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REVIEW OF THE GATES OF HELL

From stomptokyo.com

While I was ranting and raving about a 100 Greatest Horror Movies list, I referred to Suspiria and Cemetery Man as "middling horror movies", which gained me the ire of sometimes correspondent and recent Italian movie convert Marc Beschler. We both, I think, had good points, and I found I had come away able to approach Lucio Fulci's The Gates of Hell with a fresher viewpoint than I might have managed otherwise - thanks, Marc (it also got him to write a review for the movie Autopsy, so I'll put that particular Evil Plan in the "Successful" folder).

By and large I still feel Italian horror cinema typifies Sturgeon's Law quite nicely. Theodore Sturgeon was a fine (and deeply missed) writer who once posited 95% of everything is crap. Depending on your pessimism that day, the number can go as high as 98%. Oh, yes, the same Law holds for American cinema too, but in Italian movies, the demarcation is so much starker. For so long, most of the Roman movies we got for domestic consumption was mere imitative drek, which tends to drown out the better stuff that might come our way.

For instance, on that self-same list, the only Fulci film is Zombie, which is simply Dawn of the Dead by way of the previous year's Dr. Butcher, M.D., only without the humor or social commentary of the Romero film (It's common knowledge, but here we go anyway: DotD was a big hit in Italy, where it was called Zombie. What we know as Zombie here in the US was actually titled Zombie 2. Got that? Next time, we'll go into the The Big Boss/Fist of Fury re-titling). Why this was chosen over the more imaginative (but still problematic) Gates of Hell or the recently re-released The Beyond aka Seven Doors of Death remains quite beyond me.

We are informed that the movie begins in Dunwich (hmmmm....) where a priest, Father Thomas, retires to a local graveyard to hang himself. Meanwhile, in New York, Mary the Medium (Catriona MacColl) has a vision of the suicide, shrieks "The living dead!" and falls to floor, an apparent victim of death by fright.

Enter Peter (Christopher George), possibly the world's least effective reporter. Peter gets turned away by cops at Mary's apartment, then shows up at the cemetery long after the funeral, when there's nobody around to interview. This does, however, put him in the right place at the right time when Mary wakes up inside her sealed coffin. Hearing her screams, Peter grabs a nearby pickaxe and ventilates the coffin (and nearly her head, several times), saving her from suffocation (and a damned lucky thing they don't embalm in New York, eh?).

Later, at Mary's apartment, Peter hears about Mary's vision and learns our plot - The suicide of Father Thomas has opened up the Gates of Hell, and if they are not closed by All Saints Day ("next Monday!!!!") then the dead will walk, Hell will reign over Earth, and Vanilla Ice will stage a comeback. Armed with this knowledge, Peter and Mary swing into action, piling into his car to seek out Dunwich, a place that "isn't even on the map".

Meantime, things are getting weird in Dunwich, a town which we are told is peopled by descendants of the "Salem witch burners" (we are also told later that Dunwich is built on the ruins of Salem, which must have been a shock to the good people of Salem, Massachusetts). Mirrors shatter for no reason, walls crack and bleed, and a constant windstorm buffets the town. The local problem kid, Bob (Giovanni Radice) breaks into an abandoned house and finds, to his delight, a self-inflating love doll. To his less-than-delight, he also finds a badly decomposed corpse. True to form, Fulci gives us a long, loving closeup of the body, the camera panning down the worm-infested landscape.

There are a goodly number of worms in The Gates of Hell. The most remarkable thing about them is that they are the noisiest worms ever placed on film... and I was completely unaware that worms made any sound at all, lacking such niceties as lungs, and that sort of thing. But we never see any invertebrates onscreen without an accompanying odd, squeaking, slurping sound.

Although Dunwich is too small to appear on any map, it still possesses a psychiatrist, Jerry (Carlos de Mejo), who has at least one patient, Sandra (Janet Agren). After her introduction, though, we follow Emily, who is Jerry's assistant or main squeeze or something, and who is also trying to play social worker to the disturbed Bob. When she tracks down Bob at a deserted gas station however, a bestial snarling freaks out the already strung-out Bob, and he bolts, leaving Emily behind. An all-too-ambulatory Father Thomas appears, shoving a handful of slimy dirt mixed with squeaky worms in her face.

Meanwhile... which is the way things tend to happen in horror movies... there is a... (wait for it!) couple out parking in the windstorm. BAD MOVE. Father Thomas shows up. The guy tries to start his Jeep, but (wait for it!) the car won't start! Fr. Thomas locks eyes with the girl, and, in the movie's most infamous scene, she starts bleeding from the eyes and then pukes up her guts... quite literally. Boyfriend is predictably horrified, but the door handles prove to be just as useless as the ignition. Then his girlfriend yanks his brain out the back of his head. Ouch.

Let us pause here to mention that the Boyfriend is played by none other than Michele Soavi, who would recover from his brain-ectomy to make some pretty good horror films of his own. I have no idea who the girl was, which is a real pity. She deserves extra props for putting all that crap in her mouth until they could cut to the dummy head.

Now, Bob is blamed for the rash of deaths and disappearances (although the official verdict is that Emily died of fright), with the eventual result of Bob crossing paths with an angry, drunken father who introduces Bob's head forcibly to a huge drill. This is the movie's second most infamous scene, aping the notorious huge-splinter- in-the-eyeball scene from Zombie. It takes a full, struggling, grunting minute to play out, causing the moviegoer to think, nah, they're not gonna do it. They never stretch things out this long and do it. Something's gonna make him stop. They'll never do it. Then they do it: the drill bites into flesh and eventually comes out the other side of Bob's head. Although the mechanics of how the effect was achieved are fairly transparent, it's still quite realistic and unnerving.

And where are Peter and Mary during all this, you may ask? Wandering around lost, until a helpful priest in a nearby community points them in the right direction. Meanwhile (there's that word again), dead bodies have been disappearing from the funeral parlor (after chewing up the hand of a thieving attendant) and doing anti-social things like peering in windows and cropping up suddenly in Sandra's kitchen (only to vanish when Jerry and Sandra turn their backs). These events conspire to place Jerry, Peter and Mary in the graveyard at the same time.

Now, although they only have until midnight to find Fr. Thomas' grave and kill him again, everyone retires to Jerry's house for a nice cup of tea and exposition. Just as they are about to decide what to do, the windstorm bursts open the living room window and sprays a rain of maggots into the room (Suspiria flashback, anyone?). They are, needless to say, squeaking maggots, and Sandra provides us with the mandatory Italian horror movie scene of a person vomiting. The phone rings, and Jerry brushes off enough maggots to answer it. On the other end is Emily's kid brother, who tells him that Emily just showed up and slaughtered his parents.

Thus begins a series of sidetrips that further delay our heroes. Sandra is sent home with the orphaned kid brother to protect, but the wily undead Emily has gotten there first, and yanks Sandra's brain out the back of her head. Kid bro is entrusted to the cops, and Peter, Mary and Jerry finally make it back to the graveyard - at midnight.

Unfortunately, after this point, Gates of Hell becomes simply another zombie attack movie, as the dead pop up and do away with most of the surviving denizens of Dunwich... off camera. Our heroes break into the Thomas family crypt and find a tunnel behind Thomas' empty chamber. A zombie Sandra shows up and pulls Peter's brain out the back of his etc. (and I thought it was jokes that are supposed to be repeated three times), and Jerry finds that a wooden stake through the belly will put a zombie down. Not the heart, the belly. Make of that what you will.

Peter and Mary continue down the tunnel, finally coming to what might be the Gate of Hell, except that it's not open. A bunch of zombie monks creep up behind them in a far-too-dark-to-be-effective scene, and Fr. Thomas finally shows back up, trying to do the regurgitate-your-entrails bit with Mary. Jerry snatches a large cross from one of the zombie monks and stabs Thomas with it (in the belly, natch), causing the undead clergyman and his Blind Dead wannabes to burst into flames. The end.

Or, it should be. There's an annoying non-ending that absolutely defies my ability to render it into words. Suffice to say that it is dreary, stupid, and looks like it was tacked on purely as an afterthought, sometime in the post-production stage, accomplished as it is with sound and cheap animation.

One of my major criticisms of Italian horror cinema is that too often they seem made up of major setpieces linked together by the weakest of plots, as if somebody said, "Hm, I'd like to do a movie where a girl pukes up her guts. How do we set that up?" "How about the old 'gates of hell are open' gambit?" "Sure, that'll work." The difference here, I think, is that the disjointed, chaotic nature of the setpieces actually enhances the plot... such as it is. The best thing about Italian horror cinema is that anybody is fair game. In an American movie, Weird Bob would be rescued from the drill and probably do something heroic towards the end of the movie. Not here. And they killed the token American, for pete's sake. It doesn't make you feel safe.

There are still major hurdles to cross, and not just historical inaccuracies, like the bogus destruction of Salem, and the fact that no witches were burned there (they were all hanged, except for one, who was pressed to death): Just what the hell is the relationship between Jerry and the doomed Emily? And between Jerry and Sandra, for that matter? If the end of the world is only hours away, why does Mary pout coquettishly that she wants to stop for a while and get something to eat (get a burger to go, for God's sake, woman!)? Why is everyone so lackadaisical about preventing the end of the world? Why are the Gates of Hell so damned easy to open? And what the hell is that crap ending? (some answers have come my way since this review was first published; the negative of the original ending - the kid is really a zombie, which come to think of it, ain't that great an improvement - was destroyed in the lab. Out of money, Fulci went for the weird ending we all know and... um, love, as it were)

The makeup is fairly good - you only see obvious latex in a couple of instances. This has the reputation of being one of Fulci's goriest movies, but the gut-puking, zombie's-signature-yank-your- brain-out-the-back-of-your-head move, and drill through the head excluded, Gates of Hell is surprisingly clear of extreme gore effects (though, to some tastes, those instances are certainly enough). Then again, Peter Jackson has very effectively raised the bar for me on what constitutes gratuitous, over-the-top gore.

Instead, a lot of Gates of Hell's fear factor comes from a very creative use of sound and light. The movie begins with a black screen - a woman's scream pierces the silence, and the titles begin. I've already mentioned the noisy worms, but the bestial and gibbering sounds associated with the walking dead are original and quite unnerving. Like most movies of the period, Gates includes a Goblin-esque musical score, which, while effective, only underlines the derivative quality of the final act. Fulci also knows the value of putting a light directly under an actor's face, like the flashlight under the chin of a good storyteller at a campfire; it renders what was probably mediocre makeup into something truly horrifying. Some of the makeup, especially in the case of Weird Bob, seems designed and applied with a large proscenium stage in mind, rather than a movie.

Gates is one of those movies that bemuses me somewhat, because I discover, upon a repeat viewing, that it was actually better than I remembered, instead of the other way around. The only other movie that's managed to pull that off is Enter the Dragon (two Bruce Lee references in one review? Must be time to review a kung fu film). Neither is representative of the best their country or their genre has to offer; and while neither is necessarily a great movie, they're both entertaining in that mindless, reach-into-your-reptile-brain-and-tickle sort of way.

REVIEW OF ROCK - IT'S YOUR DECISION

From shockcinemamagazine.com

In recent years, Christian propaganda, er... educational films have become increasingly boring and generic, with slick production values and recognizable actors like Gary Busey, Casper Van Dien, Kirk Cameron, and even Nick Mancuso. Thank goodness there are still a few crude, early Christsploitation flicks to be unearthed -- such as this brain-numbing warning about the evils of rock 'n' roll! Ty Taylor stars as Jeff, our confused high school protagonist. He's basically a good kid, but his mother becomes terrified about her son's belligerent "attitude" (a teenager who's frustrated with his parents? God forbid!), so she contacts the town's closest thing to God, youth pastor Jim, who explains that an outside influence is at work. Yep, it's that Satanic rock 'n' roll music! And sure enough, the trouble began the instant Jeff got his own stereo! Pushy Brother Jim soon strikes a bargain with spineless Jeff: Stop listening to rock music for two weeks, spend that time doing endless research, and then make a decision -- give up rock and be Saved, or continue listening and spend eternity writhing in Hell. During those torturous (yet enlightening!) two weeks, Jeff's girlfriend wants to go to a concert, but he refuses, because the Lord is more important than a hot date. He also alienates friends by indignantly storming out of a party as soon as they put on some music. (Note: It's not like his music-lovin' friends are headbangers; they're all clean-cut members of his Christian Youth Group!) Exactly what does Jeff discover about rock music? The songs are about sex, drugs and the occult! And exactly what albums are so wicked? Everything from KISS and AC/DC, to Barry Manilow and The Captain and Tennille! Meanwhile,the self-important finale has passionate pea-brain Jeff preaching about how rock music enflames our "carnal" desires (hell, I always considered that one of best reasons for its existence). Karen Richardson's script -- which began as a creative writing assignment while attending Lynchburg, Virginia's Liberty Baptist College -- is painfully naive (no surprise, the first-time screenwriter admitted to knowing nothing about rock music beforehand); John Taylor's direction is as unsubtle as getting your finger slammed in a car door; and when Jeff goes without music he acts like he's kicking heroin. Meanwhile, Brother Jim is such a dull windbag that it's hard to believe any teenage viewer would want to emulate this straight-laced heavenly-ass-kisser. Filmed in Madison County, Alabama (which explains why a few cast members look a tad slow and in-bred), this mercifully brief, never-remotely-persuasive, 53-minute tirade is crude, quaint and filled with unintentional laughs.

REVIEW OF CLASS REUNION MASSACRE

From hysteria-lives.co.uk

CLASS REUNION MASSACRE is one hell of a strange movie. Sometimes genuinely creepy, with an ethereal, nightmarish quality akin in places to the vampire movies of Jean Rollin. Unfortunately, it is well and truly sunk by a flaw bigger than the San Andreas fault...

The movie starts, as it means to go on, slightly off-kilter.... A static shot of a motionless lake. The credits roll, accompanied by celestial music, the same shot continues for such a long time that I was wondering whether I was watching one of those new age relaxation tapes! The ambience is well and truly broken as the calm notes are replaced by that jarring electro synth- so beloved of 70’s horror film makers, indicating an end to peace at the lake. "From out of the darkness the hand of the Redeemer shall appear to punish those who have lived in sin..."- blazes across the screen in blood red. A hand punches through the placid water. I drew in my breath waiting for the revelation of this ‘redeemer’. And....well I knew the Devil could assume many shapes but I must admit I was a little underwhelmed, but mildly intrigued, when a dumpy kid with a fat arse and hair like a bell came strolling out of the depths. The film then shows its true non-linear nature by flying off in all directions and would make very little sense if I literally repeated what subsequently followed in the way of setting up the plot- hell it didn’t make much sense when I was watching it! The bare bones of it are that the kid ends up as a choirboy, attending a fire-and-brimstone church service complete with sweaty and rabid priest. And as he spits out righteous clap-trap we are introduced to six characters- three men and three women, a different one each time the priest shrieks the name of a sin, as they go about their daily business. The only thing they appear to have in common is their ten year high school reunion, which is due to take place the next day. Meanwhile someone has murdered the high school janitor, where the reunion is due to take place, and taken a plaster cast of his face. The mysterious figure also does something that would become a staple of most dorm-slashers of later years- flicks through the year book (from 1967) and mutilates it, cutting out the pictures of the six ex-students....To cut along story short- and God knows I’ve tried! The six turn up to the reunion only to find that they are the only ones there and to, at first their bemusement and then, their mounting horror, realise they are trapped in the school. And to make matters worse someone is stalking and despatching them- one by one.....

Whilst the basic premise of CLASS REUNION MASSACRE may seem like cliché personified, it manages to steer clear of the ‘rules’ laid out by HALLOWEEN (1978) and FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980). The reason being- it was made before either of them and once again proves John Carpenter wasn’t solely responsible for the masked maniac in American cinema. And some of these earlier bodycount/slasher movies whilst still nodding to the basic plot of TEN LITTLE INDIANS and, in this case, choosing a name that would associate it with the (then) recent THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), throw in plot twists and ideas that come from way out of left field. Taking a viewer raised on 80’s (or even 90’s!) slashers off guard. And in the case of CLASS REUNION MASSACRE the idea comes from way, WAY out of left (or perhaps that should be ‘right’) field. Firstly the viewer is knocked for six by the films nightmare logic- literally it appears the film is taking place within a dream. The killer not only appears to be omnipresent but also dons a different disguise for each of his victims: clown; magician; grim reaper etc. The deaths too are tied to semi-nightmare logic- lifesize mannequins wielding swords and flame throwers. The film achieves, and more or less manages to retain, a genuinely creepy atmosphere and an overall air of doom. So far so good. Where CLASS REUNION MASSACRE shoots itself in the foot- big time, is with its warped morality. This is the kind of slasher movie you’d get if you let a latter day Torquemada loose with a 16mm cine-camera. It soon becomes apparent that the six friends are being punished for their ‘sins’. Sins described by the killer as- "GLUTTONY IN ALL THINGS ...VANITY ...HOARDENESS ...PERVERSION ...LICENTIOUSNESS ...DEBAUCHERY ...AVARICE."- (yeah I know that is *7* as in the deadly sins, and there are six potential victims but, hey, I did say that logic wasn’t this movie’s strong point!). Firstly, this throws the audience off kilter yet again- who exactly are we supposed to be rooting for? Are we supposed to empathise with the killers intentions against the guilty? If so the film maker confuses things even more by actually making the six friends some of the most likeable and believably acted victims-to-be in low budget slasher movie history. Sure they have their faults- but who doesn’t? Secondly the ‘sins’ of the six friends are the kind that only the most bigoted bible basher would have a problem with now- and even back in 1976! One of the men likes cheeseburgers a little too much, another is a lawyer who defends criminals, the other a camp actor who gets upset when food is spilled on his trousers. The women: one is (SHOCK!, HORROR!) a

lesbian, another has been married a few times and is a bit of a party girl and the other married for wealth and gets her kicks out of shooting live pigeons. Hardly damnation material in my book! Still, it is for these ‘sins’ they are sentenced to death by the Redeemer in ‘suitably’ harsh ways. In one particularly gratuitous scene the, really rather sweet, woman who has been labelled the floozy and embodiment of licentiousness is dragged into a shower and has her face scrubbed of all its makeup before being drowned in a hand basin. You can’t help but feel that the director was following some private, psychotic agenda. It just ends up rather depressing. And the denouement doesn’t provide any redress- it just appears to be wilful abstraction posing as enigma.

There are some really nice touches here: good cinematography; a genuinely creepy ambience and a likeable principle cast. It’s just a shame they ended up in mean-spirited junk like this.

REVIEW OF BEASTMASTER 2

From hollywoodmetal.com

At points I feel criticizing and ribbing the sequel to the 1982 fantasy film Beastmaster is unfair. The franchise limped into the 90’s with all of their previous fanbase older and not interested in fantasy anymore. At times, I feel that this film has suffered enough slings and arrows of criticism that another one would just be useless. This, of course, would be true if Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time was a few degrees above one of the most ludicrous films ever made. Move out of the way, I am going to try to do a roundhouse kick.

As previously mentioned in my Dragonheart review, the 90’s market for fantasy was a different landscape. As oppose to the 80’s, where fantasy filmmaking experienced a small renaissance, the 90’s found itself desperately trying to hold on to its audience. Where Dragonheart tried to wrap fantasy around a family film, Beastmaster 2 tried to make the idea of someone who claims kinship to animals humorous and hip. One of those things is true but the other couldn’t be further from effective. Where the first Beastmaster was full of escapist charm, the second Beastmaster tries to sidle up next to 90’s pop culture in one of the most asinine adventure ever made.

The film finds our hero, Dar still entrenched in the conflict that marked the first film. Wait, I thought everyone was fine? Dar, who is still ripped but aged hard in the face, learns that he has an evil brother Arklon who is planning to take over the world because that is what evil people do. We know that the two are brothers because it is fed to us at the beginning but also because the two have the same scar on their hand, which sort of doesn’t make any fucking sense as in the first movie, Dar gets kidnapped from the womb of his mother who was a queen. Right? Do I really need to re-watch this to check the facts? Is there some sort of office I can write to file a complaint? What you do need to know at this point is that Beastmaster 2 isn’t terrible. The film still retains its clunky charm. This is true until they introduce the portal of time, which actually has nothing to do with time travel.

Oh yes, I believe I was discussing our masterful villain a minute ago. Along with his laser sidearm, Arklon wears a half mask to cover up a small gash left by Dar’s hawk at the beginning of the movie. Rather than sport a cool scar, which would add to an evil persona, Arklon is content in wearing what looks like a giant artichoke leaf on his face. Arklon eventually meets a witch, Lyranna, who annoyingly talks like a valley girl. Lyranna shows Arklon, for some reason, a portal to 1990’s Los Angeles. How we get from there to a great caper that involves a neutron bomb heist I do not know, but what is known is that this is the point when the movie goes from passively bad to aggressively terrible. Uh yeah. Guys. That isn’t a time portal. Yep, that’s right, Lyranna even said it’s a transdimensional portal. Did that not fit on the movie poster? Assholes.

And now it is time to meet one of the film’s prime agitators, Jackie Trent, played by Kari Wuhrer. As if the film was not awkward enough, we are given a heroine whose main goal is to make wise cracks in the form of pop culture references. This escapist disconnect is not only strange but infuriating as all I wanted to do was pretend I was a druid who could talk to bird. Trent is a Senator’s daughter, but do not let that confuse you as it never comes into play throughout the entire rest of the film. She could have had a cyclops for a father and it wouldn’t matter. Trent somehow goes through the time, er, dimensional portal and ends up in Beastmaster land with her corvette. After a deflated attempt at romance and some smoke bomb fights, Trent, Arklon, and Lyranna end up Los Angeles with Dar and his faithful animals on their heels. Leave now because this is when the film loses its shit.

Rather than crafting a semi-believable story with Dar navigating an urban setting, the film takes a swan dive into a ball pit of tropes and cliches and is content in allowing near parody storytelling to helm it. When a film is more interested in fish out of water hero encountering television, eating cold cuts, and listening to rock and roll than it is about solving problems, things get weird. When a film thinks its a good idea for Arklon to go shopping for a fashionable suit in a boutique run by an effeminate store owner things go fucking bananas. Add to this a side plot of a neutron bomb, a spoiled rich girl, and a burnt out cop with his wormy sidekick and I either want to scream, laugh, cry, or all of the above.

Artichoke Arklon fools his way into a military base to seize control of the neutron bomb. After he acquires said bomb he dismisses Lyranna, the witch, as his side kick. Alright now is an important time to remember where the portal is. Why? Because Arklon wants to go back to his dimension and rule with one bomb, which is sort of unbelievable seeing how he needs to:

A) Know how to detonate it.
B) Explain to his people the power of the bomb.
C) Detonate it one time and hope who ever is left after the explosion believes Arklon can do it again.

This is actually believable seeing how the denizens of the world worship the corvette left behind by Jackie Trent (spoiler) but still is unlikely. Regardless, the film is pretty clear of Arklon’s motivation. Time dimensional portal. Bomb. World ruling. Oh Wait, we are going to the Zoo? The fuck?

For no apparent reason other than to strengthen his adversaries obvious power, Arklon goes to the zoo to end up in a duel with Dar. After Arklon is defeated (spoiler), the rich valley girl, the burnt out cop, his wormy sidekick, and a kooky old war general have to deactivate the bomb with hilarious results. Dar leaves Los Angeles for his own time because, ready for it, he has to return 5 years later for Beastmaster III. Oh for the love of Christ.

Beastmaster 2 tells us a lot of things. First, is how utterly disastrous a movie can be when you treat your audience like idiots. Listen, I understand the first Beastmaster wasn’t a shining example of cinematic art but it had the decency to leave a fantasy vehicle within the realm of fantasy. I almost want to blame the entire thing on the writing department but that was headed by Jim Wynors and RJ Roberts, who are near famous for their work in cheesy horror and softcore porn films. The Hills Have Thighs was my favorite aside from the Da Vinci Coed. At this point I accept Beastmaster II for what it is — an abomination that not only illuminates how terrible the 90’s were but also strengthens my love for the original.

REVIEW OF WHEELS OF TERROR

From 1000misspenthours.com

It’s funny how faddish cultural anxieties can be. Sure, something truly new and terrifying occasionally enters the world, like the threat of global nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, but more often the bogies that throw whole societies into a panic are things that had been there in the background all along. I could name any number of examples, but the one that’s on my mind right now is the hysteria over child abduction that swept the United States in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Don’t misunderstand me now; I’m not saying the fear was totally unfounded. Kidnapping has held a prominent place among the ways humans mistreat each other since time immemorial, and it would take an unimaginative parent indeed not to feel uneasy about that prospect once in a while. But that’s just it— there had always been sickos grabbing children off the street and doing unspeakable things to them, but from the way people carried on for a few years to either side of 1990, you’d think everyone in the country was out to steal somebody else’s baby. Where popular worries go, the popular media invariably follow, so of course those years also saw an uptick in the production of movies about kidnapping and other sorts adult depredation on children— especially, oddly enough, in the made-for-cable field. Wheels of Terror, originally broadcast on the USA Network, is one of the strangest manifestations of turn-of-the-90’s abductor panic I’ve seen. It’s like a hybrid rip-off of Duel and The Car crossed with a Lifetime Channel movie of the week, pitting an indomitable single mother against a kid-touching psycho who prowls the streets of her little town in the world’s angriest-looking customized Dodge.

Laura McKenzie (Joanna Cassidy, of Vampire in Brooklyn and Blade Runner) relocated two weeks ago with her pubescent daughter, Stephanie (Marcie Leeds, from Near Dark and Out of the Dark), from Los Angeles to the sleepy Arizona hamlet of Copper Valley. You know the deal: the Big City is no place to raise a child. Stephanie herself kind of hates her new environment, although she has managed to make at least one friend there. That would be Kim Donaldson (Kimberly Duncan), whose mother (Sharon Thomas Cain), appears also to be the one friend Laura has thus far acquired in Copper Valley. The local labor market must be pretty tight, because the only work Laura has been able to find is a gig driving bus #9 for Stephanie’s elementary school. In what might be this silly movie’s silliest detail, Luis (Gary Carlos Cervantes, of Nightmares and Howling VI: The Freaks), the mechanic for the Copper Valley Elementary School motor pool, recently finished hot-rodding the shit out of #9, outfitting it with a racing engine (is there such a thing as a racing diesel compatible with a commercial medium truck body?) that will push it to 110 on a well-surfaced straightaway, and apparently with brakes to match. The vehicle really ought to have some cheesy “Knight Rider”-style acronym at this point. How about “Bullshit Up-powered Sequential Stopper, or B.U.S.S. for short?

The trouble is, the McKenzies aren’t the only newcomers to Copper Valley. We never see the other guy except in the proxy form of his filthy and fucked-up 1974 Dodge Charger, but he establishes his credentials as a stand-in for both Duel’s mad trucker and The Car’s joyriding Satan in his very first appearance. That’s when he drives over a father stopped by the side of the road with car trouble, then speeds off with the victim’s little girl. That leads to Wheels of Terror’s one genuinely effective scene, as a highway patrol car comes upon the child walking dazedly down the highway some time later, the whole encounter played silent and shot from such a distance that we can just make out the hollow, haunted expression on the girl’s face.

Laura encounters the Molestermobile on what appears to be that same afternoon, when it makes a menacing orbit around B.U.S.S. as she takes a load of kids home from school. She sees it around town a number of times over the next few days, too, always being driven or parked in an intensely shady manner. So when Kim disappears from the schoolyard one afternoon, Laura goes at once to Detective Drummond (Prison’s Arlen Dean Snyder) to report the mysterious vehicle. Alas, Drummond is a nitwit, and doesn’t believe her testimony. On the other hand, maybe it’s more that the whole town is populated by nitwits, since Drummond claims that no one he’s spoken to has mentioned any strange cars meeting the Molestermobile’s description. Believe me, that custom Charger couldn’t be any more conspicuous if it had a big, light-up sign reading “MOLESTERMOBILE” on the roof, so if nobody else has seen it, then everyone else must be walking around with their heads up their asses. Even the kid the cops picked up on the highway before is no help, because she and another girl whom Drummond believes to have been caught and released by Kim’s kidnapper are both in catatonic states from which they emerge only to scream incoherently and uncontrollably. Still, they have it better than Kim, whose corpse turns up after a day or two in a pond on the outskirts of town. Between Kim’s fate and Drummond’s attitude, it’s no wonder that when the killer nabs Stephanie right in front of her mother, Laura gives him the full Mad Max, busload of kids or no.

That last busload of kids was a miscalculation on the filmmakers’ parts. Not because it makes the heroine guilty of mass child endangerment (although I suppose some viewers probably will take exception to that), but because it means that we have to spend the whole first half of the epic motor vehicle chase that climaxes Wheels of Terror listening to the little shits whine. I’m going to be hearing “Mrs. McKenzie! Please— stop!” in my dreams for the next week or so. You really feel the puling passengers’ extraneous presence, too, because the big chase is where Duel finally supplants The Car as an influence on this film. Duel is one of the leanest and most efficient movies ever made, and the looming need for Laura to unload those kids somewhere just draws that much more attention to how Wheels of Terror isn’t. So long as there are children aboard B.U.S.S., we know that Wheels of Terror is in no danger of getting down to business.

Switching between a Car rip-off and a Duel rip-off in midstream is a bad idea structurally, too, since it means that the plot essentially withers up and dies as soon as Laura engages B.U.S.S.’s Super Pursuit Mode. Steven Spielberg and Richard Mattheson could pull developing drama out of one continuous, feature-length car chase. Similarly, George Miller and Byron Kennedy could make a giant, sprawling automotive action sequence stand in for the final act of an otherwise conventionally constructed narrative. Writer Alan McElroy and director Christopher Cain will never be mistaken for any of those guys, however. Rather, these are the kind of filmmakers whose idea of foreshadowing is to play the opening credits over a scene of open-pit mining that bears no connection to anything else in the movie, telling us right up front what the arbitrary setting for the final confrontation is going to be. They’re the kind of filmmakers who lead up to said final confrontation with an extended two-vehicle demolition derby in soft focus and slow motion, set to a musical cue more appropriate to a romantic montage than a battle to the death between an enraged mother and the child-killer who just stole her daughter. They’re the kind of filmmakers who think an inexplicable racing engine is an adequate response to the objection that a school bus hardly seems capable of keeping pace with a muscle car, even one of the neutered muscle cars of the mid-70’s.

Wheels of Terror is minimally worth watching, though, just because it shines light on an aspect of exploitation cinema that most fans don’t ever think about. One normally thinks of sleaze as a masculine phenomenon; even when women are deemed sleazy, it’s usually because they’ve been caught catering to the untamed male id. Nevertheless, there’s at least one form of sleaze marketed specifically to female audiences, like an entertainment counterpart to the crassly reductive gender-branding typical of personal grooming products. Call it Sleaze For Her, or the Pastel Grindhouse— prurient enough for a man, but made for a woman! Sleaze For Her panders not to the libido, but to the maternal instinct. It trades in threats to children or to the family unit, with which it justifies a vision of heroism as violent and amoral as anything you’ll see in the late works of Charles Bronson. In the name of motherhood, the Pastel Grindhouse will sanction any barbarism or brutality, and by the same token, there is no limit to the atrocities that it will dangle over the heroine’s family in order to motivate a maternal rampage. (Note, however, that the atrocities in question are rarely depicted explicitly. Because the Pastel Grindhouse is primarily a television phenomenon, it’s an open question how much of that reticence reflects the assumed tastes of the target audience, and how much of it is due simply to the strictures of TV censorship.) The perpetrators of these horrors are usually men, although there’s some room for female villains in the home-wrecker mode, too: jealous stalkers, deranged ex-girlfriends, domineering mothers-in-law, etc. Non-villainous roles for men, meanwhile, are notably as limited and limiting as the roles for women in male-oriented sleaze-operas. Men in the Pastel Grindhouse may be well-meaning incompetents, unreliable absentees, or spineless pushovers, but the central conceit of Sleaze For Her is that the mother must always stand alone in the end. Mind you, the women get boxed in a bit, too, because the one thing this sensibility has no room for is voluntary childlessness. Consequently, the Pastel Grindhouse has pronounced tendencies to reinforce the grotesque modern notion of competitive motherhood, and to be positively vicious toward “bad” mothers. And of course, it was in the aforementioned era of widespread abductor panic that it really came into its own. Anyway, the point is, Wheels of Terror is loaded with Sleaze For Her, but as a horror/action hybrid, it applies the technique to a genre that is usually aimed squarely at men. Most Pastel Grindhouse movies are psychological thrillers or melodramas about families in disintegration; they certainly don’t devote their whole second halves to one giant car chase. Wheels of Terror can therefore be taken as a film for the woman who longs for a Lifetime Original Movie with a bit of adrenaline in its bloodstream, or as one for the man who wants to see how the other half are pandered to, but has no taste for tear-jerkers.

REVIEW OF HOUSE 2

From inpoortaste.ca

Watching House II: The Second Story, a sequel that has nothing to do with the first movie, House, really brings me back to my childhood. A time when I could watch a movie like this and enjoy the absurd humor, light horror and not think twice about the hokey acting and thin, plot hole filled story. Yes, House II: The Second Story has all of those problems, but screw it, I want to relive my childhood again…

Short nitty-gritty plot description from IMDb is as follows: The new owner of a sinister house gets involved with reanimated corpses and demons searching for an ancient Aztec skull with magic powers. 

The story follows Jesse (Arye Gross), a man who inherits his deceased parents big house, a house that has a dark history. He immediately goes about messing around with all the old books and family albums and eventually starts researching about a mysterious Crystal Skull and his Great Great Grandfather and thinks the best thing to do is dig him up (yeah, digging up corpses was all the rage back in the 80s). So, he and a friend, Charlie (Jonathan Stark), starts digging and it ain’t long before Jesse meets a very much still alive Gramps (Royal Dano), who is the guardian of the powerful Crystal Skull. From there, a bunch of quirky, humorous and fun stuff happens, as all sorts of people try to get their hands on this skull, ending with an old arch nemesis of Gramps, coming back for revenge.

Fun is the best word to describe House II: The Second Story. It just reeks of fun. The acting is okay, the plot is thin, but dammit, I had tons of fun with this movie. It’s got adventure, horror, comedy and a few beautiful ladies in distress. Plus, a cameo from John Ratzenberger, as an electrician/adventurer, which comes so far out of left field, I can’t help but just take it for what it is and go along for this crazy, kick ass ride.

Fans of the first House movie (who doesn’t love that one), might be a little disappointed that the story doesn’t continue on from that one, but honestly, it didn’t bother me the least bit. Yes, they probably should’ve called this movie something else, but you can’t change the past. You take what you get and what you’re getting, is a prime example of a fun, 80s, campy horror comedy. Now, you may be wondering why I’m reviewing this movie in October, as it doesn’t seem like a Halloween themed movie, but alas, my loyal readers, the movie takes place on Oct 30th and 31st and we get a gnarly 80s Halloween party, full of wicked/cheesy costumes and a surprise appearance of Kane Hodder, dressed as a Gorilla (Kane did the stunt work on the movie).

I probably should list a few negatives, but it’s so freaking hard to list anything. I mean, yeah, the acting for the most part is borderline 80s cheese and the plot like I’ve mentioned, is paper thin and full of holes. Characters come and go, never to be seen again and the ending seems to leave things hopeless for the main characters, even if they think everything will be fine and dandy (why leave the skull there?!?). These few nitpicks will take the score down, as this movie definitely isn’t perfect, but screw it, I ain’t bringing the score down a lot (sue me, it’s my site).

Verdict: A fun filled horror comedy, that has nothing to do with the first movie, but has everything to do, with giving the viewer a childhood flashback, filled with decaying Grandfathers, cute monsters, hot women and an undead Cowboy out for revenge. What more can you ask for?

APRIL 2 VHS MOVIE REVIEW : THE ABOMINATION (1988)