Maybe a Hyena Ate Your Baby

This is going to be fun.

Quick Plot: While driving home, talking on her phone, and inexplicably having her baby laying on its stomach in the backseat, a woman gets run off the road and eaten by hyena people. As does her already endangered child.

See, a baby being eaten by hyena people is normally sad, but since mom was about one text away from probably getting into a fatal accident anyway, does it make THAT much of a difference?

Moving on, everybody’s favorite beefcake Costas Mandylor enters as the sad husband and father now in mourning. Best way to get over family tragedy? Start hanging out with Meshach Taylor--yes, the sparkle in Mannequin--who is also kind enough to speak directly to the camera to explain what science calls Crypto-Humans.

Aka Hyena People or really, werehyenas.

Pause for one of my favorite lines of all time: “My name is Briggs. But folks around these parts call me Crazy Briggs.”

This naturally means we get to hear Costas Mandylor refer to said character as ‘Crazy’ from that moment on. Not in a ‘you’re crazy!’ kind of way. Rather, “What should we do, Crazy?” or, I imagine, “I’m ordering takeout. Do you want your sesame sauce on the side, Crazy?”

*Pause to acknowledge that Saw VII features a similar conversation with an overeager detective and Jigsaw's ex-wife. Apparently, it's some weird Mandylorian coincidence.*

Flash forward two years, tragically sparing us what could have been a golden training montage for Crazy to train Costas in the art of Hyena People. Sigh. Not every movie can be perfect.

We soon meet two feuding gangs that may possibly have unthawed from 1985 (I swear there’s some lingering DNA from Zombie Nightmare here). They almost fight. A lot. What they have to do with anything isn’t really, well, anything, but I suppose it was necessary to include young people in a film about hyena people? I didn’t read the handbook, so perhaps I’m just qualified to discuss such matters.

Luckily, Costas Mandylor is qualified for everything, including saving a pretty young woman from a hyena attack and quickly charming her with his gigantic Mandylorian lips and catcher’s mitts hands. Yes ladies, if you’ve ever wanted to know how the Mandylor makes love, you get a little warmup peek here and let’s just say, it’s grabby.

While love is slopping itself on a haystack (seriously), the band of Crypto-Hyena-People are ravaging the land, led by Christa Campbell with an easily removable tank top. Anybody who ever had a problem with Hulk’s pants not ripping during his many growth spurts may be pleased that Campbell always carefully removes her clothing before being transformed in a bargain basement CGI monster. Oh, she also tries to speak a few times, during which we as an audience learn that Ms. Campbell has a hostile opossum inside her lungs.

Wow. If I didn’t know anything about the talent behind this film, I would have sworn Hyenas was simply made by a Uwe Boll apprentice or ESL student with a brain injury. It is, without any question, a terrible movie, one nowhere near writer/director Eric Weston’s 1981 video nasty that I enjoyed enough, Evilspeak. Yes, the same demigod that gave Clint Howard his first full-out starring role made these 93 minutes of first-grade CGI projects, hilarious acting further made funnier by occasional dubbing, and storylines that seem put together with all the skill of a lefty wearing a mitten on his right hand and using that to assemble a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle.

It ain’t good.

But it sure is funny.

Loyal readers might know that my love of bad cinema toes a fine line. Anything intentional simply irks, while the earnest elates. Because Hyenas is made by a man who was clearly competent in 1981, a part of me wonders if it’s aware of just how ridiculous it is. Examine this typical piece of dialogue between a hitchhiking Campbell and Orville, a simple-minded trucker:

Orville: What’s your name?

Campbell: Wilda.

Orville: What kind of name is Wilda?

...

Mean something?

(25 seconds of silence)

Campbell: Wow. That’s my car.

Orville proceeds to get out of his truck and walk around a quiet forest, kindly telling the audience that he is confused and thought he may have seen something (just in case we didn’t understand his facial acting, which honestly, I didn’t). 

Or take Mandylor’s first meetup with Crazy Briggs:

Mandylor: What are you doing sneaking around here?

Crazy: I was just waiting for you to be alone

Most men might have a problem with this. Mandylor just kind of continues the conversation. Because damnit, he’s in a movie called Hyenas!

High Points

The fact that the film ends with a tease for a sequel warms my heart like a hyena in a fur coat

Low Points

Well, you know...the movie is actually awful and a low point in itself, but we don’t really need to talk about that, do we?

Lessons Learned

The best way to unite warring youth gangs is to make them band together in an effort to battle Hyena People

Turf is for horses

A redneck pig without balls shouldn’t talk about f*cking when he can’t get it up; wait, can we think about this a little more? 

Your free Spanish lesson: everything’s cool=Esta bien

Fear feels like a gunshot. Hm.

When working with a low budget and young actors who can’t really handle fight choreography, simply cover it up by having said young actors hug as you lay over punching sound effects

Stray Observations

Recent reader will know of my newfound obsession with 2001’s Gangland, a similarly dreadful Costas Mandylor vehicle that defies logic and emerges spectacular. Perhaps one of the (many) reasons I’m so darned amused by Hyenas is the subtle threads it shares with that action thriller, including Mandylor having audio flashbacks to his family being slaughtered and his face getting a close-up cut with CGI flames.

This will only matter to those that actually watch this movie, but how disgusting did that diner pecan/apple sauce pie look? Was the scariest part of this film NOT watching the hero(?) feed it to his reluctant girlfriend?

The Winning Line

“The bathroom is in there. The toothbrush is new. The paste is mint.”

Costas Mandylor, you are smoother than a baby’s skin

Rent/Bury/Buy

More competent than Birdemic but only because the kitchen sink play my cats wrote is too, Hyenas is a hilariously bad film that merits a watch if ‘hilarious bad film’ is music to your ears and strawberry gumdrops to your tongue. Invest no actual capitol into the film, but should the stork drop it on your porch or mugger shove it in your pocket in place of your wallet, please do press play. 

Be Careful What You Shop For...

Everybody is abuzz with the news about Apple’s newest creation, a pretty techno do-wappy that does stuff (I didn’t watch the press conference, but people are really excited so I’m going to assume it’s a flat screen cheese griller). Clearly, the world hasn’t been watching enough horror movies or they’d know the torture and torment that come with every warranty. A few examples with a cost benefit analysis:


Evilspeak

Gadget: Satanic verse translating computer
It’s Babblefish for the Video Nasty generation when Clint Howard’s orphaned military academy cadet discovers a devil worshipping handbook in the oddly located basement computer lab. Before you can say google, the awkward teen--yes, imagine a time when Clint Howard was awkward!--uses his 1981 desktop to translate ancient rituals as written by an evil-eyed Richard Moll. Why bother? Well, how else is a 98 lb. weakling to get vengeance on the Hitler youth bullies who mess with his uniform, unplug his alarm clock, and slaughter his insanely adorable puppy?
Minuses: Impaling priests and sicking man-eating pigs on your classmates has a few sour effects, such as catatonia and a stay in the familiarly named Sunnydale Asylum. Also, your chances of scoring at the next kegger are next to nil now that you’ve killed the entire graduating class.
Worth the Price? There is no more noble cause than avenging one’s puppy. So yes. 


Hardware

Gadget:The disembodied head of M.A.R.K.-13, a cyborg originally designed as a government killing machine.
Leaping in time to land in the depressingly barren future, Richard Stanley’s 1990 sci-fi horror details a finders/keepers society where the unhealthy civilians choose a life of scavenging in a nuclear hued desert or a closed up existence in dimly lit apartment complexes. Technology is moving slowly. Video doorbells are a mainstay and running water remains usefully in abundance, but the life expectancy has seemingly plummeted, a course of actions in any society where people leave their killer robots laying around where any old Dylan McDermott can pick it up. And naturally, give it to his artist girlfriend as a Christmas gift.
Downside Believe it or now, secret government projects abandoned due to their unpredictability are, much like mogwais, not necessarily made for the holidays. Sometimes, they do what homicidal cyborgs do and regenerate with the aide of household appliances. To kill you and any perverted neighbors/good-intentioned boyfriends that might stop by.
Worth the Price? Technically, anything free is an automatic purchase and if one were to pick up M.A.R.K.-13 quickly enough, it could indeed fetch a fair price at the local trading post. And who knows? Maybe the only reason it went Terminator was due to a paint allergy. Perhaps there’s a WALL-E buried somewhere underneath that cold killer exterior. 


Kairo

Gadget: The Internet
If Strangeland and FeardotCom taught us to be careful with the path we take in the virtual world, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 horror demonstrated a far more valuable lesson: the world wide web could actually inspire a good film. It all begins as some college students/penthouse gardeners slowly drift into lonely and isolated states of empty depression only to find that phishing and pop-up ads are the least of the Internet’s evils.
DownsideGhostly apparitions driving you to suicide, and/or your body disappearing into a moldy clump of ash that will never come out of that wallpaper. 
Worth the Price? If you’re reading this column in a pulsified world of interwebbery, there’s a 99% chance that you’re already dead or worse, trapped in some sort of empty limbo due to an unforeseen run on red masking tape. So how’s that working out for you?


Flatliners

Gadget: Defibrillator
Joel Schumacher’s star-studded sci-fi is less about a new product than old technology given a new spin, but it still illustrates a theme shared by many of the films in this list. When several insanely attractive med students (Julia Roberts, Keifer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, pre-pastries William Baldwin and who-invited-that-guy Oliver Platt) decide to toy with the afterlife by stopping their heartbeats then bringing each other back with a few chest pumps, the results are not surprisingly not good. 
Downside: Being taunted by the ghosts of your past and...you know...dying.
Worth the Price?: The final solution turns out to be fairly easy and conveniently karma cleansing, but the whole teasing death thing seems hardly worth the time and stress involved. Why not just go bungee jumping or start a fight club?


The Fly

GadgetHuman teleport
Whether you watched Star Trek or used to beat up its fans with your model Millennium Falcon, it’s a sure bet that you once dreamed of going to the dollar store without climbing into your recalled Toyota. Teleportation is something I wishfully think of just about every day that I find myself scrunched underneath the armpit of a fellow commuter. It’s a pipe dream and perhaps I should be thankful for George Langelaan’s 1957 short story “The Fly.” This Playboy published science fiction yarn follows a brilliant but slightly careless-where-it-counts scientist taking a maiden voyage in his own innovative invention with a fellow pest of a passenger. You’re probably more familiar with the two fine film adaptations that showed, in all its insecticide glory, the true effects of picking up hitchhikers in the new wave of transportation.
Downside: Depends. If you’re spending too much time with David Cronenberg, you might find yourself slowly shedding your skin as your body morphs into gooey, brown, and limb-burning acid shooting tongued superfly with some Electric Boogaloo-esque wall-crawling abilities and the minor problem of leprocy. If you’re living in the ‘50s, you get the honor of simultaneously embodying a high-pitched housefly from the neck down and a seriously uncomfortable insect-headed man harnessing ill-will towards your lovely (if a bit daft) young wife. Both are not fun (and the Kurt Neumann’s original doubles the pain) and offer very little in the way of benefits. Although I still hope someone perfects the teleport by the time I die. Deodorant doesn’t seem to be advancing. 


The Lawnmower Man

Gadget Who doesn’t want to spin on an American Gladiators-meets-Event Horizon style high tech wheelie thing, particularly when the ride ends with bonus points added to your IQ (and, it should be noted, yours is currently hovering near Forrest Gump levels)? 
Downside Being the smartest one in the room can be lonely. So then you invite your girlfriend into your virtual reality existence for some simulated loving and she ends up a total drag. And brain dead. Plus, you get pre-Bond Pierce Bronsnan hunting you down and Stephen King suing your creator to remove his name from the mediocre film you head.
Worth the Price? Totally. Your body may not last, but your cyber energy proceeds to haunt all the telephones of the universe AND star in a straight-to-video sequel now led by Matt “Trashcanman” Frewer. Still not sold? How about using your prowess as the title role to springboard into a guest arc on Lost? Jeff Fahey, you’ve made a fine purchase.


So what kind of wacky adventures will the new iPad bring to a generation hopefully well-versed in these kinds of horrors? Let’s hope for the best and save our library cards. Unless it has computers. Or teleports. Or Clint Howard...

Play Clinty For Me

There are some phrases that just aren’t used enough in this day and age. Buy one get one free. Huzzah. Off with their heads. You can’t fire me, I quit. These are all well and good, but you know what three words I really want to hear more? 

Starring. Clint. Howard.

And so, upon a reader recommendation and Netflix availability, I present to you Evilspeak, a 1980 Video Nasty-listed horror starring some everybody’s favorite Ice Cream Man. 

Quick Plot: Stanley Coopersmith (or Cooperdick, as his not-very-clever schoolmates like to call him) is an orphan and outcast attending a Catholic military academy. Teased by his peers, misunderstood by his teachers, and set up for some type of major injury by his soccer coach, Stanley’s only salvation comes via a sympathetic but ineffective friend and the fun he has designing a virtual catapult on the school’s sole computer.

All those hours typing come in handy when Stanley, sentenced to clean the school’s creepily dank basement, stumbles upon a collection of Satanic skulls, bobbling jarred fetuses, and most excitingly, a leather bound book of evil invocations. Although the hardcover gets swiped by a sadistic and apparently undervalued secretary, Stanley has enough time to type in a few spells and call upon the spirit of Esteban (Nightcourt’s Richard Moll, refreshingly taking on evil following his Mormon hero in Savage Journey). 

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to summon a minion of the devil. You need blood, mandrake, consecrated host, and most inexplicable, unholy water (which I guess is like urine from a sinner?). Stanley has a few failed tries, some of which succeed in temporarily calling upon some kind of force to break a man’s neck and rile up some hogs. In the meantime, he adopts an adorably underweight puppy from the friendly and unsanitarily shirtless mess hall chef and sets the audience up for a major moment of shouting “nooooooooo!” in true Anakin Skywalker fashion.

I won’t spoil the finale, but it is vital to know that the ten minute climax of Evilspeak is pretty well worth the ride. The film is surprisingly well-paced, giving us plenty of time to follow Howard’s Stanley through his tormented days in a place he just doesn’t belong. The final act that causes the bloody ending is horrendous and makes any viewer cheer on Satanically possessed carnivorous hog chewing, while there’s also enough random camp to please a bad movie fan, like having a heavily faked German accented actor teach Latin. On the other hand, there are random plot holes that go unfilled, such as how not a single faculty member questions the disappearance of the caretaker or the inevitably discovered entrails of the devoured secretary. Still, it’s refreshing to see a geek played as an actual outcast (today, I imagine someone like Zack Efron would simply don a pair of glasses and part his hair on a less flattering side) and characters that deserve gutting and being set on fire getting gutted, set on fire, and, for a bonus, eaten alive by pigs from hell.

High Points

The opening prologue set in medieval times is less than impressive, but transition featuring a severed head turning into a soccer ball is pretty genius

A roller rink scene is included, which naturally earns the film about fifty bonus points

The start of the film’s ending involves a rather well done Jesus-on-the-cross statue coming to life and (SPOILER) shooting its nail into the head of a rather daft priest. Awesome? The word doesn’t do the death justice

Low Points

While Stanley’s build up of bullied anger is fairly well done, it would have been a far more interesting finale had we gotten a little more development of the individual tormentors so that each gruesome death had more measurable weight

Although I was fairly let down by the text epilogue, it did put a smile on my face to see a reference to “Sunnydale Asyulum,” whether Joss Whedon took any inspiration from it or not

For the most part, the score of Evilspeak is adequate and at times, haunting in a choral style. There’s one moment during the finale as Bubba (an oddly named character if ever there was one) tries to escape and is followed by an inappropriately sweet violin melody

Lessons Learned

The purpose of sports is to make us all well-rounded

The good lord prefers his young men in uniform

Computers of the 1980s were far more grammatically considerate than today’s Babblefish and freetranslation.com

Placing a satanic handbook nearby a piggy bank will connect evil forces to wild hogs

Catholic military academies have an impressive stash of Wicker Man-esque masks for its student body to play with

For an extra scoop of mashed potatoes, always inform the lunch guy that you’re an orphan

Winning Line

“I have to go...to study hall.”

If you’re trying to get out of an uncomfortable situation, at least use a more pressing engagement like “math class”, “soccer practice”, or “date with satanically enhanced Richard Moll”

Proof of Cred

According to that far too trusted Wikipedia, Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan (and consultant on a little classic called The Devil’s Rain ) considered Evilspeak to be “very Satanic”

Rent/Bury/Buy

This was a pleasant surprise and fairly un-discussed remnant of that bridge between 70s and 80s horror. It’s well worth a watch, although a tad too unpleasant to pop on so many more times to warrant a buy. The DVD includes a jovial commentary by Howard, writer/director Eric Weston (now directing the Costas Mandylor sure-to-be classic, Hyenas), and production roustabout Warren Lewis is filled with some useful film trivia and random tidbits about everybody’s favorite B-movie character actor (like how he loves horror conventions and often bids for his own memorabilia on ebay). Certainly worth a rental, and not just because it stars the first human recipient of MTV Movie Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award.