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VHS MOVIE REVIEW : SILENT MADNESS (1984)
This little-seen horror gem (filmed in 3-D, but shown flat when released to most theaters) deserves a U.S. DVD release NOW! Better acted than most slasher films, SILENT MADNESS delivers the goods from the get-go. Due to a name mix-up, psychotic silent mental patient Howard Johns (stunt co-ordinator Solly Marx) is accidentally released from the looney bin and begins to kill immediately. He kills a teenage couple making out in a van (the boy gets a sledgehammer to the head and the girl gets a flying 3-D axe planted in her back) and then turns his anger on a rollerskating girl, crushing her head in a vise. He then begins stalking the girls at a local sorority house (where it is half-empty during Fall Break), where den mother Miss Collins (film vet Viveca Lindfors) chastises the girls for flaunting their feminity. One of the girls pays the price by getting a faceful of steam, courtesy of Howard. Meanwhile, back at the hospital, psychiatrist Dr. Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) is trying to find out why the dastardly Dr. Kruger (Roderick Cook) is covering-up Howard Johns' release. Dr. Kruger says Johns is "deceased" not "released" as it says on the paperwork, declaring it a typo. Dr. Gilmore doesn't buy it and tries to find out just what type of experiments Kruger is running on the patients in his heavily guarded ward. Dr. Gilmore takes her case to the police and tries to get info on Howard Johns from foul-mouthed Sheriff Liggett (genre stalwart Sydney Lassick), who tells her to go to the newspaper office. There she meets Mark McGowan (David Greenan), a reporter who helps her unravel the mystery. She learns that Johns committed several bloody murders at the sorority house years earlier, and with Mark's help, goes undercover there as an alumni to try to uncover more info. She becomes friends with the girls there and she learns that Miss Collins knows all about the murders. Miss Collins tells a story (told in a black-and-white flashback) of how Howard was ridiculed by some sorority sisters during Pledge Week and snapped, killing them all in the house's boiler room. While investigating the boiler room, Dr. Gilmore is attacked by Howard, but escapes. Now that she has proof that Howard is alive, she and David have the proof they need to bring down Dr. Kruger, that is if Howard and the evil doctor (and his goons) don't get to her, David and the sorority girls first. Director Simon Nuchtern (SAVAGE DAWN - 1985) builds the tension slowly, giving us a trio of murders in the beginning and then slowly building suspense until the suspenseful conclusion. For once, the 3-D effects don't seem to be tacked on as they are integral to the plot and killings. No flying ping-pong balls or yo-yos in your face here (just one unnecessary electric prod thrusted at the screen). The acting is uniformly excellent for a horror film and it's nice to have more than one bad guy to boo at, as there are two kinds of killers here: The psychotic "kill anything that moves" kind and the cold, calculating intellectual kind. Give this one a chance and you'll probably like it, but good luck trying to find a copy. It's just different and more offbeat than most films of this type and there's a couple of killer gags involving a flying dumbell and a table drill. Also starring Rick Aeillo, Stanja Lowe and John Bentley. A Media Home Entertainment Release wich is long OOP. I managed to score a copy on eBay, but not without some heavy bidding. Rated R. { text from critcononline.com }
VHS MOVIE REVIEW : THE INITIATION (1983)
When Kelly (Daphne Zuniga; THE FLY II - 1989) was a young girl, she witnessed her mother, Frances (Vera Miles; PSYCHO - 1960), having sex with Dwight Fairchild (Clu Gulager; HUNTER'S BLOOD - 1986) and then watched as Dwight fought with and poured alcohol on a strange man who bursts into the bedroom, accidentally setting him on fire by pushing him into the fireplace (If you watch this whole sequence very closely, it gives away the film's surprise "reveal" way too early, thanks to some awkward editing). Kelly is having the nightmare on a regular basis now that she is a pledge at the Delta Ro Kai sorority house, where she is subjected to Hell Week along with fellow pledges Marcia (Marilyn Kagan; THE LADIES CLUB - 1986), Beth (Paula Knowles) and Alison (Hunter Tylo; FINAL CUT - 1986; here using the name "Deborah Morehart"). Sorority head (and supreme bitch) Megan (Frances Peterson) has decided that for Prank Night, the four pledges are to sneak into Kelly's father's department store, Fairchild's, and steal the night watchman's uniform, "From his badge down to his skivvies". Megan has a real hard-on for Kelly ever since she went on one date with Andy (Pater Malof), Megan's ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, three hundred miles away, someone wearing surgical gloves sets all the patients free at a mental institution and murders cruel Nurse Higgins (Patti Heider) with a garden claw (which may belong to a badly-burned trustee who is the hospital's groundskeeper). The surgical-gloved killer steals Nurse Higgins' car and escapes; the news seems to upset Frances and Dwight greatly. Kelly asks one of the teacher's assistants, Peter Adams (James Read), to help her solve the meaning of her recurring nightmare (since he is doing his thesis on dream interpretation) and cure the amnesia she has had since a young child (Frances told her that she fell on her head after falling out of a tree house and spent three months in a coma, but I'm willing to bet the farm that story is nothing but bunk). Peter hooks Kelly up to a bunch of machines to monitor her brainwaves and her EEG shows that when she is having her recurring nightmare, her brainwaves are weirdly calm. Peter believes the mirrors that punctuate her nightmares symbolize something very important, but when Frances finds out about the experimentation, she demands that Kelly stop seeing Peter (Frances also tells Dwight that she's tired of keeping a "horrible lie" from Kelly). Shortly after Kelly hears Dwight over the telephone setting up a date with a secret lover, he is murdered by the surgical-gloved killer with the garden claw to his throat and then is beheaded (offscreen) with a machete. After attending a fraternity costume party, where Ralph (Trey Stroud) dresses as a giant dick and testicles (it's hilarious) and Kelly hits on Peter ("You listen. That's why I chose you."), Peter hooks Kelly up to the machine and discovers that her real last name is Randall when Frances bursts in on the session and threatens to throw Peter in jail if he has any more contact with Kelly. Everything comes to a head when Kelly and the other two pledges (Beth thinks the whole thing is childish and quits the sorority) spend the night at Fairchild's Department Store, unaware the night watchman has already been murdered with the garden claw. Have you got if figured out yet? A totally ordinary and uneventful slasher film if there ever was one, THE INITIATION sure isn't helped by the bland direction by Larry Stewart (a TV director by trade, directing episodes of FANTASY ISLAND, BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY and other 70's & 80's series, which may be why this has the look and feel of a TV movie) or the rather easy-to-guess mystery screenplay by Charles Pratt Jr. It also doesn't help that many of the murders are saved for the final thirty minutes and they're nothing to write home about (a few garden claw stabbings; an axe to the forehead; an arrow to the chest [it's horrendously done and you'll know what I mean when you see it]; a throat slitting; a knife stabbing; a speargun impalement) and the blood is used sparingly. There is some nice topless and full-frontal female nudity, but the sad fact is that the mystery can be solved in the film's opening minutes (I solved it without even trying). Not worth your time unless you are a slasher completist. This film "introduces" Daphne Zuniga, but she appeared in THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD in 1981. Also starring Robert Dowdell, Christopher Bradley and Joy Jones. Originally available on VHS by Thorn/EMI Video with a budget VHS by Starmaker Entertainment following that. A single edition or double feature DVD (with MOUNTAINTOP MOTEL MASSACRE - 1983) was issued by Anchor Bay Entertainment. Rated R. { text from critcononline.com }
VHS MOVIE REVIEW : SHOCK WAVES (1976)
This is the film that started the Nazi zombie craze (most recently seen in DEAD SNOW - 2008) and it's still one of the best. The fact that this film manages to be creepy without relying on gross-out gore, but rather with mood and atmosphere, is all the more remarkable. Even more amazing is that it was directed and co-written by Ken Weiderhorn, who would later give us such inferior films as the frat house scatfest KING FRAT (1979), the B-level slasher film EYES OF A STRANGER (1981), the fractured mess of a horror film DARK TOWER (1987) and the mostly unfunny horror sequel RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II (1988), so it seems he shot his creative wad on his freshman effort. In the film's beginning, it is explained that during World War II, the Nazi SS High Command began top secret experiments in the supernatural (it is now a well-known fact that Hitler had deep interests in the occult) to turn soldiers into indestructible zombie storm troopers, which was code-named "The Death Corps." (the shooting title of the film). Unfortunately for Germany, the war ended before The Death Corps. could be put into action outside Germany and a platoon of the Nazi zombies have been waiting in a sunken freighter off the coast of Florida to be reactivated. It is now 1976 and a fishing boat spots a glass-bottomed dingy drifting aimlessly in the Florida seas. On the dingy is a dehydrated Rose (Brooke Adams; THE DEAD ZONE - 1983) and the story she has to tell is the basis for the rest of the film. We flashback to a few weeks earlier, where Rose and three other passengers are on a small tour boat trolling around the islands. The temperamental boat's even more temperamental Captain Ben (John Carradine; FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND - 1981) complains to first mate Keith (Luke Halpin; MR. NO LEGS - 1979) that the boat must have "accurate navigation" ("It's a sailor's best friend!"), but the sun starts to look strange (the whole sky turns orange) and they lose compass bearings and radio contact. This visibly unnerves Captain Ben and his crew (The boat's cook, Dobbs [Don Stout], says, "The sea spits up what it can't keep down" which is very prophetic), but they try to hide it from the passengers, which besides Rose, includes an always-complaining Norman (Jack Davidson), his much put-upon wife Beverly (D.J. Sidney) and the physically-fit Chuck (Fred Buch). In the middle of the night, the boat is sideswiped by a ghost freighter, which seemingly rose out of the ocean depths and has gotten itself stuck on a sandbar. The next morning, everyone discovers that they are stuck on the same sandbar next to a mysterious island, but Captain Ben is missing. When it is deemed that the boat is no longer seaworthy, everyone takes the glass-bottomed dingy to the island, where they discover Captain Ben's dead body underwater. On the island is a decaying old seaside hotel and they use it for shelter, but it's plain to see someone already lives there (a working fish tank and a Gramophone playing an old 78 rpm record are just two clues). That occupant is an old SS Commander (Peter Cushing; his next film was STAR WARS!), who has been hiding on the island since the end of WWII, and he is just as surprised as everyone else to see the rusted freighter on the horizon. This can only mean one thing: The Death Corps. Have been reactivated and they are ready to kill. The blonde-haired, goggle-wearing, jackbooted zombies rise out of the ocean (a very well-done and eerie sequence) and begin killing the stranded castaways, beginning with Dobbs, who Rose finds while taking a swim in the lagoon (his body is bloated and misshapen). The SS Commander explains to the group what they are up against and offers them a small sailboat to make their escape, but as we already know, there will only be one survivor of this ordeal. While there is very little plot to this low-budget horror flick (Weiderhorn co-wrote the screenplay with John Harrison [MURDER BY PHONE - a.k.a. BELLS - 1982]), SHOCK WAVES still manages to be a scary, moody film thanks to some totally creepy underwater sequences (the zombies walking on the sea bottom is a unique sight and Underwater Photographer Irving Pare captures it perfectly) and the look of the zombies themselves (Makeup Design by Alan Ormsby; CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS - 1972), outfitted in SS uniforms and looking like the Master Race with a really bad case of acne. I also like that these zombies aren't flesh eaters. They're fast-moving undead whose only job is to kill, even killing the SS Commander who created them (Peter Cushing looks impossibly thin and frail here). There's very little blood or gore on view (just shots of dead bodies and zombies rotting when their goggles are pulled off), but there is no real call for it here, because this film relies more on atmosphere than blood and guts. Must viewing for fans of Val Lewton-esque horror. This had various VHS releases, from Prism Entertainment, American Video and Starmaker Entertainment, but the only way to really watch this film is the widescreen DVD from Blue Underground, mastered from the director's own vault print. It blows all the VHS editions out of the water. Rated PG. { text from critcononline.com }
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