As the first full millenium following the birth of Baby Jesus came to a close, the 70-year tradition of cranking out crappy movies was still in full bloom. As a public service to film-buffs everywhere, here are reviews of some of the very worst.
| Alien Blood
Year of Release: 1999 Steve's Rating: 1 of 10 Stars Starring: Glyn Whiteside
An alien mother on the run with her child takes refuge in a country house where the residents are having a New Year's Eve fancy dress party on the last night of the 20th century, hoping to lay low until her people come to get her. However, the government agents pursuing her lay seige to the house, and a night of gunfire and gory psychically-induced violence follows. To describe this movie as a mess is generous. We've got alien mothers and kids on the run from a band of killers whose assocation is impossible to discern--they certainly don't behave like government agents. We also have the giant alien space ship that eventually shows up to rescue our mom and child on the run... but this ship could have collected them anywhere, so why weren't they hiding more intelligently is a question that occurs to the viewer, but that the film also doesn't answer. And the people in the house where the alien hides out? Well, they may be vampires, but they may also just be a group of decadent country gentry playing dress-up; it's not clear in the film.
"Alien Blood" has some interesting visuals in it, and some so-so special effects, but that's about it. It is almost totally devoid of plot, what what we are left with isn't interesting enough to be worth the 80 minutes you'll lose of your life watching it.
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| Back From Hell
(aka "Demon Apocalypse") Year of Release: 1999 Steve's Rating: 1 of 10 Stars Starring: Shawn Scarbrough, Larry DuBois, Don Ruem, and Matt Hundley
After Jack (DuBois), an actor who sold his soul for stardom, renegs on the deal with Satan, he turns to his childhood friend, Aaron (Scarsbrough), now a priest, hoping not only to free himself from the curse that has been placed on him, but also to stop the demonic conquest of the world that is coming. "Back From Hell" features a good idea--an actor who is cursed to inspires homicidal rage against him in anyone who looks into his eyes--but that idea is watered down by an insipid "demons are going to conquer the world" storyline that gets added. Any potential to bring decent life to this idea is then squashed by badly written dialogue that is delivered by actors who are amazing in their lack of talent; by bad casting (Larry DuBois would barely be believable as a porn star, let alone a Hollywood leading man); by badly choreographed fight scenes; by some of the worst gore effects ever put on film; by inconsistent color correction of the footage; by sound editing and foley work so bad it might almost have been better if the crew hadn't even bothered; and by a music soundtrack that sounds like it was a discarded rough draft stolen from the garbage cans outside John Carpenter's office. (Or maybe the band Goblin saw some of their discarded music swiped... there are after all zombies tossed into this flick for no real good reason.) I think maybe three minutes of actual music was composed for the film, and the same bit was used over and over... and it doesn't matter WHAT is happening on the screen... zombie attacks, boring filler footage of the heroes driving down the freeway, filler shots of the landscape... all are equally worthy of the short little electronic riff that is the movie's score. The only thing that makes this film even remotely watchable is the occasional moments of unintentional comedy, which is at its high-point when Father Aaron is touched by the Bible in ways he's never been before, and when the demonic entity Tiamat speaks with Jack and Father Aaron and sounds alternatively like Cookie Monster and Grover from "Sesame Street." (I kept expecting the demon to start saying "Near... Far! Neeaarr... Faaar!") There is also humor in the bad editing, sound effects, dialogue, and continuity control in the film. However, the giggle-worthy stuff is vastly outweighed by the just plain bad.
"Back From Hell" is one of those films that is barely worthy of a putting on the program for a Bad Movie Night... and you want to make sure you show it last. It may be too bad to actually get through. (I only got through it because every time I reached for the remote, something so atrotiously bad would appear on the screen that I had to keep watching to see if things could get worse. It teeters on the brink between One Tomato and Zero, with the unintentional comedy earning it what little rating it gets.
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| Evil Clutch
(aka "Horror Queen") Year of Release: 1992 Steve's Rating: 1 of 10 Stars Starring: Coralina Tassoni and Diego Ribon
The story in "Evil Clutch" (such as it is) is about a young couple who leave the city behind for a quiet vacation in the Italian Alps. After an encounter with a mysterious young woman who claims to have been attacked and a self-described writer of 'supernatural stories,' they go camping in the woods. Naturally, they end up being stalked by monsters. A staple of *bad* B-movies are filler shots of people walking along with spooky music playing for no reason, storylines devoid of any logic, characters devoid of any common sense or personality, and actors so bad that it makes one consider a career in the movies. "Evil Clutch" has all these in spades. Additionally, in this film we've to clumsy attempts at foreshadowing and even clumsier attempts at copying scenes that have already been done many times in much better in other films.
After all that negativity, I suppose I should point out the two things that recommend this video. First, it has a nice score consisting of electronic music. It's just too bad that said music plays at times that seem as unmotivated and inexplicable as the actions of our heroes. Spend your money and time on something else. You'll regret the loss of both if any is wasted on watching "Evil Clutch."
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| Laser Mission
Year of Release: 1990 Steve's Rating: 0 of 10 Stars Starring: Brandon Lee and Ernest Borgnine
It's the final decade of the Cold War. Brandon Lee plays an independent "trouble-shooter" who is hired by the CIA to extract a brilliant Russian scientist (Borgnine) who is being guarded by screwhead Cubans in an African nation. At stake: Laser weapons that can tip the balance of power. With a summary like that, "Laser Mission" sounds like it might be alot of fun, either as a comedy or as an action movie. Sadly, it's neither. The attempts at humor fall flatter than the chests on the grade-schoolers who might find the gags amusing, and it's possibly the most boring action movie ever put on film. In fact, the fights are so obviously (and badly) choreographed that I think those grade-schoolers above could have done a better job just playing "Cops and Robbers" in the backyard.
As the reviews here show, I have quite alot of stamina when it comes to bad movies... but this one kicked my ass. It was so dull and so dumb that I threw in the towel just shy of the one-hour mark.
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| Night Crawlers
Year of Release: 1996 Steve's Rating: 1 of 10 Stars Starring: Mark Polonia, Armand Sposto, and Maria Russo
A young couple buys a fully furnished house for a ludicrously low price. Shortly after they move in, they discover why: The area is being plagued by mysterious dissapearances, as monsters are tunneling into basements and eating the occupants of homes. "Night Crawlers" is one of those films I wish I could have given a better rating, and, in truth, the One Star is an extremely generous given how bad "Night Crawlers" is. But it's one of those movies where there's actually a pretty good little horror movie plot buried under the badly written dialogue, and where I got the sense that everyone one involved was passionate and trying their absolute best with the tiny budget, limited resources, and near-complete lack of acting talent they had to work with. In fact, at the beginning of the film, it looked like the filmmakers were indeed approaching the fact they were trying to make a monster movie with no budget and no one capable of building a decent-looking monster. During the earliest part of the film, the monsters were barely shown and they were obscured with cheap effects that are straight out of the arsenal used by the BBC "Doctor Who" crew ca. 1974. For a film like this, I could have lived with that... but then they started showing us their monsters in all its football-hided, papermachie-headed, egg-carton-eyes-with-magic-market-drawn-pupils, coathanger-clawed glory. Repeatedly.
The childishly made creature, the bad special effects, the complete lack of acting ability on the part of just about everyone featured in the movie (and I do mean COMPLETE... I don't think I've ever seen a collection of people so devoid of talent), and a script in serious need of an additional two or three revisions, all result in "Night Crawlers" taking a place in the Movie Hall of Shame. Even approaching it with a generous eye and a soft heart doesn't make this a worthwhile film.
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| Rockabilly Vampire
Year of Release: 1997 Steve's Rating: 1 of 10 Stars Starring: Stephen Blackehart, Margaret Lancaster, Wendy Walker, and Dennis Davis
A struggling, Elvis-obsessed writer (Lancaster) falls in love with a vampire who bears a passing resemblence to The King when he was young (Blackehart). Boredom ensues. "Rockabilly Vampire" is an unfunny, badly executed comedy with pathetically weak horror overtones. There isn't a scene in the film that doesn't go on for at least four mintues too long and that doesn't feel like it was ad-libbed and then not edited down. There isn't anything scary (or tragic or particularly sexy) about any of the vampires, including the one our heroine falls in love with; he doesn't even do a good Elvis impression.
Spend the time you would have wasted on this film reorganizing your underwear drawer.
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| Tomie
Year of Release: 1999 Steve's Rating: 1 of 10 Stars Starring Yoriko Douguchi, Miho Kanno and Mami Nakamura
Junji Ito created one of the only truly scary comic book series I've read--"Uzemaki." His other famous series, "Tomie," is almost as creepy, although you'd never know it from the incredibly boring movie adaptation. "Tomie" is the tale of a teen girl who is the center of violent love triangles where everyone involved ends up dead, including her. And, yes, it's plural, because Tomie is so evil that even death cannot stop her--her body always regrows, even from total dismemberment, into an exact replica of when she was at her most beautiful... and then she goes looking for more victims to seduce and lead to destruction. Unfortunately, the movie version of "Tomie" is an awful in every sense of the word. The only reason I suffered through it until the end was because I kept thinking it HAD to get better. "Tomie" fails to take advantage of nearly everything that was truly creepy in the original source material, so it starts boring and it stays there; is filled with drab characters having inane conversations; spends too much time with characters talking about how horrific things are instead of showing the viewer the horror; and has special and gore effects so awful that Ed Wood Jr. is embarrassed on the filmmakers' behalf. Finally, the film seems to assume that the viewer is familiar with the Ito comics series, which is an unforgivable sin in my opinion. If you're going to adapt something to a different media from its inception, you can't assume the audience is going to be familiar with the original source.
One of the biggest dissapointments of "Tomie" is that it features some decent performances by the actors. I can only dream about what they might have done if they'd had a decent script to work with.
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| Witchouse
Year of Release: 1999 Steve's Rating: 1 of 10 Stars Starring: Matt Raferty, Monica Serene Garnic, and Ashley McKinney
I probably should have know better than to bother with a film that can't spell it's own title in a sensible fashion. How is "Witchouse" to be pronouned anyway? What does it mean? Is it "Witch Ouse"? Wit Chouse"? Or could no one at Full Moon Productions properly spell "Witch House"? "Witchouse" is the tale of the final night on Earth an unlikable group of college-age teens who run the cliche gamut from stoner dude and rocker chick, to oversexed jock and cheerleader, to the shy dork who rises to the challenge and unexpectedly [well, in the minds of the filmmakers] saves the day. They have been invited to a party at the home of their strange high school friend Elizabeth. Turns out, she is the decendent of a witch who was burned at the stake by the ancestors of her guests, and that she has decided it's time for revenge and a little demon summoning. Everything that follows is as predictable as a paint-by-numbers picture of dogs playing poker, made worse by bad acting and an even worse script. (What's truly shocking is that this awful movie spawned at least three sequels!)
"Witchouse" wishes it was "Demons " or "April Fool's Day," but the script, the actors, and the special effects are so bad that it is closer in nature to "The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave" or "Plan Nine From Outer Space."
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