford. The movie is a silly comedy with lots of naked chicks and chainsaw plus it has the original Leatherface, Gunnar Hanson playing a straight faced Ancient Chainsaw Worshipping Cult leader. This movie doesn't belong to Linnea Quigley like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, but she still does a great job as the runaway from Oxnard. Jay Richardson who plays Jack Chandler uses one too many private dick jokes in the movie but also comes off a lovable curmudgeon, a real parody of all the hard bitten private detectives of dime novels. There are a couple of absolutely hiliarous scenes, one involving a chainsaw that runs out of gas right before the killing is about to begin. A good movie as long as you don't take anything in it seriously.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari - A

Often considered the first horror movie ever made and still is one of the best. Alan and his finacee travel to a carnival where Dr Caligari who exhibits a somnambulist, a somnambulist is someone who can predict the future while in a trance. Alan asks how long he will live and Cesare, the big freaky guy in the box, says until dawn. True to his word the next morning Alan is found dead. Of course suspect number one is Cesare who doesn't help his case by kidnapping Alan's finacee. After Cesare dies on the run they discover that the Cesare in the box is really a dummy and Dr Caligari has vanished. This is a glorious example of the Post-War Film making, with the exception of the beginning and the end of the film authority is looked up as almost insane. This was a very prevailent theme in Post-War Europe especially Germany and France that suffered catastrophic casualties from the First World War. When the movie came out in the US in 1920 2,000 members of the American Legion demostrated in front of a theatre in Los Angeles protesting that they shouldn't be giving money to Germany while they were still at war with them, I guess news really travelled slow in those days, the war had been over for two years. The sets are wonderful examples of expressionalism, everything is cardboard and all the shadows are just painted on. Another thing that makes this movie so good and groundbreaking is it is different approach of telling the story, through Francis who is looking back at what happened, or maybe happened? It is silent but you must watch this.

Attic Expeditions - C-

A confused muddled movie that is one part Phantasm and one part One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I think the story is about this guy Trevor who may or may not have killed his fiancee after she tried to kill him in some sort of magical ritual. Now he is in a mental hospital run by Jeffrey Combs with Elvis Presley Sideburns, who may or may not have engineered the entire scheme to make Trevor think he is insane. Trevor sometimes is living in a halfway house called the House of Love that is populated by a small group of loonies including Seth Green. But then he starts to think his fiancee who he may or may not have killed is really alive and jumping through peoples' bodies trying to kill him. In the end the movie leaves you with the feeling that somebody just whacked you up side the head with a monkey wrench and not really sure which storyline was real or phony. When you make a trippy movie the ultimate goal is to give the audience a revelation about the real reality of the film but this wasn't really do a good job of it. The movie had potential in the supporting cast, Jeffrey Combs really owns the role of mad doctor and again as a horror heavy he weighs a ton, also Seth Green does a good role as the crazy Douglas in the halfway house, also little brother Raimi, Ted is Dr Coffee Jeffrey Comb's assisting doctor in the weird to scheme to screw with Trevor's head. Look for a great cameo by Alice Cooper as a resident of the mental hospital. The problem is that the hero and I think main villian aren't really good at anything other than having sex on a revolving table and while that could cut it in a porno it doesn't for a psychological movie. Jeffery Combs, and Ted Raimi give this move its C- instead of recieving a D. I'm not sure if this worth watching when not on a fist full of club drugs or maybe I've just lost grip with reality after watching this.

Blood Sisters (2003) - F

One part student film, one part softcore porn music video. There is a sorority of vampires at I think UCLA, and two freshmen, interested why guys are disappearing around school, go to investigate. This is a wonderful example of why I don't like vampire movies, this is just a softcore porn movie with really cheap strippers, and this is like 99 percent of vampire movies made in the last twenty years. I mean this isn't even a good softcore porno movie, the only nudity is when the vampires start to dance around like some bizarre music video. I had no intention of renting this movie instead I wanted the 1986 movie Blood Sisters released by Joe-Bob Brigg's Guilty Pleasures but when I went to Netflix and when I thought I rented that one, I instead rented this one, and am very sad for this mistake, this movie just plain sucks.

Witchboard - B

The ultimate Ouija movie, Yuppie Brandon in his spare time, while not being a Yuppie, likes to dabble in mystism, and at a party hosted by his ex-girlfriend, Linda, played by Tawny Kitaen, he introduces her into the world of Ouija. Well this leads to Linda playing with the board by herself and she calls up a freak old Portugese Mass Murderer and the fun begins. After a failed attempt by a punk rock medium, it is up to her current boyfriend and her ex-boyfriend, who hate one another but like Linda enough to put aside their difference, have to save her. This is the first film by Kevin S Tenney, best known for Night of the Demons. It is a good movie but spends a little too much time with the soap opera of the love triangle and not enough on the horror. The guy who plays the Portugese Mass Murder is the coolest looking freaky bastard I've seen but you only get two scenes with him. My favorite character in the movie by far is Zarabeth, the punk rock medium. Now normally in movies mediums are weird looking people to begin with but she takes it one step further. Her character should have been in the movie longer, or the movie could centered around her. Tawny Kitaen when this movie was made in 1985 was better looking than she is now but still she was not prize winner although she had been on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. That is my biggest problem with the movie, while it was good, it never worked up to its full potential. A worthwhile certainly but there is potential that lays untapped.