228. The Guy From Harlem

228. The Guy From Harlem (1977)
Director: Rene Martinez Jr.
Writer: Gardenia Martinez
From: Cult Cinema; Drive-In
Watch: archive.org, Rifftrax

Al Connors, Miami private eye, is hired to thwart two kidnappings by local crime lord Big Daddy.

Open on a shack, a black woman asleep on a couch while a white man sits in a chair. While it could be the start of a Beckett play, it’s something far more depressing. The man walks over to the couch and starts feeling up the woman. She wakes up, objects, and then he tells her she’s going to have a friend to spend time with her soon.

Cut to the opening credits! Which should really be the end credits because they cover every position in the crew. Also, as you can see from the title card still at the top, you can’t actually read them because they’re not on top of a black background.

Behold Al, the titular Guy From Harlem, driving into work. Since I mentioned that the shot is of him driving, you can probably guess that a good chunk of this movie is spent watching people go from point to point. The innovation The Guy From Harlem adds is, instead of just watching people driving and parking, we get to see them move from one part of the room to the other, thoroughly. Nary a step is overlooked. And the cameraman is always very far away so you can watch each actor move from one part of the room… all the way over… to… the other part… where the scene… might… be about… to continue… maybe.

Anyway, nothing much happens in the movie so I’ll speed through things. The CIA contacts Al to guard the wife of an African President. They don’t say which country, just that “she’s the wife of an African head of state.” She reveals that it’s a president although she also never says which country. The CIA is hiring Al because they’re afraid there’s a leak in their organization. Al takes her to a hotel, starts hitting on her, thwarts a kidnapping attempt by Big Daddy, and then takes her to his white girlfriend’s place. He asks the girlfriend to stay at a hotel and then hooks up with the president’s wife.

Next day (maybe?), he’s back in the office, job well done. Harry De Bauld, a former gambling magnate that’s moved into the drug trade, wants Al to save his daughter Wanda who’s been kidnapped by Big Daddy. Turns out she’s the woman we saw at the beginning. Harry wants Al to deliver $500,000 worth of cocaine and a $250,000 ransom to Big Daddy to get Wanda back. He’s hiring Al because he’s afraid of betrayal within his organization. Al manages to rescue Wanda without doing the handoff, kills all the henchmen, and then takes her to his white girlfriend’s place. He asks the girlfriend to stay at a hotel and then hooks up with Wanda.

Next day, he hands Wanda over to her dad, tells him he’s disposed of the cocaine to convince him to get out of the drug business. Then Big Daddy calls Al, they agree to meet, and Al and Big Daddy have a fight. Al kills Big Daddy and walks off with Wanda, laughing. THE END

The movie sucks, y’all. It has the aesthetics of a porno but, thankfully, never goes all the way down that road. Not to say this isn’t an exploitation flick and that it doesn’t have gratuitous nudity (hope you enjoy seeing a woman take her top off… from across the room… in a mirror), but it’s pretty fleeting. The Rifftrax version I watched actually cut all of it out and the only reason I knew it’d been cut was that I’d scanned through my copy of the movie to see if there were any Mill Creek bugs in it.

Nothing about the movie is interesting. The few fight scenes it has are plodding and poorly choreographed, there really aren’t any characters, and the whole “facing off against Big Daddy” feels contrived just to have a final showdown with a villain. Big Daddy isn’t even present or a character much in the movie. On top of that, with Wanda being tied up in a shack for a good portion of the movie, things get kind of rapey. She’s never assaulted, but it’s not for lack of trying on the part of the goons. Since the movie has that porno aesthetic, it always felt like the only thing keeping the movie from going down that road was that it would take too much effort.

Obviously, not a recommend, not even the Rifftrax version. They can’t work against how little is going on in this film and even their jokes start to fall into that leery space that the movie seems to invite. They constantly refer to the white girlfriend as “Jessica Simpson with smaller boobs” which just isn’t the Rifftrax tone.

While I suggest giving this one a pass, it is in the public domain. I’ve uploaded an MPEG2 copy to archive.org here, but I’d say the only use you could get from it would be to do a complete redubbing for comic effect. It’s pretty bad.

206. Sisters of Death

206. Sisters of Death (1976)
Director: Joe Mazzuca
Writers: Peter Arnold and Elwyn Richards from a story by Elwyn Richards
From: Chilling
Watch: archive.org, Rifftrax, Bunny Galore’s Movie Nightmares

Seven years after a hazing ritual results in a girl’s death, her sorority sisters are invited to a reunion at an isolated getaway. Only the consequences from that night are still being felt, and someone’s out for revenge.

Two girls are going through the final stage of their initiation into a sorority: having a gun pointed at their head and the trigger pulled. Fun. The bullets are supposed to be duds, but the second girl is shot and killed. Credits run over freeze frames of all the girls screaming.

Seven years later, Judy, a rich model, opens the newspaper to see a rumor-mongering story about her and the Governor’s son. She goes through her mail and finds an invitation for “The Sisters” to gather for a reunion and $500. She calls Sylvia, one of the Sisters, and accuses her of setting up the reunion. Sylvia says she thought Judy did it because she was the only one with the funds to engineer it. In the scene, we see Sylvia accepting money from an anonymous man after having had sex with him.

And we get similar sort-of-backstory introductions to the other three Sisters—one’s hitchhiking, one’s doing a Krishna/escape to nature thing, and one looks and acts like Gidget. None of them are really characters, just presences in the movie. Regardless, all five show up at the rendezvous point and are met by two creepy/suave 70’s types who say they’ll drive the Sisters to their final destination—over an hour away! Somehow this doesn't set off alarm bells.

They all arrive at a mansion in the middle of the desert surrounded by an electric fence. The Sisters initially see a setup for a reunion and the guys sneak in after hearing the party. The fence closes locking them all in and their host emerges—Edmond Clybourn, the father of the girl that died. He’s learned that his daughter’s death was engineered by one of the Sisters and he intends for the truth to come out the next day.

Everyone splits into groups trying to find a way to escape, focusing on cutting the power to the fence. Of course, someone ends up alone, gets killed, and that’s generally the model for the rest of the movie. Someone’s strangled, someone gets stabbed with scissors, someone’s bitten by a rattlesnake, someone’s chased into the electric fence by a dog, and

SPOILERS UNTIL THE END

we get to the final showdown with Clybourn, Judy, Sylvia, and one of the drivers.

Sylvia put together the reunion with Clybourn because she was the one that pulled the trigger. That moment ruined her life and now she’s a sex worker and alcoholic. She blames Judy, the one who engineered the sister’s death out of jealousy, for ruining her life. Clybourn says he was never going to kill any of them, but that Judy outed herself by murdering all her sisters. Now he’s going to kill her by using a Gatling gun loaded with a mix of real and dummy bullets because that echoes the hazing ritual.

The driver, who’d just been knocked out, wakes up, attacks Clybourn, and frees Judy. Sylvia gets shot in the back by Clybourn and, as Judy and the driver are running across the grounds, Judy manages to shoot Clybourn, causing him to fall to his death. The driver throws a makeshift bomb at the gate, clearing their path, and, as they reach the car, Judy shoots him so there will be no witnesses to the events.

THE END

I’d watched this the last time I tried to make my way through all these box sets, and I remembered the movie half-fondly. Instead of rewatching that version, I hopped onto OSI 74 to watch Bunny Galore’s Movie Nightmares version which, I’m sorry to say, was a little disappointing. Galore doesn’t do much with the movie in her host segments, only offering one brief “so far in our film” and two sketches. Most of the host segments are just her standing on a basement stair saying, “You’re watching Sisters of Death on Movie Nightmares.” I wanted more.

It didn’t help that the movie itself was pretty underwhelming the second time through. The extended introduction of each character on their way to the rendezvous is just padding. Judy and Sylvia’s introductions work because they’re supposed to be the main characters and they’re done well. Their phone call serves the dual purpose of providing exposition and establishing the characters’ situation and relationship. I’d have liked to see more of that throughout the movie--characters talking about who and where they are now and what that night meant to them--instead of the focus on these two dipshit drivers who suddenly become the protagonists. We know they’re good guys because one tells the other, “You’re a good guy,” apropos of nothing.

A lot of the movie is people sitting around not understanding what’s going on and then getting killed when off-screen. The movie’s interesting in that it’s a precursor to the slasher flick, and it’s not terribly put together, but it does provoke a lot of eye-rolling and clock-glances on its way to the end. It’s not bad, but not great either, and maybe that makes it easily riffable. Also, it does have some good shots so there’s plenty that could be used in editing projects if you’re so inclined.

There is a Rifftrax version of this and the movie itself is in the public domain. I’ve uploaded an MPEG-2 copy to archive.org here so you can make your own fun, whatever form that takes.

203. Bloody Pit of Horror

203. Bloody Pit of Horror aka Il boia scarlatto (1965)
Director: Massimo Pupillo
Writers: Romano Migliorini and Roberto Natale
From: Pure Terror
Watch: archive.org; Rifftrax

A group of models looking to shoot book covers goes into a castle that used to be the home of the torturous Crimson Executioner. It’s current resident starts killing them through various medieval means.

Another movie that I watched several times before in the pre-PD Project days. My copy came from The Dead Walk 10-Movie Pack. I already uploaded to the Internet Archive nearly eleven years ago. It’s a silly little piece of Italian not-quite sleaze, and I opted to watch the Rifftrax version this time around. During the opening credits featuring a car driving along a road for minutes on end, one of the riffs is, “Kind of a Manos goes to Europe feel about this.” They’re not wrong.

A group of cover girls arrives at a castle that their producer hopes to use as a set for book cover photos. Cause that was a thing at a time I guess? I was born in 1980 so my only experience with book cover models was Fabio, and even then, he’d pose for portraits as opposed to photos. But anyway. The castle is locked and no one answers the bell so, naturally, they break in. The owner initially tells them to leave, but relents upon seeing the producer’s female assistant. Then, during the shoots, a male model is impaled by a pendulum device.

The photography sequence reveals both the motive and tone of the movie—scantily-clad women in peril and a Scooby-Doo-ish level of camp.

Gradually every character ends up in a torture device at the whims of the Crimson Executioner, but everything looks terrible and hokey. The end result of every device is to gradually strip the women a little further than they are at the present moment. Imagine lingerie models having their lingerie removed literally thread-by-thread and you’ll have the right idea. There’s never any nudity, but there is the suggestion that with enough time, and if the victim doesn’t die, and the devices aren’t clearly cardboard, there might, eventually, conceivably, be a bit of titty.

I'm the metaphorical budget literalized!

I do have to note that the torture devices are at once hilariously cheap and hilariously convoluted. One women is tied to a spider web with a giant stuffed spider coming ever nearer to eventually prick her with a poisoned needle. No one can save her because the floor is criss-crossed with massive tripwires that will set off arrows embedded in the wall, killing whoever tripped them. Our hero tries to save her by crawling along the floor, which is pretty easy to do (as would be walking around the edge of the room or just stepping in the massive gaps between the tripwires), but gets there just a moment too late.

Huh?

I’m all over the place with this movie because it doesn’t follow any plot, it’s just, “people show up, start dying.” So the Crimson Executioner was a 17th-century madman obsessed with purity who tortured people he regarded as sinning to death. He gets sealed in the hokiest iron maiden I’ve ever seen and dies. The castle’s current owner is an ex body builder, also obsessed with human perfection, who lionizes the Crimson Executioner and starts murdering everyone in the castle. The woman he saw is his ex-fiancée, but when she tells him to stop killing, he rejects love as weak and an imperfection.

Anyway, inevitably the hero gets caught, escapes, the villain thinks he’s dead, but they have one final battle. The villain falls against one of his own traps, gets poisoned, and dies. By this point, everyone except the hero and the fiancée are dead, but it’s cool cause they’re each other’s love interest and they leave. THE END.

The movie’s stupid, but it’s short, clocking in at just under 75 minutes, and it’s just silly. It’s a cheapo exploitation flick, but it doesn’t fall into the trap a lot of those do by being grim or rapey. As I said above, it feels like an adult Scooby-Doo, only the gang is too stupid to figure out what’s really happening.

The movie’s in the public domain and, as mentioned above, I uploaded a copy here almost eleven years ago. The Rifftrax version is a much better print, but the riffing is only generally okay. It’s not bad, but it feels like they hammered on some things a bit and went for the obvious targets. You could do as well with a group of your friends, and I recommend you do. It’s not good enough to watch on its own, but perfect for laughing at with people, even kids in the preteen age group. Your mileage may vary, but it doesn’t get too sexually explicit and, like I said, there’s no nudity, so it may not be the worst movie to use to bring an 11 or 12-year-old into the world of riffing and camp cinema.

162. Manos: The Hands of Fate

162. Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
Director: Harold P. Warren
Writer: Harold P. Warren
From: Pure Terror
Watch: archive.org, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (via Netflix), Rifftrax, Rifftrax Live

A family on vacation takes a wrong turn and ends up at the Valley Lodge, a home owned by the mysterious “Master” and seen over by his servant Torgo.

The movie that there’s very little to say about because its reputation exceeds anything that can be said. One of the contenders for worst movie ever made, it entered the public imagination due to being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its fourth season. Since then, it’s become a midnight movie staple and a cult sensation with various theater adaptations being produced.

There’s nothing to be said about the plot because nothing in the movie makes sense. The story of the film is that Warren, an insurance and fertilizer salesman, made the film on a bet, and the result is a train wreck that rivals The Room, Samurai Cop, Birdemic, and the films of Neil Breen for sheer incomprehensibility. I dreaded this movie coming up in the list because I didn’t want to watch it. I ended up going back to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, and that’s really what I want to talk about.

You don’t need me to tell you about the movie because you already know about it. What’s new, though, is the launch of Mystery Science Theater 3000 Season 11 today on Netflix. I chipped in to the Kickstarter campaign in the winter of 2015 so, as a backer, I got to see a preview of the first episode. So rather than talk about Manos, I’ll briefly mention my thoughts on the reboot and then be on my way.

I have thoughts about the relaunch itself, what they’re aiming to do with the property, and these Kickstarter campaign in general, but that feels like a longer essay about the marketing of nostalgia, returning to the well to try to squeeze out a little more from the fans, and the corrupting effects of branding in general. Though I don’t feel like I’m ready to write that essay yet. It would take some more time than I have right now and my thinking may change as I get to sit down and watch more of the new season.

As for the reboot itself, it’s good, I liked it. The show looks fantastic, I can clearly hear the voice of head writer Elliott Kalen in the riffs (which is to the good since I’m a fan of his sense of humor), and it’s obvious the show is incorporating elements of Cinematic Titanic both in terms of using the entire space of the screen during the riffs and in what’s being done with the films at the end of every episode. That means they’re expanding the idea of what can be done with riffing and learning from how post-MST3k projects engaged with the form. I laughed at a lot of the jokes, thought the cast rose to the occasion, and was really happy with this overall.

There are choices I take issue with. The biggest is that each episode is nearly or exactly 90 minutes long. One of the advantages of being produced for online distribution is you don’t have to edit—the work can be as long as it needs to be. Instead, it’s clear that the movie for the first episode has some significant chunks taken out of it which gives the show the abruptness of MST3k: The Movie. Furthermore, because the episodes are short, the host segments get cut short as well. The first host segment is a rap about monsters which runs as long as it needs to, but every other bit feels really quick and truncated. There is plenty of time for these gags, but the show isn’t using it.

On top of that, there are obvious commercial break moments including show bumpers. Granted, I think the bumpers they have are good and speak to the Saturday morning kid show tradition that MST3k ultimately draws from. Plus, there is the structural challenge of how to move from riffing to a comedy bit without the excuse of a commercial interruption already moving you, visually, into a new format. It’s an interesting stylistic choice that I think works, but only if you’re going to have this on broadcast TV. I think that’s why the bumps are there, so that this season can be sold in syndication if/when Netflix stops carrying it. That seems at once both lazy and greedy, like they’re preparing to be able to sell this in every format they can imagine right now instead of tailoring the show to whatever channel they’re trying to distribute it on.

I almost called the show the “product” there, which is another issue.

Kinga Forrester, the new Mad, is bringing the show back to license and market it in as many ways and on as may platforms as possible. I like that as an idea: we move from the trope of mad scientists doing experiments for nebulous purposes to a megalomaniac intent on revenge and world domination to a marketing person mad with power. The problem with that concept, though, is that’s exactly what Joel is doing. The whole Kickstarter campaign was about bringing MST3k back so they could keep making and selling new episodes. A lot of the messages he sent during production detailed how they were working on the branding angle and asking backers what kind of MST3k-related products we’d like to buy. Would you like a Crow plushie? What about an SOL-based video game? During the post-preview Q&A, he mentioned a comic book coming out from Dark Horse comics.

I don’t get the sense from the show that it has an ironic perspective that it’s making fun of the very thing that it is, that there’s a knowing wink to the fans that part of loving a show is loving the brand and picking up tons of ancillary products. Instead, it feels like it’s all in earnest, that all the effort is about getting as much money as possible from every angle possible. I don’t object to people getting paid, but when is it enough and how much is this show that’s been profoundly influential for me diminished by this effort?

Gee, I wonder what the “long” essay would have looked like.

Bottom line, the show’s good, I’m glad it’s back, and I’m enjoying what I’m seeing on screen. I just wonder why it came back and what they intend to do with it now that it’s here.

109. Keep My Grave Open and 110. Curse of Bigfoot

Jump to Curse of Bigfoot (1975)

109. Keep My Grave Open (1976)
Director: S. F. Brownrigg
Writer: F. Amos Powell
From: Pure Terror
Watch: archive.org

Lesley is trying to protect her brother Kevin from the outside world, but he keeps murdering people who come to the house and townsfolk are asking Lesley about her mental health.

We open with a drifter getting off a truck near some land with a "No Trespassing" sign that he of course ignores. He winds up at a seemingly empty house—it must be empty for all the time he spends shouting "Hello?" into its echoy depths—steals some food, and then is killed by the katana-wielding person who was hiding in the house.

I'll admit, the katana's a nice touch, the one interesting thing in this otherwise uninspired slasher film.

The next morning, Lesley, the resident of the house, is trying to give her brother/husband/lover (?) breakfast, but he won't come out of his room. I'm sure the movie wanted us to think Kevin's the killer, but it's immediately clear that Kevin doesn't exist and Lesley's the killer. In fact, that element is clearer than Kevin's relationship to her.

Anyway, Lesley kills a few more people—the girlfriend of a local boy doing work on her property, the local boy after trying to seduce him, the prostitute the local boy admitted to visiting just before Lesley killed him—without much consequence, and then feels guilty. She calls her doctor to the house, tells him she's made him executor of her will, and then relates a pointless story about hating the aunt that raised her and Kevin.

The doctor leaves, Lesley takes a fistful of pills, and, just before she dies, finally sees Kevin on the balcony. Cut to her graveside where the real Kevin is paying his respects. He goes into the house, which is now his, and calls to somebody upstairs. We hear them giggle, but it's not clear if it's someone Kevin has brought or if he's delusional the same way Lesley was and is imagining her there. Then he goes outside to bury the bodies, laughing to himself how Lesley was always leaving messes for him to clean up.

That's the movie. There's nothing particularly impressive or compelling about it and a lot of it is annoying. This has, hand's down, the worst bed music I've heard in a film so far. It's tinny, generic, and relentlessly annoying. On top of that, the twist is immediately obvious and there's no drama. The movie doesn't even offer up any camp pleasures so I wouldn't recommend watching it.

However, it seems this is in the public domain so I've uploaded a copy to archive.org here.


110. Curse of Bigfoot (1975)
Director: Dave Flocker
Writer: James T. Flocker
From: Pure Terror
Watch: archive.org

A group of students on an archaeological field trip uncover a perfectly preserved mummy. However, once they remove the mummy from its tomb, it awakens and starts killing.

This is a remix, if you will, of an earlier film called Teenagers Battle the Thing. That movie was the students uncovering the mummy that comes to life. This movie provides an extra half-hour of footage that’s largely a frame narrative happening in a class about cryptids like Bigfoot.

So we open with a voice over about human evolution that notes that monsters evolved alongside humans and still exist. Then we cut to a dog barking in the suburbs and shots of an approaching monster. The dog’s owner comes out, gives it milk, and gets attacked by the monster. Then it’s revealed that this is merely a movie the class is watching. The teacher is trying to tell them about cryptids and says they’re having a special to tell them about Bigfoot.

While they’re waiting, the professor tells them about two men involved in a Bigfoot sighting which involves cutting away to footage of that situation. They’re lumberjacks who see Bigfoot cross the road in front of them. They go walking through the forest to find it and one gets killed off-screen. It has no impact on the plot and takes ten minutes which, let’s be honest, is why it’s in the movie.

This is bad and you should feel bad about it.

The guest finally arrives and tells the story about leading a field trip years before. The group was looking for burial artifacts of Native American tribes—so desecrating graves—and stumble across a sealed tomb with a mummy. Opening the tomb releases a strange gas, one they suspect helped keep the mummy so well-preserved, and they take the mummy back to camp. One student says he saw it move, but no one believes him. He returns that night and the creature is revealed in all its laughable paper mâché glory.

Burn, baby, burn, Bigfoot inferno!

The Thing goes into town, kills a person, gets shot by a hunter without being harmed, and the sheriff comes to the camp to find out the truth. He puts together a plan to set the Thing on fire, but it’s not showing up. Finally it attacks the sheriff. The students go to check on him, find the Thing, douse it in gasoline, and set it on fire. The sheriff stumbles out of the woods, apparently unharmed.

This is Coast to Coast AM: The Movie with all the aesthetic quality of Manos. It’s silly-bad and really dull. Definitely riffable, and there is a Rifftrax version, but I wouldn’t recommend watching it on its own. A group of people could make this a hilarious watching experience, but it’s a slog to watch on your own. As an experiment, though, as a demonstration of how films can be remixed into something new, it’s kind of interesting.

The movie’s in the public domain and there are several copies on archive.org. I’ve added an MPEG-2 copy here, although the quality isn’t great. Mill Creek’s copy clearly is taken from an old VHS dub, but I don’t imagine there are any hi-def versions of this floating around.

107. Grave of the Vampire and 108. Mutant

Jump to Mutant (1984)

107. Grave of the Vampire (1972)
Director: John Hayes
Writers: David Chase, treatment by John Hayes
From: Pure Terror
Watch: archive.org

A child born from the rape of a woman by a vampire grows up to hunt his evil father down.

The movie opens with a couple going to a graveyard to make out, which is always a good idea and promises a quality outcome. As the guy proposes to the girl, the vampire Croft rises from his grave. Croft kills the guy, rapes the girl, and runs off when the gravedigger comes by.

There’s some material that feels like it’s going to be important—the detective investigating the murder and rape is closing in on Croft, the woman is told to abort the baby because it’s not alive and is actually feeding off her, the baby being born as an early version of Blade--but ultimately comes to nothing. The detective is killed by Croft at the graveside, the woman insists the baby is her lover’s child and so refuses to abort him, and the rearing of a half-human/half-vampire child isn’t explored.

This constitutes the first third/half of the movie, and there’s a lot the movie does well. First is the issue of the rape. It’s an inciting incident so, in that sense, is essential to the story, but the movie never makes it an angle for exploitation or entertainment. The assault happens off-screen so you’re not watching someone’s assault displayed for fun. Plus the cops investigating the case take her seriously, never question her story, and never halfway blame her for her own assault. She’s the victim and they’re focused on the person who committed the crime. I know it sounds PC to highlight it, but this manages to be a movie about an assault that does it right, and it was done in 1972. It’s 44 years later—figure it out, filmmakers!

The detective is interesting as well. Since he dies relatively quickly, he doesn’t get defined a lot, but he’s sketched out pretty well for the time he’s on-screen and the initial impression is that he’s going to be a mentor or Dr. Loomis figure for the kid: “He was there the night of the assault, figured out it was a vampire, but no one believed him. Now, twenty years later, the child of that assault is coming to the detective to hunt down his vampire father and stamp out the evil for good!” That movie sounds awesome. Unfortunately, this one has the detective killed by Croft at Croft’s graveside and that’s the end of that plotline.

Also the end of the production values. This is the moment when the movie shifts to the woman having the baby and, during the first few difficult weeks, learning that the baby will only drink blood. This starts to look like an Andy Milligan movie, that anachronistic moldering Gothic made in a contemporary space aesthetic. I like that look. There is a pleasure, sometimes, to seeing the seams because you get the sense that you could do this too. And the overall aesthetic of this first part works pretty well. There’s a nice tone, atmosphere, and then it just falls away for the rest of the movie.

Jump ahead, the child, James, is an adult, has learned the truth about his father, and has been tracking him around the world, seeking revenge. How this revenge has manifested or been funded is never explained. We only get introduced to it all through voice-over, and are told that James has finally found him.

Croft is teaching a night class (of course) about myths and fears under the name Professor Lockwood. James has signed up as a student and antagonized Lockwood briefly by mentioning Croft. After class, Lockwood flirts with Anne, one of his students who reminds him of his dead wife.

Anne and her roommate Anita live in the same building as James. James comes down to find a party being thrown, Anita takes him aside to ask about Croft, and then Anne leaves with James because she didn’t anticipate coming home to a party. She and James hook up which Lockwood sees in a vision. He visits Anne and Anita’s apartment, but only finds Anita. She says she knows he’s Croft and asks him to turn her. He kills her instead. Anne finds the body and is expectedly disturbed.

Not that it seems to matter much in the movie because we cut to Anne talking to brand new characters about the séance that Lockwood has invited them all to because apparently that’s happening now. Anne, James, and the sundry deadmeats join Lockwood for the séance. Lockwood tries to get his late wife to possess Anne, but Anita possesses her instead and reveals him as the vampire—a revelation that carries no weight because James is the only one who cares and he already knows.

You fail. You fail at movie-making.

The spirit leaves, James takes Anne upstairs to recover on one of the beds, and Lockwood kills the deadmeats. James finally confronts Lockwood, reveals that James is Lockwood’s son, and they fight. James kills Lockwood, but in the final moments, the vampiric curse seems to take him over and the movie ends with him as a vampire. And a goofy title card.

What starts as a low-budget, atmospheric piece devolves into an episodic muddle. The three parts—conception, classroom, climax—don’t feel linked, like the writer and director had the three big events they wanted in the movie, but didn’t know how to make the energy flow. I was ultimately disappointed by this because I enjoyed the beginning so much. There was a lot of promise that just petered out. The movie, frankly, felt like a mini-series that got cut down to a 90-minute feature: the key moments of each episode were present, but the material linking them got cut for time.

On the upside, the film is in the public domain and there’s a nice MPEG2 on Archive.org. Due to the rape at the beginning, it’s a little difficult to riff this movie, but it’s good enough to pass the time on a Saturday afternoon.


108. Mutant aka Night Shadows (1984)
Directors: John “Bud” Cardos, Mark Rosman
Writers: Michael Jones, John C. Kruize, and Peter Z. Orton from a story by Michael Jones and John C. Kruize
From: Pure Terror

Two brothers get stranded in a small Southern town while on a road trip. Strange figures start stalking the streets at night and, when one brother disappears, the other has to start digging to find out the truth.

We open with a man walking through the yard of a darkened house. He finds curious ooze on the ground and puts it in a specimen jar. He goes into a cellar through the outer door and gets attacked by hands that burn, and he never appears in the movie again.

We cut to Josh and Mike driving down a country highway. Josh is telling Mike to lighten up and, to demonstrate his point, closes his eyes and lets go of the wheel allowing the car to go wherever it may on the road. Mike tells him to quit and Josh almost has a head-on collision with a truck. The truck turns around and runs Josh and Mike off the road into a gulley, leaving them stranded.

It’s in this introduction to our heroes, and, yes, Josh and Mike are the heroes, that you find the problem with the movie. Josh is being stupid and almost gest Mike killed. Mike just takes it—I mean, he doesn’t even try to grab the wheel to keep the car going straight. He just whines at Josh to quit it. And the truck that runs them off the road is full of giggling rednecks laughing at them for being city boys, but Josh almost ran right into their truck. He’s the problem, not them. The movie forgets where our sympathies lie.

So the brothers walk to town, arrive at night, and Mike finds a body that’s been attacked by someone with powers similar to whatever killed the man at the beginning. Mike wants to call the police, but when they go into the bar to ask for help, they run into the rednecks again and a fight breaks out. Josh actually makes things a bit worse. The sheriff is there, though, and breaks it up, telling Josh and Mike to leave by morning. Mike tells him they found a body, but when they investigate, the corpse is gone and a bum wearing almost identical clothes is found instead.

The sheriff drops them at a boarding house where Josh and Mike are given separate rooms and this is the part where you’d expect something to happen to Josh because he’s the jerk, the comic relief, and Mike is the character who’s starting to suspect something about this town and investigate. So of course a monster reaches out from under the bed and takes Mike. We’re left for the rest of the movie with the cinematic equivalent of the asshole on the other end of the bar that you’re so glad you don’t have to deal with.

Things don’t develop too dramatically from there. Josh asks the cute barmaid for help getting to a gas station since the town is eerily deserted, and she agrees after she swings by the school since she’s also a teacher. School’s been canceled as well and there’s a crying child there because he’s afraid of how weird his parents are acting at home. Teacher sends him home anyway—thanks lady!—and Josh finds a corpse in the school basement. He gets into another fight with the head redneck and then hides in the teacher’s car.

The sheriff and local doctor are confused about the state of the body so the doctor does her own autopsy. She starts describing the effects of the disease that seems to have killed the victim while her assistant is going through them and ultimately turns into a monster.

An hour in, we finally see one of the monsters. And they look. . .

Okay. Actually, they’re not terrible at all, but it’s mostly pancake makeup spread all over their skin. They look a bit like the dead souls in Carnival of Souls so it’s not that bad, it’s just not dramatic.

Anyway, there are a few red herrings—Josh is suspected of involvement with the killings, he’s still trying to find his brother, and there are nods to the sheriff and doctor having had a relationship. Eventually Josh tracks the contamination back to the local chemical plant which is causing the zombie outbreak, the town is completely overrun by zombies that night, and Josh and the teacher are saved at the last minute from the monsters by the sheriff and the state police.

The movie’s not terrible, I just didn’t care. The production values are okay and it looks nice enough, but the plot’s lacking and the characters never drew me in. Making the jerky brother the protagonist was a real misstep because I spent the movie going, “If you stopped being a prick for five minutes, ya might get somewhere.” Frankly, this feels like something Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have seriously considered doing for an episode. Rifftrax, it turns out, did.

I grabbed the Rifftrax a while ago, which was lucky because, as of this writing, it’s no longer available. According to one of the comments on the page, this has been the case since at least early September. The movie may have been mistakenly thought to be public domain and someone has stepped forward to make their claim or the Rifftrax contract to distribute the film expired. So it may come back. Definitely a strange occurrence.

So, yeah, it’s okay. You can make jokes around it and it’s not overly-boring, it’s just never that compelling or over-the-top either. It is more than perfunctory, which is to its credit, but it’s also probably part of that subset of 80’s horror movies where the VHS cover art was far more dramatic than anything in the film itself.

083. The Crater Lake Monster and 084. Fangs of the Living Dead

Jump to Fangs of the Living Dead (1969)

083. The Crater Lake Monster (1977)
Director: William R. Stromberg
Writers: William R. Stromberg and Richard Cardella
From: Cult Cinema; Sci-Fi Invasion
Watch: Riffrax

A meteor lands in Crater Lake awakening a long-dormant monster that starts feeding on the local populace.

A scientist and his wife bring Doc into a cave to show him thousand-year-old cave paintings depicting early humans fighting a plesiosaur—a large, water-based dinosaur with flippers—proving that humans somehow co-existed with dinosaurs. A meteor crashes in the nearby lake, though, setting off tremors that collapse the cave after the scientists and Doc only just escape.

Get used to seeing a lot of Doc because the movie returns to him constantly for no reason whatsoever. Also, he looks like the dad in every mid-50's TV sitcom. It's kind of awesome.

The next day, Steve the Sheriff, played by the co-writer Richard Cardella, joins Doc and the scientists to go out on the lake and investigate the meteor. The meteor is still too hot for them to remove, so the scientists leave until the end of the movie.

In the meantime, the titular monster wakes up, eats a John Oates-looking guy, is spotted by a birdwatcher, then eats a bull. Only the report of the bull's disappearance arouses Sheriff Steve's attention, presumably because he's worried about having enough bullcrap for this movie.

On the lake, Mitch and Arnie are running a boat rental/bait shop business. They're the comic relief, which, in these films, means they're not funny. Also, they become the main characters for the next 45 minutes to an hour. They rent a boat to a tourist, he gets eaten by the monster, they bring Doc in to examine the blood-filled boat, and he doesn't have anything to say.

Mitch and Arnie bicker with each other over how they're going to keep the business running, who really does the work, who's going to get a date with the waitress at the local diner, and stumble across the head of the guy who disappeared on the boat. Sheriff Steve yells at them to stay out of the water and not do any more rentals, but they've already rented to a couple who are currently out on the lake.

The couple, in full daylight, keep talking about how beautiful a night it is (how can you not love this?), and then the monster shows up. They flee, ground the boat, and set it on fire, for some reason, which manages to scare the monster off. Mitch and Arnie find the couple, bring them back to town, and get yelled at by Sheriff Steve.

Then we cut to the apartment of a mustachioed man who puts a gun in his belt, goes to a liquor store and murders both the clerk and a customer. 100% “Meanwhile, in another movie.”

Back at the lake, Mitch and Arnie bicker, nothing moves forward, then the mustachioed man from the other movie shows up, has a shoot-out with Sheriff Steve, drives his car off a cliff, runs, and gets eaten by the monster. This is when Sheriff Steve starts to suspect something is up. So he talks to Doc.

Finally, Sheriff Steve is attacked by the monster, escapes, and brings Doc to examine the tracks it left. They both go to the scientists, who are part of the movie again, who decide to capture the monster instead of killing it. Sheriff Steve objects, but he has no idea how to kill the monster. At a town meeting the next day, Mitch and Arnie agree with the scientists that the monster should be taken alive because it'll mean lots of tourism dollars for the town. Unfortunately, the monster is already moving about.

They drive to where it is, Arnie gets bit, dies, and Sheriff Steve, somehow, kills the monster with a snow plow. Doc arrives to examine the carnage as Mitch collapses to the ground in grief over his partner Arnie.

Oh man, is this movie deliciously stupid. It's perfunctory on the one hand, but has at least the hint of a budget and evidence of competence behind the camera. What torpedoes it is a mix of the idea that they're doing something amazing and the ham-fisted attempt to turn Sheriff Steve, the co-writer, remember, into an action star. That dog don't hunt.

Don't flush!

The Wikipedia page for this movie is kind of interesting for noting Cardella's complaints about Crown's financing of the film. His issue with the soundtrack is legit—this sounds like an episode of Gilligan's Island. It's also worth mentioning the monster, which looks all right. It's Ray Harryhausen-esque stop-motion, and generally works, except for a few scenes of the monster's neck rising from the water which looks like a turd with a face. The movie doesn't skimp on the beast, either. It shows up at 14:30 and then consistently throughout the rest of the picture. So often, in fact, that you have to wonder how Sheriff Steve missed it for so long.

Definitely a recommend. It's a silly movie, but actually looks pretty good and moves along quickly enough. As I noted above, Riffrax did a take on it, and it's certainly highly-riffable. Gather your popcorn, pizza, and pals and I guarantee you a grand time.


084. Fangs of the Living Dead aka Malenka (1969)
Director: Amando de Ossorio
Writer: Amando de Ossorio
From: Pure Terror
Watch: Riffrax

Sylvia, two weeks before her wedding, learns that she's inherited a castle and title, so goes to see the estate. Once there, though, she learns of her family's vampiric past and of her own cursed existence.

Sylvia, one of Italy's best models, has learned from her uncle that, with the death of her mother, Sylvia has inherited not only her mother's castle, but the title of Countess as well. She goes to the little village to look things over, but finds the townspeople horrified once they learn of her heritage. At the castle, her uncle tells her of her family's great history, particularly of her grandmother Malenka, a brilliant biochemist who started dabbling in the dark arts and learned how to raise the dead. Malenka was burned as a witch, but not before bringing Sylvia's “uncle” back from the dead as a vampire. He tells her she can never leave the village or get married because of the family's curse.

Sylvia breaks off her engagement, but her fiancé comes to the castle with his friend to find out the truth. In town, the fiancé treats a woman with anemia, but she dies that night after a visit from the uncle. The local doctor suggests burying her in the old way with a stake through the heart, but the fiancé refuses.

Meanwhile, in the castle, Sylvia is refusing to drink her uncle's blood and become a vampire. The woman from town returns, now a vampire. Sylvia escapes to the Inn, her fiancé, friend, and the doctor go to kill the new vampire, and Sylvia is kidnapped and taken back to the castle. The trio end up there as well where the uncle ties up the fiancé and reveals the plan all along has been to drive Sylvia insane, make her think she's a vampire, and then steal her inheritance from her.

Sylvia comes to kill her fiancé, but is actually aware of the plan, unties him, and he stabs the uncle with a torch which makes him age, crumble, and die, apparently having been a vampire all along.

The movie doesn't make much sense at the end.

This starts out promisingly enough. You have doctors smoking while doing research, seriously bad dubbing, and some legitimately fantastic aesthetics. The sets look great, the colors and costumes really pop, and the whole thing looks like what Elvira was parodying in Elvira's Haunted Hills. The movie just loses its way after the first act, though. The fiancé shows up and is just kind of boorish, Slyvia's trapped in the castle, not exploring or trying to escape, and there really aren't any vampire antics going on. The film just kind of stops.

There is a Riffrax version of this, which would certainly make the experience better, and there's plenty to make fun of here, it's just that it's never quite campy enough to be really funny or enjoyable. It's one that I'm going to have to pass on recommending.

069. Death Machines and 070. The Devil's Hand

Jump to The Devil’s Hand (1962)

069. Death Machines (1976)
Director: Paul Kyriazi
Writer: Joe Walders and Paul Kyriazi from a story by Joe Walders
From: Cult Cinema; Sci-Fi Invasion
Watch: archive.org

A trio of assassins, known as the Death Machines, are dispatched to kill members of a rival gang to shore up Madame Lee’s criminal control of the city.

From Paul Kyriazi, writer/director of Weapons of Death comes another, “This is pretty fun oh why would you do that?” film.

We open with three racially-segregated pairs of fighters sparring with weapons—a white pair, an Asian pair, and a black pair. Yes, they are racially segregated. Turns out they’re all involved in fights to the death with the white guy literally shooting his opponent. Not even five minutes in and we’re already at genius levels of what-the-hell?

All of this is a display for Madame Lee, whose wig I kept expecting to sprout eyes and shout, “Manamana!” She hires the Death Machines to become her personal assassins, but first they have to take out the assassins of the stereotypical Italian mobsters in her city.

This leads to a sequence of the Death Machines being the least subtle assassins ever, which is surprising considering one of their targets drives a car into the middle of a park, unrolls a blanket to reveal a rifle, and balances it on the hood of his car. No cover, no hiding, just pointing a rifle in a park at a jogger. The Death Machines trump this by driving up behind him and shooting him with a bazooka.

The movie goes to some strange places. I did start wondering if there were any good guys at all. Until the Death Machines attack a dojo run by a drug dealer (and kill everyone except Frank, who just loses a hand), it’s just zombie assassins versus the mob. Half-an-hour in, the homicide detectives show up, but they don’t stick around long.

They get the case, blow off the paperwork and training they’re supposed to do, catch the white Death Machine when the trio goes to the hospital to try to kill Frank, and get kicked off the case for not doing their job. Standard trope of “good” cops being stymied by all these pesky “rules” and “regulations” and “laws.” That message of, “we’re all better off if we just let cops be vigilantes,” is undercut a bit, though, by the Captain chewing them out for not doing the paperwork because that lack of paperwork left him completely in the dark about a mass murder case that he has to inform the public about. It’s almost like the Captain has a point and they’re terrible cops.

Don’t worry, the correct order reasserts itself. The “incompetent” cops who do their job end up getting beat up by the Death Machine. He escapes to a diner where the owner tries to make him come to Jesus and then a biker gang shows up. They give the owner grief, start picking on the Death Machine, and then the other two members of the trio show up. Bikers get a stomping and the trio leaves.

The trio’s next job is to sexually assault the daughter of a bank manager, pictures of which are used to try to blackmail him into quitting his job. The man making the threat soothes the bank manager by reassuring him that the girl wasn’t conscious for most of it. The banker still refuses so the man handcuffs him to a filing cabinet and leaves a bomb in the office. The explosion is reminiscent of the end of Twin Peaks.

Yeah. It’s a big, “Why is this in this movie?” They could have just kidnapped the daughter, taken pictures to imply that they could find and attack her, but instead the movie goes for rape. It doesn’t show it, but it makes a plot point rape. And then it doesn’t even do anything to the story! The banker isn’t moved and it never comes up again. The whole sequence could be cut and you’d never know.

Except for that scene, the movie is entertainingly bad. Frank returns to the movie after his nurse, who’s inexplicably interested in him, tracks him down to unload some exposition and force a love interest. They get together, decide to go on vacation, and, while driving, happen to pass the trio in another car and decide to track them.

That’s right, the pursuit of the killers hinges on a meet-cute.

Stare at it. Let it seep into your soul.

So Frank keeps making really stupid decisions that would make even Scooby and the Gang say, “Jinkies, you’re begging for death,” the cops show up at the last minute to do nothing of consequence, and the trio heads to the airport for a potential sequel that was never going to happen. Best part of that final sequence: they freeze on the Death Machines for at least a solid minute. No credits, no dialogue or sound collage of news reports about them, just that one picture and the entirety of the backing track.

This movie, despite raising the specter of rape (and how’s that for a caveat?), is pretty fun. So many elements are hilariously bad because it’s clear that they’re present only because “these sorts of things happen in these movies.” For instance, every victim of the Death Machines is sent a red Buddha, but they get murdered so there’s no way for them to know what the statue means and the statue doesn’t act as a homing device for the Death Machines. They’re literally pointless.

There are no copyright marks on my print at all (maybe they were supposed to be in the closing credits that weren’t there), so I think it’s public domain. I’ve added a copy to the Internet Archive here that you can check out yourself.


070. The Devil’s Hand (1962)
Director: William J. Hole Jr.
Writer: Jo Heims
From: Cult Cinema; Chilling
Watch: archive.org, Rifftrax (buy), Rifftrax (Hulu stream)

Rick finds a doll that looks exactly like a woman who’s been appearing in his dreams. When he investigates further, he finds himself ensorceled and drawn into the machinations of an evil cult.

The movie opens with a nice, peppy, lounge instrumental which strikes the absolute wrong tone for a film about a man seduced into an evil cult. Or maybe it's exactly the right tone. “Hey, get with these sexy, swinging, Satanists. They've got groovy sacrifices and solid investment advice!” From the credits we cut to a park where Rick is meeting his fiancée Donna for lunch. She's feeding the ducks because he's twenty minutes late. He's smarmy and condescending about standing her up, and then he tells her that he quit his job. . . several days before.

This is sounding like the start of a Lifetime Original Movie.

Why was he late, they don't say. It couldn't have been the job he quit, but he has been having trouble sleeping because he's haunted by the specter of a beautiful dancing woman. That night, he wakes up from the nightmare and goes for a walk where he finds a shop with a doll in the window that looks exactly like the woman from his dreams.

The next day, he takes Donna there to show her the doll and the proprietor says Rick had ordered it to resemble Bianca Milan. When shown a picture, Rick identifies her as the woman, but insists he's never been to the store. Donna then finds her own doll, designed to look just like Donna, but the proprietor says it doesn't look like her and belongs to another customer. The couple leave, confused, and the proprietor puts a needle through Donna's doll, sending her to the hospital with a heart condition.

So there are elements of Voodoo without Voodoo ever being invoked. To speed things up, the proprietor is a high priest of Gamba, an evil devil-god, and Bianca, his girlfriend/second, has become infatuated with Rick and is using magic to make him fall in love with her. He does, joins the cult, and life immediately becomes The Great Gatsby even though it's 1962.

Various challenges arise—a cultist comes to Rick asking for help getting her soul back, but it's a test to prove his loyalty; Rick removes the needle from Donna's doll and has pangs of guilt over getting her involved; a journalist infiltrates the cult, but is found out and killed. These are all fine, but the problem is that they tend to arise and get resolved as quickly as I've described here. There's no sense of mounting tension or forces closing in on Rick, there are just things that come up and then sort themselves out.

Bianca finds out Rick cured Donna and so has Donna kidnapped to be the next sacrifice. When Donna's brought in to be killed, Rick rebels, saves Donna, and inadvertently starts a fire that kills all the cultists except Bianca. Rick flees with Donna while Bianca, superimposed on the film, holds his doll and laughs.

If the movie had been structured a little differently, it would have been more interesting. As it is, it feels a lot like a filmed version of a radio play. There's narration, the characters explain what they're looking at all the time, and there's very little going on visually. The movie's very perfunctory. That said, it's not awful. Overall, it's a competently-made product, but that doesn't inspire much enthusiasm.

I'm actually surprised I haven't seen this on more horror host shows. As far as I know, only Rifftrax has taken a stab at it, and it's certainly highly riffable. So I'd recommend it in that context: if you want to make fun of something with friends or with your kids, this is a good choice. For pure camp fun, though, it falls a bit short. Since it's PD, you can do what you like. I uploaded this to archive.org a while ago, but have replaced it with a sharper copy.

63. Prisoners of the Lost Universe and 64. Blood Sabbath

Jump to Blood Sabbath (1972)

063. Prisoners of the Lost Universe (1983)
Director: Terry Marcel
Writer: Terry Marcel, Harry Robertson
From: Cult Cinema and Drive-In
Watch: Rifftrax, archive.org

Carrie, Dan, and a scientist fall through a portal to a parallel universe populated by strange prehistoric tribes and medieval warlords with modern technology. Carrie and Dan have to survive long enough to find both the scientist and a way back home.

Starring Richard Hatch from my favorite movie ever, Best Friends and his character’s just as charming here!

That is unfair. This movie is nowhere near as nihilistic and grim as Best Friends and even manages to reach some level of goofy fun. It’s not an accident that there’s a Rifftrax version of this.

Anyway, the movie opens with super upbeat and heroic music and then cuts to a shot of a woman hypnotizing a snake by humming. This is our heroine (and the term, unfortunately, needs to be gendered), Carrie who hosts a show about weird science. It may be the most WTF opening sequences I’ve ever seen since it goes from this tense stare down with a snake to a chipper, “we’ll see you next time” style closing sequence.

From there, Carrie learns that her crew is going to be delayed for her next shoot, an interview with Dr. Hartman who’s doing interesting sciencings. She goes on ahead to do a preliminary interview, but there’s an earthquake along the way that causes her to have a minor fender-bender with Dan, Richard Hatch. Dan’s car ends up stuck on the side of a mountain and his bokken (wooden practice sword) broken. Seeing as he’s our hero, he takes the whole thing as a man.

Sorry, I meant he takes it like a whiny pissbaby screeching at her about his broken stick. She’s so awful, such a bad driver, women like her, amiright? I mean, who can’t control their car in an earthquake? Richard Hatch couldn’t, but, *mumblemumble* bitches, amiright? When can I open for Daniel Tosh?

He bullies away her offers of help, which he needs, and money to cover the damages, which he needs, so she leaves to get on with her life like an adult. She gets to the scientist’s house where the doctor isn’t played by Clint Howard but should be. He shows her his experiment, a device that opens windows into other dimensions. While he’s demonstrating it, there’s an aftershock and he stumbles through the hole.

Meanwhile, Manbaby can’t get his car to move so he stamps up the hill to the doctor’s house, doesn’t get an answer when he rings the bell, breaks in, and gets hit on the head by Carrie because he’s an intruder breaking into a house! Sorry, I meant because, pfft, women, amiright?

She explains what happened to the doctor, Manbaby makes fun of her, sarcastically repeats the machine’s start-up sequence, and also falls through. Then Carrie follows him because she’s scared, or worried about him, or also falls. I forget because just the work of making them all fall into the hole was so contrived.

Relatively quickly into the movie, we’re in the titular Lost Universe. Carrie’s alone, saves a giant from quicksand, and he proceeds to follow her from a distance, periodically saving her from the curious threats of this world. Manbaby also shows up and starts just unrelentingly insulting her. Seriously, he just negs her the entire time. Of course, 27 minutes into the movie, they screw. This is shortly after she’s arrived in the world. Basically they’ve been on a long walk together so that’s time enough.

From there, she’s kidnapped by the evil warlord Kleel who’s played by John Saxon. Oddly enough, the film doesn’t list him as a star, just as a cameo, but he’s in a lot of the picture and is the central villain. Also, he’s hands-down the best part of the movie. He gets that it’s stupid and just hams it up throughout.

So, it turns out Kleel’s using modern technology developed for him by the doctor to keep his people in check. The rest of the movie is Carrie being abused/seduced by Kleel and Manbaby wandering across the world gathering a party to rescue her.

There’s a lot of goofy fun to be had here: the sound design is just off the wall including people making jaguar growls being thrown over a cliff to a videogame WOMP WOMP sound effect, there’s a character referred to as the “Green Man” who’s at best blue or grey, and, of course, Manbaby is just the worst sort of 80’s machismo dickishness that you love to laugh at.

That last element, though, is also what makes the movie a bit of a slog. This feels like what MRA’s wanted Mad Max: Fury Road to be and that’s what undercuts a lot of the fun. The plot is kind of obvious and there's more than a hint of camp at work here which elevates that very obviousness, but we have to spend so much time with this douchenozzle that it can be a touch wearying.

As I mentioned above, Rifftrax did a pass on this and that may be the way to go. Also, apparently it's public domain. Here's the post on archive.org. I'd add a DVD version, but Mill Creek stamped their logo on my copies, so I can't. This is definitely a pizza-and-beer/mock-with-friends film, but falls a little short of being an enjoyably bad watch if you’re alone.


064. Blood Sabbath (1972)
Director: Brianne Murphy
Writer: William A. Bairn
From: Pure Terror

David, a Vietnam vet, falls in love with the water nymph Yyalah. To be with her, he must become involved in the power struggle between the witch Alotta and the town she and her cult cruelly rule over.

Folks, I'm going to be straight with you. I've watched this movie, read its IMDB page, even read a blog post about it on WFMU, and I still don't know what the hell I just watched.

David is a drifter, just walking through the woods, when he gets buzzed by a vanload of hippies who initially seem to be offering him a ride, and then just flash him their tits and drive off. Later, after he's camped out for the night, the same band of hippies, now all naked, find him in the woods and start to chase him. It feels like it might be echoing Orpheus' death at the hands of the Bacchanal as the three naked women chase him until he slips and hits his head on a rock . . .

I'm kidding. It's just an excuse for titties.

Fearing he's dead, they leave him to be found and saved by the water nymph Yyalah. He wants to stay with her, but she tells him to come back tomorrow. He wanders until he finds the home of the hermit Lonzo who lets him stay, but tells him not to pursue Yyalah as water nymphs are fickle. Or something. I missed it because Lonzo asks David, “Where do you come from?”

“I came from Vietnam.”

Oooh! Brace yourselves, folks, we've got an important film here with a message!

Later, while looking for Yyalah, David, in voice-over, wonders, “She said 'tomorrow.' That was yesterday. Or was it? Vietnam. Was that yesterday too?” which leads to a flashback to Vietnam where it's revealed that David killed some kids.

Is it my birthday? Did you guys get me self-important bullshit? You shouldn't have. Really. You shouldn't.

So David finds Yyalah again who was avoiding him because she's an immortal and he's not. For them to be together, he has to get rid of his soul.

Meanwhile, Alotta [insert puns at your leisure], Queen of the witches, meets with Lonzo to convince him to turn David over to her. Normally, Lonzo brings a child from the nearby village to Alotta as an annual sacrifice in exchange for the village's prosperity. This year, she wants David instead. Lonzo refuses, but David finds out about Lonzo's job, condemns him, then learns that Alotta can take away his soul. So David cuts a deal with Alotta to be the sacrifice, she accepts on the condition that if Yyalah leaves him, he has to return and serve her. They have the ceremony, which is just basically a giant orgy, and David runs off to be with Yyalah.

Then Alotta starts playing everyone off each other. There's a priest in town that's been moving against her, so Alotta has David murder him. Lonzo tries to kill Yyalah because he thinks she's going to doom David, but David shows up and kills him instead. Yyalah leaves anyway because she's convinced she's a threat to David, which puts him in Alotta's service. When he returns, though, he kills Alotta instead.

Real blood-thirsty hero we got here.

As she's dying, she curses David to be killed by his “own people.” We flashback, again, to Vietnam, where it turns out David's in a friendly-fire situation, then back to the field where David is walking only to have the van of hippies from the beginning show up and run him down. He's knocked into the river from the beginning where Yyalah appears, wakes him up, and they embrace as the film ends.

What sort of Z-grade, Inception-style bullshit is this? Did David die in Vietnam during friendly fire and the whole movie is him traversing purgatory to eventually land in paradise? Is it all a dream from when he hit his head at the beginning of the movie? Is the movie pro-hippie or anti-hippie? The hippies that frame the piece are pretty monstrous, but isn't David on some sort of free love trip himself? Does Alotta even have magical powers or is she just tricking the townspeople into giving her new members for her lesbian sex cult each year?

Obviously a total recommend. Not really, but the movie is hilariously bad. The acting is at “I hate sand” levels of inept, the story makes no sense, and it's just relentlessly silly. Definitely fun if you have a group of friends and a few drinks. Outside of that, it's interesting for starring Philo From UHF as David and Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS as Alotta. A light Googling will find you a copy if you don't want to rent it from Amazon.

049. Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe and 050. R.O.T.O.R.

Jump to R.O.T.O.R. (1987)

049. Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe (1990)
Director: Damian Lee
Writer: Damian Lee
From: Sci-Fi Invasion
Watch: Rifftrax

Abraxas, a Finder, an intergalactic policeman, must follow his former partner, Secundus, to Earth and capture him before Secundus can find the Comator, a 5-year-old boy who unknowingly carries the “anti-life equation.”

I am giggling just trying to write the capsule summary of this movie. Jesse Ventura is Abraxas, Sven-Ole Thorsen is Secundus, and the movie is unrelentingly stupid.

Of course I love it with a passion that burns like the hearts of a thousand suns!

The movie starts with Jesse “the Body” Ventura explaining, in voice-over, what a Finder is while strapped to a table getting electric shocks. His body is undergoing special treatment to keep him as a superhuman space cop. During the voice-over, he reveals that he's just over 10,000 years old.

We then cut to a dark room that's actually one of the police stations where the two guys on duty basically repeat what Ventura just told us. Turns out, Secundus, Ventura's former partner, has turned bad and is trying to create the Comator, the being that will carry the anti-life equation and give Secundus the power to destroy this and several other universes.

Exposition done, we now cut to Earth where Secundus and Ventura are having a laser battle. Secundus briefly eludes Ventura, finds a woman, and puts his glowing hand on her stomach thereby impregnating her with the Comator. Ventura captures Secundus, sends him back to base, and then refuses the order to kill the woman before the Comator is born—which happens within the next five minutes.

Yup. Space rape to fully-formed child in five minutes.

Ventura leaves and we now see the drama of the mother, Sonia. She initially considers throwing the baby off a bridge, but doesn't. Instead, she returns home where her parents are incredulous of her story, but somehow not curious how Sonia hasn't been pregnant the previous nine months. When she won't say who the father is, they kick her out. Five years later, she's a single mom raising Tommy, who is mute and getting picked on bullies. The principal, played by Jim Belushi, suggests that Tommy stop being weird. She suggests he do his job and tell the bullies to stop picking on him. Around this time, Secundus escapes space jail and Ventura follows him back to Earth to find and save Tommy.

The movie never stops having “What?” moments. It's an obvious Terminator rip-off, tries for comedy that never lands, and is just constantly weird. One of my favorite moments is when Ventura, having found Sonia and Tommy, is staying in their house. Tommy walks into Ventura's room where Ventura is sitting up, shirtless, in bed. He says, “Do you want to sit up here with me? I'll tell you a story. It's about two men who were partners.” I initially saw this with my friends and we were just dying. The movie is constantly like that—unintentionally laugh-out-loud funny from start to finish.

I actually grabbed the Rifftrax version of this because I had already seen it and I'd listened to the amazing We Hate Movies episode of it many times. The riff is okay, certainly fun, but the movie itself is so goofy and weird that it's difficult to be funnier than the film itself. It's a good riff, but, my God, it's a funny movie. Obviously, I highly, highly recommend this. Be sure to follow it with We Hate Movies' breakdown.


050. R.O.T.O.R. (1987)
Director: Cullen Blaine
Writer: Budd Lewis from a story by Cullen Blaine
From: Sci-Fi Invasion
Watch: Rifftrax

R.O.T.O.R. is a project to create a robotic cop that can't be stopped by criminals. However, an accident causes the prototype to activate 25 years early and go on a killing spree. The only hope is that its creator can figure out a way to disable the robot before it's too late.

Another “we're totally not a Terminator/Robocop rip-off. What? No. How could you even think such a thing?” Possibly even weirder and sillier than Abraxas. I also pulled the Rifftrax version of this because I was familiar with it due to the Best of the Worst episode that featured it, had watched it with friends, and wanted to do a Rifftrax double-feature here.

It's actually difficult to talk about the movie without just repeating Best of the Worst because their response to it is so good.

“One of the most fascinating bad movies I've ever seen.”-Jay Bauman
“Establishing shot: the movie!”-Rich Evans

This is a presentation of such stunning incompetence that it's almost a work of genius. But it's not. Not by any standard or stretch of the imagination.

So, R.O.T.O.R., which stands for “Robotic Officer Tactical Operation Research” (which doesn't make sense and is stupid), is a project dedicated to building a robotic police officer for our world's inevitable descent into a dystopian hellscape where the only way we can protect against crime is to unrelentingly stalk and murder each and every law-breaker, no matter how small and petty the offense and y'all are cool with this plot cause you've never read Judge Dread, right? Right. The hellscape will be here within four years.

Not “four years from now,” as in 2020, but “four years” from the time the movie is set, which seems to be its production year of 1987. Best of the Worst notes that the project is supposed to launch in 25 years, so that's when the movie posits humanity will be beyond hope, but it's actually more pessimistic than that. Four years—before the end of the first Bush administration!

Anyway, the head scientist on the project is Coldyron (pronounced Cold-Iron, so mark “stupid names” on your Bad Movie Bingo Card) who gets pressured by some government representative to accelerate the program. He refuses and quits. The next most-senior scientist, with the help of his sarcastic robot assistant (mark “inexplicable tech” and “failed comedy” on your card), start a diagnostic on R.O.T.O.R. Meanwhile, in R.O.T.O.R.'s room, a low-level tech is “flirting” with his co-worker (mark “sexual harassment”) while making weirdly racist comments about himself (mark “racism”). He sets his headphones on some contacts and, when picking them up, accidentally completes a circuit waking R.O.T.O.R. up (mark “convenient accident”). R.O.T.O.R. leaves on his own motorcycle (why is there a motorcycle for a project that won't launch for 25 years?) to do his job protecting citizens. This is more than half-an-hour into a ninety-minute movie (mark “failed pacing”).

Cut to a car with couple having an argument about whether to go to IHOP or get married. Now, you may think this is not grounds for an argument as the two choices are not mutually exclusive and, indeed, do not operate on the same timeline. “Should we make long-term, life-altering plans that require a lot of logistic consideration, or have a gnosh?” In fact, isn't that a discussion you don't want to have on an empty stomach? Really, they should be arguing about where they're going to eat to discuss whether they should get married or not, not arguing about whether to get married or to go eat. I know I'm giving a lot of space over to this question, but it's really important. I'd say it's even fundamental to the film. It must be since we spend an eternity in this goddamn car with these pricks whining at each other! I honestly wondered if somehow a reel from another film hadn't accidentally been swapped in and nobody noticed because no one else had watched the film.

R.O.T.O.R. shows up, shoots the guy in the head for speeding, the woman lays on the car horn, which is apparently R.O.T.O.R.'s weakness, (but don't count on them to take advantage of that. Mark “pointless weakness”), and then speeds off with R.O.T.O.R. in pursuit. Dr. Officer Stupidname eventually finds out, and does what he can to save this woman. Sorry, wait, I have that wrong. He does nothing to save her and tells her to be bait. In the meantime, he takes a nice trip to the airport to pick up a colleague and fill them in on what's going on.

The movie is gloriously incompetent. Literally nothing is done right down to the copyright card that comes up at the end of the credits. The MPAA gives filmmakers a template to put in their movies with the copyright information. Just add the year, your production company, and the number on file with the MPAA and you'll be fine.

This is the card R.O.T.O.R. has. Yup, that's right, completely blank. They added the template but never bothered to fill it in. I don't know if that means it's even legally copyrighted or not.

R.O.T.O.R. is delightfully awful. There's a dropped sideplot with a love interest, Dr. Stupidname looks like he's doing a Grumpy Cat impression the entire movie, and the colleague he calls for help has an odd white stripe in her hair that leads to Best of the Worst referring to her as “Skunk Lady.” It is such a trainwreck and I was absolutely agog watching it. I was on the cusp of sputtering, “How is this a movie” the entire time. So much fun, but not to be watched alone.