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REVIEW OF ALIEN PREDATOR (1987)

From ihorrorandsons.com

I frequented quite a few different video stores in my many moves as a kid. If I stayed in one place long enough, sometimes the staff would remember my name. And I don’t mean “the weird kid that spends an hour looking at every case on the shelves, but only rents one movie”. Just as often, I’ve forgotten the name of the store. That would be the case for the store where I first rented Alien Predators.

This was not some movie that I remembered fondly. As a matter of fact, I barely remembered it at all. I knew that I liked the poster, but that wasn’t what made Alien Predators stand out. What made it memorable was that I NEVER saw it again. Anywhere. Not at other video stores. Not on cable. Nowhere. If I’m correct, this film has still never seen a US DVD release. Can’t speak for the rest of the world. (Update: 2 months to the day after this 1st posted, the movie was released via DVD-R by MGM under the alternate title of “The Falling“.)

The film was written, produced, & directed by Deran Sarafian. Sarafian has had a fairly successful career directing and producing quite a few popular television series. He also directed the films Interzone, To Die For, Terminal Velocity, & Death Warrant (starring JCVD). However, he may be best known to horror fans as the star of Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 3. Really, it’s okay if you didn’t know that.

Filmed in 1984 as “The Falling“, the film was released to video in 1987 under its new title. This was obviously a “cash-in” on the popularity of the 2 biggest horror/sci-fi releases of the time. I do not know if it was a successful strategy, but they had to recoup what they could as the production was reported to have gone significantly over budget.

In 1973, NASA launched the space station Skylab. It’s objective: to house classified experiments that could not be performed on Earth. No, that’s doesn’t sound sketchy at all. In 1979, Skylab’s orbit decayed and it crashed back to Earth. At least that’s what the words on the screen tell me.

The film opens on the remains of Skylab, somewhere in a desert near Madrid. The crash has left a fiery trench cut through the ground, the wreckage still burning at the end. The music starts turning ominous as a helicopter lands. 4 men in contamination suits get out and approach the wreckage. (In actuality, Skylab landed in Australia.)

Things get a little confusing here with time. Skylab crashed in 1979. While the film never says when it is set, it appears to be the early/mid eighties (when the film was made). If this is indeed the case, I am curious as to why it took so long to find the wreckage. I would think that classified experiments are something you wouldn’t want getting into in the wrong hands. Or heads. However, I’m more curious as to why the wreckage is still on fire after all these years. Maybe this is that “Eternal Flame” that the Bangles were talking about.

In a nearby field, a cow wanders off into the sunset, finally arriving in a city at night. It dies in the middle of a road. 2 dogs approach and start eating it. It’s actually a pretty nasty little scene with the mutts ripping and tearing at what appears to be a real carcass. The sound of the chewing and the flesh tearing makes the scene a little more gruesome. Something living inside the cow lashes out, grabbing one of the dogs. It pulls the dog into the cow’s body and we can hear it being eaten.

It’s time to meet our characters, a group of friends driving an RV through the countryside of Madrid. Michael (Martin Hewitt – Killer Party, Out of Control) is falling asleep at the wheel, while Damon (Dennis Christopher – Fade To Black, Stephen King’s It) is rocking out to classical music, air-conducting and errthang. Along for the ride is their friend, and Michael’s future love interest, Sam (Lynn-Holly Johnson – For Your Eyes Only, The Watcher In The Woods). It’s also worth noting that they are towing a dune buggy. Unnecessary additions such as this MAY have a played a part in the film’s budget issues. Possibly.

They drive up on the dead cow and surviving dog, losing control of the vehicle as they swerve to miss the animals. Sam talks Michael into walking back to check on the dog. Seems that none of them saw the much larger dead cow in the road. Michael doesn’t find either dog or cow. Instead, he finds a gooey puddle that used to be “cow”. Michael slips and falls in it after hearing a noise that the audience now knows to be the creature. He’s scared again a few seconds later when Damon grabs him from behind. They both hear the noise again and, after some screaming, run back to the RV and drive off.

They drive into town. Sam carries on about how quaint the town is, and how she’s so happy to be here. Just then, someone throws a beer bottle at the RV’s windshield. This will be a running gag throughout the movie. Not a particularly funny one, but there nevertheless. This is one of the film’s attempts at setting itself up as your standard 80’s horror/comedy, but none of these attempts really work.

They stop and spend the night at a campground. The next morning, they meet an Indian couple and their young daughter. In another of the film’s “meh” attempts at humor, the husband tries to relate to the group by rattling off some American clichés and slogans. The scene comes off feeling a little racially insensitive, but it’s not that funny as far as racist humor goes.

The film cuts to a small restaurant. A waitress carries a plate containing 2 Tylenols and a pack of Alka-Seltzer to a bearded man sitting at a table. I don’t know what kind of restaurant this is, but I hope they serve a Robitussin smoothie. An older man carrying a metal case enters. We’ll just call him “the Doctor”. We’ll call the other guy “the Captain” (minus Tennille). The Captain blames the Doctor for some experiment that’s gone wrong. I wonder what that could be.

As the 2 men walk out of the restaurant, the three friends are walking in. The Captain bumps into Sam, knocking her down. He continues walking on, without apologizing. Damon makes some threats to kick the Captain’s ass before speeding off in the dune buggy. I personally had difficulty believing Christopher in this role. I can see him as the smart ass, but not as the tough guy. That would probably explain why he’s generally type-cast as the opposite.

The Captain takes the Doctor back to a very shady looking motel. There, he shows the Doctor the body of a Lieutenant Greene. The Lt. was sent here to discover why communications with Skylab had stopped. I would assume that smashing into the ground after falling from outer-friggin-space would play a part, but there are procedures and stuff. Meanwhile, the Captain was sent here to see what had happened after communication had stopped with Greene.

The side of Greene’s head is now swollen and distorted. Something is moving in the massive growth on the side of Greene’s throat. Doc slices it opens with a scalpel and blood spurts out onto the Captain. The wound continues to ooze and bubble while the Captain sarcastically remarks about the Doctor having this situation “under control”.

Back at the restaurant, Sam & Michael deal with rude service from the creepy waitress. Michael tries to tell Sam about his feelings for her, but is interrupted when Damon returns. Damon tells them about a weird occurrence he had at an auto shop in town. The waitress returns. Her hair is now frizzed out and blood is trickling from her nose.

The Doctor and the Captain enter an old secluded fort, now used as a secret NASA facility. The facility appears to have been deserted in a hurry. They take the elevator to the bottom floor and there enter another bizarre looking structure. Here they find a hatch door that has been left open. They climb down the ladder into some sort of mist-covered containment unit. A canister is found opened on the ground. It’s then explained that microbes were taken from the moon during the Apollo 14 mission. These microbes were then injected into animals placed on Skylab. This resulted in an alien species growing inside of the animals.

Greene was exposed to these microbes, resulting in his current condition. The Captain was also exposed to the microbes when Greene’s neck gravy splattered on him. He gives the Doctor a speech about not knowing what he’s caused, and then blows his brains out. The Doctor leaves, but does not close the hatch behind him. The creature growing inside of the Captain can be heard bursting from the body below.

Back at the RV, Sam takes offense at Damon’s blowjob joke and storms out. While she’s out driving around, the Doctor pulls up along side of her. He tells her that she may be in danger and asks how long she’s been in town. Sam thinks it’s a pick-up line and drives off. Moments later, the Doctor is rear-ended by another vehicle, pushing him through a clay fence into someone’s yard.

Sam drives to a small market, empty of people. There she is cornered by someone wearing a fairly creepy mask. She tries to run outside, but a truck is waiting just outside the door, revving its engine at her. The truck tries to run her down, but she makes it back to the buggy. However, the Doctor is there waiting for her. He pulls out a gun and orders her to drive. He tells Sam that everyone in the town (including her and her friends) is now infected, but that there’s still time to find a cure. First, he needs to find a phone in order to contact NASA. Somehow, the guys are able to hear the entire conversation on the CB radio in the RV. An explanation for “how?” is given, but I’m not buying it.

Damon attempts to get help from the Indian family, but returns puking. We get a nicely done scene when Michael goes to look for himself. The camera slowly zooms in on a tricycle and the daughter’s doll. The bike wheel turns by itself and the doll introduces itself as Talking Tina, a Twilight Zone reference. Suddenly, the body of the young girl falls into the shot, her face blown open.

The guys arrive at the hotel. The Doctor informs them that the alien will grow in size, eventually bursting out of their bodies after 48 hours of incubation. The creature can also control thoughts and actions before freeing itself, which is why the citizens of the town have barricaded the bridges to prevent our heroes from leaving town and warning others. He can indeed make an antivirus. He’ll just need the canister that held the microbes. Ya know, the same canister that he left at the NASA facility that he was at earlier? The one that he should have taken with him from the beginning since he knew that people wouldn’t have much time once infected?

Michael volunteers to return to the facility for the canister. Meanwhile, the Doctor will use the RV as his lab to start the process of making the antivirus. For whatever reason, the RV has been crashed through the side of a house. I’m not sure this has any real advantages as they aren’t exactly hidden. Sam and Damon just kinda sit around.

From this point on, you get a sappy love story, car chases, explosions, more car chases, and some more “ho-hum” attempts at humor. What you don’t get is much “alien”. Or “predator”.  When you finally do get a face-bursting alien at the end of the film, the “burst” is edited too quickly to give you much of a look at the effect. The bloody, gaping hole left behind is pretty impressive though. However, it’s all overshadowed by the fact that the creature is just not well conceived, coming off looking like some blood-splattered spider puppet.

Alien Predators isn’t a bad movie. Well, it is, but it’s not THAT bad. It’s better than Alien Vs Predator, even if that isn’t much of a compliment. However, it’s just too riddled with massive gaps in reason. As in, “what was the reason we wasted time on a yawner car chase involving a Fiat?”. It’s biggest crime, however, is making you wait till the very end to reveal its creature, only to deliver a lackluster payoff.

REVIEW OF BEYOND THE DOOR 2 (AKA SHOCK) 1977

From scaredstiffreviews.com

In the 1970s, Italian horror had a certain style. It was artsy and strange and that is exactly what we see in the Mario Bava film “SHOCK”. It was a slow moving film, but when it picks up, it really picks up, and it becomes a pretty scary film.

Dora (Daria Nicolodi) lives in a house with her young son, Marco (David Colin JR), move into a new home with Bruno (John Steiner), the new husband. Dora’s ex-husband is MIA and there is an aura of mystery as to what happened to him. Marco starts acting very strange, screaming “pigs” while his mother has sex with Bruno and then telling her that he “has to kill her.” Dora remains haunted throughout this film and it’s not certain if things are really happening or if it’s in her mind.

Marco continues to act strange. At one point, he re-enacts the sex he saw on his own mother before being pulled off. He then cuts out a picture of Bruno and it somehow impacts a flight he’s on, making it nearly crash. There is something strange going on and Colin JR is one of the creepiest kids ever in horror. I don’t know if it was his missing teeth or curly hair or smile with missing teeth, but he really disturbed me. The tone of the film is like that. You squirm in your seat as you watch on, but it goes from disturbing to terrifying in the third act.

When the mystery is solved and the (spoiler) murder of her ex-husband is revealed, we get some good scares. One of the coolest scares I’ve seen in a long time was a shot where the kid is running up to his mother and as he runs to the camera, the zombie father jumps up and grabs Dora. It gave me the chills. I was so impressed with that shot. It was simple but incredibly effective.

SHOCK was an impressive film that was beautifully shot and paced appropriately. It does start off slowly but it builds to a memorable climax. If you love Italian horror with all of the strangeness and shock value, you’ll love SHOCK. It’s a very good film.

Rating: 7/10

REVIEW OF APRIL FOOLS DAY (1986)

From thenightmarenetwork.net

Director Fred Walton is no stranger to horror, giving us films such as When a Stranger Calls and The Rosary Murders, but thirty years ago, he served us something entirely different with April Fool’s Day.

Muffy St. John (yeah, that’s her real name) is putting together a party for her friends at her isolated mansion on the water for spring break. Off the bat you get a weird feeling about this chick, and it doesn’t help that she’s having some flashbacks to her birthday as a child, terrified as a jack-in-the-box is given to her as a prank and a weird creature pops out. It looks like the mom might have been the effed up one giving her kid the toy, so you just know this chick is fucked up.

Muffy’s having eight friends over for the weekend: Sexy, sassy Nikki and her funny, boundary-less boyfriend Chaz (Clayton Rohner of The Relic), Chaz’s best friend and lovable oaf Arch, sensible Kit (Amy Steel of Friday the 13th 2) and her boyfriend Rob (Ken Olandt of Leprechaun), Muffy’s cousin Skip, quiet and demure Nan, and upscale hillbilly Hal. Chaz, always a camera in hand, videos Muffy’s friends as they take the ferry over to her house. The first person he interviews is Nikki, who introduces herself: “I’m Mary O’Reilly O’Toole O’Shea…I want to work with handicapped children. My parents are my best friends. Next semester I start convent school, and… I fuck on the first date.” This sets the tone for the rest of the movie; basically, you’re watching a bunch of weirdo, privileged, directionless friends have a great time together…until an April Fool’s Day prank goes terribly awry and sets a series of unfortunate incidents into motion.

Arch and Skip are having some fun throwing a switchblade at each other, as one does with their friends, and Arch pretends to throw the knife into Skip’s stomach as he flails into the water. Unaware that it’s a joke, a few of the guys, including a deckhand named Buck, jump in the water to help. Once they figure out that it’s a prank, everyone gets back on the ferry except Buck, who decides to rope the ferry to the dock while he’s in the water. As expected, he gets crushed between the boat and the dock, and his face gets pretty ripped up.

Muffy goes to greet her guests and Buck is immediately taken to the hospital, putting a damper on their fun weekend…but it isn’t long before they forget all about him and have a nice dinner together at the house. Muffy proves to be quite the prankster this April Fools’ weekend; she’s pulled out all the stops, including whoopie cushions, moving eyes behind paintings, trick chairs, and lights that turn on as the others are turned out. It isn’t long before things get creepy and a little personal with each room containing something that delves into her guests’ darkest secrets, making them a little uneasy about their stay at casa de St. John. You soon learn that everyone in the house isn’t quite who they seem to be, as everyone has something to hide.

With such a big cast in a horror film, you know that it won’t be long before people start getting bumped off. One by one, each of Muffy’s guests go missing, as Muffy seems disoriented and acts very bizarre. (Deborah Foreman really went for it and was totally believable as a super creep.) Kit and Rob follow clues to try to figure out who’s behind it all…but will they be able to solve the mystery before it’s too late?

I liked the fact that although it was filmed in 1986, it had no problem poking fun at itself for typical 80s behavior. It kinda reminded me of Night of the Creeps in that way. I also enjoyed that it could make fun of the rich kids while still making them lovable, so you actually care about what happens to them.

It’s light on gore and there’s no nudity, so it’s pretty tame as far as horror movies go. As with many horror films, this movie has a twist… but it wasn’t the twist I thought it would be. I’ll leave that for you to see for yourself, but the twist is what made this cheeky whodunnit a cult classic.

REVIEW OF PULSE (1988)

From oh-the-horror.com

When Wes Craven and New Line Cinema unleashed Freddy Krueger on an unsuspecting populace in 1984, all bets were off. The traditional slasher movie just wasn't enough for audiences anymore, and many lower budget studios were left trying to make money off a dated business model. Therefore, when Wes Craven's next big budget studio horror project, was announced (and featuring a villain slated to become "the next Freddy Krueger") other studios scrambled to try and get in on the action of what was surely going to be a cash cow and franchise featuring as many sequels as Elm Street had, if not more. As all best laid plans often end up, however, the resulting film (Shocker) flopped, and the legacy of its villain (Horrace Pinker) is that of a one-shot late 80s horror curiosity. Instead of the next Freddy, Wes Craven's newest creation was left looking more like a Freddy rip-off, not unlike the Coroner of Doom Asylum or the myriad of other wisecracking Freddy imitators. The films that tried to cash in on Shocker's would-be success didn't fare much better. MGM's The Horror Show (also known as House 3) features a murderer similarly executed in the electric chair. However, Tri-Star pictures took a different route. Instead of a boogeyman born from a death involving electricity or using electricity as his vehicle of destruction, the villain of 1988's Pulse would essentially BE electricity itself. Further proof of its intended cash-in angle, Pulse was even shamelessly billed as "The Ultimate Shocker!"

REVIEW OF RAW FORCE (1982)

From horrorsociety.com

Director – Edward D. Murphy (Heated Vengeance)
Starring – Cameron Mitchell (Jack-O), Geoffrey Binney (Hot Potato), and Hope Holiday (Texas Lightning)
Release Date – 1982
Rating – 3/5

Tagline(s) – “Raw force.  Untamed and unleashed to kill” and “One blow! The Deathblow!”

Some of the kung-fu and martial arts films went unnoticed at the time.  Films like Raw Force and Miami Connection were often ignored during their initial release but various film distribution companies have rediscovered these forgotten films.  Recently, the folks over at Vinegar Syndrome released the action/horror/adventure martial arts film Raw Force on DVD and blu.  I reached out to Vin Syn and they were nice enough to hook me up with a review copy.

**Spoiler Alert**The film follows a group of smugglers who trade women to a sect of monks on an island for jade.  The reason the smugglers have to trade with the monks instead of just taking by force is because the island is the final resting place of some of the world’s fiercest warriors and these monks are the only thing stopping them from rising and killing the smugglers.

Stuck in the middle of this is a small yacht full of people from various backgrounds including a kung-fu master and a cook with a martial arts background.  They board the yacht and sometime during the night they are boarded by the smugglers and some of the women are captured.  They make it to the island and run into the smugglers where they fight it out with them and the monks before the undead warriors rise from the grave and join in on the fun.

**Spoiler Alert**

I love how some of my favorite 80s films follow some of the most absurd stories ever filmed.  Most of these films are random moments held together by one jumbled story.  Raw Force is no exception and it is fun as hell although it is extremely flawed.

The acting in this film is horrible.  The entire cast just read their lines without trying to convey any emotion or sentiment.  For most of the cast it felt just like another paying gig instead of acting and that is one of the biggest flaws to this film.  Also, the choreography for the first scenes are laughably bad.  No martial arts skill is used what-so-ever here but they are all good at tumbling.

The story for this one is all over the place.  For the basis of the film we have an action adventure film in the same vain as Indian Jones but with a smaller budget.  On top of that we have a crime drama and then we throw in a little zombie martial arts action.  This film is a strange concoction that actually works.  I would love to know what the writers were taking when they tripped out and wrote this shit.

Finally, the film does not have the on screen kills you would expect from a kung-fu flick featuring undead warriors.  The special effects in this one is lacking as well.  We lack on screen kills and the undead ninjas are just wearing grey make-up.  Overall, Raw Force is a film that transcends genres with one strange story.  Sadly, the acting and special effects are below quality.  If you like 80s cinemas then this one may be for you!

REVIEW OF FADE TO BLACK (1980)

From denofgeek.com

Any movie that opens with James Cagney clips gets a film buff/movie geek’s attention. You wonder what line is that from? When you recognize the voice, you try to identify the film before they show something iconic. It’s like trying to yell out the answers before the contestants on Jeopardy. It might sound smart for a minute, but it marks you as a film geek. The kind of geek who can recite scripts, spot future stars in bit parts and knows who was cranking the camera. Trivia can make you crazy. It feeds itself and it is unquenchable. I recognized the character of Eric Binford immediately. Watching old movies late at night, the only time you could catch them in the days before cable, on the little black and white TV by his bed.

Fade to Black is a coming-of-age movie for psychotic film geeks. It stars Dennis Christopher, a quintessential coming-of-age actor who came of age on the classic coming-of-age-on-a-bike film Breaking Away. BAFTA gave him an award for most promising newcomer. He would go on to huff an asthma inhaler in Stephen King's Itand play Borta on a Star Trek deep dish pizza spinoff. In Fade to Black, plays Eric Binford, a movie geek who’s blossoming into a young sociopath with a bright murderous future with a little help from his celluloid heroes. Movie trivia infests Binford’s world history. What does he remember about Hitler? That Broadway Melody was his favorite movie. The JFK assassination? Oswald was watching the double feature Cry of Battle and War is Hell when he was busted. Movie geeks make good impressionists, even if they can’t do the voice, they can usually capture a character. This geek lives in a nostalgic neverland. His mother was a big time, old-time Hollywood starlet who got knocked up by some no good bum and died giving birth to Binford. At least that’s what his Aunt Stella tells him. She’s trying to keep him alive past thirty.

The director Vernon Zimmerman, builds an increasingly annoying world around the little fuckup creep Binford. His home life. His job. His abusive aunt. His obnoxious boss. His bullying coworkers. His skinny tie. It’s enough to drive you out of you mind. His Aunt Stella (Eve Brent Ashe, who was the twelfth Jane in the Tarzan movie series), charges Binford vig on any money he borrows. His boss, Marty Berger, played by Norman Burton, who was the IADC boss Joe Atkinson on the series Wonder Woman, at the film distribution warehouse where Binford works, takes everything out of his paycheck that he can think of.

Dr. Jerry Moriarty is an Irish shrink with a hard head. He’s set up in the old basement drunk tank at the precinct. Tim Thomerson, a comedian who started on Bill Cosby’s variety series Cos and who played Jack Deth in the Trancers movies, blows harp, snorts coke and plays Moriarty with a downhome affability that you rarely see in a police precinct. What you usually see are the cops that pop at Binford when he’s taking a bow in his Cody moment. But Moriarty gets to say the line “I never fucked a cop before” after hooking up with Gwynne Gilford as Officer Anne Oshenbull.

I didn’t know who Mickey Rourke was when I first saw this at the movies. He would become one of my favorite actors after his performance as Boogie in Diner. He was instantly cool. You could hear it the way he talked to his counselor in Body Heat. Maybe he was too cool to play the asshole in this movie. You want him to get the fifty off the creep just for making him answer a stupid ass question from the most watched movie of all time, Casablanca. He’s too cool to run. He gets down on his knees. Both knees. He asks for an explanation. It’s not very movie logical, which makes it a little more real. The kid Joey (Peter Horton) running down the alley is more real. This was one of Rourke’s first roles, seven years before he rapped on David Bowie’s "Shining Star (Makin' My Love)." He plays Richie, the asshole that every coming-of-ager has to endure in his first shitty jobs.

Marilyn O'Connor looks like Marilyn Monroe. She grew up in the outback of Australia, where a guy on a truck showed the same two movies all her life: Mary Poppins andThe Sound of Music. That sounds like a good premise for horror movie to me. She works at the United Skates of America and when you think about it, she’s as delusional as Binford. Linda Kerridge, who plays Marilyn O’Connor, also looks like Marilyn Monroe. She’d played her twice, in 1980 in Switzerland in Go West, Young Man and on the 1978 French TV series Une femme, une époque. Kerridge was born in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia. That’s not really relevant, but I like typing Wagga Wagga. You get the feeling, that if only she’d gotten to the date on time, Binford would still be a creep who is growing into mature psychosis.

Aunt Stella tips over his projector leaving Richard Widmark’s cool grin shimmering off a chair. You don’t just know Binford’s gonna snap, you’re waiting for it, you’re rooting for it. You want him to pull a Tommy Udo on that bitch. You ache for him to push her down the stairs. Who cares if she’s your mother, your aunt, your mother? Whoever she is. You’re rooting for this little psycho to fullfill his psycho potential. That sets some horror movies apart. Some monsters you care about. The Frankenstein monster. King Kong (I cried when that big ape died). Most popcorn eaters weren’t rooting for Freddie. I was, but most people got some relief at the ends of the Nightmare movies.

In Breaking Away, Dennis Christopher’s Dave Stoller affected an Italian accent. Here, he wears makeup. He makes himself up to look like he just stepped out of a black and white movie. He goes out to see Night of the Living Dead as a film still fromDracula. I remember this was a very cool effect on the big screen, but it was somewhat diminished on my second or fifth generation bootleg copy. Vernon Zimmerman takes a page out of the Mel Brooks handbook of Hitchcock homage by directing an equally hilarious shot-by-shot recreation of the shower scene that’s only marred by the fact that you can see the vampire approaching in a mirror. As Dracula, Binford drinks the blood of the hooker who wouldn’t give him a tumble but takes a stumble. This begs a line from Roman Polanski’s Fearless Vampire Killers,“the blood of these whores is killing me.”

Binford’s trivia comes spilling out of control. He painstakingly transforms himself into William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy to call out Richie, who’s been stealing stuffed animals and trying to get laid, to a gunfight. The ever-cool Richie can’t help but admire the little shit’s big gun, but maybe he thinks the kid’s overcompensating, “Some toy you got there, Hoppy.” When Binford pops Richie and disappears into the backlit haze, he’s finally graduated to his second real kill. He is becoming a man. His spree is more than a popped cherry.

It looks like Gary Bially (Morgan Paull), a movie producer whose big film is The Big Rip-Off, might offer Binford some redemption for his lifelong film obsession and even a way out of his continuing confusion. He hears the pitch to Binford’s movie idea, Alabama and the Forty Thieves, over a loosely rolled (west coast) joint in a classic car. He likes it. He acknowledges that the hitch-hiking crackpot has an eye for the pictures and sees good things in his future. Like Matt Dillon in the coming-of-age-by-the-pool film Flamingo Kid, the very thing that gets him in trouble is his real calling. This is a crossroads moment, and is referenced by a quote about a devilish director, “Kenneth Anger would love the boulevard today. ‘Hollywood Boulevard’ on parade.”

The only thing this movie could have benefited from is better film stock and sound. It is a low-budget wonder with very real sounding dialogue. The answer is Blaine, by the way. Watch the movie and you’ll know the question.

REVIEW OF YOR -THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (1983)

From somethingawful.com

Overview: Yor, a smug, strapping caveman-type, romps through a seemingly endless series of cheap mishaps and poorly-lit sets, eventually ending up in an ill-advised Star Wars knockoff. Along the way, Yor destroys several cultures, fights several dinosaurs, fulfills several prophecies and drowns a few hundred women and children.

Directed By: Antonio Margheriti (Credited as Anthony M. Dawson- yeah, right) 1983

The Case For: Classic theme song; Reb Brown's easygoing machismo.

The Case Against: Explaining why you shouldn't watch this movie would be an insult to your intelligence. It's cheap, ridiculous, unfathomably boring, tacky and ill-conceived.

I don't know how to introduce Yor: The Hunter from the Future any better than the film itself introduces him. Against a grey backdrop of stony, mountainous Italo-Turkish scrubland, Yor emerges. Loinclothed, axe in hand, he runs down a rocky hillside toward the camera. The opening strains of the classic theme song, performed by Oliver Onions (best known for their hit "Come With Me for Fun in My Buggy"). The song informs us in no uncertain terms that this is Yor's world, and that he's the man. Actual lyrics:

Yor's world, he's the man!
Yor's world, he's the man!
Yor's world!

Lost in the world of past
with the echo of ancient blast
There is a man from future, a man of mystery
Yor's world!

Our first impression of Yor is a fittingly clumsy one, since he's careening down a hill, looking barely in control. Filmmaking hint: it's a terrible idea to establish a character by making him run down a steep hill. The human body isn't built for it, and our ill-suited legs can only compensate with flailing, galloping baby steps.

But, I gotta say, Reb Brown's body looks like it's built for all sorts of things, like tipping stuff over and jumping up and slapping stop signs. As he reaches the bottom of the hill, he looks around him, surveying his world, quickly realizing it's really freakin' bodacious. His vacuous smile betrays the kind of mysterious smugness that an autistic child might feel after telling a snail a secret, or yelling into a dog's butthole. For the duration of the theme song, Yor continues to careen through the wasteland, stopping only to look both ways and smile dimly, as if he's worried that he'll be hit by a train made of puppy giggles.

When the credits are done rolling, we witness the classic scene of idyllic caveman life: the cave-elder says some vague bullshit about how the gods have blessed them with this wonderful fertile valley, and then he tells his people to "pay homage to the gods by raising [their] children to the heavens." And everyone lifts up their bored, confused kids up by the armpits and kind of holds them there until they decide it's been long enough. Then everyone goes off to The Hunt".

It's during The Hunt" that we meet two of our supporting heroes, a curly-topped cave-babe named Kala, and a grizzled dude named Pak, played by Grandpa Seth from Troll II. If you've ever wanted to see the old dude from Troll II in a fur toga, your ship has finally come in, although it probably comes in all the time because you've got pretty goddamn low standards in ships. Anyway, brillo-top and Grandpa Seth stalk a pig dressed as an armadillo for a while, and are then attacked by a savage, bloodthirsty herbivore. Yor hops down from his beloved hills and clubs the shit out of it, then screams with a mighty reverberation: "YEAAAAEEEEEY!"

Victorious caveman dance party ensues. Girls dance wearing clothes made of sticks, and people drink from bowls made from hollowed out Generic Primitive Bowl Material. Yor and Kala have a lil' moment.

The game of face-footsie is interrupted by some evil cavemen, whose dour faces reveal a hatred of all romance and festivity. They bumrush the shindig, burn everything down, carry off the women, and leave our heroes pretty bummed out. Pak commands Kala to travel with Yor for safety, and then returns to the village to speak with a groaning, dying elder, who tells him everything we already know: he must travel with Yor, because his fate lies with him, etc. The first mention of the word "fate" in a cave-barbarian movie is a magical time in a young cave-barbarian movie's life.

After some boring journeying, a couple of pep-talks about fate and a skirmish or two with the evil cavedudes,Yor is beaten up and Kala is captured and taken to a yucky cave to serve as a squealing sexgirl for the badcavers. The evil guys have an entire cave full of purloined cooch, and Kala is their new prize hog. Aha! So this is where they took all the stolen women and children! Clearly, Yor must intervene.

Two of the ne'er-do-bathes get in a grunting fistfight over Kala, and the winner celebrates by slapping the hell out of his woman-prize, seemingly for no reason other than pure jerkness. Just as Kala gets her teeth rearranged, Yor shoots down a giant cardboard cave-bat, grabs it by the haunches, and uses it as a hang glider to float down into the bad-dude cave. The moment is such an awesome display of Yor's manliness that the score is interrupted, dissonantly and incongruously, by the strains of the theme song: "Yor's world, he's the man!" And, at this moment, he is the man.

Yor beats the shit out of some cave baddies, Grandpa Seth shoots a few with arrows, Yor steals Kala and hoofs it outta the cave as quickly as his bronzed beef logs will carry him. Miraculously, he discovers an underground lake in the cave, and with his amazing Super Yor Strength, he pops open the dike that holds it up, sending a crashing flood into the bad dude lair. All the jerks drown, and their underground asshole city is ruined. Booya!

Now wait just a goddamn minute. Let's take a step back and look at this from a more prudent perspective.

What the heck happened to the enslaved women and children in the cave?

Yor never rescued them. Yor drowned every single woman and child that had been kidnapped from the good guy village in the beginning. Yor saved Kala and left everyone else to die. Yor, Kala and Grandpa Seth were the only survivors. Yor is basically a mass-murderer.

But hey, let's just forget about all that. We're only half an hour into the movie, so let's just put Yor's murderous negligence behind us and move on to the next cheap set piece, or we're going to be here all night debating whether or not Yor killed all those women and children accidentally or whether he drowned them for cheap kicks and sexual gratification.

The merry band, still high from the slaughter of innocents, wanders into a Tattooine-style dust area. Grandpa Seth explains that the area contains deep crevices in the earth, containing all kinds of heat and steam and stuff; Kala warns Yor not to go there, because she had a prophetic dream that showed him helpless, surrounded by fire. Yor goes anyway, the big goof.

Yor is attacked by off-brand Sand People with giant flaming cocktail forks. Straight away, Yor is helpless, surrounded by fire. This teaches us an important lesson about the dangers of ignoring prophetic dreams. One time I had a dream that my cat Scuppers and I were trying to name a hockey team, and I thought nothing of it. Scuppers is long since dead, and for all I know that hockey team is still out there somewhere, crying themselves to sleep every night because Scuppers and I never named them and they're still called something stupid like The Ontario Pennywhistles.

I just missed a bunch of shit in the movie because I was thinking about Scuppers. Anyway, Yor gets kidnapped by the phony Sand People and led to their beautiful queen, whose radiant babeness inspires Reb Brown to produce a truly toddleresque facial expression. She explains to Yor that his amulet (did I mention that he had an amulet? No?) is some kind of& special thing. She's got one too (did I mention that she has an amulet too? Yes?). She explains their meaning thusly:

"They say 'I came here together with those men. There [indicates men caught in ice next to her]. Caught in the ice. Why I am alive and they are dead, I don't know. And why the ice has formed in this parched desert is a mystery without an answer, but the little water that comes from it is vital to these people and they worship me as a divine goddess.'"

Wow, great explanation, lady. That really puts the whole fate thing into sharp focus. Good thing they were standing right by that ice when they translated those things, or they wouldn't have made a lick of sense, would they? Anyway, through some more fate bullshit, Yor decides that he and this lady represent the last of some kind of special race, so they hightail it out of yet another cave, collapse yet another cave, and destroy yet another population of people. To be fair, these people were jerks.

They meet up with Grandpa Seth and Kala, who is obviously jealous of the new lady. She offers the new lady a big fuckin' ball of moss because she hates her.

Yor gets his mack on with the new lady, because Yor has a soft spot when it comes to the ladies. It's on his skull; it never grew together properly when he was a baby, and now he has to wear the world's fluffiest Prince Valiant haircut to cover it up. Kala is pissed. She complains to Grandpa Seth about it, but he says "why can't Yor have two?" Grandpa Seth is a mack too.

Kala gets in a fight with the new lady, and they roll around a little bit, which might be kind of erotic if you're a sixth grader with a misogynist streak (or if you're like most Something Awful readers, and just have the mind of a sixth grader with a misogynist streak). The fight is broken up by yet another fight, which is slightly less erotic and significantly more boring. The bad cave dudes from the beginning are back, and they get in a little rumble with our heroes. Yor kicks their asses, but not before they mortally wound the new lady. Before she dies, she lays some jive on Yor about how their race comes from a castle on an island in the middle of "a big sea." Helpful! New lady gives her amulet to Kala, then croaks.

Our band of merry dimwits, after an arduous two-minute journey, finally reaches the beach. That dumb bitch Kala tries to drink saltwater, and everyone laughs at her. They celebrate their apathy over the death of what's-her-face with a nice little fish-fry on the beach, which is interrupted by a giant rubber lizard. Everyone runs around screaming for way, way too long, and the rubber lizard scene ends only when I finally decide to hit the fast forward button.

When I resume my plight, our heroes are chilling on the beach with a group of kids, including one kid who's kind of hot, and who Yor obviously digs. If Yor was the kind of guy who perved on teenagers, he would definitely perv on this one. You can see the side of her boob a little bit, and don't you dare think for a minute that Yor doesn't notice. He comes up with a flimsy excuse about how he already has a woman (Kala), but we know that the only reason he's not putting his big orange muscles all over her is because her dad is right there. Dad shows Yor a little talking box (a communicator) left by "the gods" (spacemen, duh).

Then the village blows up.

Distraught at the death of her father and the blown-upness of her village, Hot Teenager offers Yor her dad's flimsy wicker boat and tells him that he must seek an island in the middle of the sea, which is always surrounded by violent storms. Yor, being a big, stupid, dumb, dumb guy, decides that he'll take the wicker boat out into the violent storms.

Right now, you're probably thinking, "hey, I bet the last half hour of this movie takes place in some kind of futuristic Star Wars space city with robots and an evil guy." You're an idiot, but you're also absolutely right. It is now time to begin Act Four, wherein Yor: The Hunter from the Future stops being the movie it was before and turns into an entirely different movie.

The violent storms capsize Yor's wicker boat (ah-duuuuuhhhh), and he washes up on the mysterious island we keep hearing so much about. But what's this? Somebody is watching him through a crystal ball!Yor stands motionless on the beach, looking in bewilderment at a big rock, plotting his next move with all the horsepower his sputtering brain can muster. His dumbshit reverie is interrupted by a bunch of robots who look like a cross between Darth Vader and a cabbage. He knocks one robot's head off with a rock, but the rest surround him and incapacitate him with a Casiotone laser.

Meanwhile, The Overlord, villain of this new plot (which is conspicuously made out of leftover props from an unrelated science fiction movie) is keeping his creepy crystal-ball gaze fixed on Kala and Grandpa Seth, who have just waded from the wicker wreckage. "I want them both captured and brought here," he says, in his best hammy space-villain seize them! voice, "alive!"

So, Yor is brought in alive, and stuck on a menacing lab table, James Bond style. Some lady, who we're to presume is good because she has a white outfit, explains to him that he's a native of this strange sci-fi subplot island, and that his special amulet tells them all they need to know about him. His name is Galahad, and he's the son of some rebel hotshot whose ship was shot down years ago while he was flying Star Wars ripoff runs over Beggar's Canyon in his T-16. Yor cares; we don't. This movie is fucking long.

The Overlord minces and chews some scenery. He's pissed because he can't find Kala and Grandpa Seth; he allows Yor to be released from his James Bond table, hoping he'll lead the baddies to his buddies.

Meanwhile, the buddies have been found by some guys in white outfits (meaning they're good), who explain that their once-great civilization was destroyed by an atomic blast, and now the Overlord is leading what remains of their proud people toward more and further destruction. At this point, I am seriously pissed off at this movie for trying to cram an entire second plot into the last half hour of this movie, because this is the densest exposition I've ever seen in my life. It's like eating an entire dry brick of shredded wheat, but cheaper.

The density lets up for a solid five minutes, and is replaced by the most fearsome tedium in the history of motion pictures. Yor sneaks around. His buddies sneak around. The overlord swishes around. Eventually, they all meet up in the same room in which they started, and The Overlord reveals his Fiendish Plan".

Somehow, I can't find it in my conscience to dignify this plot with a synopsis. The next fifteen climactic minutes can be told entirely with only a few lines of dialogue; just pretend that these are liberally interspersed with the most grating, high-pitched laser sound effects in the history of cinema:

"Those fools think they can beat me, The Overlord?"

(Daring trapeze stunt filmed using Mego action figures).

And so, the story of Yor draws to a close; Yor hops in a spaceship with his homeboys and splits the scene, blowing up the entire sci-fi island behind him, killing everyone. Can't Yor go anywhere without the blowing up the place he just left? That makes four separate cultures that have been blown up due to Yor's interference. The film leaves us with a message of hope:

"Yor returns to the primitive tribes on the mainland; he is determined to use his superior knowledge to prevent them making the same mistakes as their forefathers& will he succeed?"

No, he'll blow it up and kill everyone, the big silly doof.

APRIL 1 VHS MOVIE REVIEW : THE CORPSE GRINDERS (1971)