Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010)

Another exploitation documentary, but this time with a twist. This one explores the movies from, and made in, the Philipine’s. Many with the help of the infamous Ferdinand Marcos (he of the wife with many shoes).

Covering everything from the women in prison/cage genre through to Weng Weng (the midget James Bond), but with Roger Corman being the link between each film.

The documentary is pretty much all interviews, and begins with directors, and producers, explaining how it was far cheaper to film the entire thing in the Philippines’s as they could hire everything there. The Philippines’s had a thriving movie industry and had everything at hand, and when they say everything, they mean everything, including the army! Actors, stunt men, demolition experts, you name it it was all there, and cheap, so it made sense for Corman and his directors to film there.

It began with a couple of cheap horror films then boomed into the women in prison genre.

Mentioned 'women in prison', need to show boobs...

Corman got tired of them and thought, ” hey, let’s put black people up front” and lo, the blaxploitation genre began. Next thing you know you have one armed executioners. No, I’m not kidding, there really is a film about a one armed executioner (from 1981)!

Drawing to a close the documentary spends several minutes talking about Apocalypse Now which was shot entirely in the Philippine’s (under Marcos), using the Philippino army and ended up looking nothing like Vietnam!

It’s a great documentary with many funny stories from the actors and actresses who sometimes had a terrible time in the Philippines, but still smile when telling the stories.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Witch Bitch

Unlike in Aerobicide there are not a lot of padding scenes in Death Spa of people working out, but there are a couple of dance numbers with crap music. Not as crap as in Aerobicide, but also not as memorable. Except for the closing song of Death Spa, in which they sing about the movie itself. This is one of the many things I miss about the 80s.

The story here is that Michael (William Bumiller) owns a gym, or spa as they called them back then, and the daily operations are completely dependent on his crazy former brother in law David (gay cult icon Merritt Butrick) and the complicated computer system the BIL has set up. Oh, computers.

Now that his wife is dead, gym employee Laura (Brenda Bakke), who danced her way through the opening credits, is the new lady in his life. We see her finish her workout  and get into the sauna nude, her hand starts moving south…and then the system goes nuts and starts steaming her alive. Fortunately she breaks the window and somersaults through.

We find out that Michael’s wife killed herself after a screwup during the birth of their (stillborn? I don’t see a kid anywhere) child left her in a wheelchair. But she didn’t just take some pills; she self-immolated. As more than one character reminds us, she was “burned to unrecognizable ashes.”

Someone is busy killing off the gym’s clientele. Is it the dead wife’s ghost (Shari Shattuck), the brother in law, the computer itself, an angry employee (Alexa Hamilton), a shady business partner, or a combination?

Standout scenes: a gay guy brushes off a horny woman by telling her, “you’re VHS; I’m Betamax.” That’s a unique approach to coming out. Blaxploitation fave Rosalind Cash shows up as one of the cops investigating the deaths. David explains to the cops what “hacking” is. A guy gets his torso ripped apart by a resistance upper body machine. A man has his throat cut by a frozen fish which comes back to life through the magic of, well, magic I guess. There is a death by blender scene. The dead wife and her brother become one, in more ways than one. There is an attempted murder by tanning bed.

My copy of Death Spa is a Japanese import region free DVD; I’m pretty sure this is OOP in the USA. You know you have been watching too many weird films when you can look at Asian subtitles and tell the languages apart, yet can’t read a word of it. Also, apparently Japanese DVDs have to blur out the bush, so no full frontal. Just pixelated frontal.

This is not what anyone would call “a good movie,” but if you’re reading this site you probably don’t need to be told that. The question we have to deal with here at Midnight Showing is, “Does it entertain?” The answer is yes, immensely, a thousand times yes. I would have given it three stars anyway because it’s everything that was great about late 80s horror (everyone looks great, nobody is likeable, everything is leading up to a death extravaganza party that can’t be cancelled), but I have to bump it up to 4 for the plentitude of topless ladies and crazy death scenes.

Pembalasan ratu pantai selatan (1989) aka: Lady Terminator

I’d heard great things about this awesome Indonesian bad movie. Thus, for your enjoyment, I just had to subject myself to it. And it is awesome!

It starts off rather bland, with a (rather ugly) woman shagging some guy (cowgirl styley) whereby as she climaxes she does something or other to his penis and blood spurts everywhere. She finishes by walking towards the came and uttering the awesome line of: “is there any man who can satisfy me?”

The plot (for what there is) is pretty basic. So basic in fact that IMDb gives it one line: The spirit of an ancient evil queen posesses the body of a young anthropological student, who then goes on a murderous rampage.

Although it is, it seems, based on a book called The Legend of the South Sea Queen.

Anyway, after man one is dispatched of, man two comes in to try his luck with the ugly chick, and he wins! He lives to tell the tale and the ugly bitch promises vengeance upon his granddaughter.

Fast forward and we have an anthropologist enquiring about a dusty old book. I know she’s an anthropologist and she keeps mentioning it. Next thing she’s on the hunt for a relic and diving under water. Next thing we see is the boat being destroyed and her (in some sort of dream/hallucination) being strapped to a bed and having an eel waggle up her vag (well, through her bikini bottoms). Kinky!

Two drunks (one who can seemingly piss like a fire hose) see a woman emerge from the watery depths and come to shore. One guy takes her into his car and a bit of rumpy pumpy happens. Guy two waits patiently and gets his turn. Unfortunately for them she’s the lady terminator in question and kills them both (after sex) but it’s here we get to see some boobage:

An excellent rack, ten out of ten!

and it is good! So, boob-chick (above) is now the reincarnation of the ugly-chick.

After our good lady terminator has trashed a hotel room and (probably) raped a security guard (to death) we see the stereotypical American doofuses. Complete with bad lines, bar brawl and bad hair. Behold:

Behold his mighty mullet!

Mullet-man (who is called ‘Snake’ by the way), and seems to be wearing a woman’s denim jacket, has been quite suitably dubbed as the typical stoner/surfer character.

Meanwhile, lady terminator cobbles together some clothing (somehow getting an uzi sub-machine gun) and extracts vengeance in the ladies bathroom:

Hot chicks with big guns... can this possibly get any better?

And all this in just thirty minutes!

Having mulled over some dead bodies the cops hit the bar and we see a suspiciously familiar scene where a (lady) terminator busts into the bar and starts shooting up the place. Our man in the gay shirt (see photo above) says to his girl “come with me if you want to live“, and they flee the bar. Lady terminator gives chase and after a few (inevitable) stumbles our people flee the scene in a car. But she’s still after them! The girl is, of course, the granddaughter of the ugly chick shagger.

They end up in some lab somewhere and it’s here they find out that she (the terminator) is actually a missing person. This is found via their 1970′s 386 PC:

Green screen awesomeness!

Some creepy old guy gives the girl a family heirloom type gift. Next thing we know the lady terminator is giving chase in the most bizarre car I’ve ever seen on celluloid:

I want one of them! Even though I don't have a license.

If anyone knows what make/model that car is please let me know. I want one, and I can’t even drive.

Having laid waste to a small army of security people (at some lab of sorts) she continues to stalk the girl. But fear not, for creepy old guy is here to save you!

Go get her creepy old guy!

Oh, OK, maybe not:

Aw, she shot creepy old guy in the nuts!

Oh well, but since most characters are now dead our heroes head for the hills and camp outside, in a remote area, to hide from the lady terminator and bonk like rabbits. Lady terminator meanwhile has assumed the lotus position to meditate:

Topless meditation. A new sport for the upcoming Olympics?

But lady terminator is injured. Best course of action? A scalpel to the eye of course! If that scene also sounds familiar then, yes, I think they stole it from some American film.

Our heroes head for a shopping mall and are attacked by the lady terminator.

OK, this is beginning to sound more and more like that ‘other’ film I was talking about…

After some more explosions, car chases and what-not they fire rockets at our good lady engulfing her in flames. But she’s not out, she’s up and about, badly burned, but now (somehow!) firing laser beams from her eyes!:

And why wasn't she firing laser beams from the start of the movie? I've no idea...

Eventually they drop a net from a helicopter and capture the lady terminator. It’s at this point she shoots laser beams from her eyes and blows the helicopter out of the sky.

She purses our heroes into a building and upstairs. Lady terminator finally attacks the girl who pulls out the family heirloom (which apparently she’s been carrying with her the whole time) and stabs the lady terminator. This kills her outright. Not entirely sure why/how, but it does. At the end we’re treated to a crappy speech about good and evil.

I’ve nothing else to say about this film except: awesomeness. Watch it!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Trailer:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPvxzpyOP-8

Encarnação do Demônio (aka: Embodiment of Evil)

Things what I learned from this movie:

• if you are a mad maniac in Brazil, they set you free after 40 years
• if you are a mad maniac with a crazy agenda, people will follow you
• if you are a mad maniac with followers, some of them will be hot chicks
• if you are a mad maniac with hot chicks you will want one of them to bear the fruit of your loins
• if you are a mad maniac with loony chick followers they will throw their naked selves at you

So, the story is as thus:

After forty years in prison, the evil gravedigger Josefel Zanatas a.k.a. Zé do Caixão is released by the lawyer Lucy Pontes in accordance with Brazilian Laws. He moves to the slums with his followers that worship him, and he seeks out the perfect woman to bear his children while haunted by the ghosts of his victims. The vigilante brothers Captain Osvaldo Pontes and his brother Coronel Claudiomiro from the Military Police chase Zé do Caixão in the slums to kill him and they find a track of tortured and mutilated bodies.
(from IMDb.com)

Initially the film started of pretty slow, it’s just Josefel (aka: Joe, aka: Coffin Joe) being released from prison/asylum and meeting up with Bruno his crippled man servant. Bruno takes Joe (who hasn’t seen the outside world for 40 years) to an abandoned old basement to meet his four new followers; two dudes and two hot chicks.

I should add that Joe looks kinda like Saddam Hussein, wearing a top hat, black cloak and with big fuck off finger nails.

Apparently those fingernails aren't stuck on, he did grow them that size!

Anyway, he’s now free and (just like old times) is looking for the perfect woman to have his successor. Only problem is that ol’ Joe is being haunted by his past, several victims from previous kills are appearing to him in visions. This is juxtaposed with the brutality of the Brazilian police who are shooting kids for sport. One thing leads to another and ol’ Joe ends up meeting two blind hags who just happen to have a hot as fuck daughter, which greatly interests him. He also has Bruno kidnap a hot scientist chick. God only knows how he manages it as Bruno can barely walk never mind kidnap. Anyway, Joe drugs her up and feeds her a slice from her own right buttock:

... and here's some doped up chick munching on a slice of her own right ass cheek. Mmm, lovely!

It’s from here the film gets to the good stuff. We also learn a bit more about Joe in that he had a wife/girlfriend who was pregnant with his son but it was not to be. We also see his potential future woman in a purification rite (or sorts) with her bare boobs, which was enjoyable. While Bruno is perving on this scene the cops bust him and kick the crap out of him. Unfortunately for the cops, Joe’s four followers attack and kidnap the four cops!

At the sight of four tortured cops I think Coffin Joe is about to become Cummin' Joe.

The cops are crucified, hung on hooks etc. All the usual nice ways to go. Meanwhile, another hot chick throws herself at ol’ Joe:

And he refuses her!! WTF?!

Coffin Joe dispatches the of the old blind chicks, tells the hot chick that he’s killed their aunts and asks what now. She replies:

On her forehead is a drop of blood from her one of her dead aunts. Does that stop her from fornicating with ol' Joe? NEVAR!

And so the madness continues. Various people are captured and tortured, one woman is smeared in melted cheese and has a rat wedged in her vag. No, seriously! Eventually the cops storm his hideout and all hell breaks loose. They find bodies everywhere, mostly male, as it seems that if you want female followers you just need to treat them like shit for a little while and they come round to your way of thinking. A bit like when has cuts open the sewn up  belly of a pig and out pops a woman. And apparently it’s a real pig and a real woman!

It’s a comical film which I think tries to show what it’s like in Brazil, but it’s a bit weird to try and mix the brutality of Brazil with the brutal madness of Coffin Joe!

There’s plenty of gore and blood. Certainly a lot of torture and there’s a TON of boobs!

Bit of a slow start, goes off on a few slow hallucinatory style scenes, but after the first kill it’s all good stuff!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Even in death the chicks with neatly trimmed beavers want Joe!

And yes, she does ride his dead body...

Cool pumpkins bro.

The original Night of the Demons (review here by yours truly) is a cult classic from the good old 80′s that is often grabbed by horror fans in October when they are in need of some Demon possession fun.  While it is dated, and many of the gags that back in the day must have been quite cool fall flat or just look silly in 2010, it is still an atmosphere laden gem that has that unmistakable intangible that modern day horror movies seem to lack…fun.  Enter the inevitable remake which. despite a cast of either no names or B-list talent, and a release that seemed to have come from nowhere, does a great job of encapsulating the spirit of the 80′s classic and even manages to provide some legitimate tension, jolt-scares, and prosthetic gore.  It isn’t perfect a perfect translation (but then again, the original wasn’t perfect either), but after wading through the slog of Hollywood horror remakes for the better part of the last decade, I found NOTD 09′ to be a refreshing blast of sleazy, raunchy, gooey fun that has just enough tricks up its sleeve to ascend into a rare upper echelon of not only downright groovy horror remakes, but just plain fun and radical horror movies in general.

That is totally the kind of house where slutty, boozing, pot smoking 20 somethings bite the dust. Oops, spoilers.

Since NOTD 09′ (that’s my cool little shorthand name for it, deal with it) is the kind of movie that doesn’t beg for any real type of analysis or even that much explanation, I’ll keep this fairly brief.  Some entirely-too-good-looking-to-be-anyone-who-exists-in-the-real-world 20 somethings are invited by the resident creepy goth chick, Angela, to a house with a long history of bloodletting and gruesome happenings dating back 150 years.  Of course, this party is taking place on Halloween night, because if you’re going to tempt fate, go big right?  After dancing, and obligatory party shots of chicks making out and girls wearing “clothing” that is so tight and revealing you wonder if they painted them on, the party eventually gets busted up by those ASSHOLE COPS who are only around when they can kill your buzz but always seem to run off once you’re inundated with the demonic un-fucking-dead.  So after some “we need to get back into the building to find our drunk whore friend and get her home” shenanigans, demons, who are trying to possess enough people on Halloween night in order to screw up some biblical loophole business, show up and start slowly turning people and causing the ruckus that they are known to do in any horror movie they find themselves in.  Demon orgy?  Check.  Demon Sex? Check.  Demon gut munching? Check. Very creative substance/material that demons are “allergic” too? Check.  DEMON LESBIANS?  CHECKKKKKKKKKK.  Someone at the Halloween party dressed up like the Jigsaw puppet from the SAW MOVIES?  MOTHERFUCKING CHECK!!!!!!

GETTING JIGGY WITH IT!

All jokes aside, the film is pretty well acted, and it even stars the kid from Terminator 2, Edward Furlong.  Also Doira Baird and some other floozies I’ve seen in a bunch of these horror movies lately.  It isn’t quite a gorefest, but when the gore is present, it’s done quite beautifully with rubber, latex and Karo syrup.  The boo scares are very clever and well-timed to hit on the down or off beats and there are more than a few fake out scares that are teeth grinders because you’re just waiting for the shit to hit the fan.  The ending is also clever enough to gain praise and it doesn’t fall into the typical trappings of “OMG WE HAVE TO LEAVE ROOM FOR A SEQUEL” end of  movie bullshit.  Since going on any further would mean I would just start spoiling the best parts, I’ll leave you with a HEARTY recommendation and a 3.5 out of 5 star score.  If you’re a fan of the originals, this is a must.  I mentioned the demon lesbians right?

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Maybe she is born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline.

Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies (2001)

Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies is a documentary about, as its title suggests, the history of American movies, but not your Hollywood blockbusters, oh no, this is about the history of American exploitation movies.

The documentary begins with the end of World War II, the baby boom, televisions and quite probably the first ‘scream queen’, Vampira, who introduced the viewers to low budget movies on TV. The mid 50′s brought many headaches to Hollywood, not just people watching TV rather than going to the movies, but a law came in to force breaking up the monopoly that the studios had. The ‘theatre divorcement’ as it was nicknamed.

Around this time AIP started up producing low budget movies that put teens in the limelight with rebellion at the forefront. Then Roger Corman appears…

Vampira - the black and white version of Elvira

Corman could turn out films within days on a low budget yet still make a profit, something that AIP quite liked, and so a partnership was formed. Next thing you know we’re getting colour, Corman and Vincent Price. All in one film!

The 30min mark is where it heats up and moves in to sinema. It’s here that exploitation movies came in to their own. Hollywood movies were forbidden to show certain things in movies, but low-budget studios didn’t have the same constraints as Hollywood so they churned out the nudist, nudie-cuties, and then you have Russ Meyer.

Boredom set in and now in the early 60′s the exploiteers were looking for a new niche. Enter, Blood Feast.

The infamous 'Blood Feast'.

Prior to Blood Feast (as one man puts it) ‘no one had ever filmed blood before, or saw anyone die with their eyes open.’ After that came the ‘roughies’ which were the ‘torture-porn’ of their day with men beating women black and blue (in black and white). But when the restrictions on Hollywood are lifted, there’s no niches left for the cunning exploiteers and low-budget independent movies effectively died.

Schlock! is really interesting documentary, there’s plenty of good titbits of info and trivia in here and it’s amazing to see how much of Hollywood is built upon the shoulders of Corman. His films may suck at times, but without him there’d be no Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante, James Cameron… the list goes on. They all worked with Corman, many getting their big break (or starring role) thanks to Corman.

It’s kinda like watching a documentary on the Titanic, you know the sad end is coming, but at least with exploitation films you know it’s not THE end… as one interviewee commented ‘exploitation films are still alive, everything out of Hollywood now is exploitation.’

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The original Piranha movie was hardly an Oscar contender so I really wasn’t expecting much from this or it’s 3D

*WOOT! WOOT! RANT ALERT, RANT ALERT

Dear Hollywood,

I appreciate that your films are making less and less money, even though you spend more and more on them, and need gimmicks now more than ever but would you just FUCK OFF with the 3D? It’s a pain in the ass and not new, there’s been ’3D’ films since the 50′s now dump the 3D and get some decent script writers maybe then people will watch your films.

Yours (downloading) faithfully,
Ronnie

So, I expect you want a plot synopsis then? OK, if you must:  Every year the population of sleepy Lake Victoria explodes from 5,000 to 50,000 for Spring Break, a riot of sun and drunken fun. But this year, there’s something more to worry about than hangovers and complaints from local old timers; a new type of terror is about to be cut loose on Lake Victoria. After a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the areas new razor-toothed residents. (IMDb.com)

First things first, you can sleep for the first 30mins of the film, nothing to see here. It’s all students-gone-wild and boring character introduction. Only after the 30min mark do you see any piranha. But, while waiting for the piranha you can always admire the boobage. Yes, there’s plenty of racks on display here! 40mins in is the first decent kill with gore. Some chick with big hooters and a parachute is being dragged behind a boat but, unfortunately for her, she ends up in the water and the next time she lifts up in to the sky… well, let’s just say that there’s a fair bit less of her to lift. The highlight of the film is at the 50min mark where the highly annoying students are told to leave the water, and the area, but no… they all continue to party and dive in to the water. And thank God they do. There’s a massacre, and it is good. One chick is hit by a high tension wire which slices through her diagonally, one selfish dude grabs a speedboat to make a get away. Not only is he mowing people down left right and center but his engine gets snagged. Snagged on some chick hair. When the propellers start up it rips her entire face off. Nice! There’s also a nice piranha-eating-its-way-out of a chick. The next scene of note is the bad-ass sheriff who slices and dices a few piranha with a speedboat motor. After the one hour mark though it’s all down hill again. I think there’s one gore scene for the next half hour then the crappy ending.

I expected worse, there is a good 30mins of blood, gore and action, but with 30mins on either side of it, it could have been planned out a bit better. The gore was pretty good and there were plenty of boobs so I’m giving it…

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Frog-g-g! (2004)

I expected nothing but bad acting from this film, but within the first four minutes, I was willing to keep watching.

Why?

Because the two main characters are a couple of lesbians. Kinda hot ones at that.

Anyway, I suppose I should start off with the ‘plot’. I’m too lazy to write my own, so I’ll steal it from IMDb.com:

Chemical waste seeps into a small town’s water supply, causing the birth of a mutant FROG-G-G which is instinctively driven to mate with its genetic match – human women. Sexy EPA super-agent Dr Barbara Michaels tracks the Frog-g-g’s every move, fighting off corrupt good-ol’-boy politicians and drunken rednecks at every turn. No one in town believes her, or the evidence, until the shocking climax when the Frog-g-g is finally brought to justice… or IS it…?

So, that’s the plot. Like I was watching it for it’s riveting turn of events? Hell no, I was watching it for:

Boobies within the four minute mark is a good sign as far as I'm concerned!

Yay for the under represented!

After the boobs, we see the corrupt plant owner forcing employees to bury toxic waste in the middle of butt-fuck-nowhere.  Right after that we learn that one of the dykes (her on the left in the photo above) is in town and investigating some eco-whatsitsface.  After speaking to some old inbred man she’s shown what may, or may not, be a mutation:

uh, yeah, there's something not quite right with that frog...

This needs some serious testing! So it’s off to her lab for a good frog dissection. After that she’s almost attacked so now she must head for the shower and show yet more breast. Yay! Then it’s off to visit the Sheriff who is in cahoots with the plant owner! (boo-hiss!) But fear not, for our eco-dyke has evidence against the plant owner to show that giant mutations are taking place.

After a car crash our Frog-g-g makes an appearance. Mainly by raping some random chick:

Just repeat to yourself: it's a man in a suit, it's a man in a suit...

So, uh, yeah… some other stuff happens and then cums the second attack of the humping frog-g-g:

Uh, no, wait - that's not the attack, that's a completely unnecessary shot of some cheerleaders. Go fit-chicks!

Then, after some other stuff eco-dyke tracks down the Frog-g-g and distracts him with some fine humanoid flesh:

you wanna piece a' me? FUUUUCCCKKK MEEEEEEEE!!!! (no, seriously, that's the dialogue to go with this photo)

then whacks him in the nuts with a tyre iron.

And that’s about it. The plot is corny as hell, the acting actually isn’t bad, effects are lame but it did have plenty of boobage, so I kinda liked it! It’s a great movie to watch for boobs, brief clips of cheerleaders and general no-brain action.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Trailer:

The Ultimate Hardgore Splatter Tape

The Ultimate Hardgore Splatter Tape is a video cornucopia of gore clips taken from many of our favourite horror/gore films.

Our trip into this tape begins with, among others, a clips of big hairy spiders crawling all over some hot chick, I don’t mind spiders at all, but I don’t know if I’d have the bottle to just lie there, unflinching, while they were all over my face. Kudos to that actress!

The first clip to make me ‘ugh!’ was one where some guy is being killed – no, that didn’t make me ‘ugh’, the woman who has – what looks like – forks protruding from under her eyes, that did it for me:

Ugh! If there's one thing I can NOT stand is things being done to eyes *shudder*

Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, we see a chick peering through a peep-hole in a door, for a bullet to come flying through it and take her eye (and brain) out. God dammit, was this tape custom made to repel me?!

Next, some quality boobage from the mistress of boobage herself, Ilsa (aka: Dyanne Thorne)

Hooray for Dyanne Thorne and her ample bosom! HOORAY!

Following on comes the (in?)famous dick chopping scene from whats-its-face, the cannibal film. I always get the Holocaust’s and Ferox’s mixed up. A woman then decides to deep fry her hand and munch on it, nice!

Reaching the half-way mark, we get some Tetsuo weirdness. I can spot that grey, mechanical, oddness anywhere. Speaking of oddness… Rikki-O makes several appearances. No bizarre gore tape would be complete without some Rikki!

Another clip that I thought kicked ass was this one of some devil dude popping up in front of a monk:

If that suddenly popped up in front of me, I'd most definitely pee AND poo myself!

Don’t know what film it’s from, but I shall be looking through the end credits to find out, as that devil makeup looks kick ass for a black and while oldie. Assuming it’s not a newie with oldie effects applied to the picture.

UPDATE: I believe the film is called Häxan (aka: Witchcraft Through the Ages), from 1922. So I hope to review that soon!

The last part of the tape has the inevitable Necromantik scenes and a music video from some band I don’t recognise.

I feel like I'm John Holmes now... even I'm bigger than that! Although his IS about to be lobbed off...

I’m not even going to pretend that I know where all the clips come from, but there’s an authoritative list of clip sources (and music sources) at the end of the tape, which is something I wish more mixtapes would do, as there’s nothing worse than seeing an awesome clip but never knowing where the clip originated.

Even though it only runs for 65 minutes, it packs a punch and should be watched by all. I have no doubt that there will be at least one clip that will make you want to look away. And several that will make you rewind and replay.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

AVON needs to call her.

I am so effin’ set.  A cool breeze is crawling through the daily air, I got one of my favorite Halloween themed desktop wallpapers up, and the hoodies and long sleeve undershirts are out of the storage room and in the dresser drawers.  What’s that?  It’s not even the middle of September?  Too bad jerk off (Die Hard reference anyone?), I’m starting early.  I figured to kick off the avalanche of reviews I am planning to do on movies that take place on or around my favorite holiday, I would start with something with a fairly decent reputation that I have not seen yet.  And maybe there was a reason I hadn’t seen it yet.  For many years, Night of the Demons is the movie I always told myself I needed to see one day, but always got interrupted before I ever got 10 minutes into it.  Now that I’ve seen, I can’t help but feel really underwhelmed.  Maybe my expectations were too high, or I have put it on a mental pedestal since it always eluded me whenever I tried to sit down and view it, but Night of the Demons lacked that… “juno se qua” that makes a horror movie really stand out and pop.

The plot is simple and serviceable enough.  A gaggle of stereotypical teenagers get invited by the weird goth chick from history class to “Hull House” for a party on Halloween night.  The house is an old funeral home, that isn’t only built on some historical sacred/crazy scary patch of land, but was also the venue for a grisly multiple homicide and suicide by its former residents AND located right next to a cemetery.  Talk about a bad place to put funeral home, shit.  I don’t think it takes a nuclear physicist to figure out what the rest of the night is going to be like for these raging sacks of hormones.

Apparently old abandoned creepy houses on the edge of town come complete with their own fog machines.

The first, and most crucial, complaint I have with Night of the Demons is the fact that it takes forever to get to where it’s going, and even then it never really ramps it up like its mid-to-late 80′s contemporaries did so well.  Kevin Tenney (director of the more recent zombie flick Brain Dead, which I reviewed here) revs the engine too many times without letting the brake go and just going full bore into the killing fields, and by the time he does, the engine has been taxed too much and can barely top 60 miles an hour.  It’s a classic example of “too little, too late” film making in horror where you have been braced for all hell to be unleashed so many times, that by the time it does, even if it is really kick ass, you just don’t care anymore.  I really hate being this negative, and coming down on a film like this, because it did genuinely have some original ideas, like dressing the female lead in an Alice costume from Alice in Wonderland and having her be put in situation that could be free-associated quite easily to parallel Wonderland, but as I said before, I felt like I was watching a nervous executioner trying to flip the switch on a serial killer.  Another silent killer was the fact the movie wallows in darkness for far too long.  Not in sense of mood or tone, but I mean actual absence of lighting.  I had to watch this with the lights off just to offset some of the scenes where all I could make out were hues of blue and windows.  It works for a while, and I understand that in the darkness, boo scares are much easier to pull off (and Night of the Demons had a few really good ones) but eventually you have to let us see what is going on.

There are two people in this snapshot. Can you tell? I couldn't.

On the brighter side of things, the soundtrack is a pretty cool combination of little bumps in the night and eerie sounds and noises organized quite well.  The opening number that plays over the really fun to watch animated credit sequence is the best example of this.  There are some decent boo scares, and there is a wraparound subplot that is told through two scenes (one in the beginning of the movie, and then finished in the last scene) that is absolutely genius.  Linnea Quiqley is downright scary as she switches back and forth from prissy attractive girl who is always applying makeup, to possessed hell beast, to hyper-sexual possessed hell beast, to playful little girl at the end of a hallway with a ballerina dress on, who is also a possessed hell beast.  Everyone else in the movie, with the exception the incredibly enjoyable grumpy old man from the first and last scenes, are just various shades of “meh.”  No one really bombs their roles entirely, but I think some of them may have been working more for exposure or to pay back weed debts to their college buddies who now happen to be casting directors and film makers.  There are a few good bits of weird gore that is worth a mention as well, and the facial make up on the demonized party-goers is pretty fantastic, when you can actually see it.  The best special effect would have to be Angela floating, instead of walking, through the hallways of the maze like funeral home.  I don’t know if it is just me, but whenever people get all evil and messed up, and then gain the ability to float an inch or so off the ground, that is really quite unnerving.

Even the demons have to cut back somehow is this recession.

So, my little party didn’t get off to quite the rollicking start I had hoped it would, but Night of the Demons is far from the worst possessed house/demon party movie I have seen.  It has moments where you can feel some genuine creativity and spark rumbling just beneath the surface, but for whatever reason, that just never erupted into a fully realized on-screen bloodbath or jolt-fest that would have elevated it quite a bit.  There are some funny lines, but the constant gear switches and late blooming of the proper stalk-and-kill second and third acta managed to bring Night of the Demons to a screeching halt a few times too many times to keep up any type of serious or comedic flow, momentum, and tension.  Not the worst choice for a movie to get you into the holiday spirit, but I can guarantee I will have finer examples of the season via cinema over the next 40 or so days.  The party at Hull House isn’t one I would recommend crashing to most, save for the dedicated few who need to see more of Linnea Quiqley naked, or just every horror film that takes place on All Hallows Eve.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

Still a damn fine opening credit sequence though!