|
VHS MOVIE REVIEW : BRAIN OF BLOOD
From grindhousedatabase.com
In 1971, the producers of Blood Island films had no new Phillipino horror film for the new season, Director Eddie Romero was busy on another film at the time of Brain of Blood. He was working on a Women In Prison film called Black Mama White Mama starring Pam Grier. Romero handed over the reigns to Sam Sherman and Director Al Adamson to do their own new film in the tradition of the earlier Blood Island series. Adamson and Sherman came up with a rather strange storyline for a film they titled Brain of Blood. While many critics thought this film was shot in the Phillipines like the previous films, it was actually shot in and around Hollywood. Another interesting note is that the score of this film was actually the same score used for Mad Doctor of Blood Island. This gave the film that certain Phillipino Blood Island audio touch some maybe didnt notice while watching it the first time.
In this new bloody tale, Dr Trenton (Kent Taylor) is in the middle of transplanting a brain from a dead former leader of the nation of Khalid named Amir (Reed Hadley). Hadley looks about as Middle Eastern as Johnny Cash!! The only problem is to keep his brain alive they have to put Amir's brain into a disfigured hulking dope named Gor (John Bloom, the Frankenstein Monster of Adamson's cult classic Dracula Vs. Frankenstein) and then things go wrong. The doctor must control Gor by using a strange laser beam gun which drives Gor crazy when applied. An interesting factoid is that Producer Sam Sherman wrote the film's strangely modern script after Egypt's President Nasser died. 30 Years later this story doesnt seem so bizzare: a Middle Eastern government not wanting to accept their leader's death so they put his brain into another body.
Director Al Adamson delivered a great bloody film and even used several of Romero's own previous Blood Island stars. Actor Kent Taylor was back onboard playing the evil Dr. Trenton as was midget actor Angelo Rossito (Freaks) as Trenton's evil apprentice Dorro. Wait until you see this little guy act in this film. He's hilariously funny as he terrorizes the evil doctors hostages in the dreary dungeon. When he inserts an IV needle into one of the girls arms and takes some blood from her, it looks like Heinz ketchup dripping into his extracting jar. Also joining them in this new Blood film were Grant Williams (The Incredible Shrinking Man) Reed Hadley (Racket Squad) Vicki Volante (Horror of the Blood Monsters), Regina Carroll (Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, Adamson's real life wife) and Zandor Varkov who played Dracula in Adamson's Dracula Vs Frankenstein is also featured in this film as a devoted follower of Amir.
You'll notice that the organs used in this film were real, and theres some very bloody operation sequences that take place. The blood looks like its from a fresh bucket of red paint (Hey! it IS red paint!) While the storyline is hokey as youd expect from a film of this time and budget, the cast did a great job, acting as sincerely as they could and Director Al Adamson brought a cool edge to the look of the film, utilizing alot of groovy close ups and gore FX. The make up FX were very primitive, it basically looked like the FX crew stuck a wad of chewed up bubble gum or Silly Putty on the actors head and let the chips fall where they would. The film is actually well paced and is perfect to kick back with as you have a few beers and just enjoy the overall campy low budget madness that unfolds in front of your eyes.
MAY 6 VHS MOVIE REVIEW : EVIL ED (1995)
This lamebrained Swedish-made gore comedy tells the story of Ed (Johan Rudebeck), a film editor hired to cut out all the more violent parts of the fictitious "Loose Limb" series of horror films for distribution in European countries that have stringent censorship laws. The previous editor found the task so daunting that he blew his head off by sticking a hand grenade in his mouth! Our new editor doesn’t particularly enjoy the job but, because he needs the money, agrees to edit the 8-part series. After viewing scene upon scene of hacked-off limbs and bloody murders, Ed begins to hallucinate various graphic acts, such as cutting into an arm when he is actually slicing a loaf of bread and viewing a grotesque vulgarity-spewing monster in his refrigerator. Ed starts killing for real and likes it, so he starts murdering anyone he can get his hands on. Neck snappings, beheadings, electrocutions and a skull split down the middle follow. One wonders what director/screenwriter/photographer/editor Anders Jacobsson was trying to say here. Does he believe that watching violence causes violent behavior or is it his way of making fun of this controversial issue? I tend to lean towards the latter but I’ll bet that some anti-violence media whores will view this as a documentary of our society today. Available in Unrated and R-rated versions, you should probably avoid the R-rated cut as it excises all the bloody deaths that Ed is supposed to be editing out of the films. Maybe Ed edited the R-rated version as it destroys any impact that the film has in the first place. Ironic isn’t it? Even though all the actors speak English, they are overdubbed by others with a special voice appearance by Bill Moseley (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 - 1986). Also starring Olaf Rhodin, Per Lofberg and Camela Leierth. An A-PIX H.V. Release. Unrated. { text from critcononline.com }
VHS MOVIE REVIEW : ZONE TROOPERS
From stomptokyo.com
As any regular reader of our site knows, we have an ongoing obsession with the output of the straight-to-video company known as Full Moon Video. Full Moon is particularly noteworthy for inflicting both the Trancers series and the Puppet Master series on mankind.
Zone Troopers is not a Full Moon video.
However, it was made by the same people who would later become standards over at Full Moon. Zone Troopers features such stellar talent as Tim Thomerson (Jack Deth in the Trancers films), Art LaFleur (Jack Deth's boss in the Trancers films), Biff Maynard (Hap in the Trancers films), and Ted Nicolaou (editor of Zone Troopers, director of such Full Moon videos like Subspecies 2 and The Vampire Journals). Not only that, but the music in Zone Troopers is composed (ahem, more on that later) by Richard Band, the brother of Full Moon founder Charles Band.
Zone Troopers starts out with a platoon of American soldiers somewhere in Italy during WWII. The platoon is led by the legendary Iron Sarge (Tim Thomerson) who is renowned for his many escapes from certain death. ("Sarge doesn't try to make friends 'cause he doesn't like losin' em.") We are also introduced to Joey (Tim Van Patten, fondly rembered from such TV series as White Shadow and The Master), a private who loves to read sci-fi pulps, and Mittens (Art LaFleur), the crusty but benign character mandated by Hollywood law to be in all WWII films. They are joined by Dolan, a journalist. Then, faster than you can say "extras are too expensive for this film," a convenient German attack kills off all of the members of the platoon we didn't meet by name.
Lost behind enemy lines, our four heroes wander about until they find Nazis camped out around a crashed space ship. Sarge and Joey sneak aboard the wreck, while Mittens and Dolan manage to get captured by SS soldiers. As Joey and Sarge try to figure out how a leftover set from Saturn 3 ended up in an alien spaceship, Dolan and Mittens find out that they're not the only prisoners the Nazis have. The SS has also captured the only survivor of the spaceship crash, a bug-eyed alien in a white jumpsuit who spins a cocoon around itself when it sleeps. To be honest, the early footage of soldiers wandering around the forest made us think that a Predator rip-off was in the works, but we were surprised to find that this film was made 3 years prior to Predator's release.
It's no surprise, however, that Sarge and Joey rescue Mittens, Dolan, and the alien from the Nazis and that the mis-matched fivesome makes tracks for friendly lines. One interesting wrinkle does occur when more aliens show up, the Zone Troopers of the title, to rescue the bug-eyed guy. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't show us the tense moral discussions that the blue-faced Zone Troopers have while trying to figure out if it was worth risking four soldiers to rescue just one man... er, alien. Heck, a movie about such a thing could be a big hit! Just call it Saving Private Greedo. And in an amazing coincidence, it turns out that a twelve year-old Matt Damon is indeed playing the bug-eyed alien under that mask.*
There is no denying that Zone Troopers is a fairly low budget film, but everyone involved here has done a lot with the available moolah. The crashed spaceship, in particular, looks really good, and the World War II uniforms are nicely done, even if they do look too new to be on soldiers in the middle of a war. A fair amount of cash seems to have been thrown at the props, with the exception of the Zone Troopers' spaceship, which looks a bit too small to carry all 5 of our extraterrestrial buddies. Perhaps they skimped a bit on the acting talent: we haven't noticed Tim Thomerson's salary climbing into the millions of dollars, so it's probable that the stars of this film were making close to scale on this particular flick. Still, veterans like Thomerson and La Fleur really added a lot to the delivery of their lines, subtly camping it up and (we suspect) ad-libbing most of the funny lines.
Those lines are the real reason to watch Zone Troopers. Every time we felt like the movie was treading from the mediocre into the truly bad, one of the characters popped up with a zinger. The little squabbles between the soldiers are easily the most entertaining moments of the movie. Spicing it up between those scenes are some over-the-top Nazi actors, action scenes set to hoppin boppin Big Band tunes, and a blurry guest appearance by an Adolf Hitler impersonator. Now that's entertainment.
One of our few complaints about this movie is the music by Richard Band. Band actually rips off John Williams' Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back. Just listen carefully when Mittens and Dolan discover the Nazi camp. We expected Darth Vader to come walking around a corner at any moment. The big band tunes we mentioned during the action scenes are a bit incongruous, but nowhere near as irritating as hearing one of our favorite bits of movie music so flagrantly plagiarized.
Dare we call Zone Troopers a masterpiece? Well, no. But it is a harbinger of the better things to come from Full Moon, namely low budget movies with reasonably high entertainment value and a nice break from Hollywood's normal output.
VHS MOVIE REVIEW : HAPPY HELL NIGHT (1991)
What starts out as a strange and eerie experience quickly turns into standard slasher material in this Canadian/Yugoslavian co-production. A college fraternity sends out its pledges on Hell Night to take a photo of a lunatic named Malius (Charles Cragin) at the local insane asylum. Twenty-five years earlier, Malius killed and dismembered five pledges of the same fraternity and has spent the past quarter century sitting motionless in his cell, the outside world protected by a crucifix attached to his cell door. As you can guess, the pledges fuck-up and release Malius (whose pale, skeletal features make him a sight to behold) and he goes on a killing spree at the college. There's a sub-plot involving a pledge and his brother (the fraternity president) who are both in love with the same girl, but it's not very interesting. Darren McGavin portrays the two brothers' father, a survivor of the original massacre who harbors some secrets of his own. The rest of the film is merely a series of brutal (and unrated) killings, as Malius slashes throats, removes limbs and thrusts an ice hammer through the bodies of unsuspecting college kids having sex, including the welcome death of a video peeping tom (Ted Clark, who looks like comedian Richard Belzer on a herion binge). McGavin arrives to save his kids and confesses that it was he who performed a satanic ritual twenty-five years earlier, raising Malius from the dead (he thought it was a harmless fraternity prank until it was too late). McGavin is then stabbed in the back with his own ice hammer by Malius and as he lays mortally wounded he tells the kids that only the reading of a magical passage, performed at the original massacre site, will return Malius to the grave. They do. He does. The end. Or is it? While this film does have a few atmospheric touches (including a statue of Jesus on the cross coming to life) and plenty of extreme gore, it is basic "Teens have sex, teens get killed" formula filmmaking made popular back in 1980 by FRIDAY THE 13TH. This type of film went out of style years ago. Charles Cragin is terrifying as Malius and one wishes that there were a better storyline to showcase his talents (the ending of this film points the way for a Part 2, but I doubt that will ever happen). Darren McGavin's role in this film is no more than a extended cameo and he looks embarassed to be here. He probably took the role to get a free trip to Yugoslavia (where some exteriors were filmed) and to get some extra booze money. It's a long way from his KOLCHAK days. Everyone else in the cast are unknowns and will probably stay that way. If you are interested, there is some full frontal female nudity on view as well as some good photography, but not enough to get your mind off the fact this is something you have seen a hundred times before. To sum it up, HAPPY HELL NIGHT is neither good or bad. It's just deja vu. Directed by Brian Owens who also got story credit on the 1994 horror opus BRAINSCAN. Released on DVD by Anchor Bay Entertainment to cash-in on co-stars Jorja Fox (TV's CSI) and Sam Rockwell's (MATCHSTICK MEN - 2003) recent fame. Not Rated. { text from critcononline.com }
VHS MOVIE REVIEW : DEEP STAR SIX
From feoamante.com
This movie was released in 1989 when Hollywood was going through one of its periodical Water movie eras. LORDS OF THE DEEP, LEVIATHAN and DEEPSTAR SIX were all released in anticipation of the success that would surely follow James Cameron's THE ABYSS*. As it turned out, THE ABYSS was both over budget and behind schedule, being released far after LORDS OF THE DEEP, LEVIATHAN and DEEPSTAR SIX flopped. THE ABYSS flopped too. 1989 just wasn't the right time for dopey Horror/SF movies in the water (8 years later, Hollywood would repeat itself and release a slew of underwater critter flicks just prior to the release of/and after the success of, James Cameron's TITANIC). DEEPSTAR SIX was bad news for Carolco, a studio which started the late eighties and into the early nineties trying to be the final word in SF/Horror movies (TOTAL RECALL, THE RUNNING MAN).
They are dead these days.
What I like about DEEPSTAR SIX is the fine acting despite the derivative story and pedestrian script (Screenplay by Lewis Abernathy and Geof Millar: HOUSE IV), the horrendous plot holes, and bad Special Effects. SFX are usually what keeps most Hollywood horror movies afloat, but not this one. The SFX are laughably bad and the movie score will make you groan time and again. In fact, the music is so horrible for the movie (imagine a three way cross between the incidental music for Kojak, Charlie's Angels, and Murder She Wrote. It totally wrecks all suspense and action.) that nowhere in the credits did I see a listing for who wrote the actual Music Score. There are a few listings for Music Coordinator, Music Engineer, and Additional Orchestration; but I think I'll just be nice and not mention their names here.
The highlights of the movie come from the Direction of Sean S. Cunningham (THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, FRIDAY THE 13th, HOUSE, HOUSE II) who, though good at direction, is lousy at choosing scripts. I hope he does well with the much anticipated, FREDDY vs JASON to be released in 2000.
A cast of mostly "Television Celebrities" provide surprisingly good acting. The words they speak stink for the most part, but actors like Greg Evigan (HOUSE OF THE DAMNED) cut his teeth on really bad TV scripts. Evigan plays McBride, a civilian sub jockey working contract for the U.S. Navy's DEEPSTAR SIX project. The Navy wants missile platforms at the bottom of the ocean, and have thoughtfully provided a few Live Nukes for the team to toy with. McBride's sweetheart is Joyce Collins (Nancy Everhard: DEMONSTONE), the first woman to ever pass through Navy Seal Training. They are both led by two people: Captain Laidlaw (Taurean Blacque: [TV] THE NIGHT THE CITY SCREAMED) and Doctor Van Gelder (Marius Weyers) who is the harried and none too careful civilian project leader. Van Gelder knows that the Navy wants him to hurry up, or they will close the DEEPSTAR SIX project. Putting schedule ahead of safety,Van Gelder has some of the crew plant a bomb over a known underground cavern to blow it up and check for stability. Seems to me that throwing an atomic bomb at anything short of the sun would make it pretty unstable - but what do I know? One oceanic burp later and Merry Mishaps Ensue.
The two who really shine in this movie are Nia Peeples ([TV] Robin Cook's TERMINAL, TOWER OF TERROR [TV], BLOODHOUNDS II) who plays Oceanographer Scarpelli and Miguel Ferrer (ROBOCOP, THE HARVEST, Stephen King's THE NIGHT FLIER) who, as Communications Officer Snyder, dominates his every shot. Ferrer is a natural born scene stealer and underrated actor. He needs to be in movies worthy of his talents.
DEEPSTAR SIX is worth watching just for Peeples and Ferrer.
!!!UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT!!!
While only having two non-white actors in this movie, they are both, of course, slaughtered in the time honored Horror movie cliché of Kill The Black People/non-whites. This is not to say that the white characters don't also die, they do. The UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT is to let you know that, no matter how many victims or how many people from different races in the movie, the whites and ONLY the whites were cast as the survivors.
To be fair, Lewis Abernathy and Geof Millar's screenplay works best when simply showing the interaction of the folks involved. The opening scene with Evigan and Everhard is sweet and real, due to script, acting and direction. The same can be said for Ferrer's interaction with everybody. This movie flops around like a water starved fish concerning everything else. Especially bad are the unnecessary conflicts between crew members and the stupid antics of the creature. My rating is higher than some would expect for this flick, and it is not for the ridiculous Crawdad critter. Nia Peeples and Miguel Ferrer lead a cast that makes this movie worth watching. Two Shriek Girls and one negative Shriek for nearly being so bad its good.
VHS MOVIE REVIEW : GRADUATION DAY (1981)
Minor league slasher film helped by a veteran cast of genre actors. Tragedy strikes at a high school track meet when sprinter Laura Ramstead (Ruth Ann Llorens) drops dead after winning the hundred-yard dash (turns out she had a bad ticker). It's not long before both male and female members of the track team are dispatched in various gory manners. Laura's sister, Anne (Patch Mackenzie; THE DARK TOWER - 1987), takes a leave of absence from the Navy and arrives in town just as a female student is killed while jogging in the woods by someone with a stopwatch and a very sharp knife. Graduation Day is rapidly approaching and some of the athletes blame Coach George Michaels (Christopher George; GRIZZLY - 1976) for Laura's death because he's a no-nonsense kind of guy who pushes his athletes hard. Some say way too hard. Anne returns home to find her mother, Elaine (Beverly Dixon), has become an alcoholic and her stepfather, Ronald (Hal Bokar; REVENGE OF THE BUSHIDO BLADE - 1978), is as verbally and physically abusive since the day she left to join the Navy (He may very well be the reason why she joined). Anne sleeps in Laura's room (Ronald has turned Anne's bedroom into a darkroom) and tells her mother that she only plans to stay until graduation is over (a special trophy in Laura's honor is to be given to Anne) and she has no desire to keeps Laura's life insurance payout, which pleases a drunken Ronald. The black-gloved killer begins crossing out the faces of his victims on a team photo in red lipstick, while Anne tries to figure out why Laura really died; beginning with Laura's boyfriend, Kevin Badger (E. Danny Murphy; FINAL MISSION - 1984), who keeps a shrine of Laura in his home (as well as a crazy grandmother who yells at the TV). Anne likes Kevin and gives him a necklace she was going to give her sister at graduation. Coach Michaels forces gymnast Sally (Denise Cheshire) to do her entire uneven bar routine just for a newspaper photo op and the killer (again with stopwatch in hand) murders her by thrusting a sword through her neck while she is shaving her legs in the shower. Music teacher Mr. Roberts (Richard Balin) is seduced by topless student Dolores (a baby-faced Linnea Quigley) and Principal Guglione (Michael Pataki; GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE - 1972), who carries a switcblade (red herring alert!), is having an affair with his secretary Blondie (E.J. Peaker), so it's no wonder that no one notices that students are going missing. Mr. Roberts hears a tapping on the pipes and checks out the boiler room (Hasn't he ever watched a horror film?), where someone is playing a cassette tape of his makeout session with Dolores (It's a practical joke by Dolores and Tony [Billy Hufsy] and the entire sequence leads nowhere). Dolores and Tony get caught smoking pot by Officer MacGregor (Virgil Frye; UP FROM THE DEPTHS - 1979), but he lets them off with a warning and tokes-up on the joint he confiscated from them. Anne accuses Coach Michaels of killing her sister, but he tells Anne he "loved" Laura, just like all his students (He also lost his coaching job after graduation is over). The stopwatch killer then dispatches football player Pete (Tom Hintnaus) with a spike-tipped football to his midsection. Think you know who the killer is? I've laid out all the potential suspects, but you'll have to wait until just before the graduation ceremony for the killer to be revealed. GRADUATION DAY is a painfully slow-moving slasher flick that throws every early-80's trick in the book to liven-up the proceedings, including an opening disco tune, plenty of topless female nudity and even a roller skating scene (where a band called Felony performs their 'hit' song, "Gangster Rock"), but director/co-producer/co-screenwriter Herb Freed (HAUNTS - 1975; BEYOND EVIL - 1980; SURVIVAL GAME - 1987) forgot the most important ingredients: blood and gore. Sure, there are plenty of deaths and some practical makeup effects, but they lack the "oomph" needed to make them memorable. Tony suffers from one of the driest decapitations this side of an Andy Milligan film and Herb Freed hopes the editing, which is full of shock cuts and pre-MTV flash editing (some of it almost subliminal), will keep our minds occupied. It doesn't. The closest thing this film comes to actual gore is when a pole vaulter lands on a bunch of spikes and Anne discovering the dead bodies (and body parts) under the bleachers while being chased by the killer. This is the type of horror film where every major character acts like they could be the killer by doing or saying ominous things (Such as Anne saying to Coach Michaels, "We'll meet again!" Of course they'll meet again. They'll both be at the graduation ceremony!). It's no wonder that Herb Freed gave up filmmaking to become a rabbi! Also starring Carmen Argenziano (FIGHTING MAD - 1978) as Police Inspector Halliday, who appears during the third act to wrap everything up (by shooting the wrong man!). Letter-turner Vanna White also turns up as an overage high school student. Originally released on VHS by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, with a budget VHS by Goodtimes Home Video (recorded in LP mode). Also available on budget DVD from Hollywood DVD Ltd, and a simply horrible DVD from Troma that is the director's cut, with nine extra minutes of footage, none of it gore. Rated R. { text from critcononline.com }
|
|
