081. Slipstream and 082. I Eat Your Skin

Jump to I Eat Your Skin (1971)

081. Slipstream (1989)
Director: Steven Lisberger
Writer: Tony Kayden
From: Sci-Fi Invasion

In a post-apocalyptic world dominated by a globe-spanning wind known as “the slipstream,” Matt Owens steals the fugitive Byron from lawman Tasker to claim the bounty for himself. Now it’s a race to get downstream before Tasker catches up to them or any of the myriad threats they encounter seal their fate.

Byron is on the run from lawman Tasker (Mark Hamill) and his partner Belitski. Just as Byron is about to ride the titular slipstream—the super-wind that dominates the planet after worldwide ecological catastrophe—the pair capture him. However, they lose him at a little dive bar once huckster Matt Owens (Bill Paxton) learns there’s a bounty out on Byron and kidnaps him. As they’re escaping, Tasker shoots Owens with a poisoned dart that includes a tracking device. Now the movie is off and running with a very straightforward chase narrative.

Only it’s not. There’s never any sense of a clock in this film or any tension arising from how close Tasker and Belitski may be to Byron and Owens. Instead, the movie plays out almost as a picaresque of this only-just post-apocalyptic world. Characters talk about what they were doing before the “Convergence” that caused all the destruction, but the spaces seem generations away from anything we’d call familiar or modern day. I mean, Owens makes a pitstop at his home where all the people he knows are sitting in a hot tub together, fully clothed. Meanwhile, Tasker and Belitski are talking about quitting the law game and opening up a mink farm. Throughout the movie, Owens talks about opening a hot-air balloon company. I never imagined an apocalypse that left people considering small-business loans.

So they move on. Byron and Owens land in a village populated by wind cultists and then travel to a hidden city where the rich try to live in a manner they remember. Tasker periodically catches up with them, is thwarted, and finally gets killed by Byron after having killed a woman Byron had fallen in love with.

Oh, and Byron’s an android. That comes out about halfway through and it plays out in a very Commander Data-ish sort of way. And that’s really it. The movie doesn’t have a driving plot or much incident at all, it’s mostly a half-hearted tour through this science-fantasy landscape that can never quite make up its mind as to what it’s supposed to be.

This film is an odd duck that should be much better than it is. It has an amazing cast including Mark Hamill, Bill Paxton, and Bob Peck, along with cameos from Robbie Coltrane, F. Murray Abraham, and Ben Kingsley. The director did Tron and the producer did Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. There’s no lack of talent or skill here, but every part of the movie doesn’t work, but only just. The line deliveries—especially by Belitski—are just a little off, the metaphors are just a touch too heavy-handed, and the sense of place never quite congeals. The movie’s slow and boring, which you can get away with if you’re presenting something fantastical, but the images and ideas here are so pedestrian.

That said, this is highly-riffable. It’s a bit excruciating to watch alone, but has so many poor line deliveries and odd choices that you can rip it up one side and down the other. This feels like something Mystery Science Theater 3000 should have done. I see mentions online of it being public domain, including on the film’s Wikipedia page (which is worth a read just for the sad story of how this tanked Gary Kurtz’s career), but that seems unlikely. It’s more likely an orphaned work, which is slightly different. Either way, it’s not too hard to find and can be a lot of fun with the right friends.


082. I Eat Your Skin aka Zombie aka Zombie Bloodbath (1971)
Director: Del Tenney
Writer: Del Tenney
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: Elvira, Shocker Internet Drive-In, archive.org

Tom Harris travels to Voodoo Island to research an upcoming book. While there, he finds sacrificial rites, zombies stalking the island, and a mad scientist's plot to conquer the world.

The movie opens with a voodoo ceremony that, frankly, sets the wrong tone. It's boring, annoying, and potentially racist, which are certainly things that can be said of the film, but it lacks the breezy, almost flip tone of the rest of the movie.

We cut from the over-long opening to the pool at a swanky resort. Author Tom Harris is telling a story to a group of enraptured women when his agent shows up telling him to leave. The agent has found out about a mysterious place called “Voodoo Island” that should be a great setting for Tom's next book. When one of the womens' husbands tries to chase Tom down, Tom decides it is time to leave.

Tom, his agent, and his agent's wife fly to the island, arriving just as they run out of gas. Tom goes looking for help and finds a local who is then decapitated by a zombie. The overseer of the island's plantation saves Tom and takes him and the rest of his party to the plantation where he works for a doctor who's researching a cure for cancer. The doctor's daughter Jeannie is also on the island and Tom immediately begins courting her.

Things escalate: zombies keep appearing, there are rumors of an upcoming sacrifice that will involve Jeannie, and things keep interfering with Tom's attempts to leave the island. Ultimately, it's revealed that the doctor has developed not a cure for cancer, but the zombie formula and the overseer has been using local Voodoo traditions to seize control and create an indestructible zombie army. The doctor kills the overseer before he can sacrifice Jeannie, the doctor gets stabbed, and Tom, Jennie, the agent, and his wife manage to escape the island just before it blows up.

There is the trope that Mystery Science Theater 3000 pilloried constantly of the doughy white guy who really doesn't do anything. Tom doesn't so much investigate things as stumble upon information. The movie avoids the worst parts of that trope, though, by having Tom constantly trying to get off the island. He's not interested in the mystery, he's not trying to figure out the source of the zombies, he's trying to GTFO at the first sign of trouble and take his friends with him.

Plus the film has a flippant tone. The agent and his wife are always joke-bickering with each other that feels like a nod to screwball comedies and they spend most of the movie just getting drunk together. In fact, the ethic of the movie could be described as trying to get back poolside before the martinis arrive. I dug that tone.

Yes, there are slow parts, and, yes, there are goofy effects: the zombie make-up looks like dried oatmeal and, despite the title, no skin gets eaten. You do see a zombie walk into a moving propeller while carrying a box of explosives, so I appreciated that. Overall, I enjoyed the movie. There is an episode of Elvira's Movie Macabre that features it and, since it's in the public domain, there are several copies on archive.org (that link goes to the MPEG version). It's also featured as part of the Shocker Internet Drive-In double-feature. Any is a good way to see the movie for yourself, and I recommend it. It's light, breezy, short, easily-riffable but fun enough on its own.

079. End of the World and 080. Doomsday Machine

Jump to Doomsday Machine (1972)

079. End of the World (1977)
Director: John Hayes
Writer: Frank Ray Perilli
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org

A NASA scientist decodes messages from space that predict natural disasters. As he investigates a companion broadcast coming from Earth, he begins uncovering a plot for world destruction.

This movie opens with Christopher Lee going into a local diner to call the police, but as he approaches the phone, it explodes as does some of the equipment in the kitchen, which kills the diner’s owner. Lee returns to his convent only to be greeted at the door by his doppelgänger and then vanish from the film for the next hour.

Instead of screen legend Christopher Lee, we’re left with Andrew, a NASA scientist who’s brilliant, just brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that he’s getting a special award and a banquet in his honor for sciencing. Why, Andrew’s just the best at sciencing! And speaking! We know this because we’re told he’s getting an award for his sciencing and then everyone complements him on his speaking. We don’t ever see either, but these characters seem trustworthy. I’m comfortable just being told what the characters are about instead of seeing it for myself.

Andrew is involved in two projects at NASA. One is his actual job to research or purify or study some kind of gem and it only comes up once so that we’ll remember it for the end of the movie. The other is a lead he’s following on his own of strange signals coming from space, some being repeated back from a terrestrial source. Just before the banquet, he successfully decodes one of the signals as “Large Earth Disruption.” That evening, there’s a massive earthquake. Or volcanic eruption. I forget and don’t have it listed in my notes, but that’s okay because Andrew’s not particularly curious about it either or about why space signals would be broadcast in English.

Anyway, Andrew and his wife Sylvia are sent on a speaking tour because he’s so good at science and convincing people about the importance of science that NASA wants him to talk to college students to convince them to study space science and not ecology, which is what all the hip kids were doing. We don’t see any of these speeches or the crowds won over by his eloquence, but we’re told they exist.

Between speaking engagements, Andrew checks his space answering machine and figures out the signals are coming from a convent not to far from him. He and his wife investigate and are kidnapped by the aliens who have taken the form of the priest and nuns. Christopher Lee reappears and his human version dies. Andrew and Sylvia try to escape, but Lee makes things explode around them. He sends Andrew back to NASA to get the gem Andrew was working on at the beginning so the aliens can power their transporter and leave the Earth. Oh, and spoiler alert, they were there to destroy the planet the whole time, they just wanted to leave before everything went splodey.

As Andrew and Sylvia watch stock footage of natural disasters, they decide it’s better to risk life on an alien planet than die on Earth and walk through the transporter. After they leave, the movie lives up to its title and the Earth blows up. THE END.

A comment on archive.org claims Lee was tricked into being in this movie, and that’s plausible. There’s just not much movie here. Most of it is Andrew and Sylvia going from poorly-lit location to poorly-lit location and not doing much. There is some camp pleasure to be had. This is a Charles Band production so the explosions are pretty good, and gratuitous, and just plain silly, and the aliens’ excuse for destroying the Earth is pretty similar to the ones offered in the Starman movies--specifically that the Earth is going to be a vector for disease throughout the universe so it has to be destroyed.

Yeah, neckbeards got Cheeto dust on Voyager so the universe got together to blow us up before we could gunk up their stuff.

There’s not a whole lot to the movie and the best parts are the ones with Christopher Lee in them. The picture is public domain, but, unfortunately, Mill Creek wiped their dick all over my copy with their logo. There is a copy on archive.org, though, so it can be seen for free. The movie’s good enough to fill some time and be a new addition to the standard horror host rotation, but isn’t quite bad enough to be fun or good enough to excite.


080. Doomsday Machine (1972)
Directors: Harry Hope, Lee Sholem, and Herbert J. Leder
Writer: Stuart J. Byrne
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org

A two-year manned mission to Venus has three members of its crew swapped out for women after spies discover the Chinese have developed a doomsday machine. Now the crew faces the possibility that their mission is not one of exploration but of survival of the species.

The movie opens with a spy breaking into a Chinese weapons factory by literally throwing a cat over the wall. That really establishes the tone of the film and it never manages to come back. The spy takes pictures of the titular doomsday machine--a bomb that will start a nuclear chain reaction and destroy the planet--and reveals to US authorities that it’ll be detonated in just over two days.

Meanwhile, the ASTRA mission to Venus (where it rains sulphuric acid) has it’s departure time moved up by an hour and three of its crew are replaced by women, much to the consternation of the rest of the crew. On the plus side, one of them notes, there’ll be someone to wash his socks.

On the ship, the crew start pairing off almost immediately, with Captain Kurt (not Kirk), becoming overtly aggressive with Kate. Choice lines: As he forces himself upon her, he notes they’ll be “cozy together for a nice long time. So why don’t you relax and enjoy it?” After she responds, he says, “Do I need to use force?”

Delightful.

Anyway, Earth blows up, they realize their situation, Kurt and Katie start going space crazy, and then the ship’s doctor says unless four of the seven crew members blast themselves out of the airlock, they won’t make it to Venus without becoming sterile. Kurt throws a fit, tries to rape Katie, but ends up blowing both him and her out the airlock (in a hilariously bad wire ballet sequence).

The ship continues toward Venus, but as it’s entering orbit, the final booster gets stuck. Danny, the “comic” member of the crew, and Georgianna, the Russian representative, work the booster loose, but end up stranded in space. However, they spot a derelict Russian craft from an earlier mission and climb into that. As they’re following the ASTRA to the surface, the ASTRA vanishes and the collected minds of the Venusians tell them not to try to land on their planet or they’ll likewise be destroyed. After seeing what the Earthenoids did to their own planet, the Venusians won’t let them on Venus (shades of End of the World). Danny and Georgianna are instead sent off beyond the edge of the universe for some kind of adventure something stuff who knows it just says “THE END.”

What to say? I’d seen this before in the Elvira episode, although I’d forgotten that even Elvira makes some racist jokes. The episode’s from 1983, but that’s more explanation than excuse. It’s not like she’s going beyond the bounds that the movie itself establishes. At one point, Danny refers to the Chinese as “chopstick jockeys.”

This is a movie largely without incident. The men are kept in the dark about why the women have been added to their crew, but we, as viewers, already know about the titular threat. That doesn’t stop the men from immediately flirting with the women. In fact, most of the movie is the couples pairing off and pretending there’s chemistry.

Literally halfway through, the Earth explodes in an avalanche of stock footage, and then it’s back to flirting mixed with some weeping and catatonic stares. Then someone has to do the airlock walk, Venus says “Get off my lawn,” and the movie ends. Interesting point about the end: they ran out of money. The final sequence in the Russian shuttle features different actors in different costumes and it draaaaaaaaaaags. It’s very literally tacked on which just adds to the cheapness of the film. Another sign of that: the ASTRA is several different ships throughout the movie because they never built their own model, the producers just used footage of spaceships from other movies. They’re not even spaceships that look like each other.

This flick is real stupid, but passably watchable. It has nice colors, which seems like damning with faint praise, but it was shot in the late 60’s/early 70’s so there’s some camp pleasure in the ridiculous color schemes that appear on the walls. Also, all the chairs on the spaceship are La-Z-Boys and there’s a cameo appearance by the famous Casey Kasem. The movie is public domain, but, as with the movie above, Mill Creek had to write their name all across it. There is, though, a copy on archive.org as well as an episode of Cinematic Titanic. The movie’s retrograde politics plus general silliness make it highly riffable, but I’m not sure it’d be fun with a group of friends. It’s probably best to stick to the Elvira or Cinematic Titanic versions.

077. Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe and 078. Almost Hollywood

Jump to Almost Hollywood (1994)

077. Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940)
Directors: Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor
Writers: George H. Plympton, Basil Dickey, and Barry Shipman based on the Alex Raymond comic strip
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: serial on archive.org (ep1)

A compilation of the serial by the same name featuring Flash facing off against the evil Emperor Ming who is attacking the Earth with his evil “death dust.”

Like many of these movies cut together from serials, this one is full of incident, but moves slowly. Imagine whittling an entire season of a TV show into 90 minutes and you have a pretty good sense of what this feels like. On top of that, this is the 2nd or 3rd one of these so there's no character development or explanation of the setting at all. Since I don't know the Flash Gordon story, I was really confused. Apparently there are multiple planets or Ming is the evil ruler of one country on another planet?

The inciting incident is a disease called “the Purple Death” is striking Earth and it's caused by Ming. So Flash faces off with Ming's forces several times, ends up in, and then escaping, Ming's fortress, and eventually saves the day. I'd say more, but every mini-arc within the movie is a variation of that.

This might be more compelling if watched as the actual serials. Each of those is 15-30 minutes long, so there's probably more going on. Also, it's interesting if you think of it as a structure for a D&D game—you have a constantly escalating series of encounters with the big bad that ends in a crescendo of action. Pretty fun as a game. Not so great as a movie.

I don't think this is actually PD. It's a moot point since my copy has the Mill Creek bug on it, but this is a Universal serial, and I think the studios were pretty careful with not letting their products fall into the public domain. That said, the entire serial is available on archive.org starting here, so you might be able to see a more entertaining version than I did.


078. Almost Hollywood (1994)
Director: Michael Weaver
Writer: Michael Weaver
From: Cult Cinema

A producer at Straight-to-Video productions starts finding his comfortable world under attack as his financers want to up the production value and people who have been crossing him start ending up dead.

Two years after The Player skewered Hollywood pomposity and self-importance, we get Almost Hollywood, a movie that strives to do the same for the world of low-budget filmmaking. If only it were that smart.

We open with a man tied to a bed, a woman in lingerie, and a bad synth score. This may well be a Skinimax production, especially since she’s topless before 2:10. She approaches the bed, pulls out an ice pick, and the guy gives the best line read of the movie. “No. Not you. You’re the one who killed my brother and his boyfriend.” Read it in the flattest, most affectless voice you can and you’ll be close to how gloriously bad the delivery is.

Then someone yells, “Cut,” and it’s revealed that this is all a movie-within-a-movie and we’re on the set of Straight To Video productions, a company that releases low-budget softcore films that it’s head producer insists on calling “erotic thrillers.” The director is a guy in brownface doing a really bad Indian stereotype, which is also his character. I mean, his character is literally a guy from Cleveland who is doing brownface and a bad Indian stereotype so he can get ahead in Hollywood.

And there we have the central problem of the film. Is that clever, or crap? It’s not pulled off at all, I’m not trying to imply that it is, but is the gag there because this isn’t too far from the reality of the straight-to-video scene, or is it just supposed to be its own joke? It’s the question you can ask about every part of this movie.

So the producer steps in, he’s a scumbag cheating on his wife with the lead actress who he’s just stringing along, and no one likes him. The financers want to class up their productions so they’ve signed a multi-picture deal with a former Playboy Playmate to star in films written and directed by her idiot boyfriend. Around the same time, the lead actress, angry at being screwed out of yet another role, tells the producer’s wife about the affair. He’s kicked out of the house, moves back with his mother, and the actress is murdered on set.

This, by the way, is forty minutes into the movie. The producer is the obvious suspect, but there’s no evidence linking him to the crime, so things continue. The Playmate takes over the role in the mid-production film, her boyfriend takes over directing, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing so everything’s going over-schedule and over-budget. Now the financers are breathing down the producer’s neck to sort things out. Then the idiot boyfriend gets murdered.

Again, the producer is the suspect, but the show must go on so his assistant, who’s been gunning for a directing job throughout the movie, takes over the role of director. Because the producer has become a lightning-rod for controversy, the financers fire him and replace him with his assistant. Then the assistant reveals to the producer that, big surprise, he’s the real killer, and has framed the producer. At the last moment, a cop barges in and shoots the producer whose last words are, “I like my movies.”

We close with an extended epilogue on set of everything going great for the killer, then a credit sequence of the killer and the Playmate in a hot tub together. That credit sequence, though, is another meta gag, repeating the trope of it being a movie-within-a-movie.

This is an “edgy” satire without the comic timing or bite of satire, which is a real shame. The Player in the softcore industry would actually make an interesting film. American Movie demonstrates just how weird independent production can get and I’m sure the straight-to-video realm has its own particular quirks. This doesn’t explore that, though. There’s ultimately no wit to it nor any understanding of what makes these low-budget pieces unique. It’s just a bunch of unlikeable people being dicks, and somehow that’s supposed to be enough. That it fails to suffice probably isn’t surprising. Too dull and uninspired to recommend, even as a bad movie. I do recommend, though, the user review on the film’s IMDB page from Wizard-8 who has a glorious hate-on for this film. Having watched it, I will say he is too kind.

075. African Safari and 076. Going Steady

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073. The Firing Line and 074. The Mistress of Atlantis

Jump to The Mistress of Atlantis (1932)

073. The Firing Line (1988)
Director: Jun Gallardo
Writers: Jun Gallardo and Sonny Sanders
From: Cult Cinema and Drive-In

A mercenary helps take out the leader of a rebel insurgency, but when he finds he's been betrayed by his superiors, he joins the rebels forces.

This one's delicious and I either don't know how to describe it or I don't want to describe it. Just go find it. I mean, my first note about this film is, “'Starring Shannon Tweed.' So it's that kind of movie,” and when I say “that kind of movie,” I'm thinking in terms of The Flophouse Podcast where they discuss films requiring a sex tarp, which is incorrect. The Firing Line is, instead, this kind of movie.

That's right. More than starring Shannon Tweed, this stars Reb Brown as Mark Hardin, one of the names I'm sure the Mystery Science Theater 3000 writers rejected as too stupid for their list.

So we open on two military groups, both wearing vaguely gray uniforms, shooting at each other. I don't know which side is which, but I do know there are several sequences where a member of gray team 1 shots a member of gray team 2 only to be shot himself, and then his shooter shot, and then that shooter shot, and this pattern continuing like a series of human dominoes set off by bullets. This happens several times throughout the movie and it never stops being funny.

We finally come to the end of the battle where the rebel leader and a female subordinate are captured. Our hero, Mark Hardin, tells the leader how much he respects his ideals, but they're on opposite sides this time. After Mark Hardin leaves, the leader is killed and the subordinate is raped and killed.

So, sidenote, it's that movie too. To their credit, the rape happens off-screen and is done by the villains so it's more of a definitional moment—they're these kinds of monsters—rather than an entertainment/voyeurism one. It also leads to a nice payoff toward the end of the film where her sister, now the leader of the resistance, finds the rapist and shoots him in the dick.

Oh God, you guys, I love this movie!

Mark Hardin returns to his hotel where he meets Shannon Tweed in the bar, flirts with her, and then leaves to talk to his superior where he learns about the rebel leader getting killed. As a mercenary/American soldier (I'm not making a political statement, it's actually not clear which he is), I don't know why this would bother him, but he freaks out, attacks his superior, the liaison to the non-specific Latin American country they're working in, and is captured and tortured.

It's essential he be oiled before questioning

Torture involves him being asked questioned by a German and an Australian for some unknown reason and he has phone cords running to his nipples so he can call his pecs. Of course, he escapes, the baddies try to grab Tweed because she was seen with him, he brings her along in his escape, and they go join the rebels.

There isn't much plot from this point on. Tweed and Mark Hardin are both listed as enemies of the state so can't cross the border until the rebels win or without their help or something. There's a vague villain who refers to Mark Hardin as, “Christlike. A peasant Messiah,” as Mark Hardin is murdering people left and right. And it's all just silly.

I mean, after Mark Hardin and Tweed find the rebel camp, the military swoops in and starts massacring everyone, which is fine plot-wise, but there's stirring, triumphant action music playing the whole time. And the whole thing looks like it was shot either in the woods outside town or in the community rec center. Sure, it gets baggy in the middle, the big villain is neither present nor hammy enough, and Mark Hardin's superior looks like a deflated Andy Richter.

Conan, I don't like my hat.

Okay, that last part is kind of fantastic.

One curious element of the film is the politics. This is a late-80's Rambo knock-off and those tend to be relatively conservative, pro-military, and anti-Communist. The US Army and its client states, though, are the villains here working against the Communist rebels. The movie, of course, doesn't actually have or articulate any political views—it's just people taking turns shooting at each other and dying—but it's still a curious element.

Obviously, this is a huge recommend. It's dumb b-movie 80's action in all the right ways. Definitely something to share with friends.


074. The Mistress of Atlantis aka The Lost Atlantis (1932)
Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Writer: Hermann Oberländer and Ladislaus Vajda, English dialogue by Miles Mander, based on the novel by Pierre Benoît
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org

A member of the French Foreign Legion reminisces about a mission that led him to the lost city of Atlantis and the enrapturing Queen he finds ruling there.

A radio announcer says Atlantis isn't a continent sunken beneath the ocean, but rather a city buried in the midst of the Sahara. Two members of the French Foreign Legion are listening to the broadcast and one of them says that he's not only been there, but he killed his friend Morhange there for the love of the Queen. The rest of the movie is a flashback to the mission Saint-Avit and Morhange were on that landed them in Atlantis.

A movie that lacks much plot but makes up for it by being about tone. It's an adventure piece without the adventure, but, unlike a Monogram Pictures or Sam Newfield production, this isn't dull or poorly done. It's about the desert as a space of obsession and despair, passion and guilt. Saint-Avit meets Antinea, the titular Mistress of Atlantis, and becomes obsessed with her, but she's in love with, or pretending to be in love with, Morhange. Meanwhile, Morhange and Saint-Avit are being denied access to each other, neither sure of the other's fate, and it's helping to drive them mad.

It's difficult to describe this movie because every term I want to use I have to immediately contradict. The movie's dream-like and ardently concrete. There are echoes of German Expressionism among the studio product. It's an early talkie, but already playing with multimedia and nested narratives: the story is started by a radio broadcast that leads to a flashback that includes dream sequences and its own flashback before coming back out into the frame narrative.

This is also a definite recommend, although, obviously, for different reasons than The Firing Line. I'd say this is actually a good movie and worth watching if you like early cinema. The movie is in the public domain, but my copy has a copyright mark for 1999 because someone replaced the opening titles with different titles in a slightly different font.

I'm not making that up. Compare the title card I have on this review to the beginning of the copy on archive.org. That's the extent of the “new material” that they're claiming, but it's enough to prevent me from sharing a copy of this print. That's why I seem so angry when I mention the Mill Creek logo being burned into films—it means that specific copy of a public domain work has been locked out of our culture. Mill Creek didn't do anything to make these movies, isn't doing any special restoration work (like the Criterion Collection does), they've just scrawled “mine” across the movie so they can sue if someone else uses that now-identifiable copy. “Copy,” by the way, is the key word. They've copied it from another public domain source but then took a special effort to make sure no one else could copy it the same way they did. It's petty, it's cheap, and it does a real disservice to our culture.

071. Galaxina and 072. Death Warmed Up

Jump to Death Warmed up (1984)

071. Galaxina (1980)
Director: William Sachs
Writer: William Sachs
From: Cult Cinema; Sci-Fi Invasion

A police ship piloted by the android Galaxina is sent on a mission to recover the “Blue Star,” but the crew will have to face a variety of challenges before they can safely return home.

The movie opens with a nice widescreen shot—rare on these Mill Creek sets—with good color, a crisp print and a card reading “A Marimark Production.”

Noooooooooooo!

Oh no.

So we open with a crawl, like Spaceballs, and get a little background on this sci-fi future that doesn't matter. We're introduced to our heroes—a crew on a police ship that's mostly responsible for handing out interstellar parking tickets. The ship is run by Galaxina, an android modeled after a beautiful woman that can't speak. She also serves the crew dinner while wearing a French Maid outfit. Because this is what passes as clever in a Marimark production.

There's no plot for most of the first half, just weak send-ups of other sci-fi movies. There's an obligatory Alien parody with a chest-burster, a Star Trek parody with a captain's log (read by Captain Butt. Yeah), and just general sci-fi tropes. The sergeant on the ship is in love with Galaxina even though she constantly rebuffs him, hits him, and electrocutes him in response to his advances. Obviously, that just means keep trying.

So the crew is sent on a mission to pick up the “Blue Star,” a gem that will do something important for space travel. Getting it will take 27 years, each way, so the crew spends one last night of freedom at an alien brothel. Galaxina watches the sergeant's cavorting via video, and then the crew comes back and goes into cryosleep. During the 27 year, Galaxina reprograms herself to be able to speak because she's actually in love with the creeper.

They wake up, send Galaxina to the inhospitable planet to get the gem, she meets the villain who ends up taking over the ship. The crew all band together and save the day. The end, kill me.

As with all the Marimark movies I've watched so far, this walks that fine line of, “This could be good if you'd try. Oh, you're not going to try at all.” As I said at the top, this looks like an actual movie. There's a budget, multiple sets, and an intelligence behind putting things together. Plus the captain is played by Avery Schreiber who's good. He should be the lead and given a lot more material to riff on, but instead they focus on the rapey sergeant and his relationship with Galaxina.

To be fair, there is one good gag in the movie. Every time someone says “Blue Star,” an angelic chorus briefly breaks out and everyone looks around to see where the noise came from. As a running gag, it's not great, but there's a moment where someone says “Blue Star” and nothing happens. Everyone waits a second, then the character says it again and the chorus catches up. It legitimately made me laugh.

Overall, this feels like a 1980's sci-fi version of the Scary Movie franchise, but not as funny or carefully crafted. Yeah, exactly. So a big thumbs-down on this. It's interesting as a historical document as it was released shortly before Dorothy Stratten, Galaxina, was murdered by her estranged husband.


072. Death Warmed Up aka Death Warmed Over (1984)
Director: David Blyth
Writers: David Blyth and Michael Heath
From: Cult Cinema; Pure Terror

A group of friends take a trip to a remote island where an evil scientist is doing experiments on people's brains. What one of the friends is keeping secret, though, is that he has a history with the scientist and very personal reasons for going to the island.

Dr. Howell is trying to push his research into the realm of human testing, but his colleague objects, saying the current results aren't conclusive enough. Howell bristles at the response as he's trying, in his words, to “make death obsolete.” That evening, Howell finds his colleague's son, Michael, and injects him with a serum that leads him to kill his parents.

When exactly?

Seven years later, Dr. Howell is doing experiments on an isolated island and Michael has just been released from a psychiatric institution. “Now...” we see Dr. Howell doing brain surgery on a patient who ultimately dies while Michael and his friends are taking a ferry over to the doctor's island. The boat's first mate clearly has issues and is complaining of a headache. The other passengers on the ferry are two goons that work for the doctor, waiting in a bus. Michael and his friends get into an altercation with the goons, but eventually escape.

Michael and his friends explore some WWII tunnels on the island where they discover the body of the first mate who had died while visiting the doctor. The goons show up on motorcycles and chase Michael and his friends through the tunnels. One of the friends gets a serious head injury, but another manages to severely injure one of the goons. The doctor is unsympathetic to the goon's injury so the other one goes into a rage and releases all the patients at the hospital. They go into town looking for Micheal and his friends.

They find the group holed up in a pub trying to find medical help. The goons descend, but are put off by the hospital staff that comes and kidnaps Michael et al. When they get to the hospital, it's overrun, Michael and his friends are immediately fending for themselves, which ultimately leads to Michaels' injured friend dying in an explosion and her boyfriend getting killed by one of the goons. Michael manages to kill Dr. Howell after he explains his plan for world domination which doesn't explain anything, and Michael and his girlfriend leave.

Outside, the island is in chaos as the doctor had been experimenting on everyone. Michael gets out of the car they're in, walks a little bit, and gets electrocuted by a falling power line. His girlfriend runs away in slow motion, weeping and terrified.

An interesting piece of Ozploitation with obvious influences from Mad Max and Bad Taste that don't marry as well as they could. The movie's low-budget, but does a good job working within those constraints as opposed to be stymied by them, and has a good sense of humor about its plethora of gore effects. The Bad Taste influences are clearest there. There's just a fundamental problem of clarity—I was never sure what the doctor's evil plan was or why Michael had gone to that island.

Otherwise the movie's pretty okay. It moves well enough, has silly 80's action tropes, and is the right mix of intentionally and unintentionally funny. I wouldn't say it needs to enter the bad movie canon, but it's pretty good as a hangover film or something to have on in the background with friends.

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.